An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Front matter

LOCKE'S ESSAYS.

AN ESSAY

CONCERNING

Life of the Author

LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.

JOHN LOCKE, one of the most eminent philosophers, and valuable writers of his age and country, was born at Wrington, in Somersetshire en the 29th August 1632. His father, who had been bred to the law, acted in the capacity of steward, or court-keeper to colonel Alexander Popham, by whose interest, on the breaking out of the civil law, he became a captain in the service of parliament. The subject of this article was sent, at a proper age, to Westminster school, whence he was elected in 1651 to Christ-church college, Oxford. Here he much distinguished himself for his application and proficiency; and having taken the degree of BA. in 1655, and of MA. in 1658, he applied himself to the study of physic. In the year 1664, he accepted of an offer to go abroad, in the capacity of secretary to sir William Swan, appointed envoy from Charles II. to the elector of Brandenburg, and other German princes; but he returned in the course of a year, and resumed his studies with renewed ardour. In 1666 he was introduced to Lord Ashley, afterwards the celebrated political earl of Shaftesbury, to whom he became essentially serviceable in his medical capacity, and who was led to form so high an opinion of his general powers, that he prevailed upon him to take up his residence in his house, and urged him to apply his studies to politics and philosophy. By his acquaintance with this nobleman, Mr Locke was introduced to the duke of Buckingham, the earl of Halifax, and others of the most eminent persons of their day. In 1668, at the request of the earl and countess of Northumberland, he accompanied them in a tour to France; and on his return was employed by lord Ashley, then chancellor of the exchequer, in drawing up the fundamental constitutions of the American state of Carolina. He also inspected the education of that nobleman's son, and was much consulted on the marriage of the latter, the eldest son, by which was the celebrated author of the Characteristics. In 1670 he began to form the plan of his Essay on the Human Understanding; and about the same time was made a fellow of the royal society. In 1672 lord Ashley, having been created earl of Shaftesbury, and raised to the dignity of chancellor, he appointed Mr Locke to the office of secretary of presentations, which, however, he lost the following year, when the earl was obliged to resign the seals. Being still president of the board of trade, that nobleman then made Mr Locke secretary to the same; but the commission being dissolved in 1674, he lost that appointment also. In the following year he graduated as a bachelor of physic, and being apprehensive of a consumption, travelled into France, and resided some time at Montpelier. In 1679 he returned to England, at the request of the earl of Shaftesbury, then again restored to power; and in 1682, when that nobleman was obliged to retire to Holland, he accompanied him in his exile. On the death of his patron in that country, aware how much he was disliked by the predominant arbitrary faction at home, he chose to remain abroad; and was in consequence accused of being the author of certain tracts against the English government; and although these were afterwards discovered to be the work of another person, he was arbitrarily ejected from his studentship of Christ church, by the king's command. Thus assailed, he continued abroad, nobly refusing to accept a pardon, which the celebrated William Penn undertook to procure for him, expressing himself like the chancellor L'Hospital, in similar circumstances, ignorant of the crimes of which he had been declared guilty. In 1685, when Monmouth undertook his ill-concerted enterprize, the English envoy at the Hague demanded the person of Mr Locke, and several others, which demand obliged him to conceal himself for nearly a year; but in 1688 he again appeared in public, and formed a literary society at Amsterdam, in conjunction with Limborch, Le Clerc and others. During the time of his concealment, he also wrote his first "Letter concerning Toleration," which was printed at Gouda, in 1689, under the title of "Epistola de Tolerantia," and was rapidly translated into Dutch, French, and English. At the Revolution, this eminent person returned to England in the fleet which conveyed the princess of Orange, and being deemed a sufferer for the principles on which it was established, he was made a commissioner of appeals, and was soon after gratified by the establishment of toleration by law. In 1690 he published his celebrated "Essay concerning Human Understanding," which was instantly attacked by various writers among the oracles of learning, most of whose names are now forgotten. It was even proposed, at a meeting of the heads of houses of the university of Oxford, to formally censure and discourage it; but nothing was finally resolved upon, but that each master should endeavour to prevent its being read in his college. Neither this, however, nor any other opposition availed; the reputation, both of the work and of the author, increased throughout