Our knowledge, therefore
is real only so far as there is a conformity between our ideas and the
reality of things. But what shall be here the criterion? How shall the
mind, when it perceives nothing but its own ideas, know that they
agree with things themselves? This, though it seems not to want
difficulty, yet, I think, there be two sorts of ideas that we may be
assured agree with things.
4. As all simple ideas are really conformed to things. First, The
first are simple ideas, which since the mind, as has been shown, can
by no means make to itself, must necessarily be the product of
things operating on the mind, in a natural way, and producing
therein those perceptions which by the Wisdom and Will of our Maker
they are ordained and adapted to. From whence it follows, that
simple ideas are not fictions of our fancies, but the natural and
regular productions of things without us, really operating upon us;
and so carry with them all the conformity which is intended; or
which our state requires: for they represent to us things under
those appearances which they are fitted to produce in us: whereby we
are enabled to distinguish the sorts of particular substances, to
discern the states they are in, and so to take them for our
necessities, and apply them to our uses. Thus the idea of whiteness,
or bitterness, as it is in the mind, exactly answering that power
which is in any body to produce it there, has all the real
conformity it can or ought to have, with things without us.
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