An Essay concerning Human Understanding

An Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689).
38th Edition from William Tegg, London; scanned in three separate excerpts from early in the work.
CHAPTER II
NO INNATE PRINCIPLES IN THE MIND.
1. The way shown how we come by any knowledge, sufficient
to prove it not innate. – It is an established
opinion among some men, that there are in the understanding certain
innate principles; some primarily notions, characters, as it
were, stamped upon the mind of man, which the soul receives in
its very first being and brings into the world with it. It would
be sufficient to convince unprejudiced readers of the falseness
of this supposition, if I should only show (as I hope I shall
in the following parts of this discourse) how men, barely by the
use of their natural faculties, may attain to all the knowledge
they have, without the help of any innate impressions, and may
arrive at certainty without any such original notions or principles.
For I imagine, any one will easily grant, that it would be impertinent
to suppose the ideas of colours innate in a creature to whom God
hath given sight, and a power to receive them by the eyes from
external objects: and no less unreasonable would it be to attribute
several truths to the impressions of nature and innate characters,
when we may observe in ourselves faculties fit to attain as easy
and certain knowledge of them as if they were originally imprinted
on the mind.
But because a man is not permitted without censure to follow his
own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so
little out of the common road, I shall set down the reasons that
made me doubt of the truth of that opinion as an excuse for my
mistake, if I be in one; which I leave to be considered by those
who, with me, dispose themselves to embrace truth wherever they
find it.
2. General assent the great argument.
– There is nothing more commonly taken for granted, than that
there are certain principles, both speculative and practical (for
they speak of both), universally agreed upon by all mankind; which
therefore; they argue, must needs be constant impressions which
the souls of men receive in their first beings, and which they
bring into the world with them, as necessarily and really as they
do any of their inherent faculties.
3. Universal consent proves nothing innate. -
This argument, drawn from universal consent, has this misfortune
in it, that if it were true in matter of fact that there were
certain truths wherein all mankind agreed, it would not prove
them innate, if there can be any other way shown, how men may
come to that universal agreement in the things they do consent
in; which I presume may be done.
4. “What is, is;” and, “It is impossible
for the same thing to be, and not to be,” not universally
assented to. – But, which is worse, this argument of
universal consent, which is made use of to prove innate principles,
seems to me a demonstration that there are none such; because
there are none to which all mankind give an universal assent.
I shall begin with the speculative, and instance in those magnified
principles of demonstration: “Whatsoever is, is; ”
and “It is impossible for the same thing to be, and not
to be,” which, of all others, I think, have the most allowed
title to innate. These have so settled a reputation of maxims
universally received that it will, no doubt, be thought strange
if any one should seem to question it. But yet I take liberty
to say, that these propositions are so far from having an universal
assent, that there are a great part of mankind to whom they are
not so much as known.
5. Not on the mind naturally, imprinted, because not known
to children, idiots, etc. – For, first, it is evident,
that all children and idiots have not the least apprehension or
thought of them; and the want of that is enough to destroy that
universal assent, which must needs be the necessary concomitant
of all innate truths: it seeming to me near a contradiction to
say, that there are truths imprinted on the soul which it perceives
or understands not; imprinting, if it signify anything, being
nothing else but the making certain truths to be perceived. For
to imprint anything on the mind without the mind’s perceiving
it, seems to me hardly intelligible. If therefore children and
idiots have souls, have minds, with those impressions upon them,
they must unavoidably perceive them, and necessarily know and
assent to these truths; Which, since they do not, it is evident
that there are no such impressions. For if they are not notions
naturally imprinted, how can they be innate? And if they are notions
imprinted, how can they he unknown? To say, a notion is imprinted
on the mind, and yet at the same time to say that the mind is
ignorant of it, and never yet took notice of it, is to make this
impression nothing. No proposition can he said to be in the mind
which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of.
For if any one say, then, by the same reason, all propositions
that are true, and the mind is capable ever of assenting to, may
be said to be in the mind, and to the imprinted; since if any
one can be said to be in the mind, which it never yet knew, it
must be only because it is capable of knowing it; and so the mind
is of all truths it ever shall know. Nay, thus truths may be imprinted
on the mind which it never did, nor ever shall, know: for a man
may live long and die at last in ignorance of many truths which
his mind was capable of knowing, and that with certainty. So that
if the capacity of knowing be the natural impression contended
for, all the truths a man ever comes to know will, by this account,
be every one of them innate: and this great point will amount
to no more, but only to a very improper way of speaking; which,
whilst it pretends to assert the contrary, says nothing different
from those who deny innate principles. For nobody, I think, ever
denied that the mind was capable of knowing several truths. The
capacity, they say, is innate; the knowledge acquired. But then,
to what end such contest for certain innate maxims? If truths
can be imprinted on the understanding without being perceived
I can see no difference there can be between any truths the mind
is capable of knowing in respect of their original: they must
all be innate, or all adventitious; in vain shall a man go about
to distinguish them. He therefore that talks of innate notions
in the understanding, cannot (if he intend thereby any distinct
sort of truths) mean such truths to be in the understanding as
it never perceived, and is yet wholly ignorant of. For if these
words (“to be in the understanding”) have any propriety,
they signify to be understood. So that, to be in the understanding
and not to be understood; to be in the mind, and never to be perceived;
is all one as to say, anything is, and is not, in the mind or
understanding. If therefore these two propositions: “Whatsoever
is, is;” and, “It is impossible for the same thing to
be, and not to be,” are by nature imprinted, children cannot
be ignorant of them; infants, and all that have souls, must necessarily
have them in their understandings, know the truth of them, and
assent to it.
