And such are perception, thinking,
doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the
different actings of our own minds;- which we being conscious of,
and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our
understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our
senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and
though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects,
yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal
sense. But as I call the other SENSATION, so I Call this REFLECTION,
the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on
its own operations within itself. By reflection then, in the following
part of this discourse, I would be understood to mean, that notice
which the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them, by
reason whereof there come to be ideas of these operations in the
understanding. These two, I say, viz. external material things, as the
objects of SENSATION, and the operations of our own minds within, as
the objects of REFLECTION, are to me the only originals from whence
all our ideas take their beginnings. The term operations here I use in
a large sense, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind
about its ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from
them, such as is the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any
thought.
Pages:
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135