pliable, and comprehensive enough to strike out trains immediately among any collection of objects, and discern their respective situations, as clearly as we do in scenes the most familiar to our acquaintance, it would not know what irregularity was. Therefore, if we make a distinction between orderly and disorderly, or the latter term has any meaning in language, it must belong to such positions of things, as do not correspond in their parts with any courses our ideas usually fall into, nor are reducible to any system in our imagination.

11. Did order exist in things, there could not be an order of time and of causes: for there exists no more than one point of time, and one step of causation in every moment: but this single object is not capable of order, unless in conjunction with the series of events preceding, or to follow after, which being never existent together, cannot be the residence of any quality. Therefore it is the ideas of past and future occurrences brought together in the mind, that renders them capable of order, which they then receive, when she can discern their connections and dependencies upon one another. If we consider objects co-existing together in the same scene, we shall find that though they can have no more than one position at once, they may contain a variety of orders. The spots of a chess-board lie in eight equal rows, with their flat sides turned towards each other: they lie likewise in fifteen unequal rows of lozenges, touching at the angles, the middlemost having eight spots in length, the next on each side seven a piece, and so falling off until you come to single ones at the corners: and they lie also in squares inclosed within one another, the innermost consisting of four spots, the next of twelve, or four on a side; the third of twenty, or six on a side; and the outermost of twentyeight, or eight on a side. These three forms of order, besides others that might be traced out, are generated in the imagination, and may be changed, or cast into one another at pleasure, successively, without making any alteration in the chess-board, only by the eye compounding its objects variously, and running along in different courses of observation.

12. But those courses, or the component parts of them, must be such as were familiar to us before, or we must render them familiar by practice and application. And what is more remarkable, after we have brought our thoughts to run currently along a train of ideas, they cannot always run back again the contrary way, although in the same track. Take a sheet of paper written on one side in a fair legible hand, an easy style, and familiar language, turn it upside down, or hold it against a strong light, with the back part towards you, and though you have a full and clear view of

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the writing, you see nothing but perplexity and confusion: you must pick out letter by letter, and spell every word as you go along. If any particular form of objects, or their situation, with respect to one another, constituted the essence of order, this could not happen, for the form of things does not depend upon their postures: a man does not lose his human shape by being set upon his head, nor does a horse undergo a metamorphosis every time he rolls upon his back, neither do the words lose their places, nor the letters their joinings, by a different manner of holding the paper but the mind has always been used to read them from left to right, and therefore cannot follow in any other course. What then, is there a right hand and a left in the mind itself? or have her perceptions a loco-motion, which can proceed only in one particular direction? Let us rather attribute the cause to the motion of our internal organs, running mechanically in the courses to which they have been accustomed. For as the blood circulates from the heart to the arteries, and returns back again through the veins, but cannot take a contrary round, beginning first at the veins, and thence proceeding to the arteries; so the channels of our ideas give them a free passage in that course they have been used to, but close against them upon their return. Our mental organs, indeed, are of so soft and pliable temper, as that they may be brought to admit trains passing through them either way, for there are some figures we comprehend presently, whichever part of them first catches the eye: but then this must be effected by long practice, by frequently running them over, backwards and forwards in our thoughts, or, by having been used to see them in all aspects wherein they can be placed.

But though order subsists only in the conformity of our trains, with the position of objects, yet is it not produced by a voluntary act of the mind: for we cannot see order wherever we please, nor can we avoid seeing it in some subjects, if we will contemplate them at all which I suppose has made it be imagined that things were essentially and absolutely regular or irregular in themselves. The mind, as we have shown before, may, by painful application, bring any set of objects, how confused soever, to lie in trains, or the same may be brought to pass without industry, by long and intimate acquaintance: but when the organs have once acquired a habit of throwing up ideas in that manner, corresponding with the situation of objects, they will afterwards exhibit order upon sight of them without aid of the mind, and solely by virtue of their own machinery.

13. I have but one or two observations more to make upon trains, which are, that they grow quicker by continual use, and if

short, unite at last into combinations, or if long, the middle links frequently drop out, or pass so swiftly as not to touch the notice. When children learn to read, they join the letters and syllables in trains to form words, and the words to form sentences. By degrees they do this faster, and in process of time the whole word or sentence arises to their view in one assemblage. When we would recollect the members of a family, where we are tolerably well acquainted, we find the ideas of them introduce one another in trains, but after having lived, or conversed daily among them for some time, upon hearing the name of the house, the whole association of persons belonging to it starts up instantly to our fancy. And when the channels of our ideas are worn smooth by constant use, the current runs too rapid for the 'notice to keep pace with it. I have met with persons who could understand more of what they read in Latin or French, than in English, because their mother tongue affording too easy a passage to their thoughts, they skim lightly over the surface, and never touch the greater part lying at the bottom.

CHAP. XI.

JUDGMENT.

