John Locke was born at Wrington, Somersetshire, England, Aug. 29,
1632. He was educated at Westminster and at Christ Church, Oxford;
but his temperament rebelled against the system of education still
in vogue and the public disputations of the schools, which he
thought "invented for wrangling and ostentation rather than to
discover truth." It was his study of Descartes that first "gave him
a relish of philosophical things." From 1683 to 1689 he found it
prudent to sojourn in Holland. In the latter year he returned to
England, bringing with him the manuscript of the "Essay Concerning
Human Understanding," which appeared in the spring of 1690. Few
works of philosophy have made their way more rapidly than the
"Essay." Twenty editions appeared before 1700. The design of the
book, Locke explains in the introduction, is to inquire "into the
origin, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with the
grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent." Locke died on
October 28, 1704.
_I.--The Nature of Simple Ideas_
"Idea" being that term which, I think, serves best to stand for
whatsoever is the object of the understanding. I have used it to express
whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is the
mind can be employed about in thinking. Let us, then, suppose the mind
to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters--without any ideas.
Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of
man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? To this, I answer
in one word--Experience; in that all our knowledge is founded, and from
that it ultimately derives itself.
Let anyone examine his own thoughts and thoroughly search his
understanding, and then let him tell me whether of all the original
ideas he has there are any other than of the objects of his senses, or
of the observations of his mind considered as objects of his
reflection. Though the qualities that affect our senses are, in the
things themselves, so united and blended that there is no separation, no
distance between them, yet it is plain the ideas they produce in the
mind enter by the senses simple and unmixed. For, though the sight and
touch often take in from the same object at the same time different
ideas, yet the simple ideas thus united in the same subject are as
perfectly distinct as those that come in by different senses; the
coldness and hardness which a man feels in a piece of ice being as
distinct ideas in the mind as the smell and whiteness of a lily, and
each of them being in itself uncompounded, contains nothing but one
uniform appearance, or conception, in the mind, and is not
distinguishable into different ideas.
When the understanding is once stored with these simple ideas, it has
the power to repeat, compare, and unite them even to an almost infinite
variety, and so can make at will new complex ideas. But it is not in the
power of any most exalted wit or enlarged understanding, by any
quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new simple idea
in the mind, nor to destroy those that are there. I would have anyone
try to fancy any taste which had never affected his palate, or frame the
idea of a scent he had never smelt; and when he can do this, I will also
conclude that a blind man hath ideas of colours and a deaf man true,
distinct notions of sound.
There are some ideas which have admittance only through one sense which
is peculiarly adapted to receive them. Thus, light and colours come in
only by the eye, all kinds of noises by the ear, the tastes and smells
by the nose and palate. The most considerable of those belonging to the
touch are heat, cold, and solidity--which is the idea that belongs to
the body, whereby we conceive it to fill space.
Simple ideas of divers senses are the ideas of space or extension,
figure, rest, and motion, for these make perceivable impressions both
on the eyes and touch, and we can receive and convey into our minds the
ideas of the extension, figure, motion, and rest of bodies both by
seeing and feeling.
The mind, receiving the ideas mentioned in the foregoing from without,
when it turns its view inward upon itself and observes its own actions
about those ideas it has, takes from thence other ideas which are as
capable to be the objects of its contemplation as any of those it
received from foreign things. The two great and principal actions of the
mind which are most frequently considered, and which are so frequent
that everyone that pleases may take notice of them in himself, are these
two--Perception or Thinking, and Volition or Will. The power of thinking
is called the Understanding, and the power of volition is called the
Will. And these two powers, or abilities, in the mind are denominated
Faculties. Some of the modes of these simple ideas of reflection are
remembrance, discerning, reasoning, judging, knowledge, faith.
It has, further, pleased our wise Creator to annex to several objects
and to the ideas which we receive from them, as also to several of our
thoughts, a concomitant pleasure, and that in several objects to several
degrees, that those faculties which He has endowed us with might not
remain wholly idle and unemployed by us. Pain has the same efficacy and
use to set us on work that pleasure has, we being as ready to employ our
faculties to avoid that as to pursue this.
