These mixed modes, being also such
combinations of simple ideas as are not looked upon to be
characteristical marks of any real beings that have a steady
existence, but scattered and independent ideas put together by the
mind, are thereby distinguished from the complex ideas of substances.
2. Made by the mind. That the mind, in respect of its simple
ideas, is wholly passive, and receives them all from the existence and
operations of things, such as sensation or reflection offers them,
without being able to make any one idea, experience shows us. But if
we attentively consider these ideas I call mixed modes, we are now
speaking of, we shall find their original quite different. The mind
often exercises an active power in making these several
combinations. For, it being once furnished with simple ideas, it can
put them together in several compositions, and so make variety of
complex ideas, without examining whether they exist so together in
nature. And hence I think it is that these ideas are called notions:
as if they had their original, and constant existence, more in the
thoughts of men, than in the reality of things; and to form such
ideas, it sufficed that the mind put the parts of them together, and
that they were consistent in the understanding, without considering
whether they had any real being: though I do not deny but several of
them might be taken from observation, and the existence of several
simple ideas so combined, as they are put together in the
understanding.
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