have only a relative conception. What is heat in a body? It is a quality which affects the sense of touch in a certain way. If you want to know, not how it affects the sense of touch, but what it is in itself; this I confess I know not. My conception of it is not direct, but relative to the effect it has upon bodies. The notions we have of all those qualities which Mr. Locke calls secondary, and of those he calls powers of bodies, such as the power of the magnet to attract iron, or of fire to burn wood, are relative.

Having given examples of things of which our conception is only relative, it may be proper to mention some of which it is direct. Of this kind, are all the primary qualities of body; figure, extension, solidity, hardness fluidity, and the like. Of these we have a direct and immediate knowledge from our senses. To this class belong also all the operations of mind of which we are conscious. I know what thought is, what memory, what a purpose, what a promise.

There are some things of which we can have both a direct and a relative conception. I can directly conceive ten thousand men or ten thousand pounds, because both are objects of sense, and may be seen. But whether I see such an object, or directly conceive it, my notion of it is indistinct; it is only that of a great multitude of men, or of a great heap of money; and a small addition or diminution makes no perceptible change in the notion I form in this way. But I can form a relative notion of the same number of men or of pounds, by attending to the relations which this number has to other numbers, greater or less. Then I perceive that the relative notion is distinct and scientific. For the addition of a single man, or a single pound, or even of a penny, is easily perceived.

In like manner, I can form a direct notion of a polygon of a thousand equal sides and equal angles. This direct notion cannot be more distinct, when conceived in the mind, than that which I get by sight, when the object is before me; and I find it so indistinct, that it has the same appearance to my eye, or to my direct conception, as a polygon of a thousand and one, or of nine hundred and ninety-nine sides. But when I form a relative, conception of it, by attending to the relation it bears to polygons of a greater or less number of sides, my notion of it becomes distinct and scientific, and I can demonstrate the properties by which it is distinguished from all other polygons. From these instances it appears, that our relative conceptions of things are not always less distinct, nor less fit materials for accurate reasoning, than those that are direct; and that the contrary may happen in a remarkable degree.

Our conception of power is relative to its exertions or effects. Power is one thing; its exertion is another thing. It is true, there can be no exertion without power; but there may be

power that is not exerted. Thus a man may have power to speak when he is silent: he may have power to rise and walk when he sits still.

But, though it be one thing to speak, and another to have the power of speaking, I apprehend we conceive of the power as something which has a certain relation to the effect. And of every power we form our notion by the effect which it is able to produce.

3dly, It is evident that power is a quality, and cannot exist without a subject to which it belongs.

That power may exist without any being or subject to which that power may be attributed, is an absurdity, shocking to every man of common understanding.

It is a quality which may be varied, not only in degree, but also in kind; and we distinguish both the kinds and degrees by the effects which they are able to produce.

Thus a power to fly, and a power to reason, are different kinds of power, their effects being different in kind. But a power to carry one hundred weight, and a power to carry two hundred, are different degrees of the same kind.

4thly, We cannot conclude the want of power from its not being exerted; nor from the exertion of a less degree of power, can we conclude that there is no greater degree in the subject. Thus, though a man on a particular occasion said nothing, we cannot conclude from that circumstance, that he had not the power of speech; nor from a man's carrying ten pounds weight, can we conclude that he had not the power to carry twenty. 5thly, There are some qualities that have a contrary, others that have not; power is a quality of the latter kind.

Vice is contrary to virtue, misery to happiness, hatred to love, negation to affirmation; but there is no contrary to power. Weakness or impotence are defects or privations of power, but not contraries to it.

If what has been said of power be easily understood, and readily assented to, by all who understand our language, as I believe it is, we may from this justly conclude, that we have a distinct notion of power, and may reason about it with understanding, though we can give no logical definition of it.

If power were a thing of which we have no ideas, as some philosophers have taken much pains to prove, that is, if power were a word without any meaning, we could neither affirm nor deny any thing concerning it with understanding. We should have equal reason to say that it is a substance, as that it is a quality; that it does not admit of degrees, as that it does. If the understanding immediately assents to one of these assertions, and revolts from the contrary, we may conclude with certainty, that we put some meaning upon the word power, that is, that we have some idea of it. And it is chiefly for the sake of this

conclusion, that I have enumerated so many obvious things concerning it.

The term active power is used, I conceive, to distinguish it from speculative powers. As all languages distinguish action from speculation, the same distinction is applied to the powers by which they are produced. The powers of seeing, hearing, remembering, distinguishing, judging, reasoning, are speculative powers; the power of executing any work of art or labour is active power.

