John Locke
1690
To The Right Honourable Lord Thomas, Earl of Pembroke And Montgomery, Barron Herbert of
Cardiff, Lord Ross, of Kendal, Par, Fitzhugh, Marmion, St. Quintin, And Shurland; Lord President of
His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council; And Lord Lieutenant of The County of Wilts, And of
South Wales.
My Lord,
This Treatise, which is grown up under your lordship's eye, and has ventured into the world by your
order, does now, by a natural kind of right, come to your lordship for that protection which you
several years since promised it. It is not that I think any name, how great soever, set at the
beginning of a book, will be able to cover the faults that are to be found in it. Things in print must
stand and fall by their own worth, or the reader's fancy. But there being nothing more to be desired
for truth than a fair unprejudiced hearing, nobody is more likely to procure me that than your
lordship, who are allowed to have got so intimate an acquaintance with her, in her more retired
recesses. Your lordship is known to have so far advanced your speculations in the most abstract
and general knowledge of things, beyond the ordinary reach or common methods, that your
allowance and approbation of the design of this Treatise will at least preserve it from being
condemned without reading, and will prevail to have those parts a little weighted, which might
otherwise perhaps be thought to deserve no consideration, for being somewhat out of the common
road. The imputation of Novelty is a terrible charge amongst those who judge of men's heads, as
they do of their perukes, by the fashion, and can allow none to be right but the received doctrines.
Truth scarce ever yet carried it by vote anywhere at its first appearance: new opinions are always
suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already
common. But truth, like gold, is not the less so for being newly brought out of the mine. It is trial and
examination must give it price, and not any antique fashion; and though it be not yet current by the
public stamp, yet it may, for al that, be as old as nature, and is certainly not the less genuine. Your
lordship can give great and convincing instances of this, whenever you please to oblige the public
with some of those large and comprehensive discoveries you have made of truths hitherto unknown,
unless to some few, from whom your lordship has been pleased not wholly to conceal them. This
alone were a sufficient reason, were there no other, why I should dedicate this Essay to your
lordship; and its having some little correspondence with some parts of that nobler and vast system
of the sciences your lordship has made so new, exact, and instructive a draught of, I think it glory
enough, if your lordship permit me to boast, that here and there I have fallen into some thoughts not
wholly different from yours. If your lordship think fit that, by your encouragement, this should appear
in the world, I hope it may be a reason, some time or other, to lead your lordship further; and you will
allow me to say, that you here give the world an earnest of something that, if they can bear with this,
will be truly worth their expectation. This, my lord, shows what a present I here make to your
lordship; just such as the poor man does to his rich and great neighbour, by whom the basket of
flowers or fruit is not ill taken, though he has more plenty of his own growth, and in much greater
perfection. Worthless things receive a value when they are made the offerings of respect, esteem,
and gratitude: these you have given me so mighty and peculiar reasons to have, in the highest
degree, for your lordship, that if they can add a price to what they go along with, proportionable to
their own greatness, I can with confidence brag, I here make your lordship the richest present you
ever received. This I am sure, I am under the greatest obligations to seek al occasions to
acknowledge a long train of favours I have received from your lordship; favours, though great and
important in themselves, yet made much more so by the forwardness, concern, and kindness, and
other obliging circumstances, that never failed to accompany them. To all this you are pleased to
add that which gives yet more weight and relish to all the rest: you vouchsafe to continue me in
some degrees of your esteem, and allow me a place in your good thoughts, I had almost said
friendship. This, my lord, your words and actions so constantly show on all occasions, even to
others when I am absent, that it is not vanity in me to mention what everybody knows: but it would
be want of good manners not to acknowledge what so many are witnesses of, and every day tell me
I am indebted to your lordship for. I wish they could as easily assist my gratitude, as they convince
me of the great and growing engagements it has to your lordship. This I am sure, I should write of
the Understanding without having any, if I were not extremely sensible of them, and did not lay hold
on this opportunity to testify to the world how much I am obliged to be, and how much I am,
My Lord,
Your Lordship's most humble and most obedient servant,
John Locke
Dorset Court,
24th of May, 1689
Epistle to the Reader
I have put into thy hands what has been the diversion of some of my idle and heavy hours. If it has
the good luck to prove so of any of thine, and thou hast but half so much pleasure in reading as I
had in writing it, thou wilt as little think thy money, as I do my pains, ill bestowed. Mistake not this for
a commendation of my work; nor conclude, because I was pleased with the doing of it, that therefore
I am fondly taken with it now it is done. He that hawks at larks and sparrows has no less sport,
though a much less considerable quarry, than he that flies at nobler game: and he is little
acquainted with the subject of this treatise--the Understanding--who does not know that, as it is the
most elevated faculty of the soul, so it is employed with a greater and more constant delight than
any of the other. Its searches after truth are a sort of hawking and hunting, wherein the very pursuit
makes a great part of the pleasure. Every step the mind takes in its progress towards Knowledge
makes some discovery, which is not only new, but the best too, for the time at least.
