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a«*
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LOCKE'S ESSAY
CONCERNING
HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
FRASER
VOL. I.
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£onbon
HENRY FROWDE
Oxford University Press Warehouse Amen Corner, E.C.
dJiiW 9orft
MACMILLAN & CO., 66 FIFIH AVENUE
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AX ESSAY CONCERNING
lman understanding
JOHN LOCKE
COLLATED AND ANNOTATED. SVITII â– )LFMOMENA, BtOGRAPHICAL, CRITICAL, AND HISTORIC AI.
BY
ALEXANDER CAMPRELL FRASKR
nox. n c 1.., OXFORD
TMWUXrVS PBOFF&550R OT LOGIC AND MFTAFIIYSICS IN Tflf I'MIVKRStTY OF FniVPlRC-H
IX TWO VOLUMES VOL. I
0;tfor6
T THE CLARENDON PRESS
M.DCCC.XCIV
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AN ESSAY CONCERNING
HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
JOHN LOCKE
COLLATED AND ANNOTATED, tVITH PROLEGOMENA, BIOGRAPHICAL, CRITICAL, AND HISTORICAL
DV
ALEXANDER CAMPBELL ERASER
HON. D.C.T.., OXFORD BBfmtTirS mOPRSSOK OF LOGIC AKD MRTAmVSICS IN TIIR
mnvERsmr of edinbubch
IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I
Oxford
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
M.DCCC.XCIV
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THE ITEW TOftK PUBLIC UBRARY
293026B
mPQR, LKI70X AND 1 fMI ^
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Oxford
PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
BV HORACE HAKT. PRINTER TO THK UNIVERSITY
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Although increased leisure^ gained more than two years agOf by release from the public duties of the Edinburgh lecture-room^ may have hardly compensated for abatement of strength in the evening of life, I have gladly devoted a portion of that strength to this labour of love in connexion with Locke ; in succession to the development of the philosophy of Berkeley in which I was before engaged. In each undertaking I have been encouraged by the countenance of the illustrious University, associated with the historic memories of many centuries, which has not forgotten that Oxford was the academic home of Locke, and the chosen retreat of the old age of Berkeley.
I desire in particular to thank the Delegates, the Secre- taries, and the other officials of the Clarendon Press for their kindness, in the course of those critical reconstructions of Berkeley and Locke, during the last twenty five years.
I am indebted to Professor Andrew Seth, my distin- guished successor in the University of Edinburgh, for reading the proofs of the greater part of the present work, and for valuable suggestions.
In the preparation of the Index I have had the able assistance of Mr, Henry Barker.
A. C. F.
Gorton House, Hawthornden, Mid-Lothian : February 9, 1894.
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CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME
PROLEGOMENA, BIOGRAPHICAL, CRITICALy AND HISTORICAL,
PRELIMINARY.
PAGE
Editions and Interpretations of Lockers Essay . . . . xi
{A.) BIOGRAPHICAL.
I. What gave rise to the Essay (1670) xvi
II. Preparation for the Essay : Locke's Early Life in Somer- set, Oxford, and London (1633-70) .... xviii
III. Preparation of the Essay : in London, France, and Holland
(1670-89) xxvi
IV. PUBUCATION OF THE EsSAY : LoNDON (1689-91) . . . XXXVli
V. Locke at Oates : Contemporary Critics of the Essay (1691-
1704) xxxix
(i?.) CRITICAL.
I. Knowledge: Structure of the Essay . . . . liv
II. Ideas the first Element in Knowledge Iviii
III. Connexion or Repugnance of Ideas, a second Element . Ixxv
IV. Perception, a third Element Ixxviii
V. Human Knowledge of Real Existences : Self, God, and
Outward Things Ixxxi
VI. Human Knowledge of Ideas co-existing as Attributes and
Powers in Particular Substances xcii
vii. Human Knowledge of Ideas in their Abstract Relations cviii VIII. Faith instead of Omniscience cxviii
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viii Contents.
{€.) HISTORICAL.
PAGB
I. The Essay as in Berkeley : Spiritual Philosophy . . cxxvi H. The Essay as in David Hume : Philosophical Nescience cxxxiv
AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMANE UNDERSTANDING,
IN FOUR BOOKS,
BY JOHN LOCKE,
Epistle Dedicatory to the Earl of Pembroke .... 3
The Epistle to the Reader 7
Introduction 25
BOOK I. NEITHER PRINCIPLES NOR IDEAS ARE INNATE,
CHAP.
I. No Innate Speculative Principles 37
II. No Innate Practical Principles 64
in. Other considerations concerning Innate Principles, both
Speculative and Practical 9a
BOOK 11. OF IDEAS. I. Of Ideas in general, and their Original . . lai
II. Of Simple Ideas 144
III. Of Simple Ideas of Sensation 148
IV. Idea of Solidity 151
v. Of Simple Ideas of Divers Senses 158
VI. Of Simple Ideas of Reflection 159
VII. Of Simple Ideas of both Sensation and Reflection . 160 viii. Some further considerations concerning our Simple
Ideas of Sensation 166
IX. Of Perception 183
X. Of Retention 193
XI. Of Discerning, and other operations of the Mind . . 90a
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Contents. ix
CHAP. rAGS
XII. Of Complex Ideas . 313
XIII. Of Simple Modes :>-and First, of the Simple Modes of
THE Idea of Space 318
XIV. Idea of Duration and its Simple Modes .... 338 XV. Ideas of Duration and Expansion, considered together. 357
XVI. Idea of Number and its Simple Modes .... 370
XVII. Of the Idea of Infinity 376
XVIII. Of other Simple Modes 394
XIX. Of the Modes of Thinking 398
XX Of Modes of Pleasure and Pain 30a
^ XXI. Of the Idea of Power 308
XXII. Of Mixed Modes 381
xxiii. Of our Complex Ideas of Substances .... 390
XXIV. Of Collective Ideas of Substances 434
XXV. Of IHeAS of Relation 436
xxvL Of Ideas of Cause and Effect, and other Relations . 433
xxvii. [Of Ideas of Identity and Diversity] .... 439
xxviii. Of Ideas of other Relations 471
XXIX. Of Clear and Obscure, Distinct and Confused Ideas . 486
XXX. Of Real and Fantastical Ideas 497
XXXI. Of Adequate and Inadequate Ideas 50a
xxxii. Of True and False Ideas 514
XXXIII. [Of the Association of Ideas] " 537
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ERRATA
Page d^ifor § 70 read § 7a
„ 113*, line It for This read Now
>j ^55> ifisert % 5 opposite marginal analysis,
„ 156, insert § 6 opposite marginal analysis,
,, I92*,y<7r initiating read irritating in quotation frotn Prof. Huxley,
„ 319, line 2y for ch. 4 r^«^ ch. 5
,, 241*, line 17, insert not ^^« impossible
„ 260^ line 22^ for former read latter
„ zo%^yfor * Inquiry y sect, vi.* «tf£/ * Inquiry ^ sect, vii.'
w 3^5S li^e ^> insert full stop after motives Ch. xxvii, in the nnmbering of the §§, numbers 10 and 11 are repeated.
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PROLEGOMENA
BIOGRAPHICAL, CRITICAL, AND HISTORICAL
PRELIMINARY.
EDITIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS OF LOCKE'S ESSAY.
Few books in the literature of philosophy have so widely Historical represented the spirit of the age and country in which they ^f Si^"^^ appeared, or have so influenced opinion afterwards, as Essay. Locke's Essay coficerning Human Understanding. The art of education, political thought, theology, and philo- sophy, especially in Britain, France, and America, long bore the stamp of the Essay ^ or of reaction against it, to an extent that is not explained by the comprehensiveness of Locke's thought, or by the force of his genius.
In the fourteen years that elapsed between its first Editions appearance in 1690 and its author's death, the Essay ^q^^' p»assed through four .editions, followed by more than forty in the course of last century, and by many since, besides abridgments, and translations into Latin and French. From the first the book was the subject of criticism, and the occasion of controversy. Opposite inter- pretations have been put upon its doctrines by its innu- merable critics, from Stillingfleet and Leibniz in Locke's lifetime ; Condillac with the French Encyclopaedists, and Reid with his followers in Scotland, in last century; to
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Xll
Prolegomena.
Critics of the Essay,
Commen- taries of Lee and Leibniz.
Coleridge, Cousin, and Green, who treat the Essay as an incoherent expression of sensuous empiricism, or Webb and Tagart, with some recent German critics, who lay stress on its recc^nition of intuitive reason.
For a long time the Essay has been named more than it has been studied. Even historians of philosophy have dealt with it largely at second hand ; without that candid comparison of parts with the spirit and design of the whole, which is necessary in the case of a book that deals with philosophy in the inexact language of common life ; and also without sufficient allowance for the fact that it was composed by a man of affairs, who discussed questions appropriated by abstract philosophy with a view to the immediate interests of human life, as his occasional employ- ment, in an unphilo^^hical age.
It has been remarked as curious that there should be no collated and annotated edition of this English philo- sophical classic, notwithstanding the successive changes introduced in the four English editions published under Locke's eye, and the prolonged controversial discussion of the Essay. It is true that even before Locke's death it was made the subject of elaborate comment, by Henry Lee, rector of Tichmarsh in Northamptonshire, in his Anti- Scepticism : or Notes upon each chapter of Mr. Locke s Essay ^ with an explication of all the particulars lof which he treats, and in the same order. Of this work Stewart remarks, that the strictures, * often acute and sometimes just, are marked throughout with a fairness and candour rarely to be met with in controversial writers ' ; and, according to the judgment of Sir James Mackintosh, Lee *has stated the question of innate ideas more fully than Shaftesbury, or even Leibniz.' A more celebrated commentary on the Essay was that of Leibniz, in his posthumous Nouveaux Essais sur lEntendement Humain^ written before Locke died, but not published till 1765. In the inconvenient form of dialogue, the doctrines of the Essay are here dis- cussed chapter by chapter, between the interlocutors, in the eclectic spirit which thus appears in the opening sentences of the preface: — 'The Essay on the Understanding^ he says, * by an illustrious Englishman, being one of the most
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Editions and Interpretations of tke Essay, xiii
beautiful and esteemed works of the time, I have resolved to make Remarks on it, because, having myself long meditated upon this subject, and upon most of the matters touched upon in the Essay, I have thought that it afforded a good opportunity for putting forth my own thoughts about them, under the title of New Essays on the Under- standing; and that I might secure a favourable reception for my thoughts, by presenting them in such good company. I have hoped also that I might be able to profit by the work of this author, not only in the way of relieving my own labour (since it is easier to follow the thread of an able author than to elaborate anew,) but also by adding something to what he has done, which is less formidable than to make an independent beginning ; and I think I have cleared up some difficulties which he left unin- vestigated. It is true that I often differ from him ; but, so far from denying the merit of famous writers, one bears testimony to it, by frankly making known in what, and wjhy, one differs from their opinions; because we ought to prefer reason to even their authority on questions of importance. In fact, although the author of the Essay says a thousand things of which I approve, our systems are widely different. His has more rdation to Aristotle, and mine to Plato ; while we both diverge in many ways from those illustrious ancients. Also the author of the Essay adapts his style more to the general reader than I pretend to do, for I am obliged occasionally to be more acroamatical and abstract' This last consideration Lee presges more strongly than Leibniz, when he mentions * a natural elegancy of style ; an unaffected beauty in his expressions ; and a just proportion and tuneable cadence in all his periods' as, * above all,' the qualities which brought Locke's Essay into popularity — a judgment which readers may regard as an exaggeration of its literary merits.
Among more recent criticisms of the Essay the most Cousinand celebrated are contained in Cousin's Ecole Sensualiste: ^^^^"• Systhne de Locke {i82g\ according to Sir William Hamilton *the most important work on Locke since the Nouveaux Essais of Leibniz ' ; and in the Introduction to the philo-
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xiv Prolegomena.
sophical works of David Hume, by the late Mr. Green, who, notwithstanding the anachronism, has subjected the Essay to the canons of Neo-Hegelian dialectic. The The present work is meant partly as homage to its
wo^"^ author's historical importance, as a chief factor in the development of modern philosophy during the last two centuries. It is also intended to recall to a study of Locke those who, interested in the philosophical and theological problems of this age, are apt to be dominated too exclu- sively by its spirit and maxims. They may thus study the problems in a fresher, although cruder, form than they have now assumed, through the controversies of the intervening period. The text has been prepared after collation with the four editions published when Locke was alive, and also with the French version of Coste, done under Locke's supervision. The successive changes are bracketed, many of them significant, especially those which express his oscillation of opinion about * power ' in moral agency, in Bk. II. ch. xxi. The archaic orthography of the original title — Essay concerning Humane Understanding — is retained on the title-page of the Essay, but is exchanged in the body of the work for the modern form. On the same principle (with reluctance) I have retained the * it is ' and *has' of the best posthumous editions, instead of the *'tis' and (occasionally) * hath ' of the early folios. I have also reduced the superabundant italics and capitals of the early editions, retaining only what may remind readers that the book is not the work of a contemporary. The sectional analyses have been removed from the body of the text to the margin, occasionally corrected and enlarged, and new ones annexed to sections where they were wanting. The annotations might have been multiplied indefinitely; for almost every question in metaphysical philosophy and theology, as well as in philosophical physics, is suggested by the text, as well as innumerable references to the Essay in the literature of the last two centuries. The annotations offered are for the most part intended to keep the point of view and leading purpose of the Essay steadily before the reader ; and the references are mostly to the works of Locke's contemporaries, and his immediate predecessors and suc-
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Editions and Interpretations of the Essay, xv
cessors. Occasional side-glances show recent phases of philosophical or theological thought, to which the develop- ment through controversy of what was latent in the Essay may have contributed. The corresponding portions of the Nouveaux Essais are often quoted, in the interest of the contrast, and of the speculative insight of the German philosopher. In the Prolegomena Locke's individuality, and the circumstances by which it was modified are presented in their relation to the Essay ; this is followed by constructive criticism of the Essay itself, as a * historical plain' account of a knowledge that, being finite and human, is at last determined by faith ; and in the end attention is invited to two opposite directions into which the Essay helped to divert the main current of philosophical thought, in Berkeley and in Hume. The portrait of Locke presented in this work is reproduced from the picture in Christ Church, so long Locke's home.
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{A.) BIOGRAPHICAL.
I. WHAT GAVE RISE TO THE ESSAY (1670).
Locke's To interpret the Essay one must remember the personality
^f r*^""k ^^ Locke and the circumstances of his life, for the book is to the in a singular degree the reflex of its author. It has been ladon of ^^'' ^^'^ ^^^^ ^'' Locke's published writings, including even his Essay, the Essoy, were * occasional,' being intended to overcome prevailing obstacles to civil, religious, and intellectual liberty. The seventy-two years of his life coincide at first with some of the stormiest and most momentous in the history of England, and then with the compromise and peaceful settlement in which he bore an influential part. The Essay itself was the issue of an accident, and in preparing it he was throughout moved by the sober moral purpose that animated his life. A memor- Here is his own explanation of the way in which, when meetine of ^^^^"x forty years of age, he engaged in the intellectual 'five or six enterprise that occupied him at intervals until he had entered on his fifty-eighth year : — * Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of this Essay, I should tell thee that five or six friends meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that arose on every side. After we had a while puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of thcfse doubts which per- plexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course ; and that before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal with. This I proposed to the company, who all readily assented ; and thereupon it was agreed that this should be our first inquiry. Some hasty, undigested
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friends.'
Wkat gave rise to the Essay. xvli
thoughts, on a subject I had never before considered, which I set down against our next meeting, gave the first entrance into this Discourse; which, having been thus begun by chance, was continued by entreaty ; written by incoherent parcels ; and, after long intervals of neglect, resumed again, as my humour and occasions permitted ; and at last, in a retirement, where an attendance on my health gave me leisure, it was brought into that order thou now seest it.' Locke does not mention the subject which, on this memorable occasion, puzzled the assembled friends, and led him to make an inquiry into the constitution and limits of human knowledge the chief work of his life. But we are not left quite in the dark. James Tyrrell, one of the party, not unknown afterwards as a political and historical writer, has recorded it, in a manuscript note on the margin of his copy of the Essay, now in the British Museum. The difficulties, according to this record, arose in the course of a discussion about the * principles of morality and re- vealed religion.' This subject is indeed not far removed from the theory of human knowledge, which inevitably mixes itself up with all profound ethical and religious thought ; and Locke's undertaking was thus associated from the first with the mysteries of existence of which religion promises a practical solution.
At the time of this fruitful reunion Locke was living in Locke's London, in the house of the first Earl of Shaftesbury, as his stances confidential secretary and friend, a sharer in the public when this work of the most remarkable statesman in the reign of â„¢ok^|Sace. Charles the Second. How came it about that now, in middle life, in the vortex of politics, this man of affairs entered a region that is occupied for the most part by those who devote their lives exclusively to abstract speculation? A summary retrospect of the preceding history of Locke's mind may help to explain how Lord Shaftesbury's secretary became the author of the Essay concerning Human Understanding.
VOL I.
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xviii Prolegomena: Biographical.
11. PREPARATION FOR THE ESSAY: LOCKE'S
EARLY LIFE IN SOMERSET, OXFORD,
AND LONDON. (1632-70.)
Locke's Information about Locke's early history is scanty. That
boyhood ^^ ^^^^ ^^ elder of two sons, in a respectable Somersetshire in a Pun- family, of Roundhead and Puritan sympathies — that he was * ^' bom on August 29, 163a, at Wrington, under the shadow of the Mendip hills — that his boyhood was spent at Belu- ton, the rural home which he afterwards inherited from his father, a short distance froni the little market town of Pensford, in the fertile valley of the Chew, six miles south- east from Bristol, and ten west from Bath — ^that his mother was several years older than his father, * pious and affec- tionate,' whose early death left her sons in childhood without a mother's care — that his father, a small country attorney, ' kept his eldest son, when he was a boy, in much awe and at a distance, but relaxing still by degrees of that severity as he grew up to be a man, till he, being become capable of it, lived with him as a friend till his death,' when that son was almost thirty years of age — that the home training at Bduton must have been often interrupted, inasmuch as the father joined the army of the Parliament, in which, after two years' service, he rose to be captain, and in the end so suffered in those troubled times that he left a reduced estate to his son ; — these are the chief recorded incidents of the boyhood of John Locke. We see a slender and delicate youth, living through the turbulent drama in which his father was for a time an actor. As Locke wrote in the year of the Restoration : * I had no sooner perceived myself in the world but I found myself in a storm, which has lasted almost hitherto.' The Parliamentary patrons of the father found a place for the boy, when he was fourteen, on the foundation of Westminster School. He spent six years at Westminster. Little that is significant has been recorded about his Westminster life, unless the absence in the scanty record of signs of that genius for scholarship and literature which marked South and Dryden, who were among his schoolfellows. It was in those Westminster
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Preparation for the Essay. xix
years that the assembly of Puritan divines was debating Calvinistic theology in the Jerusalem Chamber ; and in one of the years Locke may have witnessed the tragedy at Whitehall in which the Puritan revolution culminated.
In 165a Locke gained a scholarship at Christ Church, Locke at and for fifteen years Oxford was his home. The picture ^^s^fi^"!'*" now becomes more distinct. We see him in Cromwellian Oxford, * under a fanatical tutor/ as Anthony Wood tells us, Cromwell Chancellor of the University, with John Owen, the famous Puritan divine and apostle of a political toleration of religious differences, Dean of Christ Church and Vice- Chancellor. The idea of toleration professed by Owen and the Independents was probably not without influence on the young scholar from Westminster. But his hereditary sympathy with the Puritans seems to have abated at Christ Church, as a consequence of the * storm,' and in the larger experience which opened at Oxford. He discovered that 'what was called general freedom was general bondage; and that the popular asserters of liberty were the greatest engrossers of it too, and not unjustly called its keepers.' It was true that even in Cromwellian Oxford the Aristotle of the Schoolmen still determined the studies of the place, which were uncongenial to Locke, because * perplexed with obscure terms and useless questions.' He thus early showed his love for facts rather than abstractions, and preferred intercourse with persons to intercourse with books. ' I have often heard him say,' Lady Masham reports, * that he had small satisfaction in his Oxford studies, as finding very little light brought thereby to his understanding ; that he became discontented with his manner of life, and wished that his father had rather designed him for anything else than what he was there destined to.' He sought the company of pleasant and witty men, whom he delighted to meet, and 'in conversation and correspondence much of his time was then spent.' Anthony Wood, one of his college contemporaries, representing the spirit of the past, after- wards described * John Locke of Christ Church, now a noted writer,' as in his undergraduate days * a man of turbulent spirit, clamorous and discontented. While the rest of our club took notes deferentially from the mouth of the master,
ba
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Descartes.
XX Prolegomena: Biographical.
the said Locke scorned to do so, but was ever prating and troublesome/ Nevertheless, in 1658 he took his master's degree, on the same day as Joseph Glanvill, who was akin to him in zeal for intellectual liberty, and author afterwards of the Vanity of Dogmatising and the Scepsis Scientifica^ works probably not without influence upon the Essay. Awakened The year of the Restoration was an important one in teiiectuai Locke's history. It left him senior student and tutor in life by Christ Church. Soon after, by the death of his father, he came into possession of the little property of Beluton. He was thus in circumstances suited to independent study. The modern disposition to free inquiry was finding its way into Oxford, although it was not recommended in the colleges ; and self-education was thus encouraged in a strong personality. The chief philosophical works of Descartes had appeared nearly twenty years before, and were awake;ning intellect in the universities of Europe The Human Nature and Leviathan of Hobbes, and the Syntagma Philosophicum of Gassendi followed, during Locke's undergraduate years. He was never a great reader, at least of philosophical books: he disclaims intimacy with the works of Hobbes, and is silent about Gassendi. But he was strongly attracted to Descartes. 'The first books, as Mr. Locke has told me,' Lady Masham writes, * which gave him a relish of philosophical things were those of Descartes. He was rejoiced in reading these, because, though he very often differed in opinion from this writer, yet he found that what he said was very intelligible; from whence he was encouraged to think that his not having understood others had possibly not proceeded from a defect in his understanding.' Descartes, often named in Locke's letters to Stillingfleet, probably influenced him more than any metaphysical philosopher, not only by his analytic intrepidity, but by his introspective method. He may have suggested the very question about human knowledge and its limits which led to the Essay — a question which Descartes says that any man who loves truth must examine once at least in his life ; since the adequate investigation of it com- prehends all intellectual method, and the organon of human knowledge ; nothing being more absurd than to argfue about
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Preparation for the Essay, xxi
the in}^eries of the universe without consideration of the relative competency of the mind of man.
The religious temper, nourished in Locke by his imbibing education among the English dissenters, when Calvinistic ^j*^*"^ theology was in the ascendant, suggested an ecclesiastical adopting career. This was not favoured, however, by his growing methods sympathy with free inquiry, in reaction against scholastic ofcxpen- studies, and against the fanaticism of which he had H^quiry, accused 'the popular asserters of liberty.' Experimental inthe research became fashionable in England after the Restora- ^edi^ine. tion. This opened a field more congenial to Locke. The Royal Society was founded in 1660 at Oxford. Wallis and Wilkins, afterwards Boyle and Wren, at Oxford, with Barrow and Newton, at Cambridge, were helping to make investigation of nature take the place of the ' vermiculate ' questions of medieval philosophy. About 1664 the young Student of Christ Church was busied in chemical experi- ments, and meteorological observations, and soon after in the study of medicine. Before 1666 he was engaged in a sort of amateur practice in Oxford. Although he never took a doctor's degree, he was in later life familiarly known among his friends as 'Doctor Locke.' Medicine did not long absorb one whose temperament inclined him to a variety of interests. Besides, he inherited a delicate constitution, unfavourable to practice as a physician, and all his life he had to offer a prudent resistance to chronic consumption and asthma. But to the end he was fond of the art of healing, and was ready on occasion to give friendly medical advice.
Locke early applied himself to questions of social polity, Investi- as well as to medicine. The constitution of society, the â„¢^tf<,njj relations of Church and State, and above all the right and of social duty of political toleration of religious differences, were ^ *^* revolved in his thoughts in those Oxford years; always in sympathy with individual freedom, and in a spirit of prudential utilitarianism. His commonplace-books be- tween his twenty-eighth and thirty-fourth year prove this. Among them a fragment on the ' Roman Commonwealth,' and another headed ' Sacerdos,' show how soon the idea of liberty, civil and religious, was in process of formation in his
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Prolegomena: BiographicaL
mind ; and how he looked at sacerdotalism as ' the one widespread perversion of the original simplicity of Christi- anity/ But the most remarkable revelation of those early Oxford years is in an ' Essay concerning Toleration/ found among his papers. It anticipates principles on behalf of which Locke published elaborate arguments in after years, when toleration became his social ideal. This juvenile essay is partly a plea for promoting a comprehensive national church, by restoring Christianity to its original simplicity, and thus removing occasion for nonconformity ; and partly a vindication of civil and ecclesiastical liberty, on the ground that it is foolish to employ persecution as a means for producing reasonable beliefs. Engaged Locke's interest in the body politic was not merely aca- monti^ln demical, even in those early Oxford years. Unexpectedly diplomatic we find the medical experiments interrupted, in the winter service. ^^ 1 665, by an engagement of some months in diplomatic service, at the court of the elector of Brandenburg, as secretary to Sir Walter Vane. This introduced him to life out of England and to business, but could hardly have been meant as a first step in a diplomatic career ; for after his return to Oxford, in February 1666, he declined to go to Spain, as secretary of the embassy — * pulled both ways by divers considerations,' before he finally resolved. This aptly expresses Locke's state of mind in these Christ Church years — pulled different ways by divers tastes and ready sym- pathies, but as yet without obviously deep, decided, and persistent intellectual purpose — Descartes, amateur medical experiments, theological problems, social problems, inter- course with men in public affairs, each in turn.
An
accident at last carried him to London and deter- mined his career.
An unexpected circumstance carried him into the political world of London, in his thirty-fifth year, so that for sixteen years of middle life his home was chiefly there, 'in the society of great wits and ambitious politicians,' a man of affairs and of the world, without much undisturbed leisure. All this came about through a meeting with Lord Ashley, soon after the celebrated first Earl of Shaftesbury, due to the accidental absence of Dr. Thomas, the physician for whose advice that statesman was visiting Oxford.
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Dr. Thomas had entrusted his friend Locke one day with the care of his patient, and the intercourse thus brought about between the versatile statesman and the Christ Church student, with his many-sided interests, ripened into friendship. 'Soon after, my lord, returning to London, desired Mr. Locke that from that time he would look upon his house as his own house, and that he would let him see him there in London as soon as he could.' So we are told by Lady Masham. Accordingly, in 1 667, Christ Church was exchanged for * Exeter House in the Strand,* and Locke h^casac factotum of the most striking political person- age in the reign of Charles the Second.
The scientific inquirer was now brought into the society Locke's of Halifax and Buckingham, amongst the politicians; London and was also encouraged in experiments, medical and ings. meteorological, by intercourse, amongst physicians and experimentalists, with Sydenham and Boyle. Sydenham's admiration was strongly expressed : — * You know,* he says, in the dedication to Mapleton of his Methodus curandi Febres (1676), * you know how thoroughly my method is approved of by an intimate and common friend of ours, and one who has closely and exhaustively examined the subject — I mean Mr. John Locke ; a man whom, in the acuteness of his intellect, in the steadiness of his judgment, and in the simplicity, that is, in the excellence of his manners, I confidently declare to have, amongst the men of our own time, few equals and no superior.' Locke's intimacy with Boyle was not less close, and the friendship with this illustrious chemist was unbroken till his death in 1 69 1, when Locke, addicted to kindred pursuits, edited Boyle's General History of the Air. Locke's intimates when Exeter House was his London home were chiefly physicists and politicians. We do not see him much in the society of men of letters or moral philosophers. There is no trace of intimacy with his former schoolfellow Dryden, from whom he was separated by politics, or with the illustrious poet of the Puritans, then far advanced in life. He met Evelyn occasionally, but there is no report of acquaintance with Temple or with Bentley. Age as well 33 politics may have separated him from Hobbes, who
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The
famous
reunion.
The bent of his thoughts in London.
spent most of his time after the Restoration in London. It is not without meaning that Locke's favourite preacher during this London life was Benjamin Whichcote, vicar of St. Lawrence Jewry from 1668 till 1683, a clerical moralist and latitudinarian churchman of the Cambridge School, modest, tolerant, and reasonable in an eminent degree.
It seems to have been in the winter of 1670, after Locke had lived for three or four years in his London home at Exeter House, that the meeting of the ' five or six friends ' took place which has made his name famous, and that converted the amateur physician, and shy student of human life, now the secretary and friend of the intriguing politician, into the author of the Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Locke's commonplace-books during those first years in London throw some light on the condition of mind in which the Essay was undertaken. A fragment, De Arte Medica^ dated in 1668, amongst his papers, reveals earnest search for truth, and dependence on experience for detecting it, as in sentences like these : — * He that in physics shall lay down fundamental questions, and from thence, drawing conse- quences and raising disputes, shall reduce medicine into the regular form of a science, totum^ teres^ atqtu rotundum^ has indeed done something to enlarge the art of talking, and perhaps laid a foundation for endless disputes : but if he hopes to bring men by such a system to the knowledge of the infirmities of their own bodies, or the. constitution, changes, and history of diseases, with the safe and discreet way of their cure, he takes much what a like course with him that should walk up and down in a thick wood, outgrown with briars and thorns, with a design to take a view and draw a map of the country. True knowledge grew first* in the world by experience and rational observations ; but proud man, not content with the knowledge he was capable of, and which was useful to him, would needs penetrate into the hidden causes of things, lay down principles, and establish maxims to himself about the operations of nature, and then vainly expect that nature, or in truth God, should proceed according to those laws which his maxims had prescribed to him ; whereas his narrow and weak faculties
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could reach no further than the observation and memory of some few facts produced by visible external causes, but in a way utterly beyond the reach of his apprehension ; — it being perhaps no absurdity to think that this great and curious fabric of the world, the workmanship of the Almighty, cannot be perfectly comprehended by any understanding but His that made it. Man, still affecting something of Deity, laboured by his imagination to supply what his observation and experience failed him in ; and when he could not discover (by experience) the principles, causes and methods of nature's workmanship, he would needs fashion all these out of his own thought, and make a world to himself^ framed and governed by his own intelligence. This vanity spread itself into many useful parts of natural philosophy ; and by how much the more it seemed subtle, sublime, and learned, by so much the more it proved pernicious and hurtful, by hindering the growth of practical knowledge.' It was with this modest ideal of human knowledge, and sense of the dependence of our ideas of things on our experience of what things are, and not on innate resources of our own, that Locke proposed — ^by an ' historical ' or matter-of-fact examination of what ' human understanding' is fit to compass, when it tries to under- stand existing things — ^to guard men against unwarranted assumptions and verbal abstractions, made to do duty for a real knowledge of the actual attributes and powers of things. We see how he suspected abstract maxims and empty phrases, the offspring of a vain conceit of innate knowledge, and was thus led to insist on the dependence of human understanding upon experience, in our inquiries into the qualities and behaviour of the substances, material or spiritual, that constitute the universe. The record of his thoughts about the time when the Essay was projected sh^ws also a disposition to look to prudent action as the chief end of intellectual exertion; to clip the wings of speculation ; and to disparage, as idle amusement, know- ledge that is pursued for its own sake only, and without regard to its efficacy in making human life happier.
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III. PREPARATION OF THE ESSAY: IN LONDON, FRANCE, AND HOLLAND. (1670-89.)
The first Locke tells his readers 'that when he first put pen to
Ssay. paper,' in fulfilment of his promise to the assembled friends, he * thought that all he should have to say on the matter would be contained on one sheet of paper,' but that * the further he went the larger prospect he had,' till, in the course of years, the work gradually *grew to the bulk it now appears in.' The * hasty, undigested thoughts,' which he * set down against the next meeting,* were perhaps con- tained in the following sentences, found among his manu- scripts:— ^ Sic cogitavity de Iniellectu Humanoy Johannes Locke, anno 1671. Intellectus humanus^ cum cognitionis certitudine et assensHs firmitate. First, I imagine that all knowledge is founded on, and ultimately derives itself from Sense, or something analogous to it ; and may be called Sensation. Which is done by our senses, conversant about particular objects, which gives us the simple ideas or images of things ; and thus we come to have ideas of light and heat, hard and soft; which are nothing but the reviving again in our mind the imaginations which these objects, when they affected our senses, caused in us — ^whether by- motion or otherwise, it matters not here to consider : and thus we do observe and conceive light or heat, yellow or blue, sweet or bitter: and therefore I think that those things which we call sensible qualities are the simplest ideas we have, and the first objects of the understanding.* — ^The inquiry in which Locke now engaged, of which this interest- ing fragment was probably the beginning, was pursued in the * historical ' or matter-of-fact way he had become accus- tomed to in his investigation of natural phenomena, or, as we should now say, in the scientific spirit and methed ; but with introspective, not external, observation, as the investigating faculty. He turned to the study of a human understanding as to a manifested living reality — a fact among other facts — the supreme fact indeed — the fact of facts, which illuminated all other facts, by bringing them into the light of conscious life — but still itself presented in expe-
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rience, and therefore to be studied in its temporal relations, according to the 'historical plain method'; not dealt with a priori as an abstraction ^ Our human understanding of the universe, and the extent to which intelligence can with us penetrate into reality, was for Locke a concrete problem, that had to be determined in a well-considered experience of the actual behaviour of the human mind. It was the knowledge of things that men are capable of, and its source ; not any theory of a knowledge more comprehensive than the human ; not an a priori criticism either of infinite knowledge, or of the metaphysical essences of things, that Locke undertook to present — at a point too of extreme opposition to the blind obedience to human authority, which spoiled the medieval ideal of intellectual system, verbally consistent with itself, but deduced as it seemed only from definitions of words. Independence of books and tradition was the new ideal : all in the individualistic temper favoured in England, where, as Hume remarks, * the great liberty and independence which every man enjoys, allows him to display the manners peculiar to himself ; so that the English of any people in the universe have the least of a national character, unless this very singularity may pass for such.'
• Intervals of neglect ' must have often interrupted this A retreat inquiry into the limits of a human understanding of the for^hSth universe, in the five years that immediately followed the and study, memorable reunion in 1670. Early in 167a, Lord Ashley, risen in Court favour for a time, was created Earl of Shaftes- bury. In the same year he became head of the Board of Trade and Lord Chancellor. This brought Locke into closer relation with public affairs, and in the following year he was advanced to the Board of Trade secretaryship. Its records illustrate the diligence, prudence, and methodical administration of the secretary — not without repeated signs of his weak health: the asthma from which he suffered much in middle life, and more afterwards, was a trouble during that life in London amidst official cares. The fall of Shaftesbury in 1675 enabled his secretary to retire to
* See Essay ^ * Introduction/ § a.
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France, where he h'ved for nearly four years, seeking health and engs^ed in studying ' human understanding,' partly at Paris, chiefly at Montpellier, in a seclusion to which he had been long a stranger. In France, for the first time, his daily history may be traced in the circumstantial record of a journal, as well as in commonplace-books, which disclose vigilant observation of the society and political institutions of France, and interest in its natural curiosities ; lucid intelligence, but no trace of sentiment or historic imagina- tion. The most significant particulars are those which present the Essay in process of formation. At Montpellier he was busied for months in revising and expanding materials which seem to have accumulated in the busy years of official life in London. At Montpellier Thomas Herbert, afterwards the accomplished seventh Earl of Pem- broke and patron of Berkeley, to whom both Locke's Essay and Berkeley's -Pr/«^jj^&j were dedicated, was his neighbour; with him, then and after, he was much in friendly intimacy. But it is remarkable that his social intercourse in France was with physicians, naturalists, jurists, and travellers ; not much, if at all, with metaphysicians. Yet that was the brilliant period of French speculative thought, represented by Nicole, Amauld, and Malebranche ; Leibniz coming into view in Germany, and when Spinoza was with- drawn by death in Holland. It does not appear that Locke met Malebranche, unless one may infer the contrary from the personal regard for the French philosopher that is expressed in a letter to Molyneux. He translated the Essais of Nicole soon after his return to England, and later on he criticised Malebranche. Bernier, the expositor of the mechanical philosophy of Gassendi, is mentioned amongst Locke's occasional associates. Progress It is difficult to say how far the Essay had advanced ^^^y^^ when its author returned to London, and to Lord Mont- Shaftesbury, in April, 1679. Although he wrote to his pellier. frfend Thoynard, a few weeks after he got there, that his * book was completed,' he added, that he * thought too well of it to let it then go out of his hands.' It was kept there for ten other years, for more mature consideration, the additions and transformations the occasion of much
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correspondence with friends in the interval. The current of his thoughts now becomes more distinctly seen in his journals. The scientific rather than the metaphysical habit of mind — the movement of events as determined by their secondary causes, and dealt with on the 'historical plain method/ according to calculations of probability — is what we are in contact with in these records. The method of experi- mental medicine; observation of *what is,' not ultimate inquiry *why it is,' is prevalent. The aptness of a human understanding to misconduct itself haunts him. He sees men ready to put empty sounds in place of lucid ideas ; to suppose that they have ideas when they have none, or distinct ideas when their ideas are obscure and confused ; blind submission to authority, without seeing for themselves ; abstract maxims, and unwarranted assumptions, apt to exclude real events and experience ; intellectual vanity in quest of solutions of unsoluble mysteries of existence, with oversight of man's appointed state of intellectual mediocrity, and of the fact that a human understanding is ' disproportionate to the infinite extent of things ' ; men unconsciously and fruitlessly assuming that they had over- come the disproportion ; escaping the pain which submission to facts as they are imposes, by keeping in circulation words void of ideas, and by building on assumptions about the realities of the universe that had no support in well- considered experience. He ^&^ too that it is only by having ideas to connect with our words that we are in a capacity for having any knowledge of the substances to which the words relate, or even for forming probable pre- sumptions about the behaviour of things ; so that the first step to knowledge of anything in the world is to admit the actual ideas in which the world reveals itself to our senses. Of what sorts then are those ideas of ours, and how do they come to be our own ? In what cases are they complete ? in what must they remain for ever incomplete and obscure, or at the most capable of carrying the understanding only into the r^ion of probabilities ? To mitigate the various diseases of a human understanding ; especially to abate its vain pretensions ; its indolent surrender of itself to maxims imposed by human authority, or by its own prejudices ; and
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to explode the empty verbalism that passes under the name of knowledge — ^all with intent to promote useful intellectual exercise in the daily life of experience, not to solve purely speculative problems of knowing and being — was plainly prominent in Locke's view, when the Essay was in process of formation in studious seclusion in France. Return to Locke passed through a troubled life in England in anf fidi*of ^^^ ^^'xt four years. He resumed his old relations with Shaftes- Shaftesbury. During his absence his patron had been im- bury. prisoned in the Tower. He was now restored to favour for
a few months, during which Locke was overwhelmed with official work. A time of plots and counterplots followed. England seemed about to plunge into another civil war. In 1 68 1 Shaftesbury was again in the Tower, charged with treason, acquitted, and welcomed back with popular enthu- siasm, to use his liberty in support of the Duke of Monmouth, with the zeal of a partisan, contrary to the prudent counsel of Locke. The arrest of Monmouth in the end of 1 68a paralyzed Shaftesbury, who escaped to Holland, and died at Amsterdam early in the following year. Course * Intervals of neglect,' and * incoherent parcels ' of the
t^o^ghts Essoy must have abounded in these four troubled years, ill the four which Were spent by Locke first with his hands full in yeare that Shaftesbury's service in London, then with his patron at followed^ his country seat of St. Giles, again with his friend Tyrrell in Oxfordshire, or at Christ Church, or with the Shaftesbury family, as the guardian of * Mr. Anthony,' afterwards the author of the Characteristics. The news of *my lord's death* in Holland was followed by Locke's appearance as one of the mourners at St. Giles. In 1683 he was under a cloud ; suspected and watched as the friend of the exiled statesman, although there is presumptive evidence that he had no part in the intrigues. In i68a Prideaux had reported from Oxford that * John Locke was living there a very cunning, unintelligible life, being two days in town and three out, and no one knows where he goes, or when he goes, or when he returns.' The year after, the Dean of Christ Church * confidently affirms that there is not any one in the college, however familiar with him, who has heard him speak a word against, or so much as
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concerning the government ; and although very frequently, both in public and in private, discourses have been pur- posely introduced to the disparagement of his master, the Earl of Shaftesbury, his party and designs, he could never be provoked to take any notice, or discover in word or look the least concern ; so that I believe there is not in the world such a master of taciturnity and passion. He has here it physician's place, which frees him from the exercise of the college/ The history of his studies in the four years, spent chiefly in London and Oxford, that followed his return from France, may be traced faintly in his journals. They recall the early medical years at Oxford more than the specu- lations about human understanding at Montpellier. Indif- ferent health and official life had interrupted the practice of medicine. But soon after the return from France we find records of patients in town and country, and the intercourse with Sydenham was resumed. At the same time problems of social polity, and the conflict of parties in England, en- couraged continued consideration of the relations of Church and State, the difference between civil and ecclesiastical power, and the duty of compromise, civil toleration, and ecclesiastical comprehension. He is loyal to the national church, but with ' a heart truly charitable to all pious and sincere Christians,* and so indifferent to questions of theolc^ical controversy that no organized religious com- munity can lay an exclusive claim to him ; but with a gravi- tation to the national church of England, as that in which the freedom of thought he supremely loved could best be found. There are signs now and then that the Essay was not forgotten. Its essence and spirit appear in the follow- ing sentences, for instance, written in 1681 : — * All general knowledge is founded only upon true ideas, and so far as we have these we are capable of demonstration, or certain knowledge : for he that hath the true idea of a circle or triangle is capable of knowing any demonstration concerning these figures ; but if he have not the true idea of a scalenus, he cannot know anything concerning it, though he may have some confused or imperfect opinion ; but this is belief, and not knowledge. And the mind being capable of thus knowing moral things as well as figures, I cannot but think
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Morality as well as Mathematics capable of demonstration, if men would employ their understanding to think more about it, and not give themselves up to the lazy traditional way of talking one after another. The knowledge of natural bodies and their operations, on the other hand, reaching little further than bare matter of fact, without our having perfect ideas of the ways and manners they are produced, or the concurrent causes they depend on ; and also the well management of public or private affairs, depending upon the various and unknown interests, humours, and capacity of men, and not upon any settled ideas of things — ^it follows that Physics, Polity, and Prudence are not capable of demonstration ; but a man is principally helped in them by the history of matter of fact, and a sagacity in inquiring into probable causes, and finding out an analogy in their operations and effects. Knowledge then depends upon right and true ideas : opinion upon history and matter of fact. Hence it comes to pass that our general knowledges are aeternae veritateSy and depend not upon the existence or accidents of things; for the truths of mathematics and morality are certain, whether men make true mathematical figures, or suit their actions to the rules of morality, or no. For that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones is infallibly true, whether there be any such figure as a triangle actually existing in the world or no. And it is true that it is every one's duty to be just, whether there be any such thing as a just man in the world or no. But whether this particular course in public or in private affairs will succeed well; whether rhubarb will purge, or quinquena cure an ague, is known only by experience : and therefore is but probability, grounded on experience or analogical reasoning, but is no certain knowledge or demon- stration.' Human understanding, in short, cannot rise above the practical certainty of probability in any of its conclusions regarding the behaviour of the actual substances that compose the universe, or reach absolute certainty as to any general propositions regarding their laws. Uncon- ditionally certain knowledge is confined to the abstract relations of our own mind-created abstractions ; it cannot be extended to the causal relations of concrete things, which
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are all independent of our will. The Essay must have been well thought out when the last-quoted sentences were written. The * survey of the extent of human knowledge ' was now taking the form of a survey of human ideas, on the ground that unless we have ideas of things there is nothing for the mind to know, and therefore no knowledge.
Locke's correspondence during this time of political The Cud- turmoil shows a growing intimacy (through their common J^^^y and friends the Clarkes of Chipley in Somerset) with the wife, the the Cam- son, and the daughter ^ of Cud worth, the Cambridge Platonist ^atonists. and philosophical theologian of the Anglican Church in the seventeenth century. Cudworth was then a recluse at Cam- bridge. His Intellectual System of the Universe had appeared in 1678, when Locke was in France. But members of the Cudworth family now figure in his life, and were associated with him to the end. The association would be philo- sophically interesting if the influence of Cudworth and of Cambridge rationalism could be traced in the Essay, Direct evidence of this is scanty, and the idealising genius and learning of Cudworth had little in common with the * ideism ' and individualism of Locke. There is no record of personal intercourse between them, and the Intellectual System is only once named in Locke's writings — in the Thoughts on Education^ published in 1693. There, in referring to • systems of natural philosophy ' ; to * that of Descartes ' as ' the one which is most in fashion ' ; and to ' the modern Corpuscularians ' as those who * talk in most things more intelligibly than the Peripatetics,' — he advises any one * who would look further back, and acquaint himself with the opinions of the ancients,' to * consult Dr. Cudworth's Intel- lectual System ; wherein that very learned author hath, with such acuteness and judgment, collected and explained the opinions of the Greek philosophers, that what principles they built on, and what were the chief hypotheses that divided them, is better to be seen in him than anywhere else that I know' (§ 193). This was written when Locke was an inmate in the family of Lady Masham, the daughter of Cudworth. From Whichcote, another representative of the same school,if not from Culverwell, Locke probably borrowed
^ Afterwards Lady Masham. VOL. I. C
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the metaphor of * the candle of the Lord,' to signify reason, especially in its intuition of self-evident principles, on which Locke * founds all certainty,^ and as to which he tells Stillingfleet that * whether they come into view of the mind earlier or later, this is true of them, that they are all known by their native evidences.* Fowler, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, another Cambridge latitudinarian, was one of Locke's intimates. In his ideas of ecclesiastical toleration, and of the relation of religion to reason, Locke had more in common with the Cambridge thinkers than with any other ecclesiastical contemporaries. But their direct influence in the formation of the Essay is probably overrated by Dr. von Hertling, in his elaborate volume, John Locke unddie SchuU von Cambridge {i^()z). He suggests that Locke's juvenile empiricism may have been modified by the Idealism of Cambridge when the Essay was approaching com- pletion, as an explanation of the more distinct recognition of intellectual elements of knowledge in the last book of the Essay, as well as of the seeming inconsistency of that book with the preceding books. It might be interesting to speculate upon the consequences to philosophy, in England and in Europe, if Locke had spent his academical life at Cambridge instead of Oxford, and had breathed its atmosphere of Platonism, instead of pursuing physical experiments at Oxford, when Oxford was giving birth to its Royal Society. In that case the Essay might have been pervaded by a higher conception of the capacities of man than that which its author is apt to find in the common sense of ordinary human intelligence. Locke in In the end of 1683 Locke reappears, now a voluntary
HoUand. ^y\\^ in Holland, then the asylum in Europe for those who failed to find civil and religious liberty in their native country. Earlier in the century Descartes made it his retreat for solitary thought, and Spinoza was living at Amsterdam six years before Locke found a home there. Holland was his refuge for more than five years after the gloomy autumn of 1683 in England. This was ' the retire- ment in which attendance on his health gave him leisure,' so that the Essay was there ' brought into that order ' in which its readers received it on its first appearance. Locke told
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Lady Masham that * in Holland, enjoying better health than he had for a long time done in England, or even in the fine air of Montpellier, he had full leisure to prosecute his thoij^hts on the subject of Human Understanding; a work,' she adds, ' which in all probability he would never have finished had he continued in England.' Curiosity and his health made him at first move from place to place, but in the winter of 1684 he settled at Utrecht for study,
* with all the books and other luggfage that I brought from England * — not to live undisturbed even in this retirement. He was watched by the authorities in England, where the Dean of Christ Church, Dr. Fell, in this same year deprived him of his Studentship and home at Christ Church, in obedience to the King's command. For the Secretary of State — ^ gfiven to understand that one Mr. Locke, who belonged to the Earl of Shaftesbury, has upon several occasions behaved himself very factiously and undutifully to the government, is a Student of Christ Church' — desired
* in the King's name, that the Dean would have him removed from being a Student.' Lady Masham adds that she heard from a friend of the Dean, * that nothing had ever happened which had troubled him more than what he had been obliged to do against Mr. Locke, for whom he ever had a sincere respect, and whom he believed to be of as irre- proachable manners and inoffensive conversation as was in the world.'
In Holland Locke found a friend in Philip von Limborch, Limborch lucid and learned, the leader of liberal theology in Holland, JJeoi^^ successor of Episcopius as Remonstrant professor, and the friend of Cudworth, Whichcote, and More. The copious correspondence of Locke with Limborch, during the rest of Locke's life, is an important revelation of his mind: it helped to develope in both the correspondents the principle of religious liberty, and a perception of the reasonableness of Christianity in its original simplicity. In a letter to Lim- borch, Lady Masham remarks that * Mr. Locke was born and had finished his studies at a time when Calvinism was in fashion in England. But these doctrines,' she adds, * had come to be little thought of before I came into the world ^ ;
^ Lady Masham was bom in 1659. C %
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and Mr. Locke used to speak of the opinions I had been accustomed to at Cambridge, even among the clergy there, as something new and strange to him. As during some years before he went to Holland, he had very little in common with our ecclesiastics, I imagine that the sentiments that he found in vogue amongst you in Holland pleased him far more, and seemed to him far more reasonable, than anything that he used to hear from English theologians.' In Locke rationalising theology was still united with a remainder of his inherited Puritanism, and always with aversion to the sacerdotal form of Christianity, to which he was not naturally attracted by historic sentiment or imagination, although it too has sustained many saints and martyrs in the history of Christendom. LeClerc Le Clerc was another of his Dutch friends, then the
Locke*s youthful representative of letters and philosophy in the beginning College of the Remonstrants, who had two years before ship"^**°'^ withdrawn from Geneva and Calvinism into the milder ecclesiastical atmosphere of Holland. The friendship with Le Clerc is associated with Locke's first appearance as an author. The Bibliothique Universelle^ commenced in 1686, under Le Clerc*s auspices, soon became the chief literary periodical of its time in Europe. Locke was induced to provide some of the articles. Although he was now in his fifty-fifth year, and afterwards a- voluminous author, these occasional essays were his first contributions to literature. * It is a very odd thing ' — he had so written to Lord Pembroke a few months before — * that I did get the reputation of no small writer without having done anything for it ; for I think two or three verses of mine, published without my name to them, have not gained me that reputation. Bating these, I do solemnly protest in the presence of God that I am not the author, not only of any libel, but not any pamphlet or treatise whatever, good, bad, or indifferent/ The * verses ' had appeared in a volume in praise of Cromwell, brought out by Dr. John Owen in 1654, in which Locke and other Oxford men figured. As one might expect, those by Locke contain no poetry. His tardiness as an author is significant. It agrees with the intellectual sobriety and caution that belong to his character.
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and is a contrast to the impetuous ardour which hurried Spinoza, Berkeley, and Hume to present to the world in youth their bolder and more comprehensive speculations. The last of Locke's articles in the Bibliothique was an * epitome' in French of the forthcoming Essay. It appeared in January 1688.
He was then living at Rotterdam. The scene soon His changed. The course of English politics was now opening j^*"j*" ^^ a way for his return to his native country. In Holland he "had found friends among the English refugees, especially Burnet, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, and Mordaunt, the famous Earl of Peterborough, with whom Berkeley travelled in Italy a quarter of a century later. Locke was known in Holland also to William of Orange. William landed at Torbay in November 1688 : Locke followed in February, 1689, in the fleet which carried the princess to Greenwich. The political struggle of half a century was then consummated in the compromise of the Revolution settlement, of which Locke, now rising into popular fame, became the intellectual representative and philosophical defender.
IV. PUBLICATION OF THE ESSAY: LONDON. (1689-91.)
Locke was busy in authorship after his return to England. Two years According to Lady Masham, ' he continued for more than two years after the Revolution much in London, enjoying all the pleasure there that any one can find, who, after being long in a manner banished from his country, unexpectedly returning to it, was himself more generally esteemed and respected than ever he was before. If he had any dissatisfac- tion in this time, it could only be, I suppose, from the ill success now and then of our public aflairs ; for his private circumstances were as happy, I believe, as he wished them. But of all the contentments that he then received there was none greater than that of spending one day every week with my Lord Pembroke, in a conversation undisturbed by such as could not bear a part in the best entertainment of rational minds — ^free discourse concerning useful truths. His old enemy, the town air, did indeed sometimes make war upon his lungs ; but the kindness of the now Earl of Peter-
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borough and his lady afforded him plejising accommodation on these occasions, at a house of theirs at Parsons Green, advantaged with a delightful garden, which was what Mr. Locke always took pleasure in.* Those two years in London were spent in hired apartments, in the house of * Mrs. Smithsby, Dorset Court, Channel Row, Westminster.' On the plea of health, in the month after his return from Holland, he declined the post of ambassador to Branden- burg, contented with a modest Commissionership of Appeals, as an official recognition by the new government.
Locke now worked diligently through the press, in the interest of individual liberty — religious, civil, and intellectual. An Epistola de Tolerantia, written in Holland, addressed to Limborch, published anonymously at Gouda, in 1689, a few weeks after he landed in England, and translated into English in the following summer by William Popple, vindicated freedom of opinion in religion. The English Revolution, as well as principles of social economy and jurisprudence which anticipated Hume and Adam Smith, and were in advance of Grotiusand Puffendorf, were defended in his anonymous Treatise on Government^ also written in Holland, which came out early in the following year.
These two were pioneers of the Essay concerning Human Understandings which at last issued from the press in March 1690. It proposed a way of escape from the bondage of too easily credited maxims that were supposed to be * innate,* and warned against words, either empty or ambiguous, maintained by the 'blind credulity' of the multitude, or to sustain rash excursions of philosophers 'into the vast ocean of being*; without due regard to the limits of experience that are imposed upon a human understanding, when man seeks to know the qualities and powers of existing things. The Essay was the first work of Locke's that was not anonymous, and for pru- dential or other reasons he resumed the veil in most of those that followed. His correspondence with Limborch and Le Clerc in 1689 shows him in all that year busied in carrying the Essay through the press. We are told that he got £jfi for the copyright, about the same sum as Kant
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received, ninety-one years after, for the philosophical com- plement of the Essay — the Kritik of Pure Reason.
V. LOCKE AT OATES: CONTEMPORARY CRITICS OF THE ESSAY. (1691-1704.) The Epistola de Tolerantia^ followed, in October 1690, The Manor by a Secoftd Letter on Toleration — the Treatise on Govern- o^tes^ ** ment — and the Essay concerning Human Understandings and the made up Locke's literary outcome while he was living in M*****"»- Dorset Court, in the two years after his return from Hol- land, that is up to his fifty-ninth year. They express con- victions gradually formed by observation of the collisions of his contemporaries with the adversaries of the free exercise of reason in experience. His bodily ailments had latterly increased in London. It was early in 1691 that the home of hjs old age, the brightest of his homes, opened to receive him. This was the retired manor house of Oates in Essex, between Ongar and Harlow, the country seat of Sir Francis Masham. Lady Masham, married when Locke was in Holland, was the accomplished daughter of Cudworth, who died three years before Locke went to live at Oates. In the course of the two years spent at Dorset Court, as Lady Masham told Le Clerc, Locke had, * by some considerably long visits to Oates, made trial of the air of the place, which is some twenty miles from London, and he thought none would be more suitable for him. His company could not but be very desirable for us, and he had all the assurance we could give him of being always welcome ; but to make him easy in living with us, it was necessary he should do so on his own terms, which Sir Francis at last assenting to, he then believed himself at home with us, and resolved, if it pleased God, here to end his days — which he did/ At Oates he lived in the bosom of the Masham family, which included Lady Masham's mother^, and a step-daughter, Esther Masham, a bright girl then about sixteen, who became Locke's favourite companion in the simple pleasures of country life. The idyllic picture of his fourteen remaining years presents as much domestic happiness and literary labour as was consistent with declining health.
> Dr. Cudworth died in 1688.
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Life at Oates was varied by occasional visits to London, particularly in 1696 and the four following years, when, as a Commissioner of the Board of Trade, with an income of ;f 1000 a year, he became again involved in official cares. One relaxation was the society of visitors who were attracted to Oates by its illustrious inmate — Newton, once and again, on his way to or from Cambridge, Molyneux from Dublin, Fowler, the latitudinarian Bishop of Gloucester, and the free-thinking Anthony Collins, then a young Essex squire. Other Work in the study was resumed with characteristic
phicS°' industry and method as soon as Locke was settled at Oates, work, latterly assisted by M. Coste as amanuensis. What he b^theT"^ had published in the two preceding years, especially the Essay. Essay, soon involved him in controversies which lasted with intervals to the end of his life. New editions of the Essay^ the second in 1694, followed by the third and fourth in 1695 and 1700, with important changes and new chapters in the second and fourth ; adverse criticism of the Essay by Norris, Thomas Burnet, Lowde, Sherlock, Sergeant, Leibniz, and Lee ; the famous controversy with Stilling- fleet ; the posthumous tractate on the Conduct of the Understandings originally meant to form a chapter in the Essay \ the Examination of Makbranche^ and the Remarks on Norris, both posthumous — formed the philo- sophical work at Oates, in these fourteen years, along with constant correspondence, especially with Molyneux, Limborch, and latterly Anthony Collins. The corre- spondence between Locke and Molyneux throws light on many parts of the Essay, It arose incidentally. In December 1692 a book reached Locke at Oates, presented by its author, William Molyneux, an eminent young member of Trinity College, Dublin. It was entitled Dioptrica Nova, In its preface Molyneux wrote, with reference to logic, that * to none do we owe more for a greater advancement of this part of philosophy than to the incomparable Mr. Locke, who in his Essay concerning Human Understandings hath rectified more received mis- takes, and delivered more profound truths, established on experience and observation, for the direction of man's mind in the prosecution of knowledge, than are to be met with
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in all the volumes of all the ancients. He has clearly over- thrown all those metaphysical whimsies which infected men's brains with a spice of madness, whereby they feigned a knowledge when they had none, by making a noise with sounds, without clear and distinct significations.' The arrival of the Dioptrica Nova at Oates was the beginning of an affectionate interchange of thoughts between its author and the author of the Essay, about projected improvements in the successive editions of the Essay ^ and other common intellectual interests, which was continued till the unexpected death of Molyneux, in October 1698, a few weeks after his visit to Oates. Through him the Essay made way in Dublin, as it had made way at Oxford, with the help of Wynne's Abridgment^ published in 1696.
The Essay rapidly attained a wide popularity, unpre- Popularity cedented in the case of an elaborate philosophical treatise, \^ay, but explained by a relation of the book to life and action that could be readily appreciated by persons unaccustomed to metaphysical speculation. It was translated under Locke's eye into French by M. Coste, his literary assistant. The French version appeared soon after the fourth English edition of the Essay ^ and has itself passed through several editions. A Latin version followed in 1701.
Locke's correspondence with Bishop Stillingfleet takes its Contro- place among the memorable controversies of the philoso- stiUmg^* phical world. It arose in this way : — Toland, the Irish Pan- fleet. theistj.in his Christianity not Mysterious, had exaggerated some doctrines in the Essay^ and then adopted them thus exaggerated as premisses of his own. In the autumn of 1696, Bishop Stillingfleet, a learned ecclesiastic more than a philosophical reasoner, in a Vindication of the Trinity^ made some reflections upon Locke's Essay ^ for not leaving room for the mysteries that are involved in the Christian revelation. Locke replied, early in the next year, in a Letter of 227 pages, defending his ideas of substance and causality, as well as of nominal and real essences. Still ingfleet's rejoinder appeared in May. It was followed by a Reply or Second Letter from Locke, in August, nearly as long as the first, in which he insists on the wide meaning in which the term idea is used in the Essay ^ and shows how
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Norris.
* the greatest part of a book treating of the Understanding must be taken up in considering ideas ' ; denies that he has placed the certainty of knowledge exclusively in ideas that are ' clear and distinct/ inasmuch as we may have know- ledge of some relations of ideas that are in all other respects obscure and mysterious ; and then returns to our ideas of 'substances,' of 'natures' or * essences,' and of essences *real and nominal.* The Bishop answered this in 1698. Locke's elaborate Reply was delayed till 1699. In it he pursues, with immense expenditure of vigorous reasoning and irony, the many ramifications of the contro- versy, 'wherein, besides other incident matters, what his lordship has said concerning certainty by reason, certainty by ideas, and certainty by faith ; the resurrection of the same body ; the immateriality of the soul ; the incon- sistency of Mr. Locke's notions with the articles of the Christian faith, and their tendency to sceptism {sic) is ex- amined.' The death of Stillingfleet in the same year ended this trial of intellectual strength.
The Essay had encountered criticism almost as soon as it appeared. Its collision with received maxims, in the form of an assault on * innate ideas and principles,* shocked those who had been accustomed to defer to authority, and to feed their minds on abstractions. In 1690 John Norris, afterwards a successor of George Herbert as Rector of Bemerton, an English mystic, the friend of Henry More and of Lady Masham, and a disciple of Malebranche, published Cursory Reflections upon a Book called an Essay concerning Human Understanding. He blames Locke, in this tract, * for setting himself to prove that there are no innate or natural principles,' and for then * inconsistently * granting that * there are self-evident propositions to which we give ready assent ' as soon as they are understood, while he still denies that the assent is * universal,' on the ground that it is not consciously given in many cases ; * it being a contradiction to assert,' so Locke argued, ' that there can be any truths imprinted on the soul of which the soul is unconscious.' This brochure of Norris is interesting for a recognition thus early, by an English writer, of the impli- cation of latent or unconscious reason in human experience.
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analogous to the *unperceived perception' of Leibniz, so important in the part it plays in modem thought. Sherlock, Sherlock, afterwards Bishop of London, was another adversary. He uttered a caveat against any book that rejects 'connate ideas or inbred notions.' On this Locke expressed himself with unusual asperity, in a letter to Molyneux (February 22, 1697): — ^ A man of no small name, as you know Dr. Sher- lock is, has been pleased to declare against my doctrine of no innate ideas, from the pulpit in the Temple ; and as I have been told charged it with little less than atheism. Though the doctor be a great man, yet that would not much fright me, because I am told that he is not always obstinate against opinions which he has condemned, more publicly than in an harangue to a Sunday's auditory ; but that it is possible he may be firm here, because it is also said, he never quits his aversion to any tenet he has once declared against, till change of times, bringing change of interest, and fashionable opinions, open his eyes and his heart, and then he kindly embraces what before deserved his aversion and censure.' Sherlock's objections to the Essay may be found in the * Digression concerning Connate Ideas and Inbred Knowledge/ which forms the second chapter of his Discourse concerning the Happiness of good men, and punishment of the wicked in the next world (1704). Some of the current objections to theological and philo- Thomas sophical postulates in the Essay found expression in two ^^rnet. tracts, in 1697, by Thomas Burnet, the eccentric author of the Sacred Theory of the Earth, To the doubts and difficulties of Burnet, in the first of these, Locke curtly replied, in an appendix to his Second Letter to Stillingfleet. Burnet's rejoinder to this was left unnoticed by Locke, whose contemptuous silence drew forth an angry Third Letter in 1699 from Burnet, in which he complained that he had not yet received * the favour of an answer.' * You ruffled over the first in a domineering answer,' he says, •without giving any satisfaction to its contents, but the second being more full and explicit, I was in hopes you would have been more concerned to answer, to answer them calmly and like a philosopher.' Locke still treated his antagonist as unworthy of public notice, but was so far
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moved that in the solitude of his study at Gates he filled the liberal margins of Burnet's pamphlet with counter criticisms in his own handwriting. The annotated tract fell into the hands of the late eminent Dr. Noah Porter, some years ago, when part of the contents of Locke's library was dispersed, and he has given an account of this interesting memorial of the past, * holographic from Locke's own hand/ in Marginalia Lockeana, contributed to the New Englaiider attd Yale Review for July 1887. The marginal criticisms are there presented — 'pointed and spirited, expressing his own positions in brief statements that are often corrections of, or antagonistic to, those of his critic. Now and then they are more clear and explicit than the corresponding statements of the Essay! Con- science, innate ideas and principles, the possibility of cogitation in matter, and free will, are the topics on which Locke here explains his meaning, removes objections, and introduces distinctions. Thus where Burnet asks whether the author of the Essay * allows any powers to be innate to mankind,' Locke notes on the margin : — * I think noe body but this author who ever read my book could doubt that I spoke only of innate ideas ; for my subject was the under- standing, and not of innate powers,^ Of ideas there must be a conscious understanding, that is to say, so that innate Sergeant, potentiality was irrelevant to his design. Some curious animadversions upon the Essay ^Xso appeared in 1697, in a volume of 460 pages, entitled Solid Philosophy asserted against the Fancies of the Ideists. The author was John Sergeant {alias Smith), who had deserted the Church of England for the Church of Rome, and had published in 1665 Rational Discourses on the Rule of Faith^ answered by Tillotson. 'Those who have in their minds only similitudes or ideas^ and only discourse of them,* says Sergeant, * which ideas are not the things themselves, do build their discoveries upon nothing. They have no solid knowledge.' * Mr. Sergeant, a Popish priest,' Locke writes to Molyneux, * whom you must needs have heard of, has bestowed a thick octavo upon my Essay, and Mr. Norris I hear is (again) writing hard against it' (This of Norris appeared in Part II of his Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible
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Worlds published in 1704.) * Shall I not be quite slain, think you, amongst so many notable combatants, and the Lord knows how many more to come ? ... I do not wonder at the confusedness of Sergeant's notions, or that they should be unintelligible to me ; I should have much more admired had they been otherwise : I expect nothing from Mr. Sergeant but what is abstruse in the highest degree.' What Leibniz thought of the Essay was told to Locke Leibniz, by Molyneux, in a transcript of * reflections ' addressed by Leibniz to Mr. Burnet of Kermnay, in Aberdeenshire, in 1697. They anticipate some of the objections of the Nouveaux Essais, a work which was in preparation when Locke died, but was held back till 1765. Locke made light of the somewhat adverse criticisms of the German eclectic.
* You and 1/ he writes to Molyneux, * agree pretty well concerning the man ; and this sort of fiddling makes me hardly avoid thinking that he is not that very great man that has been talked of him.* Of the objections in Broughton's Psychologia (1703) Locke * thinks not by what Brough- he has read to trouble himself to look further into him.' ^°"' The elaborate Anti-scepticism of Lee he classes with other Lee. books * which, though they make a noise against me, at
last state the question so as to leave no contradiction to my Essay,* Lee had charged the Essay with scepticism by implication. He had argued that 'in the case of particular propositions, whether affirmative or negative, there can be no certainty, in the way of ideas only, so much as of the existence of those things which are the subjects and predicates of these propositions: if you suppose the real existence of anything out of the mind itself, then you go beyond your ideas ; for they are wholly in the mind, as the things themselves are without it, and therefore have no connexion in nature with each other.'
* Besides,' he continues, * if you suppose the real existence of things out of the mind itself, then you are led inevitably to suppose also the truth of your senses and other faculties, and of all those common maxims in which all that have their senses are agreed; and thus you run upon the wall of preconcessa and praecognita, on which the idealist [eg. Locke] will tell you human nature has been split, and
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has occasioned all those errors with which the intellectual world is now infected. On the other hand, if you will not suppose (as all men in their wits suppose without proof) the real existence of things without us, but will be for proving it ; then you'll fail again : for if you prove the real existence of one thing from another, then that second will need the like proof of its existence from a third, and that third from a fourth, and so on in infinitum. Hence those ideal principles must involve us in an endless scepticism/ In this interesting anticipation of fundamental positions of Buffier and Reid, Locke 'sees no contradiction to the doctrine of the Essay^ Lee further argues * that there are no such things in the mind of man as he [Locke] calls simple ideas,' for that all actual ideas are complex; also that 'there are no such things as general abstract ideas [i. e. abstract images] in the mind/ Defence of Meantime the Essay did not lack defenders. Among by^&^uei ^*^" was Mr. Samuel Bold, rector of Steeple in Dorset- Bold, shire, who had been in prison before the Revolution, for his Plea for Moderation and his liberal ideas of government. In 1699 he produced Some Considerations on the Principal Objections which have been published against Mr. Lockers Essay of Humane Understanding, The * objections ' redar- gued are two — (i)That Locke's definition of knowledge, as perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas, is, particularly in the case of self-evident propositions, both untrue, and dangerous to religion, and (2) that it is im* possible for us to know that God cannot endow systems of atoms with power to feel and think. There can be no way, Bold argues, by which the truth of self-evident propositions can be known except hy perceiving their self evidence \ and so far from such propositions 'having any opposition to the way of ideas, neither their truth can be known, nor any use be made of them, without ideas,' i.e. without under- standing what the propositions mean. As to matter, in the form of a human organism having power to think joined to it — to deny this, he says, would be to deny the divine omnipotence ; and, inasmuch as the Essay allows (Bk. IV, ch. iii) that it involves an absolute contradiction to suppose 'Matter, which is evidently in its own nature void of
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sense and thought,' to be the Supreme Being, so atheistic materialism cannot on this ground be alleged against it.
Although Locke took no public notice of Norris's Locke*s ReflectiofiSy when they appeared in 1690, later on, at Oates, onNorr^' he prepared Remarks on some of Mr, Norriss books^ wherein he asserts P. Malebranches opinion of seeing all things in God. The Remarks were included among Locke's posthumous works. Locke maintains that to explain per- ception of sensible things as perception of divine ideas, is to lose our own power and personality in God's, and with this our moral responsibility. * This/ he sarcastically adds, ' is the hypothesis that clears doubts, but brings us at last to the religion of Hobbes and Spinosa ; by resolving all, even the thoughts and will of men, into an irresistible fatal necessity.' No one, he insists, can explain perception. It must be accepted as an inexplicable fact. ' Wherein this change called perception consists is, for aught I can see, unknown to one side as well as the other; only the one have the ingenuity to confess their ignorance, and the other pretend to be knowing.'
Another posthumous philosophical work, done also in the His * Ex- sedusion of Oates, was an Examinatiofi of Malebranches *â„¢^^i'^" Opinion of seeing all things in Gody in which the same branche.* theory of knowledge is dealt with more fully than in the few pages on Norris. It was at first meant to make an additional chapter in the fourth edition of the Essay ; but he changed his purpose, he tells Molyneux, * because I like not controversies, and have a personal kindness for the author' ; it was left unfinished, 'lest I should be tempted by anybody to print it.' It exposed to Locke's satisfaction the ' vanity and unintelligibleness ' of that mystical way of 'explaining human understanding,' and its inconsistency with * the experience that any man may make on himself, or of the children he converses with, wherein he may note the gradual steps that we all make in knowledge.' He insists simply upon the fact that we do have percep- tion or knowledge: he is indifferent to hypotheses that pretend to explain what seems to him essentially inex- plicable. The organic motions that accompany the mental state of sense-perception may, he suggests, be explained
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' by the motions of particles of matter coming from bodies and striking on our organs.' But this is motion in the organism, mechanically explained by motions outside the organism, which throws no light on the origin or validity of the perception that accompanies or follows the motion. Motion is the merely physical condition, without which we could not rise into the percipient state, in con- sistency with the ordinary laws of nature that regulate our embodied conscious life. The rise of any perception in a human understanding is scientifically * incomprehensible*; it * can only be resolved into the good pleasure of God.' ' How,* Locke asks, * can any one know, on Malebranche's explanation, that there is any such real being as the sun ? Did he ever see the sun itself} No ; but, on occasion of the presence of the sun to his eyes, he has seen the idea of the sun in God. How then does he know that there is a sun ? What need is there that God should make a sun only that one might see its idea in Him, when this might as well be done without any real sun at all/ Locke here approaches the new question about the abstract reality of things of sense, apart from the living perceptions of any percipient, afterwards raised by Berkeley. To call our per- ceptions ' modifications ' of the mind, or to say that * ideas ' are * modifications,' Locke argues, does not at all help; for it only substitutes one name for another name, without adding to our insight of what perception is, or how it is caused. All we are justified in saying is, that in point of fact * there is some alteration in the mind, when we think of something that we were not thinking of a moment before. What Malebranche says of universal reason, whereof all men partake, seems to me nothing new, but is only the power we find all men have to perceive the rela- tions that are between ideas ; and therefore if an intelligent being at one end of the world, and another at the other end, will consider twice two and four together, they cannot but find them equal. God knows (at once) all these relations, and so His knowledge is infinite ; but individual men are able only to discover more or less of them gradually, as they apply their minds. If he means that this universal reason, whereof men partake, is the reason of God, I can
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by no means assent : for I think we cannot say God reasons at all, for he has at once a view of all things ; but reason [he means reasoning] is a laborious and gradual progress in the knowledge of things. ... I should think it presumptuous to suppose that I should partake in God's knowledge ; there being some proportion between mine and another man's understanding, but none between mine and God's.' All this sheds light on many passages in the Essay^ in its recognition of the ultimate incomprehensibility by us of our own finite and transitory perceptions, and of God's infinite knowledge ; so that human philosophy can offer no theory of either, much less explain the one by means of the other.
New editions of the Essay^ and the part he took in the Other controversies to which it gave rise, do not nearly exhaust L^e.^ Locke's work in his study at Oates. An elaborate Third Letter on Toleration^ in reply to the criticisms of Proast and others, appeared in 1692; Thoughts concerning Education^ in the summer of the following year ; besides three politico- economical tracts on Money ^ its interest, and the coinage, in 1691 and 1695, show versatility of taste, and acute thought. A common-sense defence of the Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures was the chief work of 1695. It was followed by a Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity from Mr. Edwards s Reflections^ a few months later, and by a Second Vindication in 1697. This more theological departure was connected with the proposals for wider ecclesiastical comprehension within the national Church, made in many quarters, in connexion with the Revolution settlement. Locke's sense of the reasonableness of religious unity in the nation, and in Christendom, made him desire to show how simple essential Christianity is, and to try to induce Christians to agree to differ about all beyond this. Accordingly, in the spirit of the Essay^ he laboured to recal religion from the verbal wrangling of theologians, which had disturbed Christian unity, to the original elements of the faith. This was followed by some excursions in biblical criticism, in his last years, the fruits of which appeared posthumously as -^ Para-- phrase and Nates on certain Epistles of St. Paul; to which is prefixed an Essay for the understanding of St. PauVs Epistles
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by consulting St. Paul himself. Here the scientific spirit and method of the Essay were applied to the interpretation of the literature which the Puritans who surrounded his boy- hood had taught him to reverence as infallible. * The holy- Scripture/ he declares, * is to me, and always will be, the constant guide of my assent ; and I shall always hearken to it, as containing infallible truth relating to things of the highest concernment. And I wish I could say there are no mysteries in it : I acknowledge there are to me, and I fear always will be. But where I want the evidence of things, there yet is ground enough for me to believe, because God has said it : and I shall presently condemn and quit any opinion of mine, as soon as I am shown that it is contrary to any revelation in the holy scripture ^* But the same sense of the need for founding all his beliefs on a perception of their reasonableness followed him in his biblical exegesis ; — the same determination to get rid of unwarranted assumptions and to escape from the bondage of empty or ambiguous words. He discarded the exegetical methods of the Puritans, and resisted their disposition to interpret texts apart from contexts, or to read spiritual meanings dog- matically into texts, overlooking the circumstances in which the words were written, and their relation to the age and country in which they were produced. He was among the first in Europe to anticipate the spirit of modern criticism ; putting himself in the place of the writer, he tried to conceive the main design of the whole, and thus to evolve its rational meaning. But it was to the dry light of the understanding, judging according to prudential common sense, that Locke was ready to appeal, when, dissatisfied with * systems of divinity,* he betook himself to * the sole reading of the scriptures, for the understanding the Chris- tian religion.* This is the foundation of his vindication and interpretation of Christianity, as well as of the remarks on miracles in the Discourse on that subject, written in I'jOQ,. The teachers as well as the assailants of Christianity, in the eighteenth century, alike appealed to the Essay, as their logical standard, and tested Christian belief by ' external and internal evidences ' of the sort which satisfied ^ * Postscript' to first Letter to Stillingfleet.
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Locke. His own faith, sincere and intelligent, is more represented in the prudential morality and religion that prevailed in England in the century after his death, than in that deeper faith, rooted in the divine life revealed in the soul of man, which is found in More, Cudworth, and Leighton, in the age preceding Locke, and, since Locke, in Berkeley and William Law, or in Coleridge and Schleiermacher.
After 1700 Locke was gathering himself up for the end The last in the repose of the family life at Oates. In that year the ^f *Iffe°^ Commission at the Board of Trade was resigned, and he ceased to send his writings to the press. Adverse criticism, and the official discouragement of the Essay at Oxford, he took ' rather as a recommendation of the book ' ; so he wrote to Anthony Collins, adding that *when you and I next meet we shall be merry on the subject' One attack only moved him. In 1704 his old antagonist Jonas Proast revived their controversy. Locke in consequence began a Fourth Letter an Toleration, The few pages preserved in the posthumous volume, ending in an unfinished sen- tence, exhausted his strength. Thus religious liberty, which had so much occupied his thoughts at Oxford forty years before, and had been a ruling idea in the interval, was still dominant at Oates in the last year of his life. All that summer of 1704 he continued to decline, notwithstanding the watchful care of Lady Masham and her step-daughter Esther. On the 28th of October he passed away ; according to his dying words, * in sincere communion with the whole Church of Christ, by whatever names Christ's followers call themselves.' His tomb may be seen beside the parish church of High Laver, a mile from Oates, bearing a Latin inscription prepared by his own hand. Lely and Kneller have made us familiar with his pensive and refined ex- pression. His writings, according to the memorial on his tomb, reveal * what sort of man he was ' : — Siste Viator. Hie juxta situs est JOHANNES LoCKE, Si qtuzlis fuerit rogaSy mediocritate sua contentum se vixisse respondet, Literis innutritus eousque tantum profecit^ ut veritati unice litaret. Hoc ex scriptis illius disce ; quae quod de eo reliquum est majori fide tibi exhibebunt quant epitaphii suspecta elogia.
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Viriutesy si quas habuit, minores sane quant quas sibi laudi tibi in exemplum proponereU Vitia una sepeliantur, Morunt exemplutn si quaeras in Evangelio habes : viiiorum utinam nusquam: nwrialitatis certe {quod prosit) hie et ubique. Natum Anno Dom, 1632, Aug. 29®. Mortuum Anno Dom. 1 704, Oct. 28. Memorat haec tabula^ brevi et ipsa inieritura ^. So the inscription runs. The writings of no philosopher are more distinctly stamped with the marks of the char- acter and mind of their author than the Essay and other works of Locke. Post- The Commentaries on St. Paul were given to the
WorkT w^*"^^ ^^^^ ^ft^*" Locke's death. In 1 706 the volume of post- humous works appeared, which contains : — (i) A Discourse of Miracles^ (a) A Fourth Letter on Toleration^ (3) An Examination of Malebranche s Opinion of seeing all things in Gody (4) The Conduct of the Understandings (5) Memoirs relating to the Life of Anthony, First Earl of Shaftesbury ^ (6) Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and several of his Friends — including chiefly the correspondence with Limborch and Molyneux. This was followed in 1720 by another volume, edited by Des Maizeaux, including: — (1) The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolinay (2)^ Letter from a Person of Quality giving an account of the Debates in the House of Lords in April and May 1675, (s) Remarks on some of Mr. N orris's books, wherein he asserts Father Malebranche s Opinion of our seeing all things in God, (4) Elements of Natural Philosophy^ (5) Some Thoughts concerning Reading and Study for a Gentleman^ (6) Rules of a Society which met once a week for their improvement in useful Knowledge y and for the promotion of Christian Truth and Charity^ (7) Letters to Anthony Collins^ Samuel Bold and others. Other writings, much in harmony with Locke's taste and studies, but not sufficiently authenticated, have been published under his name, in particular : — (i) An Intro- ductory Discourse to Churchill s Collection of Voyages{\^o^ —
^ So Essay^ Bk. II. ch. x. § 5 : — where, though the brass and marble
' The ideas, as well as children, of remain, yet the inscriptions are
our youth often die before us : and effaced by time, and the imagery
our minds represent to us those moulders away/ tombs to which we are approaching ;
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Locke at Oates : Critics of the Essay. liii
many passages in the Essay and elsewhere show his fond- ness for books of travels, (a) Observations upon the Growth and Culture of Vines and Olives^ written in 1679 and published in 1766, is said to be a result of observations during his retreat in France. (3) The History of our Saviour Jesus Christ related in the words of Scripture (1706), and (4) Select Moral Books of the Old Testament and Apocrypha paraphrased (17 16), resemble Locke in subject and tone.
The J^loge historique de feu M, Locke^ by Le Clerc, which Biogra- appeared in the Bibliothique Choisie^ in 1705, has been the P^*^ ^^ foundation of later biographies. Le Clerc found his mate- rials during personal intercourse with Locke in Holland ; in his own and Limborch's correspondence with him afterwards; in a letter from the third Lord Shaftesbury (author of the Characteristics^ ; and in the interesting letter, already referred to, received by him from Lady Masham. A letter by M. Coste, Locke's amanuensis and trans- lator of the French version of the Essay^ gives a few additional particulars. Long after, in 1830, Lord King, the lineal descendant of Locke's cousin and executor. Lord Chancellor King, produced ^ Life of John Locke ^ with Extracts from his Correspondence y yournalsy and Common^ place Books 'y and in 1876 Mr. Fox Bourne's Life of yokn Locke added important documents and incidents, collected with much care and industry. Dr. Fowler's Locke (j88o), in 'English Men of Letters,' and my own Locke (1890), in Blackwood's * Philosophical Classics,' are intended to present the author of the Essay in his place in literature and in philosophy.
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{B.) EXPOSITORY AND CRITICAL.
I. KNOWLEDGE: STRUCTURE OF THE ESSAY.
The main * You have donc me and my book a great honour ' — the'lLfl^. ^^ Locke writes, a few months before his death, to Anthony Collins — * for having bestowed so much of your thoughts upon it. You have a comprehensive knowledge of it, and do not stick in the incidents, which I find many people do ; which whether true or false make nothing to the main design of the Essay ; that lies in a little compass.' The fault Locke finds with those early interpreters has beset most of their successors. They * stick in the inci- dents,' and fail to comprehend the main design, for which the structure of the Essay ^ * written by incoherent parcels,* may be an excuse. One turns to the * Introduction ' to discover the design. Locke there proposes a modest inquiry into the relation between * human understanding ' and the realities of existence ; with a view to determine the limits of a human knowledge of what exists ; and also the foundation of that assent to probability through which men are able to supplement their necessarily narrow knowledge. The office of the Essay is put with more exactness in Locke's Second Letter to Stillingfleet : — * If I have done anything new [in the Essay\ it has been to describe to others, more particularly than has been done before, what it is their minds do when they perform the action that they call knowing.' To find, in the * historical, plain method ' of investigating actual facts, pursued introspectively, under what conditions knowledge becomes a fact in the individual consciousness of man\ to what extent a human under- standing can penetrate and compass reality ; how man falls short of omniscience, without being reduced to nescience ; and on what ground our * broken' knowledge may be assisted by a reasonable faith in probabilities — all this is within the compass of the Essay ^ according to its proposed design. It is concerned with an understanding of things
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Knowledge : Structure of the Essay. Iv
that, being human, is somehow intermediate between omni- science and sense, participating in both.
The Essay was the first deliberate attempt, in modern A mixed philosophy, to engage in what might now be called f^fifcai"^" epistemological inquiry, but mixed up by Locke with inquiry, questions logical, psychological, and ontological ; all sub- ordinated in his design to * what may be of use to us, in our present state,' and to * our concerns as human beings ^.' Lxxrke inaugurated the modem epistemological era, charac- teristic of philosophy in the eighteenth century, which culminated in Kant — the reaction against medieval dog- matism of authority, and against the abstract ontology of Spinoza and physiological materialism of Hobbes, in the seventeenth century, which last involve questions that Locke expressly avoids. *I shall not meddle with the physical consideration of the mind,' he tells us at the outset ^ *or trouble myself to examine wherein its essence consists [i. e. whether its substance is material or spiritual], or by what motions of our [animal] spirits, or alterations of our bodies, we come to have . . . ideas in our understandings; and whether these ideas do, in their formation, any or all of them, depend on matter or not'
The abstract demonstrations of Spinoza, and even the its modest physiological psychology of Hobbes, were foreign to the forecast. modest introspection of the Essay. Locke warns his
' Molyneux, in one of his letters (Dec 39, 1693), suggests that it is difficult to place the Essay in any of the recognised philosophical sciences (a tribute to its independent indi- viduality), and that it might succeed better if its contents could be elabo- rated into a system of 'logic and metaphysics ' by its author. To which Locke replies (Jan. 90, 1693) : — * That which you propose of turning my Essay into a body of logic and metaphysics, accommodated to the usual forms, though I thank you very kindly for it, and plainly see in it the care you have of the education of young scholars, yet I feel I shall scarce find time to do it. Besides
that, if you have, in this book of mine, what you think the matter of these two scimcts^ or what you will call them, I like the method it is in better than that of the schools,' &c. In return Molyneux 'is fully con- vinced by the arguments you give me, for not turning your book into the scholastic form of logic and metaphysics; and I had no other reason to advise the other, but merely to get it promoted the easier in our [Dublin] university; one of the businesses of which place is to learn according to the old forms.' (March 9, 1693.) ' Introduction, § 9.
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Ivi Prolegomena: Expository and Critical.
readers^ *not to expect undeniable cogent demonstrations* of the conclusions which he maintains; and ^professes no more than to lay, down, candidly and freely, his own conjectures, concerning a subject lying somewhat in the dark, without any other design than an unbiassed inquiry into truth/ It \? no dialectical deduction of what know- ledge in the abstract must be that he promises, but a matter- of-fact account of what seem to be the resources of human understanding, for comprehending the attributes aid powers of the material and spiritual substances that actually exist, in a so-called science that, instead of omniscience, is not raised far above sense. *If by this inquiry into the nature of the [human] understanding, I can discover the powers thereof : how far they reach : to what things they are in any degree proportionate: and where they fail us — I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension ; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether ; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities. . . . For I thought that the first step towards satisfying several inquiries the mind of man was very apt to run into, was, to take 1 view of our own understanding, examine our own powers, and see to what things they were adapted. Till that wab done I suspected we began at the wrong end, and 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 posses- sion of our understandings.' The * truths which concern us^ he insists, are those which determine human character, not satisfaction of merely speculative curiosity. ' Our business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct. If we can find out those measures whereby a rational creature, put in that state in which man is in this world, may and ought to govern his opinions, and actions depending thereon, we need not to be troubled that some other things escape our knowledge.' He thus
1 Bk. I. ch. iii. § 95.
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Knowledge: Structure of the Essay. Ivii
prepares us for finding that man's knowledge of the qualities and behaviour of existing realities, is of the intermediate sort — neither nescience nor omniscience, but, if one may use the vfordf fiduscience^ or science that is at last a reason- able faith, in lack of omniscience. Things are what they are, and not other things than they are ; why therefore should we allow ourselves to be deceived regarding the possible extent of our knowledge, or r^arding anything else ? This is Locke's attitude.
An answer of genuine worth for human purposes tJ its the questions about Knowledge, is what is sought for ^f human throughout the Essay. So one naturally turns first to its knowledge definition of Knowledge. This comes out at the beginning pju^th^ of the Fourth, not, as might have been expected, at the Book. beginning of the First Book. In fact the Fourth Book is in some respects more in its place when treated as the first, with the other three as a supplement ; and there is some ground for the conjecture that, in preparing this * Discourse, written by incoherent parcels,' the investigations proper to the Fourth Book were those which engaged Locke at the outset, and that those now appropriated to the other three were entered on, when his conception of his enterprise became more comprehensive. To the end he recognised faults in the structure of the Essay ^ but pleaded a^e and want of leisure as an excuse for not reducing and recon- structing it. This need not now hinder an expositor from passing at once from the 'Introduction' to the part of the Essay where the elements that are essential to human knowledge are distinguished from one another. The lines of inquiry in the rest of the Essay are then seen to radiate from the definition of knowledge as a centre.
Human knowledge, it there appears \ is * perception ' of The four • conitexion or repugnancy, of agreement or disagreement,' ^e°^^y betA\'een * ideas.* The unit of knowledge is thus a mental in their proposition, not an idea. It is a judgment, in the ordinary ™"ation. meaning of that term, but not exactly in Locke's restricted meaning; for in ^e Essay 'judgment ' means * presumption* or * assent,' founded on probability — not a perceived absolute certainty — of connexion or repugnance between ideas ; and
* Bk. IV. ch. i. § I ; cf. Bk. II. ch. xxi. § 5.
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Iviii Prolegomena: Expository and Critical.
thus excludes the intellectual necessity which is essential to Locke's idea of * knowledge/ when he employs that term (which he does not always do) with a rigorous meaning \ Proposition — spontaneous or reflective, mental or verbal — being thus the unit of knowledge, it follows that no one of the elements essential to knowledge cdsi^per se, constitute knowledge. Ideas are presupposed in knowledge ; and it also presupposes relations of connexion or repugnance between ideas; as well as a living perception of those relations. But not one of those three elements, abstracted from the other two, makes knowledge. Without 'ideas' mental propositions are empty and barren ; without rela- tions of connexion or repugnance ideas are unintelligible — the propositions have no copulas ; without a living per- ception knowledge is dead or unconscious. The Essay ^ in its four Books, is throughout concerned with these three, logically separable, but actually inseparable, elements. The Second and Third Books deal especially with ideas and their verbal signs ; the First Book with abstract principles, in refutation of the hypothesis that some of them are 'innate'; the Fourth Book, in its first thirteen chapters, describes the various perceptions of relations between ideas that, immediately or by demonstrated implication, are self- evident, thus offering an analytical description of human knowledge ; the remaining chapters deal with the reasonable probabilities of presumptive faith, which, in lack of omni- science, do duty for knowledge, in a human understanding.
II. IDEAS, THE FIRST- ELEMENT IN KNOWLEDGE.
Thcphe. *Idea' is the most obtrusive and significant word in
prSen?ed Locke's Essay^ which has been charged with * inventing a
by external new Way of knowing — by means of ideas.' The word could
fnternal ^^^ "^"^ occur often in an inquiry about knowledge, when
realities, idea means what Locke makes it mean. For an idea in the
received Essay signifies the particular object immediately known, or
retained, of which there is consciousness, in any act of understanding,
rate^^are '^^^ particular phenomena of outward things, when they
called are actually presented in sense, or of our own minds when
* ideas ' by
Locke. * See Bk. IV. ch. xiv. § 4.
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Ideas the first Element in Knowledge. lix
we are self-conscious; the phenomena when represented in the particular mental images of memory, or of plastic imagination ; and also the phenomena when, in our ' ab- stract notions,* they are viewed universally, or as appear- ances *such as more than one particular thing can correspond with and be represented by' — all alike are ' ideas ' in Locke's meaning of idea. * Whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking,' Locke tells us (Introduction, § 8) is what is meant by an idea in the Essay ; and as every one is assured that when he knows he is conscious of somethings he thinks it is unnecessary to prove that men have ideas, or to raise subtle questions about how realities that are independent of the particular ideas of individual men can be manifested in and through their ideas. The withdrawal of all ideas would plainly/ make knowledge impossible, because there would then be I nothing for us to know; so, although ideas /^ se are not' knowledge, but only abstractions considered apart from the living knowledge to which they are essential, yet there can be no actual knowledge when there are no ideas of any sort before the mind. Our knowledge of reality may be said, accordingly, to originate in, and depend upon, our ideas of what the particular reality is by which it is manifested to our understandings^. *My new way of
' Locke's ' ideas ' most be divested crainte sont mis par moi en nombre of Platonic connotation. He uses the desiddes; etjemesuis servi de ce term in at least as wide a meaning as mot, parcequ'il ^tait d^jii commune- Descartes had sanctioned. * Par le ment re9u par les philosophes pour nom d'id^e/ Descartes says, in an- sig:nifier les formes des conceptions swer to Hobbes, ' il veut seulement de I'entendement divin, encore que qu'on intime id Us images des chases nous ne reconnoissions en Dieu au- maUrielUs depeinies en la pkantasie cune fantasie ou imagination corpo- eorporeile; et cela ^tant suppose, il relle.* The objections of Hobbes and loi est ais6 de montrer qu^on ne pent Descartes* replies are determined by avoir propre et veritable id^e de this primary difference between ideas Dieu ni d*un ange ; mais j'ai souvent as [sensuous] images, and ideas as un- averti, et principalement en celui-lk imaginable concepts that^are never- mtme,que}epmuis U nom d"* idee pour theless capable of being reasoned tout ce qui est confu trnmAHaiement about. Gassendi denied anything to par r esprit \ en sorte que, lorsque be an idea but what was imagined; je veux et que je crains, parceque je and Locke says that all ideas are confois en m6me temps que je veux particular, and that particular ideas et que je cnuns, ce vouloir et cette become general only by being taken
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Ix Prolegomena: Expository and Critical.
\
All human ideas originate either in what is presented to the senses, or in reflec- tion upon what we are con- scious of.
knowing by means of ideas* Locke writes to Stilling- fleet^, *may in the full latitude comprehend my whole Essay \ because, treating of the understanding, which is nothing but the faculty of thinking, I could not well treat of that faculty without considering the immediate objects of the mind in thinking, which I call ideas. And therefore I guess it will not be considered strange that the greatest part of my book has been taken up in considering : — what these objects of the mind in thinking are ; whence they come; what use the mind makes of them in its several ways of thinking ; and what are the outward marks whereby it signifies them to others, or records them for its own use. And this in short is my way by ideas, that which your lordship calls my new way by ideas ; which, my lord, if it be new, is but a new history of an old thing.' The 'new way of ideas,' which he was alleged to have * in- vented,' is, and ever will be, Locke says, * the same with the old way of speaking intelligibly.' We must have ideas of things, or in other words things must manifest themselves to us in some sorts of ways, so that we may perceive what they are. That what exists must make some appearance or idea of itself, is a condition indispensable to the con- version of reality into conscious knowledge^ in a finite mind. In the case of mental propositions expressed in words, this only implies that the terms of the proposition must be significant and not idealess terms : idealess terms are empty sounds that have no significant relation to the understanding.
According to Locke, (i) extended things around us, and (2) the mental operations of which we are conscious, are the two sources back to which may be traced all the ideas that can enter into any propositions about things, true or false, spontaneous or reflective, that a human understand- ing can entertain. All significant assertions or denials that are possible to human beings must involve, either ideas of outward things that have been presented in our senses,
representatively, as generic images. capable of being represented in imagin-
Descartes often asked Gassendi and aiion. Thus we imagine a (particular)
Hobbes to remember that he meant triangle, but cannot imagine, and yet
by idea whatever was conceived by can reason about, a figure of 1000 sides,
the understanding, even though not ^ Second Letter^ p. 79.
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Ideas the first Element in Knowledge. Ixi
or else ideas of actual 'operations' of our own minds. These are Locke's two sorts of * simple ideas.' Into these the Essc^'^ makes all the ' complex ideas ' we have, whether concrete ideas of things, or ideas in abstraction from things, at last resolve themselves. They are all gradually given in an experience of two sorts of substances — substances outside ourselves, and reflective experience of one's in- dividual substance or self.
That we are born in complete ignorance of all things around We are all us, and of ourselves too, and so without any ideas at all of •IIT™^-.
' ' ^ Ignorance
what they or we are ; that our matured ideas of things are of the the slow accumulation of a gradual and always imperfect ^^^^^ experience, in which things around us show themselves to in which us only * in part,' and in which we show only * in part ' our g^d"©!^- conscious selves to ourselves; that no human intelligence selves, has a knowledge of any thing prior to the rise of its phenomena or ideas in the senses — ^is the burden of Locke's famous argument against innate ideas and innate principles, that fills up the First Book. All the ideas that we have and can have about existences must have been experienced in one or other of these ways, as far as their elementary constituents are concerned : otherwise the words supposed to have meanings are only empty sounds.
But while all our ideas are thus virtually, either qualities Human of outward things, of the several sorts presented in our ""^er- senses, or else spiritual operations in which we are self- can eiabo- conscious ; and while as to ideas of aught beyond these ^^j^ two sorts all human beings are in a condition like that of simple those who have been born blind, in relation to colours, there ana'iysable is nevertheless a sense in which, according to the Essay, ideas men can ' invent ' ideas. For we can not only retain, but c^^tions we can alSo elaborate, in numberless ways, the simple or of its own. unanalysable appearances of things that were presented to our senses and in consciousness. This arbitrary elaboration to which men can subject the ideas they involuntarily receive, explains the new forms which ideas take in our imagination, as well as in the comprehensive conceptions of abstract science and philosophy. Human understanding can abstract and generalise ideas, in ways different from their > See Bk. II. ch. i. §S 15.
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Ixii . Prolegomena : Expository and Critical.
Locke's simple ideas are not know- ledge, but one ele- ment in know- ledge.
groupings and aggregations in the involuntary experience of sense. This is illustrated in our (often erroneous) general- isations of substances, under supposed special relations of cause and effect. Human ideas, moreover, are originally per- ceived in complexity^; although all their complexities may be analysed either into qualities and powers of matter, or into spiritual operations, as their ultimate constituents. But our ideas, whether simple or complex, are * every one of them particular existences ; so that the perception of the agreement or disagreement of our particular ideas is the whole and utmost of all our knowledge. Universality is but accidental to it ; and consists in this, that '' the particular ideas about which it is are such as more than one particular thing can correspond with and be represented by " ^.'
It has been a common charge against the Essay that it makes a bare apprehension of simple ideas the primary form of human knowledge^ so that knowledge begins in simple ideas. On the contrary, by Locke's definition of knowledge, there can be no knowledge at all until an idea is perceived in its relation to another idea. The simple phenomena in which substances originally manifest them- selves are only unanalysable elements of the complex ideas that form our ordinary consciousness ; and ideas, whether simple or complex, are in themselves only elements in knowledge, not knowledge. Certainty of knowledge, or even presumption of probability, is added to mere idea. A mere idea, Locke reiterates, can be neither true nor false, certain nor uncertain, self-evident nor demonstrable. ' Nothing is truer,' he tells Stillingfleet, * than that it is not the idea that makes us certain, without reason, or without the understanding*; although * it is as true, that it is not reason, it is not the understanding, that makes us certain without ideas. Nor is it one idea by itself tYidA. in any case makes us certain.* (Second Letter.) And where, he asks, * do I anywhere speak of self-evident ideas ; self-evidence belonging not to ideas, but to those propositiotis of which it is impossible for the mind to suppose the contrary/ The opposite view would make it possible to express know- ledge through a term only, whereas it requires a proposition * See Bk. II. chh. ii. § i ; v I §$ 7-9. « Bk. IV. ch. xvii. § 8.
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Ideas the first Element in Knowledge. Ixiii
to express it Hence Locke makes mental proposition the irreducible atom of knowledge. Ideas simple or complex, particular or universal^ are incognisable^ by the definition of knowledge given in the Essay ^ except so far as they are in a perceived relation to something that is predicated of them, predicated too with an intuitive as- surance of the certainty of the relation. Knowledge thus begins in mental proposition; and all propositions that represent it, whether particular or universal, are (ultimately) intuitively known ^. Locke nowhere says that knowledge can be really reached merely by compounding simple ideas, independently of those other elements. Ideas remain mere ideas, until they are perceived under relation, with an absolute assurance of the certainty of the relation.
The simple ideas, or unanalysable phenomena, in which Our com- things of sense and our own conscious spirits originally ijjven\^^ present themselves, are introduced into new relations through of human the elaborative activity of the individual understanding. sundTne They may thus be put together, or separated, in ways altogether different from those in which they were originally presented to the individual, in his senses or by reflection- elaborated in ways, it may be, in which they are never actually found in their original manifestation. They are in that case abstracted from the original experience ; they are not given directly as manifestations of outward substances, or of our own spiritual substance, in sensation and reflec- tion: they are 'invented by the understanding.' In this way, through those * inventions of our understanding,' error often enters into our mental propositions.
The * complex ideas' thus * invented by the understanding' Three are of three sorts, according to the Essay. They are either complex ideas of the anodes (simple or mixed) of substances, which or in- ' contain not in them the idea of their subsistence by them- \l^^ selves, but only as dependent on or affections of individual substances, and so are considered in abstraction from sub- stances'; or they are ideas of substances in their different sorts, that is to say, of ' distinct particular things, bodies or spirits,' that are supposed to be * capable of subsistency independently'; or they are ideas of relations between » See Bk. IV. ch. u. $§ i-8.
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Ixiv Prolegomena: Expository dnd'CriUtul.
modes, or between substances. The innumerable ideas thus
* invented by the human understanding/ as distingfuished from the aggregates of simple ideas that are actually presented in the senses and in reflex consciousness, arc referred by Locke to those three classes — ideas of Modes, Substances, and Relations^. Our * invented* ideas of the different sorts of individual substances are central and supreme, among complex or invented ideas. But the Essay describes in the first place our invented ideas of Modes, perhaps for the reason suggested in one of Locke's letters to Mr. Samuel Bold : — * I agree with you,* he says, 'that the ideas of the modes and actions of substances are usually in our minds before the idea of substance itself: but in this I differ from you, that I do not think the ideas of the operations of things are antecedent to the ideas of their existence ; for they must exist before they can in any way affect us, or make us sensible of their operations, and we must suppose them to be before they operate* (May i6, 1699). Accordingly, the chapter on
* Power ' is one of those in which ' modes ' of ideas, * simple and mixed/ are described. We are further told that their
* powers * make up a great part of the complex ideas of the different sorts of substances that human understandings invent, and so their supposed powers make up the ' nominal essences ' to which particular substances are referred by the inventive understanding.
Our Our * invented ideas ' of the different sorts of substances,
invented material and spiritual, including God ; of their modes and sorteof powers; and of their mathematical, causal and moral substances relations, do not necessarily, or perhaps ever, attain to the to? o1?en ^ essential ideas of them which constitute science proper. The inconsis- complex idcas of things which men form are founded on the real ' Superficial relations, and do not reach the centre of things. T^^^'h! °^ "^"^ *^^y ^^^ often idola of the human mind, as Bacon would stances. say, out of harmony with the Ideas of the Divine Mind. In none But do we, Locke virtually asks in this connexion, do we
hurnan**^*" in the case of any of the * invented ideas,* find that human under- understanding can ever rise into ideas thatare independent b^me^in- ^^ ^ ^^ manifestations of themselves that external things
1 Bk. II. ch. zu.
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Ideas the first Element in Knowledge. Ixv
and our minds present, in our primary experience? Do dependent any of our complex ideas of modes, of substances in their ^f^^^ different kinds, or of relations, contain simple ideas that unanalys- are not modifications, or combinations, or correlations of of'^x^^* the primary data of external and internal sense ? A great penence. part of the Second Book may be r^arded as Locke's reasoned answer to the question. From the thirteenth to the end of the twenty-eighth chapter, he is as it were offering a series of * crucial instances,' in support of his main thesis — the dependence of all our ideas on experi- ence, without which our words must be barren and empty. He is trying to show that even our sublimest imagina- tions, whether of modes, substances, or relations, must be capable of being individualised, in terms either of phenomena that are presented in the senses, or of operations of our self- conscious spirits. Take our * invented ideas * of the infinite in quantity, he virtually says, — whether a quantity of ex- tension, or duration, or number ; our ideas of power, active or passive ; our ideas of any of the different sorts of sub- stances ; our ideas of causal connexion ; our ideas of moral relations. If none of these * invented ideas ' can transcend the simple and inexplicable phenomena of real existence that are originally given in our twofold experience ; if even they are all modifications, aggregations, and correlations of those phenomena only — then we may conclude confidently that it is unnecessary to suppose that men bring ideas of things with them into the world before they have any experience ; ideas that are independent of verification ; that are ours by nature, not needing to become ours through the gradual exercise of our understanding among the data of external and internal sense. We are thus taught the lesson, that man is not, like God, originally intelligent of the whole universe of realities, or even of any part of it, but that our intellectual office is discharged in a sphere intermediate between the nescience of mere sense and divine omniscience, so that each man becomes possessed of reality, whether in knowledge or in probability, only gradually and * in part.'
Here arises Locke's difficulty. If all our ideas, whether Crucial of the realities or the unrealities of existence, can be JJ^^^/* resolved into unanalysable phenomena, which happened which
VOL. L e
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Ixvi Prolegomena : Expository and Critical.
might to be presented either in our senses or in reflection, how th^ind^ comes it about that we have some complex ideas that pendent, refuse to be treated as arbitrary inventions of our under- standing, but that, when they rise into consciousness, seem to be revelations of a higher understanding? What- ever we see, touch, hear, taste, or smell, is limited, rounded, transitory — finite in a word: the mental operations of which each man is conscious are also all changing and finite. Yet we find that we have, and are obliged by something in us to have, an idea of Immensity, or infinite space, that refuses to submit to bounds \ also an idea of Duration, unbeginning and unending, that cannot be com-' pleted ; for Immensity and Eternity are surely not mean- ingless words. Yet we have never seen or touched infinite space, nor reached through reflection an unbeginning and unending duration. Why, moreover, are we obliged to recognise inevitable inadequacy in our deepest and truest ideas of different sorts of substances ; and why especially have we to form that ' obscure ' general idea of substance, a vague 'something,' which Locke confesses that he finds involved in all the invented ideas we form of particular sorts of substances ? We find too, in the heart of our ideas of the changes that are presented in experience, an idea of causal connexion between phenomena, which we are somehow obliged to have. Now this idea, alike in its infinite r^[ress and in its infinite progress, is at the last incomplete^ incapable of being satisfied by any possible multiplication of particular causes that are in turn effects : every change makes us think of its cause, and that cause in turn of its cause, and so on in an endless series, of which series we must have some sort of idea, unless the word ' cause ' is a meaningless word. In all these words — immensity, eternity, substance, cause— does the meaning involve nothing more than can be reduced either to qualities of things presented to the senses, or to states in which our mind has consciously operated ? If the ideas we have *are truly every one of them particular existences,' must not these and other like supposed funda- mental conceptions, be empty or idealess abstractions? Those just mentioned are crucial instances, which Locke brings in evidence of his main position — that all our
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Ideas the first Element in Knowledge. Ixvii
invented or complex ideas may be reduced to finite pheno- mena, originally given, either in our senses, or in reflection upon our own mental operations. Locke's treatment of these ideas is characteristic of his point of view, which b apt to keep out of sight ultimate necessities of reason.
Take our idea of the Immensity within which our bodies Ideas of are conceived to exist ; or of the Duration, unbanning ^"â„¢^"'**^ and unending, within. which our little lives, between birth Eternity, and death, are conceived to be contained. Locke sees that suimMed the words Immensity and Eternity are not meaningless, infinite in The one idea is apt to arise in connexion with the pre- v^^^^^^'y- sented ideas of sight and touch, but is itself neither seen nor touched ; the other is blended with, but is more than, the changing ideas whether of sensation or reflection. Some- thing in reason hinders us from putting any limit to either space or duration. * I would fain meet with any thinking man,' Locke grants, 'that can in his thoughts set any bounds to space more than he can to duration/ Thus, by implica- tion, he acknowledges, in our ideas of Immensity and Eternity, what resists the restraint of finite imagination. This endless obligation to add is not found in any simple idea, or groups of simple ideas, as changing data of sensation or reflection. It is an intellectual necessity, not a con- tingent manifestation of existence in sense. Locke, with characteristic fidelity to facts, recognises the fact, that human understanding 'cannot set bounds to space or to duration,' but without taking this as evidence of the inade- quacy of the hypothesis which makes all human ideas finite or particular. He does not ask why we are obliged to add witihout limit, and to divide without limit, when we try in vain to reduce to the finitude of the imaginable our ultimate thoughts of space and duration, and are thus involved in the attempt to make a contradictory image of an unimaginable quantity. When we try to imagine immensity, or unbegin- ning and unending duration, we usually suppose, he says, an idea that is in its nature imaginable, and perhaps imagined, in an imagination other than human, e. g. millions of miles multiplied by millions, or millions of years multiplied by millions. This expansion, however, does not explain the mental obligation always to cofitinue expanding^ without
e %
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Ixviii Prolegomena: Expository and Critical.
Idea of substance, abstracted from our complex ideas of particular sorts of sub- stances.
exhausting what we expand^ or to continue dividing^ without reaching the indivisible ; nor the thought we have that, after going ever so far, in expanding or subdividing, we are as far from the unquantijidble Infinite as we were at the beginning of the process. For it only describes, in the historic plain method, the process in which a human understanding is obliged to recognise what Locke calls ' an idea which lies in obscurity, and has all the indeterminate confusion of a negative idea.'
Another crucial test is in what Locke calls ' the general idea of substance,' as distinct from complex ideas of particular substances, 'invented by us,' that are always inadequate to reality, and in which men are often misled. Here too, in his fidelity to facts, he accepts an intellectual obligation that surely cannot be literally regarded as a * particular idea ' of the senses, or of reflection. An arbitrary aggr^ate of sense-presented phenomena, without a * mate- rial substance'; or of conscious states and acts, without a * spiritual substance ' on which they respectively depend, and of which they may be predicated, is, he finds, * inconceiv- able.* It is like an adjective without its substantive ; and in fact the presupposition of substantives corresponding to their adjectives expresses, in another way, this mental obligation tosubstantiate s\mi^\t ideas in all concrete experience. Locke allows the obligation, but complains that this ultimate idea of substance in the abstract is * obscure ' ; that we cannot have it from our senses, or in our experience of our own mental operations: although both the ideas of the senses and the ideas of reflection somehow give rise to this * uncertain supposition of something we know not what,' by which simple ideas of existence are ^supported,' and which is involved in all our complex ideas of anything that really exists. But when he tried to represent this abstract but indispensable * something,' in an idea-image, he was baffled, as he was when he tried to complete the idea-image of Immensity and Eternity. It was an endless unimaginable regress. If one asks what the substance is to which the colour he sees, or the sound he hears, is to be attributed, and is told that it is the aggregated atoms of which the coloured or sonorous object consists, this indeed gives
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Ideas the first Element in Knowledge. Ixix
a particular idea that is representable in imagination ; but then it is inadequate, for one is mentally obliged to ask in turn, what their substance is, and if he gets in reply only another idea of sense, he has to repeat the question ; and so on without end — as long as the understanding is confined within the limits of sensuous imagination. ' He is in a difficulty like that of the Indian,' Locke says, ' who, after explaining that the world rested on an elephant, which in its turn was supported by a broad-backed tortoise, could at last only suppose the tortoise to rest on something — I know not what' We can neither think, i.e. image, nor refrain from thinking, i.e. presupposing, the meaning that is connoted by the abstract term substance, as distinguished from the * invented ideas ' of particular sorts of substances, which form their nominal essences. Why we are in the mental predicament of neither being able to image an abstract substance, nor to refrain from presupposing sub- stance, in everything that we have an idea of as existing, Locke does not ask. It does not seem to occur to him that this mental predicament itself calls for consideration, since it cannot be resolved into the contingent advent of aggre- gates of simple ideas, in the senses and in reflection. After all, is not Locke's perplexity about the abstract idea of substance an example of that very misleading influence of abstractions against which the Essay so often warns us? His * general idea of substance' is an impossible one — a something that makes no manifestation of itself, that is concealed, not revealed * in part,' in the simple ideas that might properly be regarded as manifestations (so far) of what it is. The substance is partially revealed in our complex idea of it : the complete complex idea, involving omniscience, is unattainable in a human understanding. In perceiving its phenomena we necessarily so far perceive the substance, inadequate as the complex conception so found must be, in an understanding that at the most is able to receive only a few of the simple ideas or phenomena that existing substances can present.
Another example of inadequacy in Locke's account of ideas of those metaphysical ideas is found in what he says of causality ^lj[*^*wer, and power. The idea of a change involves the idea of abstracted
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Ixx Prolegomena: Expository and Critical
from our ideas of the actual causes and efifects.
Crucial
instances
oftheex-
perential
origin of
all our
ideas.
a cause, by a necessity which something in the constitution of understanding imposes on us ; although the idea that this particular change is caused by that particular substance is the issue of custom or experience. Causality in the abstract, which Locke leaves almost untouched, seems to be a necessity of immanent or innate reason : what is chiefly looked to in the Essay is the manner in which ideas of particular causal connexions are formed — the powers, active and passive, of the substances that exist When he is pressed by Stillingfleet, indeed, he falls back on the abstract and universal principle of causality — that 'whatever has a b^inning must have a cause ' — as * a true principle of reason, which we come to know by perceiving that the idea of beginning to be is necessarily connected with the idea of some operation ; and the idea of operation with that of something operatii^, which we call a cause.' This abstract necessity for a particular cause for every particular change — like the abstract necessity for Immensity, or Eternity, or Substance — carries the mind into thoughts that are un- imaginable and mysterious. It confines us to the mysterious alternative, on the one hand, of a necessarily endless r^ress of finite causes that are in turn effects, and a necessarily endless progress of finite effects that are in turn causes, under the mechanical idea of nature \ or, on the other hand, of free or originating causality, typified in respon- sible agents, and implied in an ideal of moral order that transcends the mechanism of nature.
Immensity, Eternity, Substantiality, and Causality are examples of the complex ideas offered in the Essay as a fortiori proof of the truth of its leading proposition, — ^that all our ideas of actual and conceived realities are gradually gathered in experiences of external and internal reality, and that none of them are independent of this experience, in the way Locke supposed that what he called
* innate ideas,' were meant to ba For the Essay dismisses
* innate ideas ' by two sorts of arguments. In the Second Book their advocates are virtually challenged to name any idea in a human understanding that may not be referred to finite data of experience — those of Immensity, Eternity, Substance, and Causality being chosen as those
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Ideas the first Element in Knowledge. Ixxi
least likely to submit to the analysis. In the First Book, on the other hand, it is argued that the ideas which are reckoned as innate by some — the ideas of identity, of sub- stance, and of God, for example — must depend upon each man's experience ; because some are never conscious of them at all ; nor are any conscious of them in infancy, as they must have been if they were in their minds at birth, seeing that an idea cannot be ' in the mind ' without the mind being con- scious of it. For an ^ innate idea ' is with Locke an idea consciously possessed, independently of any experience, and without any need for an active exercise of the understanding among the data of experience in order to its attainment. * Whatever idea is in the mind, the mind must be conscious of.* This too is the drift of his argument, at the b^inning of the Second Book ^, against the hypothesis that the mind is always having ideas, e. g. during sleep, which for the most part seems to be a dreamless state. An idea that in Locke's sense is innate must be in the consciousness of all — infants, savages, and idiots. Of course it is easy for him to show that no ideas can be mentioned that answer this condition. The abstract ideas of immensity and eternity, of substance and cause, infants and savages are not con- scious of; and as for the idea of God, whole nations are destitute of it, while it appears in innumerable different forms in the minds of those who are familiar with the name. Therefore even those ideas are not innate ; and if not even those, afortiorty none others can be so.
It is difficult to find any one who would have denied this ; Innate or to tell who was chiefly in Locke's mind, in the famous J^^?^ *°^ assault on ' innate ideas,' that is carried on all along the defenders. line in the Essay. Lord Herbert alone is named ^. Locke's familiarity with Descartes, as well as some of the arguments employed, suggest that he too was in view. But by an innate idea Descartes means something antecedent to all ex- perience, potential in the constitution of the understanding, and not necessarily in consciousness — argued on the ground that the individual ideas contingently given in experience cannot fully explain ideas that are universal. This means
* Ch. i. f $ 9-18. > Bk. II. ch. u. %% 15-19.
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Ixxii Prolegomena: Expository and Critical.
that the mind has vdTizXjt faculty for universal ideas. That
only this sort of innateness was intended, Descartes expressly
says, in explaining his meaning to Regius, who had
insisted that innateness of idea was not needed to solve
the phenomena, innateness of faculty being enough. As
to which Descartes says — 'Regius appears to differ from
me merely in words ; for when he says that the mind has
no need of ideas that are innate, and meantime grants that
we all have an innate faculty for thinking them, he asserts,
in effect, what I myself hold, although he rejects it in '
words. For I have never said or thought that the mind
has ideas that are innate, in any other sense than that it
has a faculty for thinking such ideas.'
What Locke was so exclusively set upon the banishment of all
Locke words that are empty of ideas, that he had no patience with
dread the a theory which seemed to shelter ' ideas ' that might never
hypothesis gn^er consciousness at all — ideas that seemed above the need
that some /-./«. t • tt. . /-
of our of venfication by experience. His point of view was too *1nnat?M practical for an adequate appreciation of universal ideas, or necessities of thought, in the ultimate interpretation of the universe. He was too little read in the literature of philosophy to do full justice to those who, from Plato onwards, have recognised implicates in our physical and moral experience that deeply concern the ultimate destiny of man, and the reality of the universe. 'Innate,' as his pupil the third Lord Shaftesbury observes, ' innate is a word Mr. Locke poorly plays on. The right word, though less used, is connatural. For what has birth, or the progress of the foetus, to do in this case ' ? The question, that is to say, is not as to the time when persons first become conscious of certain ideas that are of uni- versal extent in their application. The true question is, as Shaftesbury puts it, ' whether the constitution of man be not such that, being adult and grown up^ the ideas of order, and administration of a God, will not infallibly and neces- sarily spring up in consciousness' — if the man does justice, one may add, to all the elements that are * innate' in his constitution. Locke himself would hardly deny this. ' That there are certain propositions,* we find him acknow- ledging, 'which, though the soul from the beginning,
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Ideas the first Element in Knowledge. Ixxiii
when a man is born, does not know, yet, by assistance from the outward senses, and the help of some previous cultiva- tion, it may afterwards come either self-evidently, or with a demonstrable necessity, to know the truth of, is no more than what I have affirmed in my First Book^.' What Locke cared for was the conscious possession, and practical application of ideas by the individual ; not their unconscious immanence, either subjectively in human understanding, or objectively in the universe. This appears in his reply to Thomas Burnet, who meets the objection founded on uncon- sciousness of ideas that are credited with innateness, by an analogy, urging that it is no sufficient argument that there is no sun in the firmament, because his light is obscured in cloudy days, or does not appear in foggy regions. To which Locke's answer is, that * though the sim be in the heaven, those yet are in the dark, who do not gfuide their steps by it, and show that his light is not innate in ihem^ On the whole, one does not find that Locke meant to deny that men may rise into consciousness of conceptions that, when risen, are felt to be imposed by an intellectual necessity ; and also that some of those conceptions cannot be comprehended fully in sensuous imagination : what he meant to deny was, that such ideas are the conscious possession of all human beings, at all ages, and in all stages of mental development; so that they do not need either the contingent data of experience, or activity in our under- standing, to enable us to individualise them in imagination. But he hardly saw the importance to man of a due regard to these elements of immanent reason, as distin- guished from what is directly contributed in the shifting phenomena of experience. He was moved, too, by his assumption, that * nothing can be in the mind of which the mind is not conscious,' to the neglect of the now acknowledged fact — that in the living consciousness of an individual there may arise only a part of what human understanding contains, by logical implication, in its essential constitution.
The ideas of the Essay are ' all of them particular Abstract existences,' in themselves: they are considered in their ^^!^^^^
^ Pre&ce to Second Edition of the Essay,
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Ixxiv Prolegomena: Expository and Critical.
'universality' when it is believed that 'more than one particular thing' can be represented by the idea, which then becomes an * abstract complex idea.' It is only when the mind refers any of its particular or general ideas to what is * extraneous to them ' that, as elements of knowledge, they become ' capable of being called true or false ; because the mind, in such a reference, makes a tacit supposition of their conformity to that thing V This reference is the essential factor in knowledge. As Locke puts it *, the mind * find- ing that if it should proceed by, and dwell upon only particular things, its prepress would be very slow, and its work endless ; therefore, to shorten its way to knowledge, and make each perception more comprehensive, the first thing it does is to bind them into bundles, and rank them into sorts, that what knowledge it gets of any of them, it may thereby with assurance extend to all of that sort, and so advance by larger steps in knowledge. This is the reason why we collect things under comprehensive ideas, with names annexed to them — into genera and species, i. e. into kinds and sorts.' The part which this sort of abstraction enables the particular ideas that undergo it to play in the constitution of human knowledge, and the dependence of the * abstract ideas ' upon words, gave rise to the Third Book of the Essay ^ which is concerned with Words, as the organism of ideas when ideas are considered as universals. Locke's The language of the Essay about abstract (i. e. general)
Tdea'cf a ideas is apt to be misunderstood. They are spoken of as triangle. « fictions and contrivances of the mind, that carry difficulty with them.' * Does it not/ Locke asks, 'require some pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle ; for it must be neither oblique nor rectangle ; neither equilateral, equi- crural, nor scalenon ; but all and none of these at once ? It is something imperfect, that cannot exist ; an idea wherein some parts of different and inconsistent [particular] ideas are put together' (Bk. IV. ch, vii. § 9). This paradoxical statement, along with inadequate apprehension of the difference between sensuous images and notions of the understanding, was the occasion of Berkeley's objections
> See Bk. II. ch. xzzii. §f t-3. * Bk. II. ch. zxxii. % 6.
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Connexion a second Element in Knowledge. Ixxv
to the abstract ideas of the Essay ^ in the Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge. Abstract notions, as such, cannot be 'particular ideas,* and cannot be pre- sented in sense, or represented in imagination. 'What Locke seems to mean is, that the concept, e. g. of a triangle, nuiy be individualised, or exemplified as a particular idea, in any one of many possible applications — oblique, equi- lateral, &c. — ^all of which it is potentially, but none of them actually, save when it is exemplified in that one. Only thus can 'abstract ideas ' be presented in sense, or represented in imagination.
According to his account of ' ideas * and their particu- Locke's larity, and apart from their office as factors in knowledge, *^*^^â„¢- Locke is more properly an ideist or phenomenalist than an Idealist, our ideas being with him originally the particular phenomena in which real existences immediately present themselves in human experience.
III. CONNEXION OR REPUGNANCY OF IDEAS, A SECOND ELEMENT IN KNOWLEDGE.
Knowledge, according to Locke, is concerned with the Know- ideas, or particular manifestations, which existence presents j^f^g to us. Now to get knowledge out of ideas implies that Uie inter- ideas are related to one another, and so are interpretable ; on^!^*^ for knowledge is mental assertion or denial, and this pre- supposes relations of 'connexion and agreement, or dis- agreement or repugnancy' as the foundation of assertion or denial. In short, an implied copula is distinctive of all proposition, mental or verbal, spontaneous or reflective.
Locke, accordingly, proceeds to inquire what sorts of Four sorts knowable relations there are amongst ideas ; whether these between"' all come within the range of human knowledge ; and if ideas, not, why not? He finds that the 'connexions or agree- ments and disagreements or repugnancies' between the ideas or phenomena of existence, which constitute our real and our imaginary worlds, are of four sorts. As thus ^ : — * To
> Bk. IV. ch. i. § 3. See also ch. iii. passim.
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Ixxvi Prolegomena: Expository and Critical.
Identity and diver- sity as knowable relations of ideas.
Abstract relations in general between ideas, e. g. in pure mathe- matics.
understand wherein this agreement or disagreement con- sists, I think we may reduce it all to these four sorts : — (i) Identity or diversity, (a) Relation. (3) Coexistence, or necessary connexion. (4) Real existence.' He adds that 'though identity and coexistence are truly nothing but relations, yet they are such peculiar ways of agree- ment or disagreement of our ideas that they deserve to be considered as distinct heads, and not under relation in general ' — the second sort. This seems to imply that perception of 'real existence* in and through means of our ideas — the fourth sort of connexion— is other than perception of relation between ideas, in the way the other three preceding sorts are ;— although knowledge of 'real existence,* like the other sorts of knowledge, takes the form of proposition, with implied * connexion ' between two ideas — ' real existence ' being therein predicated of the subject, which is thereby brought within the sphere of reality, in the mind's regard. Look a little at each sort.
Take first Identity and Diversity. It is impossible to have any ideas at all without perceiving that an idea is what it is, and that one idea is not another idea. This is the fundamental relation of all ideas, which in its ultimate form of abstraction appears, in logic, as the two correlative principles of identity and non-contradiction. It is so uni- versally necessary that without a perception of it there could be no knowledge of any sort ; so that, in having any ideas, this relation, at any rate, is implied, ideas 'being' universally and eternally known to be not the same, * and so being ' universally and constantly denied of one another. And this negative relation, the one in which knowledge is fully coextensive with ideas, opens the way to positive knowledge; because unless it is presupposed ideas are uninterpretable, there being no ideas to interpret.
Again, there are innumerable positive relations of ideas, particular and universal, which arise when ideas are con- sidered in abstraction from the contingencies of time and change. Those abstract relations belong to them as such, and Locke accordingly regards them as relations proper. Pure mathematics and abstract ethics exemplify this second cat^ory of the knowable.
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Connexion a second Element in Knowledge. Ixxvii
Further, there are innumerable positive relations of Necessary ideas that arise out of their simultaneous and successive ^°^"^V
ence of
appearances^ in the constant flux of which the sensible world simple and our own minds are the scenes. This third sort of Jh^Mme knowable relation among ideas is described in the Essay substance, as that of their ' co-existence or non-existence in the same J^j* °®^' subject' It implies that they are supposed to be complex relation, ideas in particular substances, material or spiritual, and not, as in the preceding case, abstracted from conditions of time.
Lastly, there is the agreement or repugnance of ideas Agree- with the * real existence ' of the particular substance which "®"* ^^
* repug-
they then manifest to us. This is illustrated in all proposi- nance of tions, mental and verbal, spontaneous and reflective, in JheTdea^^ which 'real existence' is aflirmed or denied. of real
Within these four sorts of agreement or disagreement of *^^*®"<^<^- ideas, according to the Essay, lies all the knowledge we have, ofcwh S or are capable of. For all assertions that can be made ^^e four concerning any idea presented in experience are — ^that it knowable is, or is not the same with some other idea ; that it has relation, this or that abstract, e. g. mathematical or moral, relation with some other idea ; that it does or does not always coexist with some other idea in the same individual sub- stance ; or that it has real existence, independent of any momentary perception. Thus *blue is not yellow' is an example of the relation of diversity ; * two triangles upon equal bases between two parallels are equal - is an example of abstract relation ; * iron is susceptible of magnetical impres- sions' illustrates coexistence of ideas ; * I exist,' * things around me exist,' *God exists,' are assertions of real existence. Pure Ic^c reflects scientifically the first of these sorts of 'connexion and disagreement,' in their ultimate abstrac- tion, as applicable to all ideas. The abstract sciences of mathematics and ethics, and also reasonings that deal only with arbitrary definitions of words, exemplify the second sort Experiential inquiries into the laws of natural ideas or phenomena, under the presuppositions of physical causality, aim at the discovery of relations of the third sort. The fundamental propositions which affirm the ultimate realities of existence, constitute the fourth sort of con- nexion or repugnance of ideas.
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Ixxviii Prolegomena: Expository and Critical.
Know- ledge dis- tinguished from
judgment of prob- ability.
Know- ledge proper is essentially intuitive, or self- evident, according to the Essay,
IV. PERCEPTION, A THIRD ELEMENT IN KNOWLEDGE.
In the views which the mind finds itself obliged or able to take of the connexions and repugnances amongst ideas, or of the interpretation to be put upon them, Locke finds a difference. There is the perceived abso- lute certainty which is essential to knowledge, and the presumptiofiy or judgment of probability ^ on which after all human life turns. In knowledge or science proper we ' certainly perceive, and are undoubtedly satisfied of the agreement or disagreement of any ideas.' In judgments of probability, which are often practically certain, we affirm or deny ideas of one another, when their uncon- ditionally certain agreement or disagreement is not perceived, but only presumed. Our knowledge extends only as far as we are conscious of an intellectual insight of necessary relation between the subject and the predicate of the mental proposition in which the knowledge rises into consciousness.
This * perception ' or insight Locke describes as funda- mentally intuitive ; the relation is perceived * at once, as the eye perceives light, only by being directed to it.' The unconditional certainty we have that * white is not black ' ; that * a circle is not a triangle ' ; that ^ three are more than two, or equal to one and two,' are examples of this intuitive perception. It does not need the medium of reasoning, and ir is the utmost certainty that human understanding is capable of, or that one can even suppose possible in any intelligent being. Intuitive knowledge, according to the Essay y is ' irresistible,' and, like bright sunshine, forces itself immediately to be perceived as soon as ever the mind turns its view that way : it leaves no room for hesitation, doubt, €•■examination, but the mind is presently filled with the clear light of it. ' It is on this intuition that depends all the certainty and evidence of all our knowledge ; which certainty f eiy one finds to be so great, that he cannot imagine, ' id therefore cannot require, a greater : for a man cannot onceive himself capable of a greater certainty that to know ^'i.e. perceive intuitively] that any idea in his mind is such
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Perception a third Element in Knowledge. Ixxix
as he perceives it to be ; and that two ideas, wherein he perceives a difference, are different, and not precisely the same. He that demands a greater certainty than this, demands he knows not what, and shows only that he has a mind to be a sceptic without being able to be so/ (Bk. IV. ch. it § I.) Thus, while Locke, in treating of ideas per se^ in the Second Book, makes human knowledge depend upon our getting particular ideas of things, through ex- ternal and internal experience, without the aid of any ideas that are * innate ' or prior to * all experience/ — in the Fourth Book he represents intuition, or self-evidence, as not less essential than experience ; for on it, he says, * depends all the certainty and evidence of all our know- ledge.' In this recognition of the second of these two cardinal constituents of knowledge, Locke agrees with his favourite Hooker, who says that ' to make nothing evident of itself unto man's understanding were to take away the possibility of knowing anything'; and that * herein that of Theophrastus is true — ^they that seek a reason of all things do utterly overthrow reason.'