Europe; and besides being translated into French and Latin, it had reached a fourth English edition, in 1700. In 1690 Mr Locke published his second "Letter on Toleration;" and in the same year appeared his two "Treatises on Government," in opposition to the principles of sir Robert Filmer, and of the whole passive obedient school. He next wrote a pamphlet, entitled, "Some Considerations of the Consequences of lowering the Interest and Value of Money," 1691, 8vo, which was followed by other smaller pieces on the same subject. In 1692 he published a third "Letter on Toleration;" and the following year his "Thoughts concerning Education." In 1695 he was made a commissioner of trade and plantations, and in the same year published his "Reasonableness of Christianity, as delivered in the Scriptures;" which being warmly attacked by Dr Edwards, in his "Socinianism Unmasked," Mr Locke followed with a first and second "Vindication," in which he defended himself with great mastery. The use made by Toland, and other latitudinarian writers, of the premises laid down in the "Essay on the Human Understanding," at length produced an opponent in the celebrated bishop Stillingfleet, who, in his "Defence of the Doctrine of the Trinity," censured some passages in Mr Locke's essay, and a controversy arose, in which the great reading and proficiency in ecclesiastical antiquities of the prelate, necessarily yielded in an argumentative contest to the reasoning powers of the philosopher. With his publications in this controversy, which were distinguished by peculiar mildness and urbanity, Mr Locke retired from the press, and his asthmatic complaint increasing, with the rectitude which distinguished the whole of his conduct, he resigned his post of commissioner of trade and plantations, although king William was very unwilling to receive it, observing, that he could not in conscience hold a situation to which a considerable salary was attached, without performing the duties of it. From this time he lived wholly in retirement, where he applied himself to the study of scripture; while the sufferings incidental to his disorders were materially alleviated by the kind attentions and agreeable conversation of lady Masham, who was the daughter of the learned Dr Cudworth, and for many years his intimate friend. Mr Locke existed nearly two years in a very declining state, and at length expired in a manner correspondent with his great piety, equanimity, and rectitude, on the 28th of October, 1704. He was buried at Oates, where there is a neat monument erected to his memory, with a modest Latin inscription indited by himself. The moral, social, and political character of this eminent and valuable man, is sufficiently illustrated by the foregoing brief account of his life and labours; and the effect of his writings upon the opinions, and even fortunes of mankind, will form the most forcible eulogium on his mental superiority. Of his "Essay on the Human Understanding" it may be said, that no book of the metaphysical class has ever been more generally read; or, looking to its overthrow of the doctrine of innate ideas, none has produced greater consequences. In the opinion of Dr Reed he gave the first example in the English language of writing on abstract subjects with simplicity and perspicuity. No author has more successfully pointed out the danger of ambiguous words, and of having distinct notions on subjects of judgment and reasoning; while his observations on the various powers of the human understanding, on the use and abuse of words, and on the extent and limits of human knowledge, are drawn from an attentive reflection on the operations of his own mind, the only source of genuine knowledge on those subjects. Several topics, no doubt, are introduced into this celebrated production, which do not strictly belong to it, and some of its opinions have been justly controverted. In some instances, too, its author is verbose, and wanting in his characteristic perspicuity; but with all these exceptions, and even amidst the improvements in metaphysical studies, to which this work itself has mainly conduced, it will ever prove a valuable guide in the acquirement of the science of the human mind. His next great work, his "Two Treatises on Government," although necessarily opposed by the theorists of divine right and passive obedience, and by writers of jacobitical tendencies, essentially espouses the principles which, by placing the house of Brunswick on the throne of Great Britain, may be deemed the constitutional doctrine of the country, and as such it has been ably and unanswerably defended. Besides the works already mentioned, Mr Locke left several MSS. behind him, from which his executors, sir Peter King and Mr. Anthony Collins, published in 1706, his paraphrase and notes upon St Paul's Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, Romans, and Ephesians, with an essay prefixed for the understanding of St Paul's Epistles, by a reference to St Paul himself. In 1706 the same parties published, "Posthumous Works of Mr Locke," 8vo, comprising a treatise "On the Conduct of the Understanding;" "An Examination of Malebranche's Opinion of seeing all Things in God," &c.

