WILLIAM, EARL OF NEWCASTLE

PART I

Chapter 1: The General Classification of Natural Human Capacities

1,2,3. Preface. 4. Human nature. 5. Classification of human capacities. 6. Capacities of the body. 7. Capacities of the mind. 8. Cognitive powers, and conceptions and imagery of the mind.

1.1. [1] My present purpose is to give a true and clear account of the elements of natural and civil law. This depends on knowledge of what human nature is, of what the state is, and of what it is that we call a ‘law’. The more books people have written on these topics from antiquity onwards, the more doubtful and controversial they have become. And since true knowledge gives rise to knowledge, not doubt or controversy, it is obvious from the present controversies, that people who have written about these topics up to now, have not had a good understanding of their own subject.

1.2. Even if I am just as wrong as they are, I can do no harm, since I shall only be leaving people in their present state of doubt and dispute. But I hope to make fewer mistakes, by not taking any principle on trust, but merely drawing people’s attention to what they already know, or can know by their own experience. When I do make mistakes, it will be because I have drawn conclusions too rashly — which I shall do my best to avoid.

1.3. If, on the other hand, I do reason correctly, but (which may very easily happen) I fail to win the agreement of people who are so confident of their own knowledge that they fail to consider what I say carefully enough, then [2] the fault is not mine, but theirs. It is my job to produce my arguments, and theirs to pay attention to them.

1.4. Human nature is the sum of the natural capacities and powers of human beings — for example, nourishment, motion, reproduction, sensation, reasoning, etc. We unanimously call these powers ‘natural’, and they are included in the definition of a human being through the words ‘animal’ and ‘rational’.

1.5. Since human beings have two principal parts, I divide their capacities into two sorts: capacities of the body, and capacities of the mind.

1.6. It is irrelevant to my present purpose to analyse all the distinct powers of the body in detail, so I shall merely summarise them as being of three kinds: the power to nourish itself, the power to move, and the power to reproduce.

1.7. There are two kinds of mental power: cognitive (or imaginative, or conceptual), and motive. I shall discuss the cognitive first.

1.8. In order to understand what I mean by ‘cognitive power’, we must remember and accept that our minds permanently contain certain images or conceptions of external objects, such that, if it were possible for you to remain alive while all the rest of the world was annihilated, you would nevertheless retain the image of it, and of all the things you had previously seen and perceived in it. Everybody knows from their own experience, that once you have an image of a thing, the absence or destruction of that thing does not cause the absence or destruction of the image itself. This imagery, and these representations of the qualities of things outside us, is what we call our ‘cognition’, ‘imagination’, ‘ideas’, ‘notion’, ‘conception’, or ‘knowledge’ of them. And the capacity or power by which we are capable of such knowledge, is what I here call ‘cognitive’, or ‘conceptual’ power, or the power of knowing or conceiving.

Chapter 2: The Cause of Sensation

2. Definition of ‘sensation’. 4. Four propositions concerning the nature of conceptions. 5. The proof of the first. 6. The proof of the second. 7,8. The proof of the third. 9. The proof of the fourth. 10. The main sensory illusion.

2.1. [3] Having stated what I mean by the word ‘conception’, and other words equivalent to it, I come to the conceptions themselves. I shall say as much as is necessary for the present topic, about the differences between them, their causes, and how they are produced.

2.2. The ultimate origin of all conceptions is the action of the thing itself, of which it is the conception. When the action is actually happening, the conception it produces is called a ‘sensation’; and the thing of which the action produced the conception is called the ‘object’ of sensation.

2.3. By our different sense organs, we have different conceptions of different qualities in objects. By sight we have a conception or image consisting of colour or shape; and this is the only awareness and knowledge of its nature which the object imparts to us by the eye. By hearing we have a conception called ‘sound’, which is the only knowledge we have of what the object is like by the ear. Similarly, all other sensations are also conceptions of different qualities or natures of their objects.

2.4. Because, in vision, the image consisting of colour and shape is the knowledge we have of the qualities of the object of that sensation, it is very easy to fall into the opinion that the said colour and shape are the actual qualities themselves. For the same reason, it is easy to think that sound and noise are the qualities of a bell, or of the air. This opinion has been accepted for so long, that its denial must seem to fly in the face of common sense. On the other hand, the opinion can only be maintained on the assumption that there are visible and intelligible species, which travel to [4] and from the object; and this is worse than non-commonsensical, since it is obviously impossible. I shall therefore try to show the obviousness of the following four points:

1. That the subject which colours and images inhere in is not the object, or the thing which is seen.
2. That what we call an ‘image’ or ‘colour’ has no existence as a thing outside us.
3. That this image or colour is nothing but the appearing to us of the motion, vibration, or alteration which the object brings about in the brain, or animal spirits, or some substance inside the head.
4. That what is true of visual conceptions is also true of the conceptions which arise from the other senses, namely that the subject they inhere in is not the object, but the being which senses.

2.5. Everybody has had experience enough to have seen the sun and other visible objects reflected in water or mirrors; and this alone is sufficient for the conclusion that colour and images can be in a different place from the thing which is seen. However, it might be claimed that, although the image in the water is not in the object, but something which is merely imaginary, it could nevertheless be the case that colour is something real in the thing itself. I shall counter this with further evidence from experience. There are occasions when people see the same object double when looking straight at it, for example two candles instead of one. This may be because of an illness, or the voluntary act of a healthy person; and both the eyes might be perfectly sound, or both equally defective. The colours and shapes in two such images of the same thing cannot both inhere in the thing itself, since the thing which is seen cannot be in two places at once. Therefore one of these images is not in the object. But given that the organs of sight are equally sound or equally defective, one image no more inheres in the object than the other, and consequently neither of them is in the object — which is the first proposition mentioned in the preceding section.

2.6. [5] Secondly, everybody can prove to their own satisfaction that the image of a thing seen by reflection in a mirror, or water, or the such like, is not a thing in or behind the mirror, or in or under the water. And this is the second proposition.

2.7. As for the third, we need to consider first, that whenever the brain is violently shaken or hit (for example from a punch, especially if the punch is to the eye, so that optic nerve is violently stimulated), a sort of light appears before the eyes. However, this light is nothing external, but only an apparition, since all that is real is the violent disturbance or motion of the optic nerve. From this experience we can conclude that light which appears to be external to us is really nothing but a motion inside us. So when luminous bodies are the source of a motion which is capable of affecting the optic nerve in its own special way, this will result in an image somewhere on the line by which the motion finally reached the eye — that is to say, in the object if we are looking straight at it, and in the mirror or water if we are looking at it along a line which has been reflected. This is in effect the third proposition, namely ‘That this image or colour is nothing but the appearing to us of the motion, vibration, or alteration which the object brings about in the brain, or animal spirits, or some substance inside the head.’

2.8. But it is not hard to prove that, from all shining, luminous, and illuminated bodies, a motion is propagated to the eye, and through the eye to the optic nerve, and so on into the brain, which brings it about that light or colour appears. First, it is evident that fire, which is the only luminous body here on earth, works by radiating motion in every direction, since, if its motion is blocked or enclosed, it is immediately extinguished, and ceases to be fire. Further, it is also obvious from experience that the motion by which fire has its effect is an alternating expansion and contraction of itself, which is usually called ‘sparkling’, or ‘glittering’. This motion in the fire must necessarily involve its thrusting back, or pushing away from itself, [6] the part of the medium which is in contact with it; and this part pushes the next, and in this way one part successively pushes the next, right up to the eye itself.

In the same way, the outer part of the eye pushes against the inner part, still in accordance with the laws of refraction. Now the inner lining of the eye is nothing other than a piece of the optic nerve, and therefore the motion is further transmitted by it into the brain. But the brain resists, or reacts against the motion, so it bounces back again along the optic nerve. However, we do not conceive it as a motion, or a recoil from within, so we think it is external to ourselves, and call it ‘light’ (as I have already shown from experience by the example of being punched).

We have no reason to suppose that the sun, which is the source of light, works any differently from fire, at least in this respect; therefore all vision originates from the sort of motion I have just described. For where there is no light, there is no sight; and therefore colour must also be the same thing as light, since it is the effect of luminous bodies. The only difference between them is that we call it ‘light’ when the light comes directly from the source to the eye, or indirectly when it is reflected by clean and polished bodies, such as have no motion of their internal particles which would alter it. And we call it ‘colour’ when it comes to the eyes by reflection from uneven, rough, and unpolished bodies, or such as have an internal motion of their own which might alter it. So colour and light differ only in that the one is pure, and the other a confused light.

From what has been said, it is not only obvious that the third proposition is true, but a complete account has also been given of how light and colour are produced.

