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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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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
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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
  
1. Ideas of proportional relations.
  
2. Natural relation.
  
3. Ideas of instituted or voluntary relations.
  
4. Ideas of moral relations.
  
5. Moral good and evil.
  
6. Moral rules.
  
7. Laws.
  
8. Divine law the measure of sin and duty.
  
9. Civil law the measure of crimes and innocence.
  
10. Philosophical law the measure of virtue and vice.
  
11. The measure that men commonly apply to determine what they call virtue and vice.
  
12. Its enforcement is commendation and discredit.
  
13. These three laws the rules of moral good and evil.
  
14. Morality is the relation of voluntary actions to these rules.
  
15. Moral actions may be regarded either absolutely, or as ideas of relation.
  
16. The denominations of actions often mislead us.
  
17. Relations innumerable, and only the most considerable here mentioned.
  
18. All relations terminate in simple ideas.
  
19. We have ordinarily as clear a notion of the relation, as of the simple ideas in things on which it is founded.
  
20. The notion of relation is the same, whether the rule any action is compared to be true or false.
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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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17. Relations innumerable, and only the most considerable here mentioned.

And thus much for the relation of human actions to a law, which, therefore, I call moral relations.

It would make a volume to go over all sorts of relations: it is not, therefore, to be expected that I should here mention them all. It suffices to our present purpose to show by these, what the ideas are we have of this comprehensive consideration called relation. Which is so various, and the occasions of it so many, (as many as there can be of comparing things one to another,) that it is not very easy to reduce it to rules, or under just heads. Those I have mentioned, I think, are some of the most considerable; and such as may serve to let us see from whence we get our ideas of relations, and wherein they are founded. But before I quit this argument, from what has been said give me leave to observe:

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