An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. | Page 2

it be not yet current by the public
stamp, yet it may, for all that, be as old as nature, and is certainly not
the less genuine. Your lordship can give great and convincing instances
of this, whenever you please to oblige the public with some of those
large and comprehensive discoveries you have made of truths hitherto
unknown, unless to some few, from whom your lordship has been
pleased not wholly to conceal them. This alone were a sufficient reason,
were there no other, why I should dedicate this Essay to your lordship;
and its having some little correspondence with some parts of that
nobler and vast system of the sciences your lordship has made so new,
exact, and instructive a draught of, I think it glory enough, if your
lordship permit me to boast, that here and there I have fallen into some
thoughts not wholly different from yours. If your lordship think fit that,
by your encouragement, this should appear in the world, I hope it may
be a reason, some time or other, to lead your lordship further; and you
will allow me to say, that you here give the world an earnest of

something that, if they can bear with this, will be truly worth their
expectation. This, my lord, shows what a present I here make to your
lordship; just such as the poor man does to his rich and great neighbour,
by whom the basket of flowers or fruit is not ill taken, though he has
more plenty of his own growth, and in much greater perfection.
Worthless things receive a value when they are made the offerings of
respect, esteem, and gratitude: these you have given me so mighty and
peculiar reasons to have, in the highest degree, for your lordship, that if
they can add a price to what they go along with, proportionable to their
own greatness, I can with confidence brag, I here make your lordship
the richest present you ever received. This I am sure, I am under the
greatest obligations to seek all occasions to acknowledge a long train of
favours I have received from your lordship; favours, though great and
important in themselves, yet made much more so by the forwardness,
concern, and kindness, and other obliging circumstances, that never
failed to accompany them. To all this you are pleased to add that which
gives yet more weight and relish to all the rest: you vouchsafe to
continue me in some degrees of your esteem, and allow me a place in
your good thoughts, I had almost said friendship. This, my lord, your
words and actions so constantly show on all occasions, even to others
when I am absent, that it is not vanity in me to mention what everybody
knows: but it would be want of good manners not to acknowledge what
so many are witnesses of, and every day tell me I am indebted to your
lordship for. I wish they could as easily assist my gratitude, as they
convince me of the great and growing engagements it has to your
lordship. This I am sure, I should write of the UNDERSTANDING
without having any, if I were not extremely sensible of them, and did
not lay hold on this opportunity to testify to the world how much I am
obliged to be, and how much I am,
MY LORD,
Your Lordship's most humble and most obedient servant,
JOHN LOCKE
2 Dorset Court, 24th of May, 1689

THE EPISTLE TO THE READER
READER,
I have put into thy hands what has been the diversion of some of my
idle and heavy hours. If it has the good luck to prove so of any of thine,
and thou hast but half so much pleasure in reading as I had in writing it,
thou wilt as little think thy money, as I do my pains, ill bestowed.
Mistake not this for a commendation of my work; nor conclude,
because I was pleased with the doing of it, that therefore I am fondly
taken with it now it is done. He that hawks at larks and sparrows has no
less sport, though a much less considerable quarry, than he that flies at
nobler game: and he is little acquainted with the subject of this
treatise--the UNDERSTANDING--who does not know that, as it is the
most elevated faculty of the soul, so it is employed with a greater and
more constant delight than any of the other. Its searches after truth are a
sort of hawking and hunting, wherein the very pursuit makes a great
part of the pleasure. Every step the mind takes in its progress towards
Knowledge makes some discovery, which is not only new, but the best
too, for the time at least.
For the understanding, like