First, as to identity and diversity. In
this way of agreement or disagreement of our ideas, our intuitive
knowledge is as far extended as our ideas themselves: and there can be
no idea in the mind, which it does not, presently, by an intuitive
knowledge, perceive to be what it is, and to be different from any
other.
9. Of their co-existence, extends only a very little way.
Secondly, as to the second sort, which is the agreement or
disagreement of our ideas in co-existence, in this our knowledge is
very short; though in this consists the greatest and most material
part of our knowledge concerning substances. For our ideas of the
species of substances being, as I have showed, nothing but certain
collections of simple ideas united in one subject, and so
co-existing together; v.g. our idea of flame is a body hot,
luminous, and moving upward; of gold, a body heavy to a certain
degree, yellow, malleable, and fusible: for these, or some such
complex ideas as these, in men's minds, do these two names of the
different substances, flame and gold, stand for. When we would know
anything further concerning these, or any other sort of substances,
what do we inquire, but what other qualities or powers these
substances have or have not? Which is nothing else but to know what
other simple ideas do, or do not co-exist with those that make up that
complex idea?
10.
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