John Locke

Abstinence

The abstinence from a present pleasure that offers itself is a pain, nay, oftentimes, a very great one.

Acquaint

Before a man can speak on any subject, it is necessary to be acquainted with it.

Add

As easily as he can add together the ideas of two days or two years.

Affectation

Affectation is an awkward and forced imitation of what should be genuine and easy, wanting the beauty that accompanies what is natural what is natural.

Affrightment

Passionate words or blows . . . fill the child's mind with terror and affrightment.

Agreement

Expansion and duration have this further agreement.

Alloy

Fine silver is silver without the mixture of any baser metal. Alloy is baser metal mixed with it.

Anathema

The Jewish nation were an anathema destined to destruction. St. Paul . . . says he could wish, to save them from it, to become an anathema, and be destroyed himself.

Anticipation

Many men give themselves up to the first anticipations of their minds.

Application

If a right course . . . be taken with children, there will not be much need of the application of the common rewards and punishments.

Appropriate

It is not at all times easy to find words appropriate to express our ideas.

Argument

The argument is about things, but names.

Assent

Faith is the assent to any proposition, on the credit of the proposer.

Associate

The one [idea] no sooner comes into the understanding, than its associate appears with it.

Assurance

Conversation with the world will give them knowledge and assurance.

Attend

The state that attends all men after this.

Avulsion

The avulsion of two polished superficies.

Backward

Some reigns backward.

Baffle

The mere intricacy of a question should not baffle us.

Balance

He would not balance or err in the determination of his choice.

Bate

He must either bate the laborer's wages, or not employ or not pay him.

Bating

We have little reason to think that they bring many ideas with them, bating some faint ideas of hunger and thirst.

Beat

Why should any one . . . beat his head about the Latin grammar who does not intend to be a critic?

Beauty

Beauty consists of a certain composition of color and figure, causing delight in the beholder.

Begin

The apostle begins our knowledge in the creatures, which leads us to the knowledge of God.

Behind

We can not be sure that there is no evidence behind.

Bent

Bents and turns of the matter.

Beside

It is beside my present business to enlarge on this speculation.

Bespeak

When the abbot of St. Martin was born, he had so little the figure of a man that it bespoke him rather a monster.

Better

The better to understand the extent of our knowledge.

Between

Castor and Pollux with only one soul between them.

Bias

Morality influences men's lives, and gives a bias to all their actions.

Bib

He was constantly bibbing.

Bottom

Find on what foundation any proposition bottoms.

Boundary

Sensation and reflection are the boundaries of our thoughts.

Bountiful

God, the bountiful Author of our being.

Brace

The women of China, by bracing and binding them from their infancy, have very little feet.

Breed

His farm may not remove his children too far from him, or the trade he breeds them up in.

Children would breed their teeth with less danger.

Bring

It seems so preposterous a thing . . . that they do not easily bring themselves to it.

The nature of the things . . . would not suffer him to think otherwise, how, or whensoever, he is brought to reflect on them.

Broad

A broad mixture of falsehood.

Brute

Brutes may be considered as either aërial, terrestrial, aquatic, or amphibious.

Call

St. Paul himself believed he did well, and that he had a call to it, when he persecuted the Christians.

Canton

They canton out themselves a little Goshen in the intellectual world.

Carry

If the ideas . . . were carried along with us in our minds.

Passion and revenge will carry them too far.

Catch

It has been writ by catches with many intervals.

Cause

Cause is substance exerting its power into act, to make one thing begin to be.

Challenge

I challenge any man to make any pretense to power by right of fatherhood.

Charge

The charging of children's memories with rules.

Cheap

Where there are a great sellers to a few buyers, there the thing to be sold will be cheap.

Check

The mind, once jaded by an attempt above its power, either is disabled for the future, or else checks at any vigorous undertaking ever after.

Chronologist

That learned noise and dust of the chronologist is wholly to be avoided.

Claim

We must know how the first ruler, from whom any one claims, came by his authority.

Clipper

The value is pared off from it into the clipper's pocket.

Clipping

clipping by Englishmen is robbing the honest man who receives clipped money.

