2. The mind can neither make nor destroy them.
These simple ideas, the materials of all our knowledge, are
suggested and furnished to the mind only by those two ways above mentioned, viz., sensation and reflection.
When the understanding is once stored with these simple ideas, it has the power to repeat, compare, and unite
them, even to an almost infinite variety, and so can make at pleasure new complex ideas. But it is not in the power
of the most exalted wit, or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one
new simple idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways before mentioned: nor can any force of the understanding
destroy those that are there. The dominion of man, in this little world of his own understanding being muchwhat
the same as it is in the great world of visible things; wherein his power, however managed by art and skill, reaches
no farther than to compound and divide the materials that are made to his hand; but can do nothing towards the
making the least particle of new matter, or destroying one atom of what is already in being. The same inability
will every one find in himself, who shall go about to fashion in his understanding one simple idea, not received in
by his senses from external objects, or by reflection from the operations of his own mind about them. I would
have any one try to fancy any taste which had never affected his palate; or frame the idea of a scent he had never
smelt: and when he can do this, I will also conclude that a blind man hath ideas of colours, and a deaf man true
distinct notions of sounds.
