What is the Nature of Creative Power?

Power cannot subsist alone.

• It is always regarded as an attribute of some being or existence.

We must be able to:

• place this power in some particular being, and
• conceive that being as endowed with a real force and energy which causes such effects.

We must distinctly and particularly:

• conceive the connection between the cause and effect, and
• be able to pronounce, from a simple view of the one, that it must be followed or preceded by the other.

This is the true way of conceiving a power in a body.

A general idea is impossible without an individual idea.

Where the latter is impossible, the former certainly can never exist.

The human mind cannot create an idea of two objects which have a power to create a connection between themselves, by themselves.

Such a connection would result in a demonstration.

It would imply that the objects could have the power not to follow the other.

We have rejected this kind of connection.

If anyone thinks that he has discovered an innate power in any object, he should show that object to me.

Until then, I conclude that we can never think of how any power can innately reside in any object.

We may infer that:

• we really have no distinct meaning:
• when we talk of any being, superior or inferior, endowed with a power proportioned to any effect, and
• when we speak of a needed connection between objects and suppose that this connection depends on an effectiveness or energy, which any of these objects innately have,
• we use only common words, without any clear and determinate ideas.

Those words lose their true meaning by being wrongly applied, rather than them never having any meaning.

We shall see if we can discover the nature and origin of those ideas that we annex to those words.

Suppose two objects are presented to us.

• One is the cause.
• The other the effect.

From the simple consideration of one or both these objects, we shall never:

• perceive the tie by which they are united, or
• be able certainly to pronounce that there is a connection between them.

It is not from any one instance that we arrive at the idea of:

• cause and effect, and
• a need for a power, force, energy, and efficacy.

If we never see any conjunctions of objects different from each other, we would never be able to create such ideas of cause and effect and innate power.

Suppose we observe several instances when the same objects are always conjoined together.

We immediately:

• conceive a connection between them, and
• begin to draw an inference from one to another.

This multiplicity of resembling instances, therefore:

• constitutes the very essence of power or connection, and
• is the source of its idea.

To understand the idea of power, we must consider that multiplicity.

This is enough to solve that difficulty which has so long perplexed us.

Thus, the repetition of perfectly similar instances can never alone create an original idea, different from the idea in any specific instance.

It follows from our fundamental principle, that all ideas are copied from impressions.

The idea of power:

• is a new original idea.
• is not found in any one instance.
• arises from the repetition of several instances.

Therefore, the repetition alone does not lead to the idea of power.

The repetition either discovers or creates something new.

This creation is the source of the idea of power.

If the repetition did not discover nor create anything new, our ideas might be multiplied by the repetition.

But our ideas would not be enlarged above what they are on the observation of a single instance.

Therefore, every enlargement (such as the idea of power or connection) which arises from the multiplicity of similar instances:

• is copied from some effects of the multiplicity, and
• will be perfectly understood by understanding these effects.

Wherever we find anything new to be discovered or produced by the repetition, there we must:

• place the power, and
• never look for it in any other object.