The intellectualism of Locke: an essay

Presented to the
LIBRARY of the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

by

PROFESSOR R. F. McRAE

THE

INTELLECTUALS! OF LOCKE:

BY

THOMAS E. WEBB, M.A.,

PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN.

DUBLIN:

WILLIAM MCGEE & CO., 18, NASSAU-STREET.
LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, LONGMANS, & ROBERTS.

1857.

DUBLIN :

^rtntefl at tlje gani&ersttp

BY M. H. GILL.

B

1

VV4-

TO

THE RIGHT REVEREND

WILLIAM FITZGEBALD, D,D,,

LORD BISHOP OF CORK, CLOYNE, AND ROSS,

IS DEDICATED,
IN GRATITUDE FOR THE INTEREST HE HAS TAKEN IN ITS PROGRESS,

AND IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF
THE BENEFIT IT HAS DERIVED FROM HIS SUGGESTIONS.

s

PREFACE.

object of this Book is indicated by its Title.
It professes to establish by a rigorous analysis
of the Essay concerning Human Understanding, that
Locke is neither a Sensualist, ignoring the existence
of any Elements of Thought but those supplied by
the External Senses, nor an Empiricist, recognising
the existence of no Elements of Thought but those
supplied by Sense, External or Internal. It professes
to establish that Locke, on the contrary, as recognis
ing Ideas of which Intellect is properly the source,
and Cognitions of which Intellect is exclusively the
guarantee, is an Intellectualist — an Intellectualist in
the sense of Reid and Kant.

To enunciate this doctrine is to proclaim that
Locke's Philosophy has hitherto been interpreted
by opposites. Any attempt to propitiate the pre
possessions of the Reader in such a case is plainly
out of the question ; the utmost I can hope is to

PEEFACE.

guard against misapprehension. To secure this ob
ject I shall give, though at the expense of any in
terest which my Essay might otherwise possess, a
synopsis of the results at which it professes to have
arrived.

In the First Chapter, then, I give a brief sketch
of the History of Locke's Philosophy, and point out
certain antecedent probabilities in favour of my
general conclusion. In the Second, I show that
Locke regarded our Ideas neither as Separate Enti
ties, nor as Latent Modifications of Mind, but as
Percipient Acts ; — in other words, that his Ideal
Theory was identical with that of Arnauld. In the
Third, I show that Locke was not misled by an
Ignis Fatuus in his Polemic against Innate Ideas,
on the one hand ; and that, on the other, he syste
matically recognised the element of truth of which
the Doctrine of Innate Ideas was the disguised
expression. In the Fourth, I determine the mean
ing attached by Locke to the words Sensation and
Eeflection, and show that in declaring Sensation
and Eeflection to be the sole " Originals" of our
Ideas, Locke merely contemplated the Chronological
Conditions of Thought. In the Fifth, I show that,
ulterior to Sensation and Reflection, Locke recog-

PREFACE. vii

nises the Understanding itself as a principle genetic I
of Ideas which Sensation and Reflection are wholly
incompetent to give. In the Sixth, I show that^
Locke anticipated the Kantian distinction of Know
ledge into A posteriori and A priori, Synthetic and
Analytic. In the Seventh, I endeavour to systematize
Locke's views on the subject of the Three Ontologic
Realities, the World, the Soul, and God. In the
Eighth, I endeavour to perform the same office with
respect to his views on Freedom and the Moral Law.
In the Ninth, by a minute comparison of Locke's
doctrines with those of Hume and Kant, I endea
vour to show that Hume's doctrine was not the
sceptical development, but the dogmatic reversal, of
that of Locke, and that Locke, on all the funda
mental questions of Psychology, was agreed with
Kant, though with regard to the Science of Meta
physics the two Philosophers diverged.

These conclusions are so utterly alien to the ac
credited Criticism of the last hundred and fifty years,
that, perhaps, I may be suspected of having failed
to comprehend the nature of the question I have
undertaken to discuss. To obviate this suspicion, I
have selected as the expression of the received opi
nions on the subject of Locke's Philosophy, the two

PREFACE.

greatest Philosophers which this generation has pro
duced — M. Cousin and Sir William Hamilton. I
have selected these from the great mass of Locke's
Critics for a variety of reasons. In the first place,
their acquaintance with the general Problems of
Philosophy was so accurate, and their expression of
Philosophical Opinion so clear, that a controversy
which would have been vague when directed against
others, becomes definite when directed against them.
In the second place, the present reputation of these
Philosophers stands so high, that a professed expo-
sure of their errors of Criticism would be more likely
to attract attention than any professed exposition
of the Philosophy of Locke. In the third place, I
must acknowledge the existence of some such feel
ing as that which animated the Unknown Knight
in Ivanhoe, and, instead of selecting as antagonists
those whose seat was least sure, I have preferred
touching the shield of the most redoubted cham
pions that the lists of Metaphysics can supply.

Should any professional Critic deem the subject
worthy of his notice, all I would ask is, that he will
study it with the attention which, from its very na
ture, the subject itself demands. This Essay pro
fesses to expose an error which for a century and a

PREFACE. IX

half has vitiated the History of Philosophy, and
thrown a shade upon the reputation of the chief of
British Philosophers. Let it be studied, then, with
the care due to the interests of Philosophy. Let it
be studied with the respect due to the memory of
Locke.

POSTSCRIPT.

THE opinion which identifies Locke's Theory of
Ideas with the Peripatetic Theory of Intentional
Species has been so strenuously maintained by Reid,
by Cousin, and by Sir William Hamilton, that, pro-
bably, there is no portion of the following Essay
which will be regarded with so much incredulity as
that which professes to demonstrate the contrary.
I trust I shall be excused, therefore, if I direct at
tention to a perfectly decisive passage which I un
fortunately overlooked when writing the chapter on
Ideas.* In speaking of the fourth "Abuse of Words,"
—that of " taking them for things," — Locke ex
pressly mentions the Peripatetic Doctrine of " Inten
tional Species" as an instance (in. x. 14). He ridi
cules it as the fitting pendant of a Philosophy which
asserted the reality of " Substantial Forms," " Vege
tative Souls," and " Abhorrence of a Vacuum." He
classes it with the " Soul of the World" of the Pla-
tonists, and with the " Endeavour towards Motion"
in the " Atoms at Rest" of the Epicureans. He com
pares it to the Doctrine of " Aerial and Etherial Ve
hicles." He pronounces it to be "gibberish"

* See page 32.

CONTENTS.

PAG*.

I. — HISTORICAL, j

II. — IDEAS, 20

III. — INNATE IDEAS, 39

IV. — THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS, 59

V. — THE GENESIS OF IDEAS, 75

VI. — INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE, 107

VII. — EEAL EXISTENCE, 126

VIII. — FREEDOM AND THE MORAL LAW, 146

IX. — LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT, 160

APPENDIX, 137

The Editions referred to in this Essay a/re : — The Second Edi
tion of Sir William Hamilton1 s Discussions ; the last Paris Edition
of the Works of M. Cousin; and Sir William Hamilton's Editions
of the Works of Reid and Stewart.

THE

INTELLECTUALS! OF LOCKE,

i.

HISTORICAL.

three works which have vindicated for Eng-
land a name in the Philosophy of Europe
are, the Instauratio Magna of Bacon, the Levi
athan of Hobbes, and Locke's Essay concerning
Human Understanding. Of these three works,
Locke's Essay is, perhaps, that which has produced
the most powerful and permanent effect. The de
velopment of Natural Science which has taken place
since the time of Bacon is to be referred rather to
the necessary tendencies of the age than to the
genius of that great man. The Ethical controver
sies which were once connected with the name of
Hobbes have long ceased to be a matter of interest
to any but the recluse student of Philosophy.
Locke's Essay, on the contrary, is not only the
starting-point of Metaphysical Science in this coun
try, it is still the text-book in all our Univer-

B

2 HISTOKICAL.

sities and Schools. On the Continent of Europe,
and on the Continent of America, it is the same.
The name of Locke is still a watchword in Philo
sophy ; and the history of the Essay concerning
Human Understanding is, in a great measure, the
history of modern Thought.

The circumstances under which Locke made his
first appearance as a Philosopher were, in many
respects, unfavourable. Maintained in ancient times
by the School of Epicurus, the system which educes
all knowledge from Experience had, in the preceding
age, been reproduced on the theatre of speculation
by Gassendi, and accredited to Europe on the sup
posed authority of Hobbes. The Ethical theories
of Hobbes had excited a mingled feeling of terror
and disgust, and had called forth a powerful anta
gonist in Cudworth. Impressed with the necessity
of investigating the Psychological foundations of
morals, Cudworth, in combating Hobbes, repro
duced the argument with which Socrates had
combated the Scepticism of Protagoras, and anti
cipated the argument with which Kant combated
the Scepticism of Hume. The efforts of Cudworth
were worthily seconded by Cumberland. In the
meanwhile, Cartesianism had effected a footing in
this country ; the Platonic tendencies of the age
had been developed by More and Smith ; and the
first dim intimations of a Philosophy of Common
Sense had been given by Lord Herbert. It was in
this state that Metaphysical Science was found by

HISTOKICAL. 3

Locke. But Locke unfortunately was a Politician
as well as a Philosopher, — a Politician, too, identified
with a party in the highest degree obnoxious to
those who, at that period, claimed to be arbiters in
all questions of Philosophy. The Church and the
Universities were then, as now, the chief centres of
speculative activity, and the Clergy, though they
acquiesced in the Revolution as a disagreeable neces
sity, had little sympathy with its principles, and
were inclined to look upon its advocates with sus
picion. Hence it was that, on his first appearance
as a Philosopher, Locke was universally greeted as a
second Hobbes, and the Essay was universally de
nounced as a a new Leviathan. True it is that
Locke expressly disclaimed an intimate acquain
tance with the works of his predecessor. True it is
that he coupled the name of Hobbes with the ill-
omened name of Spinosa, and pronounced him to
have been justly decried by his antagonists.*
Locke's disclaimer was unheeded. There was on
some leading points a superficial appearance of agree
ment between the two philosophers, and the result
was what might have been predicted. The whole
Church militant, to employ the expression of War-

* Yet Mr. Stewart, who in one page quotes the passage in which
Locke " disclaims any intimate acquaintance with the works of
Hobbes" (Diss., p. 213), in the preceding page asserts that, "to
those who are well acquainted with his speculations, it must ap
pear evident that he had studied diligently the metaphysical
writings both of Hobbes and Gassendi" (Diss., p. 212).

B2

4 HISTORICAL.

burton, resumed the arms, the temper of which had
been tried in thundering on the steel cap of the
Philosopher of Malmesbury. The University of Ox
ford, by a private agreement between the Heads of
Houses, determined to ignore the existence of the
obnoxious book. Even Newton was so carried
away by the prevalent excitement as to wish that
Locke were dead. In spite of this opposition, how
ever, partly, perhaps, in consequence of its violence,
the dry metaphysical tractate passed through suc
cessive editions with the rapidity of a romance.
Pope satirized the abortive efforts of —

" Each fierce Logician still expelling Locke."

The doctrines of the Essay were popularized by
Addison in the pages of the Spectator. Even the
ridicule of Arbuthnot and the Scriblerus Club con
tributed to make the new Philosophy familiar to
the reading public. The physico-metaphysical spe^
culations of the School of Hartley belonged to a re
gion in which Locke professedly declined to wander.
But the intellectual impetus communicated by the
author of the Essay was perpetuated by thinkers
of a different order. Berkeley developed Philo
sophy into an Idealism which denied the objective
existence of the world of matter ; Hume, into a
Nihilism which recognised the existence of nothing
but our own Ideas. Outraging the ordinary con
victions of humanity, and fraught with danger to
life and morals, the Scepticism of Hume elicited

HISTORICAL. 5

the indignant protest of Reid. The Scottish Philo
sophy was called into existence, and the result was
the formation of the School of Common Sense.

Nor has the influence of Locke's Philosophy
been less conspicuous in France. Struck with its
apparent clearness, — attracted to it, perchance, by
the hostility with which it was regarded by the
English Church, Voltaire pronounced Locke to be
the Hercules of Metaphysics, and proclaimed the Es
say concerning Human Understanding to be a book
which contained nothing but truths — truths, too,
enunciated in the most unambiguous manner. But
Montesquieu's sarcasm againstVoltaire is well known.
" Quant a Voltaire," said the illustrious President,
" il a trop d'esprit pour m'entendre ;" and the remark
is as applicable to Voltaire's estimate of the Essay
concerning Human Understanding as it was to his
strictures on the Spirit of the Laws. Voltaire was
a Gassendist, and unfortunately identified Locke
with Gassendi. The system of the Essay in this
manner became synonymous with Sensualism, and
was made responsible for its results. Introduced to
public notice by the Freethinker, it was no wonder
that Locke became an object of hostility to the Eccle
siastic, and, so powerful was the feeling of animosity
excited in the Church of France, that Voltaire him
self complained that for thirty years he had been
subjected to incessant persecution for the praises he
had bestowed upon the English Philosopher. But
even this added to the popularity of Locke. The most

6 HISTORICAL.

austere of Philosophers became the Philosopher a
la mode. In the salons of Paris, and the gardens of
Versailles, fine gentlemen descanted with fine ladies
on the origin of Ideas, and even the heroines of the
stage amused their audience with disquisitions on
the original, certainty, and extent of Knowledge.*
Buf Locke's Philosophy was destined to produce
more permanent results. Misled by the same error
as Voltaire, Condillac enunciated the system of Trans
formed Sensations, and presented it to the world as a
development of the Philosophy of Locke. The writers
in the " Encyclopaedia" participated in the views of
Condillac. The Philosophy of Sensualism, thus
accredited, was developed by D'Holbach into Athe
ism; byHelvetius, into an Animalism which acknow
ledged no characteristic difference between man and
the lower animals. The hypothesis of the Man
Statue was succeeded by the hypothesis of the Man
Machine ; which, in its turn, gave way to the hy
pothesis of the Man Triton. The stream of French
speculation was thus poisoned at its source ; the
" dirt Philosophy" was everywhere triumphant ; and
even to the present day the disciples of the higher
Philosophy denounce England as having debauched
the morality of France.

Nor has the influence of the Philosophy of
Locke been less powerfully felt in Germany. At
tracted amidst his dreams of universal knowledge by

* For the influence of Locke on the fashionable circles in France
see Stewart's "Dissertation," pp. 222, 552.

HISTOKICAL. 7

the celebrity of the Essay concerning Human Un
derstanding, Leibnitz, for a moment, devoted his
energies to the study of the new system, tracked it
from position to position, and confronted it at every
turn with the doctrines of the " Nouveaux Essais."
But it was not through Leibnitz that Locke was des
tined to influence the Philosophy of Germany. The
universal genius looked with contempt on the talents
of the English Metaphysician. M. Locke, he said,
had subtlety and address, and a sort of superfi
cial Metaphysic, which he knew how to make the
most of ; but, on the whole, he missed the gateway
of Philosophy, and understood nothing of the nature
of the mind.* Hence it was that Locke's influence
in Germany was neither immediate nor direct. It
was the Scepticism of Hume that had aroused the
indignant common sense of Reid, and it was the
Phantom of the modern Pyrrho that aroused the
speculative reason of Kant, — startled him, as he him
self expressed it, from his dogmatic slumber. Re
garding the Scepticism of Hume as the logical
development of the Empiricism of Locke, Kant de
voted his whole energies to supplying the alleged

* Locke, as Mr. Stewart has observed, was not backward in
returning the compliment. "I see yon and I agree pretty well
concerning Mr. Leibnitz," lie says in a letter to Molyneux, " and
this sort of fiddling makes me hardly avoid thinking that he is
not that very great man as has been talked of him." "Even great
parts," he says in another letter, "will not master any subject
without great thinking, and even the largest minds have but nar
row swallows."

8 HISTOKICAL.

deficiencies of the Essay concerning Human Under
standing, and the Kritik of the Pure Reason was the
result. The reaction thus originated in Germany
was, as is usual in such cases, Europeanized by
France. Belonging to the German school of specu
lation rather than to the French, M. Cousin re
sumed the Kantian polemic, and his lectures on
Locke's Philosophy constitute the best known, and
in the estimation of his admirers, the most valuable
portion of his voluminous productions. The Scot
tish School became modified in the same manner as
the French. The whole Philosophy of Sir William
Hamilton is an attempt at the conciliation of the
School of Common Sense with the School of the
Speculative Reason ; and, inheriting the animosities
of both Reid and Kant, Sir William has accepted the
criticism of M. Cousin, and pronounced his Lectures
to be the most important work on Locke since the
" Nouveaux Essais" of Leibnitz.

Locke is thus the centre of the Philosophy of
Great Britain, Germany, and France. He is to the
metaphysical disputes of modern Europe what in the
eyes of Arnold the great Carthaginian was to the
Second Punic War. The history of Philosophy
gathers itself around his single person, and in the
collision of contending Schools we see nothing but
Locke, his followers, and his foes.

That the scope of a book which has thus for a
century and a half been the centre of controversies
and the source of systems, should never yet have

HISTOKICAL. 9

been properly conceived, may appear a paradox too
extravagant to be entertained. Yet Dugald Stewart,
in his Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical
Science, does not hesitate to aver that in his opinion
the Essay concerning Human Understanding had
been far more generally talked about than read, —
far more generally read than understood. Nor, even
at first sight, is this paradox without certain ante
cedent probabilities in its favour. In the first place,
the opinions concerning the purport of Locke's Phi
losophy are almost as various as the opinions enu
merated by Cicero concerning the Nature of the
Gods. " Res nulla est, de qua tan to opere non solurn
indocti, sed etiam docti dissentiant." While one set of
commentators maintain, with Reid, that Locke re
garded our Ideas as separate entities, another main
tains, with Brown, that he regarded them as mere
percipient acts. While one historian of Philosophy
informs us that Locke rejected the Cartesian theory
of Innate Ideas, another informs us that on the sub
ject of Innate Ideas Descartes and Locke were in
reality at one. If we ask Diderot, Condorcet, or La
Harpe, " What was Locke's great and capital disco
very ?" they will answer, in the words of Condorcet,
" Locke was the first who proved that all our Ideas
are compounded of Sensations" (Diss., p. 227). Put
the same question to Reid, Stewart, and Sir William
Hamilton, they will answer, in the words of Stewart,
that the term which expresses " the peculiar and
characteristic doctrine by which his system is dis-

10 HISTORICAL.

tinguished" is "Reflection" (Diss., p. 230). Evenhere
the diversity of opinion does not cease. What does
Locke mean by " Reflection" ? Stewart tells us that
under Reflection Locke includes the Understanding
proper, and that "it is in this sense he uses it when
he refers to Reflection our Ideas of Cause and Effect,
of Identity and Diversity, and of all other Relations"
(Diss., p. 229). Sir William Hamilton, on the con
trary, insists that Locke employs the term exclu
sively in its etymological sense of eTrtarpocp^ TT/X)?
eairro, and regards it " merely as a source of adven
titious, empirical, or a posteriori knowledge" (Reid,
p. 346). The disciple of Condillac maintains, with
La Harpe, that " the faculty of Reflection is the
power which the mind possesses of comparing and
combining its Perceptions." It is the same with re
ference to Sensation. Reid supposes that Locke's
Sensation is merely Sensation proper (Reid, pp. 208,
290, 317)— Sir William Hamilton denounces Reid,
and protests that it comprehends Sensation proper
and Perception (Reid, pp. 208, 290, 317). It is the
same Avith regard to a variety of other questions.
Is Locke a Conceptualist, or is he a Nominalist? Is he
a Materialist, or is he a believer in the Immateriality
of the Soul ? Is he a Necessitarian, or is he a believer
in the Freedom of the Human Will ? Does he reduce
all Moral Distinctions to the accidental variations of
opinion, to the arbitrary appointment of the civil
magistrate, to the mere edict of the Deity — or does
he repudiate the conclusions of Epicurus, Hobbes,

HISTOKICAL. 11

and Ockham, and acknowledge an Eternal and Im
mutable Morality with Plato, with Cudworth, and
with Clarke ? The question of Morality is a speci
men of the irreconcilable diversity of opinion that
subsists among the commentators. While Shaftes-
bury identifies Locke's doctrines with those of
Hobbes, Stewart identifies them with those of
Shaftesbury (Diss., p. 243). Dissentient even from
himself, Stewart at one time classes Locke with the
"Minute Philosophers" (Diss.,p. 248) ; at another,
he makes him responsible for the ethical paradoxes
that are associated with the names of Helvetius and
Mandeville (D-iss., pp. Ill, 429). Where all is thus
doubt and dissension, the conclusion to be entertained
is obvious. It is that of Cicero in the corresponding
case. "Opiniones cum tarn varioe sint tamque inter
se dissidentes, alterum profecto fieri potest, ut earum
nulla, altera certe non potest, ut plus una vera sit."
Nor is this diversity of view the only circumstance
that rouses the suspicion that Locke's Philosophy
has been the subject of misapprehension. The mon
strous absurdities for which he has been made re
sponsible lead us to the same conclusion. The Scrib-
lerusClub could find no parallel for Locke's Abstract
Idea of a Triangle except Crambe's Abstract Idea of
a Lord Mayor. Brown can compare Locke's theory
of Personal Identity to nothing but the speculations
which Gulliver listened to in the Island of Philoso
phers. But if we want the type of the criticism to
which Locke has been subjected, we must have

12 HISTOKICAL.

recourse to the Lectures of M. Cousin — a work which
professes to embody the criticisms of Reid and
Kant — a work which has received the sanction of
Sir William Hamilton — a work which may, there
fore, be regarded as the expression of the philosophic
sentiment of Europe on the merits of the great
English Philosopher. If we are to believe his French
expositor, Locke starts with a gratuitous " hypothe
sis" (p. 81). Throughout the Essay "contradic
tions gross as yea and nay are to be met with, not
only from chapter to chapter, but from paragraph
to paragraph of the same chapter" (p. 100). "In
a critical point of view the most general charac
teristic of Locke's metaphysical system" is "confu
sion" (p. 116). The only expedient by which he
maintains even the semblance of consistency is the
systematic "mutilation of ideas" and "distortion of
facts" (p. 148). He confounds what everybody else
distinguishes (p. 109) ; he is guilty of" paralogism,"
"confusion," and "extravagance" (p. 128); he
"destroys the belief of the human race" (p. 134) ;
he "annihilates all moral responsibility and juridical
action" (p. 139) ; he confounds consequent with an
tecedent, and antecedent with consequent (passim) ;
at every step he is bewildered amid "Abysses of
Paralogism" (p. 245) ; and "Absolute Nihilism" is
the gulf in which his progress inevitably ends
(p. 250). Surely, if M. Cousin be in the right, this
is the very " midsummer madness" of Malvolio. As
Lee was named the Bedlam Poet, so Locke should

HISTORICAL. 13

be designated the Bedlam Philosopher. The great
English Metaphysician is, after all, but a Metaphy
sician in motley. But who is the man whose master
piece is thus stigmatized as a farrago of fatuity and
falsehood ? A man whose metaphysical sagacity
has never been denied — a man proverbial for so
briety of judgment and breadth of common sense —
a man described by M. Cousin himself as a " born
Philosopher," a second " Socrates," " the sage
Locke." Add to this, a man whose devotion to truth,
as M. Cousin also admits, is attested by all his con
temporaries, and demonstrated by every action of
his life. That such a man should have produced
such a book is, of all unlikely things, the most un
likely. M. Cousin's criticism is not only an insult
to the memory of Locke, — it is an insult to Phi
losophy and to common sense. Whenever an au
thor appears peculiarly absurd, the first suggestion
should be that he has been misunderstood. A great
genius is not gratuitously to be charged with absur
dities which an idiot might detect. In any case, it
is a mere balancing of probabilities, and it is at least
as possible that M. Cousin may have misconceived
the meaning of Locke, as that Locke should have
merited the criticism of M. Cousin.

The probability of the existence of some strange
misconception in connexion with Locke's Philosophy
is confirmed by another circumstance. Strange to
say, the points which M. Cousin and the critics select
as points of attack are the very points which Locke

1 4 HISTORICAL.

himself regards with peculiar complacency. Instead
of regarding his fundamental principle as a gratui
tous Hypothesis, he confidently appeals to " Obser
vation and Experience" for the confirmation of its
truth (i. iv. 25 ; n. i. 1 ; n. xi. 15). Instead of re
garding his system as a rude mass of incoherent ma
terial, he exults in the reflection that it will be ac
knowledged to be "an edifice uniform and consistent
with itself," even by those who may be disposed to
view it as " a castle in the air" (i. iv. 25). Instead
of regarding his Philosophy as exhibiting the muti
lation of ideas and the distortion of facts, he insists
that " if we examine the whole course of men in their
several ages, countries, and educations," their " no
tions" will be found to depend on the " foundations"
which he has laid, and to correspond in every re
spect with the " method" which he has thought
proper to adopt (n. xi. 16).

Nor can it be said that Locke was ignorant of the
conditions of the problem which he undertook to
solve. Every metaphysical difficulty which was ob
truded upon Reid and Kant, by the Philosophy of
Hume, had already been obtruded upon Cudworth
and Cumberland by the Philosophy of Hobbes.
Nor, even if Locke had been ignorant of the meta
physical controversies which had agitated the pre
ceding age, would he have been permitted by his
contemporaries to ignore the great principles at
issue. Never was any book greeted with such a
storm of opposition as the Essay concerning Hu-

HISTORICAL. 15

man Understanding on its first appearance. At the
head of its assailants appeared the Bishop of Wor
cester. He took exception to Locke's theory of
Ideas. He maintained that the reasoning against In
nate Ideas invalidated the argument for the exist
ence of a God. He challenged the theory of the
origin of Ideas to account for the existence of the
Idea of Substance. He denounced the theory of
Knowledge as incompetent to give either the Immate
riality of the Soul, or the expectation of a Future Life.
Nor was Stillingfleet the only opponent that Locke
was called upon to encounter. The efforts of the
philosophic Bishop were seconded by Sherlock and
by Norris. " Solid Philosophy" was " asserted against
the Fancies of theldeists" by Sargent. Lee confronted
the supposed Scepticism of the Essay with an " Anti-
Scepticism" in folio. Lowde assailed its fancied
Hobbism with a " Discourse concerning the Nature
of Man." Every leading objection that has been
adduced against Locke's system by Leibnitz, Kant,
or Cousin, by Reid, Stewart, or Sir William Hamil
ton, was thus obtruded on Locke's own notice by
his own contemporaries. And what was the result ?
Locke tells us, in the Epistle to the Reader prefixed
to the sixth edition of the Essay. He had not had
the good luck to receive any light from those excep
tions he had met with in print against any part of
his book. Whether the subject he had in hand re
quired more attention than cursory readers, at least
such as were prepossessed, were willing to allow, or

16 HISTORICAL.

whether any obscurity in his expressions cast a cloud
over it, and those notions were made difficult to
others' apprehensions in his way of treating them,
he did not undertake to say ; but so it was, that his
meaning, he found, was often mistaken, and he had
not the good luck to be everywhere rightly under
stood. Whichever was the case, it was merely his own
reputation that was affected. He declined, therefore,
to trouble the reader with what he thought might
be said in answer to the several objections he had
met with to isolated passages in his book, " since I
persuade myself," he said, " that he who thinks them
of moment enough to be concerned whether they
are true or false will be able to see, that what is said
is either not well founded, or else not contrary to my
doctrine, when I and my opposer come both to be
well understood."

Now, if Locke professed to have derived no light
from the exceptions of Stillingfleet, assuredly he
would have derived no light from the exceptions of
M. Cousin. If he protested that he had been mis
taken by Lowde and Sherlock, he would equally have
protested that he had been mistaken by Sir William
Hamilton. If he declared that he was agreed with
his antagonists of the School of Cudworth, he would
have as readily avowed that he was agreed with his
antagonists of the School of Keid and Kant. And
this suggests the principle on which the Philo
sophy of Locke should in reality be judged. When,
with reference to " the origin of the pure cognitions

HISTORICAL. 17

of Reason," Kant divided philosophers into Noolo-
gists and Empiricists, he regarded Aristotle as the
head of the Empiricists, and Locke as the follower of
Aristotle in modern times. But if after the lapse of
two thousand years it may be made a question whe
ther Aristotle in reality regarded all knowledge as
educed from Experience, a similar question may
surely be raised concerning Locke. Fontenelle has
said that History is merely a collection of fables con-
venues ; what if the Empiricism of Locke be one of the
fables convenues of Philosophy ? This is the fact which
it is the object of this Essay to establish, and it is on
the establishment of this fact that I rest Locke's
claims to be regarded as a great thinker. Viewed as
a system of Empiricism, Locke's Philosophy has been
the theme of ten thousand discordant judgments :
viewed in its true character, it will exhibit in corre
lation the doctrines of which each of these discordant
judgments was a partial glimpse. Viewed as a system
of Empiricism, his Philosophy has been regarded as a
chaos of contradiction : viewed in its true character,
it will be seen to be, what he himself considered it,
an edifice uniform and consistent with itself. Viewed
as a system of Empiricism, his Philosophy presents
the appearance of abysses of paralogism : viewed in
their true light, these abysses of paralogism will be
seen to be nothing but a species of metaphysical
mirage thrown up by the ambiguities of language.
Viewed in an Empiric aspect, the Essay concerning
Human Understanding, to use an adaptation of

c

18 HISTORICAL.

Locke's own metaphor, presents to the spectator
nothing but a picture of confusion : viewed in the
" cylindrical mirror" of a just criticism, the confusion
ceases, the irregular lines are reduced to order, and
the Essay presents to the eye the very form and fea
tures of a true Philosophy.

Nor is it merely as a point of speculative curio
sity that this discussion commends itself to the at
tention of those who have the interests of Philosophy
at heart. The great opprobrium of Metaphysics has
hitherto been the diversity of opinion that exists
amongst the acknowledged masters of the science.
In modern times, the two chiefs under whose stan
dards the rival factions of Philosophy have ranged
themselves are Locke and Kant ; and it will be no
mean triumph over the enemies of Philosophy if it
can be demonstrated that on all essential and fun
damental points the rival chiefs are in reality at
one. Nor is this discussion devoid even of the in
terest which nationality can give. It has long been
the fashion to denounce the English School of Phi
losophy as essentially material, and to account for
the alleged fact by the practical tendencies of the
English people ; as if the most practical nation of
antiquity had not produced the most Ideal Philo
sophy, and as if England were not the native country
of Shakspeare and of Milton. It is the object of this
Essay to show that, rightly understood, the Philo
sophy of England is not unworthy of its Poetry —
that Europe has no valid ground of complaint against

HISTORICAL. 19

the English School — and that if the true Philosophy
was developed in a reaction from the false, the false
Philosophy was itself engendered by a misconcep
tion of the true. But a still more; serious con side-
ration remains to be pointed out. Locke has hi
therto been identified with those whom the Roman
orator denounces as the Plebeians of Philosophy.
Sensualist and Sceptic — Materialist, Fatalist, and
Atheist — those who centre all morality in self-inte
rest, and all self-interest in sense — these have hitherto
been regarded as the legitimate representatives of
Locke's principles, the faithful depositories of his
system. I wish to deprive them of that glory. I
wish to transfer the authority of a great name to a
higher and purer School of Speculation. I wish, in
fine, to identify the chief of British Philosophers
with a Philosophy which recognises the Intellectual
dignity of Man — the Immutability of the Moral Law
— the Being and the Attributes of God.

II.

IDEAS.

ACCORDING to Kant, the cause of the failure of the
Metaphysicians who had preceded him was to be
found in the fact that they had occupied themselves
with the objects of knowledge before they had ex
amined into the capabilities of the subject ; and it
was to supply this deficiency that he instituted his
analysis of the laws to which Reason is itself sub
jected, and embodied the results in the Kritikof the
Pure Reason. It was to a conviction of the same
kind that the world is indebted for the Essay con
cerning Hum an Understanding. Findinghimself per
plexed with certain metaphysical difficulties, Locke
fell into the same train of reflection as Kant. " It
came into my thoughts," he says, " that we took a
wrong course, and that, before we set ourselves upon
inquiries of that nature, it was necesary to examine
our own abilities, and see what objects our Under
standings were, or were not, fitted to deal with"
(Epistle). — "I thought that the first step towards
satisfying several inquiries the mind of man was
very apt to run into was to take a survey of our
own Understandings, examine our own powers, and

IDEAS. 21

see to what things they were adapted" (Introduc
tion). — " Till that was done," he adds, almost in the
very words of the German Philosopher, " I suspected
we began at the wrong end, arid in vain sought for
satisfaction in a quiet and sure possession of truths
that most concerned us, whilst we let loose our
thoughts into the vast Ocean of Being, as if all that
boundless extent were the natural and undoubted
possession of our Understanding" (Ibid.). Locke,
therefore, at the very outset repudiates what M.
Cousin calls " the thesis of Sensualism."* He does
not proceed from the Object to the Subject, from
Being to Thought, from Ontology to Psychology.

* " Lectures on Kant," p. 45. — So little, however, is this the
thesis of Sensualism — so little is Kant entitled to any originality for
the counter-thesis, that even Hume enounces the Kantian method
as unambiguously as either Locke or Kant. " Here then," he says
in his " Treatise of Human Nature," " is the only expedient from
which we can hope for success in our philosophical researches — to
leave the tedious, lingering method which we have hitherto fol
lowed, and, instead of taking now and then a castle or village in the
frontier, to march up directly to the capital or centre of the Sci
ences, to Human Nature itself: which, heing once masters of, we
may everywhere else hope for an easy victory." In his " Essays"
he holds exactly the same language. " The only method of freeing
learning at once from these abstruse questions," he says, "is to
inquire seriously into the nature of the Human Understanding,
and show, from an exact analysis of its powers and capacity, that
it is by no means fitted for such remote and abstruse subjects.
We must submit to this fatigue in order to live at ease ever after."
This last sentence gives the ipsissima verla of the Philosopher of
Koenigsberg.

