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An essay concerning human understanding

  
[frontispiece]
  
[title page]
  
To The Right Honourable Lord Thomas,
  
Epistle to the Reader

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Introduction An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
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Book I Neither Principles Nor Ideas Are Innate
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Book II Of Ideas
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Chapter I Of Ideas in general, and their Original
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Chapter II Of Simple Ideas
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Chapter III Of Simple Ideas of Sense
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Chapter IV Idea of Solidity
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Chapter V Of Simple Ideas of Divers Senses
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Chapter VI Of Simple Ideas of Reflection
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Chapter VII Of Simple Ideas of both Sensation and Reflection
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Chapter VIII Some further considerations concerning our Simple Ideas of Sensation
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Chapter IX Of Perception
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Chapter X Of Retention
  
1. Contemplation.
  
2. Memory.
  
3. Attention, repetition, pleasure and pain, fix ideas.
  
4. Ideas fade in the memory.
  
5. Causes of oblivion.
  
6. Constantly repeated ideas can scarce be lost.
  
7. In remembering, the mind is often active.
  
8. Two defects in the memory, oblivion and slowness.
  
9. A defect which belongs to the memory of man, as finite.
  
10. Brutes have memory.
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Chapter XI Of Discerning, and other operations of the Mind
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Chapter XII Of Complex Ideas
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Chapter XIII Complex Ideas of Simple Modes:--and First, of the Simple Modes of the Idea of Space
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Chapter XIV Idea of Duration and its Simple Modes
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Chapter XV Ideas of Duration and Expansion, considered together
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Chapter XVI Idea of Number
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Chapter XVII Of Infinity
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Chapter XVIII Other Simple Modes
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Chapter XIX Of the Modes of Thinking
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Chapter XX Of Modes of Pleasure and Pain
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Chapter XXI Of Power
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Chapter XXII Of Mixed Modes
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Chapter XXIII Of our Complex Ideas of Substances
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Chapter XXIV Of Collective Ideas of Substances
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Chapter XXV Of Relation
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Chapter XXVI Of Cause and Effect, and other Relations
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Chapter XXVII Of Identity and Diversity
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Chapter XXVIII Of Other Relations
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Chapter XXIX Of Clear and Obscure, Distinct and Confused Ideas
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Chapter XXX Of Real and Fantastical Ideas
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Chapter XXXI Of Adequate and Inadequate Ideas
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Chapter XXXII Of True and False Ideas
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Chapter XXXIII Of the Association of Ideas
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Book III Of Words
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Book IV Of Knowledge and Probability

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1. Contemplation.

The next faculty of the mind, whereby it makes a further progress towards knowledge, is that which I call retention; or the keeping of those simple ideas which from sensation or reflection it hath received. This is done two ways.

First, by keeping the idea which is brought into it, for some time actually in view, which is called contemplation.

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