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BOOK II
Of Ideas
Chapter I
Of Ideas in general, and their Original
1. Idea is the object of thinking. 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 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 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 sensible objects, or about the internal
operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is
that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of
thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all
the ideas we have, or can naturally 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 experience 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 consider, do
furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not
be had from things without. And such are perception, thinking,
doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the
different actings 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 reflection 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 operations in the
understanding. These two, I say, viz. external 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 operations.
These, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several
modes, combinations, and relations, 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 examine 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 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 surrounded with
bodies that perpetually and diversely affect 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
operations 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 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 attention. 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.
Because, though they pass there continually, yet, like floating
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 constantly 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 sensations, 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 perceive. 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 opinion, 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.
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 rudiments 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 necessary for the soul always to think,
than for the body always to move: the perception of ideas being (as
I conceive) 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, perhaps, is the privilege of the infinite Author and
Preserver 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 consequence,- that there is something in us
that has a power to think. But whether that substance perpetually
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 anything, 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 I must necessarily think all last night,
because another supposes I always think, though I myself cannot
perceive 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: without 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, because 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 waking 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 conscious of it, I ask whether, during such thinking, it
has any pleasure or pain, or be capable of happiness or misery? 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,
enjoyments, and concerns, its pleasures or pain, apart, which the
man is not conscious of nor partakes in,- it is certain 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 waking, are two persons: since waking Socrates has no
knowledge 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 consciousness of our actions and sensations, especially of
pleasure and pain, and the concernment that accompanies it, it 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, without 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 perception 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 distinct 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 persons, who make the soul think
apart what the man is not conscious of. For, I suppose nobody will
make identity 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 man should be the same person
two days, or two moments, 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 without their knowing of
it; and if they are taken in the very act, waked in the middle of that
sleeping contemplation, 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 remember 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
looking-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-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 contemplate 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
experiences, 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
impressions 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
conceived 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 uselessly 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 motion of
dull and senseless matter, any where in the universe, made so little
use of and so wholly thrown away.
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 reason 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 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 operations about them: which, since the waking man never
remembers, we must from this hypothesis conclude either 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
operations 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 themselves 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 retain 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, 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 altogether as intelligible to
say that a body is extended without parts, as that anything thinks
without being conscious 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 myself? No man's knowledge here can go beyond his
experience. 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 philosophy; and it
cannot be less than revelation, that discovers to another thoughts
in my mind, when I can find none there myself, And they must needs
have a penetrating 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 definitions that I
know, no suppositions of any sect, are of force enough to destroy
constant experience; and perhaps 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, evident, 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
improve 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 experience, and not make his
own hypothesis the rule of nature, 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 reason to imagine that a foetus in the mother's womb
differs 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 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 distinguishes 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, compounding, 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 sensation. 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 understanding. 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, remembering, 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 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 remote speculations it may seem
to be elevated with, it stirs not one jot beyond those ideas which
sense or reflection have offered for its contemplation.
25. In the reception of simple ideas, the understanding is for the
most part passive. In this part the understanding is merely passive;
and whether or no it will have these beginnings, and as it were
materials of knowledge, 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 operations 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 imprinted, 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 produce. As the bodies that surround us do diversely affect
our organs, the mind is forced to receive the impressions; and
cannot avoid the perception of those ideas that are annexed to them.
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