22 IDEAS.

Impressed with the conviction that we can only
know according to the measure of our capacities of
knowing, he undertakes to survey our capacities of
knowing as the necessary preliminary to the deter
mination of the question he proposed to discuss —
" the original, certainty, and extent of human know
ledge" (i. i. 2).*

But this is not all. Knowledge, according to
Locke, "is nothing but the perception of the con
nexion and agreement, or disagreement and repug
nancy, of any of our Ideas" (iv. i. 2). In order to
ascertain the original and extent of knowledge, there
fore, it is necessary to determine the original and
extent of the Ideas with which knowledge is exclu
sively concerned. This enables us to see the whole
lie of the Essay concerning Human Understanding,
as it were, from the bird's-eye point of view. In the
first book, Locke professes to demonstrate that we
have no Ideas prior to Experience. In the second,
he shows the nature of the Experience by which
our Original Ideas are supplied, and the manner in
which other Ideas are subsequently developed by the
Mind itself. In the third he points out the nature
of those General Ideas, in the contemplation of which,
in his opinion, all General Knowledge consists. In

* M. Cousin considers the celebrated comparison which Kant
institutes between himself and Copernicus, as referring to the ne
cessity of commencing a System of Metaphysics with an Analysis
of the Laws of Reason. The comparison, however, has a different
reference.

IDEAS. 23

the fourth, he investigates the nature of the con
nexions established among our various Ideas, deter
mines their objective value, and pronounces the
judgment of his Philosophy on the three great On-
tologic Realities, — the World, the Soul, and God.

What, then, is the nature of these Ideas which play
so prominent a part in the Philosophy of Locke ?
According to Kant, the mind is conscious of nothing
but its own Ideas ; the Ideas of the mind are nothing
but its various acts ; and these acts are to be referred
partly to the recipient capacities of Sense, and partly
to the generative faculties of the Mind itself. Now,
that Locke agrees with Kant in holding the mind
to be conscious of nothing but its own Ideas, is ad
mitted ; it is the fundamental principle of the Essay.
The first thing, therefore, to be ascertained with re
spect to the Ideology of Locke is the light in which
Ideas themselves are to be regarded, That there are
Ideas in the mind, Locke presumes will be easily
granted. " Every one," he says, " is conscious of
them in himself, and men's words and actions will
satisfy him that they are in others" (i. i. 8). So far
all is clear. But Locke, unfortunately, has himself
created a difficulty in attempting to obviate a mis
conception. He defines Ideas to be " the immediate
objects of our minds in thinking" (i. i., Note} ; and
this naturally suggests a query. Are these "objects"
separate objects, or are they the mere acts of the
mind regarded in an objective point of view? In
the words of Sir William Hamilton, are they objec-

24 IDEAS.

tivo-objects, or are they subjective-objects ? With
regard to many of our Ideas, Locke's opinion on this
point admits of no dispute. He speaks, for instance,
of Ideas of Pleasure and Pain, which can be nothing
but mental affections ; of Ideas of Perception and
Volition which can be nothing but mental acts ; of
Ideas of Relation which cannot possibly be separate
entities ; of general Ideas which he distinctly tells
us are " something imperfect that cannot exist"
(iv. vii. 9). The whole controversy, therefore, re
lates exclusively to Locke's opinion as to the es
sence of our Ideas of Sense. According to Reid,
" Mr. Locke thought that there are Images of exter
nal things conveyed to the brain ; but whether he
thought, with Descartes and Newton, that the Images
in the brain are perceived by the mind there pre
sent, or that they are imprinted on the mind itself,
is not so evident" (Reid, p. 256). According to
Brown, " the doctrine of this truly eminent Philoso
pher is, that the presence of the external object and
the consequent organic change are followed by an
Idea, which is nothing but the actual Perception"
(Lect. xxvii., p. 171). Sir William Hamilton un
dertakes to adjudicate in this dispute, and the fol
lowing are the words with which he opens the con
sideration of the question : —

" In his language, Locke is, of all Philosophers, the
most figurative, ambiguous, vacillating, various, and
even contradictory — as has been noticed by Reid
and Stewart, and Brown himself; indeed, we be-

IDEAS. 25

lieve by every author who has had occasion to com
ment on this Philosopher. Thus, on the matter
.under discussion, though really distinguishing, Locke
verbally confounds, the objects of Sense and of In
tellect, the operation and its object, the objects
immediate and mediate, the object and its relations,
the Images of Fancy and the Notions of the Under
standing. Consciousness is converted with Percep
tion, Perception with Idea, Idea with Ideatum, and
with Notion, Conception, Phantasm, Representation,
Sense, Meaning, &c. Now his language, identifying
Ideas and Perceptions, appears conformable to a
disciple of Arnauld — and now it proclaims him a
follower of Digby, explaining Ideas by mechanical
impulse, and the propagation of material particles
from the external reality to the brain. The Idea
would seem, in one passage, an organic affection,
the mere occasion of a spiritual representation ; in
another, a representative Image in the brain itself.
In employing thus indifferently the language of
every hypothesis, may we not suspect that he was
anxious to be made responsible for none? One,
however, he has formally rejected ; and that is the
very opinion attributed to him by Dr. Brown — that
the Idea, or object of consciousness in Perception, is
only a modification of the mind itself (Disc., pp. 78, 79).
If this representation be just, Locke's Idea would
seem to be a Psychologic Proteus from which we
should vainly seek to extort an intelligible response.
" Omnia transformat sese in miracula rerum."

26 IDEAS.

But the first thing to be remarked with reference to
the preceding criticism is, that if Locke be confused,
his confusion is worse confounded by his critic.
Among the various hypotheses the language of which
Locke is represented as using indifferently, there are
enumerated hypotheses wholly independent in cha
racter : hypotheses involved in the connotation of
the term — hypotheses as to the physical antecedents
of the phenomenon — and hypotheses as to the essence
of the phenomenon itself. On each of these points
let us endeavour to ascertain the sentiments of
Locke.

As to the connotation of the term, the word Idea in
Locke's system performs two incongruous functions.
At one time it denotes a Quality of Matter — an
employment of the term which is evidently abusive,
and which gives to Locke's system an appearance of
Berkeleianism which it was never intended to pre
sent ; at another, it denotes a Modification of
Thought — and in this sense Locke employs it in its
full Cartesian comprehensiveness, to include the ob
jects of our consciousness in general. It is true that
Locke sometimes employs the word with an exclu
sive reference to its etymological and anti-Platonic
meaning of Idea, 'I8ea, or Image ; as, for instance,
when he denies that we have any Idea of the Infi
nite, or any Idea of Substance. Nor does the exclu
sive employment of the term in this sense date, as Sir
William Hamilton asserts, from the School of Con-
dillac (Disc., p. 70). It was in this sense it was em-

IDEAS. 27

ployed by Hobbes, when he denied that we have any
Idea of Spirit, Substance, the Infinite, or God ( Obs.
ad Cart.Med.)} by Clarke, when he admitted that we
have no Idea of Substance (Attributes, Prop, x.) ; by
Berkeley, when he denied that we can form any Idea
of Spirits and Relations (Principles, Sect. Ixxxix.)
Nay, Locke's contemporary, King, asserts that the
employment of the term Idea to denote anything
but the Intuitions of Sense is an abuse of language
which bids defiance to the universal associations of
mankind (De Origine, i. i. vi., Note A}. But this
is not the sense in which the term is systematically
employed by Locke. It stands for " whatsoever is
the object of the Understanding when a man thinks"
(i. i. 8). It is used to express " whatever is meant
by Phantasm, Notion, Species" (Ibid.) It is "the
immediate object of Perception, Thought, or Under
standing" (n. viii. 8). In a word, it is a general
term which comprehends under it the Sensible In
tuition, the Intellectual Concept, and the Rational
Idea, of the Kantian.*

* Mr. B. H. Smart, according to Mr. J. S. Mill, has "justly"
observed that " Locke will be much more intelligible if, in the
majority of places, we substitute ' the knowledge of for what he
calls 'the idea of.' " " Among the many criticisms on Locke's
use of the word Idea," says Mr. Mill, " this is the only one which,
as it appears to me, exactly hits the mark" (Logic, i. 126). As
it appears to me, the mark could not have been more ignominiously
missed by the quoit-players of old, when Diogenes seated himself
beside it to avoid being hit. Ideas, according to Locke, are, " as
it were, the materials of Knowledge" (n. xxxiii. 19)— Knowledge

28 IDEAS.

With regard to the physical antecedents of our
Ideas, Locke, it is true, professedly declines to be
made responsible for any hypothesis (i. i. 2). But
he subsequently lays aside this sage reserve, and
pronounces that, in the case of the Primary and
Secondary Qualities of Matter, our Ideas are pro
duced by Impulse, this, he says, being the only
way in which we can conceive bodies to operate
(u. viii. 11). Yet how little Sir William Hamilton
was justified in identifying Locke's doctrine with
the gross material hypothesis of Sir Kenelm Digby
(Disc., p. 81), is evident from Locke's own explana-
tipn of his meaning. He distinctly admits that
"motion, according to the utmost stretch of our
Ideas, is able to produce nothing but motion, so that
when we allow it to produce pleasure or pain, or
the Idea of a colour, or a sound, we are fain to quit
our reason, go beyond our Ideas, and attribute it
wholly to the good pleasure of our Maker" (iv. iii. 6 ;
II. viii. 13). This is not only Reid's opinion, it is
his very language (p. 257). Locke's "Impulse" cor
responds, in fact, to Reid's "Impression" (p. 248).

is " the perception of the agreement or disagreement of our Ideas "
(iv. i. 2). " Ideas," in fact, "being nothing but bare appear
ance, or perceptions in our minds, cannot," in Locke's opinion,
"be said to be true or false" (n. xxxii. 1). Mr. Smart's error
has not even the merit of novelty. Stillingfleet, in one of his
Controversial Letters, confounded the Idea with the Being of Sub
stance; and what was Locke's reply? It is well worthy the
attention of Mr. Mill: — " If your Lordship please, let it be the
Idea" (n. xxiii. Note A).

IDEAS. 29

It is merely a name for the change produced in the
the organ, the nerves, and the brain, by the opera
tion of the external cause (n. viii. 12). It is merely
a name for the physical antecedents of Perception.

But neither with regard to the connotation of
the term, nor with regard to the physical conditions
of the phenomenon, have Locke's views anything to
do with the point on which Sir William Hamilton un
dertook to adjudicate. Here the question, it is to be
observed, is, not whether Locke held the Perception
of external things to be merely by way of Idea, but
whether he held the Idea of external things to be
identical with their Perception, — two questions
which Sir William Hamilton has frequently con
founded, and to the confusion of which he is indebted
for much of the apparent triumph of his celebrated
polemic against Brown. According to Sir William
Hamilton, all possible forms of the Representative
Hypothesis may be reduced to three : — that which
regards the representative object as "not a Modifi
cation of the Mind ;" that which regards it as "a
Modification of Mind dependent for its apprehen
sion, but not for its existence, on the act of
thought;" and that which regards it as " a Modifica
tion of Mind, non-existent out of consciousness,
the Idea and its perception being only different re
lations of an act or state in reality identical" (Disc.,
p. 57). Now let us examine the intimations of
Locke's Essay with reference to each of these forms
of the Representative Hypothesis. Does Locke hold

30 IDEAS.

the doctrine which regards our Sensible Ideas as
numerically and substantially distinct from the sen
tient Mind ? — distinct, to employ the material meta
phors of Tucker, just as wafers are distinct from the
box in which they are contained, or the fish from
the water by which it is enveloped? Even the
most objectionable passages in the whole Essay
afford no countenance to such a view. It is true,
Locke speaks of Ideas as existing " objectively" in
the mind (Epistle). But it is evident that an act
of mind may be an object of thought as much as a
Separate Entity ; and the first remark in the whole
Essay is that the mind can make itself its own ob
ject (i. i. 1). Even Arnauld, from whom Locke
may, perhaps, have borrowed the phrase, speaks of
the objective presence of Ideas, nay, designates it
"objective," to distinguish it from the "local" presence
of external objects (Reid, p. 296). It is true that
Locke holds our Ideas of the Primary Qualities of
Matter to be "exact resemblances" (n. viii. 15).
But so far is this from justifying Sir William Ha
milton in attributing to him the absurdity of " Ex
tended Ideas" (Disc., p. 79), that a reference to the
passages in question will show that, in stating our
Ideas of the Primary Qualities to be exact resem
blances, Locke merely meant to assert that those
Qualities exist in nature exactly as in thought we
conceive them to exist (n. viii. 9, 15, 17, 23). As
to the expressions, Ideas " in" the mind, and Impres
sions "on" the mind, they are metaphors which

IDEAS. 3

every philosopher employs; and to illustrate the
injustice of converting them into expressions of phi
losophical opinion, I cannot do better than adduce
the example of a great thinker, who, if we may be
lieve Sir William Hamilton, " is one of the philo
sophers who really held the doctrine of Ideas,
erroneously by Reid attributed to all" ( Reid, p. 288).
" Look you, Hylas," says Berkeley, — speaking under
the character of Philonous, in the third of the Dia
logues which he wrote to illustrate his Principles
of Human Knowledge, — " Look you, Hylas, when I
speak of objects as existing in the mind or im
printed on the senses, I would not be understood in
the gross literal sense, as when bodies are said to
exist in a place, or a seal to make an impression
upon wax. My meaning is only that the mind
comprehends or perceives them, and that it is affected
from without, or by some being distinct from itself —
in other words, by God."* Locke, undoubtedly, if

* According to Sir William Hamilton, "the Egoistical Ideal
ism of Fichte, resting on the third form of representation, is less
exposed to criticism than the Theological Idealism of Berkeley,
which reposes on the first" (Disc., p. 91). This I hold to be a
representation of Berkeley's Idealism, which is not only opposed
to Berkeley's reiterated and express declarations, but which, if
adopted, would render his whole system a mass of unintelligible
absurdity. It is not a little remarkable with respect to the Ideal
controversy, that this, almost the only case in which Sir "William
Hamilton admits Brown to have been in the right, is almost the
only case in which Brown can be demonstrated to have been in
the wrong.

32 IDEAS.

questioned, would have given a similar explanation
of those passages in which he describes the Senses as
the " Inlets" of Ideas, arid speaks of the " Audience-
chamber" of the Mind. Even Sir William Hamilton
admits that no argument can be legitimately based
on expressions so essentially vague and metaphori
cal. In point of fact the only passage in the whole
of the four books of the Essay, which gives the
slightest countenance to the views of Sir William
Hamilton and Reid, is a parenthetical remark on
our " not knowing how the Ideas of our Minds are
framed, of what materials they are made, whence they
have their light, and how they make their appear
ance" (n. xiv. 13) ; a remark which may well enough
refer to the physical antecedents of Perception — the
Species Impressae of the Schoolmen, the Corporeal
Ideas of Descartes. And as Locke's expressions can
not be identified with the dogma which asserts the
Idea to be a Separate Entity, so he explicitly repu
diates the dogma which asserts the Idea to be " a mo
dification of Mind, dependent for its apprehension,
but not for its existence, on the act of conscious
ness." " To imprint anything on the Mind, without
the mind's perceiving it," seems to him " hardly intel-
gible" (i. ii. 5). " To say a notion is imprinted on
the mind, and yet at the same time to say that the
mind is ignorant of it," is, in his opinion, " to make
this impression nothing" (i. ii. 5). " To be in the
understanding arid not to be understood, to be in the
mind and never to be perceived," this he regards as

IDEAS. 33

a contradiction in terms (i. ii. 5). His whole pole
mic against Innate Ideas, in fact, is a polemic against >\
the doctrine that the existence of Ideas can be la
tent. But the strongest proof that Locke rejected
both the first and second of the forms into which Sir
William Hamilton has analyzed the Representative
Hypothesis, is supplied by the passages in which he
unequivocally avows his adoption of the third, —
that the Idea is " a Modification of Mind, non-ex
istent out of Consciousness, the Idea and its Percep
tion being only different relations of an act in reality
identical." On this point Locke not merely adopts
the sentiments, he reproduces the very language of
Arnauld. He tells us that, " whatever Idea is in
the mind, is either an actual Perception, or else, hav
ing been an actual Perception, is so in the mind, that
by Memory it can be made an actual Perception
again" (i. iv. 20). He tells us, that when he says,
"the Senses convey into the mind the Ideas of
the Sensible Qualities" of Matter, he means that
" they from external objects convey into the mind
what produces there those Perceptions" (n. i. 3). He
tells us, that " external objects furnish the mind
with the Ideas of Sensible Qualities which are all
those different Perceptions they produce in us"
(n. i. 5). He tells us, that "whatsoever is so con
stituted in nature as to be able by affecting our
Senses to cause any Perception in the mind, doth
thereby produce in the understanding a Simple
Idea" (n. viii. 1 ). He tells us that the names of Sim-

34 IDEAS.

pie Ideas "are never referred to any other essence but
barely that Perception they immediately signify"
(in. ix. 18). He tells us, in fine, that " our Ideas
are nothing but actual Perceptions in the mind,
which cease to be anything when there is no percep
tion of them"* (n. x. 2).

Now in what manner would Sir William Hamilton
require us to treat these declarations, — declarations,
be it remembered, which might be multiplied ad
libitum ?f " We do not deny," he says, " that Locke
occasionally employs expressions which, in a writer of
more considerate language, would imply the identity
of Ideas with the act of Knowledge" (p. 79); but
"the opinions of such a writer are not to be assumed
from isolated and casual expressions which them
selves require to be interpreted on the general ana
logy of his system ; and yet this is the only ground
on which Dr. Brown attempts to establish his con
clusion" (Disc., p. 78). Now, in the first place, this
statement is grossly unjust to Brown. In addition
to quoting certain passages from Locke, Brown
argues that Locke uses Idea as the synonym of No
tion and Conception, which no one could suppose to
denote anything but Mental Acts ; that he employs
his most objectionable expressions in cases in which

* Locke should have said, "actual Perceptions which cease to
be anything when there is no consciousness of them." This em
ployment of a word in two senses in one and the same sentence is
characteristic.

f Compare Locke's Essay (IT. viii. 7, 8; n. xxxi. 2, 12; n.
xxxii. 1, 3, 14, 16 ; m. ix. 18 ; iv. iv. 4).

IDEAS. 35

their literal interpretation would be absurd; and,
" especially," that there is not a single argument in
his Essay, or any of his other works, that is founded
on the substantial reality of our Ideas as separate
and distinct things. But, granting that Sir Wil
liam Hamilton has done no injustice to Brown, the
answer of the advocate of Locke is obvious. The
expressions of Locke are neither isolated nor casual;
even if they were isolated and casual, they are
perfectly unambiguous ; and, even if they were am
biguous, the interpretation given is in perfect ac
cordance with the general analogy of Locke's system,
for Locke's system is a recoil from Scholasticism — a
protest against all gratuitous hypothesis — an appeal
to the authority of experience and common sense.
Add to this, that the Ideal Theory had already been
exploded by his predecessor, Arnauld. But what
is the ground on which Sir William Hamilton at
tempts to establish his own conclusion in opposition
to that of Brown ? The general analogy of Locke's
system ? No. Doubtless, then, the reiterated and
official declarations of the work which embodies the
principles of his Philosophy? Again we are doomed
to disappointment. The critic who protests against
the validity of an argument, based on the isolated
and casual expressions of the Essay, bases his own
argument on a casual and isolated expression ex
tracted from Locke's Examination of Malebranche's
Opinion — " which," he says, " as subsequent to the
publication of the Essay, must be held authentic

D 2

36 IDEAS.

in relation to the doctrines of that work" (p. 79).
Even to this I must demur. The last hours of
Locke's life were devoted to the preparation of the
sixth edition of his Essay, and in the Epistle pre
fixed to that edition he tells the reader he has
nothing to alter or to add. But what is the purport
of the passage which, according to Sir William Ha-
milton, supplies " a positive and explicit contradic
tion of Dr. Brown's interpretation"? Locke, it

seems, is found to ridicule the doctrine which re-

«

duces our Ideas of the Secondary Qualities of Mat
ter to " Mental States," and, therefore, a fortiori,
the doctrine which reduces "the resembling, and
consequently extended," Ideas of the Primary
Qualities to "Modifications of the immaterial, unex-
tended Mind" (p. 77). A more infelicitous argu
ment could scarcely be advanced. Sir William Ha
milton is like the Stoic in the "De Finibus" — " quum
perspicuis dubia debeat illustrare, dubiis perspicua
conatur tollere." The phrase, "Modification of Mind,"
is ambiguous. It may either denote a Modification
of the mental Energy, or a Modification of the men
tal Substance. If any one were to explain our dif
ferent Ideas as different Modifications of Mind, in the
same sense that the different images into which a piece
of wax could be moulded are different modifications
of the wax — such a declaration would be undoubt
edly absurd. It would, in fact, correspond with the
cruder form of the Egoistical Theory of Representa
tion, which, as we have already seen, Locke, in his

IDEAS. 37

Essay, has rejected. But what if by Modification
of Mind we understand a Modification of mental
action ? The sense in which Locke understood the
phrase is evident from the very passage quoted by
Sir William Hamilton. " Can the same unextended,
indivisible Substance," he asks, " have different, nay,
inconsistent and opposite Modifications at the same
time ? Must we suppose distinct parts in an indi
visible Substance, one for black, another for white,
and another for red Ideas ?" Irresistibly conclusive
against the doctrine which represents our Ideas to
be Modifications of the mental Substance, these
questions have riot the slightest force against the
doctrine which represents our Ideas to be Modifica
tions of the mental Energy, and, therefore, identical
with the percipient act. Nay, the sequel of the
passage so "superfluously conclusive" against Brown,
is, in reality, superfluously conclusive against Sir
William Hamilton — for Locke acknowledges that
these "black, white, and red Ideas," as he calls them,
are merely so many " Sensations? different " in sorts
and degrees," which we can " distinctly perceive,"
or be conscious of, " at the same time," and " so are
distinct Ideas" (Ibid.) Sir William Hamilton's ar
gument is like the missile of the Australian. Hurled
vigorously against Brown, it misses its mark, and
recoils with fatal effect upon himself. The doctrine
of the Examination is, in reality, the same as the
doctrine of the Essay. In the one Locke repudiates
the error ; in the other, he enunciates the truth.

38 IDEAS.

Hence it is that in the Examination Locke denies
that our Ideas are " Modifications of Mind" while
in the Essay he consistently admits that they are
"Modifications of Thinking" (11. xix. 1); and hence,
while in the one work he denies that the same un-
extended indivisible Substance can have different
modifications at the same time, in the other he
adopts the very phraseology of Brown, and argues
that " the more probable opinion is that Conscious
ness is annexed to, and the affection of, one indivi
dual, immaterial Substance (n. xxvii. 25).

Brown, therefore, I conceive to be in the right.
The Idea of Locke, like the Idea of Arnauld, is the
mere act of thought considered as an object of re
flection. The only Ideas he speaks of are those
"Ideas which a man observes and is conscious to
himself he has in his mind" (i. i. 8). If his antago
nists " dislike the name, they may call them ' No
tions," Conceptions,' or how they please" (iv. \.,Note).
Locke presumes it will be easily granted him that
there are such Ideas — a fact which is itself a proof
that he was postulating no scholastic entities ; and
his " first inquiry" is, " how they come into the mind"
(i. i. 8).

III.

INNATE IDEAS.

IN order clearly to comprehend the scope of the i
celebrated polemic against Innate Ideas with which
Locke opens the Essay concerning Human Un
derstanding, it is necessary to advert to several
distinctions, the existence of which has been very
generally overlooked. In the first place, if there be
any such thing as knowledge, there must be some
thing which knows ; and if there be anything which
knows, it must be originally endowed with the capa
city of knowing. Every philosopher, therefore, must
recognise the existence of certain Innate Capacities
and Powers. The Sensationalist must postulate as
Innate our Capacities of Sense / the disciple of the
School of Empiricism must postulate as Innate those

Powers of Observation, Memory, and Induction,

(u, .

without which even Experience would be impossible.

Granting the soul to be a sheet of white paper, we
must still regard it as endued with certain proper
ties before it can receive the handwriting of Expe
rience ; granting it to be a mere daguerreotype
plate, we must still regard it as endued with certain
susceptibilities before it can be painted by the Light

40 INNATE IDEAS.

of Observation and reflect the image of the World.
But not only must all philosophers, without excep
tion, recognise the existence of certain Innate Ca
pacities and Powers, they also, under one form or
another, must recognise the existence of certain In
nate Laws of Intellectual Development. If, for instance,
they deny the existence of an Innate Law which
predetermines the human mind to the anticipation
of Experience, they admit the existence of an Innate
Law which predetermines it to the Association of
Ideas ; if they deny an instinctive apprehension of
the phenomena of the Future, they admit a sugges
tion of the phenomena of the Past, which is equally
instinctive. And this, too, with perfect reason.
Even if the mind of man be regarded merely as an
animated and self-conscious magic lanthorn, we
must admit a certain pre- arrangement and pre-
adjustment of the mysterious chamber of thought,
or thought itself would be merely the phantasma
goria of a delirious dream. But at this point the
unanimity of Philosophers will be found to end.
According to one School, the Mind possesses no
power beyond that of combining, according to cer
tain Laws, the various Ideas which it has passively
received through its capacities of Sense : according
to another, not only does the Mind receive, repro
duce, and variously combine the phenomena of
Sense, it regards them as subjected to Relation. It
regards them, for instance, as subjected to the Laws
of Space and Time. It regards them as inherent in

INNATE IDEAS. 41

some Substance, and produced by some efficient
Cause. Not only so, but it forms certain combina
tions of Ideas, elevates them into an Ideal, and ob
jectifies these Ideals in the World, the Soul, and
God. Now, these Forms of Sensibility, these Cate
gories of the Understanding, these Ideas of the Rea
son — how are we to account for their existence in
the Human Mind ? That they exist is demonstrated
by the very effort to explain away their existence.
That they are not furnished by our Capacities of
Sense is evident from the fact that they belong to
the region of the Super-Sensible. But Sense and
Intellect are the only conceivable sources of Human
Knowledge. It is plain, therefore, that they must
owe their existence to the Intellect. As the offspring
of the Intellect, it is true, they may be regarded in
a twofold light. They may be regarded either as
Illusions of the Imagination or as Revelations of the
Reason. As Illusions of the Imagination they may
either be tacitly ignored, as was the procedure of
the School of Condillac, or they may be merged into
Habit and Association of Ideas, as was the procedure
of Hume. As Revelations of the Reason, on the
other hand, they may be regarded as Ideas having
an actual existence in the human mind prior to all
mundane experience, as was the opinion of Plato ;
or they may be regarded as Ideas having no actual
existence till the human mind develops them by its
own inherent force of thought on the occasion of
Experience, as was the opinion of Descartes and

42 INNATE IDEAS.

Kant. Of these latter Theories, the one may be de
nominated the Theory of Innate Principles and Ideas,
the other the Theory of Innate Forms of Thought,
and it is by a reference to these distinctions that the
character of Locke's Polemic against Innate Ideas is
to be determined.

Now, that Locke denies the existence of Innate
Ideas is certain. It is equally certain that he de
nies the existence of Innate Principles. But what
are we to understand by the terms Ideas and Prin
ciples, as employed by Locke ? Locke's doctrine, it
must be admitted, is disguised in a masquerade of
metaphor. "Constant Impressions," "Inscriptions
written by the finger of God," and " Native beams
of Light" — such is a sample of the phraseology which
occurs at every step in this celebrated argument. On
certain occasions, however, Locke's meaning has laid
aside its mask. By Ideas he gives us to understand
he means not the capacity of Thought, but Thought
itself — by Principles, not Truth in its latent energy,
but Truth in its logical expression as an abstract
" Proposition" or " Maxim"* (i. iv. 21). In denying

* Nor was this employment of the term "Principle" peculiar
in the age of Locke. In his criticism on Archbishop Whately's
Logic, Sir William Hamilton " makes bold to say," in oppo
sition to the Archbishop, " that no Logician ever employed the
term Principle as a synonome for Major Premiss." The Italics
are his own. But is not this rather too dogmatic ? Through
out the fifth book of the De Augmentis, Bacon uses the term
" Principium" exclusively in the sense of Major Proposition, — a

INNATE IDEAS. 43

Innate Ideas, accordingly, Locke merely denies the
existence of Ideas " before impressions from Sensa
tion and Reflection" (i. iv. 20). In denying Innate
Principles he merely denies the existence of any
knowledge anterior to Experience (n. ix. 6).

But what philosopher, it is asked, has ever main-
tained the doctrine of Innate Ideas, under the form
in which it is denied by Locke ? M. Cousin regards
the Theory of Innate Ideas as a mere chimera. M.
Cousin's translator professes his surprise that "Locke
should ever have gravely instituted such a polemique,
or that it should ever have gained such celebrity."
Coleridge intimates that "the supposed error" which
Locke labours to subvert is " a mere thing of straw"
— " an absurdity which no man ever did- or ever •;
could believe." Even Sir William Hamilton him
self, in spite of all his acquaintance with the Phi
losophers of the past, considers that Locke in his
refutation of Innate Ideas was led astray by an
" ignis fatuus." In opposition to these criticisms,

fact which it is of some importance to notice, as the ignorance of
it has misled Mr. Mill into the assertion that Bacon ignored the
Deductive method in Physical investigations. Bacon's account of
Syllogism is decisive on this point : " In Syllogismo fit reductio
propositionum && principia per propositiones medias" (De Aug.,
lib. v. cap. ii.) — " Ars judicandi per Syllogismum nihil aliud est
quam reductio propositionum ad principia per medios terminos"
(cap. iv.) — " Numerus vero terminorum mediorum minuitur aut
augetur, pro remotione propositionis a principio" (Hid.} This
employment of the word " Principium" throws considerable light
on Locke's Polemic against Innate Principles.

44 INNATE IDEAS.

however, Locke tells us that the theory against which
he contends was " an established opinion" (i. ii. 1),
" a doctrine commonly taken for granted" (i. ii. 2),
a "great point" (i. ii. 5). Moreover, this ques
tion of Innate Ideas was one which had established
peculiar claims upon Locke's attention. He had
been told that an Epitome of his doctrine which he
published as the precursor of his Essay had been
generally rejected because it denied Innate Ideas.
He knew that his denial of Innate Ideas had caused
him to be denounced by Sherlock from the Pulpit
of the Temple as little better than an Atheist. He
knew that his denial of Innate Ideas had caused even
Newton to identify his moral doctrine with the ethi
cal enormities of Hobbes. Nor is Locke the only
person whose scientific reputation is here at stake.
The Epitome was published under the superinten
dence of Leclerc. The Essay grew up under the eye
of the metaphysical Earl of Pembroke. Locke was
in constant communication with Molyneux, and
Molyneux with a wide circle of philosophic friends.
Add to this, that if Locke was deluded in this point,
so also was the Philosopher of Malmesbury. Under
these circumstances it is impossible to believe that
Locke was labouring under a species of metaphysical
monomania in contending against Innate Ideas —
we have every reason to take him at his word, and
to regard the theory of Innate Ideas as a " received
doctrine" (ii. i. 1).

Nor was the doctrine of Innate Ideas a doctrine too

INNATE IDEAS. 45

monstrous to be received. On the contrary, it was the
only theory by which the highest Schools of specu
lation in the ancient world could account for the
existence of our a priori Concepts. So obviously was
the doctrine of Innate Ideas involved in the prin
ciples of the Pythagorean Philosophy, that Pytha
goras professed actually to remember the events
of his antenatal life. So completely did it interpe
netrate the Philosophy of Plato, that Plato denomi
nated Philosophy itself by no other name than that
of Reminiscence. Nor was this expression of Plato
a mere metaphor. In the Tusculan Disputations
the Roman orator reproduces the arguments of the
Platonic Socrates as enounced in the Meno and the
Phaedo, and proclaims the doctrine of Pre-existent
Ideas to be a necessary truth : — " Nee vero fieri ullo
modo posse, ut a pueris tot rerum atque tantarum
insitas, et quasi consignatas in animis, Notiones quas
'Ei/iWa? vocant haberemus, nisi animus, antequam
in corpus intravisset, in rerum cognitione viguisset.
Cumque nihil esset,* ut omnibus locis a Platone
disseritur, (nihil enim putat esse quod oriatur et in-
tereat, idque solum esse quod semper tale sit quale
et'Seai/ appellat ille, nos speciem), non potuit ani
mus hgec in corpore inclusus agnoscere, cognita

* This passage is somewhat obscure, and the reading probably
corrupt. The meaning is, that in the sphere of Experience, in
which the Mind meets nothing but Phenomena, it could not pos
sibly gain the necessary Ideas which it unquestionably possesses ;
— it must, therefore, have brought them with it. The Kantian
argument is enounced, the Kantian alternative ignored.

46 INNATE IDEAS.

adtulit" (Tusc. Disp., I 24). Now compare these
words with Locke's enunciation of the doctrine
against which he protests. " It is an established
opinion among some men," he says, " that there are
in the Understanding certain Innate Principles —
some Primary Notions, Koival "Eyyomi, Characters,
as it were, stamped upon the Mind of man, which
the soul receives in its very first being, and brings
into the world with it" (i. ii. 1). Divested of the
doctrine of Pre-existence, this is the very doctrine
of Plato, enounced in the very words of Cicero. In
deed, so striking are the verbal coincidences, and so
familiar does Locke show himself with the Tusculan
Disputations in his controversy with Stillingfleet on
the Immateriality of the Soul, that I can scarcely
avoid suspecting that he had the very passage I
have quoted before his view when he opened his
polemic against Innate Ideas. Nor were these
ancient speculations alien from the spirit of modern
thought. The Philosophy that superseded Scholas
ticism was, in fact, essentially Platonic. The tide of
speculation which sunk in Greece reappeared, like the
Alpheus, with the chaff and stubble still floating on
its surface. Locke speaks of the doctrine of Pre-ex
istence as a doctrine still actually held (11. xxvii. 14).
He regards the doctrine of Reminiscence as worthy
of a set refutation (i. iv. 20). What, then, is more
probable than that in the time of Locke Philosophy
might have required an elaborate polemic against
Innate Ideas even in their ancient and most objec
tionable form?

