1. Positive ideas from privative causes.
Concerning the simple ideas of Sensation, it is to be considered,--that
whatsoever is so constituted in nature as to be able, by affecting our senses, to cause any perception in the mind,
doth thereby produce in the understanding a simple idea; which, whatever be the external cause of it, when it
comes to be taken notice of by our discerning faculty, it is by the mind looked on and considered there to be a real
positive idea in the understanding, as much as any other whatsoever; though, perhaps, the cause of it be but a
privation of the subject.