An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book II

by John LOCKE (1632 - 1704)

Chapter 13 Of Simple Modes, and first of the Simple Modes of Space

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book II

John Locke wrote four essays on human (or humane) understanding. Here are a few quotes from the book: "I see no reason to believe, that the soul thinks before the senses have furnished it with ideas to think on. The dreams of sleeping men are, as I take it, all made up of the waking man's ideas, though for the most part oddly put together. Can the soul think, and not the man, or a man think, and not be conscious of it? Suppose the soul of Castor separated, during his sleep, from his body, to think apart. Let us suppose too, that it chooses for its scene of thinking the body of another man, v. g. Pollux, who is sleeping without a soul. Nobody can imagine that his soul can think, or move a body at Oxford, whilst he is at London. The question is, whether if the same substance which thinks, be changed, it can be the same person; or, remaining the same, it can be different persons? Whiteness and coldness are no more in snow than pain is."John Locke wrote four essays on human (or humane) understanding. The first and second have been recorded into LibriVox. This recording is a repetition of the second of Locke's Essays. All of his essays were, and are, very influential. Edward Stillingfleet 1635-1699 (Bishop of Worcester) wrote a Critique of Locke’s ideas and many letters to him. Locke’s Essays inspired Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) to write his New Essays Concerning Human Understanding and Victor Cousin analyzed all four books in his 1834 Elements of Psychology. - Summary by Craig Campbell


Listen next episodes of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book II:
Chapter 23 Of our complex Ideas of Substances Part 2 , Chapter 27 Of Identity and Diversity Part 2 , Chapter 27 Footnote: Locke discusses the Bishop of Worchester Part 2 , Chapter 14 Of Duration, and its simple Modes , Chapter 15 Of Duration and Expansion, considered together , Chapter 17 Of Infinity , Chapter 20 Of Modes of Pleasure and Pain , Chapter 21 Of Power Part 1 , Chapter 21 Of Power Part 2 , Chapter 21 Of Power Part 3 , Chapter 21 Of Power Part 4 , Chapter 22-Of Mixed Modes , Chapter 23 Of our complex Ideas of Substances Part 1 , Chapter 27 Footnote: Locke discusses the Bishop of Worchester Part 1 , Chapter 27 Of Identity and Diversity Part 1 , Chapter 28 Of Moral Relations , Chapter 29 Of Clear and Obscure, Distinct and Confused Ideas , Chapter 30 Of Real and Fantastical Ideas , Chapter 31 Of adequate and inadequate Ideas , Chapter 32 Of True and False Ideas , Chapter 33 Of the Association of Ideas , Chapter16 Of Number , Chapters 18-19 Of Other Simple Modes, Of the Modes of Thinking , Chapters 24-26 Of Collective Ideas of Substances, Of Relation, Of Cause and Effect and other Relations