An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Volume 1 quotes

Since it is the UNDERSTANDING that sets man above the rest of sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has over them; it is certainly a subject, even for its nobleness, worth our labour to inquire into.

The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires and art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own object.

But whatever be the difficulties that lie in the way of this inquiry; whatever it be that keeps us so much in the dark to ourselves;

… will be an unpardonable, as well as childish peevishness, if we undervalue the advantages of our knowledge, and neglect to improve it to the ends for which it was given us, because there are some things that are set out of the reach of it.

It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant, who would not attend his business by candle light, to plead that he had not broad sunshine.

The Candle that is set up in us shines bright enough for all our purposes. The discoveries we can make with this ought to satisfy us;

It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant, who would not attend his business by candle light, to plead that he had not broad sunshine.

The Candle that is set up in us shines bright enough for all our purposes.

The discoveries we can make with this ought to satisfy us;

and not peremptorily or intemperately require demonstration, and demand certainty, where probability only is to be had, and which is sufficient to govern all our concernments.

If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do much—what as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly.

6. Knowledge of our Capacity a Cure of Scepticism and Idleness.

nor on the other side, question everything, and disclaim all knowledge, because some things are not to be understood.

It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean.

It is well he knows that it is long enough to reach the bottom, at such places as are necessary to direct his voyage, and caution him against running upon shoals that may ruin him.

It is well he knows that it is long enough to reach the bottom, at such places as are necessary to direct his voyage, and caution him against running upon shoals that may ruin him.

Our business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct.

If we can find out those measures, whereby a rational creature, put in that state in which man is in this world, may and ought to govern his opinions, and actions depending thereon, we need not to be troubled that some other things escape our …

7.

Doubtful expressions, that have scarce any signification, go for clear reasons 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;

15. The Steps by which the Mind attains several Truths.

The senses at first let in PARTICULAR ideas, and furnish the yet empty cabinet, and the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, and names got to them.

Afterwards, the mind proceeding further, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general names. In this manner the mind comes to be furnished with ideas and language, the MATERIALS about which to exercise its discursive faculty.

Or that the child has any notion or apprehension of that proposition at an age, wherein yet, it is plain, it knows a great many other truths?

He that will say, children join in these general abstract speculations with their sucking-bottles and their rattles, may perhaps, with justice, be thought to have more passion and zeal for his opinion, but less sincerity and truth, than one of that age.

26. And so not innate.

2. Faith and Justice not owned as Principles by all Men.

Whether there be any such moral principles, wherein all men do agree, I appeal to any who have been but moderately conversant in the history of mankind, and looked abroad beyond the smoke of their own chimneys.

Where is that practical truth that is universally received, without doubt or question, as it must be if innate? JUSTICE, and keeping of contracts, is that which most men seem to agree in.

but it is impossible to conceive that he embraces justice as a practical principle who acts fairly with his fellow-highwayman, and at the same time plunders or kills the next honest man he meets with.

Justice and truth are the common ties of society; and therefore even outlaws and robbers, who break with all the world besides, must keep faith and rules of equity amongst themselves; or else they cannot hold together.

But will any one say, that those that live by fraud or rapine have innate principles of truth and justice which they allow and assent to?

Perhaps it will be urged, that the tacit assent of their minds agrees to what their practice contradicts.

I answer, first, I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.

But, since it is certain that most men’s practices, and some men’s open professions, have either questioned or denied these principles, it is impossible to establish an universal consent, (though we should look for it only amongst grown men,) without which it is impossible to …

… civility allow too much sincerity to the professions of most men, but think their actions to be the interpreters of their thoughts, we shall find that they have no such internal veneration for these rules, nor so full a persuasion of their certainty and obligation.

The great principle of morality, ‘To do as one would be done to,’ is more commended than practised.

But the breach of this rule cannot be a greater vice, than to teach others, that it is no moral rule, nor obligatory, would be thought madness, and contrary to that interest men sacrifice to, when they break it themselves.

Did men find such innate propositions stamped on their minds, they would easily be able to distinguish them from other truths that they afterwards learned and deduced from them; and there would be nothing more easy than to know what, and how many, they were.

There could be no more doubt about their number than there is about the number of our fingers; and it is like then every system would be ready to give them us by tale.

