ereby it
appears that it consists in something that is not perfectly conformable
to them.

3. Clearness alone hinders Confusion.

To the well distinguishing our ideas, it chiefly contributes that they
be CLEAR and DETERMINATE. And when they are so, it will not breed any
confusion or mistake about them, though the senses should (as sometimes
they do) convey them from the same object differently on different
occasions, and so seem to err. For, though a man in a fever should from
sugar have a bitter taste, which at another time would produce a sweet
one, yet the idea of bitter in that man's mind would be as clear and
distinct from the idea of sweet as if he had tasted only gall. Nor does
it make any more confusion between the two ideas of sweet and bitter
that the same sort of body produces at one time one, and at another time
another idea by the taste, than it makes a confusion in two ideas of
white and sweet, or white and round, that the same piece of sugar
produces them both in the mind at the same time. And the ideas of
orange-colour and azure, that are produced in the mind by the same
parcel of the infusion of lignum nephritmim, are no less distinct ideas
than those of the same colours taken from two very different bodies.

4. Comparing.

The COMPARING them one with another, in respect of extent, degrees,
time, place, or any other circumstances, is another operation of the
mind about its ideas, and is that upon which depends all that large
tribe of ideas comprehended under RELATION; which, of how vast an extent
it is, I shall have occasion to consider hereafter.

5. Brutes compare but imperfectly.

How far brutes partake in this faculty, is not easy to determine. I
imagine they have it not in any great degree, for, though they probably
have several ideas distinct enough, yet it seems to me to be the
prerogative of human understanding, when it has sufficiently
distinguished any ideas, so as to perceive them to be perfectly
different, and so consequently two, to cast about and consider in what
circumstances they are capable to be compared. And therefore, I think,
beasts compare not their ideas further than some sensible circumstances
annexed to the objects themselves. The other power of comparing, which
may be observed in men, belonging to general ideas, and useful only to
abstract reasonings, we may probably conjecture beasts have not.

6. Compounding.

The next operation we may observe in the mind ab