Close

The golden globe being put into a press, . . . the water made itself way through the pores of that very close metal.

Clownishness

That plainness which the alamode people call clownishness.

Clue

Serve as clues to guide us into further knowledge.

Coexist

Of substances no one has any clear idea, farther than of certain simple ideas coexisting together.

Cohere

Neither knows he . . . how the solid parts of the body are united or cohere together.

Coherence

Coherence of discourse, and a direct tendency of all the parts of it to the argument in hand, are most eminently to be found in him.

Coin

Tenants cannot coin rent just at quarter day.

Collect

Which sequence, I conceive, is very ill collected.

Command

Command and force may often create, but can never cure, an aversion.

Commiserate

We should commiserate our mutual ignorance.

Community

The original community of all things.

Compass

He that first discovered the use of the compass did more for the supplying and increase of useful commodities than those who built workhouses.

Competent

That is the privilege of the infinite Author of things, . . . but is not competent to any finite being.

Complex

Ideas thus made up of several simple ones put together, I call complex; such as beauty, gratitude, a man, an army, the universe.

Complexedness

The complexedness of these moral ideas.

Comport

How their behavior herein comported with the institution.

Comprehensible

The horizon sets the bounds . . . between what is and what is not comprehensible by us.

Concomitant

It has pleased our wise Creator to annex to several objects, as also to several of our thoughts, a concomitant pleasure.

Concurrence

We have no other measure but our own ideas, with the concurence of other probable reasons, to persuade us.

Confine

Events that came to pass within the confines of Judea.

Confound

They who strip not ideas from the marks men use for them, but confound them with words, must have endless dispute.

Conjoin

Let that which he learns next be nearly conjoined with what he knows already.

Connect

A man must see the connection of each intermediate idea with those that it connects before he can use it in a syllogism.

Consecutive

The actions of a man consecutive to volition.

Consequent

The right was consequent to, and built on, an act perfectly personal.

Consequential

All that is revealed in Scripture has a consequential necessity of being believed . . . because it is of divine authority.

Consort

He begins to consort himself with men.

Construction

Some particles . . . in certain constructions have the sense of a whole sentence contained in them.

Contemplation

Contemplation is keeping the idea which is brought into the mind for some time actually in view.

Contend

The question which our author would contend for.

Contest

The people . . . contested not what was done.

Contradistinguish

These are our complex ideas of soul and body, as contradistinguished.

Controversy

This left no room for controversy about the title.

Converse

According as the objects they converse with afford greater or less variety.

Convey

Men fill one another's heads with noise and sound, but convey not thereby their thoughts.

Coop

The contempt of all other knowledge . . . coops the understanding up within narrow bounds.

Coppice

The rate of coppice lands will fall, upon the discovery of coal mines.

Correspond

Words being but empty sounds, any farther than they are signs of our ideas, we can not but assent to them as they correspond to those ideas we have, but no farther.

Corrupt

He that makes an ill use of it [language], though he does not corrupt the fountains of knowledge, . . . yet he stops the pines.

Counterbalance

Money is the counterbalance to all other things purchasable by it.

Couple

Adding one to one we have the complex idea of a couple.

Cozen

Children may be cozened into a knowledge of the letters.

Cram

Children would be freer from disease if they were not crammed so much as they are by fond mothers.

Creation

As when a new particle of matter dotn begin to exist, in rerum natura, which had before no being; and this we call creation.

Credit

Credit is nothing but the expectation of money, within some limited time.

Creep

The sophistry which creeps into most of the books of argument.

Cumber

The multiplying variety of arguments, especially frivolous ones, . . . but cumbers the memory.

Cunning

Discourage cunning in a child; cunning is the ape of wisdom.

Dark

Till we perceive by our own understandings, we are as much in the dark, and as void of knowledge, as before.

Deduce

Reasoning is nothing but the faculty of deducing unknown truths from principles already known.

Deducible

All properties of a triangle depend on, and are deducible from, the complex idea of three lines including a space.

Definition

Definition being nothing but making another understand by words what the term defined stands for.

Delay

There seem to be certain bounds to the quickness and slowness of the succession of those ideas, . . . beyond which they can neither delay nor hasten.

