So likewise in thinking, a power to receive
ideas or thoughts from the operation of any external substance is
called a power of thinking: but this is but a passive power, or
capacity. But to be able to bring into view ideas out of sight at
one's own choice, and to compare which of them one thinks fit, this is
an active power. This reflection may be of some use to preserve us
from mistakes about powers and actions, which grammar, and the
common frame of languages, may be apt to lead us into. Since what is
signified by verbs that grammarians call active, does not always
signify action: v.g. this proposition: I see the moon, or a star, or I
feel the heat of the sun, though expressed by a verb active, does
not signify any action in me, whereby I operate on those substances,
but only the reception of the ideas of light, roundness, and heat;
wherein I am not active, but barely passive, and cannot, in that
position of my eyes or body, avoid receiving them. But when I turn
my eyes another way, or remove my body out of the sunbeams, I am
properly active; because of my own choice, by a power within myself, I
put myself into that motion. Such an action is the product of active
power.
75. Summary of our original ideas. And thus I have, in a short
draught, given a view of our original ideas, from whence all the
rest are derived, and of which they are made up; which, if I would
consider as a philosopher, and examine on what causes they depend, and
of what they are made, I believe they all might be reduced to these
very few primary and original ones, viz.
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