4. The clearest idea of active power had from spirit.
We are abundantly furnished with the idea of passive power
by almost all sorts of sensible things. In most of them we cannot avoid observing their sensible qualities, nay,
their very substances, to be in a continual flux. And therefore with reason we look on them as liable still to the
same change. Nor have we of active power (which is the more proper signification of the word power) fewer
instances. Since whatever change is observed, the mind must collect a power somewhere able to make that
change, as well as a possibility in the thing itself to receive it. But yet, if we will consider it attentively, bodies, by
our senses, do not afford us so clear and distinct an idea of active power, as we have from reflection on the
operations of our minds. For all power relating to action, and there being but two sorts of action whereof we have
an idea, viz., thinking and motion, let us consider whence we have the clearest ideas of the powers which produce
these actions. (1) Of thinking, body affords us no idea at all; it is only from reflection that we have that. (2)
Neither have we from body any idea of the beginning of motion. A body at rest affords us no idea of any active
power to move; and when it is set in motion itself, that motion is rather a passion than an action in it. For, when
the ball obeys the motion of a billiard-stick, it is not any action of the ball, but bare passion. Also when by
impulse it sets another ball in motion that lay in its way, it only communicates the motion it had received from
another, and loses in itself so much as the other received: which gives us but a very obscure idea of an active
power of moving in body, whilst we observe it only to transfer, but not produce any motion. For it is but a very
obscure idea of power which reaches not the production of the action, but the continuation of the passion. For so
is motion in a body impelled by another; the continuation of the alteration made in it from rest to motion being
little more an action, than the continuation of the alteration of its figure by the same blow is an action. The idea of
the beginning of motion we have only from reflection on what passes in ourselves; where we find by experience,
that, barely by willing it, barely by a thought of the mind, we can move the parts of our bodies, which were before
at rest. So that it seems to me, we have, from the observation of the operation of bodies by our senses, but a very
imperfect obscure idea of active power; since they afford us not any idea in themselves of the power to begin any
action, either motion or thought. But if, from the impulse bodies are observed to make one upon another, any one
thinks he has a clear idea of power, it serves as well to my purpose; sensation being one of those ways whereby
the mind comes by its ideas: only I thought it worth while to consider here, by the way, whether the mind doth not
receive its idea of active power clearer from reflection on its own operations, than it doth from any external
sensation.
