11. Several words seeming to signify action, signify but the effect.
Power being the source from whence all action
proceeds, the substances wherein these powers are, when they exert this power into act, are called causes, and the
substances which thereupon are produced, or the simple ideas which are introduced into any subject by the
exerting of that power, are called effects. The efficacy whereby the new substance or idea is produced is called, in
the subject exerting that power, action; but in the subject wherein any simple idea is changed or produced, it is
called passion: which efficacy, however various, and the effects almost infinite, yet we can, I think, conceive it, in
intellectual agents, to be nothing else but modes of thinking and willing; in corporeal agents, nothing else but
modifications of motion. I say, I think we cannot conceive it to be any other but these two. For whatever sort of
action besides these produce any effects, I confess myself to have no notion nor idea of; and so it is quite remote
from my thoughts, apprehensions, and knowledge; and as much in the dark to me as five other senses, or as the
ideas of colours to a blind man. And therefore many words which seem to express some action, signify nothing of
the action or modus operandi at all, but barely the effect, with some circumstances of the subject wrought on, or
cause operating: v.g. creation, annihilation, contain in them no idea of the action or manner whereby they are
produced, but barely of the cause, and the thing done. And when a countryman says the cold freezes water, though
the word freezing seems to import some action, yet truly it signifies nothing but the effect, viz., that water that
was before fluid is become hard and consistent, without containing any idea of the action whereby it is done.
