An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 3 and 4Locke, John
Philosophy
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 3 and 4
Locke, John
Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800
Let us suppose Adam, in the state of a grown man, with a good
understanding, but in a strange country, with all things new and unknown
about him; and no other faculties to attain the knowledge of them but
what one of this age has now. He observes Lamech more melancholy than
usual, and imagines it to be from a suspicion he has of his wife Adah,
(whom he most ardently loved) that she had too much kindness for another
man. Adam discourses these his thoughts to Eve, and desires her to take
care that Adah commit not folly: and in these discourses with Eve he
makes use of these two new words KINNEAH and NIOUPH. In time, Adam's
mistake appears, for he finds Lamech's trouble proceeded from having
killed a man: but yet the two names KINNEAH and NIOUPH, (the one
standing for suspicion in a husband of his wife's disloyalty to him; and
the other for the act of committing disloyalty,) lost not their distinct
significations. It is plain then, that here were two distinct complex
ideas of mixed modes, with names to them, two distinct species of
actions essentially different; I ask wherein consisted the essences of
these two distinct species of actions? And it is plain it consisted in a
precise combination of simple ideas, different in one from the other. I
ask, whether the complex idea in Adam's mind, which he called KINNEAH,
were adequate or not? And it is plain it was; for it being a combination
of simple ideas, which he, without any regard to any archetype, without
respect to anything as a pattern, voluntarily put together, abstracted,
and gave the name KINNEAH to, to express in short to others, by that one
sound, all the simple ideas contained and united in that complex one;
it must necessarily follow that it was an adequate idea. His own choice
having made that combination, it had all in it he intended it should,
and so could not but be perfect, could not but be adequate; it being
referred to no other archetype which it was supposed to represent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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