Part I, Chapter 9: Of the Clearness and Distinctness of Ideas, and their Obscurity and Confusion
WE may distinguish, in any idea, the clearness from the distinctness, and the obscurity from the confusion; for we may say that an idea is clear when it strikes us sensibly, though it may not be distinct,—as the idea of pain, strikes us very sensibly, and on that account may be called clear, and yet it is very confused, since it represents pain to us as in the hand which is wounded, although it is only in the mind. We may, nevertheless, say, that every idea is distinct, in so far as it is clear, and that the obscurity arises only from the confusion: as, in the case of pain, the single sensation which strikes us is clear, and is also distinct; but what is confused, i. e., that the sensation is in our hand, is not clear to us.
Taking, therefore, as the same thing, the clearness and distinctness of ideas, it is of great importance to examine how the one are clear and the other obscure. But this will be known better by examples than by any other way; and we may develop the principles of those ideas which are clear and distinct, and the principles of those which are confused and obscure. The idea which each has of himself, as something that thinks, is very clear; and, in this way, also, the idea of everything which depends on our thought, as judging, reasoning, doubting, wishing, desiring, feeling, imagining. We have also very clear ideas of substance extended, and that which belongs to it, as figure, motion, rest; for though it is possible for us to pretend that we have no idea either of body or figure, which we cannot pretend of the substance which thinks, so long as we are thinking—yet we are not able to hide from ourselves, that we conceive clearly of extension and figure.
We conceive, also, clearly—being, existence, time, order, number—provided we consider only that the duration of each thing is a mode, or phase, under which we consider that thing, so long as it continues to be; so that thus order and number are not different in fact from the things which are ordered and numbered. All these ideas are so clear, that, often wishing to make them more clear, and not being satisfied with those which we form naturally, we obscure them. We may say, also, that the idea which we have of God, in this life, is clear in one sense, though it may be obscure and very imperfect in another. It is clear, since it suffices to reveal to us in God a very great number of attributes which, we are assured, can be found in God alone; but it is obscure, if we compare it with that which the blessed in heaven have of Him; and it is imperfect, in that our mind, being finite, is able to conceive an infinite object only very imperfectly. But the conditions of an idea’s perfection are different from those of its clearness, for it is perfect when it represents to us all that is in its object, and it is clear when it represents to us enough for forming a clear and distinct conception of it.
Confused and obscure ideas are those which we have of sensible qualities, as of colour, of sound, of smell, of taste, of cold, of heat, of weight, &c.; as also of our appetites, of hunger, of thirst, of bodily pain, &c.; and we may explain the cause of confused ideas as follows:—As we have been children before we were men, and as external things have acted on us, causing different sensations in our mind, by the impressions which they made on our body, the mind, which sees that it was not through its own will that these sentiments were excited in it, but that it had them only in connection with certain bodies, as when it was conscious of heat in approaching the fire, was not satisfied with judging therefrom that there was something without it which had been the cause of these sensations, in which it would not have been deceived; but it has gone further in believing, that what was in these objects was perfectly like the sensations, or ideas, which were excited on occasion of them,—and from these judgments it has formed ideas of them, by transferring the sensations of heat, of colour, &c., to the things themselves, which are without it. And these are those confused and obscure ideas which we have of sensible qualities, the mind having added its false judgments to that which nature reveals to it.
And as these ideas are not natural but arbitrary, there is great inconsistency amongst them; for though heat and burning are only two sensations,—one feebler, and the other stronger,—we have placed heat in the fire, and we have said that the fire has heat, but we have not placed there burning, or the pain which is felt on approaching too near it; neither have we said that the fire has pain. But though men have seen clearly that pain is not in the fire which burns the hand, they have still been deceived in believing that it is in the hand that the fire burns, whereas, when considered aright, it is only in the mind, although on occasion of what takes place in the hand, since pain of body is nothing else but a feeling of aversion which the mind conceives at some movement contrary to the natural constitution of its body.
