An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689

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

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: and the use of reason becomes daily more visible, as these materials, that give it employment, increase.

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.

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.

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

I think there cannot any one moral rule be proposed, whereof a man may not justly demand a reason.

He may, out of interest, as well as conviction, cry up that for sacred; which if once trampled on, and profaned, he himself cannot be safe nor secure.

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, skeptical, or atheist, which he is sure to meet with, who does in the least scruple any of the common opinions?

And, perhaps, if we should, with attention, mind the lives, and discourses of people not so far off, we should have too much reason to fear, that many, in more civilized countries , have no very strong, and clear impression of a deity upon their minds; and that the complaints of atheism from the pulpit, are not without reason. And though only some profligate wretches own it too barefacedly now; yet, perhaps, we should hear, more than we do, of it, from others, did not the fear of the magistrate’s sword, or their neighbour’s censure, tie up people’s tongues; which, were the apprehensions of punishment, or shame taken away, would as openly proclaim their atheism, as their lives do.

The great difference that is to be found in the notions of mankind, is, from the different use they put their faculties to, whilst some (and those the most) taking things upon trust , misemploy their power of assent, by lazily enslaving their minds, to the dictates and dominion of others, in doctrines, which it is their duty carefully to examine; and not blindly, with an implicit faith, to swallow: others employing their thoughts only about some few things, grow acquainted sufficiently with them, attain great degrees of knowledge in them, and are ignorant of all other, having never let their thoughts loose, in search of other inquiries.

So much as we ourselves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so much we possess of real and true knowledge.

Nor is it a small power it gives one man over another, to have the authority to be the dictator of principles, and teacher of unquestionable truths; and to make a man swallow that for an innate principle, which may serve to his purpose, who teacheth them.

Let us 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.

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 coeval with sensation; which is such an impression or motion, made in some part of the body, as produces some perception in the understanding.

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 a blind man’s mind, by talking; and to discourse into him the ideas of light and colour.

There be other simple ideas, which convey themselves into the mind, by all the ways of sensation and reflection, viz.

pleasure, or delight, and its opposite.

pain, or uneasiness.

power.

existence.

unity.

Delight, or uneasiness, one or other of them join themselves to almost all our ideas, both of sensation and reflection: and there is scarce 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.

Existence and unity, are two other ideas, that are suggested to the understanding, by every object without, and every idea within.

The particular bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts of fire, or snow, are really in them, whether anyone’s senses perceive them: and therefore they may be called real qualities, because they really exist in those bodies.

Attention and repetition help much to the fixing any ideas in the memory: but those, which naturally at first make the deepest, and most lasting impression, are those, which are accompanied with pleasure or pain.

Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth often die before us: 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.

I endeavor, 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.

In the meantime, the argument is at least as good, that where nothing hinders, (as beyond the utmost bounds of all bodies) a body put into motion may move on, as where there is nothing between, there two bodies must necessarily touch: for pure space between, is sufficient to take away the necessity of mutual contact; but bare space in the way, is not sufficient to stop motion.

‘Tis 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; and to see which, amongst its simple ones, have or have not a necessary connexion and dependence on one another.

‘Tis evident to anyone, who will but observe what passes in his own mind, that there is a train of ideas, which constantly succeed one another in his understanding, as long as he is awake. Reflection on these appearances of several ideas, one after another, in our minds, is that which furnishes us with the idea of succession: and the distance between any parts of that succession, or between the appearance of any two ideas in our minds, is that we call duration.

So that to me it seems, that the constant and regular succession of ideas in a waking man, is, as it were, the measure and standard of all other successions, whereof if any one either exceeds the pace of our ideas, as where two sounds or pains, etc. take up in their succession the duration of but one idea, or else where any motion or succession is so slow, as that it keeps not pace with the ideas in our minds, or the quickness, in which they take their turns; as when any one, or more ideas, in their ordinary course, come into our mind between those which are offered to the sight by the different perceptible distances of a body in motion, or between sounds or smells following one another, there also the sense of a constant continued succession is lost, and we perceive it not, but with certain gaps of rest between.

