CHAPTER I.
OF IDEAS IN GENERAL, AND THEIR ORIGINAL.
1. 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 minds 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 al 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. Al Ideas come from Sensation or Reflection.
Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of al
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 al 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
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 whol y upon our
senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I cal 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 mind 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, wil ing, and al 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 cal 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. Al our Ideas are of the one or of 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 al
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, and the compositions made out of them we shall find to contain
al our whole stock of ideas; and that we have nothing in our minds
which did not come in one of these two ways. Let any one 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 or 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 of it or not, are imprinted on the minds of children.
Light and colours are busy at hand everywhere, 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 wil be
granted easily, that if a child were kept in a place where he never saw
any other but black and white til 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 wil 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 al 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 al 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 up of, til he applies himself with
attention, to consider them each in particular.
8. Ideas of Reflection later, because they need Attention.
And hence we see the reason why it is pretty late before most children
get ideas of the operations of their own minds; and some have not any
very clear or perfect ideas of the greatest part of them all their
lives. Because, though they pass there continually, yet, like floating
visions, they make not deep impressions enough to leave in their mind
clear, distinct, lasting ideas, till the understanding turns inward upon
itself, reflects on its own operations, and makes them the objects
of its own contemplation. Children when they come first into it, are
surrounded with a world of new things which, by a constant solicitation
of their senses, draw the mind constantly to them; 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, til they come to be of riper years; and some scarce
ever at al .
9. The Soul begins to have Ideas when it begins to perceive.
To ask, at what TIME a man has first any ideas, is to ask, when he
begins to perceive;--HAVING IDEAS, and PERCEPTION, being the same thing.
I know it is an opinion, that the soul always thinks, and that it has
the actual perception of ideas in itself constantly, as long as it
exists; and that actual thinking is as inseparable from the soul as
actual extension is from the body; which if true, to inquire after the
beginning of a man's ideas is the same as to inquire after the beginning
of his soul. For, by this account, soul and its ideas, as body and its
extension, wil begin to exist both at the same time.
10. The Soul thinks not always; for this wants Proofs.
But whether the soul be supposed to exist antecedent to, or coeval
with, or some time after the first rudiments of organization, or the
beginnings of life in the body, I leave to be disputed by those who have
better thought of that matter. I confess myself to have one of those
dull souls, that doth not perceive itself always to contemplate ideas;
nor can conceive it any more necessary for the soul always to think,
than for the body always to move: the perception of ideas being (as I
conceive) to the soul, what motion is to the body; not its essence, but
one of its operations. And therefore, though thinking be supposed never
so much the proper action of the soul, yet it is not necessary to
suppose that it should be always thinking, always in action. That,
perhaps, is the privilege of the infinite Author and Preserver of all
things, who "never slumbers nor sleeps"; but is not competent to any finite being, at least not to the soul of man. We know certainly, by
experience, that we SOMETIMES think; and thence draw this infallible
consequence,--that there is something in us that has a power to think.
But whether that substance PERPETUALLY thinks or no, we can be no
further assured than experience informs us. For, to say that actual
thinking is essential to the soul, and inseparable from it, is to beg
what is in question, and not to prove it by reason;--which is necessary
to be done, if it be not a self-evident proposition But whether this,
"That the soul always thinks," be a self-evident proposition, that everybody assents to at first hearing, I appeal to mankind. It is
doubted whether I thought at all last night or no. The question being
about a matter of fact, it is begging it to bring, as a proof for it,
an hypothesis, which is the very thing in dispute: by which way one may
prove anything, and it is but supposing that al watches, whilst the
balance beats, think, and it is sufficiently proved, and past doubt,
that my watch thought al last night. But he that would not deceive
himself, ought to build his hypothesis on matter of fact, and make it
out by sensible experience, and not presume on matter of fact, because
of his hypothesis, that is, because he supposes it to be so; which way
of proving amounts to this, that I must necessarily think al last
night, because another supposes I always think, though I myself cannot
perceive that I always do so.
But men in love with their opinions may not only suppose what is in
question, but al ege wrong matter of fact. How else could any one
make it an inference of mine, that a thing is not, because we are not
sensible of it in our sleep? I do not say there is no SOUL in a man,
because he is not sensible of it in his sleep; but I do say, he cannot
THINK at any time, waking or sleeping, without being sensible of it. Our
being sensible of it is not necessary to anything but to our thoughts;
and to them it is; and to them it always will be necessary, till we can
think without being conscious of it.
