1. Idea is the object of thinking.
Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks; and that which his mind is
applied about whilst thinking being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt that men have in their minds several
ideas,--such as are those expressed by the words whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man,
elephant, army, drunkenness, and others: it is in the first place then to be inquired, How he comes by them?
I know it is a received doctrine, that men have native ideas, and original characters, stamped upon their minds in
their very first being. This opinion I have at large examined already; and, I suppose what I have said in the
foregoing Book will be much more easily admitted, when I have shown whence the understanding may get all the
ideas it has; and by what ways and degrees they may come into the mind;--for which I shall appeal to every one's
own observation and experience.
