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imagination. So true it is, that, though it may 

 be justly affirmed, we can have no knowledge 

 without ideas, yet it is most unjust and absurd to in- 

 fer thence, that we can have no knowledge leyo?id 

 them. 



SECT. I1L 



The Properties of Ideas of Sensations. 



S' 

 INGE then the ideas of sensation are the founda* 



tion, and rough materials, of all even our most ab- 

 stracted knowledge, (out of which every man raises a 

 superstructure, according to the different turn of those 

 organs, that are more immediately subservient to the 

 operations of the understanding, and the different 

 ways in which he employs those opt rations) it will be 

 convenient to say something concerning the proper- 

 tits of these ideas. 



Their first property is, that they are original. We 

 receive them from our first coming into the wor)d y 

 without any immediate concurrence of the understand- 

 ing, antecedently to any of its operations. The 

 soul, till these are received, is wholly unactive, and 

 cannot so much as form one thought. These ideas 

 are, in respect of our subsequent notions, like the 

 first particles of matter in respect of the things com- 

 pounded of them. They run through infinite changes 

 as the uimd works upon them ; yet in themselves 

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