{
    "schema": "prokopton42-public-passage-v1",
    "id": "locke.essay_human_understanding",
    "canonical_url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/john-locke/essay-human-understanding/reference-b3-c2-s8/",
    "language": "en",
    "title": "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding",
    "author": "John Locke",
    "date": "1689-1700; revised lifetime editions",
    "summary": "The Essay examines the origin and composition of ideas, personal identity, and the limits of knowledge.",
    "learning": "Take a disputed term, trace the ideas composing it, then separate what experience warrants as knowledge from what remains probable judgment.",
    "long_summary": "This edition joins three English Gutenberg transcriptions to Pierre Coste’s historical French translation. Canonical identity follows book, chapter and section. Sections missing from one manifestation remain monolingual and are never attached to a neighbor.\n\nThe reading distinguishes sensation and reflection, simple and complex ideas, qualities, identity, knowledge and probability. The 1975 editorial PDF remains a doxographer witness outside dialogue.",
    "historical_context": "The corpus manifests do not yet establish the precise place and circumstances of composition. The images below document the author’s world or the text’s transmission. They do not claim to show the exact scene of writing.",
    "material_world_label": "World of 1989",
    "material_world": {
        "technology": "Personal computers, satellites, video, industrial robots, and expensive mobile phones exist, but the public Web does not yet.",
        "science": "Computing, genetics, climate science, cosmology, and medical imaging produce growing data and international collaboration.",
        "medicine": "CT, MRI, transplantation, vaccines, and intensive care advance; the AIDS epidemic exposes both medical capacity and its limits.",
        "transport": "Cars, high-speed rail, metros, aircraft, and containers globalize people and goods.",
        "agriculture": "Machinery, chemical inputs, breeding, and cold chains support high yields with increasingly debated social and environmental costs.",
        "communication": "Fixed telephones, fax, television, radio, and newspapers predominate. Email and computer networks remain mainly professional or academic.",
        "clothing": "Loose suits, jeans, trainers, women’s power suits, sportswear, and urban subcultures create highly varied silhouettes."
    },
    "material_world_scenes": [
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/30-1989-ce/world-01.webp",
            "title": "Technology, science, and care",
            "description": "Personal computers, satellites, video, industrial robots, and expensive mobile phones exist, but the public Web does not yet. Computing, genetics, climate science, cosmology, and medical imaging produce growing data and international collaboration. CT, MRI, transplantation, vaccines, and intensive care advance; the AIDS epidemic exposes both medical capacity and its limits."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/30-1989-ce/world-02.webp",
            "title": "Travel and communication",
            "description": "Cars, high-speed rail, metros, aircraft, and containers globalize people and goods. Fixed telephones, fax, television, radio, and newspapers predominate. Email and computer networks remain mainly professional or academic."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/30-1989-ce/world-03.webp",
            "title": "Farming and food",
            "description": "Machinery, chemical inputs, breeding, and cold chains support high yields with increasingly debated social and environmental costs."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/30-1989-ce/world-04.webp",
            "title": "Clothing, women and men",
            "description": "Loose suits, jeans, trainers, women’s power suits, sportswear, and urban subcultures create highly varied silhouettes."
        }
    ],
    "intellectual_tradition": {
        "id": "modern-philosophy",
        "label": "Modern and contemporary philosophy"
    },
    "period": {
        "id": "modern",
        "label": "Modern era"
    },
    "languages": [
        "en",
        "fr"
    ],
    "manifestations": [
        {
            "coverage": "complete_for_attested_edition_boundaries",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/john_locke/essay_human_understanding/representations/en.ndjson",
            "language": "en",
            "records": 1079,
            "role": "source_language_transcription",
            "sha256": "e49bcd8808fd3451f7cf4fcc724d0d625f1f9ce8cb33257e914416616ede401c"
        },
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            "coverage": "complete_for_attested_edition_boundaries",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/john_locke/essay_human_understanding/representations/fr.ndjson",
            "language": "fr",
            "records": 1093,
            "role": "historical_translation",
            "sha256": "a453c04e0a08b4ba12e7733e0203e7d5e55526ce44b30150d5a84d85cdefa12e"
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            "coverage": "fills_missing_source_attested_coverage",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/john_locke/essay_human_understanding/representations/ai-generated/en-gpt-5-6-sol-corpus-passage-translation-v1.ndjson",
            "generated_on": "2026-09-30",
            "language": "en",
            "model": "gpt-5.6-sol",
            "official_status": "non_official",
            "prompt_version": "corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "provider": "codex_subscription",
            "records": 35,
            "role": "ai_generated_translation_non_official",
            "sha256": "7db56855031b5ecd0356a11522f61911855e0bd3295ce26f15f816caace9b6dc",
            "source_id": "prokopton42-codex-translation:gpt-5.6-sol:corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation"
        },
        {
            "coverage": "fills_missing_source_attested_coverage",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/john_locke/essay_human_understanding/representations/ai-generated/fr-gpt-5-6-sol-corpus-passage-translation-v1.ndjson",
            "generated_on": "2026-09-30",
            "language": "fr",
            "model": "gpt-5.6-sol",
            "official_status": "non_official",
            "prompt_version": "corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "provider": "codex_subscription",
            "records": 21,
            "role": "ai_generated_translation_non_official",
            "sha256": "77f9a1513641a1fddef00925571739164e51eaa36a7a9def5ea9f627f012f595",
