5. All our ideas are of the one or the other of these.
The understanding seems to me not to have the least
glimmering of any ideas which it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish the mind with
the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us; and the mind furnishes
the understanding with ideas of its own operations.
These, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several modes, combinations, and relations, we shall
find to contain all our whole stock of ideas; and that we have nothing in our minds which did not come in one of
these two ways. Let any one examine his own thoughts, and thoroughly search into his understanding; and then let
him tell me, whether all the original ideas he has there, are any other than of the objects of his senses, or of the
operations of his mind, considered as objects of his reflection. And how great a mass of knowledge soever he
imagines to be lodged there, he will, upon taking a strict view, see that he has not any idea in his mind but what
one of these two have imprinted;--though perhaps, with infinite variety compounded and enlarged by the
understanding, as we shall see hereafter.