John Locke

“ I ask, then, whether Castor and Pollux, thus with only one soul between them, which thinks and perceives in one what the other is never conscious of, nor is concerned for, are not two as distinct persons as Castor and Hercules, or as Socrates and Plato were ? And whether one of them might not be very happy, and the other very miserable ? Just by the same reason, they make the soul and the man two persons, who make the soul think apart what the man is not conscious of. ”

“ The soul begins to have ideas when it begins to perceive. To ask, at what time a man has first any ideas, is to ask, when he begins to perceive ; – having ideas, and perception, being the same thing. I know it is an opinion, that the soul always thinks, and that it has the actual perception of ideas in itself constantly, as long as it exists ; and that actual thinking is as inseparable from the soul as actual extension is from the body ; which if true, to inquire after the beginning of a man’s ideas is the same as to inquire after the beginning of his soul. ”

“ How knows any one that the soul always thinks ? For if it be not a self-evident proposition, it needs proof. I would be glad also to learn from these men who so confidently pronounce that the human soul, or, which is all one, that a man always thinks, how they come to know it ; nay, how they come to know that they themselves think when they themselves do not perceive it. This, I am afraid, is to be sure without proofs, and to know without perceiving. It is, I suspect, a confused notion, taken up to serve an hypothesis ”

“ Impossible to convince those that sleep without dreaming, that they think. Thus, methinks, every drowsy nod shakes their doctrine, who teach that the soul is always thinking. Those, at least, who do at any time sleep without dreaming, can never be convinced that their thoughts are sometimes for four hours busy without their knowing of it ; and if they are taken in the very act, waked in the middle of that sleeping contemplation, can give no manner of account of it. ”

“ He that attentively considers the state of a child, at his first coming into the world, will have little reason to think him stored with plenty of ideas, that are to be the matter of his future knowledge. It is by degrees he comes to be furnished with them. And though the ideas of obvious and familiar qualities imprint themselves before the memory begins to keep a register of time or order, yet it is often so late before some unusual qualities come in the way, that there are few men that cannot recollect the beginning of their acquaintance with them. ”

“ No man can be wholly ignorant of what he does when he thinks. These simple ideas, when offered to the mind, the understanding can no more refuse to have, nor alter when they are imprinted, nor blot them out and make new ones itself, than a mirror can refuse, alter, or obliterate the images or ideas which the objects set before it do therein produce. As the bodies that surround us do diversely affect our organs, the mind is forced to receive the impressions ; and cannot avoid the perception of those ideas that are annexed to them. ”

“ The dreams of sleeping men are, as I take it, all made up of the waking man’s ideas ; though for the most part oddly put together. It is strange, if the soul has ideas of its own that it derived not from sensation or reflection, (as it must have, if it thought before it received any impressions from the body,) that it should never, in its private thinking, (so private, that the man himself perceives it not,) retain any of them the very moment it wakes out of them, and then make the man glad with new discoveries. ”

“ To think often, and never to retain it so much as one moment, is a very useless sort of thinking ; and the soul, in such a state of thinking, does very little, if at all, excel that of a looking-glass, which constantly receives variety of images, or ideas, but retains none ; they disappear and vanish, and there remain no footsteps of them ; the looking-glass is never the better for such ideas, nor the soul for such thoughts. Perhaps it will be said, that in a waking man the materials of the body are employed, and made use of, in thinking ”

“ They who make the soul a thinking thing, at this rate, will not make it a much more noble being than those do whom they condemn, for allowing it to be nothing but the subtilist parts of matter. Characters drawn on dust, that the first breath of wind effaces ; or impressions made on a heap of atoms, or animal spirits, are altogether as useful, and render the subject as noble, as the thoughts of a soul that perish in thinking ; that, once out of sight, are gone forever, and leave no memory of themselves behind them. ”

“ I confess myself to have one of those dull souls, that doth not perceive itself always to contemplate ideas ; nor can conceive it any more necessary for the soul always to think, than for the body always to move : the perception of ideas being (as I conceive) to the soul, what motion is to the body ; not its essence, but one of its operations. And therefore, though thinking be supposed never so much the proper action of the soul, yet it is not necessary to suppose that it should be always thinking, always in action. ”

“ All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas : – How comes it to be furnished ? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety ? ”

“ Ideas of reflection later, because they need attention. And hence we see the reason why it is pretty late before most children get ideas of the operations of their own minds ; and some have not any very clear or perfect ideas of the greatest part of them all their lives. Because, though they pass there continually, yet, like floating visions, they make not deep impressions enough to leave in their mind clear, distinct, lasting ideas, till the understanding turns inward upon itself, reflects on its own operations, and makes them the objects of its own contemplation. ”

“ Idea is the object of thinking. Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks ; and that which his mind is applied about whilst thinking being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt that men have in their minds several ideas, – such as are those expressed by the words whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness, and others : it is in the first place then to be inquired, How he comes by them ?
I know it is a received doctrine, that men have native ideas, and original characters, stamped upon their minds in their very first being. ”

