36. No ideas in our complex ideas of spirits, but those got from sensation or reflection.
This further is to be
observed, that there is no idea we attribute to God, bating infinity, which is not also a part of our complex idea of
other spirits. Because, being capable of no other simple ideas, belonging to anything but body, but those which by
reflection we receive from the operation of our own minds, we can attribute to spirits no other but what we
receive from thence: and all the difference we can put between them, in our contemplation of spirits, is only in the
several extents and degrees of their knowledge, power, duration, happiness, etc. For that in our ideas, as well of
spirits as of other things, we are restrained to those we receive from sensation and reflection, is evident from
hence,--That, in our ideas of spirits, how much soever advanced in perfection beyond those of bodies, even to
that of infinite, we cannot yet have any idea of the manner wherein they discover their thoughts one to another:
though we must necessarily conclude that separate spirits, which are beings that have perfecter knowledge and
greater happiness than we, must needs have also a perfecter way of communicating their thoughts than we have,
who are fain to make use of corporeal signs, and particular sounds; which are therefore of most general use, as
being the best and quickest we are capable of. But of immediate communication having no experiment in
ourselves, and consequently no notion of it at all, we have no idea how spirits, which use not words, can with
quickness, or much less how spirits that have no bodies can be masters of their own thoughts, and communicate or
conceal them at pleasure, though we cannot but necessarily suppose they have such a power.
