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An essay concerning human understanding

  
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[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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Book III Of Words
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Book IV Of Knowledge and Probability
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Chapter I Of Knowledge in General
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Chapter II Of the Degrees of our Knowledge
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Chapter III Of the Extent of Human Knowledge
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Chapter IV Of the Reality of Knowledge
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Chapter V Of Truth in General
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Chapter VI Of Universal Propositions: their Truth and Certainty
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Chapter VII Of Maxims
  
1. Maxims or axioms are self-evident propositions.
  
2. Wherein that self-evidence consists.
  
3. Self-evidence not peculiar to received axioms.
  
4. As to identity and diversity, all propositions are equally self-evident.
  
5. In co-existence we have few self-evident propositions.
  
6. In other relations we may have many.
  
7. Concerning real existence, we have none.
  
8. These axioms do not much influence our other knowledge.
  
9. Because maxims or axioms are not the truths we first knew.
  
10. Because on perception of them the other parts of our knowledge do not depend.
  
11. What use these general maxims or axioms have.
  
12. Maxims, if care he not taken in the use of words, may prove contradictions.
  
13. Instance in vacuum.
  
14. But they prove not the existence of things without us.
  
15. They cannot add to our knowledge of substances, and their application to complex ideas is dangerous.
  
16. Instance in demonstrations about man, which can only be verbal.
  
17. Another instance.
  
18. A third instance.
  
19. Little use of these maxims in proofs where we have clear and distinct ideas.
  
20. Their use dangerous, where our ideas are not determined.
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Chapter VIII Of Trifling Propositions
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Chapter IX Of our Threefold Knowledge of Existence
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Chapter X Of our Knowledge of the Existence of a God
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Chapter XI Of our Knowledge of the Existence of Other Things
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Chapter XII Of the Improvement of our Knowledge
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Chapter XIII Some Further Considerations Concerning our Knowledge
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Chapter XIV Of Judgment
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Chapter XV Of Probability
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Chapter XVI Of the Degrees of Assent
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Chapter XVII Of Reason
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Chapter XVIII Of Faith and Reason, and their Distinct Provinces
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Chapter XIX Of Enthusiasm
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Chapter XX Of Wrong Assent, or Error
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Chapter XXI Of the Division of the Sciences

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13. Necessity, what.

Wherever thought is wholly wanting, or the power to act or forbear according to the direction of thought, there necessity takes place. This, in an agent capable of volition, when the beginning or continuation of any action is contrary to that preference of his mind, is called compulsion; when the hindering or stopping any action is contrary to his volition, it is called restraint. Agents that have no thought, no volition at all, are in everything necessary agents.

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