The Objects of Human Knowledge

1. The Objects of Human Knowledge are either:

• Ideas imprinted on the Senses
• Ideas perceived by the Passions and Operations of the Mind
• Ideas formed by help of Memory and Imagination, either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those original perceptions

Sight gives me the Ideas of Light and Colours with their several Degrees and Variations.

Touch lets me perceive, Hard and Soft, Heat and Cold, Motion and Resistance, and of all these more and less either as to Quantity or Degree.

Smelling furnishes me with Odors.

The Palate furnishes me with Tastes.

Hearing conveys Sounds to the Mind in all their variety of Tone and Composition.

Several of these are observed to accompany each other and so they are called as one Thing.

For Example, a certain Colour, Taste, Smell, Figure and Consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct Thing, signified by the Name Apple.

Other collections of Ideas constitute a Stone, a Tree, a Book, and the like sensible Things; which, as they are pleasing or disagreeable, excite the Passions of Love, Hatred, Joy, Grief, and so forth.

2. There is an endless variety of Ideas or Objects of Knowledge.

But there is likewise something which knows or perceives them, and exercises divers Operations, as Willing, Imagining, Remembering about them.

This perceiving, active Being is what I call Mind, Spirit, Soul or my Self.

By which Words I do not denote any one of my Ideas, but a thing intirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived; for the Existence of an Idea consists in being perceived.

3. That neither our Thoughts, nor Passions, nor Ideas formed by the Imagination, exist without the Mind, is what every Body will allow.

The various Sensations or Ideas imprinted on the Sense, however blended or combined together (that is, whatever Objects they compose) cannot exist otherwise than in a Mind perceiving them.

I think an intuitive Knowledge may be obtained of this, by any one that shall attend to what is meant by the Term Exist when applied to sensible Things.

The Table I write on exists.

I see and feel it.

I were outside of my room, I should say it existed.

It means that if I were in my room I might perceive it [again], or that some other Spirit actually does perceive it.

I smelled an Odor.

I heard a Sound.

I saw a color and touched a shape.

This is all that I can understand by these and the like Expressions.

It is perfectly unintelligible for unthinking Things to have absolute Existence without any relation to their being perceived.

Their Esse is Percipi, nor is it possible they should have any Existence, out of the Minds or thinking Things which perceive them.

4. I find it strange that people think that Houses, Mountains, Rivers, and all sensible Objects have a Natural or Real Existence, distinct from their being perceived by the Understanding.

But this principle is contradictory.

This is because those Objects are but the things we perceive by Sense.

What do we perceive besides our own Ideas or Sensations?

It is repugnant that any one of these or any Combination of them should exist unperceived.

5. If we thoroughly examine this Tenet, we find it to depend on the Doctrine of Abstract Ideas.

For can there be a nicer Strain of Abstraction than to distinguish the Existence of sensible Objects from their being perceived, so as to conceive them Existing unperceived?

Light and Colours, Heat and Cold, Extension and Figures, and the Things we see and feel are but so many Sensations, Notions, Ideas or Impressions on the Sense.

Is it possible to separate, even in thought, any of these from Perception?

I can easily divide a Thing from its Self.

I may indeed divide in my Thoughts or conceive apart from each other those Things which, perhaps, I never perceived by Sense so divided.

Thus I imagine a Human Body without Limbs, or conceive the Smell of a Rose without thinking of the Rose itself.

I can abstract by extending only to the conceiving separately such Objects, as it is possible may really exist or be actually perceived asunder.

But my conceiving or imagining Power does not extend beyond the possibility of real Existence or Perception.

Hence as it is impossible for me to see or feel any Thing without an actual Sensation of that Thing, so is it impossible for me to conceive in my Thoughts any sensible Thing or Object distinct from the Sensation or Perception of it.