 Section 1 of an Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 2 by John Locke. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Pamela Nagami. Chapter 1 of ID is in general and their original. 1. 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 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. 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 all that our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either upon 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. Just our senses conversant about particular sensible objects to 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. Secondly, the other fountain, 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 be unconscious 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 comes to be ideas of these operations in the understanding. These too I say, namely, 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 in the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought. 5. 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 anyone 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 so ever he imagines to be lodged there, he will upon taking a strict view see that he has not any idea in his mind but want one of these two have imprinted, though perhaps with infinite variety compounded and enlarged by the understanding as we shall see hereafter. 6. He that attentively considers the observable 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 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 worthwhile, 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 no, are imprinted on the minds of children. Light and colors 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 pineapple has of those particular relishes. 7. 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 turns 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. 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 minds 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. Children'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 sensation, seldom make any considerable reflection on what passes within them, till they come to be of ripe or years, and some scarce ever at all. 9. To ask at what time a man has first any ideas is to ask when he begins to perceive, understanding 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. But whether the soul be supposed to exist antecedent to, or co-evil 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 ever 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 things, who never slumbers nor sleeps, but it 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 then draw this infallible consequence, that there is something in us that has a power to think. But whether that substance perpetually thinks or know, we can be no farther 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 is sensed to at first hearing, I appeal to mankind. It is doubted whether I thought at all last night or know, the question being about a matter of fact, it is begging it to bring, as a proof for it, and hypothesis, which is the very thing in dispute, by which one may prove anything, and it is but supposing that all watches, whilst the balance beats think, and it is sufficiently proved, and passed out 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 that 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 man 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. Your being sensible of it is not necessary to anything, but to our thoughts, and to them it is, and to them it will always be necessary, till we can think without being conscious of it. 11. 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 any 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 pleasure 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 any 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 where into place personal identity. The soldering sound sleep thinks, says 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 playing is conscious of nothing of all this. Let us suppose then the soul of Caster, 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, and perception of happiness or misery without the body. Let us then as I say suppose the soul of Caster 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, for example Pollux, who is sleeping without a soul. For if Caster's soul can think, whilst Caster is asleep, what Caster 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, or of the sleeping man is never conscious, has never the least perception. I ask then whether Caster 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 too as distinct persons as Caster 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 person to consist in the souls being united, to the very same numerical 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. Thosme thinks 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. It will perhaps be said, that the soul thinks even in the soundest sleep, but the memory retains it not, that the soul of a sleeping man should be at this moment busy at thinking, and the next moment an awaking 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 everyone's acquaintance will furnish him with examples enough of such, as pass most of their nights without dreaming. 15. 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, in 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 farther, 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 thing than those do whom they condemn for allowing it to be nothing but the subtlest parts of matter. Nature's 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 as the power of thinking, that faculty which comes nearest the excellency of his own incomprehensible being, to be so idle 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 will not find, I suppose, the motion of dull and senseless matter, anywhere in the universe, made so little use of, and so wholly thrown away. 16. 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 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. Those who so confidently tell us that, the soul always actually thinks, I would, that they would also tell us what those ideas are that are in the soul of a child, before or just at the union of 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 derive not from sensation or reflection, 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 makes the man glad with new discoveries. Who can find it reasonable, 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 busy about should be, sometimes at least, those more natural and congenial ones which it had in itself underrived 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. I would be glad also to learn from these men who so confidently pronounced 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 and hypothesis, and none of those clear truths that either their own evidence forces us to admit, or common experience makes it imprudence to deny. For the most that can be said of it is this, that it is impossible 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. 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 and 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 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. Take 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 an imaginable except only telling us that they do so. This some may suspect to be a step beyond the Rosicrucians. It is seeming easier to make one 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. Hence they find a good part of their lives pass away without thinking. For no definitions that I know, no suppositions of any sect are a 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. 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. 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 newborn 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, and 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 important of all sensations, or some other violent impression upon 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 fetus 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 in a place where it needs not ask for food and is surrounded by liquor, always equally soft and near of the same temper, where the eyes have no light, and the ears so shut up and not very susceptible of sounds, and where there is little or no variety or change of objects to move the senses. 22. 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 if it is 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. 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 co-evil 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 and etc. 24. 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 ground work 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 good 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 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, uptrude their particular ideas upon our minds whether we will or no, 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 there and 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. End of section one. Section two of an essay concerning human understanding. Book two by John Locke. