2. Creation, generation, making, alteration.
Having thus, from what our senses are able to discover in the
operations of bodies on one another, got the notion of cause and effect, viz., that a cause is that which makes any
other thing, either simple idea, substance, or mode, begin to be; and an effect is that which had its beginning from
some other thing; the mind finds no great difficulty to distinguish the several originals of things into two sorts:--
First, When the thing is wholly made new, so that no part thereof did ever exist before; as when a new particle of
matter doth begin to exist, in rerum natura, which had before no being, and this we call creation.
Secondly, When a thing is made up of particles, which did all of them before exist; but that very thing, so
constituted of pre-existing particles, which, considered all together, make up such a collection of simple ideas, had
not any existence before, as this man, this egg, rose, or cherry, etc. And this, when referred to a substance,
produced in the ordinary course of nature by internal principle, but set on work by, and received from, some
external agent, or cause, and working by insensible ways which we perceive not, we call generation. When the
cause is extrinsical, and the effect produced by a sensible separation, or juxta-position of discernible parts, we call
it making; and such are all artificial things. When any simple idea is produced, which was not in that subject
before, we call it alteration. Thus a man is generated, a picture made; and either of them altered, when any new
sensible quality or simple idea is produced in either of them, which was not there before: and the things thus made
to exist, which were not there before, are effects; and those things which operated to the existence, causes. In
which, and all other cases, we may observe, that the notion of cause and effect has its rise from ideas received by
sensation or reflection; and that this relation, how comprehensive soever, terminates at last in them. For to have
the idea of cause and effect, it suffices to consider any simple idea or substance, as beginning to exist, by the
operation of some other, without knowing the manner of that operation.
