5. Secondly, All complex ideas, except ideas of substances, are their own archetypes.
Secondly, All our complex ideas,
except those of substances, being archetypes of the mind's own making, not intended to be the copies of anything,
nor referred to the existence of anything, as to their originals, cannot want any conformity necessary to real
knowledge. For that which is not designed to represent anything but itself, can never be capable of a wrong
representation, nor mislead us from the true apprehension of anything, by its dislikeness to it: and such, excepting
those of substances, are all our complex ideas. Which, as I have shown in another place, are combinations of
ideas, which the mind, by its free choice, puts together, without considering any connexion they have in nature.
And hence it is, that in all these sorts the ideas themselves are considered as the archetypes, and things no
otherwise regarded, but as they are conformable to them. So that we cannot but be infallibly certain, that all the
knowledge we attain concerning these ideas is real, and reaches things themselves. Because in all our thoughts,
reasonings, and discourses of this kind, we intend things no further than as they are conformable to our ideas. So
that in these we cannot miss of a certain and undoubted reality.