2.9. Just as colour does not inhere in the object, but is an effect in us produced by the object, caused by the sort of motion in the object I have described; similarly sound is not in the thing we hear, but in ourselves. One obvious indication of this is that, just as [7] you can see double, you can also hear double or treble, when you hear echoes, and echoes of echoes. But these echoes are just as much sounds as the original sound, and cannot inhere in the body which makes them, since they are not in one and the same place. Nothing can create an entirely new being. A clapper has no sound in it, but only motion; and it causes motion in the internal parts of the bell, so that the bell has motion, but not sound. The bell imparts motion to the air, and the air has motion, but not sound. The air imparts motion by the ear and nerves to the brain; and the brain has motion, but not sound. From the brain, it bounces back into the nerves outwards, and because of that becomes an external appearance which we call ‘sound’.

To move on to the rest of the senses, it is obvious enough that the smell and taste of the same thing are different for different people, and therefore are not in the thing smelt or tasted, but in the people. Similarly, the heat we feel from a fire is obviously in us, and is quite different from the heat that is in the fire. For our heat is pleasure or pain, depending on whether it is extreme or moderate; but there is no such thing in the coal. So this proves the fourth and last of the propositions, viz. ‘That what is true of visual conceptions is also true of the conceptions which arise from the other senses, namely that the subject they inhere in is not the object, but the being which senses.’

2.10. From this it also follows that, whatever accidents or qualities our senses make us think there are in the world, they are not out there, but are only seemings and appearances. The things which really exist in the world outside us are the motions by which these seemings are caused. And this is the great sensory illusion; but one which is also to be corrected by sensation. For just as it is sensation which tells me, when I look directly at an object, that the colour seems to be in the object; so also it is sensation which tells me, when I look at a reflected object, that colour is not in the object.

Chapter 3: Imagination, and its Various Kinds

1. Imagination defined. 2. Sleep and dreams defined. 3. Causes of dreams. 4. Fiction defined. 5. Phantasms defined. 6. Memory defined. 7. What remembering consists in. 8. Why in a dream people never think they are dreaming. 9. Why few things seem strange in dreams. 10. That a dream may be taken for reality and vision.

3.1. [8] If the water of a pond is set in motion by a stone thrown into it, or by a gust of wind, it does not immediately stop moving as soon as the wind dies down, or the stone reaches the bottom. Similarly, the effect which an object has produced in the brain does not come to an end immediately the object stops affecting it, e.g. because the sense organ has turned away from it. That is to say, although the sensation has ceased to exist, the image or conception remains. However, as long as we are awake, the conception is more obscure than the image was, because there is always some object or other, which is assailing and disturbing our eyes and ears, and keeping the mind in a stronger motion, so that it is difficult for the weaker motion to appear. And this obscure conception is what we call ‘phantasy’ or ‘imagination’. So we can define imagination as a conception remaining from and after the act of sensation, and gradually decaying.

3.2. But when no sensation is present, as in sleep, the images remaining from sensation (when there are some, as in dreams) are not obscure, but strong and clear, as in sensation itself. The reason is because there is no longer any sensation, or current influence from objects, which was what obscured the conceptions and made them weak. For sleep is the absence of activity of the senses (although it is still there in potential), and dreams are the imaginations of those who are asleep.

3.3. The causes of dreams (if they happen naturally) are forceful influences of the internal organs of the body on the brain. Although the nerves from the sense organs to the brain are numbed by sleep, they are restored to their motion by these influences. Indications which [9] make this likely are the differences between dreams arising from differences between the accidents of different people’s bodies. Since old people are usually less healthy and less free from internal pains, they are more subject to dreams, especially painful ones. People dream of sex or anger depending on whether the heart or other internal organs act more or less forcefully on the brain, and with more or less heat. Similarly, the downward flow of different sorts of mucus make one dream of different tastes of food or drink.

Also, I believe there is a reciprocal motion from the brain to the vital organs, and back from the vital organs to the brain. Consequently, as well as imagination bringing about motion in these organs, motion in these organs also brings about an imagination similar to the one which brought it about in the first place. If this is true, and if it is true that distressing imaginations nourish the spleen, then we can also see a reason why a strong spleen should cause fearful dreams in return. Again, it explains why the bodily effects of sexual attraction can, in a dream, produce the image of the person who caused them. It would certainly be shown that the motion is reciprocal, if it could be established, by careful observation, that the amount of heat generated by the actual presence of the person lusted after during waking hours, was the same as the amount of obedience shown by the image of that person in a dream which resulted from a different source of heat in the dreamer’s body.

Another indication that dreams are caused by the activity of the internal organs is the disorder and random following of one conception or image from another. When we are awake, a preceding thought or conception ushers in, and is the cause of the next one, just as [10] water follows your finger on a dry and level table. But in dreams there is usually no coherence (and when there is, it is by chance). This must be because, in dreams, the brain is not restored to its normal motion in every part equally. Consequently, it happens that our thoughts manifest themselves like stars between flying clouds — not in the order we would choose to observe them in, but only as the unpredictable movement of broken clouds permits.

3.4. When water, or any other liquid, is set in motion by different moving things simultaneously, the result is a single motion which is a compound of them all. Similarly, when the brain, or the animal spirits it contains, has been stimulated by a variety of objects, it constructs a single compound imagination out of the various conceptions which appeared individually in sensation. For example, sensation gives us the form of a mountain at one time, and the colour of gold at another; but the imagination subsequently combines them together into a golden mountain. The same is the cause of appearances of castles in the air, chimeras, and other monsters which do not belong to the real world, but have been perceived by the senses bit by bit at different times. And this composition is what we usually call a fiction of the mind.

3.5. As well as a dream, there is yet another kind of imagination which rivals sensation for clarity. This is when the action of a sensation has lasted a long time, or is very forceful; and this is experienced more often in the sense of seeing than the rest. An example of it is the image which remains before the eye after looking steadily at the sun. Other examples of the same are those little images which appear before the eyes in the dark (I think everybody has experienced them, but most of all those who are fearful or superstitious). In order to keep them distinct, these can be called ‘phantasms’.

3.6. We have five senses, corresponding to the number of sense organs; and as has already been said, it is by them that we are aware of the objects outside us; and this awareness is our conception [11] of them. But in some way or other we are also aware of our conceptions themselves. For when the conception of the same thing recurs, we are aware that it exists again; that is to say, that we have had the same conception before. This is as much as to imagine a thing from the past; and it cannot be sensation, since we can only sense things which are present. This therefore may be classed as a sixth sense, but an internal one, not an external one like the others; and it is usually called ‘memory’.

3.7. As for the way in which we are aware of a past conception, we need to remember that, according to the definition of imagination, it is said to be a conception which gradually decays, or becomes more obscure. An obscure conception is one which represents the object as a whole, but none of its smaller parts individually; so the conception or representation is said to be more or less clear depending on whether more or fewer parts are represented. When the conception was first produced by sensation, it was clear, and represented the parts of the object distinctly. But since it is obscure when it recurs, we find that something we expected is missing; and it is by this that we judge it to be a past and decayed conception. For example, if you are actually in a foreign city, you see not only whole streets, but you can also distinguish individual houses, and parts of houses. But once you have gone away, you cannot distinguish them in your mind in as much detail as before, and some house or side street will escape you; nevertheless, this is to remember the city. Some time later, yet more details will escape you; and this is also to remember, but not so well. In the process of time, the image of the city will return, but only as a mass of building; which is almost to have forgotten it. So since how much we remember is a function of the degree of obscurity of our memory, why should we not think memory to be nothing other than the absence of parts which everyone expects to follow after they have a conception of the whole? To see something from a great distance, and to remember [12] it after a long interval of time, is to have similar conceptions of it. In both there is a lack of a distinction between the parts; the one being weak because it is produced from a distance, and the other because of decay.

3.8. From what has been said, it follows that you can never know that you are dreaming. You might dream that you are wondering whether it is a dream or not; but the clarity of the imagery represents each thing as having as many parts as does sensation itself, and consequently you cannot be aware of anything except as being in the present. On the other hand, to believe you are dreaming is to believe that your conceptions are of the past, that is to say, obscurer than they were when originally sensed. So you must believe them to be both as clear as, and not as clear as sensation; which is impossible.

3.9. It also follows from the same consideration, that, in their dreams, people are not surprised by where they are or the people they meet. When awake, you would think it strange to be in a place where you had never been before, and to have no memory of how you got there. But in a dream, you hardly think of this sort of consideration. The clarity of conception takes away distrust, unless the strangeness is extreme — for example, if you think you have fallen from a great height without any harm. But most people would wake up at that point.