For the understanding, like the eye, judging of objects only by its own sight, cannot but be pleased
with what it discovers, having less regret for what has escaped it, because it is unknown. Thus he
who has raised himself above the alms-basket, and, not content to live lazily on scraps of begged
opinions, sets his own thoughts on work, to find and follow truth, will (whatever he lights on) not miss
the hunter's satisfaction; every moment of his pursuit will reward his pains with some delight; and he
will have reason to think his time not ill spent, even when he cannot much boast of any great
acquisition.
This, Reader, is the entertainment of those who let loose their own thoughts, and follow them in
writing; which thou oughtest not to envy them, since they afford thee an opportunity of the like
diversion, if thou wilt make use of thy own thoughts in reading. It is to them, if they are thy own, that I
refer myself: but if they are taken upon trust from others, it is no great matter what they are; they are
not following truth, but some meaner consideration; and it is not worth while to be concerned what
he says or thinks, who says or thinks only as he is directed by another. If thou judgest for thyself I
know thou wilt judge candidly, and then I shall not be harmed or offended, whatever be thy censure.
For though it be certain that there is nothing in this Treatise of the truth whereof I am not fully
persuaded, yet I consider myself as liable to mistakes as I can think thee, and know that this book
must stand or fall with thee, not by any opinion I have of it, but thy own. If thou findest little in it new
or instructive to thee, thou art not to blame me for it. It was not meant for those that had already
mastered this subject, and made a thorough acquaintance with their own understandings; but for my
own information, and the satisfaction of a few friends, who acknowledged themselves not to have
sufficiently considered it.
Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of this Essay, I should tell thee, that five or six friends
meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found themselves
quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that rose on every side. After we had awhile puzzled ourselves,
without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my
thoughts that we took a wrong course; and that before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that
nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings
were, or were not, fitted to deal with. This I proposed to the company, who all readily assented; and
thereupon it was agreed that this should be our first inquiry. Some hasty and undigested thoughts,
on a subject I had never before considered, which I set down against our next meeting, gave the
first entrance into this Discourse; which having been thus begun by chance, was continued by
intreaty; written by incoherent parcels; and after long intervals of neglect, resumed again, as my
humour or occasions permitted; and at last, in a retirement where an attendance on my health gave
me leisure, it was brought into that order thou now seest it.
This discontinued way of writing may have occasioned, besides others, two contrary faults, viz.,, that
too little and too much may be said in it. If thou findest anything wanting, I shall be glad that what I
have written gives thee any desire that I should have gone further. If it seems too much to thee, thou
must blame the subject; for when I put pen to paper, I thought all I should have to say on this matter
would have been contained in one sheet of paper; but the further I went the larger prospect I had;
new discoveries led me still on, and so it grew insensibly to the bulk it now appears in. I will not
deny, but possibly it might be reduced to a narrower compass than it is, and that some parts of it
might be contracted, the way it has been writ in, by catches, and many long intervals of interruption,
being apt to cause some repetitions. But to confess the truth, I am now too lazy, or too busy, to
make it shorter.