Delegate

The delegated administration of the law.

Demand

He that has confidence to turn his wishes into demands will be but a little way from thinking he ought to obtain them.

Demonstration

Those intervening ideas which serve to show the agreement of any two others are called “proofs;” and where agreement or disagreement is by this means plainly and clearly perceived, it is called demonstration.

Dependency

Modes I call such complex ideas which . . . are considered as dependencies on or affections of substances.

Derogation

I hope it is no derogation to the Christian religion.

Design

A . . . settled design upon another man's life.

Designation

Finite and infinite seem . . . to be attributed primarily, in their first designation, only to those things which have parts.

despond

Others depress their own minds, [and] despond at the first difficulty.

Determination

Remissness can by no means consist with a constant determination of the will . . . to the greatest apparent good.

Digress

In the pursuit of an argument there is hardly room to digress into a particular definition as often as a man varies the signification of any term.

Direct

What is direct to, what slides by, the question.

He nowhere, that I know, says it in direct words.

Discourse

Filling the head with variety of thoughts, and the mouth with copious discourse.

Disgust

The manner of doing is more consequence than the thing done, and upon that depends the satisfaction or disgust wherewith it is received.

Dispose

Freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons.

Distinction

The distinction betwixt the animal kingdom and the inferior parts of matter.

Distinguishable

A simple idea being in itself uncompounded . . . is not distinguishable into different ideas.

Distinguishing

The distinguishing doctrines of our holy religion.

Diversify

Separated and diversified on from another.

Door

His imaginary title of fatherhood is out of doors.

Down

If he be hungry more than wanton, bread alone will down.

Dream

They dream on in a constant course of reading, but not digesting.

Drudgery

Paradise was a place of bliss . . . without drudgery and with out sorrow.

Eager

Gold will be sometimes so eager, as artists call it, that it will as little endure the hammer as glass itself.

Effeminate

It will not corrupt or effeminate children's minds.

Embrace

What is there that he may not embrace for truth?

Empiric

Swallow down opinions as silly people do empirics' pills.

Enforcement

The rewards and punishment of another life, which the Almighty has established as the enforcements of his law.

Engrave

Engrave principles in men's minds.

Enlarge

To enlarge their possessions of land.

Entangle

The difficulties that perplex men's thoughts and entangle their understandings.

Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm is founded neither on reason nor divine revelation, but rises from the conceits of a warmed or overweening imagination.

Entrails

That treasure . . . hid the dark entrails of America.

Equiponderant

A column of air . . . equiponderant to a column of quicksilver.

Equivocation

There being no room for equivocations, there is no need of distinctions.

Esteemer

The proudest esteemer of his own parts.

Estimate

It is by the weight of silver, and not the name of the piece, that men estimate commodities and exchange them.

Etch

There are many empty terms to be found in some learned writes, to which they had recourse to etch out their system.

Eternal

To know wether there were any real being, whose duration has been eternal.

Exchange

Exchange his sheep for shells, or wool for a sparking pebble or a diamond.

Exercise

An exercise of the eyes and memory.

Expedite

Speech is a very short and expedite way of conveying their thoughts.

Experience

Whence hath the mind all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer in one word, from experience.

Expose

Those who seek truth only, freely expose their principles to the test, and are pleased to have them examined.

Extend

Few extend their thoughts toward universal knowledge.

Fain

The learned Castalio was fain to make trechers at Basle to keep himself from starving.

Fall

Upon lessening interest to four per cent, you fall the price of your native commodities.

Familiar

There is nothing more familiar than this.

Fancy

I have always had a fancy that learning might be made a play and recreation to children.

If our search has reached no farther than simile and metaphor, we rather fancy than know.

Fashion

The innocent diversions in fashion.

Fashioned plate sells for more than its weight.

Fear

Fear is an uneasiness of the mind, upon the thought of future evil likely to befall us.

Feint

Dressed up into any feint appearance of it.

Fence

Vice is the more stubborn as well as the more dangerous evil, and therefore, in the first place, to be fenced against.

Fend

The dexterous management of terms, and being able to fend . . . with them, passes for a great part of learning.

