on? How shall the
mind, when it perceives nothing but its own ideas, know that they agree
with things themselves? This, though it seems not to want difficulty,
yet, I think, there be two sorts of ideas that we may be assured agree
with things.

4. As, First All Simple Ideas are really conformed to Things.

FIRST, The first are simple ideas, which since the mind, as has been
showed, can by no means make to itself, must necessarily be the product
of things operating on the mind, in a natural way, and producing therein
those perceptions which by the Wisdom and Will of our Maker they are
ordained and adapted to. From whence it follows, that simple ideas are
not fictions of our fancies, but the natural and regular productions of
things without us, really operating upon us; and so carry with them all
the conformity which is intended; or which our state requires: for they
represent to us things under those appearances which they are fitted
to produce in us: whereby we are enabled to distinguish the sorts of
particular substances, to discern the states they are in, and so to take
them for our necessities, and apply them to our uses. Thus the idea of
whiteness, or bitterness, as it is in the mind, exactly answering
that power which is in any body to produce it there, has all the real
conformity it can or ought to have, with things without us. And this
conformity between our simple ideas and the existence of things, is
sufficient for real knowledge.

5. Secondly, All Complex Ideas, except ideas of Substances, are their
own archetypes.

Secondly, All our complex ideas, EXCEPT THOSE OF SUBSTANCES, being
archetypes of the mind's own making, not intended to be the copies
of anything, nor referred to the existence of anything, as to their
originals, cannot want any conformity necessary to real knowledge. For
that which is not designed to represent anything but itself, can never
be capable of a wrong representation, nor mislead us from the true
apprehension of anything, by its dislikeness to it: and such, excepting
those of substances, are all our complex ideas. Which, as I have showed
in another place, are combinations of ideas, which the mind, by its free
choice, puts together, without considering any connexion they have in
nature. And hence it is, that in all these sorts the ideas themselves
are considered as the archetypes, and things no otherwise regarded, but
as they are conformable to them. So that we cannot but be infal