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Franklin Vies. Chapter two of simple ideas. One, 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 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 taken from the same object at the same time, different ideas as a man sees at once motion and color, the hand feels softness and warmth in the same piece of wax, yet the simple ideas thus united in the same subject are as perfectly distinct as those that come in by different senses, the coldness and hardness which a man feels in a piece of ice being as distinct ideas in the mind as the smell and whiteness of a lily or as the taste of sugar and smell of a rose. And there is nothing can be planer to a man than the clear and distinct perception he has of those simple ideas which being each in itself and compounded contains in it nothing but one uniform appearance or conception in the mind and is not distinguishable into different ideas. Two, these simple ideas, the materials of all our knowledge, are suggested and furnished to the mind only by those two ways above mentioned, this sensation and reflection. When the understanding is once stored with these simple ideas, it has the power to repeat, compare and unite them even to an almost infinite variety and so can make a pleasure new complex ideas but it is not in the power of the most exalted wit or enlarged understanding by any quickness or variety of thought to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind not taken in by the ways aforementioned nor can the force of the understanding destroy those that are there. The dominion of man in this little world of his own understanding being much what the same as it is in the great world of visible things were in his power however managed by art and skill reaches no further than to compound and divide the materials that are made to his hand but can do nothing towards the making the least particle of new matter or destroying one atom of what is already in being the same ability will everyone find in himself who shall go about to fashion in his understanding any simple idea not received in by his senses from external objects or by reflection from the operations of his own mind about them I would have anyone try to fancy any taste which had never affected his palette or frame the idea of ascent he had never smelt and when he can do this I will also conclude that a blind man half ideas of colors and a deaf man true distinct notions of sounds three this is the reason why though we cannot believe it impossible to god to make a creature with other organs and more ways to convey into the understanding the notice of corporeal things than those five as they are usually counted which he has given to man yet I think it is not possible for anyone to imagine other qualities in bodies how so ever constituted whereby they can be taken notice of besides sounds tastes smells visible and tangible qualities and had mankind been made but with four senses the qualities then which are the object of the fifth sense had been as far from our notice imagination and conception and now any belonging to a sixth seventh or eighth sense can possibly be which whenever yet some other creatures in some other parts of this vast and stupendous universe may not have will be a greater presumption to deny he that will not set himself proudly at the top of all things but will consider the immensity of this fabric and the great variety that is to be found in this little and inconsiderable part of it which he has to do with may be apt to think that in other mansions of it there may be other and different intelligent beings of those faculties he has a little knowledge for apprehension as a warm shot up in one drawer of a cabinet half of the senses or understanding of a man such variety and excellency being suitable to the wisdom and power of the maker i have here followed the common opinion of mans having but five senses though perhaps there may be justly counted more but either supposition serves equally to my present purpose chapter three of ideas of one sense one the better to conceive the ideas we receive from sensation it may not be a miss for us to consider them in reference to the different ways whereby they make their approaches to their minds and make themselves perceivable by us first then there are some which come into our minds by one sense only secondly there are others that convey themselves into the mind by more senses than one thirdly others that are had from reflection only fourthly there are some that make themselves way and are suggested to the mind by all the ways of sensation and reflection we shall consider them apart under their several heads first there are some ideas which have admittance only through one sense which is peculiarly adapted to receive them the slight and colors as white red yellow blue with their several degrees or shades and mixtures as green scarlet purple sea green and the rest coming only by the eyes all kinds of noises sounds and tones only by the ears and several tastes and smells by the nose and palate and if these organs or the nerves which are they can do it's to convey them from without to their audience in the brain the mind's presence room as i may so call it are any of them so disordered as not to perform their functions they have no posture to be admitted by no other way to bring themselves into view and be perceived by the understanding the most considerable of those belonging to the touch are heat and cold and solidity all the rest consisting almost wholly in the sensible configuration as smooth and rough or else more or less firm adhesion of the parts as hard and soft tough and brittle are obvious enough two i think it will be needless to enumerate all the particular simple ideas belonging to each sense nor indeed is it possible if we would there being a great many more of them belonging to most of the senses then we have names for the variety of smells which are as many most if not more than species of body in the world do most of them want names sweet and stinking commonly serve our turn for these ideas which in effect is little more than to call them pleasing or displeasing though the smell of the rose and violet both sweet are certainly very distinct ideas nor are the different tastes that by our palates we receive ideas of much better provided with names sweet bitter sour harsh and salt are almost all the epithets we have to dominate the numberless variety of religious which are to be found distinct not only in almost every sort of creatures but in the different parts of the same plant fruit or animal the same may be said of colors and sounds i shall therefore in the count of simple ideas i am here giving content myself to set down only such as our most material to our present purpose or are in themselves less apt to be taken notice of though they are very frequently the ingredients of our complex ideas amongst which i think i may well account solidity which therefore i shall treat of in the next chapter chapter four of solidity one the idea of solidity received by and it rises from the resistance which we find in body to the entrance of any other body into the place it possesses till it has left it there is no idea which we receive more constantly from sensation than solidity whether we move or rest in what posture so ever we are we always feel something under us that supports us and hinders our further sinking downwards and the bodies which we daily handle make us perceive that whilst they remain between them they do by an insurmountable force hinder the approach of the parts of our hands that press them that which thus hinders the approach of two bodies when they are moved one towards another i call solidity i will not dispute whether this exception of the word solid be nearer to its original signification than that which mathematicians use it in it suffices that i think the common notion of solidity will allow if not justify this use of it but if anyone think it better to call it impenetrability he has my consent only i have thought the term solidity the more proper to express this idea not only because it is vulgar to use in that sense but also because it carries something more of positive in it than impenetrability which is negative and is perhaps more a consequence of solidity than solidity itself this of all other seems the idea most intimately connected with and essential to body so as nowhere else to be found or imagined by only matter and though our senses take no notice of it but in masses of matter of a bulk sufficient to cause a sensation in us yet the mind having once got this idea from such gross or sensible bodies traces it farther and considers it as well as figure in the minutest particle of matter that can exist and finds it inseparably inherent in body wherever or however modified to this is the idea which belongs to body whereby we conceive it to fill space the idea of which feeling of space is that where we imagine