Taken together, they comprise an extremely long and detailed theory of knowledge starting from the very basics and building up. Book i, of innate ideas, is an attack on the cartesian view of knowledge, which holds that human beings are born with certain ideas already in their mind. Of innate ideas begins with an argument against the possibility of innate propositional knowledge that is, innate knowledge of fact, such as the fact that whatever is, is , and then moves on to an argument against the possibility of innate ideas such as the idea of god. Once he feels secure that he has sufficiently argued the cartesian position, locke begins to construct his own theory of the origins of knowledge. He argues that everything in our mind is an idea, and that all ideas take one of two routes to arrive in our mind: either they come in through the senses, or else they come in through the mind's reflection on its own operation. He also classifies our ideas into two basic types, simple and complex with simple ideas being the building blocks of complex ideas , and then further classifies these basic types into more specific subcategories.

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The vast majority of this book is spent analyzing the specific subcategories of our ideas. Though book ii is primarily an attempt to account for the origin of all our ideas, it also includes two other very important discussions, only tangentially related to the subject of the origin of ideas. Chapter vi contains locke's argument for a distinction between primary and secondary qualities.

He attempts to show that there are two very different sorts of relations that can hold between the qualities of the outside world and our ideas about those qualities. Size and shape and our ideas of them is one of resemblance what we sense is roughly what is out there. Color and odor and our ideas of them is one of mismatch there is nothing out in the world that resembles our sensations. In chapter xxi, locke tries to give an account of substance that allows most of our intuitions without conceding anything objectionable. In book i, of words, locke turns from philosophy of mind to philosophy of language. According to the theory of meaning that locke presents, words do not refer to things in the external world but to the ideas in our heads. Locke, relying heavily on his theory of ideas, attempts to give an account of how we form general terms from a world of particular objects, which leads him into a lengthy discussion of the ontology of types that is, the question of whether there are any natural kinds out in the world or whether all classifications are purely conventional.

Book iv, of knowledge and opinion, finally gives us the long awaited theory of knowledge. Locke begins with a strict definition of knowledge, one which renders most sciences all but mathematics and morality ineligible. Knowledge, according to locke, is the perception of strong internal relations that hold among the ideas themselves, without any reference to the external world.

He lists four sorts of relations between ideas that would count as knowledge identity/diversity, relation, coexistence, actual existence , and then distinguishes between three grades of knowledge intuition as the highest, demonstration as a middling level, and sensitive knowledge as a sort of pseudo knowledge. The remainder of the book is spent discussing opinion or belief, which is the best we can hope for from nearly all our intellectual endeavors. Locke is very careful to refrain from speaking as if opinion is mere opinion he is not a skeptic and does not believe that science is futile. On the contrary, he is very eager to claim in the last chapters of theessay. That we should be satisfied with this level of certitude and that we should continue collecting scientific data with gusto. Gaining a better and better opinion of the world is a worthy goal, and one that he shares.

He does ask, however, that we be aware that as good as our opinions become, they are never going to reach the level of knowledge. Another occasion the mind often takes of comparing, is the very being of things, when, considering anything as existing at any determined time and place, we compare it with itself existing at another time, and thereon form the ideas of identity and diversity. For we never finding, nor conceiving it possible, that two things of the same kind should exist in the same place at the same time, we rightly conclude, that, whatever exists anywhere at any time, excludes all of the same kind, and is there itself alone. When therefore we demand whether anything be the same or no, it refers always to something that existed such a time in such a place, which it was certain, at that instant, was the same with itself, and no other. From whence it follows, that one thing cannot have two beginnings of existence, nor two things one beginning it being impossible for two things of the same kind to be or exist in the same instant, in the very same place or one and the same thing in different places.

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That, therefore, that had one beginning, is the same thing and that which had a different beginning in time and place from that, is not the same, but diverse. That which has made the difficulty about this relation has been the little care and attention used in having precise notions of the things to which it is attributed. In nothing but a participation of the same continued life, by constantly fleeting particles of matter, in succession vitally united to the same organized body. He that shall place the identity of man in anything else, but, like that of other animals, in one fitly organized body, taken in any one instant, and from thence continued, under one organization of life, in several successively fleeting particles of matter united to it, will find it hard to make an embryo, one of years, mad and sober, the same man, by any supposition, that will not make it possible for seth, ismael. For if the identity of soul alone makes the same man and there be nothing in the nature of matter why the same individual spirit may not be united to different bodies, it will be possible that those men, living in distant ages, and of different tempers, may have been the same man: which way of speaking must be from a very strange use of the word man, applied to an idea out of which body and shape are excluded. And that way of speaking would agree yet worse with the notions of those philosophers who allow of transmigration, and are of opinion that the souls of men may, for their miscarriages, be detruded into the bodies of beasts, as fit habitations, with organs suited to the satisfaction of their brutal inclinations.

But yet i think nobody, could he be sure that the soul of heliogabalus were in one of his hogs, would yet say that hog were a man or heliogabalus. An animal is a living organized body and consequently the same animal, as we have observed, is the same continued life communicated to different particles of matter, as they happen successively to be united to that organized living body. And whatever is talked of other definitions, ingenious observation puts it past doubt, that the idea in our minds, of which the sound man in our mouths is the sign, is nothing else but of an animal of such a certain form. Since i think i may be confident, that, whoever should see a creature of his own shape or make, though it had no more reason all its life than a cat or a parrot, would call him still a man or whoever should hear a cat or a parrot discourse, reason, and philosophize, would call or think it nothing but a cat or a parrot and say, the one was a dull irrational man, and the other a very intelligent rational parrot. A relation we have in an author of great note, is sufficient to countenance the supposition of a rational parrot. When we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will anything, we know that we do so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations and perceptions: and by this every one is to himself that which he calls self: it not being considered, in this case, whether the same self be continued in the same or divers substances.

For, since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things, in this alone consists personal identity, i.e. The sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person it is the same self now it was then and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done. This few would think they had reason to doubt of, if these perceptions, with their consciousness, always remained present in the mind, whereby the same thinking thing would be always consciously present, and, as would be thought, evidently the same to itself. Which, however reasonable or unreasonable, concerns not personal identity at all. The question being what makes the same person and not whether it be the same identical substance, which always thinks in the same person, which, in this case, matters not at all: different substances, by the same consciousness where they do partake in it being united into one person, as well as different bodies by the same life are united into one animal, whose identity is preserved in that change of substances by the unity of one continued life.

For, it being the same consciousness that makes a man be himself to himself, personal identity depends on that only, whether it be annexed solely to one individual substance, or can be continued in a succession of several substances. For as far as any intelligent being can repeat the idea of any past action with the same consciousness it had of it at first, and with the same consciousness it has of any present action so far it is the same personal self for it is by the consciousness it has of its present thoughts and actions, that it is self to itself now, and so will be the same self, as far as the same consciousness can extend to actions past or to come. And would be by distance of time, or change of substance, no more two persons, than a man be two men by wearing other clothes to day than he did yesterday, with a long or a short sleep between: the same consciousness uniting those distant actions into the same person, whatever substances contributed to their production. That this is so, we have some kind of evidence in our very bodies, all whose particles, whilst vitally united to this same thinking conscious self, so that we feel when they are touched, and are affected by, and conscious of good or harm that happens to them, as a part of ourselves i.e.