INNATE IDEAS. 47

Nor was it merely in connexion with the doctrine
of Pre-existence that the theory of Innate Ideas was
maintained. It was also maintained in connexion
with the doctrine of Infusion — the doctrine which
regarded our a priori Ideas as infused into the In
tellect by the act of God. The difference between
such a doctrine and that which is at present held is
obvious. Instead of regarding the human Intellect
as an energetic principle of thought, it regarded it
as a mere passive recipient of adventitious Ideas.
Instead of regarding our a priori Ideas as necessary
Concepts essential to Intelligence, it regarded them
merely as the arbitrary results of a Divine appoint
ment. Instead of regarding the concurrence of Ex
perience as a necessary condition to the excitation
of the spontaneous force of thought inherent in In
tellect, it regarded the contents of the Intellect as
independent of Experience.

Whether the Pre-existent Ideas of the Platonist
and the Infused Ideas of the Cartesian were re
garded as Separate Entities, corresponding to the
tertium quid of Eeid, is a different question. As
commonly understood, the doctrine of Innate Ideas,
in either of its forms, would, doubtless, have been
repudiated by every Philosopher as energetically as
it was repudiated by Dr. Henry More. No sane
man could ever have believed " that there is a certain
number of Ideas flaring and shining, like so many
torches or stars in the firmament, to our outward
sight, or that there are figures that take their distinct

48 INNATE IDEAS.

places, and are legibly writ there, like the red letters
or astronomical characters in an almanac." But the
doctrine of Innate Ideas entailed no such monstrous
consequence. Our a priori Concepts might have been
regarded as latent Modifications of Mind, depending
for their apprehension, though not for their exis
tence, on the act of Consciousness ; and the doctrine
of Innate Ideas, whether Pre-existent or Infused,
would thus correspond with that form of the Ideal
Theory which constitutes the second variety of the
Representative Hypothesis, as analyzed by Sir Wil
liam Hamilton. It is this very form of the doctrine
of Innate Ideas that Locke opposes in the passages
already quoted in connexion with his sentiments
about Ideas. It is in this sense that he pronounces
it to be a contradiction to assert that there are
"truths imprinted on the soul" before perception
(i. ii. 5). It is in this sense that he denies that " the
Understanding hath an implicit knowledge of these
principles before first hearing" (i. ii. 22).

But the opinions of the Philosophers of the se
venteenth century on the subject of Innate Ideas
are best exhibited in their own language. When, in
order to satisfy his mind upon the subject, Locke had
recourse to the works of his predecessors, he did not, as
Sir William Hamilton asserts, rely exclusively on the
authority of Gassendi (Eeid, p. 784) ; he consulted
the work (i. iii. 15), which, even in the opinion of
Sir William Hamilton, contains the most formal and
articulate enoun cement of the doctrines of Common

INNATE IDEAS. 49

Sense, which at that time had appeared (Reid,
p. 781). And what did Locke discover from the
"De Veritate" of Lord Herbert? He discovered
that the mind was not originally a Tabula Rasa, but
a Book already printed, though only opened on the
presentation of objects. He discovered that our ne
cessary cognitions are " tanquam Dei effata in Foro
interior! descripta f that the truths of Natural Re
ligion are " Veritates in ips& Mente ccelitus descripta1,
nulliscjue traditionibus sive scriptis sive non scriptis
obnoxice ;" that their great characteristic is " Prio-
ritas." The language of the Laureate of Metaphysics
is more objectionable still : —

" Yet hath the Soul a dowry natural,

And Sparks of Light some common things to see ;
Not being a Blank where nought is writ at all,
But what the Writer will may written be."

The language of Sir Matthew Hale is as objection
able as that of Sir John Davies. " I come now to
consider those Rational Instincts, as I call them,"
says the great lawyer, " the Connate Principles en
graven on the Human Soul, which, though they are
truths acquirable and deducible by rational conse
quence and argumentation, yet seem to be inscribed
in the very crasis and texture of the soul antecedent
to any acquisition by industry or exercise of the
discursive faculty in man." Or take the case of Dr.
Henry More. Though he repudiates the theory of
" Flaring Torches" and " Red Letters," he repro-

E

50 INNATE IDEAS.

duces, in words at least, the theory of Plato. He
speaks of the Mind as possessing " actual know
ledge" from the first. He describes this actual
knowledge as "an active sagacity in the Soul, or
quick Recollection, as it were, whereby some small
business being hinted to her, she runs out presently
into a more clear and larger conception." He com
pares the original state of the Soul to that of a Mu
sician who has fallen asleep upon the grass, and
practises his art the moment he awakes. Even the
philosophical phraseology of Cudworth is vitiated
by the admixture of incongruous metaphor. " The
Mind," he says, " contains in itself virtually (as the
future plant or tree is contained in the seed) general
notions of all things, which unfold and discover
themselves as occasions invite and proper circum
stances occur." Sixteen years before Locke's first
appearance as a Philosopher, Cumberland, in the
Prolegomena to his celebrated work against the
Philosophy of Hobbes, speaks of the Platonic theory
of Innate Ideas as the accredited doctrine of the
Platonists of the day, and himself gives it a modi
fied support. Even subsequently to the publication
of the Essay, and in professed antagonism to its
doctrine, the Platonic theory was zealously main
tained. " Should they admit that the Mind was
coeval with the body," exclaims Mr. Harris, in high
indignation, " yet, till the body gave it Ideas, and
awakened its dormant powers, it could at best have
been nothing more than a sort of dead capacity, for

INNATE IDEAS. 51

Innate Ideas it could not possibly have any." King,
in the Preface to his Treatise " De Origine Mali,"
maintains that even our Sensible Ideas are " Innate
and Inexistent in the Mind from its first creation" —
" Pre-existent as the statue in the block" (Note A).
According to Sir William Hamilton himself, that
Ideas are " found in the Mind, not formed by
it," is strenuously asserted as the doctrine of his
master by the Cartesian Roell, in the controversy
he maintained with the anti-Cartesian De Yries
(Disc., p. 74). Nay, if we may believe the testimony
of Dugald Steward, Brucker, himself a historian of
Philosophy, " could imagine no intermediate opinion
between the theory of Innate Ideas as taught by the
Cartesians, and the Epicurean account of our know
ledge as revived by Gassendi and by Hobbes"
(Diss.j p. 226). But why multiply examples ad
infinitum ? On this subject of Innate Ideas, no less
a man than Leibnitz himself speaks in high com
mendation of the doctrine enounced by Plato and
embraced by Tully — the doctrine which, according
to our modern metaphysical critics, no man in his
senses ever did or ever could believe.

Whether much of the language I have quoted
should or should not be regarded as figurative, it is
needless to pause to inquire. One thing, at all events,
is certain. If the Platonic Dogma was defunct,
the language of the Dogma survived. If the Phi
losophers had abandoned their old positions, they
had left their camp-fires burning on the heights.

E 2

52 INNATE IDEAS.

Locke's Polemic against Innate Ideas at least pos
sesses the merit of Reid's Polemic against Ideas.
The opinions against which both the one and the
other protested may have become mere metaphors ;
but their protest will for ever prevent those me
taphors from being reconverted into opinions.
Poets, indeed, may still tell us, with Wordsworth,
that—

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,"

and that —

" The Soul which rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting."

They may describe our higher intuitions, with Bai
ley's Festus, as —

" The imaged hint of ante-mundane life —
A Photograph of pre-existent light,
Or Paradisal Sun."

But the opinion has departed from Philosophy ; its
very language is forgotten. The first book of the
Essay concerning Human Understanding has done
justice upon both ; and to this extent at least Phi
losophy is under everlasting obligation to Locke.

But this great Metaphysician has been subjected
to a more serious charge. " Locke," says Reid,
" endeavours to show that Axioms or Intuitive
Truths are not Innate" (p. 465). " He does more,"
says Sir William Hamilton. " He attempts to show
that they are all Generalizations from Experience ;

INNATE IDEAS. 53

whereas Experience only affords the occasion on
which the Native (not Innate) or a priori cognitions
virtually possessed by the Mind actually manifest
their existence" (Beid, p. 465). But here the task
of the vindicator of Locke is comparatively easy.
This is a reproduction of an old objection, and to de
monstrate its injustice he has merely to reproduce
the old reply. Lowde objected to Locke's Theory
exactly in the same spirit as Sir William Hamilton.
Locke's answer is to be found in a note appended to
the commonest editions of the Essay, and it is briefly

this : " We are better agreed than he thinks in

what he says concerning Natural Inscription and
Innate Notions : there is no controversy between
him and me upon the point" (n. xxviii. Note).
Locke, it is true, objects to the phraseology of Lowde
as " misleading men's thoughts by an insinuation as if
these Notions were in the Mind before the Soul exerts
them, i. e., before they are known ; whereas truly,"
he says, " before they are known there is nothing of
them in the Mind but a capacity to know them when
the concurrence of the circumstances, which this in
genious author thinks necessary in order to the
Soul's exerting them, brings them into our know
ledge" (Ibid.) Here then we have a remarkable
coincidence. The " whereas" with which Locke pro
fesses to rectify the phraseology of Lowde is the
very " whereas" with which Sir William Hamilton
professes to rectify the theory of Locke. Locke's
preliminary declaration is verified, and upon the

54 INNATE IDEAS.

cardinal point of Intellectualism he and his opposer
are found to be agreed, when each comes to be
rightly understood.

Nor is Locke's note at variance with the indica
tions of his text. TVre need not insist on those pas
sages in which he recognises the existence of certain
"Natural" and " Inherent" Faculties (i. ii. 1, 2), or
on the still more celebrated passage in which he at
tributes to the Mind certain "Operations proceeding
from Powers intrinsical and proper to itself" (n. i.
24). The existence of such Faculties and Powers is
recognised by all. Neither need we insist on Locke's
recognition of " Antipathies," which " are truly na
tural, depend upon our original constitution, and
are born with us" (n. xxxiii. 7) — a point which both
Shaftesbury and Harris, in fancied opposition to
Locke, so needlessly undertook to demonstrate. The
Essay contains intimations of opinion far more un
equivocal than these. So far is Locke from rejecting
the element of truth embodied in the Cartesian doc
trine, that on this point he is a professed Cartesian.
" Nunquam scripsi vel j udicavi Mentem indigere
Ideis qua) sint aliquid diversum ab ejus Facultate
Cogitandi :" — such are the words of the Father of
Modern Intellectualism. " If the Capacity of Know
ing be the Natural Impression contended for, this
great point will amount to no more but only to a
very improper way of speaking, which, while it pre
tends to assert the contrary, says nothing different
from those who deny Innate Principles :" — such are

INNATE IDEAS. 55

the corresponding words of Locke (i. ii. 5). Locke,
in short, exhibits the whole scope of his Polemic
against Innate Ideas in a single sentence. He ex
pressly tells us that "the only confessed difference"
between himself and those whose opinion he opposed,
related to the " dependence" of the Ideas and Prin
ciples in question " on the constitution and organs
of the body"* (i. ii. 27).

The positive portion of Sir William Hamilton's
criticism is as infelicitous as the negative. So far
is Locke from holding Axioms or Maxims to be " Ge
neralizations from Experience," that he holds them

* Nothing can be more confusing than the celebrated criticism,
which, according to Mr. Stewart, affords the "key to all the
confusion running through Locke's argument" against the exist
ence of Innate Ideas (Dm., p. 243). " Innate," says Shaftesbury,
" is a word he poorly plays upon." But if there be any play upon
words, it is not upon the word Innate, but upon the word Idea.
"The question," says Shaftesbury, "is not about the time the
Ideas entered." But it is the question of time, — in other words,
the question of the chronological conditions of thought, — that Locke
is professedly discussing. "The question," says Shaftesbury,
" is whether the constitution of man be such that, sooner or later,
no matter when, the Idea will not infallibly spring up." This
Locke admits — admits it in the very language of Shaftesbury —
admits it with reference to the very Idea on which Shaftesbury
particularly insists. " From the consideration of ourselves," he
says, " and what we infallibly find in our own constitutions, our
Reason leads us to the knowledge of this certain and evident
Truth, that there is an eternal, most powerful, and most knowing
Being" (iv. x. 6). After this, the assertion that Locke had made
the Idea of God " wwnatural" may be dismissed with the con
tempt it merits. It is simply a calumny of criticism.

56 INNATE IDEAS.

to be Generalizations from "Intuition" (i. ii. 11;
iv. vii. 19; iv. xvii. 14),— Generalizations, not be-
cause we compass their certainty by repeated and
comparative experiments, but because all Intuitive
Truths are first recognised in the particular instance,
and subsequently embodied in the general expression
(iv. vii. 10). " A man," he says, " will be in a capa
city to know the truth of these Maxims upon the first
occasion that shall make him put together" the re-
quisite Ideas (i. ii. 16). They are "propositions
which every man in his wits at first hearing what
the names stand for must necessarily assent to"
(i. ii. 18); they are "self-evident" propositions, ad
mitted " without any proof," and assented to " at first
sight" (iv. vii. 1,2); they are "propositions, which,
whether they come in view of the mind earlier
or later, are all known by their native evidence"
(iv. vii. 10). Hence it is that Locke refers the Prin
ciple of Contradiction for its credentials to "Common
Sense" (i. iii. 4). Sir William Hamilton thinks this
a "confession," the importance of which has been ob
served neither by Locke, nor by his antagonists (JfewJ,
p. 784). But Sir William Hamilton might have de
tected a thousand such confessions ; for these confes
sions are not Locke's repugnancies, they are his sys
tem. Not only does Locke refer the Analytical Axioms

of Logic to Common Sense and and Intuition he

describes the Principles of Morality as constituting
a " Natural Law," discoverable by our " Natural Fa
culties," and revealed to us by the " Light of Nature"
(i. iii. 13; iv. iii. 20). In the same manner he iden-

INNATE IDEAS. 57

tifies the Principles of Causality and Final Causes
with " the Common Light of Reason" (i. iv. 9), with
the "Principles of Common Reason" (i. iv. 10),
with " Reason, and the Natural Propensity of our
Thoughts" (i. iv. 11). It is by means of this portion
of our "Intuitive Knowledge" that we attain the
knowledge of the existence of a God (iv. x. 1), — a
knowledge which Locke repeatedly attributes to the
"Light of Reason" (in. ix. 23), an Idea which he
systematically represents as a " necessary" develop
ment of the human mind (n. xvii. 5, 20), a disco
very which, in his opinion, " a rational creature
who will but seriously reflect" could never miss
(i. iv. 9). Locke's definition of Reason is in itself
decisive of the dispute. " Reason," he says, " is Na
tural Revelation, whereby the Eternal Father of
Light and Fountain of all Knowledge communicates
to mankind that portion of Truth which He has
laid within the reach of our Natural Faculties"
(iv. xix. 4). Nay, so impressed is Locke with the
lofty prerogatives of the master faculty, that he
scarcely hesitates to reproduce the very language
which he has reprobated in others ; and in speaking
of the impediments to the progress of the Moral
Sciences, he describes Reason as " the Candle of the
Lord, set up by Himself in men's minds, which it is
impossible for the breath or power of man wholly to
extinguish" (iv. iii. 20).

We are now in a position to determine in what
sense Locke supposes the Mind to be originally, " as
it were, White Paper" (u. i. 2). It is White Paper,

58 INNATE IDEAS.

riot as devoid of all intrinsic properties, not as desti
tute of all spontaneous force, but, to use Locke's own
language, as " void of all Characters, without any
Ideas" (Ibid.) — in other words, as aboriginally White.
The metaphor by which Professor Sedgwick has
proposed to supersede the Tabula Rasa of Locke and
Aristotle is well known. Admitting that the soul
is at first an unvaried blank, " yet has this blank,"
he adds, " been already touched with an immortal
hand ; and when plunged in the colours which sur
round it, it takes not its tinge from accident, but de
sign, and comes out covered with a glorious pattern."
It may be doubted whether this metaphor is an im
provement upon that of Locke. A self-acting and self-
conscious principle of thought, the Human Intellect
stands isolated in the world of Matter, and material
analogies are wholly inadequate to typify its action.
The Mind is its own mirror, as it is its own place.
Nought but itself can be its parallel. If we compare
it to the enchanted sabre of the Caliph Vathek, we
reduce Human Knowledge to a mere magical con
juration. If we compare it to the mysterious gem
which flashed upon the breastplate of the High
Priest, we ignore the inherent force of Intellect, and
in reality preach the doctrine of Infusion. Divested
of hypothesis, and undisguised by metaphor, the
fact is simply this, — the Human Intellect comes
into the sphere of Experience, endued with certain
Capabilities and Powers; and in the presence of Ex
perience it frames to itself the corresponding Con
cepts.

IV.

THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS.

" THAT all our knowledge begins with Expe-
perience," says Kant, "there can be no doubt.
For, how is it possible that the Faculty of Cognition
should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by
means of objects which affect our Senses, and partly
of themselves produce Representations, partly rouse
our Powers of Understanding, to compare, to con
nect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw
material of our Sensuous Impressions into a know
ledge of objects, which is called Experience ? In
respect of time, therefore, no knowledge of ours is
antecedent to Experience — all knowledge com
mences with it." This, as we have seen, is the
great point contended for by Locke in his Polemic
against Innate Ideas. " But," says Kant, " though
all our knowledge commences with Experience, it
by no means follows that all our knowledge arises
from Experience," and accordingly he establishes his
celebrated distinction between knowledge a priori,
and the a posteriori knowledge of which Experience
is the exclusive source. This distinction, according
to the all but universal opinion of Philosophers,

60 THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS.

Locke has either utterly ignored, or, if he has recog
nised it, he has only recognised it in opposition to
his fundamental principles.

Sir William Hamilton, as we have seen, is guilty
of a twofold injustice to Locke on the subject of
Innate Ideas. He represents him as misled by an
Ignis Fatuus in what he denied. He represents
him as misled by a Theory in what he dogmati
cally affirmed. But let us do justice to the Scottish
Critic. He observes, whether consistently or not,
that, "had Descartes and Locke expressed themselves
on the subject of Innate Ideas and Principles with
due precision, the latter would not so have misun
derstood the former, and both would have been found
in harmony with each other and with truth" (Eeid,
p. 785). But then with respect to "the question con
cerning the Origin of our Knowledge," Locke, it
seems, "relied exclusively on Gassendi" (p. 784). He
did not prepare himself for the discussion of that im
portant question by studying " the writings of Aris
totle, his Greek Commentators, and the Schoolmen"
(p. 784). Otherwise, says Sir William Hamilton,
" he would have seen that, in appealing to Com
mon Sense or Intellect, he was, in fact, surrendering
his thesis, — that all our Knowledge is an Educt
from Experience" (p. 784).

But before charging Locke with having sur
rendered this thesis, Sir William Hamilton would
have done well to have asked himself in what por
tion of Locke's writings this thesis is maintained.

THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS. Gl

That Locke holds all our knowledge to be grounded f
on Experience cannot be denied. Neither can it be
denied that he holds that there are but two Modi- •
fications of Experience — Sensation and Reflection
(n. i. 2), and that he represents Sensation and Re
flection to be the two "Fountains of Knowledge"
(n. i. 2), the two " Sources of Ideas" (11. i. 3), the
only " Passages to the Understanding," whether of
Ideas or of Knowledge (n. xi. 17). But here again ;
we have the old masquerade of metaphor; and here
again the question arises, what is the meaning which ?
lies concealed beneath the mask 1

Before, however, we can ascertain the functions
which Sensation and Reflection discharge in the
Philosophy of Locke, so dense is the obscurity in
which that Philosophy is involved, that we must
first ascertain what Locke understands by Sensation
and Reflection. Of the word Sensation Locke gives
a variety of definitions, — each of them, however,
contemplating a different phasis of the question.
As an Organic Affection, it is " such an impression
or motion made in some part of the body as
produces some perception in the Understanding"
(n. i. 23). As a Mental Act, it is, " as it were, the
actual entrance of any Idea into the Understanding
by the Senses" (n. xix. 1). As a Primitive Capa
city, it is that "Capacity of Human Intellect" whereby
" the Mind is fitted to receive the Impressions made
on it through the Senses by outward objects"
(n. i. 24). Reid tells us that Locke's Sensation is

62 THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS.

equivalent to Sensation Proper ; his Editor tells us
that it comprehends both Sensation Proper and
Perception (Eeid, pp. 208, 290, 317). But this
controversy may be quickly settled. " Our Senses,"
savs Locke, " conversant about particular Sensible
Objects, do convey into the Mind several distinct
Perceptions of things, according to those various
ways wherein those objects do affect them; and
thus we come by Ideas of all those which we call
Sensible Qualities''' (n. i. 3). Now what are the
Sensible Qualities of Matter ? " The power that is
in any body,by reason of its insensible Primary Qua
lities, to operate, after a peculiar manner, on any of
our Senses, and thereby produce in us the different
Ideas of several Colours, Sounds, Smells, Tastes,
&c., these," says Locke, " are usually called Sensible
Qualities" (n. viii. 23). The Sensible Qualities of
Matter, therefore, are the Secondary Qualities, and
Locke's Sensation, consequently, is merely a Capacity
recipient of Sensations.

But, according to Locke, when the Mind has once
been furnished with Sensations, there are certain
"Operations proceeding from Powers Intrinsical and
Proper to itself," which it performs upon the Ideas
thus supplied (n. i. 24); there is a "notice which the
Mind takes of its own Operations, and the manner of
them" (11. i. 4) ; and the " Capacity of Human Intel
lect," by which " the Mind is fitted to receive the
Impressions made on it by its own Operations when
it reflects upon them," Locke denominates " Reflec-

THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS. 63

tion" (n. i. 24). As "the Understanding turning
inwards upon itself, and making its own Operations
the object of its own contemplation," it may be
denominated " Reflection" (n. i. 8); as a mere "Capa
city," recipient of nothing but the various Pheno
mena " obtruded" upon it from within, it may be
denominated "Internal Sensation" (n. xi. 17), or
"Internal Sense" (n. i. 4). Its objects are the
various mental Operations, considered merely as
Operations, and as distinguished at once from the
Ideas operated upon, and from the Ideas developed
in the Operation. Like the Empiric Consciousness
of Kant, it is a " Capacity of receiving Representa
tions through the mode in which the mind is affected
by its own activity." Thus characterized by an
utter absence of spontaneity, to use the Kantian
term, it is with strict propriety referred to our Ca
pacities of Sense. On this point there is even a
verbal agreement between the English and the Ger
man Philosopher ; and, as Locke designates Reflec
tion by the name of " Internal Sensation? " Internal
Sense? so Kant regards Consciousness as a " Mode of
Sensibility? and names it " der innere Sinn.1'*

But the Consciousness of Kant is not to be con
founded with the Consciousness of Locke. Reid as-

* Obvious as this coincidence appears, it has been altogether
overlooked by M. Cousin, whose whole criticism of Kant is vitiated
by the oversight. Confounding the Consciousness which Kant
regards as a Mode of Sensibility with the Consciousness which he
himself considers as the Synonym of Reason, M. Cousin reduces
Kant's System to a ruin of absurdity which rivals even the ruin

64 THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS.

serts (p. 420), and Cousin re-echoes the assertion, that
Locke has confounded Consciousness with Reflec
tion, and " seems not to have been aware that they
are different powers, and appear at different periods
of life." Never was charge more gratuitously ad-
vanced. While Locke regards " Reflection" as a se
parate capacity restricted to the definite function
which is implied in its very name (n. i. 4, 8), he
regards "Consciousness" as the "essential" condition
and " inseparable" concomitant of every modification
of thought, whether Sensation, Reflection, or Under
standing proper (n. xxvii. 9 ; 11. i. 19). While he
regards Consciousness as forced and inevitable, com
mon to all, and coeval with even the first dim sensa
tions of our ante-natal state (IT. i. 25 ; n. ix. 5),
"Ideas of Reflection," he tells us, " come later because
they need attention ; men seldom make any consi
derable reflection on what passes within them till
they come to be of riper years ; and some scarce
ever at all" (n. i. 8). In fact, so far is Locke from
meriting the censure of Reid upon this point, that
the very passage in which Reid himself distinguishes
between Consciousness and Reflection (p. 239)
might have been borrowed, both meaning and meta-

to which he has reduced that of Locke. That Kant in one chapter
should have regarded Consciousness as a Mode of Sensibility, and
in another as one of the Primary Faculties in the service of the
Understanding, M. Cousin pronounces to be a contradiction so
flagrant, that it is marvellous it has never been exposed (Kant,
p. 91).

THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS. 65

phor from Locke (n. i. 7, 8), except, indeed, that
Locke has avoided the absurdity into which Reid
has suffered himself to be betrayed — that of regard
ing Consciousness as a specific faculty.

Equally erroneous is another statement of Reid's
(p. 347) which has been reproduced by Stewart
(Diss., p. 229). It represents Locke as inconsis
tently identifying Reflection with the a priori Rea
son. " It is in this sense Locke uses it," says Mr.
Stewart, "when he refers to Reflection, our Ideas of
Cause and Effect, of Identity and Diversity, and of
all other Relations" But where has Locke been guilty
of such a reference ? He regards our Relative Ideas,
it is true, as developed in an operation of which
Reflection may take cognizance, but he nowhere
considers them as Ideas of Reflection. The recogni
tion of these Ideas as Ideas of Reflection would, in
fact, entail the distortion of his whole system. Re
flection in that system is a mere mode of " Expe
rience" (n. i. 2), an "Internal Sense" (11. i. 4), a
" Capacity " recipient of nothing but mere Pheno
mena (n. i. 24), a source of those "Simple Ideas"
from which our Ideas of Relation are expressly
discriminated as "Complex" (n. xii. 1, 3). Add to
this, Locke, as we shall see, expressly denies that
Reflection is competent to give the Ideas in question.
The Theory attributed to Locke by Mr. Stewart is
in reality the Theory attributed by Sir William Ha
milton to the " Subtle Doctor" (Reid, p. 777). The
Theory of the Subtle Doctor, as Sir William Hamil-

F

66 THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS.

ton perceived, has no existence in the work of
Locke — Locke's Reflection is " merely a source of
adventitious, empirical, or a posteriori knowledge"
(p. 346).*

Such then are Sensation and Reflection, as con
ceived by Locke. Such are the two modifications
of Experience, which he proclaims to be the Sources
of all our Ideas, the Fountains of all our Knowledge.
But what is the doctrine which lies latent beneath
these metaphors ? Sir William Hamilton will tell us
that Locke adopts as the basis of his Philosophy "the
twofold Origin of Knowledge" (Disc., p. 272); and
he will tell us right. But then it is to be noted that
while by the term " Origin" Sir William Hamilton
understands one thing, Locke understands another
diametrically the reverse. The Intellectualist doc
trine, as given by the Editor of Reid, is that " our
Knowledge chronologically commences with Sense,
but logically originates with Intellect" (p. 772 ) ; or —
as some modern anti- Aristotelian has "incomparably
enounced it" — " Cognitio nostra omnis a Mente pri-
mam Originem, a Sensibus Exordium habet primum"
(Ibid.) But while Locke's opponents have thus em-

* Mr. Stewart's mistake is reproduced in the Article upon
Locke which appeared in a recent Number of the " Edinburgh
Keview." Every attempt, indeed, which has hitherto been made
to vindicate Locke's Philosophy on Intellectualist principles has
proceeded upon this enlargement of the functions attributed to
Eeflection. Even Mr. Hallam, in his " History of the Literature
of Europe," lends the weight of his authority to countenance the
error of Mr. Stewart.

THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS. 67

ployed the term " Origin" in the sense of Genesis or
Logical Development, Locke unfortunately has em
ployed the corresponding term " Original" in the
exclusive sense of Exordium or Chronological Condi
tion. No sooner has he announced his purpose to
" inquire into the Original of Human Knowledge"
than he forewarns the reader that it is merely a
"Historical Method" he intends to pursue (i. i. 2);
no sooner has he brought his inquiry to a conclusion,
than he takes care to remind us that he has only
given " a short and true History of the first begin
nings of human knowledge, whence the Mind has its
first objects" (n. xi. 15). If he tells us that Sensa
tion and Reflection are " the only Originals of our
Ideas," he tells us in the same breath that they are
" the only Originals from whence all our Ideas take
their beginnings" (n. i. 4). If he tells us that Sensa
tion and Reflection are " the Original of all our
Knowledge," he explains that they constitute " the
first capacity of human Intellect" — that they enable
us to take " the first step towards the discovery of any
thing" — that they supply "the groundwork where
on to build all those notions, which ever we shall
have naturally in this world" — that " all those sub-
lime thoughts which tower above the clouds, and
reach as high as heaven itself, take their rise and
footing there" (u. i. 24). In fine, when Locke states
that Sensation and Reflection are " the Originals of
all our Ideas," he merely states that "all our Original
Ideas" are furnished by Sensation and Reflection

F 2

68 THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS.

(u. i. 5; ii. xxi. 73). Locke's theory of Sensation
and Reflection is thus, as he himself intimates
(n. i. 1), the mere counterpart and complement of
his Polemic against Innate Ideas. In the first book
of the Essay he shows that we have no Ideas anterior
to Experience ; in the second he shows the nature
of that Experience, with which all cognition must
commence.

But " at any rate," says Sir William Hamilton,
" according to Locke, all our knowledge is a Deriva
tion from Experience" (Reid, p. 294). Undoubtedly.
At the very threshold of the second book Locke pro
claims that "in Experience all our knowledge is
founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself"
(n. i. 2). But here again we have a criticism, which
is truth to the ear and falsehood to the sense. Full of
the Kantian distinction between " coming with" and
" coming from" Experience, Sir William Hamilton
has failed to observe that Locke employs the term
" coming from" and its equivalents in the sense of
"coming with." Yet even the context of the passage
which caused him to stumble thus ominously at the
threshold of Locke's system, the very question
which Locke is professedly answering, might have
convinced him that he employs " derived from"
merely as a rhetorical amplification of "founded in"
But Locke has not left us to mere inference in this
matter. If by the inadvertent utterance of the wrong
spell the magician has evoked a host of idola, he has
himself furnished the counter-spell by which they

THE OK1GIN OF IDEAS. 69

are to be exorcised. " Even the most abstruse Ideas,"\
says Locke, " are derived from Sensation and Reflec- j
tion." How ? As being derived from Sensation i
and Reflection in Sir William Hamilton's sense of
derivation ? On the contrary, as " being no other
than what the Mind by the ordinary use of its own
Faculties employed about Ideas received from ob
jects of Sense, or from the operations it observes
in itself about them, may arid does attain to"
(n. xii. 8). " This," says Locke, " I shall endeavour
to show in the Ideas we have of Time, Space, and
Infinity, and some few others that seem the most re
mote from those Originals" (11. xii. 8). " A la bonne
heure," exclaims M. Cousin, " ceci a un peu 1'air
d'un defi" (p. 100). Yet what is the utmost that
Locke shows with respect to these Ideas ? Nothing
but what is shown by M. Cousin himself, — that they
are " derived from" Sensation or Reflection, because
Sensation or Reflection furnishes those Ideas " with
out which" they would never have been developed
(11. xiv. 4), — that they are " received from" Sensa
tion or Reflection, because, however remote they
may seem from any objects of Sense, or operations
of the Mind, they have their " Original" their Chro
nological Condition, " there" (n. xvii. 22), — that
they " terminate in and are conversant about our
Simple Ideas either of Sensation or Reflection," and
are " so originally derived from" one or the other of
those two Sources of our Knowledge (n. xxv. 9). In
connexion with the Idea of Cause and Effect, Locke

70 THE OKIGIN OF IDEAS.

explicitly raises the question, " How derived from
the twoFountains of all our Knowledge" (n. xxv.l 1 ),
and his answer is, that " the notion of Cause and
Effect has its rise from Ideas, received by Sensa
tion or Reflection, and terminates at last in them"
(n. xxvi. 2). What Locke says with respect to
the Ideas of Substance must set this question for
evermore at rest. " The general Idea of Substance,"
he says, " may be grounded on plain and evident
Reason ; and yet it will not follow from thence that
it is not ultimately grounded on and derived from
Ideas which come in by Sensation or Reflection"
(n. ii. Note).