any space taken up by a solid substance we conceive it so to possess it that it excludes all other solid substances and will forever hinder any other two bodies that move towards one another in a straight line from coming to touch one another unless it removes from between them in a line not parallel to that which they move in this idea of it the bodies which we ordinarily handle sufficiently furnish us with three this resistance whereby it keeps other bodies out of the space which it possesses is so great that no force how great so ever can surmount it all the bodies in the world pressing a drop of water on all sides will never be able to overcome their assistance which it will take soft as it is to their approaching one another till it be removed out of their way whereby our idea of solidity is distinguished both from pure space which is capable neither of resistance nor motion and from the ordinary idea of hardness for a man may conceive two bodies at a distance so as they may approach one another without touching or displacing any solid thing till their surfaces come to meet whereby I think we have the clear idea of space without solidity four not to go so far as inhalation of any particular body I ask whether a man cannot have the idea of the motion of one single body alone without any other succeeding immediately to its place I think it is evident he can the idea of motion in one body no more including the idea of motion in another than the idea of a square figure in one body includes the idea of a square figure in another I do not ask whether bodies too so exist that the motion of one body cannot really be without the motion of another to determine this either way is to beg the question for or against a vacuum but my question is whether one cannot have the idea of one body moved whilst others are at rest and I think this no one will deny if so then the place it deserted gives us the idea of pure space without solidity wherein too any other body may enter without either resistance or protrusion of anything when the sucker in a pump is drawn the space it filled in the tube is certainly the same whether any other body follows the motion of the sucker or not nor does it imply a contraction that upon the motion of one body another that is only contagious to it should not follow it the necessity of such a motion is built only on the supposition that the world is full but not on the distinct ideas of space and solidity which are as different as resistance and not resistance protrusion and not protrusion and that men have ideas of space without a body their very disputes about the vacuum plainly demonstrate as is showed in another space for solidity is hereby also differenced from hardness in that solidity consists in repulsion and so an utter exclusion of other bodies out of the space it possesses but hardness in a firm of cohesion of the parts of matter making up masses of a sensible bulk so that the hole does not easily change its figure and indeed hard and soft are names that we give to things only in relation to the constitutions of our own bodies that being generally called hard by us which will put us to pain sooner than change figure by the pressure of any part of our bodies and that on the contrary soft which changes the situation of its parts upon an easy and painful touch but this difficulty of changing the situation of the sensible parts amongst themselves or of the figure of the whole gives no more solidity of the hardest body in the world than to the softest nor is an adamant one jut more solid than water for though the two flat sides of two pieces of marble will more easily approach each other between which there is nothing but water or air than if there be a diamond between them yet it is not that the parts of the diamond are more solid than those of water or resist more but because the parts of water being more easily separable from each other they will by a side motion be more easily removed and give way to the approach of the two pieces of marble but if they could be kept from making place by that side motion they would eternally hinder the approach of these two pieces of marble as much as the diamond and it would be as impossible by any force to surmount their resistance as to surmount the resistance of the parts of a diamond the softest body in the world will as invisibly resist the coming together of any other two bodies if it be not put out of the way but remain between them as the hardest that can be found or imagined he that shall feel a yield and soft body well with air and water will quickly find its resistance and he that thinks that nothing but bodies that are hard can keep his hands from approaching one another may be pleased to make a trial with the air enclosed in a football the experiment I have been told was made at Florence with a hollow globe of gold filled with water and exactly closed which further shows the solidity of so soft a body as water for the golden globe thus filled being put into a press which was driven by the extreme force of screws the water made itself way through the pores of the very close metal and finding no room for a nearer approach of its particles within go to the outside where it rose like a dew and so fell in drops before the sides of the globe could be made to yield to the violent compression of the engine that squeezed it five by this idea of solidity is the extension of body distinguished from the extension of space the extension of the body being nothing but the cohesion or continuity of solid separable movable parts and the extension of space the continuity of unsolid inseparable and immovable parts upon the solidity of bodies also depend their mutual impulse resistance and protrusion of pure space then and solidity there are several amongst which I confess myself one who persuade themselves they have clear and distinct ideas and that they can think on space without anything in it that resists or is protruded by body this is the idea of pure space which they think they have as clear as any idea they can have of the extension of body the idea of the distance between the opposite parts of a concave surfaces being equally as clear without as with the idea of any solid parts between and on the other side they persuade themselves that they have distinct from that of pure space the idea of something that feels space that can be protruded by the impulse of other bodies or resist their motion if there be others that have not these two ideas distinct but confound them and make but one of them I know not how men who have the same idea under different names or different ideas under the same name can in that case talk with one another any more than a man who not being blind or deaf has distinct ideas of the colors of scarlet and the sound of a trumpet who discourse concerning scarlet color with a blind man I mentioned in another place who fancied that the idea of scarlet was like the sound of a trumpet six if anyone asked what this solidity is I send them to his senses to inform him let him put a flint or a football between his hands and then endeavor to join them and he will know if he thinks this not a sufficient explication of solidity what it is and where in it consists I promise to tell him what it is and where in it consists when he tells me what thinking is or where in it consists or explains to me what extension or motion is which perhaps seems much easier the simple ideas we have are such as experience teaches them us but if beyond that we endeavor by words to make them clearer in the mind we shall succeed no better than if we went about to clear up the darkness of the blind man's mind by talking and to discourse into him the ideas of light and colors the reason of this I shall show in another place chapter five of simple ideas of diverse senses 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 perceive and convey into our minds the ideas of the extension figure motion and rest of bodies both by seeing and feeling but having occasion to speak more at large of these in another place I hear only enumerate them chapter six of simple ideas of reflection one 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 takes from thence other ideas which are as capable to be the objects of its contemplation as any of those it received from foreign things two the two great and principal actions of the mind which are most frequently considered and which are so frequent that everyone that pleases may take notice of them in himself are these two perception or thinking and volition or willing the power of thinking is called the understanding and the power of volition is called the will and these two powers or abilities in the mind are nominated faculties of some of the modes of these simple ideas of reflection such as remembrance discerning reasoning judging knowledge faith et cetera I shall have occasion to speak here after chapter seven of simple ideas of both sensation and reflection one there be other simple ideas which convey themselves into the mind by all the ways of sensation and