8. What "Idea" stands for. Thus much I thought necessary to say
concerning the occasion of this Inquiry into human Understanding. But,
before I proceed on to what I have thought on this subject, I must
here in the entrance beg pardon of my reader for the frequent use of
the word idea, which he will find in the following treatise. It
being that term which, I think, serves best to stand for whatsoever is
the object of the understanding when a man thinks, I have used it to
express whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it
is which the mind can be employed about in thinking; and I could not
avoid frequently using it.
I presume it will be easily granted me, that there are such ideas in
men's minds: every one is conscious of them in himself; and men's
words and actions will satisfy him that they are in others.
Our first inquiry then shall be,- how they come into the mind.
BOOK I
Neither Principles nor Ideas Are Innate
Chapter I
No Innate Speculative Principles
1. The way shown how we come by any knowledge, sufficient to prove
it not innate. It is an established opinion amongst some men, that
there are in the understanding certain innate principles; some primary
notions, koinai ennoiai, characters, as it were stamped upon the
mind of man; which the soul receives in its very first being, and
brings into the world with it.
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