3.10. It is also possible for people to be so taken in, that, after the dream is over, they believe it to have been real. If they dream about the sort of things which are normally in their minds, and in the same order as they usually think them when awake; and even if they went to sleep in the same place as they find themselves when they wake up (all of which can happen); I know of no criterion [n.1] or indication by which they could decide whether it was a dream or not. I am therefore less surprised at hearing people sometimes tell their dreams as if they were true, or taking them as visions. [n.2]

Chapter 4: The Various Kinds of Mental Discourse

1. Discourse. 2. Why thoughts are connected. 3. Ranging. 4. Sagacity. 5. Remembering. 6. Experience. 7. Expectation, or conjecturing about the future. 8. Conjecturing about the past. 9. Signs. 10. Foresight. 11. Warnings about drawing conclusions from experience.

4.1. The succession of conceptions in the mind (their forming sequences, or following one another), can be random and disconnected, as is usually the case in dreams. Alternatively, it can be orderly, as when the earlier thought ushers in the next. Both of these kinds constitute the discourse of the mind. But because the word ‘discourse’ is often taken to mean the connectedness and following each other of words, I shall call it ‘discursion’ [n.3] in order to avoid ambiguity.

4.2. The reason why one conception is connected to or follows another is because they were originally connected or followed each other when they were first produced by sensation. For example, the mind runs from St. Andrew to St. Peter, because their names are read together; [n.4] and from St. Peter to a stone, for the same reason; [n.5] and from stone to foundation because we see them together; and for the same reason, from foundation to church, from church to people, and from people to a disorderly crowd. This example shows that the mind can run from anything to almost anything else. But just as in sensation, the conception of the effect follows the conception of the cause, they can follow each other in the same order in imagination, after sensation has ceased. And this is what usually happens. The reason is because people who have a conception of a goal follow it with a conception of the means to achieve it. For example, if you have an appetite for honour, you might move from the thought [14] of it to the thought of wisdom, which is its immediate prerequisite; and from that to the thought of study, which is the immediate prerequisite of wisdom; and so on.

4.3. To move on from the kind of discursion by which we move from anything to anything else, there are various sorts of the other kind. [n.6] The first case is in sensation, when there are certain connections between conceptions which we can call ‘ranging’. For example, when you look all over the place on the ground to find some small object you have lost; or when hounds sniff around after they have lost the scent in a hunt; or the ranging of spaniels. In these cases, it is arbitrary where we start from.

4.4. Another sort of discursion is when it is set off by an appetite, as in the previous example, where, if you have an appetite for honour, it makes you think of the first step towards attaining it, and then the next step, and so on. This is what is called sagacitas (‘sagacity’) [n.7] in Latin, and we can call it ‘hunting’ or ‘tracking’, as dogs track their quarry with the sense of smell, and humans hunt them by their tracks; or as people hunt after riches, status, or knowledge.

4.5. There is yet another sort of discursion, which is set off by an appetite to find something which has been lost. We start out from the present, and proceed backwards from the thought of the place where we cannot find it, to the thought of the place where we last were, and from the thought of that place to the thought of a previous place, till we have in our minds a place where we had the thing we have lost. And this is called ‘remembering’.

4.6. Remembering one thing following another, that is, remembering what was antecedent, what was consequent, and what was concomitant, is called an ‘observation’. [n.8] An observation can be brought about deliberately, as when someone puts something into the fire to see what effect the [15] fire will produce in it; or not brought about by us, as when we remember good weather in the morning following a red sky in the evening. To have made many observations is what we call ‘experience’; and it is nothing other than remembering what antecedents have been followed by what consequents.

4.7. No-one can have in their minds a conception of the future, since the future does not yet exist. But we can make a conception of the future out of our conceptions of the past — of rather, we call the past the future in a relative sense. So, once we have become accustomed to seeing similar antecedents followed by similar consequents, whenever we see something happen which is similar to anything we have seen before, we expect the same thing to follow it as followed previously. For example, if you have often seen offences followed by punishment, when you see an offence in the present, you think of punishment as its consequence. But that which is consequent [n.9] to the present is what we call ‘future’. And in this way, we turn remembering into foreseeing, or conjecturing what will happen, or an expectation, or an assumption about the future.

4.8. In the same way, if we see in the present something we have seen before, we think that what was antecedent to what we saw before is also antecedent to what we see now. For example, if you have seen ashes remaining after a fire has died down, and if you now see ashes again, you conclude that there has been a fire. And this is called a ‘conjecture’ about the past, or an assumption about what has happened. [n.10]

4.9. When you have observed similar antecedents being followed by similar consequents so often that, whenever you see the antecedent you expect the consequent; or when you see the consequent, you reason that there has been a similar antecedent; then you call both the antecedent and the consequent ‘signs’ of each other. For examples, clouds are a sign of rain to come, and rain is a sign of past clouds.

4.10. [16] Most people think that this taking of signs from experience is what makes one person wiser than another; and by ‘wisdom’ they usually mean a person’s whole cognitive ability or power. But this is an error, since such signs are merely conjectural. They are more or less certain, depending on whether expectations have been disappointed more frequently or more rarely; but they are never completely certain. Even if you have so far always seen day and night follow each other, you cannot conclude from this that they will always do so, or that they have done so from eternity. Experience can never justify universal conclusions. If a sign fulfils expectations twenty times out of twenty-one, you might lay a bet of twenty to one on the outcome; but you cannot conclude that it is a truth.

Nevertheless, it is obvious that the people who have had most experience will make the best conjectures, because they have the most signs to conjecture by. This is why, other things being equal, old people are more foresightful, that is, conjecture better, than young people. For, being older, they remember more; and experience is nothing other than remembering. And people who have a quick imagination, other things being equal, are more foresightful than people with slow imaginations, since they observe more in less time. And foresightfulness is nothing other than conjecture from experience, or cautiously taking signs from experience — that is, so that all the individual experiences from which the signs are taken are remembered, otherwise events which seem alike might not really be alike.

4.11. In conjectural matters about past and future, foresight consists in concluding from experience what is likely to happen, or to have happened already. Similarly, it is an error to conclude from experience what something is called. That is to say, we cannot conclude from experience that some particular thing is to be called ‘just’ or ‘unjust’, ‘true’ or ‘false’, or any [17] universal proposition whatever, except by virtue of remembering the use of names imposed arbitrarily by human beings. For example, to have heard a sentence passed (even the same sentence a thousand times in similar cases) provides no basis for concluding that the sentence is just (though most people have no other means for judging its justice by). Instead, in order to draw such a conclusion, it is necessary to track down and find out by many observations what people actually mean by calling things ‘just’, ‘unjust’, and the such-like.

Further, there is another thing to beware of, which is wrongly concluding from experience that things which are internal to us are external to us (see Chapter 2, Section 10).

Chapter 5: Names, Reasoning, and Verbal Discourse

1. Marks. 2. Names, or appellations. 3. Positive and negative names. 4. An advantage of names is that they make scientific knowledge possible. 5. Universal and singular names. 6. Universals do not exist in the real world. 7. Ambiguous names. 8. Understanding. 9. Affirmation, denial, and proposition. 10. Truth and falsehood. 11. Reasoning. 12. What is according to reason, and what is against reason. 13. Names are the causes of error as well as of knowledge. 14. Translating the discourse of the mind into verbal discourse, and the errors this gives rise to.

5.1. As I have already said, the way one conception follows another in the mind is caused by the way they followed one another when they were produced by the senses. It is also the case that the innumerable acts of sensation have produced every conception immediately before or after innumerable other ones. It therefore necessarily follows that one [18] conception follows another, not according to our choice or our needs, but depending on whether we happen to hear or see such things as will bring them before our minds. The experience we have of this is like that of dumb animals, which have the foresight to hide the remains of their food when they have too much, but then forget where they hid it, and have no benefit from it when they are hungry. However, this is the first respect in which humans have raised themselves above animal nature. They observed and remembered the cause of this defect, and in order to remedy it, they used their imaginations, and contrived to set up visible or other sensible marks, so that, on seeing them again, the thoughts they had when setting them up would be brought before their minds. A mark, therefore, is a sensible object which a person deliberately establishes for themselves, in order to use it to remember something in the past, when the mark becomes the object of sensation at a later time. For example, people who have passed close to a rock at sea set up some mark by which to remember their former danger, and avoid it.

5.2. These marks include those human utterances (which we call the ‘names’ or ‘appellations’ of things), which can be sensed by the ear, and by means of which we recall to our minds some conceptions of the things to which we give those names or appellations. For example, the name ‘white’ brings to memory the quality of such objects as produce that colour or conception in us. A name or appellation therefore is a human utterance, which is arbitrarily imposed as a mark to bring to a person’s mind some conception of the thing on which it is imposed.

5.3. Things named are either the objects themselves, e.g. a human being; or the conception itself which we have of a human being, e.g. shape or motion; or some negation, which is when we conceive that something we conceive is not in a person. For example, when we conceive that a person is not just, or not finite, we give them the [19] name [n.11] ‘unjust’ or ‘infinite’; and these signify negation or a deficiency, either in the thing named, or in ourselves who give the name. And we give the names ‘injustice’ and ‘infinitude’ to the deficiencies themselves. Consequently, there are two sorts of names: there are positive names, which are of the things in which we conceive something, or of the conceptions themselves; and those we call negative, which are of things in which we conceive negation or a deficiency.