But while human knowledge is fundamentally intuitive, Demon- according to the Essay^ the percipient act in it is not in ^J^â„¢^*^^ all instances a direct intuition. In the finite human under- a series of standing the range of direct intuition is narrow. In many ***^*"**o"s- human acts of knowing, the known relation between the two ideas is not perceived * at first sight.' It needs inter- mediate ideas, or the chain of intuited relations which constitutes demonstration. Thus, while the axioms if geometry are known by a direct intuition, the great body of geometrical truths has to be demonstrated : it is reached in the form of intellectually necessary conclusions, not of truths that are evident at once. In a demonstrated con- clusion the absolute certainty of knowledge is not ini- mediately forced upon the understanding: it is reach-^S grradually, in a series of steps, adapted to that weakness which obliges man to have recourse to reasoning. But d41 reasoning that is properly demonstrative is, as it we^'?, saturated with intuition; each step is taken in the lig7/t of intuition ; and we march towards the conclusion i^ a series of self-evident steps. Demonstration is intuitidi
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We have knowledge in all actual sensation, which is sense-per- ception.
Ixxx Prolegomena: Expository and Critical.
or self-evidence accommodated to a finite intelligence ; and it is required in that larger portion of his knowledge in which man cannot at once enter into the perfect intellectual light of direct insight. In omniscience all is intuitively known, and then demonstration and reasoning of any sort is superfluous.
In the same matter-of-fact ' historical ' way, Locke finds yet another class of examples of that perception of complete certainty to which he restricts the term knowledge. In them the certainty is less luminous than in intuition proper, or even than in demonstration. One has it when he is obliged, as he always is, to regard the ideas presented in sensation as manifestations of the real existence of something outside the sensations, and outside the subject of them. Whatever may be the best way of expressing the relation between this ' something/ its sensuous manifestations, and our acts or states of sense-perception — Locke finds himself conscious of absolute certainty, that the simple ideas of sensation are its manifestations, to and in his understanding. This evidence, as every one finds, * forbids doubting.' * For I ask any one,' he continues, 'whether he is not invincibly conscious to himself of a different perception, when he looks on the sun by day, and only thinks on it at night ; when he actually tastes wormwood, or smells a rose, or only thinks of that savour and odour? We as plainly find the difference there is between an idea revived in our minds by our own memory, and its actual coming into our minds by the senses^ as we do between any two ideas. This certainty is as great as our happiness and misery, beyond which we have no concernment to know or be ^.' In this ' sensitive knowledge,' as Locke calls it, or sense-perception, according to later terminology, we have, he insists, a third instance of human knowledge; — less luminously revealed than demonstrated knowledge, still less luminous than when we have an immediate intuition of self-evident connexion between ideas, but withal different in kind from all fallible presumptions of probability. Of this sensuous perception, awakened in us only when our organs of sense are actually affected, the Essay declines to attempt an explanation.
» Bk. IV. chh. u. § 14; xi. §§ i-io.
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It only announces the inexplicable fact, and refers it to the * will of God.' The organic accompaniments of the percipient act, Locke suggests, are not out of the reach of explanation,. on the ground that motion is the mechan- ical cause of motion ; so that motion, and contact with extra-organic moving bodies^ may account mechanically for motions within our corporeal organs: we thus learn indeed to distinguish * our own bodies ' from all the rest of the solid and extended world. But the irresistible per- ception of the external reality of sense-received ideas remains an inexplicable mystery. Perception is not from the thing known but from the percipient. Outward things do not make living knowledge.
V. HUMAN KNOWLEDGE OF REAL EXISTENCES: SELF, GOD, AND OUTWARD THINGS.
Is human understanding actually, or at least virtually, As to in possession, to any extent, of the absolute certainty that J^^e^^four is able to resist all sceptical questioning ; and if so, in sorts of which of the four sorts of * perceived ' * agreement or repug- connexion nancy ' between * ideas ' to which Locke, by his definition, can a confines the term knowledge, is this certainty to be attained unde*" by him? Are there any mental propositions — particular standing or universal — which it is impossible for a human mind know-*° seriously and practically to hold in suspense, inasmuch as ledge I they are intuitively or demonstrably certain ? Or is man First, confined, in all his interpretations of all his ideas, in all their ,^"°^' relations, logical, mathematical, physical, and metaphysical, real ex- to hypothetical presumptions of probability — to proposi- istcnces. tions that are only provisionally true, because subject to the flux of experience, and because therein dependent on agents that are imperfectly known ? The Fourth Book of the Essay, in the chapters which treat of the extent and reality of human knowledge ^, contains Locke's answer to these questions. Again inverting his order of procedure, let us consider first, how far he recognises this absolute certainty in the mental propositions, either particular or universal, in which * real existence ' is affirmed.
^ Bk. IV, especially chh. iv, ix, x, xi. VOL. I. f
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Two sorts of real existences are pre- supposed, at the opening of the Esaayy and through- out
Connexion of ab- stracted ideas, without any
irresistible assurance of real existence, is a ' castle in the air/
The Essay starts, even in the Second Book, with the presupposition of two * real existences,' to one or other of which all the simple ideas of men are assumed to be originally referable. The growth of our experience ac- cordingly consists in the increased variety of simple and complex ideas gradually attributed to those two sorts of realities. Whence, he asks, has the mind of man the ideas that constitute the distinctive element in each concrete example of knowledge, and that form men's conceptions of what the realities are? 'Our observation,' he replies^, * employed either about external objects, or about thcopera- tions of our own minds, is what supplies the understanding with all its attainable materials of positive knowledge.' Here * external sensible objects,' and * our own minds,' are presupposed to exist, and to become gradually clothed with qualities, through an experience of the simple ideas in which they make themselves known in sense. Afterwards, in the Fourth Book, the two presupposed realities are offered as examples of the unconditionally certain know- ledge of real existences that is within reach even of a human understanding.
With an element of reality, ideas must be implicated from the first ; otherwise it could never enter into them. Locke himself sees that * connexion and repugnance' of abstracted ideas is construction of * castles in the air.' ' *If it be true that all knowledge lies only in perception of the agreement or disagreement of our own ideas,' he supposes a critic to say, * the visions of an enthusiast, and the reasonings of a sober man will be equally certain. It •is no matter how things are ; so a man can observe but the agreement of his own imaginationSy and talk conformably, it is all truth, all certainty. Such castles in the air will be as strongholds of truth as the demonstrations of Euclid. Of what use is all this fine knowledge of men's own imagina- tions to a man that inquires after the reality of things ? It matters not what men's fancies are : it is the knowledge of things only that is to be prized— things as they really are.' To all which Locke replies, * that if our knowledge of our ideas terminate in them, and reach no further, where > Bk. 11. ch. i. % I.
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there is something further intended, our most serious thoughts will be of little more use than the reveries of a crazy brain. But I hope/ he adds, 'to make it plain, that this way of certainty, by the knowledge of our own ideas, goes a little further than bare imagination ^' We must see whether he makes it plain.
The test offered in the Essay of our possession of at Locke's least a subjective certainty that * actual and real existence certdnty^ agrees to an idea' is, the irresistible assurance of reality, of real ex. of which we are conscious, or at least may become con- foundin scious. 'Wherever we are sure that our ideas agree with theirre- the reality of things, there is certain real knowledge. Of fntJitive which agreement of our ideas with the reality of things, assurance having given the marks, I think I have shown whence welire^ certainty, real certainty, consists ; which, whatever it was conscious, to others, was, I confess, to me, heretofore, one of those desiderata which I found great want of ^' Adopting this test of the legitimate employment of the term * real exist- ^ence,' as a predicate in our mental assertions, Locke finds that in the original reception of all our simple ideas, we are 'sure,' actually or by implication, that the received ideas 'agree with,' manifest, or signify, at least ' our own existence.' We are also sure that many of our simple ideas 'agree with,' manifest, or reveal, the real existence of * some external sensible object.' All our ideas thus originally involve an irresistible assurance of reality: when we have them we are obliged to presuppose some- thing more permanent than the momentary consciousness, and that is therefore independent of that momentary consciousness. Locke does not much trouble himself with the puzzle of how we can determine ' agreement * of ' ideas ' with 'reality,' without first having the real existence presented to us apart from all ideas of it. This question Reid and other critics have pressed, when they ask whether Locke's supposition does not imply either a contradiction, or a double consciousness, i. e. a consciousness of our own ideas, and also a knowledge of reality apart from all ideaSy with which to compare our own ideas, and so discern their agreement with it.
» Bk. IV. ch. iv. « I, a. • Bk. IV. ch. iv. ( i8.
f2
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Our simple ideas, in the process of being received, carry with them this irresistible assurance.
The in- tuitive assurance each man has of the reality of ' his own existence.'
Ulterior questions involved in this certainty, of which Locke says nothing.
Ixxxiv Prolegomena: Expository and Critical.
Locke asks indeed,.* how the mind, when it perceives nothing but its own ideas, can know that they agree with things themselves ? ' * This,' he says, * though it seems not to want difficulty,' yet we have perfect assurance that *all our simple ideas' agree with the idea of reality^. Something in the mind obliges us to predicate reality of ihem^ for we cannot but have irresistible certainty, when they arise, that they are manifesting to us what things really are, to the extent, and in those relations, which our condition requires. This he thinks is enough of real know- ledge for all practical purposes. It enables us to regulate our conduct in harmony with the realities of existence, and with the system of relations which goes to constitute reality, and to distinguish what is real from what is illusory.
The one intuitive assurance of reality that Locke finds all our ideas charged with is, assurance of * our own existence,' made known in * the operations of which we are conscious,' as well as those which supply us with simple ideas of reflection. He puts it thus * : — * As for our own existence we perceive it so plainly and so certainly that it neither needs nor is capable of any proof. For nothing can be more evi- dent to us than our own existence : 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. . . . Experience then convinces us that we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence, and an internal infallible perception that we are.' In short there cannot be any con- sciousness of any sort of idea without an implied assurance of the truth of the mental proposition — ' I really exist.'
Locke does not pause to ask what is meant by either the subject or the predicate in this proposition ; or what is the source of the ideas signified by ' I,' and by * real existence.' ' Existence,' he indeed tells us,- in the Second Book ^, is an idea * suggested to the understanding by every object without, and every idea within '; but nothing is said of the nature and origin of the idea signified by realy although 'real knowledge' is distinguished from what is merely
» See Bk. IV. ch. iv. {§ 3, 4- " See Bk. IV. ch. ix. § 3.
» Bk. II. ch. vii. % 7.
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• certain' (e. g. in Bk. IV. ch. iv. § i8). Then what is meant by ^my own existence/ and by the personal pronoun ' I*? Is any idea associated with a personal pronoun? It is not mentioned in the Essay among the simple ideas either of sensation or of reflection. Finding that it could not be individualised in a sensuous image, and yet could not be dismissed as a meaningless term, Berkeley called its meaning a notion instead of an idea^. Hume, dismissing all words as meaningless when the supposed meaning could not be resolved into a particular impression of sense — a simple idea of sense, as Locke would say — and finding that he could never thus * catch himself at any time 'without a percep- tion,* nor light upon anything but a momentary perception, to answer to the personal pronoun I — added, that if any one thinks he has a different notion of himself than as a momentary perception, * I must confess I can reason no longer with him : he may perhaps perceive something simple and continued^ which he calls himself \ though I am certain there is no such principle in me.' Nor does Locke explain whether by ' my own existence' — of which he assumes that we must all have *an internal infallible perception' — he intends only an existence that lasts during the conscious- ness of each moment, or one which includes a past self, given in memory, through which the present consciousness is identified with an imperfectly remembered past. The chapter on * Personal Identity,' in the Second Book, as well as the chapters on * our complex ideas of Substances,' and on our idea of ' Power,' especially ' the active power we find in ourselves,' may be compared with what is said in the Fourth Book about our intuitive knowledge of *our own existence,' as aids to the discovery of what Locke means. The treatment of the subject in the Essay shows his dispo- sition to avoid speculative questions and the ultimate mysteries, and to remain contented with the point of view that satisfies ordinary minds.
While this intuitive certainty of * our own existence * is Our Locke's signal instance of a proposition concerning reality tnowi^dge which we are mentally obliged to receive at once, with an of the real
^ 'In Berkeley/ as Reid says, 'the most important objects are known without m/«05.'
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existence of * other things.'
Ulterior questions involved in this certainty of which Locke says nothing.
undoubting certainty, he finds, in the eleventh chapter of the Fourth Book, another example of knowledge of reality, in the irresistible ' assurance all men have ' of the * real existence * of * other things,' at those moments when, * by actually operating upon our senses, they make themselves perceived by us.* For it is to their present actual operation upon the organs of sense that he says our knowledge of things around us is limited. So when 'outward things' are absent from our senses — distant or future — they cannot be * known ' to exist really : their existence is then only •presumed,' with more or less probability. When I am actually looking at the sun, I * know ' that it really exists ; when I only think of it at night, and then expect its reappearance in the morning, this, he would say, is only a probable judgment that it exists, although it amounts to practical certainty.
When Locke finds, by applying his own criterion of reality, that something real, outside of * our own existence,' is manifested to us, as immanent, so to speak, in our actual sensations and sense-ideas, he does not tell us whether it is equally and alike manifested in all our * sensations.* The eleventh chapter of the Fourth Book should therefore be compared with the eighth chapter of the Second Book, in which certain simple ideas, or qualities, of matter are signalised, as 'primary' or *real,' 'inseparable from body, in what state soever it be,' and * such as sense finds in every particle of matter which has bulk enough to be perceived.' Ideas of this sort are there said to be 'in the external things themselves,' — in whatever mysterious way the per- ceived can be said to exist in the percipient, and yet be a quality of the perceived. But when Locke is dealing, in the Fourth Book, with our irresistible assurance of the existence of * whatever is actually operating upon our senses,' he does not refer to what he had said in the Second Book, about the 'primary qualities' of things. In the light of what was there said about these ' essential qualities ' of matter, this * something operating upon our senses ' must be something solid and extended^ and must be construablc in terms of motion^. Neither does he try to remove the » Cf. Bk. IV. ch. iv. S 4.
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obvious difficulty involved in the apparent conversion of molecular movements into simple ideas. He seems how- ever to regard them as only correlatives that are not causally convertible. Then as to 'operation/ — ^what sort of causality and power does operation here connote ? Else- where^ he hesitates to include 'active power' in our complex idea of any material substance — 'material sub- stances being not perhaps so truly active powers as our hasty thoughts are apt to represent them.' The world of solid moveable things, in the momentary revelations of themselves which they make, during our experience of actual sensations, would thus be an occasion rather than the active cause of our * perceptions ' of * real existence ' ; and with Berkeley we should look for the needed active power in the Supreme Power in the universe.
It should be noted that Locke seems to say that those sense- A simuiu- perceptions of outward things also involve a simultaneous »«>"sreye- revelation of the reality of the existence of the Ego. * It is the Ego for want of reflection,' he says, * that we are apt to think *"^.£\ that our senses show us nothing but material things, in sense- Every act of sensation, when duly considered, gives us an ^^^' equal view of both parts of nature— the corporeal and spiritual. For, whilst I know, by seeing or hearing, that there is some corporeal being without me — the object of that sensation, I do more certainly know that there is some spiritual being within me that sees and hears V This approaches the estimate of sense-perception given by Reid and Hamilton. * Every conception of self neces- sarily involves a conception of not-self: every perception of what is different from me, implies a recognition of the percipient subject, in contradistinction from the object perceived. In one act of knowledge indeed the object is the prominent element ; in another the subject ; but there is none in which either is known out of relation to the other '.' But the language of the Essay is not always thus.
A duality of some sort, in real existence as it appears A demon- in human experience, is thus, according to the Essay^ strauve
certainty
^ See Bk. II. ch. xxi. ( a ; also ch. ' Bk. II. ch. xxiii. % 15.
xxiii. % 98. Hume seems to overlook * Hamilton's DtscHssions^ P* S^- fbis, in Inquiry f Note D.
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of the real originally given, in an irresistible assurance, which can be of God ^or awakened in all men, of the real existence of the Ego, and theEternai also of Something outside the Ego, of which each Ego has maintained *^^ sense-ideas in which this * something' manifests its real in the existence. But Locke finds further (Bk. IV. ch. x) that
^^^' experience of the real is not satisfied with an unexplained duality, in which each factor is finite and dependent. * Though God has given us no innate ideas of Himself,' so that thus individuals, and even whole nations, may remain without an idea of God, yet He has so * furnished us with faculties, that we cannot want a clear proof that He exists ' as long as we carry ourselves about us. Each man knows intuitively that he himself exists, and that he has not existed always ; it is therefore ' unavoidable for all rational creatures to conclude, that something has existed from eternity; this being of all absurdities the greatest, to imagine, that pure nothing, the perfect n^ation and absence of all beings, should ever produce any real exist- ence.' I cannot myself be this eternal Something, seeing that my own existence had a beginning ; and whatever had a beginnii^ must have been produced by something else, and also must have got all that now belongs to its real existence from another being. Further, I am a thinking being: therefore the something that eternally exists^ the source of my existence, must think; it being 'as impossible that what is wholly void of knowledge, and operating blindly, and without any perception, should produce a knowing being as I am, as it is impossible that a triangle should make itself three angles bigger than two right ones.' That God really exists is therefore *the most obvious truth that reason [reasoning] discovers,' and its evidence is 'equal to mathematical certainty'; although *it requires thought and attention, and the mind must apply itself to a regular deduction of it from some part of our intuitive knowledge, else we shall be as ignorant of this as of other propositions, which are in themselves capable of clear demonstration'; seeing that none of them are ' innate/ inasmuch as individual men can remain ignorant of them. This * eternal Something ' may be called * eternal Mind,' because practically knjown as Mind, or so known,
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*as far as is necessary to the true end of our being, and the great concernment of our happiness ' ; yet only in this relative sense after all, according to one of Locke's last letters to Anthony Collins, in which he says — ' Though I call the thinking faculty in me, mind, I cannot, because of that name, equal it in anything to that eternal and incom- prehensible Being, which, for want of right and distinct conceptions, is called Mind also, or the eternal Mind.' (June 29, 1704,)
These last words express a deeper sense of the mystery Ulterior that is involved in our idea of the ultimate reality than ?J!^Q,'^g2* appears in the Essay \ but with what looks like an in- in this sufficient perception of the inadequacy of reasoning to suable" infer, on the basis of an experience of finite beings, the certainty actual existence of the Infinite Mind in whom alone we existence can have an absolute trust. Unless the conclusion is pre- which supposed in the premisses, Locke's * demonstration ' breaks Jf^^ot down. The assumption that perfect Reason is immanent discuss, and active in the universe, seems to be a presupposition needed for the satisfaction of the human spirit, in its fully developed condition, and for the interpretation of our
* simple ideas ' of the finite realities ; but the cosmological proof, of which Locke's * mathematically certain demon- stration' is a modification, is, when taken by itself, an eminent example of circular reasoning. Moreover the
* God ' of the Essay seems to be conceived as one among an innumerable aggregate of individual substances, each really existing, that make up the universe of reality, forming its minima intelligibilia. If God is supposed only as a self- centred individual, the unity of reality disappears in an aggregate of separated substances. This is surely an inadequate apprehension of the absolute uniqueness of Deity, as the single being, not comprehended under any species or genus, and so incapable of being classed with finite substances.
In Locke's * demonstration ' of the existence of God, the Locke's universality and necessity of the causal principle is tacitly station
presupposed, although, in the analysis of the complex of God's idea of causality (Bk. II. ch. xxvi. § 1) its contents were pri^u^^ referred exclusively to * observation of the constant vicissi- poses the
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universal- ity and necessity of the causal principle.
The three
ultimate
realities in
their
mutual
relations.
tude of things.' Now this analysis could only explain concrete instances and special laws of causality, not the necessary and universal relation assumed in this demonstra- tion. It is characteristic of the analysis of ideas in the Essay to look only to concrete embodiments of fundamental conceptions, in disregard of the absolute universality and necessity on which nevertheless Locke's argumentative theism depends. And so it came to pass that what was dogmatically assumed in the Essay, in working out a theological conception of the universe, but without critical vindication of the validity of the assumption, was afterwards explained away by Hume, who could find no ground for presupposing the applicability of the causal principle to immensities and eternities ; and who con- cluded that the only objects of legitimate demonstration must lie within the purely abstract ideas of * quantity and number.' * These,' Hume says, * may safely, I think, be pronounced the ofily proper objects of knowledge and demonstration.' As for demonstrations about the Supreme Power, and the Final Purpose of the universe, *our line is too short to fathom such immense abysses,' which open when we apply it in this way to subjects that lie beyond the contingencies of experience. And unless the universal reason in which we share implies that we are living and having our being in a reality that must be active moral reason at last, surely, the whole becomes, as here with Hume, *a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery.'
On the whole, according to Locke, a merely human knowledge of what really exists is confined to the intuitive knowledge we all have of our own existence, as far back as memory can go ; the sensitive knowledge or perception we all have of the real existence of things * outside * of ourselves, when we are actually sentient ; and the demon- strative certainty we may all have of the eternal reality of ' what, from want of right and distinct conceptions is called Mind, or the eternal Mind.' So, in treating of our ideas of substance and identity, in the Second Book ^, he finds that 'we have the ideas of but three sorts of substances: — (i) God. (a) Finite intelligences. (3) Bodies. God is without begin-
^ Bk. II. ch. zxvii. ( 9.
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ning, eternal, unalterable, and everywhere, and therefore con- cerning his identity there can be no doubt. Finite spirits have each had its determined time and place of beginning to exist ; the relation to that time and place will always determine to each of them its identity as long as it exists. The same will hold of every particle of matter, to which no addition or subtraction of matter being made, it is the same. For, though these three sorts of substances, as we term them, do not exclude one another out of the same place, yet we cannot conceive but that they must necessarily, each of them, exclude any of the same kind out of the same place, or else there could be no such distinction of substances one from another.' Locke's disposition to conceive the universe of reality mechanically, appears in this application of relations of * place' to all the * three sorts of substances.' He suggests, however, that the word * substance,' when applied to finite beings^ corporeal or spiritual, which are not absolutely self- subsistent or complete in themselves, is not to be used in the same meaning as when it is applied to the Supreme Mind.
Are not Locke's three realities tacitly assumed by These all men, as immanent in experience from the first, in rJ^ti^s a faith which becomes at last human reason in its are highest form? If not, could they have any claim to ^^n^ recognition afterwards; and are not all the three uncon- even when sciously presupposed in human life and action, even when ^^l^ *" one or other of them is denied in speculation? For the sceptic is found, in word and action, to bear witness to an irresistible primary faith in himself, in things^ and in God. The history of philosophy, in its deepest meaning, is the history of human endeavour to determine the complex conceptions of self, and external nature, and God that issue from the deepest and truest interpretation of the realities which rise into perception in external and internal sense. The daily employment of the personal pronoun * I,' and the application of the words which imply an individual responsibility of persons for their own actions, as worthy of praise or blame, carry a latent assurance of his own existence all through the experience of the speculative doubter; even while, like Hume, he asks in
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vain for an idea-image of an abstract Ego. Life and action also spontaneously reveal a latent faith in some- thing outside each individual personality, that is real enough to be at least a medium of intercourse between persons, and the occasion too of each person's consciousness of his own personality being awakened in him. As to the supreme and ultimate reality, the scientific agnostic, who professes ignorance of the existence of God, does himself, as an experimental inquirer, presuppose immanence of natural order, and, to that extent, of God, in the physical universe, without which it could not be reasoned about. For the atheistic hypothesis — which logically implies that experience is ultimately a physical as well as moral chaos, without reason in the heart of things, to be the final appeal in all inquiries ; and which thus empties the universe of all natural and moral government, and therefore of all natural as well as moral law — is a self-contradictory hypothesis, belied by every reasonable action in our lives : trust even in natural law is faith in God in its germ. Mere Egoism, atheistic Materialism, and Pantheism, are each philosophical exaggerations of one or other of the three final realities, to the apparent exclusion of the other two ; which still unconsciously govern, in diminished strength, the life and experience even of those who suppose that they have got rid of them by philosophical reasoning. It thus appears that the spirit in man, unconsciously if not reflectively, presupposes the antithesis which distinguishes each person from the external world with which his senses and actions bring him into contact and collision ; and also presupposes God, in the physical order, and in the ideals of duty, which make science and morality possible.
VI. HUMAN KNOWLEDGE OF IDEAS, AS COEXISTING ATTRIBUTES AND POWERS OF REAL EXISTENCES. The Thus, according to the Essay ^ human knowledge of what
cxtenr really exists is narrow. It comprehends only, (i) the of human existence of the knower, as a 'thinking substance,' mani- repirdtng^ fcsted to himself in the operations of which he is momentarily things conscious, and also in those for which he trusts his memory,
and per- , , ... . , . ^
sons. and thus recognises his own continuous reality as a person ;
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(2) the actual existence of (solid and extended) substances, outside each person, while they do, or when they did, present simple ideas through sense, of which he is percipient — because he is somehow unable to doubt that *such collections of simple ideas as we observe, or have observed, by our senses to be united together, do really exist together' ; and (3) the existence of * a most powerful and most knowing Being, whose eternal existence is denionstrable with an evidence equal to mathematical certainty/ The existence of *the infinite and incompre- hensible Being, which, for want of right and distinct conceptions, is called mind, or the Eternal Mind'; 'our own existence,' cocxtensively with our present and remem- bered self-conscious life; and the existence of 'things outside of us,* coextensively with the actual and remem- bered sensations which they occasion in us, exhaust, according to the Essay^ the knowledge of realities that is possible to a human understanding. With the unique exception of the * Eternal Mind,' all (or nearly all) that is not actually presenting itself, in our momentary self- consciousnesses and in our sensations, or that is not remem- bered as having done so, is not knowable by man. We are thus debarred from absolute certitude, with regard to the attributes and behaviour of any of at least the finite substances in existence, including our own ' thinking sub- stance,* save and except what may be given in present perceptions and in memor>^ The temporal history, past and future, of all substances that neither are nor have been present in his sensations, and the history, past and future, of his own thinking substance, outside his present and remembered consciousness of its states, supremely impor- tant as this history is to his welfare, is outside possible knowledge ; it can only be matter of probability ; so that human life thus turns at last on faith in probabilities, in all our intercourse with things and persons. The universe, in the most practical of all its relations to the life of man, namely, as a sphere of innumerable activities, or the subject of innumerable changes, which determine our pleasures and pains, is withdrawn from the intuitive and demonstrative certainty in which man can share.
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We are This is what Locke implies when he asserts that our
on^e «m- ^^^owledge of the simple ideas, that is to say the attributes tingendes and powers, that ' coexist ' in the individual substances of cnce ^r which the universe of reality is comprised, is * very short, our under- though in this Consists the greatest and most material ofttie"^ part of knowledge concerning substances/ For * our [com- actuai plex] ideas of the species of substances being, as I have 2nd*Wia- showed, nothing but a certain collection of simple ideas viourof [found by sense to be] united in one subject, and so persons." coexisting together; e.g. our idea oi flame is a body hot, luminous^ and moving upward: of gold^ body heavy in a certain degree, yellow, malleable, and fusible ; — these, or some such complex ideas as these, in men's minds, do these two names of the different substances, flame and gold, stand for. When we would know anything further concerning these, or any other sort of substances, what do we inquire but what other qualities or powers these substances have or have not ? Which is nothing else but to know what other simple ideas do or do not coexist with those that make up that complex idea [i. e. our present complex idea of that species of substance]. This, how weighty and considerable a part soever of human science, is yet very narrow, and scarce any at alL The reason whereof is, that the simple ideas whereof our complex ideas of substances are made up are, for the most part, such as carry with them no visible necessary connexion or inconsistency with any other simple ideas, whose existence with them we would inform ourselves about ^.* In short, so far as human knowledge of the substances that compose the real universe goes, any simple idea, i.e. any quality or power, vmy a priori consist with any other in that substance. We cannot show demonstratively that, because this quality is found in a substance, that other must also belong to it. The reason for this limitation of our knowledge of the constitution of substances, and so of the laws of coexistence and succession illustrated in the changes to which they are subject, is — the dependence of all human understanding upon the contingencies of human experience, and the impos- sibility of building absolutely certain knowledge upon
^ Bk. IV. ch. Hi. §S 9. la
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inexperienced conditions about which one is uncertain. We are at the mercy of a narrow experience, and of imperfectly known agents, which transcend our experience, in our most important relations to the material substances which present themselves to our senses, and to the spiritual substance that is presented in reflection.
It follows from this, that men can have no absolute Hence no certainty, i. e. no strictly scientific knowledge, of the truth ^^^^^^e ^^ or falsehood of any general proposition regarding matters or the ' of fact ; for assertions about the qualities and powers of ^^g'^^ai substances are by implication always general : also that all order, particular assertions that would not be certain if they were J!^ch"of made general, are assertions concerning real existence ; a human * they declaring only the accidental union or separation of sunding. ideas [qualities] in things now existing, which in their abstract natures have no known necessary union or repugnancy^.* This implies that a human understanding, incapable of omniscience, can know certainly only the existence of finite things, and of their qualities and powers, so far as these are, or have been, momentarily presented to the senses, or in self-consciousness. Science, or complete know- ledge of things really existing, transcends the faculties and experience of man. This is the favourite conclusion of the Essayy reiterated in many forms, and at different points of view, but with illustrations drawn almost exclusively from substances in the universe of matter. * I am apt to doubt that, how far soever human industry may advance useful and experimental philosophy in physical things, scientifical will still be out of our reach; because we want perfect and adequate [complex] ideas of those very bodies [material substances] that are nearest to us, and most under our command V That is to say, we may have presumptions of probability, about the behaviour of the substances amidst which we live, that may sometimes amount to practical certainty ; but we cannot have the unconditional certainty that is essential to what Locke intends by * knowledge ^.'
^ Bk IV. ch. ix. § I. form of a total where there is but
* Bk. IV. ch. iii. % q6. matter for a part, cannot be without
' As Bacon profoundly says — supplies by supposition and pre-
' Ex p€trU sdmua, and to have the sumption.' {Adva9u*ni4nt, Bk. II.)
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The real or primary, and the imputed or secondary qualities of sensible things.
Matter to be in- terpretable in terms of molecular motion.
In this connexion the Essay has much to say about the * qualities/ and * active or passive powers ' of external bodies, a subject discussed in the eighth chapter of the Second Book, and oftert returned to afterwards. By far the greater part of their qualities and powers are, it is argued, *no more the likeness of something existing without us than the names that stand for them are the likeness of our ideas, which yet upon hearing they are apt to excite in us^.' This immense aggregate of interesting qualities we can only ' impute' to bodies, thereby meaning that those bodies to which they are imputed are the occasions of sensations in us ; and therefore the ideas we have of them are not ideas which can be predicated of the bodies themselves, in the way that the real or primary qualities can. We can no more suppose that the taste or the fragrance we attribute to an orange, exists in the orange itself, in the way it does in our simple ideas, than we can suppose the pain of a wound existing in the knife that inflicts it. The imputed qualities are those that make bodies interesting to us, but they are all our own sensations, not direct manifestations of the bodies themselves. The only qualities that really exist in body, as given in our simple ideas, and that are predicable of it and not of us^ are * those we are obliged to suppose utterly insepar- able from it, in what state soever it be; such as 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 our senses ^.* Our ideas of those 'real or primary qualities' resemble what is in the body, and are indeed virtually identical with what is in it ; as far as a passing percept can be identical with what exists inde- pendently of any particular perception of an individual.
Now the only real qualities thus predicable by us of outward things are, extension^ solidity and mobility^ in their modes. Bodies accordingly seem to be revealed to us as essentially atomic or molecular in constitution, so that all their * real ' or * primary * qualities might be interpreted in terms of motion. Their innumerable * imputed or secondary'
* Bk. II. ch. viii. § 7. » Bk. II. ch. viii. § 9.
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qualities, full of human interest, as well as their * power' to change the simple ideas or phenomena that are presented by other bodies, are conditioned by, and must be scienti- fically interpreted in terms of, the size, figfure, and motion of the constituent molecules in each of them ; unless, indeed, they depend, Locke adds, upon something else in them, more mysterious, and that wholly transcends all human ideas. Now, even if we adopt the hypothesis that the entire behaviour of each substance in the material world is interpretable in terms of molecular motion — an hypothesis, not an absolute certainty — Locke still urges that unless man can discover of what sorts the ultimate constituent atoms in a substance actually are, and also the sorts of sensation which the various possible modes of atoms naturally occasion in a sentient being, there can be no absolutely certain prevision of its behaviour, or of the changes in other substances which may follow changes in that substance.
Thus, according to the Essay ^ the absolute certainties that We can- are within man's reach, about the world of 'outside things,' pret'ouT cannot extend beyond the real or primary qualities of the sensations, individual things that are, or that have been, present in his mo\eSlar ^ sensations. We must remain scientifically ignorant of the motion, manner in which the constituent atoms in each thing began ^Swlute to exist ; how ultimately they have assumed their present certainty, collocations ; or what future changes are latent, according to the order of the universe, in their imperfectly perceived collocations ; and latent too in other imperfectly known agents that might modify the customary course of external nature. So Locke concludes that ' for a human understand- ing there can be no science of natural bodies.' Our so-called natural science is only a mass of * presumptions'; often indeed practically certain, as when we ' presume ' that the sun will rise to-morrow, but which in no instance can reach the unconditional certainty that is independent of incalculable agencies. Every * previsional ' inference of change in the universe is therefore in this sense a leap in the dark. The reason for denying absolute certainty as to what phenomena in nature must coexist with other phenomena is so important and significant in Locke's
VOL. I. g
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philosophy that it is best put in his own words, in one of the many passages in the Essay in which it finds expression. Take the following ^ : — This doc- * The ideas that our complex ones of [material] substances expressed *^^ made up of, and about which our knowledge concerning in the substances is most employed, are those of their secondary ^^-^^ . qualities [and powers] ; which depending all, as has been shown, upon the primary [real] qualities of their minute and insensible parts ; or^ if not upon them^ upon something yet more remote from our comprehension \ — it is impossible we should know which have a necessary union or in- consistency with one another : for, not knowing the root they spring from [i. e. their real essence], not knowing, that is to say, what size, figure, and texture of parts they are on which depend, and from which result, those qualities which make our complex idea, e. g. of gold, it is impossible we should know what other qualities result from, or are in- compatible with, the same constitution of the insensible parts of gold ; and so consequently must always coexist with that complex idea we have of it, or else are incon- sistent with it. But besides this our ignorance of the primary qualities of the insensible parts of bodies [i. e. of their imperceptible molecules], on which [hypothetically] depend all their secondary qualities . . . there is no [by us] discoverable connexion between any secondary quality and those primary qualities that it [hypothetically] depends on. That the size, figure, and motion of one body should cause a change in the size, figure, and motion of another body [no power by us unknown, natural or supernatural, inter- posing] IS not beyond our conception : the separation of the parts of one body upon the intrusion of another; the chaise from rest to motion upon impulse — these and the like seem to have some [necessary?] r^?««^;wi7« one with another. . . . But our minds not being able to discover any connexion betwixt these primary qualities of bodies, and the sensations that are produced in us by them, we can never be able to establish certain and undoubted rules of the consequence or coexistence of any secondary qualities, even though we could discover the size, figure,
» Bk. IV. ch. iii. §§ 11-13, 35.
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and motion of those invisible parts which immediately produce them. . . . Insensible corpuscules, being the active parts of matter, and the great instruments of nature, on which depend not only all their secondary qualities, but also most of their natural operations, our want of precise, distinct ideas of their primary qualities keeps us in an incurable ignorance of what we desire to know about them. I doubt not but, if we could discover the figure, size, texture, and motion of the minute constituent parts of any two bodies, we should know, without trialy several of their operations upon one another, as we do now the properties of a square or triangle. Did we know the mechanical affections of the particles of rhubarb, hemlock, opium, and a man, as a watchmaker does those of a watch, whereby it performs its operations, ... we should be able to tell beforehand that rhubarb will purge, hemlock kill, and opium make a man sleep. . . . But whilst we are destitute of senses acute enough to discover the minute particles of bodies, and to give us ideas of their mechanical affections, we must be content to be ignorant of their properties and ways of operation; nor can we be assured about them any further than some few trials we make are able to reach. But whether they will succeed again another time, we cannot be certain. This hinders our certain knowledge of universal truths concerning natural bodies.'
Locke, like Socrates, thus advocates what Professor tyi^ Essay Huxley calls a kind of * inverse agnosticism,' in concluding teaches that for man physical problems are beyond the reach of cism in the absolute certainty which belongs to science, while ^nJ^ncon- much in ethics and natural theology admits of demonstration, ditionai Scientific prevision of natural phenomena, and all human appli- IJ^^*^*^*^ cations of the principle of physical causality to the changes ethics, and in nature, are therefore expressions of our faith in proba- [^heology bility, not of an intuition of what is intellectually necessary. Absolute certainty about distant changes, and future changes, in nature is not to be attained. The constant lesson of the Essay is that reasonable probability, not unconditional cer- tainty, is what man's limited understanding of the universe of change is confined to, in all his intellectual intercourse with
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The
* created universe ' of the Essay consists ultimately of atoms and egos, with their respective powers, passive or active.
ever-fluctuating nature. Within this sphere, objections to competing hypotheses have to be 'balanced,' and often wisdom more than logical subtlety is needed to conduct to right conclusions. This is the sphere characteristic of an understanding that has to play a part intermediate between mere sense and omniscience : for mere sense cannot calculate probabilities, and omniscience, which always sees all in each, leaves no room for probability and faith. But man, sharing at once in animal sense and divine reason, is obliged to hazard expectations and inductive guesses, which never- theless, through his participation in divine reason, may be more than mere * leaps in the dark/ Something like this is perhaps implied in the chapters on presumption of probability, in the Fourth Book of the Essay ^. It is Locke's answer to the question which he proposed to his frieads at the memorable reunion, nearly twenty years before the answer was matured and given to the world.
The atomic hypothesis^, in the way now explained, governs^. the conclusions of the Essay y with regard to the limits of k human knowledge of * outward things.' The substances that constitute the material world are supposed to be aggregates of atoms^ in correlation, through sense, with sentient and thinking Egos. The universe consists of these two sorts of substances — solid, extended and moveable molecules (or else something yet more remote from our diimprehension), and self-conscious Egos. These are all interrelated, as causes or effects; for their respective * powers,' active or passive, * make up a great part, if not the whole,' of our complex ideas of existing substances. * He has the perfectest idea of any particular [sort of] sub* stance, who has gathered and put together most of those simple ideas which do exist in it ; among which are to be reckoned its active powers and passive capacities.' (Bk. II. ch. xxiii. § 7.) Locke's individual substances are centres of the active and passive powers, to which their simple ideas may be referred. In this respect they resemble the monads of Leibniz, appercipient and percipient.
» Bk. IV. chh. xiv-xx. ' The difiBculty of determining between the counter-hypotheses of
txtended and unextended parts, as the ultimate constituents of bodies, does not seem to occur to Locke.
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One of the most s^nificant suggestions in the Essay ^ in Power this connexion, is in a passage where Locke indulges more ®**^^^ than he usually does in metaphysical speculatioa He had or active, explained how customary experience, that like changes ^^^,^^53 are always in sequence to like antecedents, somehow gives wholly rise to a general idea of capacity in things for being ^*^®' changed, and of active power to originate changes, as char- whoUy acteristic of substances (Bk. II. cL xxi. § i). Elsewhere he "^^^^l^ "^^ treats the idea which thus arises as an intellectual necessity, spiritual unconditioned and universal in its application, so that we b^th**"*^^^ are obliged to infer, with mathematical certainty, the * real active and existence * of Eternal Mind. Like Aristotle, he also dis- P**^^®- tinguishes power, as either passive and active — power to be an effect, and power to origrinate an effect. Now of active or originative power Locke finds no trace in outward things — only perennial flux — capacity of continual cha»ge ; he finds God revealed as the original source, never as the passive subject, of changes ; he sees man intermediate between these extremes, yet in a measure participating in both. He suggests, accordingly, that 'matter is probably destitute of active power, as its author, God, is truly above all passive power; and that the intermediate state of created spirits may be that alone in which beings exist that are endowed at once with active and passive power. * Since active powers make so great a part of our complex ideas of natural substances; and I mention them as such accord! ig to common apprehension ; — yet they, being not perhaps so truly active powers as our hasty thoughts are apt to repre- sent them, I judge it not amiss, by this intimation, to direct our minds to the consideration of God and spirits, for the clearest idea of active power.' (Bk. II. ch. xxi. § 2 ; see also ch. xxiii. § 28.) Locke's * intimation ' that the language of * active power' is applied by him to solid and moveable sub- stances according to popular usage only — * because our hasty thoughts so represent them ' — must not be forgotten in interpreting passages in the Essay which refer simple ideas of qualities of matter to the * powers ' of outward things ; or in which 'body, by reason of the constitution of its primary qualities,' is said to be * able to produce ' such change in another body as to make it 'operate on our senses' differently
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The
chapters on our ideas of Power, Personal Identity, and Sub- stances, maybe compared.
The obli- gation in moral reason to attribute a self- originated activity to morally re-
from what it did before, — so that the sun for example *has power to make wax white, and fire to make lead fluid,' for
* these are usually called powers ' (Bk. II. ch. viii. § 23) ; and also such statements as that a man comes to perceive the existence of any outward thing 'only when, by actually operating upon him^ it makes itself perceived by kinty or that * perceptions are produced in us by exterior causes affecting our senses ' (Bk. IV. ch. xi. §§ 1,4, &c.). Locke's disposition, after Descartes, to see active power only in spirits is one of his unconscious approaches to an ultimately spiritual conception of all the activities of the universe, akin to that afterwards advocated by Berkeley. By making
* matter only passive,' and referring its apparent actions to divine activity, it harmonises with the conception of divine immanence in nature, and of nature and natural law being throughout supematurally active.
The chapter on our idea of ' Power,' in the Second Book, contains an analysis of this complex idea which refers it to our experience of the voluntary activity of egos or thinking beings, responsible for their activities. It may be read in connexion with the chapter on * Personal Identity ' in the same Book, which deals mth the idea of separate personality, connecting present with past feelings and thoughts, all which, through faith in memory, we are obliged to regard as exclusively * our own.' Accordingly, although a sensuous image of a continuously identical abstract ego is impossible, the personal pronoun ' I ' is not meaningless, but rather an inevitable intelligible implicate in all that we say and do ^. The chapter on * our complex ideas of Substances,* material and spiritual, should be compared with the one on ' Power,' and also with that on the idea of Identity in persons.
Here one may ask, what Locke found in his experience of his own voluntary activity, that made him refer our ideas of active power exclusively to this source ; and that also suggested the impotence, in themselves, of the solid, move- able things which compose the material world ? Why am
* I ' conceived to be ' active,' while the changes in the cosmic
^ Berkeley accordingly gives it a have a notion^ not a (sensuous) idia, separate name, and says that we of it.
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phenomena are the passive subjects of a power that does sponsible not properly belong to the visible and tangible things which ■«®"**' present the changes? Moreover, what is meant by the 'activity' with which *I' and other spiritual agents are credited? It cannot be said that Locke's famous chapter on 'Power' offers distinct and coherent answers to those questions ; and he was himself dissatisfied with his results, even after the transformations to which this chapter was subjected, in the editions of the Essay that were brought out under his care. Yet our answers to such questions determine for us, whether our ultimate conception of the universe is moral and spiritual, or only non-moral and physical : — whether it resolves man into a physical organism, and his supposed ' actions ' into issues of natural laws, to the exclusion of personal responsibility ; or, on the contrary, makes us reject, as inadequate to the implicates of spiritual experience and the necessities of moral reason, the exclu- sively physical conception, on the ground that, although many of our mental states are dependent upon the inherited organism, we are also obliged to recognise, as our own creation, all those acts or states for which we are justly accountable. The second alternative may be held, even while it is allowed that our inevitable ignorance of the exact line which separates nature in meti from moral or immoral agency of man in nature^ requires, in each case, a large exercise of charity, when we, in our intermediate sphere of finite experience, judge the overt acts of other men.
The self-originated power of spiritual agents, that is Inade- presupposed in their moral responsibility, is, in the Essay^ n^ogmsed subordinated to the mechanical causality by which our inthe interpretations of the cosmic successions of phenomena are ^^^' regulated ; and thus the freedom of man's voluntary agency is regarded, not as self-contained power to determine one's own volition, but merely as freedom of the volition, when it has been determined according to cosmic law, from interference by other causes that would hinder its intended consequences. The uniqueness of an immoral will^ in the mechanism of nature, seems to be inadequately recognised by Locke, owing to an inadequate recognition of what is implied in all agency that is morally responsible. It is
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in acknowledging his own responsibility that man recog- nisesy that he must be an agent who creates his own actions, and who, so far as he is this, must be free from the Power that regulates the mechanical order of natural causality. In the activity for which he is personally account- able, he finds the only example of real originative activity that is given in human experience, and in virtue of it he finds himself sharing in a higher order than the mechanical. Freedom from the chain of cosmic causality— i.e. of an un- beginning and unending, and therefore ultimately unimagin- able and mysterious, natural succession — is indeed reached in its fullness, when a man does what he ought to do — when he realises the moral ideal. But this right determina- tion, this harmony of human action with moral reason, presupposes a power in a finite agent also to act immorally or irrationally, and, by so acting, power even to destroy his free agency. Then, as a mere animal, he has lost his proper personality, and become only a part of the natural system of mechanically r^^ulated phenomena, because he has lost the moral power needed for the fulfilment of the highest law of his being. The intermediate place of man in the ordered universe^ is seen in this conflict between the natural or externally determined, and the supernatural or spiritual, in his action^ not less than in the limitation of his knowledge to what is intermediate between mere sense and divine omni- science. The final That the universe of realities — alike in its sensuous or outcome as natural, and in its spiritual or supernatural revelations of knowledge itself — must throughout be ultimately the expression of ®.^^^ perfect order and purpose, is presupposed in every exercise ideas that of our reason about physical and moral events. A complete ^n^h-' intuition of the Divine Ideal, including the rational harmony stances. of the natural order or physical government, in subor* dination to the spiritual order or moral government, is presumably confined to the Eternal Mind ; yet even human understanding may see no reason for asserting that the supposition of this universal harmony is self-contradictory. This is acknowledged in his own way by Locke, in one of his letters to Molyneux (Jan. 20, 1693) : — ' I own freely to you the weakness of my understanding: though it be un-
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questionable, that there is omnipotence and omniscience in God ; and thoug^h 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 truths I most firmly assent to. And therefore I have long since given off the consideration of this 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/ This is one way of expressing the m)^tery of immoral or irrational agency, within the divine or perfect system — moral disorder within the universal order — ^the moral government, which presupposes freedom, combined with the mechapical government, in which all events, including human actions, are passive examples of natural laws. The theological idea of the universe, as ulti- mately the orderly manifestation of rational purpose, but in ways that human understanding cannot elaborate in their infinite detail; and the merely physical idea of it, as purposeless causal mechanism — both lead our limited understanding at last into mystery. Reason surely finds the reasonable alternative in that mystery which satisfies the divine spirit in man, without necessarily contradicting the scientific understanding, which limits its judgments to the laws of sense.
What Locke teaches about the necessary narrowness of Nominal man's knowledge of the attributes and the powers of sub- fences, stances, or, in his own language, about 'simple ideas' in the 'coexistences' implied in the connotations of their dass names, is seen, at another point of view, in the many passages of the Essay^ especially in the Third Book, in which it is argued that a human understanding can be concerned only with * nominal,' not with the * real,' essences of individual substances \ 'Nominal essences' are those 'abstract' or general ideas of substances that men form for themselves : conformity to such ideas, on the part of real substances, when it is found by experience to exist, gives the conforming substances a right to the name appropriated
* An edition of the Third Book of was published in iSSi by Mr. Ryland, the Essay, with useful annotations, of St. John s College, Cambridge.
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to the 'abstract idea,* which the name thus connotes. Having that conformity, and having the nominal essence, mean the same thing. ' To be a man, or of the species man, and to have a right to the name man is the same thing. Since nothing can be a man [in our regard], or have a right [according to our conceptions] to the name man, but what has a conformity to the abstract idea the name man stands for in our mind ; nor an3rthing be a man, or have a right to the species man, but what has the essence of that species [i. e. its nominal essence] ; — ^it follows that the abstract idea for which the name stands, and the [nominal] essence of the species is one and the same.' It also follows, that the different essences of the different sorts of substances are 'inventions of the human under- standing ' ; and the * sorts,' created thus by our minds, are applied to actual things, according as the cap prepared by the inventors is found to fit Take away the abstract idea according to which we sort individual substances, and which we attribute, as nominal essence, to objects in which attributes are found corresponding to our connotation of the name, and *our thought of anything essential to them instantly vanishes.* We have no idea of their essence, except in an abstract idea that may be applicable to them, or that seems to be exemplified in them. It is impossible that anything deeper than the complex idea connoted by our class name should determine yiv «j the species of substances ; and this idea of ours is what Locke calls a * nominal essence.' * Why do we say, ''This is a horse, and that a mule; this is an animal, and that an herb ?" How comes any particular thing to be of this or that sort^ but because it has that nominal essence ; or, which is all one, agrees to that abstract idea that name is annexed to ? ' Hence ' our ranking and distinguishing natural substances into species consists in the ^nominal essences the mind [of man] makes, and not in the real essences to be found in the things themselves. It is evident that we sort and name substances by their nominal, and not by their real, essences. And these nominal essences are made by the mind [of man] and not by nature ; for were they nature's workmanship, they could not be so various and different in several men as experience tells us
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they are ^' Nature^ in short, makes particular things, which differ in their molecular or other ultimate constitution— that is, in the real essences that make them be the particular things that they actually are ; men connect with names their own abstract ideas, which they * invent,' and they apply those names to particular substances that seem to correspond to abstract ideas or nominal essences thus formed by them- selves, although the ideas must fall short of the deeper reality which belongs to the (by us) undiscoverable real essences. In those comparatively superficial 'inventions' of men consists, Locke would say, the whole business of genus and species — so far as a human understanding can be concerned with it.
We are ignorant of that molecular constitution of each The real body, which, as containing its real essence, makes each ^]^cular^^ be the individual body that it is ; we are ignorant too of sub- the ultimate constitution of self-conscious persons, and must bodiefor not take for granted, Locke thinks, that consciousness cannot spirits. be among the attributes that coexist in matter, at least in certain material substances, such as the human organism. According to the Essay^ the real essences of bodies, hidden in the primary qualities of their atomic constitution, outside human experience, cannot be made the principle according to which things are classed by men, or the ground of their scientific inferences. But men can form abstract notions, associate their notions with names, apply the names to things, and evolve logical conclusions in which the signi- ficant names are the terms, thus constructing ' sciences ' that may be only verbal. Inasmuch as the real essence — that which makes each individual thing be the thing it really is — is hidden from human observation, the nominal essences that we are obliged to make our reasonings about things turn upon, and which connote only superficial qualities of the particular substances to which they are applied, afford no sufficient foundation for the absolute certainty that alone is entitled to be called knowledge. So-called * science ' of nature must thus be for ever, in a human understanding, provisional and hypothetical. It is progressive just so far as the nominal essences made by men approximate to the
* See Bk. III. ch. vi.
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real essences that are hid from man's view by inexorable conditions, imposed upon every human inquirer into the ultimate causes of the changes which material substances are always undergoing. The 'essences' with which man can be concerned are all of his own construction, and, as Bacon says, fall far short of the subtlety of nature. In regard to the natural universe of coexistences and changes, human understanding, according to Locke, is confined to judgments of probability, and must operate within what is at best a sphere of faith and hope, not of knowledge or absolute certainty. Nature is If Locke had thought out what is implied in his own idea natural. ^^ active power being properly spiritual, he might perhaps have seen that, through the eternal and universal presence of the divine activity in the cosmical system, God and nature are not mutually exclusive; that the contempora- neous and successive * coexistences ' of the changing ideas or phenomena, in which nature presents itself, are all sig^s and revelations of the supreme Reason and Will that eternally maintains this orderly system ; according to laws, and for ends, that are only imperfectly comprehensible, in any knowledge of the realities that, like. the human, is necessarily incomplete. Nature would thus be conceived as (so far) an incarnation of God. But Locke's point of view in the -fi'jj^^' always gives prominence to the external condi- tions under which knowledge and faith arise in a human understanding. It thus overlooks the innate spiritual reason that forms their background, and that is presupposed in the very laws according to which changes are physically regulated; and also in the 'real essences,' or individusd ' natures,' with which things are charged, and by which their individualities are so determined as that each is what it is.
VII. HUMAN KNOWLEDGE OF IDEAS IN THEIR ABSTRACT RELATIONS.
Know- So much for Locke's account of the knowableness, by
abstract ^i human understanding, of mental propositions in which the
maxims, agreement or disagreement of the ideas concerns, either
'real existences,' manifested in their simple ideas, or
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* coexistence ' of ideas, as qualities or powers of different sorts of substances. See next what the Essay teaches about the other two sorts of 'agreement or disagreement ' of ideas — ^relation proper, and identity with diversity — in which the ideas are abstracted from real substances and their changes, and are viewed without respect to conditions of time and place, or to what happens in an experience of the concrete universe. Although propositions concerned with
* coexistences/ i. e. which present human interpretations of matters of fact, have" not got absolute certainty — are tentative, though it may be progressive, hypotheses, that gradually approximate to ultimate truth — Locke finds that the case is different with purely abstract assertions that are independent of the contingencies of time and sense.
The relations of the ideas that are abstracted from par- illustrated ticular substances, and liberated from bondage to the changes J^J^^J^ of sense, are, according to the Essay ^ the only ones in which a matics,and human understanding can x^^s^general propositions that are e"hic^****^' unconditionally certain. The reason of this is, that a human understanding is the sole creator and preserver of the abstract ideas which enter into such propositions. In this way the assertions which they involve escape interference on the part of the powers, imperfectly calculable by the narrow experience of mam, that determine the coexistences and sequences in nature. Those relations of our abstract ideas, as they form ' the largest field of our knowledge, so it is hard to determine how far it may extend ; because the advances that are made in this part of our knowledge, depending on our sagacity in finding intermediate ideas that may show the' relations and habitudes of ideas whose coexistence [in nature] is not considered, it is hard matter to tell when we are at an end in such discoveries.' (Bk. IV. ch. iii. § i8.) Accordingly, there is a prospect of indefinite advancement in pure mathematics, Locke's signal example of this sort of knowledge. But abstract ideas of quantity are not his only examples of the absolute certainty of abstract knowledge. *The [abstract] idea of a Supreme Being, infinite in power, goodness and wisdom, whose workman- ship we are, and on whom we depend, and the [abstract] idea of ourselves as rational beings, being such as are clear
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Does Locke recognise, in any abstract proposi- tions, synthetic as well as analytic necessity I
in US, would, I suppose, if duly considered and pursued, afford such foundations of our duty, and rules of action, as might place [abstract] morality among the sciences capable of demonstration: wherein I doubt not but, from self- evident propositions, by necessary consequences, as incon- testable as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong [in the abstract] might be made out. ** Where there is no property there is no injustice," is a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid ; for the idea of property being [by definition] a right to anything, and the idea to which the name injustice is given being [by definition] an invasion or violation of that right, it is evident that these ideas, being thus established [by our definitions], and these names annexed to them, I can as certainly know this proposition to be true as I know that a triangle has three angles equal to two right ones.' (Bk. IV. ch. iii. § i8.)
Pure mathematics and abstract ethics are Locke's exam- ples of absolute certainty in general propositions. But here it is not easy to determine whether he means, that the certainty depends in all such cases upon men's arbitrary definitions of the names which enter into their reasonings, as those who allege that Locke is an empirical Nominalist would say that he does ; or whether he intends to leave room for a /rii?r/ intellectual necessities, involved in the abstract con- ceptions, with the Conceptualists ; or even with the Realists sees in them necessities of reason that, inasmuch as reason is innate in the nature of things, makes things fit to be reasoned about. It seems that Locke tacitly allows that even a human understanding becomes aware of abstract relations of ideas that are independent of the arbitrary definitions of men. * In some of our ideas,' he says, * there are certain relations, habitudes, and connexions, so visibly included in the relation of the ideas themselves^ that we cannot conceive them separable from them by any power whatsoever \ and in these only we are capable of certain and real knowledge. Thus the idea of a right-angled triangle necessarily carries with it an equality of its angles to two right ones. Nor can we conceive this relation of these two ideas to be possibly mutable, or to depend on any arbitrary power, which of choice made it thus, and
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could make it otherwise.' (Bk. IV. ch. iii. § 29.) Such relations of ideas are therefore seen by us to be * eternal and immutable'; in contrast with all relations of 'coexist- ence' in particular substances, as well as with relations that depend on our arbitrary definitions. At the same time, mathematical and moral propositions, so Locke implies, are at first perceived by us to be thus necessarily true, not in their most general form, but only in one or other of their particular embodiments; and they are actually true only when there are individual things or persons really existing that correspond to the general idea. The abstract proposition thus constitutes what might be called an a priori knowledge of what, in that respect, the actual things must be, on the hypothesis that they really exist in nature. The eternity and immutability of the abstract ' maxims ' of mathematics and of ethics, with all that is logically implied in them, is steadily maintained in the Essay. With reference to the abstract principles of morals, he says, in reply to Lowde, that if this critic ' had been at the pains to reflect on what I have said, he would have seen what I think of the eternal and immutable nature of right and wrong, and what I call virtue and vice ; and if he had observed that, in the place he quotes, I only report, as matters of fact, what other men call virtue and vice, he would not have found it liable to any great exception.' When asked, * Why a man should keep his word or his contract ? ' Locke answers^ * Truth, and keeping of faith, belong to men as men, and not only as members of society ; nor can custom serve in place of reason ^.'
Although the Essay does not expressly include the rela- He tacitly tion of Causality among those * connexions of ideas ' that Jh^^^^I^g* are intellectually, and therefore universally necessary, Locke sity of the virtually takes this for granted, in his 'demonstration' p^^pies of the existence of the Eternal Mind. This proceeds on of Causal- the assumption, as he tells Stillingfleet, that the proposition st^^e^a^n^d — 'everything that has a beginning must have a cause' — of the' IS *a true principle of reason, or 2l general proposition that ™{(5^Jcs is certainly true.' So too with the correlative idea of of reason- substance : that the simple ideas or appearances presented *"^'
^ Margmaiia I^ocktana.
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in the senses and in self-consciousness must be referred, as qualities, to substances, is implied in the treatment of simple ideas throughout the Essay. And the abstract principle of all analytical and verbal logic, that our ideas must not contradict one another, is, above all, according^ to Locke, independent of proof from experience ; although, apart from sense-experience, like other abstract maxims, it does not actually rise into consciousness. ' He would be thought void of common sense/ the Essay tells us ^, 'who asked, on the one side^ or on the other, went about to give a reason, Why it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be. It carries its own light and evidence with it, and needs no other proof: he that understands the terms assents to it for its own sake, or else nothing will ever be able to prevail with him to do it' All those different sorts of abstract principles are tacitly treated in the Essay as principles of universal reason, accepted in the faith of ^common sense/ but without adequate criticism of their nature and origin. To reject them, or to subordinate them to the contingencies of sense, would be as inconsistent with Locke's account of human knowledge, as it would be to say that he denies that experience is the source of all assertions about qualities and powers that men attribute to particular substances.
Notwithstanding this virtual acknowledgment, that ab- stract * maxims ' which are incapable of proof, because above proof, are presupposed by implication in our interpretations of simple ideas, Locke looks with suspicion on maxims. He suspects them, because they have been credited with an innateness not consistent (in his idea of innateness) with the fact that they are consciously held, in their abstract form, only by a few persons, after prolonged exercise of their understandings among data of experience ; and also because he thinks they do not add to our knowledge of things ". He insists that self-evident maxims need not be innate, merely because they are seen to be self-evidently true when we do become conscious of them ; and he ai^ues that the abstract forms of syllogism, and the laws of formal logic, add nothing to our knowledge of
^ Bk. I. ch. ii. § 4.
' See Bk. IV. chh. vii, viii, xvii.
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facts. No abstract maxims, how self-evident soever they may be, 'can help one to an acquaintance with ethics, or instruct us in the practice of morality/ We may amuse ourselves for ever with such self-evident propositions, or with a series of demonstrated propositions, self-evidently their consequences, in syllogistic forms, without adding at all to our practical acquaintance with the material and spiritual substances that exist. ^ It is but like a monkey shifting his oyster from the one hand to the other ; and had he had words, might no doubt have said '* oyster in right hand is subject, oyster in left hand is predicate," and so might have made a self-evident proposition of " oyster is oyster " ; and yet with all this not have been one whit wiser or more knowing.' (Bk. IV. ch. viii. §§ 1-3.) So too syllogism cannot, he argues, increase real knowledge: its premisses always implicitly contain its conclusions. It can be used as a criterion merely of argumentative consistency — which indeed^ one may add, is all that its philosophical advocates claim for it Locke rejects it as a source of real knowledge, on the ground that without experience it is impossible to interpret the actual order of nature ; and also that * no pro- position can be said to be in the mind of which the mind is unconscious.' The highest office of syllogistic logic is, to evolve the forms according to which men (in general un- conscious of the form) make patent to themselves and others propositions that were lexically implied in their assumed knowledge.
With his eye exclusively fixed upon experience, as the Self- supreme condition of any true interpretation of the world maxfms of realities, Locke is apt to underestimate the human im- ^ "*<>' portance of those abstract intellectual necessities. Must not any finite understanding of the actual world presuppose principles — ^by most persons held unconsciously — which form the rational construction of experience, through which the individual is connected with the universal — the finite and temporal with the eternal and divine? Is not man's power of penetrating into what was before unknown dependent on those necessary implicates, alike of the consti- tution of his own knowing mind, and of the universal system of things which he seeks to know ? Suspicion of
VOL. I. h
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a claim to too wide a range of absolute certainties on the part of human understanding, founded upon an innate posses* sion of self-evident abstract maxims, and a^ deep conviction that in our scientific inductions we cannot rise above practical certainties of probability, roused Locke to his celebrated assault upon * innate principles,* in the First Book of the Essay. With him their innateness consists in their being principles that are so born with each man that he is conscious of them even in their abstract forms at birth, and this without exercising his understanding in experience. But that is a meaning of innateness which makes Locke's objections irrelevant, and puts him at cross- purposes with those who, from Plato onwards, have argued for the inadequacy of the mere phenomena presented in experi- ence to explain even sense-perception itself. The ambiguity and irrelevancy of Locke's negative conclusion was shown by the earliest critic of the Essay ^ John Norris, in his later remarks^ upon its most prominent doctrine: — 'I say as to the principle from which Mr. Locke derives our ideas, that if by having our ideas from our senses, his meaning be, — - that sensible objects do send or convey ideas of themselves to our minds by the mediation of the senses ; if this be what he means {as indeed I once thought^ and the rather because he expresses himself much after the same manner as the schools do, whose known meaning this is, according to that maxim quoted by Aquinas from Aristotle's " Meta* physics " — Principium nostrae cogitationis est a seftsu^ then it appears, by the whole tendency of this Discourse, that he has derived our ideas from a false original. But if his meaning be, as perhaps it may, (for indeed his way of ex- pressing himself, upon this occasion, is not so clear but that one may pardonably mistake him) — that sensible objects do, by the impression which they make upon our outward senses, serve to excite ideas in our minds, so that we are beholding to them as the occasions of our having such ideas : I say, if this be all that he means by pretending to make Sense the original and source of our ideas, I think
' See Norris's Essay towards the peared in 1704, fourteen years after Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible his Cursory Reflections on the Essay, World, vol. ii. p. 371, which ap-
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there is nothing either so dangerous, or so extraordinary in it, but that we may, without scruple, in a great measure allow it to him. For though ideas do not come from objects, as any genuine issue or production of theirs, nor are so much as the causal result of any of their impressions ; yet there is no absurdity in supposing that the Author of Nature may establish a connexion between certain sensible impressions and certain ideaSy as well as between such impressions and certain sensations. Nay we find by ex- perience it is so in fact.'
It is against the innateness of ideas, when ideas mean Why abstract notions, that Locke argues in the First Book : in the objected Second Book * ideas' mean ultimately particular impressions 'o/ innate^ of external or internal sense. Universality is ' accidental ' to ideas, according to Locke; in respect that an indi- vidual mind may, or may not, become aware, that any of the * particular ideas' which enter into knowledge *are such as more than one particular thing in nature corresponds with and is represented by.' But the abstract intellectual necessity of what may or may not arise actually in the indi- vidual consciousness, cannot be disposed of in Ae ^historical method.' Locke easily shows the absurdity of supposing that all infants are philosophers ; but in thus restricting his view to the process according to which knowledge happens to rise in consciousness, he neglects important elements, found consciously only in the educated mind, yet tacitly sup- posed in the validity of the process through which the con- tingent suggests what is necessary, and on which morality and religion depend. There is an inadequate appreciation in the Essay of the human importance that may belong to concepts, in respect of their universality and necessity, and thus its range of speculative interest is confined. Locke's inclination to look at abstract ideas only in their concrete applications, makes him indifferent to principles that are independent of the changes presented by things, in the experience of particular persons ; and that are inde- pendent too of the imperfectly known agencies by which changes are determined : yet it is on principles that faith, which is human reason in its highest form, finally steadies itself. He is so much moved by the desire to recall dog-
h2
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The really philoso- phical question about in- nateness.
matists, and concept-mongers, to * particular ideas ' given la experience, that the Essay takes no sufficient account of the psychical fact, — that human experience tacitly involves concepts and principles that are logically independent of accidents in the history of any individual consciousness. For, in the spirit of his 'historical plain method/ it is conscious realisation of them by individual minds, and patient exercise of individual understanding with a view to this realisation, that he wants to substitute for the indolence which tempts men to dispense with reflection, and to assume principles blindly on authority. He thought he saw in ' innate principles ' what * eased the lazy from the pains of search, and stopped the inquiry of the doubtful concerning all that was once styled innate . . . which was to take men off from the use of their own reason and judgment, and put them on believing and taking upon trust, without further ex- amination . . . Whereas had they examined the ways whereby [individual] men come to the knowledge of universal truths, they would have found them to result, in the minds of men, from the being of things themselves when duly considered ; and that they were discovered by the application of those faculties that were fitted by nature to receive and judge of them, when duly employed about them ^.' But when innate^ ness means immanence of reason in the constitution .of the universe and of man, which needs active exercise of mind for its awakening into life in a human mind, it no longer appears, as it did to Locke, to be an obstacle to the freest exercise of human understanding among the phe- nomena presented in experience.
The philosophical yet human question that underlies Locke's irrelevant argument is not touched in the Essay, It is not a question about an event, or succession of events, in the early history of each human mind: it is about the necessary constitution and implicates of a matured human experience of reality. The term a priori^ in this connexion, has no such reference to time as Locke sup- posed. It no more means, that all men enter life conscious of certain highly abstract principles or categories of know-
' See Bk. I. ch. ili. § 94 ; also Bk. IV. chh. vii, viii.
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ledge, which they afterwards make concrete in receiving data through experience, than Locke himself means, that an idea or phenomenon of sense, in its ultimate simplicity, is the earliest example of knowledge in the consciousness of each man. Each of these hypotheses admits of easy refutation. That knowledge itself can- not be resolved into simple ideas or sensations, although it is evoked in sensation, has been shown, at various points of view, from Plato to Kant and Hegel. Other- wise there could be no unconditional certainty for man, as the possibility of demonstration proves that there is ; no categorical imperative of morality, although immutable morality shows the contrary ; and no faith, although daily life as well as science reposes in faith.
This latent apriority of abstract principles to the data Inherited of experience — simple ideas of external and internal sense — is as insufficiently recognised in the hypothesis of in- herited aptitudes, which biology since Locke has brought into vogue, as it was in the Essay^ where the history of individual consciousness was alone taken into account. Dogmas or prejudices, as well as scientific discoveries of the past, are unconsciously bom with us; but this * historical' fact does not explain the contents of the matured reason and conscience, nor supply an answer to the self-contradictory question, * Why reason is reasonable?' The critical analysis of reason has no direct reference to time and the succession of events, either in the history of the individual, or in that of the human race.
Locke overlooks the part played by ultimate abstract Locke's principles and moral ideals, in constituting the validity of abstract human knowledge, and in r^ulating our interpretations of maxims. events, as well as our estimate of the final purpose of the changes through which we and things around us are passing. For the Essay is throughout an attempt to show that our understanding, but for the simple ideas or attributes of things presented in experience, must be barren, and that the presented ideas can be interpreted only gradually, in a pro- gressive experience ; so that, without experience, an idealess understanding is * like a closet wholly shut out from light,* ignorant of all that it concerns man to know about the
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Prolegomena: Expository and Critical.
properties and powers of surrounding things, and about his own thinking substance. The background of the whole — ^the fundamental abstractions of space and immensity, duration and eternity, infinity, substance and personality, power and causality, eternal and immutable duty — is looked at only in and through the finite ideas or phenomena in which those abstractions receive concrete expression ; not in the light of the necessity of the abstract principles themselves to the rational reality of the universe. Inthis way it was easy to show, as in the Second Book, that even the complex ideas there taken as 'crucial instances,' when individualised in the sensuous imagination, may be resolved into unanalysable manifestations of realities presented either in the senses or in reflection. For without these, the abstract universals remain, for us, immanent and unconscious ; they cannot rise into consciousness without being blended with the simple ideas which they then enable us to interpret.
Relation between the
abstract presuppo- sitions of intellec- tual and moral reason, and our presuppo- sitions of proba- bility.
VIII. FAITH INSTEAD OF OMNISCIENCE.
How are the abstract certainties that belong to the known relations of our fundamental -conceptions connected with the practical certainties of probability which regulate human life, — in our judgments regarding the causal con- nexions and behaviour of ' particular substances,' material and spiritual, which compose the universe of finite realities? Locke does not discuss this question, although it underlies the Essay ^ especially in those parts of the Fourth Book where connexions of * co-existence,* and faith in judgments of probability are considered. He finds that the uncon- ditional certainty, which alone "he dignifies with the name of 'knowledge' or 'science,' is within reach of a human understanding, only to the extent of each man being able to know: — (i) his own existence as a thinking being; {%) the present and past existence of outward things that are or were actually presented in his sensations ; and (3) the eternal reality of the Supreme Mind. He also finds absolute certainty in relations of ideas, particular and universal, when the ideas are abstracted from change and temporal relations, and thus from dependence upon the
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imperfectly known powers that are constantly at work in the universe. These abstract relations are illustrated in pure mathematics and in pure ethics, and (so his theistic demonstration implies) also in the abstract principle of causality ; all which relations can be predicated only hypo- thetically in our assertions about the concrete things that are contingently presented in actual experience^.
What then of the sphere of knowable relations that is Proposi- in a manner intermediate between our knowledge of the pr^bilit three primal realities, and our knowledge of the abstract belong to relations which are tacitly assumed in the Essay to be |^at^^^^^^ necessities of speculative or moral reason, latent in the inter- ultimate nature of things, as well as in the human under- ^^^Jj^^ standing? It is to this intermediate sphere that all the know- qualities and powers that 'coexist' in substances belong, the^ree forming the ever-changing world of bodies and spirits, all primary mutually related ; and within this sphere, according to the and k*iww. Essay ^ *thc greatest and most material part of knowledge ledge of the concerning substances * lies ; — that which shows how each preL^^. existing substance is related practically to other substances, sitions of Locke finds that the unconditional certainty which belongs '^*'°"' to knowledge is here unattainable by a human under- standing. The attainment would involve omniscience; and man, neither omniscient nor wholly nescient, must, in all this, fall back upon ' faith ventures,' or presumptions of probability. In his interpretations of the ever-changing phenomena of things and persons, he must be satisfied, as his only attainable ideal, with what are at last hypothetical judgments, although some of them are practically certain. After disposing, in the first thirteen chapters of the Fourth Book, of the three certainties of real existence, and the many certainties of abstract thought — ^two categories which, according to the Essay y exhaust human 'knowledge,' the remainder of the Book deals with human understanding in its chief practical office — ^forming in faith presumptions of probability, about the attributes and powers that
^ Knowledge, as Origen says, have infallibility ; without possessing
is the only thing which creatures which, to some extent, nothing at
have that is in its own nature all could be proved absolutely, fiim and absolute. In this only they
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does not propose a philo- sophical theory of judgments of proba- bility or co-exist-
coexist in substances. Now this implies that faith is the deepest form of man's intellectual intercourse with the universe of reality, as presented in the transient manifesta- tions which reality makes of itself in sense, during this short life, between two eternities.
The Essay does not carry us far into a theory of probable judgments. What Locke calls presumption, or undemonstrable proposition, to which 'assent' is given, comprehends all inductions, whether more or less complete. It is curious that while he refuses to such propositions the name of knowledge or science, it is among propositions that rest upon inductive comparison and verification that experimental inquirers now profess to find man's highest attainable certainty ; and this notwithstanding the unproved hypotheses that are involved even in scientific * verification.' Locke does not inquire into the ultimate grounds of induc- tive proof. Yet one might naturally look for this, in a work on human understanding which made its appearance in the age and country of Bacon. The defect was noticed by Bishop Butler, the philosophical theologian of the school of Locke. In explaining ^ how, in his Analogy ^ he did not intend any * inquiry into the nature, the foundation, and the measure of probability; or whence it proceeds that likeness should beget that presumptive opinion and full conviction which the human mind is found to receive from it, and which it does naturally produce in each one,' — Butler adds, that * this is a part of logic which has not yet been thoroughly considered, little having in this way been attempted by those who have treated of our intellectual powers and the exercise of them^.* Probable evidence, he goes on to say, * affords but an imperfect kind of infor- mation, and is to be considered only as relative to beings of limited capacities. For nothing which is the possible object of knowledge, whether past, present, or future, can be probable to Infinite Intelligence ; since it cannot but be discovered absolutely as it is in itself, certainly true or certainly false.' In omniscience, in short, there is no room
* Analogy — Introduction.
* As we shall see, this was after- wards attempted by Hume, as the
chief problem in his Inquiry con^ cemmg Human Understanding,
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for probability, and therefore no room for the faith which is at the root of all human interpretations of the phenomena presented by real existences in experience. But for man, with his limited experience, and correspondingly narrow intelligence, faith in the necessities of causal and moral reason, which is faith in God, is the highest form of human reason, in its dealings either with the actual mechanism of nature, or with the history and destiny of man.
A reader of the Essay is apt to ask, how the faith that is Our at the root of our judgments of probability, which look o"/™ba^ so much like leaps in the dark, can be after all justified by bUity are reason, the final court of appeal? How can the under- [J^^our standing satisfy itself, in interpretations of the phenomena faith in the of things that carry our judgments into the distant and ratlonaTity the future, nay even to the eternal and infinite? Locke and contributes little to the controversy between scepticism ™f°Se *^ and faith in this form. In the Essay 'faith' usually universe. means assent to biblical revelations of God that are com- monly called supernatural or miraculous ; but no question is asked about the philosophical meaning of supernatur- ality or miraculousness. The sort of faith which the Essay ^ recc^izes, * as absolutely determines our mind,' it tells us, 'and as perfectly excludes all wavering, as our knowledge itself does ; and we may as well doubt of our own being as we can whether any revelation of God be true. Only we must be sure that it be a divine revelation, and that we understand it right : else we shall expose our- selves to all the extravagancy of enthusiasm.' After this is secured, faith becomes ' assent founded on the highest reason.' Dread of ' enthusiasm ^' and a consequent dis- position to look for the criteria of real revelation among external things of sense, predisposed Locke to take physical miracles as the chief test for distinguishii^ what is truly divine from illusions of this enthusiasm. To rest 'contented with fancy and sentiment,' without support from facts presented to the senses, was with him a sure sign of the absence of love for intellectual truth. * This sort of confidence that one is right is commonly a sign that one is wrong.' And Locke sees the supernatural in
* Bk. IV. ch. xvl § 14. • Bk. IV. ch. xix.
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extraordinary events in external nature rather than in what is moral and spiritual. Miracles, Yet in the Discourse of Miracles^ as well as now and then *««2^« in the Essay^ the argument suggests that the ultimate foundation of any revelation of God must be transferred not only from unreasoned dogmas, and from enthusiasm, which he always warned against, but also from physical miracles merely as such, in order to be rested on the response which the alleged revelation meets with in the moral reason. 'A miracle,' Locke says^, 'is a sensible operation, which, being above the comprehension of the spectator, and in his opinion contrary to the established connexion of nature, is taken by him to be divine.' This seems to imply that physical miracles, if they do occur, cannot in themselves be anomic — that no manifestation in external nature can be really irrational and purposeless — although human understanding and experience are too limited to enable man to articulate scientifically, in all their applica- tions to the ' coexistences ' in nature, the intellectual and moral principles that contain the final explanation of all phenomena, whethef called natural or miraculous. Man must repose in the reasonable trust, that the Supreme Ideal is on the whole and finally reasonable. Philosophical faith is the conviction that the universe of finite realities cannot be absolutely in contradiction to the intellectual and moral reason, which is God immanent in nature and in man, and which is revealed in the physical and moral order. Events that are incomprehensible under the mechanical laws dis- coverable by human understanding, may, as relative miracles, serve the purpose of awakening the religious consciousness, otherwise latent, not only in the lower or non-moral way in which it is awakened even in our faith in natural order, on which mechanical science rests, but also in the deeper faith, in moral and spiritual order, which r^ulates religious thought in its further development. The history of man s interpretations of external nature, under mechanical cate- gories, as well as of the increasing command of things that he obtains by obedience to the natural order, is a history of faith in God, as the constantly immanent power ; so that ^ Discoum of MiradiSf § i.
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even scientific agnosticism itself is, so far, unconscious recog- nition of the divine order or God. Must not any revelation that is more specially called 'supernatural' be the com- plement, or further development, erf this revelation in external nature; sustained by faith, not merely in the non-moral order, but in the supremacy of the moral and spiritual order, i.e. by faith in Grod, as the constantly active moral reason ?
Locke's faith in the Christian revelation of God, and, The basis through this, in a deeper and fuller meaning of the three ^{^^ 4e final realities, rests at last on his sense of the moral excel- Christian Icnce of Christianity, when it is interpreted in its original ^od**" simplicity, and received in connexion with the miracle of the resurrection. The spiritual response, not anomic and purposeless mirade, makes him accept as reasonable a life of faith in God morally personified in Christ. *Even in those books which have the greatest proof of revelation from God, and the attestation of miracles to confirm their being so, the miracles,' he says, ' are to be judged by the doctrine, not the doctrine by the miracles/ The resurrec- tion, merely as a physical miracle, cannot be a spiritual revelation, or other in kind than an uncommon manifesta- tion of the immanent power that is revealed in all natural order ; although it may be apt, by its uncommonness, to arouse attention to the personality and inner life of the subject of the change. Faith in God is faith in the ultimate rationality and morality of the power continually operative and supreme in the universe. This faith justifies regard for inductively gathered laws, as trustworthy in their applications, through the assurance that understanding in us cannot be finally put to confusion by nature. Atheism is the opposite despair ; the Nescience which, in thoroughgoing consistency, is bound to withdraw even its physical faith in the ordinary expectations of daily life, and also in the interpretations and verifications of natural science ; not to speak of the higher faith, in the final tendency of the whole, in its relation to self-conscious moral agents, in and through whom the universe exemplifies actuality and purpose.
Faith — in this large or philosophical meaning — sustained by the abstract necessities of intellectual and moral reason
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Faith in its larger meaning is the character- istic of an intelli- gence that is inter- mediate between Sensuous Feeling and Om- niscience.
that are eternally and universally active in God, and that must be embodied in all revelations of God, either in external nature or in spiritual history, whether looked at on their natural or their supernatural side — thus becomes the foundation and inspiring source of our inter- pretations of the attributes and powers of any of the finite substances presented in human experience, *and of any of the temporal manifestations which they make of themselves, in what Locke calls * agreements of coexistence.' Human life, sensuous and spiritual, accordingly reposes on the absolute reasonableness and goodness of the Power that is supreme. If the Christian conception of the universe is found to give the fullest satisfaction to what is highest in man, bringing all the complex elements of his constitution into harmony with the realities of existence, then^ even without omniscience, man may vindicate his faith in it. If his intelligence could be put to confusion by this expe- rience, he must be living and moving and having his being in an illusory ' reality' — in a universe that, because insane and immoral, is ab^lutely incalculable, and therefore unfit to be reasoned about, since experience of it puts understand- ing to confusion, in sceptical or pessimist despair. Yet in all our actions and scientific previsions, as well as in the more comprehensive interpretations of existence implied in religious thought, we rest at last in the faith that law or order is supreme ; although we cannot naturally articu- late the infinite reality in all its details, or 'perceive' all finite realities in all their causal and moral relations to one another and to the supreme Power. For this faith is just recognition of the universal truth, that one is really living, not in a physical and moral chaos, but in a physical and moral cosmos ; notwithstanding that one is unable to com- pass all the parts, in the omniscience that sees each part in its causal relations to every other. The philosophical faith that regulates human understanding, in the education of an intelligence that is intermediate between nescience and omniscience^ presupposes that the universe, in its temporal ' coexistences ' and changes, is somehow the expression of perfect reason ; although this reason cannot be so applied, in an understanding of limited experience, as that man can
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have prevision of all changes, or even unconditionally certain prevision of any particular change; the course even of 'verified' laws being always open to modification by as yet unknown agents. When we advance beyond the immediate data of the senses, we are always making faith and hope ventures about the particular event ; but in absolute certainty of the supremacy of the intellectual and moral order, or divine immanence, in all. Our inferences, in propositions of * coexistence,* would be leaps wholly * in the dark,' but for the faith that they all somehow consist with the abstract intellectual and moral order on which what is best and highest in man is obliged at last to rest. This large faith thus becomes reason in its highest human form, and may be in a way the final solution of the difficulties * concerning morality and revealed religion * which are said to have first suggested the Essay concerning Human Under- standing,
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(C) HISTORICAL.
I. THE ESSAY AS IN BERKELEY: SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY.
Locke's Chiefly through the influence of William Molyneux, the
DubUn" Essay concerning Human Understanding was introduced soon after it appeared into the course of study at Trinity College, Dublin, About the time of Locke's death the new methods of Bacon and Descartes, in their application to the invisible facts and events presented in our conscious intelligence, were, through the Essay^ producing a reaction in Dublin against the traditions and abstract logic of the schools. Then and there the new philosophy found a critical yet sympathetic response in the mind of George Berkeley, who entered Trinity College in 1700, fresh from his native valley of the Nore, full of inquisitive enthusiasm. It was in Ireland, through Berkeley, that the English philosophy of Locke was first developed and modified, in a manner so signal as to possess historical significance. The problems that were only latent in it took root in a mind more subtle and less given to compromise than Locke's, of wider and acuter speculative grasp, while less endowed with prudential common sense. About a year after Locke's death, Berkeley was the leading member of an academical society that met weekly for promoting inquiries into the facts of external nature and life, according to the methods of Boyle and Newton in physics, and of Locke in human understanding. The Essay was above all the subject of debate and free criticism. Berkeley's A remarkable revelation of Berkeley's state of mind in Common- ^1^5^ ^^^ 1^ the two years following, is contained in his place college * Commonplace Book* of queries and occasional
thoughts, in logic, ontology, and ethics^. The startling inspiration of a new philosophical principle runs through
* See my Cotteded Works of Berkeley, vol. iv. pp. 419-501,
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Book.
Berkeley : Spirittml Philosophy, cxxvii
its pages, suggested by the Essay ^ with much in which this Commonplace Book is at variance. The *new principle* rose out of meditation upon the meaning of the word *real/ especially when applied to * outward things.' That Locke had overlooked the nature and origin of this idea, in his famous analysis of human ideas, was borne in upon Berkeley in his study of the Essay. His own explanation of the meaning of reality when it is affirmed of * outward things,' was destined to encounter the ridicule of the multitude, always apt to put words in place of thoughts, and to take outward things for the only type of what is real, without troubling themselves to ask what reality means. Whatever is real — all Locke's three final realities — Berkeley began to see, must depend for their actual reality on con- scious mind. Withdraw from existence all living perception, and then the unperceiving and unperceived things supposed to remain necessarily lose all their attributes and powers ; for the universe can be actual^ only in and through active or self-conscious mind. Existence of any sort is not conceiv- able without living perceptions and volitions. Existence is perceiving and willing, or else being perceived and willed. The term 'real existence' is not intelligible otherwise. Actual things are therefore * ideas,' or dependent on mind for their actuality. Ignorance of this, Berkeley takes to be the chief source of all scepticism and folly, all the con- tradictory and inexplicable puzzling absurdities that have in all ages been a reproach to human reason. If, he says, in this and some other things * I differ from a philosopher that I profess to admire [Locke], it is for that very thing on account of which I admire him, namely, the love of truth.' Berkeley anticipates one great bar to the reception of his new world-transforming principle in the very evil which the Essay of Locke was mainly directed against — man's disposition to abuse words to the perversion and even the paralysis of thought. True philosophical principles are perpetually concealed by the * mist and veil of words.'
Berkeley, charged with this new philosophical concep- tion of what reality means, issued from his * obscure comer,' as he calls it, to become a leader in European philosophy, in immediate succession to Locke. His
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Meta- physical negation prominent in Berke- ley's juvenile treatises.
Three doc- trines in the Essay which led to Berkeley's new con- ception of the material world.
The de- pendence of the secondary, or im- puted, qualities
cxxviii Prolegomena: Historical.
governing conception was unintelligible to his contem- poraries, and to generations of his successors. He had himself only an imperfect appreciation of what it implied. In his old age it was so modified that it led him to reverse the nominalistic empiricism which was at first suggested to his uncompromising intelligence by Locke's Essay,
Within ten years after Locke's death three treatises, in which the *new principle' was explained and vindicated, negatively more than on its constructive side, were given by Berkeley to the world. That outward things cannot be actual or real, out of all relation to any knowing mind — that they must otherwise be unsubstantial and impotent, is their more obvious outcome. The way in which percipient mind sustains reality, and the philosophical formulas in which this office of intelligence may receive ultimate expression, were left in the background ; while the polemic against 'abstract ideas,' with which the new conception of real existence was introduced, even exaggerated the depreciation of abstract universals in the Essay.
Berkeley's * new principle,* which makes all actual reality depend on percipient or conscious mind, is suggested by three doctrines that are conspicuous in the Essay : — (i) Its reference of all secondary or imputed qualities of * outward things * to sentient mind. (2) Its repeated hints that * pure matter is only passive,* active power being attributed exclusively to * created spirits ' like ourselves, and to * God.* (3) Its tendency to separate material substances from the simple ideas in which their qualities are manifested ; along with the occasionally implied assumption, that our own self-conscious personality is more immediately revealed than the things of sense — * no one of the things the mind contemplates, besides itself ^ being present to the under- standing^.' Let us look at each of these.
(i) The imputed qualities of matter Locke had argued must all be referred to sentient minds ; apart from them they are meaningless : matter per se must be interpreted exclusively in terms of solid extension and motion, which alone are its essential, real, or original qualities. But
1 Bk. IV. ch. xxi. $ 4.
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Berkeley : Spiritual Philosophy. cxxix
all the qualities in which matter manifests itself, or in of matter which it can be supposed to manifest itself, Berkeley "^^^ent argues, are equally dependent for their actuality upon mind, conscious mind : so * matter,' stripped of all its qualities, by the subtraction of all percipient mind, must be an empty abstraction — one of those meaningless words against which Locke had protested. Therefore its real existence must be the existence, in us and other percipient beings, of a certain order of ideas or phenomena — namely, those of which we and they are conscious in actual seeing and touching; ideas which possess marks that plainly dis- tinguish them from * unreal ' fancies. It is of no importance to say, as Locke does, that our primary ideas of matter are 'copies or resemblances' of an 'unthinking' substance; for an idea can be only like another idea, and ideas obviously all depend upon percipient minds : besides, it is impossible to have ideas of solid atoms in motion without also imputing to them some of the qualities that are called secondary. In short, the very phenomena presented in sense, primary as well as secondary^ are themselves the * out- ward things* : we call them real^ partly because they appear involuntarily, as far as each of us is concerned ; partly because they are more vivid than our unreal fancies are ; and partly too because they are elements in that universal order, on which our pleasures and pains, and all the in- terests of human life, are found to depend.
(a) For us ' outward things ' are in this way constantly That pure undergoing annihilation and re-creation. They are in ma"er a perpetual flux ; but then it is flux in a cosmical system, passive, which the immutable principle of causality obliges us to ^^ ^.*' refer to Eternal Mind as its sustaining and supreme cause ; power because mind is the only active power of which we have *° .^®
A . » rw,, . . universe
any idea, or rather any 'notion. The constant activity must be and supremacy of Mind is the only possible explanation of J^'^^d the natural order on which human life depends, and which all scientific interpretation of natural phenomena, all ex- pectation or prevision, presupposes. Hence the presence of reason or order in the coexistences and successions of sensuous phenomena; the real or sense ideas of which things are composed are practically the same for all minds ; VOL. I. i
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ideas of sense can in this way be calculated upon ; they may be used as sense-symbols through which finite spirits can communicate with one another ; and collectively they embody a divine language in which God is constantly address- ing men. The essential as well as the imputed qualities of 'outward things,' therefore, exist * in mind,' i.e. dependent on perception; not, as they were supposed to do, as modes or attributes of unperceived and unperceiving sub- stances, which must all be impotent, and can have no independent subsistence. That our (3) But as to the personal or substantial existence of ispr^^t thiniking beings, on the contrary, this, Berkeley argues, is to our not open to the objection to which unthinking substance is stondSng open, that it involves a manifest repugnance and incon- inaway sistency. 'That ideas should exist in what doth not ward " perceive, or be produced by what doth not act, is repugnant, substances But it is no repugnancy to say that a perceiving thing so that we should be the subject of ideas, or an active thing the cause have a of them. I have a notion of spirit, though I have not, but not an Strictly Speaking, an idea ^ of it. I know and am conscious idea of it. of my own being. But I am not in like manner conscious either of the existence or essence of Matter.' There is there- fore 'no parity of case' between a material and a spiritual substance. As Locke had said, ' none of the things the mind contemplates, ^^j/^/^^ itself^ are present to the understanding.* Berkeley's In Berkeley's Latin tract, De MotUy published sixteen Fn midcUe^ years after Locke's death, this exclusive activity of mind life. or spirit is the special conclusion argued for ; and twelve
years later the * outward world * of merely sensible realities appears transformed into a system of sensible and signi- ficant effects, emptied of all efficient causality, in Berkeley's Alciphron, With more emphasis he now insists, that the con- nexion of real ideas, or actual sense-phenomena, according to natural laws, ' does not imply the relation of cause and effect, but only of a mark or sign with the thing signified.' This proposition might be taken for the motto of Berkeley's philosophical work in middle life ; in which external nature appears as an infinite sense-symbolism, constantly sustained
^ ' idea,' i. e. a sensuous image, sentable noHon, which is not mean- as distinguished from an unrepre- ingless nevertheless.
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and directed in all its changes^ according to the divinely imposed order.
In old age Berkeley was employed less in the elimination lu of independence and active power from our conceptions ^^/^ of 'outward things'; more in reconstruction, through the old age, in supernatural and eternal Mind, to which all reality and ^i^"^ power, except that implied in the dependent existence ideas or yet responsible agency of finite moral beings, is referred ^^^f by him. In the aphoristic thoughts of Siris^ he approaches Sense are absolute Idealism by making sense absolutely subordinate ^hiate to to constructive reason. The crude nominalism derived Reason, from the ideism and ' nominal essences ' of Locke is ex- changed for Platonic Realism or Idealism. All so-called causes ox powers in external nature are interpreted as only orderly phenomenal effects of Divine power. The universe is a unity, in and through the causal chain, which leads up, in an order of development, to the active Reason that is supreme and pervading. Take the following utterances : — ' Nothing mechanical either is or really can be a cause. • . Strictly sense knows nothing. . . Sense is reason immersed and plunged into matter, as Cudworth says. . . Sense and experience acquaint us only with the course and analogy of appearances, or natural effects : thought, reason, and intellect introduce us into the knowledge of their causes. The [abstract] principles of science are neither objects of sense nor of imagination : and intellect and reason are alone the sure guides of truth. . . Sense at first besets and overbears the mind. We look no further than to it for realities and causes ; till Intellect begins to dawn, and casts a ray on this shadowy scene. We then perceive the true principles, and those that before seemed to be the whole of being, upon taking an intellectual view, are seen to be but phantoms. . . Plato held original ideas in the mind ; that is notions^ such as never were nor can be in the sense. Mind is not a tabula rasa, as some hold. There are properly no ideas or passive objects in the mind but what were derived from sense; but there are also besides these her own acts or operations, as notions, . • There runs a chain [of rational order] through the whole system of things, in which the meanest things are connected with the
12
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cxxzii Prolegomena: Historical.
highest. A divine force or influence permeates the entire universe. . . Plotinus represents God as order; Aristotle as law. . . Comprehending God and the creatures in one general notion^ we may say that all together make one Universe, or rd ircw. But if we should say that all things thus make one God, this would indeed be an erroneous notion of God, but would not amount to Atheism, as long as Mind or Intellect was admitted to be the governing part.' * Our constant endeavour,' he concludes, 'should be to rise into and recover this ** lost region of light." ' Theology and philo- sophy 'gently unbind the ligaments that chain the soul down to the earth and assist her flight towards the Sovereign Good.' Sinsard Thus in Siris 'propositions of real existence,* which \\i^ Essay, Locke vaguely accepts as the intuitive starting-point of human knowledge, but without asking what their * reality ' means, are interpreted by Berkeley in the light of funda- mental conceptions, which necessarily connect all actual reality with percipient and active mind ; ' propositions of co- existence ' are recognised as attempts, often futile, to express relations of physical causality in what is really a system of sense-signs, maintained by the perpetual activity of the Supreme Reason in which we live and have our being; — the sense-symbolism awakening in its human interpreters dormant principles of reason (which Locke unconsciously acknowledges in his abstract * propositions of relation') that unite all to God, the perfect active Reason. Yet this conception of the universe, as reason-charged, and with all its activities fundamentally activities of Mind, is not in Siris regarded as the issue of man's omniscience, or man's power to solve the problems of * propositions of co-exist- ence,* in the way the 'eternal geometer,' supposed by Leibniz, could solve them. That in this mortal state we must be modestly satisfied with transient ' glimpses ^ of the universal laws, and imperfect forecasts of their actual exem- plifications in the concrete facts and events in the history of nature and of man, is its final lesson. ' Human souls in this low situation, bordering on mere animal life, bear the weight and see through the dusk of a gross atmosphere, gathered from wrong judgments daily passed, false opinions daily
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Berkeley: Spiritual Philosophy, cxxxiii
learned, and early habits of an older date than either judg- ment or opinion. Through such a medium the sharpest eye cannot see clearly. And if by some extraordinary effort the mind should surmount this dusky region, and snatch a glimpse of pure light, she is soon drawn back- wards, and depressed by the heaviness of the animal nature to which she is chained. And if again she chanceth, amidst the agitation of wild fancies and strong affections, to spring upwards, a second relapse speedily succeeds into this r^on of darkness and dreams.' The particular ideism or pheno- menalism of the Essay, its assertion of the impotence of matter, and its occasional assumption that our own mind is present to itself in a way that * outward things ' are not, is in Siris transformed into this universal active Idealism, expressed naturally in a sense-symbolism that is imperfectly interpretable by man. Siris^ or the spiritual philosophy into which Locke was transformed in Berkeley, was as a whole unintelligible to the Anglo-Saxon mind in the century in which Berkeley lived. It finds a more congenial reception now, in a generation accustomed to the larger philosophical conceptions of Hegel and Lotze, and which has cast its eye back upon the history of human thought struggling with ultimate problems, in a way to which Locke with his ' historical plain method ' was a stranger. The fragments of ancient and medieval speculation that are scattered through Siris suggest an appreciation of previous thought, of which there is no trace in the Essay. For it must always be remembered that with Locke 'historical' method is simply the method that recognises actual facts or events — contingent phenomena, when men essay to interpret realities, whether outward things or human understandings ; and * the action that we call knowing ' is itself, in his view, an act or event presented in human experience. The historical learning deposited in books, Locke held in small esteem. Antiquitas saculi^ juventus mundi^ expressed his deep-rooted conviction, as well as Bacon's. As for the history of philosophic thought being itself the intellectual system of the universe, in its course of gradual develop- ment in human understanding, this idea was foreign to him, and to the age he belonged to. VOL. I. i 3
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cxxxiv Prolegomena: Historical.
Locke in Hume.
II. THE ESSAY AS IN DAVID HUME: PHILOSOPHICAL NESCDENCE.
The spiritual philosophy of Berkeley in Ireland was thus a development in one direction of elements latent in Locke's Essay. The next succeeding evolution of philo- sophy in these islands, of historical importance, occurred in Scotland, in an opposite direction. Hume's Treatise of Human Nature^ and his Inquiry concerning Human Under- standings were published half a century after the Essay ; the one some years before, and the other rather later than Siris. Locke's Essay was the new philosophical influence at work at Edinburgh in Hume's youth, and the negative side of Berkeley's new conception of the world of the senses was engaging attention there and then, as a sceptical paradox ^. Hume awoke into intellectual life in this atmosphere, with a natural disposition to doubt, and to apply sceptical paradox to the prevailing philosophy, as he found it in Locke's Essay. His agnostic criticism emptied the Essay of most of its fundamental elements, and in particular banished the * propositions of real existence ' that Locke took as presupposed in all * knowledge by means of ideas ^/
^ In Hume's youth, when he was a student in Edinburgh, a Society of young men was formed for discussing Berkeley's conception of the material world, and for correspondence with him. (See my Life and Letters of BerkeUy, p. 224.) That Hume was influenced by the destructive^ to the exclusion of the amstmctive, aspect of Berkeley's religious theory of the universe appears, when he says that ' the writings of that very ingenious author [Berkeley] form the best les- sons of scepticism which are to be found either among the ancient or modem philosophers, Bayle not ex- cepted. . . That all his arguments, though otherwise intended, are merely sceptical, appears from this -—that they adntit of no answer, and produce no conviction* (Hume's
Inquiry concerning Human Under- standing, Note N.)
* Hume's references to Locke are not complimentary. Take the follow- ing : — * The fame of Cicero flourishes, but that of Aristotle is utterly de- cayed. La Bruyere passes the seas, and maintains his reputation ; but the glory of Malebranche is confined to his own nation and to his own ag^. And Addison perhaps will be read with pleasure when Locke shaU be entirely forgotten.' {Inquiry, Sect L) * Locke was betrayed by the Schoolmen into this question [about innate ideas]; who, making use of undefined terms, draw out their disputes to a tedious length, without ever touching the point in question. A like ambiguity and cir- cumlocution seem to run through
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David Hume: Philosophical Nescience, cxxxv
According to the historians of philosophy and philo- Is the sophical critics, including Green, the latest and most ofHumr elaborate of Hume's critics, the nescience of the Treatise ^e n- and the Inquiry is a legitimate reductio ad absurdum of ^^rdum the account of human knowledge in the Essay \ for know- ^^^^ ledge begins, Locke is made to say, in • simple ideas,' or ^^^ sensations taken in isolation, and is thus emptied at the banning of all reality. Mere phenomena, in which what is real is in no way manifested — simple ideas that are ideas of nothing — can never of course become real knowledge of aa3^ing. Unless knowledge begins in propositions of real existence, propositions of real existence can never enter into it. It can never rise out of the momentary sense- consciousnesses that are called (not simple ideas but) ' im- pressions ' by Hume. These may * coexist/ but in relations which may be capricious, and which may in the end put understanding to confusion : the whole looks hollow and evanescent — ^'a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery' — an experience emptied of all absolute certainties. The unexplained background of real substances, material and spiritual, presupposed in the Essay, and actually manifested to us, according to Locke, in our simple ideas or phenomena of * real existences,* disappears, when the sensuous ideas, abstracted from realities, are made the sole elements and measure of what is called human knowledge. A supposed knowledge that is the issue of unconnected phenomena — momentary impressions — can be nothing more than a finite and transitory impression.
Measured by this test, Locke's three ultimate existences all become meaningless. For there is no idea or sensuous
that philosopher's reasonings, on this mar and criticism. And though this
as well as most other subjects.' turn must have improved our talent
{Inquiry, Note A.) *As to Sprot, of reasoning, it must be confessed
Locke, and even Temple, they know that, even in those sciences, we have
too little of the rules of art to be not any standard book which we can
esteemed elegant writers. . . Men in transmit to posterity. The utmost
this country have been so much we have to boast of are a few essays
occupied in the great disputes of towards a more just philosophy.*
religion, politics, and philosophy, (Hume's Essays— ^Oi the Original
that they had no relish for the seem- Contract.') ingly minute observations of gram-
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cxxxvi Prolegomena: Historical.
How Hume abolishes the pro- positions of real existence of the Essay,
How of proposi- tions of co- existence and causality ?
image of something simple and continued, corresponding to the personal pronoun *I'; the personal pronoun can therefore apply only to the particular perception of each moment: this sweeps away the mental assertion of their own real continued existence which Locke and Berkeley find accompanying all their particular ideas. 'Outward things* are equally transitory: when the * im- pressions ' or momentary sense-perceptions are withdrawn, no permanent impression remains behind : so Locke's assertions of the real existence of outward things can legitimately retain no permanent realities in their meaning. As for the mathematically certain * demonstration' of Eternal Mind, and the constant presence of reason in what is thus the divine language of sense, Hume finds no * impression * (simple idea) corresponding to this supposed reality, and concludes that ' our line is too short to fathom such immense abysses ^* There can be no agreements or disagreements of the impossible ideas to which the meaningless term *real existence' is applied ; so that this sort of proposition, which plays so great a part in the Essay^ is superfluous and illusory. It follows that, with knowledge thus evisce- rated, matter-of-fact propositions of * coexistence ' have no ground in reason. Whatever is, might be different No negation of a fact can involve a contradiction. If we reason a priori, anything is able to produce anything — if indeed we are still to speak of ' production.' * The falling of a pebble may, for aught we know, extinguish the sun, or the wish of a man control the planets in their orbits *.' Propositions that are * intuitively or demonstratively certain ' may per- haps still be found among the abstract relations of ideas, as in ^ our abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number * ; but these must always be divorced from, and empty of concrete reality, and in the end such abstract reasonings even are involved in insurmountable contradictions.
But what about propositions of ' coexistence,' in which, according to Locke, we attribute powers and qualities to particular substances, and which thus involve the causal relations of substances? Hume's Inquiry is an attempt to save them from the wreck, for the practical purposes
* Inquiry f section vii. â– Inquiry, section xii. pt. 3.
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David Hume: Philosophical Nescience, cxxxvii
of human life. ' Human knowledge ' becomes throughout a probable presumption, and all human propositions that are concrete are converted into hypothetical ones. It remains to explain how this is done.
If all the elements of experience are only momentary Hume's consciousnesses, in the form of transitory simple ideas or im- ^"^^t*^" pressions, there can be no * uniting principle ' for connecting when the one simple idea or impression with another. Yet without ^°J^en ^ this there cannot be even the semblance of knowledge or the only proposition; for as long as phenomena rise in absolute efemeiTt isolation they are unintelligible. It is in this predicament in know- that Hume at last finds himself in contemplating knowledge. ^®* At the end of his review of * human understanding* in the Treatisey the three fundamental realities, including even the reality supposed to be signified by the personal pronoun ' I,' are dissolved in meaninglessness — the synthetic principles implied in the fundamental conceptions of abstract thought are reduced to self-contradiction — all assertion and all denial on all subjects paralysed — ^ simple ideas' the only residuum. * I am affrighted and confounded,* is his confession, *with that forlorn solitude in which I am placed by my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who, not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expelled all human converse, and left utterly abandoned and disconsolate . . . The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence on me ? I am con- founded with all these questions.' Yet the very expression of these questions, the use of the personal pronoun * I,' the term ' surrounding beings,' and the pervading causal presup- positions, all bring back, by implication, the three realities of knowledge, the discharge of which had reduced the divine cosmos to this chaos of simple ideas or impressions,
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— phenomena in which no realities are manifested. The words dismissed as meaningless already call out for philo- sophical recognition.
Thus * bereft of reason/ by the supposed meaninglessness of some of the propositions in which reason ultimately con- sists, and the self-contradictoriness of others, Hume, in his philosophical nescience, turns to * feeling* as a reconstruc- tive influence. He finds that some ideas of * impressions ' include *a strong propensity to consider objects strongly in that view in which they appear,' which causes us to receive the 'enlivened ideas' of the absent impressions in memory, as * true pictures of past perceptions.' The rement" bered existence of /^d^^w/ impressions is accordingly accepted as probable; not on ground of reason, but as the issue of this * strong propensity.* But what of the absent that is unre- membored — past, distant, or future, roughly represented by Locke's propositions of 'coexistence'? What of our under- standing or belief of absent phenomena that are neither actually perceived nor remembered ? We are here brought to Hume's 'sceptical solution of sceptical doubts,' which, with its applications, may be said to form the problem of the Inquiry, This problem is thus put by himself: — * The con- trary of every matter of fact [proposition of coexistence] is still possible; because it can never imply a contradiction. That the sun will not rise to-morrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation that it will rise. We should in vain therefore attempt to demonstrate its falsehood. . . It may therefore be a subject worthy of curiosity, to inquire, What is the nature of that evidence which assures us of any real existence and matter of fact beyond the present testimony of our senses^ and the records of our memory'^ This part of philosophy, it is observable, has been little cultivated either by the ancients or the moderns.' The solution which Hume offers of this, the central philosophical problem of his Inquiry^ is — ^the ' strong propensity ' which causes expectations of the re- appearance of the past in the future ; so that propositions of coexistence among phenomena are held together by the habit generated by the (inexplicable) ' custom ' of certain ' simple ideas,' as Locke would call them— K>r ' impressions'
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in the language of Hume — to * coexist.' Without ground in necessities of reason, there is somehow gradually formed a blind disposition to treat * impressions ' as units in an ordered system, consisting of customary, or as men call them 'natural' sequences. Here there is a bar to all further inquiry. Deeper than this, all is darkness — nowhere any absolute foundation on which to rest in reasonable trust. All that is supposed below this, or around this, is .illusion. The past custom of coexistence among impressions is the highest object of trust. Blind Custom takes the place of God. What has been, we have to suppose will be. The only constructive principles are the customary sequences of the simple ideas that appear in sense. Is this adequate to the facts? Are there not other presuppositions, some of them tacitly made by Hume himself, which as much admit of justification as those that are expressly recognised even in this thin and hollow construction, which still tacitly proceeds upon the three fundamental realities attenuated^ even after it has professed to dissolve them all in isolated impressions?
Association of impressions, followed by a corresponding association of the representative ideas, was for Hume the sole synthetic principle, if this accident can be called a principle, of human understanding. 'Association* then became the supreme rule of English psychology — in Hartley, Priestley, the Mills; now with Mr. Herbert Spencer ex- panded, through recognition of heredity, and under a larger philosophical conception, into the evolutionary principle of all cosmical change; also in the French 'ideology' of Con- dillac and the Aufkldrung^ in last century, and since in the Philosophie Positive of Comte. By Locke, on the contrary, 'association,' as illustrated in the 'history' of ideas, is introduced \ not as the ultimate explanation of human understanding, but as an explanation of many of its illusions and prejudices; whereas Hume, and his English and French successors, bring in custom or association to explain all 'assur- ance of any real existence and matter of fact, beyond the present testimony of the senses, and the records of memory,' if not even the very testimony of sense and memory itself.
^ Bk. II. ch. zxxiii.
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The spiritual philosophy of Berkeley and the philo- sophical nescience of Hume — opposite issues of the Essay of Locke — are types of the two antithetical modes of treating the eternal problem of the universe and our knowledge of it, that have appeared, in various phases, in all ages of philosophical activity. They are distin- guished by what is after all a difference of degree in the depth to which thinkers go in their interpretations ; this determined by the degree in which reason and will, the supernatural elements in man, along with reverential faith, are awakened in the interpreter. Is man justified in interpreting the universe spiritually at last, as well as sensually at first; or is a positive conception, under associations of mechanical causality, all that is l^itimate : and if this last, is even this, or indeed any, interpretation at all, philosophically competent? To describe the answers since given, in the Une of Berkeley, on the one hand, and in the line of Hume on the other, would be to present a history of modem religious and philosophical thought; and it might illustrate the sentiment of Bacon, ' that a little philosophy inclineth Man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion/
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AN ESSAY
CONCERNING
HUMANE UNDERSTANDING
IN FOUR BOOKS
[• WRITTEN BV
JOHN LOCKE, GENT.]
[* As thou knowest not what is the way of the Spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child : even so thou knowest not the works of God, who maketh all things. — Eccles. xi. 5.]
Quam bellum est velle confiteri potius nescire quod nescias, quam ista effutientem nauseare, atque ipsum sibi displicere. — Cic* de Natur, Deor. 1. i.
LONDON
Printed by Eliz. Holt, for Thomas Basset, at the George in Fleet
Street, near St. Dunstan's Church.
MDCXC
> Addod in second edition. * Added in foarth edition.
VOL.1.
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TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THOMAS, EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY,
BARON HSRBBST OP CARDIFF
IjORD ROSS, OF KBNDAL, PAR, PITZHXTOH, IIARUION, ST. QUINIIN, AND SHURLAND ;
I«ORD PRB6IDBNT OF HIS UAJBSTT*S U08T HONOVRABLB PRIVT COUNCIL ;
AND XX)RD LIBUTBNANT OF THB COUNIT OP WILTS, AND OF SOUTH WALES'.
My Lord, This Treatise, which is ^own up under your lordship's eye, and has ventured into the world by your order, does now, by a natural kind of right, come to your lordship for that protection which you several years since promised it*. It is not that I think any name, how great soever, set at the beginning of a book, will be able to cover the faults that are to be found in it Things in print must stand and fell by their own worth, or the reader's fancy. But there being nothing more to be desired for truth than a fair unprejudiced hearing, nobody is more likely to procure me that than your lordship, who are allowed to have got so intimate an acquaintance with her, in
' Thomas Herbert, eighth Earl of was president of the Royal Society in Pembroke (1656-1 733), the patron and 1690, when Locke*s Essay was dedi- friend of Locke, and also of Berkeley, cated to him * in token of kind ofiBces who, twenty years afterwards, dedi- done in evil times.* cated his Principles of Human Know- ' About 1676 Locke and Pembroke !edge to that ' ornament and support of (then Mr. Herbert) were intimate at learning.* In his day Pembroke filled Montpellier, Locke*s retreat for study high offices of state, the representative at that time, and where he completed of an iUustrious family, of whom Lord the first draft of the Essay. After- Herbert of Cherbury, the meta- wards till the end of his life, * Mr. physician, and his brother George Herbert ' and * Lord Pembroke ' often Herbert the poet, were members. He appear in Locke's letters.
B 2
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4 The Epistle Dedicatory.
her more retired recesses. Your lordship is knotm to have so far advanced your speculations in the most abstract and general know- ledge of things, beyond the ordinary reach or common methods, that your allowance and approbation of the design of this Treatise will at least preserve it from being condemned without reading, and will prevail to have those parts a little weighed, which might otherwise perhaps be thought to deserve no consideration, for being somewhat out of the common road. The imputation of Novelty is a terrible charge amongst those who judge of men's heads, as they do of their perukes, by the fashion, and can allow none to be right but the received doctrines. Truth scarce ever yet carried it by vote any- where at its first appearance : new opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common \ But truth, like gold, is not the less so for being newly brought out of the mine. It is trial and examination must give it price, and not any antique fashion ; and though it be not yet current by the public stamp, yet it may, for all that, be as old as nature, and is certainly not the less genuine. Your lordship can give great and convincing instances of this, whenever you please to oblige the public with some of those large and comprehensive dis- coveries you have made of truths hitherto unknown, unless to some few, from whom your lordship has been pleased not wholly to conceal them. This alone were a sufficient reason, were there no other, why I should dedicate this Essay to your lordship ; and its having some little correspondence with some parts of that nobler
^ Locke is conscious that he is way of certainty by means of ideas, making a new departure in the Essay, instead of the old way of certainty by Its novelty is here assumed, and was means of reason.' Lee, in AnH-ScepH- at once recognised by Molyneux and cism, complains that the Essay is < writ other enthusiastic readers when it ap- throughout in a kind of new language.' peared, though now less apparent. . Its The inductive, yet introspective psycho- own influence has since converted logy of Locke was also a * novelty,' much in its spirit and doctrine into in contrast both to the verbal reason- commonplace. Its novel assault on ings of the schools, and to the empirical innate ideas and a priori theorising materialism of Hobbes and Gassendi. was Locke's way of leading the great But the originality of the B^ay is modem revolt against blind authority mainly due to its being a genuine re- and empty verbalism. Stillingfleet velation of the powerful individuality charges him with inventing a 'new of its author.
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The Epistle Dedicatory. 5
and vast system of the sciences your lordship has made so new, exact, and instructive a draught of, I think it glory enough, if your lordship permit me to boast, that here and there I have fallen into some thoughts not wholly different from yours *. If your lord- ship think lit that, by your encouragement; this should appear in the world, I hope it may be a reason, some time or other, to lead your lordship further ; and you will allow me to say, that you here give the world an earnest of something that, if they can bear with this, will be truly worth their expectation. This, my lord, shows what a present I here make to your lordship ; just such as the poor man does to his rich and great neighbour, by whom the basket of flowers or fruit is not ill taken, though he has more plenty of his own growth, and in much greater perfection. Worthless things receive a value when they are made the offerings of respect, esteem, and gratitude : these you have given me so mighty and peculiar reasons to have, in the highest degree, for your lordship, that if they can add a price to what they go along with, proportionable to their own greatness, I can with confidence brag, I here make your lordship the richest present you ever received. This I am sure, I am under the greatest obligations to seek all occasions to acknow- ledge a long train of favours I have received from your lordship ; favours, though great and important in themselves, yet made much more so by the forwardness, concern, and kindness, and other obliging circumstances, that never failed to accompany them. To all this you are pleased to add that which gives yet more weight and relish to all the rest : you vouchsafe to continue me in some degrees of your esteem, and allow me a place in your good thoughts, I had almost said friendship. This, my lord, your words and actions so constantly show on all occasions, even to others when I am absent, that it is not vanity in me to mention what everybody knows : but it would be want of good manners not to acknowledge what so many are witnesses of, and every day tell me I am indebted to your lordship for. I wish they could as easily assist my gratitude, as
^ Allowance must be made for the customary exaggeration of dedications in Locke's time.
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they convince me of the great and growing engagements it has to
your lordship. This I am sure, I should vnite of the Understanding
without having any, if I were not extremely ^ sensible of them, and
did not lay hold on this opportunity to testify to the world how much
I am obliged to be, and how much I am,
My Lord,
Your Lordship's most humble and most obedient servant,
JOHN LOCKE. [•Dorset Court,
24th of May, 1689.]
' * Certainly/ in first edition.
' The place and date were added in the fourth edition. When Locke returned from Holland, in February 1689, after five years of exile there, he settled in apartments at Mrs. Smithsby's in Dorset Court, Channel Row, Westminster, which was his home till he removed to Oates in Essex in the spring of 1691. The Dedication is dated nearly a year be* fore the Eissay was published. Dorset Court lay between Channel (now Can-
non) Row and the Thames. Accord- ing to Strype, it was ' a handsome open place, containing but six houses, large and well built, fit for gentry to dwell in, of which those towards the Thames have gardens towards the water side very pleasant.' They were built on the site of Dorset House, a few years be- fore Locke came to live in one of them. Dorset Court was demolished towards the end of last century, and the place is now partly occupied by the building of the Civil Service Commission.
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THE
EPISTLE TO THE READERS
Reader, I HAVE put into thy hands what has been the diversion of some of my idle and heavy hours. If it has the good luck to prove so of any of thine, and thou hast but half so much pleasure in reading as I had in writing it, thou wilt as little think thy money, as I do my pains, ill bestowed. Mistake not this for a commendation of my work ; nor conclude, because I was pleased with the doing of it, that therefore I am fondly taken with it now it is done. He that hawks at larks and sparrows has no less sport, though a much less considerable quarry, than he that flies at nobler game : and he is little acquainted with the subject of this treatise — ^the UNDERSTANDING* — ^who does not know that, as it is the most elevated faculty of the soul, so it is employed with a gjreater and more constant delight than any of the other. Its searches after truth are a sort of hawking and hunting, wherein the very pursuit makes a great part of the pleasure '. Every step
^ Locke, in defending himself against * So Pascal in the Pnts^s—' Uous
his critics, refers to this 'Epistle, 'for an ne cherchons jamais les choses, mais
explanation of his design in the Essay, la recherche des choses.' The analogy
and of the circumstances which sug- of the chase is not original to Locke,
gested it. Philosophical finality is inconsistent
' The distinction between ' Under- with a human intelligence and finite
standing ' with its hypothetical judg- experience ; which presupposes an
ments, finite and relative, and 'Reason' endless assimilation and application of
with its immediate and absolute insight the infinite thought in which the intel-
of primary truth and ultimate ends, in ligibility of things consists— a progress
which intelligence culminates, was through continuous striving to evolve
foreign to Locke. He means by the reason that is latent in each of us
'Human Understanding* the intelli- in harmony with the Reason that is
gence of man in its various degrees of manifested in the universe of nature
development as related to its objects and spirit, immediate and remote.
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8 The Epistle to the Reader.
the mind takes in its progress towards Knowledge makes some discovery, which is not only new, but the best too, for the time at least ^
For the understanding, like the eye^ judging of objects only by its own sight, cannot but be pleased with what it discovers, having less regret for what has escaped it, because it is unknown. Thus he who has raised himself above the alms-basket, and, not content to live lazily on scraps of begged opinions, sets his own thoughts on work, to find and follow truth, will (whatever he lights on) not miss the hunter's satisfaction; every moment of his pursuit will reward his pains with some delight ; and he will have reason to think his time not ill spent, even when he cannot much boast of any great acquisition.
This, Reader, is the entertainment of those who let loose their own thoughts, and follow them in writing ; which thou oughtest not to envy them, since they afford thee an oppor- tunity of the like diversion, if thou wilt make use of thy own thoughts in reading. It is to them, if they are thy own, that I refer myself: but if they are taken upon trust from others, it is no great matter what they are ; they are not following truth, but some meaner consideration; and it is not worth while to be concerned what he says or thinks, who says or thinks only as he is directed by another ^ If thou judgest for thyself I know thou wilt judge candidly, and then I shall not be harmed or offended, whatever be thy censure. For though it be certain that there is nothing in this Treatise of the truth whereof I am not fully persuaded, yet I consider
* A recognition of the tentative and seeing and interpreting things for him- provisional character of man's inter- self, as they really are— unmodified by pretations of the universe, whether fancy, or sentiment, or authority, and philosophic or merely scientific ; each for getting others to see and interpret leading on to others, deeper and truer, them for themselves too. Cf. Bk. IV. in an endless evolution of thought. ch. xix. % i. Unlike Plato and Bacon,
* This analogy between the eye and Locke has little eye for the beautifiil ; the understanding is a favourite one he suspects imagination, and dreads with Locke. the errors to which abstract specula-
* Lockers dominant passion was for tion about reality is exposed.
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The Epistle to the Reader. 9
myself as liable to mistakes as I can think thee, and know that this book must stand or fall with thee, not by any opinion I have of it, but thy own. If thou findest little in it new or instructive to thee, thou art not to blame me for it It was not meant for those that had already mastered this subject, and made a thorough acquaintance with their own understandings ; but for my own information, and the satis- faction of a few friends, who acknowledged themselves not to have sufficiently considered it.
Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of this Essay ^ I should tell thee, that five or six friends meeting at my chamber^, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this^, found themselves quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that rose on every side. After we had awhile puzzled our- selves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course ; and that before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects^ our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with. This I proposed to the company, who all readily assented; and thereupon it was agreed that this should be our first inquiry. Some hasty and undigested thoughts, on a subject I had never before considered, which I set down against our next meeting, gave the first entrance
' Locke was always fond of re- 1718), son of SirT. Tyrrell of Shotover,
unions or clubs of this sort. We find near Oxford, and grandson of Abp.
him helping to form them at Oxford, Usher,alifelongfriendofLocke,became
in London, in Holland. This memor- known as the author of a * History of
able one belongs to the time when his England/and of works in political philo-
home was with Lord Ashley (Shaftes- sophy. He published an abridgement
buiy), in Exeter House in London. of Cumberland's Dt LegSbus NnUurtu.
The incident here recorded probably ' 'What objects' — i. e., in the
occurred in the winter of 1670-7 lywhen favourite phraseology of the Essay,
he was in his 39th year. what ideiis men are capable of having ;
* According to his friend James and what relations among their ideas
Tyrrell, who was at the * meeting/ the they are able to determine, either
' difficulties ' arose in discussing the with absolute certainty, or with more
* principles of morality and revealed or less probability. Not the 'vast ocean
religion.' This is recorded in a manu- of Being ' but the limited intellectual
script note in his copy of the jEsso^r now experience of man, is what Locke
in the British Museum. Tyrrell (1640- asked his friends to contemplate.
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lo The Epistle to the Reader.
into this Discourse ; which having been thus begun by chance, was continued by intreaty ; written by incoherent parcels ; and after long intervals of neglect, resumed again, as my humour or occasions permitted ^ ; and at last, in a retirement where an attendance on my health gave me leisure ^ it was brought into that order thou now seest it.
This discontinued way of writing may have occasioned, besides others, two contrary faults, viz., that too little and too much may be said in it. If thou findest anything wanting, I shall be glad that what I have written gives thee any desire that I should have gone further ^. If it seems too much to thee, thou must blame the subject ; for when I put pen to paper, I thought all I should have to say on this matter would have been contained in one sheet of paper ; but the further I went the larger prospect I had ; new discoveries led me still on, and so it grew insensibly to the bulk it now appears in. I will not deny, but possibly it might be reduced to a narrower compass than it is, and that some parts of it might be contracted, the way it has been writ in, by catches, and many long intervals of interruption, being apt to cause some repetitions. But to confess the truth, I am now too lazy, or too busy, to make it shorter *.
' This helps to explain verbal and that the history of philosophy since
other inconsistencies, repetitions, and the Essay appeared, may be said to be
defects of arrangement complained of a history of the criticism to which it
in the Essay. has given rise, and of the new points of
' In Holland, where Locke com- view to which it has thus conducted,
pleted the Essay, during bis retirement Plato and Plotinus, Spinoza and Hegel
there in 1683-89. Yet in June 1679, would be inaccessible to Locke, and yet
soon after he left Montpellier, he says he has unconsciously led into their
in a letter to Thojmard, ' I think too problems.
well of my book, which is completed y to * The 'prolixity 'of the £5sa>> and its
let it go out of my hands.' So he kept repetitions are obvious to the reader,
it, recast it, and corresponded about it In preparing the second edition he
with his friends, for ten other years. thus apologises to his Dublin friend
' Locke's hope has been fulfilled. Molyneux : < You will find, by my
The strong unspeculative common Epistle to the Reader, that I was not
sense, which was his congenial ele- insensible of the fault I committed by
ment, with the consequent inadequacy being too long upon some points ; and
and incoherence of his philosophical the repetitions that by my way of
outcome, has so stimulated thought, writing I had got into, I let it pass
through controversy and otherwise, with, but not without advice so to do.
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The Epistle to the Reader. 1 1
I am not ignorant how little I herein consult my own reputation, when I knowingly let it go with a fault, so apt to disgust the most judicious, who are always the nicest readers. But they who know sloth is apt to content itself with any excuse, will pardon me if mine has prevailed on me, where I think I have a very good one. I will not therefore allege in my defence, that the same notion, having different respects, may be convenient or necessary to prove or illustrate several parts of the same discourse, and that so it has happened in many parts of this : but waiving that, I shall frankly avow that I have sometimes dwelt long upon the same argument, and expressed it diff"erent ways, with a quite different design. I pretend not to publish this Essay for the information of men of large thoughts and quick apprehensions ; to such masters of knowledge I profess myself a scholar, and there- fore warn them beforehand not to expect anything here, but what, being spun out of my own coarse thoughts, is fitted to men of my own size, to whom, perhaps, it will not be unacceptable that I have taken some pains to make plain and familiar to their thoughts some truths which established prejudice, or the abstractedness of the ideas themselves, might render difficult. Some objects had need be turned on every side ; and when the notion is new, as I confess some of these are to me ; or out of the ordinary road, as I suspect they will appear to others, it is not one simple view of it that will
But now that my notions are got into tends to the illustration of the matter the world, and have in some measure in hand, as I am sure yours always bustled through the opposition and does. And after I received your letter difficulty they were like to meet with I communicated the contents thereof from the received opinion, and that to two very ingenious persons here, prepossession which might hinder and at the same time I sent them your them from being understood upon a book, desiring them to examine it short proposal ; I ask you whether it strictly, and to find out and note what- would not be better now to pare off, ever might be changed, added, or sub- in a second edition, a great part of that tracted. After a diligent perusal, which cannot but appear superfluous they agreed with me in the conclusion, to an intelligent and attentive reader.' that the work in all its parts was so (September ao, 169a.) ' I never wonderfully curiousand instructive that quarrelled with a book for being too they would not venture to alter anything prolix,' replied Molyneux, ' especially in it' (December aa, 169a.) And so where the prolixity is pleasant, and the 'repetitions'were left untouched.
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12 The Epistle to the Reader.
gain it admittance into every understanding, or fix it there with a clear and lasting impression. There are few, I believe, who have not observed in themselves or others, that what in one way of proposing was very obscure, another way of expressing it has made very clear and intelligible ; though afterwards the mind found little difference in the phrases, and wondered why one failed to be understood more than the other. But everything does not hit alike upon every man's imagination. We have our understandings no less different than our palates ; and he that thinks the same truth shall be equally relished by every one in the same dress, may as well hope to feast every one with the same sort of cookery: the meat may be the same, and the nourishment good, yet every one not be able to receive it with that seasoning ; and it must be dressed another way, if you will have it go down with some, even of strong constitutions. The truth is, those who advised me to publish it, advised me, for this reason, to publish it as it is : and since I have been brought to let it go abroad, I desire it should be understood by whoever gives himself the pains to read it. I have so little affection to be in print ^, that if I were not flattered this Essay might be of some use to others, as I think it has been to me, I should have confined it to the view of some friends, who gave the first occasion to it. My appearing therefore in print being on purpose to be as useful as I may, I think it necessary to make what I have to say as easy and intelligible to all sorts of readers as I can '. And I had much rather the speculative
* Locke did not appear as an author vacillation and want of precise conno-
till 1686, when he was 54, and then tation in the use of some of the most
only as an anonymous contributor to important words, have made the Essay
Le Clerc's Biblioiheque universelle, the puzzle of commentators and critics.
' The result has not been according The reader, labouring after the mean- to the intention. Locke's endeavour to ing, must not 'stick in the incidents,' accommodate his Essay to all sorts of as Locke complained to Collins that his readers has made it perhaps the critics often did, but must strive to most difficult of modern philosophical take a comprehensive view of the work classics to reduce to luminous and nn its main design, which he says ' lies consecutive thought The desire to in a little compass' {Letter, 21 March, avoid scholastic terms, combined with 1704).
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The Epistle to the Reader. 13
and quick-sighted should complain of my being in some parts tedious, than that any one, not accustomed to abstract speculations, or prepossessed with different notions, should mistake or not comprehend my meaning.
It will possibly be censured as a great piece of vanity or insolence in me, to pretend to instruct this our knowing age ; it amounting to little less, when I own, that I publish this Essay with hopes it may be useful to others. But, if it may be permitted to speak freely of those who with a feigned modesty condemn as useless what they themselves write, methinks it savours much more of vanity or insolence to publish a book for any other end ; and he fails very much of that respect he owes the public, who prints, and consequently expects men should read, that wherein he intends not they should meet with anything of use to themselves or others : and should nothing else be found allowable in this Treatise, yet my design will not cease to be so ; and the goodness of my intention ought to be some excuse for the worthlessness of my present. It is that chiefly which secures me from the fear of censure, which I expect not to escape more than better writers. Men's principles, notions, and relishes are so different, that it is hard to find a book which pleases or dis- pleases all men. I acknowledge the age we live in is not the least knowing, and therefore not the most easy to be satisfied. If I have not the good luck to please, yet nobody ought to be offended with me. I plainly tell all my readers, except half a dozen ^, this Treatise was not at first intended for them ; and therefore they need not be at the trouble to be of that number. But yet if any one thinks fit to be angry and rail at it, he may do it securely, for I shall find some better way of spending my time than in such kind of con- versation ^. I shall always have the satisfaction to have aimed sincerely at truth and usefulness, though in one of the meanest
* The * half dozen ' friends whose with Stillingfleet (1697-99) shows that ' difficulties * suggested the Essay. he had to modify this resolution.
* Locke's celebrated controversy
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14 The Epistle to the Reader.
ways. The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity : but every one must not hope to be a Boyle ^ or a Sydenham ^ ; and in an age that produces such masters as the great Huygenius® and the incomparable Mr. Newton*, with some others of that strain, it is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge*; — ^which certainly had been very much more advanced in the world, if the endeavours of ingenious and industrious men had not been much cumbered with the learned but frivolous use of uncouth, affected, or unintelligible terms, introduced into the sciences, and there made an art of, to that degree that Philosophy, which is nothing but the true knowledge of things®, was thought unfit or incapable to be brought into well-bred company and polite conversa- tion. Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science ; and hard and misapplied words, with little or no meaning, have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance, and hindrance of true knowledge. To break in upon the sanctuary of vanity and ignorance will be, I suppose, some service to human understanding ; though
^ Robert Boyle (1626-91), son of the Dutch mathematician and ph3^cist.
first Earl of Cork, founder of the * 'Sir Isaac' in 1705, — the year
' Boyle Lectures,' which were in- after Locke's death,
augurated by Dr. Samuel Clarke's ' The 'master-builders' whom he
Demonstration of the Being and Attri- names all worked by way of observa-
butes of God, Boyle was a friend of tion and generalisation of facts. Locke
Locke, who edited his History of the represents himself as ' an under
^tir, and added meteorological observa- labourer, clearing the ground' for
tions of his own. further advance in the interpretation
• Thomas Sydenham (1634-89), one of nature, by like methods,
of the greatest names in the history of • * Philosophy is nothing else but the
medicine, intimate with Locke and study of wisdom and truth.' (^Berkeley,
Boyle. Principles, Introd. Sect i.)
