Philosiphy

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foundations: or at least, if mine prove a castle in the air,

I will endeavour it shall be all of a piece and hang to-

gether. Wherein I warn the reader not to expect undeni-

able cogent demonstrations, unless I may be allowed the

privilege, not seldom assumed by others, to take my

principles for granted; and then, I doubt not, but I can

demonstrate too. All that I shall say for the principles I

proceed on is, that I can only appeal to men’s own un-

prejudiced experience and observation whether they be

true or not; and this is enough for a man who professes

no more than to lay down candidly and freely his own

conjectures, concerning a subject lying somewhat in the

dark, without any other design than an unbiased in-

quiry after truth.

BOOK II Of Ideas

Chapter I Of Ideas in general, and their Original

1. Idea is the object of thinking. Every man being con-

scious 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 their

minds several ideas,—such as are those expressed by

the words whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking,

motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness, and others:

it is in the first place then to be inquired, How he comes

by them?

I know it is a received doctrine, that men have native

ideas, and original characters, stamped upon their minds

in their very first being. This opinion I have at large

examined already; and, I suppose what I have said in

the foregoing Book will be much more easily admitted,

when I have shown whence the understanding may get

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all the ideas it has; and by what ways and degrees they

may come into the mind;—for which I shall appeal to

every one’s own observation and experience.

2. All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us

then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper,

void of all characters, without any ideas:—How comes

it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store

which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted

on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all

the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer,

in one word, from experience. In that all our knowledge

is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself.

Our observation employed either, about external sen-

sible objects, or about the in ternal operations of our

minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that

which supplies our understandings with all the materi-

als of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowl-

edge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can natu-

rally have, do spring.

3. The objects of sensation one source of ideas. First,

our Senses, conversant about particular sensible objects,

do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of

things, according to those various ways wherein those

objects do affect them. And thus we come by those ideas

we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter,

sweet, and all those which we call sensible qualities;

which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I

mean, they from external objects convey into the mind

what produces there those perceptions. This great source

of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon

our senses, and derived by them to the understanding,

I call sensation.

4. The operations of our minds, the other source of

them. Secondly, the other fountain from which experi-

ence furnisheth the understanding with ideas is,—the

perception of the operations of our own mind within

us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got;—which

operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and con-

sider, do furnish the understanding with another set of

ideas, which could not be had from things without. And

such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, rea-

soning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings

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of our own minds;—which we being conscious of, and

observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our

understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies

affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has

wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having

nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like

it, and might properly enough be called internal sense.

But as I call the other sensation, so I Call this reflection,

the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by

reflecting on its own operations within itself. By reflec-

tion then, in the following part of this discourse, I would

be understood to mean, that notice which the mind

takes of its own operations, and the manner of them, by

reason whereof there come to be ideas of these opera-

tions in the understanding. These two, I say, viz. exter-

nal material things, as the objects of sensation, and the

operations of our own minds within, as the objects of

reflection, are to me the only originals from whence all

our ideas take their beginnings. The term operations

here I use in a large sense, as comprehending not barely

the actions of the mind about its ideas, but some sort of

passions arising sometimes from them, such as is the

satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought.

5. All our ideas are of the one or the other of these.

The understanding seems to me not to have the least

glimmering of any ideas which it doth not receive from

one of these two. External objects furnish the mind

with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those

different perceptions they produce in us; and the mind

furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own op-

erations. These, when we have taken a full survey of

them, and their several modes, combinations, and rela-

tions, we shall find to contain all our whole stock of

ideas; and that we have nothing in our minds which did

not come in one of these two ways. Let any one exam-

ine his own thoughts, and thoroughly search into his

understanding; and then let him tell me, whether all

the original ideas he has there, are any other than of

the objects of his senses, or of the operations of his

mind, considered as objects of his reflection. And how

great a mass of knowledge soever he imagines to be lodged

there, he will, upon taking a strict view, see that he has

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not any idea in his mind but what one of these two

have imprinted;—though perhaps, with infinite variety

compounded and enlarged by the understanding, as we

shall see hereafter.