The Epistle Dedicatory

CONCERNING

HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.

BY

JOHN LOCKE, GENT.

ΤΟ

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THOMAS,

EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY;

Baron Herbert of Cardiff, Lord Ross of Kendal, Par, Fitzhugh, Marmion, St Quintin, and Shurland; Lord President of his Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, and Lord Lieutenant of the County of Wilts, and South Wales.

My Lord,

This Treatise, which is grown up under your lordship's eye, and has ventured into the world by your order, does now, by a natural kind of right, come to your lordship for that protection, which you several years since promised it. It is not that I think any name, how great soever, set at the beginning of a book, will be able to cover the faults that are to be found in it. Things in print must stand and fall by their own worth, or the reader's fancy. But there being nothing more to be desired for truth than a fair, unprejudiced hearing, nobody is more like to procure me that than your lordship, who is allowed to have got so intimate an acquaintance with her, in her more retired recesses. Your lordship is known to have so far advanced your speculations in the most abstract and general knowledge of things beyond the ordinary reach, or common methods, that your allowance and approbation of the design of this treatise will at least preserve it from being condemned without reading; and will prevail to have those parts a little weighed, which might otherwise, perhaps, be thought to deserve no consideration, for being somewhat out of the common road. The imputation of novelty is a terrible charge among those who judge of men's heads, as they do of their perukes, by the fashion; and can allow none to be right, but the received doctrines. Truth scarce ever yet carried it by vote any where at its first appearance: new opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed without any other reason, but because they are not already common. But truth, like gold, is not the less so for being newly brought out of the mine. It is trial and examination must give it price, and not any antique fashion: and though it be not yet current by the public stamp; yet it may, for all that, be as old as nature, and is certainly not the less genuine. Your lordship can give great and convincing instances of this, whenever you please to oblige the public with some of those large and comprehensive discoveries you have made of truths hitherto unknown, unless to some few, from whom your lordship has been pleased not wholly to conceal them. This alone were a sufficient reason, were there no other, why I should dedicate this Essay to your lordship; and its having some little correspondence with some parts of that nobler and vast system of the sciences your lordship has made so new, exact, and instructive a draught of, I think it glory enough, if your lordship permit me to boast, that here and there I have fallen into some thoughts not wholly different from yours. If your lordship think fit, that, by your encouragement, this should appear in the world, I hope it may be a reason some time or other. to lead your lordship farther; and you will allow me to say, that you here give the world an earnest of something, that, if they can bear with this, will be truly worthy their expectation. This, my lord, shows what a present I here make to your lordship; just such as the poor man does to his rich and great neighbour, by whom the basket of flowers or fruit is not ill taken, though he has more plenty of his own growth. and in much greater perfection. Worthless things receive a value, when they are made the offerings of respect, esteem, and gratitude: these you have given me so mighty and peculiar reasons to have, in the highest degree, for your lordship, that if they can add a price to what they go along with, proportionable to their own greatness, I can with confidence brag, I here make your lordship the richest present you ever received. This I am sure, I am under the greatest obligations to seek all occasions to acknowledge a long train of favours I have received from your lordship: favours, though great and important in themselves, yet made much more so by the forwardness, concern, and kindness, and other obliging circumstances, that never failed to accompany them. To all this, you are pleased to add that which gives yet more weight and relish to all the rest: you vouchsafe to continue me in some degrees of your esteem, and allow me a place in your good thoughts; I had almost said friendship. This, my lord, your words and actions so constantly show on all occasions, even to others when I am absent, that it is not vanity in me to mention what every body knows: but it would be want of good manners, not to acknowledge what so many are witnesses of, and every day tell me I am indebted to your lordship for. I wish they could as easily assist my gratitude, as they convince me of the great and growing engagements it has to your lordship. This, I am sure, I should write of the understanding without having any, if I were not extremely sensible of them, and did not lay hold on this opportunity to testify to the world, how much I am obliged to be, and how much I am, My Lord, Your Lordship's most humble And most obedient servant, JOHN LOCKE. Dorset-Court, 24 May, 1689.

Epistle to the Reader

EPISTLE TO THE READER.

Reader,

I here put into thy hands, what has been the diversion of some of my idle and heavy hours: if it has the good luck to prove so of any of thine, and thou hast but half so much pleasure in reading, as I had in writing it, thou wilt as little think thy money, as I do my pains, ill bestowed. Mistake not this for a commendation of my work; nor conclude, because I was pleased with the doing of it, that therefore I am fondly taken with it now it is done. He that hawks at larks and sparrows, has no less sport, though a much less considerable quarry, than he that flies at nobler game: and he is little acquainted with the subject of this treatise, the Understanding, who does not know, that as it is the most elevated faculty of the soul, so it is employed with a greater and more constant delight than any of the other. Its searches after truth are a sort of hawking and hunting, wherein the very pursuit makes a great part of the pleasure. Every step the mind takes in its progress towards knowledge, makes some discovery, which is not only new, but the best too, for the time at least.