NARROW as we must acknowledge our capacities to be, they can nevertheless give harbor to several ideas, and several combinations at the same time. External objects continually pour a variety of sensations upon us, which do not so fill the imagination, but that reflection still finds room to throw in other ideas from her own store. And when the notice touches upon two or more ideas together, there generally arises another, not compounded or extracted from them, but generated by them, to wit, an idea of comparison, resemblance, identity, difference, relation, distance, number, situation, or other circumstance belonging to them all which, in metaphysical language, are comprehended under the general term of Judgment, which, in common speech, we distribute into several species, as knowledge, discernment, opinion, and appearance, not indeed very accurately, as not always adhering inviolably to that division, but often using them promiscuously for one another.

2. Single ideas may be expressed by single words, as a man, a color, motion, gratitude; for upon hearing the sound, the whole idea associated therewith starts up instantly to the thought but to

express a judgment, you must employ a proposition, which always contains three parts at least, namely, the terms, and the judgment, passed upon them; as, man is an animal, fire consumes wood, one egg resembles another. For though we have sentences consisting only of two words, as, Peter lives, Thomas sleeps, the earth moves, which therefore seem to contain no more than one term, yet that there is another implied appears manifest, because we may express that other, without adding anything to the sense for Peter is alive, Thomas asleep, the earth in motion, convey not a whit more than was conveyed by the shorter sentences above cited. And though many times one of the terms be comprehended within the other, as being an ingredient of the assemblage, expressed thereby, yet must it be taken out from the assemblage, and stand apart, before we can judge anything concerning it. The idea of man includes that of life, activity, reason, and several other particulars; but this idea, contemplated ever so long, will make no proposition, nor produce any judgment, unless some of those particulars be considered in the abstract, and beheld in the same view as it were by the side of the concrete; and then we can discern that man is a living, an active, or a rational creature. But this abstract is as much a complete idea, when compared with assemblages comprehending it within them, as when compared with others that do not the idea of sweetness being as distinct from that of sugar whereof it is affirmed, as from that of gall whereof it is denied: and he that thinks of the former, has no fewer ideas in his mind, than he that thinks of the latter.

3. That judgment likewise, although the production of the terms, for we cannot judge without something in our thoughts to judge upon, is nevertheless a distinct idea from the roots whereout it grows, cannot be doubted when we reflect, that many things occur to our view, and affect our notice in some degree, without our passing any judgment upon them. We may see leaves falling from the trees, birds flying in the air, or cattle grazing upon the ground, without affirming, or denying, or thinking anything concerning them and yet perhaps we had taken so much notice of them, that, upon being asked a minute afterwards, we could remember what we had seen. A man may have beheld a field from his window a hundred times, without ever observing whether it were square, or pentangular, and yet the figure was exhibited to his view every time he looked upon it: and we have observations suggested to us sometimes, upon things extremely familiar to our acquaintance, which we acknowledge very obvious, when put in mind of them, although we never hit upon

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them ourselves. It is notorious that men judge variously of the same objects, and so do the several faculties of the same man upon many occasions; Appearance, which is the judgment of sense, being opposite to Opinion, or the judgment of understanding. For we believe the sun to be an immense globe, much larger than all the countries we ever travelled over, while it appears at the same time to our eyes, but as a little ball, that one might roll about in a bushel. And though the apparent magnitude of objects is supposed to depend upon the angle they subtend at our eye, nevertheless our familiarity with them changes our estimation of their bulk. Why does the sun look smaller than the house, and yet a man at twenty yards distance, does not look smaller than your hand, although you might quite cover him from your sight by holding it up at arms-length before you? Unless because we continually see men close by our side, whereas we never saw the sun so near as to subtend a greater angle than the house.

4. Hence it follows incontestably, that judgment is an act of reflection, never thrown upon us by external objects, but something done upon the ideas after their entrance. Therefore the schoolmen reckon it a second act of the mind, distinct from the first, called simple apprehension, whereby we receive the ideas conveyed by sensation, or turned up by the workings of imagination. But if it be an act of the mind, it is, as well as apprehension, an act of her perceptive faculty, wherein the mind remains purely passive, and only receives what some other agent strikes upon her. For judgment is not a voluntary act, any further than that in many cases we may choose whether we will consider things attentively enough to discern their relations or resemblances: but this we have not always in our option, for sometimes they force upon us, whether we will or no; and when we fix our attention voluntarily, the judgment formed thereupon is not the work of the mind, for she cannot discern snow to be green, nor twenty to be less than fifteen, but must take such estimation as results of its own accord, from the subject she contemplates. It is true we sometimes judge amiss through the fault of our Will, when we had materials before us for doing better, but this we do by the power we have over our ideas to overlook, or as it were, squint upon some, and hold others in a steadier view; but what is done by the instrumentality of ideas, although remotely our own act, and therefore justly chargeable at our door, is nevertheless the immediate operation of the instrument; just as an impression is made by the seal, although we press it down upon the wax ourselves. 5. Since then the mind is purely passive in the act of judg