6. Observable in children. He that attentively considers

the state of a child, at his first coming into the world,

will have little reason to think him stored with plenty of

ideas, that are to be the matter of his future knowledge.

It is by degrees he comes to be furnished with them.

And though the ideas of obvious and familiar qualities

imprint themselves before the memory begins to keep a

register of time or order, yet it is often so late before

some unusual qualities come in the way, that there are

few men that cannot recollect the beginning of their

acquaintance with them. And if it were worth while, no

doubt a child might be so ordered as to have but a very

few, even of the ordinary ideas, till he were grown up to

a man. But all that are born into the world, being sur-

rounded with bodies that perpetually and diversely af-

fect them, variety of ideas, whether care be taken of it

or not, are imprinted on the minds of children. Light

and colours are busy at hand everywhere, when the eye

is but open; sounds and some tangible qualities fail not

to solicit their proper senses, and force an entrance to

the mind;—but yet, I think, it will be granted easily,

that if a child were kept in a place where he never saw

any other but black and white till he were a man, he

would have no more ideas of scarlet or green, than he

that from his childhood never tasted an oyster, or a

pine-apple, has of those particular relishes.

7. Men are differently furnished with these, according

to the different objects they converse with. Men then

come to be furnished with fewer or more simple ideas

from without, according as the objects they converse

with afford greater or less variety; and from the opera-

tions of their minds within, according as they more or

less reflect on them. For, though he that contemplates

the operations of his mind, cannot but have plain and

clear ideas of them; yet, unless he turn his thoughts

that way, and considers them attentively, he will no

more have clear and distinct ideas of all the operations

of his mind, and all that may be observed therein, than

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he will have all the particular ideas of any landscape, or

of the parts and motions of a clock, who will not turn

his eyes to it, and with attention heed all the parts of it.

The picture, or clock may be so placed, that they may

come in his way every day; but yet he will have but a

confused idea of all the parts they are made up of, till he

applies himself with attention, to consider them each in

particular.

8. Ideas of reflection later, because they need atten-

tion. And hence we see the reason why it is pretty late

before most children get ideas of the operations of their

own minds; and some have not any very clear or perfect

ideas of the greatest part of them all their lives. Be-

cause, though they pass there continually, yet, like float-

ing visions, they make not deep impressions enough to

leave in their mind clear, distinct, lasting ideas, till the

understanding turns inward upon itself, reflects on its

own operations, and makes them the objects of its own

contemplation. Children when they come first into it,

are surrounded with a world of new things, which, by a

constant solicitation of their senses, draw the mind con-

stantly to them; forward to take notice of new, and apt

to be delighted with the variety of changing objects.

Thus the first years are usually employed and diverted

in looking abroad. Men’s business in them is to acquaint

themselves with what is to be found without; and so

growing up in a constant attention to outward sensa-

tions, seldom make any considerable reflection on what

passes within them, till they come to be of riper years;

and some scarce ever at all.

9. The soul begins to have ideas when it begins to per-

ceive. To ask, at what time a man has first any ideas, is

to ask, when he begins to perceive;—having ideas, and

perception, being the same thing. I know it is an opin-

ion, that the soul always thinks, and that it has the

actual perception of ideas in itself constantly, as long as

it exists; and that actual thinking is as inseparable from

the soul as actual extension is from the body; which if

true, to inquire after the beginning of a man’s ideas is

the same as to inquire after the beginning of his soul.

For, by this account, soul and its ideas, as body and its

extension, will begin to exist both at the same time.

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10. The soul thinks not always; for this wants proofs.

