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nydus/An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1Public

John Locke presents a philosophical treatise dedicated to the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery. The work explores the nature of human understanding and advocates for the objective examination of new ideas regardless of their departure from established doctrines.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER XXIII. OF OUR COMPLEX IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES.

a mathematician can consider a certain distance, or a change of that distance between two points, one may certainly conceive a distance and a change of distance, between two spirits; and so conceive their motion, their approach or removal, one from another.

  1. Proof of this.

Every one finds in himself that his soul can think, will, and operate on his body in the place where that is, but cannot operate on a body, or in a place, an hundred miles distant from it. Nobody can imagine that his soul can think or move a body at Oxford, whilst he is at London; and cannot but know, that, being united to his body, it constantly changes place all the whole journey between Oxford and London, as the coach or horse does that carries him, and I think may be said to be truly all that while in motion or if that will not be allowed to afford us a clear idea enough of its motion, its being separated from the body in death, I think, will; for to consider it as going out of the body, or leaving it, and yet to have no idea of its motion, seems to me impossible.

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