11. It is not always conscious of it.
I grant that the soul, in a waking man, is never without thought,
because it is the condition of being awake. But whether sleeping without
dreaming be not an affection of the whole man, mind as well as body, may
be worth a waking man's consideration; it being hard to conceive that
anything should think and not be conscious of it. If the soul doth think
in a sleeping man without being conscious of it, I ask whether, during
such thinking, it has any pleasure or pain, or be capable of happiness
or misery? I am sure the man is not; no more than the bed or earth he
lies on. For to be happy or miserable without being conscious of it,
seems to me utterly inconsistent and impossible. Or if it be possible
that the SOUL can, whilst the body is sleeping, have its thinking,
enjoyments, and concerns, its pleasures or pain, apart, which the MAN is
not conscious of nor partakes in,--it is certain that Socrates asleep
and Socrates awake is not the same person; but his soul when he sleeps,
and Socrates the man, consisting of body and soul, when he is waking,
are two persons: since waking Socrates has no knowledge of, or
concernment for that happiness or misery of his soul, which it enjoys
alone by itself whilst he sleeps, without perceiving anything of it; no
more than he has for the happiness or misery of a man in the Indies,
whom he knows not. For, if we take wholly away al consciousness of
our actions and sensations, especially of pleasure and pain, and the
concernment that accompanies it, it wil be hard to know wherein to
place personal identity.
12. If a sleeping Man thinks without knowing it, the sleeping and
waking Man are two Persons.
The soul, during sound sleep, thinks, say these men. Whilst it thinks
and perceives, it is capable certainly of those of delight or trouble,
as wel as any other perceptions; and IT must necessarily be CONSCIOUS
of its own perceptions. But it has all this apart: the sleeping MAN, it
is plain, is conscious of nothing of al this. Let us suppose, then, the
soul of Castor, while he is sleeping, retired from his body; which is
no impossible supposition for the men I have here to do with, who so
liberally allow life, without a thinking soul, to all other animals.
These men cannot then judge it impossible, or a contradiction, that the
body should live without the soul; nor that the soul should subsist
and think, or have perception, even perception of happiness or misery,
without the body. Let us then, I say, suppose the soul of Castor
separated during his sleep from his body, to think apart. Let us
suppose, too, that it chooses for its scene of thinking the body of
another man, v. g. Pol ux, who is sleeping without a soul. For, if
Castor's soul can think, whilst Castor is asleep, what Castor is never
conscious of, it is no matter what PLACE it chooses to think in. We have
here, then, the bodies of two men with only one soul between them, which
we wil suppose to sleep and wake by turns; and the soul still thinking
in the waking man, whereof the sleeping man is never conscious, has
never the least perception. I ask, then, whether Castor and Pol ux, thus
with only one soul between them, which thinks and perceives in one what
the other is never conscious of, nor is concerned for, are not two as
distinct PERSONS as Castor and Hercules, or as Socrates and Plato were?
And whether one of them might not be very happy, and the other very
miserable? Just by the same reason, they make the soul and the man two
persons, who make the soul think apart what the man is not conscious of.
For, I suppose nobody wil make identity of persons to consist in the
soul's being united to the very same numerical particles of matter.
For if that be necessary to identity, it wil be impossible, in that
constant flux of the particles of our bodies, that any man should be the
same person two days, or two moments, together.
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; and if
they are taken in the very act, waked in the middle of that sleeping
contemplation, can give no manner of account of it.
14. That men dream without remembering it, in vain urged.
It wil perhaps be said,--That the soul thinks even in the soundest
sleep, but the MEMORY retains it not. That the soul in a sleeping man
should be this moment busy a thinking, and the next moment in a waking
man not remember nor be able to recollect one jot of al those thoughts,
is very hard to be conceived, and would need some better proof than bare
assertion to make it be believed. For who can without any more ado, but
being barely told so, imagine that the greatest part of men do, during
al their lives, for several hours every day, think of something, which
if they were asked, even in the middle of these thoughts, they could
remember nothing at all of? Most men, I think, pass a great part of
their sleep without dreaming. I once knew a man that was bred a scholar,
and had no bad memory, who told me he had never dreamed in his life,
til he had that fever he was then newly recovered of, which was about
the five or six and twentieth year of his age. I suppose the world
affords more such instances: at least every one's acquaintance wil
furnish him with examples enough of such as pass most of their nights
without dreaming.