But whether the soul be supposed to exist antecedent

to, or coeval with, or some time after the first rudi-

ments of organization, or the beginnings of life in the

body, I leave to be disputed by those who have better

thought of that matter. I confess myself to have one of

those dull souls, that doth not perceive itself always to

contemplate ideas; nor can conceive it any more neces-

sary for the soul always to think, than for the body

always to move: the perception of ideas being (as I con-

ceive) to the soul, what motion is to the body; not its

essence, but one of its operations. And therefore, though

thinking be supposed never so much the proper action

of the soul, yet it is not necessary to suppose that it

should be always thinking, always in action. That, per-

haps, is the privilege of the infinite Author and Pre-

server of all things, who “never slumbers nor sleeps;”

but is not competent to any finite being, at least not to

the soul of man. We know certainly, by experience, that

we sometimes think; and thence draw this infallible con-

sequence,—that there is something in us that has a

power to think. But whether that substance perpetu-

ally thinks or no, we can be no further assured than

experience informs us. For, to say that actual thinking

is essential to the soul, and inseparable from it, is to beg

what is in question, and not to prove it by reason;—

which is necessary to be done, if it be not a self-evident

proposition. But whether this, “That the soul always

thinks,” be a self-evident proposition, that everybody

assents to at first hearing, I appeal to mankind. It is

doubted whether I thought at all last night or no. The

question being about a matter of fact, it is begging it to

bring, as a proof for it, an hypothesis, which is the very

thing in dispute: by which way one may prove any-

thing, and it is but supposing that all watches, whilst

the balance beats, think, and it is sufficiently proved,

and past doubt, that my watch thought all last night.

But he that would not deceive himself, ought to build

his hypothesis on matter of fact, and make it out by

sensible experience, and not presume on matter of fact,

because of his hypothesis, that is, because he supposes

it to be so; which way of proving amounts to this, that

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I must necessarily think all last night, because another

supposes I always think, though I myself cannot per-

ceive that I always do so.

But men in love with their opinions may not only

suppose what is in question, but allege wrong matter of

fact. How else could any one make it an inference of

mine, that a thing is not, because we are not sensible of

it in our sleep? I do not say there is no soul in a man,

because he is not sensible of it in his sleep; but I do say,

he cannot think at any time, waking or sleeping: with-

out being sensible of it. Our being sensible of it is not

necessary to anything but to our thoughts; and to them

it is; and to them it always will be necessary, till we can

think without being conscious of it.

11. It is not always conscious of it. I grant that the

soul, in a waking man, is never without thought, be-

cause it is the condition of being awake. But whether

sleeping without dreaming be not an affection of the

whole man, mind as well as body, may be worth a wak-

ing man’s consideration; it being hard to conceive that

anything should think and not be conscious of it. If the

soul doth think in a sleeping man without being con-

scious of it, I ask whether, during such thinking, it has

any pleasure or pain, or be capable of happiness or mis-

ery? I am sure the man is not; no more than the bed or

earth he lies on. For to be happy or miserable without

being conscious of it, seems to me utterly inconsistent

and impossible. Or if it be possible that the soul can,

whilst the body is sleeping, have its thinking, enjoy-

ments, and concerns, its pleasures or pain, apart, which

the man is not conscious of nor partakes in,—it is cer-

tain that Socrates asleep and Socrates awake is not the

same person; but his soul when he sleeps, and Socrates

the man, consisting of body and soul, when he is wak-

ing, are two persons: since waking Socrates has no knowl-

edge of, or concernment for that happiness or misery of

his soul, which it enjoys alone by itself whilst he sleeps,

without perceiving anything of it; no more than he has

for the happiness or misery of a man in the Indies, whom

he knows not. For, if we take wholly away all conscious-

ness of our actions and sensations, especially of pleasure

and pain, and the concernment that accompanies it, it

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will be hard to know wherein to place personal identity.

12. If a sleeping man thinks without knowing it, the

sleeping and waking man are two persons. The soul,

during sound sleep, thinks, say these men. Whilst it

thinks and perceives, it is capable certainly of those of

delight or trouble, as well as any other perceptions; and

it must necessarily be conscious of its own perceptions.

