Locke's thought advocates: "Any insignificant impression we get in our childhood will have a considerable and lasting impact on our future." He believes that the associations formed when a person is young are more important than those formed later, because they are the root of self-they are the first impressions left on the whiteboard.

Locke is a pioneer of British empiricism, although he himself did not fully implement this philosophical thought. Locke believes that all human thoughts and concepts come from or reflect human sensory experience.

Therefore, Locke believes that "self" is a kind of self-consciousness and a reflection of self-consciousness in the body. Locke explained the development process of this conscious soul in the Theory of Human Understanding. He criticized Saint Augustine's theory that people are born with original sin and Descartes' theory that people are born with basic logical knowledge.