This drives the misapprehension of Locke's doc
trine of Sensation and Reflection to its last retreat.
According to Reid, " Dr. Price, in his ' Review of
the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals,'
has observed, very justly, that if we take the words
Sensation and Reflection, as Mr. Locke has denned
them in the beginning of [the second book of] his
excellent Essay, it will be impossible to derive some
of the most important of our Ideas from them ; and
that, by our Understanding — that is, by our Judging
and Reasoning Power — we are furnished with many
Simple and Original Notions" (p. 347 ). The objection
thus advanced by Price, and ratified by Reid, is ac
quiesced in by Sir William Hamilton, and is, per
haps, the simplest expression of the views which
have influenced Locke's Intellectualist opponents
from the time of Stillingfleet and Leibnitz to the

THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS. 71

present. It proceeds, however, on a fundamental
misconception of Locke's nomenclature and System.
Locke, it is true, denies that the Understanding can
fashion a single new Simple Idea It is the funda
mental principle of his System, that " Simple Ideas,
the Materials of all our knowledge, are suggested and
furnished to the Mind only by the two ways, Sensa
tion and Reflection" (n. ii. 2). But what does Locke
mean by " Simple Ideas" ? " The better to under
stand the nature, manner, and extent of our know
ledge," says Locke, " one thing is carefully to be
observed concerning the Ideas we have ; and that
is, that some of them are Simple, and some Complex"
(n. i. 2). Strange to say, it is under the head of
Complex Ideas that Locke considers the Ideas which
his opponents persist in denominating Simple. What,
then, is the ground of this diversity of language ?
As Notions that are essentially uncompounded, our
Intellectual Conceptions may certainly be regarded
as Simple Elements of Thought ; but as Notions
that are developed ex hypothesi in an act of Judg
ment, they cannot possibly be regarded as Simple
Apprehensions of Sense. In the Simple Apprehen
sions of Sense, moreover, the various Sensible Phe
nomena are given successive and unconnected ; in
the a priori Concepts of the Understanding, the
Phenomena of Sense are viewed as connected by a
variety of insensible relations. It is plain, therefore,
that the Ideas referred to the Judging and Reasoning
Power may be denominated either Simple or Complex,

72 THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS.

according as the Philosopher regards their essence
on the one side, or their genesis and relativity on
the other. The point of view selected by Locke is
easily determined. Locke has described Simple
Ideas as " uncompounded appearances" (n. ii. 1 ),
and his critics have inferred that he regarded all
uncompounded Ideas as Simple. But the fact is, that,
properly speaking, Locke's Simple Idea is merely
an uncompounded appearance, a Phenomenon, of
Sense (n. ii. 1). It is an Idea which the mind does
not "make," but " receive" (ii. xii. 1). It is an Idea
" in the reception of which" the mind is purely reci
pient, and, therefore, " wholly" (ii. xii. 1), or at least
ufor the most part" (ii. i. 25) "passive." It is an
Idea "obtruded" upon Consciousness with no co-ope
ration of Intellect beyond that involved in the "bare
naked perception" (n. i. 25 ; n. ix. 1; n. xii. 1). It
is an Idea which " we receive from corporeal objects
by Sensation, and from the operations of our own
minds as the objects of Reflection" (iv. iii. 23). In
a word, it is a " Sensible Idea" (n. xxx. 2). When,
therefore, Locke denies, as he does deny, that the
Understanding can frame to itself a single new Sim
ple Idea (n. ii. 2), the very context shows that
he merely meant to assert, what he asserts more
explicitly elsewhere, — that the Understanding " can
have no other Ideas of Sensible Qualities than what
come from without by the Senses, nor any Ideas of
other kind of Operations of a thinking substance
than what it finds in itself" (n. xii. 2), When he

THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS. 73

proclaims that " all the Simple Ideas we have are
confined to those we receive from Corporeal Objects
by Sensation, and from the Operations of our own
minds as the objects of Reflection" (iv. iii. 23), he
merely proclaims, with Kant, that the Sensibility,
External or Internal, is the only inlet of Intuition,
the only modification of Experience. The assertion
that all our Simple Ideas are furnished by Sensation
and Reflection is, in reality, a mere definition of the
term Simple Idea, The Simple Idea of Locke, in
fine, would thus far seem to coincide with the Sen
sible Intuition of Kant, and we might as well charge
Kant with ignoring the so called Intuitions of Intel
lect, because he restricts all Intuition to Sensibility,
as charge Locke with ignoring the so-called Simple
Ideas of the Understanding, because he recognises no
Simple Ideas but those of Sensation and Reflection.
But if Simple Ideas be thus restricted to the Sen
sible Qualities of Matter and the Intro-Sensible Ope
rations of Mind, how, it will be asked, are we to
explain Locke's Classification of Simple Ideas ? If
Sensation be a Capacity recipient of nothing but
Sensations, how can Locke enumerate our Ideas of
the Primary Qualities of Matter among our "Simple
Ideas of Sensation"? No Sense is receptive of any
thing but its appropriate object ; how then can he
speak of " Simple Ideas of Divers Senses" ? If Reflec
tion be merely a Capacity recipient of mental Opera
tions, how can he reckon our Ideas of the mental
Powers among our "Simple Ideas of Reflection"? No

74 THE OHIGIN OF IDEAS.

object can be at once a Quality of Matter and an
Operation of Mind ; how then can Locke speak of
"Simple Ideas of both Sensation and Reflection"? The
answer to these questions will place Locke's Philo
sophy in a new and unexpected light.*

* Locke, says M. Cousin, evidently confounds Eeflection with
Consciousness (p. 95). Locke, as we have seen, most carefully
distinguishes between them. Locke, says M. Cousin, capriciously
restricts the province of Reflection to the Mind. Locke is both
etymologically and philosophically correct, for, as Bacon remarks,
we behold the objects of Sense with a " direct" ray, the opera
tions of Mind with a " reflex." Is it Sensation, or is it the opera
tions of the Mind which first enter into exercise ? M. Cousin asks.
The question is absurd, for, according to Locke, Sensation is itself
an operation of the Mind. Locke, says M. Cousin, places the ac
quisitions of Sense before the acquisitions of Reflection. How
could there be an Idea of Mental Operation, before a Mental Ope
ration had occurred? Locke's Perception, says M. Cousin, is
equivalent to Consciousness. Consciousness, according to Locke,
is the concomitant of all our Faculties, the equivalent of none.
Locke's System, says M. Cousin, consists in deducing all our Ideas
from Sensation and Reflection. In Locke's System our Ideas are
not deduced from Sensation and Reflection, — they are derived.
According to Locke, says M. Cousin, our Faculties add nothing to
the data of Sense, but the knowledge of their own existence and
mode of action. This, as we shall see, is absolutely and unequi
vocally false.

V.

THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

THE Origin of Ideas, as understood by Locke, refers
exclusively to the Chronological Conditions of the /
development of Thought, and is, therefore, consis
tently centred in Sensation and Reflection — the two
modifications of human Experience. But in addi
tion to the data of Sensation and Reflection there
is a class of Ideas, which, in the opinion of a large
School of Philosophers, owes its existence to the
generative force of the Understanding, and is spon
taneously developed from within. The Genesis of
Ideas by the Understanding is thus correlative to the
Origin of Ideas in Sensation and Reflection, and
must be discussed by every Philosopher who pro
poses to give a complete solution of the great Ideo
logic problem.

The manner in which Reid accounted, not only
for our Intellectual Concepts, but for our Intuitions
of the Primary Qualities of Matter, was by a process
of Simple Suggestion. " I beg leave to make use of
the woYdSuggestion^he says," because I know not one
more proper, to express a power of the mind, which
seems entirely to have escaped the notice of Philo-

76 THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

sophers, and to which we owe many of our Simple
Notions which are neither Impressions nor Ideas,
as well as many original Principles of Belief. I
shall endeavour to illustrate, by an example, what
I understand by this word. We all know that a
certain kind of sound suggests immediately to the
mind a coach passing in the street ; and not only
produces the imagination, but the belief that a
coach is passing. Yet there is here no comparing
of Ideas, no perception of agreements or disagree
ments, to produce this belief : nor is there the least
similitude between the sound we hear and the coach
we imagine and believe to be passing. It is true
that this Suggestion is not natural and original ; it
is the result of experience and habit. But I
think it appears, from what has been said, that
there are Natural Suggestions; particularly, that
Sensation suggests the notion of present Existence,
and the belief that what we perceive or feel does
now exist ; that Memory suggests the notion of
past Existence, and the belief that what we remem
ber did exist in time past ; and that our Sensations
and Thoughts do also suggest the notion of a Mind,
and the belief of its existence, and of its relation to
our Thoughts. By a like natural principle it is
that a Beginning of existence, or any Change in
nature, suggests to us the notion of a Cause, and
compels our belief of its existence. And, in like
manner, as shall be shown when we come to the
Sense of Touch, certain Sensations of Touch, by the

THE GENESIS OF IDEAS. 77

constitution of our nature, suggest to us Extension,
Solidity, and Motion, which are nowise like to Sen
sations, although they have been hitherto con-
founded with them."

Such is the theory of Rational Suggestion as
enounced by Reid. Dugald Stewart thinks it " re
markable that Dr. Reid should have thought it
incumbent on him to apologize for introducing into
Philosophy a word so familiar to every person con
versant with Berkeley's works," though he admits
that Reid's employment of the term is different from
that of Berkeley (Diss., p. 347 ). Sir William Ha
milton, on the other hand, thinks that " Mr. Stewart
might have adduced, perhaps, a higher and, certainly,
a more proximate authority, in favour, not merely
of the term in general, but of Reid's restricted em
ployment of it as an intimation of what he and
others have designated the Common Sense of Man
kind ;" and accordingly Sir William adduces a higher
and more proximate authority in Tertullian (Reid,
p. 111). But we need not go so far into the region
of antiquity for " a singular anticipation both of
the Philosophy and of the Philosophical Phraseo
logy of Reid." The anticipation is to be found
in the Essay concerning Human Understanding ; a
higher and more proximate authority is to be found
in Locke.*

* Reid's principle of Rational Suggestion was anticipated not
only by Locke, but by Locke's immediate predecessor, Cumber
land. ' ' Utrobique intelligimus propositiones quasdam immutabilis

78 THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

The fundamental proposition of the second book
of the Essay declares, as we have seen, that "Simple
Ideas, the materials of all our knowledge, are sug
gested and furnished to the Mind only by the two
ways, Sensation and Reflection" (n. ii. 2). Nor is
this a mere rhetorical distinction. When Locke tells
us that "the Idea of Solidity we receive by our
touch, and it arises from the Resistance which we
find in body" (n. iv. 1), it is plain he regards Re
sistance as an Idea furnished by Sensation, and So
lidity as an Idea suggested by Resistance. When he
tells us that " the Idea of Extension joins itself inse
parably with all Visible and most Tangible Qualities"
(n. xiii. 25), it is plain he regards the Ideas of Vi
sible and Tangible Qualities, as furnished by Sight
and Touch, and the Idea of Extension, as suggested
by the Ideas of which it is regarded as the necessary
concomitant. So also, when Locke enumerates our

veritatis. Hujusmodi aliquot veritates a rerum hominumque na-
tura mentibus humanis necessario suggeri, hoc est quod a nobis
affirmatur, hoc idem ab adversariis non minus diserte denegatur"
(JDe Legg. Nat., c. i. s. i.) Berkeley employs the term in a simi
lar sense, so also does Bishop Butler. As an English word, the
term is at least as old as Shakspeare : —

If good why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
And make my sealed heart knock at my ribs,

n mae my seae ear
Against the use of nature?

Bacon also employs it in his < 'Advancement of Learning : " ' * To pro
cure the ready use of Knowledge there are two courses, — Prepa
ration and Suggestion."

THE GENESIS OF IDEAS. 79

Ideas of the mental Powers among our simple Ideas
of Reflection, it is evident that he regards the Idea
of the Power as suggested to the Mind by the Idea
of the Operation. But if we wish to see the full
purport of the Lockian doctrine of Suggestion, we
must examine with peculiar attention Locke's ana
lysis of our "Simple Ideas of both Sensation and Re
flection." As enumerated by Locke, these Simple
Ideas are our Ideas of Pleasure and Pain, of Unity
and Existence, of Power and Succession (n. vii. 1-9).
The vices of this enumeration are obvious. Pleasure
and Pain, by Locke's own definition, are mere Ideas
of Reflection (n. i. 4), and, by the fundamental
distinction of his system, Succession and Power are
not Simple Ideas, but Ideas of Relation, and accord
ingly Complex (n. xxi. 3, n. xxiii. 7). But, preter-
mitting these vices of detail, let us examine into the
principle involved. The Ideas in question are de
scribed as " Simple Ideas suggested to the Understand
ing by all the ways of Sensation and Reflection"
(n. iii. 1 ). And how suggested ? Suggested appa
rently, not by Sensation, but by Ideas of Sensation ;
not by Reflection, but by Ideas of Reflection. Delight
and Uneasiness "join themselves to" (n. vii. 2), and
are "concomitant" of (n. vii. 3), "almost all our Ideas
both of Sensation and Reflection" (n. vii. 2) ; "Ex
istence and Unity are two other Ideas that are sug
gested to the Understanding by every object without
and every Idea within" (n. vii. 7); "Power is
another of those Simple Ideas which we receive from

80 THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

Sensation and Reflection" by a similar process
(n. vii. 8) ; " Succession is another Idea which,
though suggested by our Senses, yet is more con
stantly offered us by what passes within our own
Minds" (n. vii. 9). Nor are these the only intima
tions of Locke's opinion on the subject. When dis
cussing the Simple Modes of Space, he tells us that
" there is not any object of Sensation or Reflection
which does not carry with it the Idea of One"
(11. xiii. 26) ; at the commencement of his chapter
on Number he tells us that "every object our Senses
are employed about, every Idea in our Understand
ing, every thought of our Mind, brings this Idea along
with it" (LI. xvi. 1) ; in his opening remarks on In
finity he tells us that " the obvious portions of Ex
tension that affect our Senses," as well as " the ordi
nary periods of Succession," both " carry with them
the Idea of the Finite" (n. xvii. 2).* Here, then, as
it seems to me, we have the Understanding unequi
vocally recognised as a source of Simple Ideas. If
certain Ideas be suggested by, they must be super-
added to, the data of Sensation and Reflection ; if
they be suggested to, they must be superadded by,
the faculty of Understanding. Consider now what

* Locke is more accurate than M. Cousin. " L'Idee de Fini,"
says that Philosopher, "vient aisement de la Sensation ou de la
Reflexion" (p. 131). A similar remark is made with respect to
the Idea of Succession. But though Phenomena are both finite
and successive, they cannot be regarded <w finite and successive by
any mere capacities of Sense.

THE GENESIS OF IDEAS. 81

Locke tells us with regard to the genesis of our Ideas
of Unity and Existence. " "When Ideas are in our
minds," he says, " we consider them as being actually
there, as well as we consider things to be actually
without us, which is that they exist or have exist*
ence ; and whatever we can consider as one thing,
whether a real being or an Idea, suggests to the Un
derstanding the Idea of Unity" (n. vii. 7). These
Ideas, therefore, according to Locke, are not only
suggested to the Understanding, but they are sug*
gested to the Understanding in an act of Judgment.
Why, then, are they denominated Simple Ideas ?
Apparently because they are suggested to the Un
derstanding in an act of Judgment that reposes on
a single datum of Experience — a way of getting the
notion of relations which, according to Reid and
to Reid's echo, M. Cousin, " seems not to have oc
curred to Mr. Locke" (p. 420). Whether Locke
was right in mixing up the Simple Ideas furnished
by Sense with the Simple Ideas suggested to the
Understanding — whether it would not have been
better if Locke had restricted the term Simple
Idea to the domain of Sense, and thus rendered it
convertible with the Intuition of Kant — this is an
other question. The main fact bids defiance to dis
pute. The formula which proclaims that " Simple
Ideas, the materials of all our knowledge, are sug
gested and furnished to the Mind by Sensation and
Reflection," recognises, in addition to the recipient
capacities of Sensation and Reflection, a spontaneous

G

82 THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

faculty of Suggestion which belongs essentially to
the Understanding — Eeid and Locke are in reality
at one.*

But even if we ignore the existence of the prin
ciple of Rational Suggestion, the Essay concerning
Human Understanding is not a mere Essay con
cerning Sensation and Reflection — it contains a
Theory of the Understanding proper. Ideas, as we
have seen, are divided by Locke into Simple and
Complex. Simple Ideas are the Ideas " suggested
and furnished to the Mind by Sensation arid Reflec
tion" (n. ii. 2) ; Complex Ideas, on the other hand,
are the Ideas " made by the Mind out of Simple
ones, as the materials and foundations of the rest"

* Since writing the above, I have discovered an unexpected
corroboration of the justice of my views on this portion of the
subject, in the last edition of Mr. Hallam's " Introduction to the
Literature of Europe. ' ' Struck with the peculiarity of Locke' s ex
pressions with respect to the simple Ideas of both Sensation and
Reflection, Mr. Hallam regards them as a decisive proof " that
Locke really admitted the Understanding to be so far the source
of new Simple Ideas, that several of primary importance arise in
our minds, on the Suggestion of the Senses, or of our observing the
inward operations of our minds, which are not strictly to be classed
themselves as Suggestions or acts of Consciousness (Vol. iv. p. 128).
But Mr. Hallam's criticism is vitiated by the error of Mr. Stewart.
Misled by Locke's reiterated assertion that Sensation and Reflec
tion are the exclusive sources of our Ideas, he has identified the
Understanding proper with Reflection. Of the functions of the
Understanding in connexion with the genesis of Ideas of Rela
tion — the central point of the Intellectualism of Locke — Mr.
Hallam, like every critic with whose writings on the subject I
am acquainted, is altogether silent.

THE GENESIS OF IDEAS. 83

(u. xii. 1). As distinguished from the Simple Idea,
the Complex Idea is an Idea which the Mind does
not " receive," but " make" (ii. xii. 1). It is an Idea
in the making of which the Mind exerts " acts of its
own" (n. xii. 1), and manifests "its own power"
(n. xii. 2). It is an Idea which the Mind frames by
means of " operations proceeding from powers in-
trinsical and proper to itself" (11. i. 24). It is the Idea
of the Intellect.

But here again the whole Chorus of Critics bursts
forth into a symphony of objection. " The Com
plex Idea of Locke," says M. Cousin as its Coryphaeus,
"is a Compound Idea" (p. 201) ; " the Materials of
which it is composed are the mere Ideas of Sensation
and Reflection" (p. 98) ; Locke restricts the func
tions of the Understanding to the " mere combina
tion of the scattered elements of Sense" (p. 201) ; he
concedes to the Understanding the possession of
" no originative virtue" (p. 99).* Let us examine
into the justice of this charge.

That Locke holds " the Materials of all our Know
ledge" to be suggested and furnished by " Sensation
and Reflection" (n. ii. 2) cannot be denied. Neither
can it be denied that he holds " the Understand
ing" to be impotent to create " the least particle
of new Matter" (n. ii. 2). But here a question
similar to those already asked immediately suggests
itself, — what does Locke understand by the word

* M. Cousin's criticism is here, as elsewhere, a mere re
chauffe of Reid's. Cf. Reid, pp. 346, 347.

G2

84 THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

Material ? That Reid should have stumbled over
the expressions that lie scattered at the threshold of
the Essay was natural ; but the expositor of Kant
might have recollected when expounding Locke, that
if in the Essay concerning Human Understanding
it is Experience which supplies " the Materials of
Thinking" (n. i. 2), it is Experience which, even in
the Ivritik of the Pure Reason, supplies the " Mat
ter" as distinguished from the " Form" of Thought.
If Locke asserts that we cannot have any Idea which
does not " wholly consist" of Ideas of Sense (n. xii. 1 ),
if he asserts that even our Ideas of Relation are " col
lections" of Simple Ideas" (n. xxxi. 14 ; u. xxv. 11),
I need remind no Student of the German Philo
sophy that, even according to Kant, our Concepts
without Content are vacuous abstractions, and that
on the fundamental principles of the Transcen
dental Logic it is as necessary to make our Concepts
sensuous as it is to make our Intuitions intellectual.
The sense in which Locke employs the word " Mate
rial" is evident from the mere juxtaposition of the
two propositions which constitute the ^Esthetic of
the Essay, — " Simple Ideas, the Materials of all our
Knowledge, are suggested and furnished to the Mind
only by the two ways, Sensation and Reflection"
(n. ii. 2) ; " Ideas of Relation all terminate in and
are concerned about those Simple Ideas, either of
Sensation or Reflexion, which are the whole Mate
rials of our Knowledge" (n. xxv. 9) — propositions
which have their exact counterpart in the Kantian

THE GENESIS OF IDEAS. 85

doctrine that all our Intuitions are furnished by Sen
sibility, External or Internal, and that all Thought
must, directly or indirectly, by means of certain signs,
relate ultimately to Intuitions. That the Concepts
of the Understanding exist only in relation to the
Intuitions of Sense is, in fact, one of the cardinal
doctrines of the Critical Philosophy. It is also the
doctrine of the Essay concerning Human Under
standing. " Our Moral Ideas," says Locke, " signify
nothing if removed from all Simple Ideas quite"
(n. xxviii. 8), and the remark is equally applicable
to every other Concept. Regarded in this light, the
Scholastic brocard which proclaims " nil in Intel
lect u quod non prius in Sensu" is rigorously true,
and the " sublime limitation of Leibnitz,"* the " nisi
Intellectus ipse," betokens an utter misapprehension
of the question. If Phillis were to say to Amaryllis,
" there is nothing in the cheese- vat which was not
previously in the milk-pail," and Amaryllis were to
add, "except the cheese-vat itself," the addition would
be regarded as palpably unmeaning. The metaphor
may be a coarse one, but it conveys a true idea.
Every Concept must have its Content, and the Con
tent of every Concept must be supplied exclusively
by Sense. In the System of Locke, as also in the
System of Kant, the Understanding superadds no
thing to the data of Experience but the Form of
Thought. The Waters well from the Fountains of
Sensation and Reflection — the Understanding de-
* The expression of Madame de Stacl,

80 THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

termines the Channel in which they are to flow ;
the Materials are supplied rough from the quarry
by our Capacities of Sense — the Understanding, as
the Architectonic Faculty, supplies the Design of the
edifice into which they are to be combined.

But does Locke admit that in the formation of
our Complex Ideas the Understanding superadds the
Form of Thought ? " The acts of the Mind wherein
it exerts its power over its Simple Ideas," accord
ing to Locke, are chiefly three, Combination, Com
parison, and Abstraction (n. xii. 1 ), and " Com
plex Ideas," he thinks, may be all reduced under
the threefold head of Modes, Substances, and Rela
tions (n. xii. 3). Let us examine each of these
heads, and we shall find that under each, Locke ad
mits the existence of an a priori element of thought,
and concedes to the Understanding the possession
of an " originative virtue."

Take, for instance, the Forms of Sensibility which
Locke considers under the head of Modes. The
most important of our Sensible Ideas, as we have
seen, are given as Simple Suggestions of the Under
standing. But the intellectual process does not
terminate in this. " The Mind," says Locke, " hav
ing once got the Idea of Solidity from the grosser
Sensible bodies, traces it farther, and considers it
as well as Figure in the minutest particle of matter
that can exist, and finds it inseparably inherent in
body, wherever or however modified" (n. iv. 1).
All " the Primary Qualities," in fact, arc " such as

THE GENESIS OF IDEAS. 87

Sense constantly finds in every particle of matter
which has bulk enough to be perceived, and the
Mind finds inseparable from every particle of matter,
though less than to make itself singly be perceived
by the Senses" (n. viii. 9 ). In other words, the Na
tural Suggestion is elevated into a Necessary Con-J
cept by a subsequent act of Judgment, and so far
is Locke from sensualizing the Intellect, as Kant com
plains, that he intellectualizes the Sensibility itself.
It is the same with respect to Space. The Simple
Idea of Space is suggested by our Ideas of Sight or
Touch (n. xiii. 2) ; the Simple Mode of Space, as a
Complex Idea, is the creature and invention of the
Understanding (n. xii. 1) ; the Necessary Concept
of Space is the product of an act of Judgment
which proclaims it to be " plainly and sufficiently"
distinguished " from Body, since its parts are inse
parable, immovable, and without resistance to the
motion of Body" (n. xiii. 14). But this is not all. Ac
cording to Locke, " we are apt to think that Space,
in itself, is actually boundless" (n. xvii. 4). How
does he account for the genesis of this Idea of Infinity ?
In order to compass this Idea, he tells us, that, " at
first step we usually make some very large Idea, as,
perhaps, of millions of miles, which possibly we
double and multiply several times" (n. xvii. 5);
and this being effected, Locke detects a triple ele
ment of thought;— "the Idea of so much," which,
he says, is "positive and clear," — "the Idea of
greater," which he describes as "comparative," — and

88 THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

thirdly, "the Idea of so much greater as cannot be
comprehended," and this he says is "plain negative,
not positive" (11. xvii. 1,5). Now, whence this "Idea
of greater" which Locke admits? Whence this "Idea
of so much greater as cannot be comprehended"?
These Ideas, it is evident, are neither data of Sen-
sation, nor products of the mere compositive Energy
of Thought. How then does Locke account for
their appearance in the theatre of Consciousness?
As " the obvious portions of Extension that affect
our Senses carry with them the Idea of the Finite"
(n. xvii. 2), so, he says, the "addition" of the units
of Finite Space " suggests the Idea of Infinite, by a
power we find we have of still increasing the sum,
and adding more of the same kind, without coming
one jot nearer to the end of such progression"
(n. xvii. 13). But is this Idea of Infinity merely a
Natural Suggestion ? On the contrary, " wherever
the Mind places itself by any thought, either
amongst or remote from all bodies, it can in this
uniform Idea of Space nowhere find any bounds,
any end, and so must necessarily conclude it by the
very nature and Idea of each part of it to be ac.
tually infinite" (n. xvii. 4). In other words, the
Idea of Infinity is suggested to the Understanding
by its experienced incompetence to reconcile, in the
synthesis of Thought, the Idea of any given Finite
Space with the Idea of an Absolute Termination. It
is true that Locke denies that we have any Idea of
the Infinite (n. xvii. 7, 8, &c.) But by Idea, in

THE GENESIS OF IDEAS. 89

this case, as in the parallel case of Substance, he
merely means Sensible Idea, or Idea of Imagina
tion. That he admits the necessary Concept is evi
dent from his assertion of the necessary existence. It
is true, also, that Locke defines Simple Modes to be
" only variations, or different combinations of the
same Simple Idea" (n. xii. 5). But Locke, in con
nexion with this very subject, protests against
being bound down by any mere " scholastic" defi
nitions ; he " contents himself to employ the prin
cipal terms that he uses, so that from his use of
them the reader may easily comprehend what he
means by them" (n. xv. Note). Besides, he is
speaking merely of the Content of the Idea. Locke's
account of the Idea of Eternity, and of the Idea of
the Infinite Divisibility of Matter, is identical with
his account of the Idea of the Infinity of Space
(n. xvii. 5, 12). In each of these cases the Mind
finds it "impossible to find or suppose an end"
(n. xvii. 4) — there is a "supposed endless progres
sion of the Mind" (n. xvii. 7) — the Concept is a
mere "negation" of the conceivable (n. xvii. 18).
In the words of Bacon, whose doctrine upon this
subject Locke has reproduced, these Ideas are "Idola
ex inotu inquieto Mentis," " Subtilitates ex impo-
tentia Cogitationis" (Nov. Org. lib. i. aph. xlviii.)
In the words of Sir William Hamilton, whose doc
trine upon this subject Locke has anticipated, " the
Infinite and the Absolute are only the names of two
counter-imbecilities of the Human Mind, transmuted

90 THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

into properties of the nature of Things, of two sub
jective negations converted into objective affirma
tions" (Disc. p. 21).*

In the Genesis of Simple Modes, therefore, Locke
recognises a twofold Intellectual element — a com
positive act of the Imagination, and a suggestion
of Intellect occasioned by an innate impotence of
thought. In the second of Locke's Categories the
Intellectual element is equally conspicuous. Not
only does Locke intellectualize Sense by referring to
Intellect our Ideas of the Primary Qualities of Mat
ter ; — he further intellectualizes it by referring even
our Ideas of Sensible Objects to the synthetic ener
gies and a priori Concepts of the Understanding.
The Phenomena of Sense as given by Sensation and
Reflection, are isolated and successive. Our " Ideas
of Substances," on the other hand, are " Combina
tions of Simple Ideas taken to represent distinct
particular things subsisting by themselves, in which
the supposed or confused Idea of Substance, such as
it is, is always the first and chief" (n. xii. 6). They
are " Collections of Simple Ideas with a Supposition
of something to which they belong, and in which

* I may add that, as far as Time and Space are concerned, Sir
William Hamilton's doctrine of the Conditioned, and the argu
ments by which it is sustained, borrowed as they are from Kant,
arc anticipated by Locke (n. xvii. 12, 18, 20, 21). Much of the
dispute on the subject of the Infinite seems to me to be verbal.
Sir William Hamilton agrees that the Infinite exists ; M. Cousin
agrees that the Infinite cannot be realized in Imagination. The
controversy turns upon the meaning of the word Idea.

THE GENESIS OF IDEAS. 91

they subsist" (n. xxiii. 37). Reid, it is true (p. 376),
and Cousin after Reid (p. 201), charge Locke with
having in this reversed the procedure of the Under
standing in the acquisition of Ideas.* But in reality
Locke agrees with both Reid and Cousin. He ad
mits that " the qualities that affect our Senses are
in the things themselves so united and blended that
there is no separation, no distance between them"
(n. ii. 1). All he asserts is that "the Ideas they
produce in the Mind enter by the Senses simple and
unmixed " (Ibid.), and that they are combined into
the unity of Sensitive Perception by a higher energy
than that of Sense. Locke's "power of composi
tion" (n. xxiv. 2) is in fact the TO avvOe-riKov of the
Greek Intellectualists (Reid, p. 830). His doctrine
is that enounced by Plato, and reproduced by Kant.f
So far, however, Locke has only recognised the com
positive energy of the Soul. But if, as Locke's critics
assert, Locke restricts the functions of the Under-

* M. Cousin represents Locke as making the Understanding
commence with " Abstractions" His language leaves it doubtful
whether by " Abstractions" M. Cousin meant abstract simple Ideas
or abstract general Ideas. That the mind does not commence
with abstract general Ideas, Locke has repeatedly asserted
(iv. vii. 9 ; in. iii. 7 ; IT. xi. 9 ; i. ii. 14). Indeed, he treats such
a notion with the most unmitigated contempt (i. ii. 25). His words
in that passage are almost identical with those of Berkeley (Prin.
Int., sect, xiv.), who, nevertheless, attributes to him the notion
which he ridicules.

f Comp. Cic., Tusc. Disp.., i. 20 : — " Quid, quod eadem Mente
res dissimillimas comprehciidimus, ut colorem, saporem, calorem,
odorem sonum?"

02 THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

standing to the mere " Combination" of the Data of
Sense whence this " Supposition" of Substance which
he superadds to the " Collection" of Simple Ideas,
and considers as the chief ingredient in our complex
Ideas of Substances ? Kant defines a Noumenon to
be a " Hypothesis of the Understanding," and here
we find Locke employing the very phraseology of
Kant. " He abandons his system," says Reid ; " he
surrenders his thesis," says Sir William Hamilton.
But a great consecutive thinker does not so easily
surrender thesis and abandon system. Let us ex
amine what his system and his thesis are.

" Man's power and its way of operation," says
Locke, " is much- what the same in the material and
intellectual world. For the materials in both being
such as he has no power over, either to make or de
stroy, all that man can do is either to unite them to
gether, or to set them by one another, or wholly sepa
rate them" (11. xii. 1 ; n. ii. 2 ). Such is the declaration,
which, of all others, would seem to be most fatal to
the conclusion which I have undertaken to establish.

But what are we to understand by the expression

" Set them by one another" ? " The second act of the
Mind," says Locke, " is bringing two Ideas, whether
Simple or Complex, together, and setting them by
one another, so as to take a view of them at once,
without uniting them into one" (n. xii. 1 ), " though still
considered as distinct" (n. xxv. 1). The Setting to
gether of Ideas, therefore, it would seem, is not to be
confounded with their " Combination." But Locke

THE GENESIS OF IDEAS. 93

goes further. " Every one's experience," he says,
" will satisfy him that the mind, either by perceiving
or supposing the agreement of any of its Ideas, does
tacitly put them into a kind of proposition, which I
have endeavoured to express by the term ' putting
together'" (iv. v. 6). The Setting together of Ideas,
therefore, is in reality an act of Judgment, or, to
employ the peculiar phraseology of the Essay, an
act of " Comparison" Mark now what follows.
"Besides the Ideas, whether Simple or Complex,
that the Mind has of things as they are in them
selves, there are others it gets from their* Comparison
one with another" (n. xxv. 1 ; n. xii. 1 ; n. xi. 4).
It appears, then, not only that the Understanding
can " combine" the Data of Sensation and Reflec
tion, but that it can " compare" them ; not only that
it can " compare" them, but that there is a new class
of Ideas which it develops on the occasion of the
Comparison. These are the Ideas which Locke va
riously designates Relations, Relative Ideas, and Ideas
of Relation. Now, what are the Ideas which Locke
comprehends under this Category of Relation ? With
that disregard to system which is the great blemish
of the Essay considered as a work of Art, no sooner
has Locke divided Ideas into Simple and Complex,
than for "brevity's sake" and "in a looser sense"
he regards the Relative Idea of Power as Simple (n.
xxi. 3 ; n. xxiii. 7) ; no sooner has he divided Com
plex Ideas into Modes, Substances, and Relations,
than he discusses the Relations of Space amongst

94 THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

Modes (n. xiii. 5, 7, &c.), and the Relation of Sub
stance among Substances (n. xxiii. 1-4). But when
he comes to the official consideration of the subject,
what are the Relations which he enumerates ? The
Relation of Cause and Effect (n. xxv. 11), the Re
lations of Time and Space (n. xxvi. 3, 5), the Rela
tions of Identity and Diversity (n. xxvii. 1), the
Relations of Equality and Excess (n. xxviii. 1),
and lastly, the Relations of Right and Wrong (u.
xxviii. 4), — the very Ideas enumerated by Price
and Reid and Stewart as the Simple Ideas for which
we are indebted to the Reasoning Power ; the very
Ideas comprehended by Kant under the Forms of
Sensibility, the Categories of the Understanding,
and the Revelations of the Practical Reason. Locke,
it is true, does not designate these Ideas as Simple.
On the contrary, he regards them as Complex. But
why Complex ? Complex, apparently, not because
they are Compound, but because they are generated
in a complex act of Comparison. "My Notion of
Substance in general," says Locke, " is quite different
from my Idea of Substances, and has no such com
bination of Simple Ideas in it ;" it is " only a Sup
position of we know not what" (n. xxiii. Note A ).
Simple in their Essence, therefore, our Ideas of Re
lation are Complex only in their Genesis. The na
ture of this Genesis Locke has repeatedly exemplified.
" Because we cannot conceive how Sensible Qualities
should subsist alone, nor one in another" — in other
words, on comparing the Idea of a Sensible Quality

THE GENESIS OF IDEAS. 95

with " the Idea of Self-Subsistence" (iv. iii. Note) —
"we suppose them existing in and supported by
some common subject, which support we denote by
the name ' Substance'" (ir. xxiii. 4). "From the
observation of the constant vicissitude of things" — in
other words, from comparing the two terms in the
Complexldea of Change — "we get our Ideas of Cause
and Effect" (n. xxvi. 1) ; " the Mind must collect a
Power somewhere, able to make that Change, as well
as a possibility in the thing itself to receive it"
(ii. xxi. 4). " Considering anything as existing at
any determined time and place, we compare it with
itself existing at another time, and thereon form the
Ideas of Identity and Diversity" (IT. xxvii. 1). All
these Ideas are expressly described as " the creatures
and inventions of the Understanding" The utmost
that Locke claims for Sensation and Reflection in
their genesis is that they all " terminate in, and are
ultimately founded on the Simple Ideas we have got
from Sensation and Reflection" (n. xxviii. 18) ;* in
other words, that Sensation and Reflection supply
the Content of the Concept and the chronological
condition of its development. That the Idea is not
educed from, but superadded to, the Data of Sensi
tive Experience, Locke most unequivocally asserts.
" Relation," he says, " is a Notion superinduced "
(n. xxv. 4) — " it is not contained in the real exis
tence of things ; it is something extraneous and su-

* Comp. IT. xxv. 9 ; n. xxvi. 2, 6 ; n. xxviii. 1 ; IT. xxviii. 14.

