ABSTRACT
The purpose of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding is ‘to inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion and assent’. The type of thinking associated with faculty psychology also gave the intellect heavy priority over the senses, knowledge derived from sense impression being regarded as very unreliable. John Locke is careful to distinguish between the notion of an innate idea, ready-made, so to speak, in the mind, and a law of nature, which may be inherent in the structure of the universe and of which we may by observation and thought attain to knowledge. It is interesting to notice the ironical somersault of Locke’s down-to-earth empiricism into complete scepticism at the hands of David Hume, who pushed Locke’s empiricism to the length of refusing to accept any knowledge as valid for which no previous sense impression could be found.