            "source_id": "prokopton42-codex-translation:gpt-5.6-sol:corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation"
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    ],
    "concepts": [
        {
            "id": "care_of_soul",
            "label": "Care of the soul"
        },
        {
            "id": "degrees_of_knowledge_and_probability",
            "label": "Degrees of knowledge and probability"
        },
        {
            "id": "family",
            "label": "Family"
        },
        {
            "id": "ideas_from_sensation_and_reflection",
            "label": "Ideas from sensation and reflection"
        },
        {
            "id": "knowledge",
            "label": "Knowledge"
        },
        {
            "id": "messiah",
            "label": "Messiah"
        },
        {
            "id": "nature",
            "label": "Nature"
        },
        {
            "id": "nominal_and_real_essence",
            "label": "Nominal and real essence"
        },
        {
            "id": "personal_identity_and_consciousness",
            "label": "Personal identity and consciousness"
        },
        {
            "id": "primary_and_secondary_qualities",
            "label": "Primary and secondary qualities"
        },
        {
            "id": "reason",
            "label": "Reason"
        },
        {
            "id": "simple_and_complex_ideas",
            "label": "Simple and complex ideas"
        },
        {
            "id": "sin",
            "label": "Sin"
        }
    ],
    "source_work_ids": [
        "locke.essay_human_understanding"
    ],
    "passages": 1114,
    "word_count": 257071,
    "word_counts_by_language": {
        "en": 257071,
        "fr": 297020
    },
    "editorial_status": "gpt_5_6_semantic_draft_v1",
    "structure": {
        "citation_scheme": "locke-essay-book-chapter-section-v1",
        "kind": "native",
        "levels": [
            {
                "key": "book",
                "label_fr": "Livre",
                "label_en": "Book"
            },
            {
                "key": "chapter",
                "label_fr": "Chapitre",
                "label_en": "Chapter"
            },
            {
                "key": "section",
                "label_fr": "Section",
                "label_en": "Section"
            }
        ],
        "leaf_fr": "Section",
        "leaf_en": "Section"
    },
    "canonical_passage_id": "passage:locke.essay_human_understanding:B3.C2.S8",
    "canonical_ref": "B3.C2.S8",
    "canonical_parent_ref": null,
    "canonical_parent_id": null,
    "representations": [
        {
            "language": "en",
            "text": "Words, by long and familiar use, as has been said, come to excite in men certain ideas so constantly and readily, that they are apt to suppose a natural connexion between them. But that they signify only men's peculiar ideas, and that BY A PERFECT ARBITRARY IMPOSITION, is evident, in that they often fail to excite in others (even that use the same language) the same ideas we take them to be signs of: and every man has so inviolable a liberty to make words stand for what ideas he pleases, that no one hath the power to make others have the same ideas in their minds that he has, when they use the same words that he does. And therefore the great Augustus himself, in the possession of that power which ruled the world, acknowledged he could not make a new Latin word: which was as much as to say, that he could not arbitrarily appoint what idea any sound should be a sign of, in the mouths and common language of his subjects. It is true, common use, by a tacit consent, appropriates certain sounds to certain ideas in all languages, which so far limits the signification of that sound, that unless a man applies it to the same idea, he does not speak properly: and let me add, that unless a man's words excite the same ideas in the hearer which he makes them stand for in speaking, he does not speak intelligibly. But whatever be the consequence of any man's using of words differently, either from their general meaning, or the particular sense of the person to whom he addresses them; this is certain, their signification, in his use of them, is limited to his ideas, and they can be signs of nothing else.",
            "edition": "Project Gutenberg transcription of Locke author text",
            "source_id": "gutenberg-10616",
            "translation_type": "source_language_transcription"
        },
        {
            "language": "fr",
            "text": "Comme on l’a dit, par un usage long et familier, les mots en viennent à susciter chez les hommes certaines idées avec tant de constance et de facilité qu’ils sont portés à supposer entre eux une liaison naturelle. Mais il est évident qu’ils ne signifient que les idées particulières des hommes, et cela PAR UNE IMPOSITION PARFAITEMENT ARBITRAIRE, puisqu’ils manquent souvent de susciter chez les autres, même chez ceux qui parlent la même langue, les mêmes idées dont nous les tenons pour les signes. Et chaque homme possède une liberté si inviolable de faire représenter par les mots les idées qu’il lui plaît que nul n’a le pouvoir de faire que les autres aient dans l’esprit les mêmes idées que lui lorsqu’ils emploient les mêmes mots. C’est pourquoi le grand Auguste lui-même, bien qu’il possédât la puissance qui gouvernait le monde, reconnaissait qu’il ne pouvait créer un nouveau mot latin. Cela revenait à dire qu’il ne pouvait décider arbitrairement de quelle idée un son serait le signe dans la bouche et dans la langue commune de ses sujets. Il est vrai que l’usage commun, par un consentement tacite, approprie certains sons à certaines idées dans toutes les langues, ce qui limite la signification de ce son au point que, si un homme ne l’applique pas à la même idée, il ne parle pas proprement. Et j’ajouterai que, si les mots d’un homme ne suscitent pas chez l’auditeur les mêmes idées qu’il leur fait représenter en parlant, il ne parle pas intelligiblement. Mais quelles que soient les conséquences du fait qu’un homme emploie les mots autrement que selon leur signification générale ou selon le sens particulier que leur donne la personne à laquelle il s’adresse, une chose est certaine : dans l’usage qu’il en fait, leur signification est limitée à ses idées, et ils ne peuvent être les signes de rien d’autre.",
            "translator": "Codex gpt-5.6-sol",
            "edition": "Prokopton42 non-official AI translation, 2026-09-30",
            "source_id": "prokopton42-codex-translation:gpt-5.6-sol:corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation",
            "official_status": "non_official",
            "generation_model": "gpt-5.6-sol"
        }
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}