senses, and reflection, or the notice which the mid takes of its own operations. his reasoning processes were direct and simple, and the language of the Essay is an exact expression of his own clear thought. Sentences, however, are frequently loose and carelessly constructed, and his evident desire to make things perfectly plain sometimes leads him into wearisome repetition. He was the first of the philosophers to adopt the expression, the Association of Ideas, though the thought underlying it had, to a certain extent, been made use of by his predecessors. His use of the term idea is at times ambiguous, as he does not distinguish between the popular and the philosophical use of the word.
The “Essay on the Conduct of the Understanding,” which was not published until after Locke's death, was undoubtedly designed as an additional chapter to the great Essay. This is evident from the author's own notes on the subject. H. R. Fox Bourne, perhaps the fullest and most careful of Locke's biographers, says of it: “It is a collection of notes for an essay or discourse, the notes often repeating one another, and sometimes not fitting very well together. But the incoherence almost enhances the value of the work to us, if not as a scientific treatise, as an index to the modest, earnest temper in which Locke prepared to give his last message to the world as an apostle of truth.” At one point in this Essay we read, “I am not inquiring the easy way to an opinion, but the right way to truth.” In this brief statement may be found the purpose of all Locke's intellectual work and the secret of his influence on the deeper thought of his time.
