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
Nor let any one think that the questions I have here proposed about the
identity of man are bare empty speculations; which, if they were, would
be enough to show, that there was in the understandings of men no
innate idea of identity. He that shall with a little attention reflect
on the resurrection, and consider that divine justice will bring to
judgment, at the last day, the very same persons, to be happy or
miserable in the other, who did well or ill in this life, will find it
perhaps not easy to resolve with himself, what makes the same man, or
wherein identity consists; and will not be forward to think he, and
every one, even children themselves, have naturally a clear idea of it.
6. Whole and Part not innate ideas.
Let us examine that principle of mathematics, viz. THAT THE WHOLE IS
BIGGER THAN A PART. This, I take it, is reckoned amongst innate
principles. I am sure it has as good a title as any to be thought so;
which yet nobody can think it to be, when he considers the ideas it
comprehends in it, WHOLE and PART, are perfectly relative; but the
positive ideas to which they properly and immediately belong are
extension and number, of which alone whole and part are relations. So
that if whole and part are innate ideas, extension and number must be
so too; it being impossible to have an idea of a relation, without
having any at all of the thing to which it belongs, and in which it is
founded. Now, whether the minds of men have naturally imprinted on them
the ideas of extension and number, I leave to be considered by those
who are the patrons of innate principles.
7. Idea of Worship not innate.
That GOD IS TO BE WORSHIPPED, is, without doubt, as great a truth as
any that can enter into the mind of man, and deserves the first place
amongst all practical principles. But yet it can by no means be thought
innate, unless the ideas of GOD and WORSHIP are innate. That the idea
the term worship stands for is not in the understanding of children,
and a character stamped on the mind in its first original, I think will
be easily granted, by any one that considers how few there be amongst
grown men who have a clear and distinct notion of it. And, I suppose,
there cannot be anything more ridiculous than to say, that children
have this practical principle innate, “That God is to be worshipped,”
and yet that they know not what that worship of God is, which is their
duty. But to pass by this.
8. Idea of God not innate.
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