Flinch

A child, by a constant course of kindness, may be accustomed to bear very rough usage without flinching or complaining.

Flummery

Milk and flummery are very fit for children.

For

If a man can be fully assured of anything for a truth, without having examined, what is there that he may not embrace for tru?

Foreignness

Let not the foreignness of the subject hinder you from endeavoring to set me right.

Forge

Those names that the schools forged, and put into the mouth of scholars, could never get admittance into common use.

Fortitude

Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.

frailty

God knows our frailty, [and] pities our weakness.

Free

That which has the power, or not the power, to operate, is that alone which is or is not free.

Full

Every one is full of the miracles done by cold baths on decayed and weak constitutions.

Gallop

Such superficial ideas he may collect in galloping over it.

Gather

To pay the creditor . . . he must gather up money by degrees.

General

In particulars our knowledge begins, and so spreads itself by degrees to generals.

Glean

Content to glean what we can from . . . experiments.

Go

[The money] should go according to its true value.

Habitude

The same ideas having immutably the same habitudes one to another.

Hand

A dictionary containing a natural history requires too many hands, as well as too much time, ever to be hoped for.

Haphazard

We take our principles at haphazard, upon trust.

Harmonious

God hath made the intellectual world harmonious and beautiful without us.

Hedge

That is a law to hedge in the cuckoo.

Hinder

What hinders younger brothers, being fathers of families, from having the same right?

Hit

Birds learning tunes, and their endeavors to hit the notes right.

If bodies be extension alone, how can they move and hit one against another?

Hold

The rule holds in land as all other commodities.

Huddle

Our adversary, huddling several suppositions together, . . . makes a medley and confusion.

Hurter

The pains of sickness and hurts . . . all men feel.

Idea

Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or as the immediate object of perception, thought, or undersanding, that I call idea.

Imperiousness

Imperiousness and severity is but an ill way of treating men who have reason of their own to guide them.

Imprint

Ideas of those two different things distinctly imprinted on his mind.

Impudence

Clear truths that their own evidence forces us to admit, or common experience makes it impudence to deny.

Inane

The undistinguishable inane of infinite space.

Incoherence

Incoherences in matter, and suppositions without proofs, put handsomely together, are apt to pass for strong reason.

Inconceivable

It is inconceivable to me that a spiritual substance should represent an extended figure.

Infer

To infer is nothing but by virtue of one proposition laid down as true, to draw in another as true.

Ingenuous

If an ingenuous detestation of falsehood be but carefully and early instilled, that is the true and genuine method to obviate dishonesty.

Inhabitable

Systems of inhabitable planets.

Inheritance

Men are not proprietors of what they have, merely for themselves; their children have a title to part of it which comes to be wholly theirs when death has put an end to their parents' use of it; and this we call inheritance.

Initiate

To initiate his pupil into any part of learning, an ordinary skill in the governor is enough.

Innate

If I could only show, as I hope I shall . . . how men, barely by the use of their natural faculties, may attain to all the knowledge they have, without the help of any innate impressions; and may arrive at certainty without any such original notions or principles.

Inquisitiveness

Curiosity in children nature has provided, to remove that ignorance they were born with; which, without this busy inquisitiveness, will make them dull.

Insinuate

All the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment.

Intention

Intention is when the mind, with great earnestness, and of choice, fixes its view on any idea.

Interpreter

We think most men's actions to be the interpreters of their thoughts.

Intimate

The names of simple ideas and substances, with the abstract ideas in the mind, intimate some real existence, from which was derived their original pattern.

Intrench

We are not to intrench upon truth in any conversation, but least of all with children.

Introduce

Whosoever introduces habits in children, deserves the care and attention of their governors.

Intruder

They were all strangers and intruders.

itself

Borrowing of foreigners, in itself, makes not the kingdom rich or poor.

Jade

The mind, once jaded by an attempt above its power, . . . checks at any vigorous undertaking ever after.

Joy

Joy is a delight of the mind, from the consideration of the present or assured approaching possession of a good.

Keep

If we would weigh and keep in our minds what we are considering, that would instruct us.

Key

Those who are accustomed to reason have got the true key of books.

