5. Evidently arbitrary, in that the idea is often before the existence.
Nobody can doubt but that these ideas of mixed modes are made by a volumtary collection of ideas, put
together in the mind , independent from any original patterns in nature, made, abstracted,
and have names given them, and so a species be constituted, before any one individual
of that species ever existed. Who can doubt but the ideas of sacrilege or adultery
might be framed in the minds of men, and have names given them, and so these species
of mixed modes be constituted, before either of them was ever committed; and might be as well discoursed of and reasoned
about, and as certain truths discovered them, whilst yet they had no being but
in the understanding, as well as now, that they have but too frequently a real existence? whereby it is plain how must the sorts of mixed modes are the creatures
of the understanding, where they have a being as subservient to all the ends of real truth and
knowledge, as when they really exist. And we cannot doubt but law-makers have often made laws about species of actions which
were only the creatures of their own understandings; beings that had no other
existence but in their own minds. And I think nobody can deny but that the resurrection was
a species of mixed modes in the mind, before it really existed.