Existence and unity are two other ideas that are suggested to the
understanding by every object without and every idea within. Power,
also, is another of those simple ideas which we receive from sensation
and reflection; and, besides these, there is succession.
Nor let anyone think these too narrow bounds for the capacious mind of
man to expatiate in, which takes its flight farther than the stars and
cannot be confined by the limits of the world, that extends its
thoughts often even beyond the utmost expansion of matter and makes
excursions into that incomprehensible inane. Nor will it be so strange
to think these few simple ideas sufficient to employ the quickest
thought or largest capacity if we consider how many words may be made
out of the various composition of twenty-four letters; or if, going one
step farther, we will but reflect on the variety of combinations that
may be made with barely one of the above-mentioned ideas, _viz._,
number, whose stock is inexhaustible. And what a large and immense field
doth extension alone afford the mathematicians!
_II.--Of Idea-Producing Qualities_
The power to produce any idea in our mind I call Quality of the subject
wherein that power is. Qualities are, first, such as are utterly
inseparable from the body in what state soever it be. These I call
original or primary qualities, which I think we may observe to produce
simple ideas in us, _viz._, solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest,
and number.
Secondly, such qualities which in truth are nothing in the objects
themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us by their
primary qualities, _i.e._, by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of
their insensible parts. These secondary qualities are colours, sounds,
tastes, etc. From whence I think it is easy to draw this observation:
that the ideas of primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them,
but the ideas produced in us by the secondary qualities have no
resemblance in them at all.
If anyone will consider that the same fire that at one distance produces
in us the sensation of warmth does, at a nearer approach, produce in us
the far different sensation of pain, let him bethink himself what reason
he has to say that his idea of warmth, which was produced in him by
fire, is actually in the fire; and his idea of pain which the same fire
produced in him in the same way, is not in the fire. The particular
bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts of fire or snow are really
in them, whether anyone's senses perceive them or not; and, therefore,
they may be called real qualities, because they really exist in those
bodies. But light, heat, whiteness, or coldness are no more really in
them than sickness or pain is in manna. Take away the sensation of them;
let not the eyes see light or colours, nor the ears hear sounds; let the
palate not taste, nor the nose smell; and all colours, tastes, odours,
and sounds, as they are such particular ideas, vanish and cease, and are
reduced to their causes, _i.e._, bulk, figure, and motion of parts.
_III.--Various Faculties of the Mind_
What perception is everyone will know better by reflecting on what he
does himself when he sees, hears, feels, etc., or thinks, than by any
discourse of mine. This is certain, that whatever alterations are made
in the body, if they reach not the mind, whatever impressions are made
on the outward parts, if they are not taken notice of within, there is
no perception.
We ought further to consider concerning perception, that the ideas we
receive by sensation are often in grown people altered by the judgment
without our taking any notice of it. When we set before our eyes a round
globe of any uniform colour--_e.g._, gold, alabaster, or jet--it is
certain that the idea thereby imprinted in our mind is of a flat circle
variously shadowed with several degrees of light and brightness coming
to our eyes. But we having by use been accustomed to perceive what kind
of appearances convex bodies are wont to make in us, what alterations
are made in the reflections of light by the difference of the sensible
figures of bodies, the judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters
the appearances into their causes; so that from that which is truly a
variety of shadow or colour collecting the figure, it makes it pass for
a mark of figure, and frames to itself the perception of a convex figure
and a uniform colour, when the idea we receive from thence is only a
plane variously coloured, as is evident in painting. Perception, then,
is the first operation of our intellectual faculties, and the inlet of
all knowledge into our minds.
