An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense

The language of philosophers, with regard to the original faculties of the mind, is so adapted to the prevailing system that it cannot fit any other ; like a coat that fits the man for whom it was made, and shows him to advantage, which yet will sit very awkward upon one of a different make, although perhaps as handsome and as well proportioned. It is hardly possible to make any innovation in our philosophy concerning the mind and its operations, without using new words and phrases, or giving a different meaning to those that are received ; a liberty which, even when necessary, creates prejudice and misconstruction, and which must wait the sanction of time to authorize it. For, innovations in language, like those in religion and government, are always suspected and disliked by the many, till use hath made them familiar and prescription have given them a title. If the original perceptions and motions of the mind were to make their appearance single and unmixed, as we first received them from the hand of nature, one accustomed to reflection would have less difficulty in tracing them ; but before we are capable of reflection, they are so mixed, compounded, and decompounded by habits, associations, and abstractions, that it is hard to know what they were originally. The mind may in this respect be compared to an apothecary or a chemist, whose materials indeed are furnished by nature; but for the purposes of his art, he mixes, compounds, dissolves, evaporates, and sublimes them, till they put on a quite different appearance ; so that it is very difficult to know what they were 6 OF THE HUMAN MIND. [CHAP. I. at first, and much more to bring them back to their original and natural form.…