‘Tis not then motion, but the constant train of ideas in our minds, whilst we are waking, that furnishes us with the idea of duration, whereof motion no otherwise gives us any perception, than as it causes in our minds a constant succession of ideas, as I have before showed: and we have as clear an idea of any succession or duration, as by the train of other ideas succeeding one another in our minds, without the idea of any motion, as by the train of ideas caused by the uninterrupted sensible change of distance between two bodies, which we have from motion; and therefore we should as well have the idea of duration, were there no sense of motion at all.

Having thus got the idea of duration, the next thing natural for the mind to do, is, to get some measure of this common duration, whereby it might judge of its different lengths, and consider the distinct order, wherein several things exist, without which, a great part of our knowledge would be confused, and a great part of history would be rendered very useless. This consideration of duration, as set out by certain periods, and marked by certain measures or epochs, is that, I think, which most properly we call time.

Duration in itself, is to be considered as going on in one constant, equal, uniform course: but none of the measures of it, which we make use of, can be known to do so; nor can we be assured that their assigned parts or periods are equal in duration one to another; for two successive lengths of duration, however measured, can never be demonstrated to be equal.

For this present moment is common to all things, that are now in being, and equally comprehends that part of their existence, as much as if they were all but one single being; and we may truly say, they all exist in the same moment of time.

Amongst all the ideas we have, as there is none suggested to the mind by more ways, so there is none more simple, than that of unity, or one: it has no shadow of variety or composition in it: every object our senses are employed about; every idea in our understandings; every thought of our minds, brings this idea along with it.

Things then are good or evil, only in reference to pleasure or pain.

Everyone, I think, finds in himself a power to begin or forbear, continue or put an end to several actions in himself. From the consideration of the extent of this power of the mind over the actions of the man, which everyone finds in himself, arise the ideas of liberty and necessity.

All the actions that, we have any idea of, reducing themselves, as has been said, to these two, viz. thinking and motion, so far as a man has the power to think, or not to think; to move, or not to move, according to the preference or direction of his own mind, so far is a man free.

‘Tis plain then, that the will is nothing but one power or ability, and freedom another power or ability: so that to ask, whether the will has freedom, is to ask, whether one power has another power, one ability another ability; a question at first sight too grossly absurd to make a dispute, or need an answer.

To return to the inquiry about liberty, I think the question is not proper, whether the will be free, but whether a man be free.

But so much as there is anywhere of desire, so much is there of uneasiness.

Men may choose different things, and yet all choose right, supposing them only like a company of poor insects, whereof some are bees, delighted with flowers and their sweetness; others beetles, delighted with other kinds of viands, which having enjoyed for a season, they should cease to be, and exist no more for ever.

The first therefore, and great use of liberty, is to hinder blind precipitancy; the principal exercise of freedom, is to stand still, open the eyes, look about, and take a view of the consequence of what we are going to do, as much as the weight of the matter requires.

Had we senses acute enough to discern the minute particles of bodies, and the real constitution on which their sensible qualities depend, I doubt not but they would produce quite different ideas in us; and that which is now the yellow of gold, would then disappear, and instead of it, we should see an admirable texture of parts of a certain size and figure.

This also shows wherein the identity of the same man consists; viz. in nothing but a participation of the same continued life, by constantly fleeting particles of matter, in succession vitally united to the same organized body.

An animal is a living organized body; and consequently, the same animal, as we have observed, is the same continued life communicated to different particles of matter, as they happen successively to be united to that organized living body.

For should the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the prince’s past life, enter and inform the body of a cobbler, as soon as deserted by his own soul, everyone sees he would be the same person with the prince, accountable only for the prince’s actions: but who would say it was the same man?

Self is that conscious thinking thing, (whatever substance, made up of whether spiritual, or material, simple, or compounded, it matters not) which is sensible, or conscious of pleasure or pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends.

