An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 3 and 4
John Locke · en
And therefore I am apt to doubt that, how far soever human industry
may advance useful and experimental philosophy in physical things,
SCIENTIFICAL will still be out of our reach: because we want perfect and
adequate ideas of those very bodies which are nearest to us, and most
under our command. Those which we have ranked into classes under names,
and we think ourselves best acquainted with, we have but very imperfect
and incomplete ideas of. Distinct ideas of the several sorts of bodies
that fall under the examination of our senses perhaps we may have: but
adequate ideas, I suspect, we have not of any one amongst them. And
though the former of these will serve us for common use and discourse,
yet whilst we want the latter, we are not capable of scientifical
knowledge; nor shall ever be able to discover general, instructive,
unquestionable truths concerning them. CERTAINTY and DEMONSTRATION are
things we must not, in these matters, pretend to. By the colour, figure,
taste, and smell, and other sensible qualities, we have as clear and
distinct ideas of sage and hemlock, as we have of a circle and a
triangle: but having no ideas of the particular primary qualities of the
minute parts of either of these plants, nor of other bodies which we
would apply them to, we cannot tell what effects they will produce; nor
when we see those effects can we so much as guess, much less know, their
manner of production. Thus, having no ideas of the particular mechanical
affections of the minute parts of bodies that are within our view and
reach, we are ignorant of their constitutions, powers, and operations:
and of bodies more remote we are yet more ignorant, not knowing so much
as their very outward shapes, or the sensible and grosser parts of their
constitutions.
27. Much less a science of unembodied Spirits.