The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University

away; and so all that we call extension, motion and figure is gone if color is gone. As to any idea of space, extension, distance or motion that a man born blind might form, it would be nothing like what we call by those names. All that he could have would be only certain sensations or feelings, that in themselves would be no more like what we intend by space, motion, etc., than the pain we have by the scratch of a pin, or than the ideas of taste and smell. And as to the idea of motion that such an one could have, it could be only a diversification of those successions in a certain way, by succession as to time; and then there would be an agreement of these successions of sensations with some ideas we have by sight, as to number and proportions—but yet the ideas, after all, nothing akin to that idea we now give this name to. And, as it is very plain, color is only in the mind, and nothing like it can be out of all mind. Hence it is manifest, there can be nothing like those things we call by the name of bodies out of the mind, unless it be in some other mind or minds.

And indeed, the secret lies here: that which truly is the substance of all bodies is the infinitely exact and precise and perfectly stable idea in God's mind, together with his stable will that the same shall gradually be communicated to us, and to other minds, according to certain fixed and exact established methods and laws: or in somewhat different language, the infinitely exact and precise divine idea, together with an answerable, perfectly exact, precise and stable will with respect to correspondent communications to created minds, and effects on their minds.

[14]. Excellence, to put it in other words, is that which is beautiful and lovely. That which is beautiful considered by itself separately, and deformed considered as a part of something else more extended; or beautiful only with respect to itself and a few other things, and not as a part of that which contains all things—the universe—is false beauty, and a confined beauty. That which is beautiful with respect to the university of things has a generally extended excellence and a true beauty; and the more extended or limited its system is, the more confined or extended is its beauty.

[15]. Truth. After all that has been said and done, the only adequate definition of truth is the agreement of our ideas with existence. To explain what this existence is, is another thing. In abstract ideas, it is nothing but the ideas themselves; so their truth is their consistency