96 THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

perinduced" (n. xxv. 8). Whether the Relations
enumerated by Locke are all suggested to the Un
derstanding on the comparison of two Ideas, or
whether, like the Simple Ideas of Unity and Exis
tence, some of them may not rather be regarded as
suggested on the contemplation of one, is another
matter.* Yet even the process and nomenclature
of Locke is not without authority in the very highest
Schools of Intellectualism. What, for instance, is
the language of the British Plato ? " That there
are some Ideas of the Mind which were not stamped
or imprinted upon it from sensible objects, and,
therefore, must needs arise from the innate vigour
and activity of the Mind itself, is evident in that
there are many RELATIVE NOTIONS AND IDEAS, at
tributed as well to corporeal as incorporeal things
that proceed wholly from the activity of the Mind
COMPAKING one thing with another ;" and, accord-

* Thus it may be contended that the Idea of Self-Subsistence,
which forms the second term in the comparison by which the Idea
of Substance is suggested, is itself the Idea sought for. On other
occasions, however, Locke expresses himself in a manner to which
no exception can be taken. " All Simple Ideas, all Sensible Qua
lities," he says, "carry with them a Supposition of a Substratum
to exist in, and of a Substance wherein they inhere" (IT. xxiii.
Note B}. But though Substance may be suggested by the Sen
sible Quality, the Quality and the Substance, it must be remem
bered, are two different things, though mutually related. This
constitutes a difference between the Idea of Substance and the
Idea of Existence which justifies Locke in regarding them under
different categories.

THE GENESIS OF IDEAS. 97

ingly, he proceeds to enumerate the very Ideas enu
merated by Locke, commencing with the Idea which
has since played so prominent a part in the history
of Philosophy — the Idea of Causation. Quoted by
Mr. Stewart to prove that Kant was anticipated in
the fundamental principle of his Philosophy by Cud-
worth, this passage equally proves that Kant was
anticipated in the fundamental principle of his Phi
losophy by Locke. But why have recourse to indi
rect argument ? Kant himself reproduces the words
of Locke, just as Locke reproduces the words of
Cudworth. " How is it possible," he asks, " that
the Faculty of Cognition should be awakened into
exercise otherwise than by means of objects which
affect our Senses, and partly of themselves produce
Representations, partly rouse our powers of Under
standing into activity to COMPARE, to connect, or to
separate these, and so to convert the raw material
of our Sensuous Impressions into a knowledge of
objects which is called Experience?" And under
what Category does the great Critic of the Reason
arrange our Ideas of Substance and Causation, the
most important of all our a priori Concepts ? Under
the Category of " RELATION."

Nor is this " seeing in Homer more than Homer
saw." Against the assertion that " the materials of
all our knowledge are suggested and furnished to
the mind only by Sensation and Reflection," the
Bishop of Worcester objected just as Sir William
Hamilton objects. "If the Idea of Substance," he

H

98 THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

said, " be grounded upon plain and evident Reason,
then we must allow an Idea of Substance which
comes not in by Sensation or Reflection." The reply
of Locke is so conclusive as to the sense in which he
himself interpreted his Philosophy, that I make no
apology for quoting the passage in extenso : —

" These words of your Lordship's contain nothing
that I see in them against me ; for I never said that
the General Idea [or Concept] of Substance comes in
by Sensation or Reflection, or that it is a Simple Idea
[or Intuition] of Sensation or Reflection, though it
be ultimately founded in them ; for it is a Complex
Idea, made up of the General Idea of something, or
being, with the Relation of a support to accidents.
For General Ideas come not into the mind by Sen
sation, or Reflection, but are the creatures and inven
tions of the Understanding, as I think I have shown ;
arid also how the Mind makes them from Ideas which
it has got by Sensation and Reflection ; and as to
the Ideas of Relation, how the Mind forms them, and
how they are derived from, and ultimately termi
nates in, Ideas of Sensation and Reflection, I have
likewise shown" (n. ii. Note}.

The words which Locke adds to " explain himself
and clear his meaning in this matter" are still more
decisive as to his recognition of the Understanding
as a source of Ideas ulterior to Sensation and Reflec
tion: — "All the Ideas [or Intuitions] of the Sensible
Qualities of a cherry come into my mind by Sensa
tion ; the Ideas [or Intuitions] of Perceiving, Think-

THE GENESIS OF IDEAS. 99

ing, Reasoning, Knowing, &c., come into my mind by
Reflection. The Ideas of these Qualities and Actions
or Powers are perceived by the Mind to be by them
selves inconsistent with [the Idea of] Existence ; or,
as your Lordship well expresses it, 4 we find that we'
can have no true conception of any Modes or Acci
dents, but we must conceive a Substratum, or Subject,
wherein they are ;' i. e., that they cannot exist or
subsist of themselves. Hence the Mind perceives
the necessary connexion with inherence, or being sup
ported, which, being a Relative Idea, superadded to
the red colour in a cherry, or to thinking in a man,
the Mind frames the correlative Idea of a support.
For I never denied that the Mind can frame to itself
Ideas of Relation, but have showed the quite con
trary in my chapters about Relations" (n. ii. Note).
Not a single element of the Kantian solution of the
problem is wanting in this exposition of his views by
Locke. Our Ideas of Relation are not educed from,
but superadded to, our Ideas of Sensation and Re
flection. They are superadded in an act of Judg
ment. They are characterized by a perception of
necessary connexion. They are the creatures and
inventions of the Understanding. They are Rational
Ideas. " Your Lordship," says Locke, " calls it l the
Rational Idea of Substance ;' and says, ' I grant that
by Sensation and Reflection we come to know the
powers and properties of things ; but our Reason
is satisfied there must be something beyond them,
because it is impossible that they should subsist by

H 2

100 THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

themselves :' so that if this be that which your Lord
ship means by i the Rational Idea of Substance, I see
nothing there is in it against what I have said" —
What, then, is it that Locke professes to have said? —
"that it is founded on Simple Ideas of Sensation or
Reflection, and that it is a very obscure Idea :" ob
scure, as he has just before explained, because it is
not given as an Intuition of Sense — obscure, because
it is not an Idea, I Sea, or Image (i. iv. 18 ) — obscure,
because, in the very language of Kant, it is an " in-
determined" Concept of the Understanding (n. ii.
Note) — obscure, because it is " a supposition of we
know not what" (n. xxiii. 2).*

Such is the exposition of Locke's doctrine of Re
lation, as given by Locke himself. " I never said
that Ideas, such as that of Substance, come in by
Sensation or Reflection — I never denied that the
Mind could frame to itself Ideas of Relation — I
have showed the quite contrary in my chapters
about Relation" — such are the emphatic and reite-

* This is the answer to M. Cousin's criticism on Locke's em
ployment of the term " Obscure" (p. 143). M. Cousin himself
defines a Cause to be a "Je ne sais quoi a la quelle vous rapportez
la production du phenomene" (p. 151). Sir William Hamilton's
doctrine of Substance is even verbally the same as Locke's. Sub
stance, he says, " expresses a Relation;" it is " only supposed by a
necessity of thought ;" " even as a Relative it is not positively
knoivn" (Disc., p. 644). Reid's doctrine is equally coincident.
" Our notion of Body or Matter," he says, " as distinguished
from its qualities, is a Relative Notion ; and I am afraid it must
always be obscure until men have other faculties" (p. 322).

THE GENESIS OF IDEAS. 101

rated terms in which he repudiates the Sensualism
and the Empiricism with which his name has been
so long arid so universally identified. As he ex
pressed his agreement with Lowde on the subject
of Innate Ideas, so he expresses his agreement with
Stillingfleet on the subject of the Genesis of our a
priori Concepts. All that his opponents contend
for he himself insists upon, and here again he
has verified the declaration of his Epistle to the
Reader ; — he and his opponents are at one when
each comes to be rightly understood.

What, then, is the general result at which we have
arrived ? Locke " sees no reason to believe that
the Soul thinks before the Senses have furnished it
with Ideas to think on" (n. i. 20) — he conceives
that "Ideas in the Understanding are coeval
with Sensation" (n. i. 23). So far Condillac,
Diderot, and Condorcet, are in the right. So
far Locke places the Origin of Ideas in Sensation.
So far he undoubtedly belongs to the School of
Sensualism. Locke holds that " Simple Ideas, the
materials of all our knowledge, are suggested arid
furnished by Sensation and Reflection" (n. ii. 2),
and that "Complex Ideas are made by the Mind
out of Simple ones, as the materials and founda
tions" which constitute at once their content and
the condition of their development" (n. xii. 1). So
far Kant, Cousin, and Sir William Hamilton are in
the right. So far Locke places the Origin of Ideas
in Sensation and Reflection. So far Locke is to be
regarded as the Evangelist of Empiricism. But

102 THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

among our Simple Ideas Locke enumerates certain
a priori Concepts, which he describes as "suggested
to the Understanding" by the isolated Data of Sen
sation and Reflection (n. vii. 1-9); among the
Complex Ideas, which he professedly regards as " the
creatures or inventions of the Understanding," he
enumerates certain " Modes, which are " suggested"
to the Understanding by an Impotence of Thought
(n. xvii. 4, &c.); certain "Relations," "supposed,"
"superinduced," and " superadded," by the Under
standing in an act of Comparison or Judgment
(n. xxv-xxviii.) Here, then, we have a triple
element of Intellectualism. Here we have the Un
derstanding unequivocally recognised as a sponta
neous energy and a generative force. And here
Locke is to be identified neither with Sensualism
nor Empiricism, but with that great School of
Speculation which from Plato to Kant has pro
claimed the a priori origin of our higher principles
of thought.

We are now in a position to estimate the critical
value of the work which Sir William Hamilton
styles " the most important work on Locke since the
' Nouveaux Essais' of Leibnitz" (Disc., p. 80). Con
founding Locke's order of Exposition with his
order of Thought, M. Cousin charges him with
rushing prematurely into the question of the Origin
of Ideas (p. 80) ; confounding Locke's views on the
question of the Origin of Ideas with his own views
on the question of their Genesis, M. Cousin charges
him with assigning an Origin that is essentially

THE GENESIS OF IDEAS. 103

defective (p. 81). Ignoring the systematic discus
sions of the Essay, ignoring the very titles of the
chapters of the second Book, M. Cousin next asserts
that Locke precluded himself from the very possi
bility of a return to truth by the omission of the
pre-eminently experimental question of "the In
ventory of Ideas" (p. 84); and, lest a fictitious rea
son should be wanting for an imaginary fact, informs
us that the experimental method was in its infancy
in the time of Locke ; — in its infancy at a time
when every canon of that method had been laid
down in the " De Augmentis" and the " Novum
Organon," and when its proudest triumph had been
already achieved in the "Principia" and the "Optics."
Thus stumbling at the threshold of his criticism, it
is no wonder that M. Cousin misconceives the whole
purport of Locke's Philosophy. Misconceiving what
Locke means by a Simple Idea, he regards the Com
plex Idea as essentially Compound. Not only does
he ignore the Simple Ideas suggested to the Un
derstanding by the isolated data of Sense, and the
Simple Modes framed by the Understanding in con
sequence of an impotence of Thought — he ignores
even the Ideas of Comparison developed in the Com
parison of Ideas. He reiterates that according to
Locke the Understanding can only " combine, com-
pare, and abstract" the data of Sensation and Re
flection, without pausing to inquire what is meant
by the term " compare." In a word, he overlooks
the fact that Locke regards the most important of

104 THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

our a priori Concepts as Ideas of Relation, and that
lie enumerates Ideas of Relation among those Com
plex Ideas which, by the fundamental distinction of
his system, are " the creatures or inventions of the
Understanding" (n. ii. Note). Accordingly, M. Cou
sin imposes upon Locke the necessity of explaining
the Genesis of these Concepts by Sensation and Re
flection (p. 100), — a necessity which could only
eventuate in the mutilation and distortion of the
Concepts. To show that Locke actually mutilates
arid distorts these elements of Thought, M. Cousin
mutilates and distorts the words of Locke. In elu
cidation of his Idea of " Place," Locke remarks that
" to say the universe is somewhere, means no
more than it does exist" (11. xiii. 10) ; M. Cousin,
confounding " Place" with " Space," represents
him as openly identifying "Space" with "Body"
(pp. 103, 120). In his account of the chronologi
cal conditions of the development of the Idea of
Time, Locke observes that " we have no perception
of Duration but by considering the train of Ideas"
in our Minds (n. xiv. 4) ; M. Cousin represents him
as holding that " Time in itself is nothing but the
Succession of Ideas" (p. 129). Locke tells us that
it is " the endless addibility of number" that gives
us "the clearest Idea of Infinity" (n. xvi. 8); M.
Cousin represents him as reducing the Idea of the
Infinite to that of some "determined number"
(p. 134). Locke holds that "Personal Identity," as
distinguished from Identity of Spiritual Substance,

THE GENESIS OF IDEAS. 105

consists in "Consciousness" (n. xxvii. 7, 9); M.
Cousin represents him as holding that Consciousness
constitutes the only Identity of which we are suscep
tible (p. 138). Locke holds that our Ideas of
" Substances" are " collections of Simple Ideas,
with a supposition of something in which they
subsist" (n. xxiii. 37); M. Cousin represents him
as " officially" resolving the Idea of " Substance"
into "a collection of Simple Ideas" (p. 144).
Locke states that "from the observation of the
constant vicissitudes of things we get our Ideas
of Cause and Effect" (n. xxv. 1 ; n. xxi. 1) ;
M. Cousin represents him as holding that our
Ideas of Cause and Effect are nothing but Ideas of
Succession (p. 150). Locke holds that the mea
sure of what is everywhere "called and esteemed"
Virtue and Vice is Praise and Blame (n. xxviii. 10);
M. Cousin represents him as holding that Virtue and
Vice in themselves are merely matter of opinion
(p. 198). But M. Cousin is Orator as well as Critic.
Not only does he slay his enemy — he drags him in
triumph at his chariot- wheels. With respect to the
Idea of Space, it seems, Locke " contradicts himself
from paragraph to paragraph" (p. 100) ; with refer
ence to the Idea of Time he is guilty of " Confusion,"
"Paralogism," and " Extravagant Results" (p. 128) ;
with reference to the Idea of Infinity, he " annihi
lates the belief of the human race" (p. 134) ; with
reference to Personal Identity, he " puts an end to
all moral responsibility, to all juridical action"

106 THE GENESIS OF IDEAS.

(p. 139) ; with reference to the Idea of Substance,
he is "hurled headlong into Nihilism" (p. 146);
with reference to the Ideas of Right and Wrong, he
" denaturalizes and corrupts Virtue" (p. 198) ; with
reference to Religion itself, he evokes Deity from
the "Abyss of Paralogism" (p. 245), and "avoids
Atheism only at the cost of an Inconsequence"
(p. 376).

If any apology for these remarks on M. Cousin
were required, it is supplied by the illustrious His
torian of the Literature of Europe. Admiring, as
I do, the genius of M. Cousin, I cannot but regret
with Mr. Hallam, that he " had nothing so much at
heart as to depreciate the glory of one whom Europe
has long reckoned among the founders of Metaphy
sical Science." " The name of Locke," as Mr. Hallam
observes, " is part of our literary inheritance, which,
as Englishmen, we cannot sacrifice. If, indeed, the
University at which he was educated cannot disco
ver that he is, perhaps, her chief boast ; if a declaimer
from that quarter presumes to speak of ' the Sophist
Locke,' we may console ourselves by recollecting how
little influence such a local party is likely to obtain
over the literary world. But the fame of M. Cousin
is so conspicuous, that his prej udices readily become
the prejudices of many, and his misrepresentations
pass with many for unanswerable criticisms."

VI.

INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE.

A JUDGMENT of the Understanding, as we have seen,
is presupposed in Locke's account of the Genesis of
our a priori Concepts, whether regarded as Simple
Ideas, as Simple Modes, or as Ideas of Eelation. In
the Genesis of our Ideas of Relation, especially, we
have seen that Locke explicitly enounces the neces
sity of an act of Comparison, which, in his phrase
ology, is in reality an act of Judgment. Locke's
Theory of Judgment, therefore, would seem the ap
propriate pendant of his Theory of Relation. But
all General Knowledge, according to Locke, consists
in the contemplation of General Abstract Ideas
(iv. vi. 13), and the consideration of Abstraction
and Generalization, therefore, is a necessary prelimi
nary to the consideration of the Theory of Know
ledge. Hence, the discussions contained in the third
book of the Essay, — discussions which Locke tells
us he did not originally contemplate (in. v. 16 ;
in. ix. 21), and which, interposing as a huge paren
thesis between his Theory of Knowledge and his
Theory of the Genesis of Ideas, have hitherto pre-

108 INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE.

vented these theories from being viewed in their na
tural correlation.

Into Locke's Theory of General Ideas I do not
intend, in this place, to inquire. Those who feel
an interest in the subject will find it discussed at
the end of this Essay, in the Appendix upon Berke
ley. Suffice it to state, that I regard the absurdity
of Abstract Ideas as a mere chimera of the Critics, j
Avhich has no existence in the Essay concerning ,
Hum an Understanding; and that, in opposition to the !
views of the Scottish School, I hold Locke to have \
been a moderate Nominalist. This being premised, I |
make no apology for omitting the consideration of I
what Mr. Mill justly denominates " that immortal j
third book of Locke," — and pass forthwith to the
consideration of Locke's Theory of Knowledge.

" Knowledge," says Locke, " seems to me to be no
thing but the perception of the connexion and
agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy, of any
of our Ideas" (iv. i. 2) : a statement which has been
vehemently impugned, but which in reality merely
amounts to the self-evident assertion that in every
proposition there must be a Subject and a Predicate,
and that in every intelligible proposition the Subject
and the Predicate must stand for definite Ideas.
But how is this synthesis of Thought effected ?
On what grounds are we justified in asserting the
connexions which exist among Ideas ? According
to the Philosopher of Koenigsberg, we may either

INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. 109

have recourse to Experience, and discover that two
Ideas are actually connected in point of fact — as in
the Judgment which asserts that all Body is endued
with Weight ; or we may have recourse to Reason,
and discover that two Ideas are absolutely con
nected by a necessity of thought, as in the Judgment
which asserts that every Change must have some
efficient Cause. This distinction, if we are to be
lieve Sir William Hamilton, has no existence in
the theory of Locke. "In Locke's Philosophy all our
Knowledge is a Derivation from Experience" (Reid,
p. 294) ; uhe endeavours to show that Intuitive truths
are all Generalizations from Experience" (p. 465);
he maintains the " thesis that all our knowledge is
anEduct from Experience" (p. 784); he "dogmati
cally" asserts that it is to " Experience" we are in
debted even for the truths of Geometry itself (Disc.,
p. 272). Once more from Locke's critic let us ap
peal to Locke.

" In some of our Ideas," says Locke, " there are
certain Relations, Habitudes, and Connexions so
visibly included in the nature of the Ideas them
selves that we cannot conceive them separable from
them by any power whatsoever ; and in these only
we are capable of Certain and Universal Knowledge1
(iv. iii. 29). Now what is the knowledge with which
this is deliberately contrasted? " The things," says
Locke, "that, as far as our Observation reaches, we
constantly find to proceed regularly, we may conclude
do act by a law set them, but yet by a law that we know

110 INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE.

not ; whereby, though causes work steadily, and ef
fects constantly flow from them, yet their connexions
and dependencies being not discoverable in our Ideas,
we can have but an Experimental Knowledge of them"
(Ibid.) The distinction between Rational and Em
piric Knowledge is here laid down with Kantian
precision ; but the following passage is, if possible,
more striking still. " We must, therefore, if we will
proceed as reason advises, adapt our methods of in
quiry to the nature of the Ideas we examine, and the
Truth we search after. General and certain Truths
are only founded in the Habitudes and Relations of
Abstract Ideas. A sagacious and methodical appli
cation of our thoughts for the finding out these Re
lations is the only way to discover all that can be put
with truth and certainty concerning them into ge
neral propositions .... What then are we to do for
the improvement of our knowledge in substantial
beings ? Here we are to take a quite contrary
course. The want of the Ideas of their real essences
sends us from our own Thoughts to the Things them
selves as they exist. EXPEEIENCE here must teach
us what REASON cannot ; and it is by trying alone
that I can certainly know what other qualities co
exist with those of my Complex Idea" (iv. xii. 7, 9).
But not only did Locke thus anticipate Kant in
the recognition of the distinction between Rational
and Empiric knowledge — he also anticipates him in
the recognition of the Criterion by which they are
to be distinguished.

INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. Ill

The Criterion of Necessity, as we have already seen,
is explicitly recognised in connexion with the Gene
sis of our Ideas of Relation. But in the fourth Book
the recognition of the Criterion recurs at every step.
To elucidate the distinction between what we learn
from " Experience" and what we learn from " Rea
son," between what we must ascertain from "Things,"
and what we may ascertain by " Thought," Locke
takes the Synthetic a posteriori Judgment, "Gold is
malleable." This he pronounces to be an " Experi
mental Truth" — and why ? " The necessity or in con
sistence of malleability," he says, " hath no visible
connexion with the combination of qualities which
make up the other constituents of gold" (iv. xii. 9).
To quote all the passages in which similar state
ments occur would be as tedious as it would
useless. In one single paragraph Locke tells u
with every variety of expression, that what distin
guishes Experimental from Universal knowledge is
the absence of "necessary connexion," of "necessary
coexistence," of " necessary dependence and visible
connexion," of "evident dependence or necessary
connexion," of "the necessary connexion of the
Ideas themselves" (iv. iii. 14). Yet what is the state
ment of Sir William Hamilton ? " Reid, and to his
honour be it spoken," says Sir William Hamilton,
" stands alone among the Philosophers of this coun
try in his appreciation and employment of the Crite
rion of Necessity" (Eeid, p. 753).*

* Previously to Locke the Criterion of Necessity had been

112 INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE.

Once more, however, let us listen to Sir William
Hamilton. " No subject, perhaps, in modern spe
culation," he says, "has excited an in tenser interest,
or more vehement controversy than, Kant's famous
distinction of A nalytic and Synthetic Judgments a
priori. The interest in this distinction was naturally
extended to its history. The records of past Philo
sophy were ransacked, and for a moment it was
thought that the Prussian Sage had been forestalled
in the very groundwork of his system by the Me-
garic Stilpo. But the originality (I say nothing of
the truth) of Kant's distinction still stands un
touched. The originality of its author, a very dif
ferent question, was always above any reasonable
doubt. Kant himself is disposed indeed to allow
that Locke (iv. iii. 9, sq.) had, perhaps, a glimpse of
the discrimination ; but, looking to the places re
ferred to, this seems on the part of Kant an almost
gratuitous concession. Locke, in fact, came nearer
to it in another passage (i. ii. 19, 20); but there,
although the examples on which the distinction
could have been established are stated, and even
stated in contrast, the principle was not appre
hended, and the distinction consequently [was]
permitted to escape" (Reid, p. 787).

Now, in opposition to Sir William Hamilton, I

enounced by Cumberland. " Cavendum, praecipue cum de primis
seu universalissimis veritatibus meditamur, ne ulli proposition!
assentiamur absque summa et ineluctalili Necessitate" (De Legg.
Nat., cap. ii. sect, ix.) The reader will not have forgotten the
" necessario mggeri" to which attention has already been directed.

INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. 113

maintain that the principle of the Kantian distinc
tion was apprehended by Locke, and that the dis
tinction was not permitted to escape. The Kantian
distinction cannot be better expressed than in the
words of Kant. " In all Judgments wherein the
relation of a subject to a predicate is cogitated,"
says the Intellectual Critic, " this relation is possible
in two different ways. Either the predicate B be
longs to the subject A, as something which is con
tained (though covertly) in the conception A; or
the predicate B lies completely out of the concep
tion A, although it stands in connexion with it.
In the first instance I term the Judgment Analyti
cal, in the second, Synthetical. Analytical Judg
ments are, therefore, those in which the connexion
of the predicate with the subject is cogitated through
Identity ; those in which this connexion is cogitated
without Identity are called Synthetical. The former
may be called Explicative, the latter Augmentative
Judgments : for the former in the predicate add
nothing to the conception of the subject, but only
analyze it into its constituent conceptions ; the lat
ter add to our conception of the subject a predicate
which is not contained in it, and which no analysis
could ever have discovered therein." Such is the
Kantian distinction as enounced by Kant. Such
also, I contend, is the Kantian distinction as anti
cipated by Locke.

" To understand a little better wherein the agree
ment or disagreement of our Ideas consists, I think,"

I

114 INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE.

says Locke, " we may reduce it all to these four
sorts," — Identity, Relation, Coexistence, and Real
Existence (iv. i. 3). If we wish for an exemplifica
tion of these distinctions, Locke supplies it : — " 'Blue
is not Yellow,' is of Identity ; ' Two triangles upon
equal bases between two parallels are equal,' is of
Relation ; ' Iron is susceptible of magnetical im
pressions,' is of Coexistence ; ' God is,' is of Real
Existence" (iv. i. 7). That the examples on which
the Kantian distinction can be founded are here
stated is evident, — an assertion that can scarcely be
made in connexion with the passage referred to by
Sir William Hamilton (i. ii. 19. 20). "Real Ex
istence" being discounted as belonging to the do
main of Ontology, " Coexistence" corresponds to the
Synthetic a posteriori Judgment of Kant, " Iden
tity" and " Relation" to his Analytic and Synthetic
a priori. Nor can it be maintained that Locke merely
stated the examples. Not only is the distinction
the fundamental distinction of his theory of Know
ledge, but the terms in which he justifies it show
that he was aware of its import in all its fulness. —
" Though Identity and Coexistence," he says, " are
truly nothing but Relations, yet they are so pecu
liar ways of agreement or disagreement of our
Ideas," they are "so different grounds of affirmation
and negation," that "they deserve well to be consi
dered as distinct heads, and not under Relation in
general" (iv. i. 7), — "as will easily appear," he adds,
" to any one who will but reflect on what is said in

INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. 1L5

several places of this Essay" (iv. i. 7). Now what is
it that is said in several places of this Essay? What
is said with reference to our Judgments of Coexist
ence, as distinguished from those of Identity and
Relation, we have already seen ; and, if we were to
quote every passage in which the distinction be
tween "Universal" and "Experimental" knowledge
is recognised, we might quote half the fourth book of
the Essay. But what is it that is said by Locke of
the Judgments of Identity, and the Judgments of
Relation, as distinguished from each other? "We
can know the truth of two sorts of propositions with
perfect certainty," says Locke ; " the one is of those
trifling propositions which have a certainty in them,
but it is only a verbal certainty, but not instruc
tive ; and, secondly, we can know the truth, and so
may be certain, in propositions which affirm some
thing of another which is a necessary consequence of
its precise Complex Idea, but not contained in it; this is
a real truth, and conveys with it instructive real
knowledge" (iv. viii. 8). What has Kant added to
the distinction thus enounced by Locke ? Absolutely
nothing. The very language of the two Philoso
phers is one. The summary of the Kantian account
of our Analytic Judgments is that they are Intui
tive Truths, arrived at by the analysis of a single
Idea, conveying no new knowledge, but at once in
dispensable and unproductive. What is the sum
mary of the Lockian account of Axioms or Maxims?
" The evidence of all these Maxims consists in that

i 2

116 INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE.

Intuitive Knowledge which is certain beyond all
doubt, and needs no probation, nor can have any"
(iv. xvii. 14; iv. vii. 19; iv. vii. 2); "their cer
tainty is founded only upon the knowledge we have
of each Idea by itself, and of its distinction from all
others" (iv. vii. 14); they are "truths, self-evident
truths, and so cannot be laid aside" (iv. vii. 14);
they are " universal propositions, which, though
they be certainly true, yet they add no light to
our understandings, bring no increase to our know
ledge" fiv. viii. 1). To illustrate the futility of
attempting to increase our knowledge by means of
Axioms, Locke describes a monkey shifting an oys
ter from one paw to the other, and fancying the
oyster to be multiplied by the process. This rouses
the ire of M. Cousin. " It is not exact," he says,
" it is not fair, to concentrate all Axioms, all Prin
ciples, all Primitive and Necessary Truths, in the
Axiom, c what is, is,' ; the same is the same'
— aux exemples vains et bouffons de Locke j' op
pose les exemples, les Axiomes suivants" (p. 320) ;
and M. Cousin opposes the Principle of Substance
and the like. Here again we have the reproduction
of an old error ; what can we do but reproduce the
old reply ? — " If those who blame my calling them
Trifling Propositions," says Locke, " had but read
and been at the pains to understand what I had
above writ down in very plain English, they could
not but have seen that by ' Identical Propositions' I
mean only such wherein the same Term importing

INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. 117

the same Idea is affirmed of itself" (iv. viii. 3). In
other words, while Locke restricts the term Axiom
to our Intuitive Judgments of Identity and Ana
lysis, M. Cousin, like Sir William Hamilton and
Reid, understands him as applying it to our Intui
tive Judgments in general.* Locke's examples of
Synthetic a priori Judgments, it is true, are mostly
taken from Geometrical Science ; but he has not
left us in doubt as to his views on the Principles of
Metaphysics and of Morals. The Principle of Sub
stance, as we have already seen, he recognises as
a Rational Principle, with every variety of expres
sion, and every concomitant of emphasis.f The
Principle of Causation and Final Causes he ex
pressly designates — "Principles of Common Rea
son" (i. iv. 10), and describes them as portions of
our " Intuitive Knowledge" (iv. x. 1, 3, 4, et seq.}.

* M. Cousin has charged Locke with extending his proscription
of Identical Propositions to Propositions which arc not Identical,
as, for instance, in the case of— " all Gold is fusible." " So far is
this from being an Identical Proposition," says M. Cousin, "that
the man who first enounced it enounced a great Physical disco
very ; it can only be regarded as Identical when the notion of
fusibility has become a part of the ordinary connotation of the
word Gold." This is precisely the view of Locke himself: — " 1
see not how it is any jot more material to say * Gold is fusible'
[than to say ' Gold is yellow'], unless that quality be left out of
the Complex Idea of which the sound ' Gold' is the mark in ordi
nary speech. What instruction can it carry with it, to tell one
that which he hath been told already, or he is supposed to know
before" (iv. viii. 5).

f ii. ii. Note; n. xxiii. 1, 4, Notes A and B; iv. iii. Note.

118 INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE.

He proclaims the Principles of Morality to be "Self-
evident Propositions" (iv. iii. 18), and numbers
them among those " Relations, Habitudes, and Con
nexions, so visibly included in the nature of the
Ideas themselves, that we cannot conceive them
separable from them by any power whatsoever"
(iv. iii. 29). And under what category does Locke
rank these Principles ? If we ignored every intima
tion of the fourth Book, the very titles of the chap
ters of the second would tell us it is under the
category of Relation. Does Locke regard these
Principles as unproductive ? On the contrary, it
is by means of these principles we make the
44 endless discoveries" of Mathematics (iv. iii. 18 ;
iv. xii. 7). It is by means of these that Mo
ral Science may be invested with the progres
sive and demonstrative character of Mathematical
(iv. iii. 18, 20). It is by means of these that we
arrive at the " discovery" of a God (i. iv. 9, 17 ;
iv. x. 1).

