8. What idea stand for.
Thus much I thought necessary to say concerning the
occasion of this Inquiry into human understanding. But,
before I proceed on to what I have thought on this subject,
I must here in the entrance beg pardon of my reader
for the frequent use of the word idea, which he will find in
the following treatise. It being that term which, I think,
serves best to stand for whatsoever is the object of the
understanding when a man thinks, I have used it to express
whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or
whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking; and
I could not avoid frequently using it. I presume it will be easily granted me, that there are such ideas in men's minds: every one is conscious of them in
himself; and men's words and actions will satisfy him that
they are in others.
Our first inquiry then shall be, how they come into the
mind.