' Christian Huygens (1639-93), the
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The Epistle to the Reader. 15
so few are apt to think they deceive or are deceived in the use of words ; or that the language of the sect they are of has any faults in it which ought to be examined or corrected, that I hope I shall be pardoned if I have in the Third Book dwelt long on this subject, and endeavoured to make it so plain, that neither the inveterateness of the mischief, nor the prevalency of the fashion, shall be any excuse for those who will not take care about the meaning of their own words, and will not suffer the significancy of their expressions to be inquired into *.
I have been told that a short Epitome of this Treatise, which was printed in 1688*, was by some condemned without reading, because innate ideas were denied in it; they too hastily concluding, that if innate ideas were not supposed, there would be little left either of the notion or proof of spirits. If any one take the like offence at the entrance of this Treatise, I shall desire him to read it through ; and then I hope he will be convinced, that the taking away false founda- tions is not to the prejudice but advantage of truth, which is never injured or endangered so much as when mixed with, or built on, falsehood ^
* It is curious that vagueness and Communique par Monsieur Locke/ It
vacillation in the use of words should fills more than ninety pages of Le
be the chief defect of the Essay it- Clerc's celebrated journal, self, which so aptly illustrates what * The following paragraph in the
Sir James Mackintosh says of the first edition is omitted in the later
inadequacy of the words of ordinary ones that appeared in Locke's lifetime,
language for the delicate purposes of in which the summaries are printed in
philosophy. Cf. Berkeley on the the margin, at the suggestion of Moly-
abuse of words, Principles, Introd. neux: — ' One thing more I must adver-
Sect. 18-35. tise my reader of, and that is, that the
' This Epitome appeared in Le summary of each section is printed [in
Clerc*s French version. It was pub- the text] in italic characters ; whereby
lished in the Biblioiheqtu utUverselU the reader may find the contents
(Amsterdam, January, 1688^ more than almost as well as if it had been printed
two years before the Essay), with this in the margin by the side, if a little
heading — ' Extrait d*un livre Anglais, allowance be made for the grammatical
qui n'est pas encore public, intitule : construction, which in the text itself
Essai Philosophique concemant TEn- could not always be so ordered as to
tendement, oil Ton montre quelle est r^- make perfect propositions, which yet
tendue de nos connaissances certaines, by the words printed in italic may he
et la manidre dont nous y parvenons. easily guessed at.'
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1 6 The Epistle to the Reader.
In the Second Edition ^ I added as foUoweth : —
The bookseller will not forgive me if I say nothing of this New Edition, which he has promised, by the correctness of it, shall make amends for the many faults committed in the former^. He desires too, that it should be known that it has one whole new chapter concerning Identity ^^ and many ad- ditions and amendments in other places. These I must inform my reader are not all new matter, but most of them either further confirmation of what I had said, or explications, to prevent others being mistaken in the sense of what was formerly printed, and not any variation in me from it.
I must only except the alterations I have made in Book II. chap. xxi.
What I had there written concerning Liberty and the Will, I thought deserved as accurate a view as I am capable of; those subjects having in all ages exercised the learned part of the world with questions and difficulties, that have not a little perplexed morality and divinity, those parts of knowledge that men are most concerned to be clear in. Upon a closer inspection into the working of men's minds, and a stricter examination of those motives and views they are turned by, I have found reason somewhat to alter the thoughts I formerly had concerning that which gives the last determination to the Will in all voluntary actions. This I cannot forbear to acknowledge to the world with as much freedom and readiness as I at first published what then seemed to me to be right ; thinking myself more concerned to quit and renounce any opinion of my own, than oppose that of another, when truth appears against it. For it is truth alone I seek^ and that will always be welcome to me, when or from whencesoever it comes.
' Published * with large additions/ ' Locke regrets, in his correspond- in May 1694. The preparation of it ence with Molyneuz, the numerous occupied much of the two preceding trrata found in the first edition, years at Oates. See his correspond- ' Bk. II. ch. xzvii. ence during these years with Moly- * See Bk. I. ch. iii. % as ; Bk. IV. neux. ch. v; xix. | x.
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The Epistle to the Reader. 17
But what forwardness soever I have to resign any opinion I have, or to recede from an3^ing I have writ, upon the first evidence of any error in it ; yet this I must own, that I have not had the good luck to receive any light from those exceptions I have met with in print against any part of my book, nor have, from anything that has been urged against it, found reason to alter my sense in any of the points that have been questioned. Whether the subject I have in hand requires often more thought and attention than cursory readers, at least such as are prepossessed, are willing to allow; or whether any obscurity in my expressions casts a cloud over it, and these notions are made difficult to others' apprehen- sions in my way of treating them ; so it is, that my meaning, I find, is often mistaken, and I have not the good luck to be everywhere rightly understood ^.
[Of this the ingenious author * of the Discourse Concerning the Nature of Man has g^ven me a late instance, to mention no other. For the civility of his expressions, and the candour that belongs to his order, forbid me to think that he would have closed his Preface with an insinuation, as if in what I had said, Book II. ch. xxvii, concerning the third rule which men refer their actions to, I went about to make virtue vice and vice virtue, unless he had mistaken my meaning ; which he could not have done if he had g^ven himself the trouble to consider what the argument was I was then upon, and what was the chief design of that chapter, plainly enough set down in the fourth section and those following. For I was there not laying down moral rules, but showii^ the original and nature of moral ideas, and enumerating the rules men make use of in moral relations, whether these rules were true or false : and pursuant thereto I tell what is everywhere called virtue and vice ; which * alters not the nature of things,' though men generally do judge of
^ Locke's letters are full of com* ' Mr. Lowde. This and the four
plaints that his meaning in the Essay following bracketed paragraphs are is misapprehended by his critics. omitted in the posthumous editions.
VOL. I. C
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1 8 The Epistle to the Reader.
and denominate their actions according to the esteem and fashion of the place and sect they are of.
If he had been at the pains to reflect on what I had said, Bk. I. ch. ii. ^ sect. i8, and Bk. II. ch. xxviii.^ sect. 13, 14, 15 and 20, he would have known what I think of the eternal and unalterable nature of right and wrong, and what I call virtue and vice. And if he had observed that in the place he quotes I only report as a matter of fact what others call virtue and vice, he would not have found it liable to any great exception. For I think I am not much out in saying that one of the rules made use of in the world for a ground or measure of a moral relation is — that esteem and reputation which several sorts of actions find variously in the several societies of men, according to which they are there called virtues or vices. And whatever authority the learned Mr. Lowde places in his Old English Dictionary^ I daresay it nowhere tells him (if I should appeal to it) that the same action is not in credit, called and counted a virtue, in one place, which, being in disrepute, passes for and under the name of vice in another. The taking notice that men bestow the names of * virtue * and * vice ' according to this rule of Reputation is all I have done, or can be laid to my charge to have done, towards the making vice virtue or virtue vice. But the good man does well, and as becomes his calling, to be watchful in such points, and to take the alarm even at expressions, which, standing alone by them- selves, might sound ill and be suspected.
'Tis to this zeal, allowable in his function, that I forgive his citing as he does these words of mine (ch. xxviii. ^ sect 1 1) : * Even the exhortations of inspired teachers have not feared to appeal to common repute, Philip, iv. 8 ;' without taking notice of those immediately preceding, which introduce them, and run thus : * Whereby even in the corruption of manners, the true boundaries of the law of nature, which ought to be the rule of virtue and vice, were pretty well preserved. So that even the exhortations of inspired teachers,* &c. By which
^ The references are to the chapters as numbered in this edition.
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The Epistle to the Reader. 19
words, and the rest of that section, it is plain that I brought that passage of St Paul, not to prove that the general measure of what men called virtue and vice throughout the world was, the reputation and fashion of each particular society within itself; but to show that, though it were so, yet, for reasons I there give, men, in that way of denominating their actions, did not for the most part much stray from the Law of Nature ; which is that standing and unalterable rule by which they oi^ht to judge of the moral rectitude and gravity of their actions, and accordingly denominate them virtues or vices. Had Mr. Lowde considered this, he would have found it little to his purpose to have quoted this passage in a sense I used it not ; and would I imagine have spared the application he subjoins to it, as not very necessary. But I hope this Second Edition will grive him satisfaction on the point, and that this matter is now so expressed as to show him there was no cause for scruple.
Though I am forced to differ from him in these apprehen- sions he has expressed, in the latter end of his preface, con- cerning what I had said about virtue and vice, yet we are better agreed than he thinks in what he says in his third chapter (p. 78) concerning 'natural inscription and innate notions.' I shall not deny him the privil^e he claims (p. 52), to state the question as he pleases, especially when he states it so as to leave nothing in it contrary to what I have said. For, according to him, ' innate notions, being conditional things, depending upon the concurrence of several other circumstances in order to the soul's exerting them,' all that he says for * innate, imprinted, impressed notions' (for of innate ideas he says nothing at all), amounts at last only to this — that there are certain propositions which, though the soul from the b^inning, or when a man is born, does not know, yet * by assistance from the outward senses, and the help of some previous cultivation,' it may afterwards come certainly to know the truth of; which is no more than what I have affirmed in my First Book. For I suppose by the ' soul's exerting them,' he means its beginning
C %
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20 The Epistle to the Reader.
to know them ; or else the soul's ' exerting of notions ' will be to me a very unintelligible expression ; and I think at best is a very unfit one in this, it 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 before they are known, there is nothing of them in the mind but a capacity to know them, when the * concurrence of those circumstances,' which this ingenious author thinks necessary
* in order to the soul's exerting them,' brings them into our knowledge.
P. ^% I find him express it thus : * These natural notions are not so imprinted upon the soul as that they naturally and necessarily exert themselves (even in children and idiots) with- out any assistance from the outward senses, or without the help of some previous cultivation.' Here, he says, they * exert themselves,* as p. 78, that the *soul exerts them.' When he has explained to himself or others what he means by * the soul's exerting innate notions,' or their * exerting themselves ;' and what that 'previous cultivation and circumstances' in order to their being exerted are — he will I suppose find there is so little of controversy between him and me on the point, bating that he calls that ' exerting of notions ' which I in a more vulgar style call * knowing,' that I have reason to think he brought in my name oo. this occasion only out of the pleasure he has to speak civilly of me ; which I must grate- fully acknowledge he has done everywhere he mentions me, not without conferring on me, as some others have done, a title I have no right to.]
^ There are so many instances of this 2, that I think it justice to my reader and myself to conclude, that either my book is plainly enough written to be rightly understood by those who peruse it with that attention and indifferency ^, which every one who will give himself the pains to read ought to employ in reading ; or else that I have written mine so obscurely that
^ This paragraph first appears in the ' * this,' i. e. misapprehension,
posthumous editions. ' ' indifierency' i.e. freedom from bias.
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The Epistle to the Reader. 2i
it is in vain to go about to mend it. Whichever of these be the truth, it is myself only am affected thereby ; and therefore I shall be far from troubling my reader with what I think might be said in answer to those several objections I have met with, to passages here and there of my book ; since I persuade myself 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.]
If any other authors, careful that none of their good thoughts should be lost, have published their censures of my Essay ^ with this honour done to it, that they will not suffer it to be an essay, I leave it to the public to value the obligation they have to their critical pens, and shall not waste my reader's time in so idle or ill-natured an employment of mine, as to lessen the satisfaction any one has in himself, or gives to others, in so hasty a confutation of what I have written ^.
The booksellers preparing for the Fourth Edition * of my Essay^ gave me notice of it, that I might, if I had leisure, make any additions or alterations I should think fit. Where- upon I thought it convenient to advertise the reader, that besides several corrections I had made here and there, there
^ The following paragraph, which selves, so that the former Edition may
appeared in the Second Edition, is not be wholly lost to those who have
omitted in the Fourth : — it, but by the inserting in their proper
' Besides what is already mentioned, places the passages that will be re-
this Second Edition has the summaries printed alone, to that purpose, the
of the several sections not only printed former book may be made as little
as before in a table by themselves, but defective as is possible/ in the margin too. And at the end ' The lastwhich appeared in Locke's
there is now an Index added. These lifetime. In it this and the five follow-
two, with a great number of short ing paragraphs were added to the
additions, amendments and alterations, < Epistle.' It was published in the end
are advantages of this Edition which of 1699, dated 1700, *• with large
the bookseller hopes will make it selL additions.* The third edition, which
As to the laiiger additions and altera- was only a reprint of the second, ap-
tions, I have obliged him, and he has peared in 1695. promised me to print them by them-
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22 The Epistle to the Reader.
was one alteration which it was necessary to mention, because it ran through the whole book, and is of consequence to be rightly understood. What I thereupon said was this :^-
Ckar and distinct ideas are terms which, though familiar and frequent in men's mouths, I have reason to think every one who uses does not perfectly understand. And possibly 'tis but here and there one who gives himself the trouble to consider them so far as to know what he himself or others precisely mean by them. I have therefore in most places chose to put determinate or determined^ instead of clear and distinct^ as more likely to direct men's thoughts to my meaning in this matter. By those denominations, I mean some object in the mind, and consequently determined, i. e. such as it is there seen and perceived to be. This, I think, may fitly be called a determinate or determined idea, when such as it is at any time objectively in the mind, and so determined there, it is annexed, and without variation deter- mined, to a name or articulate sound, which is to be steadily the sign ox' that very same object of the mind, or determinate idea ^.
To explain this a little more particularly. By determinate^ when applied to a simple idea, I mean that simple appearance which the mind has in its view, or perceives in itself, when that idea is said to be in it : by determined^ when applied to a complex idea, I mean such an one as consists of a deter- minate number of certain simple or less complex ideas, joined in such a proportion and situation as the mind has before its view, and sees in itself, when that idea is present in it, or should be present in it, when a man gives a name to it. I say sltould be, because it is not every one, nor perhaps any one, who is so careful of his language as to use no word till
^ That Locke made certainty in all This Locke emphatically disavows, and
cases depend upon the possession of maintains that in some instances we
clear and distinct, or determinate,* have determined ideas of rdations
ideas, about that of which we are among ideas that otherwise are obscure
certain, was a proposition which Stil* and mysterious, lingfleet charged him with maintaining.
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The Epistle to the Reader. 23
he views in his mind the precise determined idea which he resolves to make it the sign of. The want of this is the cause of no small obscurity and confusion in men's thoughts and discourses.
I know there are not words enough in any language to answer all the variety of ideas that enter into men's dis- courses and reasonings. But this hinders not but that when any one uses any term, he may have in his mind a deter- mined idea, which he makes it the sign of, and to which he should keep it steadily annexed during that present discourse. Where he does not, or cannot do this, he in vain pretends to clear or distinct ideas : ' it is plain his are not so ; and therefore there can be expected nothing but obscurity and confusion, where such terms are made use of which have not such a precise determination.
Upon this ground I have thought determined ideas a way of speaking less liable to mistakes, than clear and distinct ^ : and where men have got such determined ideas of all that they reason, inquire, or argue about, they will find a great part of their doubts and disputes at an end ; the greatest part of the questions and controversies that perplex mankind depending on the doubtful and uncertain use of words, or (which is the same) indetermined ideas, which they are made to stand for. I have made choice of these terms to signify, (i) Some immediate object of the mind, which it perceives and has before it, distinct from the sound it uses as a sign of it. (2) That this idea, thus determined, i. e. which the mind has in itself, and knows, and sees there, be determined with- out any change to that name, and that name determined to that precise idea. If men had such determined ideas in their inquiries and discourses, they would both discern how
^ Locke has not been generally fol* obscure, distinct and confused. 'Deter- lowed in this ' alteration.' He seems mination ' is commonly applied by not to have known the Dt Cogmtkme^ logicians to the process by which the &e., of Leibniz, inserted in the Acta content or comprehension of a notion of Leipsic in 1684, in which ideas are is increased — ^by which it is con- carefully distinguished, as dear and creted.
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24
The Epistle to the Reader.
far their own inquiries and discourses went, and avoid the greatest part of the disputes and wranglings they have with others \
Besides this, the bookseller will think it necessary I should advertise the reader that there is an addition of two chapters wholly new ; the one of the Association of Ideas^ the other of Enthusiasm. These, with some other larger additions never before printed, he has engaged to print by themselves, after the same manner, and for the same purpose, as was done when this Essay had the second impression.
In the Sixth Edition there is very little added or altered. The greatest part of what is new is contained in the twenty- first chapter of the second book, which any one, if he thinks it worth while, may, with a very little labour, transcribe into the margin of the former edition*.
* So in Berkeley's Pn>ia>/«s, Introd.
' The Sixth Edition, issued in 1706, two years after Locke's death, with these two sentences appended to the 'Epistle/ contains a few slight ad- ditions and alterations. Most of them had appeared in Coste's French Ver-
sion of the Essqyf — prepared at Oates under Locke's eye. * The author being present,' says Le Clerc, ' he corrected . several places in the original, that he might make them more plain.' Coste was Locke's amanuensis, and lived with him at Oates for some years till his death.
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ESSAY
CONCERNING
HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.
INTRODUCTION \
I. Since it is the understanding^ that sets man above the Introd. rest of sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and — »*— dominion which he has over them ^ ; it is certainly a subject, iJitJ^he'*^ even for its nobleness, worth our labour to inquire into. The Under- understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and per- pi^sanf ceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires *°^ useful. art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own object *. But whatever be the difficulties that lie in the way of this inquiry ; whatever it be that keeps us so much in the dark to ourselves ; sure I am that all the light we can let in upon our minds, all the acquaintance we can make with our
' I follow Costers French Version in separating the ' Introduction ' from the First Book, an arrangement more expressive of its relation to the Essay than that adopted in the other editions.
' < The understanding ' with Locke is that in man which enables him to have ideas; and to form intuitive, demonstrable, and probable proposi- tions about what exists. It represents man in his ultimate relations to truth and error. Cf. note on p. 7.
' 'Scientia et potentia humana in idem coincidunt' — as Bacon puts it, Nov. Org, i. aph. 3.
* Locke assumes that * human under- standing ' can be investigated as one among the other ' objects * which pre- sent themselves in the universe; but with this signal peculiarity, that it is itself the factor of knowledge; and also an object that is apprehended, not by any of the five senses, but intro- spectively, and therefore with dif- ficulty, because all men are in early life accustomed to confine their atten- tion to external objects, so that in introspection or reflection they have to resist habit.
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26 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Introd. own understandings, will not only be very pleasant, but bring — ►^ us great advantage, in directing our thoughts in the search of other things ^.
Design. 2. This, therefore, being my purpose — to inquire into the
original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge \ together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent^ ; — I shall not at present meddle with the physical considera- tion ^ of the mind ; or trouble myself to examine wherein its essence * consists ; or by what motions of our spirits * dr alterations of our bodies we come to have any sensation • by our organs, or any ideas ® in our understandings ; and whether those ideas ® do in their formation, any or all of them, depend on matter or not^. These are speculations which, however
^ * All the sciences/ says Hume, ' have a relation to human nature, and are in some measure dependent on the science of Man; since they ail lie un- der the cognizance ('* understanding ") of men, and are judged by their powers and faculties' {Trtatise of Human Na- ture, Introduction). Human under- standing, in short, is the common element in all the sciences.
' In Locke's use of words, knowledge usually means what is absolutely cer- tain; judgnuni, belief opimon, and assent, on the contrary, refer to the sphere of probability, including all degrees from moral certainty down to the faintest likelihood. By the ambiguous term 'original' of know- ledge he means the time and circum- stances in which men begin to be per- cipient, and the sources from which a human understanding gradually derives its knowledge of facts. 3 « * Physical consideration,' i. e. study of the understanding as expressed in terms of the physical organism, instead of by introspective consciousness of its actual operations.
* Its * essence,' i e. whether the real essence of mind in man is material or spiritual—whether God has endowed the human ox^ganism with self-con*
sdousness, or has given to each man a spiritual substance.
* * Spirits' — the animal spirits which some ancient philosophers, and Des Cartes among the modems, adduced in explanation of external perception, memory, and sensuous imagination.
* He connects ' sensations ' with the organism, which must be observed by the senses ; * ideas ' with the un* derstanding, which must be studied through self-consciousness. Cf. Bk. II. ch. L § as, on sensation, and Introd. I 8, on idea.
^ He thus declines both, not only ontology, butalso physiological psycho- logy, of which Hobbes had given an example, and thus isolates the 'human understanding' from its organic rela- tions, treating it as non-natural, at the point of view of phjrsiological materialists. It were to be wished, Stewart remarks, that Locke had ad- hered more to this resolution. If he had done so, he would have been less disposed to seek the explanation of experience in organic functions, which themselves need to be explained, than in the ultimate constitution of reason^- in the supernatural in man and in the universe.
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Introduction. 27
curious and entertaining, I shall decline, as lying out of my Introd. way in the design I am now upon. It shall suffice to my "**"' present purpose, to consider the discerning faculties of a man, as they are employed about the objects ^ which they have to do with. And I shall imagine I have not wholly misemployed myself in the thoughts I shall have on this occasion, if, in this historical, plain method ^, I can give any account of the ways whereby our understandings come to attain those notions of things we have * ; and can set down any measures of the certainty of our knowledge*; or the grounds of those per- suasions^ which are to be found amongst men, so various, different, and wholly contradictory; and yet asserted some- where or other with such assurance and confidence, that he that shall take a view of the opinions of mankind, observe their opposition, and at the same time consider the fondness and devotion wherewith they are embraced, the resolution and eagerness wherewith they are maintained, may perhaps have reason to suspect, that either there is no such thing as truth at all, or that mankind hath no sufficient means to attain a certain knowledge of it \
3. It is therefore worth while to search out the bounds Method, between opinion and knowledge; and examine by what measures, in things whereof we have no certain knowledge, we ought to regulate our assent and moderate our persuasion ''. In order whereunto I shall pursue this following method : —
1 < Objects/ i. e. ideaSf in Locke's Ian- the method of observing what happens
guage. It is not a critical analjrsis of in time, in contrast to logical analysis of
the ultimate constitution of knowledge what is abstracted from time and place,
abstract epistemology — ^that he ' See Bk. II.
has in view, any more than it is an in* * See Bk. IV. ch. i-ziii.
terpretation of human understanding in * See Bk. IV. ch. xiv-zx.
terms of its organism. It begins with * Yet the motive spirit of the Essay
an inquiry into the ideas or pheno- is to disinteg^te prejudices, not re-
mena which provide material for the action against scepticism — to encourage
human understanding. free thought rather than constructive
' This assumes that human under* philosophy and conservation of belief,
standing in its ultimate relations to If Hume had preceded instead of fol-
its objects can be dealt with adequately lowing Locke, the latter might have
when it is examined as an aggregate looked at his subject more from the
of phenomena, a succession of invisible conservative point of view of Reid.
events, to which the ' historical plain ' This is the special 'subject of the
method ' b applicable. < Hiatorical,''-^ Fourth Book.
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28 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
iNTROD. First, I shall inquire into the original of those ideas^ notions,
— **— or whatever else you please to call them, which a man observes,
and is conscious to himself he has in his mind ; and the ways
whereby the understanding comes to be furnished with them ^
Secondly, I shall endeavour to show what knowledge the understanding hath by those ideas ; and the certainty, evidence, and extent of it *.
Thirdly, I shall make some inquiry into the nature and grounds of faith or opinion : whereby I mean that assent which we give to any proposition as true, of whose truth yet we have no certain knowledge. And here we shall have occa- sion to examine the reasons and degrees ot assent^
Useful to know the Extent of our Com- prehen- sion.
4. If by this inquiry into the nature of the understanding, I can discover the powers thereof; how far they reach ; to what things they are in any degree proportionate* ; and where they fail us, I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to bo more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension ; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether ; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities. We should not then perhaps be so forward, out of an affectation of an universal knowledge, to raise questions, and perplex ourselves and others with disputes
* The subject of the Second Book, and negatively of the First.
' The basis and boundary of human ' knowledge/ or absolute certainty, is examined in the first thirteen chapters ofthe Fourth Book.
' 'Assent/ in its degrees of proba- bility, from moral certainty down to the faintest presumption, is considered in the fourteenth and following chap* ters of the Fourth Book. This Book is thus the culmination of the whole inquiry; yet it has been left in the background by most critics of the£!ssay, who, with Cousin, assume that for Locke the study of the * understanding ' is the study of man's 'ideas,' or Idea- logy ; instead of a study of man's 'in- tellectual 'perceptions' and probable
' presumptions,* concerning the relations of his ideas, — in which perceptions and presumptions alone, according to Locke, knowledge and probability con- sist. His design, thus announced, is so far analogous to Kant's, although it is a history of the presented data, not a critical analysis of the rational con- stitution, of human understanding. Whether the work designed and exe- cuted by Locke should be called ' Logic/ or ' Metaphysics,' b a question, touched by Locke himself, in his correspond- ence with Molyneux.
* That human knowledge is neither Omniscience nor Nescience, but must, in all instances of it, be somewhere intermediate between the two, is the central lesson of the Essay,
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Introduction. 2 9
about things to which our understandings are not suited ; and Introd. of which we cannot frame in our minds any clear or distinct """**" perceptions, or whereof (as it has perhaps too often happened) we have not any notions at all. If we can find out how far the understanding can extend its view; how far it has faculties to attain certainty ; and in what cases it can only judge and guess, we may learn to content ourselves with what is attain- able by us in this state.
5. For though the comprehension of our understandii^s Our comes exceeding short of the vast extent of things, yet we suUed^io shall have cause enough to magnify the bountiful Author of o"*; State our bemg, for that proportion and degree of knowledge he has cems. bestowed on us, so far above all the rest of the inhabitants of this our mansion^. Men have reason to be well satisfied with what God hath thought fit for them, since he hath given them (as St. Peter says) Travra itpbs Mv tat ivacfittavj whatso- ever is necessary for the conveniences of life and information of virtue ; and has put within the reach of their discovery, the comfortable provision for this life, and the way that leads to a better. How short soever their knowledge may come of an universal or perfect comprehension of whatsoever is, it yet secures their great concernments, that they have light enough to lead them to the knowledge of their Maker, and the sight of their own duties. Men may find matter sufficient to busy their heads, and employ their hands with variety, delight, and satisfaction, if they will not boldly quarrel with their own constitution, and throw away the blessings their hands are filled with, because they are not big enough to grasp everything. We shall not have much reason to complain of the narrowness of our minds, if we will but employ them about what may be of use to us ; for of that they are very capable. And it will be an unpardonable, as well as childish peevishness, if we undervalue the advantages of our
^ Locke always takes for granted tunities of experience ; while in all it that an understanding of what exists is an incomplete understanding, be- ts m some degree possible for man, cause dependent upon incomplete, varying in each individual according to though it may be progressive, expe- his intellectual development and oppor- rience.
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30 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Introd. knowledge, and n^lect to improve it to the ends for which it â– "**~ was given us, because there are some things that are set out of the reach of it. It will be no excuse to an idle and un- toward servant, who would not attend his business by candle light, to plead that he had not broad sunshine. The Candle that is set up in us ^ shines bright enough for all our purposes. The discoveries we can make with this ought to satisfy us; and we shall then use our understandings right, when we entertain all objects in that way and proportion * that they are suited to our faculties, and upon those grounds they are capable of being proposed to us ; and not peremptorily or intemperately require demonstration, and demand certainty, where probability only is to be had, and which is sufficient to govern all our concernments. If we will disbelieve every- thing, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do muchwhat as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly \
Know. 6. When we know our own strength, we shall the better
o^u/capa- know what to undertake with hopes of success ; and when
of^Sce^"'^*^ ^^ have well surveyed the powers of our own minds, and
ticiam and made some estimate what we may expect from them, we shall
Idleness. ^^^ ^^ inclined either to sit still, and not set our thoughts
on work at all, in despair of knowing anything ; nor on the
other side, question everything, and disclaim all knowledge,
because some things are not to be understood ^ It is of
grreat use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though
^ ' The Spirit of man is the candle of the Lord' (Prov. xx. 87). This metaphor of the * candle/ for the light of intuitive reason, is familiar to Whichcote, Locke's favourite preacher ; also to Culverwell, who says that * God hath breathed into all the sons of men reasonable souls, which may senre as so many candles to enlighten and direct them * {Light of Nature, p. 29), thus making the expression equivalent to the light of reason in human ex- perience. It suggests the share of divine or universal reason, that is
latent in man — as distinguished from the Supreme Reason, immanent to the universe — resplendent in what is self- evident, and in what is demonstrable ; glimmering through the transitory phe- nomena of sense in what is probable, where we have to grope our way,
* Here 'proportion' implies that man is not, and cannot become, omniscient, although each man may be progres- sively conquering the real for himself.
' Cf ConduaofUtuUrstandmg, § 39, on 'those who despond at the first difficulty.'
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Introduction. 3 r I
he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean. It is Introd.
well he knows that it is long enough to reach the bottom, at •""**"
such places as are necessary to direct his voyage, and caution j
him against running upon shoals that may ruin him. Our
business here is not to know all things, but those which >
concern our conduct^. If we can find out those measures,
whereby a rational creature, put in that state in which man
is in this world, may and ought to govern hia opinions, and
actions depending thereon, we need not to be troubled that
some other things escape our knowledge.
7. This was that which gave the first rise to this Essay Occasion concerning the understanding. For I thought that the first Essay. step towards satisfying several inquiries the mind of man was very apt to run into, was, to take a survey of our own under- standii^s, examine our own powers, and see to what things they were adapted. Till that was done I suspected we began at the wrong end, and 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 j
Being; as if all that boundless extent were the natural and undoubted possession of our understandings, wherein there was nothing exempt from its decisions, or that escaped its comprehension. Thus men, extending their inquiries beyond their capacities, and letting their thoughts wander into those depths where they can find no sure footii^, it is no wonder that they raise questions and multiply disputes, which, never coming to any clear resolution, are proper only to con- tinue and increase their doubts, and to confirm them at last in perfect scepticism*. Whereas, were the capacities of our understandings well considered, the extent of our knowledge once discovered, and the horizon found which sets the bounds
^ This might be the motto of the It is in reaction against irrationally
Essay, and the watchword of English imposed authority, empty verbalism,
philosophy, which characteristically and neglect to educate and exercise
seeks to keep in direct relation to life individual judgment, and is meant to
and conduct encourage by doubt the disintegration
' We must remember that Locke's of traditional systems. That Locke
study of the constitution and reality of lived before Hume, while Reid and
human knowledge, and of probability, Kant lived after him, is important to
18 not in reaction against scepticism, the interpreter of Locke.
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32 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
^' ^ \
Introd. between the enlightened and dark parts of things; betwieen
"**~ what is and what is not comprehensible by us, mjpn would
perhaps with less scruple acquiesce in the avowed ignorance of
the one, and employ their thoughts and discourse with more
advantage and satisfaction in the other ^.
What Idea stands for.
8. Thus much I thought necessary to say concerning the occasion of this Inquiry into human Understanding. But, before I proceed on to what I have thought on this sub- ject, I must here in the entrance b^ pardon of my reader for the frequent use of the word idea^ which he will find in the following treatise. It being that term which, I think, serves best to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks, I have used it to express whatever is meant by phantasm^ notion^ species^ or whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking ; and I could not avoid frequently using it *.
^ It has been well said, that this passage expresses the inmost thought of Locke, and that * in it may be found the key to his thoughts on aU subjects.' Without being omniscient, man may be able to discover that he cannot know the universe fully — that his science, de- pendent on a limited experience, must always fall short of the intellectual ideal.
' Idea is thus, with Locke, a term of most comprehensive generality, em- bracing all that is in any way immedi- ately apprehensible by the mind of man, — whether as a datum of external or internal sense, a sensuous im- age, or an individualized product of generalizing thought. It is difficult jto find an adequate synonym, but perhaps phmtmunon would be the nearest. Locke's first task is to ana- lyse the complex ideas, or aggre- gated phenomena, which occupy the mind, into their simple or irreducible elements, showing how they arise in consciousness, and what modifications they undei^. Perceptions in sense,
imaginations or phantasms, and abstract conceptions or notions, are all species of the Lockian idea ; which must not be confounded with the supersensible archetypes called ideas by Plato, with Kant's transcendent ideas of Reason, or with the absolute idea of Hegel. Locke's idia^ moreover, instead ofbeing synonymous with kutowUdge^ is con- trasted with it, though among others, Mr. J. S. Mill confounds them (Logic, Bk. I, ch. vi. § 3). Ideas or phenomena are an indispensable element in know* ledge : knowledge itself is the intuition or perception of their relations. With- out this intuition or perception ideas are blind ; although by abstraction they may be considered apart from their ' relations in knowledge, in the way Locke considers them in the second books of the Essay ; or ordinary logic, in distinguishing concepts or terms from judgments or propositions. Locke explains and defends what he intends by this watchword of the Essay, in his controversy with Stillingfleet, by whom he was blamed for introducing a
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Introduction.
33
I presume it will be easily granted me, that there are such Introd ideas in men's minds: every one is conscious of them in "â– '^*~ himself; and men's words and actions will satisfy him that they are in others.
Our first inquiry then shall be, — how they come into the mind ^.
' new way of ideas.' ' Having thoughts and having ideas,' he says, ' with me mean the same thing; and as every one who uses words inteliigibfy is conscious of having ideas, the existence of ideas in the mind may reasonably be taken for granted.' In reply to Stillingfleet's taunt about reaching certainties and probabilities 'by ideas ' being ' a new way of not doing so,' he says, that to have ideas only im- plies that we must have some meaning in any proposition which we enter- tain, whether the proposition be true or false. * The new way of ideas* he says, ' and the old way of speaking in- idiigibly was always, and will ever be, the same.' The objection to 'ideas' he takes to be a dispute about words ; bat if any should prefer to say that notions — rather than ideas — are presupposed in all certainties and pro* babilities, he says that his only ob- jection to this would be, that < notion ' is commonly used in a narrower application than the all-comprehen- sive meaning which he wants to express — ^^ notion' being commonly confined to that class of ideas which he calls 'mixed modes.' ' I think it i¥iU not sound altogether so well to say, the notion of red, or the notion of a horse, as the idea of red or the idea of horse; but if any one thinks it will, I contend not ; I have no fond- ness for, nor antipathy to, any parti- cular articulate sounds' {Reply , p. 69). To have an idea of anything b to
perceive, or to imagine, to conceive it; to have no idea of it is, not to perceive, imagine, or conceive it at all. Locke speaks of ideas not only as ' ob- jects ' but as ' perceptions,' implying that in all cases an idea or phenomenon is, as suchf dependent on a person being conscious of it. Whatever the mind is conscious of is an idea. Either its intrin- sic reality, or its correspondence with objective reality, introduces consider- ations foreign to ideas considered in themselves, which is the point of view in the Second Book. Locke's ideas, moreover, whether simple or aggre- gated, are 'truly every one of them particular existences ; universality being but accidental to them, and con- sisting only on this, that the particular ideas about which it is are such as more than one particular thing csui be represented by * (Bk. IV, ch. xvii. § 8). — Phantasm, notion, species are, with Locke, not co-extensive with, but subordinate to idea, — Cf. Descartes in his use of the term ' idea ' ; also Berkeley's distinction between ideaj which he confines to sensuous pre- sentation or representation, and no* turn, or meaning which cannot be sensuously represented ; and Hume's distinction of impression, or what is presented in sense, and ielea, or what is represented in imagination.
* ' How they come into the mind,' i.e. under what conditions, and when, a human mind becomes conscious^ or ' thinks,' ofat^hing.
VOL. I.
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BOOK I
NEITHER PRINCIPLES NOR IDEAS ARE INNATE
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SYNOPSIS OF THE FIRST BOOK.
The First Book of the Essay is meant to open the way to Locke's account of the origin and history of human ideas, and the certain knowledge and prob- able presumptions to which they give rise, — by showing that men are bom ignorant of everjrthing. This is argued for on the grounds, (i) that there are no propositions, either speculative or practical, which are consciously received as true by every human being at birth ; nor (a) even by all in whom reason is developed ; (3) that to suppose aught to be innate in the mind, of which that mind is unconscious, involves a contradiction ; (4) that although knowledge, when formed, is found to involve self-evident principles, their self-evidence does not prove (rather disproves) their innateness ; and (5) that the hypothesis of their innateness is unnecessary, as the actual steps to knowledge and assent can be proved not to depend on our being bom with a consciousness of the meaning and truth of any alleged innate principles. Moreover there could be no innate principles without innate ideas ; but our ideas of identity, quantity, substance, and (above all) God, which (if any) must be innate, are plainly dependent on experience. The supposition of innate principles, thus at variance with facts and superfluous, has come into vogue because it * eases the lazy from the pains of search,' and stops inquiry concerning all that is thus accepted, so that it becomes ' the principle of principles, that innate principles must not be questioned.'
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CHAPTER I.
NO INNATE SPECULATIVE PRINCIPLES.
I. It IS an established opinion amongst some men^, that Chap. i. there are in the understanding certain innate principles ; some -'^*— primary notions, icoii^at Iwoiai, characters, as it were stamped shljw^"^ upon the mind of man; which the soul receives, in its very how we first being, and brings into the world with it *. It would be any *^ ^
* Locke does not name the 'men* of * innate principles ' whose ' opinion ' he proceeds to criticise ; nor does he quote their words in evidence of what thty intended by the opinion. He says (ch. ii. § 15) that after he had argued out objections to the 'established opinion/ his attention was directed to the arguments in its defence in the Dg VeriiaU of Lord Herbert, which there- upon he proceeds to controvert From the first, Descartes, with whose writ- ings he was early familiar, was prob- ably in his view. According to Descartes there are three sources of ideas : * Entre ces id^es, les unes sentblent itre nees avec ntoi; les autres €tre ^trangferes et venir de dehors; et les autres etre faites et invent^es par moi-mSme.* (Med, iii. 7.) But even the 'id^es n^es avec moi ' of Descartes were not regarded by him as in con- sciousness until ^ 'experience' had evoked them from latency — a position which Locke*s argiunent always &ils to reach. Though Locke nowhere names More, Hale, or Cudworth, he might have found expressions of theirs which, on a superficial view, appear to countenance the sort of innateness which he attributes to the 'established opinion.' See Hume's /»- quiry concerning Human Understand-
ing, in Note A, on ' innate ideas,' and Locke's * loose sense of the word idea. ' • The impossibility of resolving the intellectual necessities, which govern and constitute knowledge and exist- ence, into transitory data of sense ; or of explaining, by means of nature and its evolutions, the spiritual elements in human experience, which connect man with the supernatural, the infinite, the divine—has suggested that those elements, presupposed by experience, must have been innate, or bom with the mind; thus potentially belonging to it, antecedently to all acquired knowledge. This hypothesis has found expression in many forms ; and it has waxed or waned, as the spiritual or the sensuous was most developed in the consciousness of the phOosopher or of the age. Locke assails it in its crudest form, in which it is counten- anced by no eminent advocate; ac- cording to which the ideas and prin- ciples which ultimately constitute knowledge are supposed to beheld con- scioMsfyf from birth, or even before it, in every human mind, being thus 'stamped' on us from the beginning, and * brought into the world ' with us. It is easy to refute this ; for it can be shown that there are no principles of which all men are aware as soon
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38 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. I. sufficient to convincc unprejudiced readers of the falseness of
â– â– **~ this supposition, if I should only show (as I hope I shall in
ledgel^" th® following parts of this Discourse) how men, barely by the
sufficient use of their natural faculties \ may attain to all the knowledge
to prove it^ ., .tir- . . .
not innate, they have, Without the help of any innate impressions ; and may arrive at certainty, without any such original notions or principles. For I imagine any one will easily grant that it would be impertinent to suppose the ideas of colours innate in a creature to whom God hath given sight, and a power to receive them by the eyes from external objects: and no less unreasonable would it be to attribute several truths to the impressions of nature, and innate characters, when we may observe in ourselves faculties fit to attain as easy and certain knowledge of them as if they were originally imprinted on the mind.
But because a man is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road ^, I shall set down the reasons that made me doubt of the truth of that opinion, as an excuse for my mistake, if I be in one ; which I leave to be considered by those who, with me, dispose them- selves to embrace truth wherever they find it.
General 5t. There IS nothing more commonly^ taken for granted
A^nt the ^^,j ^j^^^^ there are certain principles^ both speculative and
Argument, practical^ (for they speak of both), universally agreed upon
by all mankind : which therefore, they argue, must needs be
as they are born, or even in which are (consciously or unconsciously)
all mankind are agreed when they presupposed in a rational exercise of
are adult That data of experience the innate faculties,
are needed, to awaken what must ' ' Originally imprinted,* and which
otherwise be the slumbering poten- therefore, he concludes, must have
tialities of man*s spiritual being; and been present consciously from the
that human knowledge is the issue of first, before our faculties were exer-
sense when sense is combined with cised in experience,
latent intellect, is an interpretation of * This dogma of the conscious in-
the ' established opinion,' which Locke nateness of certain principles, or
does not fairly contemplate. ' maxims,' is represented as the
^ Locke recognises the innaUmss of * common road'; departure from which
< faculties ' in calling them < natural ' ; seems to Locke to give his Essay that
but without examining whether any, air of * novelty ' to which he so often
and if so what, ideas and judgments refers.
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No Innate Speculative Principles.
39
the constant impressions ^ which the souls of men receive in their first beings, and which they bring into the world with them, as necessarily and really as they do any of their inherent faculties.
3. This argument, drawn from universal consent, has this misfortune in it, that if it were true in matter of fact, that there were certain truths wherein all mankind agreed, it would not prove them innate, if there can be any other way shown how men may come to that universal agreement, in the things they do consent in, which I presume may be done^
4. But, which is worse, this argument of universal consent, which is made use of to prove innate principles, seems to me a demonstration that there are none such : because there are none to which all mankind give an universal assent. I shall begin with the speculative, and instance in those magnified principles of demonstration, * Whatsoever is, is/ and *It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be ' ; which, of all others, I think have the most allowed title to innate ^
Chap. I.
Universal
Consent
proves
nothing
innate.
'What is. is,' and *It is impos- sible for the same Thing to be and not to be»' not univer- sally as- sented to.
^ ' Constant impressions/ i. e. of which there is a conscious impression in all human beings from birth, and about which all, even infants and idiots, are agreed.
' Conscious consent on the part of every human being cannot be alleged on behalf of any abstract principle, as Locke is easfly able to show. There is no proposition which some one has not been found to deny. A better criterion of the supernatural or divine, in man and in the universe, than this of 'universal consent/ which Locke makes so much of, is found, when it is shown, — ^that the full and adequate exercise of our faculties in experience necessarily presupposes principles of which the mass of mankind may be only dimly conscious, or wholly unconscious. Locke ignores the main issue; and when he explains his meaning is found nearer than he supposes to those who hold the innateness of reason in experience.
He acknowledges innateness of faculty. Also that knowledge involves and is based upon what is self-evident is a prominent lesson of the Fourth Book. 'That there can be any knowledge without self-evident pro- positions,* he assures Stillingfleet that he is so &r from denying, ' that I am accused by your lordship for requir- ing more such in demonstration than you think necessary' {Third LeUtr, p. 964). ' I contend for the usefulness and necessity of self-evident proposi- tions in all certainty, whether of intuition or demonstration ' (p. a86). < I make self-evident propositions ne- cessary to certainty, and found all knowledge or certainty in them' (p. 340).
' These two, called by logicians the principles of uUnitfy and of contradic' turn, are again treated of in Bk. IV* ch. vii, where his distinction between coMsdousHiss of them ai hirth, which he denies, and the graduai diseovny
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40 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. I. These have so settled a reputation of maxims universally
'"^^^ received, that it will no doubt be thought strange if any one
should seem to question it. But yet I take liberty to say,
that these propositions are so far from having an universal
assent, that there are a great part of mankind to whom they
are not so much as known.
Not on 5. For, first, it is evident, that all children and idiots
naturaUy ^^«^ve not the least apprehension or thought of them. And
imprinted, the Want of that is enough to destroy that universal
because i t . 1 « 1 1 . ^
not known assent^ which must needs be the necessary concomitant of ren^ Wiots ^" innate truths : it seeming to me near a contradiction to &c' 'say, that there are truths imprinted on the soul, which it perceives or understands not : imprinting, if it signify any- thing, being nothing else but the making certain truths to be perceived. For to imprint anything on the mind without the mind's perceiving it, seems to me hardly intelligible. If therefore children and idiots have souls, have minds, with those impressions upon them, they must unavoidably perceive them, and necessarily know and assent to these truths ; which since they do not, it is evident that there are no such impres- sions. For if they are not notions naturally imprinted, how can they be innate ? and if they are notions imprinted, how can they be unknown ? To say a notion is imprinted on the mind, and yet at the same time to say, that the mind is ignorant of it, and never yet took notice of it, is to make this impression nothing. No proposition can be said to be in the mind which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of^. For if any one may, then, by the same
of their self-evidenctt which he re- tally in a latent or unconscious state,
cognises, is illustrated. The second that there cannot be impressions made
of the two is the axiom of axioms with on the mind without accompanying
Aristotle, itself indemonstrable be- consciousness of them, a mental im-
cause presupposed in all proof. pression and a consciousness of it
^ < Assent,' i. e. actual or conscious, being regarded as identical That
not potential or unconscious, although there may be condiHoHSy implied in
the whole question turns upon the the constitution of reason, to which
latter. In Bk. lY. he confines * assent ' our ideas, when they do emeiige in
to judgments of probability exclusively, consciousness, must conform, by neces-
thus contrasting it with < knowledge * sity of reason, is a conception foreign
or absolute certainty. to his view. Locke argues that no
' The argument in this section as- idea can be said to be ' in the mind ' of
sumes that ideas cannot be held men- which that mind is not either actually
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No Innate Speculative Principles. 41
reason, all propositions that are true, and the mind is capable Chap. i. ever of assenting to, may be said to be in the mind, and to be — •^— imprinted : since, if any one can be said to be in the mind, which it never yet knew, it must be only because it is capable of knowing it ; and so the mind is of all truths it ever shall know. Nay, thus truths may be imprinted on the mind which it never did, nor ever shall know ; for a man may live long, and die at last in ignorance of many truths which his mind was capable of knowing ^ and that with certainty. So that if the capacity of knowing be the natural impression contended for, all the truths a man ever comes to know will, by this account, be every one of them innate ; and this great point will amount to no more, but only to a very improper way of speaking; which, whilst it pretends to assert the contrary, says nothing different from those who deny innate principles. For nobody, I think, ever denied that the mind was capable of knowing several truths. The capacity, they say, is innate ; the knowledge acquired. But then to what end such contest for certain innate maxims ? If truths can be imprinted on the understanding without being perceived, I can see no difference there can be between any truths the mind is capable of knowing in respect of their original : they must all be innate or all adventitious : in vain shall a man go about to distinguish them^. He therefore that talks of innate notions in the understanding, cannot (if he intend thereby any distinct sort of truths) mean such truths to be in the understanding as it never perceived, and is yet wholly ignorant of. For if these words * to be in the understanding ' have any propriety, they signify to be understood. So that to be in the understanding, and not to be understood ; to be in the mind and never to be perceived, is all one as to say
percipient, or through memory capable tions of sense, and from generalised
of becoming percipient. sense data. Not so ; if there are ideas
* Locke never asks, as Kant after- (concepts^ which, by an intellectual wards did, what this ' capacity,' which necessity, on certain occasions in ex- he allows to be latent or innate, ne- perience, form themselves in us, with- cessarily implies. out our forming them by tentative
^ Not so; ifthe primitive necessities generalisation. The question still re-
which constitute reason in us and in mains — ^What does a capability of
the universe can be distinguished by having experience imply t marks from the empirical generalisa-
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42 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. I. anything is and is not in the mind or understanding. If -**- therefore these two propositions, * Whatsoever is, is/ and * It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be/ are by- nature imprinted, children cannot be ignorant of them : infants, and all that have souls, must necessarily have them in their understandings, know the truth of them, and assent to it ^ That men 6. To avoid this, it is usually answered, that all men know Uiem^ ^^^ assent to them, when they come to the use of reckon ^ ; and when they this is enough to prove them innate. I answer : th^Use of 7- Doubtful expressions, that have scarce any signification, Reason go for clear reasons to those who^ being prepossessed, take ' not the pains to examine even what they themselves say. For, to apply this answer with any tolerable sense to our present purpose, it must signify one of these two things : either that as soon as men come to the use of reason these supposed native inscriptions come to be known and observed by them ; or else, that the use and exercise of men's reason, assists them in the discovery of these principles, and certainly makes them known to them. If Reason 8. If they mean, that by the use of reason men may thwn^that ^^^^ver these principles, and that this is sufficient to prove would not them innate ; their way of arguing will stand thus, viz. that fhenTin- whatever truths reason can certainly discover to us, and make nate. us firmly assent to, those are all naturally imprinted on the mind ; since that universal assent, which is made the mark of them, amounts to no more but this, — that by the use of reason we are capable to come to a certain knowledge' of and assent to them ; and, by this means, there will be no
^ Universal consent may mean that ' Locke often uses ' reason ' for any who do think such propositions reasoning ; so here he means, when intelligentiy must think them in one they come to the conscious use of the and the same way; not that every deductive faculty, which elicits pre- human being does in fact think them viously unknown propositions from with conscious intelligence. In any those already known, other meaning universal consent could ' ' Knowledge ' and ' assent/ here be no criterion of reason being innate used convertibly, are in Bk. IV dis- or latent in us, and in the imiverse ; for tinguished emphatically— self-evidence there are no propositions to which all and demonstrable evidence consti- human beings, including infants, give tuting knowledge, while assent is conscious consent determined by weighing probabilities.
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Nd Innate Speculative Principles. 43
difference between the maxims of the mathematicians, and Chap. i. theorems they deduce from them : all must be equally allowed ""^^^ innate ^ ; they being all discoveries made by the use of reason, and truths that a rational creature may certainly come to know, if he apply his thoughts rightly that way.
9. But how can these men think the use of reason necessary it is
to discover principles that are supposed innate, when reason Re^on" (if we may believe them) is nothing else but the faculty of^^^^^o^®" deducing unknown truths from principles or propositions that are already known? That certainly can never be thought innate which we have need of reason to discover ; unless, as I have said, we will have all the certain truths that reason ever teaches us, to be innate *. We may as well think the use of reason necessary to make our eyes discover visible objects, as that there should be need of reason, or the exercise thereof, to make the understanding see what is originally engraven on it, and cannot be in the understanding before it be per- ceived by it. So that to make reason discover those truths thus imprinted, is to say, that the use of reason discovers to a man what he knew before : and if men have those innate impressed truths originally, and before the use of reason, and yet are always ignorant of them till they come to the use of reason, it is in effect to say, that men know and know them not at the same time \
10. It will here perhaps be said that mathematical demon- No use strations, and other truths that are not innate, are not assented ^^soziing to as soon as proposed, wherein they are distinguished from "* *^« <J>s- these maxims and other innate truths. I shall have occasion these two
maxims.
^ As Leibniz held, who argued that exercise of intuitive and discursive
all arithmetic and all geometry are reason.
virtually innate, and may (with effort) ' Not so ; if Uie criterion of innate-
be found in the mind ; as Plato showed ness is sought, not in the process, but
when he made Socrates oblige a child in the intellectual characteristics of the
to admit abstract truths without telling product.
him anjrthing. The innate knowledge ' The unconscious presence of prin-
of Plato and Leibniz is characterised, ciples which can be proved (by philo-
not by its independence of, and priority sophical analysis) to be virtually
to, mental development in the indi- presupposed in our certainties, and
vidual, but by its intuited necessity even in our assent to probability, i$
and universality after it has been here overlooked, awakened into consciousness, in the
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44 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. I. to speak of assent upon the first proposing, more particu- — ►♦- larly by and by. I shall here only, and that very readily, allow, that these maxims and mathematical demonstrations are in this different : that the one have need of reason, using of proofs, to make them out and to gain our assent ; but the other, as soon as understood, are, without any the least reason- ing, embraced and assented to ^. But I withal beg leave to observe, that it lays open the weakness of this subterfuge, which requires the use of reason * for the discovery of these general truths : since it must be confessed that in their dis- covery there is no use made of reasoning at all. And I think those who give this answer will not be forward to affirm that the knowledge of this maxim, * That it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be,' is a deduction of our reason. For this would be to destroy that bounty of nature they seem so fond of, whilst they make the knowledge of those principles to depend on the labour of our thoughts. For all reasoning ^ is search, and casting about, and requires pains and application. And how can it with any tolerable sense be supposed, that what was imprinted by nature, as the foundation and guide of our reason, should need the use of reason to discover it ? And if II. Those who will take the pains to reflect with a little
thSwouW attention on the operations of the understanding, will find prove that this ready assent of the mind to* some truths, depends
them not . , .... - r i .
innate. not, either on native inscnption, or the use of reason, but on a faculty of the mind quite distinct from both of them, as we shall see hereafter *. Reason, therefore, having nothing to do
* That is, they are self-evidently ence. This must in the nature of the true, but not what Locke means by case be posterior, not anterior, to the innate ; for he here argues that self- exercise of intellect in experience, evidence in a principle is no proof of * Rather inieiieciual necessity to per^ its innateness. awe, of which only the developed in-
• * Reason,* i. e. reasoning, which is telligence becomes conscious. 'Assent' not needed for discovering the truth here again used for rational perception, of self-evident mathematical axioms. instead of the presumed probability to
■On the contrary, philosophical which the term is confined in Bk. IV. reasoning and analysis are needed for ^ €£ Bk. I V. ch. ii § i ; ch. vii. § 19 ;
quickening into distinct consciousness, ch. xvii. §§ 14, 17, in which the truths
in their abstract form, those conscious referred to are shown to be ' perceived
principles of reason which are logically at first ^ight , by bare intuition, * as soon
presupposed in all reasoning and infer- as the mind, sufficiently educated to per-
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No Innate Speculative Prinaples. 45
in procuring our assent to these maxims, if by saying, that Chap. i. ' men know and assent to them, when they come to the use — *^ of reason/ be meant, that the use of reason assists us in the knowledge of these maxims, it is utterly false ; and were it true, would prove them not to be innate.
I a. If by knowing and assenting to them *when we come The to the use of reason,' be meant, that this is the time when ^"ufe*of they come to be taken notice of by the mind ^ ; and that as Reason soon as children come to the use of reason, they come also to x^m^^e know and assent to these maxims ; this also is false and come to frivolous. First, it is false ; because it is evident these th^^ maxims are not in the mind so early as the use of reason ; Maxims. and therefore the coming to the use of reason is falsely assigned as the time of their discovery. How many instances of the use of reason may we observe in children, a long time before they have any knowledge of this maxim, * That it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be ? ' And a great part of illiterate people and savages pass many years, even of their rational age, without ever thinking on this and the like general propositions. I grant, men come not to the knowledge of these general and more abstract truths, which are thought innate, till they come to the use of reason ; and I add, nor then neither. Which is so, because, till after they come to the use of reason, those general abstract ideas are not framed in the mind, about which those general maxims are, which are mistaken for innate principles, but are indeed discoveries made and verities introduced and brought into the mind by the same way, and discovered by the same steps, as several other propositions, which nobody was ever so extravagant as to suppose innate^. This I hope to make
ceive them, 'turns itsidew^at way/ * That is, if their being * innate'
Truths thus inhtUed (not inferred) are means, as with Locke it does, that we
there presented by Locke as the founda- were all bom with a conscious know-
tion of < an the certainty and evidence ledge of them, and in their abstract
of all our knowledge '—as ' known by expression too ; his own fundamental
a superior and higher evidence than principle being, that we are bom
reasoning,' and generalisation by cal« destitute of all knowledge and belief,
ciliated experiments. They are at so that his task is, to show how we
first apprehended as embodied in gradually acquire more or less of both,
concrete instances, and then in their ' Though it is only gradually, and
abstract expression. by dint of abstract thinking, that the
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46 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. I.
By this they are not dis- tinguished from other knowable Truths.
If coming to the Use of Reason
plain in the sequel of this Discourse. I allow therefore, a necessity that men should come to the use of reason before they get the knowledge of those general truths ; but deny that men's coming to the use of reason is the time of their discovery.
13. In the mean time it is observable, that this saying, that men know and assent to these maxims * when they come to the use of reason,' amounts in reality of fact to no more but this, — that they are never known nor taken notice of before the use of reason, but may possibly be assented to some time after, during a man's life ; but when is uncertain. And so may all other knowable truths, as well as these ; which therefore have no advantage nor distinction from others by this note of being known when we come to the use of reason ^ ; nor are thereby proved to be innate, but quite the contrary.
14. But, secondly, were it true that the precise time of their be»^*f known and assented to ^ were, when men come to
conscious apprehension of those ab- stract axioms of identity and contra- diction is reached, in the individual mind, — yet when one does realise them, it is with a sense of their absolute intellectual necessity, which is want- ing in the case of tentative inductions from experience. And this it is that makes them be regarded as somehow innate in the reason that is also innate in things, thus making real inference, deductive and inductive, possible.
■Their *note' is not properly al- leged to consist in their becoming known as soon as one comes to the use of reason; for they are to be tested by the fact that, as soon as there is consciousness of them, there is an involved perception of their absoiuU necessity, — in contrast to the amdUkmal ^ necessity ' of generalisations which depend merely upon the custom of experience.
' Throughout this whole argument it is forgotten that in this matter the question of interest in philosophy is
not one of Hme at all, — not of when individuals become aware of what, if apprehended, is seen to be self- evidently true. The philosophical question about innateness, as Shaftes- bury well puts it, really is — 'whether the constitution of man be such that, being adult and grown up* certain ideas do not ' infallibly and necessarily spring up in consciousness.* And Locke grants this ;When he replies, — that ' there are certain propositions which, though the soul from the beginning, when a man is bom, does not [consciously] know, yet, by assistance from the out- ward senses, and the help of some previous cultivation, it may afterwards come sd/-evidentfy, or with " " -non- strable necessity, to know the truth of, is no more than what I have affirmed in my First Book.' Innateness, as argued by Locke, means original conscious possession of such truths, without the laborious intellectual effort that must be put forth before they are recog- nised in their philosophical abstraction.
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No Innate Speculative Principles. 47
the use of reason ; neither would that prove them innate. Chap. i. This way of arguing is as frivolous as the supposition itself is •"**" false. For, by what kind of logic will it appear that any^^g^f^ notion is originally by nature imprinted in the mind in its ti^eir Dis- first constitution, because it comes first to be observed and would not assented to when a faculty of the mind, which has quite aP"^^^^^®™ distinct province, begins to exert itself? And therefore the coming to the use of speech, if it were supposed the time that these maxims are first assented to, (which it may be with as much truth as the time when men come to the use of reason,) would be as good a proof that they were innate, as to say they are innate because men assent to them when they come to the use of reason. I agree then with these men of innate principles, that there is no knowledge of these general and self-evident maxims ^ in the mind, till it comes to the exercise of reason : but I deny that the coming to the use of reason is the precise time when they are first taken notice of; and if that were the precise time, I deny that it would prove them innate. All that can with any truth be meani jy this proposition, that men ' assent to them when they come to the use of reason,' is no more but this, — ^that the making of general abstract ideas, and the understanding of general names, being a concomitant of the rational faculty, and grow- ing up with it, children commonly get not those general ideas, nor learn the names that stand for them, till, having ^or a good while exercised their reason about familiar and more particular ideas, they are, by their ordinary discourse and actions with others, acknowledged to be capable of rational conversation '. If assenting to these maxims, when
It is the need for this effort that he ^ He still refeis indefinitely to wants to show. He is really arguing^ ' these men of innate principles.' throughout the First Book, for the Here, too, the veiy maxims that are exer*' ^^^of individual judgment, and denied to be ' innate' are expressly against blind submission to dogmas, called ' self-evident' Hume hardly sees this when he pro- ' The axioms of identic and con- nounces the discussion 'frivolous, if tradiction, which Locke takes as his by innate Locke meant contemporsiy examples of speculative principles al- to our birth ; nor is it worth while to leged to be consciously innate, are of inquire at whai imu ikinkmg Ugmsy all others the most abstract, and there- whether before, at, or after our birth.' fore among the latest, to be recognised (Jnqtwy, Note A.) by the mind, which must nevertheless
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48 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. I. men come to the use of reason, can be true in any other
"*^ sense, I desire it may be shown ; or at least, how in this, or
any other sense, it proves them innate.
The Steps 1 5. The senses at first let in particular ideas, and furnish
fhe^nd ^^ ^^^ empty cabinet ^, and the mind by degrees growing
have always virtually assumed their truth. It is this unconscious assump- tion that his opponents offer, as evi- dence of the principles named being * universally ' assented to, — in a poten- tial or implied assent.
^ In this and the two following sentences Locke anticipates his own account, in the Second Book, of the origin and elaboration of ideciSy which *are all at first particular/ their generalisations being moreover only ^ accidental.* The ' empty cabinet ' represents the mind before its latent faculties have been quickened into exercise in experience. The 'sheet of blank paper ' and the 'waxed tablet ' are misleading metaphors, which, after Aristotle and others, he elsewhere em- ploys. In his endeavour to emphasise the difference between the continuous effort involved in the formation of human knowledge, and the perfect knowledge eternally present in the Supremt Mind, — thus enforcing his favourite lesson of an active private judgment in man, — he fails to see that to attribute to human knowledge innate elements, and also data of experi- ence, is not contradictory, since all knowledge may involve both elements. But Locke might have unconsciously in view whathisfavourite Hooker thus ex- presses : — ' In the matter of knowledge there is between the angeb of God and the children of men this differ^ ence :— angeb already have full and complete knowledge in the highest degree that can be imparted to them ; men, if we view them in their spring, are at first without understanding or knowledge at aU. Nevertheless, from this utter vacui^, tk$y grow by thgnes^ till they come at length to be even as
the angels themselves are. That which agreeth to the one now, the other shall attain unto in the end; they are not so far disjoined and severed but that they come at length to meet. The soul of man being therefore at the first as a book wherein nothing is, and yet all things may be imprinted, we are to search by what steps and degrees it riseth into perfection of knowledge' {Ecdes, Polit. Bk. I. $ 6). Leibniz takes the analogy of the marble to illustrate the latent presence in expe- rience of ideas and principles which are influential without being recog- nised : — * Je me suis servi aussi de la comparaison d'une pierre de marbre qui a des veines plutdt que d*une pierre de marbre tout unie ou de tablettes vides, c*est-k-dire de ce qui s'appelle tabula rasa chez les philosophes. Car si TAme ressemblait k ces tablettes vides, les v^rit^s seraient en nous comme la figure d*Hercule est dans un marbre quand le marbre est tout a faii indifferent a recevoir ou cette figure ou quelque autre. Mais s*il y avait des veines dans la pierre qui marquassent la figure d^Hercule priferabUment a d^autres figures, cette pierre y serait plus d^termin^e, et HercuU y serait comme inne en quelque fitfon, quoiqu'il falhitdu travail pour decouvrircts veines, et pour Us neltoyer par la poUssure, en retranchant ce qui les etnpSche de paraitre, C'est ainsi que les id^es et les vdrit^s nous sont inn^es, comme des inclinations, des dispositions, des habitudes, ou des virtualit^ na« turelles, et non pas comme des actions ; quoique ces virtualitds soient toujours accompagn^es de quelques actions, souvent insensibles, qui y ripondent.' (NouveoHx Essais, Avant Propos.)
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No Innate Speculative Principles. 49
familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, Chap. I. and names got to them. Afterwards, the mind proceeding 7**^ further, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of several general names ^. In this manner the mind comes to be Truths, furnished with ideas and langus^e, the materials about which to exercise its discursive faculty. And the use of reason be- comes daily more visible, as these materials that give it employment increase*. But though the having of general ideas and the use of general words and reason usually grow tc^ether, yet I see not how this any way proves them innate. The knowledge of some truths, I confess, is very early in the mind ; but in a way that shows them not to be Innate. For, if we will observe, we shall find it still to be about ideas, not innate, but acquired ; it being about those first which are imprinted by external things, with which infants have earliest to do, which make the most frequent impressions on their senses ^ In ideas thus got, the mind discovers that some agree and others differ, probably as soon as it has any use of memory ; as soon as it is able to retain and perceive distinct ideas. But whether it be then or no, this is certain, it does so long before it has the use of words ; or comes to that which we commonly call ' the use of reason.' For a child knows as certainly before it can speak the difference between the ideas of sweet and bitter (i.e. that sweet is not bitter), as it knows afterwards (when it comes to speak) that wormwood and sugarplums are not the same thing ^.
' The process of hunuui ezperiepce au moins Qn partie ; au lieu que les
is here described as presenting three id^es intellectuelles, et les v^rit^ qui
stages->perception or acquisition, re- en dependent sont distinctes, et ni le^
tention, and eiaboFBtion of its material. unes ni les autres n'ont point leur
' But the intellectual authority of origine des sens ; quoiqu'il soit vrai
a principle when evolved does not que nous n'y penserions jamais sans
depend upon its natural genesis or les sens.' (iVoMv. Ess, I. i.)
evolution. That a judgment should ^ That 'sweet is not bitter' i^volve^
arise in one's consciousness undgr recognition, in data of sense, of the
naturcd law does not disprove its in- abstract principle, that it is impossible
trinsic necessity and ujuversality, which for the same thing to be and not to be
reflective analysis may detect after it * at the same time.' I( is true that
has thus arisen. this concrete embodiment of it in a
* * Les id^es qui viennent des sens,' particular example is more evident to
says Leibniz, 'sont confuses, et les an uneducated mind than the highly
v^rit^ qui en dependent le sont aussi, abstract m#xi]9i or axiom which
VOL. L fi
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50 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. I. 1 6. A child knows not that three and four are equal to "â– **" seven, till he comes to be able to count seven, and has got the su^pposed name and idea of equality; and then, upon explaining those innate words, he presently assents to, or rather perceives the truth depends on of that proposition. But neither does he then readily assent cleaur'and ^^^"^ ^^ *^ ^" innate truth, nor was his assent wanting till distinct then because he wanted the use of reason ; but the truth of it what Uieir appears to him as soon as he has settled in his mind the clear terms and distinct ideas that these names stand for. And then he notion knows the truth of that proposition upon the same grounds their ^nd by the same means, that he knew before that a rod and
mnateness.
a cherry are not the same thing ; and upon the same groimds also that he may come to know afterwards ' That it is im- possible for the same thing to be and not to be,' as shall be more fully shown hereafter^. So that the later it is before any one comes to have those general ideas about which those maxims are; or to know the signification of those general terms that stand for them ; or jto put tc^ether in his mind the ideas they stand for ; the later also will it be before he comes to assent to those maxims ; — whose terms, with the ideas they stand for, being no more innate than those of a cat or a weasel, be must stay till time and observation have acquainted him with them ; and then he will be in a capacity to know the truth of these maxims, upon the first occasion that shall make him put together those ideas in his mind^, and observe whether they agree or disagree, according as is expressed in those pro- positions. And therefore it is that a man knows that eighteen and nineteen are equal to thirty-seven, by the same self- evidence that he knows one and two to be equal to three : yet a child knows this not so soon as the other ; not for want of the use of reason, but because the ideas the words eighteen,
the embodiment logically presupposes, ditions indispensable to a conscious
when its principle remains unexpressed intuition of the self-evidence of these
in words or in consciousness, like and other truths, are insisted on. an unexpressed premiss in ordinary ' TThey are thus distinguished from
reasoning. inductive generalisations, which pre-
^ In Bk. IV. ch. ii, $ I, and ch. vii. suppose calculated observations, and
( 9, as well as in other places, the after all are only probabilities that
need of time, and the active continu- may be modified by unexpected con.
ous exercise of our faculties, as con- ditions.
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No Innate Speculative Principles. 51
nineteen, and thirty-seven stand for, are not so soon got, as Chap. I. those which are signified by one, two, and three ^, "■♦♦^
17. This evasion therefore of general assent when men come Assenting to the use of reason, failing as it does, and leaving no difference - ^^oged^ between those supposed innate and other truths that are after- and under- wards acquired and learnt, men have endeavoured to secure an proves universal assent to those they call maxims ^, by saying, they ***^â„¢ "^* are generally assented to as soon as proposed, and the terms
they are proposed in understood : seeing all men, even children, as soon as they hear and understand the terms, assent to these propositions, they think it is sufficient to prove them innate. For, since men never fail after they have once understood the words, to acknowledge them for undoubted truths, they would infer, that certainly these propositions were first lodged in the understanding, which, without any teaching, the mind, at the very first proposal, immediately closes with and assents to, and after that never doubts again.
18. In answer to this, I demand whether ready assent given If such an to a proposition, upon first hearing and understanding the ^ ^^^ JJ terms, be a certain mark of an innate principle * ? If it be not, innate, such a general assent is in vain urged as a proof of them : if < that one it be said that it is a mark of innate, they must then allow all *"^ *^°,
are equal
such propositions to be innate which are generally assented to three, to as soon as heard, whereby they will find themselves plenti- ^^^j^noV fully stored with innate principles. For upon the same ground, Bitter-
* And until the * ideas ' are got, the • Cf. Bk. IV. ch. vii.
judgments into which they enter can- * In what follows there is still failure
not be formed ; while, on the other to distinguish between the later philo-
hand, fner$ idea (as the term is under- sophical analysis, in which the mind
stood by Locke) cannot be regarded consciously discerns, as necessarily
as knowledge, as long as it is viewed true, abstract principles which are
in abstraction from judgment^ which logically presupposed in knowledge
is the unit of knowledge and belie£ and assent, and the earlier un-
â– No 'difference' in the time at conscious proceeding upon those which the individual consciously re- principles. Also we must distinguish cognises and accepts them. But this between the innumerable concrete ex- is quite consistent with difference in the amples in which self-evident truths intellectual character of the acceptance, are embodied, and the abstract philo- in each case when it does take place, sophical expression of the same as Locke allows in the next sentence. truths.
E %
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52 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. I. viz. of assent at first hearing and understanding the terms,
"^ that men would have those maxims pass for innate, they must
a thousand ^^^^ admit Several propositions about numbers to be innate ;
the like, a^d ^^^3, that one and two are equal to three, that two and
must be ,
innate. two are equal to four, and a multitude of other the like pro- positions in numbers, that everybody assents to at first hear- ing and understanding the terms, must have a place amongst these innate axioms. Nor is this the prerogative of numbers alone, and propositions made about several of them ; but even natural philosophy, and all the other sciences, afford pro- positions which are sure to meet with assent as soon as they are understood. That 'two bodies cannot be in the same place ' is a truth that nobody any more sticks at than at these maxims, that ' it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be,' that ' white is not black,' that ^ a square is not a circle,' that * bitterness is not sweetness ^.' These and a million of such other propositions, as many at least as we have distinct ideas of, every man in his wits, at first hearing, and knowing what the names stand for, must necessarily assent to^. If these men will be true to their own rule, and have assent at first hearing and understanding the terms to be a mark of innate, they must allow not only as many innate propositions as men have distinct ideas, but as many as men can make propositions wherein different ideas are denied one of another. Since every proposition wherein one different idea is denied of another, will as certainly find assent at first hearing and understanding the terms as this general one, ' It is impossible
^ The proposition, th$ swed ia not and, on the other hand, incapable of
iht hitter^ is not innate, says Leibniz, being latent, inasmuch as for the mind
according to the proper meaning of the to possess an idea or a principle (^which
term innate truth. 'Car les senti- it is unconscious is assumed to be a con-
ments de doux et de Vatner viennent tradiction in terms. Here Leibniz asks,
des sens extemee. Ainsi c'est un con- why, since acquired knowledge may,
elusion mdee (J%yhrida candusid), ou as Locke acknowledges, be latent in
Taziome est appliqu^ k une v^t6 numoty, — ^why may not nature have
sensible ' (Nouv, Ess,), in like manner included in the primary
* Again, he contrasts self-evident constitution of the mind ideas on which
maxims with empirical generalisations, the constitution of knowledge neces-
while denying that the former are sarily depends? For a reference to
* innate,' because, on the one hand, memoiy c£ ch. iii. § aa not patent in the consciousness of all.
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No Innate Speculative Principles. 53
for the same thing to be and not to be/ or that which is the Chap. i. foundation of it, and is the easier understood of the two, "^^
* The same is not different' ; by which account they will have legions of innate propositions of this one sort, without men- tioning any other ^ But, since no proposition can be innate unless the idects about which it is be innate, this will be to suppose all our ideas of colours, sounds, tastes, figure, &c., innate, than which there cannot be anything more opposite to reason and experience 2. Universal and ready assent upon hearing and understanding the terms is, I grant, a mark of self-evidence ; but self-evidence, depending not on innate impressions, but on something else, (as we shall show here- after ^) belongs to several propositions which nobody was yet so extravagant as to pretend to be innate.
19. Nor let it be said, that those more particular self-evident Such less propositions, which are assented to at first hearing, as thatpr"^*^
* one and two are equal to three/ that * green is not red,' &c., sitions are received as the consequences of those more universal pro- before positions which are looked on as innate principles ; since any t*»ese uni- one, who will but take the pains to observe what passes in the Maxims, understanding, will certainly find that these, and the like
less general propositions, are certainly known, and firmly assented to by those who are utterly ignorant of those more general maxims; and so, being earlier in the mind than those (as they are called) first* principles, cannot owe
^ As Leibniz says, all arithmetic and ' Cf. Bk. IV. ch. il § i, &c. Again,
all geometry are virtually innate or in so &r from identifying them in a
the mind. common condemnation, he contrasts
* There is here again confusion of * innate ' and * self-evident '—rejecting the perceived truth of an intellectual innateness of knowledge, because 'we principle in its most abstract form, and are all born ignorant of everything'; perception of the truth of propositions and arguing for self-evidence, as that on which ultimately depend upon it, as which all the certainty of all our know- well as perception of its variable and ledge ultimately depends, and which, contingent embodiments. This is in the intellectually awakened mind, is further exaggerated by Hume, when < perceived ' as the eye perceives light, he asserts that, *■if innate be equivalent only by being directed towards it. to natural, then aU the perceptions ^ But they are not 'first' because and ideas of the mind must be allowed soonest apprehended by the individual to be innate ' {Inquiiyy Note A) — at mind, but because presupposed in the least if this be taken in the sense nature of things, or in reason, and so Hume seems to intend. first in logical order.
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54 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. I, to them the assent wherewith they are received at first --►♦- hearing ^ One and ;jo. If it be Said, that these propositions, viz. * two and two
one equal i /• » , i . « i > n «
to Two, are equal to four, ' red is not blue, &c., are not general maxims, *en ^ "^^ ^^ ^"^ great use, I answer, that makes nothing to the nor useful argument of universal assent upon hearing and understanding, answered, p^^.^ jj- ^j^^^ j^^ ^^ Certain mark of innate, whatever proposition can be found that receives general assent as soon as heard and understood, that must be admitted for an innate proposition, as well as this maxim, * That it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be,' they being upon this ground equal. And as to the difference of being more general, that makes this maxim more remote from being innate ^ ; those general and abstract ideas being more strangers to our first appre- hensions than*those of more particular self-evident proposi- tions ; and therefore it is longer before they are admitted and assented to by the growing ^ understanding. And as to the usefulness of these magnified maxims, that perhaps will not be found so great as is generally conceived, when it comes in its due place to be more fully considered *. These 21 . But we have not yet done with * assenting to propositions
no**being ^* ^'^^^ hearing and understanding their terms/ It is fit we known first take notice that this, instead of being a mark that they till pro- are innate, is a proof of the contrary ; since it supposes that posed, several, who understand and know other things, are ignorant
' Notwithstanding, the * more ge- none of it is born with us, is the les- neral' are so presupposed logically son intended by Locke in this con- in the less general and particular pro> troversy against innate ideas and prin- positions, that the former (though often ciples.
only latent or unconsciously held) * See Bk. IV. ch. vii. The reason
could not be denied without involving of the less general truths is found in
denial of the latter. We rest on them the more abstract, and in that sense
as we rest on suppressed sumptions in the more simple, which, as Leibniz
enthymemes, in which the force of the puts it, are in us virtually and before
conclusion is determined by what is all apperception. Yet they form the
suppressed or latent soul and tissue of our knowledge,
> In Locke's meaning of innateness being as necessary to it as the muscles
or apriority. and sinews are for walking, though
' That a human ifnderstanding of we may not actually think of either, the innate, or of any part of it, must and' do not distinguish them by ab- be a growth, — ^the issue of labour straction till we have become philoso- and a tentative experience, and that phical.
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No Innate Speculative Principles. 55
of these principles till they are proposed to them ; and that Chap. I. one may be unacquainted with these truths till he hears them ~**^ from others. For, if they were innate, what need they be pro- them^ot posed in order to gaining assent, when, by being in the under- innate. standing, by a natural and original impression, (if there were any such,) they could not but be known before ? Or doth the proposing them print them clearer in the mind than nature did ? If so, then the consequence will be, that a man knows them better after he has been thus taught them than he did before. Whence it will follow that these principles may be made more evident to us by others' teaching ^ than nature has made them by impression : which will ill agree with the opinion of innate principles, and give but little authority to them ; but, on the contrary, makes them unfit to be the foundations of all our other knowledge ; as they are pretended to be. This cannot be denied, that men grow first acquainted with many of these self-evident truths upon their being proposed : but it is clear that whosoever does so, finds in himself that he then begins to know a proposition, which he knew not before, and which from thenceforth he never questions; not because it was innate, but because the consideration of the nature of the things contained in those words would not suffer him to think otherwise ^, how, or whensoever he is brought to reflect on them. [^ And if whatever is assented to at first hearing and understanding the terms must pass for an innate principle, every well-grounded observation, drawn from particulars into a general rule *, must be innate. When yet it is certain that
* * Assent when proposed * is here we must all be conscious of when we interpreted, assent on the ground of are bom, if they are innate, proposal by a person, i. e. deference to ' Added in Second Edition, human authority, instead of rational ^ TThat is, every empirical generalisa- insight by the person himself. This tion formed by a sufficient induction, introduces a new and irrelevant ques- which Locke strongly distinguishes in tion, about the rationale of authority. Bk. IV. from self-evident and demon- The question is, whether, when such strated truths. But is the condiiumal judgments are anyhow brought into necessitywhich constrains an educated our consciousness, the supposition of man to accept the law of gravitation their being false must not be seen by of the same sort as the absolute intel-* us to be necessarily absurd. lectual necessity which constrains an
* Truths intellectually necessaiy or educated man to accept the abstract self-evident are here again opposed to principle of non-contradiction or of innate truths, which Locke supposes causality?
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56 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. I. not all, but only sagacious heads, light at first on these observa- — **— tions, and reduce them into general propositions : not innate, but collected from a preceding acquaintance and reflection on particular instances. These, when observing men have made them, unobserving men, when they are proposed to them, cannot refuse their assent to.] Implicitly 22. If it be said, the understanding hath an implicit know- before ledge of these principles, but not an explicit^ before this first proposing, hearing (as they must who will say * that they are in the under- that A? standing before they are known,') it will be hard to conceive Mind is what is meant by a principle imprinted on the understanding
capable of, ,. ., , .,,. , , .,• «i r ^
under- implicitly, unless it be this, — that the mmd is capable of under- th^*or standing and assenting firmly to such propositions. And thus else ' all mathematical demonstrations, as well as first principles, noSiing. roust be received as native impressions on the mind ; which I fear they will scarce allow them to be, who find it harder to demonstrate a proposition than assent to it when demonstrated And few mathematicians will be forward to believe, that all the diagrams they have drawn w.ere but copies of those innate characters which nature had engraven ^ upon their minds. The Argu- 23. There is, I fear, this further weakness in the foregoing aMcnting argument, which would persuade us that therefore those on first maxims are to be thought innate, which men admit at first is upon' hearing; because they assent to propositions which they are \1^L\ ^ot taught, nor do receive from the force of any argument or tiou of no demonstration, but a bare explication or understanding of the tei^hin^* terms. Under which there seems to me to lie this fallacy, that men are supposed not to be taught nor to learn anything de novo ; when, in truth, they are taught, and do learn some- thing they were ignorant of before. For, first, it is evident that they have learned the terms, and their signification ; neither of which was born with them. But this is not all the acquired knowledge in the case : the ideas themselves, about which the proposition is, are not bom with them, no more
^ That is, ' had engraven ' consdousiy argues in Bk. IV. for the perceived in-
at bitih, which no one worth arguing tellectual necessity of all mathematical
against would maintain. Cf. Bk. IV. truths, and of the existence of God, —
ch. il $ 7, on the iniuiUve evidence of or as we should say, their latent < in-
each sUp in every mathematical or nateness.' other demonstration. Locke himself
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No Innate Speculative Principles. 57
than their names, but got afterwards. So that in all pro- Chap. i. positions that are assented to at first hearing, the terms of -"^*— the proposition, their standing for such ideas, and the ideas themselves that they stand for, being neither of them innate, I would fain know what there is remaining in such propositions that is innate. For I would gladly have any one name that proposition whose terms or ideas were either of them innate. We by degrees get ideas and names, and learn their appro- priated connexion one with another ; and then to propositions made in such terms, whose signification we have learnt, and wherein the agreement or disagreement we can perceive in our ideas when put together is expressed, we at first hearing assent ; though to other propositions, in themselves as certain and evident, but which are concerning ideas not so soon or so easily got, we are at the same time no way capable of assent- ing. For, though a child quickly assents to this proposition, ' That an apple is not fire,' when by familiar acquaintance he has got the ideas of those two different things distinctly im- printed on his mind, and has learnt that the names apple and fire stand for them ; yet it will be some years after, perhaps, before the same child will assent to this proposition, ' That it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be' ; because that, though perhaps the words are as easy to be learnt, yet the signification of them being more large, comprehensive, and abstract than of the names annexed to those sensible things the child hath to do with, it is longer before he learns their precise meaning, and it requires more time plainly to form in his mind those general ideas they stand for. Till that be done, you will in vain endeavour to make any child assent to a proposition made up of such general terms; but as soon as ever he has got those ideas, and learned their names, he forwardly closes with the one as well as the other of the forementioned propositions: and with both for the same reason; viz. because he finds the ideas he has in his mind to agree or disagree, according as the words standing for them are afiSrmed or denied one of another in the proposition. But if propositions be brought to him in words which stand for ideas he has not yet in his mind, to such propositions, however evidently true or false in themselves, he affords
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58 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. I. neither assent nor dissent, but is ignorant. For words being ""**" but empty sounds, any further than they are signs of our ideas, we cannot but assent to them as they correspond to those ideas we have, but no further than that. But the showing by what steps and ways knowledge comes into our minds ; and the grounds of several degrees of assent, being the business of the following Discourse, it may suffice to have only touched on it here, as one reason that made me doubt of those innate principles ^
Not innate because not uni- versally assented to.
24. To conclude this argument of universal consent, I agree with these defenders of innate principles, — that if they are innate, they must needs have universal assent ^. For that a truth should be innate and yet not assented to, is to me as unintelligible as for a man to know a truth and be ignorant of it at the same time ^. But then, by these men's own con- fession, they cannot be innate ; since they are not assented to by those who understand not the terms ; nor by a great part of those who do understand them, but have yet never heard nor thought of those propositions ; which, I think, is at least one half of mankind. But were the number far less, it would be enough to destroy universal assent, and thereby show these propositions not to be innate, if children alone were ignorant of them *.
* Here and elsewhere Locke per- sists in taking for granted, that the ^ innateness ' of ideas and of know- ledge is being maintained by his adversaries in a sense that is incon- sistent with much that is innate being consciously apprehended only late in life, progressing by steps, and in all cases dependenUy upon development of the mind, and accumulation of experience. The 'steps and ways' of knowledge, and the *â– grounds of as- sent,'described in the sequel, need not have been thus put in antagonism to the ultimate principles for which the phi- losopher seeks (the only innateness worth discussing), though Locke, in his controversial temper, presented them in the light of contradictories.
* But it is a ' universal assent * that needs to be elicited and verified by a philosophical analysis of our complex experience.
' Conscious assent, as he reiterates, is with him of the essence of innate- ness, and must be given by all (in- cluding infants) to all principles, however abstract, for which innate- ness can be claimed. It is easy, on this assumption, to show, either that there are no innate principles, or that, if there are, it is superfluous to vindicate their truth, — as, gx hypothesis every human being from birth is, and must be, conscious that they are true.
* Not if 'innate' means nectssarUy latent in an experience in which even children in a degree participate. Yet
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25. But that I may not be accused to argue from the Chap. I. thoughts of infants, which are unknown to us, and to conclude "^^ from what passes in their understandings before they express Maxims it ; I say next, that these two general propositions are not the ?^ ^^^ truths that first possess the minds of children, nor are ante- known, cedent to all acquired and adventitious notions : which, if they were innate, they must needs be. Whether we can determine it or no, it matters not, there is certainly a time when children begin to think, and their words and actions do assure us that they do so. When therefore they are capable of thought, of knowledge, of assent, can it rationally be supposed they can be ignorant of those notions that nature has imprinted, were there any such ? Can it be imagined, with any appearance of reason, that they perceive the impressions from things without, and be at the same time ignorant of those characters which nature itself has taken care to stamp within ? Can they receive and assent to adventitious notions, and be ignorant of those which are supposed woven into the very principles of their being, and imprinted there in indelible characters, to be the foundation and guide of all their acquired knowledge and future reasonings ? This would be to make nature take pains to no purpose ; or at least to write very ill ; since its characters could not be read by those eyes which saw other things very well: and those are very ill supposed the clearest parts of truth, and the foundations of all our knowledge, which are not first known, and without which the undoubted knowledge of several other things may be had. The child certainly knows, that the nurse that feeds it is neither the cat it plays with, nor the blackmoor it is afraid of : that th^ wormseed or mustard it refuses, is not the apple or sugar it cries for : this it is cer- tainly and undoubtedly assured of: but will any one say, it is by virtue of this principle, * That it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be,' that it so firmly assents to these and other parts of its knowledge ? Or that the child has any notion or apprehension of that proposition at an age, wherein yet, it is plain, it knows a gfreat many other truths ? He that will say, children join in these general abstract speculations
Locke himself says that ' we are bom we have the actual exercise of either.' free, as we are born rational^ not that (TV. of Govt. 11. § 6i),
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6o Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. I. with their sucking-bottles and their rattles, may perhaps, with ~^**" justice, be thought to have more passion and zeal for his opinion, but less sincerity and truth, than one of that age ^. And so a6. Though therefore there be several general propositions
not innate. ^^^ ^^^ ^j^j^ constant and ready assent, as soon as proposed to men grown up, who have attained the use of more general and abstract ideas, and names standing for them; yet they not being to be found in those of tender years, who never- theless know other things, they cannot pretend to universal assent of intelligent persons, and so by no means can be sup- posed innate; — it being impossible that any truth which is innate (if there were any such) should be unknown, at least to any one who knows anything else. Since, if they are innate truths, they must be innate thoughts: there being nothing a truth in the mind that it has never thought on *. Whereby it is evident, if there be any innate truths, they must necessarily be the first of any thought on ; the first that appear '. Not 27. That the general maxims we are discoursing of are not
became known to children, idiots, and a great part of mankind, we have they already sufficiently proved : whereby it is evident they have
\e^^^ oot an universal assent, nor are general impressions. But there where jg this further argument in it against their being innate : that
what is , , ^._ , ^ . , . . , .
innate these Characters, if they were native and original impressions,
^teeif ' should appear fairest and clearest in those persons in whom
clearest, yet wc find no footsteps of them ; and it is, in my opinion, a
strong presumption that they are not innate, since they are
^ But the concrete judgments which ness seems unintelligible to him.
children see the truth of could not be ' This reasoning, as Leibniz shows,
true if the abstract principles of iden- proves too much ; for if all the truths
tity and contradiction were false. They on which experience depends must be
are therefore latent, and in that sense present to the consciousness of each
innate, in the concrete judgments ; — person, we should be deprived not
and not useless either,for science would only of those ultimate abstractions
become chaos, and reasoning about (which many have never actually
what is real impossible, in the absence realised in consciousness), but also of
of some absolute principles of reason ideas of which we once thought, but
in us and in things. have ceased to think ; while, if truths
' Again, Locke's controversial con- are not necessarily conscious thoughts,
ception of innateness, as implying con- but only natural aptitudes, there is no
5CK>M5a/^r«A^yfSM>M of the principles and obstacle to our possessing some such
ideas which are needed to harmonize of which we have never actually
experience. The other sort of innate- thought, and may never actually think.
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least known to those in whom, if they were innate, they must Chap. i. needs exert themselves with most force and vigour. For *""**" children, idiots, savages^, and illiterate people^ being of all others the least corrupted by custom, or borrowed opinions ; learning and education having not cast their native thoughts into new moulds ; nor by superinducing foreign and studied doctrines, confounded those fair characters nature had written there ; one might reasonably imagine that in their minds these innate notions should lie open fairly to every one's view, as it is certain the thoughts of children do * It might very well be expected that these principles should be perfectly known to naturals ; which being stamped immediately on the soul, (as these men suppose,) can have no dependence on the constitu- tion or organs of the body, the only confessed difference between them and others. One would think, according to these men's principles, that all these native beams of light (were there any such) should, in those who have no reserves, no arts of concealment, shine out in their full lustre, and leave us in no more doubt of their being there, than we are of their love of pleasure and abhorrence of pain. But alas, amongst children, idiots, savages, and the grossly illiterate, what general maxims are to be found ? what universal principles of know- ledge ? Their notions are few and narrow, borrowed only from those objects they have had most to do with, and which have made upon their senses the frequentest and stroi^est impres- sions. A child knows his nurse and his cradle, and by degrees the playthings of a little more advanced age ; and a young savage has, perhaps, his head filled with love and hunting,
' ' Savages ' : salvages, in the eariy and of mathematics are, in a sense, in us,
editions, here and afterwards. and in the nature of things, — ^because
' The opposite conclusion follows in apprehending them we apprehend when 'innate* is otherwise under- their self-evidence; yet we need stood. Those principles which are exercise of the intellectual faculty to latent in the mind of man, and in the rise into this intuitive perception of nature of things, become patent in the their truth. Children may be less consciousness of individuals, through perverted from truth, by accidental as- reflex attention given to them. But sociation and the hardening of custom, ' infants, idiots, savages, and illiterate than adults are, while they are never- people ' do not rise to this ; they direct theless unfit, as philosophers, to realise any attention which they exert to the ultimate truths on which know- their own bodies and the external ledge and life depend, world. The abstract truths of logic
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62 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. I. according to the fashion of his tribe. But he that from a child — ♦^ untaught, or a wild inhabitant of the woods, will expect these abstract maxims and reputed principles of science, will, I fear, find himself mistaken. Such kind of general propositions are seldom mentioned in the huts of Indians : much less are they to be found in the thoughts of children, or any impressions of them on the minds of naturals. They are the language and business of the schools and academies of learned nations, accustomed to that sort of conversation or learning, where disputes are frequent ; these maxims being suited to artificial argumentation and useful for conviction, but not much con- ducing to the discovery of truth or advancement of knowledge^. But of their small use for the improvement of knowledge I shall have occasion to speak more at large, 1. 4, c. 7 ^.
Recapitu- lation.
28. I know not how absurd this may seem to the masters of demonstration. And probably it will hardly go down with anybody at first hearing. I must therefore beg a little truce with prejudice, and the forbearance of censure, till I have been heard out in the sequel of this Discourse, being very willing to submit to better judgments. And since I impartially search after truth, I shall not be sorry to be convinced, that I have been too fond of my own notions ; which I confess we are all apt to be, when application and study have warmed our heads with them.
Upon the whole matter, I cannot see any ground to think these two speculative Maxims innate : since they are not uni- versally assented to ; and the assent they so generally find is no other than what several propositions, not allowed to be innate, equally partake in with them: and since the assent that is given them is produced another way ^ and comes not from natural inscription, as I doubt not but to make appear
^ The ultimate principles through which knowledge is harmonized, and seen in its universality, are chronologic caUy not first principles but last prin- ciples— ^in the history alike of the indi- vidual mind and of the human race. And in both it is the history of ap- proximation, not complete attainment
There can be no finality in human philosophy.
• Which treats of * maxims,' or axioms.
' Through intuition, aided, more or less, by elaborative thinking, as ex- plained in Bk. IV.
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No Innate Speculative Principles. 63
in the following Discourse. And if these * first principles ' of Chap. i. knowledge and science are found not to be innate, no other '"**" speculative maxims can (I suppose), with better right pretend to be so ^.
^ In refusing to start in speculation experience. But philosophy, thus led,
with abstract * first ' principles, or to in the end raised its old questions in a
allow that all men start with them, new form, when it inquired with Kant
Locke seemed to himself to be leading as to the foundatioH of scientific expe-
away from the * vast ocean of Being ' rience, which Hegel saw in the divine
into the familiar facts of ordinary essence of things, — the absolute Idea.
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CHAPTER II.
NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES *.
Chap. II. I. If those speculative Maxims, whereof we discoursed in -♦*— the foregoing chapter, have not an actual universal assent Principles ^o*^ ^^^ mankind, as we there proved, it is much more visible so clear concerning fraciical Principles, that they come short of an generaUy universal reception : and I think it will be hard to instance as ttie^^ any one moral rule which can pretend to so general and ready foremen- an assent as, ' What is, is ' ; or to be so manifest a truth as speculative ^^y ^^^^ * I* '^ impossible for the same thing to be and not to Maxims, be/ Whereby it is evident that they are further removed from a title to be innate ; and the doubt of their being native impressions on the mind is stronger against those moral prin- ciples than the other \ Not that it brings their truth at all in question. They are equally true, though not equally evident. Those speculative maxims carry their own evidence with them : but moral principles require reasoning and discourse, and some exercise of the mind, to discover the certainty of their truth. They lie not open as natural characters engraven on the mind ; which, if any such were, they must needs be visible by themselves, and by their own light be certain and known to everybody. But this is no derogation to their truth and certainty ; no more than it is to the truth or certainty of the three angles of a triangle being equal to two right ones : because it is not so evident as ' the whole is bigger than a part/
^ In this chapter Locke passes from ' It has' been remarked that ' the
the abstract principles of speculaihe argument for common sense/ — ^i. e. on
knowledge — ^interesting to the phUo- behalf of the theoretical and practical
sophic few, to the principles of morality principles latent in man — is of principal
and conduct— more interesting to the importance 'in reference to the practical
mass of mankind. In this, as in the principles.' The speculative axioms,
previous argument, when he concludes ' from their conyerse being absolutely
against innateness, he asserts self- Incogitable, sufficiently guard them-
evidence. selves.* (Hamilton*8 Reid, p. 754.)
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No Innate Practical Principles.
65
nor so apt to be assented to at first hearing ^ It may suffice Chap. il. that these moral rules are capable of demonstration* : and ""^^^ therefore it is our own faults if we come not to a certain knowledge of them. But the ignorance wherein many men are of them, and the slowness of assent wherewith others re- ceive them, are manifest proofs that they are not innate, and such as offer themselves to their view without searching ^.
^ Locke reiterates the difference be- tween an 'innate' law, conscUmsly impressed upon the mind in its first original, and an intellectual necessity in the reason of things, which, although at first ignorant of, we may realise in its self-evidence, * by the due applica- tion of our natural faculties.* In this last category Locke himself puts *â– the eternal and unalterable nature of right and wrong.*
' The tUtnonsirabU character of the conclusions of abstract morality, deter- mined by the eternity and immutability of abstract ethical distinctions, was a favourite speculation with Locke, which Molyneux, in his correspondence, thus urged him to develop into an ethical system : — ' One thing I must needs insist on to you, which is, that you would think of obliging the world with a Treatise on Morals, drawn up according to the hints you frequently give in your Essay of their being de- monstrable according to mathematical method. This is most certainly true ; but then the task must be undertaken only by so clear and distinct a thinker as you are, and there is nothing I should more ardently wish for than to see it.' (Molyneux to Locke, August, 169a.) Locke thus replies : — < Though by the view I had of moral ideas, when I was considering that subject,! thought I saw that morality might be dinum» straHvely made out, yet whether I am able so to make it out is another ques- tion. Every one could not have de- monstrated what Mr. Newton's book hath shown to be demonstrable.* * Good sir,* rejoins Molyneux, ' let me VOL. I.
renew my requests ; for believe me, sir, *twill be one of the most useful and glorious undertakings that can employ you. The touches you give in many places of your book on this subject are wonderfully curious. Be as large as *tis possible on this subject, and by all means let it be in English. He that reads the 45th section on your 199th page (ist ed., now Bk. IL ch. xxu % 70) will be inflamed to read more of the same kind from the same incom^ parable pen.* Locke in the end ex- cused himself, on grounds of age and health, from the formidable enter- prise. 'The Gospel,' he adds, 'con- tains so perfect a body of Ethics that reason may be excused from that in- quiry, since she may find man's duty clearer and easier in revelation than in herself. This is the excuse of a man who, having a sufficient rule of his actions, is content therewith, and thinks he may employ the little time and strength he has in other researches wherein he is more in the dark.' Locke's thesis, that morality is as de- monstrable as mathematics, is held by Cumberland, De Legibus Naiurae, ch. i- $( 7> 8 ; iv. ( 4. See also Reid, Essays on th$ IntdUctttal Powers, vii. ch. a.
' 'Without searching' suggests Locke*s moral purpose in this con- troversy against innateness — that it tends to ' ease the lazy of the pains of search,' and to leave the individual the slave of prejudices, under cover of their being ' innate principles,* given at our birth, without trouble on our part.
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66 Essay (onceming Human Understanding.
Chap. II. 2. Whether there be any such moral principles, wherein all 'TT^ . men do agree, I appeal to any who have been but moderately Justice not conversant in the history of mankind, and looked abroad Prind* 1^ beyond the smoke of their own chimneys. Where is that by all Men. practical truth that is universally received, without doubt or question, as it must be if innate^? Justice^ and keeping of contracts, is that which most men seem to agree in ^. This is a principle ^ which is thought to extend itself to the dens of thieves, and the confederacies of the greatest villains ; and they who have gone furthest towards the putting off of humanity itself, keep faith and rules of justice one with another. I grant that outlaws themselves do this one amongst another: but it is without receiving these as the innate laws of nature. They practise them as rules of con- venience within their own communities : but it is impossible to conceive that he embraces justice as a practical principle, who acts fairly with his fellow-highwayman, and at the same time plunders or kills the next honest man he meets with. Justice and truth are the common ties of society ; and there- fore even outlaws and robbers, who break with all the world besides, must keep faith and rules of equity amongst them- selves ; or else they cannot hold together. But will any one say, that those that live by fraud or rapine have innate prin- ciples of truth and justice which they allow and assent to? Objection : 3. Perhaps it will be urged, that the tacit assent of their Men^cny ^linds agrees to what their practice contradicts. I answer, them in first, I have always thought the actions of .men the best
^ That diversity of belief is greater volved in contract-keeping; thus show, in regard to fundamental principles of ing that our mind is not originally like fiction than in the case of the abstract white paper, in the sense of being principlesofidentity and contradiction, equally disposed to accept any pro- does not prove want of self-evidence va, positions regarding conduct ; and dis* the former, but only that owing to the proving the hypoth^l^ that antecedent greater complexity of practical prin- to human custom ^^ constitution, or ciples, and their affinity with our pas- to special revelation, there was nothing sions, < more pain of search ' is needed absolutely good or bad } to enable the individual to recognise ' As put by Locke himself, < it is the self-evidence that is latent. every man's duty to be just, whether
' But might not all, by due develop* there is any such thing as a just man in
ment of their latent reason, be made the world or no.' {Omduct of Under*
to see the self-evident morality in- standings § 94.)
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No Innate Practical Principles. 67
interpreters of their thoughts. But, since it is certain that Chap. ii. most men's practices, and some men's open professions, have *T**~ either questioned or denied these principles, it is impossible Practice, to establish an universal consent, (though we should look for adLitthem it only amongst grown men,) without which it is impossible in their to conclude them innate. Secondly, it is very strange and answered. unreasonable to suppose innate practical principles, that terminate only in contemplation. Practical principles, derived from nature, are there for operation, and must produce conformity of action, not barely speculative assent to their truth, or else they are in vain distinguished from speculative maxims. Nature, I confess, has put into man a desire of happiness and an aversion to misery : these indeed are innate practical principles ^ which (as practical principles ought) do continue constantly to operate and influence all our actions without ceasing : these may be observed in all persons and all ages, steady and universal ; but these are inclinations of the appetite to good, not impressions of truth on the under- standing. I deny not that there are natural tendencies imprinted on the minds of men ; and that from the very first instances of sense and perception, there are some things that are grateful and others unwelcome to them ; some things that they incline to and others that they fly: but this makes nothing for innate characters on the mind, which are to be the principles of knowledge regulating our practice. Such natural impressions on the understanding are so far from being confirmed hereby, that this is an argument against
' In our natural desire for the con- compared with near and obvious re-
tinuance and return of felt pleasure, wards and punishments, but this difier-
and our aversion from felt uneasiness, ence of judgment is not inconsistent
— Locke finds an example of a ten- with the innateness of the tendency,
dency which he allows to be ' innate,' < Men have a natural tendency to what
because practir"^ operative as soon delights and from what pains them.
asthereisanycOi sciousnessof either. This universal observation has esta>
Whether this innate tendency is the blished past doubt. But that the soul
supreme motive of human action is has such a tendency to what is morally
considered in the sequel (e. g. Bk. II. good and from evil has not fallen
ch. zxi). Moreover, men often mistake under my observation, and therefore
or difier in their applications even of I cannot grant it' (MS. Marginalia
thb acknowledged innate tendency, Locktana, 1699.) and in their estimates of remote as
F 2
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68 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap, II, them ; since, if there were certain characters imprinted by "**^ nature on the understanding, as the principles of knowledge, we could not but perceive them constantly operate in us and influence our knowledge, as we do those others on the will and appetite ; which never cease to be the constant springs and motives of all our actions, to which we perpetually feel them strongly impelling us. Moral 4. Another reason that makes me doubt of any innate
need\ practical principles is, that I think there cannot any one moral Pi-oo^ ergo rtde be proposed whereof a man may not justly demand a mna e. ^^^^^ . ^hjch would be perfectly ridiculous and absurd if they were innate ; or so much as self-evident, which every innate principle must needs be, and not need any proof to ascertain its truth, nor want any reason to gain it approba- tion^. He would be thought void of common sense* who asked on the one side, or on the other side went to give a reason why * it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be.' It carries its own light and evidence with it, and needs no other proof : he that understands the terms assents to it for its own sake or else nothing will ever be able to prevail with him to do it. But should that most unshaken rule of morality and foundation of all social virtue, ' That one should do as he would be done unto,' be proposed to one
* All Uiat was (in Locke's sense) to common sense, he was, in fact, sur-
* innate' would also be self-evident; rendering his thesis — that all our
but what is self-evident is not there- knowledge is an educt from experience,
fore innate, if innate means consciously For in admitting, as he here virtually
recognised at birth. does, that experience must ultimately
' The ' common sense,' or common ground its procedure on the laws of reason, is here taken by Locke as the intellect, he admits that intellect con- evidence and guarantee of the ab- tains principles of judgment on which stract logical axiom of contradiction. experience, being dependent, cannot ' There is here,' says Hamilton, * a con- possibly be their precursor or their fession, the importance of which has cause.' (Hamilton's Reid, pp. 784, 5.) been observed neither by Locke nor his This depends on whether Locke does antagonists. Had Locke not . . . been or does not include in ' experience ' its led astray in the pursuit of an ignis own necessary presnpposUumSy which fsUmis — in his refutation of the Car- are held unconsciously in ordinary tesian theory of Innate Ideas, which experience, but which it is the office certainly as impugned by him neither of speculative philosophy (neglected Descartes nor the representatives of by Locke) to articulate into distinct his school ever dreamt of holding — he consciousness, would have seen that, in thus appealing
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No Innate Practical Principles. 69
who never heard of it before, but yet is of capacity to under- Chap. il. stand its meaning ; might he not without any absurdity ask a ""^^ reason why? And were not he that proposed it bound to make out the truth and reasonableness of it to him ? Which plainly shows it not to be innate; for if it were it could neither want nor receive any proof ; but must needs (at least as soon as heard and understood) be received and assented to as an unquestionable truth, which a man can by no means doubt of. So that the truth of all these moral rules plainly depends upon some other antecedent to them, and from which they must be deduced^ ; which could not be if either they were innate or so much as self-evident
5. That men should keep their compacts is certainly a Insunce great and undeniable rule in morality. But yet, if a Christian, com^^\s^ who has the view of happiness and misery in another life, be
asked why a man must keep his word, he will give this as a reason : — Because God, who has the power of eternal life and death, requires it of us *. But if a Hobbist be asked why ? he will answer : — Because the public requires it, and the Leviathan will punish you if you do not ^. And if one of the old philosophers had been asked, he would have answered : — Because it was dishonest, below the dignity of a man, and opposite to virtue, the highest perfection of human nature, to do otherwise.
6. Hence naturally flows the great variety of opinions Virtue concerning moral rules which are to be found among men, fpproved, according to the different sorts of happiness they have a not prospect of, or propose to themselves ; which could not be if innate,* practical principles were innate, and imprinted in our minds ^* immediately by the hand of God. I grant the existence of profitable. God is so many ways manifest, and the obedience we owe
^ Deduction may be needed to eternal and immutable nature of God ;
evolve that which is nevertheless vir- but without legislative sanctions it fails
tually in us, and in the nature of to guard conduct against the pressure
things, already. of the appetites.
> He looks here to the received ' See Hobbes, Dt Homine^ ch. 14.
sanctions ofconduct, rather than to the This sarcastic reference is the only
immutability of moral law in the nature express mention of Hobbes in the
of things. Reasoning resolves the self- Essay. evident principles of morality into the
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70 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap» II. him so congruous to the light of reason, that a great part of " mankind give testimony to the law of nature: but yet I think it must be allowed that several moral rules may receive from mankind a very general approbation, without either knowing or admitting the true ground of morality ; which can only be the will and law of a God, who sees men in the dark, has in his hand rewards and punishments, and power enough to call to account the proudest offender ^, For, God having, by an inseparable connexion, joined virtue and public happiness together, and made the practice thereof necessary to the preservation of society, and visibly beneficial to all with whom the virtuous man has to do ; it is no wonder that every one should not only allow, but recommend and magnify those rules to others, from whose observance of them he is sure to reap advantage to himself. He may, out of interest as well as conviction, cry up that for sacred, which, if once trampled on and profaned, he himself cannot be safe nor secure. This, though it takes nothing from the moral and eternal obligation which these rules evidently have *, yet it shows that the outward acknowledgment men pay to them in their words proves not that they are innate principles: nay, it proves not so much as that men assent to them in- wardly in their own minds, as the inviolable rules of their own practice ; since we find that self-interest, and the con* veniences of this life, make many men own an outward profession and approbation of them, whose actions sufficiently
^ That a Christian, a Hobbist, and a as members of society.' (TV. of Go» Heathen should give different reasons vimmeMtj ii. 14.) for observing a moral rule does not ' Moral obligation, which is eternal disprove the obligation of that rule, an* and grounded on reason, is thus dis- tecedently to the intermediate prin* tinguished from the contingency of an ciples on which they ground it Locke individual recognition of, and con- is apt to rest content with premisses formity to, what is in itself thus which are short of the ultimate ones obligatory. In what follows it only for which the philosopher craves ; but appears that men are not actually as he recognises in many passages the good as they know they ought to be. conception of ethical law, eternal and His argument is, that immoral practice divine, superior to custom and to wiihaut reproach of omsaeMCf proves the judgments of human conscience, that the law transgressed cannot be < Truth and keeping of £uth,' he says, innate, or consciously acknowledged * belong to men as men, and not merely by all.
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No Innate Practical Principles. 71
prove that they very little consider the Lawgiver that pre- Chap. ii. scribed these rules ; nor the hell that He has ordained for the '* punishment of those that transgress them.
7. For, if we will not in civility allow too much sincerity to Men's the professions of most men, but think their actions to be the con^n^ interpreters of their thoughts, we shall find that they have no "^^*^^ such internal veneration for these rules, nor so full a persuasion of Virtue of their certainty and obligation. The great principle of{^^* morality, * To do as one would be done to,' is more com- internal mended than practised. But the breach of this rule cannot "'**^*^ ** be a greater vice, than to teach others, that it is no moral
rule, nor obligatory, would be thought madness, and contrary to that interest men sacrifice to, when they break it them- selves. Perhaps conscience will be urged as checking us for such breaches, and so the internal obligation and establish-^ ment of the rule be preserved.
8. To which I answer, that I doubt not but, without being Con- written on their hearts, many men may, by the same way that j^^of of°° they come to the knowledge of other things, come to assent j^y innate to several moral rules, and be convinced of their obligation. Rule. Others also may come to be of the same mind, from their education, company, and customs of their country; which persuasion, however got, will serve to set conscience on work ;
which is nothing else but [our own opinion or judgment of the moral rectitude or pravity of our own actions ^] ; and if conscience be a proof of innate principles, contraries may be
^ In first three editions—' Our own action by ikat which ii iabis to be
opinion of our own actions.' Locke's [eternal] rule of good and evil, acquits
* conscience ' is individual and variable, or condemns it But where is it/ he
and thus distinguished from the ab- asks, * I so much as mention, much
stract relations of eternal and immu- less assert, an arbHrary difference of
table morality. When Thomas Burnet good and evil ? * Again, ' I call not
asked him, ' What those laws are that conscience practical principles. Pro*
we ought to obey, or how we can duce the place where I so represent it.
know them without revelation, unless He who confounds the judgment made
you take in natural conscience for a with the rule or law upon which it is
distinction of good and evil, or another made may perhaps talk so. Conscience
idea of God than what you have given is not the law of nature, but judging
us ? ' he replied — ' It is not conscience by that which is (by it) taken to be the
that ntakes the distinction of good and law.' {Marginalia Lodnana,) evil, conscience only judging of an
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72 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. II. innate principles; since some men with the same bent of " conscience prosecute what others avoid *.
Instances 9. But I Cannot see how any men should ever transgress Enormities t^ose moral rules, with confidence and serenity, were they
practised innate, and stamped upon their minds. View but an army at without ^,_ , . /. t . , . r
Remorse, the sacking of a town, and see what observation or sense 9f moral principles, or what touch of conscience for all the outrages they do. Robberies, murders, rapes, are the sports of men set at liberty from punishment and censure. Have there not been whole nations, and those of the most civilized people, amongst whom the exposing their children, and leaving them in the fields to perish by want or wild beasts has been the practice ; as little condemned or scrupled as the begetting them ' ? Do they not still, in some countries, put them into the same graves with their mothers, if they die in childbirth ; or despatch them, if a pretended astrologer declares them to have unhappy stars? And are there not places where, at a certain age, they kill or expose their parents, without any remorse at alP? In a part of Asia, the sick, when their case comes to be thought desperate, are carried out and laid on the earth before they are dead ; and left there, exposed to wind and weather, to perish without assistance or pity*.
^ If moral ideas or moral rules (which are the moral principles I deny to be innate) are innate, I say children must actually know them as well as men. But if by moral principles you mean a faculty to find out in time the moral difference of actions — besides, that this is an improper way of speak- ing, to call a power principles, I never denied such a power to be innate, but that which I denied was that any idea or €owuctum of ideas was innate.' {Marginalia Lockiana.) In what fol- lows the fallibility of ' conscience,' as a guide in concrete morality, or as a spontaneous revelation of eternal and immutable principles to the indi- vidual, is argued, from the various and self-contradictory moral judgments of
' The custom of infanticide has been vindicated, on the ground that human life is valuable, and its destruction criminal, only after it has lasted long enough to be possessed of self-con- scious intelligence.
' Extreme old age was regarded as a return of infancy.
* Gruber, apud Thevenot, part iv. p. 13. The reference here and else- where is to the collection of travels, in two folios, entitled Relations des dwers Voyages curieux, par M. Melchisedec Thevenot, of which some account is given in the appendix to the * History of Navigation,' prefixed to Churchill's Collecfion of Voyages (1704) — by some attributed to Locke, and contained in the 181 a edition of his Works, vol. x. p. 357.
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No Innate Practical Principles. 73
It is familiar among the Mingrelians, a people professing Chap. ii. Christianity, to bury their children alive without scruple^. "■**" There are places where they eat their own children ^ The Caribbees were wont to geld their children, on purpose to fat and eat them^. And Garcilasso de la Vega tells us of a people in Peru which were wont to fat and eat the children they got on their female captives, whom they kept as concu- bines for that purpose, and when they were past breeding, the mothers themselves were killed too and eaten ^. The virtues whereby the Tououpinambos believed they merited paradise, were revenge, and eating abundance of their enemies. They have not so much as a name for God^ and have no religion, no worship. The saints who are canonized amongst the Turks, lead lives which one cannot with modesty relate. A remarkable passage to this purpose, out of the voyage of Baumgarten®, which is a book not every day to be met with, I shall set down at large, in the language it is published in. Ibi (sc. prope Belbes in iEgypto) vidimus sanctum unum Saracenicum inter arenarum cumulos^ ita ut ex utero matris prodiit nudum sedentem, Mas est^ ut didicimus^ Mahometistis^ ut eoSy qui amentes et sine ratione sunt, pro Sanctis colant et venerentur. Insuper et eos^ qui cum diu vitam egerint inquinatissimam^ voluntariam demum poenitentiam et pauper- tatem^ sanctitate venerandos deputant, Ejusmodi verb genus hominum libertatem quandam effrenem habent^ domes quos volunt intrandif edendi^ bibendi^ et quod tnajus est^ concum-- bendi; ex quo concubitu^ si proles secuta fuerit, sancta similiter habetur. His ergo hominibus dum vivunt^ magnos exhibent honor es; mortuis verb vel templa vel monumenta extruunt amplissima, eosque contingere ac sepelire maximce fortunce ducunt loco. Audivimus hcec dicta et dicenda per interpretem d Mucrelo nostro. Insuper sanctum illum^ quern eo loco vidi- nmsypublicitus apprimi commendari^ eum esse hominem sanctum^
' Lambert apud Thevenot, p. 38. 1507 contain much information that at
' Vossius, De Nili Origmf, c. 18, i^ the time was new and curious con-
' P. Mart, Dec. i. ceming the history, manners, and re-
* Hist des Incasy 1. i. c. la. ligion of these countries. His journal
* Leiy, c. 16, ai6, 331. of his travels, in Latin, was corrected
* A German nobleman, whose travels by Joseph Scaliger, and first appeared in Egypt, Arabia, . and Palestine in in English in Churchiirs Collection,
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74 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. II. divinum ac integritate prtBcipuum; eo quod^ nee fckminarum "â– **^ unquam esset, nee puerarum^ sed tantummodo asellarum concu- Htor atque mtdarum, (Peregr. Baumgarten, L ii. c i. p. 73.) P More of the same kind concerning these precious saints amongst the Turks may be seen in Pietro della Valle, in his letter of the 25th of January, 1616.]
Where then are those innate principles of justice, piety, gratitude, equity, chastity? Or where is that universal con- sent that assures us there are such inbred rules? Murders in duels, when fashion has made them honourable, are com** mitted without remorse of conscience : nay, in many places innocence in this case is the greatest ignominy. And if we look abroad to take a view of men as they are> we shall find that they have remorse, in one place, for doing or omitting that which others, in another place, think they merit by. Men have 10. He that wiU Carefully peruse the history of mankind^ practlS ^"^ '^^'^ abroad into the several tribes of men, and with indif- Principlcs. ferency^ survey their actions, will be able to satisfy himself, that there is scarce that principle of morality to be named, or rule of virtue to be thought on, (those only excepted that are absolutely necessary to hold society together, which commonly too are neglected betwixt distinct societies,) which is not, somewhere or other, slighted and condemned by the general fashion o£ whole societies of men, governed by practical opinions and rules of living quite opposite to others. Whole II. Here perhaps it will be objected, that it is no argument
reject that the rule is not known, because it is broken. I grant the Moraf • objection good where men, though they tran^ress, yet disown Rules. not the law; where fear of shame, censure, or punishment carries the mark of some awe it has upon them. But it is impossible to conceive that a whole nation of men should all publicly reject and renounce what every one of them certainly and infallibly knew to be a law; for so they must who have it naturally imprinted on their minds. It is possible men may sometimes own rules of morality which in their private thoughts they do not believe to be true, only to keep them-
^ Added in French version. ' 'With indifferency '—without bias.
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No Innate Practical Principles. 75
selves in reputation and esteem amongst those who are Chap. ii. persuaded of their obligation. But it is not to be imagined ""*^ that a whole society of men should publicly and professedly disown and cast off a rule which they could not in their own minds but be infallibly certain was a law ; nor be ignorant that all men they should have to do with knew it to be such : and therefore must every one of them apprehend from others all the contempt and abhorrence due to one who professes himself void of humanity: and one who, confounding the known and natural measures of right and wrong, cannot but be looked on as the professed enemy of their peace and happiness* Whatever practical principle is innate, cannot but be known to every one to be just and good. It is therefore little lesd than a contradiction to suppose, that whole nations of men should, both in their professions and practice, unanimously and universally give the He to what, by the most invincible evidence, every one of them knew to be true, right, and good ^. This is enough to satisfy us that no practical rule which id anywhere universally, and with public approbation or allow*^ ance, transgressed, can be supposed innate. — But I have some- thing further to add in answer to this objection.
12. The breaking of a rule, say you, is no argument that it The is unknown. I grant it: but the generally allowed breach of f^"^^*^ it anywhere, I say, is a proof that it is not innate. For breach of example : let us take any of these rules, which, being the most p^f that obvious deductions of human reason, and conformable to the !* *^ ^^^
innate.
natural inclination of the greatest part of men, fewest people have had the impudence to deny or inconsideration to doubt of. If any can be thought to be naturally imprinted, none^ I think, can have a fairer pretence to be innate than this : ' Parents, preserve and cherish your children.' When, there- • fore, you say that this is an innate rule, what do you mean ? Either that it is an innate principle which upon all occasions excites and directs the actions of all men ; or else, that it is a truth which all men have imprinted on their minds, and
^ ' Whatever may be affirmed of the and also in a piece cut out of it' (MS.
nature of any whole nation may like- note ))y Tyrrell in his copy of the
wise be affirmed of all mankind ; as all Esst^.) the properties of bread are in a loaf,
t
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76 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. II. which therefore they know and assent to. But in neither of ~**~ these senses is it innate. Firsts that it is not a principle which influences all men's actions, is what I have proved by the examples before cited : nor need we seek so far as Mingrelia or Peru to find instances of such as neglect, abuse, nay, and destroy their children ; or look on it only as the more than brutality of some savage and barbarous nations, when we remember that it was a familiar and uncondemned practice amongst the Greeks and Romans to expose, without pity or remorse, their innocent infants. Secondly^ that it is an innate truth, known to all men, is also false. For, * Parents preserve your children,' is so far from an innate truth, that it is no truth at all : it being a command, and not a proposition, and so not capable of truth or falsehood To make it capable of being assented to as true, it must be reduced to some such proposition as this : * It is the duty of parents to preserve their children.' But what duty is, cannot be understood without a law; nor a law be known or supposed without a lawmaker, or without reward and punishment ; so that it is impossible that this, or any other, practical principle should be innate, i. e. be imprinted on the mind as a duty, without supposing the ideas of God, of law, of obligation, of punish- ment, of a life after this, innate : for that punishment follows not in this life the breach of this rule, and consequently that it has not the force of a law in countries where the generally allowed practice runs counter to it, is in itself evident. But these ideas (which must be all of them innate, if anything as a duty be so) are so far from being innate, that it is not every studious or thinking man, much less every one that is born, in whom they are to be found clear and distinct ; and that one of them, which of all others seems most likely to be innate, is not so, (I mean the idea of God,) I think, in the next chapter^, will appear very evident to any considering man. If men jj. From what has been said, I think we may safely con-
ignorant elude, that whatever practical rule is in any place generally of what is jyjj ^j^jj allowance broken, cannot be supposed innate ; it
» Ch. iii §§ e-17.
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No Innate Practical Principles. 77
being impossible that men should, without shame or fear, Chap. 1 1, confidently and serenely, break a rule which they could not . "**" but evidently know that God had set up, and would certainly certainty punish the breach of, (which they must, if it were innate,) to Jf^j^^ribcd a degree to make it- a very ill bargain to the transgressor, by innate Without such a knowledge as this, a man can never be certain P""*^*p ^' that anything is his duty. Ignorance or doubt of the law, hopes to escape the knowledge or power of the law-maker, or the like, may make men give way to a present appetite ; but let any one see the fault, and the rod by it, and with the transgression, a fire ready to punish it; a pleasure tempting, and the hand of the Almighty visibly held up and prepared to take vengeance, (for this must be the case where any duty is imprinted on the mind,) and then tell me whether it be possible for people with such a prospect, such a certain know- ledge as this, wantonly, and without scruple, to offend against a law which they carry about them in indelible characters, and that stares them in the face whilst they are breaking it ? Whether men, at the same time that they feel in themselves the imprinted edicts of an Omnipotent Law-maker, can, with assurance and gaiety, slight and trample underfoot his most sacred injunctions? And lastly, whether it be possible that whilst a man thus openly bids defiance to this innate law and supreme Lawgiver, all the bystanders, yea, even the governors and rulers of the people, full of the same sense both of the law and Law-maker, should silently connive, without testi- fying their dislike or laying the least blame on it ? Principles ^ of actions indeed there are lodged in men's appetites; but these are so far from being innate moral principles, that if they were left to their full swing they would carry men to the overturning of all morality. Moral laws are set as a curb and restraint to these exorbitant desires, which they cannot be but by rewards and punishments that will over- balance the satisfaction any one shall propose to himself in the breach of the law. If, therefore, anything be imprinted on the minds of all men as a law^ all men must have a certain and unavoidable knowledge that certain and unavoidable punishment will attend the breach of it For if men can be ignorant or doubtful of what is innate, innate principles are
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78 Essay concerning Human Understanding,
Chap. II. insisted on, and urged to no purpose ; truth and certainty
" (the things pretended) are not at all secured by them ; but
men are in the same uncertain floating estate with as without
them. An evident indubitable knowledge of unavoidable
punishment, great enough to make the tran^ression very
uneligible, must accompany an innate law; unless with an
innate law they can suppose an innate Gospel too. I would
not here be mistaken, as if, because I deny an innate law,
I thought there were none but positive laws. There is a great
deal of difference between an innate law, and a law of nature ;
between something imprinted on our minds in their very
original, and something that we, being ignorant of, may
attain to the knowledge of, by the use and due application of
our natural faculties. And I think they equally forsake the
truth who, running into contrary extremes, either affirm an
innate law, or deny that there is a law knowable by the light
of nature, i.e. without the help of positive revelation*.
Thosewho 14. The difference there is amongst men in their practical
innate principles IS SO evident that I think I need say no more to
practical ^yince, that it will be impossible to find any innate moral
tell us not rules by this mark of general assent ; and it is enough to
what they ^^^ ^^^ suspect that the supposition of such innate prin-
ciples is but an opinion taken up at pleasure; since those
who talk so confidently of them are so sparing to tell us
1 Thus Locke distinguishes *â– innate ideas, and what they were.' < I only
law,' which he argues against, from the report as matters of fact what others
eternal and immutable moral law of call virhu and wpr/ is his reply to
nature, which he acknowledges (cf.Bk. Lowde's charge of 'subverting the
II. ch. xxviii. $§ 7, 8, as in the succes- eternal and immutable nature of moral
sive editions of the Essay.) In a letter distinctions.' The &cts of human life
to Tyrrell (August 4, 1691, see Lord may thus conceal the abstract laws
King's * Life '), he tries to remove with which they are at variance ; for
misunderstandings as to what he in- the eternal laws of morality do not put
tended by ' the law of nature/ as part men under physical necessity actually
of the revealed divine law, — ^the con- to obey them, but only under moral
sideration of which he regards as ir- obligation. Locke's admiration of
relevant, when he is 'not designing Hooker may have influenced him in
to treat of the [absolute and universal] his recognition of 'that law which, as
grounds of true morality, which b laid up in the bosom of God, they call
necessary to true and perfect happi- eternal.* See Ecdes, Hist, Bk. I. 3.
ness/ but was only trying to show • Note how Locke contrasts ' innate '
' whence men had %o^ their moral imd * natural'
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No Innate Practical Principles. 79
which they are. This might with justice be expected from Chap. li. those men who lay stress upon this opinion; and it gives '"^^ occasion to distrust either their knowledge or charity, who, declaring that God has imprinted on the minds of men the foundations of knowledge and the rules of living, are yet so little favourable to the information of their neighbours, or the quiet of mankind, as not to point out to them which they are, in the variety men are distracted with. But, in truth, were there any such innate principles there would be no need ^to teach them. Did men find such innate pro- positions stamped on their minds, they would easily be able to distinguish them from other truths that they afterwards learned and deduced from them ; and there would be nothing more easy than to know what, and how many, they were. There could be no more doubt about their number than there is about the number of our fingers ; and it is like then every system would be ready to give them us by tale. But since nobody, that I know, has ventured yet to give a cata- Ic^ue of them, they cannot blame those who doubt of these innate principles ; since even they who require men to believe that there are such innate propositions, do not tell us what they are^ It is easy to foresee, that if different men of different sects should go about to give us a list of those innate practical principles, they would set down only such as suited their distinct hypotheses, and were fit to support the doctrines of their particular schools or churches ; a plain evidence that there are no such innate truths. Nay, a great part of men are so far from finding any such innate moral principles in themselves, that, by denying freedom to mankind, and thereby making men no other than bare machines, they take away not only innate, but all moral rules whatsoever, and leave not a possibility to believe any such, to those who cannot conceive
' To detect and to express in their philosopher from attaining a clear and
abstract generality and harmony the distinct understanding of the universe,
principles in which the universe, and in the full light of the reason according
thus the sciences, are harmonised, is to which it is constituted. Neverthe-
the ideal towards which philosophy is less human intellect remains resUess
perpetually struggling ; although in* in the isolation of the special sciences,
adequate capacity and experience notwithstanding their relative lucidity, now, perhaps for ever, hinder the
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8o Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. II. how an3^ing can be capable of a law that is not a free agent. ~**^ And upon that ground they must necessarily reject all prin- ciples of virtue, who cannot put morality and mechanism together, which are not very easy to be reconciled or made consistent^.
15. When I had written this, being informed that my Lord Herbert had, in his book De Veritate^y assigned these innate
Lord
Herbert's
innate
Principles principles, I presently consulted him, hoping to find in a man of so great parts, something that might satisfy me in this point, and put an end to my inquiry. In his chapter De Instifictu Naturali, p. 7a, ed. 1656, 1 met with these six marks of his NotituB Communes'. — J. Prioritas, 2. Independentia. 3. Universalitas, 4. Certitudo. 5. NecessitaSy i.e. as he ex- plains it, faciunt ad hominis conservaiionem. 6. Modus con- formationis, i. e. Assensus nulld interpositd mord. And at the latter end of his little treatise De Religione Laid, he says this of these innate principles : Adeo ut non uniuscujusvis religionis confinio arctentur qua ubique vigent veritates. Sunt enim in ipsd mente ccelitus descriptce, nullisque traditionibus^ sive scriptis^ sive non scriptis, obnoxia, p. 3. And Veritates nosirce catholicce^ quce tanquam indubia Dei emata in foro interiori descriptce. Thus, having given the marks' of the innate principles or
^ In thus distinguishing ' morality ' and ' mechanism* Locke recognises the inadequacy of a merely physical inter- pretation of morality, and leaves room for the supremacy of moral and spiri- tual reality over that reality which is only sensuous and physical.
■The Dt VtritaUi prout disHnguiiur a RevelahofUt a VerisimUiy a Possilnlif et a Falso of Lord Herbert of Cher- bury (1581-1648), appeared in 1634, at Paris and London. To the third edition (London, 1645) are annexed two tractates — Dt Ctutsis Errorunt and De Rtligiong Laid. The speculations of this remarkable thinker deserve the careful study of every critical reader of Locke's Essay, not only on account of this explicit reference to them, but as a significant phenomenon in the his- toiy of English philosophy. They had
before Locke attracted the attention of Descartes {(Euvns, ed. Par. viii. 138, 168), Gassendi (Op. iii. 411), and Culverwell in his L^hi o/Naturt. That Locke should have been thus ignorant of the 2># VeritaU shows his comparative indifference to books, and to the philosophical opinions of others. Lord Herbert tried to place English Deism on a philosophical basis, as the universal religion, amstituUd by iht ^innate prmcipUs* kin nuH/iofutl, which seemed to him to make external or miraculous revelation superfluous. Yet miracles might be a means of evoking and consolidating spiritual ideas and principles otherwise latent in man, even on Lord Herbert's hypo- thesis.
• The * universal consent,' of which Locke makes so much in this and the
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No Innate Practical Principles.
8i
common notions, and asserted their being imprinted on the Chap. li. minds of men by the hand of God, he proceeds to set them ""**" down, and they are these * : — i. Esse cUiquod supremum numen. 2. Numen illud colt debere, 3. Virtutem cum pietate con- junctam optimam esse rationem cult^s divinu 4. Resipiscendum ' esse d peccatis. 5. Dari prcemium vel pcmam post hanc vitam transcu:tam. Though I allow these to be clear truths, and
preceding chapter, is thus not the only, nor indeed the chief, test which Lord Herbert proposes for distinguishing truths ultimate and absolute from the contingent data of experience ; nor does he assume, regarding the former, that they are innate in the sense of being truths of which every human being is conscious at birth, or that they are then held otherwise than virtually. Leibniz made an advance here, in his proposed test of their existence, and his express recognition that they are at first, and may be always, only unconsciously held. Their test is with* him ihg mtelUdual necessity we find our- selves under to accept them as soon as they are perceived, and the intellectual im* possibility of supposing their contradic- tories. Thus, that two parallel straight lines cannot enclose a space is seen to be intellectually necessary ; the suppo- sition that they can enclose it is in> capable of being realised in thought, in the way that a suspension of the law of gravitation, or of any other natural law, m ight be conceived. And though this example may not have occurred in the conscious experience of some men, it can be shown, by analysis of what (x>nsciousness implies, to be in it virtually. ' Do all truths,* he asks, * depend upon induction and experi- ence, or are there not some which have another foundation ? The se/ises, although their data are needed for actual knowledge, are inadequate to account for all that knowledge implies ; for the senses can only give ex- amples, that is particular or individual truths. Nowthe examples which verify
VOL. I. <
an inductive generalisation, however numerous, cannot show that it is Mm- versidly necessary ; for we are not intel- lectually obliged to conceive that what has happened must always in like manner happen. . . . That day follows night is seen not to be a necessary or eternal truth, when we consider that the earth and sun themselves (on which this succession depends) have no necessary existence, and that a time may come when the whole solar system will cease to exist — ^at least, in its present form. . . . The original proof of truths of reason comes from the necessities of reason, while other truths are dependent on what we happen to observe. How great soever may be the number of observed in- stances of an inductive generalisation, we can never be absolutely certain of its universality, unless we discern its intellectual necessity. The senses may verify generalisations, but cannot de- monstrate their eternal and uncon- ditional certainty.* (See Nouveaux EssaiSf Avant-Propos.) But while the ^ innate ' (not in Locke's sense) prin- ciples of speculation are thus guarded by their perceived necessity, * innate * mom/ principles are those rather which only good men cannot reject.
