The Origin of Our Ideas
Table of Contents
All Simple Ideas Initially Come from Simple Impressions as Sensory Perceptions and Feelings
All our perceptions are either impressions or ideas
Their difference is in how their force strikes the mind.
‘Impressions’ are perceptions which enter with most force and violence.
- This includes all our sensations and feelings.
‘Ideas’ are the faint images of impressions in the process of thinking. This includes all the perceptions except:
- those from the sight and touch, and
- the immediate sensation from sight and touch.
Feeling and thinking sometimes seem like the same thing.
Our ideas may seem like our impressions when we:
- have dreams
- have fever
- have madness or violent emotions
Sometimes, our impressions are so faint and low that we cannot distinguish them from our ideas.
No one classifies each of them.
I use ‘impression’ and ‘idea’ in a different sense from the usual. I am restoring the word ‘idea’ to its original sense from which John Locke had perverted it. He made it stand for all our perceptions. ‘Impression’ does not mean how our lively perceptions are produced in the soul. It merely means the perceptions themselves.
Simple and Complex Perceptions
Our perceptions are either:
- Simple
These are impressions and ideas that are distinct and cannot be separated.
- Complex
These can be separated into parts.
This apple has colour, taste, and smell.
- These 3 are distinguishable from each other.
Our impressions and ideas always correspond to each other, and are similar except in their force and vivacity.
The one reflects the other. This makes all the perceptions of the mind:
- become double, and
- appear both as impressions and ideas.
I close my eyes and think of my room.
- The ideas I form are exact representations of the impressions that I felt.
- What is in my ideas is also found in my impressions.
But I realize that:
- many of our ideas never had matching impressions
- These are complex ideas
- many of our impressions never are exactly copied into ideas.
- These are complex impressions
I can imagine a city called ‘New Jerusalem’, with gold pavements and ruby walls even if I never saw it.
I have seen Paris.
- But I can never recreate an idea of all of Paris with all its streets and houses.
As a general rule, our complex impressions and ideas resemble greatly.
- But they are not exact copies of each other.
On the other hand, the rule on simple perceptions has no exception.
- Every simple idea has a resembling simple impression.
- Every simple impression has a correspondent idea.
Our idea of red and the actual red that we see differ only in degree, not in nature.
Thus, all simple ideas and impressions resemble each other.