2. Made by the power of composing in the mind.
These collective
ideas of substances the mind makes, by its power of composition, and
uniting severally either simple or complex ideas into one, as it does,
by the same faculty, make the complex ideas of particular
substances, consisting of an aggregate of divers simple ideas,
united in one substance. And as the mind, by putting together the
repeated ideas of unity, makes the collective mode, or complex idea,
of any number, as a score, or a gross, etc., so, by putting together
several particular substances, it makes collective ideas of
substances, as a troop, an army, a swarm, a city, a fleet; each of
which every one finds that he represents to his own mind by one
idea, in one view; and so under that notion considers those several
things as perfectly one, as one ship, or one atom. Nor is it harder to
conceive how an army of ten thousand men should make one idea, than
how a man should make one idea; it being as easy to the mind to
unite into one the idea of a great number of men, and consider it as
one, as it is to unite into one particular all the distinct ideas that
make up the composition of a man, and consider them all together as
one.
3. Artificial things that are made up of distinct substances are our
collective ideas.
Amongst such kind of collective ideas are to be
counted most part of artificial things, at least such of them as are
made up of distinct substances: and, in truth, if we consider all
these collective ideas aright, as army, constellation, universe, as
they are united into so many single ideas, they are but the artificial
draughts of the mind; bringing things very remote, and independent
on one another, into one view, the better to contemplate and discourse
of them, united into one conception, and signified by one name. For
there are no things so remote, nor so contrary, which the mind cannot,
by this art of composition, bring into one idea; as is visible in that
signified by the name universe.