count time, without ever thinking of something, is very hard to me to conceive; and the things they thought on, or were present in their minds when they thought, are what I call ideas: thus much in answer to what your lordship says. But to any one that shall put the objection stronger, and say, Many have had the idea of time, who never reflected on the constant train of ideas, succeeding one another in their minds, whilst waking, I grant it; but add, that want of reflection makes not any thing cease to be: if it did, many men's actions would have no cause, nor rise, nor manner; because many men never reflect so far on their own actions, as to consider what they are bottomed on, or how they are performed. A man may measure duration by motion, of which he has no other idea, but of a constant succession of ideas in train; and yet never reflect on that succession of ideas in his mind. A man may guess at the length of his stay by himself in the dark: here is no succession to measure by, but that of his own. thoughts; and without some succession, I think there is no measure of duration. But though in this case he measures the length of the duration by the train of his ideas, yet he may never reflect on that, but conclude he does it he knows not how.

You add, "but besides such arbitrary measures of time, what need any recourse to ideas, when the returns of days, and months, and years, by the planetary motions, are so easy and so universal?" Such, here, as I suppose, refers to the knots, and notches, and figures before-mentioned: if it does not, I know not what it refers to; and if it does, it makes those knots and notches measures of time, which I humbly conceive they were not, but only arbitrary ways of recording (as all other ways of recording are) certain numbers of known lengths of time: for though any one sets down by arbitrary marks, as notches on a stick, or strokes of chalk on a trenchard, or figures on paper, the number of yards of cloth, or pints of milk that are delivered to a customer; yet I suppose nobody thinks that the cloth or milk were measured by those notches, strokes of chalk, or figures, which therefore are by no means the

arbitrary measures of those things. But what this is against, I confess I do not see: this, I am sure, it is not against any thing I have said. For, as I remember, I have said (though not the planetary motions, yet) that the motions of the sun and the moon are the best measures of time. But if you mean, that the idea of duration is rather taken from the planetary motions, than from the succession of ideas in our minds, I crave leave to doubt of that; because motion no other way discovers itself to us, but by a succession of ideas.

Your next argument against my thinking the idea of time to be derived from the train of ideas, succeeding one another in our minds, is, that your lordship thinks the contrary. This, I must own, is an argument by way of authority, and I humbly submit to it; though I think such arguments produce no certainty, either in my way of certainty by ideas, or in your way of certainty by reason.

4. As to your fourth instance, you having set down my exceptions to the peripatetic and Cartesian definitions of light, you subjoin this question: "And is this a self-evident idea of light?" I beg leave to answer in the same way by a question, and whoever said or thought that it was, or meant that it should be? He must have a strange notion of self-evident ideas, let them be what they will (for I know them not) who can think, that the showing others' definitions of light to be unintelligible is a self-evident idea of light. But farther, my lord, what, I beseech you, has a self-evident idea of light to do here? I thought, in this your instance of light, you were making good what you undertook to prove from myself, that we have no intuition of light. But because that perhaps would have sounded pretty oddly, you thought fit (which I with all submission crave leave sometimes to take notice of) to change the question but the misfortune is, that put as it is, not concerning our intuition, but the self-evidence of the idea of light, the one is no better proved than the other: and yet your lordship concludes this your first head according to your usual form: "thus we have seen what account the author of the Essay himself has given of

these self-evident ideas, which are the ground-work of demonstration." With submission, my lord, he must have good eyes, who has seen an account I have given in my Essay of self-evident ideas, when neither in all that your lordship has quoted out of it, no nor in my whole Essay, self-evident ideas are so much as once mentioned. And where the account I have given of a thing, which I never thought upon, is to be seen, I cannot imagine. What your lordship farther tells me concerning them, viz. " that self-evident ideas are the ground-work of demonstration," I also assure you is perfect news to me, which I never met with any where but in your lordship: though if I had made them the ground-work of demonstration, as you say, I think they might remain so, notwithstanding any thing your lordship has produced to the contrary.

