Some Aspects of Locke's Essay Concerning Human UnderstandingUniversity of Wisconsin--Madison, 1925 - 140 pages |
Common terms and phrases
ability able absolutely abstract active powers agreement and disagreement assumption attainment of knowledge beginning Berkeley bodies bolies cause and effect certainty Chapt clear and distinct coexist color complex ideas criticism deal deistic Descartes disagreement and repugnancy doctrine doubt entirely essence of things eternity exis experience fact faculties finite spirits historical plain method human understanding Hume idea of active idea of infinity idea of power ideas of substances ileas impossible infinite innate ideas inquiry intel intellectual necessity intuitive knowledge ities judgements of probability Locke held Locke never materialistic matter means mental propositions merely mind mixed modes motion nature never give objects origin passage passive powers perceive perception philosophy possible problems produce real essence real existence reason scholasticism secondary qualities Sect sensation and reflection senses simple ideas simple modes space sumption teaching tence term theory of knowledge thinking thought tion trying University of Wisconsin
Popular passages
Page 49 - For it is as repugnant to the idea of senseless matter, that it should put into itself, sense, perception, and knowledge, as it is repugnant to the idea of a triangle, that it should put into itself greater angles than two right ones.
Page 47 - 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 and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends.
Page 65 - I doubt not but my reader, by this time, may be apt to think, that I have been all this while only building a castle in the air; and be ready to say to me, to what purpose all this stir? Knowledge...
Page 36 - I mean there is such a knowledge within our reach which we cannot miss, if we will but apply our minds to that as we do to several other inquiries.
Page 35 - I doubt not but from self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences, as incontestable as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out to any one that will apply himself with the same indifferency and attention to the one, as he does to the other of these sciences.
Page 36 - From what has been said, it is plain to me we have a more certain knowledge of the existence of a God, than of anything: our senses have not immediately discovered to us. Nay, I presume I may say, that we more certainly know that there is a God, than that there is anything else without us.
Page 43 - What is it that solidity and extension inhere in," he would not be in a much better case than the Indian before mentioned, who, saying that the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked, what the elephant rested on? to which his answer was, "A great tortoise;" but being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied, — something, he knew not what.
Page 31 - ... require a greater : for a man cannot conceive himself capable of a greater certainty, than to know that any idea in his mind is such as he perceives it to be ; and that two ideas, wherein he perceives a difference, are different and not precisely the same.
Page 38 - All our complex ideas, except those of substances, being archetypes of the mind's own making, not intended to be the copies of anything, nor referred to the existence of anything, as to their originals, cannot want any conformity necessary to real knowledge.
Page 51 - 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 application and operation of some other being. From this observation we get our ideas of cause and effect. That which produces any simple or complex idea, we denote by the general name "cause;" and that which is produced, "effect.