But since nobody, that I know, has ventured yet to give a catalogue of them, they cannot blame those who doubt of these innate principles;

And he will be much more afraid to question those principles, when he shall think them, as most men do, the standards set up by God in his mind, to be the rule and touchstone of all other opinions.

And what can hinder him from thinking them sacred, when he finds them the earliest of all his own thoughts, and the most reverenced by others?

26. A worship of idols.

especially when one of their principles is, that principles ought not to be questioned.

And had men leisure, parts, and will, who is there almost that dare shake the foundations of all his past thoughts and actions, and endure to bring upon himself the shame of having been a long time wholly in mistake and error?

Who is there hardy enough to contend with the reproach which is everywhere prepared for those who dare venture to dissent from the received opinions of their country or party?

Who is there hardy enough to contend with the reproach which is everywhere prepared for those who dare venture to dissent from the received opinions of their country or party?

And where is the man to be found that can patiently prepare himself to bear the name of whimsical, sceptical, or atheist; which he is sure to meet with, who does in the least scruple any of the common opinions?

And he will be much more afraid to question those principles, when he shall think them, as most men do, the standards set up by God in his mind, to be the rule and touchstone of all other opinions.

26. A worship of idols.

It is easy to imagine how, by these means, it comes to pass that men worship the idols that have been set up in their minds; grow fond of the notions they have been long acquainted with there; and stamp the characters of divinity upon absurdities and errors; become zealous votaries to bulls and monkeys, and contend too, fight, and die in defence of their opinions.

Dum solos credit habendos esse deos, quos ipse colit.

… have of the truth and evidence of their principles, will perhaps find it a hard matter any other way to account for the contrary tenets, which are firmly believed, confidently asserted, and which great numbers are ready at any time to seal with their blood.

And, indeed, if it be the privilege of innate principles to be received upon their own authority, without examination, I know not what may not be believed, or how any one’s principles can be questioned.

If they may and ought to be examined and tried, I desire to know how first and innate principles can be tried; or at least it is reasonable to demand the MARKS and CHARACTERS whereby the genuine innate principles may be distinguished from others:

I leave them to consider, whether, by the force of this argument, they shall think that every man IS so. I think it a very good argument to say,—the infinitely wise God hath made it so; and therefore it is best.

But it seems to me a little too much confidence of our own wisdom to say,—‘I think it best; and therefore God hath made it so.’

And in the matter in hand, it will be in vain to argue from such a topic, that God hath done so, when certain experience shows us that he hath not.

For I think we may as rationally hope to see with other men’s eyes, as to know by other men’s understandings. So much as we ourselves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so much we possess of real and true knowledge.

The floating of other men’s opinions in our brains, makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true.

What in them was science, is in us but opiniatrety; whilst we give up our assent only to reverend names, and do not, as they did, employ our own reason to understand those truths which gave them reputation.

And if the taking up of another’s principles, without examining them, made not him a philosopher, I suppose it will hardly make anybody else so.

In the sciences, every one has so much as he really knows and comprehends.

What he believes only, and takes upon trust, are but shreds; which, however well in the whole piece, make no considerable addition to his stock who gathers them.

And if the taking up of another’s principles, without examining them, made not him a philosopher, I suppose it will hardly make anybody else so. In the sciences, every one has so much as he really knows and comprehends.

What he believes only, and takes upon trust, are but shreds; which, however well in the whole piece, make no considerable addition to his stock who gathers them.

Such borrowed wealth, like fairy money, though it were gold in the hand from which he received it, will be but leaves and dust when it comes to use.

In the sciences, every one has so much as he really knows and comprehends. What he believes only, and takes upon trust, are but shreds; which, however well in the whole piece, make no considerable addition to his stock who gathers them.

Such borrowed wealth, like fairy money, though it were gold in the hand from which he received it, will be but leaves and dust when it comes to use.

25. Whence the Opinion of Innate Principles.

and made use rather of our own thoughts than other men’s to find it.

For I think we may as rationally hope to see with other men’s eyes, as to know by other men’s understandings.

So much as we ourselves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so much we possess of real and true knowledge. The floating of other men’s opinions in our brains, makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true.

2. All Ideas come from Sensation or Reflection.

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.

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas:—How comes it to be furnished?

Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety?

Whence has it all the MATERIALS of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE. In that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself.

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.

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 Objects of Sensation one Source of Ideas

forward to take notice of new, and apt to be delighted with the variety of changing objects.