' The five propositions which follow are ofiered by Lord Herbert, not as the result of an exhaustive analysis of the ' natural instincts,' or constituents of the Common Reason, but only as examples of those among them which constitute the catholic religion of mankind.
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82 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK I. Chap. II.
These five either not all, or more than all, if there are any.
The
supposed marks wanting.
Oflittie use if they were innate.
such as, if rightly explained, a rational creature can hardly avoid giving his assent to, yet I think he is far from proving them innate impressions in faro interiori descriptce. For I must take leave to observe : —
1 6. First, that these five propositions are either not all, or more than all, those common notions written on our minds by the finger of God ; if it were reasonable to believe any at all to be so written. Since there are other propositions which, even by his own rules, have as just a pretence to such an original, and may be as well admitted for innate principles, as at least some of these five he enumerates, viz. * Do as thou wouldst be done unto.' And perhaps some hundreds of others, when well considered.
17. Secondly, that all his marks are not to be found in each of his five propositions, viz. his first, second, and third marks agree perfectly to neither of them ; and the first, second, third, fourth, and sixth marks agree but ill to his third, fourth, and fifth propositions. For, besides that we are assured from history of many men, nay whole nations, who doubt or dis- believe some or all of them*, I cannot see how the third, viz. ' That virtue joined with piety is the best worship of God,' can be an innate principle, when the name or sound virttie^ is so hard to be understood ; liable to so much uncertainty in its signification ; and the thing it stands for so much contended about and difficult to be known ^ And therefore this cannot be but a very uncertain rule of human practice, and serve but very little to the conduct of our lives, and is therefore very unfit to be assigned as an innate practical principle.
18. For let us consider this proposition as to its meaning, (for it is the sense, and not sound, that is and must be the principle or common notion,) viz. * Virtue is the best worship of God,' i. e. is most acceptable to him ; which, if virtue be
^ As already remarked, Locke looks too much for express recognition, and overlooks indirect signs of the presence of unconscious or semi-conscious be- liefs. He is besides uncritically cre- dulous of reports, by travellers and others, even less critical than he was himself.
' This is his often repeated assump- tion,— that xnnsX^prmdpUs always pre- suppose innate ideas^ inasmuch as they must be otherwise propositions con- taining meaningless terms. He grants that amnecHons of ideas, after experi- ence has given the ideas, may be seen to be necessary.
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No Innate Practical Principles. 83
taken, as most commonly it is, for those actions which, booki. according to the different opinions of several countries, are p"'**~„ accounted laudable, will be a proposition so far from being certain, that it will not be true. If virtue be taken for actions conformable to God's will, or to the rule prescribed by God — which is the true and only measure of virtue [^when virtue is used to signify what is in its own nature right and good] — then this proposition, ' That virtue is the best worship of God,' will be most true and certain, but of very little use in human life : since it will amount to no more but this, viz. • That God is pleased with the doing of what he commands ' ; — which a man may certainly know to be true, without knowing what it is that God doth command ; and so be as far from any rule or principle of his actions as he was before. And I think very few will take a proposition which amounts to no more than this, viz, * That God is pleased with the doing of what he himself commands,' for an innate moral principle written on the minds of all men, (however true and certain it may be,) since it teaches so little^. Whosoever does so will have reason to think hundreds of propositions innate principles ; since there are many which have as good a title as this to be received for such, which nobody yet ever put into that rank of innate principles ^
19. Nor is the fourth proposition (viz. * Men must repent Scarce of their sins ') much more instructive, till what those actions §J^^t^God are that are meant by sins be set down. For the word should peccata^ or sins, being put, as it usually is, to signify in general principles ill actions that will draw punishment upon the doers, what ^".^^'"^^ great principle of morality can that be to tell us we should be ceruin sorry, and cease to do that which will bring mischief upon us; ™^*"'"8r. without knowing what those particular actions are that will do so ? Indeed this is a very true proposition, and fit to be
^ Added in second edition. * Because a philosopher seeks for
â– The ' emptiness ' of the ultimate, the most comprehensive categories of
and therefore highly abstract, princi- thought ; but not primarily for all the
pies which are called < innate ' is one conclusions that may be evolved from
of his objections to their being recog- them, or that are determined by them,
nised by a practical philosopher like as applied presuppositions in concrete
himsel£ They cannot, per sty inform inferences, the mind of anything that happens.
G 2
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84 Essay concerning Human Understanding. BOOK I. inculcated on and received by those who are supposed to have
Chap. II
been taught what actions in all kinds are sins : but neither this nor the former can be imagined to be innate principles ; nor to be of any use if they were innate, unless the particular measures and bounds of all virtues and vices were engraven in men's minds, and were innate principles also, which I think is very much to be doubted. And therefore, I ims^^e, it will scarcely seem possible that God should engrave principles in ipen's minds, in words of uncertain signification, such as virtues and sins^ which amongst different men stand for dif- ferent things : nay, it cannot be supposed to be in words at all, which, being in most of these principles very general, names, cannot be understood but by knowing the particulars comprehended under them. And in the practical instances, the measures must be taken from the knowledge of the actions themselves, and the rules of them, — abstracted from words, and antecedent to the knowledge of names ; which rules a man must know, what language soever he chance to learn, whether English or Japan, or if he should learn no language at all, or never should understand the use of words, as happens in the case of dumb and deaf men. When it shall be made out that men ignorant of words, or untaught by the laws and customs of their country, know that it is part of the worship of God, not to kill another man ; not to know more women than one ; not to procure abortion ; not to expose their children ; not to take from another what is his, though we want it our- selves, but on the contrary, relieve and supply his wants ; and whenever we have done the contrary we ought to repent, be sorry, and resolve to do so no more ; — ^when I say, all men shall be proved actually to know and allow all these and a thousand other such rules, all of which come under these two general words made use of above, viz. virtutes et peccata^ virtues and sins, there will be more reason for admitting these and the like, for common notions and practical principles. Yet, after all, universal consent (were there any in moral principles) to truths ^ the knowledge whereof may be attained
' All truths, whether intellectually in experience; and not antecedently to, necessary or (for us) contingent, are but in dependence on, the presentation reached by the exercise of our faculties of data in external or internal sense.
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No Innate Practical Principles. 85
otherwise, would scarce prove them to be innate ; which is all book i. I contend for. ^ ""**"
Chap II
ao. Nor will it be of much moment here to offer that very obectlon ready but not very material answer, viz. that the innate Innate principles of morality may, by education, and custom, and the ni^y b^^*^^ general opinion of those amongst wjiom we converse, be corrupted, darkened, and at last quite worn out of the minds of men. *" ^^ Which assertion of theirs, if true, quite takes away the argu- ment of universal consent, by which this opinion of innate principles is endeavoured to be proved; unless those men will think it reasonable that their private persuasions, or that of their party, should pass for universal consent ; — a thing not unfrequently done, when men, presuming themselves to be the only masters of right reason, cast by the votes and opinions of the rest of mankind as not worthy the reckoning. And then their argument stands thus : — * The principles which all man- kind allow for true, are innate ; those that men of right reason admit, are the principles allowed by all mankind ; we, and those of our mind, are men of reason ; therefore, we agreeing, our principles are innate ' ; — which is a very pretty way of arguing, and a short cut to infallibility. For otherwise it will be very hard to understand how there be some principles which all men do acknowledge and agree in ; and yet there are none of those principles which are not, by depraved custom and ill education, blotted out of the minds of many men : which is to say, that all men admit, but yet many men do deny and dissent from them. And indeed the supposition of stich first principles will serve us to very little purpose ; and we shall be as much at a loss with as without them, if they may, by any human power — ^such as the will of our teachers, or opinions of our companions — be altered or lost in us : and notwithstanding all this boast of first principles and innate light, we shall be as much in the dark and uncertainty as if there were no such thing at all : it being all one to have no rule, and one that will warp any way; or amongst various and contrary rules, not to know which is the right. But con- cerning innate principles, I desire these men to say, whether they can or cannot, by education and custom, be blurred and blotted out ; if they cannot, we must find them in all mankind
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86 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. II.
BOOK I. alike, and they must be clear in everybody; and if they may suffer variation from adventitious notions, we must then find them clearest and most perspicuous nearest the fountain, in children and illiterate people, who have received least impres- sion from foreign opinions. Let them take which side they please, they will certainly find it inconsistent with visible matter of fact and daily observation ^. Contrary 21. I easily grant that there are great numbers of opinions hi"the^^^ which, by men of different countries, educations, and tempers. World. are received and embraced as first and unquestionable prin- ciples ; many whereof, both for their absurdity as well as oppositions to one another, it is impossible should be true^. But yet all those propositions, how remote soever from reason, are so sacred somewhere or other, that men even of good understanding in other matters, will sooner part with their
^ This argument against ' innate principles for determining conduct' proceeds, like his previous arguments, upon Locke's interpretation of innate- ness, as involving actual realisation in the consciousness of each individual from birth. But a principle may be poten- tially innate^ and only evoked in the consciousness of the few who are highly educated, morally and intellec- tually. To awaken a response in indivi- duals to the principles on which human life reposes is the aim of the higher education. From Socrates onwards this has been recognised by teachers of religion and philosophy. These ' innate ' elements are not consciously apprehended by all; some of them are always dormant in some persons, or are acted on without a philosophical intelligence of their meaning. ' Chil- dren and illiterate people ' cannot have this intelligence. Moral principles may be vindicated on the ground that — operative in good men, though dor- mant in others — they ought not to be surrendered, unless they can be shown to contradict necessities of intellect. Note that Locke's point still is,->the time and way in which
the individual becomes aware of the abstract principles of morality; not whether the moral constitution of things be not such that, a/ the proper time^ and under the natural conditions, self-evident truths must shine forth in their self-evidence.
■It is granted even by Reid — an uncritical advocate of ' first principles ' — that it cannot ' without great want of charity ' be denied, that men who love truth may * differ about first prin- ciples.' He argues, however, that nature has not left us destitute of means whereby the candid and honest part of mankind may be brought to unanimity when they happen to differ about first principles. Those principles * which are really the dictates of com- mon sense, and directly opposed to absurdities of opinion, will always, /rom the constitution of human nature, support themselves, and gain rather than lose ground among mankind. There are certain ways of reasoning about them by which those that are just and solid may be confirmed, and those that are false may be detected.* Some of those < ways' Reid points out See Essays on Intellectual Powers, VL ch. iv.
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No Innate Practical Principles. 87
lives, and whatever is dearest to them, than suffer themselves book i. to doubt, or others to question, the truth of them. r^**~T
22. This, however strange it may seem, is that which every ^^^ ^^^* day's experience confirms ; and will not, perhaps, appear so commonly wonderful, if we consider the ways and steps by which it is ^^^ ^ brought about ; and how really it may come to pass, that Principles, doctrines that have been derived from no better original
than the superstition of a nurse, or the authority of an old woman, may, by length of time and consent of neighbours, grow up to the dignity of principles in religion or morality. For such, who are careful (as they call it) to principle children well, (and few there be who have not a set of those principles for them, which they believe in,) instil into the unwary, and as yet unprejudiced, understanding, (for white paper^ receives any characters,) those doctrines they would have them retain and profess. These being taught them as soon as they have any apprehension ; and still as they grow up confirmed to them, either by the open profession or tacit consent of all they have to do with ; or at least by those of whose wisdom, knowledge, and piety they have an opinion, who never suffer those propo- sitions to be otherwise mentioned but as the basis and founda- tion on which they build their religion and manners, come, by these means, to have the reputation of unquestionable, self- evident, and innate truths*.
23. To which we may add, that when men so instructed are Principles grown up, and reflect on their own minds, they cannot find ^^^^^ anything more ancient there than those opinions, which were *>«cause taught them before their memory began to keep a roister of remember their actions^ or date the time when any new thing appeared ^^^ ^® to them ; and therefore make no scruple to conclude, that hold them, those propositions of whose knowledge they can find in them- selves no original, were certainly the impress of God and nature
upon their minds, and not taught them by any one else. These
^ The tabula rasa metaphor. It is intellectual necessity. Note here once apt to suggest that we are merely pas- more the motive of Locke's attack on sive or receptive in the acquisition of innate principles — to explode preju- experience ; and that experience is dices, dispel empty phrases, and sub- simple, and therefore incapable of criti- stitute rational insight for hUnd depen- cal analysis. dence on authority.
But without ptrception of their
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88 Essay concerning Human Understanding, BOOK I they entertain and submit to, as many do to their parents
Chap. II.
with veneration ; not because it is natural ; nor do children do it where they are not so taught ; but because, having been always so educated, and having no remembrance of the begin- ning of this respect, they think it is natural. How such 24, This will appear very likely, and almost unavoidable to comeTo^ come to pass, if we consider the nature of mankind and the be held, constitution of human affairs ; wherein most men cannot live without employing their time in the daily labours of their callings ; nor be at quiet in their minds without some founda- tion or principle to rest their thoughts on^. There is scarcely any one so floating and superficial in his understanding, who hath not some reverenced propositions, which are to him the principles on which he bottoms his reasonings, and by which he judgeth of truth and falsehood, right and wrong ; which some, wanting skill and leisure, and others the inclina- tion, and some being taught that they ought not to examine, there are few to be found who are not exposed by their ignorance, laziness, education, or precipitancy, to take them upon trust Further ^5. This is evidently the case of all children and young explained, f^jj^ . ^^^ custom, a greater power than nature ^, seldom failing to make them worship for divine what she hath inured them to bow their minds and submit their understandings to, it is no wonder that grown men, either perplexed in the necessary affairs of life, or hot in the pursuit of pleasures, should not seriously sit down to examine their own tenets ; especially when one of their principles is, that principles ought not to be questioned'*. And had men leisure, parts, and will, who is there almost that dare shake the foundations of all his past thoughts and actions, and endure to bring upon himself the
* Th§ fdt need for something fixed the supreme (physical) cause in deter- and persistent on which to rest, in a mining our sense of the true, the continually changing and hazardous beautiful, and the good.
world, originated philosophy and sus* ' Note the antithesis here between
tains religion. premisses accepted blindly, and that
* Hume afterwardsy like the Greek criticism of premisses which his argu* sceptics, sought to resolve all judg- ment against innate ideas and principles ments about matters of fact into the was meant to encourage. Cf. Bk. IV. natural issue of custom^ thus making it ch. xx. § 9.
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No Innate Practical Principles. 89
shame of having been a long time wholly in mistake and book i. error? Who is there hardy enough to contend with the p^**~,, reproach which is everywhere prepared for those who dare venture to dissent from the received opinions of their country or party? And where is the man to be found that can patiently prepare himself to bear the name of whimsical, sceptical, or atheist ; which he is sure to meet with, who does in the least scruple any of the common opinions ? And he will be much more afraid to question those principles, when he shall think them, as most men do, the standards set up by God in his mind, to be the rule and touchstone of all other opinions. And what can hinder him from thinking them sacred, when he finds them the earliest of all his own thoughts, and the most reverenced by others ?
26, It is easy to imagine how, by these means, it comes to A worship pass that men worship the idols that have been set up in ^ * ° ^' their minds ^ ; grow fond of the notions they have been long acquainted with there ; and stamp the characters of divinity upon absurdities and errors ; become zealous votaries to bulls and monkeys, and contend too, fight, and die in defence of their opinions. Dum solos credit habendos esse deos, quos ipse colit. For, since the reasoning faculties of the soul, which are almost constantly, though not always warily nor wisely employed, would not know how to move, for want of a founda- tion and footing, in most men, who through laziness or avocation do not, or for want of time, or true helps, or for other causes, cannot penetrate into the principles of know- ledge, and trace truth to its fountain and original *, it is natural for them, and almost unavoidable, to take up with some
^ A reference to the idola of Bacon, go<is ; and we (so far) find the true
— those phantoms of the human mind, God in finding the genuine princi-
which we are apt to prefer to the pies of physical and moral experience,
' ideas of the divine mind ' that are and (so far) worship God by living in
expressed in the laws of nature. * Non harmony with them,
leve quiddam interest inter humanae ' That is to say, indolent persons,
mentis idola^ et divinae mentis ideas.' who live thus, cannot become philo*
Nov. Org, i. aph. 93. See relative notes sophers : the genuine principles of
in Dr. Fowler's edition. This is one reason remain for them latent They
of the few allusions to Bacon in the are thus ready to accept spurious ones
Essay, His idola^ as they are unreal in the form of their own prejudices, ideas and false principles, are false
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90 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK I. borrowed principles ; which being reputed and presumed to be ^ ** jj the evident proofs of other things, are thought not to need any other proof themselves. Whoever shall receive any of these into his mind, and entertain them there with the reve- rence usually paid to principles, never venturing to examine them, but accustoming himself to believe them, because they are to be believed, may take up, from his education and the fashions of his country, any absurdity for innate principles ; and by long poring on the same objects, so dim his sight as to take monsters lodged in his own brain for the images of the Deity, and the workmanship of his hands. Principles 27. By this progress, how many there are who arrive at examined. P^J^ciples which they believe innate may be easily observed, in the variety of opposite principles held and contended for by all sorts and degrees of men. And he that shall deny this to be the method wherein most men proceed to the assurance they have of the truth and evidence of their principles, will perhaps find it a hard matter any other way to account for the contrary tenets, which are firmly believed, confidently asserted, and which great numbers are ready at any time to seal with their blood. And, indeed, if it be the privilege of innate principles to be received upon their own authority, without examination ^, I know not what may not be believed, or how any one's principles can be questioned. If they may and ought to be examined and tried, I desire to know how first and innate principles can be tried ; or at least it is reasonable to demand the marks and characters whereby the genuine innate principles may be distinguished from others : that so, amidst the great variety of pretenders, I may be kept from mistakes in so material a point as this. When this is done, I shall be ready to embrace such welcome and useful propositions ; and till then I may with modesty doubt ; since I fear universal consent, which is the only one produced, will scarcely prove
> It is the ready reception of < cus- the difficulty and danger of mistake in
tomary * premisses, without criticism the process through which self-evident
of their claims in reason, which makes truth is realised in its self-evidence,
Locke pursue with so much moral while he overlooks the intellectual
intensity this otherwise tedious argu- necessity and universality of the pro*
ment. Accordingly, in this and the duct, when it has at last been reached,
seven preceding sections, he dwells on by dint of reflective energy.
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No Innate Practical Principles. 91
a sufficient mark to direct my choice, and assure me of any book i. innate principlea c"^*~ii
From what has been said, I think it past doubt, that there are no practical principles wherein all men agree ; and therefore none innate^.
' Although a conscious * universal Kant*s test of principles that are not
agreement ' is necessarily the test of mere generalisations from contingent
innateness, in Locke*s meaning ofMn- data, but derived to the mind from its
nate/ it is not the only, nor indeed own operation, — ^which he finds in
a possible, test of virtual innateness. our consciousness of their intellectual
Cf. Leibniz, and Reid, ut supra ; also necessity and universality.
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CHAPTER III.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING INNATE PRINCIPLES, BOTH SPECULATIVE AND PRACTICAL.
BOOK I.
Chap. HI.
Piindples not innate, unless their Ideas be innate.
Ideas,
especially
those
belonging
to
Principles,
not bom
with
Children.
I. Had those who would persuade us that there are innate principles not taken them together in gross, but considered separately the parts out of which those propositions are made, they would not, perhaps, have been so forward to believe they wci'e innate. Since, if the ideas which made up those truths were not, it was impossible that the propositions made up of them should be innate, or our knowledge of them be born with us. For, if the ideas be not innate, there was a time when the mind was-Vlthout those principles ; and then they will not be innate, but be derived from some other original. For, where the ideas themselves are not, there can be no knowledge, no assent, no mental or verbal propositions about them^.
a. If we will attentively consider new-bom children, we shall have little reason to think that they bring many ideas into the world with them. For, bating perhaps some faint ideas of hunger, and thirst, and warmth, and some pains, which they may have felt in the womb, there is not the least appear- ance of any settled ideas at all in them ; especially of ideas
^ Intelligible propositions, in short, presuppose intelligible terms. The world had been perplexed, he implies, by being asked to believe propositions in which the terms were void of meaning. Hence Locke's hostility to innate propositions, as inconsistent with genuine insight, and with the consciousness which he assumes to be essential to an ^idea.' But, as one of his earliest critics remarks, ' we call ideas innate, not because we are bom
with an actual notion of all the par- ticulars in our minds, but with a natural facility to know them, as soon as the things implied in the words that stand for them are presented to the under- standing ; and a natural and unavoid- able determination to judge them true, as soon as we know the things themselves, or the words by which they are signi- fied to others.* (Lee, Anti-Scepticism, Bk. I. ch. iv.)
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Other proofs against Innate Principles. 93
anszvering the terms which make up those universal propositions book i. thai are esteemed innate principles^. One may perceive how, *' by degrees, afterwards, ideas come into their minds ; and that they get no more, nor other, than what experience, and the observation of things that come in their way, furnish them with ; which might be enough to satisfy us that they are not original characters stamped on the mind.
3. * It is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to Impossi- be,' is certainly (if there be any such) an innate principle, idemity^ But can any one think, or will any one say, that ' impossibility * pot innate and 'identity' are two innate ideasl Are they such as all ' ^^' mankind have, and bring into the world with them ? And are they those which are the first in children, and antecedjspt to all acquired ones ? If they are innate, they must needs be so^. Hath a child an idea of impossibility and identity, before it has of white or black, sweet or bitter? And is it from the knowledge of this principle that it concludes, that wormwood rubbed on the nipple hath not the same taste that it used to receive from thence ? Is it the actual knowledge of impos- sibile est idem esse, et non esse^ that makes a child distinguish between its mother and a stranger ; or that makes it fond of the one and flee the other ? Or does the mind regulate itself and its assent by ideas that it never yet had ? Or the under- standing draw conclusions from principles which it never yet knew or understood? The names impossibility and identity stand for two ideas, so far from being innate, or born with us, that I think it requires great care and attention to form them right in our understandings. They are so far from being brought into the world with us, so remote from the thoughts of infancy and childhood, that I believe, upon examination it will be found that many grown men want them*.
^ Although * universal ' propositions Book continually overlooks this dis-
are a priori and ultimate in rerum tinction — especially in what follows.
naiura, they are not a priori in the " The human mind proceeds towards
time of their conscious apprehension. universal or ' first ' principles rather
Their apriority is not in time, but as than Jrom them, in gradually be-
conditions of the constitution of our coming conscious of the logical and
experience of what is real, and there- metaphysical conditions that in ordi-
fore of the nature of things. The ar- nary experience are unconsciously
gument which runs through the First presupposed as necessary.
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94 Essay concerning Human Understanding. BOOK I. 4. If identity (to instance that alone) be a native impression,
Chap. III.
not innate.
and consequently so clear and obvious to us that we must Identity" "^^^^^ know it even from our cradles, I would gladly be an Idea resolved by any one of seven, or seventy years old, whether a man, being a creature consisting of soul and body, be the same man when his body is changed? Whether Euphorbus and Pythagoras, having had the same soul, were the same men, though they lived several ages asunder^ ? Nay, whether the cock too, which had the same soul, were not the same with both of them ^ ? Whereby, perhaps, it will appear that our idea of sameness is not so settled and clear as to deserve to be thought innate in us. For if those innate ideas are not clear and distinct, so as to be universally known and naturally agreed on, they cannot be subjects of universal and undoubted truths, but will be the unavoidable occasion of perpetual uncertainty. For, I suppose every one's idea of identity will not be the same that Pythagoras and thousands of his followers have. And which then shall be true ? Which innate ? Or are there two different ideas of identity, both innate ? What 5. Nor let any one think that the questions I have here
^me man^ proposed about the identity of man are bare empty specula- tions ; which, if they were, would be enough to show, that there was in the understandings of men no innate idea of identity. He that shall with a little attention reflect on the resurrection, and consider that divine justice will 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 ; and will not be forward to think he, and every one, even children themselves, have naturally a clear idea of it ^
* The allusion is to the Pythagorean by the terms * uUptUfy' ^aame^ &c. Cf. teaching about the transmigration of Bk. II. ch. xxvii. See Bp. Butler's souls. Locke deals with the idea of Dissertathn on Personal Identity 'identity ' more fully under our com- (1736), and Perronet*s Vindicatwn plex ideas, Bk. II. ch. xxvii. (i738)> for a criticism and a defence of
' The reference is to Lucian*s satire Locke, whose idea of sameness in per- of the Pythagorean metempsychosis. sons has continued to be matter of
* Locke puzzled himself about the controversy since.
meaning which should be expressed
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Other proofs against Innate Principles. 95
6. Let us examine that principle of mathematics, viz. that book 1. the whole is bigger than a part. This, I take it, is reckoned "*^tt amongst innate principles. I am sure it has as good a title as whole and any to be thought so ; which yet nobody can think it to be, Part not when he considers [that] the ideas it comprehends in it, whole idcas^ and part^ are perfectly relative; but the positive ideas to
which they properly and immediately belong are extension and number, of which alone whole and part are relations. So that if whole and part are innate ideas, extension and number must be so too ; it being impossible to have an idea of a rela- tion, without having any at all of the thing to which it belongs, and in which it is founded. Now, whether the minds of men have naturally imprinted on them the ideas of extension and number, I leave to be considered by those who are the patrons of innate principles ^
7. That God is to be worshipped, is, without doubt, as great Idea of
a truth as any that can enter into the mind of man, and ^^^nTte. deserves the first place amongst all practical principles. But yet it can by no means be thought innate, unless the ideas of God and worship are innate. That the idea the term worship stands for is not in the understanding of children, and a cha- racter stamped on the mind in its first original, I think will be easily granted, by any one that considers how few there be amongst grown men who have a clear and distinct notion of it. And, I suppose, there cannot be anything more ridiculous than to say, that children have this practical principle innate, * That God is to be worshipped,' and yet that they know not what that worship of God is, which is their duty^ But to pass by this.
8. If any idea can be imagined innate, the idea o{ God msyy idea of of all others®, for many reasons, be thought so; since it is^®^"®*
innate.
' Locke would account, by means ' Lord Herbert assumed it to be
of sight and touch, for the rise in con- innate. We may be long uncon-
sciousness of the idea of ' extension ' scious of an idea which, when it does
in both of which senses concrete ex* rise into consciousness, is perceived
tensions are presented (Bk. II. ch. v) ; to be necessary and universal,
and for unity and ' number,' as modes * That the idea of God is to be
' suggested by every object of which regarded as innate might be main-
we can be conscious* (Bk. II. ch.vii.§ 7). tained on other grounds than those
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96 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK I. hard to conceive how there should be innate moral principles,
""^„ without an innate idea of a Deity. Without a notion of
' a law-maker, it is impossible to have a notion of a law, and an
obligation to observe it. Besides the atheists taken notice of
amongst the ancients ^ and left branded upon the records of
history, hath not navigation discovered, in these later ages,
conceived by Locke, and in another sense of innateness than his. It is easy to show, as he does in the sequel, that the idea is obscured in many minds, and that it takes many un- worthy forms. But if faith in God is virtually implied in the fundamental as- sumption of the constant supremacy of Order or Reason in the universe, to which man, as intelligent and re- sponsible, lesponds, — then the exist- ence of God is virtually, if uncon- sciously, assumed even in the faith in physical ofdsr or natural law, with the ideas and principles therein pre- supposed, on which all common life and science of nature depend — a &ith which is the basis of natural religion ; while faith in the ultimate supremacy of spiritual ordtr and moral purpose^ with their presupposed moral ideas, is the basis of spiritual or supernatural religion. Atheism is thus that nega- tion of reason, in the universe and in us, which logically should become the speechless scepticism with which Plato deals. The necessary presup- positions of physical science, and still more the necessary presuppositions of morality, are virtually presuppositions of God's existence, — as the immanent ever active Reason that is at once the beginning and the end of philo- sophy as well as of religion. This whole question about innate, in the sense of presupposed absolute, prin- ciples, thus becomes the religious question in its ultimate intellectual form. But this is not Locke's point of view. With him the existence of God i% a thesis to be proved; not a pre-
supposition, apart from which nothing else can be proved — the ultimate ground of any explanation of the phe- nomena of the universe into which we are bom, and of us who are bom into it.
For Locke's account of man's idea and knowledge of God, in addition to $^ 8-18 in this chapter, see Bk. IL ch. XV. §§ a, la ; xxiii. {§ ai, 33-36 ; Bk. IV. ch. x; also Letter to Collins, June 29, 1704, as to how far we can interpret the universe ultimately in terms of human consciousness.
' Locke is apt to accept without criticism the crude reports of travellers, who were often unable to interpret the languages of the nations they de- scribed, and thus, with an uncharac- teristic deference to authority, he main- tains that whole nations exist to whom the ideas of God and a future life are strange. Yet while, on this ground, he here denies the innateness of these ideas, he elsewhere seeks to show that God's existence is demonstrable — 'as certain as any conclusion in pure mathematics' (Bk. IV. ch. x). Moreover, he nowhere takes sufficient account of the very different degrees in which the complex idea of God is developed in different persons, and of the various phases assumed by this, the deepest and most comprehensive of all the presuppositions of our real experi- ence. To presuppose the rationality of experience, as all reasoning about reality must do, is to presuppose the immanent existence or presence of God.
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Other proofs against Innate Principles. 97
whole nations, at the bay of Soldania^ in Brazil ^ [*in Boran- book i. day,] and in the Caribbee islands, &c., amongst whom ** there was to be found no notion of a God, no religion? Nicholaus del Techo *, in Literis ex Paraquaria, de Caignarum Conversiane^ has these words: Reperi earn gentem nullum nomen habere quod Deum^ et hominis animam significet; nulla sacra habet, nulla tdola. [* These are instances of nations where uncultivated nature has been left to itself, without the help of letters and discipline, and the improvements of arts and sciences. But there are others to be found who have enjoyed these in a very great measure, who yet, for want of a due application of their thoughts this way, want the idea and knowledge of God. It will, I doubt not, be a surprise to others, as it was to me, to find the Siamites of this number. But for this, let them consult the King of France s late envoy thither •, who gives no better account of the Chinese them* selves. And ^ if we will not believe La Loub^re, the mission- aries of China, even the Jesuits themselves, the great encomiasts of the Chinese, do all to a man agree, and will convince us, that the sect of the liter arty or learned, keeping to the old religion of China, and the ruling party there, are all of them
1 Roe, in Thevenot's JReloHon de five years. He reports many par*
divers Voyages Curietvc. Sir Thomas ticulars of the customs of the savage
Roe, a distinguished diplomatist, was Indians, in his Letters from Paraguay,
King James's ambassador to the Great and as to the conversion of the Indians
Mogul in 1614-18. The report of his of that South American province. See
experience there appeared in 1665, as Churchill's ColUcHon^ vol. iv.
an appendix to the translation of Pie* * This and the next three sentences
tro della Valle's travels, and again in added in fourth edition. Locke again
Churchill's CoHecHon, He died in trusts too much to the statements of
1644. strangers imperfectly acquainted with
' Jo. de Lery, p. i6y who travelled the native languages, ignorant too of the
in Brazil in the end of the sixteenth sciences of comparative religion and
century, and wrote a history of that comparative philology, and thus apt to
country. misinterpret the imperfectly developed
' Added in fourth edition. Martini^re and inarticulate beliefs of savages.
}H ; Terry, Vcyage to the Mogul, ^ * La Loub^re, Du Royaunu de
and ^^; Ovington 4tf* (Ovington's Siam, tom. i. c. 9« $ 15; c. 90, §§ 4-
Voyetge to Surat in 1689.) aa ; c. aa, § 6, and c. ag. M. de la
< Nicholas de Techo, a Jesuit mis- Loub^re (1643-1 7a9) was the envoy
sionary, who wrote an account of of Louis XIV to Siam in 1687.
Paraguay and other countries in South ^ This and the next sentence added
America, where he lived for twenty* in Coste's French Version.
VOL. L
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98 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK I. Chap. III.
The name of God not universal or obscure in mean- ing.
atheists. Vid. Navarette^, in the Collection of Voyages, vol. i., and Historia Cultus Sinensium.'] And perhaps, if we should with attention mind the lives and discourses of people not so far off, we should have too much reason to fear, that many, in more civilized countries, have no very strong and clear im- pressions of a Deity upon their minds, and that the complaints of atheism made from the pulpit are not without reason. And though only some profligate wretches own it too barefacedly now ; yet perhaps we should hear more than we do of it from others, did not the fear of the magistrate's sword, or their neighbour's censure, tie up people's tongues ; which, were the apprehensions of punishment or shame taken away, would as openly proclaim their atheism as their lives do*.
9. But had all mankind everywhere a notion of a God, (whereof yet history tells us the contrary,) it would not from thence follow, that the idea of him was innate. For, though no nation were to be found without a name, and some few
' A Dominican friar, sent in 1646 by his order as a missionary to the Philip- pine Islands, and afterwards to China, where he spent more than twenty years in the service of Christianity. His learned account of the Chinese, in Spanish, appears in a translation in Churchill's ColltdioH.
' ' I think ' (Locke afterwards says, in his Third Letterto Stillingfleet, p. 447), *I think that the "universal consent" of mankind as to the being of a God amounts to thus much — that the vastly greater majority have, in all ages of the world, actually believed a God ; that the majority of the remaining part have not actually disbelieved it; and consequently those who have actually opposed the belief of a God have truly been very few. . . . This is all the universal consent which truth of matter of fact will allow, and therefore all that can be made use of to prove a God. . . . But a consent of every man, even to a man, in all ages and coun- tries, this would make it either no argument or an unnecessary one.
For, if anyone deny a God, such perfect universality of consent is destroyed ; and if nobody does deny a God, what need of arguments to convince atheists ? what need of arguments against a fault from which mankind are so wholly free ? If you say (as I doubt not but you will) that they have had atheists in the world, then your lordship's ^* uni- versal consent " reduces itself to only a great majority ; and I have not said one word that does in the least invali- date this argument for a God. The argument I was upon there was, to show that the idea of God was not innate; and to my purpose this suf- ficed— if there were but a less number found who had no idea of God than your lordship will allowthere have been of professed atheists ; far whatsoever is innate nmst be universal in the strictest sense; one exception is a sufficient proof against «/.'— This argument is good against the explicit, but not against the implicit innateness of the ideas of God and religion. — Locke elsewhere argues against toleration of atheists.
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Other proofs against Innate Principles. 99
dark notions of him ^, yet that would not prove them to be book i.
natural impressions on the mind; no more than the names of ^ ""^tt r ^ , , , , . , • Chap. III.
fire, or the sun, heat, or number, do prove the ideas they
stand for to be innate ; because the names of those things, and
the ideas of them, are so universally received and known
amongst mankind. Nor, on the contrary, is the want of such
a name, or the absence of such a notion out of men's minds,
any argument against the being of a God ; any more than it
would be a proof that there was no loadstone in the world,
because a great part of mankind had neither a notion of any
such thing nor a name for it ; or be any show of argument to
prove that there are no distinct and various species of angels,
or intelligent beings above us, because we have no ideas of
such distinct species, or names for them. For, men being
furnished with words, by the common language of their own
countries, can scarce avoid having some kind of ideas of those
things whose names those they converse with have occasion
frequently to mention to them. And if they carry with it the
notion of excellency, greatness, or something extraordinary;
if apprehension and concernment accompany it ; if the fear of
absolute and irresistible power set it on upon the mind, —
the idea is likely to sink the deeper, and spread the further ;
especially if it be such an idea as is agreeable to the common
light of reason^, and naturally deducible from every part of
our knowledge, as that of a God is. For the visible marks of
extraordinary wisdom and power appear so plainly in all the
works of the creation, that a rational creature, who will but
seriously reflect on them, cannot miss the discovery of a Deity.
And the influence that the discovery of such a Being must
necessarily have on the minds of all that have but once heard
of it is so great, and carries such a weight of thought and
communication with it, that it seems stranger to me that
^ For the origin and constitution of ence. It is the deistical idea, in short,
the complex idea of God, see Bk. II. * ' Common light of reason ' is else-
ch. xxiii. %% 33-35. The idea is found where * intuition ' (Bk. IV. ch. ii. $ i),
in very various stages of development, * natural revelation ' (Bk. IV. ch. xix.
and with Locke himself is external and § 4), and ' the candle of the Lord set
mechanical, excluding immanence in up by God Himself in men's minds '
the actuality of the world of experi- (ch. iii. 30).
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Chap. III.
lcx> Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK I. a whole nation of men should be anywhere found so brutish
as to want the notion of a God, than that they should be
without any notion of numbers, or fire ^.
Ideas of ^o* The name of God being once mentioned in any part of
God and the world, to express a superior, powerful, wise, invisible Beii^,
Fire. the suitableness of such a notion to the principles of common
reason, and the interest men will always have to mention it
often, must necessarily spread it far and wide ; and continue it
down to all generations : though yet the general reception of
this name, and some imperfect and unsteady notions conveyed
thereby to the unthinking part of mankind, prove not the idea
to be innate ; but only that they who made the discovery had
made a right use of their reason, thought maturely of the
causes of things, and traced them to their original ; from
whom other less considering people having once received so
important a notion, it could not easily be lost again K
Idea of II* This is all could be inferred from the notion of a God,
God not ^ere it to be found universally in all the tribes of mankind,
innate. , ,,,•,,« • . n
and generally acknowledged, by men grown to maturity m all countries. For the generality of the acknowledging of a God, as I imagine, is extended no further than that ; which, if it be sufficient to prove the idea of God innate, will as well prove the idea of fire innate ; since I think it may be truly said, that there is not a person in the world who has a notion of a God, who has not also the idea of fire. I doubt not but if a colony of young children should be placed in an island where no fire was, they would certainly neither have any notion of such
^ Here and elsewhere he speaks of ce qui en d^oule naturellement, ne
God as one object among many (fire, paralt guere s*doigner de mon sens sur
loadstone, &c.), rather than as unique, les v^rit^s inn^es.' (Nouv. Ess, Liv. I.
and incapable of being classed — the ch. iii.)
perfect ever-active Reason in which all * Although the full presence of the finite persons live and have their being, complex idea of Deity in individuals but in a way that is somehow consis- presupposes their spiritual activity, it tent vfith their individuality and moral may, when it does arise, show by its con- freedom. * Rien de plus beau,* says stitution that it cannot be analysed into Leibniz, in reference to this section, accidents of experience — that, on the 'et de plus a mon ^6^ que cette suite contrary, it was a sustaining, organising despens^es.* Butheadds—'Jedirais faith, necessarily latent in the experi- seulement ici que Tauteur, parlant des ence of those who were least conscious plus simples lumi&res de la raison qui of it—manifest in a degree even in s'accordent avec Tidde de Dieu, et de their habitual trust in natural order.
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Other proofs against Innate Principles. loi
a thing, nor name for it, how generally soever it were received book i. and known in all the world besides; and perhaps too their ""*^ apprehensions would be as far removed from any name, or notion, of a God\ till some one amongst them had employed his thoughts to inquire into the constitution and causes of things, which would easily lead him to the notion of a God ; which having once taught to others, reason, and the natural propensity of their own thoughts, would afterwards propagate, and continue amongst them ^.
12. Indeed it is ui^ed, that it is suitable to the goodness of Suiubie to God, to imprint upon the minds of men characters and notions g^^jness of himself, and not to leave them in the dark and doubt in so that ail
Men
grand a concernment ; and also, by that means, to secure to should himself the homage and veneration due from so intelligent a t**^^ *" creature as man ; and therefore he has done it ^ Him,
This argument, if it be of any force, will prove much more **»^refore than those who use it in this case expect from it. For, if we imprinted may conclude that God hath done for men all that men shall answered. judge is best for them, because it is suitable to his goodness so to do, it will prove, not only that God has imprinted on the minds of men an idea of himself, but that he hath plainly stamped there, in fair characters, all that men ought to know or believe of him ; all that they ought to do in obedience to
> But are the ideas of ' fire ' and founded on the ' common consent of
of * God,' or supreme active Reason, mankind,' — the cottsensus gentium as
when we do have them, alike, in being the vox naiuraty formulated in the
f>f/«//«fM<i/(yiM€«s5ary to the philosophic quod semper, quod uhique, quod ab
conception of the universe ? Are they omnibus, — cannot claim the weight
equally implied in the logic of natural which might be due to the inevitable
and moral experience ? Locke himself conscious conviction of every human
recognises the difference, in holding as being, children and adults, savages and
he does that the existence of God is as philosophers ; for in that case atheists
demonstrable as any conclusion in pure and agnostics would be impossible
mathematics, which the existence of phenomena, and arguments would be
fire is not. superseded. It can only claim the
' The idea appears in degrees of deference proper to convictions com-
development so various that the term monly experienced, in successive ages
* God ' suggests very different ideas in and various nations, to which Cicero
different ages and nations, as well as and the Fathers of the Church ap*
in individual minds in the same age or pealed ; and not even this if, as Reid
nation. puts it, * we could show some prejudice
' The argument for the existence, as universal as that consent is, which
if not for the complex idea, of God, might be the cause of it.'
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Chap. III.
loii Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK I. his will ; and that he hath given them a will and affections conformable to it. This, no doubt, every one will think better for men, than that they should, in the dark, grope after knowledge, as St. Paul tells us all nations did after God (Acts xvii. 27) ; than that their wills should clash with their understandings, and their appetites cross their duty. The Romanists say it is best for men, and so suitable to the good- ness of God, that there should be an infallible judge of con- troversies on earth ; and therefore there is one. And I, by the same reason, say it is better for men that every man himself should be infallible. I leave them to consider, whether, by the force of this argument, they shall think that every man is so. I think it a very good argument to say, — the infinitely wise God hath made it so ; and therefore it is best But it seems to me a little too much confidence of our own wisdom to say, — ' I think it best; and therefore God hath made it so.' And in the matter in hand, it will be in vain to argue from such a topic, that God hath done so, when certain experience shows us that he hath not^. But the goodness of God hath not been wanting to men, without such original impressions of knowledge or ideas stamped on the mind ; since he hath furnished man with those faculties* which will serve for the sufficient discovery of all things requisite to the end of such a being ; and I doubt not but to show, that a man, by the right use of his natural abilities ^ may, without any innate principles, attain a knowledge of a God, and other things that concern him. God having endued man with those faculties of knowledge which he hath^, was no more obliged by his goodness to plant those innate notions in his mind, than that, having given him reason, hands, and materials, he should build him bridges or houses, — which some people in the world, however of good parts, do either totally want, or are but ill provided of, as well as others are wholly without ideas of God and principles of morality, or at least have but very ill ones ; the reason in both cases being, that they never employed their
^ * Things are what they are, and innateness, although It does not take
are not other things; why therefore account of the necessary rational impli-
should we desire to be deceived T ' cates in the * natural Acuities,' mani-
* This so fiu* recognises potential fested when they oi>erate adequately.
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Other proofs against Innate Principles. 103
parts, faculties, and powers industriously that way, but con- BOOK i. tented themselves with the opinions, fashions, and thii^s of "**~„, their country, as they found them, without looking any further. Had you or I been born at the Bay of Soldania, possibly our thoughts and notions had not exceeded those brutish ones of the Hottentots that inhabit there. And had the Virginia king Apochancana been educated in England, he had been perhaps as knowing a divine, and as good a mathematician as any in it ; the difference between him and a more improved English- man lying barely in this, that the exercise of his faculties was bounded within the ways, modes, and notions of his own country, and never directed to any other or further in- quiries. And if he had not any idea of a God, it was only because he pursued not those thoughts that would have led him to it.
1 3- I grant that if there were any ideas to be found imprinted ideas of on the minds of men, we have reason to expect it should be various in the notion of his Maker, as a mark God set on his own work- different manship, to mind man of his dependence and duty ; and that herein should appear the first ^ instances of human knowledge. But how late is it before any such notion is discoverable in children ? And when we find it there, how much more does it resemble the opinion and notion of the teacher, than repre- sent the true God? He that shall observe in children the progress whereby their minds attain the knowledge they have, will think that the objects they do first and most familiarly converse with are those that make the first impressions on their understandings ; nor will he find the least footsteps of any other. It is easy to take notice how their thoughts enlarge themselves, only as they come to be acquainted with a greater variety of sensible objects ; to retain the ideas of them in their memories ; and to get the skill to compound and enlarge them, and several ways put them together. How, by these means, they come to frame in their minds an idea men have of a Deity, I shall hereafter show *.
> That is, 'first' in time; not the in the individual mind, or with no
apriority, in the very nature of experi- manifestation at all in some minds,
ence and of things, which consists ' See Bk. II. ch. xxiii* §§ 33-36;
with late and imperfect manifestation Bk. IV. ch. z.
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I04 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK I. 14. Can it be thought that the ideas men have of God are the ** characters and marks of himself, engraven in their minds by his Contrary ^^^^ fi^^r, when we see that, in the same country, under one and incon- and the same name, men have far different, nay often contrary fde^of and inconsistent ideas and conceptions of him? Their agreeing God under \^ ^ name, or sound, will scarce prove an innate notion of hinn.
the same __„ ,«i. ^-r^. «««
name. 1 5. What true or tolerable notion of a Deity could they
Gross have, who acknowledged and worshipped hundreds ? Every God? ° deity that they owned above one was an infallible evidence of their ignorance of Him, and a proof that they had no true notion of God, where unity, infinity, and eternity were ex- cluded. To which, if we add their gross conceptions of corpo- reity, expressed in their images and representations of their deities ; the amours, marriages, copulations, lusts, quarrels, and other mean qualities attributed by them to their gods ; we shall have little reason to think that the heathen world, i. e. the greatest part of mankind, had such ideas of God in their minds as he himself, out of care that they should not be mistaken about him, was author of. And this universality of consent, so much argued, if it prove any native impressions, it will be only this : — that God imprinted on the minds of all men speaking the same language, a name for himself, but not any idea ; since those people who agreed in the name, had, at the same time, far different apprehensions about the thing signified. If they say that the variety of deities worshipped by the heathen world were but figurative ways of expressing the several attributes of that incomprehensible Being, or several parts of his providence, I answer : what they might be in the original I will not here inquire ; but that they were so in the thoughts of the vulgar I think nobody will affirm. And he that will consult the voyage of the Bishop of Beryte^, c. 13, (not to mention other testimonies,) will find that the theology of the Siamites professedly owns a plurality of gods : or, as the Abb^ de Choisy more judiciously remarks in his Journal du Voyage de Siafn\ \^\^ it consists properly in acknowledging no God at all.
' The Bishop of Berytus*s land him. See Journal ties Savans, v. i. journey, through India, into Siam, p. 591. written by a priest who went with • ■In 1585-86.
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Other proofs against Innate Principles. 105
16. If it be said, that wise men of all nations came to have book i. tnie conceptions of the unity and infinity of the Deity, I grant "^^ ., it. But then this, . ^^'^^
First, excludes universality of consent in anything but the God not name; for those wise men being very few, perhaps one of^"5fough a thousand, this universality^ is very narrow. wise men
Secondly, it seems to me plainly to prove, that the truest nations and best notions men have of God^ were not imprinted, but come to acquired by thought and meditation, and a right use of their faculties * : since the wise and considerate men of the world, by a right and careful employment of their thoughts and reason, attained true notions in this as well as other things ; whilst the lazy and inconsiderate part of men, making far the greater number, took up their notions by chance, from common tradition and vulgar conceptions, without much beating their heads about them. And if it be a reason to think the notion of God innate, because all wise men had it, virtue too must be thought innate ; for that also wise men have always had.
17. This was evidently the case of all Gentilism. Nor hath Odd, low, even amongst Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, who acknow- fdeas^of"* ledged but one God, this doctrine, and the care taken in those God nations to teach men to have true notions of a God, prevailed among so far as to make men to have the same and the true ideas of "^'^• him. How many even amongst us, will be found upon in- quiry to fancy him in the shape of a man sitting in heaven ;
and to have many other absurd and unfit conceptions of him ? Christians as well as Turks have had whole sects owning and contending earnestly for it, — that the Deity was corporeal, and of human shape : and though we find few now amongst us who profess ^tms^lw^Anihropomorphites^ (though some I have met with that own it,) yet I believe he that will make it his business may find amongst the ignorant and uninstructed
' That is, patent or conscious, not he has here in view. It is the existence
latent or unconscious, universality. of a Supreme Mind that he elsewhere
The process of making patent may cost undertakes to ' demonstrate.' Bk. IV.
much reflective effort on the part of ch. x.
the individual theologian or philo- ' Lockers 'innate ideas' are sup-
sopher. posed by him to have been originally
' It is not the ' existence ' of God, ' imprinted * consciously in each man at
bat the notions men have of the sort of birth, and so not * acquired by the use
being that exists under that name, that of his faculties ' in experience.
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io6 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOKi, Christians many of that opinion. Talk but with country ^ *' -jj people, almost of any age, or young people almost of any condition, and you shall find that, though the name of God be frequently in their mouths, yet the notions they apply this name to are so odd, low, and pitiful, that nobody can imagine they were taught by a rational man ; much less that they were characters written by the finger of God himself. Nor do I see how it derogates more from the goodness of God, that he has given us minds unfurnished with these ideas of himself, than that he hath sent us into the world with bodies un- clothed ; and that there is no art or skill born with us. For, being fitted with faculties to attain these, it is want of industry and consideration in us, and not of bounty in him, if we have them not. It is as certain that there is a God, as that the opposite angles made by the intersection of two straight lines are equaP. There was never any rational creature that set himself sincerely to examine the truth of these propositions that could fail to assent to them ; though yet it be past doubt that there are many men, who,having not applied their thoughts that way, are ignorant both of the one and the other. If any one think fit to call this (which is the utmost of its extent) universal consent^ such an one I easily allow ' ; but such an universal consent as this proves not the idea of God, any more than it does the idea of such angles, innate. I! the Idea 1 8. Since then though the knowledge of a God be the MoPinnate ^^^^ natural discovery of human reason, yet the idea of him no other is not innate, as I think is evident from what has been said ; supposed I imagine there will be scarce any other idea found that innate. can pretend to it Since if God hath set any impression, any character, on the understanding of men, it is most reasonable to expect it should have been some clear and uniform idea of Himself; as far as our weak capacities were capable to receive so incomprehensible and infinite an object. But our minds being at first void of that idea which we are most concerned
* While he thus acknowledges the effort is inconsistent with his idea of
mathematical certainty to which we innateness.
may ultimately rise in our search after ' This is really a concession of God, he rejects innateness in the < innate principles ' and ' universal con- knowledge and idea, because it is only sent,' in the only meaning of ' innate- after effort that we rise to it, and this ness * which needs to be considered.
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Other proofs against Innate Principles. 107
to have, it is a strong presumption against all other innate book i. characters. I must own, as far as I can observe, I can find none, and would be glad to be informed by any other.
Chap. III.
19. I confess there is another idea which would be of idea of general use for mankind to have, as it is of general talk as if ^^ i^"*te. they had it; and that is the idea of substance \ which we neither have nor can have by sensation or reflection^. If nature took care to provide us any ideas, we might well expect they should be such as by our own faculties we cannot procure to ourselves; but we see, on the contrary, that since, by those ways whereby other ideas are brought into our minds, this is not, we have no such clear idea at all*; and therefore signify nothing by the word substance but only an uncertain supposition ' of we know not what, I e. of something whereof
^ See Bk. II. ch. xiii. %% 17-ao ; ch. xxiii. passiniy for Locke's account of our idea of substance, our ideas of particular substances, and how those ideas are formed.
' StiJlingfleet, assuming that Locke rested all certainty on ideas that are ' clear and distinct/ alleged that, in denying that we have a ' clear' idea of substance, he 'excludes the notion out of rational discourse,* — a charge, * which,' Locke replies, * concerns not me, for I lay not all foundation of certainty as to matters of faith upon clear and distinct ideas. ... Of sub- stance I do not say that we have any clear or distinct idea ; but barely that we take it to be something, we know not what.' ( Third Letter^ pp. 381, &c.) In fact we can have no positive idea of any substance abstracted from all its phenomena: in its perceived pheno- mena the substance is partially mani- fested, and we can say of it that it » so far what it is thus perceived to be.
' ' Uncertain ' may here mean a sup- position that, taken abstractly, is vague and obscure, although it is practically equivalent to the grammatical rule that an adjective presupposes a substan-
tive. * There are multitudes of things,' Stillingfleet objects, 'which we are not able to conceive, and yet it is not allowed us to suppose vrhvX we think fit upon that account' 'It does not therefore follow,' Locke answers, ' that we may not with certainty suppose or infer that which is an undeniable con- sequence of such inability to conceive, or repugnancy to our conceptions. . . . Your lordship grounds the idea of substance upon reasoHy or because it is a repugnancy to our just conceptions of things that modes or accidents should subsist by themselves ; and I conclude the same thing. What the difference of certainty is from a re- pugnancy to our conceptions, and from our not being able to conceive, I am not acute enough to discern.' ( Third Letter, pp. 375, &c. ; also First Letter, pp. 37, &c.) Locke offers no proof of this repugnancy ; nor can any proof of it be given, if it is a first principle. But he elsewhere 'agrees' with one of his correspon- dents, that 'the ideas of the modes and actions (i. e. phenomena) of sub* stances are usually in men's minds before the idea of substance itself.' {Letter to Samuel Bold, 15 May, 1699.)
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io8 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK I. we have no [* particular distinct positive] idea, which we take to be the substratum^ or support, of those ideas we
Chap. III.
No Pro- positions can be innate, since no Ideas are innate.
do know *.
20. Whatever then we talk of innate, either speculative or practical, principles, it noay with as much probability be said, that a man hath ;^ioo sterling in his pocket, and yet denied that he hath there either penny, shilling, crown, or other coin out of which the sum is to be made up ; as to think that certain propositiofis are innate when the ideas about which they are can by no means be supposed to be so ^ The general reception and assent that is given doth not at all prove, that the ideas expressed in them are innate ; for in many cases, however the ideas came there, the assent to words expressing the agree- ment or disagreement of such ideas, will necessarily follow. Every one that hath a true idea of God and worships will assent to this proposition, * That God is to be worshipped,' when expressed in a language he understands ; and every rational man that hath not thought on it to-day, may be ready to assent to this proposition to-morrow; and yet millions of men may be well supposed to want one or both
^ Added in fourth edition, to meet objections of StilUngfleet
' Regarded as a mere datum of sense, added to the other sense data which constitute the ' qualities* of a thing, * sub- stance ' would be a meaningless term ; and so ' by those ways whereby ideas are brought into our minds, this is not* But he acknowledges elsewhere that an ' obscure ' concept of substance (not an idea-image) is necessarily formed in the human mind. * I never said,' he tells Stillingfleet, * that (complex) ideas of relations, such as that of sub- stance, come in as simple ideas of sensation or reflection. I never denied that the mind could form for itself ideas of relation, and thai it is obliged to do so. ... I conclude there is substance, because we cannot conceive how qualities should subsist by then*- selves. . , , Sensible qualities cany the supposition of substance along with
them, but not intromitted by the senses with them. . . . By carrying with them a supposition, I mean that sensible qualities imply a substratum to exist in.' {Third Letter to Stillingfleet.) Substance, in short, is the concrete permanent in changing phenomena: these are correlatives, neither intelli- gible without the other, — which Locke seems to imply, though his language is inadequate. When he denies that we have an idea of substance, he use'^ idea for mental ifnage, and so in its anti-Platonic meaning.
' That is to say, all propositions presuppose terms. But there may be an innate intellectual obligation to per- ceive relations among those ideas that are themselves data of experience, e. g. to recognise necessary causal relation between sense-given sequences. Con- nection of ideas might be thus innate, although the connected ideas are not
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Other proofs against Innate Principles. 109
those ideas to-day. For, if we will allow savages, and most book i. country people, to have ideas of God and worship, (which con- —**" versation with them will not make one forward to believe,) yet I think few children can be supposed to have those ideas, which therefore they must begin to have some time or other ; and then they will also begin to assent to that proposition, and make very little question of it ever after. But such an assent upon hearing, no more proves the ideas to be innate, than it does that one bom blind (with cataracts which will be couched to-morrow) had the innate ideas of the sun, or light, or saffron, or yellow ; because, when his sight is cleared, he will certainly assent to this proposition, * That the sun is lucid, or that saffron is yellow.' And therefore, if such an assent upon hearing cannot prove the ideas innate, it can much less the propositions made up of those ideas \ If they have any innate ideas, I would be glad to be told what, and how many, they are.
[ai.* To which let me add : if there be any innate ideas, any No innate ideas in the mind which the mind does not actually think on, J^^** *° they must be lodged in the memory; and from thence must be Memory, brought into view by remembrance ; i. e. must be known, when they are remembered, to have been perceptions in the mind before; unless remembrance can be without remembrance. For, to remember is to perceive anything with memory, or with a consciousness that it was perceived or known before. Without this, whatever idea comes into the mind is new, and not remembered ; this consciousness of its having been in the mind before, being that which distinguishes remembering from all other ways of thinking. Whatever idea was ncMtr perceived by the mind was never in the mind. Whatever idea is in the mind, is, either an actual perception, or else, having been an actual perception, is so in the mind that, by the memory, it can be made an actual perception again ®. Whenever there is
^ This loses sight of the distinction tions concerning matters of fiict, ex-
between propositions which, after they cept the existence of God.
emerge in consciousness, are seen to ' This section was added in the
be eternally and absolutely, and those second edition.
that seem to be only temporarily and ' Here Locke grants that our ac-
conditionally true ; to which last cate- quired knowledge exists in a latent or
jg^ory Locke himself refers all proposi* unconscious state, during the intervals
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1 10 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK I. the actual perception of any idea without memory, the idea ~**^jj appears perfectly new and unknown before to the under- * standing. Whenever the memory brings any idea into actual view, it is with a consciousness that it had been there before, and was not wholly a stranger to the mind ^. Whether this be not so, I appeal to every one's observation. And then I desire an instance of an idea, pretended to be innate, which (before any impression of it by ways hereafter to be mentioned) any one could revive and remember, as an idea he had formerly known ; without which consciousness of a former perception there is no remembrance; and whatever tdeaxComes into the mind without that consciousness is not remembered, or comes not out of the memory, nor can be said to be in the mind before that appearance. For what is not either actually in view or in the memory, is in the mind no way at all, and is all one as if it had never been there ^. Suppose a child had the use of his eyes till he knows and distinguishes colours ; but then cataracts shut the windows, and he is forty or fifty years perfectly in the dark; and in that time perfectly loses all memory of the ideas of colours he once had. This was the case of a blind man I once talked with, who lost his sight by the small-pox when he was a child, and had no more notion of colours than one bom blind. I ask whether any one can say this man had then any ideas of colours in his mind, any more than one bom blind ? And I think nobody will say that either of them had in his mind any ideas of colours at all. His cataracts are couched, and then he has the ideas (which he remembers not) of colours, de novo^ by his restored sight, conveyed to his mind, and that without any consciousness of a former acquaintance. And these now he can revive and call to mind in the dark. In this case all these ideas of colours,
in which it is not actually and con- ^ This suggests Plato's theory, that
sciously present He gives no suffi- our knowledge of those truths which,
cient reason for confining latency to when awakened in us, are seen to be i^-
acquired knowledge, thus excluding /rZ/fK/Ma/ZyH^ocssary, is of the nature of
latent reason, and apriority in the remmiscence ; though unaccompanied
nature of things. Acquired ideas, he by the recognition of them as formerly
says, are either actual, i.e. conscious, ours of which we are conscious in
perceptions, or latent power of memory ordinary memory,
to re-perceive. ' This is a dogmatic assumption.
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Other proofs against Innate Principles. iii
which, when out of view, can be revived with a consciousness book i. of a former acquaintance, being thus in the memory, are said "^t, to be in the mind. The use I make of this is, — that whatever idea, being not actually in view, is in the mind, is there only by being in the memory ; and if it be not in the memory, it is not in the mind ; and if it be in the memory, it cannot by the memory be brought into actual view without a perception that it comes out of the memory ; which is this, that it had been known before, and is now remembered. If therefore there be any innate ideas, they must be in the memory, or else nowhere in the mind; and if they be in the memory, they can be revived without any impression from without; and whenever they are brought into the mind they are re- membered, i.e. they bring with them a perception of their not being wholly new to it. This being a constant and dis- tinguishing difference between what is, and what is not in the memory, or in the mind ;— that what is not in the memory, whenever it appears there, appears perfectly new and unknown before ; and what is in the memory, or in the mind, whenever it is suggested by the memory, appears not to be new, but the mind finds it in itself, and knows it was there before. By this it may be tried whether there be any innate ideas in the mind before impression from sensation or reflection. I would fain meet with the man who, when he came to the use of reason, or at any other time, remembered any of them; and to whom, after he was born, they were never new. If any one will say, there are ideas in the mind that are not in the memory, I desire him to explain himself, and make what he says intelligible^.]
aa. Besides what I have already said, there is another Principles reason why I doubt that neither these nor any other prin- because cTf ciples are innate. I that am fully persuaded that the in- i>"Je use finitely wise God made all things in perfect wisdom, cannot certainty, satisfy myself why he should be supposed to print upon the •
* What Locke had to disprove was 'wholly new/ while they are not recog*
the alleged fact, that there are ideas nised because formerly experienced,
and principles contained in knowledge as in memory, and are therefore to be
which are seen on reflection to be spoken of as 'reminiscences' only by
intellectually necessary to its consti- a metaphor, tution, and in this respect to be not
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112 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. III.
BOOK I. minds of men some universal principles ; whereof those that are pretended innate, and concern speculation^ are of no great use^ ; and those that concern practice, not self-evident* ; and neither of them distinguishable ^ from some other truths not allowed to be innate. For, to what purpose should characters be graven on the mind by the finger of God, which are not clearer there than those which are afterwards introduced, or cannot be distinguished from them ® ? If any one thinks there are such innate ideas and propositions, which by their clear* ness and usefulness are distinguishable from all that is adven* titious in the mind and acquired, it will not be a hard matter for him to tell us which they are^\ and then every one will be a fit judge whether they be so or no. Since if there be such innate ideas and impressions, plainly different from all other perceptions and knowledge, every one will find it true in himself. Of the evidence of these supposed innate maxims, I have spoken already : of their usefulness I shall have occasion to speak more hereafter ^.
Drfference of Men's Dis- coveries depends upon the different Applica- tion of
23. To conclude : some ideas forwardly offer themselves to all men's understanding ; and some sorts of truths result from any ideas, as soon as the mind puts them into propositions ^ : other truths require a train of ideas placed in order, a due comparing of them, and deductions made with attention, before they can be discovered and assented to''. Some of
^ Nature, as Leibniz remarks, has not uselessly given herself the trouble of impressing upon us innate prin- ciples; for without them there would be no means of arriving at actual know- ledge in demonstration, or at the reason of facts, and we should have only animal experiences. We build on those (innate) general maxims as we do on a suppressed premiss when we reason in enthymeme, when it is always true that the force of the conclusion is determined by the latent premiss. There is latent principle, too, in all reasoning about the future. Why should the future resemble the past f Not because it has. always done so ; this would involve the contradic-
tion that the future is already past, while of the future, as such, we can never have had any experience.
â– Incompletely evidenced, or merely probable, propositions are those with which human life is mainly concerned, according to Locke.
' On the criteria of the truths in question, see note 3, p. 80.
* It is the permanent task of philo- sophy to evolve them from the experi- ence in which they are implicitly con- tained, and thus to reach a distinct consciousness of them in their organic unity.
» Bk. IV. ch. vii.
* Self-evident truths.
^ It must never be forgotten that
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Other proofs against Innate Principles. 113
the first sort, because of their general and easy reception, have book i.
been mistaken for innate : but the truth is, ideas and notions ^ *"^„ . , , , • , , Chap. III.
are no more born with us than arts and saences; though ^^^
some of them indeed offer themselves to our faculties more Faculties.
readily than others ; and therefore are more generally received :
though that too be according as the organs of our bodies and
powers of our minds happen to be employed ; God having
fitted men with faculties and means to discover, receive, and
retain truths, according as they are employed. The great
difference that is to be found in the notions of mankind is,
from the different use they put their faculties to ^. Whilst some
(and those the most) taking things upon trust, misemploy
their power of assent, by lazily enslaving their minds to
the dictates and dominion of others, in doctrines which it
is their duty carefully to examine, and not blindly, with
an implicit faith, to swallow; others, employing their thoughts
only about some few things, grow acquainted sufficiently with
them, attain great degrees of knowledge in them, and are
ignorant of all other, having never let their thoughts loose
in the search of other inquiries ^. Thus, that the three angles
of a triangle are quite equal to two right ones is a truth
Lockers meUiod is chronological — the sort of innateness which neces*
i.e. the historical method — that from 9atAy\rxi'^\t!&c(mscumsn€S8ofiheinnaU
the outset he waives the transcendent — because it is apt to supersede the
questions that refer to Being, and exercise of our faculties. This the
the ultimate principles presupposed only innateness worth inquiring about
in mental operations — that he assumes has no such tendency, consciousness
without criticism the possibility of an of the ' innate ' elements in human
experience of what is real, and the knowledge depending upon the ac-
premisses which are necessary for tive exercise of the individual facul-
demonstrating the existence of God. ties ; and distinct recognition of them
It was by the counter assumption of in their universal or philosophic form
' innate ideas and principles ' — not depending too upon the exercise of
acquired in the methodical exercise our Afjg'^fr faculties, of our faculties, but so introduced con- ' In this sentence we find the moral
sciously into each mind at birth as to of the prolonged arg^ument of the First
be independent of the circumstances Book — to rouse men to active exercise
and experience of individuals — that, of their higher faculties and thus to
as it seemed to him, men had been withdraw them from the idolatrous
losing themselves 'in the ocean of service of assumptions indolently
Being,' instead of beginning tenta- taken upon trust, and engage them
tively at the other end, among the facta in the worship and service of the God
presented in experience. who is truth.
^ Locke dreads innateness— that is, VOL. I.
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114 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK I. as certain as anything can be, and I think more evident than ^ ** -J- many of those propositions that go for principles ; and yet ' there arc millions, however expert in other things, who know not this at all, because they never set their thoughts on work about such angles. And he that certainly knows this pro- position may yet be utterly ignorant of the truth of other propositions, in mathematics itself, which are as clear and evident as this ; because, in his search of those mathematical truths, he stopped his thoughts short and went not so far. The same may happen concerning the notions we have of the being of a Deity. For, though there be no truth which a man may more evidently make out to himself than the existence of a God, yet he that shall content himself with things as he finds them in this world, as they minister to his pleasures and passions, and not make inquiry a little further into their causes, ends, and admirable contrivances, and pursue the thoughts thereof with diligence and attention, may live long without any notion of such a Being. And if any person hath by talk put such a notion into his head, he may perhaps believe it ; but if he hath never examined it, his knowledge of it will be no perfecter than his, who having been told, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones, takes it upon trust, without examining the demonstration ; and may yield his assent as a probable opinion, but hath no knowledge of the truth of it ; which yet his faculties, if carefully employed, were able to make clear and evident to him. But this only, by the by, to show how much our knowledge depends upon the right use of those powers nature hath bestowed upon us^ and how little upon such innate principles as are in vain supposed to be in all mankind for their direction ; which all men could not but know if they were there, or else they would be there to no purpose. \} And which since all men do not know, nor can distinguish from other adventitious truths, we may well conclude there are no such.] Men must 34, What censure doubting thus of innate principles may
think and
' Added in second edition. Strictly the principles which afford the ulti*
interpreted, the words would imply mate explanation of individual &cts,
that the philosophical analysis of the is doomed to failure, constitution of knowledge, in quest of
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Other proof s against Innate Principles. 115
deserve from men, who will be apt to call it pulling up the book i. old foundations of knowledge and certainty ^, I cannot tell ; — ** I persuade myself at least that the way I have pursued, being jm^^ ^r conformable to truth, lays those foundations surer. This them- I am certain, I have not made it my business either to quit or follow any authority in the ensuing Discourse. Truth has been my only aim ; and wherever that has appeared to lead, my thoughts have impartially followed, without minding whether the footsteps of any other lay that way or not. Not that I want a due respect to other men's opinions ; but, after all, the greatest reverence is due to truth : and I hope it will not be thought arrogance to say, that perhaps we should make greater progress in the discovery of rational and con- templative knowledge, if we sought it in the fountain, in the consideration of things themselves \ and made use rather of our own thoughts than other men's to find it. For I think we may as rationally hope to see with other men's eyes, as to know by other men's understandings. So much as we our- selves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so much we possess of real and true knowledge. The floating of other men's opinions in our brains, makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true. What in them was science, is in us but opiniatrety ^ ; whilst we give up our assent only to reverend names, and do not, as they did, employ our own reason to understand those truths which gave them reputation. Aristotle was certainly a knowing man, but nobody ever thought him so because he blindly embraced, and confidently vented the opinions of another. And if the taking up of another's principles, without examining them, made not him a philosopher, I suppose it will hardly make anybody else so. In the sciences, every one has so much ad he really knows and comprehends. What he believes only, and takes upon trust, are but shreds ; which, however well ih the whole piece, make no considerable addition to his stock
* * The received maxims of all man- fill influence of custom and education.' kind, which used to be the touchstone (Lee, Anti-Sceptidsm.) by which to try truth, must, it seems, • * Opinionatrety,' i. e. obstinate ad- be tried themselves ; and in the mean- herence to opinion. Occasionally used time are to be reckoned purely arti- by Locke; also Brown, F«/^ar£rwf«r5> ficial, and wholly owing to the power- Bk. VI L ch. ix.
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Ii6 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK I. who gathers them. Such borrowed wealth, like fairy money, ^ ^^ J though It were gold in the hand from which he received it,
' will be but leaves and dust when it comes to use. Whence 25. When men have found some general propositions that oHnnate'" could not be doubtcd of as soon as understood, it was, I know, Principles, a short and easy way to conclude them innate ^. This being once received, it eased the lazy from the pains of search, and stopped the inquiry of the doubtful concerning all that was once styled innate^. And it was of no small advantage to those who affected to be masters and teachers, to make this the principle of principles, — that principles must not be questioned. For, having once established this tenet, — that there are innate principles, it put their followers upon a necessity of receiving some doctrines as such ; which was to take them off from the use of their own reason and judgment, and put them on believing and taking them upon trust without further examination: in which posture of blind credulity, they might be more easily governed by, and made useful to some sort of men, who had the skill and office to principle and guide them ^. Nor is it a small power it gives one man over another, to have the authority to be the dictator of principles, and teacher of unquestionable truths ; and to make a man swallow that for an innate principle which may serve to his purpose who teacheth them *. Whereas had they
' Self-evident principles, he means developed Common Reason. Cf. Con*
to say, were falsely assumed to be duct of Understanding^ % 41.
* innate,' or seen to be necessarily true * Hence Locke's hostility to them.
from birth by all men. He deprecates ' * Si le dessein de I'auteur est de
this uncritical assumption of them, conseiller qu'on cherche les preuves des
because it encourages laziness, and v^rit^s qui en peuvent recevoir sans
opens the door to innumerable preju- disting^er si elles sont inhees ou non,
dices, under the specious name of nous sommes enti^rement d'accord;
Annate principles.' He protests against et Topinion des v^rit^ inn^es, de la
the indolence which thus blindly re- manifere que je les prends, n'en doit
poses on the opinions of the com* ddtourner personnel (Leibniz, Nouv,
munity, and which grudges the private Essais,)
judgment by which each man is * This is another expression of the
detached from the community and moral purpose of Locke's warfare with
becomes himself. This development innateness of knowledge,— understood
of the individual, in isolation from the by him as knowledge got without
race, Locke exaggerates, making it an personal exertion, and without the
end in itself, instead of a means to the contact and suggestions of experience, higher end of an improved or more
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Other proof s against Innate Principles. 117
examined the ways whereby men came to the knowledge book i. of many universal truths, they would have found them to ""**" result in the minds of men from the being of things them- selves, when duly considered^; and that they were discovered by the application of those faculties that were fitted by nature to receive and judge of them, when duly employed about them.
a6. To show how the understanding proceeds herein is Con- the design of the following Discourse ; which I shall proceed '^^"^*^"- to when I have first premised, that hitherto, — to clear my way* to those foundations which I conceive are the only true ones, whereon to establish those notions we can have of our own knowledge, — it hath been necessary for me to give an account of the reasons I had to doubt of innate principles ^
^ Not abstract reasonings about Being considered a priori, — which is to begin at the wrong end, and to *■lose ourselves in the vast ocean ' of abstract ontology ; but beginning at the other end, aposterioriy among the phenomena presented in perception, sensuous and spiritual, in which concrete beings are manifested in part, and may be gradually interpreted, to the extent that is necessary for us, as men sen- suous and spiritual — this is the intel* lectual ideal of the Essay*
* The First Book is not part of Locke's positive explanation of Human Understanding. It does not appear in the abstract of the Essay published by Le Clerc. In this section he projects a transition from the deductive argu* ment with which he opens, to ' experi- ence and observation,' and an induc- tive interpretation of phenomena. But inductive interpretation involves un- conscious presuppositions as well as deductive ailment; and philosophy is the reflective organisation of the presuppositions of both, which are implied in all the phenomena of nature and spirit
* < In the First Book the author is very elaborate in the proof that there are no innate ideas, and consequently
propositions, which are compounded of ideas — in order to remove the rubbish which encumbered the founda- tion on which he intended to erect his new scheme of knowledge. AH which, I think, might have been saved, in the strict sense which he puts upon the word innate; for therein surely he has no adversary. For no one does, or at least can reasonably assert, that the minds of embryos, in the first moment after their creation or union to their organised bodies, are ready fur- nished with [conscious] ideas, or have any propositions or principles [con- sciously] implanted in them or stamped upon them ; that is an idle supposition. Such expressions are to be understood figuratively, to signify that the ideasonv their origin to the constitution of human nature^ as it stands necessarily related to other parts of the universe* (Lee, Anti- Sapticistftf Preface, p. z.) Lockers determination to purge the human mind of its idola — ^to have a tabula rasa from which to start on the march of modem enlightenment — pleads him in this First Book to attack what no one worth arguing with would care to defend ; while his recognition of self- evident ultimate truth is a concession to the principle of innateness, which,
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ii8 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK I. And since the arguments which are against them do, some of ""^^^ them, rise from common received opinions, I have been forced 'to take several things for granted ; which is hardly avoidable to any one, whose task is to show the falsehood or hnproba- bility of any tenet ; — it happening in controversial discourses as it does in assaulting of towns ; where, if the ground be but firm whereon the batteries are erected, there is no further inquiry of whom it is borrowed, nor whom it belongs to, so it affords but a fit rise for the present purpose. But in the future part of this Discourse, designing to raise an edifice uniform and consistent with itself, as far as my own expe- rience and observation will assist me, I hope to erect it on such a basis that I shall not need to shore it up with props and buttresses, leaning on borrowed or begged foundations: or at least, if mine prove a castle in the air, I will endeavour it shall be all of a piece and hang together. Wherein I warn the reader not to expect undeniable cogent demonstra- tions, unless I may be allowed the privilege, not seldom assumed by others, to take my principles for granted ^ ; and then, I doubt not, but I can demonstrate too. All that I shall say for the principles I proceed on is, that I can only appeal to men's own unprejudiced experience and observation* whether they be true or not ; and this is enough for a man who professes no more than to lay down candidly and freely his own conjectures, concerning a subject lying somewhat in the dark, without any other design than an unbiassed inquiry after truth.
if he had carried it out, might have ' Yet Cousin regards the whole £550^ brought him into harmony with its asagratuitoush3rpothesis,in which the philosophical advocates. &cts presented by the human under- ^ As little in the remaining, as in the standing are made to conform to a preceding part of this Discourse, can foregone theory or conclusion. Accord- he advance without presuppositions. ing to Green and others, it is a mass The trustworthiness and supremacy of of incoherent and mutually contra- active Reason in the universe, and dictory propositions ; but Locke in necessary implicates of Reason, are this paragraph designs that, even if consciously or unconsciously assumed. < a casUe in the air,' it should at least Only complete sceptics surrender all be ' an edifice uniform and consistent principles, and then they become with itself,' * all of a piece/ and that incapable of making any propositions. < hangs together.*
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BOOK II
OF IDEAS
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SYNOPSIS OF THE SECOND BOOK.
In the Second Book Locke offers what seems to him the true history of the ideas or phenomena in which the human understanding finds knowledge and probability, intending it to take the place of the ' established •pinion/ con- troverted in the First Book, — that we are conscious at birth of certain regulating ideas and principles, which are thus independent of criticism and verification by experience. That all the simple ideas or phenomena of existence, "with which the understanding of man can be concerned, are either, those presented in the five senses, which ]g/e refer to external things, or those presented in a reflex experience of our own mental operations, — is the counter thesis that is stated and illustrated in the first eleven chapters of the Second Book. That our most abstract ideas, how remote soever they may seem from data of sense or from operations of our own minds, are yet only such as our understanding frames to itself, by repeating, uniting, substantiating, and connecting ideas, received either from objects of sense or from its own operations about them, and thus by the active exercise of its faculties, is the theory of which chapters xii-xxviii contain the verification. It consists of ' a series of crucial instances,' intended to show that even in such complex ideas as those of space, time, infinity, sub' stance, power, identity, and mortdity, which seem most remote from the original phenomena of experience, the understanding ' stirs not one jot beyond ' those phenomena, by which, accordingly, our original ignorance of what exists is removed. The qualities of our simple and complex ideas, — as clear, distinct, adequate, and true, with their oppositea, are illustrated in chapters xxix-xxxii. The Book concludes in chapter xxxiii with examples of mental ' association,' as an influence that is apt to mar the quality of our ideas, making them unfit to determine either knowledge or probability.
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CHAPTER I.
OF IDEAS IN GENERAL, AND THEIR ORIGINAL.
I. Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks; bookii. and that which his mind is applied about whilst thinking being .
the ideas that are there ^, it is past doubt that men have in j ^^^ / ^^ their minds several ideas, — such as are those expressed by the Object of words whitmess^ hardness^ sweetness^ thinking^ motion^ man^ ^ "^' elephant^ army^ drunkenness^ and others : it is in the first place then to be inquired, Haw he comes by them f
I know it is a received doctrine, that men havfe native ideas, and original characters, stamped upon their minds in their very first being. This opinion I have at large examined already ; and, I suppose what I have said in the foregoing Book will be much more easily admitted, when I have shown whence the understanding may get all the ideas it has ; and by what ways and degrees they may come into the mind ; — for which I shall appeal to every one's own observation and experience.
a. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white All Ideas paper S void of all characters, without any ideas : — How comes sen^tion it to be furnished ? Whence comes it by that vast store or Reflcc- which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the
^ Cf. Introd. ( 8. It must be re- appear, and gradually multiply, in new membered that ' ideas,' as treated of combinations, in a human understand- in the Second Book, are not regarded ing 1
as cognitions (the subject reserved for * * White paper * might suggest that
the Fourth Book), but as phenomena we are originally void of ideas or
considered in abstraction from afi&rma- appearances of which there is com-
tion and denial, truth and falsehood, sdousness ; but not necessarily void of
as simple apprehensions in short. And latent capacities and their intelUctual
he h6re asks, in the ' historical plain implicates. He means by the metaphor
method,' under what conditions the that we are all bom ignorant of every
phenomena of real existence begin to thing.
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122 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. materials of reason and knowledge ^ ? To this I answer, in ""***" one word, from EXPERIENCE ^. In that all our knowledge is founded ; and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either, about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our under- standings with all the materials of thinking'. These two are the fountains * of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring. The 3. First, our Senses, conversant about particular sensible
Sensation objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions*
^ Assuming, then, that the human mind is at first ignorant of every- thing,— what, he asks, is the explana- tion of the state in which adult human understanding may now be found, with its often rich stores of varied and elaborated ideas ?
* * Experience.' The ambiguity of this term is a main source of the con- troversies which the Essay has occa- sioned. Locke did not see that innatmess (in a different meaning) and txperUnce are not contradictories, but are really two different wa3rs of re- garding the possessions of the under- standing. * Our attitude towards the philosophy of Experience must entirely depend upon the meaning we put into the term experience. . . . The point on which issue should be joined is, — the identification of Experience with mere sense. If we prove that this is not so, and that, on the contrary, mere sense is an abstraction, impossible in rerutn ftafum, Experientialism is at once shorn of all its supposed terrors.' (Seth, Scottish Philosophy, pp. 14a, 3.) What Locke argues for is, that, in respect of the Hme of its fnanifestation in the conscious life of each man, no know- ledge that he possesses can precede awakening of intellectual life into (at first dim and imperfect) exercise through impressions on the senses. He thus makes our adult understand-
ing of things the issue of the exercise of the faculties in 'experience'; but he does not get in sight of Kant's ques- tion, or try to disengage the elements of reason through which a scientific or intelligible experience is itself possible, — the problem of the next great critique of a human understanding of the uni- verse.
' But the * materials of thinking' presuppose, for their conversion into scientific experience, intellectual con- ditions, which conditions Locke either leaves in the background, or mixes up with the * materials,' L e. with those gradually accumulated data without which our notions would be empty, and our common terms meaningless.
* The exordium of knowledge, back to which the contents of all our concepts may be traced, and apart from which they would be empty ; not its origo, or the elements in the intellectual products that are found, after critical analysis of its logical constitution. Locke means by * origin,' * exordium,' which alone has relation to his < historical ' method. The acquired contents of our real knowledge, he goes on to show, must be either ideas of the qualities of matter, or ideas of the operations of mind.
' Here perception is virtually equiva- lent to idea — but regarded from the point of view of the apprehensive act, not of the phenomena apprehended.
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Our Ideas and their Origin. 123
of things, according to those various ways wherein those book ir. objects do affect them. And thus we come by those ideas we have oi yellow y whiter heaty coldy softy hardy bitter y sweety one Source and all those which we call sensible qualities ; which when o^ Weas. I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they from external ^ objects convey into the mind what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call sensation^.
4i Secondly, the other fountain from which experience The fumisheth the understanding with ideas is, — the perception of tions^f the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed our Minds,
, . , . , , . , . , 1 , the other
about the ideas it has got ; — which operations, when the soul source of comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding *^™- with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without. And such are perceptiatiy thinkingy daubtingy believing y reasoningy knowingy willingy and all the different actings of our own minds ; — which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source ^ of ideas every man has wholly in himself ; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense *. But as I call the other Sensation, so
For the three cognate meanings of or origo% The former alone is pro-
' perception ' in the Essay,, see ch. xxi. perly within the scope of the ' historical
§ 5, the second and third of these plain method ' of psychology : the
being those only which 'use aUows critical analysis which finds intellectual
us ' to attribute to the ' understanding.' necessities presupposed in the opera-
In its third meaning 'perception* plays tions of mind belongs to metaphy-
a great part in the Fourth Book. sical philosophy, to which Locke's
' * External objects/ i. e. extra- historical method is inadequate, if
organic objects. ' reflection ' is limited to contingent
' This is one of Locke's definitions ideas of * internal sense.' of sensation, which he here treats as * That Locke applies the term sense
incapable of analysis — passive impres- to ' perception of the operations of our
sion of extra-organic phenomena upon own mind,' seems to confine ' reflec-
the organism. Cf.$83; al80ch.xix. $i. tion' to empirical apprehension of
' These metaphorical terms, 'source,* mental states. But his use of this term
' fountain,' ' channel,' which he em- is not conclusive on the point. Reid
ploys here and elsewhere, are am- and Hamilton, along with many other
biguous. Is their equivalent exordium philosophers, call the a priori or
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124 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. I call this Reflection, the ideas it affords beii^ such only "â– **"â– as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself. By reflection then, in the following part of this dis- course, I would be understood to mean, that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them, by reason whereof there come to be ideas of these operations in the understanding^. These two, I say, viz. external material things, as the objects of SENSATION, and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of REFLECTION *, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their begin- nings. The term operations here I use in a large sense, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about its ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from them, such as is the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought. 'All our 5. The understanding seems to me not to have the least
of th€ o^ne glimmering of any ideas which it doth not receive from one or the of these two. External objects'^ furnish the mind with the these. ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different per- ceptions they produce in us; and the mind^ furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations ^.
These, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several modes, [* combinations, and relations,] we shall find to contain all our whole stock of ideas ; and that we have
Common Reason a sense — the *■Com- of the assumption. This is (so far)
mon Sense.' inquired into in Bk. IV. ch. ix. and xi.
* Whether refUdion should be inter- ' So Bacon — * Homo, naturae minis-
preted in the Elssay empirically or in- ter et interpres, tantum facit et intel-
tellectually, is a primary question for ligit quantum de naturae ordine re vel
the interpreter, since on the answer mente observaverit.' {Nov. Org. Lib. I.
depends whether it includes reflex Aph. i.) * The distinction intended by
consciousness of reason proper, with the re vel nunie^ says Dr. Fowler, * may be
judgments therein necessarily presup- either between the observation of
posed as conditions of our having facts and the subsequent process of
more in experience than the momen- reflection on such observation, or be-
tary data. The alternative was not tween external and internal percep-
contemplated by Locke. tion. According to either interpreta-
' He, here and throughout, presup- tion the passage will remind the reader
poses ' external material things * and of the main position in Locke's Essay^
*' our own minds,* as the causes of the to which it might well serve as a
phenomena (simple ideas) given in ex* motto.' (Fowler's Nov, Org, p. 188.)
temal and internal ' sense,' but without ^ 'and the compositions made out
metaphysical discussion of the reason of them *— in the first three editions.
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Our Ideas and their Origin. 125
nothing in our minds which did not come in one of these book ii. two ways. Let any one examine his own thoughts, and r^\ thoroughly search into his understanding ; and then let him tell me, whether all the original ideas he has there, are any other than of the objects^ of his senses, or of the operations of his mind, considered as objects of his reflection. And how great a mass of knowledge soever he imagines to be lodged there, he will, upon taking a strict view, see that he has not any idea in his mind but what one of these two have im- printed ; — though perhaps, with infinite variety compounded and enlarged by the understanding, as we shall see hereafter 2.
6. He that attentively considers the state of a child, at his observable first coming into the world, will have little reason to think Jj|^***^" him stored with plenty of ideas ', that are to be the matter of his future knowledge. It is by degrees he comes to be furnished with them. And though the ideas of obvious and familiar qualities imprint themselves before the memory begins to keep a register of time or order, yet it is often so late before some unusual qualities come in the way, that there are few men that cannot recollect the beginning of their acquaintance with them. And if it were worth while, no doubt a child might be so ordered as to have but a very few, even of the ordinary ideas, till he were grown up to a man. But all that are bom into the world, being surrounded with bodies that perpetually and diversely affect them, variety of ideas, whether care be taken of it or not, are imprinted on the minds of children. Light and colours are busy at hand everywhere, when the eye is but open ; sounds
1 Leibniz grants that ideas are it contains (implicitly) < ideas/ or what
^objects' — adding, 'pourvu que vous in intellect corresponds to things,
ajoutiez que c*est un objet imm^diat in- * See ch. xiii-xxviii. Does this limi-
terne, et que cet objet est une expres- tation of our ultimate sources of expe-
sion de la nature ou des quality des rience make the Essay an expression of
choses. Si Tid^e ^tait la forme de la the materialistic formula, — ' Every man
pens6e, elle naitrait et cesserait avec counts as an animal ; and no man can
les pens^es aciuelles qui y r^pondent ; count for more than an animcU* ?
mais en ^tant Tobjet, elle pourra £tre ' * Stored,' i. e. with phenomena
ant^rieure et post^rieure aux pens^es.' of which there is consciousness — ^not
(Nouv, Essais, Lib. IL L) TJie mmd, potentially * stored,' with conditions
according to Leibniz, is its own imme- necessarily presupposed in the consti-
diate internal object ; but only so far as tution of adult knowledge. *
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126 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK 11. and some tangible qualities fail not to solicit their proper
""**" senses, and force an entrance to the mind ; — but yet, I think,
it will be granted easily, that if a child were kept in a place
where he never saw any other but black and white till he
were a man, he would have no more ideas of scarlet or green,
than he that from his childhood never tasted an oyster, or
a pine-apple, has of those particular relishes.
Men are 7. Men then come to be furnished with fewer or more
forn^^e/ simple ideas from without, according as the objects they
with these, converse with afford greater or less variety; and from the
to the operations of their minds within, according as they more
owerts' or less reflect on them. For, though he that contemplates
they con- the operations of his mind, cannot but have plain and clear
verse with. J jgj^ of them; yet, unless he turn his thoughts that way,
and considers them attentively^ he will no more have clear
and distinct ideas of all the operations of his mind, and all
that may be observed therein, than he will have all the
particular ideas of any landscape, or of the parts and motions
of a clock, who will not turn his. eyes to it, and with attention
heed all the parts of it. The picture, or clock may be so
placed, that they may come in his way every day ; but yet
he will have but a confused idea of all the parts they are
made up of, till he applies himself with attention, to consider
them each in particular ^
Ideas of 8. And hence we see the reason why it is pretty late before
iatCT^^'*°° most children get ideas of the operations of their own minds ;
because and some have not any very clear or perfect ideas of the
Attention, greatest part of them all their lives. Because, though they
pass there continually, yet, like floating visions, they make
not deep impressions enough to leave in their mind clear,
distinct, lasting ideas, till the understanding turns inward
upon itself, reflects on its own operations, and makes them
the objects of its own contemplation. Children [*when they
^ This may be inteq>reted consis- ' In first edition — 'at their first
tently with the fact that, ideas and coming into the world seek particu-
principles presupposed in mind and larly after nothing but what may ease
in real experience need intellectual their hunger or other pain, but take
effort to awaken them into conscious- all other objects as they come ; ar^
ness. Ifso, it is not necessarily mere generally pleased with all new ones
empiricism. that are not painful ; '
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Our Ideas and their Origin.
127
Chap. I.
come first into it, are surrounded with a world of new things, book 11. which, by a constant solicitation of their senses, draw the mind constantly to them ; forward to take notice of new, and apt to be delighted with the variety of changing objects. Thus the first years are usually employed and diverted in looking abroad. Men's business in them is to acquaint them- selves with what is to be found without ;] and so growing up in a constant attention to outward sensations, seldom make any considerable reflection ^ on what passes within them, till they come to be of riper years ; and some scarce ever at all.
9. To ask, at what time a man has first any ideas, is to ask. The Soul when he begins to perceive ; — having ideas^ and perception, have^ldeas being the same thing *. I know it is an opinion, that the soul when it always thinks, and that it has the actual perception of ideas perceive?
* * This reflection ought to be distin- tinguished from consciousness, with which it is too often confounded, even by Mr. Locke. All men are conscious of the operations of their own minds at all times while they are awake ; but there are few who reflect upon them, or make them objects of thought' (Reid, ItiM, Powers, I. v.)
' The ailment against constant 'thinking/ or constant consciousness in the human soul, * as long as it exists,' elaborated in this and the ten follow- ing sections, looks like a digression, interpolated without reason in the exposition of Locke's thesis — that all our original ideas are phenomena of sensation and reflection. It is really meant to clear the ground. An * in- nate idea,* according to Locke, is an idea of which the soul is conscious before the organs of sense have given rise to the normal conscious life within which the sphere of memory lies. But if an abnormal consciousness, divorced from memory, occurs in sleep, and other intervals of the normal life, this affords an analogy in support of a similar state of the soul antecedent to
any presentation of data of experience, and to all acquired knowledge. To show that there is no ground for the conclusion that the soul is conscious during sleep, when divorced from memory and the normal life of the man, is to deprive the advocate of innateness (in Locke's sense of innate) of the support of an analogy. If during later /^ the soul cannot have ideas, or be con- scious, out of connection with memory, the supposed fact of a forgotten con- sciousness in sleep cannot be pleaded in support of its having been conscious, alike out of connection with memory and with the man, a/ or before birtli, Locke fears that, ' if the soul should think whibt the organs of the external senses cease from exercise, it should steal some ideas which it had not got in his honest v^y of sensation [and reflection] only.' (Lee,Anti-Scepticism, p. 44.) This discussion about the con- tinuity of consciousness, in §§ 9-19) might have found its place in the First Book, to which the subject of potential, as distinguished from actual, intelli- gence is cognate.
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128 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK 11. in Itself constantly, as long as it exists ; and that actual
-, *' J thinking is as inseparable from the soul as actual extension is
from the body ^ ; which if true, to inquire after the beginning
of a man's ideas is the same as to inquire after the beginning
of his soul. For, by this account, soul and its ideas, as body
and its extension, will begin to exist both at the same time.
The Soul ^o. But whether the soul be supposed to exist antecedent
thinks not ^q q^ coeval with, or some time after the first rudiments of
always ;
for this organization, or the beginnings of life in the body, I leave to Pro<^ be disputed by those who have better thought of that matter^. I confess myself to have one of those dull souls, that doth not perceive itself always to contemplate ideas ; nor can con- ceive it any more necessary for the soul always to think, than for the body always to move : the perception of ideas being (as I conceive) to the soul, what motion is to the body ; not its essence, but one of its operations. And therefore, though thinking be supposed never so much the proper action of the soul, yet it is not necessary to suppose that it should be always thinking, always in action. That, perhaps, is the privilege of the infinite Author and Preserver of all things, who 'never slumbers nor sleeps'; but is not competent to any finite being, at least not to the soul of man. We know certainly, by experience, that we sometimes think ; and thence draw this infallible consequence, — that there is something in us that has a power to think. But whether that substance perpetually thinks or no, we can be no further assured than experience informs us. For, to say that actual thinking is
■The Cartesians are here imme- be an essential attribute of spirit, and diately in view, with their a priori assume that this can be said only of maxim as to the essence of the soul, 'thinking,' or being conscious, according to which its very existence * Locke confines his regard to • soul * consists in actual cottsciousness, so that, as manifested in the present life. He if consciousness were interrupted, it distrusts metaphysical inferences as to would necessarily cease to exist. The its existence prior to the birth of the inquiry which Locke here undertakes body. Afterwards, on ground of super- had been pursued apart from experi- natural revelation, he expresses faith ence; at least, not by an appeal to facts. in its existence <i/%fr the dissolution The Cartesians justified their position of this body— questions these which by arguing that that without which we concern metaphysical or theological can have no notion, and with which we philosophy, not scientific psycho-- have a distinct notion, of spirit, must logy.
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Our Ideas and their Origin. 129
essential to the soul, and inseparable from it, is to beg what book ii. is in question, and not to prove it by reason ;-— which is ^"^*~j necessary to be done, if it be not a self-evident proposition ^. ^ut whether this, *That the soul always thinks,' be a self- evident proposition, that everybody assents to at first hearing, I appeal to mankind. [It^ is doubted whether I thought at all last night or no. The question being about a matter of fact, it is begging it to bring, as a proof for it, an hypothesis, which is the very thing in dispute : by which way one may prove anything, and it is but supposing that all watches, whilst the balance beats, think, and it is sufficiently proved, and past doubt, that my watch thought all last night. But he that would not deceive himself, ought to build his hypo- thesis on matter of fact, and make it out by sensible ex- perience, and not presume on matter of fact, because of his hypothesis, that is, because he supposes it to be so ; which way of proving amounts to this, that I must necessarily think all last night, because another supposes I always think, though I myself cannot perceive that I always do so.
But men in love with their opinions may not only suppose what is in question, but allege wrong matter of fact. How else could any one make it an inference of mine^ that a thing is not, because we are not sensible of it in our sleep ? I do. not say there is no soul in a man, because he is not sensible of it in his sleep ; but I do say, he cannot think at any time^ waking or sleeping, without being sensible of it. Our being sensible of it is not necessary to anything but to our thoughts; and to them it is ; and to them it always will be necessary, till we can think without being conscious of it \'\
* Another recognition of' self-evident nature of things, explaining our experi-
propositions/ while all intellectual in* ence of things — all this seems impos-
nateness is argued against. sible to Locke. Yet, as Leibniz says,
^ The remainder of this section this is the knot of the main question of
(within brackets) was added in the the Essay — ' le noeud de Taffaire.* It is
second edition. solved, he would say, by the hypothesis,
' That there may be ideas without any that the individual mind and the
consciousness of them — that thoughts universe of experience necessarily
of which the individual is unconscious contain more thought than there can
may influence the individual — that be a proper consciousness of, simul*
principles may exist potentially, in the taneously, or even in succession, ia
VOL. I. K
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I30 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. I.
It is not always conscious of it.
BOOK II. II. I grant that the soul, in a waking man, is never without thought, because it is the condition of being awake. But whether sleeping without dreaming be not an affection of the whole man, mind as well as body, may be worth a waking man's consideration ; it being hard to conceive that anything should think and not be conscious of it. If the soul doth think in a sleeping man without being conscious of it, I ask whether, during such thinking, it has any pleasure or pain, or be capable of happiness or misery ? I am sure the man is not ; no more than the bed or earth he lies on. For to be happy or miserable vdthout beng conscious of it, seems to me utterly inconsistent and impossible. Or if it be possible that the sotd czn, whilst the body is sleeping, have its thinking, enjoyments, and concerns, its pleasures or pain, apart, which the man is not conscious of nor partakes in ^, — it is certain that Socrates asleep and Socrates awake is not the same person ; but his soul when he sleeps, and Socrates the man, consisting of body and soul, when he is waking, are two persons: since waking Socrates has no knowledge of, or concernment for that happiness or misery of his soul, which it enjoys alone by itself whilst he sleeps, without perceiving anything of it ; no more than he has for the happiness or misery of a man in the Indies, whom he knows not. For, if we take wholly away all consciousness of our actions and sensations, especially of pleasure and pain, and the concern- ment that accompanies it, it will be hard to know wherein to place personal identity ^
that mind. The latent stores of memory illustrate this, as even Locke acknow- ledges, ch. X. §§ a, 7, 8, where he speaks of 'dormant* ideas. Leibniz goes further, when he adds — ' il reste quelquc chose de toutea nos pens^es pass^es, et aucune n*en saurait jamais 6trc effac^e enti^rement.' But while he argues that no past ideas of which we have been conscious can ever be en- tirely effaced, he allows that most of them must be latent, while the rest are consciously held. That we have ideas of which we are unconscious, is the
principal argument against Locke in Norris's Cursory RtJUcHons upon the Essay f published in 1690, a few months' after the Essay appeared.
^ This does not apply to potential thought, with its necessary implicates, into which actual consciousness does not enter — the perception as distin- guished from the apperception of Leibniz — which may be the condition of the ' soul,' and the whole < man * in a deep sleep.
* Cf. ch. xxvii. Locke holds that consciousness amsiituUs personal iden-
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Our Ideas and their Origin. 131
12. The soul, during sound sleep, thinks, say these men. BOOKir. Whilst it thinks and perceives, it is capable certainly of those ""^^^ of delight or trouble, as well as any other perceptions ; and j^ j * ] it must necessarily be conscious of its own perceptions. But ing Man it has all this apart : the sleeping man ^, it is plain, is without conscious of nothing of all this. Let us suppose, then, the knowing soul of Castor, while he is sleeping, retired from his body ; sleeping which is no impossible supposition for the men I have here *°1.
waking
to do with, who so liberally allow life, without a thinking soul, Man are to all other animals^. These men cannot then judge it ^^^^s impossible, or a contradiction, that the body should live without the soul ; nor that the soul should subsist and think, or have perception, even perception of happiness or misery, without the body. Let us then, I say, suppose the soul of Castor separated during his sleep from his body, to think apart. Let us suppose, too, that it chooses for its scene of thinking the body of another man, v. g. Pollux, who is sleeping without a soul. For, if Castor's soul can think, whilst Castor is asleep, what Castor is never conscious of, it is no matter what place it chooses to think in. We have here, then, the bodies of two men with only one soul between them, which we will suppose to sleep and wake by turns ; and the soul still thinking in the waking man, whereof the sleeping man is never conscious, has never the
tity, which he has to reconcile with presupposes.' {Essay on Personal
his argument here, that continuous Identity.)
personality is consistent with intervals ^ The 'man' means the soul in union
of unconsciousness—in sleep, &c. But with the body; *so\i\,* per se, means
BuUer objects, as against Locke, that the source of consciousness as it exists
* though consciousness of what is past when the organs of external sense are
does ascertain our personal identity to dormant. Locke's assumption, — that
ourselves, yet to say that it makes either the soul or the man ' must
personal identity, or is necessary to necessarily be conscious of the percep«
our being the same persons, is to say tions,' is not self-evident, any more
that a person has not existed a single than the Cartesian supposition, — ^that if
moment, nor done one action, but what consciousness is interrupted, there
he can remember. And we should must either be no soul during the in-
really think it self-evident, that con- termption, or else the soul of man
sciousness of personal identity pre- is only a special JuncHon of the human
supposes, and therefore cannot consti- body^ which disappears when the ap-
tute, personal identity, any more than propriate organs cease from exercise,
knowledge in any other case can con- ' According to the Cartesians ani-
stitute the truth [reality] which it mals are unconscious automatons.
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132 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. least perception. I ask, then, whether Castor and Pollux, ■■"**^ thus with only one soul between them, which thinks and perceives in one what the other is never conscious of, nor is concerned for, are not two as distinct persons as Castor and Hercules, or as Socrates and Plato were? And whether one of them might not be very happy, and the other very miserable ? ^ Just by the same reason, they make the soul and the man two persons, who make the soul think apart what the man is not conscious of For, I suppose nobody will make identity of persons to consist in the soul's being united to the very same numerical particles of matter. For if that be necessary to identity, it will be impossible, in that con- stant flux of the particles of our bodies, that any man should be the same person two days, or two moments, together. Impossible 1 3. Thus, methinks, every drowsy nod shakes their doctrine, v?nce"hose ^^^ teach that the soul is always thinking. Those, at least, that sleep who do at any time sleep without dreaming^ can never be dreandng, Convinced that their thoughts are sometimes for four hours that they bygy without their knowing of it; and if they are taken in the very act, waked in the middle of that sleeping con- templation, can give no manner of account of it. That Men 14. It Will perhaps be said, — That the soul thinks even without ^^ ^^ soundest sleep, but the memory retains it not ^. That remember- the soul in a sleeping man should be this moment busy a vafn urged, thinking, and the next moment in a waking man not re- member nor be able to recollect one jot of all those thoughts, is very hard to be conceived, and would need some better proof than bare assertion ^ to make it be believed. For who
^ This whimsical illustration implies Ume, He now meets the objection, that
that the source of consciousness in we may have been conscious in sleep,
man is a substance that is capable of but so slightly, or so rapidly, that when
acting apart from his body ; and even we awake we lose all memory of the
of occupying the body of another man ; consciousness.
which one might say it can no more ' The phenomena of somnambulism
be or do than one man can be actually have since been adduced, as evidence
conscious of the successive thoughts of the existence of intellectual activities
and feelings of another man. wholly forgotten by the agent. The
^ Locke's first argument for inter- facts that persons suddenly awakened
rupted consciousness was, — that we find themselves in a dream ; also that
cannot feel or think during sleep dreams are often remembered only for
without being conscious of it at the a brief interval after awaking, and are
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133
Chap. I.
can without any more ado, but being barely told so, imagine book it. that the greatest part of men do, during all their lives, for several hours every day, think of something, which if they were asked, even in the middle of these thoughts, they could remember nothing at all of? Most men, I think, pass a great part of their sleep without dreaming ^. I once knew a man that was bred a scholar, and had no bad memory, who told me he had never dreamed in his life, till he had that fever he was then newly recovered of, which was about the five or six and twentieth year of his age. I suppose the world affords more such instances : at least every one's acquaintance will furnish him with examples enough of such as pass most of their nights without dreaming ^
then irrecoverably lost, are offered as evide'nce of the abnormal action of memory during sleep. For experi- mental reasons for concluding, that the mind has been then and otherwise con- scious of activities afterwards wholly lost, see Jouffroy, Melanges PhUos, — Du Sommeil ; Hamilton's Lectures on Metaph, xvii. But if remembered dreams occur only during the semi-conscious periods of falling asleep and of awaking, these experiments do not warrant the application of the inference to deep sleep. In this relation some curious facts, regarding unconsciousness in hysteria, are referred to in James's Psy* diology, ch. viii., suggesting occasions on which there is a disruption of the conscious life into separate conscious- nesses, so that a part of the conscious- ness 'may sever its connection with other parts and yet continue to be.'
^ Leibniz argues that we can never be without perceptions ; but as he also maintains that perception may exist without apperception or consciousness, his position does not necessarily imply that we are never unconscious, or with- out dreams, even in deep sleep. Wolf adopts the views of Leibniz on this question, Psychologia Rationalise § 59.
' This and what follows implies that miMOfy of dreams is the only channel
through which there could be evidence of continuous mental activity during sleep ; and also that the activity can never be an imperfect consciousness ^both which assumptions may be disputed. The effects which semi- conscious and unconscious perceptions leave behind them in the current of conscious life, rather than memory, afford the evidence on which, for example, Leibniz relies : ' II y a mille marques qui font juger qu'il y a k tout moment une infinite de percep- tions en nous, mais sans aperception et sans reflexion ; c'est-k-dire des changements dans I'Ame m6me, dont nous ne nous apercevons pas, parce que ces impressions sont ou trop petites, et en trop grand nombre, ou trop unies, en sorte qu'elles n'ont rien d'assez dis- tinguant k part; mais jointes & d'autres elles ne laissent pas de faire leur effet et de se faire sentir dans I'assemblage au moins confus^ment.' {Nouv, Ess, Avant-Propos.) The phenomena of habit are then referred to as examples — e.g. unconscious perception of the motion of a mill or a waterfall, when we listened so long that the undulations at last induce perception without apper- ception ; or the noise of the sea, in hearing which we must have an un- conscious perception of the noise of
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134 Essay concerning Human Understanding,
BOOK II. 15. To think often, and never to retain it so much as ^ *' J one moment, is a very useless sort of thinking ; and the soul, U on this ^^ ^"^^ ^ state of thinking, does very little, if at all, excel Hypothe- that of a looking-glass, which constantly receives variety Thoughts ^f images, or ideas, but retains none; they disappear and of a sleep- vanish, and there remain no footsteps of them ; the looking- oughtto glass is never the better for such ideas, nor the soul for be most gy^j^ thoughts. Perhaps it will be said, that in a waking man the materials of the body are employed, and made use of, in thinking ; and that the memory of thoughts is retained by the impressions that are made on the brain, and the traces there left after such thinking; but tliat in the thinking of the soul^ which is not perceived in a sleeping man, there the soul thinks apart, and making no use of the organs of the body, leaves no impressions on it, and con- sequently no memory of such thoughts. Not to mention again the absurdity of two distinct persons, which follows from this supposition, I answer, further, — That whatever ideas the mind can receive and contemplate without the help of the body, it is reasonable to conclude it can retain without the help of the body too ; or else the soul, or any separate spirit, will have but little advantage by thinking. If it has no memory of its own thoughts ; if it cannot lay them up for its own use, and be able to recall them upon occasion ; if it cannot reflect upon what is past, and make use of its former experiences, reasonings, and contemplations, to what purpose does it think ? They who make the soul a thinking thing, at this rate, will not make it a much more noble being than those do whom they condemn, for allowing it to be nothing but the subtilist parts of matter. Characters drawn on dust, that the first breath of wind effaces ; or impressions made on a heap of atoms, or animal spirits, are altogether as
each wave, which produces conscious has been suggested of this want of perception of the collective sound — memory is, that in deep and seemingly clear in the aggregate but confused in dreamless sleep, and other abnormal the parts — since we could not other- states, while there is continuous con- wise become conscious of the sound sciousness, the successive states are of a hundred thousand waves ; a hun- so rapid that there can be no retention dred thousand notliings could not make of them, under the ordinary conditions something. Another explanation that of memory.
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Our Ideas and their Origin. 135
useful, and render the subject as noble, as the thoughts of a book it. soul that perish in thinking ; that, once out of sight, are gone for ever, and leave no memory of themselves behind them* Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses : and it is hardly to be conceived that our infinitely wise Creator should make so admirable a faculty as the power of thinking, that faculty which comes nearest the excellency of his own incomprehensible being, to be so idly and uselessly employed, at least a fourth part of its time here, as to think constantly, without remembering any of those thoughts, without doing any good to itself or others, or being any way useful to any other part of the creation. If we will examine it, we shall not find, I suppose, the motion of dull and sense- less matter, any where in the universe, made so little use of and so wholly thrown away ^.
16. It is true, we have sometimes instances of perception On this whilst we are asleep, and retain the memory of those thoughts: ^^^^' but how extravagant and incoherent for the most part they Soul must are ; how little conformable to the perfection and order of a not derived rational being, those who are acquainted with dreams need ^^^ . not be told. This I would willingly be satisfied in, — whether or Renec- the soul, when it thinks thus apart, and as it were separate ^^kh ^ from the body*, acts less rationally than when conjointly with there is it, or no. If its separate thoughts be less rational, then these ^arance. men must say, that the soul owes the perfection of rational
^ It might be held that, instead of lepr^ent est pleindeTaveniret charge
being ' useless/ these unremembered, du pass^, que tout est conspirant, et
because semi-conscious and uncon- que dans la moindre des substances, des
scious, perceptions have immense yeux aussi per9ants que ceux de Dieu
efficacy in the spiritual economy. ' Ces pourraient lire toute la suite des choses
petites perceptions/ Leibniz ai*gues, de I'univers.' N<mv, Essais, Avant-Pro-
* sont done de plus grand efficace qu'on pos. Other ' useful * consequences of
ne pense. Ce sont elles qui forment ce ' unconscious perceptions' are sug*
je ne sais quoi — ces goClts, ces images gested in the sequel, des quality des sens, daires dans * No reason is given for the assump-
Tassemblage, mais confuses dans les tion, that even in dreams the soul
parties ; ces impressions que les corps thinks apart from the body, for there
qui nous environnent font sur nous et is experimental evidence that dreams
qui enveloppent Tinfini ; cette liaison are conditioned by the organism ;
que chaque dtre a avec tout le reste de though not equally with waking per^
Tunivers. On peut m£me dire qu'en ception by the special organ of each
consequence de ces petites perceptions sense.
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136 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. thinking to the body : if it does not, it is a wonder that our ""**", dreams should be, for the most part, so frivolous and irra-
Chap. I. *^ '
tional; and that the soul should retain none of its more rational soliloquies and meditations. If I think 17. Those who so confidently tell us that the soul always know it actually thinks, I would they would also tell us, what those not, no- ideas are that are in the soul of a child, before or just at the can^know ^nion with the body, before it hath received any by sensation. it- The dreams of sleeping men are, as I take it, all made up of
the waking man's ideas ; though for the most part oddly put together. It is strange, if the soul has ideas of its own that it derived not from sensation or reflection, (as it must have, if it thought before^ it received any impressions from the body,) that it should never, in its private thinking, (so private, that the man himself perceives it not,) retain any of them the very moment it wakes out of them, and then make the man glad with new discoveries. Who can find it reason that the soul should, in its retirement during sleep, have so many hours' thoughts, and yet never light on any of those ideas it borrowed not from sensation or reflection; or at least pre- serve the memory of none but such, which, being occasioned from the body, must needs be less natural to a spirit ? It is strange the soul should never once in a man's whole life recall over any of its pure native thoughts, and those ideas it had before it borrowed anything from the body ; never bring into the waking man's view any other ideas but what have a tang of the cask, and manifestly derive their original from that union^. If it always thinks, and so had ideas before it
^ Here again the metaphysical con- volved in the rationality of things, and
stitution {prigo) of adult knowledge of our experience of their changes,
is reduced to a question regarding ' The inadequacy of empiricism to
the history of the growth of knowledge express the facts and implicates of ex*
in the individual. But, as Shaftesbury perience is maintained, not on the
long ago observed, ' the question is not ground that it neglects ideas which the
about the time the ideas entered, but soul was conacUms q^before it borrowed
whether the constitution of man [and anything from the body, but because the
of knowledge] be such that . . . sooner knowledge to which man afterwards as-
or later {no matttr when) the ideas of cends, in union with his body, involves
order, administration, and a God, for elements which cannot be analysed
instance, will not infallibly^ inevitably^ into mere sensations and their acci-
neassarily spring up ' — because in- dental aggregates. The first steps ofi
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Our Ideas and their Origin. 137
was united, or before it received any from the body ^, it is book ii. not to be supposed but that during sleep it recollects its p"""**", native ideas ; and during that retirement from communicating with the body, whilst it thinks by itself, the ideas it is busied about should be, sometimes at least, those more natural and congenial ones which it had in itself, underived from the body, or its own operations about them : which, since the waking man never remembers, we must from this hypothesis conclude [either ^ that the soul remembers something that the man does not ; or else that memory belongs only to such ideas as are derived from the body, or the mind's operations about them.]
18. I would be glad also to learn from these men who so How confidently pronounce that the human soul, or, which is all any^e one, that a man always thinks, how they come to know it ; that the nay, how they come to know that they themselves think, always when they themselves do not perceive it. This, I am afraid, *?*"^; .
For if It be
is to be sure without proofs, and to know without perceiving, not a self- It is, I suspect, a confused notion, taken up to serve an ^op^o^^j. hypothesis ; and none of those clear truths, that either their tion, it own evidence forces us to admit, or common experience makes p^oC it impudence to deny. For the most that can be said of it is, that it is possible the soul may always think, but not always retain it in memory. And I say, it is as possible that the soul may not always think ; and much more probable that it should sometimes not think, than that it should often think, and that a long while together, and not be conscious to itself, the next moment after, that it had thought ^
the intellectual ascent, in the form of ' In first edition — ' that memory
expectations of the future, illustrate belongs only to ideas derived from the
this. It is a contradiction to say that body, and the operations of the mind
the ultimate reason of expectation is, — about them ; or else that the soul
our individual and inherited experience remembers something that the man
that the future resembles the past ; for does not.'
men never had, and never can have, ^ The kind of evidence which any experience of the y%</Mfv. Locke's opponents would adduce is ^ Locke thus sees, in the hypothesis referred to in preceding notes. It is that the soul ^ always thinks,' a sup- either a priori, or inference from port to the hypothesis oV innate ideas,' observation of the phenomena of con- according to his interpretation of ' in- sciousness, in our waking normal nateness.' state. But is there after all evidence
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138 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. 19. To suppose the soul to think, and the man not to r'l perceive it, is, as has been said, to make two persons in one That a nian^. And if one considers well these men's way of speak- Man ing, one should be led into a suspicion that they do so. For
busy in ^ ^^ey who tell us that the soul always thinks, do never, that Thinking, J remember, say that a man always thinks *. Can the soul not retain think, and not the man? Or a man think, and not be moment*^ conscious of it ? This, perhaps, would be suspected of jargon very im- in others. If they say the man thinks always, but is not pro a e. ^^^y^ conscious of it, they may as well say his body is extended without having parts. For it is altogether as in- telligible to say that a body is extended without parts, as that anything thinks without being conscious of it, or per- ceiving that it does so. They who talk thus may, with as much reason, if it be necessary to their hypothesis, say that a man is always hungry, but that he does not always feel it ; whereas hunger consists in that very sensation, as thinking consists in being conscious that one thinks ^. If they say that a man is always conscious to himself of thinking, I ask» How they know it? Consciousness is the perception of what passes in a man's own mind. Can another man perceive that I am conscious of anything, when I perceive it not myself? No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience. Wake a man out of a sound sleep, and ask him what he was that moment thinking of. If he himself be conscious of nothing he then thought on, he must be a notable diviner of thoughts that can assure him that he was thinking. May he not, with more reason, assure him he was not asleep? This is something beyond philosophy ; and it cannot be less than revelation, that discovers to another thoughts in my mind, when I can find none there myself. And they must needs have a penetrating sight who can certainly see that I
to justify a positive conclusion regard- ' Wliat they might say is, that the
ing this question, either in the form of conscious experience of the adult pre*
a priori metaphysics, or a posteriori sents phenomena from which it may be
experiences? inferred, that more was latent in it
^ There are phenomena, observed from the first than the subject of it was
bince Locke wrote, which might sug- then conscious of.
gest the supposition of this sort of ' See previous notes, double personality.
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Our Ideas and their Origin. 139
think, when I cannot perceive it myself, and when I declare book 11. that I do not ; and yet can see that dogs or elephants do not ^ *' j think, when they give all the demonstration of it imaginable, except only telling us that they do so. This some may suspect to be a step beyond the Rosicrucians ^ ; it seeming easier to make one's self invisible to others, than to make another's thoughts visible to me, which are not visible to himself. But it is but defining the soul to be * a substance that always thinks,' and the business is done. If such definition be of any authority, I know not what it can serve for but to make many men suspect that they have no souls at all ; since they find a good part of their lives pass away without thinking. For no definitions that I know, no suppositions of any sect, are of force enough to destroy constant experience ; and perhaps it is the affectation of knowing beyond what we perceive, that makes so much useless dispute and noise in the world ^.
ao. I see no reason, therefore, to believe that the soul No ideas thinks before the senses have furnished it with ideas to think senMtion on*; and as those are increased and retained, so it comes, and Re- by exercise, to improve its faculty of thinking in the several evident parts of it; as well as, afterwards, by compounding those »f we
. , , rt . . .... observe
ideas, and reflecting on its own operations, it increases its chHdren. stock, as well as facility in remembering, imagining, reasoning, and other modes of thinking *.
ai. He that will suffer himself to be informed by observa- State of a tion and experience, and not make his own hypothesis the ^^^ ^ rule of nature, will find few signs of a soul accustomed to mother's much thinking in a new-born child, and much fewer of any ^^"* ' reasoning at all. And yet it is hard to imagine that the
* The mystical society called Rosi* iin<5oiiscioiisly, or semi-unconsciously,
arudans^ with their secret symbols, was active (in sleep),
formed early in the seventeenth cen- ' * We are bom ignorant of every-
tuiy. According to their doctrine, the thing.* (Cottduci of Undersiandmgy
four elements are inhabited by invisible § 38.)
spirits, with whom men may hold ^ Thb and what follows, to the end
familiar intercourse on certain condi- of the chapter, is history of the gradual
tions. growth of experience in the individual
' These objections ia\\ if there is man — not critical analysis of the ulti*
evidence, other than that of present mate rational constitution of the gjow*
consciousness, or memory of p<ist con- ing experience. sdousnessy to show that men have been
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I40 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK 11. Chap. I.
The mind thinks in proportion to the matter it gets from experience to think about
rational soul should think so much, and not reason at all. And he that will consider that infants newly come into the world spend the greatest part of their time in sleep, and are seldom awake but when either hunger calls for the teat, or some pain (the most importunate of all sensations), or some other violent impression on the body, forces the mind to perceive and attend to it ; — he, I say, who considers this, will perhaps find reason to imagine that a foetus in the mother's womb differs not much from the state of a vegetable, but passes the greatest part of its time without perception or thought ; doing very little but sleep in a place where it needs not seek for food, and is surrounded with liquor, always equally soft, and near of the same temper ; where the eyes have no light, and the ears so shut up are not very susceptible of sounds ; and where there is little or no variety, or change of objects, to move the senses ^.
%%. Follow a child from its birth, and observe the alter- ations that time makes, and you shall find, as the mind by the senses comes more and more to be furnished with ideas, it comes to be more and more awake ; thinks more, the more it has matter to think on. After some time it begins to know the objects which, being most familiar with it, have made lasting impressions. Thus it comes by degrees to know the persons it daily converses with, and distinguishes them from strangers ; which are instances and effects of its coming to retain and distinguish the ideas the senses convey to it. And so we may observe how the mind, by degrees^ improves in these ; and advances to the exercise of those other faculties of enlarging, compounding, and abstracting its ideas ^ and of
^ It is easy thus to show that a child in its mother s womb is not consciously conversant with the abstract principles of the philosopher.
' According to Locke, men at first perceive and image individual objects. ' Our ideas every one of them are particular; universality is but acci- dental to them.' (Bk. IV. ch. xvii. § 8.) For the intellectual advance is from particular images to the intelligent use of common terms. In proportion
as men accumulate particular ideas, they become less conscious of them, and more apprehensive of their con- cepts. Idea is here confined to what is representable in the sensuous or in- dividualising imagination {^i^raafuC' ; and, so understood, an abstract idea (S(oy^i;/ia and y6rffm) is an absurdity. Yet we find more than is presentable in the senses, and representable in imagination, in those abstract meanings which we are intellectually obliged
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^
Our Ideas and their Origin. 141
» reasoning about them, and reflecting upon all these ; of which book ii.
I shall have occasion to speak more hereafter.
23. If it shall be demanded then, when a man begins to^^j^^' have any ideas, I think the true answer is, — when he first has begins to any sensation. For, since there appear not to be any ideas in whe„ he the mind before the senses have conveyed any in, I conceive ^^^ ^^
, . , . , , ,. , . , • sensation.
that ideas in the understanding are coeval with sensation ; what which is such an impression or motion mcuie in some part ^sensation the body, as [^ produces'^ some perception\ in the understanding'^. [It ^'^ is about these impressions made on our senses by outward objects that the mind seems first to employ itself, in such operations as we call perception, remembering, consideration, reasoning, &c.]
24. [In* time the mind comes to reflect on its own operations The about the ideas got by sensation, and thereby stores itself ^^"fj^Jjyj. with a new set of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection. These Know- are the impressions that are made on our senses by outward ^ ^^' objects that are extrinsical to the mind ; and its own oper- ations, proceeding from powers intrinsical and proper to itself, which, when reflected on by itself, become also objects of its contemplation — are, as I have said, the original
to entertain, — so ' obliged/ we must It may thus with Locke include what
presume, because reason is immanent has since been distinguished as sen-
in what is real, and thus objective suous feeling (sensation proper), and
as well as subjective. the intellectual apprehension in sense
^ In first three editions — ' makes it of solid extension in its various rela-
be taken notice of.' ' Sensation ' is tions (perception proper),
here an affection of the organism, and ^ This sentence was introduced in
* perception ' the ntental apprehension the French version,
which accompanies or follows it. ^ The first four editions, instead of
* This is one of Locke's definitions the sentences bracketed, read thus : —
of sensation, according to which it is 'The impressions then thataremadeon
an organic affection which may be our senses by outward objects that are
manifested to the senses of an ob- extrinsical to the mind ; ai d its own
server. In the next section he refers operations about these impressions, re-
to it as the receptive ' capacity of the fleeted on by itself, as proper objects to
human intellect* \ and in ch. xix. § i be contemplated by it, are, Lconceive,
he describes it as ' the actual entrance the original of all knowledge^' The two
of any idea into the understanding by sentences within brackets appear first
the senses/ adding that 'the same idea, in the French version. The meaning
when it recurs without the operation of the second is obscure, unless for
of the like [extra-organic] object on * These are the impressions,' we read,
the external sensory, is remembrance* ' Thus the impressions &c.'
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142 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II Chap. I.
' In the Reception of simple Ideas, the Under- standing is for the most part passive.
of all knowledge.] Thus the first capacity of human intellect is, — that the mind is fitted to receive the impressions made on it ; either through the senses by outward objects, or by its own operations when it reflects on them ^ This is the first step a man makes towards the discovery of anything, and the groundwork whereon to build all those notions which ever he shall have naturally in this world. All those sublime thoughts which tower above the clouds, and reach as high as heaven itself, take their rise and footing here : in all that great extent wherein the mind wanders, in those remote speculations it may seem to be elevated with, it stirs not one jot beyond those ideas which sense or reflection have offered for its contemplation ^.
25. In this part the understanding is merely passive; and whether or no it will have these beginnings, and as it were materials of knowledge, is not in its own power ^. For the objects of our senses do, many of them, obtrude their particular ideas upon our minds whether we will or not ; and the operations of our minds will not let us be without, at least, some obscure notions of them*. No man can be wholly ignorant of what he does when he thinks. These simple ideas, when offered to the mind*, the understanding
' That is to say, intelligence in the individual deals at first with concrete * impressions,' and advances in the way of comprehending their more general, and at last their ultimate or philoso- phical relations. Whether in those ultimate relations Locke saw only gene- ralisation by induction ; or whether he recognised conditions necessarily embedded in all experience of reality, because necessities of the reason that is inherent in things, is the question to be settled in determining his philosophical position.
* Nothing, says Hume, is 'beyond the power of thought, except what implies an absolute contradiction/ But Locke here looks to the limits of the materials^ contingently presented, with which human thought is con- cerned.
I
' This passivity, or invotuntarintss, is one of the marks by which external and internal perception are distin- guished from plastic imagination. Men- tal images can be modified by our will, and are thus subject to our control; the data of sense, on the contrary, are independent of our will, as long as the objects are present to the senses ; so that, in this respect, we are passive in the ' reception ' of them. At another point of view than Locke's, we arc active even in acquisition ; for sense- perception itself necessarily involves some attention, and constructive ac- tivity of intelligence.
^ In spontaneous self-consciousness, as distinguished from deliberate intro- spection.
* But he does not say that they are ever 'offered* in their simplicity — as
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Our Ideas and their Origin.
143
Chap. I.
can no more refuse to have, nor alter when they are im- book n. printed', nor blot them out and make new ones itself, than a mirror can refuse, alter, or obliterate the images or ideas which the objects set before it do therein produce. As the bodies that surround us do diversely affect our organs, the mind is forced to receive the impressions ^ ; and cannot avoid the perception of those ideas that are annexed to them.
isolated sensations. Elsewhere he implies the contrary, when he men- tions 'ideas that necessarily accom- pany' all our other ideas, e.g. those of * existence," duration,' and 'substance.'
^ ' imprinted,' i. e. in all actual per- ception external and internal.
' 'Impressions.' This term was afterwards employed by Hume to desig-
nate * all our more lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will,' in contrast with 'idea,* which he applies only to the Mess lively* mental representations of preceding ' impressions,' — in memory and imagination (Humis Inquiry eon- ceming Human Undfrstanding, Sect
II).
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CHAPTER II.
OF SIMPLE IDEAS.
BOOK II.
Chap. II.
Uncom- pounded Appear- ances.
J. The better to understand the nature, manner, and extent of our knowledge, one thing is carefully to be observed concerning the ideas we have ; and that is, that some of them are simple and some complex'^.
Though the qualities that affect our senses are, in the things themselves, so united and blended, that there is no separation, no distance between them; yet it is plain, the ideas they produce in the mind enter by the senses simple and unmixed. For, though the sight and touch often take in from the same object, at the same time, different ideas ;— as a man sees at once motion and colour ; the hand feels softness and warmth in the same piece of wax : yet the simple ideas thus united in the same subject, are as perfectly distinct^ as those that come in by different senses. The coldness and
* In distinguishing simple from owi- pUx ideas Locke does not assert that the former are, or can be, received, or represented, in their simplicity \ nor does he deny that a ' simple ' idea of sense, as such, is an abstraction from our actual experience. On the con- trary, he tells us that simple ideas are received in groups or combinations in the senses ; and that some simple ideas (e. g. those of existence^ umty^ &c) are 'necessary' concomitants of all other simple ideas (ch. vii. § 7). None of them, as it were, * hang in the air alone.* And besides this recognition of the fact that simple ideas are received in complexity, in the contemporaneous activity of the several senses — though, by logical analysis of the percepts,
images, and concepts of which we are conscious, they may afterwards be con- sidered apart — he also usually dis- tinguishes mere ideas, both simple and complex, from knowledge and assent, into which they enter as elements, but which, per se, they cannot constitute. The additional elements involved in ' knowledge,' and in * assent to proba- bility,' are discussed in the Fourth Book. The simple and complex ideas of the Second Book are with Locke analo- gous to the 'simple apprehension' (considered apart from judgment) of logicians.
" That is, in themselves, either in virtue of spontaneous abstraction by the separate senses, or, by logical analysis of our concepts of things.
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Simple Ideas, 145
hardness which a man feels in a piece of ice being as distinct book ii. ideas in the mind as the smell and whiteness of a lily ; or ~"**~ as the taste of sugar, and smell of a rose. And there is nothing can be plainer to a man than the clear and distinct perception he has of those simple ideas ; which, being each in itself uncompounded, contains in it nothing but one uniform appearance^ or conception in the mind^ and is not distinguishable into different ideas ^
%. These simple ideas, the materials of all our knowledge, The Mind are suggested and furnished to the mind only by those two make nor ways above mentioned, viz. sensation and reflection ^. When destroy the understanding is once stored with these simple ideas, it has the power to repeat, compare, and unite them, even to an almost infinite variety, and so can make at pleasure new com- plex ideas ^ But it is not in the power of the most exalted wit, or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways before mentioned : nor can any force of the understanding destroy those that are there. The dominion of man, in this little world of his own under- standing being muchwhat the same as it is in the great world of visible things ; wherein his power, however managed by art and skill, reaches no farther than to compound and divide the materials that are made to his hand ; but can do nothing towards the making the least particle of new matter, or destroying one atom of what is already in being. The same inability will every one find in himself, who shall go about to fashion in his understanding one simple idea, not received in by his senses from external objects, or by reflection
* They are * simple' in the sense of ch. ill § i ; ch, vii. §§ 7-9^
being incapable of analysis, while all ' ' Complex ideas/ according to
complex ideas can be analysed. Locke, are both ' made for us/ and
* This sentence, in expressing the * made by us.* They are made for us leading principle in the Second Book, in the perceived union of qualities in distinguishes ideas as in some cases individual things ; and more generally * furnished ' and in others ' suggested.' in the invariable * suggestion ' e. g. of The term 'suggested' was adopted the ideas of existence, unity, andpower, afterwards by Berkeley and Reid. along with all that we can consciously Its meaning in the Essay is illustrated apprehend. They are made by us in in the sequel, where ideas are described the voluntary constructions of plastic which Locke refers to suggestion (e. g. imagination and of abstract thought.
