Appendix - CHAPTER 1 SECTION I OF THE IDEAS OF SENSATION
CHAPTER 1 SECTION I OF THE IDEAS OF SENSATION
Our senses are the only source of those ideas, upon which all our knowledge is founded. Without ideas of’ some sort or other, we could have no ‘knowledge ; and without our senses we could have no ideas. But these being once transmitted to the memory, the soul, which till then was still an unactive being, supplied with materials to work upon, begins to exert her operations.
Before we speak of the properties of ideas of sensation, it is proper to observe three things : 1. That it is not necessary to decide whether sensitive perception be performed, by an impression of the object upon the sense, or by an operation of the sense upon the object. It is certain that either way of sensitive perception necessarily requires the presence of the object, and an immediate action, either of the organ upon this, or of this upon the organ : consequent upon which is a sort of representation of the object to the mind. This is the case of all external objects, which have left any representation of themselves with us by our senses: which representation being transmitted by the senses to the memory, is properly termed an IDEA.
If any one asks, what an idea is, let him look upon a tree, and then immediately shutting his eyes, try if he retains any resemblances of what he saw; and that is an idea. Thus is it is, that all the varieties of the visible creation is let in upon our minds through the senses, as all parts of a delightful and spacious landscape are contracted and conveyed into a dark chamber, through an artificial eye in the wall , and so become conspicuous and distinguished in miniature.
Nor, 2. Is it material whether the ideas of sensible objects are true images of their real natures: or whether the objects be only occasions of producing these ideas, by virtue of an arbitrary law of God, such a thought in the soul should follow such a motion in the body. For whatever impression sensible objects occasion in us, this we call their idea; it being the only perception of them we are capable of, and the only way we now have of knowing them. And such a way it is, as answers all the ends of knowledge in this life, and lays a groundwork sufficient for all that knowledge which is necessary in order to another. The third thing proper to be mentioned, is, that to prevent confusion, the word IDEA is, in all that follows, confined to the images we have of sensible objects, and the various alterations of them by the understanding. And taking the word in this sense, the mind has no idea of her own operations For these are originally within us themselves, and so are known by inward consciousness; not as outward things are, by any similitude of them, conveyed through the senses to memory.