An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding Volume 1 Mdcxc Based O

This Treatise, which is grown up under your lordship’s eye, and has ventured into the world by your order, does now, by a natural kind of right, come to your lordship for that p...

Since it is the UNDERSTANDING that sets man above the rest of sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has over them; it is certainly a subject, ev...

It is an established opinion amongst some men, that there are in the understanding certain INNATE PRINCIPLES; some primary notions, Κοινὰι εὔνοιαι, characters, as it were stampe...

If those speculative Maxims, whereof we discoursed in the foregoing chapter, have not an actual universal assent from all mankind, as we there proved, it is much more visible co...

Had those who would persuade us that there are innate principles not taken them together in gross, but considered separately the parts out of which those propositions are made,...

Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks; and that which his mind is applied about whilst thinking being the IDEAS that are there, it is past doubt that men have in t...

The better to understand the nature, manner, and extent of our knowledge, one thing is carefully to be observed concerning the ideas we have; and that is, that some of them, are...

The better to conceive the ideas we receive from sensation, it may not be amiss for us to consider them, in reference to the different ways whereby they make their approaches to...

The idea of SOLIDITY we receive by our touch: and it arises from the resistance which we find in body to the entrance of any other body into the place it possesses, till it has...

The ideas we get by more than one sense are, of SPACE or EXTENSION, FIGURE, REST, and MOTION. For these make perceivable impressions, both on the eyes and touch; and we can rece...

The mind receiving the ideas mentioned in the foregoing chapters from without, when it turns its view inward upon itself, and observes its own actions about those ideas it has,...

2. Delight or uneasiness, one or other of them, join themselves to almost all our ideas both of sensation and reflection: and there is scarce any affection of our senses from wi...

Concerning the simple ideas of Sensation; it is to be considered,—that whatsoever is so constituted in nature as to be able, by affecting our senses, to cause any perception in...

PERCEPTION, as it is the first faculty of the mind exercised about our ideas; so it is the first and simplest idea we have from reflection, and is by some called thinking in gen...

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...

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 s...

We have hitherto considered those ideas, in the reception whereof the mind is only passive, which are those simple ones received from sensation and reflection before mentioned,...

Though in the foregoing part I have often mentioned simple ideas, which are truly the materials of all our knowledge; yet having treated of them there, rather in the way that th...

There is another sort of distance, or length, the idea whereof we get not from the permanent parts of space, but from the fleeting and perpetually perishing parts of succession....

Though we have in the precedent chapters dwelt pretty long on the considerations of space and duration, yet, they being ideas of general concernment, that have something very ab...

Amongst all the ideas we have, as there is none suggested to the mind by more ways, so there is none more simple, than that of UNITY, or one: it has no shadow of variety or comp...

He that would know what kind of idea it is to which we give the name of INFINITY, cannot do it better than by considering to what infinity is by the mind more immediately attrib...

Though I have, in the foregoing chapters, shown how from simple ideas taken in by sensation, the mind comes to extend itself even to infinity; which, however it may of all other...

When the mind turns its view inwards upon itself, and contemplates its own actions, THINKING is the first that occurs. In it the mind observes a great variety of modifications,...

AMONGST the simple ideas which we receive both from sensation and reflection, PAIN and PLEASURE are two very considerable ones. For as in the body there is sensation barely in i...

The mind being every day informed, by the senses, of the alteration of those simple ideas it observes in things without; and taking notice how one comes to an end, and ceases to...

Having treated of SIMPLE MODES in the foregoing chapters, and given several instances of some of the most considerable of them, to show what they are, and how we come by them; w...

The mind being, as I have declared, furnished with a great number of the simple ideas, conveyed in by the senses as they are found in exterior things, or by reflection on its ow...

Besides these complex ideas of several SINGLE substances, as of man, horse, gold, violet, apple, &c., the mind hath also complex COLLECTIVE ideas of substances; which I so call,...

BESIDES the ideas, whether simple or complex, that the mind has of things as they are in themselves, there are others it gets from their comparison one with another. The underst...

In the notice that our senses take of the constant vicissitude of things, we cannot but observe that several particular, both qualities and substances, begin to exist; and that...

ANOTHER occasion the mind often takes of comparing, is the very being of things, when, considering ANYTHING AS EXISTING AT ANY DETERMINED TIME AND PLACE, we compare it with ITSE...

BESIDES the before-mentioned occasions of time, place, and causality of comparing or referring things one to another, there are, as I have said, infinite others, some whereof I...

Having shown the original of our ideas, and taken a view of their several sorts; considered the difference between the simple and the complex; and observed how the complex ones...

Besides what we have already mentioned concerning ideas, other considerations belong to them, in reference to THINGS FROM WHENCE THEY ARE TAKEN, or WHICH THEY MAY BE SUPPOSED TO...

Of our real ideas, some are adequate, and some are inadequate. Those I call ADEQUATE, which perfectly represent those archetypes which the mind supposes them taken from: which i...

Though truth and falsehood belong, in propriety of speech, only to PROPOSITIONS: yet IDEAS are oftentimes termed true or false (as what words are there that are not used with gr...

There is scarce any one that does not observe something that seems odd to him, and is in itself really extravagant, in the opinions, reasonings, and actions of other men. The le...