The text is drawn from the Project Eris text of Locke's Essay , and has not yet been carefully proofread or collated. Idea is the object of thinking. I know it is a received doctrine, that men have native ideas, and original characters, stamped upon their minds in their very first being.
All ideas come from sensation or reflection.
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. The objects of sensation one source of ideas. First, our Senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways wherein those objects do affect them. The operations of our minds, the other source of them.