14. Method followed in this explication of faculties.
These, I think, are the first faculties and operations of the
mind, which it makes use of in understanding; and though they are exercised about all its ideas in general, yet the
instances I have hitherto given have been chiefly in simple ideas. And I have subjoined the explication of these
faculties of the mind to that of simple ideas, before I come to what I have to say concerning complex ones, for
these following reasons:--
First, Because several of these faculties being exercised at first principally about simple ideas, we might, by
following nature in its ordinary method, trace and discover them, in their rise, progress, and gradual
improvements.
Secondly, Because observing the faculties of the mind, how they operate about simple ideas,--which are usually,
in most men's minds, much more clear, precise, and distinct than complex ones,--we may the better examine and
learn how the mind extracts, denominates, compares, and exercises, in its other operations about those which are
complex, wherein we are much more liable to mistake.
Thirdly, Because these very operations of the mind about ideas received from sensations, are themselves, when
reflected on, another set of ideas, derived from that other source of our knowledge, which I call reflection; and
therefore fit to be considered in this place after the simple ideas of sensation. Of compounding, comparing,
abstracting, etc., I have but just spoken, having occasion to treat of them more at large in other places.