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
Besides the complex ideas we have of material sensible substances, of
which I have last spoken,—by the simple ideas we have taken from those
operations of our own minds, which we experiment daily in ourselves, as
thinking, understanding, willing, knowing, and power of beginning
motion, &c., co-existing in some substance, we are able to frame the
COMPLEX IDEA OF AN IMMATERIAL SPIRIT. And thus, by putting together the
ideas of thinking, perceiving, liberty, and power of moving themselves
and other things, we have as clear a perception and notion of
immaterial substances as we have of material. For putting together the
ideas of thinking and willing, or the power of moving or quieting
corporeal motion, joined to substance, of which we have no distinct
idea, we have the idea of an immaterial spirit; and by putting together
the ideas of coherent solid parts, and a power of being moved joined
with substance, of which likewise we have no positive idea, we have the
idea of matter. The one is as clear and distinct an idea as the other:
the idea of thinking, and moving a body, being as clear and distinct
ideas as the ideas of extension, solidity, and being moved. For our
idea of substance is equally obscure, or none at all, in both: it is
but a supposed I know not what, to support those ideas we call
accidents. It is for want of reflection that we are apt to think that
our senses show us nothing but material things. Every act of sensation,
when duly considered, gives us an equal view of both parts of nature,
the corporeal and spiritual. For whilst I know, by seeing or hearing,
&c., that there is some corporeal being without me, the object of that
sensation, I do more certainly know, that there is some spiritual being
within me that sees and hears. This, I must be convinced, cannot be the
action of bare insensible matter; nor ever could be, without an
immaterial thinking being.
16. No Idea of abstract Substance either in Body or Spirit.
By the complex idea of extended, figured, coloured, and all other
sensible qualities, which is all that we know of it, we are as far from
the idea of the substance of body, as if we knew nothing at all: nor
after all the acquaintance and familiarity which we imagine we have
with matter, and the many qualities men assure themselves they perceive
and know in bodies, will it perhaps upon examination be found, that
they have any more or clearer primary ideas belonging to body, than
they have belonging to immaterial spirit.
17. Cohesion of solid parts and Impulse, the primary ideas peculiar to
Body.
The primary ideas we have PECULIAR TO BODY, as contradistinguished to
spirit, are the COHESION OF SOLID, AND CONSEQUENTLY SEPARABLE, PARTS,
and a POWER OF COMMUNICATING MOTION BY IMPULSE. These, I think, are the
original ideas proper and peculiar to body; for figure is but the
consequence of finite extension.
18. Thinking and Motivity
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