That with which the consciousness of this present thinking thing can join itself, makes the same person, and is one self with it, and with nothing else; and so attributes to itself, and owns all the actions of that thing as its own, as far as that consciousness reaches, and no further; as everyone who reflects will perceive.

Morally good and evil then, is only the conformity or disagreement of our voluntary actions to some law, whereby good or evil is drawn on us from the will and power of the law-maker; which good or evil, pleasure or pain, attending to our observance, or breach of the law, by decree of the law-maker, is that which we call reward and punishment.

For though men uniting into politic societies, have resigned up to the public the disposing of all their force, so that they cannot employ it against any fellow- citizen any further than the law of the country directs; yet they retain still the power of thinking well or ill, approving or disapproving of the actions of those whom they live amongst, and converse with: and by this approbation and dislike, they establish amongst themselves what they will call virtue and vice.

But no man escapes the punishment of their censure and dislike, who offends against the fashion and opinion of the company he keeps, and would recommend himself to.

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.

Fifthly, the idea of good, which signifies anything that may advance his happiness; and terminates at last, if examined, in particular simple ideas, of which the word good in general, signifies any one, but if removed from all simple ideas quite, it signifies nothing at all.

Some of our ideas have a natural correspondence and connexion one with another: it is the office and excellency of our reason to trace these, and hold them together in that union and correspondence which is founded in their peculiar beings.

Let the ideas of being and matter be strongly joined either by education or much thought, whilst these are still combined in the mind, what notions, what reasonings, will there be about separate spirits?

Interest, though it does a great deal in the case, yet cannot be thought to work whole societies of men to so universal a perverseness, as that every one of them to a man should knowingly maintain falsehood: some at least must be allowed to do what all pretend to, i.e. to pursue truth sincerely, and therefore there must be something that blinds their understandings, and makes them not see the falsehood of what they embrace for real truth.

Men would often see what a small pittance of reason and truth, or possibly none at all, is mixed with those huffing opinions they are swelled with; if they would look beyond fashionable sounds, and observe what ideas are, or are not comprehended under those words, with which they are so armed at all points, and with which they so confidently lay about them.

For untruth being unacceptable to the mind of man, there is no other defence left for absurdity, but obscurity.

Thirdly, there is no knowledge of things conveyed by men’s words, when their ideas agree not to the reality of things.

Fifthly, he that hath imagined to himself substances such as never have been, and filled his head with ideas which have not any correspondence with the real nature of things, to which yet he gives settled and defined names, may fill his discourse, and perhaps, another man’s head, with the fantastical imaginations of his own brain; but will be very far from advancing thereby one jot in real and true knowledge.

And ‘tis in vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving, wherein men find pleasure to be deceived.

He that uses words without any clear and steady meaning, what does he but lead himself and others into errors? And he that designedly does it, ought to be looked on as an enemy to truth and knowledge.

Knowledge then seems to me to be nothing but the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our ideas. In this alone it consists.

"Tis the first act of the mind, when it has any sentiments or ideas at all, to perceive its ideas, and so far, as it perceives them, to know each what it is, and thereby also to perceive their difference, and that one is not another. This is so absolutely necessary, that without it there could be no knowledge, no reasoning, no imagination, no distinct thoughts at all.

If anyone say, a dream may do the same thing, and that all these ideas may be produced in us without any external objects, he may be pleased to dream that I make him this answer, 1. That ‘tis no great matter, whether I remove his scruple, or no: where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing. 2. That I believe he will allow a very manifest difference between dreaming of being in the fire, and being actually in it.

Nevertheless, I do not question, but that human knowledge under the present circumstances of our beings and constitutions may be carried much further, than it hitherto has been, if men would sincerely, and with freedom of mind, employ all that industry and labour of thought, in improving the means of discovering truth, which they do for the colouring or support of falsehood, to maintain a system, interest, or party, they are once engaged in.

Nothing being so beautiful to the eye, as truth to the mind; nothing so deformed and irreconcilable to the understanding, as a lie.

