An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding Vol I Chapter II. - Of Simple Ideas
by John Locke
1. Uncompounded Appearances.
The better to understand the nature, manner, and extent of our
knowledge, one thing is carefully to be observed concerning the ideas we
have; and that is, that some of them, are SIMPLE and some COMPLEX.
Though the qualities that affect our senses are, in the things
themselves, so united and blended, that there is no separation, no
distance between them; yet it is plain, the ideas they produce in the
mind enter by the senses simple; and unmixed. For, though the sight and
touch often take in from the same object, at the same time, different
ideas;--as a man sees at once motion and colour; the hand feels softness
and warmth in the same piece of wax: yet the simple ideas thus united
in the same subject, are as perfectly distinct as those that come in by
different senses. The coldness and hardness which a man feels in a piece
of ice being as distinct ideas in the mind as the smell and whiteness
of a lily; or as the taste of sugar, and smell of a rose. And there is
nothing can be plainer to a man than the clear and distinct perception
he has of those simple ideas; which, being each in itself uncompounded,
contains in it nothing but ONE UNIFORM APPEARANCE, OR CONCEPTION IN THE
MIND, and is not distinguishable into different ideas.
2. The Mind can neither make nor destroy them.
These simple ideas, the materials of all our knowledge, are suggested
and furnished to the mind only by those two ways above mentioned, viz.
sensation and reflection. When the understanding is once stored with
these simple ideas, it has the power to repeat, compare, and unite them,
even to an almost infinite variety, and so can make at pleasure new
complex ideas. 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. The dominion of man, in this little world of his
own understanding being much what the same as it is in the great world
of visible things; wherein his power, however managed by art and skill,
reaches no farther than to compound and divide the materials that are
made to his hand; but can do nothing towards the making the least
particle of new matter, or destroying one atom of what is already in
being. The same inability will every one find in himself, who shall go
about to fashion in his understanding one simple idea, not received
in by his senses from external objects, or by reflection from the
operations of his own mind about them. I would have any one try to fancy
any taste which had never affected his palate; or frame the idea of a
scent he had never smelt: and when he can do this, I will also conclude
that a blind man hath ideas of colours, and a deaf man true distinct
notions of sounds.
3. Only the qualities that affect the senses are imaginable.
This is the reason why--though we cannot believe it impossible to God
to make a creature with other organs, and more ways to convey into the
understanding the notice of corporeal things than those five, as they
are usually counted, which he has given to man--yet I think it is not
possible for any MAN to imagine any other qualities in bodies, howsoever
constituted, whereby they can be taken notice of, besides sounds,
tastes, smells, visible and tangible qualities. And had mankind been
made but with four senses, the qualities then which are the objects
of the fifth sense had been as far from our notice, imagination, and
conception, as now any belonging to a sixth, seventh, or eighth sense
can possibly be;--which, whether yet some other creatures, in some other
parts of this vast and stupendous universe, may not have, will be a
great presumption to deny. He that will not set himself proudly at the
top of all things, but will consider the immensity of this fabric, and
the great variety that is to be found in this little and inconsiderable
part of it which he has to do with, may be apt to think that, in other
mansions of it, there may be other and different intelligent beings, of
whose faculties he has as little knowledge or apprehension as a worm
shut up in one drawer of a cabinet hath of the senses or understanding
of a man; such variety and excellency being suitable to the wisdom and
power of the Maker. I have here followed the common opinion of man's
having but five senses; though, perhaps, there may be justly counted
more;--but either supposition serves equally to my present purpose.