The Mind as an "Empty Container"

Dublin Core

Title

The Mind as an "Empty Container"

Subject

English Philosophy, Human Understanding, Mind Metaphors

Description

A passage from John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Creator

John Locke

Source

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Date

1689

Contributor

Corey Goergen

Format

Text

Language

English

Type

Passage

Coverage

Eighteenth-Century Philosophy

Text Item Type Metadata

Text

The senses at first let in particular ideas, and furnish the yet empty cabinet, and the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, and names got to them. Afterwards, the mind proceeding further, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general names. In this manner the mind comes to be furnished with ideas and language, the materials about which to exercise its discursive faculty.

Citation

John Locke, “The Mind as an "Empty Container",” Enlightenmens, accessed April 1, 2023, http://enlightenmens.lmc.gatech.edu/items/show/12.

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