For the understanding, like the eye, judging of objects only by its own sight, cannot but be pleased with what it discovers, having less regret for what has escaped it, because it is unknown. Thus he who has raised himself above the alms-basket, and, not content to live lazily on scraps of begged opinions, sets his own thoughts on work, to find and follow truth, will (whatever he lights on) not miss the hunter's satisfaction; every moment of his pursuit will reward his pains with some delight, and he will have reason to think his time not ill spent, even when he cannot much boast of any great acquisition.

This, reader, is the entertainment of those who let loose their own thoughts, and follow them in writing; which thou oughtest not to envy them, since they afford thee an opportunity of the like diversion, if thou wilt make use of thy own thoughts in reading. It is to them, if they are thy own, that I refer myself: but if they are taken upon trust from others, it is no great matter what they are, they not following truth, but some meaner consideration: and it is not worth while to be concerned, what he says or thinks, who says or thinks only as he is directed by another. If thou judgest for thyself, I know thou wilt judge candidly; and then I shall not be harmed or offended, whatever be thy censure. For though it be certain, that there is nothing in this treatise, of the truth whereof I am not fully persuaded; yet I consider myself as liable to mistakes, as I can think thee, and know that this book must stand or fall with thee, not by any opinion I have of it, but thy own. If thou findest little in it new or instructive to thee, thou art not to blame me for it. It was not meant for those that had already mastered this subject, and made a thorough acquaintance with their own understandings; but for my own information. and the satisfaction of a few friends, who acknowledged themselves not to have sufficiently considered it. Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of this Essay, I should tell thee, that five or six friends meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that rose on every side. After we had a while puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts, that we took a wrong course: and that before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with. This I proposed to the company, who all readily assented; and thereupon it was agreed, that this should be our first inquiry. Some hasty and undigested thoughts on a subject I had never before considered, which I set down against our next meeting, gave the first entrance into this discourse; which having been thus begun by chance, was continued by entreaty; written by incoherent parcels; and after long intervals of neglect, resumed again, as my humour or occasions permitted; and at last, in a retirement, where an attendance on my health gave me leisure, it was brought into that order thou now seest it.

This discontinued way of writing may have occasioned, besides others, two contrary faults, viz. that too little and too much may be said in it. If thou findest any thing wanting, I shall be glad, that what I have writ gives thee any desire that I should have gone farther: if it seems too much to thee, thou must blame the subject; for when I put pen to paper, I thought all I should have to say on this matter would have been contained in one sheet of paper; but the farther I went, the larger prospect I had; new discoveries led me still on, and so it grew insensibly to the bulk it now appears in. I will not deny, but possibly it might be reduced to a narrower compass than it is; and that some parts of it might be contracted; the way it has been writ in, by catches, and many long intervals of interruption, being apt to cause some repetitions. But to confess the truth, I am now too lazy, or too busy to make it shorter.