The mention of Mathematical Science suggests an
other misrepresentation of Sir William Hamilton,
which it may be well to consider — the more so, as
the consideration will place the Intellectual character
of Locke's Philosophy in the strongest light. In
illustration of the principle that the Mathematician
is better fitted than the Metaphysician to perceive
the difference bet ween Necessary Truths and Truths
that are furnished by Experience, Dr. Whewell re
fers to the case of Hume as holding that Geometri-

INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. 119

cal Truths themselves are only ascertained by Expe
rience. Indignant at this " inculpation of the Me
taphysicians," Sir William Hamilton asks, " why was
Locke not mentioned in the place of Hume ?" " If
Hume did advance such a doctrine," he says, " he
only sceptically took up what Locke dogmati
cally laid down. But in regard to Hume, Mr.
Whewell is wholly wrong. So far is this philo
sopher from holding ' that Geometrical Truths are
learnt by Experience/ that, while rating Mathemati
cal Science as a study at a very low account, he was
all too acute to countenance so crude an opinion in
regard to its foundation, and, in fact, is celebrated
for maintaining one precisely the reverse. On this
point Hume was neither Sensualist nor Sceptic ; but
deserted ^Enesidemus and Locke to encamp with
Descartes and Leibnitz" (Disc., p. 272). In this
passage everything is incorrect. In the first place
Sir William Hamilton neglects to tell us that, al
though Hume in his " Essays" admitted the a priori
origin of Geometrical Science, in his "Treatise of
Human Nature" he held even in its most para
doxical form the opinion attributed to him by Dr.
Whewell. In the second place, in asserting that
Hume merely sceptically took up what Locke dog
matically laid down, Sir Wm. Hamilton misrepre
sents the scope of the scepticism of Hume, which, as
we shall see, was essentially dogmatic. But in the
third place, granting that Dr. Whewell was wholly
in the wrong with regard to Hume, Sir William

120 INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE.

Hamilton is wholly in the wrong with regard to Locke.
So far is Locke from regarding Geometrical Science
as an educt from Experience, that he regards it as
a product of pure Intellect. " The Mathematician,"
says Locke, " considers the truth and properties be
longing to a rectangle or a circle only as they are
in Idea in his own Mind. For it is possible he never
found either of them existing mathematically, i. e.,
precisely true, in his life" (iv. iv. 6). " Real things,"
he says, " are no farther concerned, nor intended to
be meant by any such propositions, than as things
really agree to these Archetypes in his Mind" (Ibid. )
" Intending things no farther than they agree with
those his Ideas," he continues, " he is sure what he
knows concerning those Figures when they have
barely an Ideal Existence in the Mind will hold
true of them also when they have a Real Existence
in Matter" (Ibid.) These are the systematic de
clarations of the Essay. Like all other Abstract
Ideas, our Ideas of Geometrical Figure, according to
Locke are, " the creatures and inventions of the Un
derstanding" (in. iii. 11). Like all other General
Truths, Geometrical Propositions are discovered ex
clusively by "the contemplation of our own Abstract
Ideas" (iv. vi. 16). The very example given to illus
trate the nature of "Certain and Universal," as distin
guished from " Experimental," Knowledge, is taken
from Mathematical Science (iv. iii. 29). Accord
ingly, Locke tells us that our Mathematical Ideas are
"Ingenerable and Incorruptible" (in. iii. 19); and

INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. 121

that Mathematical Propositions, as expressive of Im
mutable Kelations, are " Eternal Truths" (iv. xi. 14).
In other words, Locke adopts the very phraseo
logy of the School of Plato — and Sir William
Hamilton boldly identifies him Avith the School of
Epicurus.*

One thing more, and the confutation of Sir Wil
liam Hamilton's criticism is complete. Among the
charges preferred against Locke by Stillingfleet was
that of" affecting the honour of an original." " But,"
says Locke, " how little I affect the honour of an
original may be seen in that place of my book where,

* I may add that Locke gives in his adhesion to the doctrine
maintained by Stewart, — that the Principles of Mathematical
discovery are not the Axioms, but the Definitions, or, as Locke
would call them, the Abstract Ideas. "It is evident," he says,
" that it was not the influence of these Maxims which are taken
for Principles in Mathematics, that hath led the Masters of that
Science into those wonderful discoveries they have made"
(iv. xii. 15.) In connexion with this subject of Geometrical
Figure I cannot resist quoting a curious remark of Mr. Hallam :
— "On the supposition of the Objectivity of Space, as truly ex
isting without us, which Locke undoubtedly assumes, it is certain
that the passage just quoted (iv. iv. 6) is entirely erroneous, aud
that it involves a confusion between Geometrical Figure itself and
its delineation to the eye. A Geometrical Figure is a portion of
Space contained in boundaries, determined by given Kelations. It
exists in the Infinite round about us, as the Statue exists in the
block .... The expression, therefore, of Locke, ' whether there be
any Square or Circle existing in the world or no,' is highly inaccurate,
the latter alternative being an absurdity" (Lit. Hist. iv. 133-4).
I doubt whether this criticism bo just. It is the ' delineation to
the eye' that is exclusively contemplated by Locke (in. iii. 19).

122 INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE.

if anywhere, that itch of vain-glory was likeliest to
have shown itself, had I been so overrun with it as
to need a cure." Now, where is it that Locke af
fects the honour of an original ? — for there, if any
where, we are likely to find the key to the interpre
tation of his system. Locke tells us it is where he
speaks of Certainty. "I think," he says, "I have shown
wherein it is that Certainty, real Certainty, consists"
(i. i. Note). In what, then, does Certainty, real Cer
tainty, consist, according to Locke ? Doubtless
in the Revelations of Sense, as might be expected
from " The Sensualism of Locke" — doubtless in the
Dictates of Experience, as might be expected from
" Locke's Empiricism." So says Sir William Ha
milton (Eeid, pp. 207, 294, 465, 784). But what says
Locke ? " Sensitive knowledge," says the Sensualist,
" reaches no further than the existence of things
present to the Senses" (iv. iii. 5) — "Experimen
tal knowledge," says the Empiric, " reaches no far
ther than the bare instance" (iv. 6, 7). In what,
then, does Certainty, real Certainty, consist ? Locke
tells us. He tells us that " the certainty and evi
dence of all our knowledge" depends on the " bright
sunshine" of" Intuition" (iv. ii. 1). He tells us that
" the only true way of certain and universal know
ledge" is " by our Ideas" and " the perception of their
necessary connexions" (iv. iii. 14). He tells us that
"the foundation of all knowledge and certainty" is to
be found in that "Intuitive knowledge" which " neither
requires nor admits proof" (iv. vii. 19 ; iv. xvii. 14).

INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. 123

He tells us that " as to all general knowledge, we
must search and find it only in our own Minds
(iv. iii. 31). He tells us that "general certainty
is never to be found but in our Ideas" (iv. vi. 16).
In short, he " founds Knowledge on Belief, the ob
jective certainty of Science on the subjective neces
sity of Believing," and the doctrine of " Aristotle,
his Greek commentators, and the Schoolmen," is thus
enounced by the Philosopher who is said to have
relied exclusively on the authority of " Gassendi"
(fieid, pp. 771, 784). What, then, is the real po
sition in which, at the close of this discussion, Sir
William Hamilton stands to Locke ? Locke centres
the whole originality of his Philosophy in its de
velopment of scientific knowledge from Intuition ;
and Sir William Hamilton represents him as main
taining the thesis that all our knowledge is an educt
from Experience ! Well might Locke exclaim to
Stillingfleet — " Truly, my Lord, my book hath most
unlucky stars !"

The manner in which Sir William Hamilton closes
his vindication of Reid against Brown is well
known. " On all this," he says, " no observation of
ours can be either so apposite or authoritative as
the edifying reflections with which Dr. Brown him
self concludes his vindication of the Philosophers
against Eeid. Brown's precept is sound, but his ex
ample is instructive. One word we leave a blank,
which the reader may himself supply. That a mind
so vigorous as that of Dr. - - should have been ca-

124 INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE.

pable of the series of misconceptions which we have
traced may seem wonderful, and truly is so ; and
equally, or rather still more wonderful, is the general
admission of his merit in this respect. I trust it will
impress you with one important lesson — to consult
the opinions of authors in their own works, and not in
the works of those who profess to give a faithful account
of them"— (Disc.,?. 82).

Quam temcrc in nosmet legem saneimus iniquam !

The blank supplied by Brown with the name of Reid,
and by Sir William Hamilton with the name of
Brown, may, with respect to Locke, be supplied with
the name of Sir William Hamilton himself. That
Sir William Hamilton was a great philosophical
genius, I admit. I acknowledge the powerful stimu
lus he has communicated to the spirit of Philosophy,
which in this country had so long lain dormant,
and to all appearance dead. The editor of Reid,
the expositor of Kant, the critic of M. Cousin, above
all, the author of that invaluable Analysis of the
various Theories of Perception which constitutes his
great contribution to the stores of Philosophy, Sir
William Hamilton stands without a rival, the phi
losophic glory of an unphilosophic age. I do all
homage to his memory. But a great Philosophical
Thinker is not necessarily a patient and impartial
Philosophical Critic. To the just appreciation of an
alien system a certain passivity of intellect is re
quired. A strong current of original thought prc-

INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE. 125

vents the mind from being an equal mirror to the
thoughts of others. The standing pool reflects the
forest and the sky more faithfully than the running
stream ; and it is possible to be a more faithful critic
than a great man — not because one is a greater man,
but because one is a less,

VII.

REAL EXISTENCE.

AT the opening of the second book of the Essay
concerning Human Understanding, Locke proclaims
that " in Experience all our Knowledge is founded,
and from that it ultimately derives itself" (u. i. 2).
At the opening of the fourth he proclaims that " it
is on Intuition that depends all the certainty and
evidence of all our Knowledge" (iv. ii. 1). Viewed
in a spirit of antagonism, these two propositions
present the appearance of an irreconcilable con
tradiction, — viewed in a conciliating spirit, which
is, after all, the true spirit of criticism, they are
found to correspond to the declaration of Sir William
Hamilton, that " our Knowledge chronologically
commences with Sense, but logically originates with
Intellect."

To complete our analysis of Locke's Theory of
Knowledge one point still remains to be considered
— his doctrine of Real Existence. It is on this point
that the doctrine of the Essay is especially impugned
by M. Cousin. Locke, as we have seen, resolves all
knowledge into a perception of the " conformity" or
" difformity" of Ideas. This Theory M. Cousin at-

REAL EXISTENCE. 127

tacks from every side. What, for instance, he says,
are the Conditions of Conformity? (p. 225). All Con
formity, it seems, supposes Representation, — all
Representation implies Resemblance, — all Resem
blance involves an Image, — there can be no Image
without Figure, — and Figure is one of the Primary
Qualities of Matter. Locke's Idea, therefore, says
M. Cousin, is a "Material Idea-Image" (p. 226), —
a doctrine which, considered in relation to the " Ob
ject" of Knowledge, eventuates in "Nihilism" (p. 245 ),
which, considered in relation to the " Subject" of
Knowledge, entails "Materialism" (p. 251), and
which, considered in relation to the Act of knowing,
involves a Pleonasm if we possess the Original, and
a Parologism if we possess it not (p. 261). But the
chain of M. Cousin gives way at every link. In the
first place, Locke's Conformity does not always imply
Representation, for in Scientific Knowledge Confor
mity is nothing but " necessary connexion" (iv. iii.
14). In the second place, Locke's Representation does
not always involve Resemblance, for in the case of the
Secondary Qualities, our Ideas are merely the " con
stant effect" of an unresembling power (n. xxx. 2).
In the third place, Locke's Resemblance does not en
tail the Idea-Image, for even in the case of the Pri
mary Qualities of Matter the " exact resemblance"
of the Idea is a mere assertion of the " real existence"
of its object (n. viii. 15, 17, 23). The Idea-Image
is thus a mere chimera of M. Cousin. Locke's Nihi
lism and Materialism, his Paralogism and Pleonasm,

128 REAL EXISTENCE.

die with the chimera that gave them birth. Nor is
M. Cousin more fortunate when he assails Locke's
Theory of Knowledge with respect to the "Condi
tions of Agreement" (p. 281). The Conditions of
Agreement, he says, are three, — the existence of two
Ideas "anterior" to the act of comparison, a com-
parison of these two Ideas, and a perception of their
congruity (p. 281) ; a theory, he says, which ends
in abstractions, which starts from abstractions, and
which starts from abstractions only by the most
ridiculous paralogism (p. 290). The answer of the
advocate of Locke is as brief as it is triumphant.
The word " anterior" has no existence in the Theory
of Locke. According to Locke, Knowledge does not
" result from," it " consists in," the comparison, the
mutual predication, of Ideas (iv. i. 2). Of the com
pared Ideas one may be given in the very act of
comparison. The Idea on which M. Cousin so stre-
nously insists is a case in point. The Idea of Exist
ence, according to Locke, is suggested to the Under
standing by a single datum of Experience, a sugges
tion which is immediately followed up by a judgment
which affirms that the datum of Experience in reality
exists (n. vii. 7). The same answer is to be made
when M. Cousin attacks Locke's Theory with respect
to the " Conditions of Comparison" (p. 302). "Pour
qu' il y ait comparaison," says M. Cousin, " il faut
deux termes a comparer" (p. 304). Nothing can be
more true. " Et il faut," M. Cousin continues, " que
ces deux termes soient presents a 1'esprit avant que

REAL EXISTENCE. 129

Fesprit les compare et juge" (p. 304). Nothing can
be more false. " Eh bien !" M. Cousin triumphantly
exclaims, " cela saint pour renverser la Theorie du
Jugement Comparatif en matiere de Realite et
d'Existence" (p. 304).

But let us examine Locke's doctrine of Real Exist
ence more narrowly. That doctrine is summed up
in the proposition that " we have an INTUITIVE
knowledge of our own Existence, a DEMONSTRATIVE
knowledge of the Existence of God, and of every
thing else a SENSITIVE knowledge, which extends not
beyond the objects present to the Senses" (iv. iii. 21).
On each of the three great Ontological Realities let
us endeavour to ascertain the views of Locke.

What, for instance, are Locke's views with respect
to the Ontologic Reality of the WORLD ? In pro
fessed opposition to Locke, M. Cousin asserts that
we attain the knowledge of material existence " di
rectly" (p. 262). Yet, he admits as distinctly as
Locke himself, that all that Consciousness can attain
" directly" is our own Ideas (pp. 75, 140). Here
again we have a collision of shades ; the fancied
opponents are in reality agreed. " Existence? says
Locke, "is an Idea suggested to the Understanding
by every object without ; — we consider things to be
actually without us, which is that they have exis
tence" (n. vii. 7). In the words of M, Cousin, our
first notion of External Existence is a Suggestion of
the Understanding on the occasion of a single datum
of Sensation (pp. 297, 309). " Simple Ideas," says

K

130 REAL EXISTENCE.

Locke, " since the mind can by no means make them
to itself, must necessarily be the product of things
operating on the mind in a natural way" (iv. iv. 4) ;
" it must needs be some Exterior Cause that produces
those Ideas in my mind" (iv. xi. 5). In the words
of M. Cousin, the Principle of Causality is " the Sire
of the External World" (p. 157). "All Sensible
Qualities," says Locke, " carry with them a supposi
tion of a Substratum to exist in" (IL xxiii. Note B) ;
" we cannot conceive how Sensible Qualities should
subsist alone, and, therefore, we suppose them to
exist in some common Subject" (n. xxiii. Note A).
In the words of M. Cousin, Material Substance is
a Revelation of Reason in the exercise of Sense
(p. 142). When, therefore, Locke asserts that we
have a " Sensitive Knowledge " of the External
World (iv. ii. 14) — when he asserts that " Sensa
tion" convinces us that there are Material Substances
(iv. xi. 1; ii. xxiii. 29) — he merely asserts that the
Understanding possesses a knowledge of external
things, to the development of which Sensation af
fords occasion — which is precisely the doctrine of
M. Cousin.

Reid deems it " strange that Locke, who wrote so
much about Ideas, should not see those consequences
which Berkeley thought so obviously deducible from
that doctrine" (p. 286). This is an injustice to
Locke's philosophical acumen. " There can be no
thing more certain," he says, "than that the Idea
we receive from an external object is in our minds ;

REAL EXISTENCE. 131

this is Intuitive Knowledge. But whether there be
anything more than barely that Idea in our minds,
whether we can thence certainly infer the existence
of anything without us which corresponds to that
Idea, is that whereof some men think there may be
a question made ; because men may have such Ideas
in their minds when no such thing exists, no such
object affects their Senses (iv. ii. 14; iv. xi. 1, seq.).
Who these ante- Berk eleian Idealists may have
been, we need not inquire ; but Berkeleianism evi
dently existed before Berkeley. Locke settles the
controversy much in the same way as Reid. An
External Reality, he says, is the natural Suggestion
of the Understanding (n. vii. 7) ; and " the confi
dence that our faculties do not herein deceive us is
the greatest assurance we are capable of concerning
the existence of material things" (iv. xi. 3).

But if Locke recognised the objective existence of
the World of Matter, a fortiori, he recognised the ob
jective existence of the Universe of Space. M. Cou
sin charges Locke with " explicitly" identifying the
Universe of Space with the Material Universe, and
professes to quote Locke's words in support of the
allegation : — " To say that the world is somewhere
means no more than that it does exist" (n. xiii. 10).
Yet even the very context of the passage which M.
Cousin so monstrously perverts might have con
vinced him of his error. " When one can find out
and frame in his mind clearly and distinctly the
place of the Universe," says Locke, " he will be able

K2

132 REAL EXISTENCE.

to tell us whether it moves or stands still in the un-
distinguishable Inane" (Ibid.). If we demand whe
ther Space be Substance or Accident, Locke, more
wise in his profession of ignorance than his oppo
nents in their plenitude of knowledge, replies, " I
know not" (n. xiii. 17). That it is not a mere Form
of the Sensibility, he is convinced. Here, again,
the Speculative Reason of the Philosopher acquiesces
in the dictates of the Common Sense of Mankind.
The very Idea of Space, he says, " naturally leads
us" to the belief of its objective reality. Adaman
tine walls would be unable to arrest the mind
in its progress through it ; Thought is incompe
tent to realize the Idea of its non-existence. Even
here Locke does not abandon the sobriety of the
true sage. Though Reason reveals the Existence of
the Infinite, Imagination is unable to compass the
Idea. " All our positive Ideas have always bounds"
(n. xvii. 18). Man " can no more have a positive
Idea of the greatest than he has of the least Space"
(Ibid.). The Infinite and the Absolute are equally
beyond the reach of his Imagination, and u the defect
in his Ideas" on the subject is a mark of the dispro
portion that exists between his " narrow capacities"
and the boundless extent of things (n. xvii. 21).

With regard to the World, Locke, according to
M. Cousin, is betrayed into semi-scepticism — with
regard to the SOUL, his Scepticism is absolute. " Sur
Texistence de VEsprit" says Locke, if we are to
believe M. Cousin, " nous devons nous contenter de

REAL EXISTENCE. 133

Tevidence de la foi" — " voila bien," he exclaims, " ce
me semble le Scepticisme absolu." But what are the
words of which this passage professes to give the
translation ? — " Concerning the existence of Finite
Spirits we must content ourselves with the Evidence
of Faith" (iv. xi. 12). Is this absolute Scepticism?
Then all mankind are absolute Sceptics. The days
have long passed since the Angel conversed with
Adam. No longer do we hear the voice of " Woman
wailing for her Daemon lover." The denizens of the
invisible world may still mix themselves up in the
affairs of men as the gods and goddesses in " the
tale of Troy divine ;" but the mist which Pallas
Athene removed from the eyes of Diomed still rests
on the vision of ordinary men. Carried away with
his illusion, however, M. Cousin is pitiless to Locke.
The vehemence with which he precipitates himself
upon his foe is characteristic of his nation. " There
is no Philosopher at once more sage and more in
consequent than Locke — he explains obscurum per
obscurius — he evokes Faith from the Abyss of Pa
ralogism— partout, a chaque pas dans la Theorie
de Locke des Abimes de Paralogisme" (p. 245).* >

* Monstrous as is this misrepresentation, it is gravely reproduced
by M. Cousin's American translator — a Professor of Philosophy—
a speaker of the English language — a countryman of Locke. " It
was a question," he says, " about the Existence of Finite Spirits,
our own Souls." In fact, every misrepresentation of M. Cousin is
blindly reproduced by Dr. Henry— with one solitary exception in
the case of the Freedom of the Human Will.

134 HEAL EXISTENCE.

But from the din of a contentious criticism let us
escape to the calm Philosophy of its illustrious ob
ject. "Experience," says Locke, "convinces us that
we have an Intuitive knowledge of our own exist
ence, and an internal infallible perception that we
are. I think, I reason, I feel pleasure and pain:
can any of these be more evident to me than my
own existence ? If I doubt of all other things, that
very doubt makes me perceive my own existence,
and will not suffer me to doubt of that" (iv. ix. 3).
Locke's Doctrine of the Soul, therefore, starts from the
" Cogito ergo sum" of Descartes. But Locke is far
from acquiescing in the Cartesian conclusion that
the Essence of the Soul consists in Thought* "We
know certainly by experience that we sometimes
think ; and hence," he says, " we draw the infallible
consequence that there is something in us that has
a power to think" (n. i. 10); "the Idea of this ac
tion or mode of thinking is inconsistent with the
Idea of Self-subsistence, and, therefore, has a neces
sary connexion with a support or subject of inhe
sion" (iv. iii. Note). Locke recognises, therefore,
the existence of a Thinking Substance. Whether he

* I say the Cartesian conclusion, for, as Mr. Stewart has shown,
we have no reason for considering it the opinion of Descartes him
self (Elements, vol. i., Note A}. In stating that Thought "con
stitutes" the Substance of the Soul, and that Extension "constitutes"
the Substance denominated Matter, he merely means that Thought
and Extension determine the nature of the two Substances in
which they are inherent — as he has just before stated, "ex
quo vis Attribute cognoscitur Substantial'

REAL EXISTENCE. 135

regards this Substance as Material or not, is ano
ther question. " Concluding the operations of the
Mind," he says, " not to subsist of themselves, nor
apprehending how they can belong to body, or be
produced by it, we are apt to think these the ac
tions of some other Substance which we call "Spirit"
(n. xxiii. 5). Here we have a recognition of
the great Philosophic argument by which the
Immateriality of the Soul has been vindicated by
every Intellectual Philosopher from Aristotle and
Cicero to Sir William Hamilton and M. Cousin.
Mind has none of the attributes of Matter — Matter
possesses none of the attributes of Mind. Locke, it
is true, concedes that he has not proved, and that
on his principles it cannot be "demonstratively"
proved, " that there is an Immaterial Substance
in us that thinks" (iv. iii. Note) ; yet "from our
Ideas," he conceives, " it may be proved that it is to
the highest degree probable that it is immaterial"
(iv. iii. Note). "Matter," as he elsewhere says, "is
evidently in its own nature void of Sense and
Thought" (iv. iii. 6) — Thought "cannot be the ac
tion of base insensible Matter, nor ever could be,
without an Immaterial thinking Being" (n. xxiii. 15).
The reason of Locke's reserve on this subject has
been strangely misunderstood. — " Since we know
not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort of
Substances the Almighty has been pleased to give
that power, I see no contradiction in it," he says,
" that the first eternal thinking Being should, if he

136 KEAL EXISTENCE.

pleased, give to certain systems of created sense
less Matter, put together as he thinks fit, some de
gree of Sense, Perception, and Thought" (iv. iii. 6).
So far, therefore, is Locke from having recourse to
Deity to prove the Immateriality of the Soul, as M.
Cousin asserts, that it is only from a reluctance to
set limits to the Omnipotence of God that he admits
the possibility of its being material. Was Locke
right in thus modifying his Philosophy by theo
logical considerations ? That is another question.
That "all Quality presupposes a Substance," is a
proposition, the negation of which involves a con
tradiction not only to the Laws of Thought, but to
the Nature of Things. That " such as is the Qua
lity, such also must be the Substance," is a proposi
tion which is so far from being a Law of Nature
that many Philosophers, the Philosopher of Kcenigs-
berg among the rest, have denied it even to be a
Law of Thought. " It is not an easy matter," says
Stillingfleet, "to give an account how the Soul
should be capable of Immortality, unless it be an
Immaterial Substance." M. Cousin goes farther —
" If the Soul be not an Immaterial Substance," he
says, " we ought not to say that its Immortality is
doubtful; we ought to say that it is impossible"
(Kant, p. 169). In other words, the whole fabric
of our future hopes is founded on the floating island
of a Metaphysical abstraction. The doctrine of
Locke is more modest and more true. The Im
mortality of the Soul is dependent on the will

KEAL EXISTENCE. 137

of the Deity. The power that created the Soul
may continue its existence through Eternity, or
annihilate it according to his own good pleasure.
No necessary existence, no emanation from the
divine essence, no attribute of divinity, is attri
buted to the Soul by Locke. Its hopes of Immor
tality are centred all in God.* "All the great ends of
Morality and Religion," he says, " are well enough
secured without Philosophical proof of the Soul's
Immateriality, since it is evident that He who made
us at the beginning to subsist here, sensible and

* According to Kant — and Tenneman is the mere echo of his
master — Locke, "after having derived all the conceptions and
principles of the Mind from Experience, goes so far in the employ
ment of these conceptions and principles as to maintain that
we can prove the Existence of God, and the Immortality of the
Soul, — "both of them lying beyond the limits of possible [actual]
experience, — with the same force of demonstration as any ma
thematical proposition." But here there is a double misrepre
sentation. Locke did not derive all the principles of the Mind from
Experience. Locke did not hold that the Immortality of the
Soul is a demonstrable Truth. He holds the very contrary — that
"it neither was nor could be made out by natural Keason without
Kevelation" (iv. iii. Note). Locke himself seems to have fallen
into an historical error in his controversy with Stillingneet.
He states that in the whole first book of the Tusculan Disputa
tions "there is not one syllable showing the least thought that
the Soul was an Immaterial Substance." But the doctrine
enounced by Aristotle, and adopted by Cicero himself, the doctrine
of the "Quinta Natura," was itself the doctrine of Immaterial
Substance, and Cicero supports it by the very argument of
M. Cousin,— Mind has none of the attributes of Matter, Matter
has none of the attributes of Mind (Tuse. Lisp. i. 27). Locke

138 REAL EXISTENCE.

intelligent beings, and for several years continued
us in such a state, can restore us to the like state of
sensibility in another world, and make us capable
there to receive the retribution He has designed
to men according to their doings in this life"*
(iv. iii. 6).

But our difficulties with respect to Locke's theory
of the Soul are not yet exhausted. " He that shall,
with a little attention, reflect on the Kesurrection,"
says Locke, " and consider that Divine Justice shall

makes a still stranger mistake, in which, however, he has been
very generally followed, among others by Clarke. As a proof of
the necessity of a Revelation to decide the question of the Immor
tality of the Soul, he quotes the remark of Cicero — " harum sen-
tentiarum quae vera sit Dcus aliqui viderit, quae verisimillima
magna quaestio" (i. 11). But the truth is, Cicero is here speak
ing not of the Immortality of the Soul, but of its Essence — whether
it was Air, or Fire, or Blood ; whether it was a Number, a Har
mony, or an Entelecheia — and the "Deus aliqui viderit," instead
of being a recognition of the necessity of a Revelation, is merely
a profane "God knows."

* The value of the doctrine of Immateriality in the establish
ment of the Soul's Immortality seems to me purely negative. It
is in this light it is regarded by Bishop Butler : — " Upon suppo
sition that living agent each man calls himself is a single being,"
he says, " it follows that our organized bodies are no more our
selves or part of ourselves than any other matter around us,"
and that, therefore, " the dissolution of the body has no conceiva
ble tendency to destroy the living being." Compare this with the
conclusion deduced by Cicero from the same fact : — "cum simplex
natura animi esset, non posse eum dividi ; quod si non possit, non
posse interire." It is no wonder that with such a view Cicero
proclaimed the Soul to be not only Divine, but God.

REAL EXISTENCE. 139

bring to Judgment at the last day the very same
persons to be happy or miserable in the other, who
did well or ill in this life, will find it, perhaps, not
easy to resolve with himself what makes the same
man, or wherein Identity consists" (i. iv. 15). This
brings us to the consideration of Locke's Theory of
Personal Identity — a theory which has passed into
a byword of philosophical contempt, and which has
been regarded only as an example of the absurdities
into which genius may be betrayed. But the ridicule
of Locke's critics has proceeded on the confusion of
two things, which Locke has most carefully dis
tinguished. Locke " agrees that the more probable
opinion is that Consciousness is annexed to, and the
affection of, one individual immaterial Substance"
(n. xxvii. 25) ; and he holds that " whatever Sub
stance begins to exist, must during its existence be
necessarily the same" (n. xxvii. 28). With regard
to the Identity of the Spiritual Substance, therefore,
he concedes everything for which his antagonists
contend. " But," says Locke, " it is not unity of
Substance that comprehends all sorts of Identity, or
will determine it in every case ; it being one thing
to be the same ' Substance ;' another, the same ' Man ;'
and another, the same ' Person' (n. xxvii. 7). What
then is Locke's Theory of Personal Identity? " To
find wherein Personal Identity consists," he says,
" we must consider what Person stands for, which,
I think, is a thinking, intelligent being that has
Reason and Reflection, and can consider itself as it-

140 REAL EXISTENCE.

self, the same thinking thing, in different times and
places" (n. xxvii. 9). Now how is it that a think
ing thing can consider itself as itself, the same in dif
ferent times and places ? Evidently by an act of
Judgment, and accordingly, in strict consistency
with himself, Locke enumerates the idea of Personal
Identity among those Relative Ideas which he sys
tematically regards as " the creatures or inventions
of the Understanding." But what is the Chro
nological Condition of the development of this
Judgment ? Evidently an act of Consciousness.
" Consciousness," says Locke, " is inseparable from
thinking, and essential to it" (n. xxvii. 9) — "Con
sciousness," as he subsequently adds, including un
der it "a present representation of a past action"
(n. xxvii. 13). But Consciousness is not only
the Chronological Condition of the development of
the Judgment. All self-regard is centred in hap
piness and misery, and all happiness and misery are
centred in Consciousness. — What becomes of " any
Substance not joined to or affected with our Con
sciousness" is a matter of the most complete indiffe
rence (11. xxvii. 17, 18). In this sense, therefore, our
Personal Identity may be said to " consist" in Con
sciousness — Consciousness, by a third deviation of
meaning, being employed by Locke to designate the
continuity of correlated Consciousnesses (n. xxvii.
25). But this is not all. For the best refutation of
Locke's theory of Personal Identity Sir William
Hamilton refers us to M. Cousin (Reid, p. 351) — it

REAL EXISTENCE. 141

is to M. Cousin I would refer for its best elucidation
and defence. In his Introduction to the Gorgias of
Plato, the French Philosopher discovers the " Princi
ple of Penality " in the fact that the unjust man thinks,
and cannot but think, that he is undeserving. " That
which declares and measures the Moral Imputability
of Actions," he says in his Lectures on Locke, " is
the Consciousness of the free will that has produced
them" (p. 139) — "the Consciousness of Merit and
Demerit is the condition of all Reward and Punish
ment" (p. 191). Expressed in other language, these
are the very views of Locke. " Person," he says,
" is a forensic term, appropriating actions and their
merit" (n. xxvii. 26). The Consciousness in the
continuity of which he makes Personal Identity con
sist is the " Consciousness which draws Eeward and
Punishment with it" (n xxvii. 13). It is in sup
port of this view that he appeals both to the Com
mon Sense of Mankind, and to the Justice of God.
" Human Laws," he says, " do not punish the mad
man for the sober man's actions, nor the sober man
for what the madman did" (n. xxvii. 20). " Sup
posing a man punished i/ow for what he had done
in another life, whereof he could be made to have
no Consciousness at all, what difference is there," he
asks, " between that punishment and being created
miserable" (§ 26)? Nay, in this matter Locke does
not hesitate to appeal to Revelation itself. " Con
formable to this," he says, " the Apostle tells us that
at the great day, when everyone shall ' receive accord-

142 REAL EXISTENCE.

ing to his doings, the secrets of all hearts shall be laid
open.' The sentence shall be justified by the Con
sciousness all persons shall have that they themselves,
in what bodies soever they appear, or what substance
soever that Consciousness adheres to, are the same
that committed those actions, and deserve that pun
ishment for them" (Ibid.).

Locke's theory of Personal Identity is thus the
theory, not, as Brown would say, of our Mental, but
of our Moral Identity. M. Cousin denounces it as
the annihilation of all Moral Responsibility ; it is
in connexion with our Moral Responsibility that its
truth is most conspicuously clear. Moral Respon
sibility is no longer the mere creature of a Meta
physical dogma. If, as Locke believes, the soul
throughout the term of its existence be one indivi
dual immaterial substance, then Identity of Sub
stance arid Identity of Person are coincident and
one. But even if, as the Materialist asserts, the
substance of the soul be subjected to fluctuations
as incessant as the substance of the body — even if
atom after atom and essence after essence should
disappear in the running stream of change — yet if
Consciousness continue, none of the constituents of
our Moral Agency are necessarily lost. In the Moral
world, as Conscience is the only judge, so Conscious
ness is the only witness. Before the august tribunal
of the God within, the metaphysical subtilties of
Substance and Essence are never raised. It is not
upon these that Virtue builds her security, her exul-

REAL EXISTENCE. 143

tation, or her hope. It is not in these that Vice seeks
refuge from the agonies of regret, repentance, and
remorse. The Consciousness of good or ill desert is
the condition of Moral Retribution ; the Conscious
ness of happiness or misery is the essence of Reward
and Punishment. All the elements of our Persona
lity thus gather around Consciousness ; and it is in
Consciousness, therefore, that Locke has centred the
Moral Identity of Man.

Such is Locke's doctrine with reference to the
World ; such is his doctrine with reference to the
Soul. What is the decision of his Philosophy with
reference to GOD ? " The Theodicy of Locke," says
M. Cousin, " in rejecting the argument a priori, and
in employing by preference the argument a poste
riori, still retains and develops the fundamental
character of his system" (p. 375). But here there
is a twofold error. In the first place, Locke does
not reject the a priori argument. " Our Idea of a
most Perfect Being," he says, " is not the sole proof
of a God" (iv. x. 7). Neither in the second place
is the argument which he adopts in preference the
argument which is commonly designated a posteriori.
Divested of the mystical speculations which would
identify the Deity with Space, Locke's argument is
in reality the argument of Clarke. Like Clarke, he
postulates o-ur Personal Existence, and by means of
the Principle of Causality attains to the conception
of a Primeval Cause ; like Clarke, he postulates our
Personal Intelligence, and by the aid of the Principle

144 REAL EXISTENCE.

of the Complement of Effects, arrives at the know
ledge of a Primeval Mind (iv. x. 3, 5). It is true
Locke's Theodicy retains and develops the funda
mental character of his Philosophy. But the fun-
damental character of that Philosophy is not the
eduction of knowledge from Experience — it is the
deduction of knowledge from Intuition. It is on
the principles of "Intuitive Certainty" — it is by an
appeal to the " necessary" development of the Laws
of Thought — it is on the authority of our Rational
Faculties that he repudiates both the Atheistic Ma
terialism of the disciple of Hobbes and the Pan
theistic Materialism of the disciple of Spinoza
(iv. x. 1-19). The manner in which we frame the
Idea of God, when, by the aid of the " Principles of
Reason," we have arrived at a knowledge of his
Existence, is purely Kantian. We combine all the
various perfections which our Experience enables us
to conceive, enlarge them with the Idea of Infinity,
and then objectify the Concept (n. xxiii. 33-35).
Nor in the formation of this " Ideal" are the Moral
Attributes omitted. " Locke's theory," says M.

