158 



it is simple : by which I mean, that it is an appear- 

 ance, which cannot be resolved into more than ene 

 of the same kind. 



Simple ideas are generally confined within too 

 narrow a compass. For not only those of sounds, 

 smells, tastes, colours, and tangible qualities, are 

 'simple, but the ideas of all single bodies. All that 

 strikes the sense at once, is to be accounted a simple 

 idea. For you cannot divide the idea you have of 

 any one body, into the idea of more bodies than 

 one ; though it may be subdivided into the ideas of 

 the several parts of that body. 



By this property, ideas of sensation are distin- 

 guished : 



1. From the various alterations and combinations 

 of them made by the mind. The mind cannot in- 

 deed destroy any of these ideas, any more than it 

 could create them. But it alters, enlarges, or dimi- 

 nishes them : it separates and transposes them ; and 

 thus is furnished with a new set of ideas from within* 

 as well as with simple ones from without. 



2. From those notions, which the understanding 

 forms out of simple and complex ideas, considered 

 together with the various operations of the under- 

 standing upon them. Such is the notion we form of 

 most virtues and vices : each of which is apprehend- 

 ed by ideas of sensation, and the action of the 

 mind upon them put together into one complex con- 

 ception. 



A third property of ideas of sensation is, that they 