6. That men know them when they come to the use of reason,
answered. – To avoid this, it is usually answered, that
all well know and assent to them, when they come to the use of
reason; and this is enough to prove them innate. I answer,
7. Doubtful expressions, that have scarce any signification, go
for clear results to those who, being prepossessed, take not the
pains to examine even what they themselves say. For, to apply
this answer with any tolerable sense to our present purpose, it
must signify one of these two things; either, that, as soon as
men come to the use of reason, these supposed native inscriptions
come to be known and observed by them; or else, that the use and
exercise of men’s reasons assists them in the discovery of these
principles, and certainly makes them known to them.
8. If reason discovered them, that would not prove them
innate. – If they mean that by the use of reason men
may discover these principles, and that this is sufficient to
prove them innate, their way of arguing will stand thus: viz.
That, whatever truths reason can certainly discover to us and
make us firmly assent to, those are all naturally imprinted on
the mind; since that universal assent which is made the mark of
them, amounts to no more but this – that by the use of reason
we are capable to come to a certain knowledge of, and assent to,
them; and by this means there will be no difference between the
maxims of the mathematicians and theorems they deduce from them:
all must be equally allowed innate, they being all discoveries
made by the use of reason and truths that a rational creature
may certainly come to know, if he apply his thoughts rightly that
way.
9. It is false that reason discovers them. – But
how can these men think the use of reason necessary to discover
principles that are supposed innate, when reason (if we may believe
them) is nothing else but the faculty of deducing unknown truths
from principles or propositions that are already known? That certainly
can never be thought innate which we have need of reason to discover,
unless, as I have said, we will have all the certain truths that
reason ever teaches us to be innate. We may as well think the use
of reason necessary to make our eyes discover visible objects
as that there should be need of reason, or the exercise thereof
to make the understanding see what is originally engraved in it,
and cannot be in the understanding before it be perceived by it.
So that to make reason discover these truths thus imprinted, is
to say, that the use of reason discovers to a man what he knew
before; and if men have those innate impressed truths originally,
and before the use of reason and yet are always ignorant of them
till they come to the use of reason, it is in effect to say that
men know, and know them not, at the same time.
10. It will here perhaps be said, that mathematical demonstrations,
and other truths that are not innate, are not assented to, as
soon as proposed, wherein they are distinguished from these maxims
and other innate truths. I shall have occasion to speak of assent
upon the first proposing, more particularly by and by. I shall
here only, and that very readily, allow, that these maxims and
mathematical demonstrations are in this different – that the one
has need of reason using of proofs to make them out and to gain
our assent; but the other, as soon as understood, are, without
any the least reasoning, embraced and assented to. But I withal
beg leave to observe, that it lays open the weakness of this subterfuge
which requires the use of reason for the discovery of these general
truths, since it must be confessed, that in their discovery there
is no use made of reasoning at all. And I think those who give
this answer will not be forward to affirm, that the knowledge
of this maxim, “That it is impossible for the same thing
to be, and not to be,” is a deduction of our reason. For
this would be to destroy that bounty of nature they seem so fond
of, whilst they make the knowledge of those principles to depend
on the labour of our thoughts; for all reasoning is search and
casting about, and requires pains and application. ...
BOOK II, CHAPTER I: OF IDEAS IN GENERAL, AND THEIR ORIGINAL.
l. Idea is the object of thinking. – Every man
being conscious to himself, that he thinks, and that which his
mind is applied about, whilst thinking, being the ideas that are
there, it is past doubt that men have in their mind several ideas,
such as are those expressed by the words, “whiteness, hardness,
sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness,”
and others. It is in the first place then to be inquired, How
he comes by them? I know it is a received doctrine, that men
have native ideas and original characters stamped upon their minds
in their very first being. This opinion I have at large examined
already; and, I suppose, what I have said in the foregoing book
will be much more easily admitted, when I have shown whence the
understanding may get all the ideas it has, and by what ways and
degrees they may come into the mind; for which I shall appeal
to every one’s own observation and experience.
2. All ideas come from sensation or reflection.
– Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper [tabula rasa],
void of all characters without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished?
Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless
fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety?
Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this
I answer, in one word, From experience: in that all our knowledge
is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation,
employed either about external sensible objects, or about the
internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by
ourselves is that which supplies our understandings with all the
materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge,
from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.
