for their direction; which all men could not but know if they were there, or else they would be there to no purpose; and which since all men do not know, nor can distinguish from other adventitious truths, we may well conclude there are no such.

23. Men must think and know for themselves.—What censure, doubting thus of innate principles, may deserve from men, who will be apt to call it pulling up the old foundations of knowledge and certainty, I cannot tell; I persuade myself at least that the way I have pursued, being conformable to truth, lays those foundations surer. This I am certain, I have not made it my business either to quit or follow any authority in the ensuing discourse: truth has been my only aim, and wherever that has appeared to lead, my thoughts have impartially followed, without minding whether the footsteps of any other lay that way or not. Not that I want a due respect to other men's opinions; but, after all, the greatest reverence is due to truth: and I hope it will not be thought arrogance to say, that perhaps we should make greater progress in the discovery of rational and contemplative knowledge, if we sought it in the fountain, in the consideration of things themselves, 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. 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. Aristotle was certainly a knowing man, but nobody ever thought him so because he blindly embraced or confidently vented the opinions of another. And if the taking up 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. *

24. Whence the Opinion of Innate Principles.—When men have found some general propositions that could not be doubted of as soon as understood, it was, I know, a short and easy way to conclude them innate. This being once received, it eased the lazy from the pains of search, and stopped the inquiry of the doubtful concerning all that was once styled innate. And it was of no small advantage to those who affected to be masters and teachers, to make this the principle of principles, "that principles must not be questioned:" for having once established this tenet, that there are innate principles, it put their followers upon a necessity of receiving some doctrines as such; which was to take them off from the use of their own reason and judgment, and put them on believing and taking them upon trust without further examination: in which posture of blind credulity they might be more easily governed by and made useful to some sort of men who had the skill and office to principle and guide them. 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: whereas had they examined the ways whereby men came to the knowledge of many universal truths, they would have found them to result in the minds of men from the being of things themselves when duly considered; and that they were discovered by the application of those

Locke had possibly read in Galland's translation of the Arabian Nights the story of the barber's fourth brother, El-kooz-el-Aswanee, the butcher of Bagdad, of whom it is related, that "being in his shop one day, there accosted him an old man with a long beard, who handed to him some money, saying, Give me some meat for it. So he took the money, and gave him the meat. And when the old man had gone away, my brother looked at the money which he had paid him, and seeing that it was of a brilliant whiteness, put it aside by itself. This old man continued to repair to him during a period of five months, and my brother always threw his money into a chest by itself; after which period he desired to take it out for the purpose of buying some sheep; but on opening the chest, he found all the contents converted into white paper, clipped round." (Lane's Translation, vol. i. p. 396.)—ED.

faculties that were fitted by nature to receive and judge of them when duly employed about them.

25. Conclusion. To show how the understanding proceeds herein is the design of the following discourse, which I shall proceed to when I have first premised, that hitherto, to clear my way to those foundations which I conceive are the only true ones whereon to establish those notions we can have of our own knowledge, it hath been necessary for me to give an account of the reasons I had to doubt of innate principles. And since the arguments which are against them do some of them rise from common received opinions, I have been forced to take several things for granted, which is hardly avoidable to any one, whose task is to show the falsehood or improbability of any tenet; it happening in controversial discourses as it does in assaulting of towns, where, if the ground be but firm whereon the batteries are erected, there is no further inquiry of whom it is borrowed, nor whom it belongs to, so it affords but a fit rise for the present purpose. But in the future part of this Discourse, designing to raise an edifice uniform and consistent with itself, as far as my own experience and observation will assist me, I hope to erect it on such a basis that I shall not need to shore it up with props and buttresses, leaning on borrowed or begged foundations; or at least, if mine prove a castle in the air, I will endeavour it shall be all of a piece and hang together. Wherein I warn the reader not to expect undeniable cogent demonstrations, unless I inay be allowed the privilege, not seldom . assumed by others, to take my principles for granted, and then, I doubt not, but I can demonstrate too. All that I shall say for the principles I proceed on is, that I can only appeal to men's own unprejudiced experience and observation whether they be true or not; and this is enough for a man who professes no more than to lay down candidly and freely his own conjectures, concerning a subject lying somewhat in the dark, without any other design than an unbiassed inquiry after truth.

BOOK II.

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 all 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. 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; in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. + Our observation employed either

* Upon this comparison I have already remarked in a former note.-ED. It would at first sight, and to an unprejudiced person, appear that Locke in this passage had expressed himself with sufficient clearness, but Mr. Dugald Stewart found it to be either obscure in itself, or directly at variance with the comments which the philosopher has elsewhere made on the doctrine it contains. His remarks are too long to be introduced into a note, but the result to which he supposes them to lead is stated in the following sentences: "If the foregoing remarks be wellfounded, they are fatal to a fundamental principle of Locke's philosophy, which has been assumed by most of his successors as a demonstrated

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.—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 wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call SENSATION.*

truth, and which, under a form somewhat disguised, has served to Hume as the basis of all his sceptical theories. It appears to me, that the doctrines of both these eminent authors, with respect to the origin of our ideas, resolve into the supposition, that consciousness is exclusively the source of all our knowledge. Their language, indeed, particularly that of Locke, seems to imply the contrary; but that this was really their opinion, may, with certainty, be inferred from their own comments." (Phil. Essay, p. 82, et seq.)-ED.

*On this subject see Wolf's Logic, p. 11. Logique de Du Marsais, p. 20 et seq. This latter writer takes of the whole question the views of a mere materialist. "Elle (l'âme) sent immédiatement par les sens extérieurs, et elle sent médiatement par les organes du sens intérieur du cerveau. Descartes undertakes to explain the very manner in which ideas are obtained by sensation: "Les choses extérieures,' says he, "mettant les esprits vitaux en mouvement par les impressions qu'elles produisent, ces esprits remontent au cerveau, et y forment un canal ou type, qui correspond aux impressions et a leur matière determinée. Ce type n'est pas l'idée de l'objet lui-même, mais l'âme en prend connaissance, et alors voit en elle-même l'idée, qui diffère donc totalement du type et de l'objet qui cause l'impression." (Buhle, Hist. de la Phil. Mod. vol. iii. p. 20.) Aristotle on this question appears to have entertained the same opinions as Locke. (See De Anima, ii. 5, 6, 12.) Though, as Dr. Gillies has already observed, the celebrated axiom, Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuit prius in sensu,' appears not to be at present found in the works of the Stagirite. (Ethics and Politics, Anal. I. 46.) This doctrine, before the time of Locke, had already been adopted by Hobbes. "Il n'y a dans l'âme aucune idée qui n'ait été précédemment produite, en toute ou en partie, par un des sens. (Buble, Hist. Phil. Mod. vol. iii. 203.)-ED.

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