Thus the first years are usually employed and diverted in looking abroad.

Men’s business in them is to acquaint themselves with what is to be found without; and so growing up in a constant attention to outward sensations, seldom make any considerable reflection on what passes within them, till they come to be of riper years;

13. Impossible to convince those that sleep without dreaming, that they think.

Thus, methinks, 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;

Consciousness is the perception of what passes in a 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.

Wake 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.

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;

This some may suspect to be a step beyond the Rosicrucians; it seeming easier to make one’s 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; since they find a good part of their lives pass away without thinking.

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; since they find a good part of their lives pass away without thinking.

For no definitions that I know, no suppositions of any sect, are of 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. No ideas but from Sensation and Reflection, evident, if we observe Children.

This is the first step a man makes towards the discovery of anything, and the groundwork 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 great 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 the Reception of simple Ideas, the Understanding is for the most part passive.

For the objects of our senses do, many of them, obtrude their particular ideas upon our minds whether we will or not; 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 …

The same inability will every one find in himself, who shall go about to fashion in his understanding one 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 any one try to fancy any taste which had never affected his palate; or frame the idea of a scent he had never smelt: and when he can do this, I will also conclude that a blind man hath ideas of colours, and a deaf man true distinct notions of sounds.

3. Only the qualities that affect the senses are imaginable.

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 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 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 a rose and violet, both sweet, are certainly very distinct ideas.

… blind or deaf, has distinct ideas of the colour of scarlet and the sound of a trumpet, could discourse concerning scarlet colour with the blind man I mentioned in another place, who fancied that the idea of scarlet was like the sound of a trumpet.

If any one asks me, WHAT THIS SOLIDITY IS, I send him to his senses to inform him.

Let him put a flint or a football between his hands, and then endeavour to join them, and he will know. If he thinks this not a sufficient explication of solidity, what it is, and wherein it consists;

I promise to tell him what it is, and wherein it consists, when he tells me what thinking is, or wherein 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 endeavour 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 a blind man’s mind by talking; and to discourse into him the ideas of light and colours.

The reason of this I shall show in another place.

But he, not designing our preservation barely, but the preservation of every part and organ in its perfection, hath 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 to our eyes, causes a very painful sensation.

Which is wisely and favourably so ordered by nature, that when any object does, by the vehemency of its operation, disorder the instruments of sensation, whose structures cannot but be very nice and delicate, we might, by the pain, be warned to withdraw, before the …

… the absence of light (and the more the absence of light is, the more discernible is the shadow) does not, when a man looks on it, cause as clear and 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, to which there be no positive ideas; but they consist wholly in negation of some certain ideas, as SILENCE, INVISIBLE; but these signify not any ideas in the mind but their absence.

6. Whether any ideas are due to causes really private.

And thus one may truly be said to see darkness.

For, supposing a hole 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 with makes any other idea, is a question.

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 manna.

Take away the sensation of them; let not the eyes see light or colours, nor the ear hear sounds; let the palate not taste, nor the nose smell, and all colours, tastes, odours, 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. The secondary exist in things only as modes of the primary.

20.

Pound an almond, and the clear white colour will be altered into a dirty one, and the sweet taste into an oily one.

What real alteration can the beating of the pestle make in an body, but an alteration of the texture of it?

What perception is, every one will know better by reflecting on what he does himself, when he sees, hears, feels, &c., or thinks, than by any discourse of mine. 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.

3. Arises in sensation only when the mind notices the organic impression.

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.

4. Impulse on the organ insufficient.

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 by-word, do almost in every sentence pronounce sounds which, though taken notice of by others, they themselves neither hear nor observe.

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!

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 receive the afflux of colder or warmer, clean or foul water, as it happens to come to it?

and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching; where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away.

The pictures drawn in our minds are laid in fading colours; and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear.

How much the constitution of our bodies are concerned in this;

and he who, through this default in his memory, has not the ideas that are really preserved there, ready at hand when need and occasion calls for them, were almost as good be without them quite, since they serve him to little purpose.

The dull man, who loses the opportunity, whilst he is seeking in his mind for those ideas that should serve his turn, is not much more happy in his knowledge than one that is perfectly ignorant.

It is the business therefore of the memory to furnish to the mind those dormant ideas which it has present occasion for; in the having them ready at hand on all occasions, consists that which we call invention, fancy, and quickness of parts.

