2. Design. This, therefore, being my purpose- to inquire into the
original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with
the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent;- I shall not
at present meddle with the physical consideration of the mind; or
trouble myself to examine wherein its essence consists; or by what
motions of our spirits or alterations of our bodies we come to have
any sensation by our organs, or any ideas in our understandings; and
whether those ideas do in their formation, any or all of them,
depend on matter or not. These are speculations which, however curious
and entertaining, I shall decline, as lying out of my way in the
design I am now upon. It shall suffice to my present purpose, to
consider the discerning faculties of a man, as they are employed about
the objects which they have to do with. And I shall imagine I have not
wholly misemployed myself in the thoughts I shall have on this
occasion, if, in this historical, plain method, I can give any account
of the ways whereby our understandings come to attain those notions of
things we have; and can set down any measures of the certainty of
our knowledge; or the grounds of those persuasions which are to be
found amongst men, so various, different, and wholly contradictory;
and yet asserted somewhere or other with such assurance and
confidence, that he that shall take a view of the opinions of mankind,
observe their opposition, and at the same time consider the fondness
and devotion wherewith they are embraced, the resolution and eagerness
wherewith they are maintained, may perhaps have reason to suspect,
that either there is no such thing as truth at all, or that mankind
hath no sufficient means to attain a certain knowledge of it.
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