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An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1

John Locke · 1689

passage 228 of 287 · BOOK I NEITHER PRINCIPLES NOR IDEAS ARE INNATE > CHAPTER XXV. (4/4)

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in brief
He derives the idea of cause and effect from observing how one thing produces another, distinguishes creation, generation, making, and alteration, and insists this notion still comes from sensation or reflection.
  1. All relatives made up of simple ideas.

Having laid down these premises concerning relation in general, I shall now proceed to show, in some instances, how all the ideas we have of relation are made up, as the others are, only of simple ideas; and that they all, how refined or remote from sense soever they seem, terminate at last in simple ideas. I shall begin with the most comprehensive relation, wherein all things that do, or can exist, are concerned, and that is the relation of CAUSE and EFFECT: the idea whereof, how derived from the two fountains of all our knowledge, sensation and reflection, I shall in the next place consider.

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topics: fate, destiny, and necessity · reason and the intellect

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 · John Locke · 1689