This has been confessed, not only by some ancient philosophers, as the Cyrenaics, but also by St Augustine in several places. " Those pains,” says he (in the xiv. book of the " City of God,” cap. 15), " do not arise from the body, but from the mind, which is in the body and on account of the body. Dolores qui dicuntur carnis, animae sunt in carne, et ex carne; for pain of body,” he adds, “is nothing else but a grief of mind on account of its body, and the opposition to that which has been done in the body, as the pain of mind, which we call sorrow, is the opposition which the mind feels to those things which happen contrary to its pleasure. (Dolor carnis tantum modo offensio est animae ex carne, et quaedam ab ejus passione dissensio; sicuti animi dolor, quae tristitiae nuncupatur, dissensio est ab his rebus, quae nobis nolentibus acciderunt” And in the vii. book " of Genesis, in the note, cap. 19, the repugnance which the mind feels at seeing that the action through which it governs the body is impeded by some disturbance which is made in its temperament, is what is called pain. " Cum afflictionis corporis moleste sensit (anima) actionem suam, qua illi regendo adest, turbato ejus temperamento impediri offenditur et haec offensio dolor vocatur”
In fact, that which shows us that the pain which we call corporeal is in the mind, not in the body, is, that the same things which occasion us pain when we think of them, cause none when our mind is strongly occupied elsewhere, as that priest of Calamis, in Africa, of whom St Augustine speaks in the xiv. book of the " City of God,” cap. 24, who, as often as he wished, could so alienate himself from sense that he would remain as though dead, and not only was not conscious when they pinched or pierced him, but even when they burnt him. " Qui quando ei placebat, ad imitatas quasi lamentantis hominis voces, ita se auferebat a sensibus, et jacebat simillimus mortuo, ut non solum vellicantes atque pungentes minime sentiret, sed aliquando etiam igne ureretur admoto, sine ullo doloris sensu, nisi postmodum ex vulnere”
It must be remarked, further, that it is not properly the injured state of the hand, and the change which the burning causes in it, which makes the mind conscious of pain, but that movement must be communicated to the brain by means of the small fibres contained in the nerves, as in tubes, which are extended as small threads from the brain to the hand and the other parts of the body, so that when these small fibres are stirred, that part of the brain also, whence they derive their origin, is agitated; and this is why, if any obstruction prevents these threads of nerves from communicating their movement to the brain, as is the case in paralysis, a man may see his hand cut and burnt without being conscious of any pain; and, on the contrary, what appears strange enough, he may have what is called pain in the hand without possessing a hand at all, as it happens very often to those who have their hand cut off, because the fibres of the nerves which extended from the hand to the brain, being excited by some movement about the elbow, where they terminated when the arm was cut off, are still able to affect that part of the brain to which they are attached in the same manner as before, when they extended down to the hand, as the extremity of a cord can be agitated in the same way by pulling it at the middle as at either end. And this it is which causes the mind to feel the same pain then, as it felt when the limb was perfect, because it excites its attention, at the place in the brain where the movement was accustomed to come, as what we see in a mirror appears to us in the place where it would have been, if it had been seen by direct rays, because that is the most common manner of viewing objects. And this will enable us to show how very possible it is that a mind separated from the body may be tormented by the fire either of hell or of purgatory, and that it may feel the same pain as we feel when we are burnt, since, even when it was in the body, the pain of the burning was in it, and not in the body, and was, indeed, nothing else but a thought of sadness which it felt on occasion of what happened in the body to which God had united it.
Why, therefore, may we not conceive that the justice of God may so dispose a certain portion of matter in regard to a mind, as that the movement of that matter may be an occasion to that mind of afflictive thoughts, which is all that can happen to our minds in corporeal pain?
