Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"Syllogism, at best, is but the Art of fencing with the little Knowledge we have, without making any Addition to it: And if a Man should employ his Reason all this way, he will not doe much otherwise than he, who having got some Iron out of the Bowels of the Earth, should have it beaten up all in...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"Had the King of Spain imploy'd the Hands of his People, and his Spanish Iron so, he had brought to Light but little of that Treasure, that lay so long hid in the dark Entrails of America. And I am apt to think, that he who shall employ all the force of his Reason only ...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"Though therefore it be the Mind that makes the Collection, 'tis the Name which is, as it were, the Knot, that ties them fast together."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"The senses at first let in particular Ideas, and furnish the yet empty Cabinet: And the Mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the Memory, and Names got to them."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

Internal and external sensation, "These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this dark room: For methinks the understanding is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little openings left, to let in external visible resemblances, or i...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"And if these Organs, or the Nerves which are the Conduits, to convey them from without to their Audience in the Brain, the mind's Presence-room (as I may so call it) are any of them so disordered, as not to perform their Functions, they have no Postern to be admitted by; no other way to bring th...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"In all these cases, Ideas in the Mind, quickly fade, and often vanish quite out of the Understanding, leaving no more footsteps or remaining Characters of themselves, than Shadows do flying over fields of Corn; and the Mind is as void of them, as if they never had been there."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"The Dominion of Man, in this little World of his own Understanding, being muchwhat the same, as it is in the great World of visible things: wherein his Power, however managed by Art and Skill, reaches no farther, than to compound and divide the Materials, that are made to his Hand; but can do no...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

Surveying the "Powers of our own Minds" is like fathoming "the depths of the Ocean": "'Tis of great use to the Sailor to know the length of his Line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the Ocean. 'Tis well he knows, that it is long enough to reach the bottom, at such Places as are ...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"When the Ideas that offer themselves, (for as I have observed in another place, whilst we are awake, there will always be a train of Ideas succeeding one another in our Minds,) are taken notice of, and, as it were, registred in the Memory, it is Attention."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)