19. Idea of substance not innate.
I confess there is another idea which would be of general use for mankind to
have, as it is of general talk as if they had it; and that is the idea of substance; which we neither have nor can have
by sensation or reflection. If nature took care to provide us any ideas, we might well expect they should be such as
by our own faculties we cannot procure to ourselves; but we see, on the contrary, that since, by those ways
whereby other ideas are brought into our minds, this is not, we have no such clear idea at all; and therefore signify
nothing by the word substance but only an uncertain supposition of we know not what, i.e., of something whereof
we have no [particular distinct positive] idea, which we take to be the substratum, or support, of those ideas we do
know.
