doctrine that men have native ideas and original characters stamped upon
their minds in their very first being;" but he utterly rejects every
such theory. It is his principal business to protest and argue against
the existence of such "innate ideas." Virtue he believes to be generally
approved because it is profitable, not on account of any natural leaning
of the mind in its direction. Conscience "is nothing else but our own
opinion or judgment of the moral rectitude or pravity of our own
actions." Memory is the power in the mind to revive perceptions which it
once had, with this additional perception annexed to them, that it has
had them before. Wit lies in the assemblage of ideas, judgment in the
careful discrimination among them. "Things are good or evil only in
reference to pleasure or pain;" ... "our love and hatred of inanimate,
insensible beings is commonly founded on that pleasure or pain which we
receive from their use and application any way to our senses, though
with their destruction; but hatred or love of beings incapable of
happiness or misery is often the uneasiness or delight which we find in
ourselves, arising from a consideration of their very being or
happiness. Thus the being and welfare of a man's children or friends,
producing constant delight in him, he is said constantly to love them.
But it suffices to note that our ideas of love and hatred are but
dispositions of the mind in respect of pleasure or pain in general,
however caused in us."

We have no clear idea of substance nor of spirit. Substance is that
wherein we conceive qualities of matter to exist; spirit, that in which
we conceive qualities of mind, as thinking, knowing, and doubting. The
primary ideas of body are the cohesion of solid, and therefore separate
parts, and a power of communicating motion by impulse. The ideas of
spirit are thinking and will, or a power of putting body into motion by
thought, and, which is consequent to it, liberty. The ideas of