But it has all this apart: the sleeping man, it is plain, is

conscious of nothing of all this. Let us suppose, then,

the soul of Castor, while he is sleeping, retired from his

body; which is no impossible supposition for the men I

have here to do with, who so liberally allow life, with-

out a thinking soul, to all other animals. These men

cannot then judge it impossible, or a contradiction, that

the body should live without the soul; nor that the soul

should subsist and think, or have perception, even per-

ception of happiness or misery, without the body. Let

us then, I say, suppose the soul of Castor separated

during his sleep from his body, to think apart. Let us

suppose, too, that it chooses for its scene of thinking

the body of another man, v.g. Pollux, who is sleeping

without a soul. For, if Castor’s soul can think, whilst

Castor is asleep, what Castor is never conscious of, it is

no matter what place it chooses to think in. We have

here, then, the bodies of two men with only one soul

between them, which we will suppose to sleep and wake

by turns; and the soul still thinking in the waking man,

whereof the sleeping man is never conscious, has never

the least perception. I ask, then, whether Castor and

Pollux, thus with only one soul between them, which

thinks and perceives in one what the other is never

conscious of, nor is concerned for, are not two as dis-

tinct persons as Castor and Hercules, or as Socrates and

Plato were? And whether one of them might not be

very happy, and the other very miserable? Just by the

same reason, they make the soul and the man two per-

sons, who make the soul think apart what the man is

not conscious of. For, I suppose nobody will make iden-

tity of persons to consist in the soul’s being united to

the very same numercial particles of matter. For if that

be necessary to identity, it will be impossible, in that

constant flux of the particles of our bodies, that any

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man should be the same person two days, or two mo-

ments, together.

13. Impossible to convince those that sleep without

dreaming, that they think. Thus, methinks, every drowsy

nod shakes their doctrine, who teach that the soul is

always thinking. Those, at least, who do at any time

sleep without dreaming, can never be convinced that

their thoughts are sometimes for four hours busy with-

out their knowing of it; and if they are taken in the

very act, waked in the middle of that sleeping contem-

plation, can give no manner of account of it.

14. That men dream without remembering it, in vain

urged. It will perhaps be said,—That the soul thinks

even in the soundest sleep, but the memory retains it

not. That the soul in a sleeping man should be this

moment busy a thinking, and the next moment in a

waking man not remember nor be able to recollect one

jot of all those thoughts, is very hard to be conceived,

and would need some better proof than bare assertion

to make it be believed. For who can without any more

ado, but being barely told so, imagine that the greatest

part of men do, during all their lives, for several hours

every day, think of something, which if they were asked,

even in the middle of these thoughts, they could re-

member nothing at all of? Most men, I think, pass a

great part of their sleep without dreaming. I once knew

a man that was bred a scholar, and had no bad memory,

who told me he had never dreamed in his life, till he had

that fever he was then newly recovered of, which was

about the five or six and twentieth year of his age. I

suppose the world affords more such instances: at least

every one’s acquaintance will furnish him with examples

enough of such as pass most of their nights without

dreaming.

15. Upon this hypothesis, the thoughts of a sleeping

man ought to be most rational. To think often, and

never to retain it so much as one moment, is a very

useless sort of thinking; and the soul, in such a state of

thinking, does very little, if at all, excel that of a look-

ing-glass, which constantly receives variety of images,

or ideas, but retains none; they disappear and vanish,

and there remain no footsteps of them; the looking-

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glass is never the better for such ideas, nor the soul for

such thoughts. Perhaps it will be said, that in a waking

man the materials of the body are employed, and made

use of, in thinking; and that the memory of thoughts is

retained by the impressions that are made on the brain,

and the traces there left after such thinking; but that in

the thinking of the soul, which is not perceived in a

sleeping man, there the soul thinks apart, and making no

use of the organs of the body, leaves no impressions on

it, and consequently no memory of such thoughts. Not

to mention again the absurdity of two distinct persons,

which follows from this supposition, I answer, further,—

That whatever ideas the mind can receive and contem-

plate without the help of the body, it is reasonable to

conclude it can retain without the help of the body too;