… entertainment and pleasantry of wit, which strikes so lively on the fancy, and therefore is so acceptable to all people, because its beauty appears at first sight, and there is required no labour of thought to examine what truth or reason there is in it.

The mind, without looking any further, rests satisfied with the agreeableness of the picture and the gaiety of the fancy.

And it is a kind of affront to go about to examine it, by the severe rules of truth and good reason; whereby it appears that it consists in something that is not perfectly conformable to them.

For they do not appear to me to have lost the faculty of reasoning, but having joined together some ideas very wrongly, they mistake them for truths; and they err as men do that argue right from wrong principles.

For, by the violence of their imaginations, having taken their fancies for realities, they make right deductions from them.

Thus you shall find a distracted man fancying himself a king, with a right inference require suitable attendance, respect, and obedience: others who have thought themselves made of glass, have used the caution necessary to preserve such brittle bodies.

… is agreeable to those notions, which, if we will examine the whole course of men in their several ages, countries, and educations, seem to depend on those foundations which I have laid, and to correspond with this method in all the parts and degrees thereof.

I pretend not to teach, but to inquire; and therefore cannot but confess here again,—that external and internal sensation are the only passages I can find of knowledge to the understanding.

These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this DARK ROOM.

I endeavour as much as I can to deliver myself from those fallacies which we are apt to put upon ourselves, by taking words for things.

It helps not our ignorance to feign a knowledge where we have none, by making a noise with sounds, without clear and distinct significations.

Names made at pleasure, neither alter the nature of things, nor make us understand them, but as they are signs of and stand for determined ideas.

It helps not our ignorance to feign a knowledge where we have none, by making a noise with sounds, without clear and distinct significations.

Names made at pleasure, neither alter the nature of things, nor make us understand them, but as they are signs of and stand for determined ideas.

And I desire those who lay so much stress on the sound of these two syllables, SUBSTANCE, to consider whether applying it, as they do, to the infinite, incomprehensible God, to finite spirits, and to body, it be in the same sense;

but bare space in the way is not sufficient to stop motion. The truth is, these men must either own that they think body infinite, though they are loth to speak it out, or else affirm that space is not body.

For I would fain meet with that thinking man that can in his thoughts set any bounds to space, more than he can to duration; or by thinking hope to arrive at the end of either.

And therefore, if his idea of eternity be infinite, so is his idea of immensity; they are both finite or infinite alike.

Here I must not be mistaken, to think that every floating imagination in men’s brains is presently of that sort of ideas I speak of.

It is not easy for the mind to put off those confused notions and prejudices it has imbibed from custom, inadvertency, and common conversation.

It requires pains and assiduity to examine its ideas, till it resolves them into those clear and distinct simple ones, out of which they are compounded;

the extremity and bounds of all body we have no difficulty to arrive at: but when the mind is there, it finds nothing to hinder its progress into this endless expansion; of that it can neither find nor conceive any end.

Nor let any one say, that beyond the bounds of body, there is nothing at all; unless he will confine God within the limits of matter.

Solomon, whose understanding was filled and enlarged with wisdom, seems to have other thoughts when he says, ‘Heaven, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain thee.’

From such points fixed in sensible beings we reckon, and from them we measure our portions of those infinite quantities; which, so considered, are that which we call TIME and PLACE.

For duration and space being in themselves uniform and boundless, the order and position of things, without such known settled points, would be lost in them; and all things would lie jumbled in an incurable confusion.

6. Time and Place are taken for so much of either as are set out by the Existence and Motion of Bodies.

Because man comprehends not in his knowledge or power all past and future things: his thoughts are but of yesterday, and he knows not what to-morrow will bring forth.

What is once past he can never recall; and what is yet to come he cannot make present.

What I say of man, I say of all finite beings; who, though they may far exceed man in knowledge and power, yet are no more than the meanest creature, in comparison with God himself. Finite or any magnitude holds not any proportion to infinite.

So much as the mind comprehends of any space, it has a positive idea of: but in endeavouring to make it infinite,—it being always enlarging, always advancing,—the idea is still imperfect and incomplete.

So much space as the mind takes a view of in its contemplation of greatness, is a clear picture, and positive in the understanding: but infinite is still greater.

