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
It is true, the idea of extension joins itself so inseparably with all
visible, and most tangible qualities, that it suffers us to SEE no one,
or FEEL very few external objects, without taking in impressions of
extension too. This readiness of extension to make itself be taken
notice of so constantly with other ideas, has been the occasion, I
guess, that some have made the whole essence of body to consist in
extension; which is not much to be wondered at, since some have had
their minds, by their eyes and touch, (the busiest of all our senses,)
so filled with the idea of extension, and, as it were, wholly possessed
with it, that they allowed no existence to anything that had not
extension. I shall not now argue with those men, who take the measure
and possibility of all being only from their narrow and gross
imaginations: but having here to do only with those who conclude the
essence of body to be extension, because they say they cannot imagine
any sensible quality of any body without extension,—I shall desire them
to consider, that, had they reflected on their ideas of tastes and
smells as much as on those of sight and touch; nay, had they examined
their ideas of hunger and thirst, and several other pains, they would
have found that THEY included in them no idea of extension at all,
which is but an affection of body, as well as the rest, discoverable by
our senses, which are scarce acute enough to look into the pure
essences of things.
26. Essences of Things.
If those ideas which are constantly joined to all others, must
therefore be concluded to be the essence of those things which have
constantly those ideas joined to them, and are inseparable from them;
then unity is without doubt the essence of everything. For there is not
any object of sensation or reflection which does not carry with it the
idea of one: but the weakness of this kind of argument we have already
shown sufficiently.
27. Ideas of Space and Solidity distinct.
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