Experience and the limits of understanding › The Core Insight

::: {.callout-note title="Tabula Rasa"} "Tabula rasa" is a conventional label for a blank slate. Locke's own image in Book II, chapter I is white paper without written characters. The image concerns the absence of innate ideas; it does not remove the mind's natural capacities to perceive, remember, compare, and abstract. ::: Locke's central thesis concerns the origin of ideas: sensation and reflection supply their materials. The mind receives simple ideas, then exercises powers on them. A person can therefore reject innate ideas while still giving an active role to the mind. That distinction creates the work of the *Essay*. How do sensations contribute to abstract concepts? How do simple ideas enter complex thoughts? How can we think about things we have never encountered as complete objects? Locke answers by separating the reception of simple ideas from the operations that rearrange them. In the Introduction, Locke calls his approach an "historical, plain method." He proposes to examine the origin and reach of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of belief. This is an inquiry into our understanding, not an account of the physical constitution of the mind.