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
I proceed now to examine some of these simple ideas and their modes a
little more particularly.
CHAPTER XII.
OF COMPLEX IDEAS.
1. Made by the Mind out of simple Ones.
We have hitherto considered those ideas, in the reception whereof the
mind is only passive, which are those simple ones received from
sensation and reflection before mentioned, whereof the mind cannot make
one to itself, nor have any idea which does not wholly consist of them.
As simple ideas are observed to exist in several combinations united
together, so the mind has a power to consider several of them united
together as one idea; and that not only as they are united in external
objects, but as itself has joined them together. Ideas thus made up of
several simple ones put together, I call COMPLEX;—such as are beauty,
gratitude, a man, an army, the universe; which, though complicated of
various simple ideas, or complex ideas made up of simple ones, yet are,
when the mind pleases, considered each by itself, as one entire thing,
signified by one name.
2. Made voluntarily.
In this faculty of repeating and joining together its ideas, the mind
has great power in varying and multiplying the objects of its thoughts,
infinitely beyond what sensation or reflection furnished it with: but
all this still confined to those simple ideas which it received from
those two sources, and which are the ultimate materials of all its
compositions. For simple ideas are all from things themselves, and of
these the mind CAN have no more, nor other than what are suggested to
it. It can have no other ideas of sensible qualities than what come
from without [*dropped word] the senses; nor any ideas of other kind of
operations of a thinking substance, than what it finds in itself. But
when it has once got these simple ideas, it is not confined barely to
observation, and what offers itself from without; it can, by its own
power, put together those ideas it has, and make new complex ones,
which it never received so united.
3. Complex ideas are either of Modes, Substances, or Relations.
COMPLEX IDEAS, however compounded and decompounded, though their number
be infinite, and the variety endless, wherewith they fill and entertain
the thoughts of men; yet I think they may be all reduced under these
three heads:—1. MODES. 2. SUBSTANCES. 3. RELATIONS.
4. Ideas of Modes.
First, MODES I call such complex ideas which, however compounded,
contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but
are considered as dependences on, or affections of substances;—such as
are the ideas signified by the words triangle, gratitude, murder, &c.
And if in this I use the word mode in somewhat a different sense from
its ordinary signification, I beg pardon; it being unavoidable in
discourses, differing from the ordinary received notions, either to
make new words, or to use old words in somewhat a new signification;
the later whereof, in our present case, is perhaps the more tolerable
of the two.
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