5.4. Names give us the advantage of being capable of scientific knowledge, which dumb animals are not, since they cannot use names. An animal with a large litter of young ones does not notice if one or two are missing, since she lacks the names for counting with (‘one’, ‘two’, ‘three’, etc.), which we call ‘numbers. Similarly, humans would not know how many coins or other things they were confronted with, without reciting the names of numbers, whether orally or mentally.

5.5. Since there are many conceptions of one and the same thing, and we give a different name to each conception, it follows that we have many names or adjectives for one and the same thing. For example, we give one and the same person the names ‘just’, ‘brave’, etc. in respect of various virtues, and ‘strong’, ‘handsome’, etc., in respect of various bodily characteristics. And again, many things must necessarily have the same names as each other, because we receive similar conceptions from different things. For example, we give the same name ‘visible’ to all the things which we see, and the name ‘mobile’ to all the things which we see to be moving. The names we give to many things are called universal to all of them; as, for example, we gave the name ‘human’ to every individual member of the human species. Names we give to only one thing are called ‘individual’ or singular — for example, ‘Socrates’ and other proper names; or, roundabout expressions, such as ‘the author of the Iliad,’ for ‘Homer’.

5.6. [20] The fact that one name is universal to many things has been the reason why people think that the things themselves are universal. They seriously maintain that, in addition to Peter and John, and all other individual human beings who exist, who have existed, or who will exist in the world, there is also something else which we call ‘human’, viz human being in general. But they make the mistake of taking the universal, or general name, for the thing it signifies. If you commissioned an artist to do you a picture of a person, which is as much as to say of a person in general, you would mean no more than that the artist should choose anyone he liked to draw. This would have to be someone who exists, or has existed, or might exist in the future — none of which are universal. But if you asked them to draw a portrait of the king, or any other individual person, you would be restricting the artist to the one individual you yourself had chosen. It is therefore obvious that there is nothing universal apart from names. They are therefore also called ‘indefinite’ names, since we do not ourselves determine any individual, but leave them to be applied to an individual by the hearer. By contrast, a singular name is determined or restricted to just one of the many things it signifies; as when we say ‘this man’ while pointing to him, or giving him his proper name, or by some other such means.

5.7. Names which are universal and common to many things are not always (as they ought to be) given to all the individuals which give rise to similar conceptions, and are considered in the same way. This is the reason why many of them do not have a fixed meaning, but bring into our minds thoughts which are different from the ones for which they were originally established. These are called ambiguous. For example, the word ‘faith’ sometimes means the same as ‘belief’; sometimes it means specifically the belief which makes one a Christian; and sometimes it means the keeping of a promise. Also, all metaphors are explicitly ambiguous. And there is [21] hardly any word that is not made ambiguous by different linguistic contexts, or by the way it is uttered, or by accompanying gestures.

5.8. This ambiguity of names makes it difficult to bring back the conception for which a particular name was established. It is the case not only when we are listening to other people speaking, when we have to consider the general meaning, the circumstances, and the linguistic context, as well as the words themselves; but also when we ourselves are thinking or speaking, since our words do not bring back to us our own conceptions, but are derived from customary usage which we share with others. It is therefore an advanced human skill to free oneself from the ambiguity of words, linguistic context, and other circumstances, and to find out the true meaning of what is said. And this is what we call understanding.

5.9. By means of the little verb ‘is’, or something equivalent, we make an affirmation or a negation out of two names. University philosophers call both of these a ‘proposition’, which consists of two names joined together by the word ‘is’. For example, ‘Human beings are living creatures’ and ‘Human beings are not moral’ are both propositions. The former is called an ‘affirmation’, because the name ‘living creature’ is positive; the latter a ‘negation’, because ‘not moral’ is negative.

5.10. In every proposition, whether affirmative or negative, the second name either does or does not include the first name. An example of the former is the proposition ‘Charity is a virtue,’ since the name ‘virtue’ includes the name ‘charity’ (and many other virtues besides). In this case the proposition is said to be true or the truth, since there is no difference between truth and a true proposition. An example of the latter is the proposition ‘Everybody is moral,’ since the name ‘moral’ does not apply to everybody — in fact, the name ‘immoral’ applies to the vast majority of people. In this case, the proposition is said to [22] be false, or falsehood, since there is no difference between falsehood and a false proposition.

5.11. I am not going to write about how syllogisms are constructed out of two propositions, of which either both are affirmative, or one is affirmative and the other negative. What I have said so far about names and propositions is necessary, but rather boring. This is not the place for the whole art of logic; and if I went any further into it, I would have to continue. Besides, it is unnecessary, since there are few people who have so little natural logic that they cannot discern well enough whether my arguments in the rest of this discourse are valid or not. All I shall say here is that the construction of syllogisms is what we call ratiocination, or reasoning.

5.12. If you reason from starting points which are found by experience to be indubitable, and if you avoid all sensory illusions and verbal ambiguities, then the conclusion you draw is said to be in accordance with right reason. But if, by valid reasoning, you can derive from your conclusion something which is contradictory to any evident truth whatever, then you are said to have drawn a conclusion against reason — and such a conclusion is called ‘absurdity’.

5.13. Human beings could not have been raised above a state of ignorance without the invention of names, which are indispensable for remembering the necessary connections between one conception and another. The downside is that the invention of names has also made it easier for people to fall into error — so much so, that our advantage over dumb animals in knowledge, thanks to words and reasoning, is counterbalanced by our making more errors than they do, because of the disadvantages which accompany words and reasoning. The true and the false belong to propositions and language, and are completely foreign to dumb animals. But since animals do not have the capacity to reason, they cannot use it to multiply one falsehood by another — unlike humans.

5.14. [23] It belongs to the nature of almost every bodily thing, that, if it is often moved in one and the same way, the same motion gradually becomes easier for it, and it performs it better. The motion eventually becomes so habitual, that it only has to be started for it to be completed. [n.12] Human passions are the beginning of all voluntary motions, and this includes speech, which is the motion of the tongue. Humans have invented language because of their desire to reveal to others the knowledge, opinions, conceptions, and passions which are within themselves. In this way, by the motion of their tongues, they have transferred their mental discourse, which I mentioned in the previous chapter, into verbal discourse. By now, thinking has been largely replaced by talking. [n.13] Here habit is so powerful, that the mind has only to suggest the first word, and the rest follow out of habit, without being followed by the mind. It is like beggars reciting the Lord’s Prayer, who put the words together in the way they learned from their nurses, or friends, or teachers, but have no images or conceptions in their minds corresponding to the words they speak. And they teach the next generation in the same way as they themselves learned. Now consider the power of the sensory illusions mentioned in Chapter 2, Section 10; and consider also how loosely names have been established, and how subject they are to ambiguity, and how their meanings are affected by the passions (hardly two people agreeing what is to be called good or bad, generous or extravagant, brave or reckless); and again, consider how prone people are to illogicality and fallacies in reasoning. Given all this, I am justified in concluding that these causes must necessarily give rise to so many errors in any given person, that it is impossible to correct them without starting afresh from the very first grounds of all our knowledge, namely sensation; and, [24] instead of reading books, systematically reading over one’s own conceptions. Interpreted in this way, the motto ‘Know thyself’ [n.14] deserves the reputation it has acquired.

Chapter 6: Knowledge, Opinion, and Belief

1. The two kinds of knowledge. 2. Truth and evidence are necessary for knowledge. 3. The definition of ‘evidence’. 4. The definition of ‘scientific knowledge’. 5. The definition of ‘supposition’. 6. The definition of ‘opinion’. 7. The definition of ‘belief’. 8. The definition of ‘conscience’. 9. In some cases, belief is no less free from doubt than knowledge.

6.1. There is a story somewhere, of a man who pretended to have been miraculously cured of congenital blindness by St. Alban (or some other saint) in the town of St. Albans. The Duke of Gloucester happened to be there, and he wanted to satisfy himself that it was a genuine miracle. So he asked the man, ‘What colour is this?’ But the man gave himself away by replying ‘It is green,’ and he was punished for being a fraud. The reason is that, although his newly recovered sight might enable him to distinguish between green, red, and all the other colours as clearly as anyone questioning him, yet he could not possibly know at first sight which of them was called ‘green’, or ‘red’, or any other name. This shows that there are two kinds of knowledge. One is nothing other than sensation, or original knowledge (as I said at the beginning of Chapter 2), and the memory of it. The other is called ‘scientific knowledge’, or knowledge of the truth of propositions and of what things are called; and it is derived from understanding. Both kinds of knowledge are nothing other than experience: sensation is the experience of the effects of things which influence us externally; and scientific knowledge is the experience people have of the proper use of names in language. And since, as I have said, all experience is nothing but remembering, it follows that all knowledge is [25] remembering. When we record the former in books, it is called ‘history’; and when we record the latter, it is called the ‘sciences’.