reflection this pleasure or delight and its opposite pain and uneasiness power existence unity two delight or uneasiness one or other of them join themselves to almost all our ideas both of sensation and reflection and there is scars any affection of our senses from without any retired thought of our mind within which is not able to produce in us pleasure or pain by pleasure and pain I would be understood to signify whatsoever delights or molests as most whether it arises from the thoughts of our minds or anything operating on our bodies for whether we call it satisfaction delight pleasure happiness et cetera on the one side or uneasiness trouble pain torment anguish misery et cetera on the other they are still but different degrees of the same thing and belong to the ideas of pleasure and pain delight or uneasiness which are the names I shall most commonly use for those two sorts of ideas three the infinitely wise author of our own being have given us the power over several parts of our bodies to move or to keep them at rest as we think fit and also by the motion of them to move ourselves and other contagious bodies in which consists all the actions of our body having also given a power to our minds in several instances to choose amongst its ideas which it will think on and to pursue the inquiry of this or that subject with consideration and attention to excite us to these actions of thinking and motion that we are capable of has been pleased to join to several thoughts and several sensations a perception of delight if this were wholly separated from all our outward sensations and inward thoughts we should have no reason to prefer one thought or action to another negligence to attention or motion to rest and so we should neither steer our bodies nor employ our minds but let our thoughts if I may so call it run drift without any direction or design and suffer the ideas of our minds like unregarded shadows to make their appearances there as it happened without attending to them in which state man however furnished with the faculties of understanding and will would be a very idle and active creature and past his time only in a lazy lethargic dream it has therefore pleased our wise creator to annex to several objects and ideas we receive from them as also to several of our thoughts a concomitant pleasure and that in several objects to several degrees that those faculties which he had endowed us with might not remain wholly idle and unemployed by us for pain has the same efficacy and used to set us on work with that pleasure has we being as ready to employ our faculties to avoid that as to pursue this only this is worth our consideration that pain is often produced with the same objects and ideas that produce pleasure in us this their near conjunction which makes us often feel pain in the sensations where we expected pleasure gives us new occasion of admiring the wisdom and goodness of our maker who designing the preservation of our being his annexed pain to the application of many things to our bodies to warn us of the harm that they will do and as advices to withdraw from them but he not designing our preservation barely but the preservation of every part an organ of its perfection half in many cases annexed pain to those very ideas which delight us thus heat that is very agreeable to us in one degree by a little greater increase of it proves no ordinary torment and the most pleasant of all sensible objects light itself if there be too much of it if increased beyond a due proportion of our eyes causes a very painful sensation which is wisely and favorably so ordered by nature that when any object does by the vehemence of its operation disorder the instruments of sensation those structures cannot but be very nice and delicate we might by the pain be warned to withdraw from the organ to quite put out of order and so be unfitted for its proper function for the future the consideration of those objects that produce it may well persuade us that this is the end for use of pain for though great light be insufferable to our eyes yet the highest degree of darkness does not at all disease them because that causing no disorderly motion in it leaves that curious organ unarmed in its natural state but yet excessive code as well as heat paints us because it is equally destructive to the temper which is necessary to the preservation of life and the exercise of the several functions of the body and which consists in a moderate degree of warmth or if you please a motion of the insensible parts of our body confined within certain bounds five beyond all this we may find another reason why god hath scattered up and down several degrees of pleasure and pain in all the things that environ and affect us and blended them together in almost all that our thoughts and senses have to do with that we finding imperfection dissatisfaction and want of complete happiness in all the enjoyments which the creatures can afford us might be led to sick it in the enjoyment of him with whom there is fullness of joy and at whose right hand are pleasures forever more six though what i have here said may not perhaps make the ideas of pleasure and pain clearer to us than our own experience does which is the only way that we are capable of having them yet the consideration of the reason why we are annexed to so many other ideas serving to give us two sentiments of the wisdom and goodness of the sovereign disposer of all things may not be unsuitable to the main end of these inquiries the knowledge and veneration of him being the chief end of all our thoughts and the proper business of all understandings seven existence and unity are two other ideas that are suggested to the understanding by every object without and every idea within when ideas are in our minds we consider them being actually there as well as we consider things to be actually without us which is that they exist or have existence and whatever we can consider as one thing whether a real being or idea suggests to the understanding the idea of unity eight power is also another of those simple ideas which we receive from sensation and reflection for observing in ourselves that we can at pleasure move several parts of our bodies which were at rest the effects also that natural bodies are able to produce in one another curing every moment to our senses we both these ways get the idea of power nine besides these there is another idea which those suggested by our senses yet is more constantly offered to us by what passes in our minds and that is the idea of succession for if we look immediately into ourselves and reflect on what is observable there we shall find our ideas always whilst we are awake or have any thought passing in train one going and another coming without intermission ten these if they are not all are at least as i think the most considerable of all those simple ideas which the mind has and out of which is made all its other knowledge all which it receives only by the two for mentioned ways of sensation and reflection nor let anyone think these two narrow bounds for the capacious mind of a man to expatiate in which takes its flight farther than the stars and cannot be confined by the limits of the world and extends its thoughts often even beyond the utmost expansion of matter and makes excursions into the incomprehensible in name i grant all this but desire anyone to assign any simple idea which is not received from one of those inlets before mentioned or any complex idea not made out of those simple ones nor will it be so strange to think these few simple ideas sufficient to employ the quickest thought or largest capacity or to furnish the materials of all the various knowledge and more various fancies and opinions of all mankind if we consider how many words may be made out of the various composition of 24 letters or if going one step further we will but reflect on the variety of combinations may be made with barely one of the above mentioned ideas this numbers whose stock is inexhaustible and truly infinite and with a large and immense field doth extension alone afford mathematicians end of section two recording by franklin vias section three of an essay concerning human understanding book two by john lock this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by brian c rideout chapter eight some further considerations concerning our simple ideas one 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 the mind doth thereby produce in the understanding a simple idea which whatever be the external cause of it when it comes to be taken notice of by our discerning faculty it is by the mind looked on and considered there to be a real positive idea in the understanding as much as any other whatsoever though perhaps the cause of it be but a privation of the subject two thus the idea of heat and cold light and darkness white and black motion and rest are equally clear and positive ideas in the mind though perhaps some of the causes which produce them are barely privations and subjects from whence our senses