University of Virginia Library

Search this document 
An essay concerning human understanding

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

expand section 
Introduction An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
expand section1. 
Book I Neither Principles Nor Ideas Are Innate
expand section2. 
Book II Of Ideas
collapse section3. 
Book III Of Words
expand section1. 
Chapter I Of Words or Language in General
expand section2. 
Chapter II Of the Signification of Words
expand section3. 
Chapter III Of General Terms
collapse section4. 
Chapter IV Of the Names of Simple Ideas
  
1. Names of simple ideas, modes, and substances, have each something peculiar.
  
2. Names of simple ideas, and of substances intimate real existence.
  
3. Names of simple ideas and modes signify always both real and nominal essences.
  
4. Names of simple ideas are undefinable.
  
5. If all names were definable, it would be a process in infinitum.
  
6. What a definition is.
  
7. Simple ideas, why undefinable.
  
8. Instances: scholastic definitions of motion.
  
9. Modern definitions of motion.
  
10. Definitions of light.
  
11. Simple ideas, why undefinable, further explained.
  
12. The contrary shown in complex ideas, by instances of a statue and rainbow.
  
13. Colours indefinable to the born-blind.
  
14. Complex ideas definable only when the simple ideas of which they consist have been got from experience.
  
15. Names of simple ideas of less doubtful meaning than those of mixed modes and substances.
  
16. Simple ideas have few ascents in linea praedicamentali.
  
17. Names of simple ideas not arbitrary, but perfectly taken from the existence of things.
expand section5. 
Chapter V Of the Names of Mixed Modes and Relations
expand section6. 
Chapter VI Of the Names of Substances
expand section7. 
Chapter VII Of Particles
expand section8. 
Chapter VIII Of Abstract and Concrete Terms
expand section9. 
Chapter IX Of the Imperfection of Words
expand section10. 
Chapter X Of the Abuse of Words
expand section11. 
Chapter XI Of the Remedies of the Foregoing Imperfections and Abuses of Words
expand section4. 
Book IV Of Knowledge and Probability

collapse section Collapse All | Expand All expand section
previous sectionChapter IV Of the Names of Simple Ideas An essay concerning human understanding
next section

1. Names of simple ideas, modes, and substances, have each something peculiar.

Though all words, as I have shown, signify nothing immediately but the ideas in the mind of the speaker; yet, upon a nearer survey, we shall find the names of simple ideas, mixed modes (under which I comprise relations too), and natural substances, have each of them something peculiar and different from the other. For example:

previous sectionChapter IV Of the Names of Simple Ideas An essay concerning human understanding
next section