6.2. There are two things necessarily implied in the word ‘knowledge’, namely truth and evidence. What is not true, can never be known. If you say that you know something as well as could possibly be, but it is later revealed to be false, you will be driven to admit that it was not knowledge, but merely opinion. Similarly, if the truth is not evident, even if you believe it, you no more know it than someone who believes the opposite. For if truth alone were enough to make it knowledge, then all truths would be known [n.15] — which is not the case.

6.3. I defined truth in the previous chapter. I shall now say what evidence is. It is when your conception accompanies the words which signify that conception in the act of reasoning. Suppose you reason only with your lips — that is, your mind suggests only the beginning, and you do not follow the words coming out of your mouth with conceptions in your mind, but merely speak the way you do out of habit. In this case, even if you begin your reasoning with true propositions, and proceed with perfect syllogisms, and therefore always form true conclusions; even so, your conclusions will not be evident to you, since there were no conceptions accompanying your words. If the words alone were sufficient, a parrot might be taught to know a truth as well as to speak it. Evidence is to truth as sap is to a tree: it keeps the trunk and branches alive only as far as it moves along them, and where it stops moving, they die. This evidence, which is meaning accompanying our words, is the life of truth: without it, truth is worthless.

6.4. So the knowledge which we call ‘scientific’, I [26] define as the evidence of truth, from some beginning or starting point in sensation. The truth of a proposition is never evident, until we conceive the meanings of the words or terms it consists of. These are always conceptions of the mind, and we cannot remember them without the thing which produced them in sensation. The first principle of knowledge, therefore, is that we have such and such conceptions; the second is that we have given some name or other to the things they are conceptions of; the third is that we have joined these names together in such a way as to form true propositions; the fourth and last is that we have joined these propositions together in such a way as to yield a valid conclusion. By these four steps the conclusion is known and evident, and the truth of the conclusion is said to be known. So the two kinds of knowledge are experience of what has happened. and evidence of truth. The former (if there is enough of it) is called ‘foresight’; and the latter (again, if there is enough of it) has usually been called, both by ancient and by modern writers, ‘sapience’, or ‘wisdom’. Only humans are capable of this last; whereas dumb animals are also capable of the former.

6.5. A proposition is said to be ‘supposed’, when, even though it is not evident, we nevertheless temporarily accept it, for the purpose of coming to some conclusion by connecting other propositions to it. In this way we proceed from conclusion to conclusion, to test whether it will lead us to any absurd or impossible conclusion. If it does, then we know that the supposition was false.

6. But if we follow through many conclusions, and never come to any absurd ones, then we think that the supposition is probable. However, we also think that any proposition whatever is probable if we accept it as true, even when we were led to it by erroneous reasoning, or by trusting other people. When we accept propositions on the basis of trust or error, we are not said to know them, but to think that they are true; and accepting them is called ‘opinion’.

6.7. [27] In particular, when an opinion is accepted out of trust in other people, one is said to ‘believe’ it; and one’s acceptance of it is called ‘belief’, and sometimes ‘faith’.

6.8. What we usually mean by the word ‘conscience’ is either scientific knowledge or opinion. People say that something or other is true ‘upon their conscience;’ but they never say this when they think it is doubtful; therefore they know, or think they know that it is true. But when people say things ‘upon their conscience,’ it should not be assumed that they know with certainty the truth of what they say. So it follows that the word is used by people who have an opinion, not only as to the truth of the matter, but also as to their knowledge of it. Consequently, ‘conscience’, as people usually use the word, signifies an opinion, not so much about the truth of the proposition, as about their own knowledge of it, from which the truth of the proposition follows. I therefore define conscience as the opinion of evidence.

6.9. Belief, or the acceptance of propositions on trust, is in many cases no less free from doubt than perfect and evident knowledge. Just as everything has a cause, similarly, when there is doubt, one must conceive of some cause of the doubt. Now there may be many things which we accept on the basis of what others report, of which it is impossible to imagine any cause for doubt. If you were to doubt what everybody agrees about, on matters which they can know, and which they have no reason to lie about (and this is the case with most history books), you would have to say that the whole world was conspiring to deceive you.

This is all I have to say about sensation, imagination, discursion, reasoning, and knowledge, which are the acts of our cognitive or conceptual power. The power of the mind which we call ‘motive’ is different from the motive power of the body. The motive power of the body is that by which it moves other bodies, which we call ‘strength’. But the motive power [28] of the mind is that by which the mind gives animal motion to the body it exists in. Its acts are our affections and passions, to which I now turn.

Chapter 7: Pleaure and Pain; Good and Evil

1. Pleasure, pain, love, hatred. 2. Appetite, aversion, fear. 3. Good, evil, pulchritude, turpitude. 5. Goals and their attainment. 6. Profitable, use, vain. 7. Happiness. 8. Good and evil mixed. 9 Sensual pleasure, and pain; joy and grief.

7.1. In Chapter 2, Section 8, I showed how conceptions or apparitions are in reality nothing other than motion in some internal substance of the head. Since this motion does not stop there, but continues to the heart, it must necessarily either reinforce or obstruct the motion in it which is called ‘vital’. [n.16] When it reinforces it, it is called ‘pleasure’, ‘contentment’, or ‘delight’; and it has no real existence except as motion in the region of the heart, just as conception is nothing but motion within the head. The objects that cause it are called ‘pleasant’, or ‘delightful’, or some equivalent name. In Latin the word is jucunda, from juvando, meaning ‘reinforcing’. And the same pleasure with reference to the object is called ‘love’. But when such motion weakens or obstructs the vital motion, then it is called ‘pain’; and in relation to what causes it, ‘hatred’. In Latin it is sometimes called odium, and sometimes taedium.

7.2. This motion which pleasure and pain consist in is also an inducement or provocation either to approach the thing which pleases, or to go away from the thing which displeases. This inducement is the conation or internal beginning of animal motion, which is called ‘appetite’ when the object is pleasant, and ‘aversion’ when the object is unpleasant, and the unpleasantness is actually being sensed; but when [29] the unpleasantness is expected in the future, it is called ‘fear’. So pleasure, love, and appetite (which is also called ‘desire’) are different names for different ways of considering the same thing.

7.3. Everybody, for their own part, calls that which pleases and is delightful to themselves ‘good’, and that which displeases them ‘evil’. So since everybody differs from everybody else in constitution, they also differ from everybody else over the shared distinction between good and evil. There is no such thing as the good without qualification. [n.17] Even the goodness which we attribute to God Almighty is his goodness to us. And as we call the things which please and displease us ‘good’ and ‘evil’, so we call the qualities or powers by which they do it ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’. And the indications of such goodness are called by the single word pulchritudo in Latin, and the indications of evil turpitudo; but there are no precisely equivalent words in English.

7.4. Just as all the conceptions we have directly in sensation are pleasure, or pain, or appetite, or fear, the same is true of the imaginations remaining after sensation. But as these imaginations are weaker, the pleasure and pain are correspondingly weaker.

7.5. Just as appetite is the beginning of animal motion towards something which pleases us, so attaining it is the goal of that motion, which we also call the ‘target’, or ‘aim’, or ‘final cause’ of it. And when we attain the goal, the pleasure we get from it is called ‘enjoyment’. Consequently, ‘good’ and ‘goal’ [n.18] are different names, but names for different ways of considering one and the same thing.

7.6. Some goals are called propinqui, that is, near at hand; others remoti, or further off. But when goals which can be attained sooner are related to those that are further off, they are not called ‘goals’, but ‘means’, or the [30] way to attaining the latter. The ancient philosophers located happiness in attaining a supreme goal, and the way to attain it was subject to much dispute. But there is no such thing in this world, and there is no way to it any more than there is to Utopia. As long as we live, we have desires, and desire presupposes a further goal. We call things which please us as the way or means to a further goal ‘profitable’; and the enjoyment of them ‘use’; and things which are unprofitable ‘vain’.

7.7. Since all pleasure is appetite, and appetite presupposes a further goal, there can be no contentment except in advancing towards a goal. So we should not be surprised when we see that, as people acquire more riches, status, or other kinds of power, their appetite continually grows more and more. And when they have arrived at the highest degree of one kind of power, they pursue some other kind, as long as they think there is anyone ahead of them in any kind of power. So of those who have achieved the highest degree of status and wealth, some have aspired to mastery in some art, as Nero [n.19] in music and poetry, or Commodus [n.20] in the art of a gladiator. Others, who do not aspire to anything like that, must find entertainment and pleasurable employment of their thoughts in the exertion of games or work. People rightly think that not knowing what to do is like suffering from a serious illness. So happiness (by which we mean continuing pleasure) consists not in having prospered, but in prospering.