derive those ideas these the understanding in its view of them considers all as distinct positive ideas without taking notice of the causes that produce them which is an inquiry not belonging to the idea as it is in the understanding but to the nature of the things existing without us these are two very different things and carefully to be distinguished it being one thing to perceive and know the idea of white or black and quite another to examine what kind of particles they must be and how arranged in the superfaces to make any object appear white or black three a painter or dire who never inquired into their causes have the ideas of white and black and other colors as clearly perfectly and distinctly in his understanding and perhaps more distinctly than the philosopher who hath busied himself in considering their natures and thinks he knows how far either of them is in cause positive or private and the idea of black is no less positive in his mind than that of white however the cause of that color in the external object may be only a privation four if it were the design of my present undertaking to inquire into the natural causes and manner of perception I should offer this is a reason why a private cause might in some cases produce a positive idea vis-a-vis that all sensation being produced in us only by different degrees and modes of motion in our animal spirits variously agitated by external objects the abatement of any former motion must as necessarily produce a new sensation as the variation or increase of it and so introduce a new idea which depends only on a different motion of the animal spirits in that organ five but whether this be so or no I will not here determine but appeal to everyone's own experience whether the shadow of a man though it consists of nothing but the absence of light and the more the absence of light is the more discernible the shadow does not when a man looks on it causes clear a positive idea in his mind as a man himself though covered over with clear sunshine and the picture of a shadow is a positive thing indeed we have negative names which stand not directly for positive ideas but for their absence such as insipid silence Nile etc which words denote positive ideas verbi gracia taste sound being with a signification of their absence six and thus one may truly be said to see darkness for supposing a whole perfectly dark from whence no light is reflected it is certain one may see the figure of it or it may be painted or whether the ink I write which makes any other idea is a question the private causes I have here assigned of positive ideas are according to the common opinion but in truth it will be hard to determine whether there be really any ideas from a private of cause till it be determined whether rest be any more a privation than motion seven to discover the nature of our ideas the better and to discourse of them intelligibly it will be convenient to distinguish them as they are ideas or perceptions in our minds and as they are modifications of matter in the bodies that cause such perceptions in us that so we may not think as perhaps is usually done that they are exactly the images and resemblances of something inherent in the subject most of those of sensation being in the mind no more the likeness of something existing without us than the names that stand for them are the likeness of our ideas which yet upon hearing they are apt to excite in us eight whatsoever the mind perceives in itself or is the immediate object of perception thought or understanding that I call an idea and the power to produce any idea in our mind I call a quality of the subject wherein that power is thus a snowball having the power to produce in us the ideas of white cold and round the powers to produce those ideas in us as they are in the snowball I call qualities and as they are sensations or perceptions in our understandings I call them ideas which ideas if I speak of sometimes as in the things themselves I would not be understood to mean those qualities in the objects which produce them in us nine qualities thus considered in bodies are first such as are utterly inseparable from the body and what a state so ever it be such as in all the alterations and changes it suffers all the force that can be used upon it it constantly keeps and such a sense constantly finds in every particle of matter which has bulk enough to be perceived and the mind finds inseparable from every particle of matter though less than to make itself singly be perceived by our own senses for Begratia take a grain of wheat divided into two parts each part still has solidity extension figure and mobility divided again and it retains still the same qualities and so divided on till the parts become sensible they must retain still each of them all those qualities for division which is all that a mill or pestle or any other body does upon another in reducing it to insensible parts can never take away either solidity extension figure or mobility from anybody but only makes two or more distinct separate masses of matter of that which was one before all which distinct masses reckoned as so many bodies after division make a certain number these I call original or primary qualities of body which I think we may observe to produce simple ideas in us vis-a-vis solidity extension figure motion or rest and number 10 secondly such qualities which in truth are nothing in the objects themselves but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities i.e. by the bulk figure texture and motion of their insensible parts as colors sounds tastes etc these I call secondary qualities to these might be added a third sort which are allowed to be barely powers though they are as much as real qualities in the subject as those which I'm to comply with the common way of speaking call qualities but for the distinction secondary qualities for the power and fire to produce a new color or consistency in wax or clay by its primary qualities is as much a quality in fire as the power it has to produce me a new idea or sensation of warmth or burning which I had not felt before by the same primary qualities vis-a-vis the bulk texture and motion of its insensible parts 11 the next thing to be considered is how bodies produce ideas in us and that is manifestly by impulse the only way in which we can conceive of bodies to operate in 12 if then external objects be not united in our minds when they produce the ideas therein and yet we perceive these original qualities in such of them as singly fall under our senses it is evident that some motion must then be continued by our nerves or animal spirits by some parts of our bodies to the brain or the seat of sensation there to produce in our minds the particular ideas we have of them and since the extension figure number and motion of bodies of an observable bigness may be perceived at a distance by the site is evidence that some singly imperceptible bodies must come from them to the eyes and thereby convey to the brain some motion which produces these ideas which we have of them in us 13 after the same manner that the ideas of these original qualities are produced in us we may conceive that the ideas of secondary qualities are also produced vis-a-vis by the operations of insensible particles on our senses for it being manifest that there are bodies and good store of bodies each where of our so small that we cannot by any of our senses discover either their bulk figure or motion as is evident in the particles of the air and water and other is extremely smaller than those perhaps as much smaller than the particles of air and water as the particles of air and water are smaller than peas or hailstones let us suppose a present that the different motions and figures bulk and number of such particles affecting several organs of our senses producing us those different sensations which we have from the colors and smells of bodies verbi gracia that a violet by the impulse of such insensible particles of matter of peculiar figures and bulks and in different degrees and modifications their motions cause the idea of the blue color and sweet scent of that flower to be produced in our minds it being no more impossible to conceive that God should annex such ideas to such motions with which they have no similitude then that he should annex the idea of pain to the motion of a piece of steel dividing our flesh with which the idea hath no resemblance 14 what I have said concerning colors and smells maybe understood also of tastes and sounds and others the like sensible qualities which whatever reality by mistake we attribute to them are in truth nothing in the objects themselves but powers to produce various sensations in us and depend on those primary qualities vis-a-vis bulk figure texture and motion of parts as I have said 15 from whence I think it easy to draw this observation that the ideas of primary qualities of bodies and resemblances of them and their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves but the ideas produced in us by these secondary