John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

In the beginning I would like to say why I have chosen this philosopher. All my life I tried to find out the reason people do different things. When I was a boy I always was sitting at home near the window looking at people that were passing by and trying to imagine what they are thinking about. I questioned myself why they speak or react in different ways. I understood that I can reach this knowledge only through myself; my own inward world is a fertile soil for research. Through myself I began to understand different people, but they could not understand me anymore, so as a true egoist I began to dig deeper and deeper in the internal world of mine... Taking philosophy I found out that it was not interesting for me to read philosophers because many things I had found out myself. I do not even say about discussions where people argued with each other not even realizing that they are all right but in different ways and only according to their own experience.

Sensation White

Title page for the fourth edition of John Locke's ...

John Locke

So I had taken the position of spectator and study them with all their beliefs and problems. But situation was changed when we began to read Locke's essay concerning human understanding. I found out something that I did not think about. He wrote about ideas and their origin...

In the beginning I want to note that I shall not take philosopher's essay as absolutely correct one and I shall try to express my own point of view.

In the very beginning Locke gives us such notion: Idea is the notion of thinking, and says: it is past doubt that men have in their minds several ideas,- such as are those expressed by the words whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army,