15. Upon this Hypothesis, the Thoughts of a sleeping Man ought to be
most rational.
To think often, and never to retain it so much as one moment, is a very
useless sort of thinking; and the soul, in such a state of thinking,
does very little, if at all, excel that of a looking-glass, which
constantly receives variety of images, or ideas, but retains none;
they disappear and vanish, and there remain no footsteps of them; the
looking-glass is never the better for such ideas, nor the soul for,
such thoughts. Perhaps it will be said, that in a waking MAN the
materials of the body are employed, and made use of, in thinking; and
that the memory of thoughts is retained by the impressions that are made
on the brain, and the traces there left after such thinking; but that
in the thinking of the SOUL, which is not perceived in a sleeping man,
there the soul thinks apart, and making no use of the organs of the
body, leaves no impressions on it, and consequently no memory of such
thoughts. Not to mention again the absurdity of two distinct persons,
which follows from this supposition, I answer, further,--That whatever
ideas the mind can receive and contemplate without the help of the body,
it is reasonable to conclude it can retain without the help of the body
too; or else the soul, or any separate spirit, will have but little
advantage by thinking. If it has no memory of its own thoughts; if it
cannot lay them up for its own use, and be able to recall them upon
occasion; if it cannot reflect upon what is past, and make use of its
former experiences, reasonings, and contemplations, to what, purpose
does it think? They who make the soul a thinking thing, at this rate,
will not make it a much more noble being than those do whom they
condemn, for allowing it to be nothing but the subtilist parts of
matter. Characters drawn on dust, that the first breath of wind
effaces; or impressions made on a heap of atoms, or animal spirits, are
altogether as useful, and render the subject as noble, as the thoughts
of a soul that perish in thinking; that, once out of sight, are gone for
ever, and leave no memory of themselves behind them. Nature never makes
excellent things for mean or no uses: and it is hardly to be conceived
that our infinitely wise Creator should make so admirable a faculty as
the power of thinking, that faculty which comes nearest the excellency
of his own incomprehensible being, to be so idly and uselessly employed,
at least a fourth part of its time here, as to think constantly, without
remembering any of those thoughts, without doing any good to itself or
others, or being any way useful to any other part of the creation. If we
will examine it, we shall not find, I suppose, the motion of dull and
senseless matter, any where in the universe, made so little use of and
so whol y thrown away.
16. On this Hypothesis, the Soul must have Ideas not derived from
Sensation or Reflection, of which there is no Appearance.
It is true, we have sometimes instances of perception whilst we are
asleep, and retain the memory of those thoughts: but how extravagant and
incoherent for the most part they are; how little conformable to the
perfection and order of a rational being, those who are acquainted
with dreams need not be told. This I would willingly be satisfied
in,--whether the soul, when it thinks thus apart, and as it were
separate from the body, acts less rationally than when conjointly with
it, or no. If its separate thoughts be less rational, then these men
must say, that the soul owes the perfection of rational thinking to the
body: if it does not, it is a wonder that our dreams should be, for the
most part, so frivolous and irrational; and that the soul should retain
none of its more rational soliloquies and meditations.
17. If I think when I know it not, nobody else can know it.
Those who so confidently tel us that the soul always actually thinks, I
would they would also tell us, what those ideas are that are in the soul
of a child, before or just at the union with the body, before it hath
received any by sensation. The dreams of sleeping men are, as I take it,
al made up of the waking man's ideas; though for the most part oddly
put together. It is strange, if the soul has ideas of its own that
it derived not from sensation or reflection, (as it must have, if it
thought before it received any impressions from the body,) that it
should never, in its private thinking, (so private, that the man himself
perceives it not,) retain any of them the very moment it wakes out of
them, and then make the man glad with new discoveries. Who can find it
reason that the soul should, in its retirement during sleep, have so
many hours' thoughts, and yet never light on any of those ideas it
borrowed not from sensation or reflection; or at least preserve the
memory of none but such, which, being occasioned from the body, must
needs be less natural to a spirit? It is strange the soul should never
once in a man's whole life recall over any of its pure native thoughts,
and those ideas it had before it borrowed anything from the body; never
bring into the waking man's view any other ideas but what have a tang of
the cask, and manifestly derive their original from that union. If it
always thinks,