qualities have no resemblance to them at all there is nothing like our ideas existing in the bodies themselves they are in the bodies we denominate from them only a power to produce those sensations in us and what is sweet blue or warm in idea is but a certain bulk figure and motion of the insensible parts in the bodies themselves which we call 16 flame is denominated hot and light snow white and cold and mana white and sweet from the ideas they produce in us which qualities are commonly thought to be the same in those bodies that those ideas are in us the one the perfect resemblance of the other as they are judged in a mirror and it would by most men be judged very extravagant if one should say otherwise and yet he that will consider that the same fire that at one distance produces in us a sensation of warmth does at a nearer approach producing us a far different sensation of pain ought to be think himself what reason he has to say that this idea of warmth which was produced in him by the fire is actually in the fire and that his idea of pain which the same fire produced in him the same way is not the fire why are whiteness and coldness in snow and pain not when it produces the one and the other idea in us and can do neither but by bulk figured number and motion of its solid parts 17 the particular bulk number figure and motion of the parts of fire or snow are really in them whether any one senses perceive them or know and therefore they may be called real qualities because they really exist in those bodies but light heat whiteness or coldness are no more really in them than sickness or pain is in mana take away the sensation of them let not the icy light or colors nor ears hear sounds let the palate not taste nor the nose smell and all the colors tastes odors and sounds as they are such particular ideas vanish and cease and are reduced to their causes i.e bulk figure and motion of parts 18 a piece of mana of a sensible bulk is able to produce in us the idea of a round or square figure and by being removed from one place to another the idea of motion this idea of motion represents it as it really is in the mana moving a circle or square are the same whether in idea or existence in the mind or in the mana and this both motion and figure are really in the mana whether we take notice of them or know this everybody is ready to agree to besides mana by the bulk figure texture and motion of its parts has a power to introduce the sensations of sickness and sometimes of acute pains gripping in us that these ideas of sickness and pain are not in the mana but effects of its operations on us and are nowhere when we feel them not this also everyone readily agrees to and yet men are hardly to be brought to think that sweetness and whiteness are not really in mana which are but the effects of operations of mana by motion size and figure of its particles on the eyes and palate as the pain and sickness caused by mana are confessedly nothing but the effects of its operations on the stomach and guts by the size motion and figure of its insensible parts for by nothing else can a body operate as has been proved as if it could not operate on the eyes and palate and thereby producing the mind particular distinct ideas which in itself it has not as well as we allow it can operate on the guts and stomach and thereby produce distinct ideas which in itself it has not these ideas being all effects of the operations of mana on several parts of our bodies by the size figure number in motion of its parts why those produced by the eyes and palate should rather be thought of to be really in the mana than those produced by the stomach and guts or why the pain and sickness ideas that are the effect of mana should be thought to be nowhere when they are not felt and yet the sweetness and whiteness effects of the same mana on other parts of the body by ways equally as unknown should be thought to exist in the mana when they are not seen or tasted would need some reason to explain 19 let us consider the red and white colors in porphyry hinder the light from striking on it and its colors vanish it no longer produces any such ideas in us upon the return of the light it produces these appearances on us again can anyone think any real alterations are made in the porphyry by the presence or absence of light and that those ideas of whiteness and redness are really in the porphyry in the light when it is plain it has no color in the dark it has indeed such a configuration of particles both night and day as are apt by the rays of light rebounding from some parts of that hard stone producing us the idea of redness and from others the idea of whiteness but whiteness and redness are not in it at any time but such a texture that hath the power to produce such a sensation in us 20 pound an almond and the clear white color will be altered into a dirty one and the sweet taste into an oily one what real alteration can the beating of the pets will make in any body but an alteration of the texture of it 21 ideas being thus distinguished and understood we may be able to give an account of how the same water at the same time may produce the idea of cold by one hand and of heat by the other whereas it is impossible that the same water if those ideas were really in it should at the same time be both hot and cold for if we imagine warmth as it is in our hands to be nothing but a certain sort of degree of motion in the minute particles of our nerves or animal spirits we may understand how it is possible that the same water may at the same time produce the sensation of heat in one hand and cold in the other which yet figure never does that never producing the idea of a square by one hand which has produced the idea of a globe by the other but if the sensation of heat and cold be nothing more but the increase or diminution of the motion of the minute parts of our bodies caused by the corpuscles of any other body it is easy to be understood that if that motion be greater in one hand than in the other if a body be applied to the two hands which has in its minute particles a greater motion than in those of one of the hands and a less than in those of the other it will increase the motion of the one hand and lessen it in the other and so cause the different sensations of heat and cold that depend there on 22 I have been what just goes before being engaged in physical inquiries a little further than perhaps I intended but it being necessary to make the nature of sensation a little understood and to make the difference between the qualities in bodies and the ideas produced by them in the mind to be distinctly conceived without which it were impossible to discourse intelligibly of them I hope I shall be pardoned this little excursion into natural philosophy it being necessary in our present inquiry to distinguish the primary and real qualities of bodies which are always in them vis-a-vis solidity extension figure number and motion or rest and are sometimes perceived by us vis-a-vis when the bodies they are in are big enough to singly be discerned from those secondary and imputed qualities which are but the powers of several combinations of those primary ones when they operate without being distinctly discerned whereby we may also come to know what the ideas are and what they are not resemblances of something really existing in the bodies we denominate from them 23 the qualities then that are in the bodies rightly considered are of three sorts first the bulk figure number situation and motion or rest of their solid parts those are in them whether we perceive them or no and when they are of that size that we can discover them we have by these an idea of the thing as it is in itself as is plain in artificial things I call these primary qualities secondly the power that is in anybody by reason of its insensible primary qualities to operate after a peculiar manner of any of our senses and thereby produce in us different ideas of several colors sounds smells tastes etc and these are usually called sensible qualities thirdly the power that is in anybody by reason of the particular constitution of its primary qualities to make such a change in the bulk figure texture and motion of another body as to make it operate on our senses differently from what it did before thus the sun has the power to make wax white and fire to make lead fluid these are usually called powers the first of these as has been said I think maybe properly called real original or primary qualities because they are in the things themselves whether they are perceived or no and upon their different modifications it is that the secondary qualities depend the other two are only powers to act differently upon other things which powers result from the different modifications of those primary qualities 24 but though the two latter sorts of qualities are powers barely and nothing but powers relating to several other bodies and resulting from the different modifications of their original qualities yet they are generally otherwise thought of for the