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University of Virginia Library

An essay concerning human understanding

To The Right Honourable Lord Thomas,

Epistle to the Reader

Introduction An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

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1.

Book I Neither Principles Nor Ideas Are Innate

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1.

Chapter I No Innate Speculative Principles.

The way shown how we come by any Knowledge, sufficient to prove it not innate

2. General assent the great argument.

3. Universal consent proves nothing innate.

4. "What is, is," and "It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be," not universally assented to.

5. Not on the mind naturally imprinted, because not known to children, idiots, etc.

6. That men know them when they come to the use of reason, answered.

8. If reason discovered them, that would not prove them innate.

9. It is false that reason discovers them.

10. No use made of reasoning in the discovery of these two maxims.

11. And if there were, this would prove them not innate.

12. The coming to the use of reason not the time we come to know these maxims.

13. By this they are not distinguished from other knowable truths.

14. If coming to the use of reason were the time of their discovery it would not prove them innate.

15. The steps by which the mind attains several truths.

16. Assent to supposed innate truths depends on having clear and distinct ideas of what their terms mean, and not on their innateness.

17. Assenting as soon as proposed and understood, proves them not innate.

18. If such an assent be a mark of innate, then "that one and two are equal to three, that sweetness is not bitterness," and a thousand the like, must be innate.

19. Such less general propositions known before these universal maxims.

20. "One and one equal to Two, etc., not general nor useful," answered.

21. These maxims not being known sometimes till proposed, proves them not innate.

22. Implicitly known before proposing, signifies that the mind is capable of understanding them, or else signifies nothing.

23. The argument of assenting on first hearing, is upon a false supposition of no precedent teaching.

24. Not innate, because not universally assented to.

25. These maxims not the first known.

26. And so not innate.

27. Not innate, because they appear least where what is innate shows itself clearest.

28. Recapitulation.

2.

Chapter II No Innate Practical Principles

3.

Chapter III Other considerations concerning Innate Principles, both Speculative and Practical

2.

Book II Of Ideas

3.

Book III Of Words

4.

Book IV Of Knowledge and Probability

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12. Idiots and madmen.

How far idiots are concerned in the want or weakness of any, or all of the foregoing faculties, an exact observation of their several ways of faultering would no doubt discover. For those who either perceive but dully, or retain the ideas that come into their minds but ill, who cannot readily excite or compound them, will have little matter to think on. Those who cannot distinguish, compare, and abstract, would hardly be able to understand and make use of language, or judge or reason to any tolerable degree; but only a little and imperfectly about things present, and very familiar to their senses. And indeed any of the forementioned faculties, if wanting, or out of order, produce suitable defects in men's understandings and knowledge.