Chapter V Of the Names of Mixed Modes and Relations 1. Mixed modes stand for abstract ideas, as other general names. The names of mixed modes, being general, they stand, as has been shewed, for sorts or species of things, each of which has its peculiar essence. The essences of these species also, as has […]

Chapter IV Of the Names of Simple Ideas 1. Names of simple ideas, modes, and substances, have each something peculiar. Though all words, as I have shown, signify nothing immediately but the ideas in the mind of the speaker; yet, upon a nearer survey, we shall find the names of simple ideas, mixed modes (under […]

Chapter III Of General Terms 1. The greatest part of words are general terms. All things that exist being particulars, it may perhaps be thought reasonable that words, which ought to be conformed to things, should be so too,- I mean in their signification: but yet we find quite the contrary. The far greatest part […]

Chapter II Of the Signification of Words 1. Words are sensible signs, necessary for communication of ideas. Man, though he have great variety of thoughts, and such from which others as well as himself might receive profit and delight; yet they are all within his own breast, invisible and hidden from others, nor can of […]

Chapter XI Of the Remedies of the Foregoing Imperfections and Abuses of Words 1. Remedies are worth seeking The natural and improved imperfections of languages we have seen above at large: and speech being the great bond that holds society together, and the common conduit, whereby the improvements of knowledge are conveyed from one man […]

Chapter X Of the Abuse of Words 1. Woeful abuse of words. Besides the imperfection that is naturally in language, and the obscurity and confusion that is so hard to be avoided in the use of words, there are several wilful faults and neglects which men are guilty of in this way of communication, whereby […]

BOOK III Of Words Chapter I Of Words or Language in General 1. Man fitted to form articulate sounds. God, having designed man for a sociable creature, made him not only with an inclination, and under a necessity to have fellowship with those of his own kind, but furnished him also with language, which was […]

Chapter IX Of Perception 1. Perception the first simple idea of reflection. PERCEPTION, as it is the first faculty of the mind exercised about our ideas; so it is the first and simplest idea we have from reflection, and is by some called thinking in general. Though thinking, in the propriety of the English tongue, […]

Chapter VIII Some further considerations concerning our Simple Ideas of Sensation 1. Positive ideas from privative causes. Concerning the simple ideas of Sensation, it is to be considered,- that whatsoever is so constituted in nature as to be able, by affecting our senses, to cause any perception in the mind, doth thereby produce in the […]

Chapter VII Of Simple Ideas of both Sensation and Reflection 1. Ideas of pleasure and pain. 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. 2. Mix with almost all our other […]

Chapter VI Of Simple Ideas of Reflection 1. Simple ideas are the operations of mind about its other ideas. The mind receiving the ideas mentioned in the foregoing chapters from without, when it turns its view inward upon itself, and observes its own actions about those ideas it has, takes from thence other ideas, which […]

Chapter V Of Simple Ideas of Divers Senses Ideas received both by seeing and touching. The ideas we get by more than one sense are, of space or extension, figure, rest, and motion. For these make perceivable impressions, both on the eyes and touch; and we can receive and convey into our minds the ideas […]

Chapter IV Idea of Solidity 1. We receive this idea from touch. The idea of solidity we receive by our touch: and it arises from the resistance which we find in body to the entrance of any other body into the place it possesses, till it has left it. There is no idea which we […]

Chapter XXXI Of Adequate and Inadequate Ideas 1. Adequate ideas are such as perfectly represent their archetypes. Of our real ideas, some are adequate, and some are inadequate. Those I call adequate, which perfectly represent those archetypes which the mind supposes them taken from: which it intends them to stand for, and to which it […]

Chapter III Of Simple Ideas of Sense 1. 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 […]

Chapter XXIX Of Clear and Obscure, Distinct and Confused Ideas 1. Ideas, some clear and distinct, others obscure and confused. Having shown the original of our ideas, and taken a view of their several sorts; considered the difference between the simple and the complex; and observed how the complex ones are divided into those of […]

Chapter XXVIII Of Other Relations 1. Ideas of proportional relations. Besides the before-mentioned occasions of time, place, and causality of comparing or referring things one to another, there are, as I have said, infinite others, some whereof I shall mention. First, The first I shall name is some one simple idea, which, being capable of […]

Chapter XXVII Of Identity and Diversity 1. Wherein identity consists. Another occasion the mind often takes of comparing, is the very being of things, when, considering anything as existing at any determined time and place, we compare it with itself existing at another time, and thereon form the ideas of identity and diversity. When we […]

Chapter XXVI Of Cause and Effect, and other Relations 1. Whence the ideas of cause and effect got. In the notice that our senses take of the constant vicissitude of things, we cannot but observe that several particular, both qualities and substances, begin to exist; and that they receive this their existence from the due […]

Chapter XXV Of Relation 1. Relation, what. Besides the ideas, whether simple or complex, that the mind has of things as they are in themselves, there are others it gets from their comparison one with another. The understanding, in the consideration of anything, is not confined to that precise object: it can carry an idea […]

Chapter XXIV Of Collective Ideas of Substances 1. A collective idea is one idea. Besides these complex ideas of several single substances, as of man, horse, gold, violet, apple, &c., the mind hath also complex collective ideas of substances; which I so call, because such ideas are made up of many particular substances considered together, […]

Chapter XXIII Of our Complex Ideas of Substances 1. Ideas of particular substances, how made. The mind being, as I have declared, furnished with a great number of the simple ideas, conveyed in by the senses as they are found in exterior things, or by reflection on its own operations, takes notice also that a […]

Chapter XXII Of Mixed Modes 1. Mixed modes, what. Having treated of simple modes in the foregoing chapters, and given several instances of some of the most considerable of them, to show what they are, and how we come by them; we are now in the next place to consider those we call mixed modes; […]

Chapter XXI Of Power 1. This idea how got. The mind being every day informed, by the senses, of the alteration of those simple ideas it observes in things without; and taking notice how one comes to an end, and ceases to be, and another begins to exist which was not before; reflecting also on […]

Chapter XX Of Modes of Pleasure and Pain 1. Pleasure and pain, simple ideas. Amongst the simple ideas which we receive both from sensation and reflection, pain and pleasure are two very considerable ones. For as in the body there is sensation barely in itself, or accompanied with pain or pleasure, so the thought or […]

Chapter II Of Simple Ideas 1. Uncompounded appearances. The better to understand the nature, manner, and extent of our knowledge, one thing is carefully to be observed concerning the ideas we have; and that is, that some of them are simple and some complex. Though the qualities that affect our senses are, in the things […]

Chapter XIX Of the Modes of Thinking 1. Sensation, remembrance, contemplation, &c., modes of thinking. When the mind turns its view inwards upon itself, and contemplates its own actions, thinking is the first that occurs. In it the mind observes a great variety of modifications, and from thence receives distinct ideas. Thus the perception or […]

Chapter XVIII Other Simple Modes 1. Other simple modes of simple ideas of sensation. Though I have, in the foregoing chapters, shown how, from simple ideas taken in by sensation, the mind comes to extend itself even to infinity; which, however it may of all others seem most remote from any sensible perception, yet at […]

Chapter XVII Of Infinity 1. Infinity, in its original intention, attributed to space, duration, and number. He that would know what kind of idea it is to which we give the name of infinity, cannot do it better than by considering to what infinity is by the mind more immediately attributed; and then how the […]

Chapter XVI Idea of Number 1. Number the simplest and most universal idea. 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 […]