second sort vis-a-vis the powers to produce several ideas in us by our senses are looked upon as real qualities in the things thus affecting us but the third sort are called and esteemed barely powers verbi gracia the idea of heat or light which we receive by our eyes or touch from the sun are commonly thought of as real qualities existing in the sun and something more than mere powers in it but when we consider the sun in reference to wax which it melts or blanches we look on the whiteness and softness produced in the wax not as qualities in the sun but effects produced by powers in it whereas if rightly considered these qualities of light and warmth which are perceptions in me when I am warmed or enlightened by the sun are no otherwise in the sun than the changes made in the wax when it is blanched or melted are in the sun they are all of them equally powers in the sun depending on its primary qualities whereby it is able in the one case so to alter the bulk figure texture or motion of some of the insensible parts of my eyes or hands as thereby to produce in me the idea of lighter heat and in the other it is able to alter the bulk figure texture or motion of the insensible parts of wax as to make them fit to produce in me the distinct ideas of white and fluid 25 the reason why the one are ordinarily taken for real qualities and the other only for bare powers seems to be because the ideas we have of distinct colors sounds etc containing nothing at all in them of bulk figure or motion we are not apt to think of them as the effects of these primary qualities which appear not to our senses to operate in their production and with which they have not any apparent congruity or conceivable connection hence it is that we are so forward to imagine that those ideas are the resemblances of something really existing in the objects themselves since sensation discovers nothing of bulk figure or motion of parts in their production nor can reason show how bodies by their bulk figure in motion should produce in the mind ideas of blue or yellow etc but in the other case in the operations of bodies changing the qualities of one another we plainly discover that the quality produced have commonly no resemblance with anything in the thing producing it therefore we look on it as a bare effect of power for though receiving the idea of heat or light from the sun we are apt to think of it as a perception and resemblance of such a quality in the sun yet when we see wax or a fair face receive change of color from the sun we cannot imagine that to be the reception or resemblance of anything in the sun because we find not those different colors in the sun itself for our senses being able to observe a likeness or unlikeness of sensible qualities in two different external objects we forwardly enough to conclude the prediction of any sensible quality in any subject to be an effect of bare power and not the communication of any quality which was really in the efficient when we find no such sensible quality in the thing which produced it but our senses not being able to discover any unlikeness between the idea produced in us and the quality of the object producing it we are apt to imagine that our ideas are resemblances of something in the objects and not the effects of certain powers placed in the modification of their primary qualities with which primary qualities the ideas produced in us have no resemblance 26 to conclude beside those before mentioned primary qualities in bodies vis-a-vis bulk figure extension number in motion of their solid parts all the rest whereby we take notice of bodies and distinguish them from one another are nothing else but several powers in them depending on those primary qualities whereby they are fitted either by immediately operating on our bodies to produce several different ideas in us or else by operating on other bodies so to change their primary qualities as to render them capable of producing ideas in us different from what before they did the former of these i think may be called secondary qualities immediately perceivable the latter secondary qualities immediately perceivable end of section three recording by brian c rideout section four of an essay concerning human understanding book two by john lock this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in a public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by gary b Clayton chapter nine of perception one 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 general though thinking in the propriety of the english tongue signifies that sort of operation in the mind about its ideas wherein the mind is active where it with some degree of voluntary attention considers anything for in bare naked perception the mind is for the most part only passive and what it perceives it cannot avoid perceiving two what perception is everyone will know better by reflecting on what he does himself what he sees hears feels etc or thinks then by any discourse of mind whoever reflects on what passes in his own mind cannot miss it and if he does not reflect all the words in the world cannot make him have any notion of it three this is certain that whatever alterations are made in the body if they reach not the mind whatever impressions are made on the outward parts if they are not taken notice of within there is no perception fire may burn our bodies with no other effect than it does a billet unless the motion be continued to the brain and there the sense of heat or idea of pain be produced in the mind wherein consists actual perception four how often may a man observe in himself that whilst his mind is intently employed in the contemplation of some objects and curiously surveying some ideas that are there it takes no notice of impressions of sounding bodies made upon the organ of hearing with the same alteration that uses to be for the producing the idea of sound a sufficient impulse there may be on the organ but if not reaching the observation of the mind there follows no perception and though the motion that uses to produce the idea of sound be made in the ear yet no sound is heard want of sensation in this case is not through any defect in the organ or that the man's ears are less affected than at other times when he does here but that which uses to produce the idea though conveyed in by the usual organ not being taken notice of in the understanding and so imprinting no idea in the mind there follows no sensation so that wherever there is sense or perception there is some idea is actually produced and present in the understanding five therefore i doubt not but children by the exercise of their senses about objects that affect them in the womb receive some few ideas before they are born as the unavoidable effects either of the bodies that environ them or else of those wants or diseases they suffer amongst which if one may conjecture concerning things not very capable of examination i think the ideas of hunger and warmth or two which probably are some of the first that children have and which they scarce ever part with again six but though it be reasonable to imagine that children receive some ideas before they come into the world yet those simple ideas are far from those innate principles which some contend for and which we above have rejected these here mentioned being the effects of sensation are only from some affections of the body which happen to them there and so depend on something exterior to the mind no otherwise differing in their manner of production from other ideas derived from sense but only in the precedency of time whereas those innate principles are supposed to be quite of another nature not coming into the mind by any accidental alterations in or operations on the body but as it were original characters impressed upon it in the very first moment of its being and constitution seven as there are some ideas which we may reasonably suppose may be introduced into the minds of children in the wombs, subservient to the necessities of their life and being there so after they are born those ideas are the earliest imprinted which happen to be the sensible qualities which first occur to them amongst which light is not the least considerable nor of the weakest efficacy and how covetous the mind is to be furnished with all such ideas as have no pain accompanying them may be a little guest by what is observable in children newborn who always turn their eyes to that part from whence the light comes lay them how you please but the ideas that are most familiar at first being various according to the divers circumstances of children's first entertainment in the world the order wherein the several ideas come at first into the mind is very various and uncertain also neither is it much material to know it eight we are further to consider concerning perception that the ideas we receive by sensation are often ingrown people altered by the judgment without our taking notice of it when we set before our eyes a round globe of any uniform color vg gold alabaster or jet