It is entirely the creature of the mind, considering either
an idea by itself, or any combination of ideas to which it gives one
name, and so makes it pass for an unit. According as the mind variously
combines its ideas the unit varies: and as the unit, so the number, which
is only a collection of units, doth also vary. We call a window one, a
chimney one, and yet a house in which there are many windows and many
chimneys hath an equal right to be called one, and many houses go to the
making of the city. In these and the like, instances it is evident the
unit constantly relates to the particular draughts the mind makes of its
ideas, to which it affixes names, and wherein it includes more or less as
best suits its own ends and purposes. Whatever, therefore, the mind
considers as one, that is an unit. Every combination of ideas is
considered as one thing by the mind, and in token thereof is marked by
one name. Now, this naming and combining together of ideas is perfectly
arbitrary, and done by the mind in such sort as experience shows it to be
most convenient: without which our ideas had never been collected into
such sundry distinct combinations as they now are.
110. Hence it follows that a man born blind and afterwards, when grown
up, made to see, would not in the first act of vision parcel out the
ideas of sight into the same distinct collections that others do, who
have experienced which do regularly coexist and are proper to be bundled
up together under one name.
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