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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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20. The most doubtful are the names of very compounded mixed modes and substances.

Mixed modes, therefore, that are made up but of a few and obvious simple ideas, have usually names of no very uncertain signification. But the names of mixed modes which comprehend a great number of simple ideas, are commonly of a very doubtful and undetermined meaning, as has been shown. The names of substances, being annexed to ideas that are neither the real essences, nor exact representations of the patterns they are referred to, are liable to yet greater imperfection and uncertainty, especially when we come to a philosophical use of them.