Knowledge

Knowledge, which is the highest degree of the speculative faculties, consists in the perception of the truth of affirmative or negative propositions.

Latch

The door was only latched.

Latitude

I pretend not to treat of them in their full latitude.

Latter

Hath not navigation discovered in these latter ages, whole nations at the bay of Soldania?

Learned

Men of much reading are greatly learned, but may be little knowing.

Lesser

By the same reason may a man, in the state of nature, punish the lesser breaches of the law.

Liberty

The idea of liberty is the idea of a power in any agent to do or forbear any particular action, according to the determination or thought of the mind, whereby either of them is preferred to the other.

Lie

He that thinks that diversion may not lie in hard labor, forgets the early rising and hard riding of huntsmen.

Lift

Strained by lifting at a weight too heavy.

Light

The several degrees of vision, which the assistance of glasses (casually at first lit on) has taught us to conceive.

Like

He may either go or stay, as he best likes.

Lineal

The prime and ancient right of lineal succession.

Little

There are many expressions, which carrying with them no clear ideas, are like to remove but little of my ignorance.

Look

Pain, disgrace, and poverty have frighted looks.

Low

In that part of the world which was first inhabited, even as low down as Abraham's time, they wandered with their flocks and herds.

make

They should be made to rise at their early hour.

Master

No care is taken to improve young men in their own language, that they may thoroughly understand and be masters of it.

Obstinacy and willful neglects must be mastered, even though it cost blows.

Mastery

The learning and mastery of a tongue, being unpleasant in itself, should not be cumbered with other difficulties.

Material

I shall, in the account of simple ideas, set down only such as are most material to our present purpose.

Matter

It matters not how they were called.

Meddle

The civil lawyers . . . have meddled in a matter that belongs not to them.

Million

Millions of truths that a man is not concerned to know.

Mislay

The fault is generally mislaid upon nature.

Miss

When a man misses his great end, happiness, he will acknowledge he judged not right.

There will be no great miss of those which are lost.

Misuse

Words little suspected for any such misuse.

Mode

Modes I call such complex ideas, which, however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are considered as dependencies on, or affections of, substances.

Moneyed

If exportation will not balance importation, away must your silver go again, whether moneyed or not moneyed.

Morality

I am bold to think that morality is capable of demonstration.

Murder

The killing of their children had, in the account of God, the guilt of murder, as the offering them to idols had the guilt of idolatry.

Near

Near about the yearly value of the land.

Need

When we have done it, we have done all that is in our power, and all that needs.

Neglectful

A cold and neglectful countenance.

Nicety

The fineness and niceties of words.

Nighly

A cube and a sphere . . . nighly of the same bigness.

Nod

A look or a nod only ought to correct them [the children] when they do amiss.

Numeral

A long train of numeral progressions.

Numeration

Numeration is but still the adding of one unit more, and giving to the whole a new name or sign.

Nurse

By what hands [has vice] been nursed into so uncontrolled a dominion?

Obstinacy

To shelter their ignorance, or obstinacy, under the obscurity of their terms.

Occasion

If we inquire what it is that occasions men to make several combinations of simple ideas into distinct modes.

Occur

In Scripture, though the word heir occur, yet there is no such thing as “heir” in our author's sense.

Odds

All the odds between them has been the different scope . . . given to their understandings to range in.

Judging is balancing an account and determining on which side the odds lie.

Operation

The pain and sickness caused by manna are the effects of its operation on the stomach.

Oppose

I may . . . oppose my single opinion to his.

opposite

Particles of speech have divers, and sometimes almost opposite, significations.

Ourselves

We ourselves might distinctly number in words a great deal further then we usually do.

Overweening

The conceits of warmed or overweening brain.

Pain

Excess of cold, as well as heat, pains us.

Parade

When they are not in parade, and upon their guard.

Part

Our ideas of extension and number -- do they not contain a secret relation of the parts ?

All the parts were formed . . . into one harmonious body.

Passion

A body at rest affords us no idea of any active power to move, and, when set in motion, it is rather a passion than an action in it.

Passive

The mind is wholly passive in the reception of all its simple ideas.

