I. Belegstellen aus Locke.*)

Zu §. 3.

1. 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. The epistle to the Reader. I thought, that the first step towards satisfying several inquiries, the mind of man was very apt to run into, was to take a survey of our own understandings, examine our own powers, and see to what things they were adapted. If by this enquiry into the nature of understanding I can discover the powers thereof, how for they reach, to what things they are in any degree proportionate, and where they fail us, I suppose it may be of use to prevail

*) Ich citire: The works of John Locke in ten volumes, the eleventh edition, London 1812. 8vo. Wo der Titel der Schrift nicht besonders angegeben ist, ist das Essay on human understanding gemeint.

with the busy mind of man, to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension, to shop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things, which upon examination we found to be beyond the reach of our capacities. — Thus men extending their enquiries beyond their capacities, and letting their thoughts wander into those depths, where they can find no sure footing, it is no wunder, that they raise questions and multiply disputes, which never coming to any clear resolution are proper only to continue and increase their doubts, and to confirm them at lest in perfect scepticism. The understanding like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself, and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance, and make it its own object. I shall not at present meddle with the physical considerations of the mind, or trouble myself to examine wherein its essence consists...., it shall suffice to my present purpose, to consider the discerning faculties of a man as they are employed_about the objects, which they have to do with. Book I. Chapt. I. §. 4. 7. 1. 2.

2. For my design being as well as I could to copy nature and to give an account of the operations of the mind in thinking, I could look into no body's understanding but in my own, to see how it wrought... All therefore that I can say of my book, is, that it is a copy of my own mind in its several ways of operating. And all that I can say for the publishing of it is, that I think, the intellectual faculties are made and operate alike in most men. Second letter to the Bishop of Worcester (Works vol. IV). The word,,idea".... serves best, to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks. I have used it to express whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species or whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking. Chapt. I. §. 8. The

things signified by,,ideas," are nothing but the immediate objects of our minds in thinking.... the term,, notion" is more peculiarly appropriate to a certain sort of those objects. Lett. II. to th. B. of Worc. I shall pursue this following method: First I shall enquire into the original of those ideas.... which a man observes and is conscious to himself he has in his mind, and the ways, whereby the understanding come to be furnished with them. Secondly I shall endeavour to shew what knowledge the understanding hath by those ideas, and the certainty, evidence and extent of it. Thirdly I shall make some enquiry into the nature and grounds of faith or opinion.... and here we shall have occasion to examine the reasons and degrees of assent. Chapt. I. §. 3. 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 well not be easy to persuade.... that they are but the covers of ignorance. Ep. to th. Read.

3. It is an established opinion amongst some

that there are in the understanding certain innate principles, some primary notions, xoai evvola characters as it were stamped upon the mind of man, which the soul receives in its first being and brings into the world with it. It would be sufficient to convince unprejudiced readers of the falseness of this supposition if I should only shew.... how men barely by the use of their natural faculties may attain to all the knowledge they have, without the help of any innate impressions, and may arrive at certainty without any such original notions or principles. For I imagine any one will easily grant, that it would be impertinent to suppose, the ideas of colours innate in a creature whom God hath given sight. But because a man is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts.... when they lead him ever so little out of the common rout....

assent.

1 shall set down the reasons, that made me doubt of the truth of that opinion. -The argument drawn from universal consent has this misfortune in it, that if it were true in matter of fact.... it would not prove them innate if there can be any other way shewn, how men may come to that universal agreement,.... but what is worse.... there are none (principles) to which all mankind give an universal For, first it is evident, that all children and idiots have not the least apprehension or thought of them, and the want of that is enough to destroy that universal assent, which must needs be the necessary concomitant of all innate truths: it seeming to me near a contradiction to say there are truths imprinted on the soul which it perceives or understands not, imprinting if it signify any thing being nothing else but the making certain truths to be perceived. No proposition can be said to be in the mind which it yet never knew, which it was never yet conscious of. Chapt. II. §. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

4. To avoid this it is usually answered, that all men know and assent to them when they come to the use of reason, and this is enough to prove them innate. To apply this answer with any tolerable sense to our present purpose, it must signify one of these two things: either that as soon as men come to the use of reason, these supposed native inscriptions come to be known and observed by them, or else that the use and exercise of men's reason assists them in the discovery of these principles and certainly makes them known to them.If they mean that by the use of reason men may discover these principles and that this is sufficient to prove them innate.... how can these men think the use of reason necessary to discover principles that are supposed innate, when reason (if we may believe them) is nothing else but the faculty of deducing unknown truths from principles or proposi tions that are already known? How can it with