There are many things related to power, in such a manner, that we can have no notion of them if we have none of power. The exertion of active power we call action; and as every action produces some change, so every change must be caused by some exertion, or by the cessation of some exertion of power. That which produces a change by the exertion of its power, we call the cause of that change; and the change produced, the effect of that cause.

When one being, by its active power, produces any change upon another, the last is said to be passive, or to be acted upon. Thus we see, that action and passion, cause and effect, exertion and operation, have such a relation to active power, that if it be understood, they are understood of consequence; but if power be a word without any meaning, all those words which are related to it, must be words without any meaning. They are, however, common words in our language; and equivalent words have always been common in all languages.

It would be very strange indeed, if mankind had always used these words so familiarly, without perceiving that they had no meaning; and that this discovery should have been first made by a philosopher of the present age.

With equal reason it might be maintained, that though there are words in all languages to express sight, and words to signify the various colours which are objects of sight; yet that all mankind from the beginning of the world had been blind, and never had an idea of sight or of colour. But there are no absurdities so gross as those which philosophers have advanced concerning ideas.

CHAPTER II.

THE SAME SUBJECT.

THERE are, I believe, no abstract notions, that are to be found more early, or more universally, in the minds of men, than those of acting, and being acted upon. Every child that understands the distinction between striking and being struck, must have the conception of action and passion.

We find accordingly, that there is no language so imperfect, but that it has active and passive verbs, and participles; the one signifying some kind of action; the other the being acted upon. This distinction enters into the original contexture of all languages.

Active verbs have a form and construction proper to themselves; passive verbs a different form and a different construction. In all languages, the nominative to an active verb is the agent; the thing acted upon is put in an oblique case. In passive verbs, the thing acted upon is the nominative, and the agent, if expressed, must be in an oblique case; as in this example: Raphael drew the Cartoons; the Cartoons were drawn by Raphael.

Every distinction which we find in the structure of all languages, must have been familiar to those who framed the languages at first, and to all who speak them with understanding.

It may be objected to this argument, taken from the structure of language, in the use of active and passive verbs, that active verbs are not always used to denote an action, nor is the nominative before an active verb conceived in all cases to be an agent in the strict sense of that word; that there are many passive verbs which have an active signification, and active verbs which have a passive. From these facts, it may be thought a just conclusion, that in contriving the different forms of active and passive verbs, and their different construction, men have not been governed by a regard to any distinction between action and passion, but by chance, or some accidental cause.

In answer to this objection, the fact on which it is founded, must be admitted; but I think the conclusion not justly drawn from it, for the following reasons.

1st, It seems contrary to reason, to attribute to chance or accident, what is subject to rules, even though there may be exceptions to the rule. The exceptions may, in such a case, be attributed to accident, but the rule cannot. There is perhaps hardly any thing in language so general, as not to admit of exceptions. It cannot be denied to be a general rule, that verbs and participles have an active and a passive voice; and as this

is a general rule, not in one language only, but in all the languages we are acquainted with, it shows evidently that men, in the earliest stages, and in all periods of society, have distinguished action from passion.

2dly, It is to be observed, that the forms of language are often applied to purposes different from those for which they were originally intended. The varieties of a language, even the most perfect, can never be made equal to all the variety of human conceptions. The forms and modifications of language must be confined within certain limits, that they may not exceed the capacity of human memory. Therefore, in all languages, there must be a kind of frugality used, to make one form of expression serve many different purposes, like sir Hudibras's dagger, which, though made to stab or break a head, was put to many other uses. Many examples might be produced of this frugality in language. Thus the Latins and Greeks had five or six cases of nouns, to express all the various relations that one thing could bear to another. The genitive case must have been at first intended to express some one capital relation, such as that of possession or of property; but it would be very difficult to enumerate all the relations which, in the progress of language, it was used to express. The same observation may be applied to other cases of nouns.

The slightest similitude or analogy is thought sufficient to justify the extension of a form of speech beyond its proper meaning, whenever the language does not afford a more proper form. In the moods of verbs, a few of those which occur most frequently are distinguished by different forms, and these are made to supply all the forms that are wanting. The same observation may be applied to what is called the voices of verbs. An active and a passive are the capital ones; some languages have more, but no language so many as to answer to all the variations of human thought. We cannot always coin new ones, and therefore must use some one or other of those that are to be found in the language, though at first intended for another purpose.

3dly, A third observation in answer to the objection is, that we can point out a cause of the frequent misapplication of active verbs, to things which have no proper activity: a cause which extends to the greater part of such misapplications, and which confirms the account I have given of the proper intention of active and passive verbs.

As there is no principle, that appears to be more universally acknowledged by mankind, from the first dawn of reason, than that every change we observe in nature must have a cause ; so this is no sooner perceived, than there arises in the human mind, a strong desire to know the causes of those changes that fall within our observation. Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,