Whilst the parties of men, cram their tenets down all men’s throats, whom they can get into their power, without permitting them to examine their truth and falsehood; and will not let truth have fair play in the world, nor men the liberty to search after it; what improvements can be expected from this kind?

The ignorance, and darkness that is in us, no more hinders, nor confines the knowledge, that is in others, than the blindness of a mole is an argument against the quick-sightedness of an eagle.

What faculties therefore other species of creatures have to penetrate into the nature, and inmost constitutions of things, what ideas they may receive of them, far different from ours, we know not.

If the ideas are abstract, whose agreement or disagreement we perceive, our knowledge is universal.

Truth then seems to me, in the proper import of the word, to signify nothing but the joining or separating of signs, as the things signified by them, do agree or disagree one with another.

For in particulars, our knowledge begins, and so spreads itself, by degrees, to generals.

Before a man makes any proposition, he is supposed to understand the terms he uses in it, or else he talks like a parrot, only making noise by imitation, and framing certain sounds, which he has learnt of others; but not, as a rational creature, using them for signs of ideas, which he has in his mind.

Nothing can be so dangerous, as principles thus taken up without questioning or examination, especially if they be such as concern morality, which influence men’s lives and give a bias to their actions.

But since the knowledge of the certainty of principles, as well as for all other truths, depends only upon the perception, we have, of the agreement, or disagreement of our ideas, the way to improve our knowledge, is not, I am sure, blindly, and with an implicit faith, to receive and swallow principles; but is, I think, to get and fix in our minds clear, distinct, and complete ideas, as far as they are to be had, and annex to them proper and constant names. And thus, perhaps, without any other principles, but barely considering those ideas, and by comparing them one with another, finding their agreement, and disagreement, and their several relations, and habitudes; we shall get more true and clear knowledge, by the conduct of this one rule, than by taking up principles, and thereby putting our minds into the disposal of others.

Just thus is it with our understanding, all that is voluntary in our knowledge, is the employing, or withholding any of our faculties from this or that sort of objects, and a more, or less accurate survey of them: but they being employed, our will hath no power to determine the knowledge of the mind one way or other; that is done only by the objects themselves, as far as they are clearly discovered.

And herein lies the difference between probability and certainty, faith and knowledge, that in all the parts of knowledge, there is intuition; each immediate idea, each step has its visible and certain connexion; in belief, not so.

The necessity of believing, without knowledge, nay, often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves, than constrain others.

The greatest part of our knowledge depends upon deductions and intermediate ideas: and in those cases, where we are fain to substitute assent instead of knowledge, and take propositions for true, without being certain they are so, we have need to find out, examine, and compare the grounds of their probability. In both these cases, the faculty which finds out the means, and rightly applies them to discover certainty in the one, and probability in the other, is that which we call reason.

Reason by its own penetration where it is strong, and exercised, usually sees quicker, and clearer without syllogism.

For faith can never convince us of anything, that contradicts our knowledge.

In all things therefore, where we have clear evidence from our ideas, and those principles of knowledge, I have above- mentioned, reason is the proper judge; and revelation, though it may be consenting with it, confirm its dictates, yet cannot in such cases, invalidate its decrees: nor can we be obliged, where we have the clear and evident sentence of reason, to quit it, for the contrary opinion, under a pretence that it is a matter of faith; which can have no authority against the plain and clear dictates of reason.

Light, true light in the mind is, or can be nothing else but the evidence of the truth of any proposition, all the light it has, or can have, is from the clearness and validity of those proofs, upon which it is received.

Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything.

But this at least is worth the consideration of those that call themselves gentlemen, that however they may think credit, respect, power, and authority the concomitants of their birth and fortune, yet they will find all these still carried away from them, by men of lower condition who surpass them in knowledge.

But though we cannot hinder our knowledge, where the agreement is once perceived; nor our assent, where the probability manifestly appears upon due consideration of all the measures of it: yet we can hinder both knowledge and assent, by stopping our inquiry, and not employing our faculties in the search of any truth.