Pause

He writes with warmth, which usually neglects method, and those partitions and pauses which men educated in schools observe.

Pennyworth

The priests sold the better pennyworths.

Perceive

Till we ourselves see it with our own eyes, and perceive it by our own understandings, we are still in the dark.

Perfect

Inquire into the nature and properties of the things, . . . and thereby perfect our ideas of their distinct species.

Perish

The thoughts of a soul that perish in thinking.

Perplex

What was thought obscure, perplexed, and too hard for our weak parts, will lie open to the understanding in a fair view.

We can distinguish no general truths, or at least shall be apt to perplex the mind.

Person

Consider what person stands for; which, I think, is a thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection.

Personal

The words are conditional, -- If thou doest well, -- and so personal to Cain.

Philosophy

We shall in vain interpret their words by the notions of our philosophy and the doctrines in our school.

Physically

I am not now treating physically of light or colors.

Pique

Men . . . pique themselves upon their skill.

Place

The word place has sometimes a more confused sense, and stands for that space which any body takes up; and so the universe is a place.

Plaything

A child knows his nurse, and by degrees the playthings of a little more advanced age.

Position

We have different prospects of the same thing, according to our different positions to it.

Posse comitatus

As if the passion that rules were the sheriff of the place, and came off with all the posse.

Postpone

All other considerations should give way and be postponed to this.

Precedence

Which of them [the different desires] has the precedency in determining the will to the next action?

Precision

I have left out the utmost precisions of fractions.

Preference

Knowledge of things alone gives a value to our reasonings, and preference of one man's knowledge over another's.

Preponderance

The mind should . . . reject or receive proportionably to the preponderancy of the greater grounds of probability.

Prescribe

A forwardness to prescribe to their opinions.

Presume

This man presumes upon his parts.

Pretense

Primogeniture can not have any pretense to a right of solely inheriting property or power.

Prevail

This custom makes the short-sighted bigots, and the warier skeptics, as far as it prevails.

Primary

These I call original, or primary, qualities of body.

Principle

Let an enthusiast be principled that he or his teacher is inspired.

Privilege

The privilege birthright was a double portion.

Probability

Probability is the appearance of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, by the intervention of proofs whose connection is not constant, but appears for the most part to be so.

Proceed

He that proceeds upon other principles in his inquiry.

Proportionate

What is proportionate to his transgression.

Punishment

The rewards and punishments of another life.

Purchasable

Money being the counterbalance to all things purchasable by it, as much as you take off from the value of money, so much you add to the price of things exchanged.

Quick

If we consider how very quick the actions of the mind are performed.

Quickness

Would not quickness of sensation be an inconvenience to an animal that must lie still ?

Quit

Such a superficial way of examining is to quit truth for appearance.

Radiate

Light radiates from luminous bodies directly to our eyes.

Ramble

He that is at liberty to ramble in perfect darkness, what is his liberty better than if driven up and down as a bubble by the wind?

Rate

They come at dear rates from Japan.

Reach

If these examples of grown men reach not the case of children, let them examine.

He would be in the posture of the mind reaching after a positive idea of infinity.

Real

Our simple ideas are all real; all agree to the reality of things.

Receive

The idea of solidity we receive by our touch.

Reception

Philosophers who have quitted the popular doctrines of their countries have fallen into as extravagant opinions as even common reception countenanced.

Reconcile

The great men among the ancients understood how to reconcile manual labor with affairs of state.

Recur

If, to avoid succession in eternal existence, they recur to the “punctum stans” of the schools, they will thereby very little help us to a more positive idea of infinite duration.

Reflection

By reflection, . . . I would be understood to mean, that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them, by reason whereof there come to be ideas of these operations in the understanding.

Relate

All negative or privative words relate positive ideas.

Remain

That . . . remains to be proved.

Representative

Difficulty must cumber this doctrine which supposes that the perfections of God are the representatives to us of whatever we perceive in the creatures.

Resistibility

The name “body” being the complex idea of extension and resistibility together in the same subject.

Resolve

Let men resolve of that as they plaease.

Return

If they returned out of bondage, it must be into a state of freedom.

