derstanding, as we shall see hereafter.

6. Observable in Children.

He that attentively considers the state of a child, at his first coming
into the world, will have little reason to think him stored with plenty
of ideas, that are to be the matter of his future knowledge. It is BY
DEGREES he comes to be furnished with them. And though the ideas of
obvious and familiar qualities imprint themselves before the memory
begins to keep a register of time or order, yet it is often so late
before some unusual qualities come in the way, that there are few men
that cannot recollect the beginning of their acquaintance with them. And
if it were worth while, no doubt a child might be so ordered as to have
but a very few, even of the ordinary ideas, till he were grown up to a
man. But all that are born into the world, being surrounded with bodies
that perpetually and diversely affect them, variety of ideas, whether
care be taken of it or not, are imprinted on the minds of children.
Light and colours are busy at hand everywhere, when the eye is but open;
sounds and some tangible qualities fail not to solicit their proper
senses, and force an entrance to the mind;--but yet, I think, it will be
granted easily, that if a child were kept in a place where he never saw
any other but black and white till he were a man, he would have no more
ideas of scarlet or green, than he that from his childhood never tasted
an oyster, or a pine-apple, has of those particular relishes.

7. Men are differently furnished with these, according to the different
Objects they converse with.

Men then come to be furnished with fewer or more simple ideas from
without, according as the objects they converse with afford greater or
less variety; and from the operations of their minds within, according
as they more or less reflect on them. For, though he that contemplates
the operations of his mind, cannot but have plain and clear ideas of
them; yet, unless he turn his thoughts that way, and considers them
ATTENTIVELY, he will no more have clear and distinct ideas of all the
operations of his mind, and all that may be observed therein, than he
will have all the particular ideas of any landscape, or of the parts and
motions of a clock, who will not turn his eyes to it, and with attention
heed all the parts of it. The picture, or clock may be so placed, that
they may come in his way every day; but yet he will have but a confused
idea of all the parts they are ma