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
Having thus, from what our senses are able to discover in the
operations of bodies on one another, got the notion of cause and
effect, viz. that a cause is that which makes any other thing, either
simple idea, substance, or mode, begin to be; and an effect is that
which had its beginning from some other thing; the mind finds no great
difficulty to distinguish the several originals of things into two
sorts:—
First, When the thing is wholly made new, so that no part thereof did
ever exist before; as when a new particle of matter doth begin to
exist, IN RERUM NATURA, which had before no being, and this we call
CREATION.
Secondly, When a thing is made up of particles, which did all of them
before exist; but that very thing, so constituted of pre-existing
particles, which, considered all together, make up such a collection of
simple ideas, had not any existence before, as this man, this egg,
rose, or cherry, &c. And this, when referred to a substance, produced
in the ordinary course of nature by internal principle, but set on work
by, and received from, some external agent, or cause, and working by
insensible ways which we perceive not, we call GENERATION. When the
cause is extrinsical, and the effect produced by a sensible separation,
or juxta-position of discernible parts, we call it MAKING; and such are
all artificial things. When any simple idea is produced, which was not
in that subject before, we call it ALTERATION. Thus a man is generated,
a picture made; and either of them altered, when any new sensible
quality or simple idea is produced in either of them, which was not
there before: and the things thus made to exist, which were not there
before, are effects; and those things which operated to the existence,
causes. In which, and all other cases, we may observe, that the notion
of cause and effect has its rise from ideas received by sensation or
reflection; and that this relation, how comprehensive soever,
terminates at last in them. For to have the idea of cause and effect,
it suffices to consider any simple idea or substance, as beginning to
exist, by the operation of some other, without knowing the manner of
that operation.
3. Relations of Time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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