6. Instances: murder, incest, stabbing.
To see how arbitrarily these essences of mixed modes are made by the
mind, we need but take a view of almost any of them. A little looking into them will satisfy us, that it is the mind
that combines several scattered independent ideas into one complex one; and, by the common name it gives them,
makes them the essence of a certain species, without regulating itself by any connexion they have in nature. For
what greater connexion in nature has the idea of a man than the idea of a sheep with killing, that this is made a
particular species of action, signified by the word murder, and the other not? Or what union is there in nature
between the idea of the relation of a father with killing than that of a son or neighbour, that those are combined
into one complex idea, and thereby made the essence of the distinct species parricide, whilst the other makes no
distinct species at all? But, though they have made killing a man's father or mother a distinct species from killing
his son or daughter, yet, in some other cases, son and daughter are taken in too, as well as father and mother: and
they are all equally comprehended in the same species, as in that of incest. Thus the mind in mixed modes
arbitrarily unites into complex ideas such as it finds convenient; whilst others that have altogether as much union
in nature are left loose, and never combined into one idea, because they have no need of one name. It is evident
then that the mind, by its free choice, gives a connexion to a certain number of ideas, which in nature have no
more union with one another than others that it leaves out: why else is the part of the weapon the beginning of the
wound is made with taken notice of, to make the distinct species called stabbing, and the figure and matter of the
weapon left out? I do not say this is done without reason, as we shall see more by and by; but this I say, that it is
done by the free choice of the mind, pursuing its own ends; and that, therefore, these species of mixed modes are
the workmanship of the understanding. And there is nothing more evident than that, for the most part, in the
framing of these ideas, the mind searches not its patterns in nature, nor refers the ideas it makes to the real
existence of things, but puts such together as may best serve its own purposes, without tying itself to a precise
imitation of anything that really exists.
