Chap. X. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 173 



no ideas of our fenfations? And I fay we have. But Mr Locke's 

 error is in not diftinguifhing betwixt the fenfation Itfelf, and the idea 

 wx form of that fenfation ; for if we take into our confideration the 

 nature of the objeds of thofe fenfations, the organs upon wliich 

 they make the impreffion, and the nature of any particular fenfation, 

 as diftinguifhed from another, then we may be faid to have an idea 

 of that fenfation, but as diftind: from the fenfation as any other idea 

 is from the obje<5t from which the mind forms it. 



But even of fenfations he does mot appear to me to have under- 

 ftood the nature ; otherwife he never could have confounded them 

 with ideas: For he would have known, that in fenfation the mind is 

 paffive, only receiving the impreifion, which external objeds make 

 upon the organs of fenfe ; whereas, in forming ideas, the mind, as 

 I have {hown, is active; and the intellect exerts that faculty which 

 is peculiar to it, of confidering things not fmgle and by themfelves^ 

 in which way the fenfe perceives them, but together, arranging them 

 and making fyftems of them. And, accordingly, as I have faid in 

 feveral parts of this work, every idea is a fyftem greater or lefler, 

 and is truly a definition of the thing, though not fo accurate and 

 perfedt as definitions, made by men of fcience, are. Now, definition 

 is certainly a work of intelled, which cannot be performed by the 

 fenfe. But Mr Locke does not appear to me to have known what 

 intelled is, nor confequently what maji is, that is, what an inteliedual 

 creature is. 



What appears to me to have led Mr Locke into this grofs error 

 concerning ideas, was, that he perceived all our ideas to arife from 

 fenfations ; which is certainly true. But then he Ihould have dif- 

 tinguifhed betwixt the materials of which our ideas are formed, and 

 the ideas themfelves. The fenfes, no doubt, furnifh the materi- 

 als, of v/hich the intelled forms its firft ideas j for, as I have faid, 



the 