We are now come to your second head, where I expected to have found this consequence made good, "that there may be contradictory opinions about ideas which I account most clear and distinct; ergo, it is impossible to come to a demonstration about real beings in the way of intuition of ideas." For this you told me was your second reason to prove this proposition. This consequence your lordship, it seems, looks upon as so clear, that it needs no proof; I can find none here where you take it up again. To prove something, you say, "suppose an idea happen to be thought by some to be clear and distinct, and others should think the contrary to be so:" in obedience to your lordship, I do suppose it. But, when it is supposed, will that make good the above-mentioned consequence? You, yourself, my lord, do not so much as pretend it; but in this question subjoined, "What hopes of demonstration by clear and distinct ideas then ?" infer a quite different proposition. For "it is impossible to come to a demonstration about real beings in the way of intuition of ideas;" and there is "no hopes of demonstration by clear and distinct ideas;" appear to me two very different propositions.

There appears something to me yet more incomprehensible in your way of managing this argument here. Your

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reason is, as we have seen, in these words, "there may be contradictory opinions about some ideas, that I account most clear and distinct:" and your instance of it in these words, "suppose an idea happen to be thought by some to be clear and distinct, and others should think the contrary to be so." Answ. So they may, without having any contradictory opinions about any idea, that I account most clear and distinct. A man may think his idea of heat to be clear and distinct, and another may think his idea of cold (which I take to be the contrary idea to that of heat) to be clear and distinct, and be both in the right, without the least appearance of any contradictory opinion. All therefore that your lordship says, in the remaining part of this paragraph, having nothing in it of contradictory opinions about ideas that I think most clear, serves not at all to make good your second reason. The truth is, all that you say here concerning Des Cartes's idea of space, and another man's idea of space, amounts to no more but this, that different men may signify different ideas by the same name, and will never fix on me what your lordship would persuade the world I say, "that both parts of a contradiction may be true." Though I do say, that in such a loose use of the terms body and vacuum, it may be demonstrated, both that there is, and is not a vacuum: which is a contradiction in words, and is apt to impose, as if it were so in sense, on those who mistake words for things; who are a kind of reasoners, whereof I perceive there is a greater number than I thought there had been. All that I have said in that place quoted by your lordship*, is nothing but to show the danger of relying upon maxims, without a careful guard upon the use of words, without which they will serve to make demonstrations on both sides. That this is so, I dare appeal to any reader, should your lordship press me again, as you do here, with all the force of these words, "Say you so? What! demonstrations on both sides? And in the way of ideas too? This is extraordinary indeed!"

* Essay, b. iv. c. 7. § 12.

That all the opposition between Des Cartes and those others, is only about the naming of ideas, I think may be made appear from these words of your lordship in the next paragraph: "in the ideas of space and body, the question supposed is, whether they be the same or no." That this is a question only about names, and not about ideas themselves, is evident from hence, that nobody can doubt whether the single idea of pure distance, and the two ideas of distance and solidity, are one and the same idea or different ideas, any more than he can doubt whether one and two are different. The question then in the case, is not whether extension considered separately by itself, or extension and solidity together, be the same idea or no ; but whether the simple idea of extension alone shall be called body, or the complex idea of solidity and extension together shall be called body. For that these ideas themselves are different, I think I need not go about to prove to any one, who ever thought of emptiness or fulness: for whether in fact the bottle in a man's hand be empty or no, or can by him be emptied or no; this, I think, is plain, that his idea of fulness, and his idea of emptiness, are not the same. This the very dispute concerning a vacuum supposes: for if men's idea of pure space were not different from their idea of solidity and space together, they could never so far separate them in their thoughts as to make a question, whether they did always exist together, any more than they could question whether the same thing existed with itself. Motion cannot be separated in existence from space; and yet nobody ever took the idea of space and the idea of motion to be the same. Solidity likewise cannot exist without space; but will any one from thence say, the idea of solidity and the idea of space are one and the same?

Your lordship's third reason, to prove that "it is impossible to come to a demonstration about real beings in this way of intuition of ideas, is, that granting the ideas to be true, there is no self-evidence of the connexion of them, which is necessary to make a demonstration." This, I must own, is to me as incomprehensible a consequence as the former; as also is that