£1 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book TL 



fu.:h a thing exidlng in the regions of infinite fpace, as tnatter without 

 form and dimenfions, is what I think no man can take upon him to 

 decide. 



Whatever is true of 7natter in general, will apply equally to the 

 particular matter of each particular fuhftance, and which I believe is 

 meaned by our modern philofophers, when they fpcak of xhi^fubjlance 

 of any thing as diftind from its attributes : For, as to X.\\q fubjhintial 

 forms of the Peripatetics, they are quite different from the matter, as I 

 fhall afterwards fhow. 



And here it may not be improper to obferve, that the philofophers 

 of this age have fallen into great confufion concerning ideas^ by not 

 making the proper diflindions ; for fome of them fpeak of ideas as 

 exifling only in the mind \ others of them, as of things having a real 

 exif^ence in nature. Now, in one fenfe, neither of thefe opinions is 

 true; in another, both are true. Ideas are undoubtedly the creatures 

 of the viind^ being formed by the mind^ either from external objeds, 

 that is, the objeds of fenfe, or from refledions upon its own opera- 

 tions : And therefore, in as much as they are only the operations of the 

 mind-t they may be faid only to have an exiftence in the mind. But 

 we ought to difllnguifh betwixt the idea and its objeSi : For, tho* the 

 idea be only in the mina, the objed of it may have a real exiflence 

 out of the mind. And this is the cafe of all the ideas we form from 

 natural objeds. But there may be likewife ideas formed from no- 

 thing that is to be feen in nature, by w^hich I mean, that the mind 

 may conned together particular ideas, which it has formed from na- 

 tural objeds, (for all our ideas, as I have faid, are from nature,) into 

 one complex form, which has no exiftence in nature, fucn as, ilie idea 

 of a Hippocentaur, or whatever fancy or fear has conceived, 



•■' Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire," 



Such 



