The works of John Locke Volume 2 Author:John Locke This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1812 Excerpt: ...the ears do the office of all the other senses. Which is all one as to say, that we might taste, smell, and see by the ears; a sort of phi... more »losophy worthy only of Sancho Panca, who had the faculty to see Dulcinea by hearsay. And therefore he that has not before received into his mind, by the proper inlet, the simple idea which any word stands for, can never come to know the signification of that word by any other words or sounds whatsoever, put together according to any rules of definition. The only way is by applying to his senses the proper object, and so producing that idea in him, for which he has learned the name already. A studious blind man, who had mightily beat his head about visible objects, and made use of the explication of his books and friends, to understand those names of light and colours, which often came in his way, bragged one day, that he now understood what scarlet signified. Upon which his friend demanding, what scarlet was? the blind man answered, It was like the sound of a trumpet. Just such an underVol. Ii. sr standing of the name of any other simple idea will he have, who hopes to get it only from a definition, or other words made use of to explain it. The contra-§-12. The case is quite otherwise in com. ry showed plex ideas; which consisting of several simin complex pie ones, it is in the power of words, standideas, by for the several ideas that make that instances of.. ?. 1-j astatue and composition, to imprint complex ideas in rainbow. the mind, which were never there before, and so make their names be understood. In such collections of' ideas, passing under one name, definition, or the teaching the signification of one word by several others, has place, and may make us understand the names of things, which never came w...« less