29. Instances.
In some of our ideas there are certain relations, habitudes, and connexions, so visibly included in
the nature of the ideas themselves, that we cannot conceive them separable from them by any power whatsoever.
And in these only we are capable of certain and universal knowledge. Thus the idea of a right-lined triangle
necessarily carries with it an equality of its angles to two right ones. Nor can we conceive this relation, this
connexion of these two ideas, to be possibly mutable, or to depend on any arbitrary power, which of choice made
it thus, or could make it otherwise. But the coherence and continuity of the parts of matter; the production of
sensation in us of colours and sounds, etc., by impulse and motion; nay, the original rules and communication of
motion being such, wherein we can discover no natural connexion with any ideas we have, we cannot but ascribe
them to the arbitrary will and good pleasure of the Wise Architect. I need not, I think, here mention the
resurrection of the dead, the future state of this globe of earth, and such other things, which are by every one
acknowledged to depend wholly on the determination of a free agent. The things that, as far as our observation
reaches, we constantly find to proceed regularly, we may conclude do act by a law set them; but yet by a law that
we know not: whereby, though causes work steadily, and effects constantly flow from them, yet their connexions
and dependencies being not discoverable in our ideas, we can have but an experimental knowledge of them. From
all which it is easy to perceive what a darkness we are involved in, how little it is of Being, and the things that are,
that we are capable to know. And therefore we shall do no injury to our knowledge, when we modestly think with
ourselves, that we are so far from being able to comprehend the whole nature of the universe and all the things
contained in it, that we are not capable of a philosophical knowledge of the bodies that are about us, and make a
part of us: concerning their secondary qualities, powers, and operations, we can have no universal certainty.
Several effects come every day within the notice of our senses, of which we have so far sensitive knowledge: but
the causes, manner, and certainty of their production, for the two foregoing reasons, we must be content to be very
ignorant of. In these we can go no further than particular experience informs us matter of fact, and by analogy to
guess what effects the like bodies are, upon other trials, like to produce. But as to a perfect science of natural
bodies, (not to mention spiritual beings,) we are, I think, so far from being capable of any such thing, that I
conclude it lost labour to seek after it.