1. Then the idea of SO MUCH is positive and clear. 2. The idea of GREATER is also clear; but it is but a comparative idea, the idea of SO MUCH GREATER AS CANNOT BE COMPREHENDED. 3. And this is plainly negative: not positive.

For that which remains, either great or little, not being comprehended in that positive idea which we have, lies in obscurity; and we have no other idea of it, but of the power of enlarging the one and diminishing the other, WITHOUT CEASING.

A pestle and mortar will as soon bring any particle of matter to indivisibility, as the acutest thought of a mathematician; and a surveyor may as soon with his chain measure out infinite space, as a philosopher by the quickest flight of mind reach it or by thinking comprehend it; which is to have a positive idea of it.

He that thinks on a cube of an inch diameter, has a clear and positive idea of it in his mind, and so can frame one of 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and so on, till he has the idea in his thoughts of something very little;

3. Our passions moved by Good and Evil.

Pleasure and pain and that which causes them,—good and evil, are the hinges on which our passions turn.

And if we reflect on ourselves, and observe how these, under various considerations, operate in us;

SORROW is uneasiness in the mind, upon the thought of a good lost, which might have been enjoyed longer; or the sense of a present evil.

HOPE is that pleasure in the mind, which every one finds in himself, upon the thought of a probable future enjoyment of a thing which is apt to delight him.

FEAR is an uneasiness of the mind, upon the thought of future evil likely to befall us.

FEAR is an uneasiness of the mind, upon the thought of future evil likely to befall us.

DESPAIR is the thought of the unattainableness of any good, which works differently in men’s minds, sometimes producing uneasiness or pain, sometimes rest and indolency.

ANGER is uneasiness or discomposure of the mind, upon the receipt of any injury, with a present purpose of revenge.

But all the rest, terminating purely in pain and pleasure, are, I think, to be found in all men.

For we love, desire, rejoice, and hope, only in respect of pleasure; we hate, fear, and grieve, only in respect of pain ultimately.

In fine, all these passions are moved by things, only as they appear to be the causes of pleasure and pain, or to have pleasure or pain some way or other annexed to them.

he can at pleasure remove himself from one to another. But yet some ideas to the mind, like some motions to the body, are such as in certain circumstances it cannot avoid, nor obtain their absence by the utmost effort it can use.

A man on the rack is not at liberty to lay by the idea of pain, and divert himself with other contemplations: and sometimes a boisterous passion hurries our thoughts, as a hurricane does our bodies, without leaving us the liberty of thinking on other things, which we would rather choose.

But as soon as the mind regains the power to stop or continue, begin or forbear, any of these motions of the body without, or thoughts within, according as it thinks fit to prefer either to the other, we then consider the man as a …

which I have made use of, will not distinctly enough express volition, unless he will reflect on what he himself does when he wills. For example, preferring, which seems perhaps best to express the act of volition, does it not precisely.

For though a man would prefer flying to walking, yet who can say he ever wills it?

Volition, it is plain, is an act of the mind knowingly exerting that dominion it takes itself to have over any part of the man, by employing it in, or withholding it from, any particular action.

which is that which denominates him free, and is freedom itself.

But if any one should ask, whether freedom were free, he would be suspected not to understand well what he said; and he would be thought to deserve Midas’s ears, who, knowing that rich was a denomination for the possession of riches, should demand whether riches themselves were rich.

17. How the will instead of the man is called free.

and that is not able to operate that has no power to operate. Nor do I deny that those words, and the like, are to have their place in the common use of languages that have made them current.

It looks like too much affectation wholly to lay them by: and philosophy itself, though it likes not a gaudy dress, yet, when it appears in public, must have so much complacency as to be clothed in the ordinary fashion and language of the country, so far as it can consist with truth and perspicuity.

But the fault has been, that faculties have been spoken of and represented as so many distinct agents. For, it being asked, what it was that digested the meat in our stomachs?

and as far as this power reaches, of acting or not acting, by the determination of his own thought preferring either, so far is a man free.

For how can we think any one freer, than to have the power to do what he will?

And so far as any one can, by preferring any action to its not being, or rest to any action, produce that action or rest, so far can he do what he will.

and that still proportionable to the greatness of the desire, which sometimes raises the uneasiness to that pitch, that it makes people cry out, ‘Give me children,’ give me the thing desired, ‘or I die.’

Life itself, and all its enjoyments, is a burden cannot be borne under the lasting and unremoved pressure of such an uneasiness.

