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AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
by John Locke
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
LORD THOMAS, EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY,
BARRON 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 OF 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 likely to procure me that than your
lordship, who are 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 weighted, 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
amongst 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 anywhere 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 further; 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 worth 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 everybody 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,
24th of May, 1689
EPISTLE TO THE READER
I HAVE 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 are 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 awhile 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
