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John Locke
English Philosopher
1632-1704 A selection from
AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
Narrated by John Lescault
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Of Ideas in General, and Their Original
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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, and the compositions made out of them 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.
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.
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.
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. More information about John Locke from Wikipedia
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