3. The object of sensation one source of ideas.
– First. Our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects,
do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things,
according to those various ways wherein those objects do affect
them; and thus we come by those ideas we have of yellow, white,
heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those which we
call sensible qualities; which when I say the senses convey into
the mind, I mean, they from external objects convey into the mind
what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most
of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived
by them to the understanding, I call, “sensation.”
4. The operations of our minds the other source of them.
– Secondly. The other fountain, from which experience furnisheth
the understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations
of our own minds within us, as it is employed about the ideas
it has got; which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on
and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of
ideas which could not be had from things without and such are
perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing,
willing, and all the different actings of our own minds; which
we, being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these
receive into our understandings as distinct ideas, as we do from
bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has
wholly in himself; and though it be not sense as having nothing
to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might
properly enough be called “internal sense.” But as I
call the other “sensation,” so I call this “reflection,”
the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting
on its own operations within itself. By reflection, then, in the
following part of this discourse, I would be understood to mean
that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and the
manner of them, by reason whereof there come to be ideas of these
operations in the understanding. These two, I say, viz., external
material things as the objects of sensation, and the operations
of our own minds within as the objects of reflection, are to me,
the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings.
The term “operations” here, I use in a large sense,
as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about its
ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from them,
such as is the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought.
5. All our ideas are of the one or the other of these.
– The understanding seems to me not to have the least glimmering
of any ideas which it doth not receive from one of these two.
External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities,
which are all those different perceptions they produce in us;
and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own
operations.
These, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several
modes, combinations, and relations, we shall find to contain all
our whole stock of ideas, and that we have nothing in our mind
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 soever he imagines to be lodged
there, he will, upon taking a strict view see that he has not
any idea in his mind but what one of these two have imprinted,
though perhaps with infinite variety compounded and enlarged by
the understanding, as we shall see hereafter.
6. Observable in children. – He that attentively
considers the state of a child at his first coming into the world,
will have little reason to think him stored with plenty of ideas
that are to be the matter of his future knowledge. It is by degrees
he comes to be furnished with them; and though the ideas of obvious
and familiar qualities imprint themselves before the memory begins
to keep a register of time and order, yet it is often so late
before some unusual qualities come in the way, that there are
few men that cannot recollect the beginning of their acquaintance
with them: and, if it were worth while, no doubt a child might
be so ordered as to have but a very few even of the ordinary ideas
till he were grown up to a man. But all that are born into the
world being surrounded with bodies that perpetually and diversely
affect them, variety of ideas whether care be taken about it,
or no, are imprinted on the minds of children. Light and colours
are busy at hand every where when the eye is but open; sounds
and some tangible qualities fail not to solicit their proper senses
and force an entrance to the mind; but yet I think it will be
granted easily, that if a child were kept in a place where he
never saw any other but black and white till he were a man, he
would have no more ideas of scarlet or green, than he that from
his childhood never tasted an oyster or a pine-apple has of those
particular relishes.
7. Men are differently furnished with these according
to the different objects they converse with. – Men then
come to be furnished with fewer or more simple ideas from without,
according as the objects they converse with afford greater or
less variety; and from the operations of their minds within, according
as they more or less reflect on them. For, though he that contemplates
the operations of his mind cannot but have plain and clear ideas
of them; yet, unless he turn his thoughts that way, and considers
them attentively, he will no more have clear and distinct ideas
of all the operations of his mind, and all that may be observed
therein than he will have all the particular ideas of any landscape
or of the parts and motions of a clock, who will not turn his
eyes to it, and with attention heed all the parts of it. The picture
or clock may be so placed, that they may come in his way every
day; but yet he will have but a confused idea of all the parts
they are made of, till he applies himself with attention to consider
them each in particular. ...
CHAPTER III: OF IDEAS OF ONE SENSE
l. Division of simple ideas. – The better to conceive
the ideas we receive from sensation, it may not be amiss for us
to consider them in reference to the different ways whereby they
make their approaches to our 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 first 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 these several heads.
1. There are some ideas which have admittance only through one
sense, which is peculiarly adapted to receive them. Thus light
and colours, as white, red, yellow, blue, with their several degrees
or shades and mixtures, as green, scarlet, purple, sea-green,
and the rest, come in only by the eyes; all kinds of noises, sounds,
and tones, only by the ears; the several tastes and smells, by
the nose and palate. And if these organs, or the nerves which
are the conduits 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 postern to be admitted by, no other way to bring
themselves into view, and be received 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.
2. I think it will be needless to enumerate all the particular
simple ideas belonging to each sense. Nor indeed is it possible
it we would, there being a great many more of them belonging to
most of the senses than we have names for. The variety of smells,
which are as many almost, if not more, than species of bodies
in the world, do most of them want name. 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 a 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 denominate that numberless variety of relishes 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 colours and sounds. I shall therefore,
in the account of simple ideas I am here giving, content myself
to set down only such as are 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.