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
Things then are good or evil, only in reference to pleasure or pain.
That we call GOOD, which is apt to cause or increase pleasure, or
diminish pain in us; or else to procure or preserve us the possession
of any other good or absence of any evil. And, on the contrary, we name
that EVIL which is apt to produce or increase any pain, or diminish any
pleasure in us: or else to procure us any evil, or deprive us of any
good. By pleasure and pain, I must be understood to mean of body or
mind, as they are commonly distinguished; though in truth they be only
different constitutions of the MIND, sometimes occasioned by disorder
in the body, sometimes by thoughts of the mind.
3. Our passions moved by Good and Evil.
Pleasure and pain and that which causes them,—good and evil, are the
hinges on which our passions turn. And if we reflect on ourselves, and
observe how these, under various considerations, operate in us; what
modifications or tempers of mind, what internal sensations (if I may so
call them) they produce in us we may thence form to ourselves the ideas
of our passions.
4. Love.
Thus any one reflecting upon the thought he has of the delight which
any present or absent thing is apt to produce in him, has the idea we
call LOVE. For when a man declares in autumn when he is eating them, or
in spring when there are none, that he loves grapes, it is no more but
that the taste of grapes delights him: let an alteration of health or
constitution destroy the delight of their taste, and he then can be
said to love grapes no longer.
5. Hatred.
On the contrary, the thought of the pain which anything present or
absent is apt to produce in us, is what we call HATRED. Were it my
business here to inquire any further than into the bare ideas of our
passions, as they depend on different modifications of pleasure and
pain, I should remark that our love and hatred of inanimate insensible
beings is commonly founded on that pleasure and pain which we receive
from their use and application any way to our senses though with their
destruction. But hatred or love, to beings capable of happiness or
misery, is often the uneasiness of delight which we find in ourselves,
arising from their very being or happiness. Thus the being and welfare
of a man’s children or friends, producing constant delight in him, he
is said constantly to love them. But it suffices to note, that our
ideas of love and hatred are but the dispositions of the mind, in
respect of pleasure and pain in general, however caused in us.
6. Desire.
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