"When the understanding is once stored with these simple Ideas, it has the power to repeat, compare, and unite them, even to an almost infinite variety, and so can make at pleasure new complex Ideas."—Vol. I. p. 81.
"The next operation we may observe in the mind about its Ideas, is Composition, whereby it puts together several of those simple ones it has received from sensation and reflection, and combines them into complex ones."—Vol. I. p. 118.
"If either by any sudden very strong impression, or long fixing his fancy upon one sort of thoughts, incoherent Ideas have been cemented together so powerfully, as to remain united."—Vol. I. p. 121.
"But there are degree of Madness as of folly, the disorderly jumbling Ideas together, in some more, and some less." Vol. I. p. 122.
"The acts of the mind wherein it exerts its power over its simple Ideas, are chiefly three. 1st. Combining several simple Ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex Ideas are made. The second, is bringing two Ideas, whether simple or complex together, and setting them by one another, so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one; by which way it gets all its Ideas of relations. The third, is separating them from all other Ideas that accompany them in their real existence; this is called Abstraction."—Vol. I. p. 124.
[4] The acquirement of language does not wholly consist in the imitation of the word, but likewise in the comprehension that the articulate sound is the representative of the object perceived. There are some persons of defective intellect that I have seen, whose hearing was perfect, and who could whistle some tunes, but who were unable to learn their native language so as to understand what was said to them, and consequently incompetent to afford an answer. In this particular they approximate to the state of animals.
[5] "Nec missas audire queunt, nec reddere voces."
[6] On consulting the Concordance of Cruden, it does not appear that the word Idea, is to be found in our Translations of the Old and New Testament. Cruden, although deemed a Lunatic, was a man of persevering research and scrupulous accuracy.
[7] It is very probable that Martial, in his eulogy of the Roman Notarius, may have exceeded the actual performance.
"Currant verba licet, manus est velocior illis: