Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, a white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? ... To this I answer, in one word, from experience.

Locke writes this in the opening book of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (first published 1689/1690), where he sets out to explain the origin and limits of human knowledge. In the intellectual climate of late seventeenth-century England—marked by debates over innate ideas, the rise of experimental science, and post–Civil War religious and political controversy—Locke argues against the view (associated with some rationalists and scholastic traditions) that the mind contains inborn principles. The “white paper” image introduces his empiricist program: to trace ideas back to their sources in sensation and reflection, rather than to supposed innate notions.

The “white paper” (tabula rasa) metaphor encapsulates Locke’s claim that the mind begins without preloaded concepts or principles. The question “How comes it to be furnished?” frames his central thesis: all the materials of thought originate in experience—either through sensation (the external world impressing ideas on us) or reflection (the mind’s awareness of its own operations). The passage is significant because it shifts epistemology toward observation and psychological development, undermining appeals to innate authority in religion and politics. It also anticipates later debates about education, identity, and the formation of belief by environment and habit.