An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2Locke, John
Philosophy
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2
Locke, John
Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800
To conclude. Beside those before-mentioned primary qualities in bodies,
viz. bulk, figure, extension, number, and motion of their solid parts;
all the rest, whereby we take notice of bodies, and distinguish them
one from another, are nothing else but several powers in them,
depending on those primary qualities; whereby they are fitted, either
by immediately operating on our bodies to produce several different
ideas in us; or else, by operating on other bodies, so to change their
primary qualities as to render them capable of producing ideas in us
different from what before they did. The former of these, I think, may
be called secondary qualities IMMEDIATELY PERCEIVABLE: the latter,
secondary qualities, MEDIATELY PERCEIVABLE.
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, signifies that sort of operation in
the mind about its ideas, wherein the mind is active; where it, with
some degree of voluntary attention, considers anything. For in bare
naked perception, the mind is, for the most part, only passive; and
what it perceives, it cannot avoid perceiving.
2. Reflection alone can give us the idea of what perception is.
What perception is, every one will know better by reflecting on what he
does himself, when he sees, hears, feels, &c., or thinks, than by any
discourse of mine. Whoever reflects on what passes in his own mind
cannot miss it. And if he does not reflect, all the words in the world
cannot make him have any notion of it.
3. Arises in sensation only when the mind notices the organic
impression.
This is certain, that whatever alterations are made in the body, if
they reach not the mind; whatever impressions are made on the outward
parts, if they are not taken notice of within, there is no perception.
Fire may burn our bodies with no other effect than it does a billet,
unless the motion be continued to the brain, and there the sense of
heat, or idea of pain, be produced in the mind; wherein consists actual
perception.
4. Impulse on the organ insufficient.
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