Page:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume (1748).djvu/36

 and that all this creative Power of the Mind amounts to no more than the compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the Materials afforded us by the Senses and Experience. When we think of a golden Mountain, we only join two consistent Ideas, Gold, and Mountain, with which we were formerly acquainted. A virtuous Horse we can conceive; because, from our own Feeling, we can conceive Virtue, and this we may unite to the Figure and Shape of a Horse, which is an Animal familiar to us. In short all the Materials of thinking are deriv'd either from our outward or inward Sentiment: The Mixture and Composition of these belongs alone to the Mind and Will. Or to express myself in more philosophical Language, all our Ideas or more feeble Perceptions are Copies of our Impressions or more lively ones.

prove this, the two following Arguments will, I hope, be sufficient. First, When we analyse our Thoughts or Ideas, however compounded or sublime, we always find, that they resolve themselves into such simple Ideas as were copy'd from a precedent Feeling or Sentiment. Even those Ideas, which, at first View, seem the most wide of this Origin, are found, upon a narrower Scrutiny, to be deriv'd from it. The Idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise, and good Being, arises from reflecting on the Operations of our own Mind, and augmenting those Quali-