I am not ignorant how little I herein consult my own reputation, when I knowingly let it go with a fault, so apt to disgust the most judicious, who are always the nicest readers. But they who know sloth is apt to content itself with any excuse, will pardon me, if mine has prevailed on me, where, I think, I have a very good one. I will not therefore allege in my defence, that the same notion, having different respects, may be convenient or necessary to prove or illustrate several parts of the same discourse; and that so it has happened in many parts of this: but waiving that, I shall frankly avow, that I have sometimes dwelt long upon the same argument, and expressed it different ways, with a quite different design. I pretend not to publish this Essay for the information of men of large thoughts, and quick apprehensions; to such masters of knowledge I profess myself a scholar, and therefore warn them beforehand not to expect any thing here, but what, being spun out of my own coarse thoughts, is fitted to men of my own size; to whom, perhaps, it will not be unacceptable, that I have taken some pains to make plain and familiar to their thoughts some truths, which established prejudice, or the abstractedness of the ideas themselves, might render difficult. Some objects had need be turned on every side; and when the notion is new, as I confess some of these are to me, or out of the ordinary road, as I suspect they will appear to others; it is not one simple view of it, that will gain it admittance into every understanding, or fix it there with a clear and lasting impression. There are few, I believe, who have not observed in themselves or others, that what in one way of proposing was very obscure, another way of expressing it has made very clear and intelligible: though afterward the mind found little difference in the phrases, and wondered why one failed to be understood more than the other. But every thing does not hit alike upon every man's imagination. We have our understandings no less different than our palates; and he that thinks the same truth shall be equally relished by every one in the same dress, may as well hope to feast every one with the same sort of cookery: the meat may be the same, and the nourishment good, yet every one not be able to receive it with that seasoning; and it must be dressed another way, if you will have it go down with some even of strong constitutions. The truth is, those who advised me to publish it, advised me, for this reason, to publish it as it is: and since I have been brought to let it go abroad, I desire it should be understood by whoever gives himself the pains to read it; I have so little affection to be in print, that if I were not flattered this Essay might be of some use to others, as I think it has been to me, I should have confined it to the view of some friends, who gave the first occasion to it. My appearing therefore in print, being on purpose to be as useful as I may, I think it necessary to make what I have to say as easy and intelligible to all sorts of readers as I can. And I had much rather the speculative and quick-sighted should complain of my being in some parts tedious, than that any one, not accustomed to abstract speculations, or prepossessed with different notions, should mistake, or not comprehend my meaning.

It will possibly be censured as a great piece of vanity or insolence in me, to pretend to instruct this our knowing age; it amounting to little less, when I own, that I publish this Essay with hopes it may be useful to others. But if it may be permitted to speak freely of those, who with a feigned modesty condemn as useless, what they themselves write, methinks it savours much more of vanity or insolence, to publish a book for any other end; and he fails very much of that respect he owes the public, who prints, and consequently expects men should read that, wherein he intends not that they should meet with any thing of use to themselves or others: and should nothing else be found allowable in this treatise, yet my design will not cease to be so; and the goodness of my intention ought to be some excuse for the worthlessness of my present. It is that chiefly which secures me from the fear of censure, which I expect not to escape more than better writers. Men's principles, notions, and relishes are so different, that it is hard to find a book which pleases or displeases all men. I acknowledge the age we live in is not the least knowing, and therefore not the most easy to be satisfied. If I have not the good luck to please, yet nobody ought to be offended with me. I plainly tell all my readers, except half a dozen, this treatise was not at first intended for them; and therefore they need not be at the trouble to be of that number. But yet if any one thinks fit to be angry, and rail at it, he may do it securely: for I shall find some better way of spending my time than in such kind of conversation. I shal! always have the satisfaction to have aimed sincerely at truth and usefulness, though in one of the meanest ways. 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, with some others of that strain, it is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge; which certainly had been very much more advanced in the world, if the endeavours of ingenious and industrious men had not been much cumbered with the learned but frivolous use of uncouth, affected, or unintelligible terms, introduced into the sciences, and there made an art of, to that degree, that philosophy, which is nothing but the true knowledge of things, was thought unfit, or incapable to be brought into well-bred company, and polite conversation. Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard and misapplied words, with little or no meaning, have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning, and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak, or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance, and hinderance of true knowledge. To break in upon the sanctuary of vanity and ignorance, will be, I suppose, some service to human understanding; though so few are apt to think they deceive or are deceived in the use of words, or that the language of the sect they are of has any faults in it, which ought to be examined or corrected; that I hope I shall be pardoned, if I have in the third book dwelt long on this subject, and endeavoured to make it so plain, that neither the inveterateness of the mischief, nor the prevalence of the fashion, shall be any excuse for those who will not take care about the meaning of their own words, and will not suffer the significancy of their expressions to be inquired into.

I have been told that a short epitome of this treatise, which was printed 1688, was by some condemned without reading, because innate ideas were denied in it; they too hastily concluding, that if innate ideas were not supposed, there would be little left either of the notion or proof of spirits. If any one take the like offence at the entrance of this treatise, I shall desire him to read it through; and then I hope he will be convinced, that the taking away false foundations, is not to the prejudice, but advantage of truth; which is never injured or endangered so much, as when mixed with, or built on, falsehood. In the second edition, I added as followeth: