1. Made by the mind out of simple ones.
We have hitherto considered those ideas, in the reception whereof the
mind is only passive, which are those simple ones received from sensation and reflection before mentioned,
whereof the mind cannot make one to itself, nor have any idea which does not wholly consist of them. But as the
mind is wholly passive in the reception of all its simple ideas, so it exerts several acts of its own, whereby out of
its simple ideas, as the materials and foundations of the rest, the others are framed. The acts of the mind, wherein
it exerts its power over its simple ideas, are chiefly these three: (1) Combining several simple ideas into one
compound one; and thus all complex ideas are made. (2) The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or
complex, together, and setting them by one another, so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them
into one; by which way it gets all its ideas of relations. (3) The third is separating them from all other ideas that
accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction: and thus all its general ideas are made. This
shows man's power, and its ways of operation, to be much the same in the material and intellectual world. For the
materials in both being such as he has no power over, either to make or destroy, all that man can do is either to
unite them together, or to set them by one another, or wholly separate them. I shall here begin with the first of
these in the consideration of complex ideas, and come to the other two in their due places. As simple ideas are
observed to exist in several combinations united together, so the mind has a power to consider several of them
united together as one idea; and that not only as they are united in external objects, but as itself has joined them
together. Ideas thus made up of several simple ones put together, I call complex;--such as are beauty, gratitude, a
man, an army, the universe; which, though complicated of various simple ideas, or complex ideas made up of
simple ones, yet are, when the mind pleases, considered each by itself, as one entire thing, and signified by one
name.