I am not ignorant how little I herein consult my own reputation, when I knowingly let it go with a fault,
so apt to disgust the most judicious, who are always the nicest readers. But they who know sloth is
apt to content itself with any excuse, will pardon me if mine has prevailed on me, where I think I
have a very good one. I will not therefore allege in my defence, that the same notion, having
different respects, may be convenient or necessary to prove or illustrate several parts of the same
discourse, and that so it has happened in many parts of this: but waiving that, I shall frankly avow
that I have sometimes dwelt long upon the same argument, and expressed it different ways, with a
quite different design. I pretend not to publish this Essay for the information of men of large thoughts
and quick apprehensions; to such masters of knowledge I profess myself a scholar, and therefore
warn them beforehand not to expect anything here, but what, being spun out of my own coarse
thoughts, is fitted to men of my own size, to whom, perhaps, it will not be unacceptable that I have
taken some pains to make plain and familiar to their thoughts some truths which established
prejudice, or the abstractedness of the ideas themselves, might render difficult. Some objects had
need be turned on every side; and when the notion is new, as I confess some of these are to me; or
out of the ordinary road, as I suspect they will appear to others, it is not one simple view of it that will
gain it admittance into every understanding, or fix it there with a clear and lasting impression. There
are few, I believe, who have not observed in themselves or others, that what in one way of
proposing was very obscure, another way of expressing it has made very clear and intelligible;
though afterwards the mind found little difference in the phrases, and wondered why one failed to be
understood more than the other. But everything does not hit alike upon every man's imagination. We
have our understandings no less different than our palates; and he that thinks the same truth shall
be equally relished by every one in the same dress, may as well hope to feast every one with the
same sort of cookery: the meat may be the same, and the nourishment good, yet every one not be
able to receive it with that seasoning; and it must be dressed another way, if you will have it go down
with some, even of strong constitutions. The truth is, those who advised me to publish it, advised
me, for this reason, to publish it as it is: and since I have been brought to let it go abroad, I desire it
should be understood by whoever gives himself the pains to read it. I have so little affection to be in
print, that if I were not flattered this Essay might be of some use to others, as I think it has been to
me, I should have confined it to the view of some friends, who gave the first occasion to it. My
appearing therefore in print being on purpose to be as useful as I may, I think it necessary to make
what I have to say as easy and intelligible to all sorts of readers as I can. And I had much rather the
speculative and quick-sighted should complain of my being in some parts tedious, than that any
one, not accustomed to abstract speculations, or prepossessed with different notions, should
mistake or not comprehend my meaning.
It will possibly be censured as a great piece of vanity or insolence in me, to pretend to instruct this
our knowing age; it amounting to little less, when I own, that I publish this Essay with hopes it may
be useful to others. But, if it may be permitted to speak freely of those who with a feigned modesty
condemn as useless what they themselves write, methinks it savours much more of vanity or
insolence to publish a book for any other end; and he fails very much of that respect he owes the
public, who prints, and consequently expects men should read, that wherein he intends not they
should meet with anything of use to themselves or others: and should nothing else be found
allowable in this Treatise, yet my design will not cease to be so; and the goodness of my intention
ought to be some excuse for the worthlessness of my present. It is that chiefly which secures me
from the fear of censure, which I expect not to escape more than better writers. Men's principles,
notions, and relishes are so different, that it is hard to find a book which pleases or displeases all
men. I acknowledge the age we live in is not the least knowing, and therefore not the most easy to
be satisfied. If I have not the good luck to please, yet nobody ought to be offended with me. I plainly
tell all my readers, except half a dozen, this Treatise was not at first intended for them; and therefore
they need not be at the trouble to be of that number. But yet if any one thinks fit to be angry and rail
at it, he may do it securely, for I shall find some better way of spending my time than in such kind of
conversation. I shall always have the satisfaction to have aimed sincerely at truth and usefulness,
though in one of the meanest ways. The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without
master-builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to
the admiration of posterity: but every one must not hope to be a Boyle or a Sydenham; and in an
age that produces such masters as the great Huygenius and the incomparable Mr. Newton, with
some others of that strain, it is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the
ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge;--which certainly
had been very much more advanced in the world, if the endeavours of ingenious and industrious
men had not been much cumbered with the learned but frivolous use of uncouth, affected, or
unintelligible terms, introduced into the sciences, and there made an art of, to that degree that
Philosophy, which is nothing but the true knowledge of things, was thought unfit or incapable to be
brought into well-bred company and polite conversation. Vague and insignificant forms of speech,
and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard and misapplied
words, with little or no meaning, have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning
and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who
hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance, and hindrance of true knowledge. To break in
upon the sanctuary of vanity and ignorance will be, I suppose, some service to human
understanding; though so few are apt to think they deceive or are deceived in the use of words; or
that the language of the sect they are of has any faults in it which ought to be examined or
corrected, that I hope I shall be pardoned if I have in the Third Book dwelt long on this subject, and
endeavoured to make it so plain, that neither the inveterateness of the mischief, nor the prevalency
of the fashion, shall be any excuse for those who will not take care about the meaning of their own
words, and will not suffer the significancy of their expressions to be inquired into.
