"First, Our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do
convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according
to those various ways, wherein those objects do affect them: and thus
we come by those ideas we have of Yellow, White, Heat, Cold, Soft,
Hard, Bitter, Sweet, and all those, which we call sensible qualities;
which, when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they, from
external objects, convey into the mind what produces there those
perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending
wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I
call _sensation_."
"Secondly, The other fountain, from which experience furnisheth the
understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our
own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got;
which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on, and consider, do
furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not
be had from things without; and such are Perception, Thinking,
Doubting, Believing, Reasoning, Knowing, Willing, and all the
different actings of our own minds; which we being conscious of, and
observing in ourselves, do, from these, receive into our
understandings as distinct ideas, as we do from bodies affecting our
senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and
though it be not sense as having nothing to do with external objects,
yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal
sense. But, as I call the other sensation, so I call this
_reflection_; the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets,
by reflecting on its own operations within itself."[3]
[3] Locke, _Essay_, ii, 1, §§ 2-4.