Cousin, " tends to make God an Arbitrary King

to substitute in God will and power for reason and
wisdom. It is a Theodicy of the Senses, not of the
Reason — made for slaves and brute beasts, not for
beings intelligent and free" (p. 195). But here again
M. Cousin's charge is based on a mutilation of
Locke's expressions. Locke does not assert, as
M. Cousin says he asserts, that " the punishments

REAL EXISTENCE. 145

and rewards of another life are the sole touchstone,
the sole measure of the rectitude of our actions"
(p. 194) ; he asserts that " the only true touchstone
of moral rectitude" is, " whether, as Sins and Duties,
our actions are like to procure us happiness or mi
sery from the hands of the Almighty" (n. xxviii. 8).
If Locke proclaims the duty of a passive obedience
to Heaven, it is not by a reference to a brute omni
potence of force. If God has imposed a law
which we are called upon implicitly to obey, " He
has a right to do it ; we are His creatures. He has
goodness and wisdom to direct our actions to that
which is best11 (Ibid.) So far, indeed, is Locke from
regarding the Divine Will as the fountain of the
Moral Law, that he regards the Moral Law as the
regulative principle of the Divine Will. " If," he
says, " it were fit for such poor finite creatures as
we are to pronounce what Infinite Wisdom and
Goodness could do, I think we might say that God
himself cannot choose what is not good. The Freedom
of the Almighty hinders not his being determined
by what is best" (u. xxi. 49). Locke, therefore, is
neither the disciple of Democritus nor the follower
of Ockham. In the great Polity of Worlds he pro
claims neither an Anarchy of Chance nor an Au
tocracy of Arbitrary Will. He regards it as the Free .
Monarchy of God. God, in his view, is not an Ar- \
bitrary King, nor is Man the slave of Omnipotence. '.'
Even the divine prerogative is limited by the Moral
Law; the Moral Law is the charter of the rights and
liberties of the universe.

VIII.

FREEDOM AND THE MOKAL LAW.

" I OWN freely to you the weakness of my Under-
standing," says Locke in one of his letters to Moly-
neux, " that though it be unquestionable that there
is Omnipotence and Omniscience in God our Maker,
and though I cannot have a clearer perception of
anything than that I am free ; yet I cannot make
Freedom in Man consistent with Omnipotence and
Omniscience in God, though I am as fully persuaded
of both as of any truth I most firmly assent to ; and,
therefore, I have long since given off the considera
tion of that question ; resolving all into this short
conclusion, that if it be possible for God to make a
Free Agent, then Man is free, though I see not the
way of it."

Locke, then, is professedly a believer in the Free
dom of the Human Will. In the Essay, it is true,
he asserts that " Liberty belongs not to the Will"
(n. xxi. 14). But the contradiction is merely ver
bal. " I think the question is not proper," he says,
" whether the Will be free, but whether a Man be
free" (n. xxi. 21). Locke, therefore, does not, as
M. Cousin asserts, destroy the question of Liberty ;

FREEDOM AND THE MORAL LAW. 147

does he, as M. Cousin asserts, destroy Liberty itself?
All depends on the sense in which he attributes
Liberty to Man.

In the first place, then, is Locke's Liberty the
Liberty of Spontaneity — the Liberty of acting as we
will, the Will being predetermined to act by the ope
ration of certain motives ? In this case Liberty is
a mere Liberty in words —

" Free-will is but Necessity in play,
The clattering of the golden reins which guide
The thunder-footed coursers of the Sun."

Such a Liberty is so far from being incompatible
with Omniscience, that its effects could be mathe
matically calculated by athe Eternal Geometer," and
had such been Locke's notion of Liberty, his difficulty
would have had no existence. Is Locke's Liberty,
then, the Liberty of Indifference — a Liberty indepen
dent on any motive and antecedent to any determi
nation of the Understanding — a Liberty of which
the expression is an irrational sic volo, and in which
stat pro ratione voluntas ? In that case Liberty is
but a synonym for Caprice, and Man escapes being
the Slave of Necessity only to become the Sport of
Chance. Locke rejects such a notion with disdain.
" To place Liberty in an IndiiFerency antecedent to
the thought and judgment of the Understanding,"
he says, " seems to me to place Liberty in a state of
darkness" (u. xxi. 71). What, then, is Locke's
Liberty the Liberty of Self-determination ? Is it a

L 2

148 FREEDOM AND THE MORAL LAW.

liberty which leaves man as free to will as he is free
to act ? " In all proposals of present action," says
Locke, " a man is not at liberty to will or not be
cause he cannot forbear willing" (n. xxi. 24). In
other words, we must either will to act or we must
will riot to act ; " not to resolve," as Bacon says,
" is to resolve ;" the Will cannot remain passive ;
we cannot choose but will. But what of the selection
of the alternative ? Does man possess the power to
will his will in this ? " In that case," says Locke,
" we must suppose one Will to determine the acts of
another, and another to determine that ; and so on,
in infinitum" (n. xxi. 25). Locke's Liberty, there
fore, would seem to be neither the Liberty of Spon
taneity, nor the Liberty of Indifference, nor the
Liberty of Self-determination. What, then, is this
Liberty of Locke's? It is the Liberty of Self -sus
pense.

To understand the meaning of this phrase we
must give Locke's answers to a variety of queries.
" What is it that determines the Will ?" According
to Locke, " the true and proper answer is, the Mind"
(n. xxi. 29). "What is it that determines the
Mind ?" Locke tells us it is " the uneasiness of De
sire" (n. xxi. 33). What is it that moves Desire ?
Locke's answer is " Happiness, and that alone "
(n. xxi. 41). But Happiness, according to Locke,
may be either true or false. Our Pleasures and
Pains are sometimes found in competition. In the
rational pursuit of our well-being it is frequently

FREEDOM AND THE MORAL LAW. 149

wise to sacrifice the gratification of the moment to
the Happiness on the whole. This is true of the
present life, and a fortiori with reference to the
future,, Here, then, the Seat of Liberty is placed
by Locke. The Mind possesses " a power to suspend
the execution and satisfaction of any of its desires ;"
it is " at liberty to consider the objects of them,
examine them on all sides, and weigh them with
others" (n. xxi. 47). All that follows is moral ne
cessity. " It is not a fault but a perfection of our
nature to desire, will, and act according to the last
result of a fair examination" (Ibid.) All " Liberty
lies in this, that men can suspend their desires and
stop them from determining their wills to any ac
tion, till they have duly arid fairly examined the
good and evil of it, as far forth as the weight of the
thing requires" (n. xxi. 52). Such is the theory of
Locke.

But this theory of Locke involves a latent para
dox. " Till we are as much informed upon this in
quiry as the weight of the matter and the nature of
the case demands," says Locke, u we are, by the ne
cessity of preferring and pursuing true happiness as
our greatest good, obliged to suspend the satisfaction
of our desire in particular cases" (n. xxi. 51) ; in
other words, to quote the heading of the paragraph
from which this passage is extracted, " the necessity
of pursuing true happiness is the foundation of all
Liberty.'" Locke's Liberty, therefore, in words at
least, glides down the slope of Motives into the

150 FREEDOM AND THE MORAL LAW.

chasm of Necessity. But is this result entailed by
the exigencies of Locke's Theory ? It is. How, in
fact, can the Mind be determined to the act of Self-
suspense ? By the operation of a definite motive ?
The Liberty of Self-suspense becomes at once trans
muted into the Liberty of Spontaneity. By the
operation of no motive ? The Liberty of Self-sus
pense becomes either the Liberty of Indifference on
the one hand, or the Liberty of Self-determination
on the other. The Problem of Liberty remains
unsolved by Locke.

The Metaphysical Problem, indeed, is insoluble
by the faculties of man. The question agitated by
the Lost Spirits on the " hill retired" has been agi
tated by Philosophers for three thousand years, and
all in vain. We may reason high —

" Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Fate and Will,
Fixed Fate, Free will, Foreknowledge Absolute ;"

but Reason now, as heretofore, can "find no end."
It is in vain that Thought alights on that Hadean
Hill. Still, as of old, it is condemned to roam " in
wandering mazes lost." Its subtlest speculations
are still —

''Vain Wisdom all and false Philosophy."

But is there no Practical Solution of the Meta
physical Problem? no solution in which the Com
mon Sense of Mankind can acquiesce ? The only
question which can be philosophically stated on the
subject of Free-will, according to Mr. Stewart, is the

FREEDOM AND THE MORAL LAW. 151

question of the matter of fact, as ascertained by
the deliverance of Consciousness. But Conscious
ness is as unable to untie this Gordian knot as the
Speculative Eeason. Libertarian and Necessita
rian alike appeal to its deliverance. The oracle
gives but an ambiguous response. If determinable
by any mortal faculty, the question is to be deter
mined, not by Consciousness, but by Conscience.
" "We ought, therefore we can," — such was the sub
lime enthymeme of Kant, the " Cogito ergo sum"
of Morals. But this escape from the jaws of Neces
sity was impossible to Locke. What, in fact, was
the sole Obligation which he conceded to Mora
lity ? — The Obligation to consult for one's own indi
vidual Happiness. The Desire of Happiness was
the sole principle of Action which he recognised.
It is true, he admitted that Virtue might itself be a
source of Happiness. But what if a man found his
Happiness in Vice? "A man may justly incur
punishment," says Locke, "though it be certain
that in all the particular actions that he wills, he
does, and necessarily does, will that which he then
judges to be good" (n. xxi. 56); and why ?— "He
has imposed on himself wrong measures of good
and evil;" — "he has vitiated his own palate ;"-
"he had a power to suspend his determination"
(n. xxi. 59). But by what is this suspense of
determination to be determined? The Desire of
Happiness is the sole possible motive, and Self-sus
pense, therefore, is the mere offspring of Self-love.

152 FREEDOM AND THE MORAL LAW.

What Moral Responsibility can consist with such a
theory ? Given the strength of a man's Self-love,
and the circumstances in which he is placed, his
conduct is a matter of calculation. The Metaphy
sical difficulty subsists — the Practical solution is
impossible. If Happiness be the sole motive, Moral
Responsibility is a mere figment — if Moral Re
sponsibility be a figment, Moral Freedom is a
gratuitous hypothesis.

But on what grounds are we justified in pro
claiming that the Desire of Happiness is the exclu
sive principle of Action? It is true that a man
must act either to escape an Inconvenience, or to
procure a Pleasure, or to promote an Interest, or to
discharge a Duty. Everything else is the result of
blind Instinct, and scarcely deserves the name of
Action. But what right have we to assert that
Duty can only be performed from a Desire of Hap
piness ? Dependent on an inevitable Desire, it ceases
to be Duty. That " Reason is not a sufficient mo
tive to Action in such a creature as Man," we may
readily acknowledge with Butler ; but to assert with
Sir James Mackintosh and Hume that " Reason as
Reason can never be a motive to action," is to assert
that Man cannot act because he ought, and that
God cannot act at all. The fact of the case is,
that the Rational Conception of Right is of itself
sufficient to determine the will of a Rational crea
ture in a case where his own Happiness is altogether
unconcerned. That Man is under an Obligation to

FREEDOM AND THE MORAL LAW. 153

secure his own Happiness is certain ; but it is
equally certain that he is under an Obligation to act
aright. What should be the course of conduct if
these two Obligations came into collision, is another
matter. The Master of Moral Science has not hesi
tated to concede " that our Ideas of Happiness and
Misery are of all our Ideas the nearest and most
important to us ; and that they will, nay, if you
please, that they ought, to prevail over those of
Order, and Beauty, and Harmony, and Proportion,
if there ever should be, as it is impossible there ever
should be, any inconsistency between them ; though
these last two, as expressing the Fitness of Actions,
are real as Truth itself. Let it be allowed," he con
tinues, " though Virtue or Moral Rectitude does
indeed consist in affection to and pursuit of what is
Right and Good as such ; yet, that when we sit
down in a cool hour, we can neither justify to our
selves this or any other pursuit, till we are convinced
that it will be for our Happiness, or, at least, not
contrary to it." The harmony between Duty and
Happiness being thus established by the hypothesis
of a Moral Government, it is evident a man may
perform his Duty, not because it is his Happiness,
but because it is his Duty.* Here, then, if any-

* Comp. Aristotle : — H/I^V Se KOI TjSovrjv /cat vow icai traaav
ape-r^v aipovfieOa fiev /cat Si avrd (fiajOevot <yap airofiaivovrov
e\olfJL€0" av CKaa-rov avwv), alpo^^eOa Se /cat T^S evcatpovias X«V»«"»

Sia rovrwv viroXa/Jipdvovres evdaifjiov^aeif (EtJl. NtC., I. V, 5.

Ed. Bek.)

154 FREEDOM AND THE MORAL LAW.

where, both Freedom and Disinterestedness are
possible. Whatever is done from blind Impulse is
Automatism rather than Action. Whatever is
done from motives oi Happiness, — whether it be
Indolentia, Pleasure, or Interest, — can be calcu
lated with Mathematical precision. An action
done from a regard to Duty is the sole disinter
ested action, — it is the sole action that can with
any propriety be denominated free. Here, then,
we discover the great oversight of Locke. That
the Will should be determined by the Judgment
is conceded by the most cautious advocates of Free
dom. " There is a Moral Fitness or Unfitness oi
Actions," says Butler, " which I apprehend as cer
tainly to determine the Divine conduct, as Specula
tive Truth and Falsehood necessarily determine the
Divine judgment." The sufficiency of this Concep
tion of Moral Fitness to determine the Will to
Action was what Locke failed to see. It is this that
constitutes the great blemish in his Moral Doc-
trine, the great defect in his solution of the Prob
lem of the Will. Hence it was that he unconsciously
allowed himself to be seduced into the Morality of
Self; hence it was that, counter to his own inten
tion, he was precipitated into the Metaphysics of Fate.
But if Locke's doctrine be erroneous with regard
to the Obligation of Morality, if he failed to give
the true answer to the question — "Why should
Morality be made the guide of Action, and the
rule of Life"? there is a point, scarcely less irnpor-

FREEDOM AND THE MORAL LAW. 155

tant, in which his doctrine is liable to no exception.
Condemning Locke to educe all our Ideas from
Sensation and Reflection, M. Cousin considers him
necessitated to refer the existence of our Moral
Ideas to Sensation. But even on this narrow view
of his Philosophy, Locke was not reduced to the
necessity imposed upon him by his critic. Even
if he had ignored the existence of Reason, he might
consistently have referred our Moral Ideas to Re
flection. That there is in man a susceptibility to
the pleasures of Virtue, that there is, therefore, in
man a Moral Sense, — whether original or acquired it
matters not, — Locke repeatedly asserts (n. xxi. 69).
Why then might he not, consistently with his own
theory, have reckoned our Moral Sentiments among
those "Satisfactions or Uneasinesses arising from any
thought," of which, by the fundamental principle
of his Philosophy, it is the function of Reflection to
take cognisance? (n. i. 4). Why might he not
have acquiesced in the conclusion which satisfied
the moral convictions of Shaftesbury, of Hutche-
son, of Hume? But Locke took his stand upon a
loftier ground than this. He considered the great
Concepts of Morality as no mere modification of
Sense, no accident relative merely to the constitu
tion of Humanity. On the contrary, he reckoned
them among the " Relations" which he regarded as
revealed by Reason, as essential to Thought, as
independent even of the power of the Deity him
self. Here Locke not only acquiesced in the con-

156 FREEDOM AND THE MORAL LAW.

elusions, he reproduced the very language of
Cudworth and of Clarke. With the Disciple of
Plato, he recognised the " Archetypal Ideas" which
pre-existed in the Eternal Mind. With the Scholar
of Newton, he recognised the " Immutable Rela
tions" which are invested with the Eternity of God.
/ Hence it was that he held Moral Science to be sus-
/ ceptible of Demonstration. Hence it was that he
I regarded Morality as based on the foundations of
/ the Mathematics. Locke reduce all Morality to
Education and Opinion! Locke denaturalise and
corrupt Virtue ! M. Cousin might as well have pre
ferred the charge against Socrates or Kant. Lowde,
150 years ago, preferred the same charge, and see
with what calm dignity the great Englishman protests
against its injustice : — " If he had been at the pains
to reflect on what I have said, he would have known
what I think of the Eternal and Unalterable Nature
of Right and Wrong, and what / call Virtue and
Vice ; and if he had observed in the place he quotes,
I only report as matter of fact what others call
Virtue and Vice, he would not have found it liable
to any great exception" (n. xxviii. Note). No : it
was not with regard to the Reality of Moral Dis
tinctions, it was not with reference to the Fa
culty by which those distinctions are conceived,
that Locke was wrong. It was with reference to
the Obligation of Morality, — it was with reference
to the legitimate influence of Moral Ideas on the
Will.

FREEDOM AND THE MORAL LAW. 157

A third question, and the analysis of Locke's
Moral Doctrine is complete. We have considered
the question of the Obligation, and the question of
the Principle of Morality ; the question of the Cri
terion remains. In what does Morality consist,
according to Locke ? What are the Chronological
Conditions of the development of our Moral Ideas ?
What is the Standard of Moral Right and Wrong ?
" Divine Law," says Locke, " is the measure of Sin
and Duty" (n. xxviii. 8) ; and he has been identified
with Ockham and those who reduce all Morality to
the arbitrary edict of the Deity. " Civil Law," says
Locke, " is the measure of Crimes and Innocence"
(ii. xxviii. 9) ; and has been identified with Hobbes
and those who refer Moral Distinctions to the ap
pointment of the Leviathan. " Philosophical Law,"
says Locke, " is the Measure of Virtue and Vice"
(n. xxviii. 10) ; and he has been identified with
Helvetius and the Sciolists who reduce Virtue and
Vice to the mere accident of Fashion. Locke, in
short, is explaining the application of a class of
words, and his critics have regarded him as dis
cussing a question concerning the reality of things.
But the falsehood of these inferences is demon
strated by what has been already said. If Locke
holds the will of God to be " determined by what is
best" (n. xxi. 49), he acknowledges a Morality inde
pendent of the will of God. If he acknowledges the
existence of a Light " which it is impossible for the
breath or power of man to extinguish" (iv. iii. 20),

158 FREEDOM AND THE MOKAL LAW.

he acknowledges a Morality independent of the
will of Man. If he enumerates our Moral Ideas
among the Immutable Relations which Reason,
whether Finite or Infinite, must necessarily con
ceive (iv. iii. 29), he acknowledges a Morality inde
pendent of Fashion, and Immutable as Mind itself.
Whether Locke would have held the welfare
of the universe to be the sole object of Morality —
whether he would have regarded a perception of
Consequences as the chronological condition of the
Moral Concept, it is needless to inquire. Locke
has not professedly discussed the question. Intima
tions of his opinion on this matter are, doubtless,
to be detected in the Essay, and such as they are,
they point in the direction of Eudgemonism. But
far above the domain of mere Happiness, Locke re
cognises the existence of Conceptions of a higher
order. He recognises the existence of a Rational
Conception of Right, whatever the occasion of its
development. He recognises the existence of a
Rational Conception of Duty, formed on the occasion
of the Conception of Right. He recognises the
Rational Conception of Merit and Demerit, founded
on the occasion of the performance or non-perfor
mance of Duty. Here, then, is the great glory of
the Moral Philosophy of Locke. On the question
of Obligation he is erroneous — the question of the
Criterion he has overlooked ; but on the question of
the Reality of Moral Distinctions, and the nature of
the Faculty by which they are conceived, Locke

FREEDOM AND THE MORAL LAW. 159

takes his stand upon the very summit of Moral
Science. There, with the Stoic of old, he recognizes
the existence of the Lex Vera in the " Right Reason,
congruent to Nature, diffused through all, constant,
everlasting." There, with the Greek Tragic Poet, he
does homage to " those sublime Laws which have
their original in Heaven, of which God is the foun
tain ; neither did the mortal nature of Man produce
them, nor shall Oblivion ever lull them into sleep."*

* Sophocles, (Edipus Tyrannus, 1. 865, et seq.

With regard to Locke's opinion that Moral Science is suscep
tible of Mathematical Demonstration, there is one remark which
I wish to make. Whatever may become of the question, whether
all Morality may be resolved into an effort to promote the general
Happiness, it is evident that Happiness occupies an important
position in Moral Science. Benevolence is an affection to the
Happiness of others ; Prudence, an affection to our own. A being
insensible to Pleasure or Pain could suffer no Injustice ; and even
the foundation of Piety itself is to be discovered in the fact that
God is the source of the Happiness of the universe. In any case,
we must determine in what the Happiness of any given being
consists, before we can determine either the Rights which he
enjoys, or the Duties of which he is the object. Moral Science,
therefore, is to be compared to Mathematical Physics rather than
to Mathematics. Eight, Duty, and Desert are the Mathematical
Conceptions to be employed in the solution of the Problem of
Morals — Happiness is a Physical Element which intervenes, and
destroys the purely Mathematical character of the Problem.

IX.

LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT.

THE preceding analysis of Locke's Philosophy has
either effected nothing, or it has shown that for a
century and a half that Philosophy has not only
been misinterpreted, but interpreted by opposites.
But an error in the Criticism entails an error in the
History of Philosophy ; and to complete the task
which I have undertaken, I proceed to determine
the relation in which Locke stands to his successors,
and the position which he is entitled to hold in the
development of modern Thought. The character of
the conclusion at which I shall arrive may be rea
dily foreseen. Warburton remarks, as a charac
teristic of the controversies of his own times, a
strange propensity in the Clergy to mistake their
friends for their enemies, and as strange a propen
sity in the Freethinkers to mistake their enemies
for their friends. The remark of the great Theolo
gian typifies the fate of the great Philosopher. He
has been canonized by the Schools whose principles
he devoted his energies to subvert ; he has been
anathematized by the Schools whose doctrine it was
the great object of his Philosophy to enforce.

LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT. 161

Locke's relation to the School of CONDILLAC may
be easily determined. " The Essay concerning Hu
man Understanding," says M. Cousin, " contained
the germ of the theory of Transformed Sensation"
(Locke, p. 99). "The doctrine of Condillac," says
Sir William Hamilton, " was, if not a corruption, a
development of the doctrine of Locke" (Disc. p. 3).
But the injustice of this criticism is self-evident.
Confounding our Ideas of Operation with the Ideas
operated upon, the theory of Transformed Sensation
ignores the existence of Locke's Ideas of Reflection;
confounding our Ideas of Relation with the Ideas
related, it ignores the existence of the a priori Ideas
which Locke regarded as " the creatures or inven
tions of the Understanding." Add to this, that in
restricting the elements of thought to Sensations, it
ignores the existence of the a priori Ideas which
Locke regarded as " suggested to the Understanding"
by the isolated data of Sense.

But the error which has peculiarly vitiated the
History of Philosophy is not so much the identifica
tion of Locke with Condillac, as the identification of
Locke with HUME. " As a legitimate Sceptic," says
Sir William Hamilton, " Hume could not assail the
foundations of knowledge in themselves ; his pre
mises, not established by himself, are accepted only
as principles universally conceded in the previous
Schools of Philosophy" (Disc., p. 87)— conceded by
the " Sensualism of Locke" (Disc., p. 616). Such
also is the verdict of Reid and Kant, of Stewart,

M

162 LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT.

Tenneman, and Cousin, in fact, of every historian
of Philosophy — all have regarded Hume's system
as the logical development of that of Locke. But
with what gratuitous injustice let any dispassionate
Philosopher decide. While the Intellectualist re
garded the Materials of Knowledge as constituted
not only by the Ideas which Sensation and Reflection
immediately " furnish," but by the Ideas which the
data of Sense immediately " suggest," — the Sceptic
dogmatically restricts the Materials of Knowledge
to the Ideas furnished by Outward and Inward Sen
timent (Enquiry* sect, ii.) While the Intellec
tualist concedes to the Understanding not only the
function of " combining" the isolated data of Expe
rience, but the still higher function of " comparing"
its original Ideas and developing a new class of Ideas
on the occasion of the " comparison," — the Sceptic
dogmatically maintains that " the creative power of
the Mind amounts to no more than the faculty of
compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminish
ing the materials afforded us by the Senses and Ex
perience" (sect, ii.) While the Intellectualist com-

* In obedience to Hume's demand, in determining his philo
sophical sentiments I refer not to his Treatise of Human Nature,
but to the second volume of his Essays. " Several writers who
have honoured the Author's Philosophy with answers," says
Hume, in his advertisement to the latter, ' ' have taken care to
direct all their batteries against that juvenile work which the
Author never acknowledged. Henceforth the Author desires that
the following pieces may alone be regarded as containing his
philosophical sentiments and principles."

163

prehends under our "Intuitive Knowledge" not
merely the Mathematical Relations of Quantity and
Number, but the Metaphysical Relations of Sub
stance and Causation, together with the Moral Rela
tions of Right and Wrong, — the Sceptic dogmati
cally restricts all Intuitive Knowledge to the domain
of Mathematics (sect. iv. part 1 ; sect. xii. part 3).*
To see the true correlation which exists between
the two Philosophers, we have only to turn to the
great problem which the Dogmatic Sceptic proposed
to "the Lockian Sensualism" (Disc., p. 616). Ac
cording to Hume, " Mr. Locke, in his chapter of
Power, says that, finding from Experience that there
are several new productions in Matter, and con
cluding there must somewhere be a Power capable
of producing them, we arrive at last by this reason
ing at the Idea of Power. But no reasoning can
give us a new, original, Simple Idea, as this Philo
sopher himself confesses. This, therefore, can never
be the origin of that Idea" (sect, vii., part 1, Note).
Here it is evident the Scepticism of Hume is affili
ated upon " the Sensualism of Locke" by a mere
accident of nomenclature. According to Locke,

* Cf. Cousin's Kant, pp. 62, 63 : — "Kant remarque que si Hume
au lieu de s'en tenir au principe de causalite, eut examine tous
les autres principes necessaires, il aurait peut-etre recule devant

les consequences rigoreuses de son opinion II aurait du

rejeter tout jugement synthetique a priori c'est-a-dire les mathe-
matiques pures et la haute physique, consequence extreme qui peut-
etre aurait retenue cet excellent esprit sur la pcnte du Scepticisme.' '

M2

164 LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT.

the Idea of Power is not a " Simple Idea" — it is a
Complex though uncompounded Idea of Relation,
and as a Complex Idea it is by the fundamental
distinction of his system " the creature or invention
of the Understanding." It is true that Locke occa
sionally denominates the Idea of Power a Simple
Idea, but, as if to obviate the very possibility of
Hume's misconception, he tells us that he denomi
nates it Simple merely "for brevity's sake," and " in
a looser sense," since in reality it is "Complex"
(n. xxi. 3 ; n. xxiii. 7).

The misconception thus commenced in the Idea
of Cause is perpetuated in the Principle of Causa-
tion. " It was, as far as I know," says Mr. Stewart,
"first shown in a satisfactory manner by Mr. Hume,
that 'every demonstration which has been produced
for the necessity of a Cause to every new existence,
is fallacious and sophistical.' In illustration of this
assertion he examines three different arguments
which have been alleged as proofs of the proposi
tion in question ; the first by Mr. Hobbes, the se
cond by Dr. Clarke, and the third by Mr. Locke.
And I think it will now be readily acknowledged
by every competent judge that his objections to all
these pretended demonstrations are conclusive and
unanswerable" (Diss., pp. 441, 442). But where is
this pretended demonstration of • Locke's to be dis
covered? Nowhere. Locke regards the Principle
of Causality as " a Principle of Common Reason"
(i. iv. 9), — as a portion of our "Intuitive Know-

LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT. 165

ledge" (iv. x. 1), — as a proposition, therefore, which
" neither requires nor admits of proof" (iv. vii. 19).
Locke maintains the doctrine by which the Scep
tical conclusion of Hume was subsequently avoided.
Locke agrees with Reid and Kant. What has
Hume to object to this conclusion ? He did not
see the alternative, says Mr. Stewart. On the con
trary, Hume saw it, and refused to recognise it as
the truth. In the Essays to which he appealed as
the sole depository of his Philosophical opinions,
strange to say, there is no trace of the problem with
which his name has been so generally identified.
He shows that we cannot determine, a priori, by
what Effect a given Cause will be attended (sect, iv.) ;
he accounts for our belief in the Uniformity of the
operation of natural Causes by "a species of natural
instinct," " a mechanical tendency of thought," " a
kind of pre-established harmony between the course
of nature and the succession of our Ideas" (sect, v.);
on his own exclusive principles of Empiricism he
dogmatically denies the existence of any Idea of
Causation, and merges it in the Idea of Antecedence
(sect, vii.);* but to the Principle which proclaims
that whatever begins to be must have an efficient

* On this subject I cannot refrain from pointing out the paro-
logistic nature of Hume's argument. "When we analyze our
Thoughts or Ideas, however compounded or sublime," he says,
" we always find that they resolve themselves into such Simple
Ideas as were copied from a precedent feeling or sentiment"
(sect, ii.) You demur to this proposition. " There is one, and
that an easy method of refuting it," says Hume, "by producing

166 LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT.

Cause of its being — to this Principle Hume never
once alludes, except, indeed, when he endeavours
by its aid to destroy our belief in the Freedom of
the Human Will (sect. viii.). But though the
problem is not proposed, Hume has clearly inti
mated the principles upon which it should be solved.
" All Intuitive Knowledge," he says, " is restricted
to Quantity and Number" (sect. xii.). You de
mand a reason. " All other inquiries of men," he
says, "regard only matter of fact and existence,
and these are evidently incapable of demonstration"
(Ibid.). You are not yet satisfied. "No nega
tion of a fact," he says, " can involve a contradic
tion" (Ibid.). In vain you urge that a Change
without a Cause is as much a contradiction of
the Laws of Thought as a contradiction in terms.
Hume has nothing to add. The matter is settled
with the dixi of the Sage of Samos. And Nihilism
is the result. Is Locke responsible for this Nihil
ism ? Hume commences with a misconception of
his doctrine, and ends with its positive reversal.

Hume, therefore, as it appears, was no legitimate
Sceptic. His Nihilism was the illusion of an Intel
lect that denied itself. He was the Dogmatist of

that Idea which, in your opinion, is not derived from that source"
(Hid.}. You produce the Idea of Causation. " As we can have
no Idea of anything," says Hume, " which never appeared to our
outward sense or inward sentiment, the necessary conclusion
seems to be, that we have no Idea of Connexion or Power at all"
(sect. vii.). " Verum enim vero, quandoquidem, dubio procul."
This is the very Logic of Master Janotus de Bragmardo.

LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT. 167

Doubt. But whatever the character of his Scepti
cism, whether Sceptical or Dogmatic, whether Re-
lative or Absolute, its effect upon the development
of the Philosophy of Europe is beyond denial or
dispute. Hume's Philosophy was the sowing of the
dragon's teeth in the field of modern speculation ;
his theory of Causation was the rock of Cadmus, the
throwing of which was the signal of mutual war to
the host of Metaphysicians that sprang from the
ground, like the warriors in the Grecian legend. It
was the Scepticism of Hume that roused the indig
nant Common Sense of Reid ; it was the scepticism
of Hume which roused into action the Speculative
Reason of Kant. But, as I have already said, if the
true Philosophy occasioned the false by the force
of misconception, the reaction from the false Philo
sophy only reproduced the true. Enounced by Reid,
and systematized by Kant, the Intellectualism of
modern Europe is merely a reproduction of the In
tellectualism of Locke. Conceding more to the
Common Sense of Mankind than Kant, conceding
more to the Speculative Reason of the Philosopher .
than Reid, Locke is in reality at one with the two
Philosophers who have proclaimed themselves his;
foes. Does any one reject this as a monstrous para
dox ? Let us compare Locke with KANT.