VOL. L
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146 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. from the operations of his own mind about them. I would "**" have any one try to fancy any taste which had never affected his palate ; or frame the idea of a scent he had never smelt : and when he can do this, I will also conclude that a blind man hath ideas of colours, and a deaf man true distinct notions of sounds ^. Only the 3. This is the reason why — though we cannot believe it thataflbct inipossible to God to make a creature with other organs, and the senses more ways to convey into the understanding the notice of aginable. corporeal things than those five, as they are usually counted, which he has given to man — yet I think it is not possible for any man ^ to imagine any other qualities in bodies, howsoever constituted, whereby they can be taken notice of, besides sounds, tastes, smells, visible and tangible qualities. And had mankind been made but with four senses, the qualities then which are the objects of the fifth sense had been as far from our notice, imagination, and conception, as now any belonging to a sixth, seventh, or eighth sense can possibly be ; — which, whether yet some other creatures, in some other parts of this vast and stupendous universe, may not have, will be a great presumption to deny. He that will not set himself proudly at the top of all things, but will consider the immensity of this fabric, and the great variety that is to be found in this little and inconsiderable part of it which he has to do with, may be apt to think that, in other mansions of it, there may be other and different intelligent beings, of whose faculties he has as little knowledge or apprehension as a worm shut up in one drawer of a cabinet hath of the senses or understanding of a man ; such variety and excellency being suitable to the wisdom and power of the Maker ^ I
^ Locke elsewhere insists that al- ledge and judgment, although simple
though he uses the word * idea ' often, apprehension of ideas, per se, is not
in unfolding his * way of knowledge knowledge.
through ideas,' i.e. on condition of ' 'Any moMf* i. e. any being with
having ideas, — he uses it to warn men only man's limited number of senses,
against giving currency to empty words. ' We have no reason a priori to deny
' The new way of uUas,* he tells Stil* the existence in other worlds of ani.
lingfleet, ' and the old way of speaking mated intelligences in whom our five
mieiJigibiy ever will be the same.' Ap- senses are all wanting, but who may
prehension of meaning (i.e. having be endowed with five (or five hundred)
idea) is necessarily implied in all know- other senses, to which their sensible
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Simple Ideas.
H7
have here followed the common opinion of man's having but book ii. five senses ; though, perhaps, there may be justly counted more ^ ; — but either supposition serves equally to my present purpose.
worlds correspond — thus presenting qualities to them all of which are un- imaginable by human beings, and un- perceived by us in our material world. ^ Thus the sense of simple contact, the muscular sense, and the sense of temperature are now distinguished. Various classifications of the external
senses have been proposed, from Aris- totle downwards. The number is irrelevant to Locke's argument, which concludes that (whatever the number) man cannot speak or think intelligibly about any other qualities of things than those which are presented to his senses.
La
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CHAPTER III.
OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF SENSE.
BOOK II. 1. The better to conceive the ideas we receive from
~**~ sensation ^, it may not be amiss for us to consider them, in Chap III
_ . . .* * reference to the different ways whereby they make their
Division of , , , , .11
simple approaches to our minds, and make themselves perceivable ^^^^- by us.
Firsty then, There are some which come into our minds by one sense only.
Secondly y There are others that convey themselves into the mind by more senses than one.
Thirdly^ Others that are had from reflection only.
Fourthly, There are some that make themselves way, and are suggested to the mind by all tfie ways of sensation and reflection.
We shall consider them apart under these several heads.
• Ideas of There are some ideas which have admittance only through one Sense. ^^^ sense, which is peculiarly adapted to receive them *. Thus light and colours, as white, red, yellow, blue; with their several degrees or shades and mixtures, as green, scarlet, purple, sea-green, and the rest, come in only by the eyes. All kinds of noises, sounds, and tones, only by the ears. The several tastes and smells, by the nose and palate. And if these organs, or the nerves which are the conduits to
* * from sensation.' Unless reflection menal atoms, of our experience,
is regarded as itself a sense—* internal ■By * ideas of one sense ' he means
sense' (ch. i. § 4)— the words *from those qualities (of things) which are
sensation ' are added by an oversight ; perceived exclusively through one sort
for the division which follows compre- of bodily organ, hends a// the * simple ideas,' or pheno-
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Simple Ideas of one Sense. 149
convey them from without to their audience In the brain, — book ii. the mind's presence-room (as I may so call it) — ^are any of '* them so disordered as not to perform their functions, they ^
have no postern to be admitted by; no other way to bring themselves into view, and be perceived by the under- standing ^.
The most considerable of those beloi^ing to the touch *, are heat and cold, and solidity: all the rest, consisting almost wholly in the sensible configuration, as smooth and rough ; or else, more or less firm adhesion of the parts, as hard and soft, tough and brittle, are obvious enough ^
a. I think it will be needless to enumerate all the par- Few ticular simple ideas belonging to each sense. Nor indeed J^^^^avc is it possible if we would ; there being a great many more Names. of them belonging to most of the senses than we have names for. The variety of smells, which are as many almost, if not more, than species of bodies in the world, do most of them want names. Sweet and stinking commonly serve our turn for these ideas, which in effect is little more than to call them pleasing or displeasing; though the smell of a rose and violet, both sweet, are certainly very distinct ideas. Nor are the different tastes, that by our palates we receive ideas of, much better provided with names. Sweet, bitter, sour, hafsh, and salt are almost all the epithets we have to denominate that numberless variety of relishes, which are to be found distinct, not only in almost every sort of
^ This 18 a metaphorical way of suggested,wemaysuppose the universe
describing the organic conditions on to be manifested to a sentient intelli-
which our sense-perceptions are found gence destitute of all our senses, and
in fact to depend. endowed with others, five or five
' He includes under 'touch' what hundred in number, and accordingly
is now distinguished as muscular sense, presenting qualities wholly unimagin-
locomotive sense, and the sense of able by man ; or we may suppose the
temperature. senses with which man is endowed in-
' Taste, smell, hearing, and sight definitely intensified, and thus charged
have been compared to special Ian- with a superhuman intelligence. Even
guages ; touch to a general language — in our human experience the world
all uniting in presenting the external undergoes transformation to each ob*
universe for interpretation, at the server, in the ratio of his increased
human point of view. For, as already knowledge and intellectual power.
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150 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. creatures, but in the different parts of the same plant, fruit, ""^^ or animal. The same may be said of colours and sounds.
Chap III.
' I shall, therefore, in the account of simple ideas I am here giving, content myself to set down only such as are most material to our present purpose, or are in themselves less apt to be taken notice of though they are very frequently the ingredients of our complex ideas; amongst which, I think, I may well account solidity ^, which therefore I shall treat of in the next chapter.
^ An exhaustive enumeration of the one which plays the most important
simple ideas, or unanalysable pheno- partamong our complex ideas of bodies,
mena, of which man may be percipient especially as body is distinguished from
in sense, is of course impossible. In pure space, and also in a criticism of
the next chapter Locke signalises the the Cartesian analysis of matter.
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CHAPTER IV.
IDEA OF SOLIDITY.
I. The idea of solidity we receive by our touch: and it book ii. arises from the resistance which we find in body to the ^ ""**"fv entrance of any other body into the place it possesses, ^^ ^g_ till it has left it ^. There is no idea which we receive more ceive this constantly from sensation than solidity. Whether we move Towrh!^'" or rest, in what posture soever we are, we always feel some- thing under us that supports us, and hinders our further sinking downwards ; and the bodies which we daily handle make us percieve that, whilst they remain between them, they do, by an insurmountable force, hinder the approach of the parts of our hands that press them. That which thus hinders the approach of two bodies^ when they are moved one towards another^ I call solidity, I will not dispute whether this acceptation of the word solid be nearer to its original signifi- cation than that which mathematicians use it in. It suflFices that I think the common notion of solidity will allow, if not justify, this use of it ; but if any one think it better to call it impenetrability^^ he has my consent. Only I have thought the term solidity the more proper to express this idea, not only because of its vulgar use in that sense, but also because it carries something more of positive in it than impenetrability ; which is n^ative, and is perhaps more a
^ At bottom we get our distinct idea of sensations that are included vaguely
solidity, according to Leibniz, through under 'touch* — 'suggested' by, but
reason ; although ' touch ' provides distinguished from, this mere feeling,
reason with something which shows Cf. the various ways in which Locke
that solidity exists in nature. (See describes the idea of solidity in this
Nouv, Ess. Liv. ii. ch. 5.) According section ; also in § a and in § 6 ; in which
to the Essay f the idea arises from the last he ' sends us to our senses ' if we
feeling of resistance, and the motor want to know what solidity means.
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152 Essay concerning Human Understanding,
Chap. IV.
BOOK II. consequence of solidity, than solidity itself^. This, of all other, seems the idea most intimately connected with, and essential to body ; so as nowhere else to be found or imagined, but only in matter. And though our senses take no notice of it, but in masses of matter, of a bulk sufficient to cause a sensation in us: yet the mind, having once got this idea from such grosser sensible bodies, traces it further, and con- siders 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. Solidity 2. This is the idea which belongs to body, whereby we
fills Space, conceive it to fill space. The idea of which filling of space is, — that where we imagine any space taken up by a solid substance, we conceive it so to possess it, that it excludes all other solid substances ; and will for ever hinder any other two bodies, that move towards one another in a straight line, from coming to touch one another, unless it removes from between them in a line not parallel to that which they move in ^. This idea of it, the bodies which we ordinarily handle sufficiently furnish us with.
' Solidity, here defined by Locke, and afterwards (ch. viii) included in his list of the primary or real qualities of matter, is an ambiguous term, used in various meanings — geometrical and physical. * The term solidity denotes, besides the absoluU and necessary property of occupying space, simply, and in its two phases of Extension and Impenetrability, also the relative and contingent qualities of the Dense, the Inert, the Heavy, and the Hard.' (Hamilton.) With Locke it means the impenetrability, or ultimate incompres' sibility, of matter — the impossibility by pressure of transforming an extended atom into something unextended. This impossibility is assumed to be i>er- manent and absolute; but why thus assumed — whether on a priori or on experimental grounds — Locke does not inquire. At any rate, this necessary permanence is not a datum in the con- tingent experience of the sense of
touch, whether regarded as the sense of simple contact, or including sense of muscular resistance ; for sense is tran- sitory, not absolute, in its revelations, and an intellectual impossibility of sup- posing a body that is not incompressible would refer the ' perception ' to reason instead of sense. Moreover one can say that it is only as incompressible, because space-occupying, and obliged to resist the entrance of other bodies into its space, that what we call ' body ' can be judged by us to exist at all.
' This is to identify the idea of solidity, or the permanently and abso- lutely incompressible, with the idea of body, as something that is neces- sarily extended or space-occupying. In what follows Locke notes the dis- tinction between the 'simple idea' of the solid and incompressible, and the idea of pure (empty) extension (§§ 3> 5) ; And between each of these
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Simple Idea of Solidity. 153
3. This resistance, whereby it keeps other bodies out of book ii. the space which it possesses, is so great, that no force, how great soever, can surmount it. All the bodies in the world, Djgtjn^^t pressing a drop of water on all sides, will never be able to from overcome the resistance which it will make, soft as it is, ^^^' to their approaching one another, till it be removed out of their way : whereby our idea of solidity is distinguished both from pure space, which is capable neither of resistance nor motion ; and from the ordinary idea of hardness. For a man may conceive two bodies at a distance, so as they may approach one another, without touching or displacing any solid thing, till their superficies come to meet ; whereby, I think, we have the clear idea of space without solidity. For (not to go so far as annihilation of any particular body) I ask, whether a man cannot have the idea of the motion of one single body alone, without any other succeeding immediately into its place ? I think it is evident he can : the idea of motion in one body no more including the idea of motion in another, than the idea of a square figure in one body includes the idea of a square figure in another. I do not ask, whether bodies do so exists that the motion of one body cannot really be without the motion of anothen To determine this either way, is to beg the question for or against a vacuum. But my question is, — whether one cannot have the idea of one body moved, whilst others are at rest? And I think this no one will deny. If so, then the place it deserted gives us the idea of pure space without solidity ; whereinto any other body may enter, without either resistance or protrusion of anything. When the sucker in a pump is drawn, the space it filled in the tube is certainly the same whether any other body follows the motion of the sucker or not : nor does it imply a contradiction that, upon the motion of one body, another that is only contiguous to it should not follow it. The necessity of such a motion is built only on the supposition that the world is full ; but not on the distinct ideas of space and solidity, which are as different as resistance and not resistance, protrusion and not protrusion.
and Uie idea of hardness, Le. resistance, aggregate of atoms, to disintegration Jirm but variable, on the part of an and change of figure ($$ 3, 4).
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Hardness.
154 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. And that men have ideas of space without a body, their very ^ *' disputes about a vacuum plainly demonstrate, as is shown in
UHAP. IV, _
another place *. From 4. Solidity is hereby also differenced from hardness, in
that solidity consists in repletion, and so an utter exclusion of other bodies out of the space it possesses : but hardness, in a firm cohesion of the parts of matter, making up masses of a sensible bulk, so that the whole does not easily change its figure. And indeed, hard and soft are names that we give to things only in relation to the constitutions of our own bodies ; that being generally called hard by us, which will put us to pain sooner than change figure by the pressure of any part of our bodies ; and that, on the contrary, soft, which changes the situation of its parts upon an easy and unpainful touch ^.
But this difficulty of changing the situation of the sensible parts amongst themselves, or of the figure of the whole, gives no more solidity to the hardest body in the world than to the softest ; nor is an adamant one jot more solid than water. For, though the two flat sides of two pieces of marble will more easily approach each other, between which there is no- thing but water or air, than if there be a diamond between them ; yet it is not that the parts of the diamond are more solid than those of water, or resist more ; but because the parts of water, being more easily separable from each other, they will, by a side motion, be more easily removed, and give way to the approach of the two pieces of marble. But if they could be kept from making place by that side motion, they would eternally^ hinder the approach of these two pieces of marble, as much as the diamond ; and it would be as impossible by any force to surmount their resistance, as to surmount the resistance of the parts of a diamond. The softest body in the world will as invincibly resist the
^ Ch. xiii. \% 31-23. ' Mere sense, which, in strictness,
^ In this the hardness is contrasted is only of the present, cannot reveal
with the solidity, impenetrability, and what is eternally necessary, and so
compressibility of matter, which Locke cannot reveal what Locke finds in the
takes to be not relative to our sensa- idea of solidity.
tions but necessary to its existence.
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Simple Idea of Solidity. 155
coming together of any other two bodies, if it be not put book ii. out of the way, but remain between them, as the hardest c"**~iv that can be found or imagined. He that shall fill a yielding soft body well with air or water, will quickly find its resistance ^ And he that thinks that nothing but bodies that are hard can keep his hands from approaching one another, may be pleased to make a trial, with the air inclosed in a football. [The experiment ^ I have been told, was made at Florence, with a hollow globe of gold filled with water, and exactly closed ; which further shows the solidity of so soft a body as water. For the golden globe thus filled, being put into a press, which was driven by the extreme force of screws, the water made itself way through the pores of that very close metal, and finding no room for a nearer approach of its particles within, got to the outside, where it rose like a dew, and so fell in drops, before the sides of the globe could be made to yield to the violent compression of the engine that squeezed it.]
By this idea of solidity is the extension of body distin- On SoH- guished from the extension of space :— the extension of body ™/f,J,, being nothing but the cohesion or continuity of solid, separ- pulse, able, movable parts ; and the extension of space^, the con- and Pro"^^ tinuity of unsolid, inseparable, and immovable parts. Upon trusion. the solidity of bodies also depend their mutual impulse, resistance, and protrusion. Of pure space then, and solidity, there are several (amongst which I confess myself one) who persuade themselves they have clear and distinct ideas ; and that they can think on space, without anything in it that resists or is protruded by body. This is the idea of pure space*, which they think they have as clear as any idea they
* ' its existence,' i. e. its present beings, or bodies^ to exist ... In truth solidity or incompressibility. it is really nothing, and signifies no
* This and the next sentence added more but a bare possibility that body in Second Edition. may exist where now there is none
' He speaks of the * extension of ... or if there be a necessity to sup- space ' as if extension was a quality of pose a being there, it must be God, space, not a S3monym for it, as he whose being we thus suppose extended sometimes makes it, for he vacillates in but not impenetrable . . . But when we his connotation ofthis and other words. speak of space in general— abstract
* * Space in itself seems,' Locke and separate from all consideration of wrote some years before, * to be nothing any body or any other being — it seems but a capacity or possibility for extended not then to be any real thing, but only
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1 56 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
*^Q^ ^^ can have of the extension of body : the idea of the distance Chap IV ^^^^^^^ the Opposite parts of a concave superficies being equally as clear without as with the idea of any solid parts between : and on the other side, they persuade themselves that they have, distinct from that of pure space, the idea of something that fills space^ that can be protruded by the impulse of other bodies, or resist their motion^. If there be others that have not these two ideas distinct, but confound them, and make but one of them, I know not how men, who have the same idea under different names, or different ideas under the same name, can in that case talk with one another ; any more than a man who, not being blind or deaf, has distinct ideas of the colour of scarlet and the sound of a trumpet, could dis- course concerning scarlet colour with the blind man I men- tioned in another place, who fancied that the idea of scarlet was like the sound of a trumpet. What If any one asks me, What this solidity isy I send him to his
^"^»'y *«• senses to inform him^ Let him put a flint or a football
the consideration of a bare possibility of body to exist. . . . For when one says, there is si>ace for another world as big as this, it seems to me to be no more than [to say] there is no repugnancy why another world as big as this might not exist ; and in this sense space may be said to be infinite ; — and so in effect space, as antecedent to body, is in effect nothings is not capable of greater or less, and not separable into parts . . . That which makes us so apt to mistake in this point I think is this — that having been all our lifetime accus- tomed to speak, and to hear others speak, of space, in phrases that import it to be a real thing, e. g. to occupy so much space, we come to be possessed with this prejudice that it is a real thing, and not a bare relation. . . . We are apt to think that it as really exists beyond the utmost extent of all bodies or finite beings, though there are no beings there to sustain it, as it does here [as a relation] amongst bodies. For, though it be true that the black lines drawn on a rule have the
rtlafioH one to another of an inch dis- tance, they being real sensible things ; and though it be abo true that I, having the idea of an inch, can imagine that length, without imagining body, as well as I can imagine figure, without imagining body ; yet it is no more true that there is any real distance in that which we call imaginary space, than that there is any real figure there.' (Locke's Miscdlatuous Papers (1677- 78), in Lord King's Ltfe, vol. ii. pp.
175-S5.)
^ Do not these 'ideas' of pure space and of impenetrable or occupied space, in adults, involve more than the con- tingent and transitory data of the sense of simple contact and of muscular resistance t If so, they are * suggested' by something in intelligence, rather than received as either tactual or mus- cular feelings.
' That is to say, apart from data of the sense of touch, we could not put meaning into the term ' solidity.' (See Third Utter to Stillingfleet, p. 301.) If * sense ' means mere feeling, a man's
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Simple Idea of Solidity.
157
Chap. IV.
between his hands, and then endeavour to join them, and he book ii. will know. If he thinks this not a sufficient explication of solidity, what it is, and wherein it consists ; I promise to tell him what it is, and wherein it consists, when he tells me what thinking is, or wherein it consists ; or explains to me what extension or motion is, which perhaps seems much easier. The simple ideas we have, are such as experience teaches them us ; but if, beyond that, we endeavour by words to make them clearer in the mind, we shall succeed no better than if we went about to clear up the darkness of a blind man's mind by talking ; and to discourse into him the ideas of light and colours. The reason of this I shall show in another place \
senses can only inform him of his own transitory feeling of resistance; though, on occasion of this, intelligence may necessarily suggest the idea of an absolutely or permanently incom- pressible object. The knowledge one gets when a ball is placed within his hands involves ideas of the feeling, and also of the absolute impenetrability —
each of which ideas may be considered in abstraction from the * knowledge ' to which they contribute. The ultimate or metaphysical meaning of solid exist- ence thus transcends mert sense. Man needs more than ' his senses * to ' inform him what it is.' ' Bk. III. ch. ii.
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CHAPTER V.
OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF DIVERS SENSES.
BOOK II. The ideas we get by more than one sense are, of space or
—^*- extension^ ^ figure^ rest^ and motion. For these make perceiv-
Chap. . ^j^jjg impressions, both on the eyes and touch; and we can
received receive and convey into our minds the ideas of the extension,
scehi**^and ^S"^^» motion, and rest of bodies, both by seeing and feeling*.
touching. But having occasion to speak more at large of these in another
place', I here only enumerate them.
^ The ideas of spody Jigurtf tPioHoH, and rest, which Locke refers to * more than one * of the external senses, are, according to Leibniz, suggestions of the common sense {sens commun), due, that is to say, to the latent constitution of the mind itself; for they are ideas of pure understanding — although they have relation to what the senses pre- sent; and they are also capable of definition and demonstration — which < simple ideas ' are not. Along with solidity and number, they are what Locke afterwards calb the primary qualities of matter, in which bodies as they really exist are (in part) mani- fested to us; and they are by him re- garded as sensuous data of touch and sight, with little attempt at either physiological or logical analj^is of the conditions on which they depend.
Whether and how extension is a datum of sight, or of touch, or of
both — whether it is involved in every 'sensation' as such, although more distinctly in some sorts than in others — ^whether the judgments to which the idea gives rise are contingent or necessary, analytical or synthetical, due to individual and inherited experi- ence, or to the eternal constitution of intelligence, — are examples of relative questions since discussed which I.^)cke hardly sees.
* * Body is the only being capable of distance between its own parts, which is extension. . . . This plainly shows the difference of the words extension, — which is for distance, a part of the same body, or that which is considered as one body — and space, which is the distance between any two beings, without the consideration of body inters jacentJ (Locke's Misceil. Papers.)
* Ch. ziii, zv.
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CHAPTER VI.
OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF REFLECTION.
The mind receiving the ideas mentioned in the foregoing book ii. chapters from without, when it turns its view inward upon p""**"^^ itself, and observes its own actions about those ideas it has, g.^^ j^ takes from thence other ideas ^, which are as capable to be the ideas are objects of its contemplation as any of those it received from Jj^J^^g ^£^*" foreign things. Mind about
The two great and principal actions of the mind, which are ideas, most frequently considered, and which are so frequent that The Idea every one that pleases may take notice of them in himself, are °ion^and*' these two: — Idea of
Perception^ or Thinking ; and billing.
Volition^ or Willing. from Re-
[The* power of thinking is called the Understandings and the power of volition is called the Will ; and these two powers or abilities in the mind are denominated faculties.]
Of some of the modes of these simple ideas of reflection, such as are remembrance^ discerning, reasonings judging, know- ledge, faith^ &c., I shall have occasion to speak hereafter*.
^ 'Other ideas/ i.e. the ideas we positions. The last alone is equiva-
receive of the 'operations* which lent to knowledge ; and by use' under-
give meaning to the words that re- standing ' is limited to the second and
present self-conscious life and activity third. See Bk. II. ch. xxi. % 5. in man and in the universe. Locke's ' In First Edition — 'The power in
' reflection ' is self-consciousness inten- the mind of producing these actions,
sified, and different only in degree from we denominate faculties, and are called
the self-consciousness that is involved the Understanding and the WUV in sense-perception, and every con- * See ch. x, xi ; and Bk. IV. ch. xvii,
scious state as such. He is apt to xiv-xvi, i-xiii, xviii. In the Fourth
treat Intellect and Will as merely Book, ' rtaaonmgy judging, knowledge,
finite phenomena. and faith are viewed primarily as
' ' Perception ' is of ' three sorts ' mental assertions or denials, which according to Locke : — (i) perception are either true or false ; not as mere of ideas (phenomena) in our minds, ideas which are neither. He says or simple apprehension ; (a) percep- nothing here of what is contained in tion of the meanings of words ; and (3) the idea (or notion as Berkeley after- perception of connection or repugnancy wards called it) signified by the per- between ideas, — expressed by pro- sonal pronoun I, or of its origin.
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CHAPTER VII.
OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF BOTH SENSATION AND REFLECTION.
BOOK II. I. There be other simple ideas which convey themselves into the mind by all the ways of sensation and reflection, viz. 'pleasure or delight ^ and its opposite, ^^^'/r, or uneasiness ; power \ Pleasure existence \ unity.
and Pain.
Chap. VII.
Mix with almost all our other Ideas.
a. Delight or uneasiness, one or other of them, join them- selves to almost all our ideas both of sensation and reflection : and there is scarce any affection of our senses from without, any retired thought of our mind within, which is not able to produce in us pleasure or pain. By pleasure and pain, I would be understood to signify, whatsoever delights or molests us ; whether it arises from the thoughts of our minds, or anything operating on our bodies. For, whether we call it satisfaction, delight, pleasure, happiness, &c., on the one side, or uneasiness, trouble, pain, torment, anguish, misery, &c., on the other, they are still but different degrees of the same thing, and belong to the ideas of pleasure and pain, delight or uneasiness ; which are the names I shall most commonly use for those two sorts of ideas. As motives 3. ^The infinite wise Author of our being, having given us the power over several parts of our bodies, to move or keep them at rest as we think fit ; and also, by the motion of them.
of our actions.
^ In this and the three following sections Locke digresses into con- sideration of the final caust of our pleasures and pains, although his pri- mary object is to show that 'pleasure,' ' pain/ and correlative terms are not meaningless, but charged with ideas that are due either to impressions of external sense, or to the higher opera-
tions of the mind. While he repre- sents pleasure or pain as the 'con* comitants' of sensuous and spiritual experience, he o£fers no explanation of their variations in duration, intensity, and kind, — though the text implies that those yariations are an index of the healthful action of our functions or the opposite.
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Simple Ideas of Sensation and Reflection. i6i
to move ourselves and other contiguous bodies, in which con- book ii. sist all the actions of our body : having also given a power to ""^jj our minds, in several instances, to choose, amongst its ideas, which it will think on, and to pursue the inquiry of this or that subject with consideration and attention, to excite us to these actions of thinking and motion that we are capable of, — has been pleased to join to several thoughts, and several sensations a perception of delight. If this were wholly sepa- rated from all our outward sensations, and inward thoughts, we should have no reason to prefer one thought or action to another ; negligence to attention, or motion to rest. And so we should neither stir our bodies, nor employ our minds, but let our thoughts (if I may so call it) run adrift, without any direction or design, and suffer the ideas of our minds, like unregarded shadows, to make their appearances there, as it happened, without attending to them. In which state man, however furnished with the faculties of understanding and will, would be a very idle, inactive creature, and pass his time only in a lazy, lethargic dream. It has therefore pleased our wise Creator to annex to several objects, and the ideas which we receive from them, as also to several of our thoughts, a concomitant pleasure, and that in several objects, to several degrees, that those faculties which he had endowed us with might not remain wholly idle and unemployed by us.
4. Fain has the same efficacy and use to set us on work An end that pleasure has, we being as ready to employ our faculties ^,^"^ ^^ to avoid that, as to pursue this^ : only this is worth our con- sideration, that pain is often produced by the same objects and ideas that produce pleasure in us. This their near con- junction, which makes us often feel pain in the sensations where we expected pleasure, gives us new occasion of admiring the wisdom and goodness of our Maker, who, designing the preservation of our being, has annexed pain to the applica- tion of many things to our bodies, to warn us of the harm that they will do, and as advices to withdraw from them. But he, not designing our preservation barely, but the pre- servation of every part and organ in its perfection, hath in
^ Ideas of pleasure and pain are Locke ; inasmuch as by them conduct ' our great concernment/ according to is determined. See chh. xx and xxi. VOL. I. M
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1 62 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
• \
BOOK II. many cases annexed pain to those very ideas whidi* delight ~**ri„ us. Thus heat, that is very agreeable to us in one degree, * by a little greater increase of it proves no ordinary torment : and the most pleasant of all sensible objects, light itself, if there be too much of it, if increased beyond a due proportion to our tyts^ causes a very painful sensation. Which is wisely and favourably so ordered by nature, that when any object does, by the vehemency of its operation, disorder the instru- ments of sensation, whose structures cannot but be very nice and delicate, we might, by the pain, be warned to withdraw, before the organ be quite put out of order, and so be unfitted for its proper function for the future. The consideration of those objects that produce it may well persuade us, that this is the end or use of pain. For, though great light be insuffer- able to our eyes, yet the highest degree of darkness does not at all disease them : because that, causing no disorderly motion in it, leaves that curious organ unarmed in its natural state. But yet excess of cold as well as heat pains us : because it is equally destructive to that temper which is necessary to the preservation of life, and the exercise of the several functions of the body, and which consists in a moderate degree of warmth ; or, if you please, a motion of the insensible parts of our bodies, confined within certain bounds. Another 5. Beyond all this, we may find another reason why God ^" ' hath scattered up and down several degrees of pleasure and
pain, in all the things that environ and affect us ; and blended them together in almost all that our thoughts and senses have to do with ; — that we, finding imperfection, dissatisfaction, and want of complete happiness, in all the enjoyments which the creatures can afford us, might be led to seek it in the enjoyment of Him with whom there is fullness of joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore. Goodness 6. Though what I have here said may not, perhaps, make annexing ^^^ ideas of pleasure and pain clearer to us than our own pleasure experience does, which is the only way that we are capable of ?o our*"* having them ; yet the consideration of the reason why they other j^re annexed to so many other ideas, serving to give us due sentiments of the wisdom and goodness of the Sovereign Disposer of all things, may not be unsuitable to the main end
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Simple Ideas of Sensation and Reflection. 163
of these inquiries : the knowledge and veneration of him being book 11. the chief end of all our thoughts, and the proper business of "^,, all understandings.
7. Existence and Unity are two other ideas that are sug- ideas of gested to the understanding by every object without, and ]^d^uniiy. every idea within. When ideas are in our minds, 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 existence*. And whatever we can consider as one thing, whether a real being or idea, suggests to the understanding the idea of unity.
8. Power also is another of those simple ideas which we idea of receive from sensation and reflection. For, observing in our- ^^^^' selves that we do and can think, and that we can at pleasure move several parts of our bodies which were at rest; the effects, also, that natural bodies are able to produce in one another, occurring every moment to our senses, — we both these ways get the idea of power ^.
9. Besides these there is another idea, which, though sug- Idea of gested by our senses, yet is more constantly offered to us by c^'ion. what passes in our minds ; and that is the idea of succession.
^ ' Suggested ' seems to imply more when it is applied to sensible things,
than that they are only sensuous pre- 'II me semble,' says Leibniz, 'que
sentations. The idea that they exist, les sens ne sauraient nous convaincre
and the idea that they are numerable, de Texistence des choses sensibles,
accompany all our simple ideas, ac- sans U secours de la rmison, Ainsi, je
cording to the text ; our ideas are there- croirais que la consideration de I'exist-
fore complex in experience, although, ence vient de la reflection.' In a
by subsequent abstraction, the pheno- letter to S. Bold ((i6 May, 1699)
meua of which they consist may be Locke says, ' I do not think the ideas
reduced to simple elements. Locke of the operations of things are antecedent
does not examine enough the ' simple* to the ideas of their existence ; for . . .
idea of existence and its 'modes,' we must suppose them to be before
although, as Berkeley afterwards in* they operate.' Hume argues that * the
sisted, 'nothing is of more import- idea of existence is the very same
ance towards erecting a firm system with the idea of what we conceive to
of sound and real knowledge than be existent,' so that, ' when conjoined
to lay the beginning in a distinct ex- with the idea of any object, it makes no
plication of w/mi/ is meant by thin^g, addition to it.' (Treatise, pt.ii.secU^n.) reaiifyf existence' {Principles, § 89.) ' Cf. ch. xxi. in which 'simple
Berkeley's own problem was — to find modes ' of the simple idea of power
' what is meant ' by the tenn exist, are described.
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164 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK n. For if we look immediately into ourselves, and reflect on what ,. ~**7„, IS observable there, we shall find our ideas always, whilst we
Ohap. Vll.
* are awake, or have any thought, passing in train, one going and another coming, without intermission ^
Simple 10. These, if they are not all, are at least (as I think) the
materials "^^^^ Considerable of those simple ideas which the mind has, of all our and out of which is made all its other knowledge ; all which it icd^e. receives only by the two forementioned ways of sensation and reflection *.
Nor let any one think these too narrow bounds for the capacious mind of man to expatiate in, which takes its flight further than the stars, and cannot be confined by the limits of the world ; that extends its thoughts often even beyond the utmost expansion of Matter, and makes excursions into that incomprehensible Inane. I grant all this, but desire any one to assign any simple idea which is not received from one of those inlets before mentioned, or any complex idea not made out of those simple ones*. Nor will it be so strange to think these few simple ideas sufficient to employ the quickest thought, or largest capacity ; and to furnish the materials of all that various knowledge, and more various fancies and opinions of all mankind, if we consider how many words may
> What exists is revealed to us ence, the appearances being blended
in all concrete experience through always with ideas of their existeftce,
change, and thus in constant con- number, successum or ckanggj and of
nection with the idea of change or power in a substance; and all sus-
succession. The unchangeable is in- ceptible of elaboration, by plastic
capable of being experienced. imagination, or in scientific and philo-
* That is to say, it is only gradually, sophic interpretations of the pheno-
through the phenomena presented by mena which originally appeared in
the senses, and in reflection, that our external sense and in reflection. But
original ignorance of everything can should not those blended ideas be
be removed. distinguished from the occasional phe-
' According to the foregoing ac- nomcna of experience, by which they
count of the origin {exordium) of are * suggested,* and which they * al-
human ideas, men are incapable of any ways accompany,* inasmuch as they
ideas ofwhat exists, except those which connect us with the infinite, and are
th« y receive in the simple or unanaly^- presupposed in the Common Reason,
ab e appearances of external things that ' candle of the Lord,* which is
and of their own spirits — presented lighted in man by the transitory phe-
in complexity in their concrete-experi- nomena of sense |
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Simple Ideas of Sensation and Reflection. 165
be made out of the various composition of twenty-four letters; book 11. or if, going one step further, we will but reflect on the variety ""**7,| of combinations that may be made with barely one of the above-mentioned ideas, viz. number, whose stock is inex- haustible and truly infinite: and what a large and immense field doth extension alone afford the mathematicians ?
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CHAPTER VIII.
SOME FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING OUR SIMPLE IDEAS OF SENSATION.
BOOK II.
Chap. VIII.
Positive Ideas from privative causes.
Ideas in the mind distin- guished from that in things which gives rise to them.
1. Concerning the simple ideas of Sensation, it is to be considered, — that whatsoever is so constituted 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 ^ ; which, whatever be the external cause of it, when it comes to be taken notice of by our discerning faculty, it is by the mind looked on and considered there to be a real positive idea in the understanding, as much as any other whatsoever ; though, perhaps, the cause of it be but a privation of the subject.
2. Thus the ideas of heat and cold, light and darkness, white and black, motion and rest, are equally clear and positive ideas in the mind; though, perhaps, some of the causes which produce them are barely privations, in those subjects from whence our senses derive those ideas. These the understanding, in its view of them, considers all as distinct positive ideas, without taking notice of the causes that produce them: which is an inquiry not belonging to the idea, as it is in the understanding, but to the nature of the things existing without us. These are two very different things, and carefully to be distinguished ; it being one thing to perceive and know the idea of white or black, and quite
' In other words, whatever makes the proper impression upon the appro- priate sense organ is in consequence perceived^ or gives rise to the corre- sponding sense idea» e. g. colour when the eye, or sound when the ear is the
organ thus impressed. Now this per- ception, ets a menial state, he argues, cannot in any case be a negation whatever its correlate may be in ex- ternal nature. It is a positive idea.
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Causes of Ideas of Sensation. 167
Another to examine what kind of particles they must be, and book ir how ranged in the superficies, to make any object appear white "^,,, or black.
3. A painter or dyer who never inquired into their causes We may hath the ideas of white and black, and other colours, as Jjfe^swhcn clearly, perfectly, and distinctly in his understanding, and we are perhaps more distinctly, than the philosopher^ who hath }|"?â„¢"* *^ busied himself in considering their natures, and thinks hepi^ysicai
causes*
knows how far either of them is, in its cause, positive or privative; and the idea of black is no less positive in his mind than that of white, however the cause of that colour in the external object may be only a privation.
4. If 'it were the design of my present undertaking to why a inquire into the natural causes and manner of perception ^, ^^^^^'^^ I should oiler this as a reason why a privative cause might, nature in some cases at least, produce a positive idea ; viz. that all ^^jon sensation being produced in us only by different degrees and ? positive modes of motion in our animal spirits, variously agitated by external objects, the abatement of any former motion must
as necessarily produce a new sensation as the variation or increase of it ; and so introduce a new idea, which depends only on a different motion of the animal spirits in that organ ^.
5. But whether this be so or not I will not here determine, Negative but appeal to every one's own experience, whether the shadow jj^^ot of a man, though it consists of nothing but the absence of be mean- light (and the more the absence of light is, the more dis- *"*^ ^*** cernible is the shadow) does not, when a man looks on it, cause as clear and positive idea in his mind, as a man himself,
' ' Philosopher,' i. e. the natural to his introspective method. English
t>hilosopher or physicist, whose pro- philosophy has retrograded since
vince is invaded in this chapter, which Locke, in as far as it has inclined
is supplementary to the preceding to substitute observation of the nerves
account of the simple ideas presented and their functions for reflex study
in the senses. of the invisible operations of the spirit
' < Natural causes and manner,' i. e, of man.
the organic conditions which accom- ' But in this example the phjrsical
pany or precede reception of ideas cause (the organic condition) would
in sense. Locke has already (Introd. still be positive— a (reduced) ' motion '
§ fl) declined to meddle with details in the* animal spiritSy' which were then
of organic psychology, as foreign to supposed by physiologists to impart
what be proposed to inquire into and sense and motion to the body.
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1 68 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. though covered over with clear sunshine? And the picture of "~^*" a shadow is a positive thing. Indeed, we have n^^ative names,
Chap ^^III
' [^ which stand not directly for positive ideas, but for their ab- sence, such as ifisipid^ silence^ nikily &c. ; which words denote positive ideas, v.g. iaste^ soundy beings with a signification of their absence.] Whether 6. And thus One may truly be said to see darkness *. For, are durfo Supposing a hole perfectly dark, from whence no light is causes reflected, it is certain one maty see the figure of it, or it may privative, be painted ; or whether the ink I write with makes any other idea, is a question. The privative causes I have here assigned of positive ideas are according to the common opinion ; but, in truth, it will be hard to determine whether there Be really any ideas from a privative cause, till it be determined, whether rest be any more a privation than motion.
Ideas in 7. To discover the nature of our ideas the better, and to Qualities discourse of them intelligibly, it will be convenient to distin- in Bodies, guish them as they are ideas or perceptions in our mitids; and as they are modifications of matter in the bodies that cause such perceptions in us: that so we may not think (as perhaps usually is done) that they are exactly the images and resemblances of something inherent in the subject'*; most of those of sen- sation being in the mind no more the likeness of something existing without us, than the names that stand for them are the likeness of our ideas, which yet upon hearing they are apt to excite in us *.
^ In the first three editions — 4o fested in most of the ideas or phe-
which there be no positive ideas ; but nomena which we refer to it. they consist wholly in negation of * Without a previous enquiry as
some certain ideas, as silencgy invisible ; to the nature of our ideas of ' self*
but these signify not any ideas in the and of ' external things * ; and without
mind but their absence.' The change explaining how our ideas come to be
in the text is meant to show that even regarded as * qualities * of things, or
negative names are not meaningless^ how the idea of a quality of a thing
not the empty sounds which it was originates, — Locke, in this chapter,
a chief motive of the Elssay to expel supplements the preceding description
from language. of the simple ideas of sense, by dis«
' With Milton we speak of 'darkness tinguishing some of them as direct
visible.' manifestations of bodies in their solid
' ' Subject,' i. e. the substance per- extension, while others are only efflKts, ceived, which, in the case of bodies, be in our sensuous organism, or in extra- goes on to show, is not direcUy mani- organic things, of *â– powers ' inherent
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Qualities and Powers of Bodies. 169
8. Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself^ or is the im- book 11. mediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, that ""***
I call idea ; and the power to produce any idea in our mind, J^^, I call quality of the subject wherein that power is. Thus a and the snowball having the power to produce in us the ideas of ^^^g^PJ^ white, cold, and round, — the power to produce those ideas in us, as they are in the snowball, I call qualities ; and as they are sensations or perceptions in our understandings, I call them ideas ; which ideas, if I speak of sometimes as in the things themselves, I would be understood to mean those qualities in the objects which produce them in us.
9. [^ Qualities thus considered in bodies are, Primary Firsty'^wxAi as are utterly inseparable from the body, in what ofBodSs.
state soever it be;] and such as in all the alterations and changes it suffers, all the force can be used upon it, it con- stantly keeps ; and such as 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 our senses : v.g. Take a grain of wheat, divide it into two parts ; each part has still solidity, extension, figure^ and mobility : divide it again, and it retains still the same qualities ; and so divide it on, till the parts become insensible ^ ; they must retain
in bodies. For he finds body dis- produce simple ideas in us, viz. so/»/«fy,
covering itself in sense in both these extension, motion or rest, number, and
ways— in the phases of its own solid figurt* This sentence was omitted in
extension, and in the sensuous states the fourth edition, as well as the
which it occasions in sentient persons, words, ' These, which I call original or
llie former he calls its primaty or rettl, primary qualities of body, are wholly
and the latter its secondary or mtputed inseparable from it/ which were at
qualities. In the former, matter seems the beginning of what was § lo (now
to be manifested to him as directly $ 9), instead of the words bracketted.
as his own mind is manifested to ' Does the divisibility continue after
him, in his ideas of his own mental the parts become insensible ' to us —
operations when he is conscious. In ad infinihun ? The perplexities which
the latter, matter is indirectly mani- are involved in an affirmative answer
fested, in and through his ideas of the Berkeley boldly tried to relieve, by
sensuous states to which it gives rise making the commencement of insensi*
in himself. bility the terminus of the divisibility of
^ In the first three editions section extension and space, thus assuming
9 stands thus: — * Concerning these that our idea of space involves nothing
qualities we may, I think, observe but what sense happens to give. See
these primary ones in bodies that his PrinapUs^ %% laS, &c.
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170 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. still each of them all those qualities. For division (which is ^ "^11 stU that a mill, or pestle, or any other body, does upon another, in reducing it to insensible parts) can never take away either solidity, extension, figure, or mobility from any body, but only makes two or more distinct separate masses of matter, of that which was but one before ; all which distinct masses, reckoned as so many distinct bodies, after division, make a certain number. [^ These I call original or primary qualities ^ of body, which I think we may observe to produce simple ideas in us, viz. solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number. Secondary lo. Secondly^ such qualities which in truth are nothing in ofBodS ^^ objects themselves but powers' to produce various sensa- tions in us by their primary qualities, i. e. by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their insensible parts*, as colours, sounds, tastes, &c. These I call secondary qualities'^. To these might be added a third sort, which are allowed to be barely powers ^ ; though they are as much real qualities in
^ This sentence and the following section were introduced in the fourth edition.
' The qualities of matter were dis- tinguished under these names before Locke, by his friend Boyle, whose physical speculations may have sug- gested the subject of this chapter. See Boyle on the Origin of Forms and Qualities (Oxford, 1666).
' The idea of power, as already noted (ch. vii. % 8), accompanies all our ideas both of sensation and reflec- tion. But what is here meant by * power'? Does it mean more than constant sequence ; and can body, as such, be conceived as the active cause of any effect ? The idea of * power,* including this question, is the subject of ch. xxi.
* He here (without proof) takes for granted that felt sensations, which give their only positive meaning to the so-called secondary qualities of things, Are all physically caused by modifica- tions of their primary atoms^ under natural law, and may therefore be interpreted in terms of mathematics ;
although he elsewhere allows that this is only hypothetical, and that the
* power * to which the sensations are due may lie in 'what is still more remote from our comprehension * (Bk. IV. ch. iii. § I r). Any way he postulates something in extended things^ on which the relation to the felt sensations de- pends. Hence, as Boyle says — * if there were no sensitive beings in existence, bodies that are now the objects of our senses would be dispositively endowed with colours, tastes, &c. ; but actualiy only with those more catholic affec- tions, as figure, motion, texture, &c., which are called primary.' Both sorts of qualities are distinguished from ' ideas of reflection,' because regarded as either phenomena or effects of external things.
' Have the things of sense such
* power,' either in the collocations and textures of their constituent atoms, or otherwise, as that any changes in our sensations, and in extended things, can be referred to them, as their ultimate and proper cause?
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Qualities and Powers of Bodies.
171
the subject as those which I, to comply with the common way of speaking, call qualities, but for distinction, secondary quali- ties. For the power in fire to produce a new colour, or consistency, in wax or clay^ — by its primary qualities, is as much a quality in fire, as the power it has to produce in me b, new idea or sensation of warmth or burning, which I felt not before, — by the same primary qualities, viz. the bulk, texture, and motion of its insensible parts.]
11. [^The next thing to be considered is, how bodies produce ideas in us ; and that is manifestly by impulse, the only way which we can conceive bodies to operate in *.]
12. If then® external objects be not united to our minds when they produce ideas therein ; and yet we perceive these original qualities in such of them as singly fall under our senses, it is evident * that some motion must be thence con-
BOOK II. Chap. VIII.
How Bodies produce Ideas in us.
By
motions, external y and in our organism.
^ In the first three editions this sec- tion stands thus — < The next thing to be considered is, how bodies operate one upon another ; and that is mani- festly by impulse, and nothing else. It being impossible to conceive that body should operate on what it does not touch (which is all one as to imagine it can operate where it is not), or when it does touch, operate any other way than by motion.' The change introduced in the fourth edition is in fulfilment of a promise to Stilling- flcet:— 'It is true I say that bodies operate by impulse, and nothing else. And so I thought when I wrote it; and can yet conceive no other way of operation. But I am since convinced by the judicious Mr. Newton*s incom- parable book, that it is too bold a pre- sumption to limit God's power on this point by my narrow conceptions. The gravitation of matter towards matter, by ways inconceivable to me, is not only a demonstration that God can, if he pleases, put into bodies powers, luid ways of operation, above what can be derived from our idea of body, or can be explained by what we know of matter, but is also an unquestionable
and everywhere visible instance that he has done so. And therefore, in the next edition of my book, I shall take care to have that passage rectified.' (J^eply to Second Letter {16^) j p. 468.) Cf. Bk. IV. ch. iii. ( 6.
' Motion, he assumes, can itself pro- duce nothing but motion ; but how ' motion made in some part of the body produces some perception in the understanding ' (ch. i. § 93) he does not profess to explain. He says else- where that *it seems probable that in us ideas depend on, and are in some way or other the effect of, motion, since they are so fleeting ; it being almost impossible to keep in our minds the same idea long together, unless when the object that produces it is present.' (Remarks on Norris,
517.)
• The words which here follow in the first three editions — * bodies cannot operate at a distance, and ' — are omitted in the/onrih edition. Cf. ( 18.
* * Evident ' — because bodies, he as- sumes, cannot otherwise than by con' tinuity of motion occasion the motions in the organism on which our per- ceptions somehow depend.
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172 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK 11. tinued by our nerves, or animal spirits, by some parts of ou'i* ""**" bodies, to the brains or the seat of sensation, there to produce ' in our minds the particular ideas we have of them. And since the extension, figure, number, and motion of bodies of an observ- able bigness, maybe perceived at a distance^ by the sight, it is evident some singly imperceptible bodies must come from them to the eyes, and thereby convey to the brain some motion ; which produces these ideas which we have of them in us. How 13. After the same manner that the ideas of these original
QuSlitiS^ qualities are produced in us, we may conceive that the ideas P^°.^4^® of secondary qualities are also produced, viz. by the operation ' of insensible particles ^ on our senses. For, it being manifest that there are bodies and good store of bodies, each whereof are so small, that we cannot by any of our senses discover either their bulk, figure, or motion, — as is evident in the particles of the air and water, and others extremely smaller than those; perhaps as much smaller than the particles of air and water, as the particles of air and water are smaller than peas or hail-stones;— let us suppose at present that the different motions and figures, bulk and number, of such particles, affecting the several organs of our senses, produce in us those different sensations* which we have from the colours and smells of bodies ; v. g. that a violet, by the impulse of such insensible particles of matter, of peculiar figures and bulks, and in different degrees and modifications of their motions*, causes the ideas of the blue colour, and sweet scent of that flower to be produced in our minds. It being no more impossible to conceive that God' should annex
^ This do«s not necessarily imply the mechanical cause, or natural oc>
that the perception of distance in the casion, of the sensations which we
line of sight is an immediate datum of refer to extended things,
the sense of sight. * Perception itself is thus scientific
* ' Insensible particles/ i. e. ultimate cally inexplicable. The percepHtms^ as
atoms, the existence of which he infers, distinguished from the organic im^rts*
although they are not perceptible by sions, he refers not to motions, or laws
the senses of men. of motion, but to the will of God, pro-
' Does ' sensation * here mean only ceeding according to some (by us) un»
a physical impression, or motion in- known law : we perceive because God
duced in some part of the human body, has somehow given us the power of
as in ch. i. { 93 ? perceiving.
* ' Motions ' — ^here supposed to be
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Qualities and Powers of Bodies. 1 73
such ideas to such motions, with which they have no simili- book ii. tudc, than that he should annex the idea of pain to the —►^ motion of a piece of steel dividing our flesh, with which that "^'** idea hath no resemblance.
14. What I have said concerning colours and smells may They be understood also of tastes and sounds, and other the like ©n^the sensible qualities; which, whatever reality we by mistake P"™^^' attribute to them, are in truth nothing in the objects them- selves, but powers to produce various sensations in us ; and depend on those primary qualities, viz. bulk, figure, texture,
and motion of parts [^ as I have said].
15. From whence I think it easy to draw this observa- Weas of tion, — that the ideas of primary qualities of bodies are Qualities resemblances of them, and their patterns do really ^^^st ^^^^®."^' in the bodies themselves *, but the ideas produced in us byofsecond- these secondary qualities have no resemblance * of them at all. ^^' "^^* There is nothing like * our ideas, existing in the bodies them- selves. They are, in the bodies we denominate from them,
only a power to produce those sensations in us : and what is sweet, blue, or warm in idea, is but the certain bulk, figure, and motion of the insensible • parts, in the bodies themselves, which we call so.
1 6. Flame is denominated hot and light ; snow, white and Examples.
^ ' and therefore I call them Second- like nothing but another idea, and so
ary Qualities^— in first three editions. cannot represent the abstract un- ideal,
* This implies that what we are unphenomenal ' matter ' against which
directly percipient of, i. e. the idea, be- he contended ; both sorts of qualities
longs, in the case of the real or primary too being in theirnature alike dependent
qualities of sensible things, to the on a sentient intelligence. Locke, less
things themselves, being body itself subtle, probably means, in his vague
manifested^ so far as a percept can way, that the primary qualities are
present what is extended. But what virtually the ideas we have of them,
we are directly percipient of, i. e. the while of the other qualities there is
idea, in the case of the imputed or nothing in the things that can be
secondary qualities, is our own felt identified with what we feel. The
sensations, which can have no likeness alleged ' resemblance * in the former
to, or virtual identity with, any ap- case is Locke's way of asserting the
pearance in which extended things objective existence of the presented
themselves are presented. Berkeley appearance or idea,
afterwards argued, in opposition to • * insensible ' — ^yet supposed to be
this, that neither identity nor resem- solid and moveable, or endowed with
blance is in either case possible ; seeing primary qualities, that an idea, which is mental, can be
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Chap. VIII.
174 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. cold; and manna, white and sweet, from the ideas they produce in us. Which qualities are commonly thought to be the same in those bodies that those ideas are in us, the one the perfect resemblance of the other, as they are in a mirror, and it would by most men be judged very extravagant if one should say otherwise. And yet he that will consider that the same fire that, at one distance produces in us the sensation of warmth, does, at a nearer approach, produce in us the far different sensation of painS ought to bethink himself what reason he has to say — that this idea of warmth, which was produced in him by the fire, is actiiaUy in the fire \ and his idea of pain, which the same fire produced in him the same way, is not in the fire. Why are whiteness and coldness in snow, and pain not, when it produces the one and the other idea in us^ ; and can do neither, but by the bulk, figure, number, and motion of its solid parts ? The ideas 1 7. The particular bulk, number, figure, and motion of the Primary P^^ts of fire or snow are really in them, — whether any one's alone scuscs perccivc them or no : and therefore they may be called exist ^^^^ qualities, because they really exist in those bodies. But light, heat, whiteness, or coldness, are no more really in them than sickness or pain is in manna. Take away the sensation of them ; let not the eyes see light or colours, nor the ears hear sounds ; let the palate not taste, nor the nose smell, and all colours, tastes, odours, and sounds, as they are such par- tkular ideasy vanish and cease, and are reduced to their causes, i.e. bulk, figure, and motion of parts ^
^ So in Hume's table argument. — ' Because ' nothing can be like a sen-
(Jnquify H. U.y sect. xii. pt. i.) sation or idea, but a sensation or idea,'
^ Berkeley makes this ' production Berkeley argues against the intU^
in us ' an example, not of final or even pendent or substantial existence of the
of properly efficient causality, but of sensible world ; for the so-called reed
' sign and thing signified.* The motion qualities must all disappear, when the
said to cause heat, is not properly the ' ideas ' of solidity, figure, and motion,
cause of the sensation thus attributed cease to be perceived by any one, so
to it, but is only the sign to forewarn that their esse is perdpi. See the first
of the sensations that are connected Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous,
with such motions, according to the which in effect argues, that the annihi*
method of procedure established in lation of all conscious and percipient
nature by the supreme power of God. life, in God and finite beings, would
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Qualities and Powers of Bodies. 175
18. A piece of manna of a sensible bulk is able to produce book ii. in us the idea of a round or square figure ; and by being ""**" removed from one place to another, the idea of motion. This jj^^ ^_ idea of motion represents it as it really is in manna moving : condaiy a circle or square are the same, whether in idea or existence, tWngsoniy in the mind or in the manna. And this, both motion and ^^ modes figure, are really in the manna, whether we take notice of primary, them or no ^ : this everybody is ready to agree to. Besides, manna, by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of its parts, has a power to produce^ the sensations of sickness, and sometimes of acute pains or gripings in us. That these ideas of sickness and pain are not in the manna, but effects of its operations on us, and are nowhere when we feel them not ; this also every one readily agrees to. And yet men are hardly to be brought to think that sweetness and whiteness are not really in manna ; which are but the effects of the operations of manna, by the motion, size, and figure of its particles, on the eyes and palate: as the pain and sickness caused by manna are confessedly nothing but the effects of its operations on the stomach and guts, by the size, motion, and figure of its insensible parts, (for by nothing else can a body operate, as has been proved) : as if it could not operate on the eyes and palate, and thereby produce in the mind particular distinct ideas, which in itself it has not, as well as we allow it can operate on the guts and stomach, and thereby produce distinct ideas, which in itself it has not. These ideas, being all effects of the operations of manna on several parts of our bodies, by the size, figure, number, and
render meaningless the * primary or and touch ; the ideas perfectly resem-
real/ equally with the secondary or bling the primary or real qualities, in
imputed, qualities of things. what is thus an identity of similars.
^ This is Locke's ^fTM/ that our ideas He follows what Hume calls ' a blind
of real qualities * resemble,' or are and powerful instinct/ which makes us
virtually ' identical with,* the objec- suppose the very images presented by
tive qualities themselves. ' A circle the senses to be virtually a presenta-
or square are Me same whether in idea tion of the external things them-
or existence; in the mind or in the selves.
manna.* He thus practically identifies ' It signifies that the continuously
the sensuous ideas or phenomena of active Divine Reason, immanent in
figures and motions with actual figures things, is about to produce those ' sen-
and motions, in the things we see sations ' in us.
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176 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. motion of its parts ; — why those produced by the eyes and "^YW P^^^^® should rather be thought to be really in the manna, than those produced by the stomach and guts ; or why the pain and sickness, ideas that are the effect of manna, should be thought to be nowhere when they are not felt ; and yet the sweetness and whiteness, effects of the same manna on other parts of the body, by ways equally as unknown, should be thought to exist in the manna, when they are not seen or tasted, would need some reason to explain ^.
Examples. 1 9. Let US Consider the red and white colours in porphyry. Hinder light from striking on it, and its colours vanish; it no longer produces any such ideas in us: upon the return of light it produces these appearances on us again. Can any one think any real alterations are made in the porphyry by the presence or absence of light; and that those ideas of whiteness and redness are really in porphryry in the light, when it is plain it has no colour in the dark ? It has, indeed, such a configuration of particles, both night and day, as are apt, by the rays of light rebounding from some parts of that hard stone, to produce in us the idea of redness, and from others the idea of whiteness ; but whiteness or redness are not in it at any time, but such a texture that hath the power to produce such a sensation in us^
30. Pound an almond, and the clear white colour will be altered into a dirty one, and the sweet taste into an oily one. What real alteration can the beating of the pestle make in any body, but an alteration of the texture of it '?
^ Berkeley applies an analogous was colourless in the dark, argument to the *â– real ' or primary ' Locke implies in many passages,
qualities— thus melting a// the appear- that all the so-called ' powers ' in
ances which Locke refers to permanent sensible things may be resolved into
things into transitory felt sensations. motions and change of texture ; and
' Berkeley in like manner ai-gues for that both when the * effects * take
the dependence of what is s^^/m/ on per- the form of sensations in us, and of
cipient mind. Let all conscious life or changes in the 'texture,' and there-
percipiency be suddenly extinguished, fore in the appearance, of extra
and the whole world of sensible things organic bodies. If so, and if one
must therefore lose its actuality, which could know all the motions in the
the return o^ self-conscious life would world, and all their laws of procedure,
restore, as the entrance of light intro- he could predict all the changes in
duces variety of colours in a room that things, and all our changes of sensa:
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Qualiites and Powers of Bodies. 1 77
21. Ideas being thus distinguished and understood^ we may book 11. be able to give an account how the same water, at the same _ "**~
Crap VIII
time, may produce the idea of cold by one hand and of heat Explains by the other ^ : whereas it is impossible that the same water, how water if those ideas were really in it, should at the same time be by ^^^ both hot and cold. For, if we imagine warmth^ as it is in our ^"^ ™*y hands, to be nothing but a certain sort and degree of motion to the in the minute particles of our nerves or animal spirits, we may °^**^'*- understand how it is possible that the same water may^ at the same time, produce the sensations of heat in one hand and cold in the other ; which yet figure never does, that never producing the idea of a square by one hand which has pro- duced the idea of a globe by another. But if the sensation of heat and cold be nothing but the increase or diminution of the motion of the minute parts of our bodies, caused by the corpuscles of any other body, it is easy to be understood, that if that motion be greater in one hand than in the other ; if a body be applied to the two hands, which has in its minute particles a greater motion than in those of one of the hands, and a less than in those of the other, it will increase the motion of the one hand and lessen it in the other ; and so cause the different sensations of heat and cold that depend thereon \
22. I have in what just goes before been engaged in phy- An ex- sical inquiries a little further than perhaps I intended. But, |^n"*°" it being necessary to make the nature of sensation a little natural understood ; and to make the difference between the qualities sophy. in bodies, and the ideas produced by them in the mind, to
be distinctly conceived, without which it were impossible to discourse intelligibly of them ; — I hope I shall be pardoned this little excursion into natural philosophy * ; it being neces-
tion, and thus reach a perfect scientific * * Depend * — as their ^AysM»/ causes,
interpretation of nature. But as this or signs, which are not to be regarded
cannot be, demonstrable science of as ultimate or truly efficient causes of
nature transcends the experience and the sensations.
intelligence of man. ' In Locke's Elemtttis of Natural
^ So Berkeley in his First Dialogue. Philosophy, matter is defined to be
Hume's 'table argument 'is analogous, 'an txtmdtd solid substance, which,
applied to the primary qualities. being comprehended under distinct
VOL. I. N
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178 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. VIII.
BOOK II. sary in our present inquiry to distinguish the primary and real qualities of bodies, which are always in them (viz. solidity, extension, figure, number, and motion, or rest, and are some- times perceived by us, viz. when the bodies they are in are big enough singly to be discerned), from those secondary and imputed qualities, which are but the powers of several com- binations of those primary ones, when they operate without being distinctly discerned ^ ; — ^whereby we may also come to know what ideas are, and what are not, resemblances^ of something really existing in the bodies we denominate from them.
23, The qualities, then, that are in bodies, rightly considered, are of three sorts : —
Firsty The bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion or rest of their solid parts. Those are in them, whether we perceive them or not; and when they are of that size that we can discover them ', we have by these an idea of the thing as it is in itself ; as is plain in artificial things. These I call primary qualities.
Secondly^ The power that is in any body, by reason of its insensible primary qualities ^^ to operate after a peculiar
Three Sorts of Qualities in Bodies.
surfaces, makes so many particular distinct bodies ' ; and moiioH is said to be * so well known by the sight and touch that to use words to give a clearer idea of it would be vain.*
* If the primary constitution wen perceptible, the secondary qualities would, he argues, disappear, (Cf. Bk. II. ch. xxiii. S II.)
* Locke's doctrine is objected to by Cousin, on the ground that we can- not speak of likeness between material and spiritual things, but only between materia] things among themselves. {Hisioire de la Philosophies ai™«. le^on.) This seems to be a difference about words. Locke treats primary qualities as *• real,' or * perfectly resembling the realy'and virtually ' the same *; but called ideas in the mind, at one point of view, phenomena presented by the thing, at another. Even Hamilton some-
times allows this : * If we modify the obnoxious language of Locke, and instead of saying that the ideas or notions of the primary qualities rv- semble, merely assert that they totaily represent their objects, that is, af- ford us such a knowledge of their nature as we should have were an immediate intuition of the extended reality in itself competent to man . . . Reid's doctrine and his would be found in perfect unison.' (Hamilton's Reid, p. 84a.)
' That is, discover them by our senses, and not by supersensible inference.
* This 'reason' or explanation of the secondary qualities, and other ' powers' of things (assumed in this and the following sections) is elsewhere stated by Locke less confidently — as a probable hypothesis, which cannot be
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Qualiiies and Powers of Bodies^ 1 79
manner on any of our senses, and thereby produce in us the book 11. different ideas of several colours, sounds, smells, tastes, &c. "**~ These are usually called sensible qualities ^ •
Thirdly^ The power that is in any body, by reason of the particular constitution of its primary qualities ^, to make such a change in the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of another body^ as to make it operate on our senses differently from what it did before. Thus the sun has a power to make wax white, and fire to make lead fluid. [* These are usually called powersI\
The first of these, as has been said, I think may be properly called real, original, or primary qualities ; because they are in the things themselves, whether they are perceived or not : and upon their different modifications it is that the secondary qualities ^ depend.
The other two are only powers to act differently upon other things : which powers result from the different modifi* cations of those primary qualities.
34. But, though the two latter sorts of qualities are powers The first barely, and nothing but powers, relating to several other y^n^,^.â„¢' bodies, and resulting from the different modifications of the the second original qualities *, yet they are generally otherwise thought of. be^R^sem- For the second sort, viz. the powers to produce several ideas ^^^ces,
absolutely verified. They are sup> proper^ in contrast with matter quanii- posed at any rate to be the 'constant y?«(/, or under mathematical relations, in effects * of soms non-resembling cause its so-called primary or real qualities. in the extended solid. Cf. ch. xxx. So Hobbes : — * Wliatever qualifies our $ a. senses make us think there are in the * Locke takes no special account, world, they be not therw, but are seem- under either head, of the roughness^ ing and apparitions only ; the things smoothnessy hardnesSy softness, and that really are in the world without us fluidity of bodies, which Reid and are those motions by which these others include amoug their real or seemings are caused/ {Human Nature, primary qualities ; although they are ch. it $ lo.) Not so Locke, not, like space — occupancy necessarily * Our felt sensations and all the implied in our positive conception of other phenomena of sense, are thus body. Hamilton calls them secundo- referred by Locke at last to molecu- primaty, as a mixture of the two. lar activity — the various ' powers ' of ' Added mfintrth Edition. atoms, — in their varied combinations > Distinguished by some as qualities and motions, — as their natural cause*
N %
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i8o Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. in us, by our senses, are looked upon as real qualities in the
-♦^ things thus affecting us : but the third sort are called and
' esteemed barely powers, v. g. The idea of heat or light, which
not ; the we receive by our eyes, or touch, from the sun, are commonly
neither thought real qualities existing in the sun, and something
are, nor more than mere powers in it. But when we consider the
thought so. ^^^ *^ reference to wax, which it melts or blanches, we look
on the whiteness and softness produced in the wax, not as
qualities in the sun, but effects produced by powers in it-
Whereas, if rightly considered, these qualities of light and
warmth, which are perceptions in me when I am warmed or
enlightened by the sun, are no otherwise in the sun, than the
changes made in the wax, when it is blanched or melted, are
in the sun. They are all of them ^^^y powers in the sun^
depending on its primary qualities ; whereby it is able,
in the one case, so to alter the bulk, figure, texture, or
motion of some of the insensible parts of my eyes or
hands, as thereby to produce in me the idea of light or
heat ; and in the other, it is able so to alter the bulk, figure,
texture, or motion of the insensible parts of the wax, as to
make them fit to produce in me the distinct ideas of white
and fluid.
Why the 25- The reason why the one are ordinarily taken for real
arrordln^ qualities, and the other only for bare powers, seems to be,
â– riiy taken because the ideas we have of distinct colours, sounds, &c-,
QuidtScs, containing nothing at all in them of bulk, figure, or motion,
and not for we are not apt to think them the effects of these primary
bare t. . i . t . - T
Powers, qualities ; which appear not, to our senses, to operate in their production, and with which they have not any apparent congruity or conceivable connexion. Hence it is that we are so forward to imagine, that those ideas are the resem- blances of something really existing in the objects themselves : since sensation discovers nothing of bulk, figure, or motion of parts in their production ; nor can reason show how bodies, by their bulk^ figure^ and motion, should produce in the mind the ideas of blue or yellow, &c. But, in the other case, in the operations of bodies changing the qualities one of another, we plainly discover that the quality produced hath commonly no resemblance with anything in the thing pro-
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Qualities and Powers of Bodies. i8i
ducing it ; wherefore we look on it as a bare effect of book ii. power ^. For, through receiving the idea of heat or light from "^(,| the sun, we are apt to think it is a perception and resemblance of such a quality in the sun ; yet when we see wax, or a fair face, receive change of colour from the sun, we cannot imagine that to be the reception or resemblance of anything in the sun, because we find not those different colours in the sun itself. For, our senses being able to observe a likeness or unlikeness of sensible qualities in two different external objects, we forwardly enough conclude the production of any sensible quality in any subject to be an effect of bare power \ and not the communication of any quality which was really in the efficient, when we find no such sensible quality in the thing that produced it. But our senses, not being able to discover any unlikeness between the idea produced in us, and the quality of the object producing it, we are apt to imagine that our ideas ® are resemblances of something in the objects, and not the effects of certain powers placed in the modification of their primary qualities, with which primary qualities the ideas produced in us have no resem- blance.
26. To conclude. Beside those before-mentioned primary Secondary qualities in bodies, viz. bulk, figure, extension, number, and twofold^ motion of their solid parts ; all the rest, whereby we take ^"^'. 'â„¢- notice of bodies, and distinguish them one from another, are perceiv- nothing else but several powers in them, depending on those ^condiy primary qualities ; whereby they are fitted, either by imme- mediately diately operating on our bodies to produce several different aWe.^*^ ideas in us ; or else, by operating on other bodies, so to change their primary qualities as to render them capable of producing ideas in us different from what before they did. The former of these, I think, may be called secondary qualities immediately
^ Here again Locke tends to re- ' ' in any subject,' i. e. by one body
solve physical science into mole- in another body — *bare power/ i.e.
cular physics, in which the successive there being no discernible equivaUnce
changes in bodies are ultimately inter- between the * cause ' and its effects,
pretable in terms of the constitution ' ' our ideas/ L e. of secondary of
and behaviour of atoms, imputed qualities.
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1 82 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK n. perceivable : the latter, secondary qualities, mediately per* "^^^ ceivable ^
Chap. VIII.
^ Berkeley*s fkmous question about the qualities and powers of matter
the meaning of ' reality/ in its applica- presented in this chapter, which may
tion to the world of sense, and the be compared with ch. xxi., especially
dependence or independence of sen- %% 1-4; and ch. zxiii., especially
sible things upon sentient intelligence, $§ 7-i3> on our ideas of ' power ' and
arose naturally out of the analysis of ' substance,* here silently presupposed.
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CHAPTER IX.
OF PERCEPTION. I. Perception'^, as it is the first faculty^ of the mind exercised book ii.
Chap. IX.
about our ideas ; so it is the first and simplest idea we have from reflection, and is by some called thinking in general, p^rcep-* Though thinking, in the propriety of the English tongue, tion the signifies that sort of operation in the mind about its ideas, id^a'of ^^*^ wherein the mind is active; where it, with some degree of ^eflec- voluntary attention, considers anything \ For in bare naked perception, the mind is^ for the most part, only passive ; and what it perceives, it cannot avoid perceiving *.
2. What perception is, every one will know better by Reflec- reflecting on what he does himself, when he sees, hears, cm ^ve"us feels, &c., or thinks, than by any discourse of mine. Whoever the idea of
v^rhat Der*
reflects on what passes in his own mind cannot miss it. And ception is. if he does not reflect, all the words in the world cannot make him have any notion of it.
3. This is certain, that whatever alterations are made in Arises in the body, if they reach not the mind ; whatever impressions ^^Jvhen are made on the outward parts, if they are not taken notice the mind
* Cf. Bk. IV. ch. i. $ fl, ch. iii $ 14, now common among exact thinkers. Sec See also Bk. II. ch. xxi. $ 5 for * The ideas or phenomena that are three different meanings of ' percep* actually present in sense, or in reflec- tion' in the Essay, tion, are not dependent on our un'll in
' Locke accounts for cognitive life the way representations of imagina-
by the assumption of * faculties ' inhe- tion are. As Berkeley puts it : — 'When
rent in self-conscious agents. This and in broad daylight I open my eyes, it is
the two next chapters deal with facul- not in my power to choose whether
ties, as a sort of appendix to * simple I shall see or no, or to determine what
ideas of reflection,' treating both of the particular objects shall present them*
faculties, and of the ideas we have of selves to my view. And so, too, with
them when we reflect. the acts or states of which I am con-
' Locke, like most of his contem- scious, which when they actually arise
poraries, often uses 'thought' and I cannot help being conscious of
< thinking' in a wider meaning than is them.'
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184 Essay cowerning Human Understanding.
BOOK IL of within, there is no perception *. Fire may burn our bodies
•"■*^ with no other effect than it does a billet, unless the motion be Chap IX ^. ' ' continued to the brain, and there the sense of heat, or idea
notices the , . «
organicim- of pain, be produced in the mind ; wherem consists actual
pression. p^^eption.
Impulse 4* How often may a man observe in himself, that whilst on the jjjg ixiind IS intently employed in the contemplation of some
org^n in- • r • r
sufficient, objects, and curiously surveying some ideas that are there, it takes no notice of impressions of sounding bodies made upon the organ of hearing, with the same alteration that uses to be for the producing the idea of sound? A sufficient impulse there may be on the organ ; but it not reaching the observa- tion of the mind, there follows no perception : and though the motion that uses to produce the idea of sound be made in the ear, yet no sound is heard. Want of sensation, in this case, is not through any defect in the organ, or that the man's ears are less affected than at other times when he does hear : but that which uses to produce the idea, though conveyed in by the usual organ, not being taken notice of in the under- standing ^ and so imprinting no idea in the mind, there follows no sensation. So that wherever there is sense or perception, there some idea is actually produced, and present in the understanding. Children, 5. Therefore I doubt not but children, by the exercise of they^may their senses about objects that affect them in the womb, have Ideas receive some few ideas before they are bom ^, as the un- Womb, avoidable effects, either of the bodies that environ them, or else of those wants or diseases they suffer; amongst which (if one may conjecture concerning things not very capable of examination) I think the idea» of hunger and warmth are
^ Percipient and self-conscious life be philosophically inadequate,
is thus contrasted with motion in ' This virtually implies activity in the
bodies, although our perception is 'understanding/ and its active pre-
in this world conditioned by modes of sence, as an element even in primary
cerebral motion, which are the occa- perception.
sions on which the spiritual processes < Although acquired before birth,
arise. To ascertain more fully those they would not be innaJtt^ in Locke*s
organic conditions is scientifically in- meaning of the term, if thus acquired
teresting, and might be in a high degree m an tmU^naiai una* exptrima, useful, but the knowledge must always
have none innate.
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Faculty of Perception. 185
two : which probably are some of the first that children have, book il and which they scarce ever part with again. "^ x
6. But though it be reasonable to imagine that children Th effe ts receive some ideas before they come into the world, yet of Sensa- these simple ideas are far from those innate principles which ^omb" ^^ some contend for, and we, above, have rejected. These here mentioned, being the effects of sensation, are only from some affections of the body, which happen to them there, and so depend on something exterior to the mind ; no otherwise differing in their manner of production from other ideas derived from sense, but only in the precedency of time. Whereas those innate principles are supposed to be quite of another nature ; not coming into the mind by any accidental alterations in, or operations on the body ^ ; but, as it were, original characters impressed upon it, in the very first moment
of its being and constitution.
7. As there are some ideas which we may reasonably Which suppose may be introduced into the minds of children in [l^ar'firat, the womb, subservient to the necessities of their life and >s not evi- beii^ there : so, after they are bom, those ideas are the earliest important imprinted which happen to be the sensible qualities which
first occur to them; amongst which light is not the least considerable, nor of the weakest efficacy. And how covetous the mind is to be furnished with all such ideas as have no pain accompanying them, may be a little guessed by what is observable in children new-bom ; who always turn their eyes to that part from whence the light comes, lay them how you please. But the ideas that are most familiar at first, being various according to the divers circumstances of children's first entertainment in the world, the order wherein the several ideas come at first into the mind is very various, and uncertain also ; neither is it much material to know it.
8. We are further to consider concerning perception, that the ideas we receive by sensation are often, in grown people,
^ Although our ideas are thus de- it still does not follow that all the ideas,
pendent on organic impressions, whe* which thus arise, can be fully analysed
ther after or before birth, so that no into the contingent impressions which
knowledge of things, in any man, can called them forth. be imtectdtnt to data of ' experience,'
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1 86 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. altered by the judgment, without our taking notice of it^.
— *^ When we set before our eyes a round globe of any uniform
Sensations ^^^^"^» V. g. gold, alabaster, or jet, it is certain that the idea
often thereby imprinted on our mind is of a flat circle, variously
by*the^ shadowed, with several degrees of light and brightness coming
Judgment, to our eyes. But we having, by use, been accustomed to
perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are wont
to make in us ; what alterations are made in the reflections
of light by the difference of the sensible figfures of bodies ; —
the judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters the
appearances into their causes ^ So that from that which is
truly variety of shadow or colour, collecting the figure, it
makes it pass for a mark of figure, and frames to itself the
perception of a convex figure and an uniform colour ; when
the idea we receive from thence is only a plane variously
coloured, as is evident in painting*. [*To which purpose
I shall here insert a problem of that very ingenious and
studious promoter of real knowledge, the learned and worthy
Mr. MoHneux, which he was pleased to send me in a letter
some months since ® ; and it is this : — ' Suppose a man born
blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish
* This section gives Locke's account lished correspondence a letter from of the evolution of sense percep- Molyneux, dated March a, 1693, in tions, in and through what Berkeley which the passage here quoted occurs, afterwards called * suggestion ' — with introduced as ' a jocose problem.' its latent judgment — the rise of our Berkeley refers to it in confirmation * acquired ' perceptions, in short. He of his theory of the original invisi- here shows (by a subtle illustration) bility of the ' real ' distances, magni- that nature, or inexplicable ' faculty/ tudes, and fi.gures of things, and espe- does less, 'habit* or 'experience' cially of his antithesis of visible and more, in the production of our sup- tangible extension. {Essay on Vision ^ posed direct 'perceptions' of things, §§ 13a, 133.) In the Nouveaux Essais, than appears on the surface. llv. ii. ch. ix, Leibniz disputes the
* i.e. the directly perceived signs alleged heterogeneity, as well as into the indirectly perceived pheno- Locke's solution of this problem, and mena which they signify. concludes that if the born-blind man
* ' Perspective, shading, giving re- bad known beforehand, by touch only, lief, and colouring, are nothing else but that the cube and the globe were there, copying the appearance which things he could at once, when he recovered make to the eye.' (Reid's Inquity, sight, distinguish them by reason, in ch. vi. § iii.) cconbination with the sensuous data
* The rest of this section was added of touch ; because otherwise a bom- in the second Edition. blind man could not learn the nidi-
* We find among Locke's pub- ments of geometry by touch only, as
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Faculty of Perception. 187
between a cube and a sphere of the same metal, and nighly of book ii. the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and the p'"**"!^ other, which is the cube, which the sphere. Suppose then the cube and. sphere placed on a table, and the blind man be made to see : ^ucerCy whether by his sights before he touched thefHy he could now distinguish and tell which is the globe, which the cube ? ' To which the acute and judicious proposer answers, * Not. For, though he has obtained the experience of how a globe, how a cube affects his touch, yet he has not yet obtained the experience, that what affects his touch so or so, must affect his sight so or so ; or that a protuberant angle in the cube, that pressed his hand unequally, shall appear to his eye as it does in the cube.' — I agree with this thinking gentleman, whom ^ I am proud to call my friend, in his answer to this problem ; and am of opinion that the blind man, at first sight, would not be able with certainty to say which was the globe, which the cube^ whilst he only saw them ; though he could unerringly name them by his touch, and certainly dis- tinguish them by the difference of their figures felt. This I have set down, and leave with my reader, as an occasion for him to consider how much he may be beholden to experience, improvement, and acquired notions^, where he thinks he had not the least use of, or help from them. And the rather, because this observing gentleman further adds, that 'having, upon the occasion of my book, proposed this to divers very ingenious men, he hardly ever met with one
he is able to do. The conctpt of ex- ' The acquired perceptions of sight
tension suggested by sight and by afford unique illustrations of the
touch is the same, lie implies, al- large part which htibit and suggtsHon
though there are no common ifttages pl^y in the early stages of our intel-
of them ; which shows the need for lectual development. This is all
distinguishing images of sense (vor> auxiliary to Locke's main thesis, that
stellungen) from abstract notions of men are originally ignorant of every-
the intellect. — On the ' geometry of thing, and dependent for all their ideas
visibles,' &c., see Reid*s Inquttyf ch. v. and knowledge of real existence on
sect. 9. the gradual acquisitions of experience.
^ In the second and third Editions the But he fails to inquire into the ulti*
words — ' though I have never had the mate ratumaU of the interpretations,
happinessto see him,' follow,— omitted progressively reached in science and
in the finnih edition, which appeared in philosophy, of the presented ideas
more than a year after Molyneux's of sense, visit to Locke at Gates in 1698.
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BOOK II.
Chap. IX.
This
judgment apt to be mistaken for direct percep- tion.
How, by Habit, ideas of Sensation are uncon< sciously
188 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
that at first gave the answer to it which he thinks true, till by hearing his reasons they were convinced.']
9. But this is not, I think, usual in any of our ideas, but those received by sight Because sight, the most comprehen- sive of all our senses, conveying to our minds the ideas of light and colours, which are peculiar only to that sense ; and also the far different ideas of space, figure, and motion ^, the several varieties whereof change the appearances of its proper object, viz. light and colours ; we bring ourselves by use to judge of the one by the other. This, in many cases by a settled habit, — in things whereof we have frequent experience, is performed so constantly and so quick, that we take that for the perception of our sensation which is an idea formed by our judgment ; so that one, viz. that of sensation, serves only to excite the other, and is scarce taken notice of itself; — as a man who reads or hears with attention and understand- ing, takes little notice of the characters or sounds, but of the ideas that are excited in him by them*.
lOs^Nor need we wonder that this is done with so little notice, if we consider how quick the actions of the mind are performed. For, as itself is thought to take up no space ^, to have no extension ; so its actions seem to require no time,
* * Space or distance,' says Berkeley, commenting on this passage, ' is no otherwise the object of sight than of hearing. As for figure and extension, I *eave it to any one that shall calmly ai.end to his own clear and distinct ideas, to decide whether he has any i( ;a intromitted imnudiately by sight Si e only light and colours. In a st ict sense I see nothing but light ai i colours, with their several shades and variations. ... It must be owned indeed that, by the mediation of light and colours, far different ideas are suggesUd to my mind. But upon this score I see no reason why the sight should be thought more comprehen* sive than the hearing, which besides sounds, which are peculiar to that sense, doth, by their mediation, suggest nr*- only space, figure, and motion,
but all other ideas whatsoever that can be signified by words.' {Essay on VisioHy % 130.) The original percep- tioa of tiie eye is a vague apprehen- sion of coloured surface only. The third dimension of space, with the real (tangible) sizes and figures of things, is gained through the habit of associating shades of colour, and modes of lensum in the muscles of the eye, with modes of tactual, muscular, and motor experience; so that the eye gradually learns to judge of distance outwards, and of the relative distances of things. Educated sight is calculated foresight.
* So Reid on sensations as signs that are not noticed save in their sig* nificates. — Inquiry, ch. vi. $§ xxi-xxiii.
» Cf. ch.xxvii. S a, on the 'place' of spirits.
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Faculty of Perception. 189
but many of them seem to be crowded into an instant. I book il speak this in comparison to the actions of the body. Any ~*^— one may easily observe this in his own thoughts, who will take the pains to reflect on them. How> as it were in an into ideas instant, do our minds, with one glance, see all the parts of ^^^^J^j^^' a demonstration, which may very well be called a long one, if we consider the time it will require to put it into words, and step by step show it another ? Secondly, we shall not be so much surprised that this is done in us with so little notice, if we consider how the facility which we get of doing things, by a custom of doing, makes them often pass in us without our notice. Habits, especially such as are begun very early, come at last to produce actions in us, which often escape our observation. How frequently do we, in a day, cover our ^y^s with our eyelids, without perceiving that we are at all in the dark ! Men that, by custom, have got the use of a by-word, do almost in every sentence pronounce sounds which, though taken notice of by others, they themselves neither hear nor observe. And therefore it is not so st mge, that our -mind should often change the idea of its sensation into that of its judgment, and make one serve only to excite the other, without our taking notice of it.
11. This faculty of perception seems to me to be, that Perception whidh puts the distinction betwixt the animal kingdom aiicl §iffcrem:e the . inferior parts of nature. For, however vegetables hav#*, between many of them, some degrees of motion, and upon the differert an'd'vege. application of other bodies to them, do very briskly alter ^'>^^- their figures and motions, and so have obtained the name df sensitive plants, from a motion which has some resemblanife
to that which in animals follows upon sensation: yet \ suppose it is all bare mechanism ; and no otherwise produced than the turning of a wild oat-beard, by the insinuation of the particles of moisture, or the shortening of a rope, by the affusion of water. All which is done without any sensation in the subject, or the having or receiving any ideas.
1 2. Perception, I believe, is, in some degree, in all sorts of Percep- animals ; though in some possibly the avenues provided ^w ^^is'
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Chap. IX.
190 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK 11. nature for the reception of sensations are so few, and the perception they are received with so obscure and dull ^, that it comes extremely short of the quickness and variety of sen- sation which is in other animals ; but yet it is sufficient for, and wisely adapted to, the state and condition of that sort of animals who are thus made. So that the wisdom and goodness of the Maker plainly appear in all the parts of this stupendous fabric, and all the several degrees and ranks of creatures in it. According 13. We may, I think, from the make of an oyster or cockle, condftion. reasonably conclude that it has not so many, nor so quick senses as a man, or several other animals ; nor if it had, would it, in that state and incapacity of transferring itself from one place to another, be bettered by them. What good w.ould sight and hearing do to a creature that cannot move itself to or from the objects wherein at a distance it perceives good or evil ? And would not quickness of sensation be an inconvenience to an animal that must lie still where chance has once placed it, and there receive the afflux of colder or warmer, clean or foul water, as it happens to come toit^? Decay of 14. But yet I cannot but think there is some small dull in oiTage! Perception, whereby they are distinguished from perfect insensibility. And that this may be so, we have plain instances, even in mankind itself. Take one in whom decrepit old age has blotted out the memory of his past knowledge, and clearly wiped out the ideas his mind was formerly stored with, and has, by destroying his sight, hearing, and smell quite, and his taste to a great degree, stopped up almost all the passages for new ones to enter ; or if there be some of the inlets yet half open, the impressions made are scarcely perceived, or not at all retained. How far such an one (notwithstanding all that is boasted of innate principles) is in his knowledge and intellectual faculties above the condition of a cockle or an oyster, I leave to be con*
^ According to Leibniz, brutes have beings also occasionally havQ. only the confused, obscure, semi-con* ' This suggests a development of
scious perceptions, which human special senses under evolutionaiy law.
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Faculty of Perception. 191
sidered. And if a man had passed sixty years in such a book 11 state, as it is possible he might, as well as three days, I ^^^^ wonder what difference there would be, in any intellec- tual perfections, between him and the lowest degree of animals ^. '
15. Perception then being ^'t first step and degree towards Percep- knowledge, and the inlet of all the materials * of it ; the fewer J^^et'of senses any man, as well as any other creature, hath ; and all mate- the fewer and duller the impressions are that are made by Know- them ; and the duller the faculties are that are employed ^^^%^- about them, — the more remote are they from that knowledge which is to be found in some men ^ But this being in great variety of degrees (as may be perceived amongst men) cannot certainly be discovered in the several species of animals, much less in their particular individuals. It suffices me only to have remarked here, — that perception is the first operation of all our intellectual faculties, and the inlet of all knowledge^ in our minds. And I am apt too to imagine, that it is perception, in the lowest degree of it, which puts the boundaries between animals and the inferior ranks of crea* tures. But this I mention only as my conjecture by the
* Still there is a latmt differeace, be in a higher life. * It seems very even when the mind is thus dormant, easy to conceive the soul to exist in and universal truths are therefore out a separate state (i. e. divested from of sight. The spiritual faculties may those limits and laws of motion and sabsuU without being effaced, though perception with which she is embar- for a time overborne by sense, thus rassed here) and to exercise herself on showing that a man is more than an new ideas, without the intervention organised body. of those tangible things we call our
' < materials' — otherwise called by bodies. It is even very possible to
Locke ' simple ideas ' — but which he conceive how the soul may have
sometimes applies to organic impres- ideas of colour without an eye, or of
sions of whatever sort, which so sounds without an ear.' (Berkeley;
stimulate 'the mind' as that ideas of Li/e, p. i8i.) Why an organism and
things appear. organs are the established conditions
* The Micromegas of Voltaire sug- of perception in man is really the gests the illimitable variety of sense mystery.
ideas which may be perceived by other ^ Of all knowledge, i. e. of all con*
orders of sentient beings, who may tmgently presented ideaSy in the utter
have more and other senses than ours ; absence of which there could be no
or perhaps be percipient without actual knowledge of anything that
• organs of sense at all, as men may really exists.
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192 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK 11. by; It b^ing indifferent to the matter in hand which way ^"^^ the learned shall determine of it ^.
Chap. IX.
^ Although, in the preceding chap- ter, Locke seems to regard the reflex idea of * perception ' as * simple/ its complexity has exercised philosophers in Britain and Germany, since the Essay appeared, more than any pro- blem. In different aspects it has de- termined the speculations of Berkeley, Reid, and Kant. Here with Locke it is equivalent to 'the power* of ac- quiring * simple ideas '; but with the questions suggested by * externality ' omitted, — referred for consideration to some extent in the Fourth Book (e. g. chh. ix. xi). Indeed with Locke perception of presented phenomena is throughout an inexplicable fact. ' Ideas,' he says, ' it is certain I have, and God is the origintU cause of my having them ; but how I come by thefn^ how it is thai I perceive y I confess I understand not, . . Ideas are nothing but percep- tions of the mind, annexed to certain motions of the body by the will of God, who hath ordered such percep-
tions to accompany such motions, though we know not how they are produced, . . . That which is said about objects exciting perceptions in us /^ motion does not fully explain ho^^ this is done. In this I frankly con* fess my ignorance* (Examination of Malebranche, §§ 10-16, &c.) In short, perception — consciousness in every form — is to Locke inexplic- able, and is accepted by him as a mysterious fact which science can- not resolve. Motion may mechani- cally explain other motion, but not the rise of perception. So too Prof. Huxley: — 'How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of conscious- ness comes about as a result of initiating nervous tissue, is just as un- accountable as the appearance of the Djin, where Aladdin rubbed his lamp in the story, or as any other ultimate fact in nature.* {Elementary Physiology, p. 193)
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CHAPTER X.
OF RETENTION.
I, The next faculty of the mind, whereby it makes a bookii, further progress towards knowledge, is that which I call ""**" retention ; or the keeping of those simple ideas which from sensation or reflection it hath received. This is done piation. two ways.
First, by keeping the idea which is brought into it, for some time ^ actuaUy in view, which is called contemplation.
3. The other way of retention is, the power to revive Memory, again in our minds those ideas which, after imprinting, have disappeared, or have been as it were laid aside out of sight And thus we do, when we conceive heat or light, yellow or sweet, — the object being removed. This is memory'^, which is as it were the storehouse ^ of our ideas. For, the narrow mind of man not being capable of having many ideas
^ It is in and through 'retention* our reflex idea of the operation
that we get the idea of hmt^ and of memory, like that of perception,
specially of time as past ; without a *■simple idea of reflection/ — in each
which, and therefore without memory case overlooking their rational impli-
in some degree, perception and con- cates, but not wholly their organic
sciousness in any form is impracticable. accompaniments.
And perception of the present is * The 'wax tablet' and 'storehouse*
always blended with conception of a metaphors do not help to explain
past, if not also with anticipation of a memory as a mental act, and only
future. illustrate the poverty of language for
' Hobbes calls 'remembrance' asixth the expression of ' ideas of reflection.'
sense— the other five senses 'taking At the same time observation shows
notice of objects without us,' which that in the order of nature motions ' notice ' is ' our conception ' (idea) of in the organism accompany the act
the object perceived. But we also so of conservation. Memory as well as
' notice ' the conceptions thus gained, original sense perception is thus
as that, when they come again, ' we conditioned by organic impressions,
take notice thai it is again* {Human under relations on which physiology
Haturtj ch. liL § 6.) Locke makes has now thrown considerable light. VOL. I. O
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194 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. under view and consideration at once\ it was necessary to ""**" have a repository, to lay up those ideas which, at another time, it might have use of. [^But, our ideas being nothing but actual perceptions in the mind, which cease to be anything when there is no perception ^ of them ; this laying up of our ideas in the repository of the memory signifies no more but this, — that the mind has a power* in many cases to revive perceptions which it has once had, with this additional perception annexed to them, that it has had them before. And in this sense it is that our ideas are said to be in our memories, when indeed they are actually nowhere ; — but only there is an ability in the mind * when it will to revive them again, and as it were paint them anew on itself, though some with more, some with less difficulty ; some more lively, and others more obscurely.] And thus it is, by th^ assistance of this faculty, that we are said to have all those ideas in our understandings which, though we do not actually contemplate, yet we can bring in sight, and make appear again, and be the objects of our thoughts, without the help of those sensible qualities which first imprinted them there. Attention, 3. Attention * and repetition help much to the fixing any don^*'" ideas in the memory. But those which naturally at first make Pleasure the deepest and most lasting impressions, are those which are fix Id^/ accompanied with pleasure or pain. The great business of the senses being, to make us take notice of what hurts or advantages the body, it is wisely ordered by nature, as has
^ Cf. § 9. in the individual) as presupposed in,
' This and the next sentence were and a regulative condition of all ex- added in the second edition. perience.
^ Although the ideas are then ^ The 'rudiments of memory are ' actually nowhere/ in consciousness involved in the minimum of conscious- it has been suggested that * the capa- ness. The first beginnings of it appear bility of being put into a mental state in that minimum, just as the first is itself something actual, and is, more- beginnings of perception do. The fact over, a different something when the that the minimum of consciousness is state to be reproduced is different' difference, or change of feelings, is (See Ward's article, ' Psychology.') the ultimate explanation of memory
* This potential and unconscious as well as of single perceptions.'
retention of what has been consciously (Hodgson, Philas, 0/ ReJUdion, i. p.
perceived, favours by analogy recog- 248.)
nition of * innate ' intellect (often in * Attention, as an element in the
like manner potential and unconscious acquisition and retention of ideas, is
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Faculty of Retention. 195
been shown, that pain should accompany the reception of book 11. several ideas ; which, supplying the place of consideration q""***"^ and reasoning in children, and acting quicker than considera- tion in grown men, makes both the old and young avoid painful objects with that haste which is necessary for their preservation; and in both settles in the memory a caution for the future,
4. Concerning the several degrees of lasting, wherewith Ideas fade ideas are imprinted on the memory, we may observe, — that Memory. some of them have been produced in the understanding by
an object affecting the senses once only, and no more than once ; [^ others, that have more than once offered themselves to the senses, have yet been little taken notice of : the mind, cither heedless, as in children, or otherwise employed, as in men intent only on one thing ; not setting the stamp deep into itself. And in some, where they are set on with care and repeated impressions, either] through the temper of the body, or some other fault, the memory is very weak. In all these cases, ideas [^in the mind] quickly fade, and often vanish quite out of the understanding, leaving no more footsteps or remaining characters of themselves than shadows do flying over fields of com, and the mind is as void of them as if they had never been there*.
5. Thus many of those ideas which were produced in the Causes of minds of children, in the beginning of their sensation, (some
of which perhaps, as of some pleasures and pains, were before they were bom, and others in their infancy,) if in the future
not overlooked by Locke. This is when through the temper of the body,
not inconsistent with what he says or otherwise, the memory is very
of the 'passivity ' of the understanding weak, such ideas,' &c. in perception. We cannot make that ■Added in the second edition : —
white which is presented to sight as ' in the mind,' i. e. in the private
black, or that square and soft which is store-house ol individual memory ;
exhibited in sense as circukr and hard, not ideas of external sense presented
but we can conantrate consciousness to all.
upon any one of the many objects ' Thatthe range of ^^m/m/ memory
which thus present themselves. is much wider than that of actual
^ In first edition: — 'especially if reproduction, possibli under ordinary
the mind, then otherwise employed, condiiions, is shown by well-attested
took but little notice of it, and set not examples of abnormal resuscitation —
on the stamp deep into itself; or else in dreams and cases of cerebral disease,
oa
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196 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK IL course of their lives they are not repeated again, are quite '"â– **^ lost, without the least glimpse remaining of them. This ' may be observed in those who by some mischance have lost their sight when they were very young ; in whom the ideas of colours having been but slightly taken notice of, and ceasing to be repeated, do quite wear out ; so that some years after, there is no more notion nor memory of colours left in their minds, than in those of people born blind. The memory of some men, it is true, is very tenacious, even to a miracle. But yet there seems to be a constant decay ^ of all our ideas, even of those which are struck deepest, and in minds the most retentive; so that if they be not sometimes renewed, by repeated exercise of the senses, or reflection on those kinds of objects which at first occasioned them, the print wears out, and at last there remains nothing to be seen. Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth, often die before us : and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching ; where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away ^. The pictures drawn in our minds are laid in fading colours ; and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear. How much the constitution of our bodies [*and the make of our animal spirits] are concerned in this ; and whether the temper of the brain makes this difference, that in some it retains the characters drawn on it like marble, in others like freestone, and in others little better than sand, I shall not here inquire ; though it may seem probable that the constitu- tion of the body does sometimes influence the memory, since we oftentimes find a disease quite strip the mind of all its ideas, and tlie flames of a fever in a few days calcine all
^ Hobbes speaks of imagination and the other by decay.' {J/uman Nature,
memory as * decaying sense,' and de- ch. iii. § 7.)
scribes ' remembrance ' as ' nothing ' The imaginative sensibility that
else but the missing of parts. To see one often misses in Locke— attributed
at a great distance of place, and to by Stewart, forgetful of Bunyan and
remember at a great distance of time, Milton, to inherited puritanical aus*
is to have like conceptions of the terity, is not wanting in this touching
thing; for there wanteth distinction passage.
of parts in both ; the one conception > Added in the fourth edition, •being weak by operation at distance,
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Faculty of Retention. 197
those images to dust and confusion, which seemed to be as book ii. lasting as if graved in marble ^. ""^^^
6. But concerning the ideas themselves, it is easy to consunti remark, that those that are oftenest refreshed (amongst which repeated are those that are conveyed into the mind by more ways sc^ce^br than one) by a frequent return of the objects or actions lost, that produce them, fix themselves best in the memory,
and remain clearest and longest there ; and therefore those which are of the original qualities of bodies, viz. solidity, extension, figure, motion, and rest ; and those that almost constantly affect our bodies, as heat and cold ; and those which are the affections of all kinds of beings, as existence, duration, and number, which almost every object that affects our senses, every thought which employs our minds, bring along with them ; — these, I say, and the like ideas, are seldom quite lost, whilst the mind retains any ideas at all ^.
7. In this secondary perception ^, as I may so call it, or In Re- viewing again the ideas that are lodged in the memory, the "gâ„¢Jhe' mind is oftentimes more than barely passive ; the appearance Mind is of those dormant pictures depending sometimes on the will^- active. The mind very often sets itself on work in search of some hidden idea, and turns as it were the eye of the soul upon it ; though sometimes too they start up in our minds of their
^ The conscious act of memory (or even unconscious) energy can be
presents what Locke calls a ' simple wholly obliterated. The act perishes,
idea of reflection.' It is not a phe- but not the 'habit.' Coleridge sug-
nomenon presentable to the senses ; gests that, in connection perhaps with
although in man, in this life, it is a finer organism — a ' body celestial ' —
dependent upon organic conditions, one's whole past life may be revived
regarding which recent physiological consciously ; and that this resuscitation
research has largely added to our may be that ^ book of judgment ' in
useful knowledge, but without thereby which every idle word and deed is thus
affording more than a mechanical ex- indelibly registered,
planation of the invisible act itself. ' * Secondary perception ' — ^instead
Mind may explain brain ; brain cannot of Hobbes's * sixth sense.'
explain memory. Why self-conscious * This is recolUctioH (the iofd/unjffts
life in man is embodied life at all is as distinguished from the /a^/aj of
by us inexplicable. Aristotle), in which intelligent pur-
' Whether any ' idea ' of which a pose uses associative law to recover
man has been conscious is ever wholly what has been partly foi^gotten ; and
lost, so that it cannot revive, in this or in which the more numerous the as*
in a future life, may be questioned. sociations, the easier the recoUective
Some facts suggest that no conscious act.
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198 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK IL own accord, and offer themselves to the understanding ; and -"^*^ very often are roused and tumbled out of their dark cells
Chap X«
' into open daylight, by turbulent and tempestuous passions ;
our affections bringing ideas to our memory, which had otherwise lain quiet and unregarded. [^ This further is to be observed, concerning ideas lodged in the memory, and upon occasion revived by the mind, that they are not only (as the word revive imports) none of them new ones, but also that the mind takes notice of them as of a former impression, and renews its acquaintance with them, as with ideas it had known before. So that though ideas formerly imprinted are not all constantly in view^ yet in remembrance they are constantly known to be such as have been formerly im- printed; i.e. in view, and taken notice of before, by the understanding.] Two de- 8. Memory, in an intellectual creature, is necessary in the Memory^^ next degree to perception. It is of so great moment, that. Oblivion where it is wanting, all the rest of our faculties are in a great Slowness, measure useless ^. And we in our thoughts, reasonings, and knowledge, could not proceed beyond present objects, were it not for the assistance of our memories ; wherein there may be two defects: —
First, That it loses the idea quite, and so far it produces perfect ignorance. For, since we can know nothing further than we have the idea of it, when that is gone, we are in per- fect ignorance *.
Secondly, That it moves slowly, and retrieves not the ideas
^ These two sentences were added hypothesis, 'oblivion,' rather than 're«
in the second edition. membrance,' would have to be ac-
' Finite human memory, at its best, counted for; as due to the gradual
is revival m fragments^ under associa- subsidence into semi-consciousness,
tive laws, of a past experience, which and then into unconsciousness, of
man cannot keep simulUtneously, in its energies that are latent because super-
ioiality, iu consciousness. seded (within the necessarily limited
• Without memory all our ' facul* capacity of a human consciousness) by ties ' would be, not only ' in a great new activities, but which are never measure ' but absolutely, useless. absolutely annihilated. * Ideas which
* This * perfect ignorance ' may con* remain long without being attended to â– sist with continued poUnHal know* have a natural tendency to drop out of ledge, if memory is the issue of in* consciousness.' (J. S. Mill.) delible modes of self-activity. On that
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Faculty of Retention. 199
that it has, and are laid up in store, quick enough to serve book ii. the mind upon occasion. This, if it be to a great degree, is "â– **" stupidity ; and he who, through this default in his memory, has not the ideas that are really preserved there, ready at hand when need and occasion calls for them, were almost as good be without them quite, since they serve him to little purpose. The dull man, who loses the opportunity, whilst he is seeking in his mind for those ideas that should serve his turn, is not much more happy in his knowledge than one that is perfectly ignorant. It is the business therefore of the memory to furnish to the mind those dormant ideas ^ which it has present occasion for ; in the having them ready at hand on all occasions, consists that which we call invention, fancy, and quickness of parts ^.
9. [^ These are defects we may observe in the memory of A defect one man compared with another. There is another defect J^n^ to ' which we may conceive to be in the memory of man in ^^ ™«" general ; — compared with some superior created intellectual Man, as beings, which in this faculty may so far excel man, that they ^°***^' may have constantly in view the whole scene of all their former actions, wherein no one of the thoughts they have ever had may slip out of their sight. The omniscience of God, who knows all things, past, present, and to come, and to whom the thoughts of men's hearts always lie open, may satisfy us of the possibility of this. For who can doubt but God may communicate to those glorious spirits, his immediate attendants, any of his perfections; in what proportions he pleases, as far as created finite beings can be capable? It is reported of that prodigy of parts, Mons^Bur Pascal, that till the decay of his health had impaired his memory, he forgot nothing of what he had done, read, or thought, in any part of
^ ' Dormant ideas ' imply latency or and organic, individual and inherited
unconscious innateness. Throughout —is the mechanical explanation of
life, by far the greater part of the phe- memory.
nomena acquired in experience are thus ' This interesting section was added
dormant, yet more or less revivable. in the second edition. It might be the
' A good memory is (a) apt to re* text of an essay on a human under-
ceivc, (A) tenacious in retention, and standing of the universe, as inter-
(c) ready to produce — under the asso- mediate between Omniscience and the
ciative laws. Association, psychical nescience of Sense.
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200 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. his rational age\ This is a privilege so little known to most c""**"x ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^ seems almost incredible to those who, after the ordinary way, measure all others by themselves; but yet, when considered, may help us to enlarge our thoughts to- wards greater perfections of it, in superior ranks of spirits. For this of Monsieur Pascal was still with the narrowness that human minds are confined to here, — of having great variety of ideas only by succession, not all at once. Whereas the several degrees of angels may probably have larger views ; and some of them be endowed with capacities able to retain together, and constantly set before them, as in one picture, all their past knowledge at once. This, we may conceive, would be no small advantage to the knowledge of a thinking man, — if all his past thoughts and reasonings could be always present to him 2. And therefore we may suppose it one of those ways, wherein the knowledge of separate spirits may exceedingly surpass ours.] Brutes lo. This faculty of laying up and retaining the ideas that
Manoiy. ^^^ brought into the mind, several other animals seem to have to a great degree, as well as man. For, to pass by other instances, birds learning of tunes, and the endeavours one may observe in them to hit the notes right, put it past doubt with me, that they have perception, and retain ideas in their memories, and use them for patterns. For it seems to me impossible that they should endeavour to conform their voices to notes (as it is plain they do) of which they had no ideas. For, though I should grant sound may mechanically cause a certain motion of the animal spirits in the brains of those birds, whilst the tune is actually playing ; and that motion may be continued on to the muscles of the wings, and so the bird mechanically be driven away by certain noises, because this may tend to the bird s preserva- tion ; yet that can never be supposed a reason why it should cause mechanically — either whilst the tune is playing, much
* This about Pascal must be taken do in the state of being only rtwvahUy
with allowance. That he never forgot and that bit by bit, not all simul-
anything ' which he trud to retain * is taneously ; and with large portions
what Madame Perier records of him. incapable of resuscitation in this life,
' Instead of existing* as they mosUy under normal conditions at least.
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Faculty of Retention. 201
less after it has ceased — such a motion of the organs in the book ii. bird's voice as should conform it to the notes of a foreign ** sound, which imitation can be of no use to the bird's pre- servation. But, which is more, it cannot with any appearance of reason be supposed (much less proved) that birds, without sense and memory, can approach their notes nearer and nearer by degrees to a tune played yesterday ; which if they have no idea of in their memory, is now nowhere, nor can be a pattern for them to imitate, or which any repeated essays can bring them nearer to. Since there is no reason why the sound of a pipe should leave traces in their brains, which, not at first, but by their after-endeavours, should produce the like sounds; and why the sounds they make themselves, should not make traces which they should follow, as well as those of the pipe, is impossible to conceive ^.
' The phenomena and laws of unconscious cerebration were imperfectly known when Locke wrote.
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CHAPTER XL
OF DISCERNING, AND OTHER OPERATIONS OF THE MIND K
^^^"' I. Another faculty we may take notice of in our minds
Chap. XI. 'S that of discerning smd distinguishing between the several
No Know- ideas it has \ It is not enough to have a confused perception
without ^^ something in general. Unless the mind had a distinct
Discern- perception of different objects and their qualities, it would
""^^ ' be capable of very little knowledge, though the bodies that
affect us were as busy about us as they are now, and the
mind were continually employed in thinking. On this faculty
of distinguishing one thing from another depends the evidence
and certainty of several, even very general, propositions, which
have passed for innate truths ; — because men, overlooking
the true cause why those propositions find universal assent,
impute it wholly to native uniform impressions ; whereas
it in truth depends upon this clear discerning faculty of the
mind, whereby it perceives two ideas to be the same, or
different But of this more hereafter.
The a. How much the imperfection of accurately discriminatiner
of Wit ideas one from another lies, either in the dulness or faults
andjudg- q{ thg organs of sense; or want of acuteness, exercise, or
attention in the understanding; or hastiness and precipitancy,
natural to some tempers, I will not here examine : it suffices
to take notice, that this is one of the operations that the
mind may reflect on and observe in itself. It is of that con-
^ It is with the operations of ela- don or dissociation for that of assoda-
borative thought that this chapter is tion of ideas; although 'experience is
concerned. trained by both association and dis-
* Locke's descendants, we are told, sociation.' (See James's P^yckoiogy^ L
have neglected the study of discrimina- p. 487.)
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Faculty of Discerning. 20%
sequence to its other knowledge, that so far as this faculty is BOOK il in itself dull, or not rightly made use of, for the distinguishing "~**"xi one thing from another, — so far our notions are confused, and our reason and judgment disturbed or misled. If in having our ideas in the memory ready at hand consists quickness of parts ; in this, of having them unconfused, and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where there is but the least difference, consists, in a great measure, the exactness of judgment, and clearness of reason, which is to be observed in one man above another. And hence perhaps may be given some reason of that common observation, — that men who have a great deal of wit, and prompt memories, have not always the clearest judgment or deepest reason. For wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy ^ ; judgment^ on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating jare- fully, one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and by affinity to take one thing for another^. This is a way of proceeding quite contrary to metaphor and allusion ; wherein for the most part lies that entertainment and plea- santry of wit, which strikes so lively on the fancy, and there- fore is so acceptable to all people, because its beauty appears at first sight, and there is required no labour of thought to examine what truth or reason there is in it. The mind,
* Wit, according to Hobbes, is Bk. IV. chh. adv, xv, xvi. The exer-
' quick discernment of similitude in cise of ' discernment ' implies that our
things otherwise much unlike, or of mental experience is originally cou-
dissimilitude in things that otherwise fused but complex,and that recognition
appear the same.' It is thus more akin of ideas in their simplicity is the result
to imagination than to intellect proper. of discriminative analysis. Things,
' This is only one way in which the presented in sense as confused aggre- faculty of comparison, or of elabora- gates, reveal their constituent elements tive affirmation and denial, is exer* as intelligence evolves. This evolution, cised. Locke further modifies the through dissociation of our complex meaning of ' judgment ' in the Fourth ideas of individual things, leads to re- Book, where he distinguishes it from association, under Concepts, scientific < knowledge,' and confines it to pre- or physical, and at last philosophic or sumption of probability only, See metaphysical
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204 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. without looking any further, rests satisfied with the agree- "â– **^ ableness of the picture and the gaiety of the fancy. And ' it is a kind of affront to go about to examine it, by the severe rules of truth and good reason ; whereby it appears that it consists in something that is not perfectly conformable to them. Clearness 3- To the Well distinguishing our ideas, it chiefly con- hinders tributes that they be clear and determinate. And when Confusion, they are so, it will not breed any confusion or mistake about them, though the senses should (as sometimes they do) convey them from the same object differently on different occasions, and so seem to err. For, though a man in a fever should from sugar have a bitter taste, which at another time would produce a sweet one, yet the idea of bitter in that man s mind would be as clear and distinct from the idea of sweet as if he had tasted only gall. Nor does it make any more confusion between the two ideas of sweet and bitter, that^ the same sort of body produces at one time one, and at another time another idea by the taste, than it makes a confusion in two ideas of white and sweet, or white and round, that the same piece of sugar produces them both in the mind at the same time. And the ideas of orange- colour and azure, that are produced in the mind by the same parcel of the infusion of lignum nephriticum^ are no less distinct ideas than those of the same colours taken from two very different bodies.
Com- 4. The COMPARING them one with another, in respect
panng. ^j. ^^^^^^^^ degrees, time, place, or any other circumstances, is another operation of the mind about its ideas, and is that upon which depends all that large tribe of ideas com- prehended under relation ; which, of how* vast an extent it is, I shall have occasion to consider hereafter ^. Brutes c. How far brutes partake in this faculty, is not easy to
compare ,. _. .,* . . ,
butim- determine. I imagme they have it not in any great degree:
perfectly, f^j.^ though they probably have several ideas distinct enough,
yet it seems to me to be the prerogative of human under-
^ See chh. xxv-xxviii.
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Of Comparison and Composition. 205
standing, when it has sufficiently distinguished any ideas, so book n. as to perceive them to be perfectly different, and so con- p""**^. sequently two, to cast about and consider in what circum- stances they are capable to be compared. And therefore, I think, beasts compare not their ideas further than some sensible circumstances annexed to the objects themselvea The other power of comparing^, which may be observed in men, belonging to general ideas, and useful only to abstract reasonings, we may probably conjecture beasts have not.
6. The next operation we may observe in the mind about Com-
its ideas is COMPOSITION ; whereby it puts together several P^""**^"^- of those simple ones it has received from sensation and reflection, and combines them into complex ones. Under this of composition may be reckoned also that of enlarging^ ^ wherein, though the composition does not so much appear as in more complex ones, yet it is nevertheless a putting several ideas together, though of the same kind^. Thus, by adding several units together, we make the idea of a dozen ; and putting together the repeated ideas of several perches, we frame that of a furlong.
7. In this also, I suppose, brutes come far short of man. Brutes For, though they take in, and retain together, several buriitUe. combinations of simple ideas, as possibly the shape, smell,
and voice of his master make up the complex idea a dog has of him, or rather are so many distinct marks whereby
^ The power of elaborating intel* suivante, sait forte bien trouver et
lectual concepts of things — as distin- d^m6ler tons les mat^riaux dont il a
guished from sensuous representation, besoin pour se b&tir un nid, qui, par
determined merely by automatic asso- son industrie, se trouve fait et agenc^
ciation. avec autant ou plus Tart que celui oil il
* < En conversant un jour avec M. est 6clos lui-m«me ? D*ou lui sont
Locke, le discours venant k tomber sur venues les iddes de ces differents
les fWlMs mMA», je lui fis cette objection : mat6riaux, et Tart d*en constniire ce
Que penser de certains petits oiseaux, nid ? M. Locke me r^pondit brusque-
duchardonneret, par example, qui,6c]os ment : Jt tCaipas Scrit mon livre pour
dans un nid que le pdre ou la mdre expliquer Its actions des hetes, (Coste.)
lui ont fait, s'envole enfin dans les ' In what Locke calls < simple
champs pour y chercher sa nourriture, modes ' of our simple ideas. See chh.
sans que le p^re ou la mdre prenne xiii-xxi. Aucune soin de lui, et qui, Tanii^e
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2o6 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. XI.
BOOK II. he knows him ; yet I do not think they do of themselves ever compound them, and make complex ideas ^ And perhaps even where we think they have complex ideas, it is only one simple one that directs them in the knowledge of several things, which possibly they distinguish less by their sight than we imagine. For I have been credibly informed that a bitch will nurse, play with, and be fond of young foxes, as much as, and in place of her puppies, if you can but get them once to suck her so long that her milk may go through them. [^And those animals which have a numerous brood of young ones at once, appear not to have any knowledge of their number; for though they are mightily concerned for any of their young that are taken from them whilst they are in sight or hearing, yet if one or two of them be stolen from them in their absence, or without noise, they appear not to miss them, or to have any sense that their number is lessened.]
Naming.
Abstrac- tion.
8. When children have, by repeated sensations, got ideas fixed in their memories, they begin by degrees to learn the use of signs. And when they have got the skill to apply the organs of speech to the framing of articulate sounds, they begin to make use of words, to signify their ideas to others. These verbal signs they sometimes borrow from others, and sometimes make themselves, as one may observe among the new and unusual names children often give to things in the first use of language.
9. The use of words then being to stand as outward marks of our internal ideas, and those ideas being taken from particular things, if every particular idea that we take in should have a distinct name, names must be endless. To prevent this, the mind makes the particular ideas received
* That is to say, brutes receive their simple ideas in complexity, and thus seem to have complex ideas made for them. But so too often with men. Many of oMr complex ideas, too, are not formed by our will. They are msA^for us, not by MA] as Locke himself sees. Even in sense we receive from par-
ticular substances aggregatts of sim- ple ideas, and this through various senses ; and the ideas oi existence, untty^ succession, and power are suggested by all of them (ch. vii. §§ 7-9) — im- plying that simple ideas are never presented in their simplicity. ' Added in second editiou.
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Of Abstraction. 207
from particular objects to become general ; which is done by book ii. considering them as they are in the mind such appearances, qhap xi — separate from all other existences, and the circumstances of real existence, as time, place, or any other concomitant ideas ^. This is called ABSTRACTION \ whereby ideas taken from par- ticular beings become general representatives of all of the same kind; and their names general names, applicable to whatever exists conformable to such abstract ideas. Such precise, naked appearances in the mind, without considering how, whence, or with what others they came there, the un- derstanding lays up (with names commonly annexed to them) as the standards to rank real existences into sorts, as they agree with these patterns, and to denominate them accord- ingly. Thus the same colour being observed to-day in chalk or snow, which the mind yesterday received from milk, it considers that appearance alone, makes it a representative of all of that kind ; and having given it the name whiteness^ it by that sound signifies the same quality wheresoever to be imagined or met with ; and thus universals, whether ideas or terms, are made.
10. If it may be doubted whether beasts compound and Bmtes enlarge their ideas that way to any d^ree ; this, I think, not. I may be positive in, — that the power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of general ideas is
^ Our idtas are, all of them, ^ pat^ and elsewhere, as 'remote from com-
/JbCM/ar existences/ according to Locke; mon sense, though countenanced by
.andour knowledge is confined to per- Locke, who seems to think that
ception of the agreements or disagree- having abstract ideas is what puts the
ments of particular ideas— uniuersalify difference in point of understanding
being only accidental to it, when our between man and beast' But if this
particular ideas of the moment happen be so, ' I fear,' Berkeley adds, ' that a
to represent other particular ideas, great many of those that pass for men
with which they are in a way iden- must be reckoned into the number of
tical. (Bk, IV. ch. xvii. $ 8.) beasts, who, though they use general
« The words in capitals, here and in words, are incapable of abstracting their
$$4 and 5, are so printed in the ideas.* Berkeley's criticism is due to
editions which appeared in Locke's misunderstanding. Cf. Bk. III. ch. iii.
lifetime. This and the two next sec- § 6 ; Bk. IV. ch. vii. § 9 of the Essay,
tions are the first passages in the Locke does not, like Berkeley, confine
Essay which expressly treat of the * idea ' to individual percepts of sense,
' abstract' ideas, rejected by Berkeley and images of sensuous imagination,
in the Introduction to his Principles but includes individualisable concepts.
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2o8 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOKIL that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and
""**~ brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes Chap XI
* do by no means attain to. For it is evident we observe
no footsteps in them of making use of general signs for uni- versal ideas; from which we have reason to imagine that they have not the faculty of abstracting, or making general ideas, since they have no use of words, or any other general signs. Brutes II. Nor Can it be imputed to their want of fit organs to
not^et f*^"^^ articulate sounds, that they have no use or knowledge are not of general words ; since many of them, we find, can fashion machines. ^"^^ sounds, and pronounce words distinctly enough, but never with any such application. And, on the other side, men who, through some defect in the organs, want words, yet fail not to express their universal ideas by signs, which serve them instead of general words, a faculty which we see beasts come short in. And, therefore, I think, we may sup- pose, that it is in this that the species of brutes are discri- minated from man : and it is that proper difference wherein they are wholly separated, and which at last widens to so vast a distance. For if they have any ideas at all, and are not bare machines^, (as some would have them*,) we cannot deny them to have some reason. It seems as evident to me, that they do [' some of them in certain instances] reason, as that they have sense ; but it is only in particular ideas, just as they received them from their senses. They are the best of them tied up within those narrow bounds, and have not (as I think) the faculty to enlarge them by any kind of abstraction ^,
"Machines' — 'machins' in the early guishing intellect proper from sen- editions, suous association mechanically de-
■The Cartesians, who regarded termined by natural law : — * Je suis
brutes as sentient machines, or organ- de m6me sentiment . . . Les b^tes
isms that are unconscious instruments passent d'une imagination k une
of the Supreme Power. Cf. on the other autre par la liaison qu'elles y ont
hand, Butler, Analogy, ch. i. — on the sentie autrefois. . . . On pourrait ap«
< latent powers ' and possible * natural peler cela consequence et raisonnemeni
immortality ' of brutes. dans un sens fort ^tendu. Mais j*aime
' Added in ybMf/A edition. mieux me conformer k Tusage refu,
. * Leibniz thus comments, distin* en consacrant ces mots k Thomme, et
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Of Abstraction. 209
T3. How far idiots are concerned in the want or weakness bookh. of any, or all of the foregoing faculties, an exact observation ""•*" of their several ways of faultering^ would no doubt discover. "^* * For those who either perceive but dully, or retain the ideas Madmen. that come into their minds but ill, who cannot readily excite or compound them, will have little matter to think on. Those who cannot distinguish, compare, and abstract, would hardly be able to understand and make use of language, or judge or reason to any tolerable degree ; but only a little and imperfectly about things present, and very familiar to their senses. And indeed any of the forementioned faculties, if wanting, or out of order, produce suitable defects in men's understandings and knowledge.
13. In fine, the defect in naturals seems to proceed from Difference want of quickness, activity, and motion in the intellectual Jjl^wd faculties, whereby they are deprived of reason ; whereas Madmen, madmen, on the other side, seem to suffer by the other ex- treme. For they do not appear to me to have lost the faculty of reasoning, but having joined together some ideas very wrongly, they mistake them for truths ; and they err as men do that argue right from wrong principles. For, by the violence of their imaginations, having taken their fancies for realities, they make right deductions from them. Thus you shall find a distracted man fancying himself a king, with a right inference require suitable attendance, respect, and obedience: others who have thought themselves made of glass, have used the caution necessary to preserve such brittle bodies. Hence it comes to pass that a man who is very sober, and of a right understanding in all other things, may in one particular be as frantic as any in Bedlam ; if either by any sudden very strong impression, or long fixing his fancy upon one sort of thoughts, incoherent ideas have been
en les restreig^iant & la connaissance quoique peut-6tre les raisons nescient
de quelque raison de la liaison des plus les mdmes ; ce qui trompe souvent
perceptions, quM Us sensations sndes ns ceux qui ne se gouvernent que par
sattrtMHi dottner; leur effet n'6tant lessens.' {Nouveaax Essais, Ih -xL)
que de faire que naturellement on ^ ' Faultering,* — failing, or being de-
s'attende une autre fois k cette m^me ficient. liaison qu'on a remarqu^e auparavant,
VOL. I. P
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2IO Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II, cemented together so powerfully, as to remain united. But ""^^^y, there are degrees of madness, as of folly ; the disorderly ' jumbling ideas together is in some more, and some less. In short, herein seems to lie the difference between idiots and madmen: that madmen put wrong ideas together, and so make wrong propositions^ but ai^e and reason right from them; but idiots make very few or no propositions, and reason scarce at all.
Method 14- These, I think, are the first faculties and operations
foUowed Qf the mind, which it makes use of in understanding ; and
in this ex- ^ , , ' . , , ,, . . , . ,
plication of though they are exercised about all its ideas in general. Faculties, y^^ ^j^^ instances I have hitherto given have been chiefly in simple ideas. 'And I have subjoined the explication of these faculties of the mind to that of simple ideas ^, before I come to what 1 have to say concerning complex (Ones, for these following reasons : —
First, because several of these faculties being exercised at firs*- nrincipally about simple ideas *, we might, by following nature in its ordinary method, trace and discover them *, in tbdr rise, prepress, and gradual improvements.
Secondly, Because observing the faculties of the mind, how they operate £ibout simple ideas, — which are usually, in most men's minds, much more clear, precise, and distinct than complex ones, — we may the better examine and learn how the mind extracts, denominates, compares, and exercises, in its other operations about those which are complex, wherein we are much more liable to mistake.
^ *■8im]>le ideas,' — especiblly of vancing, by abstraction, to the simple
* sensation/ — treated of in ch. ii-viii. in their simplicity, gradually rendering
' According to some interpreters of original experience more determinate,
the Essay (Cousin, Green, &c.), Locke But, though here and elsewhere occa-
supposes that men begin to have sional expressions may seem to coun-
experience in the form of a conscious- tenance this interpretation, we have
ness of isolated phenomena, i. e. of already seen that he mentions certain
simple ideas in their simplicity ; and ideas as invariably connected with all
that all their complex ideas are after- other ideas; and in the sequel he makes
wards elaborated by themselves out comparison of ideas in mental propo*
of these; while the actual history sitions the essence of knowledge.
' of the human understanding is the (Bk. IV. ch. i. $ a.)
reverse — beginning with apprehen- ' *them,' i.e. 'ideas and their cor-
sion of the complex or concrete, ad- relative faculties.'
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Simple Ideas and Faculties. 2 1 1
Thirdly, Because these very operations of the mind about book ii. ideas received from sensations, are themselves, when reflected ** on, another set of ideas, derived from that other source of our knowledge, which I call reflection; and therefore fit to be considered in this place after the simple ideas of sensation. Of compounding, comparing, abstracting, &c., I have but just spoken, having occasion to treat of them more at large in other places ^ .%.
15. And thus I have given a short, and, I think, true The true history^ of the first beginnings of human knowledge ; — whence nj^g "f the mind has its first objects ; and by what steps it makes Human its progress to the laying in and storing up those ideas, out ledge!" of which is to be framed all the knowledge it is capable of: wherein I must appeal to experience and observation whether
I am i.. the right: the best way to come to truth being to examine things as really they are, and not to conclude they are, as we fancy of ourselves, or have been taught by others to imagine.
16. To deal truly, this is the only way that I can discover. Appeal to whereby the ideas of things are brought into the un^er-^^^"" standing. If other men have either innate ideas or infused principles, they have reason to enjoy them; and if they
are sure of it, it is impossible for others to deny them the privilege that they have above their neighbours. I can speak but of what I find in myself, and is agreeable to those notions, which, if we will examine the whole course of men in their several ages, countries, and educations, seem to depend on those foundations which I have laid, and to corre- spond with this method in all the parts and degrees thereof.
17. I pretend not to teach, but to inquire ; and therefore Dark cannot but confess here again, — that external and internal ®®"' gensation are the only passages I can find of knowledge to
the understanding^. These alone, as far as I can discover,
^ Chh. xiii-zxviii, zxxii. § 6-8 ; Bk. stances that are presented in sense
III. ch. iii^ &c. for elaboration — are in fact found,
* The *â– historical ' plain matter of when subjected to analysis, as above,
fact method. (Introd. § a.) to consist of the aforesaid sorts "bf
' If the original 'materials' — the simple ideas, and of none others — ^Why
'ideas' or phenomena of the sub- should we rebel against this fact!
P %
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212 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap« XI.
BOOK II. are the windows by which light is let into this dark room. For, methinks, the understanding is not much unlike a closet ' wholly shut from light, with only some little openings left, to let in external visible ^ resemblances, or ideas of things without: [^ would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there], and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them ^
These are my guesses concerning the means whereby the understanding comes to have and retain simple ideas ^ and the modes of them, with some other operations about them.
I proceed now to examine some of these simple ideas and their modes a little more particularly.
' Things are what they are, and are not other things ; why therefore should we desire to be deceived ? '
» Why ' visible,' or of ' sight ' only ? for Locke does not (like some of his contemporaries) mean by idea only what can be sun. His ideas are pheno- mena of whatever sort — extended and unthinking, or unextended and think- ing; apprehended in complexity, as particular, in the senses and sensuous imagination, or abstracted and in their most general relations.
■'Which, would they but stay there * — in first three editions.
' Reid founds, mainly on the figur- ative language of this section, his interpretation of Locke's account of external perception — as non-present- ative, because reached through the medium of the ideas of the percipient. He also assumes that Plato intends by his 'similitude of the cave/ to illustrate the manner in which the images of external things are introduced into the mind of man. ' Plato's subterranean cave, and Mr. Locke's dark closet/ Reid says, ' may be applied with ease to all the systems of perception that have been invented; for they all suppose that we perceive not external objects immediately, and that the
immediate objects of percepticm are only certain shadows of the external objects. These shadows or images, which we immediately perceive, were by the ancients called species, Jorms^ phantasms. Since the time of Des- cartes they have commonly been called ideas, and by Hume, impressitms. But all philosophers, fi^m Plato to Hume, agree in this^that we do not perceive external objects immediately ; and that the immediate object of perception must be some image present to the mind.' {InteUectwU Powers, Essay IL ch. vii.) But, ac- cording to Locke, ideas are the 'medium' of each man's knowledge of his own mental operations, as well as of the qualities of ' external ' ob- jects. He can no more apprehend his inner life without ideas of its ' opera- tions ' than he can things in surround- ingspace without ideas of their qualities. In both alike there must be phenomena, with an apprehension of them that is dependent on, or relative to, the per- cipient subject. On the meaning of Plato's comparison of the cave, see Hamilton's Reid, p. 96a, note.
* This need not mean, that the simple ideas were originally appre- hended in their simplicity.
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CHAPTER XII.
OF COMPLEX IDEAS.
I. We have hitherto considered those ideas, in the re- bookii. ception whereof the mind is only passive ^, which arc those "**~ simple ones received from sensation and reflection before m^de bv mentioned, whereof the mind cannot make one to itself, the Mind nor have any idea which does not wholly consist of them. giJ^pic [*But as the mind is wholly passive in the reception of Ones, all its simple ideas, so it exerts several 'acts of its own, whereby out of its simple ideas, as the materials and found- ations of the rest, the others are framed \ The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over its simple ideas, are chiefly these three: (i) Combining several simple ideas into one compound one; and thus all complex^ ideas are made, (a) The second 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; by which way it gets all its ideas of relations. (3) The third is separating them from all other ideas that
' 'passive/ i.e. they are presented â– Added Kn fourth edition,
involuntarily, — ^what is actually pre- • * framed ' — * by us/ and ' for us/ in
sented in the senses, and in the opera- the complex constitution of the quali>
tions of which we are conscious, being fied things.
independent ofthettff// of the conscious * 'complex.' In ch. ii. Locke divided
subject; who is moreover dependent our ideas into 5tm^ and a>m//e;tr; here
upon what is so presented for all the he seems to make 'complex ideas' one
ideas of things and of spirits that he is class only of those which result from
capable of having, being also in this < the acts of mind wherein it exerts its
respect * passive/ for one bom blind power over its simple ideas.' Cf. Hume,
cannot image colour. But all this TrtaHst, I. i. § i, — on ideas as simple
may consist with attention and active and complex, intelligence in perception.
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214 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK IT. accompany them in their real existence : this is called abstrac- ^**3,, tion : and thus all its general ideas are made. This shows * man's power, and its ways of operation, to be much 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 destroy, all that man can do is either to unite them together, or to set them by one another, or wholly separate them. I shall here begin with the first of these in the consideration of complex ideas, and come to the other two in their due places.] As simple ideas are observed to exist in several combinations united together ^ so the mind has a power to consider several of them united together as one idea; and that not only as they are united in external objects, but as itself has joined them together. Ideas thus made up of several simple ones put together, I call complex \ — ^such as are beauty, gratitude, a man, an army, the universe ; which, though complicated of various simple ideas, or com- plex ideas made up of simple ones, yet are, when the mind pleases^ considered each by itself, as one entire thing, and signified by one name. Madevo- 2- In this faculty of repeating and joining together its iimtarily. jjeas, the mind has great power in varying and multiplying the objects of its thoughts, infinitely beyond what sensation or reflection furnished it with : but all this still confined to those simple ideas which it received from those two sources, and which are the ultimate materials of all its compositions. For simple ideas are all from things them- selves, and of these the mind can have no more, nor other than what are suggested to it^. It 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. But when
> When the conUnnatums are made or image variety in colour, and the
for, and not by the individual mind, — human mind can by no effort of will
as in individual things presented to have more or other particular ideas of
the senses. things and persons, than those pre*
' As already remarked, it is in this sented in experience,
respect that he means that we are ' Including God. Cf. Bk. II. ch,
' passive ' in dealing with simple xxiii. $ 33. ideas. The born blind cannot perceive
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Complex Ideas. 215
it has once got these simple ideas, it is not confined barely eooK 11. to observation, and what offers itself from without ; it can, "^^^ by its own power, put together those ideas it has, and make new complex ones, which it never received so united ^.
