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And surely the great and multiplied labour of framing abstract notions will be found a hard task for that tender age. Matter, I say, and each particle thereof, is according to them infinite and shapeless, and it is the mind that frames all that variety of bodies which compose the visible world, any one whereof does not exist longer than it is perceived. Again, the things perceived by sense may be termed external, with regard to their origin- in that they are not generated from within by the mind itself, but imprinted by a Spirit distinct from that which perceives them. Using NetDetective you can find everything about John Locke. I find I can excite ideas in my mind at pleasure, and vary and shift the scene as oft as I think fit. When I excite a motion in some part of my body, if it be free or without resistance, I say there is Space; but if I find a resistance, then I say there is Body; and in proportion as the resistance to motion is lesser or greater, I say the space is more or less pure. For example, the mind having observed that Peter, James, and John resemble each other in certain common agreements of shape and other qualities, leaves out of the complex or compounded idea it has of Peter, James, and any other particular man, that which is peculiar to each, retaining only what is common to all, and so makes an abstract idea wherein all the particulars equally partake- abstracting entirely from and cutting off all those circumstances and differences which might determine it to any particular existence. John Locke you can find here. By body is meant body without any particular shape or figure, there being no one shape or figure common to all animals, without covering, either of hair, or feathers, or scales, &c., By observing how ideas become general we may the better judge how words are made so. This I cannot comprehend: to me a die seems to be nothing distinct from those things which are termed its modes or accidents. Take away this material substance, about the identity whereof all the dispute is, and mean by body what every plain ordinary person means by that word, to wit, that which is immediately seen and felt, which is only a combination of sensible qualities or ideas, and then their most unanswerable objections come to nothing. For, it is evident we observe no foot-steps in them of making use of general signs for universal ideas; from which we have reason to imagine that they have not the faculty of abstracting, or making general ideas, since they have no use of words or any other general signs." But it has been made evident that bodies, of what frame or texture soever, are barely passive ideas in the mind, which is more distant and heterogeneous from them than light is from darkness. John Locke information. Would not a man be deservedly laughed at, who should talk after this manner? It hath been observed in another place that the theorems and demonstrations in Geometry are conversant about universal ideas (sect. 15, Introd.); where it is explained in what sense this ought to be understood, to wit, the particular lines and figures included in the diagram are supposed to stand for innumerable others of different sizes; or, in other words, the geometer considers them abstracting from their magnitude- which does not imply that he forms an abstract idea, but only that he cares not what the particular magnitude is, whether great or small, but looks on that as a thing different to the demonstration. These, how celebrated soever they may be for their clearness and certainty of demonstration, which is hardly anywhere else to be found, cannot nevertheless be supposed altogether free from mistakes, if in their principles there lurks some secret error which is common to the professors of those sciences with the rest of mankind. From which it follows that men who use language are able to abstract or generalize their ideas.
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