An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 3 and 4
John Locke · en
This at first will show us how disproportionate our knowledge is to
the whole extent even of material beings; to which if we add the
consideration of that infinite number of spirits that may be, and
probably are, which are yet more remote from our knowledge, whereof we
have no cognizance, nor can frame to ourselves any distinct ideas of
their several ranks and sorts, we shall find this cause of ignorance
conceal from us, in an impenetrable obscurity, almost the whole
intellectual world; a greater certainly, and more beautiful world than
the material. For, bating some very few, and those, if I may so call
them, superficial ideas of spirit, which by reflection we get of our
own, and from thence the best we can collect of the Father of all
spirits, the eternal independent Author of them, and us, and all things,
we have no certain information, so much as of the existence of other
spirits, but by revelation. Angels of all sorts are naturally beyond our
discovery; and all those intelligences, whereof it is likely there are
more orders than of corporeal substances, are things whereof our natural
faculties give us no certain account at all. That there are minds and
thinking beings in other men as well as himself, every man has a reason,
from their words and actions, to be satisfied: and the knowledge of his
own mind cannot suffer a man that considers, to be ignorant that there
is a God. But that there are degrees of spiritual beings between us and
the great God, who is there, that, by his own search and ability, can
come to know? Much less have we distinct ideas of their different
natures, conditions, states, powers, and several constitutions wherein
they agree or differ from one another and from us. And, therefore, in
what concerns their different species and properties we are in absolute
ignorance.
28. Secondly, Another cause, Want of a discoverable Connexion between
Ideas we have.