hypothesis I have proposed concerning abstract ideas, so contrary to
that, which has hitherto prevailed in philosophy, But, to tell the truth
I place my chief confidence in what I have already proved concerning the
impossibility of general ideas, according to the common method of
explaining them. We must certainly seek some new system on this head, and
there plainly is none beside what I have proposed. If ideas be particular
in their nature, and at the same time finite in their number, it is only
by custom they can become general in their representation, and contain an
infinite number of other ideas under them.

Before I leave this subject I shall employ the same principles to explain
that distinction of reason, which is so much talked of, and is so little
understood, in the schools. Of this kind is the distinction betwixt
figure and the body figured; motion and the body moved. The difficulty of
explaining this distinction arises from the principle above explained,
that all ideas, which are different, are separable. For it follows from
thence, that if the figure be different from the body, their ideas must
be separable as well as distinguishable: if they be not different, their
ideas can neither be separable nor distinguishable. What then is meant by
a distinction of reason, since it implies neither a difference nor
separation.

To remove this difficulty we must have recourse to the foregoing
explication of abstract ideas. It is certain that the mind would never
have dreamed of distinguishing a figure from the body figured, as being
in reality neither distinguishable, nor different, nor separable; did it
not observe, that even in this simplicity there might be contained many
different resemblances and relations. Thus when a globe of white marble
is presented, we receive only the impression of a white colour disposed
in a certain form, nor are we able to separate and distinguish the colour