33. The Uneasiness of Desire determines the Will.

‘It is better to marry than to burn,’ says St. Paul, where we may see what it is that chiefly drives men into the enjoyments of a conjugal life.

A little burning felt pushes us more powerfully than greater pleasure in prospect draw or allure.

35. The greatest positive Good determines not the Will, but present Uneasiness alone.

they in that case put us not upon endeavours. But, these set apart the most important and urgent uneasiness we at that time feel, is that which ordinarily determines the will, successively, in that train of voluntary actions which makes up our lives.

The greatest present uneasiness is the spur to action, that is constantly most felt, and for the most part determines the will in its choice of the next action.

For this we must carry along with us, that the proper and only object of the will is some action of ours, and nothing else.

though every little trouble moves us, and sets us on work to get rid of it. The reason whereof is evident from the nature of our happiness and misery itself.

All present pain, whatever it be, makes a part of our present misery: but all absent good does not at any time make a necessary part of our present happiness, nor the absence of it make a part of our misery.

If it did, we should be constantly and infinitely miserable; there being infinite degrees of happiness which are not in our possession. All uneasiness therefore being removed, a moderate portion of good serve at present to content men;

That, in this state of ignorance, we short-sighted creatures might not mistake true felicity, we are endowed with a power to suspend any particular desire, and keep it from determining the will, and engaging us in action.

This is standing still, where we are not sufficiently assured of the way: examination is consulting a guide.

The determination of the will upon inquiry, is following the direction of that guide: and he that has a power to act or not to act, according as SUCH determination directs, is a free agent: such determination abridges not that power wherein liberty consists.

But to give a right view of this mistaken part of liberty let me ask,—Would any one be a changeling, because he is less determined by wise considerations than a wise man?

Is it worth the name of freedom to be at liberty to play the fool, and draw shame and misery upon a man’s self?

If to break loose from the conduct of reason, and to want that restraint of examination and judgment which keeps us from choosing or doing the worse, be liberty, true liberty, madmen and fools are the only freemen:

And how much this is in every one’s power, by making resolutions to himself, such as he may keep, is easy for every one to try.

Nor let any one say, he cannot govern his passions, nor hinder them from breaking out, and carrying him into action; for what he can do before a prince or a great man, he can do alone, or in the presence of God, if he will.

Because the indolency and enjoyment we have, sufficing for our present happiness, we desire not to venture the change; since we judge that we are happy already, being content, and that is enough.

For who is content is happy.

But as soon as any new uneasiness comes in, this happiness is disturbed, and we are set afresh on work in the pursuit of happiness.

yet, WHEN WE COMPARE PRESENT PLEASURE OR PAIN WITH FUTURE, (which is usually the case in most important determinations of the will,) we often make wrong judgments of them; taking our measures of them in different positions of distance.

Objects near our view are apt to be thought greater than those of a larger size that are more remote.

And so it is with pleasures and pains: the present is apt to carry it; and those at a distance have the disadvantage in the comparison.

And so it is with pleasures and pains: the present is apt to carry it; and those at a distance have the disadvantage in the comparison.

Thus most men, like spendthrift heirs, are apt to judge a little in hand better than a great deal to come; and so, for small matters in possession, part with greater ones in reversion.

But that this is a wrong judgment every one must allow, let his pleasure consist in whatever it will: since that which is future will certainly come to be present;

or if among our pleasures there are some which are not strong enough to exclude the consideration of things at a distance, yet we have so great an abhorrence of pain, that a little of it extinguishes all our pleasures.

A little bitter mingled in our cup, leaves no relish of the sweet.

Hence it comes that, at any rate, we desire to be rid of the present evil, which we are apt to think nothing absent can equal; because, under the present pain, we find not ourselves capable of any the least degree of happiness.

(ii) INADVERTENCY: When a man overlooks even that which he does know. This is an affected and present ignorance, which misleads our judgments as much as the other.

Judging is, as it were, balancing an account, and determining on which side the odds lie.

If therefore either side be huddled up in haste, and several of the sums that should have gone into the reckoning be overlooked and left out, this precipitancy causes as wrong a judgment as if it were a perfect ignorance.

but the pleasure of the action itself is best acquired or increased by use and practice.

Trials often reconcile us to that, which at a distance we looked on with aversion; and by repetitions wear us into a liking of what possibly, in the first essay, displeased us.

