Constant experience makes us sensible of
both these, though our narrow understandings can comprehend neither.
For, when the mind would look beyond those original ideas we have from
sensation or reflection, and penetrate into their causes, and manner
of production, we find still it discovers nothing but its own
short-sightedness.
29. Summary. To conclude. Sensation convinces us that there are
solid extended substances; and reflection, that there are thinking
ones: experience assures us of the existence of such beings, and
that the one hath a power to move body by impulse, the other by
thought; this we cannot doubt of. Experience, I say, every moment
furnishes us with the clear ideas both of the one and the other. But
beyond these ideas, as received from their proper sources, our
faculties will not reach. If we would inquire further into their
nature, causes, and manner, we perceive not the nature of extension
clearer than we do of thinking. If we would explain them any
further, one is as easy as the other; and there is no more
difficulty to conceive how a substance we know not should, by thought,
set body into motion, than how a substance we know not should, by
impulse, set body into motion. So that we are no more able to discover
wherein the ideas belonging to body consist, than those belonging to
spirit.
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