I have been told that a short Epitome of this Treatise, which was printed in 1688, was by some
condemned without reading, because innate ideas were denied in it; they too hastily concluding, that
if innate ideas were not supposed, there would be little left either of the notion or proof of spirits. If
any one take the like offence at the entrance of this Treatise, I shall desire him to read it through;
and then I hope he will be convinced, that the taking away false foundations is not to the prejudice
but advantage of truth, which is never injured or endangered so much as when mixed with, or built
on, falsehood.
In the Second Edition I added as followeth:--
The bookseller will not forgive me if I say nothing of this New Edition, which he has promised, by the
correctness of it, shall make amends for the many faults committed in the former. He desires too,
that it should be known that it has one whole new chapter concerning Identity, and many additions
and amendments in other places. These I must inform my reader are not all new matter, but most of
them either further confirmation of what I had said, or explications, to prevent others being mistaken
in the sense of what was formerly printed, and not any variation in me from it.
I must only except the alterations I have made in Book II. chap. xxi.
What I had there written concerning Liberty and the Will, I thought deserved as accurate a view as I
am capable of; those subjects having in all ages exercised the learned part of the world with
questions and difficulties, that have not a little perplexed morality and divinity, those parts of
knowledge that men are most concerned to be clear in. Upon a closer inspection into the working of
men's minds, and a stricter examination of those motives and views they are turned by, I have found
reason somewhat to alter the thoughts I formerly had concerning that which gives the last
determination to the Will in all voluntary actions. This I cannot forbear to acknowledge to the world
with as much freedom and readiness as I at first published what then seemed to me to be right;
thinking myself more concerned to quit and renounce any opinion of my own, than oppose that of
another, when truth appears against it. For it is truth alone I seek, and that will always be welcome
to me, when or from whencesoever it comes.
But what forwardness soever I have to resign any opinion I have, or to recede from anything I have
writ, upon the first evidence of any error in it; yet this I must own, that I have not had the good luck to
receive any light from those exceptions I have met with in print against any part of my book, nor
have, from anything that has been urged against it, found reason to alter my sense in any of the
points that have been questioned. Whether the subject I have in hand requires often more thought
and attention than cursory readers, at least such as are prepossessed, are willing to allow; or
whether any obscurity in my expressions casts a cloud over it, and these notions are made difficult
to others' apprehensions in my way of treating them; so it is, that my meaning, I find, is often
mistaken, and I have not the good luck to be everywhere rightly understood.
Of this the ingenious author of the Discourse Concerning the Nature of Man has given me a late
instance, to mention no other. For the civility of his expressions, and the candour that belongs to his
order, forbid me to think that he would have closed his Preface with an insinuation, as if in what I
had said, Book II. ch. xxvii, concerning the third rule which men refer their actions to, I went about to
make virtue vice and vice virtue unless he had mistaken my meaning; which he could not have done
if he had given himself the trouble to consider what the argument was I was then upon, and what
was the chief design of that chapter, plainly enough set down in the fourth section and those
following. For I was there not laying down moral rules, but showing the original and nature of moral
ideas, and enumerating the rules men make use of in moral relations, whether these rules were true
or false: and pursuant thereto I tell what is everywhere called virtue and vice; which "alters not the
nature of things," though men generally do judge of and denominate their actions according to the
esteem and fashion of the place and sect they are of.
If he had been at the pains to reflect on what I had said, Bk. I. ch. ii. sect. 18, and Bk. II. ch. xxviii.
sects. 13, 14, 15 and 20, he would have known what I think of the eternal and unalterable nature of
right and wrong, and what I call virtue and vice. And if he had observed that in the place he quotes I
only report as a matter of fact what others call virtue and vice, he would not have found it liable to
any great exception. For I think I am not much out in saying that one of the rules made use of in the
world for a ground or measure of a moral relation is--that esteem and reputation which several sorts
of actions find variously in the several societies of men, according to which they are there called
virtues or vices. And whatever authority the learned Mr. Lowde places in his Old English Dictionary, I
daresay it nowhere tells him (if I should appeal to it) that the same action is not in credit, called and
counted a virtue, in one place, which, being in disrepute, passes for and under the name of vice in
another. The taking notice that men bestow the names of "virtue" and "vice" according to this rule of
Reputation is all I have done, or can be laid to my charge to have done, towards the making vice
virtue or virtue vice. But the good man does well, and as becomes his calling, to be watchful in such
points, and to take the alarm even at expressions, which, standing alone by themselves, might
sound ill and be suspected.
