In this faculty of repeating and joining together its ideas, the mind has great power in varying and multiplying the objects of its thoughts, infinitely beyond what sensation or reflection furnished it with:  but all this still confined to those simple ideas which it received from those two sources, and which are the ultimate materials of all its compositions.  For simple ideas are all from things themselves, and of these the mind can have no more, nor other than what are suggested to it.  It can have no other ideas of sensible qualities than what come from without [dropped word] the senses; nor any ideas of other kind of operations of a thinking substance, than what it finds in itself.  But when it has once got these simple ideas, it is not confined barely to observation, and what offers itself from without; it can, by its own power, put together those ideas it has, and make new complex ones, which it never received so united.

3.  Complex ideas are either of Modes, Substances, or Relations.

Complex ideas, however compounded and decompounded, though their number be infinite, and the variety endless, wherewith they fill and entertain the thoughts of men; yet I think they may be all reduced under these three heads:—­1.  Modes. 2.  Substances. 3.  Relations.

4.  Ideas of Modes.

First, modes I call such complex ideas which, however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are considered as dependences on, or affections of substances;—­such as are the ideas signified by the words triangle, gratitude, murder, &c.  And if in this I use the word mode in somewhat a different sense from its ordinary signification, I beg pardon; it being unavoidable in discourses, differing from the ordinary received notions, either to make new words, or to use old words in somewhat a new signification; the later whereof, in our present case, is perhaps the more tolerable of the two.

5.  Simple and mixed Modes of Ideas.

Of these modes, there are two sorts which deserve distinct consideration:—­

First, there are some which are only variations, or different combinations of the same simple idea, without the mixture of any other;—­as a dozen, or score; which are nothing but the ideas of so many distinct units added together, and these I call simple modes as being contained within the bounds of one simple idea.

Secondly, there are others compounded of simple ideas of several kinds, put together to make one complex one;—­v.g. beauty, consisting of a certain composition of colour and figure, causing delight to the beholder; theft, which being the concealed change of the possession of anything, without the consent of the proprietor, contains, as is visible, a combination of several ideas of several kinds:  and these I call mixed modes.

6.  Ideas of Substances, single or collective.