32. We know nothing of things beyond our simple ideas of them.
Which we are not at all to wonder at, since we
having but some few superficial ideas of things, discovered to us only by the senses from without, or by the mind,
reflecting on what it experiments in itself within, have no knowledge beyond that, much less of the internal
constitution, and true nature of things, being destitute of faculties to attain it. And therefore experimenting and
discovering in ourselves knowledge, and the power of voluntary motion, as certainly as we experiment, or
discover in things without us, the cohesion and separation of solid parts, which is the extension and motion of
bodies; we have as much reason to be satisfied with our notion of immaterial spirit, as with our notion of body,
and the existence of the one as well as the other. For it being no more a contradiction that thinking should exist
separate and independent from solidity, than it is a contradiction that solidity should exist separate and
independent from thinking, they being both but simple ideas, independent one from another: and having as clear
and distinct ideas in us of thinking, as of solidity, I know not why we may not as well allow a thinking thing
without solidity, i.e., immaterial, to exist, as a solid thing without thinking, i.e., matter, to exist; especially since it
is not harder to conceive how thinking should exist without matter, than how matter should think. For whensoever
we would proceed beyond these simple ideas we have from sensation and reflection, and dive further into the
nature of things, we fall presently into darkness and obscurity, perplexedness and difficulties, and can discover
nothing further but our own blindness and ignorance. But whichever of these complex ideas be clearest, that of
body, or immaterial spirit, this is evident, that the simple ideas that make them up are no other than what we have
received from sensation or reflection: and so is it of all our other ideas of substances, even of God himself.