'Tis to this zeal, allowable in his function, that I forgive his citing as he does these words of mine (ch.
xxviii. sect. II): "Even the exhortations of inspired teachers have not feared to appeal to common
repute, Philip. iv. 8"; without taking notice of those immediately preceding, which introduce them,
and run thus: "Whereby even in the corruption of manners, the true boundaries of the law of nature,
which ought to be the rule of virtue and vice, were pretty well preserved. So that even the
exhortations of inspired teachers," etc. By which words, and the rest of that section, it is plain that I
brought that passage of St. Paul, not to prove that the general measure of what men called virtue
and vice throughout the world was, the reputation and fashion of each particular society within itself;
but to show that, though it were so, yet, for reasons I there give, men, in that way of denominating
their actions, did not for the most part much stray from the Law of Nature; which is that standing and
unalterable rule by which they ought to judge of the moral rectitude and gravity of their actions, and
accordingly denominate them virtues or vices. Had Mr. Lowde considered this, he would have found
it little to his purpose to have quoted this passage in a sense I used it not; and would I imagine have
spared the application he subjoins to it, as not very necessary. But I hope this Second Edition will
give him satisfaction on the point, and that this matter is now so expressed as to show him there
was no cause for scruple.
Though I am forced to differ from him in these apprehensions he has expressed, in the latter end of
his preface, concerning what I had said about virtue and vice, yet we are better agreed than he
thinks in what he says in his third chapter (p. 78) concerning "natural inscription and innate notions."
I shall not deny him the privilege he claims (p. 52), to state the question as he pleases, especially
when he states it so as to leave nothing in it contrary to what I have said. For, according to him,
"innate notions, being conditional things, depending upon the concurrence of several other
circumstances in order to the soul's exerting them," all that he says for "innate, imprinted, impressed
notions" (for of innate ideas he says nothing at all), amounts at last only to this--that there are
certain propositions which, though the soul from the beginning, or when a man is born, does not
know, yet "by assistance from the outward senses, and the help of some previous cultivation," it may
afterwards come certainly to know the truth of; which is no more than what I have affirmed in my
First Book. For I suppose by the "soul's exerting them," he means its beginning to know them; or
else the soul's "exerting of notions" will be to me a very unintelligible expression; and I think at best
is a very unfit one in this, it misleading men's thoughts by an insinuation, as if these notions were in
the mind before the "soul exerts them," i.e., before they are known;--whereas truly before they are
known, there is nothing of them in the mind but a capacity to know them, when the "concurrence of
those circumstances," which this ingenious author thinks necessary "in order to the soul's exerting
them," brings them into our knowledge.
P. 52 I find him express it thus: "These natural notions are not so imprinted upon the soul as that
they naturally and necessarily exert themselves (even in children and idiots) without any assistance
from the outward senses, or without the help of some previous cultivation." Here, he says, they exert
themselves, as p. 78, that the "soul exerts them." When he has explained to himself or others what
he means by "the soul's exerting innate notions," or their "exerting themselves"; and what that
"previous cultivation and circumstances" in order to their being exerted are--he will I suppose find
there is so little of controversy between him and me on the point, bating that he calls that "exerting
of notions" which I in a more vulgar style call "knowing," that I have reason to think he brought in my
name on this occasion only out of the pleasure he has to speak civilly of me; which I must gratefully
acknowledge he has done everywhere he mentions me, not without conferring on me, as some
others have done, a title I have no right to.
There are so many instances of this, that I think it justice to my reader and myself to conclude, that
either my book is plainly enough written to be rightly understood by those who peruse it with that
attention and indifferency, which every one who will give himself the pains to read ought to employ
in reading; or else that I have written mine so obscurely that it is in vain to go about to mend it.
