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John Locke: Of
the Conduct of the Understanding
Edited by F. W. Garforth
Advertisement to the Reader *The ensuing treatises are true and genuine remains of the deceased author whose name they bear, but for the greatest part received not his last hand, being in a great measure little more than sudden views, intended to be afterwards revised and further looked into, but by sickness, intervention of business or preferable esquires happened to be thrust aside and so lay neglected. The conduct of the understanding he always thought to be a subject very well worth consideration. As any miscarriages in that point accidentally came into his mind, he used sometimes to set them down in writing with those remedies that he could then think of. This method, though it makes not that haste to the end which one could wish, yet perhaps the only one that can be followed in the case. It being here, as in physic, impossible for a physician to describe a disease or seek remedies for it till he comes to meet with it. Such particulars of this kind as occurred to the author at a time of leisure he, as is before said, set down in writing, intending, if he had listed, to have reduced them into order and method and to have made a complete treatise; whereas now it is only a collection of casual observations, sufficient to make men see some faults in the conduct of their understanding and suspect there may be more, and may perhaps serve to excite others to esquire further into it than the author has done.
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