3. Complex ideas, however compounded and decompounded, Complex though their number be infinite, and the variety endless, ^^^^^*^ wherewith they fill and entertain the thoughts of men ; yet Modes,
I think they may be all reduced under th^e three heads : — ' stances, or I. Modes. ReUtio'ns,
%. Substances. 3. Relations ^
4. First, Modes I call such complex ideas which, however Ideas of compounded, contain not in them the supposition of sub- ^** sisting by themselves, but are considered as dependences
on, or affections of substances ; — such as are the ideas sig- nified by the words triangle, gratitude, murdef, &c- And if in this I use the word mode in somewhat a different sense from its ordinary signification, I beg pardon ; it being un- avoidable in discourses, differing from the ordinary received notions, either to make new words, or to use old words in somewhat a new signification ; the later whereof, in our present case, is perhaps the more tolerable of the two ^.
5. Of these modeSy there are two sorts which deserve distinct Simple consideration:- ^^^^
First, there are some which are only variations, or different simple combinations of the same simple idea, without the mixture' ^*** of any other ; — as a dozen, or score ; which are nothing but \ the ideas of so many distinct units added together, and | these I call simple modes ^ as being contained within the ' bounds of one simple idea^
Secondly, there are others compounded of simple ideas of
> In its own plastic imaginations, ledges 'relation' in all 'complex'
and arbitrary generalisations. ideas.
* Here he makes * ideas of relation ' • Locke's * modes '— * simple' and
one species of ' complex idea ' ; where- ' mixed '—are names for the ideas we
as, in % X, he spoke of 'complex ideas' have of qualities, and collections of
and 'ideas of relation' as coordinate qualities, considered in abstraction from
species of the genus ' ideas made by substances,
the mind,' and elsewhere he acknow* * Treated in chapters xiii-xxi.
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2i6 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. XII.
BOOK II. several kinds, put together to make one complex onfe ; — ^v- g. beauty, consisting of a certain composition of colour and figure, causing delight to the beholder; theft, which beings the concealed change of the possession of anything, without the consent of the proprietor, contains, as is visible, a com- bination of several ideas of several kinds : and these I call mixed modes ^.
Ideas of Sub- stances, single or collective.
6. Secondly, the ideas of substances are such combinations of simple ideas as are 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. Thus if to substance be joined the simple idea of a certain dull whitish colour, with certain d^rees of weight, hardness, ductility, and fusibility, we have the idea of lead ; and a combination of the ideas of a certain sort of figure, with the powers of motion, thought and reasoning, joined to substance, make the ordinary idea of a man. Now of substances also, there are two sorts of ideas : — one of sittgle substances, as they exist separately, as of a man or a sheep; the other of several of those put together, as an army of men, or flock of sheep — which collective ideas of several substances thus put together are as much each of them one single idea as that of a man or an unit.
Ideas of Relation.
Theab- strusest Ideas we
7. Thirdly, the last sort of complex ideas is that we call relation^ which consists in the consideration and comparing one idea with another '.
Of these several kinds we shall treat in their order ^
8. If we trace the prc^ess of our minds*, and with attention observe how it repeats, adds together, and unites
^ See ch. zxii.
' Properly speaking all the three sorts of complex ideas involve com- parison, and therefore 'relation,' as Locke himself acknowledges in other places.
* ' Cette division des objets de nos pens^es^ en substances, modis, et rvla* turns, est assez a mon godt Je crois
que les qualit^s ne sont que modifi- cations des substances, et Tentende- menty ajoute les relations.' (Abif* Viaux Essats,)
* According to Locke's 'historical' method, which is bound to seek in past ideas or phenomena for its * explana- tions.'
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Complex Ideas.
217
Its simple ideas received^ from sensation or reflection, it book 11. will lead us further than at first perhaps we should have " imagined. And, I believe, we shall find, if we warily observe ^^ ^^^^ the originals of our notions, that even the most abstruse ideas^ are all how remote soever they may seem from sense, or from any so^oS^ operations of our own minds, are yet only such as the under- standing frames to itself, by repeating and joining together ideas that it had either from objects of sense, or from its own operations about them: so that those even large and abstract ideas are derived from sensation or reflection, being no other than what the mind, by the ordinary use of its own faculties, employed about ideas received from objects of sense, or from the operations it observes in itself about them, may, and does, attain unto.
This I shall endeavour to show in the ideas we have of space, time, and infinity, and some few others that seem the most remote *, from those originals.
* * received ' — yet originally re- ceived in complexity— a complexity however that can always, by abstrac- tion and analysis, be refunded into simple ideas of external or internal sense.
* In the following chapters,— to the end of the twenty-eighth, — the ex- amples of ideas in their modts^ of ideas of substances, and of ideas of their relations, are what Bacon would call ' crucial instances,*— in verification
of the h3rpothesis that even our 'most abstruse ideas' in science and philo- sophy all gradually rise out of pheno- mena of the five senses or of reflection. But are the < abstruse ideas* in all cases results of emfnrical comparison ? Do they not often issue from intellectual necessities, a point of view not familiar to Locke, who sometimes seems to sensualise * human understanding,' in an exclusive desire to show its de- pendence upon ' experience ' I
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CHAPTER XIIL
COMPLEX IDEAS OF SIMPLE MODES:— AND FIRST, OF THE SIMPLE MODES OF IDEA OF SPACE.
BOOK II. !• Though in the foregoing part I have often mentioned
""**" simple ideas, which are truly the materials of all our know-
'j 'ledge; yet having treated of them there, rather in the way
modes of that they come into the mind, than as distinguished from
fdeas.^ others more compounded^, it will not be perhaps amiss to
take a view of some of them again under this consideration,
and examine those different modifications of the same idea ;
which the mind either finds in things existing ^ or is able to
make within itself without the help of any extrinsical object,
or any foreign suggestion *.
Those modifications of any one simple idea (which, as has been said, I call simple modes) are as perfectly different and distinct ideas in the mind as those of the greatest distance or contrariety. For the idea of two is as distinct from that of one, as blueness from heat, or either of them from any number : and yet it is made up only of that simple idea of an unit repeated ; and repetitions of this kind joined together make those distinct simple modes, of a dozen, a gross, a million.
' * More compounded 'suggests that, ties united in substances, accompanied
from ihefirsif experience implies some always by ideas of * existence ' and
degree of complexity in the ideas of ' power ' — all obscurely present even
which it consists. in our early sense perceptions.
* The mind accordingly * finds ' • That is, they are either made by
complex ideas made for it in things or^br the individual mind.
existing, which are perceived as quali-
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Simple Modes of Idea of Space.
219
a. I shall begin with the simple idea of space'^. I have book 11. showed above, chap. 4, that we get * the idea of space, both " by our sight and touch * ; which, I think, is so evident, that it j^j^ ^^ would be as needless to go to prove that men perceive, by Space. their sight, a distance between bodies of different colours, or between the parts of the same body, as that they see colours themselves^: nor is it less obvious, that they can do so in the dark by feeling and touch.
* The idea of the immensity of space, and also our mathematical ideas of space relations, might seem too remote from the simple pheno- mena of sense to be explained by them. In what follows, Locke tries to meet this objection, and treats our ideas of the modes of space as crucial instances, in verification of his theory of the dependence of all our ideas on experience. If the simple pheno- mena of extension, presented in the senses, can give rise to the idea of boundless space, a fortiori the sub- limest ideas of which man is conscious may depend in like manner upon data of sense.
In this and the four following chap- ters, Locke tries to reconcile our idea of the Infiniit in Quantity — as in space, duration, and number — with his theory of the necessary dependence of all our ideas upon the exercise of our faculties in experience.
* *get,* i.e. dependently on per- ceptions of sight or touch, in the order of time, and thus of history; but not therefore in the order of reason, according to which space is necessarily 'suggested' by, and thus Mnnate' in, those sense per- ceptions. ' Getting an idea' is, with Locke, becoming percipient of an at' tribute for the first time; and demands a history of the circumstances in which the consciousness has arisen, and had its natural * origin' — the history of the rise of an idea super- seding in the Essay that critical analy- sis of its ultimate constitution which
may reveal other elements than the merely sensuous phenomena in which it arose.
' To regard space moreover as a datum of touch, Cousin argues, is to identify space and body. This he aUeges that Locke accordingly does, or at least is logically bound to do, and so to make the idea of immensity that of body indefinitely enlarged. Locke does not ask whether the per- ce ptionof space is exclusively tactual and visual, or whether it is not more or less occasioned by, and so implied in, every organic sensation ; also whether the idea of extension given in seeing is identical with, or different in kind from that given in touch ; and whether in * touch* it is given chiefly in the sense of simple contact (touch proper), or in the muscular sense.
* This means that some perception of extension is necessarily given in perception of colour — at least a vague superficial extension ; for the question about distance outwards in the line of sights afterwards discussed by Ber- keley, is hardly raised by Locke. Body, according to him, immediately reveals itself, in its chief primary quality of extension, through both sight and touch. Berkeley, on the other hand, concludes that space proper is not, as Locke held, both seen and felt, but is only felt; and the idea is thus ultimately resolved into the succession of tactual sensa- tions. Touch is made the only original occasion of the idea of room, which is supposed to be gradually attached to
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220 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. 3. This space, considered barely in length between any two â– â– **" beings, without considering anything else between them, is ^ .'called distance-, if considered in length, breadth, and thick- E^ension. ness, I think it may be called capacity. [^ The term exten- sion is usually applied to it in what manner soever con- sidered.]
immen- 4' Each different distance is a different modification of s»ty. space ; and each idea of any different distance, or space, is
a simple mode of this idea. [* Men, for the use and by the custom of measuring, settle in their minds the ideas of certain stated lengths, — ^such as are an inch, foot, yard, fathom, mile, diameter of the earth, &c., which are so many distinct ideas made up only of space. When any such stated lengths or measures of space are made familiar to men's thoughts, they] can, in their minds, repeat them as often as they will, without mixing or joining to them the idea of body, or anything else ; and frame to themselves the ideas of long, square, or cubic feet, yards or fathoms, here amongst the bodies of the universe, or else beyond the utmost bounds of all bodies ; and, by adding these still one to another, enlarge their ideas of space as much as they please. The power of repeating or doubling any idea we have of any distance, and adding it to the former as often as we will, without being ever able to come to any stop or
the original data of the other senses, as sidered without it. At least I think it
a ' suggestion ' of recoUected experi- most intelligible, and the best way to
ence ; — in antithesis to the opposite avoid confusion, if we use the word
extreme view, which finds the idea extension for an affection of matter, or
vaguely involved in ev€ry organic stHsor- the distance of the extremities of par*
Hon, as the germ of its objective con- ticular solid bodies ; and space in the
stitution. Objectivity, however, is not more general signification, for distance,
necessarily spacial, and must not be with or without solid matter possess-
confused with the sense or idea of iug it.'
space. ' The first edition here reads as ^ Here the first three editions read follows : — ' Men having, -by accustom- thus: — 'When considered between ing themselves to stated lengths of the extremities of matter, which fills space, which they use for measuring the capacity of space with something of other distances — as a foot, a yard, solid, tangible, and moveable, it is pro- or a fathom, a league, or diameter of perly called exUttsion. And so exten- the earth — made those ideas familiar sion is an idea belonging to body only; to their thoughts, can,' &c. but space may, as is evident, be con-
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Simple Mocks of Idea of Space. 221
stint, let us enlarge it as much as we will, is that which gives book ii. us the idea of immensity ^. ""^^^
5. There is another modification of this idea, which is pj ^^ nothing but the relation which the parts of the termination of extension, or circumscribed space, have amongst themselves. This the touch discovers in sensible bodies, whose extremities come within our reach ; and the eye takes both from bodies
and colours, whose boundaries are within its view : where, observing how the extremities terminate,— either in straight lines which meet at discernible angles, or in crooked lines wherein no angles can be perceived; by considering these as they relate to one another, in all parts of the extremities of any body or space, it has that idea we call^^«r^, which affords to the mind infinite variety^. For, besides the vast number of different figures that do really exist in the coherent masses of matter, the stock that the mind has in its power, by varying the idea of space, and thereby making still new compositions, by repeating its own ideas, and joining them as it pleases, is perfectly inexhaustible. And so it can multiply figures in infinitum.
6. For the mind having a power to repeat the idea of any Endless length directly stretched out, and join it to another in the^^/"^ same direction, which is to double the length of that straight
line ; or else join another with what inclination it thinks fit, and so make what sort of angle it pleases : and being able also to shorten any line it imagines, by taking from it one half, one fourth, or what part it pleases, without being able to t-
come to an end of any such divisions, it can make an angle of any bigness. So also the lines that are its sides, of what length
^ The idea oi tmnunsiiy cannot be a suggested by the phenomenon ofexten-
contingtnt datum of sense, if it implies sion ; the ideas of figure and place are
mtelliduai obOgaHon to add without finite and positive. Is the mysterious
limit. Tile senses present only what infinite, in its aspect of * immensity,*
is actually seen or felt, and this is properly regarded as only one of the
always a finite phenomenon ; the obli- ' modes * of the sensuous idea of space ?
gation to add without limit must come Particular spaces end, but we cannot
from another source, although without think of immensity as ending. Our
data of sense there can be no percep- only positive idea of it is that of inetnt-
tion of the obligation. Me progress ; but there can be no
' ' Immensity ' is the term which mental image of the infinity towards
stands for the mysterious infinite, as which the mind thus tends.
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222 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. it pleases, which joining again to other lines, of different
"~*t7 lengths, and at different angles, till it has wholly enclosed any
' space, it is evident that it can multiply figures, both in their
shape and capacity, in infinitum ; all which are but so
many different simple modes of space.
The same that it can do with straight lines, it can also do with crooked, or crooked and straight together ; and the same it can do in lines, it can also in superficies ; by which we may be led into farther thoughts of the endless variety of figures that the mind has a power to make, and thereby to multiply the simple modes of space.
Place. 7. Another idea coming under this head, and belonging to
this tribe, is that we call place ^. As in simple space, we con- sider the relation of distance between any two bodies or points ; so in our idea of place, we consider the relation of distance betwixt anything, and any two or more points, which are con- sidered as keeping the same distance one with another, and so considered as at rest. For when we find anything at the same distance now which it was yesterday, from any two or more points, which have not since changed their distance one with another, and with which we then compared it, we say it hath kept the same place : but if it hath sensibly altered its distance with either of those points, we say it hath changed its place : though, vulgarly speaking, in the common notion of place, we do not always exactly observe the distance from these precise points, but from larger portions of sensible objects, to which we consider the thing placed to bear relation, and its distance from which we have some reason to observe ^.
' The history of the g^dual evolu- is felt to arise can the first one acquire a
tion in sense of the idea of locality, and determination up or down, right or left;
of the localisation of our sensations, is and these determinations are all relative
now ascertained with a scientific detail to that second point. Each point, so far
beside which Locke's observations as it is placed, is then only by virtue of
seem meagre and commonplace. what it is not, namely, by virtue of
* * No single quale of sensation can, another point. This is as much as to
by itself, amount to a consciousness of say that position has nothing intrinsic
position. Suppose no feeling but that about it ; and Uiat, alUiou^ a feeling
of a point ever to be awakened, could of absolute bigness may, a feding cf
that possibly be the feeling of any place cannot posstbly firnn an immanent
special whereness or thereness\ Ccr- element in any single isolated sensation,'
tainly not Only when a second point (James, Psychology, vol. ii, p. 154.)
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Simple Modes of Idea of Space. 223
S. Thus, a company of chess-men, standing on the same book ii. squares of the chess-board where we left them, we say they are ^^m all in the same place, or unmoved, though perhaps the chess- pj^^^.^' board hath been in the mean time carried out of one room into relative to another ; because we compared them only to the parts of the bod/4. ^^ chess-board, which keep the same distance one with another. The chess-board, we also say, is in the same place it was, if it remain in the same part of the cabin, though perhaps the ship which it is in sails all the while. And the ship is said to be in the same place, supposing it kept the same distance with the parts of the neighbouring land ; though perhaps the earth hath turned round, and so both chess-men, and board, and ship, have every one changed place, in respect of remoter bodies, which have kept the same distance one with another. But yet the distance from certain parts of the board being that which determines the place of the chess-men ; and the distance from the fixed parts of the cabin (with which we made the comparison) being that which determined the place of the chess-board ; and the fixed parts of the earth that by which we determined the place of the ship, — these things may be said to be in the same place in those respects; though their distance from some other things, which in this matter we did not consider, being varied, they have un- doubtedly changed place in that respect ; and we ourselves shall think so, when we have occasion to compare them with those other.
9. But this modification of distance we call place, being Place made by men for their common use, that by it they might a^preJlnt° be able to design the particular position of things, where purpose. they had occasion for such designation ; men consider and determine of this place by reference to those adjacent things which best served to their present purpose, without con- sidering other things which, to another purpose, would better determine the place of the same thing. Thus in the chess-board, the use of the designation of the place of each chess-man being determined only within that chequered piece of wood, it would cross that purpose to measure it by anything else ; but when these very chess-men are put up in a bag, if any one should ask where the black king is, it
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224 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. would be proper to determine the place by the part of the
ChaTxiii ^^^"^ ^* ^^^^ ^^^ ^"^ "^^ ^^ *^^ chess-board ; there being another use of designing the place it is now in, than when in play it was on the chess-board, and so must be determined by other bodies. So if any one should ask, in what place are the verses which report the story of Nisus and Euryalus, it would be very improper to determine this place, by sa3ring, they were in such a part of the earth, or in Bodley's library : but the right designation of the place would be by the parts of Virgil's works ; and the proper answer would be, that these verses were about the middle of the ninth book of his i£neidsSand that they have been always constantly in the same place ever since Virgil was printed : which is true, though the book itself hath moved a thousand times, the use of the idea of place here being, to know in what part of the book that story is, that so, upon occasion, we may know where to find it, and have recourse to it for use. Place lo. That our idea of place is nothing else but such a
universe, relative position of anything as I have before mentioned, I think is plain, and will be easily admitted, when we consider that we can have no idea of the place of the universe, though we can of all the parts of it ; because beyond that we have not the idea of any fixed, distinct, particular beings, in re» ference to which we can imagine it to have any relation of distance; but all beyond it is one uniform space or expan- sion, wherein the mind finds no variety, no marks. For to say that the world is somewhere, means no more than that it does exist; this, though a phrase borrowed from place, signifying only its existence, not location: and when one can find out, and frame in his mind, clearly and distinctly, the place of the universe, he will be able to tell us whether it moves or stands still in the undistinguishable inane of infinite space: though it be true that the word place has sometimes a more confused sense^, and stands for that space which anybody takes up ; and so the universe is in a place.
^ Bk. iv, lines 176-500. with Locke is relation to bodies ex-
' An absolute meaning is then given ternal to the place itself. But to
to a term properly relative ; for ' place ' identify absolutdy the txisUnct of the
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Simple Modes of Space. 225
The idea, therefore, of place we have by the same means BOOK 11. that we get the idea of space, (whereof this is but a par- ""^^^jn ticular limited consideration,) viz. by our sight and touch; by cither of which we receive into our minds the ideas of extension or distance ^.
1 1. There are some that would persuade us, that body Extension and extension are the same thing *, who either change the ^t the ^ signification of words, which I would not suspect them of, — same, they having so severely condemned the philosophy of others, because it hath been too much placed in the uncertain meaning, or deceitful obscurity of doubtful or insignificant terms. If, therefore, they mean by body and extension the same that other people do, viz. by body something that is solid and extended, whose parts are separable and movable different ways ; and by extension^ only the space that lies between the extremities of those solid coherent parts, and which is possessed by them, — they confound very different ideas one with another; for I appeal to every man's own thoughts, whether the idea of space be not as distinct from that of solidity, as it is from the idea of scarlet colour?
universe in place with its bare existence be regarded as an empirical datum of
would be to identify space and body, sense. It must be remembered, how*
which Locke refuses to do. ever, that, in his ' historical plain
^ When thus defining our percep- method/ he is looking only to the rise
tions of distance, figure, place, and of the idea of space, as a» event in the
other space relations, Locke fails to in- history of the conscious life of moHf
vestigateindetaii the physical conditions and to the sensuous phenomena in
through which our originally vague combination with which it arises,
idea of space or room is transformed These he finds in sight and touch,
into the spacial universe, in the mani- without using which we could not
fold relations under which adults con- have our idea of space. Hiat the
template the world of the senses — risen idea includes what was neither
an inquiry which has since led to seen nor touched, is hardly recog*
interesting results in physiological nised. His method makes him apt to
psychology. overlook the spiritual activity of in-
• The Cartesians (thus referred to) tellect, and direct attention exclu-
regarded extension as the essence of sively to the phenomena supplied by
matter. Locke insists on the anti- experience, with their organic accom-
thesis between eur idea of body and paniments under the present consti*
our idea of space; but he fails to tution of things. Physical coexistences
represent adequately the distinctive and sequences, not their universal
characteristics of the idea of space ; or and necessary, I e. metaphysical, pre-
to show how, even under his own suppositions, recommend themselves
inadequate account of the idea, it can to him in this regard.
VOL. I.
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226 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. It is true, solidity^ cannot exist without extension, neither "^^ can scarlet colour exist without extension *, but this hinders ' not, but that they are distinct ideas. Many ideas require others, as necessary to their existence or conception ^ which yet are very distinct ideas. Motion can neither be, nor be conceived, without space ; and yet motion is not space, nor space motion; space can exist without it, and they are very distinct ideas ; and so, I think, are those of space and solidity. Solidity^ is so inseparable an idea from body, that upon that depends its filling of space, its contact, impulse, and communication of motion upon impulse. And if it be a reason to prove that spirit is different from body, because thinking includes not the idea of extension in it ; the same reason will be as v.alid, I suppose, to prove that space is not body, because it includes not the idea of solidity in it ; space and solidity being as distinct ideas as thinking and extension, and as wholly separable in the mind one from another. Body then and extension, it is evident, arc two distinct ideas. For, Extension 12. First, Extension includes no solidity, nor resistance to solidity. ^^ motion of body, as body doea
The parts ^3' Secondly, The parts of pure space are inseparable one of space frQjn the other ; so that the continuity cannot be separated, able, both neither really nor mentally. For I demand of any one to mentaUy** ''^"^ove any part of it from another, with which it is con- tinued, even so much as in thought To divide and separate actually is, as I think, by removing the parts one from another, to make two superficies, where before there was a continuity : and to divide mentally is, to make in the mind two superficies, where before there was a continuity, and con- sider them as removed one from the other ; which can only
^ A solid is that which fills or ception of colour f
occupies a space that is extended in ' This concession might have led
three dimensions ; and that is physi- Locke to a fuller recognition of meta-
cally impenetrable, or incapable of physical priority of, ideas in reason
being transformed bypressure or other- {origo), as distinguished from their
wise, from an extended into an un- merely < historical ' priority {axordium)
extended being. in the individual consciousness.
' Does not this imply that extension * Cf. Bk. II. ch. iv. is ti4ct$sarUy given in all sensuous per-
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Simple Modes of Space » 227
be done in things considered by the mind as capable of being BOOK ll. separated ; and by separation, of acquiring new distinct ^^m. superficies, which they then have not, but are capable of. But neither of these ways of separation, whether real or jnental, is, as I think, compatible to pure space ^.
It is true, a man may consider so much of such a space as is answerable or commensurate to a foot, without considering the rest, which is, indeed, a partial consideration, but not so much as mental separation or division ; since a man can no more mentally divide, without considering two superficies separate one from the other, than he can actually divide, without making two superficies disjoined one from the other : but a partial consideration is not separating. A man may consider light in the sun without its heat, or mobility in body without its extension, without thinking of their sepa« ration. One is only a partial consideration, terminating in one alone; and the other is a consideration of both, as existing separately.
14. Thirdly, The parts of pure space are immovable, which The parts follows from their inseparability; motion being nothing but?^JJ^^f change of distance between any two things ; but this cannot able. be between parts that arc inseparable, which, therefore, must needs be at perpetual rest one amongst another.
Thus the determined idea of simple space distinguishes it plainly and sufficiently from body ; since its parts are inse- parable, immovable, and without resistance to the motion of body \
^ * Infinites are composed of finites Space is consequently in itself essen- in no other sense than as finites are tially one, and absolutely indivisible.' composed of infinitesimals. Parts, in (Clarke to Leibniz, Collection ofPaperSy the corporeal sense of the word, are p. 131.) So too Spinoza. Cf. Ethica, separable, compounded, ununited, in- Schol. Prop. zv. Pars i. dependent on, and moveable from ' The M«(«ssary' continuity 'of space each other. But infinite space, though implies its necessarily illimitable char- it may by us be /arAVii(y apprehended, acter — that beyond any occupied space i.e. may in our imagination be conceived there must still ^e room for more^ as composed of parts ; yet those parts which room is thus necessarily in- (improperly so called) being essentially exhaustible. We can imagine an end of indiscerptible, and immoveable from body, but not of space, i. e. of potential each other, and not partable without room for more bodies. We can form an express contradiction in terms, a sensuous image of a body ; space
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!228 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
300K II. 15. If any one ask me what this space I speak of w, I will
^ "*^„ tell him when he tells me what his extension is *. For to say. Chap. XIII. . « , • . . ,
TheDefi- ^* ^^ usually done, that extension is to have partes extra
nition of fartes, is to say only, that extension is extension. For what
cxpulns*'^ am I the better informed in the nature of extension, when I
it not am told that extension is to have parts that are extended,
exterior to parts that are extended, i. e. extension consists of
extended parts ^? As if one, asking what a fibre was, I should
answer him, — that it was a thing made up of several fibres.
Would he thereby be enabled to understand what a fibre was
better than he did before? Or rather, would he not have
reason to think that my design was to make sport with him,
rather than seriously to instruct him ?
Division 16. Those who Contend that space and body are the same,
intoBodles hring this dilemma : — either this space is something or
and Spirits nothing ; if nothing be between two bodies, they must
proves not ^ .. , .^ . , ,• , « 1 . V t
Space and necessarily touch ; if it be allowed to be something, they ask,
B^y the Whether it be body or spirit ? To which I answer by another
question. Who told them that there was, or could be, nothing
but solid beings, which could not think, and thinking beings
that were not extended! — which is all they mean by the terms
body and spirit,
Subsunce, 17. If it be demanded (as usually it is) whether this space,
know^not ^^^^ ^^ body, be substance or accidetity I shall readily answer
no Proof' I know not ; nor shall be ashamed to own my ignorance, till
Space' they that ask show me a clear distinct idea of substance.
without 18. I endeavour as much as I can to deliver myself from
Different ^^^^ fallacies which we are apt to put upon ourselves, by
meanings taking words for things ^. It helps not our ignorance to feign
perse is unimaginable. Locke*s history 90), already referred to in Bk. I. ch. iii.
of the experience in which the idea % 18, of which Locke makes light,
rises fails to show how, when arisen, regarding it as of little use, while
it must be so constituted. Leibniz believes that it is ' a point in
^ In §( 15-90 the ontological ques- philosophy of the greatest importance.*
tion about space arises — whether it is (Nohv, Esstus.)
matter, spirit, or neither ; whether it ' He has already said ($ 3) that by
is nothing or something, and if some- * extension ' he means * space in what-
thing, a substance or an attribute ; ever manner considered.*
whether it is absolutely independent ' It must never be forgotten that the
or dependent upon God. This intro- deliverance of the human mind from
duces the idea of 'substance ' (§§ 17- the bondage of empty and ambiguous
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Simple Modes of Space. 229
a knowledge where we have none, by making a noise with book iIi sounds, without clear and distinct significations. Names ^ "**7„, made at pleasure, neither alter the ilature of things, nor make ^^ ^^^^ us understand them, but as they are signs of and stand for stance, determined^ ideas. And I desire those who lay so much stress on the sound of these two syllables, substance^ to con- sider whether applying it, as they do, to the infinite, incompre- hensible God, to finite spirits, and to body, it be in the same sense ; and whether it stands for the same idea, when each of those three so different beings are called substances. If so, whether it will thence follow — that God, spirits, and body, agreeing in the same common nature of substance, difier not any otherwise than in a bare different modificatiofi of that substance ; as a tree and a pebble, being in the same sense body, and agreeing in the common nature of body, differ only in a bare modification of that common matter, which will be a very harsh doctrine ^. If they say, that they apply it to God, finite spirit, and matter, in three different significations and that it stands for one idea when God is said to be a substance ; for another when the soul is called substance ; and for a third when body is called so ;— if the name substance stands for three several distinct ideas, they would do well to make known those distinct ideas, or at least to give three distinct names to them, to prevent in so important a notion the confusion and errors that will naturally follow from the promiscuous use of so doubtful a term ; which is so far from being suspected to have three distinct, that in ordinary use it has scarce one clear distinct signification. And if they can thus make three
metaphysical words was one of Locke's dari neque concipi potest substantia.'
chief motives to the inquiry in which (Ethica, Prop, ziv.) Locke's idea of
he engaged in the Essay. God, as the human spirit magnified to
* 'clear and distinct'— in first three infinity— one spirit among many, yet
editions. supreme — leads him here to alter this so
' Spinoza, as well as Descartes, &r as to speak of God as a ' modifica- was probably here in Locke's view, tion' of the one substance which under- According to the definition of Sub- lies them all. Spinoza does not think of stance in the Etkica, only one sub- God as Creator or cause of things and stance is possible, and all things persons, or as working towards ends, and persons must be conceived as its in the way Locke does. The Spino- modifications. The one substance is zisticf«mea«M65/aM/Hi is the intellectual Spinoza's ' God.' ' Praeter Deum nulla presupposition of all that exists — the
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230 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II.
Chap. XIII.
Substance and acci- dents of little use in Philo- sophy.
Sticking on and under- propping.
distinct ideas of substance, what hinders why another may not make a fourth * ?
19. They who first ran into the notion of accidents^ as a sort of real beings that needed something to inhere in, were forced to find out the word substance to support them. Had the poor Indian philosopher (who imagined that the earth also wanted something to bear it up) but thought -of this word substance, he needed not to have been at the trouble to find an elephant to support it, and a tortoise to support his elephant : the word substance would have done it effectually. And he that inquired might have taken it for as good an answer from an Indian philosopher, — that substance, without knowing what it is, is that which supports the earth, as we take it for a sufficient answer and good doctrine from our European philosophers, — that substance, without knowing what it is, is that which supports accidents. So that of sub- stance, we have no idea of what it is, but only a confused, obscure one of what it does *.
20. Whatever a learned man may do here, an intelligent American, who inquired into the nature of things, would scarce take it for a satisfactory account, if, desiring to learn our architecture, he should be told that a pillar is a thing supported by a basis, and a basis something that supported a pillar. Would he not think himself mocked, instead of taught, with such an account as this ? And a stranger to them would be very liberally instructed in the nature of books, and the things they contained, if he should be told that all learned books consisted of paper and letters, and that
conception in which all true concep- tions of things and persons are logi- cally contained, and from which they may be deduced with mathematical rigour, even as the relations of triangles and circles may be logically found in the space which contains them. For Descartes, cf. PrincipUs, Part i. Prop. 5i-54i where Lockers question about the meanings of < substance ' is raised. ^ So far from regarding sptut as a fourth substance, Locke, in the manu- scripts which record his thoughts when he was preparing the Essay,
suggests that 'space in itself seems to be nothing but a capacity or possi- bility for txUmUd being to exist, which we are apt to conctivi imfimie, because there is in nothing no substance. That space cannot be perceived apart from body was the argument against a vacuum.
' ' Here Locke himself banters the idea of substance in matttr^ (Beriieley, C. PI, B. p. 473.) But it is substance in mind, as well as in matter, that is here in question and miscon- ceived.
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Simple Modes of Space. 231
letters were things inhering in paper, and paper a thing that BOOK ir. held forth letters: a notable way of having clear ideas ^'^ r'^^^wi letters and paper. But were the Latin words, inhaereniia and substantio^ put into the plain English ones that answer them, and were called sticking on and under-propping^ they would better discover to us the very great clearness there 13 in the doctrine of substance and accidents, and show of what use they are in deciding of questions in philosophy.
ai. But to return to our idea of space. If body be not A Vacuum supposed infinite, (which I think no one will affirm,) I would the u"most ask, whether, if God placed a man at the extremity of cor- g°""^^ °^ poreal beings ^ he could not stretch his hand beyond his body ? If he could, then he would put his arm where there was before space without body; and if there he spread his fingers, there would still be space between them without body. If he could not stretch out his hand, it must be because of some external hindrance ; (for we suppose him alive, with such a power of moving the parts of his body that he hath now, which is not in itself impossible, if God so pleased to have it ; or at least it is not impossible for God so to move him :) and then I ask, — whether that which hinders his hand fi-om moving outwards be substance or accident, something or nothing? And when they have resolved that, they will be able to resolve themselves, — what that is, which is or may be between two bodies at a distance, that is not body, and has no solidity. In the mean time, the argument is at least as good, that, where nothing hinders, (as beyond the utmost bounds of all bodies.) a body put in motion may move on, as where there is nothing between, there two bodies must necessarily touch. For pure space between is sufficient to take away the necessity of mutual contact ; but bare space in
^ Although body is not continuous thus separated ?' Is there need to
like space,— inasmuch as we find suppose any ' extremity,' or that the
intervals of empty space which make universe of bodies is in this respect
motion possible — have we any right to finite ; or even that they are not ever-
assume that there b a point in the lasting, although, through all their
material universe at which, if a ~man metamorphoses, everlastingly subject
were placed on it, he would be 'at to divine law, and charged with divine
the extremity even of corporeal beings,* purpose T
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232 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. the way is not sufficient to stop motion. The truth is, these *' men must either own that they think body infinite, though they are loth to speak it out, or else affirm that space is not body. For I would fain meet with that thinking man that can in his thoughts set any bounds to space, more than he can to duration ; or by thinking hope to arrive at the end of either. And therefore, if his idea of eternity be infinite, so is his idea of immensity ; they are both finite or infinite alike. The Power 0,%. Farther, those who assert the impossibility of space lation" *' existing without matter, must not only make body infinite, proves a but must also deny a power in God to annihilate any part of matter. No one, I suppose, will deny that God can put an end to all motion that is in matter, and fix all the bodies of the universe in a perfect quiet and rest, and continue them so long as he pleases. Whoever then will allow that God can, during such a general rest, annihilate either this book or the body of him that reads it, must necessarily admit the possi- bility of a vacuum. For, it is evident that the space that was filled by the parts of the annihilated body will still remain, and be a space without body. For the circumambient bodies being in perfect rest, are a wall of adamant, and in that state make it a perfect impossibility for any other body to get into that space. And indeed the necessary motion of one particle of matter into the place from whence another particle of matter is removed, is but a consequence from the supposition of plenitude ; which will therefore need some better proof than a supposed matter of fact, which experiment can never make out ; — our own clear and distinct ideas plainly satisfying us, that there is no necessary connexion between space and solidity, since we can conceive the one without the other. And those who dispute for or against a vacuum, do thereby confess they have distinct ideas of vacuum and plenum, i. e. that they have an idea of extension void of solidity, though they deny its existence ; or else they dispute about nothing at all. For they who so much alter the signification of words, as to call extension body, and consequently make the whole essence of body to be nothing but pure extension without solidity, must talk absurdly whenever they speak of vacuum ; since it is impossible for extension to be without extension*
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Simple Modes of Space. 233
For vacuum^ whether we affirm or deny its existence, signifies book il space without body ; whose very existence no one can deny " to be possible, who will not make matter infinite, and take from God a power to annihilate any particle of it ^.
23. But not to go so far as beyond the utmost bounds of Motion body in the universe, nor appeal to God's omnipotency to vaauuD. find a vacuum^ the motion of bodies that are in bur view and neighbourhood seems to me plainly to evince it. For I desire
any one so to divide a solid body, of any dimension he pleases, as to make it possible for the solid parts to move up and down freely every way within the bounds of that superficies, if there be not left in it a void space as big as the least part into which he has divided the said solid body. And if, where the least particle of the body divided is as big as a mustard-seed, a void space equal to the bulk of a mustard-seed be requisite to make room for the free motion of the parts of the divided body within the bounds of its superficies, where the particles of matter are 100,000,000 less than a mustard-seed, there must also be a space void of solid matter as big as 100,000,000 part of a mustard-seed ; for if it hold in the one it will hold in the other, and so on in infinitum. And let this void space be as little as it will, it destroys the hypothesis of plenitude. For if there can be a space void of body equal to the smallest separate particle of matter now existing in nature, it is still space without body ; and makes as great a difference between space and body as if it were lUya xiatriia^ a distance as wide as any in nature. And therefore, if we suppose not the void space necessary to motion equal to the least parcel of the divided solid matter, but to y^ ^^ TrmF ^^ ^^ ^^ same con- sequence will always follow of space without matter.
24. But the question being here, — Whether the idea of The Ideas space or extension be the same with the idea of body? it is ^f Body not necessary to prove the real existence of a vacuum^ but the distinct
' ' Vacuum, sive mane, tribus modis bant, quod ubicunque ponitur extensio,
dicitur. x"o in quo non est conspi- necessario concipi debet corpus ; quia
cuum corpus. ... a^ in quo non est ratio essentialis corporis in extensione
soHdum corpus. . . . 2f*^ in quo nullum sita est : at in spatio vacuo ponitur
omnino est corpus, ut tenent Epicurei. extensio, ergo et corpus.' (Chauvini,
. . . Cartesian! nee dan actu, neque Lexicon^ etiam dari pos^ vacuum, ex eo pro-
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234 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. idea of it ; which it is plain men have when they inquire and ""*^ dispute whether there be a vacuum or no. For if they had ' not the idea of space without body, they could not make a question about its existence : and if their idea of body did not include in it something more than the bare idea of space, they could have no doubt about the plenitude of the world ; and it would be as absurd to demand, whether there were space without body, as whether there were space without space, or body without body, since these were but different names of the same idea. Extension 25. It is true, the idea of extension joins itself so insepar- se^rabl'e ^^^Y ^^^^ ^^^ visible, and most tangible qualities, that it fromBody, suffers US to see no one, or feel very few external objects, not^* without taking in impressions of extension too^ This san^c- readiness of extension to make itself be taken notice of so constantly with other ideas, has been the occasion, I guess, that some have made the whole essence of body to consist in extension ; which is not much to be wondered at, since some have had their minds, by their eyes and touch, (the busiest of all our senses,) so filled with the idea of extension, and, as it were, wholly possessed with it, that they allowed no existence to anything that had not extension. I shall not now argue with those men, who take the measure and possi- bility of all being only from their narrow and gross imagina- tions : but having here to do only with those who conclude the essence of body to be extension, because they say they cannot imagine any sensible quality of any body without extension, — I shall desire them to consider, that, had they reflected on their ideas of tastes and smells as much as on those of sight and touch ; nay, had they examined their ideas of hunger and thirst, and several other pains, they would have found that they included in them no idea of extension at all, which is but an affection of body, as well as the rest, discover- able by our senses, which are scarce acute enough to look into the pure essences of things.
^ Does Locke mean here to distin- idea of space necessarily < suggested '
guish between the visible and tangible by what is actually seen and touched,
extensions which happen to present but which is itself neither seen nor
themselves in sight and touch, and an touched ?
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Simple Modes of Space. 235
26. If those ideas which are constantly joined to all others ^, book ii. must therefore be concluded to be the essence of those things ""**^|„ which have constantly those ideas joined to them, and are in- Y^^aetiz^ separable from them ; then unity is without doubt the essence of things. of ever3rthing. For there is not any object of sensation or re-" flection which does not carry with it the idea of one : but the weakness of this kind of argument we have already shown sufficiently.
27. To conclude : whatever men shall think concerning the Ideas of existence of a vacuum^ this is plain to me — ^that we have as soSdity* clear an idea of space distinct from solidity, as we have of d»**»"<^*- solidity distinct from motion, or motion from space. We
have not any two more distinct ideas ; and we can as easily conceive space without solidity, as we can conceive body or space without motion, though it be never so certain that neither body nor motion can exist without space. But whether any one will take space to be only a relation resulting from the existence of other beings at a distance ; or whether they will think the words of the most knowing King Solomon, * The heaven, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain thee;' or those more emphatical ones of the inspired philosopher St. Paul, * In him we live, move, and have our being,* are to be understood in a literal sense, I leave every one to consider : only our idea of space is, I think, such as I have mentioned, and distinct from that of body. For, whether we consider, in matter itself, the distance of its coherent solid parts, and call it, in respect of those solid parts, extension ; or whether, con- sidering it as lying between the extremities of any body in its several dimensions, we call it length, breadth, and thickness ' ; or else, considering it as lying between any two bodies or
> Therefore no phenomenon, as pre- addition of elements not presented
sented in sensation or reflection, can contingently in sense seems to be
be ' simple ' although it may be after- implied here, but without sufficient
wards abstracted by analysis, from apprehension of its Immense philo-
the concrete experience. Our ideas sophical significance,
are tuctssariiy compUXf if there are ' Trinal space. We can SHppos$
' ideas which mMf/ be constantly joined a space with more than three dimen-
to all others * ; although their * simple * sions ; but we cannot hnagitft space
elements may be considered separately with another dimension than length,
aflerwards. The necessaiy super* breadth, and thickaeaa.
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236 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. positive beings, without any consideration whether there be ■"**~ any matter or not between, we call it distance; — ^however ' named or considered, it is always the same uniform simple idea of space, taken from objects about which our senses have been conversant ; whereof, having settled ideas in our minds, we can revive, repeat, and add them one to another as often as we will, and consider the space or distance so imagined, either as filled with solid parts, so that another body cannot come there without displacing and thrusting out the body that was there before ; or else as void of solidity, so that a body of equal dimensions to that empty or pure space may be placed in it, without the removing or expulsion of anything that was there. \} But, to avoid confusion in discourses concerning this matter, it were possibly to be wished that the name extension were applied only to matter, or the distance of the extremities of particular bodies; and the term expansion to space in general, with or without solid matter possessing it, — so as to say space is expanded and body extended. But in this every one has his liberty : I propose it only for the more dear and distinct way of speaking.]
Men differ a8. The knowing precisely what our words stand for, would, ciei^ ^^ ^ imagine, in this as well as a great many other cases, quickly simple end the dispute. For I am apt to think that men, when they come to examine them, find their simple ideas all generally to agree, though in discourse with one another they perhaps con- found one another with different names. I imagine that men who abstract their thoughts, and do well examine the ideas of their own minds, cannot much differ in thinking; however they may perplex themselves with words, according to the way of speaking of the several schools or sects they have been bred up in : though amongst unthinking men, who examine not scrupulously and carefully their own ideas, and strip them not from the marks men use for them, but confound them with words, there must be endless dispute, wrangling, and jargon ; especially if they be learned, bookish men, devoted to some sect, and accustomed to the language of it, and have learned
^ Added \n fourth edition. Locke does not always keep to these definitions.
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Ideas.
Simple Modes of Space.
237
Chap. XIII.
to talk after others. But if it should happen that any two book ii. thinking men should really have different ideas, I do not see how they could discourse or argue one with another. Here I must not be mistaken, to think that every floating imagination in men's brains fs presently of that sort of ideas I speak of. It is not easy for the mind to put off those confused notions and prejudices it has imbibed from custom, inadvertency, and common conversation. It requires pains and assiduity to examine its ideas, till it resolves them into those clear and distinct simple ones, out of which they are compounded ; and to see which, amongst its simple ones, have or have not a necessary connexion and dependence one upon another^. Till a man doth this in the primary and original notions of things, he builds upon floating and uncertain principles, and will often find himself at a loss ^.
^ Reaction against the abuse of words, also against a priori assump- tions and the authority of books, here again finds expression. Locke is sparing of quotations, and refuses to rest conclusions upon an array of authorities. The last sentence again implies that, among our *â– simple ideas ' some are ' necessarily connected * to- gether, so that they must rise in con- sciousness in complexity. In concrete experience our ideas are so complex that it requires pains to resolve them
into those simple ones of which the compound consists.
* Locke here expresses, more em- phatically than is common with him, the metaphysical craving for Vifounda^ Hon of absolutt certainty in knowledge and in action ; not merely one of the highest attainable probability, in which he is often disposed to leave men to exercise their judgment among the facts which happen to be presented in their experience.
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CHAPTER XIV.
IDEA OF DURATION AND ITS SIMPLE MODES.
BOOK II. I. There is another sort of distance, or length, the idea â– "^ whereof we get not from the permanent parts of space, but
D^miuon fr^"^ ^^ fleeting and perpetually perishing parts of succession.
isHeeting Jhis we Call duration \ the simple modes whereof are any X ension. jjflpgj.gjj^ lengths of it whereof we have distinct ideas, as hours^ days^ years, &c., time and eternity.
Its Idea a. The answer of a great man ^, to one who asked what
nectic^^n *'"^^ ^^ ' ^^ ^^^ rogos intelligOy (which amounts to this ;
the Train The more I set myself to think of it, the less I understand it,)
Id^s! might perhaps persuade one that time, which reveals all other things, is itself not to be discovered. Duration, time, and eternity, are, not without reason, thought to have some- thing very abstruse in their nature. But however remote these may seem from our comprehension, yet if we trace them right to their originals, I doubt not but one of those sources of all our knowledge, viz. sensation and reflection, will be able to furnish us with these ideas, as clear and distinct as many others which are thought much less obscure ; and we shall find that the idea of eternity itself is derived from the same common original ^ with the rest of our ideas.
' St Augustine. Duration is a sim* the function in intelligence, and neces- ple and unique, therefore an unde- saryinadequacyin a human understand- finable idea. We may ascertain the ing, of the idea of eternity, is here in history of its appeanuice in conscious- Locke's view. A natural explanation of ness, but we cannot analyse it after it the supernatural, rather than a super- has appeared. natural explanation of the natural, is
' The phenomenal antecedents^ not what his method inclines to.
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Duration and its Simple Modes. 239
3. To understand time and eternity aright, we ought with book it. attention to consider what idea it is we have of duration, ^ ^[TxiV and how we came by it It is evident to any one who will Nature but observe what passes in his own mind, that there is a train ^^ o"8in of ideas which constantly succeed one another in his under- idea of standing, as long as he is awake. Reflection on these ap- l^«™tion. pearances of several ideas one after another in our minds, is
that which furnishes us with the idea of succession^: and the distance between any parts of that succession, or between the appearance of any two ideas in our minds, is that we call duration \ For whilst we are thinking, or whilst we receive successively several ideas in our minds, we know that we do exist ; and so we call the existence, or the continuation of the existence of ourselves, or anything else, commensurate to the succession of any ideas in our minds, the duration of ourselves, or any such other thing co-existent with our thinking.
4. That we have our notion of succession and duration Proof that from this original, viz. from reflection on the train of ideas, got*from' which we find to appear one after another in our own minds, reflection seems plain to me, in that we have no perception of duration train of but by considering the train of ideas that take their turns in °^ '^^*^- our understandings. When that succession of ideas ceases,
our perception of duration ceases with it ; which every one clearly experiments in himself, whilst he sleeps soundly, whether an hour or a day, a month or a year ; of which dura* tion of things, while he sleeps or thinks not, he has no per- ception at all, but it is quite lost to him ; and the moment wherein he leaves off to think, till the moment he b^ins to think again, seems to him to have no distance. And so I doubt not it would be to a waking man, if it were possible for him to keep only one idea in his mind, without variation and the succession of others \ And we see, that one who fixes
' Succession, in which the idea of tion of our apprehension of pheno*
duration is necessarily contained, is, mena presented in experience. This
according to Locke, an idea which apprehension of succession or change
accompanies every other idea, as all implies memory,
our ideas are changing. Duration ' ' Nothing is more certain than
is therefore presupposed, as the condi- that every elementary part of duration
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C40 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. his thoughts very intently on one thing, so as to take but
ChaT^IV. ^^^^^^ notice of the succession of ideas that pass in his mind,
whilst he is taken up with that earnest contemplation, lets
slip out of his account a good part of that duration, and
thinks that time shorter than it is. But if sleep commonly
unites the distant parts of duration, it is because during that
time we have no succession of ideas in our minds. For if a
man, during his sleep, dreams, and variety of ideas make
themselves perceptible in his mind one after another, he
hath then, during such dreaming, a sense of duration, and of
the length of it. By which it is to me very clear, that men
derive their ideas of duration from their reflections on the
train of the ideas they observe to succeed one another in
their own understandings ; without which observation they
can have no notion of duration, whatever may happen in the
world *.
The Idea 5. Indeed a man having, from reflecting on the succession
^onapp]ic- and number of his own thoughts, got the notion or idea of
able to duration, he can apply that notion to things which exist
whU^we while he does not think; as he that has got the idea of
sleep. extension from bodies by his sight or touch, can apply it to
distances, where no body is seen or felt. And therefore,
though a man has no perception of the length of duration
which passed whilst he slept or thought not; yet, having
observed the revolution of days and nights, and found the
length of their duration to be in appearance regular and
must have duration, as every elemen- no duration, and yet that a multiplica-
tary part of extension must have tion of that no duration should have
extension. Now, in these elements duration, seems, at Reid's point of
of duration, or single intervals of sue- view, as absurd as that the multipli-
cessive ideas, there is no succession cation of nothing should produce
of ideas ; yet we must conceive them something.
to have duration ; — ^whence we may ^ Pasiness and fiUurity must mean
conclude with certainty that there is a more than change in my ideas, as
conception of duration where there is otherwise if I were to become uncon-
no succession of ideas in the mind.' scious, there would be no duration till
(Hamilton's Reid^ pp. 348>9.) Reid conscious activity revived in mr.
looks, through analytic reflection, to Change of conscious state awakens
the idea produced : Locke regards the the perception of duration in me, but
natural history of its production. To the perception thus awakened involves
suppose that a single idea should have more than the items of the change.
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Duration and its Simple Modes. 241
constant, he can, upon the supposition that that revolution book 11: has proceeded after the same manner whilst he was asleep or ch^Txiv thought not, as it used to do at other times, he can, I say, imagine and make allowance for the length of duration whilst he slept. But if Adam and Eve, (when they were alone in the world,) instead of their ordinary night's sleep, had passed the whole twenty-four hours in one continued sleep, the duration of that twenty-four hours had been irrecoverably lost to them, and been for ever left out of their account of time.
6. Thus by reflecting* on the appearing of various ideas The idea of one after another in our understandings, we get the notion not frotrT" of succession ; which, if any one should think we did rather Motion. get from our observation of motion by our senses, he will perhaps be of my mind when he considers, that even motion
* If reflection * means consciousness of a present operation of mind, no sue- cession, Reid remarks, can be an object either of immediate consciousness or of sense ; ' because the operations of both are confined to the present point of time* Change could not be observed by the senses alone, without the aid of memory. ' Reflecting upon the train of ideas can be nothing but femembering it Reflection here includes remembrance, without which there could be no re- flection on what is past, and con- sequently no idea of succession.' (Hamilton's Rtid, p. 343.) But is consciousness of an indivisible present impossible, wholly divorced from a past and a futiure ? ' Let anyone try to notice or attend to the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. Where is it, this present /* ... It is in fact an altogether ideal abstraction, not only never realised in sense [external or internal], but probably never even conceived of by those unaccustomed to philosophic meditation. Reflection leads us to the conclusion that it must exist, but that it does exist can never be a fact of our immediate experience.
VOL. I.
. . . The practically cognised present is no knife-edge, but a saddle-back with a certain breadth of its own, from which we look in two directions into time. The unit of composition of our percep- tion of time is a duration — with a bow and a stern, as it were, a rear-ward and a forward-looking end. It is only as parts of this duration-block that the relation of succession of one end to the other is perceived. We do not first feel one end, and then feel the other after it, and from the perception of the succession infer an interval of time between, but we seem to feel the interval of time as a whole, with its two ends embedded in it The ex- perience is from the outset a synthetic datum, not a simple one ; and to sen- sible perception its elements are in- separable, although attention, looking back, may easily decompose the ex- perience, and distinguish its beginning from its end.' (James's Psychology, voL i. pp. 608-ia) The present, which we recognise in our concrete experience is never the absolutely indivisible present of philosophical abstraction.
R
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242 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. produces in his mind an idea of succession no otherwise Txiv *^^" ^^ ^^ produces there a continued train of distinguishable ideas. For a man looking upon a body really moving, perceives yet no motion at all unless that motion produces a constant train of successive ideas : v. g. a man becalmed at sea, out of sight of land, in a fair day, may look on the sun, or sea, or ship, a whole hour together, and perceive no motion at all in either ; though it be certain that two, and perhaps all of them, have moved during that time a great way. But as soon as he perceives either of them to have changed distance with some other body, as soon as this motion produces any new idea in him, then he perceives that there has been motion. But wherever a man is, vrith all things at rest about him, without perceiving any motion at all, — if during this hour of quiet he has been thinking, he will perceive the various ideas of his own thoughts in his own mind, appearing one after another, and thereby observe and find succession where he could observe no motion. Very slow 7. And this, I think, is the reason why motions very slow, mipcr"^ though they are constant, are not perceived by us ; because in ccivcd. their remove from one sensible part towards another, their change of distance is so slow, that it causes no new ideas in us, but a good while one after another. And so not causing a constant train of new ideas to follow one another immediately in our minds, we have no perception of motion ; which consisting in a constant succession, we cannot perceive that succession without a constant succession of varying ideas arising from it. Very swift 8. On the contrary, things that move so swift as not to unpcr"* affect the senses distinctly with several distinguishable dis- reived. tances of their motion, and so cause not any train of ideas in the mind, are not also perceived. For anything that moves round about in a circle, in less times than our ideas are wont to succeed one another in our minds, is not perceived to move ; but seems to be a perfect entire circle of that matter or colour, and not a part of a circle in motion *.
* So when a duration is empty, or the changes, we can have no idea of seems empty, because of the extreme that duration. It is familiar to us that slowness or the extreme swiftness of the apparent length of a time is de-
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Duration and its Simple Modes. 243
9. Hence I leave it to others to judge, whether it be not book ii. probable that our ideas do, whilst we are awake, succeed one ^'**~"
Chap. XIV,
another in our minds at certain distances : not much unlike ^. ^ .
' The Train
the images in the inside of a lantern, turned round by the of Idea^ heat of a candle. This appearance of theirs in train, though ^^t^in perhaps it may be sometimes faster and sometimes slower, Degree of yet, I guess *, varies not very much in a waking man : there seem to be certain bounds to the quickness and slowness of the succession of those ideas one to another in our minds, beyond which they can neither delay nor hasten.
10. The reason I have for this odd conjecture is, from Real sue- observing that, in the impressions made upon any of our ^^^^ *" senses, we can but to a certain degree perceive any succes- motions sion ; which, if exceeding quick, the sense of succession is ^nse of lost, even in cases where it is evident that there is a real succession, succession. Let a cannon-bullet pass through a room, and in
its way take with it any limb, or fleshy parts of a man, it is as clear as any demonstration can be, that it must strike successively the two sides of the room : it is also evident, that it must touch one part of the flesh first, and another after, and so in succession : and yet, I believe, nobody who ever felt the pain of such a shot, or heard the blow against the two distant walls, could perceive any succession either in the pain or sound of so swift a stroke. Such a part of duration as this, wherein we perceive no succession, is that which we call an instant^ and is that which takes up the time of only one idea in our minds, without the succession of another ; wherein, therefore, we perceive no succession at all.
1 1. This also happens where the motion is so slow as not in slow to supply a constant train of fresh ideas to the senses, as fast ™°**°"**- as the mind is capable of receiving new ones into it ; and so other ideas of our own thoughts, having room to come into
our minds between those offered to our senses by the moving body, there the sense of motion is lost ; and the body, though
termined by the variety and interest ^ 'guess'— used by Locke for 'con -
of the phenomena which suggest the jecture * in several places. (See ch. time, and thus as one grows older each xiii. % 35.) period seems shorter in retrospect
R 2
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244 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. Chap. XIV.
ThisTrain, the
Measure of other Succes- sions.
The Mind cannot fix long on one in- variable Idea.
it really moves, yet, not changing perceivable distance with some other bodies as fast as the ideas of our own minds do naturally follow one another in train, the thing seems to stand still ; as is evident in the hands of clocks, and shadows of sun-dials, and other constant but slow motions, where, though, after certain intervals, we perceive, by the change of distance, that it hath moved, yet the motion itself we perceive not.
12,. So that to me it seems, that the constant and regular succession of ideas in a waking man, is, as it were, the measure and standard of all other successions^. Whereof, if any one either exceeds the pace of our ideas, as where two sounds or pains, &c., take up in their succession the duration of but one idea ; or else where any motion or succession is so slow, as that it keeps not pace with the ideas in our minds, or the quickness in which they take their turns, as when any one or more ideas in their ordinary course come into our mind, between those which are offered to the sight by the different perceptible distances of a body in motion, or between sounds or smells following one another, — there also the sense of a constant continued succession is lost, and we perceive it not, but with certain gaps of rest between.
13. If it be so, that the ideas of our minds, whilst we have any there, do constantly change and shift in a continual succession, it would be impossible, may any one say, for a man to think long of any one thing. By which, if it be meant that a man may have one self-same single ide^ a long time alone in his mind, without any variation at all, I think, in matter of fact, it is not possible. For which (not knowing how the ideas of our minds are framed, of what materials they are made, whence they have their light, and how they come to make their appearances) ^ I can give no other reason but
* We conceive duration as a relation that is in itself independent of that succession of oyr ideas by which it is awakened. The 'measure and stan- dard* of 'succession/ which Locke finds in each man's ideas, is not to be confused with * motion/ the objective measure of duration, treated of in the
sequel, out of which his idea of time (distinguished from duration) issues.
" This seems to be only a confession of ignorance of the organic conditions of our mental operations, on which physiology has now thrown more light. 'This,' Mr. Webb remarks, 'is the only passage in the four
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Duration and its Simple Modes. 245
experience : and I would have any one try, whether he can book ii. keep one unvaried single idea in his mind, without any other, *"*Xiy for any considerable time together.
14. For trial, let him take any figure, any degree of light Proof, or whiteness, or what other he pleases, and he will, I suppose,
find it difficult to keep all other ideas out of his mind ; but that some, either of another kind, or various considerations of that idea, (each of which considerations is a new idea,) will constantly succeed one another in his thoughts, let him be as wary as he can *.
15. All that is in a man's power in this case, I think, is The extent only to mind and observe what the ideas are that take their ®^°"''
^ power
turns in his understanding ; or else to direct the sort, and over the call in such as he hath a desire or use of: but hinder thCof^^i^*^" constant succession of fresh ones, I think he cannot, though »deas. he may commonly choose whether he will heedfuUy observe and consider them.
16. Whether these several ideas in a man's mind be made ideas, by certain motions, I will not here dispute ; but this I am ^^^^^ sure, that they include no idea of motion in their appearance^; include no and if a man had not the idea of motion otherwise, I think Motion. he would have none at all, which is enough to my present purpose; and sufficiently shows that the notice we take of
the ideas of our own minds, appearing there one after another, is that which gives us the idea of succession and duration, without which we should have no such ideas at all. It is not then motion^ but the constant train of ideas in our minds whilst we are waking, that furnishes us with the idea of duration ; whereof motion no otherwise gives us any per- ception than as it causes in our minds a constant succession of ideas, as I have before showed : and we have as clear an
books of the Essay which gives the ^ ' No one can possibly attend con- f
slightest countenance to the views tinuously to an object that does not
of Sir W. Hamilton and Reid/ when change.* (James, Psychology^ i. 431.)
they imply that Locke supposed ideas ' Here the perception is distin-
to be entities numerically and sub- guished from the organic 'motions'
stantially distinct both from the per- which, under the actual constitution
dpient mind, and from the reality of things, determine its appearance to
perceived. individual men.
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246 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. XIV.
BOOK II. idea of succession and duration, by the train of other ideas succeeding one another in our minds, without the idea of any motion, as by the train of ideas caused by the uninterrupted sensible change of distance between two bodies, which we have from motion ; and therefore we should as well have the idea of duration were there no sense of motion at all.
Time is Duration set out by Measures.
A good Measure of Time must divide its whole Duration into equal Periods.
17. Having thus got the idea of duration, the next thing natural for the mind to do, is to get some measure of this common duration, whereby it might judge of its different lengths, and consider the distinct order wherein several things exist ; without which a great part of our knowledge would be confused, and a great part of history be rendered very useless. This consideration of duration, as set out by certain periods, and marked by certain measures or epochs, is that, I think, which most properly we call time *.
18. In the measuring of extension, there is nothing more required but the application of the standard or measure we make use of to the thing of whose extension we would be informed. But in the measuring of duration this cannot be done, because no two different parts of succession can be put together to measure one another. And nothing being a measure of duration but duration, as nothing is of extension but extension, we cannot keep by us any standing, unvarying measure of duration, which consists in a constant fleeting succession, as we can of certain lengths of extension, as inches, feet, yards, &c., marked out in permanent parcels of matter. Nothing then could serve well for a convenient measure of time, but what has divided the whole length of its duration into apparently equal portions, by constantly repeated periods. What portions of duration are not distinguished, or considered as distinguished and measured, by
^ Uniform change gives us the idea of time^ or ohjtciivdy measured duration. Yet if there had been nothing uniform in nature, duration, or room for events would not cease to be the necessary condition of change, even as space^ or room for extended beings, would not
cease to be the necessary presupposi- tion of body. Duration and space thus supply eternal truths, which de- termine alike the actual and the pos- sible— the concrete and the abstract — the occupied and the empty.
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Duration and its Simple Modes. 247
such periods, come not so properly under the notion of time ; book n. as appears by such phrases as these, viz. 'Before all time,' ""^^^ and ' When time shall be no more ^' ^"^'*- ^^^•
19. The diurnal and annual revolutions of the sun, as The Revo- having been, from the beginning of nature, constant, regular, Jh^^sun*^^ and universally observable by all mankind, and supposed and Moon, equal to one another, have been with reason made use of^^^t^ for the measure of duration ^. But the distinction of days Measures and years having depended on the motion of the sun, it has for man- brought this mistake with it, that it has been thought that ^^"^ motion and duration were the measure one of another. For men, in the measuring of the length of time, having been accustomed to the ideas of minutes, hours, days, months, years, &c., which they found themselves upon any mention of time or duration presently to think on, all which portions of time were measured out by the motion of those heavenly bodies, they were apt to confound time and motion ; or at least to think that they had a necessary connexion one with another. Whereas any constant periodical appearance, or alteration of ideas, in seemingly equidistant spaces of dura- tion, if constant and universally observable, would have as well distinguished the intervals of time, as those that have been made use of. For, supposing the sun, which some have taken to be a fire, had been lighted up at the same distance of time that it now every day comes about to the same meridian, and then gone out again about twelve hours after, and that in the space of an annual revolution it had sensibly increased in brightness and heat, and so decreased again, — would not such regular appearances serve to measure out the distances of duration to all that could observe it, as well without as with motion? For if the appearances were constant, universally observable, in equidistant periods, they would serve mankind for measure of time as well were the motion away.
* Sense presents to us only concrete duration * before time *; and after the ex- measures of duration, not the ultimate tinction of tht physical order, time (not idea. If with Locke we mean by duration) could no more be. Cd % 94. time, duration measured by regulattd ' Could men have had the idea of changes, then if all regular order in time (not duration) without the regular external nature had a beginning, that movements of the bodies that make up which preceded it must have been our solar system }
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ances.
248 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK IT. 20. For the freezing of water, or the blowing of a plant, ~*^ returning at equidistant periods in all parts of the earth. But not would as well serve men to reckon their years by, as the by their motions of the sun : and in effect we see, that some people in periodical America counted their years by the coming of certain birds ^ppear- amongst them at their certain seasons, and leaving them at others. For a fit of an ague ; the sense of hunger or thirst ; a smell or a taste ; or any other idea returning constantly at equidistant periods, and making itself universally be taken notice of, would not fail to measure out the course of succes- sion, and distinguish the distances of time. Thus we see that men bom blind count time well enough by years, whose revolutions yet they cannot distinguish by motions that they perceive not. And I ask whether a blind man, who distin- guished his years either by the heat of summer, or cold of winter ; by the smell of any flower of the spring, or taste of any fruit of the autumn, would not have a better measure of time than the Romans had before the reformation of their calendar by Julius Caesar, or many other people, whose years, notwithstanding the motion of the sun, which they pretended to make use of, are very irregular? And it adds no small difficulty to chronology, that the exact lengths of the years that several nations counted by, are hard to be known, they differing very much one from another, and I think I may say all of them from the precise motion of the sun. And if the sun moved from the creation to the flood constantly in the equator, and so equally dispersed its light and heat to all the habitable parts of the earth, in days all of the same length, without its annual variations to the tropics, as a late ingenious author^ supposes, I do not think it very easy to imagine, that (notwithstanding the motion of the sun) men should in the antediluvian world, from the banning, count by years, or measure their time by periods that had no sensible marks very obvious to distinguish them by *.
^ Thomas Burnet, in his Thiory of curious subject) illustrate the difference
ihe Earth, between the intellectually necessary
' The various external measures of relations involved in duration itself^ and
duration which mankind have adopted these their contingent symbols which
in the ancient and modem world (a determine our ideas of time*
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Duration and its Simple Modes. 249
21. But perhaps it will be said, — without a regular motion, book ii. such as of the sun, or some other, how could it ever be known "**^Ty that such periods were equal ? To which I answer, — the ^^ ^^ equality of any other returning appearances might be known Parts of by the same way that that of days was known, or presumed cainbe°" to be so at first ; which was only by judging of them by the certainly train of ideas which had passed in men's minds in the be equal intervals ; \} by which train of ideas discovering inequality in the natural days, but none in the artificial days, the artificial days, or wxOrifi^pa^ were guessed^] to be equal, which was sufficient to make them serve for a measure ; though exacter search has since discovered inequality in the diurnal revolu- tions of the sun, and we know not whether the annual also be not unequal. These yet, by their presumed * and apparent equality, serve as well to reckon time by (though not to measure the parts of duration exactly) as if they could be proved to be exactly equal. We must, therefore, carefully distinguish betwixt duration itself, and the measures we make use of to judge of its length. Duration, in itself, is to be con- sidered as going on in one constant, equal, uniform course: but none of the measures of it which we make use of can be known to do so ^ nor can we be assured that their assigned parts or periods are equal in duration one to another; for two successive lengths of duration, however measured, can never be demonstrated to be equal. The motion of the sun, which the world used so long and so confidently for an exact measure of duration, has, as I said, been found in its several parts unequal. And though men have, of late, made use of a pendulum, as a more steady and regular motion than that of the sun, or, (to speak more truly,) of the earth ; — ^yet if any
* ' Whereby they guessed them * — the idea is thus elaborated, by certain in the first edition. motions in the material world which
* We cannot rise above * guess,' — are * presumed * to be regular, 'presumption,' — 'hypothesis,* — when • No two i>arts of duration can be we take for granted the objedivt regU' shown certainly to be equal, because iarity o{ the motions of the heavenly theircommon measure cannot be placed bodies, or of any other adopted mea- in juxtaposition with the parts, as in sures of duration. According to Locke^ the case of measures of space, which the idta of duration is (at first vaguely) stands still and submits to be mea- suggested by changes in our own con* sured.
scious state ; duration is mtasured, and
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250 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK IL one should be asked how he certainly knows that the two "*^ successive swings of a pendulum are equal, it would be very 'hard to satisfy him that they are infallibly so; since we cannot be sure that the cause of that motion, which is un- known to us, shall always operate equally ; and we are sure that the medium in which the pendulum moves is not con- stantly the same: either of which varying, may alter the equality of such periods, and thereby destroy the certainty and exactness of the measure by motion, as well as any other periods of other appearances ; the notion of duration still remaining clear, though our measures of it cannot (any of them) be demonstrated to be exact. Since then no two portions of succession can be brought together, it is impos- sible ever certainly to know their equality. All that we can do for a measure of time is, to take such as have continual successive appearances at seemingly equidistant periods ; of which seeming equality we have no other measure, but such as the train of our own ideas have lodged in our memories, with the concurrence o( oihex probable reasons, to persuade us of their equality. Time 2%. One thing seems strange to me, — that whilst all men
Slcasure ttianifestly measured time by the motion of the great and of Motion, visible bodies of the world, time yet should be defined to be the * measure of motion ' : whereas it is obvious to every one who reflects ever so little on it, that to measure motion, space is as necessary to be considered as time ; and those who look a little farther will find also the bulk of the thing moved necessary to be taken into the computation, by any one who will estimate or measure motion so as to judge right of it. Nor indeed does motion any otherwise conduce to the measuring of duration, than as it constantly brings about the return of certain sensible ideas, in seeming equidistant periods. For if the motion of the sun were as unequal as of a ship driven by unsteady winds, sometimes very slow, and at others irregularly very swift ; or if, being constantly equally swift, it yet was not circular, and produced not the same appear- ances,— it would not at all help us to measure time, any more than the seeming unequal motion of a comet does.
23. Minutes, hours, days, and years are, then, no more
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Duration and its Simple Modes. 251
necessary to time or duration, than inches, feet, yards, and book ii. miles, marked out in any matter, are to extension. For, ** though we in this part of the universe, by the constant use of Mjnujgg them, as of periods set out by the revolutions of the sun, or as Hours, known parts of such periods, have fixed the ideas of such y^rs n^ot lengths of duration in our minds, which we apply to all parts necessary of time whose lengths we would consider ; yet there may be of Dura- other parts of the universe, where they no more use these ***^"" measures of ours, than in Japan they do our inches, feet, or miles ; but yet something analogous to them there must be. For without some regular periodical returns, we could not measure ourselves, or signify to others, the length of any duration ; though at the same time the world were as full of motion as it is now, but no part of it disposed into regular and apparently equidistant revolutions. But the different measures that may be made use of for the account of time, do not at all alter the notion of duration, which is the thing to be measured ; no more than the different standards of a foot and a cubit alter the notion of extension to those who make use of those different measures.
24. The mind having once got such a measure of time as Our the annual revolution of the sun, can apply that measure to of Time duration wherein that measure itself did not exist, and with applicable
to Dura-
which, in the reality of its being, it had nothing to do. tion before For should one say, that Abraham was born in the two ^^™^- thousand seven hundred and twelfth year of the Julian period, it is altogether as intelligible as reckoning from the beginning of the world, though there were so far back no motion of the sun, nor any motion at all ^. For, though the Julian period be supposed to begin several hundred years before there were really either days, nights, or years, marked out by any revolutions of the sun, — yet we reckon as right, and thereby measure durations as well, as if really at that time the sun had existed, and kept the same ordinary motion it doth now. The idea of duration equal to an annual revolution of the sun, is as easily applicable in our thoughts to duration, where no sun or motion was, as the idea of a foot or yard, taken from bodies here, can be applied in our
' Locke supposes a lately-created solar system.
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2 $2 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. Chap. XIV.
As we can measure space in our
thoughts where there is no body.
The assump* tion that the world is neither boundless nor eternal.
Eternity.
thoughts to duration, where no sun or motion was, as the idea of a foot or yard, taken from bodies here, can be applied in our thoughts to distances beyond the confines of the world, where are no bodies at all ^.
25. For supposing it were 5639 miles, or millions of miles, from this place to the remotest body of the universe, (for, being finite, it must be at a certain distance.) as we suppose it to be 5639 years from this time to the first existence of any body in the beginning of the w^orld ; — ^we can, in our thoughts, apply this measure of a year to duration before tl e creation, or beyond the duration of bodies or motion, as we can this measure of a mile to space beyond the utmost bodies ; and by the one measure duration, where there was no motion, as well as by the other measure space in our thoughts, where there is no body.
26. If it be objected to me here, that, in this way of explaining of time, I have begged what I should not, viz. that the world is neither eternal nor infinite ; I answer, That to my present purpose it is not needful, in this place, to make use of arguments to evince the world to be finite both in duration and extension. But it being at least as conceivable as the contrary, I have certainly the liberty to suppose it, as well as any one hath to suppose the contrary ; and I doubt not, but that every one that will go about it, may easily conceive in his mind the beginning of motion, though not of all duration, and so may come to a step and non ultra in his consideration of motion. So also, in his thoughts, he may set limits to body, and the extension belonging to it ; but not to space, where no body is, the utmost bounds of space and duration being beyond the reach of thought, as well as the utmost bounds of number are beyond the largest compre- hension of the mind ; and all for the same reason, as we shall see in another place.
27. By the same means, therefore, and from the same original that we come to have the idea of time, we have also that idea which we call Eternity; viz. having got
* 'Ce vide^ qu'on peut concevoir
dans le temps, marquerait, comme
elui de Tespace, que le temps et Tes-
pace vont aussi bien aux possibles qu*aux existants.* (Leibniz.)
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Duration and its Simple Modes. 253
the idea of succession and duration, by reflecting on the book 11. train of our own ideas, caused in us either by the natural """**" „ appearances of those ideas coming constantly of themselves into our waking thoughts, or else caused by external objects successively affecting our senses ; and having from the revolu- tions of the sun got the ideas of certain lengths of duration, — we can in our thoughts add such lengths of duration to one another, as often as we please, and apply them, so added, to durations past or to come. And this we can continue to do on, without bounds or limits, and proceed in infinitum'^ ^ and ftpply thus the length of the annual motion of the sun to duration, supposed before the sun's or any other motion had its being; which is no more difficult or absurd, than to apply the notion I have of the moving of a shadow one hour to-day upon the sun-dial to the duration of something last night, V. g. the burning of a candle, which is now absolutely separate from all actual motion ; and it is as impossible for the duration of that flame for an hour last night to co-exist with any motion that now is, or for ever shall be, as for .any part of duration, that was before the beginning of the world, to co-exist with the motion of the sun now. But yet this hinders not but that, having the idea of the length of the motion of the shadow on a dial between the marks of two hours, I can as distinctly measure in my thoughts the dura- tion of that candle-light last nighty as I can the duration of anything that does now exist: and it is no more than to
^ ' Mais, pour tirer la notion de Vi- This conscious dissatisfaction, as an
iemUe, il faut concevoir de plus que object of reflection, gives a positive
la in6me raison subsiste toujours pour idea, and also suggests the negative
aller plus loin. C'est cette consid^- idea of duration without beginning
ration des raisons qui ach^ve la or end, in which the positive idea
notion de Tinfini, ou de Tind^fini, disappears in the mystery of Eternity,
dans les progj^ possibles. Ainsi Thus from a sense perception of what
Us sens ns sauntitHt suffire a /aire is finite, necessities of reason carry us
former ces notions.* (Leibniz.) The towards the necessarily incomplete
notion of eternity, when it means the idea of boundless room for change, —
unbeginnmg and unending, implies not time merged in the timeless. Is this
merely that we may^ but that we musit timeless Eternity— this mysterious in*
continue to add to any finite duration, finite, in which the idea of duration is
however great. In it intelligence lost— rightly called a 'mode* of our
expresses dissatisfaction with every * simple idea ' of duration ? merely finite quantity of duration. o
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Chap. XIV.
254 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. think, that, had the sun shone then on the dial, and moved after the same rate it doth now, the shadow on the dial would have passed from one hour-line to another whilst that flame of the candle lasted. Our a8. The notion of an hour, day, or year, being only the
ofEkirar '^^^ ^ \i^yt, of the length of certain periodical r^^ular motions, Hon de- neither of which motions do ever all at once exist, but on^ou"' ^^y ^^ ^^ ideas I have of them in my memory derived ideas. from my senses or reflection ; I can with the same ease, and for the same reason, apply it in my thoughts to duration antecedent to all manner of motion, as well as to anything that is but a minute or a day antecedent to the motion that at this very moment the sun is in. All things past are equally and perfectly at rest ; and to this way of considera- tion of them are all one, whether they were before the beginning of the world, or but yesterday : the measuring of any duration by some motion depending not at all on the reed co-existence of that thing to that motion, or any other periods of revolution, but the having a clear idea of the length of some periodical known motion, or other interval of duration, in my mind, and applying that to tlie duration of the thing I would measure. The Dura- 29. Hence we see that some men imagine the duration of anything ^^^ world, from its first existence to this present year 1689, need not to have been 5639 years, or equal to 5639 annual revolutions existent of the sun, and others a great deal more ; as the Egyptians with the Qf q|j ^Yio in the time of Alexander counted 2^,000 years
motion we ' «J' ^
measure from the reign of the sun ; and the Chinese now, who *' ^* account the world 3,269,000 years old, or more; which longer duration of the world, according to their computation, though I should not believe to be true, yet I can equally imagine it with them, and as tnily understand, and say one is longer than the other, as I understand, that Methusalem's life was longer than Enoch's. And if the common reckoning of 5639 should be true, (as it may be as well as any other assigned,) it hinders not at all my imagining what others mean, when they make the world one thousand years older, since every one may with the same facility imagine (I do not say believe) the world to be 50,000 years old, as 5639;
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Duration and its Simple Modes. 255
and may as well conceive the duration of 50,000 years as book ii. 5639. Whereby it appears that, to the measuring the "~^,^ duration of anything by time, it is not requisite that that thing should be co-existent to the motion we measure by, or any other periodical revolution ; but it suffices to this purpose, that we have the idea of the length of any regular periodical appearances, which we can in our minds apply to duration, with which the motion or appearance never co-existed.
30. For, as in the history of the creation delivered by infinity in Moses, I can imagine that light existed three days before ^**°"- the sun was, or had any motion, barely by thinking that
the duration of light before the sun was created was so long as {if the sun had moved then as it doth now) would have been equal to three of his diurnal revolutions ; so by the same way I can have an idea of the chaos, or angels, being created before there was either light or any continued motion, a minute, an hour, a day, a year, or one thousa/id years. For, if I can but consider duration equal to one minute, before either the being or motion of any body, I can add one minute more till I come to sixty ; and by the same way of adding minutes, hours, or years (i.e. such or such parts of the sun's revolutions, or any other period whereof I have the idea) proceed in infinitum^ and suppose a dura- tion exceeding as many such periods as I can reckon, let me add whilst I will, which I think is the notion we have ' of eternity ; of whose infinity we have no other notion than we have of the infinity of number, to which we can add for ever without end ^.
31. And thus I think it is plain, that from those two Origin of fountains of all knowledge before mentioned, viz. reflection and of Dui^ sensation, we got the ideas of duration, and the measures of it. ^*f "» *"^
of the
For, First, by observing what passes in our minds, how our of it ideas there in train constantly some vanish and others begin to appear, we come by the idea of succession.
^ Can the mysterious idea of the tegory of quantity, and the positive
Innumerable be called a 'mode* of element, which gives meaning to our
the i>ositive idea of number? The words when we speak of it, is the
ultimate reality is not numerable feeling of irresistible progress in the
- not measurable — transcends the ca- idea.
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256 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK 11. Secondly, by observing a distance in the parts of this suc- ^ '' ^ cession, we get the idea of duration.
Thirdly, by sensation observing certain appearances, at certain regular and seeming equidistant periods, we get the ideas of certain lengths or measures of duration^ as minutes, hours, days, years, &c.
Fourthly, by being able to repeat those measures of time, or ideas of stated length of duration, in our minds, as often as we will, we can come to imagine duration^ where nothing does really endure or exist ; and thus we imagine to-morrow, next year, or seven years hence.
Fifthly, by being able to repeat ideas of any length of time, as of a minute, a year, or an age, as often as we will in our own thoughts, and adding them one to another, without ever coming to the end of such addition, any nearer than we can to the end of number, to which we can always add ; we come by the idea of eternity^ as the future eternal duration of our souls, as well as the eternity of that infinite Being which must necessarily have always existed.
Sixthly, by considering any part of infinite duration, as set out by periodical measures, we come by the idea of what we call time in general.
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CHAPTER XV.
IDEAS OF DURATION AND EXPANSION, CONSIDERED TOGETHER.
I. Though we have in the precedent chapters dwelt pretty book ii. long on the considerations of space and duration, yet, they "♦*" being ideas of general concernment, that have something "^' very abstruse and peculiar in their nature, the comparing capable of them one with another may perhaps be of use for their ^^^*J|^ illustration; and we may have the more clear and distinct conception of them by taking a view of them together^. Distance or space, in its simple abstract conception, to avoid confusion, I call expansion^ to distinguish it from extension, which by some is used to express this distance only as it is in the solid parts of matter, and so includes, or at least intimates, the idea of body: whereas the idea of pure distance includes no such thing ^ I prefer also the word ex- pansion to space, because space is often applied to distance of fleeting successive parts, which never exist together ^ as
^ These ideas, along with number, space God is certainly present; and
are modes of Quantity, or that which possibly many other substances which
is conceived to consist of paris^ as are not matter, being neither tangible,
contrasted with other ideas which nor objects of any of our senses. , . .
consist of degrees in Quality, and are Space and duration are not hors de
not lost in boutuUess addition and divi- Dieuj but are created by, and are imme-
sion of quantitative parts. diate and necessary consequences o(
' 'Space void of body is the property his existence. And without them his
of an incorporeal substance, . . . Void Eternity and Omnipresence would be
space is not an attribute without a taken away.' (Clarke to Leibniz,
subject; because by void space we Papers, pp. 137-91.)
never mean space void of everything, ' e. g. distance or ' space ' of dura-
but void of body only. In all void tion. Cf. § S.
VOL. I. S
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258 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. well as to those which are permanent^. In both these (viz.
^ p ^y expansion and duration) the mind has this common idea ' of continued lengths, capable of greater or less quantities. For a man has as clear an idea of the difference of the length of an hour and a day, as of an inch and a foot.
Expansion 2. The mind, having got the idea of the length of any bounded P^^^ ^^ expansion*, let it be a span, or a pace, or what by Matter, length you will, can^ as has been said, repeat that idea, and so, adding it to the former, enlarge its idea of length, and make it equal to two spans, or two paces ; and so, as often as it will, till it equals the distance of any parts of the earth one from another, and increase thus till it amounts to the distance of the sun or remotest star. By such a progression as this, setting out from the place where it is, or any other place, it can proceed and pass beyond all those lengths, and find nothing to stop its going on, either in or without body. It is true, we can easily in our thoughts come to the end of solid extension; the extremity and bounds of all body we have no difficulty to arrive at : but when the mind is there, it finds nothing to hinder its progress into this endless expansion; of that it can neither find nor conceive any end. Nor let any one say, that beyond the bounds of body, there is nothing at all ; unless he wll confine God within the limits of matter. Solomon, whose understanding was filled and enlarged with wisdom, seems to have other thoughts when he says, * Heaven, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain thee.' And he, I think, very- much magnifies to himself the capacity of his own under- standing, who persuades himself that he can extend his
^ Cf. ch. xiii. § 9. Locke vacillates, gether ; and, as it is, we could not
nevertheless, as in other instances, in by them have perceived it, in the
his use of these terms, and occasion- absence of all perceived bodies. Yet,
ally uses extension, and also space, after the idea has thus arisen, it
instead of expansion, as here defined. remains as a necessary relation, under
* Originally by sight or touch. which things must be perceived in
Either gives an incomplete idea ; but sense, and also as a capacity or pos-
without one or other of those senses sibility for the existence of gxUnded
it seems to Locke that we must have beings, wanted the idea of ' expansion * alto-
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Ideas of Duration and Expansion compared. 259
thoughts further than God exists, or imagine any expansion book 11. where He is not ^. ^ ~^„
Chap. XV»
3. Just SO is it in duration. The mind having got the ^^^^ x^xix^^^ idea of any length of duration, can double, multiply, and tion by enlarge it, not only beyond its own, but beyond the existence
of all corporeal beings, and all the measures of time, taken from the great bodies of all the world and their motions. But yet every one easily admits, that, though we make duration boundless, as certainly it is, we cannot yet extend it beyond all being. God, every one easily allows, fills eternity ; and it is hard to find a reason why any one should doubt that he likewise fills immensity. His infinite being is certainly as boundless one way as another ; and methinks it ascribes a little too much to matter to say, where there is no body, there is nothing*.
4. Hence I think we may learn the reason why every one Why Men familiarly and without the least hesitation speaks of and ^jf supposes Eternity, and sticks not to ascribe infinity to dura- admit tion \ but it is with more doubting and reserve that many Duratk)n admit or suppose the infinity of space. The reason whereof ?**'*. seems to me to be this, — ^That duration and extension being Expan- used as names of affections belonging to other beings, we easily ^*^'*' conceive in God infinite duration, and we cannot avoid doing
so : but, not attributing to him extension, but only to matter, which is finite, we are apter to doubt of the existence of
^ Although Locke holds (as after- la source des possibility comme des
wards Samuel Clarke) that in some existences, des unes par son essence,
way God occupies and sustains space, des autres par sa volont^. Ainsi I'es*
this cannot mean that God must be pace comme le temps n*ont leur r^it^
conceived to consist of paries extra que de lui, et il pent remplir le vide
paries^ but only that signs of active quand bon lui semble/ {Nouv, Essais,) Reason and Purpose must appear * Neither space nor duration is
wherever extended beings are, or can limited by the concrete things which
exist, — that the extended universe are used to measure them by, the one
cannot be supposed, in any part of it, not being bounded by matter, nor the
or as a whole, to be purposeless other by its motions. Locke describes
chaos. ' Si Dieu ^tait ^tendu,' says the ideas of pure space and duration
Leibniz, * il aurait des parties, mais la as ideas of that which is independent
durde n'en donne qu'2i ses operations. of all objects and events, — ready to
Cependant, par rapport k Tespace, il receive concrete existences — the uni-
iaut lui attribuer Timmensit^, qui donne verse of finite objects, and the universe
oussi des parties, et de Tordre, aux of finite changes, operations immediates du Dien, II est
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26o Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. XV.
BOOK II. expansion without matter; of which alone we commonly suppose it an attribute. And, therefore, when men pursue their thoughts of space, they are apt to stop at the confines of body : as if space were there at an end too, and reached no further. Or if their ideas, upon consideration, carry them further, yet they term what is beyond the limits of the universe, imaginary space : as if 1/ were nothing, because there is no body existing in it^. Whereas duration, antecedent to all body, and to the motions which it is measured by, they never term imaginary : because it is never supposed void of some other real existence'. And if the names of things may at all direct our thoughts towards the original of men's ideas, (as I am apt to think they may very much,) one may have occasion to think by the name duration^ that the continuation of existence, with a kind of resistance to any destructive force, and the continuation .of solidity (which is apt to be con- founded with, and if we will look into the minute anatomical parts of matter, is little different from, hardness) were thought to have some analogy, and gave occasion to words so near of
^ Cf. ch. xiii. % 97. Locke wrote, in 1676, that 'space, in itself, seems to be nothing but a possibUity for tx- Undid beings to be, or exist ' ; and that ' in itself it is really nothing but a bare relation . . . not any real thing* {Mis- cellaneous Papers.) Against this oi space being a mere relation (as held by Leibniz), Samuel Clarke argues, that, Mf so, it would follow, that if God should remove in a straight line the whole material world entire, it would still remain in the same place ; and that if time is only order of succession, it would follow, that if God had created the world millions of ages sooner than he did, yet it would not have been created at all the sooner. Space and time are quantities, which situation and order are not/ (See Papers, p. 79.) Leibniz, and Kant in the * Aes- thetic,' refer to the idea of space and time held by the mathematical natural philosophers, as of * two self-subsisting entities.'
' Is not the idea of duration a mental necessity in a deeper sense than the idea of space is ? Might we not conceive an objective universe, with- out having the idea of space in any of its modes; while the absence of the idea of duration and its modes seems inconsistent with finite conscious- ness, which presupposes changing phenomena t We can suppose sen- tient intelligence, otherwise like ours, without the idea of space and its modes ; matter being thus manifested in none of the qualities, primary or secondary, of our world, but in qualities of other sorts, unimaginable by man. But can we equally suppose intelligence in the absence of all change, and without an idea of duration? The ideas of space and duration are not on the same level, if the former are essential to finite intelli- gence, while the other depends on the organisation in which the conscious life of man is at present embodied.
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pansion.
Ideas of Duration and Expansion compared. 261
km as durare and durum esse. And that durare is applied book li. to the idea of hardness, as well as that of existence, we see in ""^X^ Horace, Epod xvi. ferro duravit secula. But, be that as it will, this IS certain, that whoever pursues his own thoughts, will find them sometimes launch out beyond the extent of body, into the infinity of space or expansion ; the idea whereof is distinct and separate from body and all other things: which may, (to those who please,) be a subject of further meditation^.
5. Time in general is to duration as place to expansion. Time to They are so much of those boundless oceans of eternity and j^^J^^p^ace immensity as is set out and distinguished from the rest, as it to Ex- were by landmarks ; and so are made use of to denote the ^ position oi finite real beings, in respect one to another, in those uniform infinite oceans of duration and space. These, rightly considered, are only ideas of determinate distances from certain known points, fixed in distinguishable sensible things, and supposed to keep the same distance one from another. From such points fixed in sensible beings we reckon, and from them we measure our portions of those infinite quanti- ties ; which, so considered, are that which we call time ^nd place. For duration and space being in themselves uniform and boundless, the order and position of things, without such known settled points, would be lost in them ; and all things would lie jumbled in an incurable confusion*.
^ ' Further meditation ' would show ception of body, we could have no
that the necessities of reason carry idea of space. Changes and bodies,
finite intelligence into ideas that presented in experience, are said to
are at once essentially obscure, be- be the ' explanation ' of each, at the
cause necessarily incomplete, and also physical point of view ; but as neither
incapable of being mentally imaged ; bodies nor changes can be conceived,
nevertheless finite minds cannot dis- except as placed and dated, dura-
pense with them. It is ultimate tion and space are presupposed,
ideas of this sort that are apt to be and thus cannot be explained, by
inadequately dealt with at Locke's data of sense. Change or succession
point of view. awakens and measures the idea of
' Time has been called the place of time, and sensuous things awaken and
events, as space is the place of bodies, measure the idea of space ; but those
If we had no perception of change or ideas themselves are not to be con-
< succession,' we could have no idea of fused with their physical occasions and
time, and therefore no consciousness concrete measures, of anything ; and if we had no per-
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262 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. 6, Time and place, taken thus for determinate distin* Chap. XV. guishable portions of those infinite abysses of space* and Time and duration, Set out or supposed to be distinguished from the Place are ^ggt, by marks and known boundaries, have each of them so much a twofold acceptation.
as are St Pi^st^ Time in general is commonly taken for so much of out by the infinite duration as is measured by, and co-existent with, the anS^Mo^^ existence and motions of the great bodies of the universe, as R^-^^ far as we know anything of them : and in this sense time begins and ends with the franie of this sensible world, as in these phrases before mentioned, * Before all time,' or, * When time shall be no more^.' Place likewise is taken sometimes for that portion of infinite space which is possessed by and comprehended within the material world ; and is thereby dis- tinguished from the rest of expansion ; though this may be more properly called extension than place. Within these two are confined, and by the observable parts of them are measured and determined, the particular time or duration, and the particular extension and place, of all corporeal beings. Sometimes 7* Secondly, sometimes the word time is used in a larger much^of sense, and is applied to parts of that infinite duration, not either that were really distinguished and measured out by this real ^^^i^y existence, and periodical motions of bodies, that were ap- Measures pointed from the beginning to be for signs and for seasons the Bulk and for days and years, and are accordingly our measures of oIbocHw time; but such other portions too of that infinite uniform duration, which we upon any occasion do suppose equal to certain lengths of measured time; and so consider them as bounded and determined. For, if we should suppose the creation, or fall of the angels, was at the beginning of the Julian period, we should speak properly enough, and should be understood if we said, it is a longer time since the creation
^ Expansion. language, duration) undistinguished by
' That is, when we intend by Hms change, preceding and following the
only those motions by which we are existence of the motions by which it
accustomed to measure it, of which we is measured. A beginning or endings
caff suppose a beginning and an ending; of duration, i.e. of time in its wider
in contrast with time (in the wider sense, would be an express contra-
meaning of this term, or, in Locke*s diction.
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Ideds of Duration and Expansion compared. 263
of angels than the creation of the world, by 7640 years : book ii. whereby we would mark out so much of that undistinguished ""**" duration as we suppose equal to, and would have admitted, "^* 7640 annual revolutions of the sun, moving at the rate it now does. And thus likewise we sometimes speak of place, dis- tance, or bulk, in the great inaiUy beyond the confines of the world, when we consider so much of that space as is equal to, or capable to receive, a body of any assigned dimensions, as a cubic foot ; or do suppose a point in it, at such a certain distance from any part of the universe^.
8. Where and when are questions belonging to all finite They be- existences, and are by us always reckoned from some known ^f^*^ *" parts of this sensible world, and from some certain epochs beings. marked out to us by the motions observable in it. Without some such fixed parts or periods, the order of thii^s would be lost, to our finite understandings, in the boundless invariable oceans of duration and expansion, which comprehend in them all finite beings, and in their full extent belong only to the Deity ^. And therefore we are not to wonder that we comprehend them not, and do so often find our thoughts at a loss, when we would consider them, either abstractly in themselves, or as any way attributed to the first incompre- hensible Being. But when applied to any particular finite beings, the extension of any body is so much of that infinite space as the bulk of the body takes up. And place is the position of any body, when considered at a certain distance from some other. As the idea of the particular duration of
* Accordingly, all mtaswrohk real- by sense,
ities are tested by those concrete ' ' Expansion ' is that which makes
measures which constitute fiacn and it possible for extended things to have
dtUn, In this sense, space, duration, pUum, and duration is what makes it
and number are measurable quantities, possible for changes of any sort to have
— the ideas out of which mathematics dmUs, Except as relations of things
is formed. Measurable or finite spaces and their events, into which they in-
and durations are mathematically Intel- troduce order, neither has any positive
ligible while, the immeaaurMt expan- meaning for a human mind, although
sion and eternity in which space and Locke sometimes pictures them as
duration are lost at last (reason itself receptacles — ^pre-existing objectively
thus transcending the finite category — capable of receiving the finite uni-
of quantity) are necessarily mysUrin verse into their capacious embrace, to a human understanding measured
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264 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. Chap. XV.
AH the Parts of Extension are Ex- tension, and all the Parts of Dura- tion are Duration.
anything is, an idea of that portion of infinite duration^ which passes during the existence of that thing ; so the time when the thing existed is, the idea of that space of duration which passed between some known and fixed period of duration, and the being of that thing. One shows the distance of the extremities of the bulk or existence of the same thing, as that it is a foot square, or lasted two years ; the other shows the distance of it in place, or existence from other fixed points of space or duration, as that it was in the middle of Lincoln's Inn Fields, or the first d^^ee of Taurus, and in the year of our Lord 167 1 2, or the loooth year of the Julian period. All which distances we measure by preconceived ideas of certain lengths of space and duration, — as inches, feet, miles, and degrees, and in the other, minutes, days, and years, &c
9. There is one thing more wherein space and duration have a great conformity, and that is, though they are justly reck- oned amongst our simple ideas\ yet none of the distinct ideas we have of either is without all manner of composition : it is the very nature of both of them to consist of parts : but their parts being all of the same kind, and without the mixture of any other idea, hinder them not from having a place amongst simple ideas ^. Could the mind, as in number, come
^ Can we speak consistently of a portion of infiniU duration, thus im- plying that the 'infinite' is a finite quantity t Is not infinite duration the abstract, inexhaustible, possibility of events happening ; and infinite space the abstract, inexhaustible, possibility of bodies, composed of extended parts, existing f This is abstract duration and space; incapable of being realised with* out a universe of finite things, and without conscious mind. Whether the mysteries of immensity, in which all finite spaces, and of eternity, in which all finite durations are lost, might subsist, though all finite spaces and durations should be annihilated, we cannot tell, but it is the ideas of particular spaces and durations that suggest those mysteries to man.
* The year in which Locke undertook the inquiry which issued in the Essay.
' ' I know of no ideas or notions that have a better claim to be accounted simple and original than those of space and time.' (Reid.)
* An objection, that if ' none of the distinct ideas that we have of either extension or duration ' is ' without all manner of composition,' neither of these can be classed among * simple ideas ' ; and that in ch. ii. of this book, in which Locke introduces the subject of ' simple ideas,' he has (ailed to give an exact enough definition of their scim- pUcityf is thus referred to by M. Coste, in his French version of the Essay : — 'C'est M. Barbyrac, professeur en droit k Groningue, qui me communique ces objections, dans une lettre que je
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Ideas of Duration and Expansion compared. 265
to so small a part of extension or duration as excluded BOOKll. divisibility\ that would be, as it were, the indivisible unit or ""^y
fis voir a M. Locke. Et void la r^ ponse que M. Locke me dicta peu de jours apr6s: Pour commencer par la demidre objection, M. Locke declare d*abord, qu'il n'a pas traits son sujet dans un ordre parfaitement scAo/os- tiqut^ n*ayant pas eu beaucoup de fami- liarity avec ces sortes de livres, lors- qu'il a 6crit le sien, ou plutOt ne se souvenant gu^re plus alors de la m^- thode qu*on y observe; et qu'ainsi ses lecteurs ne doivent pas s'attendre k des definitions r^gulidrement plac^es 4 la t6te de chaque nouveau sujet. II est content d'employer les principaux termes dont il se sert de telle sorte que, d'une manidre ou d'autre, il fasse comprendre nettement k ses lecteurs ce qu'il entend par ces termes-la. £t en particulier k regard du terme tidies simpleSy il a eu le bonheur de le d^finir dans I'endroit dt^ dans Tobjection; ct par consequent il n*aura pas besoin de supplier k ce defaut La question se reduit done k savoir si Tidde ^txUn* sum pent s*accorder avec cette defini- tion qui lui conviendra, si elle est entendue dans le sens que M. Locke a eu principalement en vue. Or, la composition qu*il a eu proprement dessein d'exdure dans cette definition, c*est une composition de difiifrentes idees dans Tesprit, et non une composi- tion d'idees de m€me esp^ce et oil Ton ne peut venir k une demiere entice- ment exempte de cette composition; de sorte que si Tidee d*etendu consiste a avoir paries txtra parieSf comme on parle dans les ecoles, c'est toujours, au sens de M. Locke, une idee simple; parce que Tid^e d'avoir partes extra partes ne peut etre r^solue en deux autres idees. Du reste, Tobjection qu'on £Eut a M. Locke, a propos de la nature de Tetendue, ne lui avait pas entiirement echappee, comme on peut le voir dans le § 9 de chapitre xv, oil il dit que lamoindre portion d'espace ou
d*etendue, dont nous qyons une idee claire et distincte, est la plus propre k etre regardee comme Tidee simple de cette espece, dont les modes complexes d'espace et d*etendue sont composes ; et k son avis, on peut fort Tappeler une idee simple, puisque c'est la plus petite idee de Tespace que I'esprit se puisse former k lui-meme, et qu*il ne peut par consequent la diviser en deux plus petites. D*oii il ensuit qu'elle est a Vesprit une idee simple : ce qui suffit dans cette occasion. Car, Vaf- faire de M, Locke n^est pas de discourir, en cet endroit de la realite des chases, mats des idees de Vesprit, £t si cela ne suffit pour edaircir la difficulte, M. Locke n'a plus rien k ajouter, sinon que si lidee d'etendtte est si singulaire qu'elle ne puisse s^accorder exacte- ment avec la definition qu'il a donnee des idees simples, de sorte qu'elle difi*ere en quelque maniere de toutes les autres de cette esp^ce, il croit qu'il vaut mieux la laisser la exposee k cette difficulte, que de faire une nouvelle division en sa fiiveur. C*est assez pour M. Locke qu*on puisse comprendre sa pensee. II n'est pas trop ordinaire de voir des discours tres-intelligibles, gates par trop de deiicatesse sur ces pointilleries. Nous devons assorter les choses le mieilx que nous pouvons, doctrinae causa ; mais, apris tout, il se trouvera toujours quantite de choses qui ne pourront pas s'ajuster exacte- ment avec nos conceptions et nos fa9ons de parler.' This explanation throws some light upon Locke's use of language in the Essay, Minima sensibilia are thus his simple ideas of sensation ; and division carried be- yond what is sensible transcends the sphere of positive ideas at one extreme, even as when too Jarge to be mentally imaged, it transcends it at the other.
^ The idea of number is accordingly called discrete, not continuous, be*
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266 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. idea ; by repetition of which, it would make its more enlarged Chap XV ^^^^^ °^ extension and duration. But, since the mind is not able to frame an idea of any space without parts, instead thereof it makes use of the common measures, which, by familiar use in each country, have imprinted themselves on the memory (as inches and feet ; or cubits and parasangs ; and so seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years in duration) ; — the mind makes use, I say, of such ideas as these, as simple ones : and these are the component parts of larger ideas, which the mind upon occasion makes by the addition of such known lengths whidi it is acquainted with. On the other side, the ordinary smallest measure we have of either is looked on as an unit in number, when the mind by division would reduce them into less fractions. Though on both sides, both in addition and division, either of space or duration, when the idea under consideration becomes very big or very small, its precise bulk becomes very obscure and confused; and it is the number of its repeated additions or divisions that alone remains clear and distinct ; as will easily appear to any one who will let his thoughts loose in the vast expansion of space, or divisibility of matter. Every part of duration is duration too ; and every part of extension is extension, both of them capable of addition or division in infinitum. But the least portions of eitlter of them^ whereof we have clear attd distinct ideas, may perhaps be fittest to be considered by us, as the simple ideas of that kind out of which our complex ^ modes of space, extension, and duration are made up, and into which they can again be distinctly resolved. Such a small part in duration may be called a moment^ and is the time of one idea in our minds, in the train of their ordinary succession there. The other, wanting a proper name, I know not whether I may be allowed to
cause of indivisible parts or units ; ^ Simple ideas of space are thus the
whereas the ideas of space and dura- minima sensHnliaf and moments are
tion are of parts that are necessarily our simple ideas of duration. This
supposed to be divisible without end, need not imply a denial of the con-
and thus a/ /<»/ transcend the categ^iy tinuity of space and time. Locke
of Quantity in the form of infinite (or elsewhere recognises that their parts
mysterious) divisibility. are inseparable.
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Ideas of Duration and Expansion compared. 267
call a sensible pointy meaning thereby the least particle of book ii. matter or space we can discern, which is ordinarily about ~^^ [^ a minute, and to the sharpest eyes seldom less than thirty seconds of a circle,] whereof the eye is the centre.
10. Expansion and duration have this further agreement, Their that, though they are both considered by us as having parts *, separable. yet their parts are not separable one from another, no not
even in thought : though the parts of bodies from whence we take our measure of the one ; and the parts of motion, or rather the succession of ideas in our minds, from whence we take the measure of the other, may be interrupted and separated ; as the one is often by rest, and the other is by sleep, which we call rest too.
11. But there is this manifest difference between them, — Duration That the ideas of length which we have of expansion are liSI^Ex- tumed every way, and so make figure, and breadth, and pension as thickness^ ; but duration is but as it were the length of one * straight line, extended in infinitum^ not capable of multi- plicity, variation, or figure ; but is one common measure of
all existence whatsoever, wherein all things, whilst they exist, equally partake. For this present moment is common to all things that are now in being, and equally comprehends that part of their existence, as much as if they were all but one single being; and we may truly say, they all exist in the same moment of time. Whether angels and spirits have any analogy to this, in respect to expansion, is beyond my comprehension: and perhaps for us, who have under- standings and comprehensions suited to our own preservation, and the ends of our own being, but not to the reality and extent of all other beings, it is near as hard to conceive
^ < a second of a circle,* in first metiy. Figure, trinal extension, and
edition. Molyneux (March a, 1693) other Jimie modts of space are the
drew Locke's attention to this error, objects of the most lucid and certain
which he promised to correct, as he did. of the sciences ; while the mystery of
' Cf former notes, on the mysteries immensity is an obtrusive manifesta-
of Immensity and Eternity, as incon* tion of the ultimate mystery to which,
sistent with ideas of ' parts.' through various avenues, the finite
' The various relations of this trinal ideas of experience necessarily lead
extension afibrd the material of geo- us at last.
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268 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. any existence, or to have an idea of any real being, with ""^^^^ a perfect negation of all manner of expansion, as it is to ' have the idea of any real existence with a perfect n^^tion of all manner of duration. And therefore, what spirits^ have to do with space, or how they communicate in it, we know not. All that we know is, that bodies do each singly possess its proper portion of it, according to the extent of solid parts ; and thereby exclude all other bodies from having any share in that particular portion of space, whilst it remains there. Duration 12. Duration^ and time which is a part of it, is the idea n5x)Ram ^^ ^^^^ ol perishing distance, of which no two parts exist together, together, but follow each other in succession ; an expansion is alSgether! ^^ ^^^^ ^^ lasting distance, all whose parts exist together, and are not capable of succession. And therefore, though we cannot conceive any duration without succession, nor can put it together in our thoughts that any being does now exist to-morrow, or possess at once more than the present moment of duration ; yet we can conceive the eternal duration of the Almighty far different from that of man, or any other finite being. Because man comprehends not in his knowledge or power all past and future things: his thoughts are but of yesterday, and he knows not what to-morrow will bring forth. What is once past he can never recal ; and what is yet to come he cannot make present. What I say of man, I say of all finite beings ; who, though they may far exceed man in knowledge and power, yet are no more than the meanest creature, in comparison with God himself. Finite or any magnitude holds not any proportion to infinite ^ God's infinite duration, being accompanied with infinite knowledge and infinite power, he sees all things, past and to come; and they are no more distant from his knowledge, no further removed from his sight, than the present : they all lie under the same view : and there is nothing which he cannot make exist each moment he pleases. For the existence of all
* • Spirits/ i. e. unembodied spirits. not properly quantity at all, but unr ' Hence so-called ' infinite quan- quanttfiabU realify, in which quantity tity/ either in space or in duration, is is lost in mysteiy.
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Ideas of Duration and Expansion compared. 269
things, depending upon his good pleasure, all things exist book ii.
every moment that he thinks fit to have them exist. To ^ ""**^,,
Chap. XV.
conclude : expansion and duration do mutually embrace and comprehend each other ; every part of space being in every part of duration, and every part of duration in every part of expansion. Such a combination of two distinct ideas is, I suppose, scarce to be found in all that great variety we do or can conceive, and may afford matter to further speculation ^.
* Duration is in idea in eveiy place, and space throughout endures. It is impossible to have an idea of the annihilation of either; each is so much allied to nothings that it seems incapable either of annihilation or creation, — the one being the idea of the abstract possibility of something extended, and the other of the abstract possibility of something changing. In nature or the reason of things, they disappear in the boundless and in the infiniUly divisible. Imagination and sensuous understanding cannot repre- sent either the boundlessness or the infinite divisibility, in which they are thus, by a necessity of the reason in things, mysteriously lost. In describing
the ideas of space and duration, Locke leaves in the background this intH' itctual ntctssUy—^^vi absolute inability to conceive body without ideas of its space-reUtions, or changes without ideas of a duration in which they must have taken place ; and the necessarily illimitable character of each. This intellectual necessity cannot be ex- plained as an event, under the merely physical order of its rise in consciousness, in the ' historical plain ' method, — any more than the inability of either of these relations, abstracted from their concrete measures, to submit to the grasp of sensuous ima- gination, can be so explained.
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CHAPTER XVI.
IDEA OF NUMBER.
BOOK II.
Chap. XVI.
Number
the
simplest
and most
universal
Idea.
Its Modes made by Addition.
Each Mode distinct
I. Amongst all the ideas we have, as there is none suggested to the mind by more ways, so there is none more simple, than that of unity^ or one : it has no shadow of variety or composition in it : every object our senses are employed about ; every idea in our understandings ; every thought of our minds, brings this idea along with it. And therefore it is the most intimate to our thoughts, as well as it is, in its agreement to all other things, the most urn- versal idea we have. For number applies itself to men, angels, actions, thoughts ; everything that either doth exist, or can be imagined ^.
a. By repeating this idea in our minds, and adding the repetitions together, we come by the complex ideas of the modes of it. Thus, by adding one to one, we have the complex idea of a couple ; by putting twelve units together, we have the complex idea of a dozen ; and so of a score, or a million, or any other number *.
3. The simple modes of number are of all other the most distinct ; every the least variation, which is an unit, making each combination as clearly different from that which approacheth nearest to it, as the most remote; two being as distinct from one, as two hundred; and the idea of
* Cf. ch. vii. % 7. This necessary co-existence of the < suggested ' idea of unity with all our other ideas, in concrete experience, hinders any of thenrfrom being therein simple. As thus' inevitably blended with them all, number has been referred to the essential constitution of reason, in- stead of to the contingent phenomena
of sense, which presuppose and ex- emplify number.
' The idea of number is specially important with Locke, as he makes it the means through which we get cor clearest idea of infinity. Cf. % 8; ch. xvii. § 9. It has attracted meta* physical speculation since Pythagoras.
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Modes of the Idea of Number. 271
two as distinct from the idea of three, as the magnitude of book 11. the whole earth is from that of a mite \ This is not so in *'^^j other simple modes, in which it is not so easy, nor perhaps possible for us to distinguish betwixt two approaching ideas, which yet are really different. For who will undertake to find a difference between the white of this paper and that of the next degree to it : or can form distinct ideas of every the least excess in extension ?
4. The clearness and distinctness of each mode of number Therefore from all others, even those that approach nearest, makes me stnttkmsin apt to think that demonstrations in numbers, if they are not Numbers more evident and exact than in extension, yet they are more precise, general in their use, and more determinate in their appli- cation. Because the ideas of numbers are more precise and distinguishable than in extension ; where every equality and excess are not so easy to be observed or measured ; because our thoughts cannot in space arrive at any determined small- ness beyond which it cannot go, as an unit; and therefore the quantity or proportion of any the least excess cannot be discovered ; which is clear otherwise in number, where, as has been said, 91 is as distinguishable from 90 as from 9000, though 91 be the next immediate excess to 90. But it is not so in extension, where^ whatsoever is more than just a foot or an inch, is not distinguishable from the standard of a foot or an inch; and in lines which appear of an equal length, one may be longer than the other by innumerable parts : nor can any one assign an angle, which shall be the next biggest to a right one '.
5. By the repeating, as has been said, the idea of an unit, and joining it to another unit, we make thereof one collective
' < Numerical difference/ accord- rompu et le transcendant, et tout ce qui
ingly, with its unU^ is the most peutse prendre entre deux nombres
distinct and measurable standard of entiers, est proportionnel k la ligne,
Quantity, each variation in its mode be- et il y a Ui aussi peu de minimum que
ing as distinguishable from that which dans le contenu. Ainsi cette definition
comes nearest to it as from the most que le nombre est une multitude
remote number that can be conceived. d'unit^s, n'a lieu que pour les entiers.'
* ' Cela se doit entendre du nombre (Leibniz, Nouveaux Essais.) Locke
gMtiir ; car autrement le nombre, dans seems to exclude/raciions from his idea
sa latitude, comprenant le sourd, le of number.
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272 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II.
Chap. XVI.
Names necessary to Num- bers.
Another reason for the necessity of names to num- bers.
idea, marked by the name two. And whosoever can do this, and proceed on, still adding one more to the last collective idea which he had of any number, and gave a name to it, may count, or have ideas, for several collections of units, distin- guished one from another, as far as he hath a series of names for following numbers, and a memory to retain that series, with their several names : all numeration being but still the adding of one unit more, and giving to the whole together, as comprehended in one idea, a new or distinct name or sign, whereby to know it from those before and after, and distinguish it from every smaller or greater multitude of units. So that he that can add one to one, and so to two, and so go on with his tale, taking still with him the distinct names belonging to every progression ; and so again, by subtracting an unit from each collection, retreat and lessen them, is capable of all the ideas of numbers within the compass of his language, or for which he hath names, though not perhaps of more. For, the several simple modes of numbers being in our minds but so many combinations of units, which have no variety, nor are capable of any other difference but more or less, names or marks for each distinct combination seem more necessary than in any other sort of ideas. For, without such names or marks, we can hardly well make use of numbers in reckon- ing, especially where the combination is made up of any great multitude of units; which put together, without a name or mark to distinguish that precise collection, will hardly be kept from being a heap in confusion.
6. This I think to be the reason why some Americans ^ I have spoken with, (who were otherwise of quick and rational parts enough,) could not, as we do, by any means count to 1000 ; nor had any distinct idea of that number, though they could reckon very well to ao. Because their language being scanty, and accommodated only to the few necessaries of a needy, simple life, unacquainted either with trade or mathe- matics, had no words in it to stand for 1000 ; so that when they were discoursed with of those greater numbers, they would show the hairs of their head, to express a great mul-
American Indians.
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|
Nonil. lions. |
Octil- lions. |
Septil- Uons. |
Sextil- lions. |
Quintril- lions. |
|
857324 |
163486 |
345896 |
4379^8 |
423147 |
Modes of the Idea of Number. 273
titude, which they could not number; which inability, I book 11. suppose, proceeded from their want of names. The Tououpi- "^yr nambos had no names for numbers above 5 ; any number beyond that they made out by showing their fingers, and the fingers of others who were present^. And I doubt not but we ourselves might distinctly number in words a great deal further than we usually do, would we find out but some fit denominations to signify them by ; whereas, in the way we take now to name them, by millions of millions of millions, &c., it is hard to go beyond eighteen, or at most, four and twenty, decimal progressions, without confusion. But to show how much distinct names conduce to our well reckon- ing, or having useful ideas of numbers, let us see all these following figures in one continued line, as the marks of one number : v. g.
?■SiSS"^" llns. Bi»'0"»- Millions. Units. 248106 335421 261734 368x49 623137
The ordinary way of naming this number in English, will be the often repeating of millions, of millions, of millions, of millions, of millions, of millions, of millions, of millions, (which is the denomination of the second six figures^. In which way, it will be very hard to have any distinguishing notions of this number. But whether, by giving every six figures a new and orderly denomination, these, and perhaps a great many more figures in progression, might not easily be counted distinctly, and ideas of them both got more easily to our- selves, and more plainly signified to others, I leave it to be considered. This I mention only to show how necessary distinct names are to numbering, without pretending to intro- duce new ones of my invention.
7. Thus children, either for want of names to mark the Why several progressions of numbers, or not having yet the faculty number*^ to collect scattered ideas into complex ones, and range them not earlier. in a regular order, and so retain them in their memories, as is
^ HisUnr€ d^un Voyttgt, fait en la duration without being fit to measure Terre du Bresil, par Jean de Lciy, Immensity or Eternity, which tran- chap. XX. pp. 307-383. scend the idea or category of number,
* Any number, however great, is and are lost in the not-numerable. finite, and measures a space or a VOL* I. T
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274 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK 11. necessary to reckoning, do not b^in to number very early, "^ nor proceed in it very far or steadily, till a good while after * they are well furnished with good store of other ideas : and one may often observe them discourse and reason pretty well, and have very clear conceptions of several other things, before they can tell twenty. And some, through the default of their memories, who cannot retain the several combinations of numbers, with their names, annexed in their distinct orders, and the dependence of so long a train of numeral progres- sions, and their relation one to another, are not able all their lifetime to reckon, or regularly go over any moderate series of numbers. For he that will count twenty, or have any idea of that number, must know that nineteen went before, with the distinct name or sign of every one of them, as they stand marked in their order ; for wherever this fails, a gap is made, the chain breaks, and the progress in numbering can go no further. So that to reckon right, it is required, (i) That the mind distinguish carefully two ideas, which are different one from another only by the addition or subtraction of one unit : (2) That it retain in memory the names or marks of the several combinations, from an unit to that number ; and that not confusedly, and at random, but in that exact order that the numbers follow one another. In either of which, if it trips, the whole business of numbering will be disturbed, and there will remain only the confused idea of multitude, but the ideas necessary to distinct numeration will not be attained to. Number 8. This further is observable in number, that it is that aifMeasur- which the mind makes use of in measuring all things that abies by us are measurable, which principally are expansion and duration ; and our idea of infinity, even when applied to those, seems to be nothing but the infinity of number. For what else are our ideas of Eternity and Immensity, but the re- peated additions of certain ideas of imagined parts of duration and expansion, with the infinity of number ; in which we can come to no end of addition? For such an inexhaustible stock, number (of all other our ideas) most clearly furnishes us with, as is obvious to every one. For let a man collect into one sum as great a number as he pleases, this multitude, how great soever, lessens not one jot the power of adding to
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Modes of the Idea of Number. 275
it, or brings him any nearer the end of the inexhaustible stock book ii. of number ; where still there remains as much to be added, "~^*~ as if none were taken out. And this endless addition or "^^' addibility (if any one like the word better) of numbers, so apparent to the mind, is that, I think, which gives us the clearest and most distinct idea of infinity: of which more in the following chapter.
T 7,
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CHAPTER XVII.
OF INFINITY.
BOOK II. !• He that would know what kind of idea it is to which we --►^ give the name of infinity^ cannot do it better than by con- Chap, sidering to what infinity is by the mind more imiKediately * attributed ; and then how the mind comes to frame it. in its ' Finite and infinite seem to me to be looked upon by the lnt?^on "^^^d as the modes of quantity^ and to be attributed primarily attributed in their first designation only to those things which have Duration, parts, and are capable of increase or diminution by the addi- and Num- tj^n Of Subtraction of any the least part : and such are the ideas of space, duration, and number, which we have con- sidered in the foregoing chapters^. It is true, that we cannot but be assured, that the great God, of whom and from whom are all things, is incomprehensibly infinite : but yet, when we apply to that first and supreme Being our idea of infinite, in our weak and narrow thoughts, we do it primarily in respect to his duration and ubiquity ; and, I think, more figuratively to his power, wisdom, and goodness, and other attributes, which are properly inexhaustible and incomprehensible, &c.^
^ In which it is argued that we can trated in the four preceding chapters,
have no positive idea, or mental image is a quantitative infinity, in abstract
of an infinite quantity of anything; space and duration ; composed of finite
while it seems to be implied that we parts, inexhaustible in number and
have a positive idea of theySaft«m5isiirift/(f relations. The concrete, qualitative
necessity to advancey which makes in- Infinite is found in God ; perfect Rea-
finity an idea of reflection, so far as it son and Purpose personified, yet im-
is positive, and suggested by space or manent and Supreme in nature and
time. spirit, mysteriously independent of
' Locke's idea of Infinity, as illus- our ideas of space and duration.
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Idea of Infinity. 277
For, when we call Uum infinite, we have no other idea of this book it. infinity but what carries with it some reflection on, and "â– **"" imitation of, that number or extent of the acts or objects of ^^^ God's power, wisdom, and goodness, which can never be supposed so great, or so many, which these attributes will not always surmount and exceed, let us multiply them in our thoughts as far as we can, with all the infinity of endless number. I do not pretend to say how these attributes are in God, who is infinitely beyond the reach of our narrow capa- cities : they do, without doubt, contain in them all possible perfection : but this, I say, is our way of conceiving them, and these our ideas of their infinity.
2. Finite then, and infinite, being by the mind looked on The Idea as modifications of expansion and duration, the next thing to g^^y g^j be considered, is, — How the mind comes by them. As for the
idea of finite, there is no great difficulty. The obvious por- tions of extension that affect our senses, carry with them into the mind the idea of finite : and the ordinary periods of suc- cession, whereby we measure time and duration, as hours, days, and years, are bounded lengths. The difficulty is, how we come by those boundless ideas of eternity and immensity ; since the objects we converse with come so much short of any approach or proportion to that largeness*.
3. Every one that has any idea of any stated lengths of How we space, as a foot, finds that he can repeat that idea; and^^^^j^^j^ joining it to the former, make the idea of two feet ; and by infinity, the addition of a third, three feet ; and so on, without ever coming to an end of his additions, whether of the same idea
of a foot, or, if he pleases, of doubling it, or any other idea he has of any length, as a mile, or diameter of the earth, or of the orbis magnus : for whichever of these he takes, and how often soever he doubles, or any otherwise multiplies it, he finds, that, after he has continued his doubling in his thoughts, and enlarged his idea as much as he pleases, he has no more
^ We have never perceived, and ness. This feet Locke tries to reconcile
could not perceive an object that is with his fundamental hypothesis of
boundless, either in extent or duration, the dependence of all our ideas upon
and yet we are necessarily impelled corresponding simple ideas, or primary
towards an obscure idea of boundless- impressions.
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Chap.
XVII.
278 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. reason to stop, nor is one jot nearer the end of such addition, than he was at first setting out : thfe power of enlarging his idea of space by further additions remaining still the same, he hence takes the idea of infinite space.. Our Idea 4. This, I think, is the way whereby the mind gets the boundless, idea of infinite space^. It is a quite different consideration, to examine whether the mind has the idea of such a boundless space actually existing ; since our ideas are not always proofs of the existence of things : but yet, since this comes here in our way, I suppose I may say, that we are apt to think that space in itself is actually boundless, to which imagination the idea of space or expansion of itself naturally leads us. For, it being considered by us, either as the extension of body, or as existing by itself, without any solid matter taking it up, (for of such a void space we have not only the idea, but I have proved, as I think, from the motion of body, its necessary existence,) it is impossible the mind should be ever able to find or suppose any end of it, or be stopped an)nvhere in its progress in this space, how far soever it extends its thoughts. Any bounds made with body, even adamantine walls, are so far from putting a stop to the mind in its further progress in space and extension that it rather facilitates and enlarges it. For so far as that body reaches, so far no one can doubt of extension ; and when we are come to the utmost extremity of body, what is there that can there put a stop, and satisfy the mind that it is at the end of space, when it perceives that it is not ; nay, when it is satisfied that body itself can move into it ? For, if it be necessary for the motion of body, that there should be an empty space, though ever so little, here amongst bodies ; and if it be possible for body to move in or through that empty space ; — nay, it is impossible for any particle of matter to move but into an empty space ; the same possi- bility of a body's moving into a void space, beyond the utmost
^ A merely empirical ' repetition ' of this necessity due to something in
phenomena does not explain the m* mind, and in the rational nature of
Ullectual need for cofUinuing without things, not to the merely sensuous
end the process of repetition, which, presentations, which per se cannot
as Locke himself seems to allow, is transcend their own finitude and tran-
implied in the idea of space. Is not sitoriness f
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Idea of Infinity. 279
bounds of body,as well as into a void space interspersed amongst book ii. bodies, will always remain clear and evident: the idea of "â– ""*- empty pure space, "wrhether within or beyond the confines of JJ^^* all bodies, being exactly the same, differing not in nature, though in bulk; and there being nothing to hinder body from moving into it. So that 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 actually infinite^.
5. As, by the power we find in ourselves of repeating, as And so of often as we will, any idea of space, we get the idea of im- ^^'****°"- mensity ; so, by being able to repeat the idea of any length
of duration we have in our minds, with all the endless addition of number, we come by the idea of eternity. For we find in ourselves", we can no more come to an end of such repeated ideas than we can come to the end of number ; which every one perceives he cannot. But here again it is another question, quite different from our having an idea of eternity, to know whether there were any real beings whose duration has been eternal. And as to this, I say, he that considers something now existing, must necessarily come to Something eternal. But having spoke of this in another place^, I shall say here no more of it, but proceed on to some other considerations of our idea of infinity.
6. If it be so, that our idea of infinity be got from the power* why other we observe in ourselves of repeating, without end, our own ^^^* ideas, it may be demanded, — Why we do not attribute infinity capable of
Infinity.
^ * Pure space,' Locke asserts else- us to rest absolutely in any limited
where, is purely nothing, but merely duration.
infinite possibility that something ex- ^ Cf. Bk. IV. ch. x. § 3. The refer-
tended might there exist. 'Having ence might imply that the chapter in
been all our lifetime accustomed to the Fourth Book, here referred to,
phrases, that import it to be a real thing, was written before this on ' Infinity.'
we come at last to be possessed with He finds it impossible to suppose that
this prejudice, that it is a real thing duraiUm could be empty ; but the dis-
and not a hart rdation* {Miscellanfous tinction of space from body, so that
Papers,) there is room for motion, means that
* We ' find in ourselves,' i.e. not in portions ofspaeg are empty,
the presented phenomena, but ' in our- * Rather, in the ideas of space and
selves,' we find something that forbids duration, the mmtal obligation.
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28o Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. XVII.
BOOK II. to Other ideas, as well as those of space and duration ; since they may be as easily, and as often, repeated in our minds as the other : and yet nobody ever thinks of infinite sweetness, or infinite whiteness, though he can repeat the idea of sweet or white, as frequently as those of a yard or a day? To which I answer,— All the ideas that are considered as having parts, and are capable of increase by the addition of any equal or less parts, afford us, by their repetition, the idea of infinity ; because, with this endless repetition, there is con- tinued an enlargement of which there can be no end. But in other ideas it is not so. For to the largest idea of extension or duration that I at present have, the addition of any the least part makes an increase ; but to the perfectest idea I have of the whitest whiteness, if I add another of a less or equal whiteness, (and of a whiter than I have, I cannot add the idea,) it makes no increase, and enlarges not my idea at all ; and therefore the different ideas of whiteness, &c. are called degrees. For those ideas that consist of parts ^ are capable of being augmented by every addition of the least part ; but if you take the idea of white, which one parcel of snow yielded yesterday to our sight, and another idea of white from another parcel of snow you see to-day, and put them together in your mind, they embody, as it were, and run into one, and the idea of whiteness is not at all increased ; and if we add a less degree of whiteness to a greater, we are so far from increasing, that we diminish it. Those ideas that consist not of parts cannot be augmented to what proportion men please, or be stretched beyond what they have received by their senses^ ; but space, duration, and number, being capable of increase by repetition, leave in the mind an idea
^ Locke's quantitative Infinite con- sists of mnumerabU parts, and this cannot be conceived as an absolute whole or completed idea. Endless re- petition cannot end in a positive idea of infinite quantity. A com- pleted or comprehensible infinite quan- tity (great or small) in space, time, or number, would be incapable of further increase. This sort of infinite is re-
pelled by the category of quantity, as self-contradictory, a Jimit infinite. The obligation to continue expanding these ideas of space and duration leaves us, at our furthest stage, with that sense of incompleteness and mys- tery, which seems to be our only relation to the Infinite through this avenue.
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Idea of Infinity. 281
of endless room for more ; nor can we conceive anywhere a book it. stop to a further addition or progression : and so those ideas ""*^* alone lead our minds towards the thought of infinity. xvii
7. Though our idea of infinity arise from the contemplation Difference of quantity, and the endless increase the mind is able to make between in quantity, by the repeated additions of what portions ©f Space, thereof it pleases ; yet I guess we cause great confusion in ^^^^^^ our thoughts, when we join infinity to any supposed idea of quantity the mind can be thought to have, and so discourse
or reason about an infinite quantity, as an infinite space, or an infinite duration. For, as our idea of infinity being, as I think, an endless growing idea^ but the idea of any quantity the mind has, being at that time terminated in that idea, (for be it as great as it will, it can be no greater than it is,) — to join infinity to it, is to adjust a standing measure to a growing bulk ; and therefore I think it is not an insignificant subtilty, if I say, that we are carefully to distinguish between the idea of the infinity of space, and the idea of a space infinite. The first is nothing but a supposed endless progression of the mind, over what repeated ideas of space it pleases ; but to have actually in the mind the idea ^ of a space infinite, is to suppose the mind already passed over, and actually to have a view of all those repeated ideas of space which an endless repetition can never totally represent to it ; which carries in it a plain contradiction^.
8. This, perhaps, will be a little plainer, if we consider it in We have numbers. The infinity of numbers, to the end of whose JJJgnite ° addition every one perceives there is no approach, easily Space, appears to any one that reflects on it. But, how clear soever
this idea of the infinity of number be, there is nothing yet more evident than the absurdity of the actual idea* of an infinite number. Whatsoever positive ideas we have in our minds of any space, duration, or number, let them be ever so
^ Idea, i. e. completed or finite last disappear in the mysUnts of Im-
image in the mind. mensity and Eternity. This section
' This suggests that the ideas of may be compared with Kant's solution
Quantity (in space, duration, or jium- of his first antinomy. See also Prof.
ber)and Infinity are incompatible, and Caird's Philosophy of Kant, Pt. II. ch.
that the true infinite is unquanttfiabU, xvii.
Accordingly space and duration at ' That is, completed sensuous image.
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282 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. g^reat, they are still finite; but when we suppose an inex- '-^*- haustible remainder, from which we remove all bounds, and XVI? wherein we allow the mind an endless progression of thought, without ever completing the idea, there we have our idea of infinity : which, though it seems to be pretty clear when we consider nothing else in it but the negation of an end, yet, when we would frame in our minds the idea^ of an infinite space or duration, that idea is very obscure and confused, because it is made up of two parts, very different, if not incon- sistent. For, let a man frame in his mind an idea of any space or number, as great as he will; it is plain the mind rests and terminates in that idea, which is contrary to the idea of infinity, which consists in a supposed endless progression ^ And therefore I think it is that we are so easily confounded, when we come to argue and reason about infinite space or duration, &c.* Because the parts of such an idea not being perceived to be, as they are, inconsistent *, the one side or other always perplexes, whatever consequences we draw from the other ; as an idea of motion not passing on would perplex any one who should argue from such an idea^ which is not better than an idea of motion at rest. And such another seems to me to be the idea of a space, or (which is the same thing) a number infinite, i. e. of a space or number which the mind actually has, and so views and terminates in ; and of a space or number, which, in a constant and endless enlarging and progression, it can in thought never attain to. For, how
^ Not in a rtuntal image of tndUss tical aspects. But all necessarily im-
progression, which is not merely un- perfect truths involve contradiction,
imaginable by man, but is in its nature when forced under the categories of
unimaginable. The imagination of an understanding that judges accord-
' progress' b positive and possible; ing to the measure of the sensuous
but there can be no image of ' endUss imagination. Locke, in his own way,
progression/ which involves what is accepted them in their obscurity, and
necessarily incomplete and mysterious. insists, in his letters to SUIlingfleet,
' The puzzles of the infinitely little, that he never intended to say that oil
and the infinite divisibility of space our legitimate ideas must be clear and
and duration were raised by Berkeley, distinct.
in his controversies with the mathe* ' 'Inconsistent,' i.e. if we insist on
maticians. They are discussed in arguing from the necessarily inade-
Hume's TreaHse, Bk. I. pt. ii., and quate idea, on the assumption that it
Inquify, sect, zii., ' in their seep- is adequate and imaginable.
