Key Arguments

• Locke describes the 'other fountain from which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas' as 'the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got'.
• When the soul reflects on and considers these operations, they 'do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without'.
• He lists these operations as 'perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds', and says that 'we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses.'
• Though this source 'be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects', it is 'very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense'; Locke nevertheless chooses to call it 'REFLECTION'.
• He stipulates that by reflection he means '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.'

Source Quotes

The operations of our minds, the other source of them. Secondly, the other fountain from which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas is — the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got; — which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without. And such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds; — which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses.

Secondly, the other fountain from which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas is — the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got; — which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without. And such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds; — which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense.

And such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds; — which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other SENSATION, so I Call this REFLECTION, the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself.

This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other SENSATION, so I Call this REFLECTION, the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself. By reflection then, in the following part of this discourse, 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.

But as I call the other SENSATION, so I Call this REFLECTION, the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself. By reflection then, in the following part of this discourse, 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. These two, I say, viz. external material things, as the objects of SENSATION, and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of REFLECTION, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings.

Key Concepts

• Secondly, the other fountain from which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas is — the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got; — which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without.
• And such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds; — which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses.
• This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense.
• But as I call the other SENSATION, so I Call this REFLECTION
• By reflection then, in the following part of this discourse, 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.

Context

Book II, chapter I, section 4, where Locke introduces 'reflection' (or internal sense) as the second and only other original source of ideas besides sensation, and defines it carefully.