4. How this is done. To understand this right, we must consider
wherein this making of these complex ideas consists; and that is not
in the making any new idea, but putting together those which the
mind had before. Wherein the mind does these three things: First, It
chooses a certain number; Secondly, It gives them connexion, and makes
them into one idea; Thirdly, It ties them together by a name. If we
examine how the mind proceeds in these, and what liberty it takes in
them, we shall easily observe how these essences of the species of
mixed modes are the workmanship of the mind; and, consequently, that
the species themselves are of men's making. Evidently arbitrary, in
that the idea is often before the existence. Nobody can doubt but that
these ideas of mixed modes are made by a voluntary collection of
ideas, put together in the mind, independent from any original
patterns in nature, who will but reflect that this sort of complex
ideas may be made, abstracted, and have names given them, and so a
species be constituted, before any one individual of that species ever
existed. Who can doubt but the ideas of sacrilege or adultery might be
framed in the minds of men, and have names given them, and so these
species of mixed modes be constituted, before either of them was
ever committed; and might be as well discoursed of and reasoned about,
and as certain truths discovered of them, whilst yet they had no being
but in the understanding, as well as now, that they have but too
frequently a real existence? Whereby it is plain how much the sorts of
mixed modes are the creatures of the understanding, where they have
a being as subservient to all the ends of real truth and knowledge, as
when they really exist.
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