Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/274

198 or the first degree of Taurus, and in the year of our Lord 1671, or the 1000 year of the Julian period: all which distances we measure by preconceived ideas of certain lengths of space and duration, as inches, feet, miles, and degrees; and in the other, minutes, days, and years, &c.

§ 9. There is one thing more wherein space and duration have a great conformity; and that is, though they are justly the parts of reckoned amongst our simple ideas, yet duration are none of the distinct ideas we have of either is without all manner of composition It has been objected to Mr. Locke, that if space consists of parts, as it is confessed in this place, he should not have reckoned it in the number of simple ideas; because it seems to be inconsistent with what he says elsewhere, that a simple idea is uncompounded, and contains in it nothing but one uniform appearance or conception of the mind, and is not distinguishable into different ideas. It is farther objected, that Mr. Locke has not given in the eleventh chapter of the second book, where he begins to speak of simple ideas, an exact definition of what he understands by the word simple ideas. To these difficulties Mr. Locke answers thus: To begin with the last, he declares that he has not treated his subject in an order perfectly scholastic, having not had much familiarity with those sort of books during the writing of his, and not remembering at all the method in which they are written; and therefore his readers ought not to expect definitions regularly placed at the beginning of each new subject. Mr. Locke contents himself to employ the principal terms that he uses, so that from his use of them the reader may easily comprehend what he means by them. But with respect to the term simple idea, he has had the good luck to define that in the place cited in the objection; and therefore there is no reason to supply that defect. The question then is to know, whether the idea of extension agrees with this definition? which will effectually agree to it, if it be understood in the sense which Mr. Locke had principally in his view; for that composition which he designed to exclude in that definition was a composition of different ideas in the mind, and not a composition of the same kind in a thing whose essence consists in having parts of the same kind, where you can never come to a part entirely exempted from this composition. So that if the idea ; it is the very nature of both of them to consist of parts: but their parts being all of the same kind, and without the mixture of any other idea, hinder them not from having a place amongst simple ideas.