An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~150,000 words · 704 passages
Cite this work
- APAJohn Locke. (n.d.). An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/john-locke/an-essay-concerning-humane-understanding-volume-1
- MLAJohn Locke. An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/john-locke/an-essay-concerning-humane-understanding-volume-1.
- ChicagoJohn Locke. An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/john-locke/an-essay-concerning-humane-understanding-volume-1.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The first volume of Locke's Essay: Books I and II, against innate ideas and on the origin of all ideas in experience.
Context and history
Published in 1689 with the date 1690, and rewritten across five editions up to Locke's death. The catalogue holds it in two volumes: the first contains Books I and II — the refutation of innate ideas and the building up of all ideas out of sensation and reflection — and the second Books III and IV, on language and on the limits of what we can know. The spelling 'Humane' in the title is not an error: it is the orthography of the day. The whole English philosophical vocabulary comes out of this book, including primary and secondary qualities and the first modern discussion of personal identity; both Berkeley and Hume begin by arguing with it.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
greatest part of the questions and controversies that perplex mankind depending on the doubtful and uncertain use of words, or (which is the same) indetermined ideas, which they are made to stand for. I have made choice of these terms to signify, (1) Some immediate object of the mind, which it perceives and has before it, distinct from the sound it uses as a sign of it. (2) That this idea, thus determined, i.e. which the mind has in itself, and knows, and sees there, be determined without any change to that name, and that name determined to that precise idea. If men had such determined ideas in their inquiries and discourses, they would both discern how far their own inquiries and discourses went, and avoid the greatest part of the disputes and wranglings they have with others. Besides this, the bookseller will think it necessary I should advertise the reader that there is an addition of two chapters wholly new; the one of the Association of Ideas, the other of Enthusiasm. These, with some other larger additions never before printed, he has engaged to print by themselves, after the same manner, and for the same purpose, as was done when this Essay had the second impression. In the Sixth Edition there is very little added or altered. The greatest part of what is new is contained in the twenty-first chapter of the second book, which any one, if he thinks it worth while, may, with a very little labour, transcribe into the margin of the former edition. ESSAY CONCERNING HUMANE UNDERSTANDING. BOOK I NEITHER PRINCIPLES NOR IDEAS ARE INNATE CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. 1. An Inquiry into the Understanding pleasant and useful. Since it is the UNDERSTANDING that sets man above the rest of sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has over them; it is certainly a subject, even for its nobleness, worth our labour to inquire into.…