Whichever of these be the truth, it is myself only am affected thereby; and therefore I shall be far
from troubling my reader with what I think might be said in answer to those several objections I have
met with, to passages here and there of my book; since I persuade myself that he who thinks them
of moment enough to be concerned whether they are true or false, will be able to see that what is
said is either not well founded, or else not contrary to my doctrine, when I and my opposer come
both to be well understood.
If any other authors, careful that none of their good thoughts should be lost, have published their
censures of my Essay, with this honour done to it, that they will not suffer it to be an essay, I leave it
to the public to value the obligation they have to their critical pens, and shall not waste my reader's
time in so idle or ill-natured an employment of mine, as to lessen the satisfaction any one has in
himself, or gives to others, in so hasty a confutation of what I have written.
The booksellers preparing for the Fourth Edition of my Essay, gave me notice of it, that I might, if I
had leisure, make any additions or alterations I should think fit. Whereupon I thought it convenient to
advertise the reader, that besides several corrections I had made here and there, there was one
alteration which it was necessary to mention, because it ran through the whole book, and is of
consequence to be rightly understood. What I thereupon said was this:--
Clear and distinct ideas are terms which, though familiar and frequent in men's mouths, I have
reason to think every one who uses does not perfectly understand. And possibly 'tis but here and
there one who gives himself the trouble to consider them so far as to know what he himself or others
precisely mean by them. I have therefore in most places chose to put determinate or determined,
instead of clear and distinct, as more likely to direct men's thoughts to my meaning in this matter. By
those denominations, I mean some object in the mind, and consequently determined, i.e., such as it
is there seen and perceived to be. This, I think, may fitly be called a determinate or determined idea,
when such as it is at any time objectively in the mind, and so determined there, it is annexed, and
without variation determined, to a name or articulate sound, which is to be steadily the sign of that
very same object of the mind, or determinate idea.
To explain this a little more particularly. By determinate, when applied to a simple idea, I mean that
simple appearance which the mind has in its view, or perceives in itself, when that idea is said to be
in it: by determined, when applied to a complex idea, I mean such an one as consists of a
determinate number of certain simple or less complex ideas, joined in such a proportion and
situation as the mind has before its view, and sees in itself, when that idea is present in it, or should
be present in it, when a man gives a name to it. I say should be, because it is not every one, nor
perhaps any one, who is so careful of his language as to use no word till he views in his mind the
precise determined idea which he resolves to make it the sign of The want of this is the cause of no
small obscurity and confusion in men's thoughts and discourses.
I know there are not words enough in any language to answer all the variety of ideas that enter into
men's discourses and reasonings. But this hinders not but that when any one uses any term, he
may have in his mind a determined idea, which he makes it the sign of, and to which he should keep
it steadily annexed during that present discourse. Where he does not, or cannot do this, he in vain
pretends to clear or distinct ideas: it is plain his are not so; and therefore there can be expected
nothing but obscurity and confusion, where such terms are made use of which have not such a
precise determination.
Upon this ground I have thought determined ideas a way of speaking less liable to mistakes, than
clear and distinct: and where men have got such determined ideas of all that they reason, inquire, or
argue about, they will find a great part of their doubts and disputes at an end; the greatest part of the
questions and controversies that perplex mankind depending on the doubtful and uncertain use of
words, or (which is the same) indetermined ideas, which they are made to stand for. I have made
choice of these terms to signify, (1) Some immediate object of the mind, which it perceives and has
before it, distinct from the sound it uses as a sign of it. (2) That this idea, thus determined, i.e., which
the mind has in itself, and knows, and sees there, be determined without any change to that name,
and that name determined to that precise idea. If men had such determined ideas in their inquiries
and discourses, they would both discern how far their own inquiries and discourses went, and avoid
the greatest part of the disputes and wranglings they have with others.
Besides this, the bookseller will think it necessary I should advertise the reader that there is an
addition of two chapters wholly new; the one of the Association of Ideas, the other of Enthusiasm.
These, with some other larger additions never before printed, he has engaged to print by
themselves, after the same manner, and for the same purpose, as was done when this Essay had
the second impression.
In the Sixth Edition there is very little added or altered. The greatest part of what is new is contained
in the twenty-first chapter of the second book, which any one, if he thinks it worth while, may, with a
very little labour, transcribe into the margin of the former edition.