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
The infinite wise Author of our being, having given us the power over
several parts of our bodies, to move or keep them at rest as we think
fit; and also, by the motion of them, to move ourselves and other
contiguous bodies, in which consist all the actions of our body: having
also given a power to our minds, in several instances, to choose,
amongst its ideas, which it will think on, and to pursue the inquiry of
this or that subject with consideration and attention, to excite us to
these actions of thinking and motion that we are capable of,—has been
pleased to join to several thoughts, and several sensations a
perception of delight. If this were wholly separated from all our
outward sensations, and inward thoughts, we should have no reason to
prefer one thought or action to another; negligence to attention, or
motion to rest. And so we should neither stir our bodies, nor employ
our minds, but let our thoughts (if I may so call it) run adrift,
without any direction or design, and suffer the ideas of our minds,
like unregarded shadows, to make their appearances there, as it
happened, without attending to them. In which state man, however
furnished with the faculties of understanding and will, would be a very
idle, inactive creature, and pass his time only in a lazy, lethargic
dream. It has therefore pleased our wise Creator to annex to several
objects, and the ideas which we receive from them, as also to several
of our thoughts, a concomitant pleasure, and that in several objects,
to several degrees, that those faculties which he had endowed us with
might not remain wholly idle and unemployed by us.
4. An end and use of pain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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