The next faculty of the mind whereby it makes a further progress towards
knowledge is that which I call Retention, or the keeping of those simple
ideas which from sensation or reflection it hath received. This is done,
first, by keeping the idea which is brought into it for some time
actually in view, which is called Contemplation. The other way of
retention is the power to revive again in our minds those ideas which
after imprinting have disappeared, or have been, as it were, laid aside
out of sight; and thus we do when we conceive heat or light, yellow or
sweet, the object being removed. This is memory, which is, as it were,
the storehouse of our ideas.
Another faculty we may take notice of in our minds is that of
Discerning, and distinguishing between the several ideas it has. It is
not enough to have a confused perception of something in general. Unless
the mind had a distinct perception of different objects and their
qualities, it would be capable of very little knowledge, though the
bodies that affect us were as busy about us as they are now, and the
mind were continually employed in thinking. On this faculty of
distinguishing one thing from another depends the evidence and certainty
of several even very general propositions which have passed for innate
truths, because men, overlooking the true cause why those propositions
find universal assent, impute it wholly to native uniform impressions;
whereas it, in truth, depends upon this clear discerning faculty of the
mind, whereby it perceives two ideas to be the same or different.
The comparing of ideas one with another is the operation of the mind
upon which depends all that large tribe of ideas comprehended under
relations. The next operation is composition, whereby the mind puts
together several simple ideas and combines them into complex ones.
The use of words being to stand as outward marks of our internal ideas,
and those ideas being taken from particular things, if every particular
idea that we take in should have a distinct name, names must be endless.
To prevent this, the mind makes the particular ideas received from
particular objects to become general, which is done by considering them
as they are in the mind, and such appearances separate from all other
existences, and from the circumstances of real existence, as time,
place, or any other concomitant ideas. This is called Abstraction,
whereby ideas taken from particular being become general representatives
of all of the same kind. Thus, the same colour being observed to-day in
chalk or snow which the mind yesterday received from milk, it considers
that that appearance alone makes it a representative of all of that
kind; and having given it the name "whiteness," it by that sound
signifies the same quality wheresoever imagined or met with; and thus
universals, whether ideas or terms, are made.
As the mind is wholly passive in the reception of all its simple ideas,
so it exerts several acts of its own, whereby, out of its simple ideas,
as the materials and foundations of the rest the others are framed. And
I believe we shall find, if we observe the originals of our notions,
that even the most abstruse ideas, how remote soever they may seem from
sense, or from any operation of our minds, are yet only such as the
understanding frames to itself, by repeating and joining together ideas
that it had either from objects of sense or from its own operations
about them; so that even those large and abstract ideas are derived from
sensation or reflection, being no other than what the mind may and does
attain by the ordinary use of its own faculties.
_IV.--Knowledge of the Existence of Other Things_
It is the actual receiving of ideas from without that gives us notice of
the existence of other things, and makes us know that something does
exist at that time without us which causes that idea in us, though
perhaps we neither know nor consider how it does it. And this, though
not so certain as our own intuitive knowledge, or as the deductions of
our reason employed about the clear abstract ideas of our own minds, yet
deserves the name of knowledge.
It is plain that those perceptions are produced by exterior causes
affecting our senses for the following reasons.
Because those that want the organs of any sense never can have the ideas
belonging to that sense produced in their minds.
Because sometimes I find I cannot avoid having those ideas produced in
my mind; for as when my eyes are shut, or the windows fast, I can at
pleasure recall to my mind the ideas of light or the sun which former
sensations have lodged in my memory; so I can at pleasure lay by that
idea and take into my view that of a rose or taste of sugar. But if I
turn my eyes at noon towards the sun, I cannot avoid the ideas which the
light or sun produces in me. There is nobody who does not perceive the
difference in himself contemplating the sun as he has an idea of it in
his memory and actually looking upon it; and, therefore, he has certain
knowledge that they are not both memory or the actions of his mind and
fancies only within him, but that actual seeing has a cause without.
Add to this that many of those ideas are produced with pain, which
afterwards we remember without the least offence.
Lastly, our senses bear witness to the truth of each other's report
concerning the existence of sensible things without us.