or else the soul, or any separate spirit, will have but little

advantage by thinking. If it has no memory of its own

thoughts; if it cannot lay them up for its own use, and be

able to recall them upon occasion; if it cannot reflect

upon what is past, and make use of its former experi-

ences, reasonings, and contemplations, to what purpose

does it think? They who make the soul a thinking thing,

at this rate, will not make it a much more noble being

than those do whom they condemn, for allowing it to be

nothing but the subtilist parts of matter. Characters drawn

on dust, that the first breath of wind effaces; or impres-

sions made on a heap of atoms, or animal spirits, are

altogether as useful, and render the subject as noble, as

the thoughts of a soul that perish in thinking; that, once

out of sight, are gone forever, and leave no memory of

themselves behind them. Nature never makes excellent

things for mean or no uses: and it is hardly to be con-

ceived that our infinitely wise Creator should make so

admirable a faculty which comes nearest the excellency of

his own incomprehensible being, to be so idly and use-

lessly employed, at least a fourth part of its time here, as

to think constantly, without remembering any of those

thoughts, without doing any good to itself or others, or

being any way useful to any other part of the creation, If

we will examine it, we shall not find, I suppose, the mo-

tion of dull and senseless matter, any where in the uni-

verse, made so little use of and so wholly thrown away.

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16. On this hypothesis, the soul must have ideas not

derived from sensation or reflection, of which there is

no appearance. It is true, we have sometimes instances

of perception whilst we are asleep, and retain the memory

of those thoughts: but how extravagant and incoherent

for the most part they are; how little conformable to

the perfection and order of a rational being, those who

are acquainted with dreams need not be told. This I

would willingly be satisfied in,—whether the soul, when

it thinks thus apart, and as it were separate from the

body, acts less rationally than when conjointly with it,

or no. If its separate thoughts be less rational, then

these men must say, that the soul owes the perfection

of rational thinking to the body: if it does not, it is a

wonder that our dreams should be, for the most part, so

frivolous and irrational; and that the soul should retain

none of its more rational soliloquies and meditations.

17. If I think when I know it not, nobody else can

know it. Those who so confidently tell us that the soul

always actually thinks, I would they would also tell us,

what those ideas are that are in the soul of a child,

before or just at the union with the body, before it hath

received any by sensation. The dreams of sleeping men

are, as I take it, all made up of the waking man’s ideas;

though for the most part oddly put together. It is strange,

if the soul has ideas of its own that it derived not from

sensation or reflection, (as it must have, if it thought

before it received any impressions from the body,) that

it should never, in its private thinking, (so private, that

the man himself perceives it not,) retain any of them

the very moment it wakes out of them, and then make

the man glad with new discoveries. Who can find it rea-

son that the soul should, in its retirement during sleep,

have so many hours’ thoughts, and yet never light on

any of those ideas it borrowed not from sensation or

reflection; or at least preserve the memory of none but

such, which, being occasioned from the body, must needs

be less natural to a spirit? It is strange the soul should

never once in a man’s whole life recall over any of its

pure native thoughts, and those ideas it had before it

borrowed anything from the body; never bring into the

waking man’s view any other ideas but what have a

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tang of the cask, and manifestly derive their original

from that union. If it always thinks, and so had ideas

before it was united, or before it received any from the

body, it is not to be supposed but that during sleep it

recollects its native ideas; and during that retirement

from communicating with the body, whilst it thinks by

itself, the ideas it is busied about should be, sometimes

at least, those more natural and congenial ones which it

had in itself, underived from the body, or its own opera-

tions about them: which, since the waking man never

remembers, we must from this hypothesis conclude ei-

ther that the soul remembers something that the man

does not; or else that memory belongs only to such

ideas as are derived from the body, or the mind’s opera-

tions about them.

18. How knows any one that the soul always thinks?

For if it be not a self-evident proposition, it needs proof.