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Idea of Infinity. 283
large soever an idea of space I have in my mind, it is no book ii. larger than it is that instant that I have it, though I be "**~ capable the next instant to double it, and so on in infinitum ; xvii. for that alone is infinite which has no bounds ; and that the idea of infinity, in which our thoughts can find none^.
9. But of all other ideas, it is number, as I have said, which Number I think furnishes us with the clearest and most distinct idea the ciear^ of infinity we are capable of ^. For, even in space and dura- J^^^^* ®^ tion, when the mind pursues the idea of infinity, it there makes
use of the ideas and repetitions of numbers, as of millions and millions of miles, or years, which are so many distinct ideas, — kept best by number from running into a confused heap, wherein the mind loses itself; and when it has added together as many millions, &c., as it pleases, of known lengths of space or duration, the clearest idea it can get of infinity, is the confused incomprehensible remainder of endless addible numbers, which affords no prospect of stop or boundary ^
10. It will, perhaps, give us a little further light into the Our differ- idea we have of infinity, and discover to us, that it is nothing ^ept^n^" but the infinity of number applied to determinate parts ^ 0/ of the which we have in our minds the distinct ideas^ if we consider Number^ that number is not generally thought by us infinite, whereas contrasted
. , , . , ! ^ with those
duration and extension are apt to be so ; which arises from of Dura- hence,— that in number we are at one end, as it were : for ^^^ ^ there being in number nothing less than an unit*, we there sion. stop, and are at an end ; but in addition, or increase of number, we can set no bounds : and so it is like a line, whereof one end terminating with us, the other is extended still forwards, beyond all that we can conceive. But in space and duration it is otherwise. For in duration we consider it as if this line of number were extended both ways — to an unconceivable,
^ As ak*eady noted, we can imagine I'absolu, qui est anterieur a toute com"
progression, but not endUss progress. posUion, ft tC tst point formi par Vaddi-
' That is to say, the unimaginable tion des parties,* idea of infinity is suggested by all 'If * endless,' it not only * afibrds
finite, or imaginable, things, which no prospect ' of a stop : a stop is im-
may be numbered ; for number is possible, on pain of express contradic-
finite, till it is lost in the mystery of tion. Thus endlessness transcends the
the HUfhberUss. ' Le vrai infini/ says category of quantity. Leibniz, ' a la rigueur n*est que dans * What of fractions ?
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284 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II.
Chap. XVII.
How we
conceive the In- finity of Space.
Infinite Divisi- bility.
undeterminate, and infinite length^; which is evident to any one that will but reflect on what consideration he hath of Eternity ; which, I suppose, will find to be nothing else but the turning this infinity of number both ways, d parte ante^ and d parte post i as they speak. For, when we would consider eternity, d parte ante^ what do we but, beginning from our- selves and the present time we are in, repeat in our minds the ideas of years, or ages, or any other assignable portion of duration past, with a prospect of proceeding in such addition with all the infinity of number^ : and when we would consider eternity, A parte post^ we just after the same rate begin from ourselves, and reckon by multiplied periods yet to come, still extending that line of number as before. And these two being put together, are that infinite duration we call Eternity : which, as we turn our view either way, forwards or backwards, appears infinite, because we still turn that way the infinite end of number, i. e. the power* still of adding more.
11. The same happens also in space, wherein, conceiving ourselves to be, as it were, in the centre, we do on all sides pursue those indeterminable lines of number ; and reckoning any way from ourselves, a yard, mile, diameter of the earth, or orbis magnuSy — by the infinity of number, we add others to them, as often as we will. And having no more reason * to set bounds to those repeated ideas than we have to set bounds to number, we have that indeterminable idea of immensity.
12. And since in any bulk of matter^ our thoughts can never arrive at the utmost divisibility, therefore there is an
^ Of which we can have no mental image ; although we may of the ( necessar- ily ineffectual) mental struggle to reach it,
' If the a parte ante and a parte post is infinite, can it be spoken of as 'parts/ or as ' two * — number being finite or quantitative ? ' De spatio et tempore interminabili,* says Hobbes, • dici non potest quod sit totum aut unum ; non totunt, quia ex nuUis partibus componi potest ; partes enim quotcunque, cum singulae sint finitae,etiam simul sumptae facient totum finitum. Non unum, quia unum non dicitur nisi ut comparatum ad aliud ; duo autem infinita spatia,
vel duo tempora infinita esse, intelligi non potest. Denique cum quaeritur an mundus finitus an infinitus, nihil in animo est sub voce mundus ; quicquid enim imaginanturj eo ipso finitum est.' (JPhilosophia Prima, cap. vii. la.) This assumes sensuous imagination to be the measure of intelligence.
' Rather, are subject to a constant mental necessity of ' adding more.'
• Rather, having reason not to do so.
' Or, as it has been put — ' non datur quantitatis minimum divisibile,' and ' quavis quantitate data, sumi posse mi- norenL*
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Idea of Infinity. 285
apparent infinity to us also in that, which has the infinity also book ii. of number ; but with this difference, — that, in the former con- — ►^ siderations of the infinity of space and duration, we only use ^^^l{ addition of numbers ; whereas this is like the division of an unit into its fractions, wherein the mind also* can proceed in infinitum^ as well as in the former additions ; it being indeed but the addition still of new numbers : though in the addition of the one, we can have no more t\i^ positive idea of a space in- finitely great, than, in the division of the other, we can have the [positive] idea of a body infinitely little ; — our idea of in- finity being, as I may say, a growing or fugitive idea, still in a boundless progression, that can stop nowhere ^.
13. Though it be hard, I think, to find anyone so absurd as No posi- to say he has the positive idea of an actual infinite number ^ ; — oHnfinSy. the infinity whereof lies only in a power still of adding any combination of units to any former number, and that as long and as much as one will ; the like also being in the infinity of space and duration, which power leaves always to the mind room for endless additions ;~yet there be those who imagine they have positive ideas of infinite duration and space ^. It would, I think, be enough to destroy any such positive idea of infinite, to ask him that has it, — whether he could add to it or no ; which would easily show the mistake of such a positive idea. We can, I think, have no positive idea of any space or duration which is not made up of, and commensurate to, re- peated numbers of feet or yards, or days and years ; which are the common measures, whereof we have the ideas in our minds, and whereby we judge of the greatness of this sort of quantities.
* Hence it is inadequate, when re- the finite mind ; including, as it does,
garded, as here by Locke, from the the (negative) idea, that we can have
point of view of the sensuous imagina- no quantified image of that towards
tion, and therefore of quantity, in which we are, nevertheless, obliged to
space, duration, and number ; and mis- tend.
leading when the inadequate idea, * God, and finite persons too are which alone is possible at the human found transcending human understand- point of view, is treated in our reason- ing, measured by the phenomena of ings as if it were the whole. external and internal sense, whenever
' Infinite in number, that is to say, man tries to represent either as without
cannot be phenomenalised— individu- beginning or without end, i. e. as self-
alised — although the mental tendency conscious persons somehow transcend-
towards it can, regarded as a state of ing time and quantity.
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286 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II.
Chap. XVII.
How we cannot have a positive idea of infinity in Quantity.
What is
positive,
what
negative,
in our
Idea of
infinite.
And therefore, since an infinite idea of space or duration must needs be made up of infinite parts, it can have no other infinity than that of number capable still of further addition ; but not an actual positive idea of a number infinite. For, I think it is evident, that thfe addition of finite things together (as are all lengths whereof we have the positive ideas) can never other- wise produce the idea of infinite than as number does ; which, consisting of additions of finite units one to another, suggests * the idea of infinite, only by a power we find we have of still increasing the sum, and adding more of the same kind ; with- out coming one jot nearer the end of such progression.
14. They who would prove their idea of infinite to be posi- tive, seem to me to do it by a pleasant argument, taken from the negation of an end ; which being negative, the negation of it is positive. He that considers that the end is, in body ^ but the extremity or superficies of that body, will not perhaps be forward to grant that the end is a bare negative : and he that perceives the end of his pen is black or white, will be apt to think that the end is something more than a pure negation. Nor is it, when applied to duration, the bare negation of existence, but more properly the last moment of it. But if they will have the end to be nothing but the bare negation of existence, I am sure they cannot deny but the beginning is the first instant of being, and is not by any body conceived to be a bare negation ; and therefore, by their own argument, the idea of eternal, it parte ante^ or of a duration without a begin- ning, is but a negative idea.
15. The idea of infinite has, I confess, something of positive in all those things we apply to it When we would think of infinite space or duration, we at first step usually make some very large idea, as perhaps of millions of ages, or miles, which possibly we double and multiply several times. All that we
^ This makes the idea of the infinite that arises in quantity, a mysterious 'suggestion* oiinUUigence, not a datum of sense^ elaborated by an understand- ing that judges under sensuous ima- gination. Locke's infinite is only the ideally incomplete outcome of the finite; which would involve contradiction, if
the infinite, struggled after, and which baffles the imagination, were itsel/sap' posed to be a quantity. Cf. Novum Organum, Lib. L 48, and Dr. Fowler's notes.
' 'body,* ue. in a finite body— a finite object
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Idea of Infinity. 287
thus amass together in our thoughts is positive, and the book 11. assemblage of a great number of positive ideas of space or ""^^^ duration. But what still remains beyond this we have no ^cvn more a positive distinct notion of than a mariner has of the depth of the sea ; where, having let down a large portion of his sounding-line, he reaches no bottom. Whereby he knows the depth to be so many fathoms, and more ; but how much the more is ^, he hath no distinct notion at all : and could he always supply new line, and find the plummet always sink, without ever stopping, he would be something in the posture of the mind reaching after a complete and positive idea of infinity *. In which case, let this line be ten, or ten thousand fathoms long, it equally discovers what is beyond it, and gives only this confused and comparative idea, that this is not all, but one may yet go farther. So much as the mind compre- hends of any space, it has a positive idea of: but in endeavour- ing to make it infinite, — it being always enlarging, always advancing, — the idea is still imperfect and incomplete. So much space as the mind takes a view of in its comtemplation of greatness, is a clear picture, and positive in the understand- ing: but infinite is still greater, i. Then the idea of j^ mtich is positive and clear. 2. The idea ol greater is also clear; but it is but a comparative idea, the idea of so much greater as cannot be comprehended. 3. And this is plainly negative : not positive. For he has no positive clear idea of the largeness of any extension, (which is that sought for in the idea of infinite), that has not a comprehensive idea of the dimensions of it : and such, nobody, I think, pretends to in what is infinite. For to
^ This is still to compare a lesser the infinity, to which the 'posture'
finite with a (by us) unimaginable relates ; for the idea, if completed, or
greater finHe^ but not to compare it comprehended in imagination, would
withtheinfinite, to which 'how much' give evidence on its face that it was
is inapplicable, without assuming the not the infinity the mind was ' reaching
supposed infinite to be a measurable after.' The feeling of a tnental necessity
quantity. ' How much ' and ' the more ' which urges us beyond the idea of what
are expressions ' which keep us still is finite or completed, hvA riot the incom-
within the conception of a quantity. plete or incomprehensible itself towards
' This ' posture of the mind ' we which we are thus urged, is within the
may have a positive idea of, — as a phe- compass of an understanding confined
nomenon that can be individualised ; to what is imaginable, but this cannot be said of the idea of
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288 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II, say a man has a positive clear idea of any quantity, without ~**^ knowing how great it is, is as reasonable as to say, he has the XVII positive clear idea of the number of the sands on the sea-shore, who knows not how many there be, but only that they are more than twenty. For just such a perfect and positive idea has he of an infinite space or duration, who says it is larger than the extent or duration of ten, one hundred, one thousand, or any other number of miles, or years, whereof he has or can have a positive idea ; which is all the idea, I think, we have of infinite ^. So that what lies beyond our positive idea towards infinity, lies in obscurity, and has the indeterminate confusion of a negative idea, wherein I know I neither do nor can com- prehend all I would, it being too large * for a finite and narrow capacity. And that cannot but be very far from a positive complete idea, wherein the greatest part of what I would com- prehend is left out, under the undeterminate intimation of being still greater. For to say, that, having in any quantity measured so much, or gone so far, you are not yet at the end, is only to say that that quantity is greater. So that the negation of an end in any quantity is, in other words, only to say that it is bigger ; and a total negation of an end is but carrying this bigger still with you, in all the progressions your thoughts shall make in quantity ; and adding this idea of still greater to all the ideas you have, or can be supposed to have, .of quantity *. Now, whether such an idea as that be positive, I leave any one to consider.
We have 1 6. I ask thosc who Say they have a positive idea of eternity,
?dJS^o?!m whether their idea of duration includes in it succession^, or not?
mfinite If it does uot, they ought to show the difference of their notion of duration, when applied to an eternal Being, and to a finite ; since, perhaps, there may be others as well as I, who^will own to them their weakness of understanding in this point, and
^ Can we properly speak of the in- applicable to infinity at all, or con- finite which quantity suggests as sistent with its unimaginableness ? ' larger ' in quantity than any finite ' ' Succession,' or change (as con- quantity t This would make the infinite ceived by man) consists of parts, and difier only in degree from the finite. is thus quantitative and finite in its Is largeness of quantity, to what- constitution.
Duration.
ever extent, or • part,* however large,
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Idea of Infinity, 289
acknowledge that the notion they have of duration forces them book ii. to conceive, that whatever has duration, is of a longer con- Z^ tinuance to-day than it was yesterday. If, to avoid succession xvil. in external existence, they return to the punctum stans of the schools, I suppose they will thereby very little mend the matter, or help us to a more clear and positive idea of infinite duration ; there being nothing more inconceivable to me than duration without succession. Besides, that punctum stans ^ if it signify anything, being not quantum, finite or infinite cannot belong to it. But, if our weak apprehensions cannot separate succession from any duration whatsoever, our idea of eternity can be nothing but of infinite succession of moments of duration wherein anything does exist; and whether any one has, or can have, a positive idea of an actual infinite number, I leave him to consider, till his infinite number be so great that he himself can add no more to it ; and as long as he can ^ increase it, I doubt he himself will think the idea he hath of it a little too scanty for positive infinity.
17. I think it unavoidable for every considerii^, rational No com- creature, that will but examine his own or any other existence, ofEtenuS to have the notion of an eternal, wise Being, who had no begin- Being, ning : and such an idea of infinite duration I am sure I have.
But this negation of a beginning, being but the negation of a positive thing, scarce gives me a positive idea of infinity ; which, whenever I endeavour to extend my thoughts to, I confess myself at a loss, and I find I cannot attain any clear comprehension of it.
18. He that thinks he has a positive idea of infinite space, No posi- will, when- he considers it, find that he can no more have a oHnfinUe positive idea of the greatest, than he has of the least space. Space. For in this latter, which seems the easier of the two, and more within our comprehension, we are capable only of a compara- tive idea of smallness, which will always be less than any one whereof we have the positive idea. All our positive ideas
of any quantity, whether great or little, have always bounds.
^ See Green's ' Introduction ' to stans^ and not an event in time. Hume, p. 191, on the presence of con- ' ' can,' and also must, if in virtue of sciousness to itself as the true pundum a mental necessity.
VOL. I. U
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Chap.
XVII.
290 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. though our comparative idea, whereby we can always add to the one, and take from the other, hath no bounds. For that which remains, either great or little, not being comprehended in that positive idea which we have, lies in obscurity ; and we have no other idea of it, but of the power of enlarging the one and diminishing the other, without ceasing. A pestle and mortar will as soon bring any particle of matter to indivisi- bility, as the acutest thought of a ihathematician ; and a surveyor may as soon with his chain measure out infinite space, as a philosopher by the quickest flight of mind reach it, or by thinking comprehend it ; which is to have a positive idea of it He that thinks on a cube of an inch diameter, has a clear and positive idea of it in his mind^ and so can frame one of i, i, j, and so on, till he has the idea in his thoughts of something very little ; but yet reaches not the idea of that incomprehensible littleness which division can produce. What remains of smallness is as far from his thoughts as when he first began; and therefore he never comes at all to have a clear and positive idea of that smallness^ which is consequent to infinite divisibility.
19. Every one that looks towards infinity does, as I have said, at first glance make some very large idea of that which he applies it to, let it be space or duration ; and possibly he wearies his thoughts, by multiplying in his mind that first large idea : but yet by that he comes no nearer* to the having a positive clear idea of what remains to make up a positive infinite, than the country fellow had of the water which was yet to come, and pass the channel of the river where he stood :
* Rusticus ezpectat dum defluat amnis, at ille Labitur, et labetur in omne voIubUis sevum'.'
Some ao. There are some I have met that put so much difference
think they between infinite duration and infinite space, that they persuade
What is
positive,
what
negative,
in our
Idea of
Infinite.
* 'smallness' — rather no complete idea of whai the intellectual outcome would be of the divisibility towards which one is intellectually impelled.
' 'no nearer* — the two states of
intelligence are tneommeHsurait in the case of infinity, but not in the other case. ' Horat Epist, I. ii. 4a.
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Idea of Infinity. 291
themselves that they have a positive idea of eternity, but that book ii. they have not, nor can have any idea of infinite space. The ""**" reason of which mistake I suppose to be this — that finding, ^^^ by a due contemplation of causes and effects, that it is neces- ^^^ ^ sary to admit some Eternal Being, and so to consider the real positive existence of that Being as taken up and commensurate to Eternity, their idea of eternity ; but, on the other side, not finding it ?"^ ?^* ^^ necessary, but, on the contrary, apparently absurd, that body Space, should be infinite, they forwardly conclude that they can have no idea of infinite space, because they can have no idea of infinite matter ^. Which consequence, I conceive, is very ill collected, because the existence of matter is no ways necessary to the existence of space, no more than the existence of motion, or the sun, is necessary to duration, though duration uses to be measured by it. And I doubt not but that a man may have the idea of ten thousand miles square, without any body so big, as well as the idea of ten thousand years, without any body so old. It seems as easy to me to have the idea of space empty of body, as to think of the capacity of a bushel without corn, or the hollow of a nut-shell without a kernel in it : it being no more necessary that there should be existing a solid body, infinitely esttended, because we have an idea of the infinity of space, than it is necessary that the world should be eternal, because we have an idea of infinite duration. And why should we think our idea of infinite space requires the real existence of matter to support it, when we find that we have as clear an idea of an infinite duration to come, as we have of infinite duration past ? Though I suppose nobody thinks it conceivable that anything does or has existed in that future duration. Nor is it possible to join our idea of future duration with present or past existence, any more than it is possible to make the ideas of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow to be the same ; or bring ages past and future together, and make them contemporary. But if these men are of the mind, that they have clearer ideas of infinite duration than of infinite space, because it is past doubt that God has existed from all eternity, but there is no real matter co-extended with infinite
* cf. ch. XV. § 4.
U %
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292 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II.
Chap.
' XVII.
Supposed positive Ideas of Infinity, cause of Mistakes.
space ; yet those philosophers who are of opinion that infinite space is possessed by God's infinite omnipresence *, as well as infinite duration by his eternal existence, must be allowed to have as clear an idea of infinite space as of infinite duration ; though neither of them, I think, has any positive idea of in- finity in either case. For whatsoever positive ideas a man has in his mind of any quantity, he can repeat it, and add it to the former, as easy as he can add together the ideas of two days, or two paces, which are positive ideas of lengths he has in his mind, and so on as long as he pleases : whereby, if a man had a positive idea of infinite, either duration or space, he could add two infinites together ; nay, make one infinite infinitely bigger than another — absurdities too gross to be confuted.
ai. But yet if after all this, there be men who persuade themselves that they have clear positive comprehensive ideas of infinity, it is fit they enjoy their privilege : and I should be very glad (with some others that I know, who acknowledge they have none such) to be better informed by their com- munication. For I have been hitherto apt to think that the great and inextricable difficulties which perpetually involve all discourses concerning infinity, — whether of space, duration, or divisibility, have been the certain marks of a defect in our ideas of infinity, and the disproportion the nature thereof has to the comprehension of our narrow capacities. For, whilst men talk and dispute of infinite space or duration, as if they had as complete and positive ideas of them as they have of the names they use for them, or as they have of a yard, or an hour, or any other determinate quantity ; it is no wonder if the incomprehensible nature of the thing they discourse of, or reason about, leads them into perplexities and contradictions, and their minds be overlaid by an object too large and mighty to be surveyed and managed by them ^.
' Not that God is txtendedj as solid and extended things are, but that Divine Reason is everywhere mani- fested and operative. The expression also sugg sts Samuel Clarke's attempt to demonstrate, that the existence of God is implied in the necessary infinity
of space — which is thus regarded as an attribute of the Divine Being.
' Are not these 'perplexities and contradictions * evidence of the inade> quacy of the supposition that the (un- imaginable) Infinite consists of parts, is thus numerable ? Leibniz refers to
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Idea of Infinity.
293
%%. If I have dwelt pretty long on the consideration of duration, space, and number, and what arises from the con- templation of them, — Infinity, it is possibly no more than the matter requires ; there being few simple ideas whose modes give more exercise to the thoughts of men than those do. I pretend not to treat of them in their full latitude ^. It suffices to my design to show how the mind receives them, such as they are, from sensation and reflection ; and how even the idea we have of infinity, how remote soever it may seem to be from any object of sense, or operation of our mind, has, nevertheless, as all our other ideas, its original there ^. Some mathematicians perhaps, of advanced speculations, may have other ways to introduce into their minds ideas of infinity. But this hinders not but that they themselves, as well as all other men, got the first ideas which they had of infinity* from sensation and reflection, in the method we have here set down.
BOOK II,
Chap.
XVII.
All these are modes of Ideas got from Sensation and Re- flection.
Locke's exposition of them in this chapter, when he writes as follows in 1696 : — * Je crois avec M. Locke qu'a proprement parler on pent dire qu'il n'y a point d'espace, de tems, ni de nombre, qui soit infini; mais qu'il est seulement vrai que pour grand que soit un espace, un tems, ou un nombre, il y en a toujours un autre plus grand que lui sans fin ; et quainsi U veritable Infini ne se irouve point dans un (out compose de parties^ {Operas Erdman, p. 138.) But it is not on that account, he argues, unreal ; for we find infinity absolutely in God, without parts ^ so that the true idea is presupposed in the idea of the finite. Thus with Locke the idea of the Infinite is that of endless in- crease of a finite positively given in sense; with Leibniz it is rationally given reality, mysteriously limited in our experience, under real relations of space, duration, and number.
^ Not 'in their full latitude,' but only so far as they admit of being treated according to the 'historical
plain method,' which only discovers the occasions, under natural law, on which they arise, 'such as they are,' — with their implied intellectual necessity and incompleteness, which he ' pretends not to treat ofl*
' In minima tangibilia and visibilia, — coexisting and successive modes of quantity — which we can multiply in a constant process, without any imagin- able final issue. Why those quanti- tative relations are necessarily presup- posed, as conditions of our concrete experience ; and why the * process of multiplying is necessarily supposed to be inexhaustible, are considerations foreign to the ' historical ' method of Locke, and to the categories within which his speculations are apt to be confined.
' ' First ideas,' i. e. first occasions of our having those indeterminate, inade- quate, mysterious ideas that constitute reason — ' first ideas,' so to speak, by which the 'candle of the Lord' is lighted in man.
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CHAPTER XVIII.
OTHER SIMPLE MODES.
BOOK II.
Chap. XVIII.
Other simple Modes of sfmple Ideas of sensation.
Simple modes of motion.
1 . Though I have, in the foregoing chapters, shown how, from simple ideas taken in by sensation, the mind comes to extend itself^ even to infinity; which, however it may of all others seem most remote from any sensible perception, yet at last hath nothing in it^ but what is made out of simple ideas : received into the mind by the senses, and afterwards there put together, by the faculty the mind has to repeat its own ideas ; — Though, I say, these might be instances enough of simple modes of the simple ideas of sensation, and suffice to show how the mind comes by them, yet I shall, for method s sake, though briefly, give an account of some few more, and then proceed to more complex ideas.
2. To slide, roll, tumble, walk, creep, run, dance, leap, skip, and abundance of others that might be named, are words which are no sooner heard but every one who understands English has presently in his mind distinct ideas, which are all but the different modifications of motion. Modes of motion answer those of extension ; swift and slow are two different ideas of motion, the measures whereof are made of the distances
^ 'extend itself/ i.e. in its complex ideas.
' i.e. nothing imaginable and im- mediately useful. Without the data of experience the understanding is empty and dormant; and this is the lesson which the Essay throughout emphasises, in teaching that human knowledge rises from the observation
and comparison of concrete things. But it is not less true— this truth is indeed the indispensable ultimate sup- port of human life — ^that the universe of things and persons, with all its natural and moral laws, is rooted in the Active Reason called God, in whom men and their world of sense have their being.
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Other Simple Modes of Simple Ideas. 295
of time and space put together ; so they are complex ideas, book ii. comprehending time and space with motion. "7**"
3. The like variety have we in sounds. Every articulate xviil word is a different modification of sound ; by which we see Modes of that, from the sense of hearing, by such modifications, the Sounds, mind may be furnished with distinct ideas^ to almost an infinite number. Sounds also, besides the distinct cries of birds and beasts, are modified by diversity of notes of different length
put together, which make that complex idea called a tune, which a musician may have in his mind when he hears or makes no sound at all, by reflecting on the ideas of those sounds, so put together silently in his own fancy.
4. Those of colours are also very various : some we take Modes of notice of as the different degrees, or as they were termed ° ^^^' shades, of the same colour. But since we very seldom make assemblages of colours, either for use or delight, but figure is taken in also, and has its part in it, as in painting, weaving, needleworks, &c. ; — those which are taken notice of do most commonly belong to mixed modes^ as being made up of ideas
of divers kinds, viz. figure and colour, such as beauty, rain- bow, &c.
5. All compounded tastes and smells are also modes, made Modes of up of the simple ideas of those senses. But they, being such *^*^' as generally we have no names for, are less taken notice of,
and cannot be set down in writing; and therefore must be left without enumeration to the thoughts and experience of my reader.
6. In general it may be observed, that those simple modes Some which are considered but as different degrees of the sameJJ^jl^ simple idea, though they are in themselves many of them very have no distinct ideas, yet have ordinarily no distinct names, nor are *â„¢^ much taken notice of, as distinct ideas, where the difference is
but very small between them. Whether men have neglected these modes, and given no names to them, as wanting measures nicely to distinguish them ; or because, when they were so distinguished, that knowledge would not be of general or necessary use, I leave it to the thoughts of others. It is sufficient to my purpose to show, that all our simple ideas come to our minds only by sensation and reflection ; and that
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296 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. when the mind has them, it can variously repeat and com- ~**^ pound them, and so make new complex ideas. But, though XVIII. white, red, or sweet, &c. have not been modified, or made into complex ideas, by several combinations, so as to be named, and thereby ranked into species; yet some others of the simple ideas, viz. those of unity, duration, and motion, &c., above instanced in, as also power and thinking, have been thus modified to a great variety of complex ideas, with names belonging to them. Why some 7- The reason whereof, I suppose, has been this, — That the have^nd S^^^* concemment of men being with men one amongst others another, the knowledge of men, and their actions, and the Nam^!^'' signifying of them to one another, was most necessary ; and therefore they made ideas of actions very nicely modified, and gave those complex ideas names, that they might the more easily record and discourse of those things they were daily conversant in, without long ambages and circumlocutions ; and that the things they were continually to give and receive information about might be the easier and quicker under- stood. That this is so, and that men in framing different complex ideas, and giving them names, have been much governed by the end of speech in general, (which is a very short and expedite way of conveying their thoughts one to another), is evident in the names which in several arts have been found out, and applied to several complex ideas of modified actions, belonging to their several trades, for dispatch sake, in their direction or discourses about them. Which ideas are not generally framed in the minds of men not conversant about these operations. And thence the words that stand for them, by the greatest part of men of the same language, are not understood : v. g. coltshire^ drillings filtra- tion^ cohobation, are words standing for certain complex ideas, which being seldom in the minds of any but those few whose particular employments do at every turn suggest them to their thoughts, those names of them are not generally understood but by smiths and chymists ; who, having framed the complex ideas which these words stand for, and having given names to them, or received them from others, upon hearing of these names in communication, readily conceive those ideas in their
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Other Simple Modes of Simple Ideas. 297
minds ; — as by cohobation all the simple ideas of distilling, and book it, the pouring the liquor distilled from anything back upon the """^ remaining matter, and distilling it again. Thus we see that xvill there are great varieties of simple ideas, as of tastes and smells, which have no names; and of modes ^ many more; which either not having been generally enough observed, or else not being of any great use to be taken notice of in the affairs and converse of men, they have not had names given to them, and so pass not for species^. This we shall have occa- sion hereafter to consider more at large, when we come to speak of words \
^ ' Modes,' i.e. simple modes of sim- complexes ; par exemple, pour ezpli-
ple ideas. quer ce que c'est que glisser ou rouler^
' See Bk. III. 'La plupart des outre le mouvement, il faut considdrer
modes dont Tauteur parle dans ce la r^istance de la surface.' (Leibniz.) chapitre, ne sont pas assez simples, ' In Bk. III. chh. v, vi«
et pourraient dtre compt^ parmi les
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CHAPTER XIX.
OF THE MODES OF THINKING.
BOOK II,
Chap.
XIX.
Sensation, Remem- brance, Contem* plation, &C.J modes of think- ing.
I. When the mind turns its view inwards upon itself, and contemplates its own actions, thinking^ is the first that occurs. In it the mind observes a great variety of modifications, and from thence receives distinct ideas. Thus the perception or thought which actually accompanies, and is annexed to, any impression on the body, made by an external ' object, being distinct from all other modifications of thinking, furnishes the mind with a distinct idea, which we call sensation '^^v^hidti is, as it were, the actual entrance of any idea into the under- standing by the senses*. The same idea, when it again recurs without the operation of the like object on the external sen- sory, is remembrance : if it be sought, after by the mind, and with pain and endeavour found, and brought again in view, it is recollection : if it be held there long under attentive con- sideration, it is contemplation : when ideas float in our mind, without any reflection or regard of the understanding, it is that which the French call riverie ; our language has scarce a name for it : when the ideas that offer themselves (for, as I have observed in another place, whilst we are awake, there will always be a train of ideas succeeding one another in
^ We must not forget that Locke uses ' thinking,' not in its narrow meaning of elaborative intelligence, but as synonymous with cognition in all its gradations of development, and occasionally, like Descartes, as coextensive with conscious state of
whatever sort.
* In this definition of sensation^ 'entrance into the understanding' is the prominent clement, but in ch. i. ( 93 'sensation' is applied to 'a motion in sonu part ofthi body*
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Modes of Simple Ideas of Thinking. 299
our minds) are taken notice of, and, as it were, r^stered in book ii. the memory, it is attention : when the mind with great "**~ earnestness, and of choice, fixes its view on any idea, con- ^"^* siders it on all sides, and will not be called off by the ordinary solicitation of other ideas, it is that we call intention or study : sleep, without dreaming, is rest from all these : and dreaming itself is the having of ideas, (whilst the outward senses are stopped, so that they receive not outward objects with their usual quickness) in the mind, not suggested by any external objects, or known occasion ; nor under any choice or conduct of the understanding at all : and whether that which we call ecstasy be not dreaming with the eyes open, I leave to be examined.
a. These are some few instances of those various modes of Other thinking, which the mind may observe in itself, and so have ^inSig. as distinct ideas of as it hath of white and red^ a square or a circle. I do not pretend to enumerate them all, nor to treat at large of this set of ideas, which are got from reflection i that would be to make a volume. It suffices to my present purpose to have shown here, by some few examples, of what sort these ideas are, and how the mind comes by them ; espe- cially since I shall have occasion hereafter^ to treat more at large of reasonings jtidging^ volition ^ and knowkdge^ which are some of the most considerable operations of the mind, and modes of thinking.
3. But perhaps it may not be an unpardonable digression, The nor wholly impertinent to our present design, if we reflect degrees of here upon the different state of the mind in thinking, which Attention those instances of attention, reverie, and dreaming, &c., ing. before mentioned, naturally enough suggest. That there are ideas, some or other, always present in the mind of a waking man, every one's experience convinces him ; though the mind employs itself about them with several degrees of attention. Sometimes the mind fixes itself with so much earnestness on the contemplation of some objects, that it turns their ideas on
^ In Bk. IV., which, in treating of terms stand for. The idea of * volition,'
'knowledge,' 'judgment,' and their as a mode of the idea of powtr^ is
correlates, is by implication con- considered in ch. xxi. cemed with the idios which those
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BOOK II.
Chap. XIX.
Hence it is prob- able that Thinking is the Action, not the Essence of the SouL
300 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
all sides ; marks their relations and drcumstances ; and views every part so nicely and with such intention, that it shuts out all other thoughts, and takes no notice of the ordinary impressions made then on the senses, which at another season would produce very sensible perceptions: at other times it barely observes the train of ideas that succeed in the under- standing, without directing and pursuing any of them : and at other times it lets them pass almost quite unr^arded, as faint shadows that make no impression.
4. This difference of intention, and remission of the mind in thinking, with a great variety of d^^rees between earnest study and very near minding nothing at all, every one, I think, has experimented in himself. Trace it a little further, and you find the mind in sleep retired as it were from the senses, and out of the reach of those motions made on the organs of sense, which at other times produce very vivid and sensible ideas. I need not, for this, instance in those who sleep out whole stormy nights, without hearing the thunder, or seeing the lightning, or feeling the shaking of the house, which are sensible enough to those who are waking. But in this retirement of the mind from the senses, it often retains a yet more loose and incoherent manner of thinking, which we call dreaming. And, last of all, sound sleep closes the scene quite, and puts an end to all appearances. This, I think almost every one has experience of in himself, and his own observation without difficulty leads him thus far*. That which I would further conclude from hence is, that since the mind can sensibly put on, at several times, several degrees of
I
^ This implies complete unconscious- ness in sleep. That mental activity exists in different degrees of intensity, from deliberate attention down to semi-consciousness, and even latency, which cannot be disturbed, at least in this life, is obvious to reflection. Thus in memory an idea may exist so little out of consciousness, as that it can be recalled by a common act of reminiscence. In profounder latency, it may be impossible to recover it by
any ordinary act of voluntary recol- lection ; yet some unexpected associ- ation may make it flash into conscious- ness after a long oblivion. Or it may be obscured in a latency so much more profound than this, that it can be resuscitated only by some morbid affection of the oiiganism. Finally, it may be absolutely lost for the individual consciousness in this life, and destined for reminiscence only in a life to come.
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Modes of Simple Ideas of Thinking. 301
thinking, and be sometimes, even in a waking man, so remiss, book ii.
as to have thoughts dim and obscure to that degree that they ""*^
are very little removed from none at all ; and at last, in the ^^
dark retirements of sound sleep, loses the sight perfectly of
all ideas whatsoever: since, I say, this is evidently so in
matter of fact and constant experience, I ask whether it be
not probable, that thinking is the action and not the essence
of the soul ? Since the operations of agents will easily admit
of intention and remission : but the essences of things are
not conceived capable of any such variation ^. But this by
the by.
^ Cf. ch. i. W 10-19. 'Nous ne montr^ que npus avons A>M;bMrs une in-
sommes jamais sans perceptions^ mais il finite de petites perceptions sans nous
est n6cessaire que nous soyons souvent en apercevoir.* (Leibniz.) For Locke,
sans aperceptionsy savoir, lorsqu*il n'y a on the other hand, to be 'in the mind'
point de perceptions distingu^es. J'ai means, to be consciously apprehended.
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CHAPTER XX.
OF MODES OF PLEASURE AND PAIN.
BOOK II. I. Amongst the simple ideas which we receive both from ""^^^ sensation and reflection, pain and pleasure are two very HAP. . considerable ones ^. For as in the body there is sensation and Pain, barely in itself, or accompanied with pain or pleasure, so the sunpie thought or perception of the mind is simply so, or else ac- companied also with pleasure or pain, delight or trouble, call it how you please*. These, like other simple ideas, cannot be described, nor their names defined ; the way of knowing them is, as of the simple ideas of the senses, only by experi- ence. For, to define them by the presence of good or evil, is no otherwise to make them known to us than by making us reflect on what we feel in ourselves, upon the several and various operations of good and evil upon our minds, as they are differently applied to or considered by us.
* Cf. ch. vii. %% 1-6, for the origin â– That is, there are (a) absolutely
of the simple phenomena of pleasure indifferent sensations, and (6) sensa-
and pain. Pleasure and pain, as ap- tions that are accompanied with pain
pears in the sequel, play a supreme or pleasure; also objects of 'reflection*
part in Locke's ethical system, as that are (a) indifferent, and others
motives for conforming to moral rela- that are {b) pleasurable or painful,
tions that are themselves acknow- ' Je crois,' says Leibniz, in relation to
ledged by him to be immutable and this, ' qu'il n*y a point de perceptions
eternal. This appears in chh. xxi. and qui nous soient tout k fait indiff^rentes ;
xxviii. If men were destitute of all mais c*est assez que leur effet ne soil
capacity for pleasure and pain, human point notable, pour qu*on les puisse
life would be transformed ; its springs appeler ainsi.' Whether nerves of pom
of action dried up ; and our knowledge and of pleasure are distinguishable firom
of the universe, including even that of one another, and also from the nerves
our bodies and of our minds as our of sensation is a relative physiological
own, would be obscured. question still in debate.
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Modes of our Ideas of Pleasure and Pain. 303
a. Things then are good or evil, only in reference to book 11. pleasure or pain ^. That we call good^ which is apt to cause ""*^ or increase pleasure, or diminish pain in us ; or else to "^^* ^ '
*- ' Good and
procure or preserve us the possession of any other good or evil, what. absence of any evil. And, on the contrary, we name that evil which is apt to produce or increase any pain, or diminish • any pleasure in us: or else to procure us any evil, or deprive us of any good ^ By pleasure and pain, I must be understood to mean of body or mind, as they are commonly distinguished ; though in truth they be only different constitutions of the mind^ sometimes occasioned by disorder in the body, some- times by thoughts of the mind.
3. Pleasure and pain and that which causes them, — good Our and evil, are the hinges on which our passions turn. And if m^ed'by we reflect on ourselves, and observe how these, under various 2°.?*^ *"^
Evil.
considerations, operate in us ; what modifications or tempers of mind, what internal sensations (if I may so call them) they produce in us we may thence form to ourselves the ideas of our passions ^
4. Thus any one reflecting upon the thought he has of the Love, delight which any present or absent thing is apt to produce
in him, has the idea we call love^. For when a man declares
^ It is by pleasure and pain that we bonheur de I'objectaim^* — recognising
are helped to distinguish our indi- the disinterestedness oflove more than
vidual conscious states OS ottrosctff, and Locke does, and limiting the applica-
especially to distinguish our own bodies tion of the term to persons. It is not
from the extra-organic world— called properly love, he says, when we say
' external,' because visibly outside the that we love a beautiful picture, small aggregates of matter which men ^ Compared with Aristotle, in his
call their own bodies. Rhetoric^ or even with Hobbes, in his
* ' Every man calleth that which Human Naturt, Locke's account of the pleaseth and is delightful to himself, Passions, in what follows, is desultory good\ and that tuU which displeaseth and superficial But it is not intended him : insomuch that, as every man dif- as an adequate analysis, — only as illus- fereth from every other in constitution, tration of the dependence of our com- they difier also concerning the dis- pUx idtas of rtJUdion on phenomena tinction of good and evil.' (Hobbes, presented in internal sense. For it Human Nature, ch. vii. $ 3.) is only through reflection that we
* On which Leibniz remarks ' qu'oi- obtain ideas of our ' passions,' and nter est 6tre portd k prendre da are able to put meaning into the plaisir dans la perfection, bien, ou words that represent them* He takes
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304 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. in autumn when he is eating them, or in spring when there
Chap. XX. ^^^ none, that he loves grapes, it is no more but that the taste of grapes delights him : let an alteration of health or constitution destroy the delight of their taste, and he then can be said to love grapes no longer.
Hatred. 5. On the contrary, the thought of the pain which anything
present or absent is apt to produce in us, is what we call hatred. Were it my business here to inquire any further than into the bare ideas of our passions, as they depend on different modifications of pleasure and pain, I should remark, that our love and hatred of inanimate insensible beings is commonly founded on that pleasure and pain which we receive from their use and application any way to our senses, though with their destruction. But hatred or love, to beings capable of happiness or misery, is often the uneasiness or delight which we find in ourselves, arising from [^ a consider- ation of] their very being or happiness. Thus the being and welfare of a man's children or friends, producing constant delight in him, he is said constantly to love them. But it suffices to note, that our ideas of love and hatred are but the dispositions of the mind, in respect of pleasure and pain in general, however caused in us.
Desire. 6. The uneasiness a man finds in himself upon the absence
of anything whose present enjoyment carries the idea of delight with it, is that we call desire \ which is greater or less, as that uneasiness is more or less vehement. [^ Where, by the by, it may perhaps be of some use to remark, that the chief, if not only spur to human industry and action is un- easiness ^. For whatsoever good is proposed, if its absence
no account of the organic conditions cepHon without apperuptUm to desires
of their manifestation, of which recent which operate without conscious un-
psychology makes much. These are easiness — 'petites douleurs inaper-
irrelevant to Locke's purpose here. ceptibles, afin que nous jouissious de
^ Added in the fourth edition. tavantage du mal, sans gn recwoir
' Added in the second edition. VincommocUte* Such are confused
* ' Cette consideration de Vinquii' impulses, in which we have no idea
tude, says Leibniz, < est un point capital of what we need, but which act like
ou cet auteur montre particuli&rement springs when they txy to unbend,
son esprit penetrant et profond.' He making us machines.
proceeds to apply his principle oi per^
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Modes of our Ideas of Pleasure and Pain. 305
carries lio displeasure or pain with it, if a man be easy and book ii. content without it, there is no desire of it, nor endeavour after '"**T[^x it ; there is no more but a bare velleity^, the term used to sigfnify the lowest degree of desire, and that which is next to none at all^ when there is so little uneasiness in the absence of anything, that it carries a man no further than some faint wishes for it, without any more effectual or vigorous use of the means to attain it. Desire also is stopped or abated by the opinion of the impossibility or unattainableness of the good proposed, as far as the uneasiness is cured or allayed by that consideratioa This might carry our thoughts further, were it seasonable in this place.]
7. Joy is a delight of the mind, from the consideration of Joy. the present or assured approaching possession of a good ; and we are then possessed of any good, when we have it so in our power that we can use it when we please. Thus a man almost starved has joy at the arrival of relief, even before he has the pleasure of using it : and a father, in whom the very well-being of his children causes delight, is always, as long as his children are in such a state, in the possession of that good ; for he needs but to reflect on it, to have that pleasure.
8. Sorrow is uneasiness in the mind, upon the thought of Sorrow. a good lost, which might have been enjoyed longer ; or the sense of a present evil.
9. Hope is that pleasure in the mind, which every one finds Hope, in himself upon the thought of a probable future enjoyment
of a thing which is apt to delight him ^.
10. Fear is an uneasiness of the mind, upon the thought of Fear, future evil likely^ to befal us.
11. Despair \s the thought of the unattainableness of any Despair.
^ * Vetteitas est quoddam languida ' Hope and fear, accordingly, as
remissa et ignava voluntas, aut impo- Hume says, * are mixed passions, being
tentiam arguit perficiendi quod cupere- derived from the probabUiiy of any
mus.' (Chauvini Lexicon.) But see good or evil— probability arising from
its meaning according to Hobbes. an opposition of contrary chances or
{Human Nature, ch. ix. ( i.) causes, by which the mind is not al-
' ' Hope,* says Hobbes, ' is ezpecta- lowed to fix on either side, but is
tion of good to come, as fear is the ex- incessantly tossed from one to another.'
pectation of evil.' {Ct Arist. Rhet, i. 1 1. ) {Dissertation on the Passions,)
VOL. I. X
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3o6 Essay concerning Human Understanding-.
BOOK 11. good, which works differently in mens minds, sometimes
â– ~**^ producing uneasiness or pain, sometimes rest and indolency. Anger. ^^- Anger is uneasiness or discomposure of the mind, upon
the receipt of any injury, with a present purpose of revenge. Envy. 13. Envy is an uneasiness of the mind, caused by the con-
sideration of a good we desire obtained by one we think should not have had it before us. What 14. These two last, envy and anger, not being caused by
allien* pain and pleasure simply in themselves, but having in them have. some mixed considerations of ourselves and others, are not therefore to be found in all men, because those other parts, of valuing their merits, or intending revenge, is wanting^ in them. But all the rest, terminating purely in pain and pleasure, are, I think, to be found in all men. For we love, desire, rejoice, and hope, only in respect of pleasure ; we hate, fear, and grieve, only in respect of pain ultimately. In fine, all these passions are moved by things, only as they appear to be the causes of pleasure and pain, or to have pleasure or pain some way or other annexed to them*. Thus we extend our hatred usually to the subject (at least, if a sensible or voluntary agent) which has produced pain in us; because the fear it leaves is a constant pain : but we do not so constantly love what has done us good; because pleasure operates not so strongly on us as pain, and because we are not so ready to have hope it will do so ag^in. But this by the by. Pleasure 1 5. By pleasure and pain, delight and uneasiness, I must all w£it ""* along be understood (as I have above intimated) to mean not only bodily pain and pleasure, but whatsoever delight or uneasiness is felt by us, whether arising from any grateful or unacceptable sensation or reflection. Removal 16. It is further to be considered, that, in reference to the \l%^^' passions, the removal or lessening of a pain is considered, and
either.
* Undeveloped in the individual, sufiemaiural In the former, man is
rather than absolutely 'wanting.' subject to, and a part of the mechan-
' Our original capacities for different ism of nature ; in the latter he manifests
kinds of uneasiness and ease, are the htmsel/f as a first cause, in the exercise
ira/Mni/ explanation of our various a/^ of a free, and therefore responsible,
Hits and destrts, as these are distin- personality.
guished from will, self-originated or
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Modes of our Ideas of Pleasure and Pain. 307
operates, as a pleasure: and the loss or diminishing of a book 11. pleasure, as a pain. "^^
17. The passions too have most of them, in most persons, ^^' operations on the body, and cause various changes in it; which not being always sensible, do not make a necessary part of the idea of each passion. For shante^ which is an uneasiness of the mind upon the thought of having done something which is indecent, or will lessen the valued esteem which others have for us, has not always blushing accompany- ing it.
18. I would not be mistaken here, as if I meant this as These
a Discourse of the Passions ; they are many more than those t^^^^ I have here named : and those I have taken notice of would how our each of them require a much larger and more accurate dis- of the course. I have only mentioned these here, as so many P«s«on« instances of modes of pleasure and pain resulting in our minds from Sen* from various considerations of good and eviL I might perhaps Reflection, have instanced in other modes of pleasure and pain, more simple than these ; as the pain of hunger and thirst, and the pleasure of eating and drinking to remove them : the pain of teeth set on edge ; the pleasure of music ; pain from captious uninstructive wrangling, and the pleasure of rational conver- sation with a friend, or of well-directed study in the search and discovery of truth. But the passions being of much more concernment to us, I rather made choice to instance in them, and show how the ideas we have of them are derived from sensation or reflection.
X 7,
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CHAPTER XXI.
OF POWER.
Chap. XXI
This Idea how got.
BOOK II, I. The mind being every day informed, by the senses, of the alteration of those simple ideas it observes in things without ; and taking notice how one comes to an end, and ceases to be, and another begins to exist which was not before; reflecting also on what passes within itself> and observing a constant change of its ideas, sometimes by the impression of outward objects on the senses^ and sometimes by the determination of its own choice ; and concluding from what it has so constantly observed to have been, that the like changes will for the future be made in the same things, by like agents, and by the like ways, — considers in one thing the possibility of having any of its simple ideas changed, and in another the possibility of making that change ; and so comes by that idea which we call power^. Thus we say, Fire has a
^ Inch.Tii. $8theideaof'power' is said to be one of the < simple ideas/ received both from sensation and re- flection, being presented to us in every change we observe, obtrusively in the movements we make in our own bodies, and in the movements of bodies among themselves. Here, reasoning as well as sense seems to be called in to account for the idea. He speaks of concluding/ and implies that in the idea of power we are carried beyond what is immediately present to the senses or reflection. A similar account is given in the description of the rise of the idea of cause and efiect (ch. xxvi. ( i), awk-
wardly separated in the JSssoy from the idea of power. Now, as Hume remarks, 'no reasoning can ever give us a new simple idea.' (/m- qU^y sect vi., note ; also TrwaMai, pt. iii. sect, ii.) Probably what Locke, in his own too inexact fashion, means to say is, that on observing any change, something in the human mind, and in the very constitution of reason itself, forbids the observer to n^ard the change as isolaUd absoluUfy ; and obliges him to go in quest of an agent. It is in short a simple or inexplicable fact, that the mind is dissatisfied with change, as sttchf and it is forced to recognise the obscure idea of power
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Idea of Power.
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FKDwer to melt gold, i.e. to destroy the consistency of its book 11. insensible parts, and consequently its hardness, and make it -♦*- fluid ; and gold has a power to be melted ; that the sun has Chap.XXi. a power to blanch wax, and wax a power to be blanched by the sun, whereby the yellowness is destroyed, and whiteness made to exist in its room. In which, and the like cases, the power we consider is in reference to the change of perceivable ideas. For we cannot observe any alteration to be made in, or operation upon anything, but by the observable change of its sensible ideas ; nor conceive any alteration to be made, but by conceiving a change of some of its ideas ^.
2. Power thus considered is two-fold, viz. as able to make, Power, or able to receive any change. The one may be called active^ SSSve"^ and the other passive power*. Whether matter be not wholly destitute of active power *, as its author, God, is truly above all passive power; and whether the intermediate state of
in the change. What it b that is thus recognised, and in what ' modes ' this 'simple idea' arises, the present chapter professes to consider. Why the ideas of * power * and * cause ' are treated in separate chapters, is not made clear. Perhaps it is on the principle that the idea of cause is con- ceived to presuppose the complex idea of substance (ch. xxii. ( 11), the analy- sis of which is interposed (ch. xziii), and so causality is regarded as an idea of relation between substances, while power is conceived as a simple idea occasioned by change.
^ Observed change evokes the idea of power, but the idea thus evoked, not being an observed, nor an observable object, is hence dismissed by Hume as an illusion.
' This is the Aristotelian distinction of 5vra/i4S rev voicTy and Hwaiut roO w6ffx**^f according to which substances may be either efficacious in producing change, or susceptible of change. The one is the S^/uf Irc^Yi/rurt}, and the other the S^vo^r nafiffrueii of the Peri- patetics.
* The inactivity of matter and the
things of the natural world ; the eter- nal activity of Divine Reason ; and the intermediate position of man, as a passive sentient organism and also a moral agent, who participates at once in the system of nature and in the active supernatural system, to which the sequences and coexistences of nature are subordinated — is a con- ception of the universe that is not wholly inconsistent with Locke's prin- ciples. It is only the derived and passive power implied in physical law that he presupposes, when he explains the secondary qualities and powers of bodies by the primary, or the de- pendence of perceptions of sense on their organs. For his view of the bases of our ideas and knowledge of our- selves, of God, and of things external, regarded as substances and as powers — the central problem of metaphysical philosophy, cf. Bk. II. ch. xiii. \ iS, chh. xxiii, xxvii. ( a ; Bk. IV. chh. ix, x, xi. Aristotle distinguishes the unintelli- gent power of matter from the power of intelligence — rwr 9vrd/i<«>"' ^ 1"^ iircrrm ^0701, al 8c /itrdL k&yov, Mitaph, Bk.viii.
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Chap. XXI.
310 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. created spirits be not that alone which is capable of both active and passive power, may be worth consideration. I shall not now enter into that inquiry^, my present business being not to search into the original of power, but how we come by the idea of it*. But since active powers make so great a part of our complex ideas of natural substances, (as we shall see hereafter^,) and I mention them as such, according to common apprehension; yet they being not, perhaps, so truly active powers as our hasty thoughts are apt to represent them, I judge it not amiss, by this intimation, to direct our minds to the consideration of God and spirits, for the clearest idea of active power*.
3. I confess power includes in it some kind of relation, (a relation to action or change,) as indeed which of our ideas, of what kind soever, when attentively considered, does not ? For, our ideas of extension, duration, and number, do they not all contain in them a secret relation of the parts ? Figure and motion have something relative in them much more visibly. And sensible qualities*, as colours and smells, &c., what are they but the powers of different bodies, in relation
I
Power
includes
Relation.
^ As Berkeley soon after did, who could see active power only in spirits, created and divine; in the sensible world only a divinely maintained order and uniformity of phenomena, com* monly called the uniformity of nature.
' His inquiry is neither ontological nor cosmological, but psychological and epistemological. One could wish that he had inquired more into the nature of the idea, as well as ' how we come by it.' Is it an idea of changes that appear in things and persons, or of something in the mind's manner of regarding changes? Can we go further than succession of phenomena in our idea of power, and yet preserve meaning in what we say ? If he de* fines power by sajring it is something < productive ' of something, what does this imply) In saying this, Hume tells us, he can mean nothing. ' For what does he mean by produ€Hon\
Can he give any definition of it that will not be the same with that of causation [power] I If he can ; I desire it may be produced. If he cannot ; he here runs in a circle, and gives a synonymous term, instead of a defini- tion.' (TrwA^, Bk. I. pt. iii sect a.)
* Bk. II. ch. zxiiL §§ 7-1 1 ; also ch. viii. %\ 93-96.
* Pawtr and sub^tmce he regards as correlative ideas — powers presup- posing substance, whose powers they are. The ideas of God and of intelli- gent agents imply the idea of mdim power. Religion is the state of mind that is due to faith in power that determines the destiny of man, and the universe, in accordance with a complete idea of the good that is of necessity imperfectly apprehended by a human mind.
* ' sensible qualities,* i. e. the secon- daiy or imputed qualities of matter.
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Idea of Power. 311
to our perception, &c.? And, if considered in the things BOOKir. themselves, do they not depend on the bulk, figure, texture, -*^- and motion of the parts ^? All which include some kind of^"^^-^^^* relation in them. Our idea therefore of power, I think, may well have a place amongst other simple ideas^y and be con- sidered as one of them ; being one of those that make a principal ingredient in our complex ideas of substances, as we shall hereafter have occasion to observe \
4. [*We are abundantly furnished with the idea oi passive The power by almost all sorts of sensible things. In most of J^^*^* them we cannot avoid observing their sensible qualities, nay, active their very substances^, to be in a continual flux.] And therefore hadfrom with reason we look on them as liable still to the same Spirit. change. Nor have we of active power (which is the more proper signification of the word power*) fewer instances. Since whatever change is observed, the mind must collect a power somewhere able to make that change'', as well as a possibility in the thing itself to receive it. But yet^ if we will consider it attentively, bodies, by our senses, do not aflford us so clear and distinct an idea of active power, as we have from reflection on the operations of our minds ^. For all power relating to action, and there being but two sorts of
' Ch. viii. (( 10, IS, 14. primary or real qualities ; it being
' Yet the preceding sentences rather only in and through the appearances
imply that the idea of power is an which they make of themselves that
idea of relation, and not a simple idea. we can have positive ideas of particular
Locke calls it simpU, because * power,' substances.
while involving the idea of relation to * Cf. Hobbes on ' active power.'
its effects, is in itself incapable of {First Grounds of PhUosopky, Pt. II.
being defined. While the word is not ch. x.)
meaningless, its meaning cannot be ^ This rucessity to 'collect' implies conveyed by words to those not pre- that sonuthingin tkgmmd obliges us to pared by the experience in which it is form the idea (notion) of power, when- involved, ever * change is observed ' ; so that the ' Ch. xxiii. ( 8. idea is an intellectual suggestion, not
* The first three editions here read a mere visible or tangible phenomenon. thus : — ' Of passive power all sensible * The feeling of exertion in our men- things abundantly furnish us with sen- tal operations is in itself only a psychical sible ideas; whose sensible qualities and phenomenon, preceding other pheno- beings we find to be in a continual flux.' mena, and cannot give what is added
* ' their very substances,' L e. their to mere phenomenal succession, in the substances as manifested in their idea of power.
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312 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. XXI.
BOOK 11. action whereof we have an idea, viz. thinking and motion, let us consider whence we have the clearest ideas of the ' powers which produce these actions, (i) Of thinking, body affords us no idea at all ; it is only from reflection that we have that. {%) Neither have we from body any idea of the beginning of motion ^. A body at rest affords us no idea of any active power to move; and when it is set in motion itself, that motion is rather a passion than an action in it. For, when the ball obeys the motion of a billiard-stick, it is not any action of the ball, but bare passion. Also when by impulse it sets another ball in motion that lay in its way^ it only communicates the motion it had received from another, and loses in itself so much as the other received : which g^'ves us but a very obscure idea of an active power of moving in body, whilst we observe it only to transfer^ but not produce any motion. For it is but a very obscure idea of power which reaches not the production of the action, but the continuation of the passion*. For so is motion in a body impelled by another ; the continuation of the alteration ntade in it from rest to motion being little more an action, than the continuation of the alteration of its figure by the same blow is an action.
^ To refund imaginable physical phenomena into preceding imaginable physical phenomena is not to explain them, if explanation means referring change to unimaginable active power, on which the transformation somehow depends. It gives the physical occa- sion, but not the efficient and ultimate cause of the change. It is inadequate, rather than absolutely erroneous; if power or causality, in the full meaning of the word, is more than what is con- tinuously imaginable— change of phe- nomena into equivalent phenomena. But by what right is conservation of energy, or any other physical law, assumed to be ultimate and supreme, instead of harmoniously subordinate to higher laws of spiritual agency and moral order ?
â– Yet this * very obscure idea ' is all that enters into the mechanical caus-
ality of physical science, which is satis- fied with refunding motion continuously into preceding motion, of which it is the imaginable transformation — ^subject to the natural law of conservation, which forbids absolute loss of motion. Physical science traces body in one form into body in another fbrm, out of which it has issued. But this, as Locke sees, is not 'production'; it is only 'transference' — * continuation of the passion,* of which the body is the passive subject— the effect being con- nected with its so-called physical cause, by a quantitative relation, in which motion received is iquwaUtti to motion lost. A physical effect is thus its merely physical cause in a new form — in an imaginable sequence, or metamorphosis, but emptied of origin- ative power.
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Idea of Power. 3 1 3
The idea of the beginning of motion we have only from bookh. reflection on what passes in ourselves; where we find by ""**" experience, that, barely by willing it, barely by a thought of the mind, we can move the parts of our bodies, which were before at rest. So that it seems to me, we have, from the observation of the operation of bodies by our senses, but a very imperfect obscure idea of active power ; since they afford us not any idea in themselves of the power to begin any action, either motion or thought. But if, from the impulse bodies are observed to make one upon another, any one thinks he has a clear idea of power, it serves as well to my purpose^ ; sensation being one of those ways whereby the mind comes by its ideas : only I thought it worth while to consider here, by the way, whether the mind doth not receive its idea of active power clearer from reflection on its own operations, than it doth from any external sensation^.
5. This, at least, I think evident, — That we find in ourselves Will and a power to begin or forbear, continue or end several [^ actions] ^j^^^g of our minds, and motions of our bodies, barely by [* a thought] two or preference of the mind [* ordering, or as it were commanding, M^nd^or "* the doing or not doing such or such a particular action.] This Spirit. power which the mind has [** thus to order] the consideration of any idea, or the forbearing to consider it ; or to prefer the motion of any part of the body to its rest, [7 and vice versd, in any particular instance,] is that which we call the Will. The actual [* exercise of that power, by directing any particular action, or its forbearance,] is that which we call volition or
^ That * purpose * being to show that change in bodies ?
elaborative activity, per se, cannot be * ' thoughts,' in first edition,
productive of real discoveries, indepen- * 'the choice/ in first edition,
dently of data of experience, supplied * Added in second edition,
in ideas of the senses, and of our mental ' 'thus to order': 'to prefer,' in
operations. first edition.
' Are we not led, by the analogy of ^ Added in second edition,
the * operations ' to which we attribute • ' preferring one to another/ in first
personal responsibility, to refer all edition. A man may be free to will,
motion in the universe ultimately to even when he is not free in the sense
Divine Reason, — continuity of motion of being able, by willing, to regulate
and the ' conservation of energy' being the course of his ideas, or motions of
methods according to which the im- his body, and motions in extra-organic
manent Reason determines motion or bodies, which he seeks to cause.
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Chap. XXI.
314 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. willing, p The forbearance of that action, consequent to such order or command of the mind, is called voluntary. And whatsoever action is performed without such a thought of the mind, is called involuntary^ The power of perception is that which we call the Understatiding. Perception, which we make the act of the understanding, is of three sorts : — i. The per- ception of ideas in our minds, a. The perception of the signification of signs. 3. The perception of the [^ connexion or repugnancy,] agreement, or disagreement, pthat there is between any of our] ideas. All these are attributed to the understanding, or perceptive power, though it be [*the two latter only that use allows us to say we understand ^.] Faculties, 6. These powers of the mind, viz. of perceiving, and of bdn*^^*^ preferring, are usually called by another name. And the ordinary way of speaking is, that the understanding and will are two faculties of the mind ; a word proper enough, if it' be used, as all words should be, so as not to breed any confusion in men's thoughts^ by being supposed (as I suspect it has been) to stand for some real beings in the soul that performed those actions of understanding and volition. For when we say the will is the commanding and superior faculty of the soul ; that it is or is not free ; that it determines the inferior faculties ; that it follows the dictates of the understanding, &c., — ^though these and the like expressions, by those that carefully attend to their own ideas, and conduct their thoughts more by the evidence of things than the sound of words, may be under- stood in a clear and distinct sense — yet I suspect, I say, that this way of speaking oi faculties has misled many into a con-
^ Added in second edition. ceptibilities of pleasure and pain, which
' Added in second edition. play an important part in relation to
* * of any distinct/ in first edition. the determinations of the will in this
* * to the two latter that, in strict- chapter. * Perception,' he here ex- ness of speech, the act of under^ plains, signifies in the Essay, either (a) standing is usually applied/ in first 'simple idea'; (fi) comprehension of edition. the meanings of words ; (c) discern-
* Here, and in ch. vi. $ a, Locke ment of the relations which make presents the operations of 'under- knowledge or certainty. It appeara standing,' 'thinking/ or ' perception,' in the firstof these meanings chiefly in and those of ' will/ as ' the two great the second, and in the third meaning in and principal actions of the mind.' In the fourth Book.
ch. XX. he distinguishes also the sus-
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Idea of Power.
315
Chap. XXI.
fused notion of so many distinct agents in us^, which had book 11. their several provinces and authorities, and did command, obey, and perform several actions, as so many distinct * beings ; which has been no small occasion of wrangling, obscurity, and uncertainty, in questions relating to them.
7. Every one, I think, finds in himself a power to b^in or Whence forbear, continue or put an end to several actions in himself of*Liberty [* From the consideration of the extent of this power of the and Ne- mind over the actions * of the man, which everyone finds in ^^^^ ^' himself, arise the ideas of liberty and necessity, \
8. All the actions that we have any idea of reducing them- Liberty, selves, as has been said, to these two, viz. thinking, and ^^'*' motion ^ ; so far as a man has power to think or not to think,
to move or not to move, according to the preference or direc- tion of his own mind, so far is a man free^. Wherever any performance or forbearance are not equally in a man's power ; wherever doing or not doing will not equally follow upon the preference of his mind directing it, there he is not free, though
^ Instead of meaning by ' faculties/ as Locke does, tht human agtnis, re< garded as manifesting passive and active powers, in states of intelligence of different degrees, and exertions of will, under various motives, Locke characteristically wants to keep con- crete meaning in * mind/ its ' powers,' 'faculties/ 'capacities,' and cognate words. In a more exact usage, * faculty* is applied to the self- originated energies, and * capacity * to the passive susceptibilities of self-con* scious life, confused together by Locke as ' operations.'
' The first edition has it thus : — ' The power the mind has at any time to prefer any particular one of these actions to its forbearance, or via versa, is that faculty which, as I have said, we call the IVHl; the actual exercise of that power we call vohtion; and the forbearance or performance of that
action, consequent to such a prefer- ence of the mind, is called voluntafy. Hence we have the ideas of liberiy and necessity, which arise from the con- sideration of the extent of this power of the mind over the actions, not only of the mind, but the whole agent, the whole man.'
' The production of motion is the immediate palpable effect of willing. But the mechanism of visible move- mencs, and the idea of ' power' got from this, must not be confounded with what is implied in that primary causality of will for which alone we are accountable.
* But the 'freedom* of a moral agent refers to the hyper-physical origin of the * preference or direction ' — the voluntary determination itself — for which alone, and not for its con- sequences, the agent is accountable, as properly his own.
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31 6 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. XXI.
BOOK II. perhaps the action may be voluntary ^ So that the idea of liberty is, the idea of a power in any agent to do or forbear any particular action, according to the determination or thought of the mind, whereby either of them is preferred to the other : where either of them is not in the power of the agent to be produced by him according to his volition, there he is not at liberty ; that agent is under necessity. So that liberty cannot be where there is no thought, no volition, no will ; but there may be thought, there may be will, there may be volition, where there is no liberty*. A little consideration of an obvious instance or two may make this clear.
9. A tennis-ball, whether in motion by the stroke of a racket, or lying still at rest, is not by any one taken to be a free agent. If we inquire into the reason, we shall find it is because we conceive not a tennis-ball to think, and conse- quently not to have any volition, or preference of motion to rest, or vice versd ; and therefore has not liberty, is not a free agent ; but all its both motion and rest come under our idea
Supposes Under- standing and Will.
* He may ineffectually will to do it, erroneously supposing that the ex- pected consequence will follow, and he is still accountable for the ineffectual voluntary determination ; but not for the fiulure, which depends upon natural law.
" The idea of ' power/ as suggested by voluntary activity, is the subject of the remaining sections of this chapter, with which Locke himself was still dis- satisfied, even after the many changes which they underwent in successive editions. This appears in his corre- spondence with Molyneux. The diffi- culty of reconciling free power to will, in a finite agent, with the supremacy of Divine power and perfection of Divine knowledge, was obvious to him : — ' If you will argue,* he writes to Molyneux (Jan. ao, 1693), *for or against liberty from consequences, I will not undertake to answer you ; for I own freely to you the weakness of my understanding — that though it be unquestionable that there is omni-
potence and omniscience in God our Maker, yet I cannot make freedom in man consistent with omnipotence or omniscience in God ; — though I am as fully persuaded of hoik as of any truths I most freely assent to. And therefore I have long left off the consideration 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 \C (Letter to Moljmeux, Jan. ao, 1693.) The reasoning in this chapter presup- poses that volitions follow motives in a natural sequence, not recognising that their supernatural character of a volition is implied in the account- ability of the agent The ultimate re- lation of the mechanism of nature itself, by which they are thus supposed to be determined, to the ' omnipotence and omniscience of God* is not contem- plated ; nor is the answer to the ques- tion raised about the will seen to be tfaetuming pointbetween philosophical materialism and a spiritual philosophy.
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Idea of Power. 317
of necessary, and are so called. Likewise a man falling into book ii. the water, (a bridge breaking under him,) has not herein "^^ liberty, is not a free agent. For though he has volition, though he prefers his not falling to falling; yet the forbear- ance of that motion not being in his power, the stop or cessation of that motion follows not ^ upon his volition ; and therefore therein he is not free. So a man striking himself, or his friend, by a convulsive motion of his arm, which it is not in his power, by volition or the direction of his mind, to stop or forbear, nobody thinks he has in this liberty ; every one pities him, as acting by necessity and constraint ^
10. Again : suppose a man be carried, whilst fast asleep, Belongs into a room where is a person he longs to see and speak with ; voHtton and be there locked fast in, beyond his power to get out : he awakes, and is glad to find himself in so desirable company, which he stays willingly in, i. e. prefers his stay to going away. I ask, is not this stay voluntary ? I think nobody will doubt it : and yet, being locked fast in, it is evident he is not at liberty not to stay, he has not freedom to be gone. So that liberty is not an idea belonging to volition, or preferring ; but to the person having the power of doing, or forbearing to do, according as the mind shall choose or direct '. Our idea of liberty reaches as far as that power, and no farther *. For wherever restraint comes to check that power, or compulsion takes away that indifferency of ability to act, or to for-
' Here again it is to what fottows demandons qu'elles soient non seule-
voUHoHf not to the origin of the voli- nient5^»/emAi9,mais encore i&/f)Mnn».*
tion, that Locke looks. Are acts of will, (Leibniz.)
for which the subject is responsible, ' But how does this * choice of the
free from natural necessity to will mind ' originate ? — in the mechanism of
them ? nature ; or in something above nature
' Because hi is not the moral agent (in its ordinary meaning), in the in an act for which he is not respon- agents himself, in virtue of which he sible, as it has not ultimately originated rises into a moral person ? in him, but must be referred to the ^ Since ' liberty ' of willing is the mechanism of nature ; whether or not measure of man's responsibility, it is that mechanism is ultimately deter- surely important to him, as an account- mined by supreme Reason and Pur- able agent, to know ic^Aa/ actions are, in pose that is immanent in nature. this regard, his own actions, for which * Aristotle a d^jii bien remarqu6 que, he deserves praise or blame ; and why pour appeler les actions libres, nous they have this character.
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3i8 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. bear acting, there liberty, and our notion of it, presently
•~^^ ceases. ^^' II. We have instances enough, and often more than enoueh,
Voluiitaiy
opposed to in our own bodies. A man's heart beats, and the blood circu* ta^°*notto ^^*^^> which it is not in his power by any thought or volition necessary, to stop ; and therefore in respect of these motions, where rest depends not on his choice, nor would follow the determination of his mind, if it should prefer it, he is not a free agent Con- vulsive motions agitate his legs, so that though he wills it ever so much, he cannot by any power of his mind stop their motion, (as in that odd disease called chorea sancti tnti), but he is per- petually dancing ; he is not at liberty in this action, but under as much necessity of moving, as a stone that falls, or a tennis- ball struck with a racket. On the other side, a palsy or the stocks hinder his legs from obeying the determination of his mind, if it would thereby transfer his body to another place. In all these there is want of freedom ; though the sitting still, even of a paralytic, whilst he prefers it to a removal, is truly voluntary. Voluntary, then, is not opposed to necessary, but to involuntary. For a man may prefer what he can do, to what he cannot do ; the state he is in, to its absence or change ; though necessity has made it in itself unalterable ^. Liberty, 12. As it is in the motions of the body, so it is in the thoughts of our minds : where any one is such, that we have power to take it up, or lay it by, according to the preference of the mind, there we are at liberty '*. A waking man, being under the necessity of having some ideas constantly in his mind, is not at liberty to think or not to think ; no more than he is at liberty, whether his body shall touch any other or no: but whether he will remove his contemplation from one idea to another is many times in his choice ; and then he is, in respect of his ideas, as much at liberty as he is in respect of
* Here again it is in the efficacy or dent volition ; but he is nevertheless
the impotence of the voluntary act, not responsible for the volition itself,
in the origin of the act itself, that 'Ceux qui opposent la libtrig k la
Locke finds his idea of power. necessUe entendent parler, non pas
' He is not morally responsible for des actions exterieures, mais de Tacte
' motions * and * thoughts ' that are mftme de vouloir.' (Leibniz, Nouvtatuf
not causally connected with his antece- Essais,)
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Idea of Power. 319
bodies he rests on ; he can at pleasure remove himself from one book ii. to another. But yet some ideas to the mind, like some motions ""^^ to the body, are such as in certain circumstances it cannot avoid, nor obtain their absence by the utmost effort it can use. A man on the rack is not at liberty to lay by the idea of pain, and divert himself with other contemplations : and sometimes a boisterous passion hurries our thoughts, as a hurricane does our bodies, without leaving us the liberty of thinking on other things, which we would rather choose ^. But as soon as the mind regains the power to stop or continue, begin or forbear, any of these motions of the body without, or thoughts within, according as it thinks fit to prefer either to the other, we then consider the man as ^free agent again.
13. Wherever thought is wholly wanting, or the power to Necessity, act or forbear according to the direction of thought, there ^*"** necessity takes place. This, in an agent capable of volition,
when the beginning or continuation of any action is contrary to that preference of his mind, is called compulsion ; when the hindering or stopping any action is contrary to his volition, it is called restraint. Agents that have no thought, no volition at all, are in everything necessary agents ^.
14. If this be so, (as I imagine it is,) I leave it to be con- Liberty sidered, whether it may not help to put an end to that long ^t^JJf the agitated, and, I think, unreasonable, because unintelligible Will. question, viz. Whether marCs will be free or no? For if I mistake not, it follows from what I have said, that the question itself is altogether improper ; and it is as insigni- ficant to ask whether man's will be free, as to ask whether his
sleep be swift, or his virtue square: liberty being as little applicable to the will, as swiftness of motion is to sleep, or squareness to virtue. Every one would laugh at the absurdity
^ His responsibility, and the implied case be followed by the motions or
personal freedom, must be tested by thoughts which he intended, would
the man's power to prevent the pain still be responsible for ikt volitions
and passion — to will their absence, tkematlves ; but not for physically im-
being self-originated, and not deter- possible consequences, these being
mined for him as a physical sequence. in that case determined according to
' An agent whose volitions could, the mechanism of nature, not by his
according to the laws of nature, in no own power.
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320 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
300K II. of such a question as either of these : because it is obvious that
— **^ the modifications of motion belong not to sleep, nor the dif-
Chap.XXI. fgfgjj^g Qf figure to virtue ; and when any one well considers
it, I think he will as plainly perceive that liberty, which is but
a power, belongs only to agents^ and cannot be an attribute or
modification of the will, which is also but a power.
Volition. 15. [^Such is the difficulty of explaining and giving clear notions of internal actions by sounds, that I must here warn my reader, that ordering^ directing^ choosing^ preferring^ &c., which I have made use of, will not distinctly enough express volition, unless he will reflect on what he himself does when he wills. For example, preferring, which seems perhaps best to express the act of volition, does it not precisely. For though a man would prefer flying to walking, yet who can say he ever wills it? Volition, it is plain, is an act of the mind knowingly exerting^ that dominion it takes itself to have over any part of the man, by employing it in, or withholding it from, any particular action.] And what is the will, but the faculty to do this? And is that faculty anything more in effect than a power; the power of [*the mind to determine its thought, to the producing, continuing, or stopping any action ^, as far as it depends on us ?] For can it be denied that whatever agent has a power to think on its own actions, and to prefer their doing or omission either to other, has that faculty called will ? Will^ then, is nothing but such a power. Liberty^ on the other side, is the power a man has to do or forbear doing any particular action ^ according as its doing or forbearance has the actual preference in the mind ; which is the same thing as to say, according as he himself wills it
Powers. 16. It is plain then that the will is nothing but one power
^ In first edition : — * Volition, 'tis plain, is nothing but the odWo/ choosing or preferring forbearance to the doing, or doing to the forbearance, of any particular action in our power that we think on.*
• 'exerting* — freedom lies essen- tially in the power to originate exer- tion, not in the necessary intellectual conditions, nor in the natural effects of the exertion.
• In first edition : — ' preferring any action to its forbearance, or vut versa, as far as it appears to depend on us.'
* 'action,' i. e. event intended to follow the volition, as distinguished from the volition itsclC But are voli- tions themselves acts done in and for us, under natural law, or are they done by us so that we are accountable for them ?
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Idea of Power. 321
or ability, and freedom another power or ability ^ so that, to book ii. ask, whether the will has freedom, is to ask whether one — ►^ power has another power, one ability another ability ; a ^*^**" ^^^' question at first sight too grossly absurd to make a dispute, to A^nte. or need an answer. For, who is it that sees not that powers belong only to agents, and are attributes only of substances, and not of powers themselves ? So that this way of putting the question (viz. whether the will be free) is in effect to ask, whether the will be a substance, an agent, or at least to suppose it, since freedom can properly be attributed to nothing else. If freedom can with any propriety of speech be applied to power, it may be attributed to the power that is i^n a man to produce, or forbear producing, motion in parts of his body, by choice or preference ; which is that which denominates him free, and is freedom itself*. But if any one should ask, whether freedom were free, he would be suspected not to understand well what he said ; and he would be thought to deserve Midas's ears ^ who, knowing that rich was a denomination for the possession of riches, should demand whether riches themselves were rich.
17. However, the name faculty^ which men have given to How the this power called the will, and whereby they have been led ^J"Jf into a way of talking of the will as acting, may, by an the man is appropriation that disguises its true sense, serve a little to *^ ^ "^^* palliate the absurdity ; yet the will, in truth, signifies nothing but a power or ability to prefer or choose : and when the will, under the name of a faculty, is considered as it is, barely as an ability to do something, the absurdity in saying it is free, or not free, will easily discover itself. For, if it be reasonable to suppose and talk of faculties as distinct beings that can act, (as we do, when we say the will orders, and the will is free,) it is fit that we should make a speaking faculty, and a
^ For, according to Locke's argu- tions, so that he is their absolutely
ment, an agent may will when he has ultimate capse f
no ' freedom ' to execute what he wills ' Here again he finds the idea of power
— the only freedom here contemplated. in whsit/ollows * choice or preference:'
But does not moral freedom mean the So too in his letters to Limborch.
power of the voluntary agent to origi- ' The ears of Midas were changed
naU his own moral or immoral voli- into those of an ass. VOL. I. Y
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322 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. walking faculty, and a dancing faculty, by which these actions
— *^ are produced, which are but several modes of motion ; as well
Chap. XXI. ^^ ^^ make the will and understanding to be faculties, by
which the actions of choosing and perceiving are produced,
which are but several modes of thinking ^. And we may as
properly say that it is the singing faculty sings, and the
dancing faculty dances, as that the will chooses, or that the
understanding conceives ; or, as is usual, that the will directs
the understanding, or the understanding obeys or obeys not
the will : it being altogether as proper and intelligible to say
that the power of speaking directs the power of singing, or
the power of singing obeys or disobeys the power of
speaking ^.
This way i8. This way of talking, nevertheless, has prevailed, and,
caiwes"^ as I guess, produced great confusion. For these being all
confusion different powers in the mind, or in the man, to do several
* actions, he exerts them as he thinks fit : but the power to do
one action is not operated on by the power of doing another
action. For the power of thinking operates not on the power
of choosing, nor the power of choosing on the power of
thinking ; no more than the power of dancing operates on
the power of singing, or the power of singing on the power of
dancing, as any one who reflects on it will easily perceive.
And yet this is it which we say when we thus speak, that the
will operates on the understanding, or the understanding on
the will.
Powers 19. I grant, that this or that actual thought may be the
tiwirnot occasion of volition, or exercising the power a man has to
agents. choose ; or the actual choice of the mind, the cause of actual
thinking on this or that thing : as the actual singing of such
a tune may be the cause of dancing such a dance, and the
actual dancing of such a dance the occasion of singing such a
tune. But in all these it is not one power that operates on
^ Here * thinking ' is applied to any so far as he is morally accountable for
sort of conscious act or state. them ; or whether, in this as other-
' The real question is, whether in wise, he is only a link in the succession
willing freely the man is conceived as of natural causes that are themselves
the power to which his own volitions natural effects. Does ' I ought ' mean
are ultimately and absolutely referable, that / can, or only that nature can ?
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Idea of Power. 323
another : but it is the mind that operates, and exerts these book ii. powers ; it is the man that does the action ; it is the agent *"**^ that has power, or is able to do. For powers are relations, not agents : and that which has the power or not the power to operate, is that alone which is or is not free, and not the power itself^. For freedom, or not freedom, can belong to nothing but what has or has not a power to act^.
ao. The attributing to faculties that which belonged not to Liberty them, has given occasion to this way of talking : but the ^i**"©^ the introducing into discourses concerning the mind, with the Will, name of faculties, a notion of their operating, has, I suppose, as little advanced our knowledge in that part of ourselves, as the great use and mention of the like invention of faculties, in the operations of the body, has helped us in the knowledge of physic. Not that I deny there are faculties, both in the body and mind : they both of them have their powers of operating, else neither the one nor the other could operate. For nothing can operate that is not able to operate ; and that is not able to operate that has no power to operate *. Nor do I deny that those words, and the like, are to have their place in the common use of languages that have made them current. It looks like too much affectation wholly to lay them by : and philosophy itself, though it likes not a gaudy dress, yet, when it appears in public, must have so much complacency as to be clothed in the ordinary fashion and
^ Power ptr se is of course an ab- inexplicable by natural science, or as
straction, and the idea of free active conditioned by mechanical causality,
power is suggested by an agent to Reason and Will interpose, neverthe-
whom the effects are ultimately re- less, in the physical system, unless
ferred as their origin. the overt acts attributed to Alexander
• That, in the case of a moral agent, the Great or to Caesar, or the works
is to original, or be the first cause of of Plato or Milton, are explicable as
a volition, and of all that the volition the issue of undirected changes in
naturally carries with it, as an agent solid and extended bodies, apart from
in nature. If all activity is spiritual, consciousness.
then every physical event exhibits ' But is our idea of the 'power'
immanent Spirit, or Active Reason, that is exercised in willing an idea of
determining motions in bodies ; so that mechanical and dependent power, or
physical events or effects are all trans' of a power that is supernatural, in the
fomutHons of, but are not produced sense of being somehow superior to
by, preceding physical phenomena, passive natural economy, and under
Voluntary activity is, accordingly, the higher law of moral government I
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324 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. language of the country, so far as it can consist with truth — ^^ and perspicuity. But the fault has been, that faculties have
"'^'*' ■been spoken of and represented as so many distinct agents. For, it being asked, what it was that digested the meat in our stomachs ? it was a ready and very satisfactory answer to say, that it was the digestive faculty. What was it that made anything come out of the body ? the exptdsive faculty. What moved ? the motive faculty. And so in the mind, the intel- lectual faculty^ or the understanding, understood ; and the elective faculty^ or the will, willed or commanded. This is, in short, to say, that the ability to digest, digested ; and the ability to move, moved ; and the ability to understand, under- stood. For faculty, ability, and power, I think, are but different names of the same things : which ways of speaking, when put into more intelligible words, will, I think, amount to thus much ; — That digestion is performed by something that is able to digest, motion by something able to move, and understanding by something able to understand. And, in truth, it would be very strange if it should be otherwise ; as strange as it would be for a man to be free without being able to be free ^.
But to a I. To return, then, to the inquiry about liberty, I think
or^ManT"*' the question is not proper, whether the will be free^ but whether a man be free. Thus, I think.
First, That so far as any one can, by [* the direction or choice of his mind, preferring] the existence of any action to the non-existence of that action, and vice versd^ make // to exist or not exist, so far he is free. For if I can, by [' a thought directing] the motion of my finger*, make it move
* Freedom of moral acts from merely poses are not the only purposes, and
natural uniformity, the postulate of that the order of uniform causation
morality, transcends a physical science which she has use for, and is therefore
of man, or the science which is con- right in postulating, may be tnvdoped
cemed only with the succession of in a wider order on wkidt she has no
causal uniformities, and ignores the claims at all* (James's Psychology,
supernatural in man. * Psychology vol. ii. p. 570.)
will be psychology, and science ' * choice or preference of — in first
science, as much as ever (as much edition.
and no more) whether free will be ' ' the preference of — in first edx-
true or not Science however must lion,
be constanUy reminded that her pur- * * to its rest ' — added in first edition.
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Idea of Power. 325
when it was at rest, or vice versd^ it is evident, that in respect book ii. of that I am free : and if I can, by a like thought of my mind, ""**~ preferring one to the other, produce either words or silence, "^'*' I am at liberty to speak or hold my peace : and as far as this power reaches, of acting or not acting, by the determination of his own thought preferring either, so far is a man free. For how can we think any one freer, than to have the power to do what he will ? And so far as any one can, by preferring any action to its not being, or rest to any action, produce that action or rest, so far can he do what he will. For such a preferring of action to its absence, is the willing of it : and we can scarce tell how to imagine any being freer, than to be able to do what he wills*. So that in respect of actions within the reach of such a power in him, a man seems as free as it is possible for freedom to make him.
1%. But the inquisitive mind of man, willing to shift off in respect from himself, as far as he can, all thoughts of guilt, though it ^^^^\^' be by putting himself into a worse state than that of fatal not free, necessity, is not content with this : freedom, unless it reaches further than this, will not serve the turn : and it passes for a good plea, that a man is not free at all, if he be not as/r^^ to will as he is to act what he wills. Concerning a man*s liberty, there yet, therefore, is raised this further question, Whether a man be free to will? which I think is what is meant, when it is disputed whether the will be free. And as to that I imagine.
%^. Secondly, That willing, or volition, being an action. How a and freedom consisting in a power of acting or not acting, a not'be^ee man in respect of willing [ ^ or the act of volition], when any to will. action in his power is once proposed to his thoughts, [*as pre- sently to be done,] cannot be free. The reason whereof is very manifest For, it being unavoidable that the action depending on his will should exist or not exist, and its
^ He » ' freer * if, in virtue of his included in the moral and spiritual
moral accountability for his own volun- economy to which the natural mechan*
taiy determinations, he is, as a volun- ism is in harmonious subordination, tary agent, so Sax extricated from the ' Added in posthumous edition,
mechanism of natural causation, and ' Added in posthumous edition.
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Chap. XXI.
326 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK 11. existence or not existence following perfectly the determina- tion and preference of his will, he cannot avoid willing the existence or non-existence of that action ; it is absolutely necessary that he will the one or the other ; i. e. prefer the one to the other : since one of them must necessarily follow ; and that which does follow follows by the choice and deter- mination of his mind ; that is, by his willing it : for if he did not will it, it would not be. So that, in respect of the act of willing, a man [^in such a case] is not free : liberty, consisting in a power to act or not to act ; which, in regard of volition, a man, [* upon such a proposal] has not. [*For it is unavoidably necessary to prefer the doing or forbearance of an action in a man's power, which is once so proposed to his thoughts ; a man must necessarily will the one or the other of them ; upon which preference or volition, the action or its forbearance certainly follows, and is truly voluntary. But the act of volition, or preferring one of the two, being that which he cannot avoids a man, in respect of that act of willing, is under a necessity, and so cannot be free ; unless necessity and freedom can consist together, and a man can be free and bound at once ^] [' Besides to make a man free after this manner, by making the action of willing to depend on his will, there must be another antecedent will, to determine the acts of this will, and another to determine that, and so in infinitum: for wherever one stops, the actions of the last will cannot be free. Nor is any being, as far I can comprehend beings
' Added in posthumous edition. ' The sentences within brackets do
' Added in posthumous edition. not appear in the French version, or
' Added in fourth edition. in the posthumous editions of the
* Here at last Locke comes to the Essay, while they are found in the
idea of a free power to act for which the four English editions published in
agent is accountable ; but without an Locke's lifetime, and in the Latin
adequate estimate of it, as the turning version. The argument supposes
point between materialism or na- that 'freedom of will' means deter-
turalism, and a spiritual philosophy of mination of volitions by prtvums volt*
the universe. He concludes, under tions, as part of the mechanism of
this inadequate conception, that, in nature, instead of independence of
his volitions, man is undtr causal ne* that mechanism altogether ; and this
cesstiy to avoid uneasiness, so that he on the ground that no events, volitions
cannot be under higher law than included, can come to pass, without a
mechanism ofnature, even in his volun- previous physical or caused cause of
tary determinations. their occurrence.
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Idea of Power. 327
above me, capable of such a freedom of will, that it can for- book 11. bear to will, i. e. to prefer the being or not being of anything ""**~ in its power, which it has once considered as such.] "^'*' ^^'
24. This, then, is evident, That a man is not at liberty to will^ Liberty is or not to will, anything in his power that he once considers of: ^cute ^*^ liberty consisting in a power to act or to forbear acting, and w|j»t » in that only. For a man that sits still is said yet to be at liberty; because he can walk if he wills it. A man that walks IS at liberty also, not because he walks or moves ; but because he can stand still if he wills it. But if a man sitting still has not a power to remove himself, he is not at liberty ; so likewise a man falling down a precipice, though in motion, is not at liberty, because he cannot stop that motion if he would. This being so, it is plain that a man that is walking, to whom it is proposed to give off walking, is not at liberty, whether he will determine himself^ to walk, or give off walking or not: he must necessarily prefer one or the other of them ; walking or not walking. And so it is in regard of all other actions in our power [* so proposed, which are the far greater number. For, considering the vast number of voluntary actions that succeed one another every moment that we are awake in the course of our lives, there are but few of them that are thought on or proposed to the will, till the time they are to be done ; and in all such actions, as I have shown, the mind, in respect of willing,] has not a power to act or not to act, wherein consists liberty. The mind, in that case, has not a power to forbear willing \ it cannot avoid some determination concerning them, let the consideration be as short, the thought as quick as it will, it either leaves the man in the state he was before thinking, or changes it ; continues the action, or puts an end to it. Whereby it is manifest, that it orders and directs one, in
^ In the French version, ' n^est plus nous voulons fairt ; et si nous voulions
en liberty de vouloir vouloir (permittez vouloir, nous voudrions vouloir vouloir,
moi cette expression).' On which et cela indt a Tinfini.'
Leibniz comments thus: — ' H est vrai ' Instead of the words within brack-
qu*on parle peu juste, lorsqu*on ets, introduced in the French version,
parle comme si nous votdions vouloir, the first four editions read : — ' they
Nous ne voulons point vouloir, mais being once proposed, the mind.'
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328 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II.
Chap. XXL
The Will deter- mined by something without it
The ideas of liberty and volt* Hon must be defined.
preference to, or with neglect of the other, and thereby either the continuation or change becomes unavoidably voluntary ^.
25. Since then it is plain that, in most cases, a man is not at liberty, whether he will or no, (for, when an action in his power is proposed to his thoughts, he cannot forbear volition ; he must determine one way or the other;) the next thing demanded is, — Whether a man be at liberty to will which of the two he pleases y motion or rest? This question carries the absurdity of it so manifestly in itself, that one might thereby sufficiently be convinced that liberty concerns not the will. For, to ask whether a man be at liberty to will either motion or rest, speaking or silence, which he pleases, is to ask whether a man can will what he wills, or be pleased with what he is pleased with ? A question which, I think, needs no answer : and they who can make a question of it must suppose one will to determine the acts of another, and another to deter- mine that, and so on in infinitum ^.
a6. To avoid these and the like absurdities ^ nothing can be of greater use than to establish in our minds determined ideas of the things under consideration. If the ideas of liberty and volition were well fixed in our understandings, and
' On the principle of an excluded middle between contradictories, he must either act or not act
* The words, ' an absurdity before taken notice of,* which follow in the fourth edition, afterwards omitted. Cf. sentences in brackets in % 33.
' That volition cannot be free, in the sense of being self-determined in all cases by a preceding volition, in the order of natural sequence, is thus ar- gued by Jonathan Edwards : — * If the will determines all its own acts, then every free act of choice is determined by a preceding act of choice, choosing that act. And if that preceding act of the will be also a free act, then, by these principles, in this act too the will is self-determined, or is an act determined still by a preceding act of the will choosing that. And the like may again be observed of the last-
mentioned act, which brings us directly to a contradiction ; for it supposes an act of the will preceding the first act in the whole train, directing the rest ; — or a free act of the will before the first free act of the will. Or else we must come at last to an act of the will determining the consequent acts, wherein the will is not self-determined, [i.e. by a preceding volition], and so is not free, in this notion of freedom. But if the first act in the train deter- mining and fixing the next, be not free, none of them all can be free.' {Inquiry respecting that Freedom of Will which is supposed to be essential to Moral Agefuy, pt ii. $ i.) This argument proceeds on the unwarranted assump- tion, that ' free will ' is volition naturally caused by preceding volition, instead of being itself a first cause.
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Idea of Power. 329
carried along with us in our minds, as they ought, through book ii. all the questions that are raised about them, I suppose a ""**" great part of the difficulties that perplex men's thoughts, and entangle their understandings, would be much easier resolved ; and we should perceive where the confused signi- fication of terms, or where the nature of the thing caused the obscurity.
27. First, then, it is carefully to be remembered. That free- Freedom, dom consists in the dependence of the existence, or not existence of any action, upon our volition of it ; and not in the dependence of any action, or its contrary, on our pre- ference. A man standing on a cliff, is at liberty to leap twenty yards downwards into the sea, not because he has a power to do the contrary action, which is to leap twenty yards upwards, for that he cannot do ; but he is therefore free, be- cause he has a power to leap or not to leap. But if a greater force than his, either holds him fast, or tumbles him down, he is no longer free in that case ; because the doing or forbear- ance of that particular action is no longer in his power. He that is a close prisoner in a room twenty feet square, being at the north side of his chamber, is at liberty to walk twenty feet southward, because he can walk or not walk it ; but is not, at the same time, at liberty to do the contrary, i.e. to walk twenty feet northward.
In this, then, consists freedom, viz. in our being able to act or not to act, according as we shall choose or will ^.
\%i. 2 Secondly, we must remember, that volition or willing What
Volition
' This is the necessitarian idea of raisonne sur la liberty de la volont^, on
a free agent, as in Hobbes's Treatise ne demande pas si Thomme peut faire
q/* Liberty and Necessity^ for instance, ce qu^il veut, tnais sWly a assez d^ineU'
Locke's idea is only that of freedom pendance dans sa volonte mime ; on ne
from obstruction in executing what demande pas s'il a les jambes libres
ivc have willed. The prisoner, more- ou les coud^es franches, mais sil a
over, might originate an (ineffectual) Tesprii libre^ et en quoi cela consiste.*
voluntary determination to escape; (Leibniz.)
although, in his circumstances, this ' This section and those which fol-
volition must be inefficacious, under low to the end of § 69 (some parts of
the established laws of nature, and which correspond to the original text)
would therefore be an irrational ex- were substituted, in the second and
erciseofhis moral freedom. 'Quandon subsequent editions, for $§38-38 in
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330 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. XXI.
and action mean.
BQOK II. is an act of the mind directing its thought to the production of any action, and thereby exerting its power to produce it. To avoid multiplying of words, I would crave leave here, under the word action^ to comprehend the forbearance too of any action proposed: sitting still, or holding one's peace, when walking or speaking arc proposed, though mere forbearances, requiring as much the determination of the will, and being as often weighty in their consequences, as the contrary actions, may, on that consideration, well enough pass for actions too : but this I say, that I may not be mistaken, if (for brevity's sake) I speak thus ^.
29. Thirdly, the will being nothing but a power in the mind to direct the operative faculties of a man to motion or rest, as far as they depend on such direction ; to the question. What IS it determines the will ? the true and proper answer is, The mind. For that which determines the general power of directing, to this or that particular direction, is nothing but the agent itself exercising the power it has that particular way. If this answer satisfies not, it is plain the meaning of the question. What determines the will ? is this, — What moves the mind, in every particular instance, to determine its general power of directing, to this or that particular motion or rest ?
What deter- mines the Will.
the first edition. The eleven omitted sections are, in this edition, printed at the end of this chapter, for collation with the present text. The alteration was due to Locke*s change of his original opinion, — that our volitions are ultimately determined by our judg- ment of the greater good, — in favour of the view that^/ uneasiness is the natural cause of willing. The thirty-five sec- tions that take their place only present Locke's * second thoughts * of liberty, as consisting in power to 'suspend* volition, pending judgment The let- ters which passed between Locke and Molyneux, in 1693, when the second edition of the Essay was in prepara- tion, and letters to Limborch, show the grounds of this change, and also Locke's perplexities throughout the reasonings of this chapter.
^ Locke means by ' action ' only the effect of Mrilliug. Hb contemporary, Samuel ClariLe, carefully distinguishes action proper, in the following, among many similar passages: — 'To be an agent signifies to have a power of beginning motion (or change); and motion cannot begin necessarily, be- cause necessity of motion supposes an efficiency superior to, and irresistible by, the thing moved ; and consequently the beginning of motion cannot be in that which is moved necessarily, but in the superior cause, and then in the efficiency of some other cause, still superior to that.' {Remarks upon ' In- qniry concerning Liberty* p. 6.) A neces^ savy agentvro\ilA thus be a contradiction in terms, and there could be no active power in a mechanical or caused cause.
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Idea of Power. 331
And to this I answer, — The motive for continuing in the same book 11. state or action, is only the present satisfaction in it ; the motive ~**~ to change is always some uneasiness : nothing setting us upon the change of state, or upon any new action, but some un- easiness *. This is the great motive that works on the mind to put it upon action, which for shortness' sake we will call determining of the will, which I shall more at large explain.
30. But, in the way to it, it will be necessary to premise, Will and that, though I have above endeavoured to express the act of must^not volition, by ckoosing^ preferring^ and the like terms, that signify ^^ con- desire as well as volition, for want of other words to mark that act of the mind whose proper name is willing or volition ; yet, it being a very simple act, whosoever desires to understand what it is, will better find it by reflecting on his own mind, and observing what it does when it wills, than by any variety of articulate sounds whatsoever. This caution of being careful not to be misled by expressions that do not enough keep up the difference between the will and several acts of the mind that are quite distinct from it, I think the more necessary, be- cause I find the will often confounded with several of the affections, especially desire^ and one put for the other; and that by men * who would not willingly be thought not to have had very distinct notions of things, and not to have writ very clearly about them. This, I imagine, has been no small occasion of obscurity and mistake in this matter ; and there- fore is, as much as may be, to be avoided. For he that shall turn his thoughts inwards upon what passes in his mind when he wills, shall see that the will or power of volition is conver- sant about nothing but our own actions ; terminates there ; and reaches no further ; and that volition is nothing but that particular determination of the mind, whereby, barely by a thought, the mind endeavours to give rise, continuation, or stop, to any action which it takes to be in its power '. This,
* Then the so-called * agent* is him- cause of a volition. The supposed * free- self, in each particular ' act ' of willing, dom ' of man is only the freedom of ultimately the passive subject of a natu- external nature : whatever that may be. ral necessity consequent upon ' uneasi- ' He probably alludes to Male- ness;' he is merged in nature, and is branche.
not the agent of the action that is nomi- ' According to this account will and
nally his. A motive thus is the physical desire differ not in their origin, nor in
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332 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. well considered, plainly shows that the will is perfectly distin- —^^ guishcd from desire; which, in the very same action, may
Chap. XXI. -^^^^ ^ quite contrary tendency from that which our will sets us upon. A man, whom I cannot deny, may oblige me to use persuasions to another, which, at the same time I am speaking, I may wish may not prevail on him. In this case, it is plain the will and desire run counter. I will the action ; that tends one way, whilst my desire tends another, and that the direct contrary way. A man who, by a violent fit of the gout in his limbs, finds a doziness in his head, or a want of appetite in his stomach removed, desires to be eased too of the pain of his feet or hands, (for wherever there is pain, there is a desire to be rid of it,) though yet, whilst he apprehends that the re- moval of the pain may translate the noxious humour to a more vital part, his will is never determined to any one action that may serve to remove this pain. Whence it is evident that desiring and willing are two distinct acts of the mind ; and consequently, that the will, which is but the power of volition, is much more distinct from desire ^.
Uneasi- S^* To return, then, to the inquiry, what is it that deter-
ness deter- niines the will in regard to our actions? And that, upon
mines the , • , » ... . ,,
Will. second thoughts, I am apt to imagine is not, as is generally supposed, the greater good in view ; but some (and for the most part the most pressing) uneasiness a man is at present under *. This is that which successively determines the will,
their relation to the system of physical Locke to place the motive or cause,
causes, but only in their consequences, by which voluntary determination
Volitions and desires are equally a is naturally determined, in a felt
part of nature, but a volition issues in < uneasiness/ rather than in an ideal
overt action, while it is itself the natu- < good ' (by which he means pleasure,
ral effect of the dominant uneasiness ct ch. zx. § a), equally with his
or desire of the moment. Volition is first thoughts, make volition an issue
victorious desire. of the physical system, and man,
^ The mechanism and production of even in the deepest root of his being, voluntary movements— a complex pro- a part of nature. Yet, in writing to blem in natural science — instead of the Molyneux (15 July, 1693), he congratu- idea of power suggested by the volun- lates himself as having 'got into a Ury act, is what Locke still keeps to. new view of things, which, if I mis- Ineffectual volition, however deli- take not, will satisfy you, and give a berate, is regarded as wish or cUsirw clearer account of human freedom only. than hitherto I have done.' He makes
^ The 'second thoughts,* which led 'uneasiness* practically one with the
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Idea of Power. 333
and sets us upon those actions we perform. This uneasiness book ii.
we may call, as it is, desire ; which is an uneasiness of the ""**"
Chap XXI mind for want of some absent good. All pain of the body,
of what sort soever, and disquiet of the mind, is uneasiness : and with this is always joined desire, equal to the pain or un- easiness felt ; and is scarce distinguishable from it. For desire being nothing but an uneasiness in the want of an absent good, in reference to any pain felt, ease is that absent good ; and till that ease be attained, we may call it desire ; nobody feeling pain that he wishes not to be eased of, with a desire equal to that pain, and inseparable from it ^. Besides this desire of ease from pain, there is another of absent positive good ; and here also the desire and uneasiness are equal. As much as we desire any absent good, so much are we in pain for it. But here all absent good does not, according to the greatness it has, or is acknowledged to have, cause pain equal to that greatness; as all pain causes desire equal to itself: because the absence of good is not always a pain, as the presence of pain is. And therefore absent good may be looked on and considered without desire. But so much as there is anywhere of desire, so much there is of uneasiness *.
32. That desire is a state of uneasiness, every one who Desire reflects on himself will quickly find. Who is there that has \^!''^^' not felt in desire what the wise man' says of hope, (which is not much different from it,) that it being * deferred makes the
</«sfVv, which necessarily goes with it ; ■And so * the greater good ' is not, and wiU to differ from desirt only in as maintained in the first edition, ' that being followed by the event intended, which always determines the will.* But ' every good, nay every greater ' Freedom ' in willing would thus con- good' (so he argues in favour of his sist in a man being naturally deter- ' second thoughts ') does not constantly mined to will by kis desire or feeling move desire ; because it may not make, of uneasiness, guided iy judgment, and or may not be taken to make, any ne- volition is based upon capacity for cessary part of our happiness ; for ' all being made uneasy. He afterwards that we desire is only to be happy.' qualifies this (§$ 4S-53) by incon- The absence of good is not always a sistently claiming for * free agents ' pain, but the presence of pain must of power to 'suspend* volition, pending course always be painful. deliberation, thus mixing the natural ^ So Montaigne in his Essais: — passivity with a semblance of moral * Notre bien-6tre, ce n'est que la priva- superiority to this, tion d'etre mal'(Liv. II. ch. xiL), and • Proverbs xiii. za. in sundry other passages.
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BOOK II. heart sick ' ; and that still proportionable to the greatness of — *♦— the desire, which sometimes raises the uneasiness to that pitch. Chap. XXI. ^^^ j^ makes people cry out, * Give me children,' give me the thing desired, * or I die 1/ Life itself, and all its enjoyments, is a burden cannot be borne under the lasting and unremoved pressure of such an uneasiness. The Un- 33. Good and evil, present and absent, it is true, work upon ^^^||.^'°^the mind. But that which immediately determines the will, deter- from time to time, to every voluntary action, is the uneasiness Wiir ^ ^f desire^ fixed on some absent good : either n^ative, as in- dolence to one in pain ; or positive, as enjoyment of pleasure. That it is this uneasiness that determines the will to the suc- cessive voluntary actions, whereof the greatest part of our lives is made up, and by which we are conducted through different courses to different ends, I shall endeavour to show, both from experience *, and the reason of the thing ®. This is the 34. When a man is perfectly content with the state he is AcSon.° ^^ — which is when he is perfectly without any uneasiness — what industry, what action, what will is there left, but to con- tinue in it ? Of this every man's observation will satisfy him. And thus we see our all-wise Maker, suitably to our constitu- tion and frame, and knowing what it is that determines the will, has put into man the uneasiness of hunger and thirst, and other natural desires, that return at their seasons, to move and determine their wills *, for the preservation of themselves, and the continuation of their species. For I think we may con- clude, that, if the bare contemplation of these good ends to which we are carried by these several uneasinesses had been sufficient to determine the will, and set us on work, we should have had none of these natural pains, and perhaps in this world little or no pain at all. * It is better to marry than to burn,' says St. Paul *, where we may see what it is that chiefly drives men into the enjoyments of a conjugal life. A little burning felt pushes us more powerfully than greater pleasures in prospect draw or allure.
* Genesis XXX. I. * As 'motives' which necessitate
^ h% 34-35- their volitions ?
' §§36, &c. * I Corinth, vii. 9.
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Idea of Power. 335
35. It seems so established and settled a maxim, by the book ii. general consent of all mankind, that good, the greater good, ""♦*— determines the will, that I do not at all wonder that, when ^^* I first published my thoughts on this subject ^ I took it for greatest granted ; and I imagine that, by a great many, I shall be ^^^^ thought more excusable for having then done so, than that deter- now I have ventured to recede from so received an opinion. SlTwuL^ But yet, upon a stricter inquiry, I am forced to conclude that but pre- good^ the greater good, though apprehended and acknow- ^ness ledged to be so, does not determine the will, until our desire, **°"<^- raised proportionably to it, makes us uneasy in the want of it. Convince a man never so much, that plenty has its advan- tages over poverty ; make him see and own, that the hand- some conveniences of life are better than nasty penury : yet, as long as he is content with the latter, and finds no uneasi- ness in it, he moves not ; his will never is determined to any action that shall bring him out of it. Let a man be ever so well persuaded of the advantages of virtue, that it is as necessary to a man who has any great aims in this world, or hopes in the next, as food to life: yet, till he hungers or thirsts after righteousness, till he feels an uneasiness in the want of it, his will will not be determined to any action in pursuit of this confessed greater good; but any other uneasiness he feels in himself shall take place, and carry his will to other actions. On the other side, let a drunkard see that his health decays, his estate wastes; discredit and diseases, and the want of all things, even of his beloved drink, attends him in the course he follows : yet the returns of uneasiness to miss his companions, the habitual thirst after his cups at the usual time, drives him to the tavern, though he has in his view the loss of health and plenty, and perhaps of the joys of another life : the least of which is no incon- siderable good, but such as he confesses is far greater than the tickling of his palate with a glass of wine, or the idle chat of a soaking club. It is not want of viewing the greater good : for he sees and acknowledges it, and, in the intervals of his drinking hours, will take resolutions to
> In 1690, in the first edition of the Essay,
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336 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. Chap. XXI,
Because the Re- moval of Uneasi- ness is the first Step to Happi- ness.
Because Uneasi- ness alone is present
pursue the greater good ; but when the uneasiness to miss his accustomed delight returns, the greater acknowledged good loses its hold, and the present uneasiness determines the will to the accustomed action ; which thereby gets stronger footing to prevail against the next occasion, though he at the same time makes secret promises to himself that he will do so no more; this is the last time he will act against the attainment of those greater goods. And thus he is, from time to time, in the state of that unhappy complainer^. Video meliora^ proboque^ deteriora sequor: which sentence, allowed for true, and made good by constant experience, may in this, and possibly no other way, be easily made intelligible.
Z6. If we inquire into the reason of what experience makes so evident in fact, and examine, why it is uneasiness alone operates on the will, and determines it in its choice, we shall find that, we being capable but of one determination of the will to one action at once, the present uneasiness that we are under does naturally determine the will, in order to that happiness which we all aim at in all our actions. Foo as much as whilst we are under any uneasiness, we cannot apprehend ourselves happy, or in the way to it ; pain and uneasiness being, by every one, concluded and felt to be in- consistent with happiness, spoiling the relish even of those good things which we have : a little pain serving to mar all the pleasure we rejoiced in. And, therefore, that which of course determines the choice of our will to the next action will always be — the removing of pain, as long as we have any left, as the first and necessary step towards happiness.
37. Another reason why it is uneasiness alone determines the will, is this: because that alone is present and, it is against the nature of things, that what is absent should operate where it is not. It may be said that absent good may, by contemplation, be brought home to the mind and made present. The idea of it indeed may be in the mind, and viewed as present there ; but nothing will be in the mind as a present good, able to counterbalance the removal of any
^ Ovid, Metamorph. lib. viL, w. 90, ai.
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Idea of Power. 337
uneasiness which we are under, till it raises our desire ; and book ii. the uneasiness of that has the prevalency in determining the '~^*~" will. Till then, the idea in the mind of whatever is good is there only, like other ideas, the object of bare unactive speculation ; but operates not on the will, nor sets us on work ; the reason whereof I shall show by and by. How many are to be found that have had lively representations set before their minds of the unspeakable joys of heaven, which they acknowledge both possible and probable too, who yet would be content to take up with their happiness here ? And so the prevailing uneasiness of their desires, let loose after the enjoy- ments of this life, take their turns in the determining their wills ; and all that while they take not one step, are not one jot moved, towards the good things of another life, considered as ever so great.
38. Were the will determined by the views of good, as Because it appears in contemplation greater or less to the under- \x\^ ^jg standing, which is the state of all absent good, and that Joys of which, in the received opinion, the will is supposed to move possible. to, and to be moved by, — I do not see how it could ever gfet P"'^"^
' ^^ ^ them not.
loose from the infinite eternal joys of heaven, once proposed and considered as possible. For, all absent good, by which alone, barely proposed, and coming in view, the will is thought to be determined, and so to set us on action, being only possible, but not infallibly certain, it is unavoidable that the infinitely greater possible good should regularly and constantly determine the will in all the successive actions it directs ; and then we should keep constantly and steadily in our course towards heaven, without ever standing still, or directing our actions to any other end : the eternal condition of a future state infinitely outweighing the expectation of riches, or honour, or any other worldly pleasure which we can propose to ourselves, though we should grant these the more probable to be obtained : for nothing future is yet in possession, and so the expectation even of these may deceive us. If it were so that the greater good in view determines the will, so great a good, once proposed, could not but seize the will, and hold it fast to the pursuit of this infinitely greatest good, without ever letting it go again : for the will VOL.1. z
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338 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. having a power over, and directing the thoughts, as well as ""^^ other actions, would, if it were so, hold the contemplation of ' the mind fixed to that good. But any 39. This would be the state of the mind, and r^^lar easfness"" tendency of the will in all its determinations, were it deter- is never mined bv that which is considered and in view the greater
neEiecteu
' good. But that it is not so, is visible in experience ; the
infinitely greatest confessed good being often neglected, to satisfy the successive uneasiness of our desires pursuing trifles. But, though the greatest allowed, even everlasting unspeakable, good, which has sometimes moved and affected the mind, does not stedfastly hold the will, yet we see any very great and prevailing uneasiness having once laid hold on the will, let it not go ; by which we may be convinced, what it is that determines the will. Thus any vehement pain of the body; the ungovernable passion of a man violently in love; or the impatient desire of revenge, keeps the will steady and intent ; and the will, thus determined, never lets the understanding lay by the object, but all the thoughts of the mind and powers of the body are uninterruptedly em- ployed that way, by the determination of the will, influenced by that topping uneasiness, as long as it lasts ; whereby it seems to me evident, that the will, or power of setting us upon one action in preference to all others, is determined in us by uneasiness : and whether this be not so, I desire every one to observe in himself. Desire 40. I have hitherto chtefly instanced in the uneasiness of
pan^S'all ^^^^ire, as that which determines the will : because that is the Uneasi- chicf and most sensible; and the will seldom^ orders any ^^^' action, nor is there any voluntary action performed, without some desire accompanying it ; which I think is the reason why the will and desii^ are so often confounded. But yet we are not to look upon the uneasiness which makes up, or at least accompanies, most of the other passions, as wholly excluded in the case. Aversion, fear, anger, envy, shame, &c. have each their uneasinesses too, and thereby influence the
^ 'seldom* — nev^r^ if 'wherever musi in all cases be naturaUy deter- there is uneasiness there must be mined by present uneasiness only.* desire' for relief, and if 'the will
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Idea of Power. 339
will. These passions are scarce any of them, In life and book 11. practice, simple and alone, and wholly unmixed with others ; ""^^ though usually, in discourse and contemplation, that carries ^*'* the name which operates strongest, and appears most in the present state of the mind. Nay, there is, I think, scarce any of the passions to be found without desire joined with it. I am sure wherever there is uneasiness, there is desire. For we constantly desire happiness ; and whatever we feel of uneasi- ness, so much it is certain we want of happiness ; even in our own opinion, let our state and condition otherwise be what it will. Besides, the present moment not being our eternity, whatever our enjoyment be, we look beyond the present, and desire goes with our foresight, and that still carries the will with it. So that even in joy itself, that which keeps up the action whereon the enjoyment depends, is the desire to con- tinue it, and fear to lose it : and whenever a greater uneasiness than that takes place in the mind, the will presently is by that determined to some new action, and the present delight neglected.
41. But we being in this world beset with sundry uneasi- The most nesses, distracted with different desires, the next inquiry ^'jj^'jf naturally will be, — ^Which of them has the precedency in ness determining the will to the next action ? and to that the deter- answer is, — ^That ordinarily which is the most pressing of?J*?^***® those that are judged capable of being then removed. For, the will being the power of directing our operative faculties to some action, for some end, cannot at any time be moved towards what is judged at that time unattainable : that would be to suppose an intelligent being designedly to act for an end, only to lose its labour ; for so it is to act for what is judged not attainable ; and therefore very great uneasinesses move not the will, when they are judged not capable of a cure: they in that case put us not upon endeavours ^. But, these set apart, the most important and urgent uneasiness we at that time feel, is that which ordinarily determines the will, succes- sively, in that train of voluntary actions which makes up our
^ The spontaneous feeling of uneasi* believed to be unattainable, — volition ness, and relative desire for relief, lose being thus naturally conditioned by the their natural influence, when relief is judgment of the understanding.
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340 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. lives. The greatest present uneasiness is the spur to action, ■"^**~ that is constantly most felt, and for the most part determines ' the will in its choice of the next action. For this we must carry along with us, that the proper and only object of the will is some action of ours, and nothing else. For we pro- ducing nothing by our willing it, but some action in our power *. it is there the will terminates, and reaches no further. All desire 42. If it be further asked, — ^What it is moves desire ? I ness^' answer,— happiness, and that alone. Happiness and misery are the names of two extremes, the utmost bounds whereof we know not ; it is what * eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive.' But of some degrees of both we have very lively impressions ; made by several instances of delight and joy on the one side, and torment and sorrow on the other ; which, for shortness' sake, I shall comprehend under the names of pleasure and pain ; there being pleasure and pain of the mind as well as the body, — * With him is fulness of joy, and pleasure for ever- more/ Or, to speak truly, they are all of the mind ; though some have their rise in the mind from thought, others in the body from certain modifications of motion '. Happiness 43. Happiness^ then, in its full extent, is the utmost pleasure misery, ^^ ^^^ Capable of, and misery the utmost pain ; and the lowest good and degree of what can be called happiness is so much ease from They are. ^U pain, and so much present pleasure, as without which any one cannot be content Now, because pleasure and pain are produced in us by the operation of certain objects, either on our minds or our bodies, and in different degrees ; therefore, what has an aptness to produce pleasure in us is that we call goody and what is apt to produce pain in us we call evil ; for no other reason but for its aptness to produce pleasure and pain in us, wherein consists our happiness and misery. Further, though what is apt to produce any degree of pleasure
^ That the overt action should be being their primary qualities, and all
the unimpeded natural consequence of their other so-called qualities and
volition, without regard to the origin powers being correlative mental aensi*
of the voluntary determination itself, is bilities, of which the former are the
still the freedom contemplated by occasions, under the established laws
Locke. of nature.
' The only real qualities in bodies
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Idea of Power. 341
be in itself good ; and what is apt to produce any degree of book ii. pain be evil ; yet it often happens that we do not call it so ^^y. when It comes in competition with a greater of its sort ; be- cause, when they come in competition, the degrees also of pleasure and pain have justly a preference. So that if we will rightly estimate what we call good and evil^ we shall find it lies much in comparison : for the cause of every less degree of pain, as well as every greater degree of pleasure, has the nature of good, and vice versd ^.
44. Though this be that which is called good and evil, and What all good be the proper object of desire in general ; yet all ^s^ed good, even seen and confessed to be so, does not necessarily what not. move every particular man's desire ; but only that part, or so much of it as is considered and taken to make a necessary part of his happiness. All other good, however great in reality or appearance, excites not a man's desires who looks not on it to make a part of that happiness wherewith he, in his present thoughts, can satisfy himself. Happiness, under this view, every one constantly pursues, and desires what makes any part of it : other things, acknowledged to be good, he can look upon without desire, pass by, and be content without. There is nobody, I think, so senseless as to deny that there is pleasure in knowledge : and for the pleasures of sense, they have too many followers to let it be questioned whether men are taken with them or no. Now, let one man place his satisfaction in sensual pleasures, another in the delight of knowledge : though each of them cannot but confess, there is great pleasure in what the other pursues; yet, neither of them making the other's delight a part of his happiness, their desires are not moved, but each is satisfied without what the other enjoys ; and so his will is not deter- mined to the pursuit of it. But yet, as soon as the studious man's hunger and thirst make him uneasy, he, whose will was
^ Pleasure thus becomes Locke's savons pas jusqu'oii nos connaissances
ideal of 'good'; his summum bonufn et nos organes peuvent 6tre port^s
is logically ' infinite quantity,' not per- dans toute cette ^temit^ qui nous
feet quality, of pleasure. *Je ne attend. Je croirais done que le bon-
sais,' says Leibniz, ' si le plus grand htur est un plaisir durable, ce qui ne
plaisir est possible. Je croirais plutot saurait avoir lieu sans une progression
qu'il peut croitre k Tinfini ; car nous ne continuelle a de nouveaux plaisirs.'
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342 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. never determined to any pursuit of good cheer, poignant ""**" sauces, delicious wine, by the pleasant taste he has found in Chap. XXI. ^j^^^^ is, by the uneasiness of hunger and thirst, presently determined to eating and drinking, though possibly with great indifferency, what wholesome food comes m his way. And, on the other side, the epicure buckles to study, when shame, or the desire to recommend himself to his mistress, shall make him uneasy in the want of any sort of knowledge. Thus, how much soever men are in earnest and constant in pursuit of happiness, yet they may have a dear view of good, great and confessed good, without being concerned for it, or moved by it, if they think they can make up their hai>- piness without it. Though as to pain, thai they are always concerned for; they can feel no uneasiness without being moved. And therefore, bdi^ uneasy in the want of whatever is judged necessary to their happiness, as soon as any good appears to make a part of their portion of happiness, they begin to desire it *. Why the 45. This, I think, any one may observe in himself and GTOdTfs others,— That the greater visible good does not always raise not always men's desires in proportion to the greatness it appears, and is acknowledged, to have : though eveiy little trouble moves us, and sets us on work to get rid of it The reason whereof is evident from the nature of our happiness and misery itself. All present pain, whatever it be, makes a part of our present misery: but all absent good does not at any time make a necessary part of our present happiness, nor the absence of it make a part of our misery. If it did, we should be con* stantly and infinitely miserable ; there being infinite d^[rees of happiness which are not in our possession. All uneasiness therefore being removed, a moderate portion of good serves at present to content men ; and a few d^rees of pleasure, in a succession of ordinary enjoyments, make up a happiness wherein they can be satisfied. If this were not so, there could be no room for those indifferent and visibly trifling actions, to which our wills are so often determined, and wherein we volun-
' There could thus be no absolute to conceive of good or evfl according to standard of good and evil for man, the felt strength and variety of his own each man being naturally determined feelings of uneasiness.
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tarily waste so much of our lives ; which remissness could by book ii. no means consist with a constant determination of will or ""^^ desire to the greatest apparent good. That this is so, I think few people need go far from home to be convinced. And indeed in this life there are not many whose happiness reaches so far as to afford them a constant train of moderate mean pleasures, without any mixture of uneasiness ; and yet they could be content to stay here for ever : though they cannot deny, but that it is possible there may be a state of eternal durable joys after this life, far surpassing all the good that is to be found here. Nay, they cannot but see that it is more possible than the attainment and continuation of that pittance of honour, riches, or pleasure which they pursue, and for which they neglect that eternal state. But yet, in full view of this difference, satisfied of the possibility of a perfect, secure, and lasting happiness in a future state, and under a clear con* viction that it is not to be had here, — whilst they bound their happiness within some little enjoyment or aim of this life, and exclude the joys of heaven from making any necessary part of it, — their desires are not moved by this greater apparent good, nor their wills determined to any action, or endeavour for its attainment.
46. The ordinary necessities of our lives fill a gre^t part of Why not them with the uneasinesses of hunger, thirst, heat, cold, weari- desired, ness, with labour, and sleepiness, in their constant returns, &c* it moves To which, if, besides accidental harms, we add the fantastical w^m. uneasiness (as itch after honour, power, or riches, &c-) which acquired habits, by fashion, example, and education, have settled in us, and a thousand other irregular desires, which custom has made natural to us, we shall find that a very little part of our life is so vacant from these uneasinesses^ as to leave us free to the attraction of remoter absent good. We are seldom at ease, and free enough from the solicitation of our natural or adopted desires, but a constant succession of uneasi- nesses out of that stock which natural wants or acquired habits have heaped up, take the will in their turns ; and no sooner is one action dispatched, which by such a determination of the will we are set upon, but another uneasiness is ready to set us on work. For, the removing of the pains we feel, and
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BOOK II. are at present pressed with, being the getting out of misery, ""**" and consequently the first thing to be done in order to hap- ' piness, — ^absent good, though thought on, confessed, and appearing to be good, not making any part of this unhappiness in its absence, is justled out, to make way for the removal of those uneasinesses we feel ; till due and repeated contempla- tion has brought it nearer to our mind, given some relish of it, and raised in us some desire : which then beginning to make a part of our present uneasiness, stands upon fair terms with the rest to be satisfied, and so, according to its greatness and pressure, comes in its turn to determine the will. Due Con- 47. And thus, by a due consideration, and examinii^ any ratsef "^'^ good proposed, it is in our power to raise our desires in a due Desire. proportion to the value of that good S whereby in its turn and place it may come to work upon the will, and be pursued. For good, though appearing and allowed ever so great, yet till it has raised desires in our minds, and thereby made us uneasy in its want, it reaches not our wills ; we are not within the sphere of its activity, our wills being under the determina- tion only of those uneasinesses which are present to us, which (whilst we have any) are always soliciting, and ready at hand to give the will its next determination. The balancing, when there is any in the mind, being only, which desire shall be next satisfied, which uneasiness first removed. Whereby it comes to pass that, as long as any uneasiness, any desire, remains in our mind, there is no room for good, barely as such, to come at the will, or at all to determine it. Because, as has been said, Ha^ first step in our endeavours after happiness being to get wholly out of the confines of misery, and to feel no part of it, the will can be at leisure for nothing else, till every uneasi- ness we feel be perfectly removed : which, in the multitude of wants and desires we are beset with in this imperfect state, we are not like to be ever freed from in this world. The 48. There being in us a great many uneasinesses, always
Tuspend^ soliciting and ready to determine the will, it is natural, as the Prose- 1 have said, that the greatest and most pressing should deter-
cution of . - .,, , . ,.,/.«
any Desire nime the Will to the next action ; and so it does for the most
^ What is the criterion of its * value '?
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Idea of Power. 345
part, but not always. For, the mind having in most cases, as book ii. is evident in experience, a power to suspend the execution and ** satisfaction of any of its desires; and so all, one after another ; n,akesway is at liberty to consider the objects of them, examine them on for Con- all sides, and weigh them with others. In this lies the liberty ^* ^â„¢ man has^; and from the not using of it right comes all that variety of mistakes, errors, and faults which we run into in the conduct of our lives, and our endeavours after happiness; whilst we precipitate the determination of our wills, and engage too soon, before due examination. To prevent this, we have a power to suspend the prosecution of this or that desire ; as every one daily may experiment in himself. This seems to me the source of all liberty ; in this seems to consist that which is (as I think improperly) cdMtd free-will^. For, during this suspension of any desire, before the will be deter- mined to action, and the action (which follows that determina- tion) done, we have opportunity to examine, view, and judge of the good or evil of what we are going to do ; and when, upon due examination, we have judged, we have done our duty, all that we can, or ought to do, in pursuit of our happi- ness ; and it is not a faulty but a perfection of our nature, to desire, will, and act according to the last result of a fair examination.
49. This is so far from being a restraint or diminution of To be freedom, that it is the very improvement and benefit -of it ; it mined by is not an abridgment, it is the end and use of our liberty ; and ^JJ^ °^JJ^^ the further we are removed from such a determination, the is no nearer we are to misery and slavery ». A perfect indifference t^ Li^ny.
> Free agency with Locke thus con- desire into will is the nearest approach
sists at last in 'power to suspend' Locke makes to recognition of the
volition. But unless in this man rises spiritual freedom that is supernatural,
above a merely natural causation of But after all, on his premises, the sus-
motives, he is no more ethically free pension must be the natural issue of
in suspending the voluntary execution uneasiness.
of a desire than in any other exercise ' He that wills must conctwe what
of wiUL A power to suspend volition, he wills, and must have some moUve
necessarily thus dependent, leaves man for acting. Intelligence, so far from
still a part of the mechanism of nature. being inconsistent with a moral or
* This recognition of power in the supernatural liberty to act, is essential
agent to *â– suspend ' conversion of to it ; although free acts are not in
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346 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. in the mind, not determinable by its last judgment of the good ~*t"« or evil that is thought to attend its choice, would be so far
Chap XXI
' from being an advantage and excellency of any intellectual nature, that it would be as great an imperfection, as the want of indifferency to act, or not to act, till determined by the will, would be an imperfection on the other side. A man is at liberty to lift up his hand to his head, or let it rest quiet : he is perfectly indifferent in either ; and it would be an imper- fection in him, if he wanted that power, if he were deprived of that indifferency. But it would be as great an imperfection, if he had the same indifferency, whether he would prefer the lifting up his hand, or its remaining in rest, when it would save his head or eyes from a blow he sees coming: it is as much a perfection, that desire, or the power of preferring, should be determined by good, as that the power of acting* should be determined by the will ; and the certainer such determination is, the greater is the perfection. Nay, were we determined by anything but the last result of our own minds, judging of the good or evil of any action, we were not free ; [* the very end of our freedom being, that we may attain the good we choose. And therefore, every man is put under a necessity, by his constitution as an intelligent being, to be determined in willing by his own thought and judgment what is best for him to do : else he would be under the determina- tion of some other than himself, which is want of liberty. And to deny that a man's will, in every determination, follows his own judgment, is to say, that a man wills and acts for an end that he would not have, at the time that he wills and acts for it For if he prefers it in his present thoughts before any other, it is plain he then thinks better of it, and would have it before any other ; unless he can have and not have it, will and not will it, at the same time ; a contradiction too manifest to be admitted ^]
harmony with reason, when the fal- ' Added in Coste's French version,
lible, finite agent abuses the freedom ' If men are determined, in willing,
for which he is responsible. to follow their judgment of what is best,
^ Desire and will are here distin- under a physical necessity, how is it
guished, as ' power of preferring,' and possible for them to will immonUfy,
* power of carrying' preference into be their judgments ever so erroneous
overt action. in estimating pleasures and pains? If
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Idea of Power. 347
50. If we look upon those superior beings aboVe us, who book ii. enjoy perfect happiness, we shall have reason to judge that "**~ they are more steadily determined in their choice of good ^^^ ^^^ ^ ' than we ; and yet we have no reason to think they are less Agents happy, or less free, than we are. And if it were fit for such ^^^xlv- poor finite creatures as we are to pronounce what infinite mined, 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.
51. But to give a right view of this mistaken part of liberty A constant let me ask, — Would any one be a changeling, because he is ^nation less determined by wise considerations than a wise man? Is to a Pur- it worth the name of freedom to be at liberty to play the fool. Happiness and draw shame and misery upon a man's self? If to break no Abndg- loose from the conduct of reason, and to want that restraint of Liberty, examination and judgment which keeps us from choosing or
doing the worse, be liberty, true liberty, madmen and fools are the only freemen : but yet, I think, nobody would choose to be mad for the sake of such liberty, but he that is mad already. The constant desire of happiness, and the constraint it puts upon us to act for it, nobody, I think, accounts an abridgment of liberty, or at least an abridgment of liberty to be complained of. God Almighty himself is under the neces- sity of being happy; and the more any intelligent being is so, the nearer is its approach to infinite perfection and happiness. That, in this state of ignorance, we short-sighted creatures might not mistake true felicity, we are endowed with a power to suspend any particular desire, and keep it from determining the will ^^ and engaging us in action. This is standing still, where we are not sufficiently assured of the way : examination
the man, by a law of external nature, lectually blind cannot of course be
cannot resist his erroneous judgment, a morally free or really voluntary
and could not have judged differently, determination.
how can he be blamed for the result- ^ Are our determinations to suspend
ing volition I Locke only shows that our desires naturally necessitated by
intelligence is one of the conditions of uneasiness, or is this 'suspending'
moral freedom — not that volition is not a voluntary determination at
the necessary outcome of judgment all ; and if not an act of will, what
A so-called volition that is Intel- is it)
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348 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. Chap. XXI,
The
Necessity of pursu- ing true Happiness the Foun- dation of Liberty.
Power to Suspend.
is consulting a guide. The determination of the will upon inquiry, is following the direction of that guide : and he that has a power to act or not to act, according as such determina- tion directs, is a free agent : such determination abridges not that power wherein liberty consists. He that has his chains knocked off, and the prison doors set open to him, is perfectly at liberty, because he may either go or stay, as he best likes ; though his preference be determined to stay, by the darkness of the night, or illness of the weather, or want of other lodging. He ceases not to be free ; though the desire of some conveni- ence to be had there absolutely determines his preference, and makes him stay in his prison.
