[An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. by John Locke]@TWC D-Link bookAn Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. CHAPTER XXII 6/11
For, if we should inquire where the idea of a TRIUMPH or APOTHEOSIS exists, it is evident they could neither of them exist altogether anywhere in the things themselves, being actions that required time to their performance, and so could never all exist together; and as to the minds of men, where the ideas of these actions are supposed to be lodged, they have there too a very uncertain existence: and therefore we are apt to annex them to the names that excite them in us. 9.
How we get the Ideas of mixed Modes. There are therefore three ways whereby we get these complex ideas of mixed modes:--( 1) By experience and OBSERVATION of things themselves: thus, by seeing two men mixed wrestle or fence, we get the idea of wrestling or fencing.
(2) By INVENTION, or voluntary putting together of several simple ideas in our own minds: so he that first invented printing or etching, had an idea of it in his mind before it ever existed.
(3) Which is the most usual way, by EXPLAINING THE NAMES of actions we never saw, or motions we cannot see; and by enumerating, and thereby, as it were, setting before our imaginations all those ideas which go to the making them up, and are the constituent parts of them. For, having by sensation and reflection stored our minds with simple ideas, and by use got the names that stand for them, we can by those means represent to another any complex idea we would have him conceive; so that it has in it no simple ideas but what he knows, and has with us the same name for.
For all our complex ideas are ultimately resolvable into simple ideas, of which they are compounded and originally made up, though perhaps their immediate ingredients, as I may so say, are also complex ideas.
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