Locke

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Harper, 1901 - Authors, English - 200 pages
 

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Page 112 - Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: How comes it to be furnished ? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety ? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge ? To this I answer, in one word, From experience. In that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself.
Page 113 - First, Our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways wherein those objects do affect them: and thus we come by those ideas we have, of Yellow, White, Heat, Cold, Soft, Hard, Bitter, Sweet, and all those which we call sensible qualities; which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they from external objects convey into the mind what produces there those perceptions.
Page 105 - Believe it, my good friend, to love truth, for truth's sake, is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues ; and, if I mistake not, you have as much of it as ever I met with in any body.
Page 113 - This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense...
Page 112 - Our observation employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have do spring.
Page 57 - The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs in advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity : but every one must not hope to be a Boyle, or a Sydenham : and in an age that produces such masters, as the great Huygenius, and the incomparable Mr Newton...
Page 140 - ... as if when men quitting the state of nature entered into society, they agreed that all of them but one should be under the restraint of laws, but that he should still retain all the liberty of the state of nature, increased with power, and made licentious by impunity. This is to think, that men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by pole' cats, or foxes; but are content, nay think it safety, to be devoured by lions.
Page 108 - This therefore being my purpose, to inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent...
Page 115 - But it is not in the power of the most exalted wit, or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways before mentioned: nor can any force of the understanding destroy those that are there.
Page 113 - The term operations here I use in a large sense, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about its ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from them, such as is the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought." " The Understanding seems to me not to have the least glimmering of any ideas which it doth not receive from one of these two.

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