Habits have powerful charms, and put so strong attractions of easiness and pleasure into what we accustom ourselves to, that we cannot forbear to do, or at least be easy in the omission of, actions, which habitual practice has suited, and thereby recommends to us.

and thereby remedy that, to which one may justly impute a great deal of their wandering.

Fashion and the common opinion having settled wrong notions, and education and custom ill habits, the just values of things are misplaced, and the palates of men corrupted.

Pains should be taken to rectify these; and contrary habits change our pleasures, and give a relish to that which is necessary or conducive to our happiness. This every one must confess he can do;

… this air, not much higher than that we commonly breathe in, will have reason to be satisfied, that in this globe of earth allotted for our mansion, the all-wise Architect has suited our organs, and the bodies that are to affect them, one to another.

If our sense of hearing were but a thousand times quicker than it is, how would a perpetual noise distract us. And we should in the quietest retirement be less able to sleep or meditate than in the middle of a sea-fight.

Nay, if that most instructive of our senses, seeing, were in any man a thousand or a hundred thousand times more acute than it is by the best microscope, things several millions of times less than the smallest object of his sight now would then …

which seems to me as incomprehensible as the manner of thinking, and how it is performed.

We can as little understand how the parts cohere in extension as how our spirits perceive or move.

25. I allow it is usual for most people to wonder how any one should find a difficulty in what they think they every day observe. Do we not see (will they be ready to say) the parts of bodies stick firmly together?

immaterial, to exist, as a solid thing without thinking, i.e. matter, to exist; especially since it is not harder to conceive how thinking should exist without matter, than how matter should think.

For whensoever we would proceed beyond these simple ideas we have from sensation and reflection and dive further into the nature of things, we fall presently into darkness and obscurity, perplexedness and difficulties, and can discover nothing further but our own blindness and ignorance.

But whichever of these complex ideas be clearest, that of body, or immaterial spirit, this is evident, that the simple ideas that make them up are no other than what we have received from sensation or reflection:

… we call old at twenty, and a dog at seven years, because in each of these we compare their age to different ideas of duration, which are settled in our minds as belonging to these several sorts of animals, in the ordinary course of nature.

But the sun and stars, though they have outlasted several generations of men, we call not old, because we do not know what period God hath set to that sort of beings.

This term belonging properly to those things which we can observe in the ordinary course of things, by a natural decay, to come to an end in a certain period of time;

He must be of a strange and unusual constitution, who can content himself to live in constant disgrace and disrepute with his own particular society.

Solitude many men have sought, and been reconciled to: but nobody that has the least thought or sense of a man about him, can live in society under the constant dislike and ill opinion of his familiars, and those he converses with.

This is a burden too heavy for human sufferance: and he must be made up of irreconcileable contradictions, who can take pleasure in company, and yet be insensible of contempt and disgrace from his companions.

or, if he please, doubles the increase as often as he will: the remaining abyss being still as far beyond the end of all these progressions as it is from the length of a day or an hour.

For nothing finite bears any proportion to infinite; and therefore our ideas, which are all finite, cannot bear any.

Thus it is also in our idea of extension, when we increase it by addition, as well as when we diminish it by division, and would enlarge our thoughts to infinite space.

Whereby it is plain, that our ideas of substances are not adequate; are not what the mind intends them to be.

Besides, a man has no idea of substance in general, nor knows what substance is in itself.

14. Ideas of Modes and Relations are Archetypes, and cannot but be adequate.

as we shall see, if we examine the particular occasions wherein they come to be called true or false. In all which we shall find some kind of affirmation or negation, which is the reason of that denomination.

For our ideas, being nothing but bare APPEARANCES, or perceptions in our minds, cannot properly and simply in themselves be said to be true or false, no more than a single name of anything can be said to be true or false.

2. Ideas and words may be said to be true, inasmuch as they really are ideas and words.

… by our senses such appearances in us, and each of them being in the mind such as it is, suitable to the power that produced it, and which alone it represents, it cannot upon that account, or as referred to such a pattern, be false.

Blue and yellow, bitter or sweet, can never be false ideas: these perceptions in the mind are just such as they are there, answering the powers appointed by God to produce them; and so are truly what they are, and are intended to be.

Indeed the names may be misapplied, but that in this respect makes no falsehood in the ideas; as if a man ignorant in the English tongue should call purple scarlet.