But to return to confused ideas. That of weight, which seems so clear, is no less confused than the others of which we have to speak, for children, seeing that stones and such like things fall to the ground as soon as they ceased to hold them, have formed from this the idea of a thing that falls, which idea is natural and true, and further, of some cause of that fall, which is also true. But because they see nothing but the stone, and not that which impels it, by a hasty judgment they have concluded that what they saw not, was not, and that thus the stone fell of itself by an inward principle, without there being anything else to impel it downward, and it is to this confused idea, which arose only from their error, that they have attached the name of gravity, or weight.
For, as they have seen stones which fall down towards the earth of themselves, they have seen also straws which move towards amber, and small pieces of iron or steel, which move towards the magnet. They have, therefore, as much reason to place a quality in the straws and in the iron, which moves them towards the amber or the magnet, as in the stones to move them towards the earth. Nevertheless they have not chosen to do so; but they have placed in amber a quality for attracting straws and one in the magnet for attracting iron, which they have called attractive qualities, as if it would not have been just as easy for them to have placed in the earth such a quality for attracting heavy things. But be that as it may, these attractive qualities arise only in the same way as that of weight, from a false reasoning which has led men to believe that it must be that the magnet should attract iron, because they saw nothing which impelled the magnet towards it, although it be impossible to conceive that one body is able to attract another, if the body which attracts is not moved itself, and if that which is attracted is not joined or attached to it by some link.
We ought also to refer to these judgments of our youth the idea which represents to us hard and heavy things as more solid and material than those which are light and delicate, which leads us to believe that there is much more matter in a box full of gold than in another which is only full of air; for these ideas arise simply from our having, in our youth, judged of all external things only in relation to the impression which they made on our senses; and thus, because hard and heavy bodies acted more powerfully on us than light and subtile bodies, we have imagined that they contain more matter; whereas reason ought to lead us to the conclusion, that since each part of matter never occupies more than its own space, an equal space is always filled with the same quantity of matter.
So that a vessel of a cubic foot does not contain more when filled with gold, than when filled with air; and it is even true, in one sense, that when filled with air it contains more solid matter, for a reason which it would be too long to explain here.
We may say that it is this imagination which produces all the extravagant opinions of those, who have believed that our mind was either a very subtile air composed of atoms as Democritus and the Epicureans,—or a fiery vapour, as the Stoics,—or a portion of heavenly light, as the ancient Manicheans, and Fludd even in our time,—or a fine air, as the Socinians; for none of these philosophers believed that a stone, or wood, or mire, were capable of thinking; and this is why Cicero, while he holds, with the Stoics, that our mind is a subtile flame, rejects as an untenable absurdity, the idea that it could be of earth, or a gross air: " Quid enim, obsecro te; terrane tibi aut hoc nebuloso, aut caliginoso caelo, Sato, aut concreta esse videtur tanta vis memoriae? But they believed that, in subtilising this material, they rendered it less gross, less material; and that at length it might become capable of thinking, which is a ridiculous fancy. For one matter is not more subtile than another, except that, in being divided into parts smaller and more agitated, it makes, on the one hand, less resistance to other bodies, and, on the other, more easily insinuates itself into their pores; but, divided or not divided, agitated or not agitated, it is not on that account less material, or less corporeal, or more capable of thinking; since it is impossible to imagine that there is any relation between the motion, or figure of matter, subtile or gross, with thought; or that a matter which did not think when it was in repose, as the earth, or in moderate motion, as the water, could come to know itself when agitated somewhat more, and had received three or four additional boilings.
We might extend this subject much further, but this is sufficient to enable us to understand all other confused ideas, which almost all of them arise from some causes similar to those which we have mentioned. The only way of remedying this inconvenience is, to throw aside the prejudices of our youth, and to believe nothing which is within the province of that reason through which we have judged of it before, but only through that which we judge of it now. Thus we shall arrive at natural ideas; and in relation to those which are confused, we shall retain something clear: as, that in the fire there is something which is the cause of our feeling warmth, and that all things which are called heavy are impelled downwards by some cause,—determining nothing as to what the cause may be, which, in the fire, occasions this feeling in us—or in the stone, which makes it fall to the earth,—unless we have clear reasons, affording us the knowledge of these things.