Reverie

When ideas float in our mind without any reflection or regard of the understanding, it is that which the French call revery, our language has scarce a name for it.

Revive

The mind has a power in many cases to revive perceptions which it has once had.

Riches

Riches do not consist in having more gold and silver, but in having more in proportion, than our neighbors.

Right

If there be no prospect beyond the grave, the inference is . . . right, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”

Rise

Bullion is risen to six shillings . . . the ounce.

Root

They were the roots out of which sprang two distinct people.

Rough

Kind words prevent a good deal of that perverseness which rough and imperious usage often produces.

Ruin

If we are idle, and disturb the industrious in their business, we shall ruin the faster.

Run

Where the generally allowed practice runs counter to it.

Others, accustomed to retired speculations, run natural philosophy into metaphysical notions.

Sagacious

Only sagacious heads light on these observations, and reduce them into general propositions.

Sally

Every one shall know a country better that makes often sallies into it, and traverses it up and down, than he that . . . goes still round in the same track.

Satisfaction

The mind having a power to suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of its desires.

Scanty

His dominions were very narrow and scanty.

Scarce

You tell him silver is scarcer now in England, and therefore risen one fifth in value.

Scheme

The appearance and outward scheme of things.

Scientifically

It is easier to believe than to be scientifically instructed.

Scramble

Scarcity [of money] enhances its price, and increases the scramble.

Scrip

Bills of exchange can not pay our debts abroad, till scrips of paper can be made current coin.

Search

It sufficeth that they have once with care sifted the matter, and searched into all the particulars.

Secondhand

They have but a secondhand or implicit knowledge.

Section

It is hardly possible to give a distinct view of his several arguments in distinct sections.

See

Improvement in wisdom and prudence by seeing men.

Sensible

He [man] can not think at any time, waking or sleeping, without being sensible of it.

Serenity

I can not see how any men should ever transgress those moral rules with confidence and serenity.

Set

He that would seriously set upon the search of truth.

Shade

White, red, yellow, blue, with their several degrees, or shades and mixtures, as green only in by the eyes.

Share

A right of inheritance gave every one a title to share in the goods of his father.

Shatter

A monarchy was shattered to pieces, and divided amongst revolted subjects.

Sheepish

Wanting change of company, he will, when he comes abroad, be a sheepish or conceited creature.

Sitting

For the understanding of any one of St. Paul's Epistles I read it all through at one sitting.

Slight

Some firmly embrace doctrines upon slight grounds.

So

Use him [your tutor] with great respect yourself, and cause all your family to do so too.

God makes him in his own image an intellectual creature, and so capable of dominion.

Solicit

Sounds and some tangible qualities solicit their proper senses, and force an entrance to the mind.

Solidity

That which hinders the approach of two bodies when they are moving one toward another, I call solidity.

Sound

Sense and not sound . . . must be the principle.

Source

This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself.

Space

Pure space is capable neither of resistance nor motion.

Spark

We have here and there a little clear light, some sparks of bright knowledge.

Spirit

Spirit is a substance wherein thinking, knowing, doubting, and a power of moving, do subsist.

Whilst young, preserve his tender mind from all impressions of spirits and goblins in the dark.

Spurn

Domestics will pay a more cheerful service when they find themselves not spurned because fortune has laid them at their master's feet.

Stamp

God . . . has stamped no original characters on our minds wherein we may read his being.

Stanch

This is to be kept stanch.

Startle

The supposition, at least, that angels do sometimes assume bodies need not startle us.

Starve

The powers of their minds are starved by disuse.

Stay

I was willing to stay my reader on an argument that appeared to me new.

The father can not stay any longer for the fortune.

Stick

They will stick long at part of a demonstration for want of perceiving the connection of two ideas.

Stir

Consider, after so much stir about genus and species, how few words we have yet settled definitions of.

Stomach

This sort of crying proceeding from pride, obstinacy, and stomach, the will, where the fault lies, must be bent.

Stop

It is a great step toward the mastery of our desires to give this stop to them.

Strait-laced

Let nature have scope to fashion the body as she thinks best; we have few well-shaped that are strait-laced.

