In his denial of the existence of innate ideas, in his use of the formula that “nothing is in the intellect that has not been first in the sense,” or in his employment of the figure of the “white piece of paper,” Locke does not intend to state anything further than that the mind is free. He merely means that the individual starts without trammels and prejudices. He does not mean that the mind is completely passive and at the mercy of its environment, as his French followers interpreted him. Locke is a sensationalist, but he does not belong to that class who believe that our mental states are merely translated sensations, and that the mind itself is merely passive. He believes that the mind does not create its ideas, but that they are presented to it. The mind has original powers upon which it can reflect. The mind can operate with its ideas and make them into compounds. Thus one must read Locke’s _Essay_ to the end to get his double point of view. In the second and third books he frequently discusses the contents of the mind as if the mind were passive, in the manner of modern psychologists. In the fourth book he develops an epistemology on the assumption that the mind is active and free. =Locke’s Psychology.= The second and third books of the _Essay_ are a discussion of the empirical sources of our ideas. One notes the Cartesian dualism of mind and matter in the background. All ideas have their source either externally in the impressions upon the bodily senses, or internally in the operations of the mind itself. The sources of ideas are either sensations or reflections, or, as Locke calls them, “outer and inner perceptions.” Locke also calls them “simple ideas,” being the units out of which the complex ideas are constructed. We understand easily enough what Locke means by sensations, but “reflections” is a word peculiar to him, which has not been taken up by philosophy. He means by “reflections” a consciousness of the machinery of the mind. We are, that is to say, conscious of our willing, loving, remembering, etc. As to the order of their appearance in the mind, the sensations are prior to the reflections and are the occasion for the appearance of the reflections. The reflections are not the process of transmitting the sensations, but they are the later and mechanical transmutation of the sensations. It is important to note that throughout Locke’s psychological analysis, he regards the mind as passive, even with respect to the ideas of reflection. The reflections, as faculties of the mind, are dependent on the sensations, and both sensations and reflections make impressions upon a passive mind.