... etc? concise?) Locke used the word 'idea' as a basic component of human thought that incorporated all types of mental content that later discloses. He did not worry about the ontology of ideas but rather their function, to represent something else, 'For since the Things, the Mind contemplates, are none of them, besides it self, present to the Understanding, 'tis necessary that something else, as a Sign or Representation of the thing considers, should be present to it: And these are ideas.' [Locke, essay IV xxi 4] Locke thought that we must always be thinking about something all of the time and therefore we do posses ideas, 'Every man being conscious to himself, that he thinks, and that which his mind is applied about, whilst thinking, being the ideas, that are there, 'tis past doubt, that men have in their minds several ideas.' [Locke, essay II i 1] It was Locke's' ...

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