An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Locke, John
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 1610216
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Eris Etext Project
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: 3
subject: ideas
subject: idea
subject: mind
subject: man
subject: knowledge
subject: grown
subject: lordship
subject: eye
subject: name
subject: locke
subject: john
subject: essay
subject: concerning
subject: human
subject: understanding
subject: western
subject: philosophy
type: text
local mirror: locke-essay-113.txt
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plain html: locke-essay-113.htm
sort title: Essay Concerning Human Understanding, An
full text: 1690 AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING by John Locke TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD THOMAS, EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY, BARRON HERBERT OF CARDIFF, LORD ROSS, OF KENDAL, PAR, FITZHUGH, MARMION, ST. QUINTIN, AND SHURLAND; LORD PRESIDENT OF HIS MAJESTY'S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL; AND LORD LIEUTENANT OF THE COUNTY OF WILTS, AND OF SOUTH WALES. MY LORD, THIS Treatise, which is grown up under your lordship's eye, and has ventured into the world by your order, does now, by a natural kind of right, come to your lordship for that protection which you several years since promised it. It is not that I think any name, how great soever, set at the beginning of a book, will be able to cover the faults that are to be found in it. Things in print must stand and fall by their own worth, or the reader's fancy. But there being nothing more to be desired for truth than a fair unprejudiced hearing, nobody is more likely to procure me that than your lordship, who are allowed to have got so intimate an acquaintance with her, in her more retired recesses. Your lordship is known to have so far advanced your speculations in the most abstract and general knowledge of things, beyond the ordinary reach or common methods, that your allowance and approbation of the design of this Treatise will at least preserve it from being condemned without reading, and will prevail to have those parts a little weighted, which might otherwise perhaps be thought to deserve no consideration, for being somewhat out of the common road. The imputation of Novelty is a terrible charge amongst those who judge of men's heads, as they do of their perukes, by the fashion, and can allow none to be right but the received doctrines. Truth scarce ever yet carried it by vote anywhere at its first appearance: new opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. But truth, like gold, is not the less so for being newly brought out of the mine. It i…