“Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas”
Here is the most famous metaphor in the essay and, indeed, one of the most famous metaphors in the history of philosophical writing. This is the concept of the tabula rasa; the famous reply to the argument against innate knowledge being imprinted upon the mind at birth. Locke’s argument that the mind is a blank slate at birth is the foundation upon which empiricism is based.
“Pleasure and pain, and that which causes them, good and evil, are the hinges on which our passions turn”
Locke explains that what we call good is really that which increases pleasure and decreases pain and that which we call evil does the opposite. The metaphor of the hinge thus becomes his means of expressing how the concepts of good and evil are not absolute, but rather perceptual and subject to alteration depending upon the circumstances of perceptual input.
“Objects, near our view, are apt to be thought greater than those of a larger size, that are more remote”
Here Locke is making an insightful metaphor revealing how sensory perception can be compared to reflection as a means of attaining knowledge. The perceptual trick of the mind that associated objects at a far distance as being larger than a much closer object that is really much smaller also tends to manifests in reflection. Consequences that won’t become concrete until the distant future are treated with the perception that they smaller problems than immediate concerns even when those immediate concerns can be objectively determined as a far less important problem.
Mirror (Looking-Glass)
For Locke, a mirror is the ideal metaphor for the kind of mind that receives sensory information, but fails to reflect upon them. As a mirror briefly can contain the image of anything held before it, but never reflect it back again, so is a mind that perceives, does not reflect. As Locke points out, neither the mirror or nor the similarly operating mind operating is ever “the better for such ideas.”
“Liberty is a power to act or not to act, according as the mind directs.”
Locke introduces this metaphorical assertion thusly: “Wherein lighting upon a very easy and scarce observable slip I had made, in putting one seemingly indifferent word for another, that discovery opened to me this present view, which here, in this second edition, I submit to the learned world, and which in short is this:” And this assertion arrives after around 70 different numbered sections where the word “liberty” recurs most often. Whatever one may perceive and reflect upon as the meaning of this statement of finality on the matter of liberty, one thing is effectively clear: the question of what liberty is or isn’t was weighing heavily on Locke’s mind during composition.
