Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"It is an established Opinion amongst some Men, That there are in the Understanding certain innate principles; some primary Notions, [koinai ennoiai], Characters, as it were stamped upon the Mind of Man; which the Soul receives in its very first Being; and brings into the World with...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"But there is this farther Argument in it against their being innate: That these Characters, if they were native and original Impressions, should appear fairest and clearest in those Persons, in whom yet we find no Footsteps of them."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"Hence naturally flows the great variety of Opinions, concerning Moral Rules, which are to be found amongst Men, according to the different sorts of Happiness, they have a Prospect of, or propose to themselves: Which could not be, if practical Principles were innate, and imprinted in our Minds im...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"How, as it were in an instant, do our Minds, with one glance, see all the parts of a demonstration, which may very well be called a long one, if we consider the time it will require to put into words, and step by step shew it another?"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"This is Memory, which is as it were the Store-house of our Ideas."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"And in this Sense it is, that our Ideas are said to be in our Memories, when indeed, they are actually no where, but only there is an ability in the Mind, when it will, to revive them again; and as it were paint them anew on it self, though some with more, some with less difficulty, some more li...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"The Mind very often sets it self on work in search of some hidden Idea, and turns, as it were, the Eye of the Soul upon it."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

Few mathematicians will believe that "all the diagrams they have drawn were but copies of those innate characters which nature had engraven upon their minds"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"[W]hereas those innate principles are supposed to be quite of another nature; not coming into the mind by any accidental alterations in, or operations on the body; but, as it were, original characters impressed upon it, in the very first moment of its being and constitution."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"[N]othing is so unfit to assist the mind in that, as syllogism; which running away with one assumed probability, or one topical argument, pursues that till it has led the mind quite out of sight of the thing under consideration; and forcing it upon some remote difficulty, holds it fast there, in...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)