If Locke asserts that " there appear not to be any
Ideas in the Mind before the Senses have conveyed
any in," and that " Ideas in the Understanding are
coeval with Sensation," Kant asserts that " in respect

168 LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT.

of time, no knowledge of ours is antecedent to Ex
perience, all knowledge commences with it." If
Locke holds that it is Experience which " supplies
our Understandings with all the Materials of Think
ing," Kant holds that it is Experience which supplies
the " Matter" as distinguished from the " Form" of
Thought. If Locke contends that "External and
Internal Sensation are the only passages of know
ledge to the Understanding," Kant contends that
External and Internal Sensibility supply the Under
standing with the conditions of its development. If
Locke declares that " Simple Ideas, the materials of
all our knowledge, are suggested and furnished only
by Sensation and Reflection," and that our " Ideas
of Relation all terminate in and are concerned about
those Simple Ideas, either of Sensation or Reflection,
which are the whole materials of all our knowledge"
(n. xxv. 9), Kant declares that all our "Intuitions"
are furnished by the External Senses or the Internal
Sense, and that " all Thought must, directly or in
directly, by means of certain signs, relate ultimately
to Intuitions." And in the same manner, if Kant
views our Ideas of Sensible Objects as the product
of the synthetic energies of the Understanding, it
is as " collections" of the Understanding that our
Ideas of Substances are viewed by Locke. If Kant
regards Time and Space as native Forms of Sen
sibility and pure Intuitions of Reason,* Locke

* Cousin and Sir William Hamilton object to Kant that he has
attributed our a priori Knowledge and Ideas to three separate

LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT. 169

regards them as " Simple Modes" which the Under
standing is not only prompted, but necessitated, to
form on the contemplation of the data of Internal
and External Sense. If, in addition to the Intuitions
of Sense, Kant recognises certain Categories of the
Understanding which Reason develops into Con
cepts, Locke recognises the existence of certain
"Ideas of Relation," which he regards as "super-
added" to the data of Experience, and which he ex
pressly denominates " the Creatures and Inventions
of the Understanding." If Kant insists upon certain
composite Conceptions which the Human Intellect is
necessitated to form, and which he denominates the
Ideas of the Reason, Locke also admits the existence
of certain "Abstract Ideas" which he attributes to
" the workmanship of the Understanding," and which
he regards as " Archetypes" and " Forms." In the
Theory of Knowledge the unanimity of the two Phi
losophers is as conspicuous as in the Origin and Ge
nesis of Ideas. If Kant divides all knowledge into
A posteriori and A priori, the distinction between Ex
perimental knowledge and knowledge supplied by
Reason is fundamental in the Logical analysis of

Faculties. But the title of Kant's great work, the " Kritik of the
Pure Reason," seems to demonstrate this to be a misconception.
It is true, Kant speaks of the Forms of Sensibility, the Categories
of the Understanding, and the Ideas of Reason, — but Forms, Cate
gories, and Ideas he regards merely as Laws of development. The
Intuitions, Concepts, and Ideas Proper that result are all alike the
product of Pure Intellect.

170 LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT.

Locke. If Kant regards all knowledge as either
Analytic or Synthetic, A priori or A posteriori, Locke
makes the distinction of knowledge with reference
to Identity, Relation, and Co-existence, the basis of
his Theory of Cognition. Finally, if Kant regards all
Scientific Knowledge as a development of the Laws
of Intellect, it is in the Faculty of Intellectual In
tuition that the foundation of all Rational Certainty
is laid by Locke.

Nor is this coincidence the result of accident.
The two systems were not merely coincident in
doctrine, they were coincident in the history of their
evolution. Struck with the diversities of opinion
that characterized the speculations of preceding Phi
losophers, the German was led to investigate the
cause. Struck with the same spectacle of the various
and contradictory opinions by which mankind are
influenced, the Englishman was led to institute the
same inquiry. Like Kant, he arrived at the conclu
sion, that " the first step towards satisfying the va
rious inquiries into which the mind of man was apt
to run, wras to take a Survey of our own Understand
ing, and ascertain its Powers" (i. i. 7). Like Kant,
he saw that we built upon " floating and uncertain
principles," till we had examined our Primary and
Original Notions, and determined their " necessary
connexions and dependencies" (n. xiii. 28). Thus,
at the very outset of their Metaphysical Speculations
are the two Philosophers agreed. The Preliminary
Condition, the Propaedeutic, of the Science, according

LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT. 171

to both, is an Analysis of the Laws of Thought. In
the fundamental conception of Metaphysical Method,
Locke is the prototype of Kant, and the Essay con
cerning Human Understanding is in reality an
earlier Kritik of the Reason.

The common object of Locke and Kant was to de
monstrate that all Rational Certainty is an empiri
cally determined evolution of the Laws of Reason.
The System of each was a fabric of Intellectualism
reared upon an Empiric basis. Each, to employ the
metaphor of Bacon, celebrated the Metaphysical es
pousals of Reason and Experience. But the deve
lopment of every Philosophy is modified not only
by the Spirit of the Philosopher but by the Spirit
of the Age ; and while Kant recoiled from the ex
clusive Sensualism of Condillac and Hume, Locke
recoiled from the exclusive Intellectualism of the
Schoolman and the Cartesian. Hence it happened
that Kant was more peculiarly the Analyst of
Intellect, Locke more peculiarly the Analyst of
Sense ; the Logical Element predominated in one,
the ^Esthetic Element in the other. And this dif
ferent bias is apparent at every step in the progress
of the two Philosophers. Both agreed in the repu
diation of Innate Ideas, and in the recognition of
Innate Forms of Thought ; but while Kant was eager
to determine the Forms of Thought, Locke was
anxious to dispel the illusion of Innate Ideas. Both
recognised the Origin of Ideas in Sense, and the Ge
nesis of Ideas by the Understanding ; but while Kant

172 LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT.

devoted himself to the question of the Genesis, Locke
threw his whole force into the question of the Origin.
Both saw that there are two species of Knowledge, —
the one Universal, and the product of Reason ; the
other, Particular, and the Educt from Experience ;
but while Kant was constantly proclaiming that our
Rational Knowledge could not possibly be educed
from Experience, Locke was constantly proclaiming
with equal emphasis, that our Experimental Know
ledge could not possibly be the product of Reason.

Starting from the same point, and journeying for
awhile in the same direction, the two Philosophers,
however, at length diverged. The point of diverg
ence was with reference to the nature of Experience.
According to Locke, our Experimental Knowledge
was the result of a species of pre-established har
mony. The World was invested with an actual
existence on the one hand, and the Mind was prede
termined to believe in its existence on the other
(u. xxxi. 2). The various natural Causes operated
uniformly in the production of their effects, and
the Mind was predetermined to anticipate the uni
formity (ii. xxi. 1). Experience, in short, was the
result of the correspondence between the external
reality and thought. But Locke's successors aban
doned his position. While Hume, though inconsis
tently, held that the Forms of Thought are deter
mined by the Facts of Experience, Kant, on the
contrary held that the Facts of Experience are de
termined by the Laws of Thought. It was on the

LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT. 173

establishment of this principle, indeed, that Kant's
Metaphysical System rests ; it was here that he
diverged not only from Locke, but from the Intel-
lectualists in general.* So far is the Rational Idea
of Space from being given by Experience, that it is
the condition of the possibility of Experience, — such
was the Kantian Formula, so celebrated in the re
cent history of thought. Whether Kant held that
Space was nothing but a Form of Sensibility, may be
doubted. It is inconceivable that so consecutive and
acute a thinker should have denied the possibility of
a knowledge of the Objective, and yet dogmatically
have affirmed the objective non-existence of what,
even on his own admission, possesses an Empiric
reality, that is, a reality relative to our Experience.
However this may be, the sentiments of Kant were
far from being the sentiments of Locke. The Spirit
of the Critical Philosophy pronounced its inexorable

* It was with reference to this procedure that Kant compared
the revolution he effected in Metaphy sics to the revolution effected
by Copernicus in Astronomy. According to M. Cousin, Kant,
instead of making Man revolve around Objects, made Objects re
volve around Man, just as Copernicus, instead of making the Sun
revolve around the Earth, made the Earth revolve around the Sun
(Kant, p. 40), But Kant's comparison will not bear this exacti
tude of parallel. If the Spectator be transported to the Sun, the
heavenly body is not the object ; if, on the contrary, the Spectator
remains upon the Earth, the object does not revolve around the
subject. The true point of the comparison is this : — As the ex
istence of certain motions in the Spectator makes the heavenly
bodies appear to move, so the existence of certain Forms of Thought
in Man makes certain so-called realities appear to exist.

174 LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT.

non liquet on every argument in favour of the Objec
tive. But, to go no farther, Locke's very distinction
between the Primary and the Secondary Qualities
is based upon the counter supposition. A fortiori
the English Philosopher asserted the Objective Rea
lity of Space.

The Philosophy of Locke was distinguished from
that of Kant by an Empiric bias. In one respect,
however, the Philosophy of Kant was more Empiric
than that of Locke. Whatever his views on the
nature of Experience, Locke recognised existence
beyond its verge. But while the Englishman made
Rational Certainty coextensive with the domain of
Thought, the German restricted Rational Certainty
to the domain of Actual Experience. Here Kant is
to be compared, not with Locke, but Hume. On all
questions of Ontology, indeed, the speculative Scep
ticism of the Critic of Reason was even more palpa
ble, more all-pervading, than the dim shadow that
dogged the footsteps of the Sophister of Sense. Ad
mitting that we are necessitated to "cogitate" the
great Ontologic Realities, the German Philosopher
denied that we are able to " cognize" them ; our
thought, he said, never could be verified. Within
the sphere of Experience, Reason anticipates, and
Experience confirms ; but what confirmation could
the Anticipations of Reason admit when they tran
scended the sphere of all possible Experience ? With
regard to the World, the imagination was distracted
on every side by counter inconceivabilities ; the

LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT. 175

Mind was divided against itself ; Antinomy was its
very Law. The argument in favour of the Immate
riality of the Soul was a mere begging of the ques
tion — a Paralogism of Psychology ; the controversy
on the subject was a Metaphysical top that was kept
standing on its point merely by being involved in an
everlasting whirl. Even God himself, in a Meta
physical point of view, was a mere " Ideal." The do
main of Experience, in fine, according to Kant, was
an Enchanted Isle, from which the Understanding
in vain attempted to escape, and all beyond was
fog-bank and illusion. But Locke's Philosophy was
animated by a more manly spirit. With that con
fidence in Keason which constant contact with
reality rarely fails to produce, he reverenced its dic
tates as a Natural Eevelation. Whatever we are ne
cessitated to think, that, in his opinion, we may be said
to know. Hence it was that he proclaimed that we
have a knowledge of the World of Matter, and the
Abyss of Space. Hence he proclaimed that Matter
is evidently in its own nature void of thought, and
that, the rights of Omnipotence reserved, the Soul is
therefore Immaterial. Hence he proclaimed that
the existence of God is a fact impossible to be denied,
impossible to be made a theme for more than mo
mentary doubt. Like Kant, he held that the Soul
is confined to the Isle of Consciousness ; like Kant,
he protested against our " letting loose our thoughts
into the vast Ocean of Being, as if that boundless
extent were the natural possession of our Under-

176 LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT.

standings" (i. i. 7). But in Locke's system the Soul
is not left upon a desert shore, a desolate Ariadne,
abandoned to darkness and despair. The ocean sur
rounds it, and the heavens stretch overhead. True,
it can neither traverse the one, nor soar into the
other. But its belief transcends the sphere of its
Experience ; arid why should it gratuitously reject
its own belief?

But while the Philosophy of Locke is thus advan
tageously contrasted with that of Kant on the sub
ject of the reality of knowledge, there is one point
with respect to which the genius of the German
reached a far higher elevation of thought than that
of his illustrious rival. By no Philosopher, ancient
or modern, has the Moral Law been invested with
such majesty as by the great Critic. Other Philo
sophers have recognised the eternal and immutable
nature of Morality ; others have recognised the uni
versal and unconditional obligation which the mere
conception of Duty is sufficient to impose. But to
the eye of Kant the light of the Moral Law not only
illumed the Path of Life — it lit up the Abyss of Spe
culation. It revealed the Freedom of the Will, the
Immortality of the Soul, and the Existence of a God,
The Metaphysical arguments by which the subtlest
wits had for upwards of two thousand years con
tended for and against these great realities, he com
pared to the bootless encounters of the heroes in
Valhalla. Each shadow mortally wounded its op
posing shade ; but the wound closed, the combat was

LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT. 177

renewed, and each airy champion again wounded "the
intrenchant air." The Moral Argument, on the con
trary, Kant viewed as bidding defiance to dispute.
We ought, therefore we can — such, for instance, was
the sublime en thy m erne with which he demonstrated
the Freedom of the Will. But far different was the
case with Locke. The speculative perception of
" the eternal and unalterable nature of Right and
Wrong" it was the glory of his system to admit. He
neither ignored the existence of these Concepts, with
Hobbes, nor did he degrade them to mere Senti
ments, with Hume ; still less did he represent them
to be the offspring of Education and Fashion, with the
licentious Moralists who insulted his memory by
proclaiming themselves his followers. With Cud-
worth and with Clarke, he placed our Moral Con
cepts among those " Relations" so " visibly included
in the nature of our Ideas that we cannot conceive
them separable by any Power whatsoever." With
Cud worth and Clarke, he was the assertor of an
Eternal and Immutable Morality. But the legiti
mate influence of the Concepts of Right and Wrong
upon the Will, Locke utterly ignored. It is true, he
speaks of the Moral and Eternal Obligation which
the Rules of Morality evidently possess. It is true,
he compares the perception of Moral Obligation to
the perception of Mathematical Truth. But Locke
never rises to " the height of this great argument."
Not only does he hold that the Will is determined
by something from without ; he holds that what

178 LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT.

immediately determines the Will is the uneasiness
of Desire. The Desire of Happiness is with him the
sole motive by which man can be influenced, and
Morality is thus divested of all its Moral Power.

If on minor points we compare the two Philoso
phers, the advantage is wholly on the side of Kant.
The Philosophy of Transcendentalism we might de
scribe as Cato describes the Philosophy of the Porch: —
" Quid, aut in natura, qua nihil est aptius, nihil de-
scribtius, aut in operibus manu factis, tarn composi-
tum tamque compactum et coagmentatum inveniri
potest ? Quid posterius priori non convenit ? Quid
sequitur quod non respondeat superiori ?" In the
case of Kant, indeed, as in the case of Bacon, the
love of System frequently degenerates into an affec
tation of Symmetry, in which all System is violated
and lost. But if the Kritik is disfigured by the distor
tions of System, Locke's Essay is characterized by its
utter absence. Never was there so systematic a
thinker whose exposition was so unsystematic. His
cardinal doctrine of Relation, for instance, is to be
gathered not only from his chapters on Relation, but
from his chapters on Modes and Substances, nay,
from the notes appended to his discussion of Simple
Ideas ; while the whole doctrine of Relation, as de
veloped in the second book, is utterly unintelligible
without a constant reference to the doctrine of In
tuitive Knowledge, as developed in the fourth. It is
the same with his Metaphysic as with his Psycho
logy. His doctrine of Real Existence is to be

LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT. 179

sought not only in the fourth book, but in the second
and the first — nay, even among the merely logical
questions which constitute the matter of the third.
Its fragments are to be found scattered up and down
through the whole Essay, like the limbs of Absyrtus,
the " disjecta membra" of Ontology. Add to this
that Definitions are no sooner made than they are
abandoned ; Divisions are no sooner laid down
than they are disregarded ; Doctrines are no sooner
enounced than fresh elements are incidentally intro
duced. Locke's Essay, in fact, is not so much an Es
say, as a collection of materials for an Essay. All the
Elements of the World of Thought are there, but it
presents the appearance of a world emerging from
Chaos rather than that of a world developed into
Creation.

Closely connected with this absence of Systema
tic Exposition there is another serious defect in the
Essay concerning Human Understanding, — the ab
sence of a truly Scientific Language. Here again
Locke presents a contrast with his rival. The Scienti
fic Language of Kant satisfies all the requirements of
Science. Mr. Stewart, indeed, with that disposition
to disparage Kant which he had no anxiety to con
ceal, sneers at the invention of a new technical Lan
guage, and plumes himself on " the communication
of clear and precise notions without departing from
the established modes of expression." But these
established modes of expression have been the ruin
of Philosophy. Not only have they enabled an

N 2

180 LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT.

unscientific Common Sense to constitute itself the
arbiter of the subtlest speculations of the Scientific
Reason, but they have been the main cause of that
apparent diversity of opinion among Philosophers
which has so long been the opprobrium of their
Science. Do we wish for an illustration of the truth
of this ? It is supplied by Locke. Locke adopted
the views of Mr. Stewart. Locke objected to the
coining of new words. Locke abandoned the lan
guage of the schools. Locke endeavoured to satisfy
the exigencies of speculation by the use of the ordi
nary modes of expression. To use his own metaphor,
he made Philosophy appear in the garb and fashion
of the times. And what has been the consequence ?
A superficial and illusive clearness, which has called
down the plaudits of superficial thinkers. " No one,"
says Shaftesbury, " has done more towards the re
calling of Philosophy from barbarity into use and
practice of the world, and into the company of the
better and politer sort." " The beauties of Mr.
Locke's style," says Goldsmith, " though not so much
celebrated, are as striking as those of his understand
ing. He never says more nor less than he ought,
and never makes use of a word that he could have
changed for a better." But these panegyrics have
been dearly purchased. Whatever may be the merits
of Locke's style in a mere literary point of view, the
Philosophic Critic is constrained to admit, with Sir
"William Hamilton, that in his language Locke is of
all Philosophers the most vague, vacillating, and

181

various. " Simple Ideas, the Materials of all our
knowledge, are suggested and furnished to the Mind
only by the two ways, Sensation and Reflection," —
such is the fundamental principle of Locke's Philo
sophy, enounced in language familiar to the most
unphilosophical of readers. But what does Locke
mean by " Simple Ideas" ? What does he mean by
" Materials of Knowledge" ? What does he mean
by " suggested" as distinguished from " furnished" ?
What does he mean by " Sensation" ? What does he
mean by " Reflection" ? So far are these expressions
from being clear, that they have been universally
misunderstood ; nay, they have been understood in
a sense diametrically the reverse of that which they
were intended to convey. It is the same with the
terms " Original" and " Derived," " Complex" and
" Compound," " Ideas of Comparison" and " Com
parison of Ideas." Every word in Locke's Philoso
phy is an equivoque. Never was there such curious
mfelicity of language.

If we compare Locke and Kant with respect to
what is commonly understood by Genius, we must
certainly award the palm to Kant. The German
Sage was not only endowed with the Spirit of the
Philosopher, he was also endowed with the Spirit
of the Poet. In the elevation of its tone, and the
splendour of its diction, as well as in the unity of
its plan, the Kritik of the Pure Reason is a Me
taphysical Epic. We might style Kant, as Cicero
styled Plato, the Homer of Philosophers. But the

182 LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT.

temperament of Locke was cold. Like his great
contemporary, Newton, he possessed the power, but
not the passion, of Genius. He discusses the Im
mortality of the Soul and the Obligations of Mora
lity in the same spirit as he discusses the Primary
and Secondary Qualities of Matter. " The Thoughts
that wander through Eternity" are invested with no
superhuman grandeur as they flit across his page.
The austerity of his countenance is reflected in the
austerity of his style. Locke was the Philosopher
of the Puritans.

Even as a Philosopher the superiority of Kant to
Locke can scarcely be denied. He had a clearer
and more comprehensive view of the great Meta
physical Problem. He was a more systematic
thinker. But in contrasting the Essay concerning
Human Understanding with the Kritik of the
Pure Reason, one thing should never be forgotten,
and that is the diversity of the circumstances under
which they were produced. The Philosopher of
Koenigsberg was a Philosopher by profession.
Throughout his whole life he was the Solitary of
Science. Twelve years he spent in slowly elabora
ting his system in thought, and its embodiment
in language was the result of one grand and unin
terrupted effort. The absence of all contact with
reality may, perhaps, have occasioned that shadowy
Scepticism which only haunts the closet of the
Recluse. It may also have developed that Ideal
purity which floats around his Moral Doctrine. But

LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT. 183

Silence arid Solitude are the true associates of System.
It is no marvel, therefore, if the Transcendental Phi-
losophy issued from the brain of the solitary thinker
full-grown and armed at all points, like the Goddess
of Wisdom. But while Kant, like Socrates, had
scarcely moved beyond the precincts of his native
city, and, unlike Socrates, even amidst the buzz and
bustle of that city, had moved self-centred and
alone ; Locke, from the first, had been a man of
the world and a man of action. He had been bred
to the profession of Physic. He had been mixed up
in the most turbulent politics of the period as the
friend and confidant of its most turbulent politi
cian. He had visited most of the capitals of Europe
in the train of Ambassadors and Diplomatists. He
had been driven into exile on the charge of com
plicity with Rebellion. He was the companion of
the men who consummated the great Revolution.
He returned to his native country to subside into a
Commissioner of Trade. Physician, Politician, Po
litical Economist, and Philosopher, — Philosophy in
his life was but an episode. The account which he
gives of the composition of his great work is itself
a justification of all its defects. "Begun by chance,"
"continued by entreaty," "written by incoherent
parcels," resumed " as humour or occasions permit
ted" — what wonder is it if such a work reflects
the agitations of his life? The agitations of his life
detract from the perfection of his Philosophy, but
they can only enhance our estimate of the Philoso
phical genius which under such circumstances be-

184 LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT.

queathed to posterity so proud a memorial of its
power.

The defects of the Essay concerning Human Un
derstanding are undeniable. Locke takes no pains
to conciliate prejudice, or to guard against misap
prehension. He protests against errors without
sufficiently marking his recognition of the truths
they embody. He inculcates truths without mark
ing his reprobation of the errors to which they are
akin. He gives undue prominence to certain elements
of thought. Add to this, his exposition is confused ;
his language is ambiguous; his book abounds in
repetition and digression. But the merits of this
great work are as undeniable as its defects. It con
tains the first and most complete exposition of
Metaphysical Science to be found in the English
language. It furnishes a Philosophy which at once
satisfies the exigencies of the Schools and the exi
gencies of common life. With a sage reserve in
pronouncing on matters which lie beyond the reach
of our faculties, there is an equally sage reliance
upon the veracity of our faculties with reference to
the matters which lie within their sphere. Locke
is the Metaphysical embodiment of the good sense
and practical character of the nation from which
he sprung.

But the spirit of Locke's Philosophy, to adopt a
phrase originally employed with reference to Des
cartes, is more valuable than even his Philosophy
itself. There breathes throughout the Essay a spirit
of Intellectual Independence. There breathes a spirit

LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT. 185

of Intellectual Toleration which is still more rare.
The oaiov TrpoTifjLav Tfy aXvjfautv of Aristotle, " the
sacred and religious regard for Truth" inculcated fey
Butler, is seen conspicuous in every page of Locke.
Nor has this absolute devotedness to the interests
of Truth been unrewarded. The doctrine of the
Essay may be enveloped in ambiguity, disguised by
metaphor, darkened by defective exposition ; but
still it is, for the most part, true. And it is this
presence of Truth, " unseen, but not unfelt," that has
proved its salvation. No book has been professedly
confuted so often, and with such a parade of demon
stration, and yet no book has suffered so little from
its professed confuters. The philosophical instinct
of the ordinary reader has proved a more unerring
guide than the philosophical acumen of the pro
fessed critic. Though unable to demonstrate that
Locke was right, he was dissatisfied with every
effort to demonstrate him wrong. He acquiesced,
though he could not analyze. Hence it is that the
Essay concerning Human Understanding, though
the driest of all Metaphysical books, has also been
the most popular. Hume prophesied that Addison
would be read with pleasure when Locke was forgot
ten, yet it may be doubted whether even the Spec
tator has had a wider circulation than the Essay.
The secret of this success was at once divined by the
masculine sagacity of Warburton. Nowhere is the
eloquence of the great Theologian so pure as where
he manifests his sympathy with kindred genius,

186 LOCKE, HUME, AND KANT.

and his eulogy on Locke will bear comparison even
with his eulogy on Shaftesbury and Bayle : — " The
sage Locke supported himself by no system on the
one hand ; nor, on the other, did he dishonour him
self by any whimsies. The consequence of which
was, that, neither following the Fashion nor striking
the Imagination, he had at first neither followers
nor admirers ; but being everywhere clear and
everywhere solid, he at length worked his way, and
afterwards was subject to no reverses. He was not
affected by the new fashions of Philosophy who
leaned upon none of the old ; nor did he afford
ground for the after attacks of envy and folly by
any fanciful hypotheses which, when grown stale,
are the most nauseous of all things." This pane
gyric Mr. Stewart regards as " an additional example
of that national spirit which, according to Hume,
forms the great happiness of the English, and leads
them to bestow on all their great writers such
praises and acclamations as may often appear partial
and excessive" (Diss., p. 162). But the panegyric
of Warburton is not more eloquent than just. Suc
ceeding time will only confirm its justice, and to the
latest posterity, when the native of a foreign land
shall wish to pay homage to the philosophical genius
of this country, he will speak of it as the country of
Bacon and of Locke.

APPENDIX.

BERKELEY AND ABSTRACT IDEAS.

ACCORDING to Locke, "it is the contemplation of our own
Abstract Ideas that alone is able to afford us General Know
ledge" (iv. vi. 16). This passage suggests two questions — What,
according to Locke, is the nature of our Abstract Ideas? —
"What, according to Locke, is the immediate object of the Mind
in General Reasoning ?

The consideration of these questions cannot be better intro
duced than by quoting two celebrated passages, which, though
often commented on, have never yet been understood : —

" The next thing to be considered is, how General Words come
to be made. For, since all things that exist are only Particulars,
how come we by General Terms, or where find we those General
Natures they are supposed to stand for ? Words become general
by being made the Signs of General Ideas ; and Ideas become
general by separating from them the circumstances of time and
place, and any other Ideas that may determine them to this or
that particular existence. By this way of Abstraction they are
made capable of representing more individuals than one ; each of
which having in it a conformity to that Abstract Idea, is (as we
call it) of that sort . . . . . There is nothing more evident than
that the Ideas of the persons children converse with (to instance in
them alone), are, like the persons themselves, only particular. The
names they first give to them are confined to these individuals.

188 APPENDIX.

Afterwards, when time and a larger acquaintance has made them
observe that there are a great many other things in the world,
that in some common agreements of shape and several other qua
lities resemble their father and mother, and those persons they
have been used to, they frame an Idea which they find those
many particulars do partake in; and to that they give, with
others, the name 'man,' for example. Wherein they make no
thing new, but only leave out of the Complex Idea they had of
Peter and James, Mary and Jane, that which is peculiar to each,
and retain only what is common to them all"* (in. iii. 6, 7).

" Thus Particular Ideas are first received and distinguished,
and so knowledge got about them ; and next to them the less ge
neral or specific, which are next to particular ; for Abstract Ideas
are not so obvious or easy to children, or the yet unexercised
Mind, as particular ones. If they seem so to grown men, it is
only because by constant and familiar use they are made so ; for
when we nicely reflect upon them, we shall find that General
Ideas are fictions and contrivances of the Mind, that carry diffi
culty with them, and do not so easily offer themselves as we are
apt to imagine. For example, does it not require some pains and
skill to form the General Idea of a Triangle ? (which is yet none
of the most abstract, comprehensive, and difficult) ; for it must be
neither oblique, nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor
scalenon ; but all and none of these at once. In effect, it is some
thing imperfect that cannot exist ; an Idea wherein some parts
of several different and inconsistent Ideas are put together"
(iv. vii. 9).

On this latter passage, Berkeley in the Introduction to his Prin
ciples of Human Knowledge remarks: — "If any man has the

* According to the Theory of Smith and Condillac, a name is first given to
an individual, then instinctively transferred to all individuals that bear a resem
blance to the first, and lastly, by an act of Reflection, made the symbol of the
points in which the individuals agree to the exclusion of those in which they
differ. According to Locke, the individual name is not transferred — a general
name is fabricated. In the preceding quotation I have somewhat abridged the
words of Locke.

APPENDIX. 189

faculty of framing in his Mind such an Idea of a Triangle as is
here described, it is in vain to pretend to dispute him out of it,
nor would I go about it. All I desire is, that the reader would
fully and certainly inform himself, whether he has such an Idea
or no" (sect. xiii.). The sense in which Berkeley understood
Locke's Abstract General Idea is evident from what he has pre
viously said. He considered Locke as holding that a General Idea
might be idealized in its generality, that the Abstract Idea could
be mentally realized " in Abstract" (sects, vii.-xi.). The criticism
thus enounced by Berkeley was reproduced by Hume and accepted
by Eeid, Stewart, and Brown. It is acquiesced in by the Editor
of Reid. Crambe's General Idea of a Lord Mayor, in fact, is, in
the opinion of Philosophers, the type and parallel of Locke's Ge
neral Idea of a Triangle. But, as Mr. Hallam has well observed
on another occasion, "it ought surely to have occurred that, in
proportion to the absurdity of such a notion, is the want of likeli
hood that a mind eminently cautious and reflective should have
embraced it" (Lit. Hist., iv. 148). Locke's General Idea, in fact,
is not so much an Idea as a collection of the Ideas connoted by
a General Term (m. iii. 6, 10, 13); his Abstract Idea is not a
generalization capable of being individualized " in Abstract," it is
a generalization obtained by a process of " Abstraction" (HI. iii. 6).
Locke's General Abstract Idea is in reality a mere " Definition"
(in. iii. 10). It is true, Locke speaks of the General Idea of a
Triangle as including "all and none" of the peculiarities of the
various Individual Triangles " at once ;" but it is the very nature
of a Definition virtually to comprehend the peculiarities which it
actually excludes. It is true, Locke speaks of the difficulty con
nected with the formation of our Abstract Ideas ; but he is speak
ing of a difficulty, not of an impossibility, and the difficulty he
alludes to is constantly betraying itself in minds unaccustomed to
speculation, by abortive attempts to reduce the Abstract to the
Concrete, the General to the Particular, the Definition framed
by Intellect to an Image conceivable by Sense. The Abstract
Idea is " the measure of name and the boundary of species"
(in. iii. 14). It is, in the only proper sense of the term, a " Form"

190 APPENDIX.

(in. iii. 13). It is the Idea of Plato, the General Concept of the
recent Logicians of Germany. In short, it is the " Scheme" of
Kant. " No Image," says Kant, " could ever be adequate to our
conception of a Triangle in general. It never could attain to the
generality of the conception which includes under itself all Tri
angles, whether right-angled, acute-angled, &c. The Scheme of
the Triangle can exist nowhere else than in thought, and it indi
cates a Kule of the Synthesis of the Imagination in regard to
Figures in pure Space."

The ulterior question may now easily be settled. Locke's Ab
stract Idea is not the Separate Essence attributed to the Eealist ;
for he holds that it is " something imperfect which cannot exist"
(iv. vii. 9). It is not the Idea-Image attributed to the Concep-
tualist; for he tells us it is " an Idea wherein some parts of seve
ral different and inconsistent Ideas are put together" (ibid.). It
is not the Arbitrary Abstraction attributed to the Nominalist ; for
though he holds it to be " the creature and invention of the Un
derstanding" (in. iii. 11), he also holds that it must have its
" foundation in the similitude of things" (in. iii. 13). It is a
collection of the Ideas connoted by a general term (in. iii. 13, 14).
But, the Concept once formed, did Locke hold that the whole col
lection of Ideas must be actually present to the Mind at every step
of the reasoning process ? If so, he must be regarded as a Con-
ceptualist. Or did he hold that the connotation of the general
term being once fixed, it might be employed as an Algebraic Sym
bol, the meaning lying latent during the process, and being called
into evidence only when we come to interpret the result ? In that
case Locke is in reality a Nominalist. This point may be easily
determined. Locke, it is true, maintains that "it is the contem
plation of our own Abstract Ideas that alone is able to afford us
General Knowledge" (iv. vi. 16) ; and this with perfect reason.
The contemplation of the Concept must certainly have preceded
the employment of the Symbol Even in Algebra we must con
sider the Conditions of the Question before we can form the Sym
bolic Equation. But the meaning of the Symbol once determined,
the Equation once formed, Locke unequivocally admits that the

APPENDIX. 191

General Term may be employed as an Instrument of Reasoning.
This is evident enough from his distinction between Mental and
Verbal Propositions (iv. v. 4) ; but one passage is decisive of the
question. "I do not say," says Locke, "a man need stand to
recollect, and make this analysis at large every time the word
comes in his way ; but this, at least, is necessary, that he have so
examined the signification of that name, and settled the Idea
of all its parts in his mind, that he can do it when he pleases"
(m. xi. 9).

In spite of all apparent differences, Locke, and Berkeley, and
Reid, are, in reality, at one. "How can you employ a General
Term," says Locke, "unless you have a General Idea to regulate
its application ?" "I do not deny absolutely that there are Gene
ral Ideas," says Berkeley, "but only that there are Abstract Ge
neral Ideas" (Int., sect. xii.). "My Abstract General Idea,"
Locke would reply, " is not a General Idea idealized in Abstract,
— it is a General Idea obtained by a process of Abstraction."
"Even admitting that modification of your doctrine," says
Berkeley, "it is not necessary (even in the strictest reasonings)
significant terms which stand for Ideas should, every time they
are used, excite in the Understanding the Ideas they are made to
stand for" (sect, xix.)*~ "Granted," says Locke, "I have stated
precisely the same in the third book of my Essay." " But," ex
claims Reid, addressing himself to Berkeley, " your reasoning
seems unwillingly or unwarily to grant all that is necessary to
support Abstract and General Conceptions. If, as you say, a man
may consider a figure merely as Triangular (sect, xvi.) ; if an Idea
becomes general, by being made to represent or stand for all other
particular Ideas of the same sort (sect, xii.), then you concede

* According to Mr. Hansel, " throughout Berkeley's Dissertation, too little
notice is taken of the important fact, that we can, and in the majority of cases do,
employ Concepts as Instruments of thought, without submitting them to the
test of even possible individualization" (Prolegomena, p. 31). I think Mr. Man-
sel, if he were to re-peruse that dissertation, would see reason to retract his asser
tion. In the Minute Philosopher, at all events (Dialogue vii., sect, vi.-viii.),
Berkeley has left no doubt as to his views upon this point.

192 APPENDIX.

everything for which the Conceptualist contends" {Reid, p. 408).
The answer of both Locke and Berkeley is obvious. " You con
found the manner in which the Symbol is employed with the
manner in which it was originally framed. Framed to connote
the Attributes comprehended in a Concept, it may consistently be
employed as an unmeaning Symbol."

The Scottish School is thus guilty of a double misrepresenta
tion. It attributes to Locke an absurdity he never held — the
absurdity of the Abstract Idea-Image. It refuses to Berkeley a
doctrine which he undoubtedly did hold — the doctrine of General
Notions obtained by Abstraction,

According to M. Cousin, the Realist was right with reference
to the General Necessary Idea, such as that of Space, and the
Nominalist was right with reference to the General Collective
Idea, such as that of a Book. It is sufficient to remark that
the Idea of Space is not a General Idea, and that it is with re
ference to General Collective Ideas alone that the whole con
troversy raged.

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