7.8. There are few things in this world which do not either have a mixture of good and evil, or form part of a chain of good and evil things, which are so necessarily linked together, that the one cannot be had without the other. The pleasures of sin, and the pain of punishment are inseparable; as also are hard work and status, for the most part. Now when in the whole chain the good predominates, the whole is called ‘good’; and when the evil predominates, the whole is called ‘evil’.

7.9. [31] There are two sorts of pleasure. One seems to affect the bodily organs of sense, and I call it ‘sensual’. The greatest sensual pleasure is that which entices us to continue our species; and after that comes the one which entices us to eat, in order to preserve our individual persons. The other sort of pleasure is not peculiar to any part of the body, and it is called mental pleasure, or what we call ‘joy’. Similarly, some pains affect the body, and are therefore called pains of the body; and others do not, and these are called ‘grief’.

Chapter 8: Sensuous Pleasures; Honour

1, 2. What the pleasures of the senses consist in. 3, 4. The imagination or conception of power. 5. Honour, honourable, worth. 6. Signs of honour. 7. Reverence.

Chapter 9: The Passions of the Mind

1. Glory, aspiring, false glory, vain glory. 2. Humility and dejection. 3. Shame. 4. Courage. 5. Anger. 6 Revengefulness. 7. Repentance. 8. Hope, despair, diffidence. 9. Trust. 10. Pity and hardness of heart. 11. Indignation. Emulation and envy. 13. Laughter. 14. Weeping. 15. Lust. 16. Love. 17. Charity. 18. Wonder and curiosity. 19. The passions of those who crowd together to see danger. 20. Magnanimity and pusillanimity. 21. A view of the passions represented in a race.

Chapter 10: The Differences between People’s Intellectual Capacities, and their Causes

1. Difference in wit does not consist in a different constitution of the brain. 2. It consists in the difference of vital constitution. 3. Dulness. 4. Phantasy, judgment, wit. 5. Frivolity. 6. Seriousness. 7. Stolidity. 8. Indocility. 9. Madness from self-conceit. 10. Follies which seem to be degrees of this. 11. Madness, and degrees of it stemming from empty fear.

10.1. [48] In the preceding chapters, I have shown that human imagination arises from the action of external objects on the brain, or some internal substance of the head; and that the passions arise from the alteration made in the head, and continued to the heart. This is now the appropriate place to discuss the fact that different people have different levels of knowledge. [49] The differences are too great to be accounted for by differences in the constitution of the brain. It is a commonplace observation that some people have far greater intellectual capacities than others, and I shall explain what other causes might be responsible for such differences.

I shall not say anything about differences arising from disease, or any other such accidental brain damage, since they are irrelevant here. I am concerned only with people who are in good health, and whose organs are functioning normally.

If the difference were in the natural constitution of the brain, I can imagine no reason why it should not appear first and most obviously in the senses. But since the senses are the same in the wise and the less wise, this implies that the constitution of the brain is the same, since the brain is the organ common to all the senses.

10.2. But we see from experience that joy and grief do not have the same causes in all people. People differ greatly in their bodily constitutions, so that what helps and reinforces the vital constitution of one person, and is therefore pleasurable, hinders and obstructs it in another, and causes grief. Therefore differences in wit have their origin in the differences between people’s passions, and the goals which their appetites set for them.

10.3. First consider people whose goals are sensual pleasure, and as a class are addicted to relaxation, food, and the passage of things in and out of the body. Such people must necessarily get less pleasure from imaginations which are not conducive to these goals, such as imaginations of honour and glory, which, as I have said before, relate to the future. Sensuality consists in the pleasure of the senses, which please only for the present moment, and detract from any inclination to attend to things which are conducive to honour. Consequently, they make people less inquisitive and less ambitious, so that they pay less attention to the ways of achieving knowledge or other kinds of power, which together make up all the superiority of cognitive power. This is what people [50] call ‘dulness’, and it comes from the appetite of sensual or bodily pleasure. A reasonable conjecture is that this passion originates in the density of the spirits surrounding the heart, which makes it difficult for them to be set in motion.

10.4. The opposite is that quick ranging of the mind described in Chapter 4, Section 3, to which is added an inquisitiveness about making comparisons between the things which come into the mind. In making such comparisons, people find two sorts of pleasure.

One is to discover unexpected similarities between things which are otherwise very unlike; and people who excel at this are said to have a good phantasy. It is the source of those elegant similes, metaphors, and other turns of speech by which both poets and orators have it in their power to make things please or displease, and to show them in a good or bad light to others, as they see fit.

The other sort of pleasure consists in quickly detecting differences between things which otherwise appear the same. This virtue of the mind is that by which people attain exact and perfect knowledge; and the pleasure it gives rise to consists in continually classifying and distinguishing between people, places, and times. It is usually called by the name ‘judgment’, since to judge is nothing other than to distinguish or discriminate. Phantasy and judgment taken together are usually included under the name of ‘wit’, which seems to arise from a tenuity and agility of the spirits, as contrasted with the sluggishness of the spirits I have conjectured in dull people.

10.5. There is another defect of the mind, which people call ‘frivolity’. It also indicates mobility in the spirits, but to excess. An example of this is when people who are making a serious speech have their minds diverted by every possible little joke or clever observation, which makes them stray from the point by one digression after another, till they eventually lose themselves, or make their account like a dream, or some deliberate nonsense. The passion which gives rise to it is inquisitiveness, [51] but with too much sameness and lack of discrimination; for when every thought has the same force and is equally pleasurable, they all crowd together demanding to be expressed.

10.6. The virtue which is the opposite of this defect is seriousness, or constancy Here the goal is the one great and ruling pleasure, and it controls all other thoughts, and keeps them on course towards itself.

10.7. The extreme of dulness is the innate kind of stupidity which can be called ‘stolidity’. But the extreme of frivolity has no name, even though it is an innate kind of stupidity which is distinct from frivolity, and everybody has observed obvious instances of it.

10.8. There is a mental defect called amathia in Greek, which is indocility, or learning difficulty. This must necessarily arise from people’s false opinion that they already know the truth of the matter in question. For in other respects, the difference between people’s capacity for learning is less than the difference in evidence between what is taught by the mathematicians, and what is usually written about in other books. Therefore if everybody’s minds were a blank sheet of paper, they would be almost equally disposed to accept whatever was presented to them in accordance with correct method and valid reasoning. But once people have accepted false opinions, and stored them in their minds as correct records, then it is just as impossible to speak intelligibly to them, as it is to write legibly on a sheet of paper which has already been scribbled over. Therefore the direct cause of indocility is preconceptions; and that of preconceptions is a false opinion of our own knowledge.

10.9. Another, major mental defect is what people call ‘madness’, which appears to be nothing other than some imagination which is so predominant above all other imaginations, that it is the only one which arouses our passions. And this conception is nothing other than excessive pride or depression. That this is so is shown to be virtually certain by the following examples, every one of which appears to arise from some [52] instance of pride or mental depression. First, we have had the example of the man in Cheapside, who used a cart there for a pulpit, and preached that he himself was Christ. This was spiritual pride or madness. Then there have also been various examples of learned madness, when people have obviously been distracted by anything which reminds them of their own ability. I think we can also count as learned madmen, those who determine the time of the world’s end, and other such items of prophecy. And the chivalrous madness of Don Quixote is nothing other than an example of the extremes of empty pride which the reading of romances can produce in mean-spirited people. Also rage and the madness of love are nothing other than the extremely inappropriate behaviour of people whose brains are preoccupied by slights received from their enemies, or by their mistresses. And taking pride in their physical appearance and posture has made various people go mad, and be recognised as such by being called ‘exhibitionists’.

10.10. I have given examples of extremes, but there are also innumerable examples of degrees in between, which can therefore be reasonably counted as follies. It is a folly of the first degree for someone, without definite evidence, to think that they are inspired, or that they have been influenced by God’s holy spirit more than any other devout people. It is a folly of the second degree for someone to continually speak their minds in a mishmash of other people’s Greek or Latin sentences. It is a folly of the third degree to indulge in the present fashion for chivalry in love and duelling. A degree of rage is malice; and a degree of mad exhibitionism is affectation.

10.11. All the examples given so far are of madness, and its various degrees, arising from excessive self-esteem. But there are also other examples of madness, and its various degrees, which come from too much groundless fear and depression — [53] for example, those melancholic [n.21] people who have imagined that they are as brittle as glass, or have had some other similar imagination. The degrees of this are all those excessive and baseless fears which we frequently observe in melancholic people.