Stress

The faculties of the mind are improved by exercise, yet they must not be put to a stress beyond their strength.

Strike

Hinder light but from striking on it [porphyry], and its colors vanish.

Stumble

One thing more stumbles me in the very foundation of this hypothesis.

Subject

Esau was never subject to Jacob.

He is the most subjected, the most nslaved, who is so in his understanding.

God is not bound to subject his ways of operation to the scrutiny of our thoughts.

Subtilty

Intelligible discourses are spoiled by too much subtility in nice divisions.

Subvert

This would subvert the principles of all knowledge.

Suggest

Some ideas . . . are suggested to the mind by all the ways of sensation and reflection.

Supple

If punishment . . . makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

A mother persisting till she had bent her daughter's mind and suppled her will.

Swallow

The necessary provision of the life swallows the greatest part of their time.

Sweet

A little bitter mingled in our cup leaves no relish of the sweet.

Talk

I hear a talk up and down of raising our money.

Temperament

Bodies are denominated “hot” and “cold” in proportion to the present temperament of that part of our body to which they are applied.

Tenement

Who has informed us that a rational soul can inhabit no tenement, unless it has just such a sort of frontispiece?

Term

Men term what is beyond the limits of the universe “imaginary space.”

Testiness

Testiness is a disposition or aptness to be angry.

Then

If all this be so, then man has a natural freedom.

There

Wherever there is a sense or perception, there some idea is actually produced.

Thwart

Any proposition . . . that shall at all thwart with internal oracles.

Tire-woman

Fashionableness of the tire-woman's making.

Tolerate

Crying should not be tolerated in children.

Train

Other truths require a train of ideas placed in order.

Trick

People lavish it profusely in tricking up their children in fine clothes, and yet starve their minds.

Trouble

Never trouble yourself about those faults which age will cure.

Trust

Most take things upon trust.

Tune

A child will learn three times as much when he is in tune, as when he . . . is dragged unwillingly to [his task].

Turn

The understanding turns inward on itself, and reflects on its own operations.

Twilight

The twilight of probability.

Undermine

He should be warned who are like to undermine him.

Understand

The most learned interpreters understood the words of sin, and not of Abel.

Understanding

The power of perception is that which we call the understanding. Perception, which we make the act of the understanding, is of three sorts: 1. The perception of ideas in our mind; 2. The perception of the signification of signs; 3. The perception of the connection or repugnancy, agreement or disagreement, that there is between any of our ideas. All these are attributed to the understanding, or perceptive power, though it be the two latter only that use allows us to say we understand.

Variation

The essences of things are conceived not capable of any such variation.

Various

The names of mixed modes . . . are very various.

Vest

Empire and dominion was [were] vested in him.

View

Objects near our view are thought greater than those of a larger size that are more remote.

To give a right view of this mistaken part of liberty.

No man sets himself about anything but upon some view or other which serves him for a reason.

Vindication

Occasion for the vindication of this passage in my book.

Volition

Volition is the actual exercise of the power the mind has to order the consideration of any idea, or the forbearing to consider it.

Volition is an act of the mind, knowingly exerting that dominion it takes itself to have over any part of the man, by employing it in, or withholding it from, any particular action.

Wake

I can not think any time, waking or sleeping, without being sensible of it.

Wand

With good smart blows of a wand on his back.

Warranty

The stamp was a warranty of the public.

Wear

Trials wear us into a liking of what, possibly, in the first essay, displeased us.

Weigh

This objection ought to weigh with those whose reading is designed for much talk and little knowledge.

Whencesoever

Any idea, whencesoever we have it.

Will

He that shall turn his thoughts inward upon what passes in his own mind when he wills.

Wink

Obstinacy can not be winked at, but must be subdued.

Wit

Wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures in the fancy.

Within

Were every action concluded within itself, and drew no consequence after it, we should, undoubtedly, never err in our choice of good.

Word

Amongst men who confound their ideas with words, there must be endless disputes.

Work

This so wrought upon the child, that afterwards he desired to be taught.

Wrap

Things reflected on in gross and transiently . . . are thought to be wrapped up in impenetrable obscurity.