I would be glad also to learn from these men who so

confidently pronounce that the human soul, or, which

is all one, that a man always thinks, how they come to

know it; nay, how they come to know that they them-

selves think when they themselves do not perceive it.

This, I am afraid, is to be sure without proofs, and to

know without perceiving. It is, I suspect, a confused

notion, taken up to serve an hypothesis; and none of

those clear truths, that either their own evidence forces

us to admit, or common experience makes it impudence

to deny. For the most that can be said of it is, that it is

possible the soul may always think, but not always re-

tain it in memory. And I say, it is as possible that the

soul may not always think; and much more probable

that it should sometimes not think, than that it should

often think, and that a long while together, and not be

conscious to itself, the next moment after, that it had

thought.

19. “That a man should be busy in thinking, and yet

not retain it the next moment,” very improbable. To

suppose the soul to think, and the man not to perceive

it, is, as has been said, to make two persons in one man.

And if one considers well these men’s way of speaking,

one should be led into a suspicion that they do so. For

they who tell us that the soul always thinks, do never,

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that I remember, say that a man always thinks. Can the

soul think, and not the man? Or a man think, and not

be conscious of it? This, perhaps, would be suspected of

jargon in others. If they say the man thinks always, but

is not always conscious of it, they may as well say his

body is extended without having parts. For it is alto-

gether as intelligible to say that a body is extended with-

out parts, as that anything thinks without being con-

scious of it, or perceiving that it does so. They who talk

thus may, with as much reason, if it be necessary to

their hypothesis, say that a man is always hungry, but

that he does not always feel it; whereas hunger consists

in that very sensation, as thinking consists in being

conscious that one thinks. If they say that a man is

always conscious to himself of thinking, I ask, How they

know it? Consciousness is the perception of what passes

in a man’s own mind. Can another man perceive that I

am conscious of anything, when I perceive it not my-

self? No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his expe-

rience. Wake a man out of a sound sleep, and ask him

what he was that moment thinking of. If he himself be

conscious of nothing he then thought on, he must be a

notable diviner of thoughts that can assure him that he

was thinking. May he not, with more reason, assure

him he was not asleep? This is something beyond phi-

losophy; and it cannot be less than revelation, that dis-

covers to another thoughts in my mind, when I can find

none there myself, And they must needs have a pen-

etrating sight who can certainly see that I think, when

I cannot perceive it myself, and when I declare that I do

not; and yet can see that dogs or elephants do not think,

when they give all the demonstration of it imaginable,

except only telling us that they do so. This some may

suspect to be a step beyond the Rosicrucians; it seeming

easier to make one’s self invisible to others, than to

make another’s thoughts visible to me, which are not

visible to himself. But it is but defining the soul to be “a

substance that always thinks,” and the business is done.

If such definition be of any authority, I know not what

it can serve for but to make many men suspect that

they have no souls at all; since they find a good part of

their lives pass away without thinking. For no defini-

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tions that I know, no suppositions of any sect, are of

force enough to destroy constant experience; and per-

haps it is the affectation of knowing beyond what we

perceive, that makes so much useless dispute and noise

in the world.

20. No ideas but from sensation and reflection, evi-

dent, if we observe children. I see no reason, therefore,

to believe that the soul thinks before the senses have

furnished it with ideas to think on; and as those are

increased and retained, so it comes, by exercise, to im-

prove its faculty of thinking in the several parts of it; as

well as, afterwards, by compounding those ideas, and

reflecting on its own operations, it increases its stock,

as well as facility in remembering, imagining, reasoning,

and other modes of thinking.