“ That men dream without remembering it, in vain urged. It will perhaps be said, – That the soul thinks even in the soundest sleep, but the memory retains it not. That the soul in a sleeping man should be this moment busy a thinking, and the next moment in a waking man not remember nor be able to recollect one jot of all those thoughts, is very hard to be conceived, and would need some better proof than bare assertion to make it be believed. ”

“ And if it were worth while, no doubt a child might be so ordered as to have but a very few, even of the ordinary ideas, till he were grown up to a man. But all that are born into the world, being surrounded with bodies that perpetually and diversely affect them, variety of ideas, whether care be taken of it or not, are imprinted on the minds of children. Light and colours are busy at hand everywhere, when the eye is but open ; sounds and some tangible qualities fail not to solicit their proper senses, and force an entrance to the mind ”

“ That whatever ideas the mind can receive and contemplate without the help of the body, it is reasonable to conclude it can retain without the help of the body too ; or else the soul, or any separate spirit, will have but little advantage by thinking. ”

“ But men in love with their opinions may not only suppose what is in question, but allege wrong matter of fact. How else could any one make it an inference of mine, that a thing is not, because we are not sensible of it in our sleep ? I do not say there is no soul in a man, because he is not sensible of it in his sleep ”

“ Those who so confidently tell us that the soul always actually thinks, I would they would also tell us, what those ideas are that are in the soul of a child, before or just at the union with the body, before it hath received any by sensation. ”

“ In the reception of simple ideas, the understanding is for the most part passive. In this part the understanding is merely passive ; and whether or no it will have these beginnings, and as it were materials of knowledge, is not in its own power. For the objects of our senses do, many of them, obtrude their particular ideas upon our minds whether we will or not ; and the operations of our minds will not let us be without, at least, some obscure notions of them. ”

“ He that will suffer himself to be informed by observation and experience, and not make his own hypothesis the rule of nature, will find few signs of a soul accustomed to much thinking in a new-born child, and much fewer of any reasoning at all. ”

“ But it is but defining the soul to be « a substance that always thinks, » and the business is done. If such definition be of any authority, I know not what it can serve for but to make many men suspect that they have no souls at all ; since they find a good part of their lives pass away without thinking. ”

“ The question being about a matter of fact, it is begging it to bring, as a proof for it, an hypothesis, which is the very thing in dispute : by which way one may prove anything, and it is but supposing that all watches, whilst the balance beats, think, and it is sufficiently proved, and past doubt, that my watch thought all last night. But he that would not deceive himself, ought to build his hypothesis on matter of fact, and make it out by sensible experience, and not presume on matter of fact, because of his hypothesis, that is, because he supposes it to be so ”

“ The mind thinks in proportion to the matter it gets from experience to think about. Follow a child from its birth, and observe the alterations that time makes, and you shall find, as the mind by the senses comes more and more to be furnished with ideas, it comes to be more and more awake ; thinks more, the more it has matter to think on. ”

“ For, I suppose nobody will make identity of persons to consist in the soul’s being united to the very same numercial particles of matter. For if that be necessary to identity, it will be impossible, in that constant flux of the particles of our bodies, that any man should be the same person two days, or two moments, together. ”

“ Most men, I think, pass a great part of their sleep without dreaming. I once knew a man that was bred a scholar, and had no bad memory, who told me he had never dreamed in his life, till he had that fever he was then newly recovered of, which was about the five or six and twentieth year of his age. I suppose the world affords more such instances : at least every one’s acquaintance will furnish him with examples enough of such as pass most of their nights without dreaming.
15. Upon this hypothesis, the thoughts of a sleeping man ought to be most rational. ”

“ External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us ; and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations. ”

“ Children when they come first into it, are surrounded with a world of new things, which, by a constant solicitation of their senses, draw the mind constantly to them ; forward to take notice of new, and apt to be delighted with the variety of changing objects. Thus the first years are usually employed and diverted in looking abroad. Men’s business in them is to acquaint themselves with what is to be found without ; and so growing up in a constant attention to outward sensations, seldom make any considerable reflection on what passes within them, till they come to be of riper years ”

“ And yet it is hard to imagine that the rational soul should think so much, and not reason at all. And he that will consider that infants newly come into the world spend the greatest part of their time in sleep, and are seldom awake but when either hunger calls for the teat, or some pain (the most importunate of all sensations) , or some other violent impression on the body, forces the mind to perceive and attend to it ”

“ That, perhaps, is the privilege of the infinite Author and Preserver of all things, who « never slumbers nor sleeps ; » but is not competent to any finite being, at least not to the soul of man. We know certainly, by experience, that we sometimes think ; and thence draw this infallible consequence, – that there is something in us that has a power to think. ”

“ If a sleeping man thinks without knowing it, the sleeping and waking man are two persons. The soul, during sound sleep, thinks, say these men. Whilst it thinks and perceives, it is capable certainly of those of delight or trouble, as well as any other perceptions ”

“ For who can without any more ado, but being barely told so, imagine that the greatest part of men do, during all their lives, for several hours every day, think of something, which if they were asked, even in the middle of these thoughts, they could remember nothing at all of ? ”