it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted in our mind is of a flat circle variously shaded with several degrees of light and brightness coming to our eyes but we having by use been accustomed to perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are want to make in us what alterations are made into reflections of light by the difference of the sensible figures of bodies the judgment presently by an habitual custom alters the appearances into their causes so that from that which is truly variety of shadow or color collecting the figure it makes it pass for a mark of figure and frames to itself the perception of a convex figure and a uniform color when the idea we receive from dense is only a plain variously colored as is evident in painting to which purpose I shall here insert a problem of that very ingenious and studious promoter of real knowledge the learned and worthy Mr. Molina which he was pleased to send me in a letter some months since and it is this suppose a man born blind and now adult and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal and Nileek of the same bigness so as to tell when he felt one or the other which is the cube which is the sphere suppose then the cube and sphere placed on a table and the blind man be made to see quare quote whether by his sight before he touched them he could now distinguish entail which is the globe which is the cube end quote to which the acute and judicious proposer answers not for though he has obtained the experience of how a globe how a cube affects his touch yet he has not yet obtained the experience that what affects his touch so or so must affect his sight so or so or that a protuberant angle in the cube that pressed his hand unequally shall appear to his eye as it does in the cube I agree with this thinking gentlemen whom I am proud to call my friend and his answer to this his problem and am of opinion that the blind man at first sight would not be able with certainty to say which was the globe which the cube whilst he only saw them though he could unaryingly name them by his touch and certainly distinguish them by the difference of their figures felt this I have sat down and leave with my reader as an occasion for him to consider how much he may be beholden to experience improvement and acquired notions where he thinks he had not the least use of or help from them and the rather because this observing gentleman further adds that having upon the occasion of my book proposed this to diverse very ingenious men he hardly ever met with one that at first gave the answer to it which he thinks true till by hearing his reasons they were convinced nine but this is not I think usual in any of our ideas but those received by sight because sight the most comprehensive of all our senses conveying to our minds the ideas of light and colors which are peculiar only to that sense and also the far different ideas of space figure in motion the several varieties where of change the appearances of its proper object this light and colors we bring ourselves by used to judge of the one by the other this in many cases by a settled habit and things where of we have frequent experience is performed so constantly and so quick that we take that for the perception of our sensation which is an idea formed by our judgment so that one vis that of sensation serves only to excite the other and is scarce taken notice of itself as a man who reads or hears with attention and understanding takes little notice of the characters or sounds but of the ideas that are excited in him by them ten nor need we wonder that this is done with so little notice if we consider how very quickly actions of the mind are performed for as itself is thought to take up no space to have no extension so its actions seem to require no time but many of them seem to be crowded into an instant I speak this in comparison to the actions of the body anyone may easily observe this in his own thoughts who will take the pains to reflect on them how as it were in an instant do our minds with one glance see all the parts of a demonstration which may very well be called a long one if we consider the time it will require to put it into words and step by step show it another secondly we shall not be so much surprised that this is done in us with so little notice if we consider how the facility which we get of doing things by a custom of doing makes them often pass in us without our notice habits especially such as are begun very early come at last to produce actions in us which often escape our observation how frequently do we in a day cover our eyes with our eyelids without perceiving that we are at all in the dark men that by custom have got the use of a byword do almost in every sentence pronounce sounds which though taken notice of by others they themselves neither hear nor observe and therefore it is not so strange that our mind should often change the idea of its sensation into that of its judgment and make one serve only to excite the other without our taking notice of it 11 this faculty of perception seems to me to be that which puts the distinction between the animal kingdom and the inferior parts of nature for however vegetables have many of them some degrees of motion and upon the different application of other bodies to them do very briskly alter their figures and motions and so have obtained the name of sensitive plants from a motion which has some resemblance to that which in animals follows upon sensation yet I suppose it is all bare mechanism and no otherwise produced then the turning of a wild oat beard by the insinuation of the particles of moisture or the shortening of a rope by the effusion of water all which is done without any sensation in the subject or the having or receiving any ideas 12 perception I believe is in some degree in all sorts of animals though in some possibly the avenues provided by nature for the reception of sensations are so few and the perception they are received with so obscure and dull that it comes extremely short of the quickness and variety of sensation which are in other animals but yet it is sufficient for and wisely adapted to the state and condition of that sort of animals who are thus made so that the wisdom and goodness of the maker plainly appear in all the parts of this stupendous fabric and all the several degrees and ranks of creatures in it 13 we may I think from the make of a noisier or cockle reasonably conclude that it has not so many nor so quick senses as a man or several other animals nor if it had would it in that state and incapacity of transferring itself from one place to another be bettered by them what good would sight and hearing do to a creature that cannot move itself to or from the objects wherein at a distance it perceives good or evil and would not quickness of sensation be an inconvenience to an animal that must lie still where chance has once placed it and there received the afflux of colder or warmer clean or foul water as it happens to come to it 14 but yet I cannot but think there is some small dull perception whereby they are distinguished from perfect and sensibility and that this may be so we have plain instances even in mankind itself take one in whom decrepit old age has blotted out the memory of his past knowledge and clearly wiped out the ideas his mind was formally stored with and has by destroying his sight hearing and smell white and his taste to a great degree stopped up almost all the passages for new ones to enter or if there be some of the inlets yet half open the impressions made or scarce perceived or not at all retained how far such a one notwithstanding all that is boasted of innate principles is in his knowledge and intellectual faculties above the condition of a cockle or an oyster I leave to be considered and if a man had passed sixty years in such a state as it is possible he might as well as three days I wonder what difference there would have been in any intellectual perfections between him and the lowest degree of animals 15 perception then being the first step in degree towards knowledge and the inlet of all the materials of it the fewer senses any man as well as any other creature hath and the fewer and duller the impressions that are made by them and the duller the faculties are that are employed about them the more remote are they from that knowledge which is to be found in some men but this being a great variety of degrees as may be perceived among men cannot certainly be discovered in the several species of animals much less in their particular individuals it suffices me only to have remarked here that perception is the first operation of all our intellectual faculties and the inlet of all knowledge in our minds and I am apt too to imagine that it is perception in the lowest degree of it which puts the boundaries between animals and the inferior ranks of creatures but this I mentioned only as my conjecture by the by it being indifferent to the matter in hand which way the learned shall determine of it end of section four recording by Gary B Clayton