LOCKE, John.

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An Essay concerning Humane Understanding. First edition, first issue, with the Holt imprint. Locke worked for nearly two decades on his investigation of "the certainty and the adequacy of human knowledge" (PMM), and the resulting landmark work influenced many Enlightenment philosophers.Locke argued that all our knowledge comes from experience and through our senses, rather than innate ideas. The mind is at birth a clean sheet, a tabula rasa; since only material things can affect our sense, we can know nothing but matter and must accept a materialistic philosophy. Locke concluded that "though knowledge must necessarily fall short of complete comprehension, it can at least be 'sufficient'; enough to convince us that we are not at the mercy of pure chance, and can to some extent control our own destiny" (ODNB).Locke's Essay quickly ran to several editions and was popularized on the continent through French translations. "Few books in the literature of philosophy have so widely represented the spirit of the age and country in which they appeared, or have so influenced opinion afterwards. The art of education, political thought, theology and philosophy, especially in Britain, France and America, long bore the stamp of the Essay, or of reaction against it" (Grolier). Voltaire and Diderot accepted Locke with little question, Hume and Kant continued the investigation, and Bishop Berkeley rejected it with his own immaterialism.The edition was reissued with a cancel title bearing an Ed

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