Chapter 11: People’s Imaginations and Passions, and the Names of Supernatural Things

1, 2. One can come to know by nature that there is a God. 3. The attributes of God signify our lack of any conception of him, or our reverence of him. 4. The meaning of the word ‘spirit’. 5. ‘Spirit’ and ‘incorporeal’ are contradictory terms. 6. The source of the error which makes heathens believe in demons and ghosts. 7. The knowledge of spirit and inspiration from the Holy Scriptures. 8. How it is said that we know that the Scriptures are the Word of God. 9, 10. The source of our knowledge of the interpretation of Scriptures. 11. What it is to love and trust God. 12. What it is to honour and worship God.

11.1. So far I have discussed our knowledge of natural things, and the passions which arise naturally from them. However, we give names to supernatural things as well as to natural ones; and since there ought to be some meaning and conception associated with all names, my next task is to consider what thoughts and imaginations we have in our minds when we take into our mouths the most blessed name of God, and the names of the virtues we attribute to him; as also what image comes into the mind when we hear the name ‘spirit’, or the name ‘angel’, good or bad.

11.2. Since God Almighty is incomprehensible, it follows that we can have no conception or image of the Deity. Consequently, all his attributes signify our inability and lack of power to conceive anything about his nature. They give us no conception of him, except that there is a God. For the effects which it is our nature to believe in necessarily include a power of creating them before they were created; and that power presupposes [54] something existent which has such a power; and if the existent thing which has such a creative power were not eternal, it must necessarily have been created by something before it; and that again by something else before it — until we come to an eternal power, that is to say, to the first power of all powers, and first cause of all causes. And this is what all people call by the name ‘God’, implying eternity, incomprehensibility, and omnipotence. In this way, anyone who thinks about the matter can know by nature that God exists, though not what he is — just as someone who is born blind cannot have any imagination of what kind of thing fire is, but they cannot fail to know that there is something which people call ‘fire’, because it warms them.

11.3. Admittedly we attribute things like seeing, hearing, speaking, knowing, and loving to God Almighty. When we attribute these names to people, we have an understanding of something which is in those people; but when we attribute them to God, they give us no understanding of anything in his nature. It is a good argument that God who made the eye should be able to see; and that God who made the ear should be able to hear. But it is an equally good argument to say that God who made the eye should be able to see without the eye; or that God who made the ear should be able to hear without the ear; or that God who made the brain should be able to know without having a brain; or that God who made the heart should be able to love without having a heart. Therefore the attributes which are applied to the Deity are such as to signify either our incapacity or our reverence: our incapacity when we say he is incomprehensible and infinite; and our reverence when we give him the names which, amongst ourselves, are the names of the things we most praise and commend, for example, ‘omnipotent’, ‘omniscient’, ‘just’, ‘merciful’, etc. And when God Almighty gives these names to himself in the Scriptures, it is merely anthropopathos, [n.22] that is to say, by descending to our way of speaking, otherwise we would be incapable of understanding him.

11.4. [55] By the name ‘spirit’, we mean a natural body, but one which is so rarefied that it has no effect on the senses; yet it occupies a space which could be occupied by the image of a visible body. Therefore our conception of a spirit consists of shape without colour. But shape implies dimensions; therefore to conceive a spirit is to conceive something which has dimensions. But when people refer to supernatural spirits, they usually mean some sort of substance without dimensions — and these two words flatly contradict each other. So when we attribute the name ‘spirit’ to God, we attribute it to him, not as a name of anything we can conceive, any more than when we attribute sensation and understanding to him; but to signify our reverence for him, because we want to exempt him from all bodily grossness.

11.5. As for other spirits, which some people call ‘incorporeal’ and others call ‘corporeal’, it is impossible to come to know by natural means alone whether they even exist at all. We who are Christians accept that there are angels, both good and evil; and that there are spirits, and that the human soul is a spirit; and that these spirits are immortal. But it is impossible to know this in the sense of having natural evidence of it. For, as I said in Chapter 6, Section 3, all evidence is conception; and as I said in Chapter 3, Section 1, all conception is imagination, and arises from sensation. And we assume that spirits are substances which do not affect the senses, and therefore cannot be conceived. But although the Scripture accepts that there are spirits, it nowhere says that they are incorporeal, meaning by this that they have no dimensions or quantity. Nor, as far as I am aware, does the word ‘incorporeal’ occur anywhere in the Bible. What it does say of spirit is sometimes that it ‘abides’ in people, sometimes that it ‘dwells’ in them, sometimes that it ‘comes on’ them, sometimes that it ‘descends’, [56] and sometimes that it ‘comes and goes’; and it also says that spirits are ‘angels’, which means ‘messengers’ [n.23] — and all these words imply position in space; and to have a position in space is to have dimensions; and whatever has dimensions is a body, however rarefied. Therefore it seems to me that the Scripture gives more support to those who believe that angels and spirits are corporeal, than to those who believe the opposite. And in ordinary language it is a straight contradiction to say that the human soul is ‘wholly in a whole,’ or ‘wholly in every part of the body.’ [n.24] It has no basis in reason or revelation, but comes from ignorance of the nature of the things which are called ‘spectres’, or images which appear in the dark to children, or to people who are very fearful or have lively imaginations — as I said in Chapter 3, Section 5, where I called them ‘phantasms’. Since they take them to be things which exist in external reality, like bodies; and since they see them appear and disappear as strangely as they do, unlike bodies; what else could they call them but ‘incorporeal bodies’? However, this is not a name, but a linguistic absurdity.

11.6. It is true that the heathens, and all the peoples of the world, have accepted that there are spirits, which they have generally held to be incorporeal. So it might be thought that one could attain knowledge that spirits exist, by natural reason, and without any knowledge of Scripture. But, as I have already said, the heathens may have arrived at this erroneous conclusion because they were ignorant of the causes of ghosts and phantasms, and other such apparitions. This was the source of the Greeks’ many gods, their many good and bad demons, and the ‘genius’ [n.25] unique to each person. But it is not a recognition of the truth that spirits exist, but a false opinion about the power of the imagination. . . . .

Chapter 12: How People’s Actions Proceed from their Passions through Deliberation

1. Deliberation. 2. Will. 3. Voluntary, involuntary, and mixed actions. 4. Actions from sudden appetite are voluntary. 5. Appetite and our passions are not voluntary. 6. Opinion of reward and punishment make and govern the will. 7. Agreement, disagreement, contention, battle, aid. 8. Union. 9. Intention.

12.1. [61] I have already explained how external objects cause conceptions, and how conceptions cause appetite and fear, which are the first unperceived beginnings of our actions. Either the action directly follows the first appetite (as when we do something immediately); or else our first appetite is followed by the conception of some evil which will happen to us as a result of the action. This is fear, and it prevents us from proceeding with the action. And this fear can be followed by a new appetite, and this appetite by another fear, alternating with each other until either the action is done, or some accident intervenes so as to make the action impossible, and the alternation between appetite and fear comes to an end. This successive alternation between appetite and fear is what we call ‘deliberation’, as long as it is still in our power to do or not to do the action. This name has been given to it on account of the part of the definition which refers to its lasting as long as the action we are deliberating about is in our power, since it is only during this period that we are at liberty to do the action or not to do it — and ‘deliberation’ means the taking away of our own liberty. [n.26]

12.2. For there to be deliberation, there are two preconditions in the action deliberated about: one is that it is in the future; the other is that there is a hope of doing it, or a possibility of not doing it. Appetite and fear are expectations of the future; and there can be no expectation of some future good without hope, or of some future evil without the possibility of its occurring. Therefore there can be no deliberation about what happens necessarily. In deliberation, the last appetite or [62] fear is called ‘will’ — in other words, the last appetite is the will to do something, and the last fear is the will not to do it, or the will to omit it. Consequently, there is no difference between your will and your last will. If you express your present inclination and appetite concerning the disposal of your property, whether in words or in writing, it does not count as your will, since you are still at liberty to dispose of it differently. But when death takes away that liberty, then it becomes your will. [n.27]

12.3. Voluntary actions and failures to act are those which have their beginning in the will. All others are involuntary or mixed. Voluntary actions are those which are done because of appetite or fear. Involuntary actions are those which are done by the necessity of nature, as when you do good or harm to someone else because you have been pushed, or have fallen. Mixed actions participate of both, as when a man being taken to prison is pulled along against his will, but voluntarily walks upright for fear of being dragged along the ground: in walking to the prison, his walking is voluntary, but his walking to the prison is involuntary. The case of a man who throws his goods out of a ship into the sea in order to save his person is an example of an entirely voluntary action, since there is nothing there which is involuntary, apart from the difficulty of the choice. But this is not the man’s action, but the action of the winds. What he himself does is no more against his will, than to flee from danger is against the will of someone who sees no other way of saving themselves.

