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AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMANE UNDERSTANDING
IN FOUR BOOKS
BY JOHN LOCKE
Quam bellum est velle confiteri potius nescire quod nescias, quam ista
effutientem nauseare, atque ipsum sibi displicere.
--Cic. De Natur. Deor. 1. i.
LONDON
Printed by Eliz. Holt, for Thomas Basset, at the George in Fleet
Street, near St. Dunstan's Church.
MDCXC
CONTENTS:
[Based on the 2d Edition]
EPISTLE DEDICATORY TO THE EARL OF PEMBROKE
THE EPISTLE TO THE READER
INTRODUCTION
BOOK I. NEITHER PRINCIPLES NOR IDEAS ARE INNATE.
I. NO INNATE SPECULATIVE PRINCIPLES
II. NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES
III. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING INNATE PRINCIPLES, BOTH
SPECULATIVE AND PRACTICAL
BOOK II. OF IDEAS.
I. OF IDEAS IN GENERAL, AND THEIR ORIGINAL
II. OF SIMPLE IDEAS
III. OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF SENSATION
IV. IDEA OF SOLIDITY
V. OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF DIVERS SENSES
VI. OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF REFLECTION ...
VII. OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF BOTH SENSATION AND REFLECTION
VIII. SOME FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING OUR SIMPLE
IDEAS OF SENSATION
IX. OF PERCEPTION
X. OF RETENTION
XI. OF DISCERNING, AND OTHER OPERATIONS OF THE MIND
XII. OF COMPLEX IDEAS
XIII. OF SIMPLE MODES:--AND FIRST, OF THE SIMPLE MODES OF
THE IDEA OF SPACE
XIV. IDEA OF DURATION AND ITS SIMPLE MODES
XV. IDEAS OF DURATION AND EXPANSION, CONSIDERED TOGETHER
XVI. IDEA OF NUMBER AND ITS SIMPLE MODES
XVII. OF THE IDEA OF INFINITY
XVIII. OF OTHER SIMPLE MODES
XIX. OF THE MODES OF THINKING
XX. OF MODES OF PLEASURE AND PAIN
XXI. OF THE IDEA OF POWER
XXII. OF MIXED MODES
XXIII. OF OUR COMPLEX IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES
XXIV. OF COLLECTIVE IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES
XXV. OF IDEAS OF RELATION
XXVI. OF IDEAS OF CAUSE AND EFFECT, AND OTHER RELATIONS
XXVII. OF IDEAS OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY
XXVIII. OF IDEAS OF OTHER RELATIONS
XXIX. OF CLEAR AND OBSCURE, DISTINCT AND CONFUSED IDEAS
XXX. OF REAL AND FANTASTICAL IDEAS
XXXI. OF ADEQUATE AND INADEQUATE IDEAS
XXXII. OF TRUE AND FALSE IDEAS
XXXIII. OF THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THOMAS, EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY, BARON
HERBERT OF CARDIFF LORD ROSS, OF KENDAL, PAR, FITZHUGH, MARMION, ST.
QUINTIN, AND SHURLAND;
LORD PRESIDENT OF HIS MAJESTY'S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL; AND LORD
LIEUTENANT OF THE COUNTY OF WILTS, AND OF SOUTH WALES.
MY LORD,
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 protection which you several years
since promised it. It is not that I think any name, how great soever,
set at the beginning of a book, will be able to cover the faults that
are to be found in it. Things in print must stand and fall by their own
worth, or the reader's fancy. But there being nothing more to be desired
for truth than a fair unprejudiced hearing, nobody is more likely to
procure me that than your lordship, who are allowed to have got so
intimate an acquaintance with her, in her more retired recesses. Your
lordship is known to have so far advanced your speculations in the most
abstract and general knowledge of things, beyond the ordinary reach or
common methods, that your allowance and approbation of the design of
this Treatise will at least preserve it from being condemned without
reading, and will prevail to have those parts a little weighed, which
might otherwise perhaps be thought to deserve no consideration, for
being somewhat out of the common road. The imputation of Novelty is a
terrible charge amongst those who judge of men's heads, as they do of
their perukes, by the fashion, and can allow none to be right but the
received doctrines. Truth scarce ever yet carried it by vote anywhere
at its first appearance: new opinions are always suspected, and usually
opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already
common. But truth, like gold, is not the less so for being newly brought
out of the mine. It is trial and examination must give it price, and
not any antique fashion; and though it be not yet current by the public
stamp, yet it may, for all that, be as old as nature, and is certainly
not the less genuine. Your lordship can give great and convincing
instances of this, whenever you please to oblige the public with some
of those large and comprehensive discoveries you have made of truths
hitherto unknown, unless to some few, from whom your lordship has been
pleased not wholly to conceal them. This alone were a sufficient reason,
were there no other, why I should dedicate this Essay to your lordship;
and its having some little correspondence with some parts of that nobler
and vast system of the sciences your lordship has made so new, exact,
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