21. State of a child in the mother’s womb. He that will

suffer himself to be informed by observation and experi-

ence, and not make his own hypothesis the rule of na-

ture, will find few signs of a soul accustomed to much

thinking in a new-born child, and much fewer of any

reasoning at all. And yet it is hard to imagine that the

rational soul should think so much, and not reason at

all. And he that will consider that infants newly come

into the world spend the greatest part of their time in

sleep, and are seldom awake but when either hunger

calls for the teat, or some pain (the most importunate

of all sensations), or some other violent impression on

the body, forces the mind to perceive and attend to

it;—he, I say, who considers this, will perhaps find rea-

son to imagine that a foetus in the mother’s womb dif-

fers not much from the state of a vegetable, but passes

the greatest part of its time without perception or

thought; doing very little but sleep in a place where it

needs not seek for food, and is surrounded with liquor,

always equally soft, and near of the same temper; where

the eyes have no light, and the ears so shut up are not

very susceptible of sounds; and where there is little or

no variety, or change of objects, to move the senses.

22. The mind thinks in proportion to the matter it gets

from experience to think about. Follow a child from its

birth, and observe the alterations that time makes, and

you shall find, as the mind by the senses comes more

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Human Understanding

and more to be furnished with ideas, it comes to be

more and more awake; thinks more, the more it has

matter to think on. After some time it begins to know

the objects which, being most familiar with it, have

made lasting impressions. Thus it comes by degrees to

know the persons it daily converses with, and distin-

guishes them from strangers; which are instances and

effects of its coming to retain and distinguish the ideas

the senses convey to it. And so we may observe how the

mind, by degrees, improves in these; and advances to

the exercise of those other faculties of enlarging, com-

pounding, and abstracting its ideas, and of reasoning

about them, and reflecting upon all these; of which I

shall have occasion to speak more hereafter.

23. A man begins to have ideas when he first has sen-

sation. What sensation is. If it shall be demanded then,

when a man begins to have any ideas, I think the true

answer is,—when he first has any sensation. For, since

there appear not to be any ideas in the mind before the

senses have conveyed any in, I conceive that ideas in

the understanding are coeval with sensation; which is

such an impression or motion made in some part of the

body, as produces some perception in the understand-

ing. It is about these impressions made on our senses by

outward objects that the mind seems first to employ

itself, in such operations as we call perception, remem-

bering, consideration, reasoning, &c.

24. The original of all our knowledge. In time the mind

comes to reflect on its own operations about the ideas

got by sensation, and thereby stores itself with a new

set of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection. These are

the impressions that are made on our senses by outward

objects that are extrinsical to the mind; and its own

operations, proceeding from powers intrinsical and proper

to itself, which, when reflected on by itself, become

also objects of its contemplation—are, as I have said,

the original of all knowledge. Thus the first capacity of

human intellect is,—that the mind is fitted to receive

the impressions made on it; either through the senses

by outward objects, or by its own operations when it

reflects on them. This is the first step a man makes

towards the discovery of anything, and the groundwork

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whereon to build all those notions which ever he shall

have naturally in this world. All those sublime thoughts

which tower above the clouds, and reach as high as

heaven itself, take their rise and footing here: in all that

great extent wherein the mind wanders, in those re-

mote speculations it may seem to be elevated with, it

stirs not one jot beyond those ideas which sense or re-

flection have offered for its contemplation.

25. In the reception of simple ideas, the understanding

is for the most part passive. In this part the under-

standing is merely passive; and whether or no it will

have these beginnings, and as it were materials of knowl-

edge, is not in its own power. For the objects of our

senses do, many of them, obtrude their particular ideas

upon our minds whether we will or not; and the opera-

tions of our minds will not let us be without, at least,

some obscure notions of them. No man can be wholly

ignorant of what he does when he thinks. These simple

ideas, when offered to the mind, the understanding can

no more refuse to have, nor alter when they are im-

printed, nor blot them out and make new ones itself,

than a mirror can refuse, alter, or obliterate the images

or ideas which the objects set before it do therein pro-

duce. As the bodies that surround us do diversely affect

our organs, the mind is forced to receive the impres-

sions; and cannot avoid the perception of those ideas

that are annexed to them.

Chapter II Of Simple Ideas

1. Uncompounded appearances. The better to under-

stand 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 simple

and some complex.

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,