12.4. Actions are also voluntary if they are the result of sudden anger, or some other sudden appetite, provided they are done by people who can discriminate between good and evil. In such people, their earlier history can be deemed a period of deliberation, since they have already deliberated about the circumstances in which it is right to hit someone, or laugh at them, or do any other action arising from anger or any other such sudden passion.

12.5. Appetite, fear, hope, and the other passions are [63] not called ‘voluntary’, since they are not the result of the will, but the are the will; and the will is not voluntary. You can no more say that you will to will, than that you will to will to will, and hence repeat the word ‘will’ infinitely many times — which is absurd and meaningless.

12.6. Since the will to do something is appetite, and the will not to do it is fear, the causes of appetite and fear are also the causes of our will. But the envisaging of benefits and harms, that is to say, of rewards and punishments, is the cause of our appetites and fears, and therefore also of our wills, in so far as we believe that we shall obtain the envisaged rewards and benefits. Consequently, our wills follow our opinions, just as our actions follow our wills. In this sense, the saying that the world is governed by opinion is absolutely true.

12.7. When the wills of many people coincide on one and the same action or purpose, this coincidence of their wills is called ‘agreement’. This does not mean that a number of people have a single will, since each individual has their own will; rather, a number of wills are directed towards achieving a single purpose. But when the wills of two different people are directed towards actions which are in conflict with each other, this is called ‘contention’. If they are personally involved, it is called ‘battle’. Whereas if the actions arise from agreement, it is called mutual ‘aid’.

12.8. When many wills are delegated to, or included in, the will of an individual, or group of individuals, with whom there is an agreement (I shall explain later how this can happen), then this delegation of many wills to one person or more is called ‘union’.

12.9. When deliberations are interrupted (for example when one is distracted by other business, or by sleep), the last appetite of that part of the deliberation is called ‘intention’ or ‘purpose’.

Chapter 13: How People Affect each other’s Minds through Language

1, 2. Teaching, persuading, controversy, agreement. 3. The difference between teaching and persuading. 4. Controversies arise from dogmatism. 5. Advising. 6. Promise, threatening, commanding, law. 7. Increasing and diminishing the passions. 8. Words alone are not sufficient indications of what is meant. 9. When someone holds contradictory opinions, the one directly stated is to be preferred to the one implied. 10. The hearer is the interpreter of the language of the speaker. 11. Silence is sometimes an indication of consent.

13.1. [64] So far, I have discussed the powers and acts of the mind (both cognitive and motive) as they exist in each individual, without considering their relation to other people. This chapter is the right place to discuss the mutual effects of these powers on others. These effects are also the signs by which one person becomes aware of what someone else conceives and intends. Some of these signs cannot easily be faked, for example, actions and gestures, especially if they are spontaneous (in Chapter 9, I gave some examples of actions and gestures which are signs of various passions). Others are easy to fake, namely words or speech; and I shall now discuss their use and effects.

13.2. The first use of language is the expression of our conceptions, that is, getting others to have the same conceptions as we have in ourselves; and this is called ‘teaching’. If all the teacher’s words are always accompanied by conceptions, and if they originate in something which has been experienced, then they give rise to similar evidence in the hearer who understands them, and make them know something, which they are therefore said to ‘learn’. But if there is no such evidence, then such teaching is called [65] ‘persuasion’, which gives rise to no more in the hearer than in the speaker, namely mere opinion. When two opinions contradict one another (i.e. affirmation and denial of the same thing), it is called a ‘controversy’. When both affirm the same thing, or deny the same thing, it is called ‘agreement’ in opinion.

13.3. The infallible criterion that teaching is accurate and free from error is that no-one has ever taught the opposite. It is not that only a few have taught the opposite (however few, if any at all), [n.28] since it is often the case that truth is on the side of the few rather than the many. But when many people consider and discuss opinions and questions, and it happens that not one person disagrees with anyone else, then it can reasonably be inferred that they know what they teach — and otherwise not. And this is most obvious to those who have considered the various subjects which people have written about, and the different methods they have adopted, and have compared them with their different success rates.

Now, on the other hand, consider those who have written about the capacities, passions, and customs of people — that is to say, about moral philosophy, politics, government, and law. Although infinitely many books have been written on these topics, instead of putting an end to doubt and controversy about the questions they have handled, they have vastly increased it. Indeed, in these times nobody even claims to know any more than was handed down by Aristotle two thousand years ago. Yet everybody thinks they know as much about these subjects as anybody else. They assume that they require no study, but that knowledge of them simply grows through natural wit — even though they are willing to exercise and employ their minds in other matters, such as the pursuit of wealth or status. The sole reason for this is that, in their books and lectures, they take as their starting point opinions which are already popularly accepted, irrespective of whether they are true or false — and they are mostly false.

There is, therefore, a great difference between teaching and persuading: the criterion of the latter is that there is controversy; and the criterion of the former is that there is no controversy.

13.4. There are two sorts of people who are usually called [67] learned. One is the sort which proceeds from basic principles by evident steps, as described in the previous section; and these people are called mathematicians. [n.29] The other sort are those who pick up maxims from their education, and on the authority of people or tradition, and replace reasoning with the succession of spoken words acquired by habit; and these are called dogmatics. [n.30] In the previous section, I cleared the ones I call ‘mathematicians’ of the charge of breeding controversy; nor can it be levelled against those who make no claim to learning. Consequently the only guilty ones are the dogmatics, that is to say, those who are only partly learned, and who strive passionately to have their opinions universally accepted as true, but without any evident demonstration either from experience, or from passages in the Bible whose interpretation is uncontroversial.

13.5. Giving expression to the conceptions which cause in us the expectation of good while we are deliberating (as also those which cause our expectation of evil) is what we call ‘advising’. In the internal deliberation of the mind, when we are wondering what we ourselves should do or not do, the consequences of the action are our advisers, alternating with each other in the mind. Similarly, if you take advice from other people, your advisers take it in turns to make you see the consequences of the action. None of your advisers themselves deliberate, but between them all they supply you with arguments to deliberate about within yourself.

13.6. Another use of speech is to give expression to appetite, intention, and will. For example, we express appetite for knowledge by asking questions; we express appetite to get someone else to do something by making a request; prayer, or petition; we express our purpose or intention as a promise, which is the affirmation or negation of some action to be done in the future; threatening, which is the promise of evil; and commanding, which is the form of words by which we signify to someone else our appetite and desire to have [68] anything done or left undone, when our will itself is sufficient reason, since ‘I will this,’ or ‘I command this’ are incomplete expressions without the additional clause ‘Let my will stand for a reason.’ [n.31] And when the command is a reason sufficient to move us to action, then that command is called a ‘law’.

13.7. Another use of speech is incitement and appeasement, by which we increase or diminish each other’s passions. It is the same as persuasion, since there is no real difference between them. Giving rise to an opinion and giving rise to a passion are the same act; but whereas in persuasion we aim to get an opinion out of a passion, here the purpose is to raise a passion out of an opinion. In raising an opinion from a passion, any premises are good enough for inferring the desired conclusion. Similarly, in raising a passion from an opinion, it makes no difference whether the opinion is true or false, or whether a story is historical fact, or fiction. For passions are brought about by images, not by the truth; and a tragedy has as much emotional impact as a murder, if it is well acted.

13.8. Words are the signs we have of each other’s opinions and intentions. But because they are so often ambiguous, and depend for their meaning on their linguistic context and on the circumstances in which they are spoken, it is a great help in eliminating the ambiguities if we are in the presence of the speaker, and can see what they are doing, and make conjectures about their intentions. It necessarily follows that it is extremely difficult to find out the opinions and meanings of people who died long ago, and have left us no other indication of what they meant apart from their books. They are impossible to understand without enough historical knowledge to reveal the circumstances just mentioned, and unless we also take great care to take account of them.

13.9. [69] It sometimes happens that a person indicates to us two contradictory opinions, of which one is stated explicitly and directly, and the other is merely implied, or not known to contradict it. If so (assuming they are not available to explain themselves better), we should take the former as their opinion, since it is explicitly and directly stated as such, whereas the other might be the result of a fallacious deduction, or ignorance of the contradiction. The same goes for two contradictory expressions of a person’s intention or will, for the same reason.

13.10. Anyone who speaks to someone else intends to make them understand what they are saying. Consequently, if they speak in a language which the hearer does not understand, or if they use any word in a sense which is different from the one they believe the hearer will take it in, then they are also intending to make them not understand what they are saying — which is to contradict themselves. It must therefore always be assumed that a speaker who does not intend to deceive, allows the hearer their own personal interpretation of what they say.

13.11. Silence indicates consent, if someone thinks this is how it will be taken. It costs so little trouble to say ‘No,’ that anyone who does not say it can be assumed to mean ‘Yes.’ . . . .

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