52. As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness ; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness^ is the necessary foundation of our liberty. The stronger ties we have to an unalterable pursuit of happiness in general, which is our greatest good, and which, as such, our desires always follow, the more are we free from any necessary determination of our will to any particular action, and from a necessary compliance with our desire, set upon any particular, and then appearing preferable good, till we have duly examined whether it has a tendency to, or be inconsistent with, our real happiness : and therefore, till we are as much informed upon this inquiry as the weight of the matter, and the nature of the case demands, we are, by the necessity of preferring and pursuing true happiness as our greatest good, obliged to suspend the satisfaction of our desires in particular cases ^.
53. This is the hinge on which turns the liberty of intel- lectual beings, in their constant endeavours after, and a steady prosecution of true felicity, — That they can suspend this prose-
' This is only saying that moral freedom is not blind unintelligent caprice, and that it is rightly used only when we will in accordance with reason. *A. moins que Tapp^tit ne soit guid^ par la raison, tl tend au plaisir prtseni^ et non pas au honktHr^
c*gsi'thdir9 au plaisir durmbU* (Leib- niz.) Human freedom means original power to act immorally and unreason- ably, as well as in accordance with right reason or moral obligation. Thb is well put in an essay on Frttdom as «if EikiealPostMiaie, by Prof. James Seth.
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Idea of Power, 349
cution in particular cases, till they have looked before them, book ii. and informed themselves whether that particular thing which "■**" is then proposed or desired lie in the way to their main end, and make a real part of that which is their greatest good* For, the inclination and tendency of their nature to happiness is an obligation and motive to them, to take care not to mistake or miss it ; and so necessarily puts them upon caution, deliberation, and wariness, in the direction of their particular actions, which are the means to obtain it. Whatever necessity determines to the pursuit of real bliss, the same necessity, with the same force, establishes suspense, deliberation, and scrutiny of each successive desire, whether the satisfaction of it does not interfere with our true happiness, and mislead us from it. This, as seems to me, is the great privilege of finite ^ intel- lectual beings ; and I desire it may be well considered, whether the great inlet and exercise of all the liberty men have, are capable of, or can be useful to them, and that whereon depends the turn of their actions, does not lie in this, — That they can suspend their desires, and stop them from determining their wills to any action, till they have duly and fairly examined the good and evil of it, as far forth as the weight of the thing requirea This we are able to do ; and when we have done it, we have done our duty, and all that is in our power; and indeed all that needs. For, since the will supposes knowledge to guide its choice, all that we can do is to hold our wills undetermined, till we have examined the good and evil of what we desire. What follows after that, follows in a chain of consequences, linked one to another, all depending on the last determination of the judgment^, which, whether it shall be upon a ha^y and precipitate view, or upon a due and mature examination, is in our power ; experience showing us, that in most cases, we are able to suspend the present satisfaction of any desire.
* Will always coincides with perfect cut of^susptndmg* desires, with a view to
reason only in the infinite or perfect test their rationalUyy the so-called agent
Being. The moral education of finite b somehow independent of * the chain
agents presupposes the possibility of ofconsequences,' and is not the passive
their willing either irrationally, i.e. subject of 'uneasiness/ and of those
immorally, or the reverse. natural consequences of uneasiness
' Does this mean that in the vobinUuy which are abusively called his own acts ?
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350 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II.
Chap. XXI.
Govern- ment of our
Passions the right Improve- ment of Liberty.
How Men
come to
pursue
different,
and often
evil,
Courses.
54. But if any extreme disturbance (as sometimes it happens) possesses our whole mind, as when the pain of the rack, an impetuous uneasiness, as of love, anger, or any other violent passion, running away with us, allows us not the liberty of thought, and we are not masters enough of our own minds to consider thoroughly and examine fairly ; — God, who knows our frailty, pities our weakness, and requires of us no more than we are able to do, and sees what was and what was not in our power, will judge as a kind and merciful Father. But the forbearance of a too hasty compliance with our desires, the moderation and restraint of our passions, so that our understandings may be free to examine, and reason unbiassed give its judgment, being that whereon a right direction of our conduct to true happiness depends; it is in this we should employ our chief care and endeavours. In this we should take pains to suit the relish of our minds to the true intrinsic good or ill that is in things ; and not permit an allowed or supposed possible great and weighty good to slip out of our thoughts, without leaving any relish, any desire of itself there, till, by a due consideration of its true worth, we have formed appetites in our minds suitable to it, and made ourselves uneasy in the want of it, or in the fear of losing it. And how much this is in every one's power, by making resolutions to himself, such as he may keep, is easy for every one to try. Nor let any one say, he cannot govern his passions, nor hinder them from breaking out, and carrying him into action ; for what he can do before a prince or a great man, he can do alone, or in the presence of God, if he will ^
5$, From what has been said, it is easy to give an account how it comes to pass, that, though all men desire happiness, yet their wills carry them so contrarily; and consequently some of them to what is evil. And to this I say, that the various and contrary choices that men make in the world do not argue that they do not all pursue good ; but that the same thing is not good to every man alike. This variety of pursuits shows, that every one does not place his happiness in the same
* 'Cette remarque est trte-bonne, et dlgne qu*on y r^fl^chisse souvent,* (^Leibniz.) See Note at the end of this Chapter.
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Idea of Power. 351
thing, or choose the same way to it. Were all the concerns book ii. of man terminated in this life, why one followed study and ""^^^ knowledge, and another hawking and hunting : why one chose luxury and debauchery, and another sobriety and riches, would not be because every one of these did not aim at his own happiness; but because their happiness was placed in different things. And therefore it was a right answer of the physician to his patient that had sore eyes: — If you have more pleasure in the taste of wine than in the use of your sight, wine is good for you ; but if the pleasure of seeing be greater to you than that of drinking, wine is naught.
56. The mind has a diiferent relish, as well as the palate ; All men and you will as fruitlessly endeavour to delight all men with hlppiness, riches or glory (which yet some men place their happiness *>ut not of in) as you would to satisfy all men's hunger with cheese or sort. lobsters ; which, though very agreeable and delicious fare to some, are to others extremely nauseous and offensive: and many persons would with reason prefer the griping of an hungry belly to those dishes which are a feast to others. Hence it was, I think, that the philosophers of old did in vain inquire, whether summum bonum consisted in riches, or bodily delights, or virtue, or contemplation : and they might have as reasonably disputed, whether the best relish were to be found in apples, plums, or nuts, and have divided them^ selves into sects upon it. For, as pleasant tastes depend not on the things themselves, but on their agreeableness to this or that particular palate, wherein there is great variety ; so the greatest happiness consists in the having those things which produce the greatest pleasure, and in the absence of those which cause any disturbance, any pain. Now these, to dif- ferent men, are very different things. If, therefore, men in this life only have hope ; if in this life only they can enjoy, it is not strange nor unreasonable, that they should seek their happiness by avoiding all things that disease them here, and by pursuing all that delight them ; wherein it will be no wonder to find variety and difference. For if there be no prospect beyond the grave, the inference is certainly right — • * Let us eat and drink,' let us enjoy what we delight in, * for
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Chap. XXI.
352 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. to-morrow we shall die ^/ This, I think, may serve to show us the reason, why, though all men's desires tend to happiness, yet they are not moved by the same object. Men may choose different things, and yet all choose right; supposing them only like a company of poor insects ; whereof some are bees, delighted with flowers and their sweetness; others beetles, delighted with other kinds of viands, which having enjoyed for a season, they would cease to be, and exist no more for ever^ Power 57. [* These things, duly weighed, will give us, as I think, a
loHticm "^^ clear view into the state of human liberty. Liberty, it is plain, explains consists in a power to do, or not to do ; to do, or forbear btuty for doing, c^ we will. This cannot be denied *. But this seeming ill choice, ^q comprehend only the actions of a man consecutive to volition, it is further inquired, — Whether he be at liberty to will or no ? And to this it has been answered, that> in most cases, a man is not at liberty to forbear the act of volition : he must exert an act of his will, whereby the action proposed is made to exist or not to exist But yet there is a case wherein a man is at liberty in respect of willing; and that is the choosing of a remote good as an end to be pursued *. Here a man may suspend the act of his choice from being determined
* * C*est la seule consideration de us to recognise, in moral and properly Dieu et de rimmortalitd, qui rend les personal agency, something to which obligations de la vertu et de la justice the ' human understanding ' measured absolument indispensables/ (Leibniz.) by Locke is inadequate.
' This scepticism about the sutnntutn ^ But may it not be argued, at
bonum illustrates Locke's indifference Locke's point of view, that the previous
to ideals^and implies that ends cannot be uncertainty as to his choice involves in
chosen because they are in themselves, it an * uneasiness ' which naiuralfy
or absolutely, good, but only that they makes him will to restrain desire 1
are ' good ' because the individual finds This voluntary act of restraint or sus-
them by experience to be pleasurable. pension is only a particular instance of
' The passage within brackets was volition. Yet, in order to save the fiict
introduced in Coste*s French version. of responsibility, he treats it as if it
It is not found in any of the English were different in kind from other voli-
editions which appeared before Lockers tions; but he does not show how the
death. wiU to suspend can be supematurally
* That is to say, it * consists * in the free, in the face of the evidence which effects of the volition, which is irrele- made him conclude that all volitions vant to the question, in the view of are naturally determined for the so- those who hold that reason requires called * agent ' by uneasiness.
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Idea of Power. 353
for or against the thing proposed, till he has examined whether BOOK il. it be really of a nature, in itself and consequences, to make "^Xxj him happy or not. For, when he has once chosen it, and thereby it is become a part of his happiness, it raises desire, and that proportionably gives him uneasiness ; which deter^ mines his will, and sets him at work in pursuit of his choice on all occasions that offer. And here we may see how it comes to pass that a man may justly incur punishment, 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. For, though his ^ill be always determined by that which is judged good by his understanding, yet it excuses him not ; because, by a too hasty choice of his own making, he has imposed on himself wrong measures of good and evil ; which, however false and fallacious, have the same influence on all his future conduct, as if they were true and right. He has vitiated his own palate, and must be answerable to himself for the sickness and death that follows from it. The eternal law and nature of things ^ must not be altered to comply with his ill-ordered choice. If the neglect or abuse of the liberty he had, to examine what would really and truly make for his happiness, misleads him, the miscarriages that follow on it must be imputed to his own election. He had a power to suspend his determination ^ ; it was given him, that he might examine, and take care of his own happiness, and look that he were not deceived. And he could never judge, that it was better to be deceived than not, in a matter of so great and near concernment.]
58. What has been said may also discover to us the reason Why men why men in this world prefer different things, and Pursue ^^® happiness by contrary courses. But yet, since men are makes always constant and in earnest in matters of happiness and ^^« misery, the question still remains. How men come often to *We;
' With whatever seeming incon- finiU ^xAfalliblt men are apt to have
sistency, Locke always acknowledges of < the eternal law/ and not of the
what he calls ' the ttemal and unalUr- immutability of moral distinctions in
able nature of right and wrong.' He themselves.
elsewhere reminds us that in the £s5ay ' This 'power' is the essence of
he is chiefly treating of the ideas whidi moral freedom, according to the Essay,
VOL. I. A a
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354 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOR II. prefer the worse to the better ; and to choose that, wfaidi, bjr Chap' XXL ^^^^ ^^^ Confession, has made them miserable? The 59* '^^ account for the various and contrary ways men
causes of take, though all aim at being happy, we must consider whence the various uneasinesses that determine the will, in the pre- ference of each voluntary action, have their rise :— From I. Some of them come from causes not in our power ; such
PaSi^ as are often the pains of the body from want, disease, or outward injuries, as the rack, &c. ; which, when present and violent, operate for the most part forcibly on the will, and turn the courses of men's lives from virtue, piety, and religion^ and what before they judged to lead to happiness ; every one not endeavouring, or, [^ through disuse], not being able, by the contemplation of remote and future good, to raise in himself desires of them strong enough to counterbalance the uneasi- ness he feels in those bodily torments, and to keep his will steady in the choice of those actions which lead to future happiness. A neighbouring country^ has been of late a tragical theatre from which we might fetch instances, if there needed any, and the world did not in all countries and ages furnish examples enough to confirm that received observaticm, Necessitas cogit ad turpia ; and therefore there is great reason for us to i>ray, * Lead us not into temptation/ From a. Other uneasinesses arise from our desires of absent good ;
DmItcs which desires always bear proportion to, and depend on, the arising judgment we make, and the relish we have of any absent wrong good ; in both which we are apt to be variously misled, and Judg- that by our own fault.
ments.
Ouriudir. ^®' '^ ^'^ ^^^* place, I shall consider the wrong judgments
ment of men make of future good and evil, whereby their desires are
Good'or wiisled. For, as to present happiness and misery, when that
^^^ alone comes into consideration, and the consequences are
right quite removed, a man never chooses amiss : he knows what
best pleases him, and that he actually prefers. Things in
their present enjoyment are what they seem: the apparent
and real good are, in this case, always the same. For, the
* Added in French version.
' France. He refers to the persecutions on account of religion.
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Idea of Power. 355
pain or pleasure being just so great and no greater than it book ii. is fdt, the present good or evil is really so much as it ap- "^^, pears. And therefore were every action of ours concluded within itself, and drew no consequences after it, we should undoubtedly never err in our choice of good: we should always infallibly prefer the best. Were the pains of honest industry, and of starving with hunger and cold set together before us, nobody would be in doubt which to choose : were the satisfaction of a lust and the joys of heaven offered at once to any one's present possession, he would not balance, or err in the determination of his choice.
61. But since our voluntary actions carry not all the Ourwrong happiness and misery that depend on them along with them hav^^'*^* in their present performance, but are the precedent causes of J^^^** *° good and evil, which they draw after them, and bring upon good and us, when they themselves are past and cease to be ; our ^^' °"^^- desires look beyond our present enjoyments, and carry the mind out to absent goody according to the necessity which we think there is of it, to the making or increase of our happiness. It is our opinion of such a necessity that gives it its attraction : without that, we are not moved by absent good. For, in this narrow scantling of capacity which we are accustomed to and sensible of here, wherein we enjoy but one pleasure at once, which, when all uneasiness is away, is, whilst it lasts, sufficient to make us think ourselves happy, it is not all remote and even apparent good that affects us. Because the indolency and enjoyment we have, sufficing for our present happiness, we desire not to venture the change ; since we judge that we are happy already, being content, and that is enough. For who is content is happy. But as soon as any new uneasi- ness comes in, this happiness is disturbed, and we are set afresh on work in the pursuit of happiness.
6%, Their aptness therefore to conclude that they can be From a happy without it, is one great occasion that men often are not T^J^^'^^^enj raised to the desire of the greatest absent good. For,, whilst of what such thoughts possess them, the joys of a future state move neccMary them not ; they have little concern or uneasiness about them ; Part of and the will, free from the determination of such desires, is Happi* left to the pursuit of nearer satisfactions, and to the removal "^®'**
A a 2
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Chap. XXI.
356 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BCK)K II. of those uneasinesses which it then feels, in its want of and longings after them. Change but a man's view of these things ; let him see that virtue and religion are necessary to his happiness ; let him look into the future state of bliss or misery, and see there God, the righteous Judge, ready to * render to every man according to his deeds ; to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, and honour, and immortality, eternal life ; but unto every soul that doth evil, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish.' To him, I say, who hath a prospect of the different state of perfect happiness or misery that attends all men after this life, de- pending on their behaviour here, the measures of good and evil that govern his choice are mightily changed. For, since nothing of pleasure and pain in this life can bear any propor- tion to the endless happiness or exquisite misery of an immortal soul hereafter, actions in his power will have their preference, not according to the transient pleasure or pain that accompanies or follows them here, but as they serve to secure that perfect durable happiness hereafter ^.]
A more 63. But, to account more particularly for the misery that
A* oounrof ^^^ often bring on themselves, notwithstanding that they do wrong all in earnest pursue happiness *, we must consider how things men^s. come to be represented to our desires under deceitful appear- ances : and that is by the judgment pronouncing wrongly concerning them. To see how far this reaches, and what are the causes of wrong judgment, we must remember that things are judged good or bad in a double sense : —
First, That which is properly good or body is nothing but barely pleasure or pain.
Secondly, But because not only present pleasure and pain, but that also which is apt by its efficacy or consequences to bring it upon us at a distance, is a proper object of our desires, and apt to move a creature that has foresight ; therefore things also that draw after them pleasure andpain^ are considered as good and evil.
^ See p. 399, note a. follow in first edition, but are omitted
' The words ' and always pursue in the later ones, the greatest apparent good' — here
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Idea of Power. 357
64. The wrong judgment that misleads us, and makes the book ii. will often fasten on the worse side, lies in misreporting upon '"'**" the various comparisons of these. The wrong judgment I am ^^ ^^^ here speaking of is not what one man may think of the deter- chooses mination of another, but what every man himself must confess wSuii^iy, to be wrong. For, since I lay it for a certain ground, that but only every intelligent being really seeks happiness, p which consists jifdgmenf. in the enjoyment of pleasure, without any considerable mixture
of uneasiness] ; it is impossible any one should willingly put into his own- draught any bitter ingredient, or leave out any- thing in his power f that would tend to his satisfaction, and the completing of his happiness,] but only by a wrong judg- ment I shall not here speak of that mistake which is the consequence of invincible error ^ which scarce deserves the name of wrong judgment ; but of that wrong judgment which every man himself must confess to be so.
65. (I). Therefore, as to present pleasure and pain, the Men may mind, as has been said, never mistakes that which is really c^paHnr good or evil ; that which is the greater pleasure, or the greater Present pain, is really just as it appears. But, though present pleasure Future, and pain show their difference and degrees so plainly as not
to leave room to mistake; yet, when we compare present pleasure or pain with future^ (which is usually the case in most important determinations of the will,) we often make wrong judgments of them ; taking our measures of them in different positions of distance. Objects near our view are apt to be thought greater than those of a larger size that are more remote. And so it is with pleasures and pains : the present is apt to carry it ; and those at a distance have the dis- advantage in the comparison. Thus most men, like spend- thrift heirs, are apt to judge a little in hand better than a great deal to come ; and so, for small matters in possession,
* In first edition—* and would enjoy not be moral obligation to what is all the pleasures he could, and suffer impossible. The causes of erroneous no pain.' judgment are considered in Bk. IV.
* In first edition— ' That could add ch. xx. With Hobbes volition is a to its sweetness.' necessary consequence of the last judg-
* For ' invincible error * a man ment of the understanding, which is cannot be accountable, as there can- itself necessarily determined.
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358 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. part with greater ones in reversion. But that this is a wrong "**^ judgment every one must allow, let his pleasure consist in 'whatever it will: since that which is future will certainly come to be present ; and then, having the same advantage of nearness, will show itself in its full dimensions, and discover his wilful mistake who judged of it by unequal measures. Were the pleasure of drinking accompanied, the very moment a man takes off his glass, with that sick stomach and achii^ head which, in some men, are sure to follow not many hours after, I think nobody, whatever pleasure he had in his cups, would, on these conditions, ever let wine touch his lips*; which yet he daily swallows, and the evil side comes to be chosen only by the fallacy of a little difference in time But, if pleasure or pain can be so lessened only by a few hours' removal, how much more will it be so by a further distance, to a man that will not, by a right judgment, do what time will, i. e. bring it home upon himself, and consider it as pre- sent, and there take its true dimensions? This is the way we usually impose on ourselves, in respect of bare pleasure and pain, or the true degrees of happiness or misery : the future loses its just proportion, and what is present obtains the preference as the greater. I mention not here the wrong judgment, whereby the absent are not only lessened, but reduced to perfect nothing ; when men enjoy what they can in present, and make sure of that, concluding amiss that no evil will thence follow. For that lies not in comparing the great- ness of future good and evil, which is that we are here speaking of; but in another sort of wrong judgment, which is concerning good or evil, as it is considered to be the cause and procurement of pleasure or pain that will follow from it. Causes of 66. The cause of our judging amiss, when we compare our Tng amiss present pleasure or pain with future, seems to me to be the when we ^u^jeak and narrow constitution of our minds. We cannot well
compare . ''
present enjoy two pleasures at once ; much less any pleasure almost, an^*8dn whilst pain possesses us. The present pleasure, if it be not with very languid, and almost none at all, fills our narrow souls,
future.
^ So Montaigne : — ' Si la douleur de volupt^, pour nous tromper, marche teste nous venait avant I'ivresse, nous devant et nous cache sa suite.' (flssofs.) nous garderions de trop boire ; mais la
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Idea of Power. 359
and so takes up the whole mind that it scarce leaves any book ii, thought of things absent : or if among our pleasures there are ""^xl some which are not strong enough to exclude the consider- ation of things at a distance, yet we have so great an abhor* rence of pain, that a little of it extinguishes all our pleasures. A little bitter mingled in our cup, leaves no relish of the sweet. Hence it comes that, at. any rate, we desire to be rid of the present evil, which we are apt to think nothing absent can equal ; because, under the present pain, we find not our- selves capable of any the least degree of happiness. Men's daily complaints are a loud proof of this : the pain that any one actually feels is still of all other the worst ; and it is with anguish they cry out, — * Any rather than this : nothing can be so intolerable as what I now suffer.' And therefore our whole endeavours and thoughts are intent to get rid of the present evil, before all things, as the first necessary condition to our happiness; let what will follow. Nothing, as we passionately think, can exceed, or almost equal, the uneasiness that sits so heavy upon us. And because the abstinence from a present pleasure that offers itself is a pain, nay, oftentimes a very great one, the desire being inflamed by a near and temptii^ object, it is no wonder that that operates after the same manner pain does, and lessens in our thoughts what is future ; and so forces us, as it were blindfold, into its embraces.
67. [^ Add to this, that absent good, or, which is the same Absent thing, future pleasure,— especially if of a sort we are unac- f^ie to"' quainted with, — ^seldom is able to counterbalance any un-^j^*®*"* easiness, qjther of pain or desire, which is present. For, its present greatness being no more than what shall be really tasted when ^"^*' enjoyed, men are apt enough to lessen that ; to make it g^ve place to any present desire; and conclude with themselves that, when it comes to trial, it may possibly not answer the report or opinion that generally passes of it : they having often found that, not only what others have magnified, but even what they themselves have enjoyed with great pleasure and delight at one time, has proved insipid or nauseous at another ;
^ Added in second edition.
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360 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK 11. and therefore they see nothing in it for which they should "*^ forego a present enjoyment. But that this is a false way of
"^^' ' judging, when applied to the happiness of another life, they must confess ; unless they will say, God cannot make those happy he desigpM to be so. For that being intended for a state of happiness, it must certainly be agreeable to every one's wish and desire: could we suppose their relishes as different there as they are here, yet the manna in heaven will suit every one's palate.] Thus much of the wroi^ judgment we make of present and future pleasure and pain, when they are compared together, and so the absent considered as future.
Wrong 68. (II). As to things good or bad in their consequences^ and
in^(Sn-°* ^y ^^ aptness that is in them to procure us good or evil in
sidering the future, we judge amiss several ways.
quences of ^- When we judge that so much evil does not really depend
Actions, on them as in truth there does.
a. When we judge that, though the consequence be of that moment, yet it is not of that certainty, but that it may otherwise fall out, or else by some means be avoided ; as by industry, address, change, repentance, &c.
That these are wrong ways of judging, were easy to show in every particular, if I would examine them at large singly : but I shall only mention this in general, viz. that it is a very wrong and irrational way of proceeding, to venture a greater good for a less, upon uncertain guesses ; and before a due examination be made, proportionable to the weightiness of the matter, and the concernment it is to us not to mistake. This I think every one must confess, especially if he considers the usual cause of this wrong judgment, whereof these follow- ing are some : —
Causes of 69. (i) Ignorance \ He that judges without informing him-
^^^^' self to the utmost that he is capable, cannot acquit himself of
judging amiss.
(ii) Inadvertency : When a man overlooks even that which he does know. This is an affected and present ignorance, which misleads our judgments as much as the other. Judging is, as it were, balancing an account, and determining on which side the odds lie. If therefore either side be huddled up
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Idea of Power. 361
in haste, and several of the sums that should have gone book ii. into the reckoning be overlooked and left out, this precipi- 'â– "**^ tancy causes as wrong a judgment as if it were a perfect ignorance. That which most commonly causes this is, the prevalency of some present pleasure or pain, heightened by our feeble passionate nature, most strongly wrought on by what is present. To check this precipitancy, our understand- ing and reason were given us, if we will make a right use of them, to search and see, and then judge thereupoa [^Without liberty, the understanding would be to no purpose: and without understanding, liberty (if it could be) would signify nothing. If a man sees what would do him good or harm, what would make him happy or miserable, without being able to move himself one step towards or from it, what is he the better for seeing ? And he that is at liberty to ramble in perfect darkness, what is his liberty better than if he were driven up and down as a bubble by the force of the wind? The being acted by a blind impulse from without, or from within, is little odds. The first, therefore, and great use of liberty is to hinder blind precipitancy ; the principal exercise of freedom is to stand still, open the eyes, look about, and take a view of the consequence of what we are going to do, as much as the weight of the matter requires.] How much sloth and n^ligence, heat and passion, the prevalency of fashion or acquired indispositions do severally contribute, on occasion, to these wrong judgments, I shall not here further inquire. [^ I shall only add one other false judgment, which I think necessary to mention, because perhaps it is little taken notice of, though of great influence.
70. All men desire happiness, that is past doubt : but. Wrong as has been already observed, when they are rid of pain, they ^f ^^^Is are apt to take up with any pleasure at hand, or that custom necessary
^ Added in fourth edition. wrong represented by the understand-
' The passage within brackets, end- ing ; and it would be impossible men
ing in § 7a, was added in the second should pursue so different courses as
edition. The first contains instead the they do in the world, had they not
following sentence: — 'This, I think, different measures of good and evil,
is certain, that the choice of the will is But yet morality established on its
everywhere determined by the greater true foundations,' &c. apparent good, however it may be
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362 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK n. has endeared to them ; to rest satisfied m that ; and so being ~**" happy, till some new desire, by making them uneasy, dis- ' turbs that happiness, and shows them that they are not so, Happi- they look no further; nor is the will determined to any "*^' action in pursuit of any other known or apparent good. For since we find that we cannot enjoy all sorts of good, but one excludes another ; we do not fix our desires on every appa- rent greater good, unless it be judged to be neoessary to our happiness : if we think we can be happy without it, it moves us not. This is another occasion to men of judging wrong ; when they take not that to be necessary to their happiness which really is so. This mistake misleads us, both in the choice of the good we aim at, and very often in the means to it, when it is a remote good. But, which way ever it be, either by placing it where really it is not, or by neglecting the means as not necessary to it ; — when a man misses his great end, happiness, he will acknowledge he judged not right. That which contributes to this mistake is the real or sup- posed unpleasantness of the actions which are the way to this end ; it seeming so preposterous a thing to men, to make themselves unhappy in order to happiness, that they do not easily bring themselves to it
We can 7 1- The last inquiry, therefore, concerning this matter is, *h *^™i — Whether it be in a man's power to change the pleasantness abieness and unpleasantness that accompanies any sort of action? aercMiblc- ^^^ ^ ^^ ^^**' ^* '^ plain, in many cases he can. Men may nessin and should correct their palates, and give relish to what *"^ either has, or they suppose has none. The relish of the mind is as various as that of the body, and like that too may be altered ; and it is a mistake to think that men cannot change the displeasingness or indifferency that is in actions into pleasure and desire, if they will do but what is in their power. A due consideration will do it in some cases ; and practice, application, and custom in most. Bread or tobacco may be neglected where they are shown to be useful to health, because of an indifferency or disrelish to them ; rea- son and consideration at first recommends, and begins their trial, and use finds, or custom makes them pleasant. That
I
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Idea of Power. 363
this is so in virtue too, is very certain. Actions are pleas- book ii. ing or displeasing, either in themselves, or considered as a ""**"" means to a greater and more desirable end. The eating of a well-seasoned dish, suited to a man's palate, may move the mind by the delight itself that accompanies the eating, without reference to any other end ; to which the considera- tion of the pleasure there is in health and strength (to which that meat is subservient) may add a nevrgitsto^ able to make us swallow an ill-relished potion. In the latter of these, any action is rendered more or less pleasing, only by the contemplation of the end, and the being more or less per- suaded of its tendency to it, or necessary connexion with it : but the pleasure of the action itself is best acquired or increased by use and practice. Trials often reconcile us to that, which at a distance we looked on with aversion ; and by repetitions wear us into a liking of what possibly, in the first essay, displeased us. Habits have powerful charms, and put so strong attractions of easiness and pleasure into what we accustom ourselves to, that we cannot forbear to do, or at least be easy in the omission of, actions, which habitual practice has suited, and thereby recommends to us. Though this be very visible, and every one's experience shows him he can do so ; yet it is a part in the conduct of men towards their happiness, neglected to a degree, that it will be possibly entertained as a paradox, if it be said, that men can make things or actions more or less pleasing to themselves; and thereby remedy that, to which one may justly impute a great deal of their wandering. Fashion and the common opinion having settled wrong notions, and edu- cation and custom ill habits, the just values of things are misplaced, and the palates of men corrupted. Pains should be taken to rectify these; and contrary habits change our pleasures, and give a relish to that which is necessary or con- ducive to our happiness. This every one must confess he can do ; and when happiness is lost, and misery overtakes him, he will confess he did amiss in neglecting it, and condemn himself for it ; and I ask every one, whether he has not often done so ^?
^ All this concerns the effects not Uie or whether motives (e.g. the uneasi- arigm of our voluntary determinations, nesses of which men are conscious),
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Prefer- ence of Vice to
364 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOKIL 72. I shall not now enlarge any further on the wrong
"^ judgments and neglect of what is in their power, wherd>y
' men mislead themselves. This would make a volume, and
is not my business. But whatever false notions, or shame-
Virtue a ^^ neglect of what is in their power, may put men out of
manifest their way to happiness, and distract them, as we see, into
Judgment. SO different courses of life, this yet is certain, that] ^ morality,
established upon its true foundations ^ cannot but determine
the choice in any one that will but consider : and he that
will not be so far a rational creature as to reflect seriously
upon infinite happiness and misery, must needs condemn
himself as not making that use of his understanding he
should ^ The rewards and punishments of another life*,
which the Almighty has established, as the enforcements of
his law, are of weight enough to determine the choice,
against whatever pleasure or pain this life can show, when
the eternal state is considered but in its bare possibility,
which nobody can make any doubt of*. He that will allow
\
necessitate voluntary determinations, as natural sequences, in which the voluntary determinations form a link. That the reasonable will can, by deter- mining habits, indirectly alter and elevate our natural tastes and desires, is presupposed in the duty of educating taste and desire.
^ What follows, forming sect. 45 of the first edition, is what moved the enthusiasm of Molyneux in his letter (Dec. aa, 169a).
' The government of God, by re- wardsand punishments, fully developed in a future life, is, according to Locke, the ' foundation ' of practical morality.
* The ethical consideration implied in this self-condemnation presupposes that the man was able to make right use of his understanding ; and that volun- tary determination, which he failed to exert, is not a merely passive capacity for being pleased with some things more than others.
* The unending duration oisuffning^ in the Divine Order of the universe.
rather than of self-created sm, is with Locke, as with many others, the prominent idea, in treating of the mystery of moral government He also makes the motive to conduct arise out of prudent calculation of the probaUe consequences of actions which are in our power —according to his conception of human liberty to act, as physically determined by felt or prospective pain. * <Aman,' says Bishop BuUer, *is as really bound in prudence to do what, upon the whole, appears, ac- cording to the best of his judgment, to be for his happiness, as what he cer- tainly knows to be so. Nay further, in questions of great consequence, a reasonable man will think it concerns him to remark lower probabilities and presumptions than these; such as amount to no more than showing one side of a question to be as supposable and credible as the other ; nay, such as but amount to much less even than this.* {Andhgy^ Introduction.) So Butler argues throughout the Antilogy y as to
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Idea of Power. 365
exquisite and endless happiness to be but the possible con- book ii. sequence of a good life here, and the contrary state the ""^^rr possible reward of a bad one, must own himself to judge very much amiss if he does not conclude, — ^That a virtuous life, with the certain expectation of everlasting bliss, which may come, is to be preferred to a vicious one, with the fear of that dreadful state of misery, which it is very possible may overtake the guilty ; or, at best, the terrible uncertain hope of annihilation. This is evidently so, though the virtuous life here had nothing but pain, and the vicious continual pleasure : which yet is, for the most part, quite otherwise, and wicked men have not much the odds to brag oC even in their present possession ; nay, all things rightly considered, have, I think, even the worse part here. But when infinite happiness is put into one scale, against infinite misery in the other; if the worst that comes to the pious man, if he mistakes, be the best that the wicked can attain to, if he be in the right, who can without madness run the venture? Who in his wits would choose to come within a possibility of infinite misery ; which if he miss, there is yet nothing to be got by that hazard ^ ? Whereas, on the other side, the sober man ventures nothing against infinite happiness to be got, if his expectation comes not to pass. If the good man be in the right, he is eternally happy ; if he mistakes, he is not miserable, he feels nothing. On the other side, if the wicked man be in the right, he is not happy ; if he mistakes, he is infinitely miserable. Must it not be a most manifest wrong judgment that does not presently see to which side, in this case, the preference is to be given? I have forborne to mention anything of the certainty or probability of a future state, designing here to show the wrong judgment that any
our duty in calculatingthe consequences by 'the greater good in view/ The
of actions which it is in our power to joys of heaven are often disregarded.
do or to forbear — 'in questions of The absent good is not desired, be-
difficulty, or that might be thought so,* cause not necessary to the man*s
where more satis&ctory evidence than happiness, as the removal of present
probability, or even possibility, cannot pain always is ; though even this docs
be had. not always determine the will, if vire
^ This is to show that the will is not rise above mechanism of nature, when
determined, as he had at first supposed, we ' suspend ' the execution of desire.
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366 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. one must allow he makes, upon his own principles, laid how he pleases, who prefers the short pleasures of a vicious life upon any consideration, whilst he knows, and cannot but be certain, that a future life is at least possible.
73. [^ To conclude this inquiry into human liberty, which, as it stood before, I myself from the beginning fearing, and a very judicious friend of mine, since the publication, sus-
1 erency. p^^jj^g ^^ \a^^ some mistake in it, though he could not particularly show it me, I was put upon a stricter review of this chapter. Wherein lighting upon a very easy and scarce observable slip I had made, in putting one seemingly indifferent word for another' that discovery opened to me this present view, which here, in this second edition, I submit
Chap. XXI.
Recapitu< lation — Liberty of in-
* The following section, 46 in the first edition, there follows what is now % 7a, and was in the first edi- tion § 45 : it was afterwards omitted, and part of % 73, with % 74, were introduced instead : — * Under this 51m- pU idea of PowtTy I have taken occa- sion to explain our ideas of WiU, VoUiioHf Liberty f and AM«s$t(y ;•— which having a greater mixture in them than belongs barely to simple modes, might perhaps be better placed amongst the more complex. For Wiliy for example, contains in it the idea of a power to prefer the doing to the not doing of any particular action (and vice tftrsa) which it has thought on ; which pre- ference is truly a mode of thinking : and so the idea which the word tm'IJ stands for is a complex and mixed one, made up of the simple ideas of power, and a certain mode of thinking ; and the idea of liberiy is yet more complex, being made up of the idea of a power to act, or not to act, in conformity to volition. But I hoped this transgres- sion, against the method I have pro- posed to myself will be forgiven me, if I have quitted it a little, to explain some ideas of great importance ; such as are those of the wiily Uberfy, and MteessUyy in this place, where they as it were offered themselves, and sprang
up from their proper roots. Besides, having before largely enough instanced ' in several simple modes, to show what I meant by them, and how the mind got them (for I intend not to enumerate all the particular ideas of each sort', these of fvt?/, liberty, and necessHy may serve as instances of mixed modes, which are that sort of ieUas I propose next to treat oV
* ' I had not been so long before I acknowledged your last, had I not a design to give you an account of some alterations I intended to make in the chapter on Power, wherein I should have been very glad you had showed me any mistake. I myself being not very well satisfied by the conclusion I was led to that my reasonings were perfectly right, reviewed that chapter again with great care, and by observing only the mistake of one word (viz. having put things for actitms), which was very easy to be done in the place where it is ($ 98, of first edition), I got into a new view of things, which, if I mistake not, will satisfy you, and give a clearer account ofkumemfi^eedotH than hitherto I have done.' (Locke to Molyneux, 15th July, 1693. See also Molyneux to Locke, August za, and Locke's reply, August 93.)
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Idea of Power. 367
to the learned world, and which, in shorty is this : Liberty is book ii. a power to act or not to act, according as the mind directs, ""^y. A power to direct the operative faculties to motion or rest in particular instances is that which we call the %vilL That which in the train of our voluntary actions determines the indll to any change of operation is some present uneasiness^ vrhich is, or at least is always accompanied with that of desire. Desire is always moved by evil, to fly it : because a total freedom from pain always makes a necessary part of our happiness : but every good, nay, every greater good, does not constantly move desire, because it may not make, or may not be taken to make, any necessary part of our happiness. For all that we desire, is only to be happy. But, though this general desire of happiness operates constantly and invariably, yet the satisfaction of any particular desire can be suspended^ from determining the will to. any subservient action, till we have maturely examined whether the particular apparent good which we then desire makes a part of our real happiness, or be consistent or inconsistent with it. The result of our judgment upon that examination is what ultimately deter- mines the man ; who could not be free if his will were determined by anything but his own desire, guided by his own judgment.] [^ I know that liberty, by some, is placed in an indifferency of the man ; antecedent to the determination of his will. I wish they who lay so much stress on such an antecedent indiflerency^ as they call it, had told us plainly, whether this supposed indifferency be antecedent to the
^ If the connection between the dependent, or caused causes ?
' general desire of happiness/ as a ' What follows, in objection to the
motive, and a voluntary determination * liberty' of * indifferency,' was intror
to act, be as constant or ' uniform ' as duced in Coste's French version of the
in a mechanical sequence, how can Essay, This appears in Locke's letter
he find the volition, its effect, ' sus- to Limborch, lath August, 1701. Free
pended,' even for a time ; unless man, agency, suggested by the chapter on
in virtue of his accountability for his ' Power,' was a subject of correspond-
volitions, is mysteriously able to arrest ence between Locke and Limborch in
them, by an act which originates in the course of that year. This and
himself, supematurally, i. e. independ- other arguments of Locke's in this
ently of the mechanism of physical chapter are criticised in Law's notes
causality, with its not less mysterious to his translation of Archbishop King's
outcome of an < infinite* succession of Essay on the Origin o/Evii,
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368 Essay concerning Human Understanding'.
BOOK IL thought and judgment of the understanding, as well as to the p '' J decree of the will. For it is pretty hard to state it be- tween them^ i. c. immediately after the judgment of the understanding, and before the determination of the will: because the determination of the will immediately follows the judgment of the understanding: and to place liberty in an indiilerency, antecedent to the thought and judgment of the understanding! seems to me to place liberty in a state of darkness, wherein we can neither see nor say anything of it ; at least it places it in a subject incapable of it, no agent being allowed capable of liberty, but in consequence of thought and judgment^. I am not nice about phrases, and therefore consent to say with those that love to speak so, that liberty is placed in indifferency ; but it is an indifferency which remains after the judgment of the understanding, yea, even after the deter* mination of the will : and that is an indifferency not of the many (for after he has once judged which is best, viz. to do or forbear, he is no longer indifferent,) but an indiflferency of the operative powers of the man^ which remaining equally able to operate or to forbear operating after as before the decree of the will, arc in a state, which, if one pleases, may be called indifferency ; and as far as this indifferency reaches, a man is free, and no further : v. g. I have the ability to move my hand, or to let it rest ; that operative power • is
^ * Hard ' or not ' to state,' is it not choose good or evil, a man must be
here that the voluntary determination able to exert his will, without regard
enters for which the man is account- either to motives, or to determinations
able t Is it not mtirmetHaie between of the understanding, in an irrational
the aniectdent motive constituted by indifference' to all considerations,
the stimulus of desire, interpreted by Reason is surely an essential element
the < judgment of the understanding,' in accountability ; although a finite
and the overt action which >b£b>fV5 the moral agent may determine to act irra-
interposed v<dition I The true * indif- tionally — immorally ; and cannot act
ference,' or independence of caused without a motive. Yet it does not
causality, in which moral freedom follow that his volitions are only links
consists, belongs, not to the antecedent in the sequences of nature, or that
motive, nor to the consequent overt they may not be ultimate fiicts in a
act, but to the act of will, supplied with spiritual economy, or moral order,
sufficient intellectual light to which the mechanical sequences of
' It is thus that Locke effectually nature are somehow in faaimonious
argues against the absurd supposition, subordination,
that in order to be morally free to ' Latent in the agent, under law
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Idea of Power. 369
indifferent to move or not to move my hand. I am then, in book ii. that respect perfectly free; my will determines that opera- -^*— tivc power to rest: I am yet free, because the indifferency of ^"^'*-^^^* that my operative power to act, or not to act, still remains ; the power of moving my hand is not at all impaired by the determination of my will, which at present orders rest ; the indifferency of that power to act, or not to act, is just as it was before, as will appear, if the will puts it to the trial, by ordering the contrary. But if, during the rest of my hand, it be seized with a sudden palsy, the indifferency of that operative power is gone, and with it my liberty ; I have no longer freedom in that respect, but am under a necessity of letting my hand rest ^. On the other side, if my hand be put into motion by a convulsion, the indifferency of that opera- tive faculty is taken away by that motion ; and my liberty in that case is lost, for I am under a necessity of having my hand move^. I have added this, to show in what sort of indifferency liberty seems to me to consist, and not in any other, real or imaginary.]
74. pTrue notions concerning the nature and extent of Active and liberty are of so great importance, that I hope I shall be^^^^jn pardoned this digression, which my attempt to explain it has motions led me into *. The ideas of will, volition, liberty, and necessity. Sinking.
which determines his natural power to ' Sect 74 was introduced in the
*â– operate ' with his hand, if he has Ihs second edition.
will to $xert it, * ' I do not wonder/ writes Locke
^ But a man would still be account- to Molyneux (Jan. ao, 1693), ' you
able/>r his voluntary determinationy say think my discourse about liberty a little
to murder, or to steal, if he could, and too fine spun. I had so much that .
did deliberately will to make his hand thought of it myself, that I said the
the instrument of murder or theft; even same thing of it myself to some of my
although, in virtue of its relation to friends, before it was printed, and told
the system of nature, as in palsy, his them that upon that account, I judged
volition could no longer cany, as its it best to leave it out ; but they per-
natural consequence, the needed move* suaded me to the contrary. When
ment of his hand. the connection of the parts of my sub«
* But I am not then accountable ject brought me to the consideration
for the consequences of its movement ; of power, I had no desire to meddle
although, if voluntary determination with the question of liberty^ but barely
goes along with the movement which pursued my thoughts in the content-
I am myself unable to execute by my plation of that power in man of choosing
volition, I am then responsible for the or preferring which we call the wi7/, as
voUHoH. Ux as they would lead me, without any
VOL. I. B b
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Chap. XXI.
370 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK 11. in this Chapter of Power, came naturally in my way. In a former edition of this Treatise I gave an account of my thoughts concerning them, according to the light I then had. And now, as a lover of truth, and not a worshipper of my own doctrines, I own some change of my opinion; which I think I have discovered ground for. In what I first writ, I with an unbiassed indifferency followed truth, whither I thought she led me. But neither being so vain as to fancy infallibility, nor so disingenuous as to dissemble my mistakes for fear of blemishing my reputation, I have, with the same sincere design for truth only, not been ashamed to publish what a severer inquiry has suggested. It is not impossible but that some may think my former notions right ; and some (as I have already found) these latter; and some neither. I shall not at all wonder at this variety in men's opinions : impartial deductions of reason in controverted points being so rare, and exact ones in abstract notions not so very easy, especially if of any length. And, therefore, I should think myself not a little beholden to any one, who would, upon these or any other grounds, fairly clear this subject of liberty from any difficulties that may yet remain ^]
[^Before I close this chapter, it may perhaps be to our pur- pose, and help to give us clearer conceptions about poTver^ if
the least bias to one side or the other ; possibility of either liberty of self- or if there was any leaning in my determination, or liberty of indiffer- mind, it was rather to the contrary ence. He never rises, through the side of that where I found myself at fundamental postulate of moral govern- the end of my pursuit. But doubting ment, to the conception of the mechan- that it bore a little too hard on man's ism of nature being merged in a higher liberty, I showed it to a very ingenious system, which leaves room for deter- but professed Arminian, and desired mining choice between good and evil, him, after he had considered it, to tell in freedom from nature in the lower me his objections, if he had any ; who meaning of the term nature, frankly confessed he could cany it no ^ This and the preceding sentence further.' (FamQiar LttUrs.) In this suggested a tract entiUed : — A Vnt' chapter Locke disposes of the pre* dicoHon of Mankind, or Frte Wiil, tended freedom of self-determination,' asstriid m €tnswer to a Philosopkkai by a reducHo ad absurdum \ and of the Inquuy conaming Human LiUrty. supposed freedom of 'indifference' to . To which is addtd an examuutiioH </ motives and to reason. While still Mr. LoMs Scheme 0/ Freedom (1717). claiming for man a freedom of 'suspen- * What follows to the end of the sion/ he is logically obliged to deny it, section was added in the fourth edi- by the arguments which show the im- tion.
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Idea of Power. 371
we make our thoughts take a h'ttle more exact survey of book ii. action. I have said above, that we have ideas but of two ""^^ sorts of action, viz. motion and thinking. These, in truth, though called and counted actions, yet, if nearly considered, will not be found to be always perfectly so. For, if I mis- take not, there are instances of both kinds, which, upon due consideration, will be found rather passions than actions ; and consequently so far the effects barely of passive powers in those subjects, which yet on their accounts are thought agents. For, in these instances, the substance that hath motion or thought receives the impression, whereby it is put into that action, purely from without, and so acts merely by the capacity it has to receive such an impression from some external agent ; and such a power is not properly an active power, but a mere passive capacity in the subject. Sometimes the sub- stance or agent puts itself into action by its own power, and this is properly active power. Whatsoever modification a substance has, whereby it produces any effect, that is called action : v. g. a solid substance, by motion, operates on or alters the sensible ideas of another substance, and therefore this modification of motion we call action. But yet this motion in that solid substance is, when rightly considered, but a passion, if it received it only from some external agent. So that the active power of motion is in no substance which cannot begin motion in itself or in another substance when at rest. So likewise in thinking, a power to receive ideas or thoughts from the operation of any external substance is called a power of thinking : but this is but a passive power, or capacity. But to be able to bring into view ideas out of sight at one's own choice, and to compare which of them one thinks fit, this is an active power. This reflection may be of some use to preserve us from mistakes about powers and actions, which grammar, and the common frame of languages, may be apt to lead us into. Since what is signified by verbs that grammarians call active, does not always signify action : v.g. this proposition : I see the moon, or a star, or I feel the heat of the sun, though expressed by a verb active, does not signify any action in me, whereby I operate on those sub- stances, but only the reception of the ideas of light, roundness,
B b a n \
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372 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. XXI.
BOOK II, and heat ; wherein I am not active^ but barely passive, and cannot, in that position of my eyes or body, avoid receiving them. But when I turn my eyes another way, or remove my body out of the sunbeams, I am properly active ; because of my own choice, by a power within myself, I put myself into that motion. Such an action is the product of active
power ^.]
* Locke's idea of 'power/ as im- plied in human wHif explained with circumlocution and digression, and with many modifications, in suc- cessive editions of the Essay^ was worked out, more consistently with its implied principle, in controversies of which this chapter was the occasion, during the half century that followed its publication. Naturalism, or the universal applicability of physical causa- tion, as an adequate account of the voluntary determinations of spiritual agents, equally with events in the ma- terial world, notwithstanding his vacil- lations, is Locke's implied principle. Yet the infinite succession of antece- dents, to which all natural explana- tions conduct, is ultimately as myste- rious as the mystery of origination or creation of his own volitions by a moral agent The caused causes of science, and the power superior to but in harmony with them, presup- posed in a moral agent, are both mysteries. With our necessarily in- adequate ideKs of each, neither concep- tion of the universe can be used to destroy the other ; while, under these conditions, room is left for the absolute supremacy of the conception of the universe as a moral government, with nature and natural government sub- ordinate, yet harmonious ; all involving as a presupposition dependence on God,who is immanent Reason personi- fied and supreme. The idea of human liberty which makes mechanical neces- sity the comfMt intellectual system of the universe, implied on the whole in Locke's reasoning, was carried more luminously to its conclusion by his
friend Anthony Collins, in his Philo* sopkical Inquiry concerning Hummn Liberty y which appeared in 17 17, to which Dr. Samuel Clarke replied in the same year. A rejoinder by Collins, published in 1729 (the year in which they both died), now rarely met with, is entitled : — A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity; wherein the process of ideas t from their first entrance into the soul until their production of action, is ddineated. Besides Collins and Clarke, Jackson and a host of other polemics joined in the argumentative fray — so that the literature of * free will,' in last century in England, might form a small library. The necessitated volition of Collins is aiigued for with extraordinary acuteness by Jonathan Edwards, in his Inquiry into the Modem prevailing notions respectmg Freedom cf Win (1759^ Hume, taking the finct that we can predict with probability human actions and their consequences, as we predict events in external nature, maintains that (whether we call this necessity or not) acts of will must be determined by a cause out of the will, under the same law or custom of physical causation that is illustrated in all other changes, and concludes that 'the whole dispute has been merely verbal' But the antithesis between the nahiral and the spiritual inter- pretation of the universe, which moral accountability supposes, is not got rid of by thus reducing spirit to nature, but by allowing scientific uniformity in nature, along with supernaturality in persons, in their voluntary deter- minations.
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Idea of Power. 373
75. And thus I have, in a short draught, given a view of book ii. our original ideas, from whence all the rest are derived, and '"'**^
Chap XXI
of which they are made up ; which, if I would consider as a g^^ * philosopher, and examine on what causes they depend^ and of our of what they are made, I believe they all might be reduced ,^e«r*^ to these very few primary and original ones, viz.
Extension^
Solidity^
Mobility y or the power of being moved ; which by our senses we receive from body :
Perceptivity^ or the power of perception, or thinking ;
Motivity^ or the power of moving : which by reflection we receive from our minds.
I crave leave to make use of these two new words, to avoid the danger of being mistaken in the use of those which are equivocal.
To which if we add
Existence^
Duration^
Number^ which belong both to the one and the other, we have, perhaps, all the original ideas on which the rest depend. For by these, I imagine, might be explained the nature of colours, sounds, tastes, smells, and all other ideas we have^ if we had but faculties acute enough to perceive the severally modified extensions and motions of these minute bodies, which pro- duce those several sensations in us. But my present purpose being only to inquire into the knowledge the mind has of things, by those ideas and appearances which God has fitted it to receive from them, and how the mind comes by that knowledge^; rather than into their causes or manner of
^ ' A dire la v^rit^, je crois que ces ^tre diminu6 par ce xnoyen,je crois qu*il
id^es, qu'on appelle ici originales et pourrait ^tre augments, en y ajou-
primitives, ne le sont pas enti&rement tant d'autres id^es plus originalesi ou
pour la plupart, ^tant susceptibles, ik autant Pour ce qui est deleur arrange*
mon avis, d'une resolution ult^rieure. mentJecroirais,suivantrordrederana-
Cependant, je ne blame point Tauteur Ijrse, texisttnce ant^ricure auz autres,
de s'y ^tre bom^, et de n^avoir pas le nombrt k niendMe, la dune k la
pouss^ I'analyse plus loin. D^aiUeurs, moiivitg; quoi que cet ordre analytique
s*il est vrai que le nombre en pourrait ne soit pas ordinairemeut celui des
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Chap. XXI.
374 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II, production, I shall not, contrary to the design of this Essay^set myself to inquire philosophically into the peculiar constitution of bodiesy and the configuration of parts, whereby they have the power to produce in us the ideas of their sensible qua- lities. I shall not enter any further into that disquisition ; it sufficing to my purpose to observe, that gold or saffron has a power to produce in us the idea of yellow, and snow or milk, the idea of white, which we can only have by our sight; without examining the texture of the parts of those bodies, or the particular figures or motion of the particles which rebound from them, to cause in us that particular sensation : though, when we go beyond the bare ideas in our minds, and would inquire into their causes, we cannot conceive any- thing else to be in any sensible object, whereby it produces different ideas in us, but the different bulk, figure, number, texture, and motion of its insensible parts ^
\
occasions qui nous y font penser. Les sens nous fournissent la mati^re aux reflexions, et nous ne penserions pas mdme k la pens^e, si nous nepenshns a quelque autre chose^ <^est»d»dire aux par- ticularites que les sens fournissent^ (Leibniz.)
^ As this chapter completes Locke*s account of the < simple modes * of those ' simple ideas * to which he refers all the thoughts that can be entertained by a human understanding, he ends it with the summary, contained in this section, of ' the original ideas on which the rest depend.' Some of its expres- sions might imply, that, if he had been enquiring as a natural philosopher into the natural causes of those ideas, he was inclined to maintain, that not only
our ideas of the secondary qualities and powers of bodies, but * all other ideas we have/ might be explained by * the severally modified extensions and motions* of the atoms of which bodies consist. This would not be incon- sistent with his repeated suggestion (Bk. IV. ch. iii. § 6, and in other parts of the Essay), that 'God can, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking.' But his illustration being taken from the dependence of sen- sations of the imputed qualities of matter on the motions of its particles, it is probable that this only, or chiefly, was before him here, and not the hypo- thesis of modified materialism else- where suggested.
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Note. 375
NOTE TO CHAPTER XXI.
The following are the sections in the First Edition, imme- bcx>k ii. diately after Section 27, which were in great part omitted in ""**""
the Second Edition, and in place of them thirty-five others "^'*' (§§ a8-6o) were introduced : —
aS. Secondly^ In the next place we must remember that voHHon or willing^ regarding only what is in our power, is nothing but the preferring the doing of anything to the not doing of it ; action to rest, and contra. Well, but what is this preferring ? It is nothing but the being pleased more with the one than the other. Is then a man indifferent to be pleased, or not pleased, more with one thing than another? Is it in his choice, whether he will or will not be better pleased with one thing than another? And to this I think every one's experience is ready to make answer, No. From whence it follows,
2g. Thirdly y That the will or preference is determined by something without itself . Let us see then what it is determined by. If willing be but the being better pleased, as has been shown, it is easie to know what 'tis determines the will, what 'tis pleases best : everyone knows 'tis happiness, or that which makes any part of happiness, or contributes to it ; and that is it we call Good. Happiness and Misery are names of two extremes, the utmost bounds whereof we know not : 'tis what eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath entered into the heart of man to conceive. But of some degrees of both we have very lively impressions, made by several instances of delight and joy on the one side, and torment and sorrow on the other : which, for shortness sake, I shall comprehend under the names of pleasure and pain, there being pleasure and pain of the mind as well as the body : IVith him is fulness of joy and pleasures for evermore : Or to speak truly they are all of the mind, though some have their rise in the mind from thought, others in the body from motion. Happiness then is the utmost pleasure we are capable of, and misery the utmost pain. Now, because pleasure and pain are produced in us, by the operation of certain objects, either on our minds or our bodies ; and in different degrees : therefore what has an aptness to produce pleasure in us is that we labour for, and is that we call Good\ and what is apt to produce pain in us, we avoid and call Evil\ for no other reason but its aptness to produce pleasure and pain in us, wherein consists
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376 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. our happiness or misery. Further, because the degrees of pleasure ♦» ■and pain have also justly a preference ; though what is apt to pro- Chap. XXI. duce any degree of pleasure be in itself good ; and what is apt to produce any degree of pain be evil ; yet it often happens that ive do not call it so, when it comes in competition with a greater of its sort So that if we will rightly estimate what we call good and evil we shall find it lies much in comparison : For the cause of every less degree of pain, as well as every greater degree of pleasure, has the nature of good, and vice versa, and is that which determines our choice and challenges our preference. Good, then, ^e greater good, is thai which determines the will.
30. This is not an imperfection in man ; it is the highest perfection of intellectual natures : it is so far from being a restraint or dimi- nution oi freedom, that it is the very improvement and benefit of it : 'tis not an abridgement, 'tis the end and use of our Uberty : and the further we are removed from such a determination to good, the nearer we are to misery and slavery \ A perfect indiflferency in the will, or power of preferring, not determinable by the good or evil that is thought to attend its choice, would be so far from being an advantage and excellency of any intellectual nature, that it would be as great an imperfection as the want of indifferency to act and not to act, till determined by the will, would be an imperfection on the other side. A man is at liberty to lift up his hand to his head, or let it rest quiet : he is perfectly indifferent to either ; and it would be an im- perfection in him, if he wanted that power, if he be deprived of that indifferency. But it would be as great an imperfection, if he had the same indifferency, whether he would prefer the lifting up his hand, or its remaining in rest, when it would save his head or eyes from a blow he sees coming : 'tis as much a perfection, that the power of preferring should be determined by good, as that the power of acting should be determined by the will ; and the certainer such determina- tion is, the greater is the perfection.
31. If we look upon those superiour beings above us, who enjoy perfect happiness, we shall have reason to judge they are more steadily determined in their choice of good than we : and yet we have no reason to think they are less happy, or less free, than we are. And if 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.
32. But to consider this mistaken part of liberty right, Would any one be a changeling, because he is less determined by wise considera- tions than a wise man ? Is it worth the name of freedom to be at
^ llie loss of power to will what is subject to sense and passion. The
good is the 'slavery' in which, by subjection of the individual to the
abuse of moral liberty in a finite per- universal will is the right use of free*
eon, reason and will have become dom, but is not human freedom itsell
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Note. 377
liberty to play the fool, and draw shame and misery upon a man's BOOK IT. self? If want of restraint to chuse, or to do the worse, be liberty, — ♦♦- true liberty, madmen and fools are the only free men: but yet I think Chap. XXL nobody would choose to be mad for the sake of such liberty, but he that is mad already.
33. But though the preference of the mind be always determined by the appearance of good, greater good ; yet the person who has the power, in which alone consists liberty to act, or not to act, according to such preference, is nevertheless free ; such determination abridges not that power. He that has his chains knocked off, and the prison- doors set open to him, is perfectly at liberty, because he may either go or stay as he best likes ; though his preference be determined to stay by the darkness of the night, or illness of the weather, or want of other lodging. He ceases not to be free ; though that which at that time appears to him greatest good absolutely determines his prefer- ence, and makes him stay in his prison. I have rather made use of the vjovd preference than choice^ to express the act of volition, because choice is of a more doubtful signification, and bordering more upon desire, and so is referred to things remote ; whereas volition, or the act of -willing, signifies nothing properly, but the actual producing of some- thing that is voluntary.
34. The next thing to be considered is, If our minds be determined by good, — How it comes to pass that men*s wills carry them so contrarily, and consequently some of them to what is evil ? And to this I say, that the various and contrary choices that men make in the world, doe not argue that they do not aU chuse good ; but that the same thing is not good to every man. Were all the concerns of man terminated in this life ; why one pursued study and knowledge, and another hawking and hunting ; why one chose luxury and debauchery, and another sobriety and riches, would not be, because everyone of these did not pursue his own happiness, but because their happiness lay in different things : And therefore 'twas a right answer of the physician to his patient that had sore eyes : If you have more pleasure in the taste of wine than in the use of your sight, wine is good for you : but if the pleasure of seeing be greater to you than that of drinking, wine is naught
35. The mind has a different relish as well as the palate; and you will as fruitlessly endeavour to delight all men with riches and glory (which yet some men place their happiness in) as you would to satisfie aU men's hunger with cheese or lobsters ; which though very agreeable and delicious fare to some, are to others extremely nauseous and offensive : and many people would with reason prefer the griping of an hungry belly to those dishes which are a feast to others. Hence it was I think that philosophers of old did in vain inquire, whether Summum Bonum consisted in riches, or bodily delights, or virtue, or contemplation : and they might have as reasonably disputed, whether the best relish were to be found in apples, plums, or nuts; and divided into sects upon it For, as pleasant tastes depend not on
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378 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. the things themselves, but their agreeableness to this and that ■♦» ■particular palate, wherein there is great variety: so the greatest Chap. XXI. happiness consists, in the having those things which produce the greatest pleasure, and the absence of those which cause any dis- turbance, any pain ; which to different men are very different things. If therefore men in this life only have hope ; if in this life only they can enjoy ; 'tis not strange nor unreasonable, that they should seek their happiness by avoiding all things that disease them here, and by preferring all things that delight them ; wherein it will be no wonder to find variety and difference. For if there be no prospect beyond the grave, the inference is certainly right— Z.*/ us eat and drink, let us enjoy what we delight in,ybr to-morrow we shall die. This I think may serve to show us the reason why, though all men's wills are determined by good, yet they are not determined by the same object. Men may chuse different things, and yet all chuse right, supposing them only like a company of poor insects, whereof some are bees, delighted with flowers, and their sweetness ; others scarabes, delighted with other kind of viands ; which, having enjoyed for a season, they should cease to be, and exist no more for ever.
36. This sufficiently discovers to us, why men in this world prefer I different things, and pursue happiness by contrary courses : But yet \ since men are always determined by Good, the greater Good, and I are constant and in earnest in matter of happiness and misery, the ' question still remains. How men often come to prefer the worse to the better; and to chuse that which, by their own confession, has made them miserable f
37. To this I answer. That as to preseftt happiness or misery, present pleasure or pain, when that alone comes in consideration, a man never chuses amiss : he knows what best pleases him, and that he actually prefers. Things in their present enjojonent are what they seem: the apparent and real good are, in this case, always the same. For the pain or pleasure being just so great, and no greater than is felt, the present good or evil is really as much as it appears. And there- fore, were every action of ours concluded within itself, and drew no consequences after it, we should undoubtedly always will nothing but Good ; always infallibly prefer the best Were the pains of honest industry, and of starving with hunger and cold set together before us, nobody would be in doubt which to chuse : were the satisfaction of a lust, and the joys of heaven offered at once to any one's present possession, he would not balance, or err in the choice and determina- tion of his will. But since our voluntary actions carry not all the happiness and misery that depend on them, along with them in their present performance ; but are the precedent causes of good and evil, which they draw after them, and bring upon us, when they themselves are passed, and cease to be; that which has the preference, and makes us will the doing or omitting any action in our power, is the greater good, appearing to result from that choice, in all its con- sequences, as far as at present they are represented to our view.
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Note. 379
38* So that that which determines the choice of the will, and BQOK il. obtains the preference, is still good, the greater good : but it is also — ♦<— only good that appears ; that which carries with it the expectation of Chap. XXI. addition to our happiness, by the increase of our pleasures, either in degrees, sorts, or duration ; or by preventing, shortening, or lessening of pain. Thus the temptation of a pleasant taste brings a surfeit, a disease, and perhaps death too, on one who looks no further than that apparent good, than the present pleasure; who sees not the remote and concealed evil ; and the hopes of easing or preventing some greater pain sweetens another man's draught, and makes that ^villingly be swallowed, which in itself is nauseous and unpleasant. Both these men were moved to what they did by the appearance of good ; though the one found ease and health, and the other a disease and destruction : and therefore to him that looks beyond this world, and is fully persuaded that God, the righteous judge, will render to every man according to his deeds : to them who by patient con- tinuance in well doing, seek for glory, and honour, and immortality, eternal life ; but unto every soul that doeth evil, indignation and ivrath, tribulation and anguish : To him I say who hath a prospect of the different state of happiness, or misery that attends all men after this life, depending on their behaviour here, the measures of good and evil that govern his choice are mightily changed. For, since nothing of pleasure and pain in this life can bear any proportion to endless happiness, or exquisite misery of an immortal soul hereafter, actions in his power will have their preference, not according to the transient pleasure or pain that accompanies or follows them here, but as they serve to secure that perfect, durable happiness hereafter.
In the first edition chapter xxi consists of 47 sections only. Those reproduced above were omitted in the second and suc- ceeding editions, partly on account of Locke's change of opinion as to the motive by which the will is ultimately determined. Also in the sections substituted in the second edition, Locke, for the first time, claims for man power to suspend the execution of any of his desires, in order to examine them with deliberation in the light of intelligence; seeking thus to recognise that we are able to act * freely,' in accepting or rejecting diflferent kinds of apparent good, in governing our passions, and in educating our tastes. In this power to deli- berate he thinks he has discovered * the source of all liberty,' in which consists * that which is (as I think improperly) called free-tuill* (§48). The omissions and large additions of the second edition, and the passages inserted in subsequent editions.
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Chap. XXI.
380 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. form a mixture in which his original conception of ' freedom/ as * power to act according to our will,' and this later concep- tion of freedom, as 'power to suspend volition,' and so to determine it by a deliberate judgment of the understandii^, are left in inharmonious conjunction, in a chapter which, notwithstanding all Locke's painful labour, is perhaps the least satisfactory in the Essay,
Among the MSS. printed by Lord King are four additional sections, which Locke at one time meant to introduce imme- diately after § 54. In them he tries to explain how it comes to pass, if men ' can suspend their desires, stop their actions, and take time to consider and deliberate upon what they are going to do,* that they nevertheless so often * abandon them- selves to the most brutish, vile, irrational actions, during the whole current of a wild or dissolute life ; without any check, or the least appearance of any reflection.' Several causes of this are then mentioned — in particular the loss of power to reflect which is the issue of neglected education and bad habits ; and rejection of * the thoughts and belief of another world, as a fiction of politicians and divines,' notwithstanding that * when in this age of the world the belief of another life leaves a man of parts who has been bred up under the sound and opinion of heaven and hell, virtue seldom stays with him/ In the end Locke judged that * this addition to the chapter might be spared.' (King's Life of Locke ^ vol. ii. pp. 219-322.)
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CHAPTER XXIL
OF MIXED MODES.
1. Having treated of simple modes in the foregoing chapters, book ii. and given several instances of some of the most consider- "T*^ able of them, to show what they are, and how we come by xxil! them ; we are now in the next place to consider those we Mixed call mixed modes ; such are the complex ideas we mark by JJ^af*' the names obligationy drunkenness^ a /t>, &c. ; which consisting
of several combinations of simple ideas of different kinds, I have called mixed modes ^, to distinguish them from the more simple modes, which consist only of simple ideas of the same kind. These mixed modes, being also such combinations of simple ideas as are not looked upon to be characteristical marks of any real beings that have a steady existence, but scattered and independent ideas put together by the mind, are thereby distinguished from the complex ideas of substances*.
2. That the mind, in respect of its simple ideas, is wholly Made by passive, and receives them all from the existence and opera- ' * *" ' tions of things, such as sensation or reflection offers them, without being able to make any one idea, experience shows
us '. But if we attentively consider these ideas I call mixed
^ The ideas for which Locke devised were elaborated, when their names
this (now obsolete) name are described are lost. As they are formed chiefly
by Reid as * general conceptions foi-med for their utility in social intercourse,
by combination ' of simple ideas or at- which depends upon ever-varying cir-
tributes * into one parcel.' {Jntellectual cumstances, the < mixed modes ' of our
Powers^ V. ch. 4.) simple ideas that are current in one
' Mixed modes are not ideas of sub- age or country may remain uncon*
stances, and so supposed to be formed ceived in other nations and periods, according to the intelligible system * That is to say, the mind shows
of things. They are formed to suit passive power only, in its acquisition
the convenience of men, are their own of the phenomena of existence that
archetypes, and cease to exist, even in are presented in sense and reflection ;
the thoughts of those by whom they for they cannot be made other than
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382 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. XXII.
BOOK II. modes, we are now speaking of, we shall find their original quite different. The mind often exercises an active power in making these several combinations. For, it being once fur- nished with simple ideas, it can put them together in several compositions, and so make variety of complex ideas, without examining whether they exist so together in nature. And hence I think it is that these ideas are called notions ^ : as if they had their original, and constant existence, more in the thoughts of men, than in the reality of things ; and to form such ideas, it sufficed that the mind put the parts of them together, and that they were consistent in the understanding, without considering whether they had any real being : though I do not deny but several of them might be taken from observation, and the existence of several simple ideas so combined*, as they are put together in the understanding. For the man who first framed the idea of hypocrisy^ might have either taken it at first from the observation of one who made show of good qualities which he had not ; or else have framed that idea in his mind without having any such pattern to fashion it by. For it is evident that, in the beginning of languages and societies of men, several of those complex ideas, which were consequent to the constitutions established amongst them, must needs have been in the minds of men, before they existed anywhere else ; and that many names that stood for such complex ideas were in use, and so those ideas framed, before the combinations they stood for ever existed '.
3. Indeed, now that languages are made, and abound with words standing for such combinations, an usual way di getting these complex ideas is, by the explication of those terms that stand for them*. For, consisting of a company of simple
Some- times got by the Explica- tion of their Names.
they appear, by any voluntary deter- mination of ours.
^ 'notions,' i.e. attributes which men sptdaUy note in things. Berkeley afterwards applied this term to those of those * ideas ' of Locke which cannot appear in external sense, or in sen- suous imagination, e. g. ' ideas ' of the soul in its intellectual and voluntary operations; of personality; of relation;
and of God or the supreme Rational Will.
" *so combined,' i.e. in an objec- tively real combination.
» Cf. Bk. III. ch. V. $§ 5, 6, where Locke gives examples of his meaning.
* Tliis ' explication ' is done exhaus- tively in defbuHoH, which is applicable to * mixed modes,* but not to ' simple ideas.*
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Mixed Modes. 383
ideas combined, they may, by words standing for those simple book ii. ideas, be represented to the mind of one who understands "**" those words, though that complex combination of simple xxil ideas were never offered to his mind by the real existence of things. Thus a man may come to have the idea of sacrilege or murder^ by enumerating to him the simple ideas which these words stand for ; without ever seeing either of them committed.
4. Every mixed mode consisting of many distinct simple The Name ideas, it seems reasonable to inquire, Whence it has its unity ; p^ \<^ and how such a precise multitude comes to make but one 'n>xe<* idea ; since that combination does not always exist together into one in nature ? To which I answer, it is plain it has its unity ^^^*- from an act of the mind, combining those several simple
ideas together, and considering them as one complex one, consisting of those parts ; and the mark of this union, or that which is looked on generally to complete it, is one name given to that combination. For it is by their names that men commonly regulate their account of their distinct species of mixed modes, seldom allowing or considering any number of simple ideas to make one complex one, but such collections as there be names for. Thus, though the killing of an old man be as fit in nature to be united into one complex idea, as the killing a man*s father; yet, there being no name standing precisely for the one, as there is the name oi parricide to mark the other, it is not taken for a particular complex idea, nor a distinct species of actions from that of killing a young man, or any other man.
5. If we should inquire a little further, to see what it is that The Cause occasions men to make several combinations of simple ideas ^j^J^"^ into distinct, and, as it were, settled modes, and neglect others, Modes, which in the nature of things themselves, have as much an aptness to be combined and make distinct ideas, we shall find
the reason of it to be the end of language ; which being to mark, or communicate men's thoughts to one another with all the dispatch that may be, they usually make such collec- tions of ideas into complex modes, and affix names to them, as they have frequent use of in their way of living and conversation, leaving others, which they have but seldom an
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BOOK 11. occasion to mention, loose and without names that tie them "**~ together: they rather choosing to enumerate (when they xxiL ^^^® need) such ideas as make them up, by the particular names that stand for them, than to trouble their memories by multiplying of complex ideas with names to them, which they seldom or never have any occasion to make use of. Why 6. This shows us how it comes to pass that there are in
in one* every language many particular words which cannot be ren- Language dered by any one single word of another. For the several answering fashions, customs, and manners of one nation, making several in another, combinations of ideas familiar and necessary in one, which another people have had never an occasion to make, or perhaps so much as take notice of, names come of course to be annexed to them, to avoid long periphrases in things of daily conversation ; and so they become so many distinct complex ideas in their minds. Thus SoTpaKia-fibs amongst the Greeks, and proscriptio amongst the Romans, were words which other languages had no names that exactly answered ; because they stood for complex ideas which were not in the minds of the men of other nations. Where there was no such custom, there was no notion of any such actions ; no use of such combinations of ideas as were united, and, as it were, tied together, by those terms : and therefore in other countries there were no names for them. And 7. Hence also we may see the reason, why languages con-
chM*?^^ stantly change, take up new and lay by old terms. Because change of customs and opinions bringing with it new com- binations of ideas, which it is necessary frequently to think on and talk about, new names, to avoid long descriptions, are annexed to them ; and so they become new species of complex modes ^. What a number of different ideas are by this means wrapped up in one short sound, and how much of our time and breath is thereby saved, any one will see, who will but take the pains to enumerate all the ideas that either reprUife or appeal stand for ; and instead of either of those names, use a periphrasis, to make any one understand their meaning. Mixed 8. Though I shall have occasion to consider this more at
Modes
^ ' complex modes,* i. e. mixed modes.
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Mixed Modes. 385
lai^e when I come to treat of Words and their use^, yet book 11. I could not avoid to take thus much notice here of the names ""•*" of mixed modes ; which being fleeting and transient com- ^™" binations of simple ideas, which have but a short existence y^here anywhere but in the minds of men, and there too have no they exist, longer any existence than whilst they are thought on, have not so much anywhere the appearance of a constant and lasting existence as in their names : which are therefore, in this sort of ideas, very apt to be taken for the ideas themselves. For, if we should inquire where the idea of a triumph or apotheosis exists, it is evident they could neither of them exist altogether anywhere in the things themselves, being actions that required time to their performance, and so could never all exist together ; and as to the minds of men, where the ideas of these actions are supposed to be lodged, they have there too a very uncertain existence : and therefore we are apt to annex them to the names that excite them in us.
9. There are therefore three ways whereby we get these How we complex ideas of mixed modes:— (i) By experience and f^^ of observation of things themselves : thus, by seeing two men mixed wrestle or fence, we get the idea of wrestling or fencing. ^' (2) By invention^ or voluntary putting together of several simple ideas in our own minds : so he that first invented printing or etching, had an idea of it in his mind before it ever existed. (3) Which is the most usual way, hy explaining the names of actions we never saw, or motions we cannot see; and by enumerating, and thereby, as it were, setting before our imaginations all those ideas which go to the making them up, and are the constituent parts of them. For, having by sensation and reflection stored our minds with simple ideas, and by use got the names that stand for them, we can by those means represent to another any complex idea we would have him conceive; so that it has in it no simple ideas but what he knows ^ and has with us the same name for. For all our complex ideas are ultimately resolvable into simple ideas, of which they are compounded
^ In Book III. of colour into the imagination of one
* We could not introduce a ' mixed bom blind, mode ' which included a positive idea VOL. I. C C
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386 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. and originally made up, though perhaps their immediate ""**^ ingredients, as I may so say, are also complex ideas. Thus, xxiL ^'^ mixed mode which the word lie stands for is made of these simple ideas : — (i) Articulate sounds, (a) Certain ideas in the mind of the speaker. (3) Those words the signs of those ideas. (4) Those signs put together, by affirmation or negation, otherwise than the ideas they stand for are in the mind of the speaker. I think I need not go any further in the analysis of that complex idea we call a lie : what I have said is enough to show that it is made up of simple ideas. And it could not be but an offensive tediousness to my reader, to trouble him with a more minute enumeration of every particular simple idea that goes to this complex one ; which, from what has been said, he cannot but be able to make out to himself. The same may be done in all our complex ideas whatsoever ; which, however compounded and decompounded, may at last be resolved into simple ideas, which are all the materials ^ of knowledge or thought we have, or can have. Nor shall we have reason to fear that the mind is hereby stinted to too scanty a number of ideas, if we consider what an inexhaustible stock of simple modes number and figure alone afford us*. How far then mixed modes, which admit of the various combinations of different simple ideas, and their infinite modes ^ are from being few and scanty, we may easily imagine. So that, before we have done, we shall see that nobody need be afraid he shall not have scope and compass enough for his thoughts to range in, though they be, as I pretend, confined only to simple ideas, received from sensation or reflection, and their several combinations.
^ All the *• materials/ that is to say, made to them in sense—which men can
that men have, for knowing, or even form, by dint of elaborative activity,
conjecturing, the actual attributes and are endless. They comprehend, he
behaviour, past, present, and future, of elsewhere sa3rs, ' almost the whole
finite beings and the Supreme Being, subject about which Divinity, Ho-
as to all which we are ignorant at rality, Law, Politics, and several other
birth, — a tabula rasa, sciences, are employed ' ; — ^and so, after
' C£ Bk. II. ch. vii. § la all, some mixed modes are not arbi-
* iCf. Bk. II. ch. vii. § 14. The mixed trary, but have their roots in the in-
modes of their simple ideas, — i. e. of telligible order of things.
the original revelations of existence
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10. It is worth our observing, which of ail our simple ideas book il have been most modified, and had most mixed ideas made "^^^
Chap
out of them, with names given to them. And those have ^^jj' been these three: — thinking and motion (which are the two Motion, ideas which comprehend in them all action,) and power ^ from Thinking, whence these actions are conceived to flow. These simple Power ideas, I say, of thinkii^, motion, and power, have been those ^^^^ ^^^^ which have been most modified ; and out of whose modifica- modified. tions have been made most complex modes, with names to them. For action being the great business of mankind, and the whole matter about which all laws are conversant, it is no wonder that the several modes of thinking and motion should be taken notice of, the ideas of them observed, and laid up in the memory, and have names assigned to them ; without which laws could be but ill made, or vice and disorders re« pressed. Nor could any communication be well had amongst men without such complex ideas, with names to them : and therefore men have settled names, and supposed settled ideas in their minds, of modes of actions, distinguished by their causes, means, objects, ends, instruments, time, place, and other circumstances ; and also of their powers fitted for those actions : v. g. boldness is the power to speak or do what we intend, before others, without fear or disorder ; and the Greeks call the confidence of speaking by a peculiar name, itafiprjo'ia : which power or ability in man of doing anything, when it has been acquired by frequent doing the same thing, is that idea we name kabit\ when it is forward, and ready upon every occasion to break into action, we call it disposition. Thus, testiness is a disposition or aptness to be angry.
To conclude : Let us examine any modes of action, v. g. consideration and assent^ which are actions of the mind; running and speakings which are actions of the body; re- venge and murder^ which are actions of both together, and we shall find them but so many collections of simple ideas, which, together, make up the complex ones signified by those names.
II. Power being the source from whence all action pro- Several ceeds, the substances wherein these powers are, when they seeming to
C c a
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388 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK 11. exert this power into act, are called causes\ and the sub- --**— stances which thereupon are produced, or the simple ideas XXII '^^^^^ ^^^ introduced into any subject by the exertii^ of that signify ' power, are called effects *. The efficacy whereby the new sub- Action, stance or idea is produced is called, in the subject exerting th^Effect ^^3.t power, action ® ; but in the subject wherein any simple idea is changed or produced, it is called passion ^ : which efficacy, however various, and the effects almost infinite, yet we can, I think, conceive it, in intellectual agents, to be nothing else but modes of thinking and willing ^ ; in corporeal agents, nothing else but modifications of motion^. I say, I think we cannot conceive it to be any other but these two. For whatever sort of action besides these produces any effects, I confess myself to have no notion nor idea of; and so it is •quite remote from my thoughts, apprehensions, and know- ledge ; ^and as much in the dark to me as five other senses, or JSA the ideas of colours to a blind man. And therefore many words which seem to express some action, signify
^ Power thus presupposes a sub- •stence, as the cause in which it resides. Apart from the complex idea of a par* ticular substance, in or by which the power is (passively or actively) mani- .fested, lind to which it is referred, the idea qf power in its various modes, simple and mixed, is an abstraction. The effects, in their antecedent equiva- lents, along with active power to evolve the effects, are all latent in the cause ; which is ;thus accountable, physically, if not morally, for its effects. But a free agent, recognised as such by the ethical test, is our one experienced example of a cause, in the highest meaning of the word.
* When a tree is evolved from the elements into which it may be re« funded, we have an example of what he means by the ' production * of a sub* stanct; when its leaves change colour, appear, or disappear, simple ideas are introduced and withdrawn. Cf. ch. viii. $ 93.
» Cf. ch. xxi. $ 9.
* < Thinking and willing * would thus
be the primary qualities of spiritual agents ; their modes of extension and motion, those of bodies, on which all their other qualities and powers are said to depend.
* This assumes that bodies are themselves * agents,* and not merely ' modes ' in which active reason mani- fests itself. Are the modiJiaUioMs of moiioH which bodies undergo in tlieir progressive evolution, and in which the changes of the material worid consist, per se * efficacious ' f Is not motion originated and sustained, in its intelligible order, or modus openrndi, by an ' efficacy* that is external to the motions themselves, and responsible for them, being that to which, as evolved effects, they are to be referred ? Does not the evoluHon of physical effects, from their equivalent physical causes, in which they were potentially contained, presuppose the originative and constant hyper-phenomenal effi- cacy of an etfolver, so that evolution itself is ultimately and throughout supernatural ?
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nothing of the action or modus operandi at all, but barely the effect, with some circumstances of the subject wrought on, or cause operating : v. g. creation^ annihilation \ contain in them no idea of the action or manner whereby they are produced, but barely of the cause, and the thing done. And when a countryman says the cold freezes water, though the word freezing seems to import some action, yet truly it sig- nifies nothing but the effect, viz. that water that was before fluid is become hard and consistent, without containing any idea of the action whereby it is done ^.
I a. I think I shall not need to remark here that, though power and action make the greatest part of mixed modes, marked by names, and familiar in the minds and mouths of men, yet other simple ideas, and their several combinations, are not excluded : much less, I think, will it be necessary for me to enumerate all the mixed modes which have been settled, with names to them. That would be to make a dictionary of the greatest part of the words made use of in divinity, ethics, law, and politics, and several other sciences. All that is requisite to my present design, is to show what sort of ideas those are which I call mixed modes ; how the mind comes by them ; and that they are compositions made up of simple ideas got from sensation and reflection ; which I suppose I have done.
BOOK II.
Chap. XXII.
Mixed Modes made also of other Ideas
than those of Power and Action.
* Words which refer to a 'power' actively operating, according to a modus operandi, stand for meanings which cannot, like the modus operandi itself, be represented in sensuous imagination. A modus operandi can be followed in imagination: originative power is not thus conceivable. It is as inconceivable as the 'infinite* in which the imaginable succession of
natural causation is lost at last The modus operandi is not action proper: it is succession of phenomena; their imaginable transformations in the ka* leidoscope of nature.
' And these physical effects can be the measurable equivalents of their natural causes, so that the one can be shown to follow the other in an intel* ligible order.
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CHAPTER XXIII.
OF OUR COMPLEX IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES.
BOOK II. I. ^ The mind being, as I have declared, furnished with
"â– **" a great number of the simple ideas, conveyed in by the senses
XXlli. ^^ ^^^y ^^^ found in exterior things ^ or by reflection on its
Ideas of own operations, takes notice also that a certain number of
particular these simple ideas go constantly together ; which being pre-
stances, sumed to belong to one thing, and words being suited to
how made, common apprehensions, and made use of for quick dispatch,
are called, so united in one subject, by one name ; which, by
inadvertency, we are apt afterward to talk of and consider as
one simple idea, which indeed is a complication of many
ideas together: because, as I have said, not imagining' how
these simple ideas can subsist by themselves, we accustom
ourselves to suppose' some substratum wherein they do
^ This section is meant to show that the complex idea of an inMvidual substance is occasioneti by phenomena of sense and reflection being found to coexist in aggregates in our ex- perience. It has been mistaken for an account of the general idea of substance, which is formed, not by 'complication of many simple ideas together/ but by the opposite pro- cess of abstraction ; and is at the root of all our complex ideas of par- ticular substances, because of our intellectual inability to conceive phe- nomena really existing unsubstantiated, 1. e. existing in abstraction, and not in the concrete.
" ' C'est plutdt le concretion — comme savant, chaud, luisant— qui nous vient
dans Tesprit, que les abstractions ou quality — comme savoir, chaleur, lu- mi^re— qui sont bien plus diffidles a comprendre.' (Leibniz.)
* *not imagining how' — 'we ac- custom ourselves to suppose.* These expressions seem to refer our idea of substanpe to 'imagination' and 'cus- tom,' instead of finding it implied in the very intelligibility of experience ; for although ' custom ' may explain our reference of such and such 'simple ideas' or qualities to such and such particular substances, it does not show the need in reason for substantiating them, in order to conceive that they are concrete realities. Locke thus vindicates his language in his third Letter to Stillingfleet (p. 375) :—
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Our Complex Ideas of Substances.
39t
subsist, and from which they do result, which therefore we book ii. call substance, ****^
Chap
2. So that if any one will examine himself concerning his xxiii notion of pure substance in general, he will find he has no our ob- other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not scure idea what support^ of such qualities which are capable of pro- stance in ducing simple ideas in us ; which qualities are commonly general, called accidents. If any one should be asked, what is the subject wherein colour or weight inheres ^ he would have nothing to say, but the solid extended parts ; and if he were demanded, what is it that solidity and extension adhere in ^,
' Your lordship goes on to insist upon " supposing*^ only, as that which gives rise to, and is included in, our idea of substance, thus resting it on mere sup- position ; and you yourself, if I under- stand your reasoning, conclude that there is substance, because it is a nr- pugnamy to our conceptions of things that modes should subsist by them* selves ; and / conclude the same thing, because we cannot conceive how quali- ties should subsist by themselves.' In other places too he insists that it is necessary in reason to the reality of 'simple ideas,' that they should be substantiated.
^ To substitute for the abstract cate- gory of substance this metaphor of a 'support' is apt to mislead, and to suggest a something — stripped of all perceived qualities — hid from our view by the very phenomena in and through which it is really (in part) revealed. To tiy to phenontenalise substance per se, after all the phenomena presented by particular substances have been abstracted, is to involve ourselves in an insurmountable difficulty of our own making. It is in and through ' simple ideas' that we have our ' general idea' of particular substances, which is as inseparable from them all as they are from otherwise abstract and unimagin- able substance per se. Space with- out body; duration without events; power unrevealed in effects; and sub-
stance not even in part manifested in phenomena, all illustrate the necesr sarily incomplete ideas of finite ex- perience and imagination, thus at last lost in the infinite. Locke implies that the idea of * substance in thought,' i.e. the 'general' idea, is gradually formed or suggested in the individual mind by our becoming ' accustomed ' to par- ticular substances. ' The ideas of the modes and actions of substances are usually in our minds before the [gene- ral] idea of substance itself.' (Letter to S. Bold, i6 May, 1699.)
• 'inheres' — * adhere in.' Rather — if asked what that is which is mani- fested to us as ' coloured and weighty/ also as ' solid and extended*— should not our answer be, that (whatever more may be affirmed of it) it is at least a substance that is coloured, heavy, solid, and extended ? A perfect or infinite idea of the substance would be an idea of all the phenomena and effects which it could present to any in- telligence, in all their possible relations. The contingent, and ' in part ' revela- tion, which individual substances, cor- poreal and spiritual, make of them- selves, in a human experience, surely differs in degree rather than in kind from the perfect idea which man would require infinite time to form. But Locke and others seem to leave sub* stances for ever whoUy hid behind their manifistatioHS,
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Chap. XXIII.
392 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. he would not be in a much better case than the Indian before mentioned ^ who, saying that the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on ; to which his answer was — a great tortoise: but being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied — somethittgy he knew not what And thus here, as in all other cases where we use words without having clear and distinct ideas, we talk like children: who, being questioned what such a thing is, which they know not, readily give this satisfactory answer, that it is something : which in truth signifies no more, when so used, either by children or men, but that they know not what ; and that the thing they pretend to know, and talk of, is what they have no distinct idea of at all, and so are perfectly ignorant of it, and in the dark *. The idea then we have, to which we give the general name substance, being nothing but the supposed, but un- known, support of those qualities we find existing, which we imagine cannot subsist sine re substante^ without something to support them, we call that support substantia ; which, accord- ing to the true import of the word, is, in plain English, standing under or upholding \
Of the 3. An obscure and relative idea of substance in general
Sub? ^^ being thus made we come to have the ideas oi particular sorts sunccs. of substances \ by collecting such combinations of simple
^ See Bk. II. ch. xilL ( 19, where the abstract or general idea of sub* stance is in like manner compared to the Indian philosopher's he'huuhnoi* what, which < supported ' the tortoise.
' These difficulties, as Leibniz says, would disappear with the resolution to think and speak of substances as in co9icnt€S, so far revealed in the complex ideas we have of them.
' Even in these misleading meta- phors Locke recognises, in the consti- tution of our complex ideas of indi- vidual substances, a notion or universal, which he can neither pbenomenalise nor eliminate, but which, while hard to harmonise with his principle, that
thought is confined to phenomena presented in our experience, he is too iaithful to the facts wholly to reject He rightly emphasises its * obscurity/ tested by sensuous imagination — a character which belongs to it in com- mon with other ultimate ideas involved in reason; and he half consciously sees that to treat it as < fiction' would re- solve reality with the sceptics into mere succession of impressions, as Hume afterwards showed.
* Locke seems glad to pass from the notion of substance in general — that * supposed or confused idea,' which nevertheless (as more than a nun generalisation) it is ' repugnant to our
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Our Complex Ideas of Substances. 393
Chap.
XXIII.
ideas as are, by experience and observation of men's senses, book ii. taken notice of to exist together ; and are therefore supposed to flow from the particular internal constitution, or unknown essence ^ of that substance. Thus we come to have the ideas of a man, horse, gold, water, &c. ; of which substances, whether any one has any other clear idea, further than of certain simple ideas co-existent together ^ I appeal to every one's own experience. It is the ordinary qualities observable in iron, or a diamond, put together, that make the true complex idea of those substances, which a smith or a jeweller commonly knows better than a philosopher ; who, whatever substantial forms ^ he may talk of, has no other idea of those substances, than what is framed by a collection of those simple ideas which are to be found in them : only we must take notice, that our complex ideas of substances, besides all those simple ideas they are made up of, have always the confused idea of something to which they belong, and in which they subsist ^ : and therefore when we speak of any
conceptions of things * to explain away. He hastens to 'particular sorts of substances,' into all which data of sense or reflection necessarily enter; em*' bodying the abstract, and per se un« imaginable, notion in ideas of the concrete substances — material and spiritual — which the 'pure notion' constitutes. This chapter is pro- fessedly on 'our complex ideas of substances,' not on * the idea of sub* stance in general' which is the subject of sect 9, and is repeatedly referred to in the sequel, as the 'support' of our complex ideas of particular substances. That our txperiema m senu and rtflic turn — however it comes about, and whatever it means — musi be an ex- perience of substoftcea manifested (in part), is the lesson suggested by, if not expressed in, this chapter. But an analysis of this intellectual need for substantiating phenomena, lies outside Locke's point of view.
^ 'Essence.' The essence of a sub- stance is, that in it which makes it be
the sort of substance that it is. Cf. Bk. III. ch. iii ( 15.
' This coexistence of phenomena, maintained by God in the sensuous presentations of finite spirits, consti* tutes so-called material substances, according to Berkeley. He thus finds their substance in self-conscious spirit, of which he says we have a ' notion* that cannot be represented in sensuous imagination.
* The ' substantial form ' of the schoolmen is the supposed real and immaterial principle in substances that gives them the character by which they are definable.
* The * confused * or * obscure * idea of substance per s#, in which concrete reality consists. Locke is apt to ex- press hunself as if this were the idea of something absolutely distinct from the phenomena, or simple ideas, in which it is so really revealed that we can predicate ^%€m oft/, and have (thus fiur) in them a conception of it What he said about the 'obscurity' of the idea,
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394 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. XXIII.
BCX>K XL sort of substance, we say it is a thing liavii^ such or such qualities ; as body is a thing that is extended, figured, and capable of motion ; spirit, a thing capable of thinking ; and so hardness, friability, and power to draw iron, we say, are qualities to be found in a loadstone. These, and the like fashions of speaking, intimate that the substance is supposed always something besides the extension, figure, solidity, motion, thinking, or other observable ideas, though we know not what it is \
and its origin in the custom of experi- ence, as well as the impossibility of reconciling an idea of the sort with a purely sensuous source of ideas, raised against him a charge of scep- ticism, against which he thus de- fends himself, in one of his letters to Stillingfleet : — < It is laid to my charge that I look at the Imng of substance to be doubtful ; and rendered it so by the imperfect and ill-grounded idea I have of it. To which I beg leave to say, that I ground not the bemg but the idia of substance, on our accustoming ourselves to suppose some swAs/hs/Mm: for it is of the idea alone that I speak there, and not of the beit^ of substance. And having everywhere affirmed and built upon it, that man is a substance, I cannot be supposed to question or doubt of the being of substance. Fur- ther, I say that sensation convinces us that there an solid and txttndtd sub- stances, and reflection that there are thinking substances. So that I think the being of substance is not shaken by what I have said ; and if the idea of it should be, yet (the being of things not depending on our ideas) the being of substance would not be shaken by my saying we had but an obscure imperfect idea of it ; and that the idea came from our accustoming ourselves to suppose some substratum : or indeed if I should say that we had no idea of substance at alL For a great many things are granted to be of which we have no ideas.* (First Letter^ pp. 39, 33.) This, notwithstanding confusion of ex-
pression, may be understood to mean, that although we cannot represent m sensuous imaginatidn, and have sn this way an idea of that in which the sub- stantiality or concreteness of things, material and spiritual, consists, we are not therefore bound to deny substantial reality; and also, that although our 'obscure idea' is occasioned by the custom of experience, it is * obscure,' and dependent on that 'custom,' in the way that all ultimate notions must be. We could not have them without experience, or experience without them ; but they are necessarily obscure and incomplete, in virtue of the finitude of human understanding and expe- rience.
^ It is this 'something' in the complex ingredient, the inevitable presence of which Locke is bound to reconcile with the hypothesis, that all our ideas of reality must consist of phenomena presented in the senses and in reflection. We ntust have the idea that they are the phenomena or manifestations of something on which they depend. Hence ' substances * neither are in, nor can be affirmed of a subject, and are thus independent ; but generaand species (the secondsMbsiemces of Aristotle) are affirmable of their subject. So too we cannot understand the name of a substantive noun till we can predicate an adjective of it, while adjectives are unintelligible without substantives understood, on which they depend.
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4. Hence, when we talk or think of any particular sort of book it. corporeal substances, as horse, stone, &c., though the idea we ""**" have of either of them be but the complication or collection of xxili. those several simple ideas of sensible qualities, which we used ^ko dear to find united in the thing called horse or stone ; yet, because ?f distinct we cannot conceive ^ how they should subsist alone^ nor one in Sub- another^ we suppose them existing in and supported by some '^"g^f" common subject; which support we denote by the name substance, though it be certain we have no clear or distinct
idea of that thing we suppose a support.
5. The same thing happens concerning the operations of As dear the mind, viz. thinking, reasoning, fearing, &c., which we^j^^J^i^ concluding not to subsist of themselves, nor apprehending aubsunce how they can belong to body, or be produced by it, we are coiporeai apt to think these the actions of some other substance^ which substonce. we call spirit ; whereby yet it is evident that, having no other
idea or notion of matter, but something wherein those many sensible qualities which affect our senses do subsist; by supposing a substance wherein thinking, knowing, doubting, and a power of moving, &c., do subsist, we have as clear a notion of the substance of spirit, as we have of body ; the one being supposed to be (without knowing what it is^) the substratum to those simple ideas we have from without ; and the other supposed (with a like ignorance of what it is ^) to be the substratum to those operations we experiment in ourselves within. It is plain then, that the idea of corporeal substance in matter is as remote from our conceptions and appre-
1 < cannot conceive,' i. e. it is re- stance is not one ' thing,* and its phe-
pugnant to conception — contrary to nomena or qualities another < thing.*
reason. The qualities are that in which the sub-
* We can have no sensuous idea of stance reveals iistlfy so far as they go.
it at all till it is manifested — pfuttome- * * Pour moi/ says Leibniz, ' je crois
nalisid-^in its qualities ; but these, as que cette opinion de notre ignorance
manifested, necessarily presuppose vient de ce qu'on demande une mani^re
what he metaphorically calb a * sup- de connaissance que Tobjet ne souffre
port '—something independent, and point.' We do * know what it is,* so
that persists through the phenomenal far as it is revealed to us, in such and
changes which reveal it; while by such modes, and in such and such
means of the supersensible idea, thus effects ; and we are obliged to think
awakened, presented phenomena are that ' modes * and * effects ' mean Jom#-
conceived in the concrete. But the sub- thitig modi/Uti uid iffktent.
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BOOK 11.
Chap. XXIII.
Our ideas of par- ticular Sorts of Sub- stances.
hensions, as that of spiritual substance^ or spirit : and there- fore, from our not having any notion of the substance of spirit, we can no more conclude its non-existence, than we can, for the same reason, deny the existence of body ; it being as rational to affirm there is no body, because we have no clear and distinct idea of the substance of matter, as to say there is no spirit, because we have no clear and distinct idea of the substance of a spirit^.
6. Whatever therefore be the secret abstract nature of substance in general^ all the ideas we have of particular distinct sorts of substances are nothing but several combina- tions of simple ideas, co-existing in such, though unknown, cause of their union ^ as makes the whole subsist of itself. It is by such combinations of simple ideas, and nothing else, that we represent particular sorts of substances to ourselves ; such are the ideas we have of their several species in our minds ; and such only do we, by their specific names, signify to others, v. g. man, horse, sun, water, iron : upon hearing which words, every one who understands the langu^;e, frames in his mind a combination of those several simple ideas which he has usually observed, or fancied to exist together under that denomination ; all which he supposes to rest in and be, as it were, adherent to that unknown common subject, which inheres not in anything else *. Though, in the meantime, it be manifest, and every one, upon inquiry into his own
^ It is well said by Locke» Leibniz remarks, that spirit is at least as dis- tinctly manifested to us in our experi- ence as body is. * Et il est trte-vrai,* he furtheradds, ' que Texistence de Tesprit est plus urimnt que celle des objets sensibles.'
' Locke speaks as if this substance were a secret things something num§- rtcaliy diffitmU from its own modifica- tions, or from substance in the concrete and particular. Yet he is too faithful to the implicates of experience to be satisfied with hollow, unsubstantiated phenomena, as Hume afterwards pro* fessed to be.
* 'unknown cause of their union'
^^impt^facUy known, in and through the phenomena in which it ' in part' reveals itself; and in those inadequate interpretations, scientific and philo- sophic, of its phenomena or effects, which men, with their finite experi- ence, can attain to.
* < inheres not in anything else,' i. e. cannot be predicated as a mods or quality of anythmg dst^ and so is thus far independent. This consists with finite individual substances being causally dependent, as elements in the universal system, in which escfa needs other substances in order to reveal itself, and God to sustain the whole.
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thoughts, will find, that he has no other idea of any substance, book ii. V. g. let it be gold, horse, iron, man, vitriol, bread, but what "'•^ he has barely of those sensible qualities, which he supposes to ^^^J inhere ; with a supposition of such a substratum as gives, as it were, a support to those qualities or simple ideas, which he has observed to exist united together. Thus, the idea of the sun, — ^what is it but an aggregate of those several simple ideas, bright, hot, roundish, having a constant regular motion, at a certain distance from us, and perhaps some other : as he who thinks and discourses of the sun has been more or less accurate in observing those sensible qualities, ideas, or properties, which are in that thing which he calls the sun^.
7. For he has the perfectest idea of any of the particular Their sorts of substances, who has gathered, and put tc^ther, most p^*""^ of those simple ideas which do exist in it ; among which are Powers to be reckoned its active powers, and passive capacities ^ ^^of our which, though not simple ideas, yet in this respect, for complex brevity's sake, may conveniently enough be reckoned amongst of Sub- them ®. Thus, the power of drawing iron is one of the ideas s^^^^ces. of the complex one of that substance we call a loadstone ; and a power to be so drawn is a part of the complex one we call iron: which powers pass for inherent qualities in those subjects. Because every substance, being as apt, by the
' Locke holds that the ideas of • According to Leibniz, every sub-
the modes and actions of substances stance, or monads is necessarily active,
are usually in our minds btfor$ the and revealed only in its uncon-
general idea of substance itself. The scious and conscious activities. Locke
idea (notion^ is suggested by the manl- sees the ' powers ' of maUrial sub-
festations which substances make of stances in all their secondaiy or im-
themselves in simple ideas, i. e. in the ported qualities, as well as in the
phenomena presented in sensation or changes in other things, of which
reflection. they are the occasion; and in
' In a ' perfect,' or exhaustive, idea sprntual substances, in their passive
of the ' particular substances ' that sensibilities and voluntaiy determina-
exist, should we not be able to picture tions. On the other hand, in the
them in all their possible manifesta- solidity of bodies, and the conscious
tions and relations, in the supreme or personality of spirits, Locke appears to
spiritual, and also in the subordinate regard material and spiritual substances
or natural, system ? The drift of this as revealing ikemstlves, rather than
chapter is to show how far short of revealing iheir powers to produce effects
this ideal taty human conception of each iu other substances, substance in the universe must be.
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398 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. powers we observe in it, to change some sensible qualities ""•*" in other subjects, as it is to produce in us those simple ideas xxin ^^^^^ ^^ receive immediately from it, does, by those new sensible qualities introduced into other subjects, discover to us those powers which do thereby mediately affect our senses, as regularly as its sensible qualities do it immediately : v. g. we immediately by our senses perceive in fire its heat and colour ; which are, if rightly considered, nothing but powers in it to produce those ideas in «j : we also by our senses perceive the colour and brittleness of charcoal, whereby we come by the knowledge of another power in fire, which it has to change the colour and consistency of wood. By the former, fire immediately, by the latter, it mediately discovers to us these several powers ; which therefore we look upon to be a part of the qualities of fire, and so make them a part of the complex idea of it. For all those powers that we take cognizance of, terminating only in the alteration of some sensible qualities in those subjects on which they operate, and so making them exhibit to us new sensible ideas ^, therefore it is that I have reckoned these powers amongst the simple ideas which make the complex ones of the sorts of substances* ; though these powers considered in themselves, are truly complex ideas. And in this looser sense I crave leave to be understood, when I name any of these potentialities among the simple ideas which we recollect in our minds when we think of particular substances. For the powers that are severally in them are necessary to be considered, if we will have true distinct notions of the several sorts of substances.
And why. 8. Nor are we to wonder that powers make a great part of our complex ideas of substances'; since their secondary qualities are those which in most of them serve principally to distinguish substances^ one from another, and commonly make a considerable part of the complex idea of the several sorts of them. For, our senses failing us in the discovery of
1 < new sensible ideas/ i.e. new * 'substances'; fNa^Mi/ subfttances,
simple ideas, in which ideas powers not spiritual, are what he has in view
are manifested. in §§ 7-14.
' The idea ofpower is thus virtually ^ Cf. Bk. 11. ch. viii. %% xo^ 13, 14,
an idea of a quality presented in sense. 93-96.
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\
Our Complex Ideas of Substances.
399
Chap. XXIII.
the bulk, texture, and figure of the minute parts of bodies, on book ii. which their real constitutions and differences depend ^ we are fain to make use of their secondary qualities as the character- istical notes and marks whereby to frame ideas of them in our minds, and distinguish them one from another: all which secondary qualities, as has been shown, are nothing but bare powers. For the colour and taste of opium are, as well as its soporific or anodyne virtues, mere powers, dependii^ on its primary qualities *, whereby it is fitted to produce different operations on different parts of our bodies.
9. The ideas that make our complex ones of corporeal Three substances, are of these three sorts ^. First, the ideas of the jj^*'^ primary qualities of things, which are discovered by our make our senses, and are in them even when we perceive them not ; onTs^of^ such are the bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion of ^^fpo"^^^ the parts of bodies ; which are really in them, whether we stances. take notice of them or not*. Secondly, the sensible secon- dary qualities, which, depending on these, are nothing but the powers those substances have to produce several ideas in us by our senses ; which ideas are not in the things them- selves, otherwise than as anything is in its caused Thirdly,
^ Cf. Bk. II. ch. viii. %% 10, 13, 14, 33-36.
* The dependence of the secondary qualities, which are those that make jnaterial substances interesting, upon the primary, is stated less dogmatically elsewhere, e.g. Bk. IV. ch. iii. § 11.
* What follows, in this and next section, is nearly a restatement of what was said in ch. viii, regarding the *â– quahties and powers of bodies.'
* The chief argument of Berkeley, in his reasonings against the tttdepen- eUnt actual existence of bodies, is directed against this assumption — that all the primary qualities in which they are revealed to us, are in them even -when they are unperceived by any one. Extension and solidity, he argues, are words that can have no applicability or meaning, in the ab- sence of all percipient activity, any
more than tastes or smells, in the ab- sence of all sentients. All alike are substantiated only in and through the living experience, and active power of percipient spirit — actually mamfesUd in the sense experiences of finite spirits, and all uUimaUly determitud by the Supreme Spirit. Solids are thus necessarily dependent for their solidity, as much as for their taste, upon per- cipients ; while percipient personality is not in like manner dependent upon them. A percipient person is there- fore a substance in a way that a solid object cannot be.
' With Leibniz the idea of substances is that of an inconceivable number of self-active powers or monads, so that substance is identified with power; and this monadology is then opposed to Spinoza's central conception of unka substantia, which issues in a
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400 Essay cancemtng Human Understanding.
DCXDKii. the aptness we consider in any substance, to give or receive 7**^ such alterations of primary quah'ties, as that the substance XXIII. ^^ altered should produce in us different ideas from what it did before; these are called active and passive powers: all which powers, as far as we have any notice or notion of them, terminate only in sensible simple ideas. For whatever alteration a loadstone has the power to make in the minute particles of iron, we should have no notion of any power it had at all to operate on iron, did not its sensible motion discover it: and I doubt not, but there are a thousand changes, that bodies we daily handle have a power to cause in one another, which we never suspect, because they never appear in sensible effects. Powers lo. Powers therefore justly make a great part of our com-
a great * P'^^ ideas of substances^. He that will examine his complex Part of idea of gold, will find several of its ideas that make it up piex Ideas to be Only powcrs ; as the power of being melted, but of not lar'sub-" ®P^"^^"S itself in the fire ; of being dissolved in aqua rigia^ sunces. are ideas as necessary to make up our complex idea of gold, as its colour and weight : which, if duly considered, are also nothing but different powers. For, to speak truly, yellowness is not actually in gold, but is a power in gold to produce that idea in us by our eyes^ when placed in a due light : and the heat, which we cannot leave out of our ideas of the sun, is no more really in the sun, than the white colour it intro- duces into wax. These are both equally powers in the sun, operating, by the motion and figure of its sensible parts, so on a man, as to make him have the idea of heat ; and
universe of logical consequences is regarded as ' containing active and
emptied of causal efficiency. Locke passive powers,* righUy conceived to
does not explain what he means by be tdtpUieoi with the sum of its effects,
'powers existing in substances' — the effects balancing what is subtracted
things ' existing in their causes * ; but from the cause by its activity I he distinguishes between the iUrect ^ That is to say, a thing is substan-
manifestation of a material substance, tially, m a greai ntsasurt, what it iioes.
in its primary qualities (more or Leibniz would say that it is simply
less») and its indirect manifestation what it does, or is able to do, — its
of itself, in its ' effects * on other substance consisting of its doing. He
substances. Is a cause, i.e. a sub* finds the what of things exclusively
stance (material or spiritual}, when it in their activities or behaviour.
\
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Our Complex Ideas of Substances. 401
so on wax, as to make it capable to produce in a man the book ii. idea of white^ -"*♦-
II. Had we senses acute enough to discern the minute ^^jj^j particles of bodies, and the real constitution on which their The now sensible qualities depend, I doubt not but they would pro- secondary duce quite different ideas in us : and that which is now the ?fBodies yellow colour of gold, would then disappear, and instead of ^°"^** **!J" it we should see an admirable texture of parts, of a certain we could size and figure. This microscopes plainly discover to us ; ^^^J for what to our naked eyes produces a certain colour, is, by mary ones thus augmenting the acuteness of our senses, discovered to be mimite^ quite a different thing ; and the thus altering, as it were, P^'^- the proportion of the bulk of the minute parts of a coloured object to our usual sight, produces different ideas from what it did before. Thus, sand or pounded glass, which is opaque, and white to the naked eye, is pellucid in a microscope ; and a hair seen in this way, loses its former colour, and is, in a great measure, pellucid, with a mixture of some bright spark- ling colours, such as appear from the refraction of diamonds, and other pellucid bodies. Blood, to the naked eye, appears all red ; but by a good microscope, wherein its lesser parts appear, shows only some few globules of red, swimming in a pellucid liquor, and how these red globules would appear, if glasses could be found that could yet magnify them a thousand or ten thousand times more, is uncertain ^
' To the practical mind of Locke, persons that are all in all with Locke
the inquiry, how substances behave^ i. e. disappear in the barren notion of One
what their powers are, is more in- Substance, the only real existence, in
teresting than speculation about the which all that appears is logically
< obscure ' idea of ' substance in contained ; while the res particulares
general.' The opposite points of view of Locke are referred to the inade-
at which philosophy is regarded by quate ideas of imagination and ex-
the utilitarian Locke, and the purely perience, in a merely individual and
speculative Spinoza, appear in their temporal knowledge, wherein nothing
treatment of substance. Locke dwells is seen from the philosophic point of
on the inevitable inadequacy of our view of the One Substance, or sub
ideas of individual substances— material specie eetemitatis.
and spiritual; avoiding the ultimate ' That is to say, the sensible or
mtellectual necessity to substantiate secondary qualities of bodies would
phenomena, of which, nevertheless, appear other than they now do, if our
he cannot get rid. To the acosmic senses were acute enough to perceive
Spinoza, the individual things and the texture and motions of the atoms
VOL. I. D d r^ ]
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402 Essay concerning Human Understanding-.
BOOK It.
Chap.
XXIII. Our
Faculties for Dis- covery of the Qualities and
powers of Sub- stances suited to our State.
I a. The infinite wise Contriver of us, and all things about us, hath fitted our senses, faculties, and organs, to the con- veniences of life, and the business we have to do here. We are able, by our senses, to know and distinguish things : and to examine them so far as to apply them to our uses, and several ways to accommodate the exigences of this life. We have insight enough into their admirable contrivances and wonderful effects, to admire and magnify the wisdom, power, and goodness of their Author. Such a knowledge as this, which is suited to our present condition, we want not faculties to attain. But it appears not that God intended we should have a perfect, clear, and adequate knowledge of them : that perhaps is not in the comprehension of any finite being. We are furnished with faculties (dull and weak as they are) to discover enough in the creatures to lead us to the know- ledge of the Creator, and the knowledge of our duty ; and we are fitted well enough with abilities to provide for the con- veniences of living: these are our business in this worlds But were our senses altered, and made much quicker and acuter, the appearance and outward scheme of things would have quite another face to us ; and, I am apt to think, would be inconsistent with our being, or at least wellbeing, in this part of the universe which we inhabit. He that considers how little our constitution is able to bear a remove into parts of this air, not much higher than that we commonly breath in, will have reason to be satisfied, that in this globe of earth
of which they consist ; which are, he assumes, the physical causes of the sensations that we refer to the so- called ' secondary ' qualities. The su- perficial appearances which substances make to our senses are (so far) real ; but more acute senses, or greater ability on our part to interpret the appearances presented to us, would discover deeper and truer relations, and these in turn deeper and truer still ; our complex ideas of the sub- stance thus undergoing a gradual cor- rection and development, as we advance from our first crude interpretations of what is presented in sense.
' Cf. Introduction, % 5. Material substances, by their respective natures, produce effects, or are manifested in sense, in ways practically related to us and our functions in the universe. Deeper and truer ideas of them than those man can attain to, being in- consistent with his purpose in the universe, are withheld from his finite intelligence. The ultimait construction of sensible things is accordingly a mystery to the ' human understanding ' and we can only go a little way towards substituting their ultimate meaning for those ' first appearances* in sense which are apt to delude.
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Our Complex Ideas of Substances. 403
allotted for our mansion, the all-wise Architect has suited our book il organs, and the bodies that are to affect them, one to another. JT**"
Chap*
If our sense of hearing were but a thousand times quicker xxill. than it is, how would a perpetual noise distract us. And we should in the quietest retirement be less able to sleep or meditate than in the middle of a sea-fight^. Nay, if that most instructive of our senses, seeing, were in any man a thousand or a hundred thousand times more acute than it is by the best microscope, things several millions of times less than the smallest object of his sight now would then be visible to his naked eyes, and so he would come nearer to the discovery of the texture and motion of the minute parts of corporeal things ; and in many of them, probably get ideas of their internal constitutions: but then he would be in a quite different world from other people: nothii^ would appear the same to him and others : the visible ideas of every- thing would be different. So that I doubt, whether he and the rest of men could discourse concerning the objects of sight, or have any communication about colours, their appear- ances being so wholly different. And perhaps such a quick- ness and tenderness of sight could not endure bright sunshine, or so much as open daylight ; nor take in but a very small part of any object at once, and that too only at a very near distance. And if by the help of such microscopical eyes^ (if I may so call them) a man could penetrate further than ordi- nary into the secret composition and radical texture of bodies, he would not make any great advantage by the change, if such an acute sight would not serve to conduct him to the market and exchange ; if he could not see things he was to avoid, at a convenient distance ; nor distinguish things he had to do with by those sensible qualities others do. He that was sharp-sighted enough to see the configuration of the
^ Thus paraphrased by Pope in the The whispering zephyr and the
£ssay on Man : — purling rill ! '
' If nature thundered in his opening * So Pope again : —
ears, 'Why has not man a microscopic
And stunned him with the music of eye t
the spheres, For this plain reason — ^man is not
How would he wish that Heaven a fly.' had left him still,
Dd 2
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404 Essay concerning Human Understanding'.
BOOK II. minute particles of the spring of a clock, and observe upon "â– **r what peculiar structure and impulse its elastic motion de- XXIII. P^'^ds, would no doubt discover something very admirable : but if eyes so framed could not view at once the hand, and the characters of the hour-plate, and thereby at a distance see what o'clock it was, their owner could not be much benefited by that acuteness ; which, whilst it discovered the secret contrivance of the parts of the machine, made him lose its use. Conjee. 13- And here give me leave to propose an extravagant
ture about conjecture of mine, viz. That since we have some reason (if porcal there be any credit to be given to the report of things that some * ^^ °"^ philosophy cannot account for) to imagine, that Spirits Spirits, can assume to themselves bodies of different bulk, figure, and conformation of parts — ^whether one great advantage some of them have over us may not lie in this, that they can so frame and shape to themselves organs of sensation or per- ception, as to suit them to their present design, and the circumstances of the object they would consider. For how much would that man exceed all others in knowledge, who had but the faculty so to alter the structure of his eyes, that one sense, as to make it capable of all the several degrees of vision which the assistance of glasses (casually at first lighted on) has taught us to conceive? What wonders would he discover, who could so fit his eyes to all sorts of objects, as to see when he pleased the figure and- motion of the minute particles in the blood, and other juices of animals, as distinctly as he does, at other times, the shape and motion of the animals themselves? But to us, in our present state, unalterable organs, so contrived as to discover the figure and motion of the minute parts of bodies, whereon depend those sensible qualities we now observe in them, would perhaps be of no advantage. God has no doubt made them so as is best for us in our present condition. He hath fitted us for the neighbourhood of the bodies that surround us, and we have to do with ; and though we cannot, by the faculties we have, attain to a perfect knowledge of things, yet they will serve us well enough for those ends above- mentioned, which are our great concernment I b^ my reader*s pardon for laying before him so wild a fancy con-
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Our Complex Ideas of Substances. 405
cerning the ways of perception of beings above us ; but how book ii. extravagant soever it be, I doubt whether we can imagine ~"**^ anything about the knowledge of angels but after this xxill manner, some way or other in proportion to what we find and observe in ourselves. And though we cannot but allow that the infinite power and wisdom of God may frame crea- tures with a thousand other faculties and ways of perceiving things without them than what we have, yet our thoughts can go no further than our own : so impossible it is for us to enlarge our very guesses beyond the ideas received from our own sensation and reflection^. The supposition, at least, that angels do sometimes assume bodies, needs not startle us; since some of the most ancient and most learned Fathers of the church seemed to believe that they had bodies: and this is certain, that their state and way of existence is un- known to us. I 14. But to return to the matter in hand, — the ideas we have Our i of substances, and the ways we come by them. I say, our J§^ \^ specific ideas of substances are nothing else but a collection o/^^^ a certain number of simple ideas^ considered as united in one thing. These ideas of substances, though they are commonly simple apprehensions, and the names of them simple terms, yet in effect are complex and compounded. Thus the idea which an Englishman signifies by the name swan, is white colour ^, long neck, red beak^ black l^s, and whole feet, and all these of a certain size, with a power of swimming in the water, and making a certain kind of noise, and perhaps, to a man who has long observed this kind of birds, some other properties: which all terminate in sensible simple ideas, all united in one common subject
.3
^ So with the Sirian traveller in tations of sense, leaving in the back-
the Microntegas of Voltaire. Isaac ground the ultimate rational conatitu-
Taylor*s Physical Theory of another tion of the 'general idea.* He is
Lift contains some ingenious specu* habitually averse to the inUlUctus sibi
lations in analogy with the text. permissuSf as apt to intrude when
* Black swans have since been men speculate upon 'abstract neces-
found. sities of reason/ but without adding to
' Here again Locke emphasises the a practical knowledge of the behaviour
empirical side of * substance/ gradually of particular substances, determined by the contingent presen-
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4o6 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. 15. Besides the complex ideas we have of material sensible
-^- substances, of which I have last spoken, — by the simple ideas
xxTTT ^^ ^^^^ taken from those operations of our own minds *, which
Our ^^ experiment daily in ourselves, as thinking, understanding.
Ideas of Willing, knowing, and power of beginning motion, &c., co-
Su'b-^ existing in some substance, we are able to frame the complex
stances, idea of an immaterial spirit^. And thus, by putting tc^ether
of bodily the ideas of thinking, perceiving, liberty, and power of moving
^"^" themselves and other things, we have as clear a perception
and notion of immaterial substances as we have of material.
For putting together the ideas of thinking and willing, or
the power of moving or quieting corporeal motion, joined to
substance ®, of which we have no distinct idea, we have the
idea of an immaterial spirit; and by putting together the
ideas of coherent solid parts, and a power of being moved,
joined with substance *, of which likewise we have no positive
idea ^, we have the idea of matter. The one is as clear and
distinct an idea as the other: the idea of thinking, and
moving a body, being as clear and distinct ideas as the
ideas of extension, solidity, and being moved. For our idea
of substance is equally obscure, or none at all, in both : it
is but a supposed I know not what, to support those ideas
we call accidents. [* It is for want of reflection that we are
apt to think that our senses show us nothing but material
things. Every act of sensation •, when duly considered, gives
us an equal view of both parts of nature, the corporeal and
spiritual. For whilst I know, by seeing or hearing, &c., that
there is some corporeal being without me, the object of that
^ Thus Locke throughout makes idea of substance could not without
perception of ' the operations of our self-contradiction be phiHomeMoIisetl,
own minds * depend on our ideas of or represented positively in sensuous
them, in the same way as perception imagination,
of the qualities of external things. * Added in second edition.
' What follows, to the end of § 98, ' Here, and often elsewhere, Locke
refers to the complex ideas of s^ViVmo/ means by 'sensation' sensuous per-
substances. ception. A more refined analysis dis-
9 < substance,* i. e. substance ' in tinguishes this perception, alike from
general,* abstracted from all the modes the organic motion, and from the 5m-
in which it is manifested in particular snous feeling, with which the affection
substances. in the organism is charged.
' no positive idea.* The abstract
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Our Complex Ideas of Substances. 407
sensation, I do more certainly know, that there \^ some book 11. spiritual being within me that sees and hears ^. This, I â– ~^*~ must be convinced, cannot be the action of bare insensible xxin. matter ; nor ever could be, without -an immaterial thinking being*]
16. By the complex idea of extended, figured, coloured, No Idea of and all other sensible qualities, which is all that we know|^^J^^^g of it, we are as far from the idea of the substance of body, either in as if we knew, nothing at all ^ : nor after all the acquaintance spint.°^ and familiarity which we imagine we have with matter, and
the many qualities men assure themselves they perceive and know in bodies, will it perhaps upon examination be found, that they have any more or clearer primary ideas belonging to body, than they have belonging to immaterial spirit *.
17. The primary ideas we have peculiar to body^ as contra- Cohesion distinguished to spirit, are the cohesion of solids and consequently pl^^^^d separable, partSy and a power of communicating motion by impulse, impulse. These, I think, are the original ideas proper and mwyTdeas peculiar to body ; for figure is but the consequence of finite P®g^ extension ^.
18. The ideas we have belonging and peculiar to spirit, are Thinking thinking, and will, or a power of putting body into motion by Motivity
^ This recognises that internal per- the blind ulHynaU principle of all
ception or self-consciousness is implied that is.
in all external perception or sense- ' But do we not know this much at consciousness : and that, not merely least of its substance — that it is ' ex- in an equipoise ; for he says here and tended and figured ' ? Sometimes elsewhere (e.g. Bk. IV. chh. ix. and xi.) Locke seems to accept a merely phy- that our ' certainty * of the existence of sical conception of substance, making the spirit that perceives is greater than it consist in the nature, arrangement, our certainty of the body that is per- and motion of elementary atoms, ceived. Berkeley finds absurdity in which might be brought within the the idea of independent material sub- range of senses more acute than ours, stance, while he acknowledges a notion Here he inclines more to the Aristo- of5^'n/Ma/ substance, as implied in the telian substantial form^ which hyper- fact that the personal pronoun ' I ' is physically transcends possible modi- not a meaningless word. fications of atoms.
^ Locke elsewhere suggests that God * This is directed against those who
may have meide material organisms of refuse to believe in anything that is
a certain sort able to think (e. g. Bk. IV. supersensible.
ch. iii. % 6). What he here says is ^ Cf. ch. xxi. § 75, and the enumera-
that 'bare matter* is incapable of tion of the real, or primary qualities of
superseding Supreme Intelligence, as matter in ch. viii. § 9.
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4o8 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. thought^ and^ which is consequent to it^ liberty^. For, as body -"♦*— cannot but communicate its motion by impulse to another xxm "^^^y* which it meets with at rest, so the mind can put bodies ^j^g * into motion, or forbear to do so, as it pleases *. The ideas of primary existence,^ duration, and mobility, are common to them both *. peculiar to ^9* There is no reason why it should be thought strange. Spirit. that I make mobility belong to spirit; for having no other capaWc of ^^^^ ^^ motion, but change of distance with other beings that Motion, are considered as at rest ; and finding that spirits, as well as bodies, cannot operate but where they are ; and that spirits do operate at several times in several places, I cannot but attribute change of place to all finite spirits: (for of the Infinite Spirit I speak not here). For my soul, being a real being as well as my body, is certainly as capable of changing distance with any other body, or being, as body itself; and so is capable of motion ^ And if a mathematician can consider a certain distance, or a chaise of that distance between two points, one may certainly conceive a distance, and a change of distance, between two spirits ; and sb con- ceive their motion, their approach or removal, one from another. Proof of ^o« Every one finds in himself that his soul can think, this. ^jii^ ^jj^j operate on his body in the place where that is, but
cannot operate on a body, or in a place, an hundred miles distant from it Nobody can imagine that his soul can think or move a body at Oxford, whilst he is at London; and cannot but know, that, being united to his body, it constantly changes place all the whole journey between Oxford and London, as the coach or horse does that carries him, and I think may be said to be truly all that while in motion: or if that will not be allowed to afford us a clear idea enough
^ This is Locke's explanation of the ' Cf. ch. xxi. § 75. Thinking, or
ambiguous temit ' liberty,' when ap< ' having ideas/ and will or ' power to
plied to voluntary activity (cf. ch. xxi). produce motion,' are thus the ' primary
But it may signify, not only (a) power qualities ' of spirit,
to execute what one wills (as with ' Why is 'mobility' thus made a
Locke), but (6) power to originate test of the 'reality' of the 'soul*?
volition ; and also (^c) power to conform Cf. ch. xxi. § 75 ; also ch. xv. % 3, on
to reason or duty, instead of the slavery the place of spirits, and their relations
of passion — supremacy of spirit over to space, sense.
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Our Complex Ideas of Substances. 409
of its motion, its being separated from the body in death, book 11. I think, will ; for to consider it as going out of the body, or '-**^ leaving it, and yet to have no idea of its motion, seems to me xxm impossible. God im-
21. If it be said by any one that it cannot change place, ™*^^®*^^^» because it hath none, for the spirits are not in loco^ but ubi\ infinite.
I suppose that way of talking will not now be of much weight to many, in an age that is not much disposed to admire, or suffer themselves to be deceived by such unintelligible ways of speaking. But if any one thinks there is any sense in that distinction, and that it is applicable to our present purpose, I desire him to put it into intelligible English ; and then from thence draw a reason to show that immaterial spirits are not capable of motion ^. Indeed motion cannot be attributed to God ; not because he is an immaterial, but because he is an infinite spirit ^.
22. Let us compare, then, our complex idea of an im- Our material spirit with our complex idea of body, and seej^^^^^fan whether there be any more obscurity in one than in the immaterial other, and in which most. Our idea of body^ as I think, our com- is an extended solid substance^ capable of communicating motion ^J>®gJ^^* by impulse : and our idea of souU as an immaterial spirit^ is of compared. a substance that thinks^ and has a power of exciting motion in
body, by willing, or thought These, I think, are our complex ideas of soul and body, as contradistinguished ; and now let us examine which has most obscurity in it, and difficulty to be apprehended. I know that people whose thoughts are immersed in matter, and have so subjected their minds to their senses that they seldom reflect on anything beyond them> are apt to say, they cannot comprehend a thinking thing,
* There is a curious ' tang of the and that they cannot operate efiectu-
cask ' in much ofthis. This is surely ally where their bodies are not. This
an undue inference from the fact, that need not imply that spirit, as revealed
a human spirit cannot exert powers in its operations when we reflect,
over extra-organic things that are not occupies space, can be measured, or is
in contact with its organism. The capable of motion. We cannot attri-
' motion * of human spirits means, that bute size or situation to a feeling, a
the changes which men can produce cognition, or a volition,
in the sensible world are, in this life ' And so is supposed to fill im-
of sense, conditioned by, or limited to, mensity, and thus constitute %. plenum ;
the places which their bodies occupy, as well as to fill everlasting duration.
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4IO Essay concerning Human Understanding,
BOOK II. which perhaps is true: but I affirm, when they consider it
-**— well, they can no more comprehend an extended thing.
xxtn ^3' ^^ ^^y *^^^ ^^y^ ^^ knows not what it is thinks in him.
Cohesion ^^ Cleans he knows not what the substance is of that thinking
of solid thing: No more, say I, knows he what the substance is of
Bo^M ^^^^ ^^'^^ thing. Further, if he says he knows not how he
hard to be thinks, I answer, Neither knows he how he is extended, how
as think- the solid parts of body are united, or cohere together to make
mgina extension. For though the pressure of the particles of air
may account for the cohesion of several parts of matter that
are grosser than the particles of air, and have pores less than
the corpuscles of air, yet the weight or pressure of the air
will not explain, nor can be a cause of the coherence of the
particles of air themselves. And if the pressure of the aether ^,
or any subtiler matter than the air, may unite, and hold fast
together, the parts of a particle of air, as well as other bodies,
yet it cannot make bonds for itself ^ and hold together the
parts that make up every the least corpuscle of that materia
subiilis. So that that hypothesis, how ii^eniously soever
explained, by showing that the parts of sensible bodies are
held together by the pressure of other external insensible
bodies, reaches not the parts of the aether itself; and by how
much the more evident it proves, that the parts of other
bodies are held together by the external pressure of the
aether, and can have no other conceivable cause of their
cohesion and union, by so much the more it leaves us in the
dark concerning the cohesion of the parts of the corpuscles
of the aether itself: which we can neither conceive without
parts, they being bodies, and divisible, nor yet how their parts
cohere, they wanting that cause of cohesion which is given of
the cohesion of the parts of all other bodies.
Not ex- ^A* But, in truth, the pressure of any ambient fluid, how
plained by orreat soever, can be no intelligible cause of the cohesion of
an ambient ** **
fluid. the solid parts of matter. For, though such a pressure may
* He refers to James Beraoulli, who De Gravitaii Eiheris (1680). The Ber-
tried to explain the coherence of the nouUis, like the Gregories, were for
parts of bodies, and their consequent generations illustrious in natural philo-
extension, by the pressure of ether, sophy.
hypothetically assumed — in his essay
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Our Complex Ideas of Substances. 411
hinder the avulsion of two polished superficies, one from an- book ii. other, in a line perpendicular to them, as in the experiment "'^^^ of two polished marbles ; yet it can never in the least hinder xxill the separation by a motion, in a line parallel to those surfaces. Because the ambient fluid, having a full liberty to succeed in each point of space, deserted by a lateral motion, resists such a motion of bodies, so joined, no more than it would resist the motion of that body were it on all sides environed by that fluid, and touched no other body; and therefore, if there were no other cause of cohesion, all parts of bodies must be easily separable by such a lateral sliding motion. For if the pressure of the aether be the adequate cause of cohesion, wherever that cause operates not, there can be no cohesion. And since it cannot operate against a lateral separation, (as has been shown,) therefore in every imaginary plane, inter- secting any mass of matter, there could be no more cohesion than of two polished surfaces, which will always, notwith- standing any imaginable pressure of a fluid, easily slide one from another. So that perhaps, how clear an idea soever we think we have of the extension of body, which is nothing but the cohesion of solid parts, he that shall well consider it in his mind, may have reason to conclude. That it is as easy for him to have a clear idea how the soul thinks as how body is extended. For, since body is no further, nor otherwise, extended, than by the union and cohesion of its solid parts, we shall very ill comprehend the extension of body, without understanding wherein consists the union and cohesion of its parts ; which seems to me as incomprehensible as the manner of thinking, and how it is performed.
25. I allow it is usual for most people to wonder how any We can one should find a difficulty in what they think they every ^^^j^J..*^ day observe. Do we not see (will they be ready to say) the stand how parts of bodies stick firmly^together ? Is there anything more cohere in common ? And what doubt can there be made of it ? And extension,
as how
the like, I say, concerning thinking and voluntary motion, our spirits Do we not every moment experiment it in ourselves, and ^^^^^*^® ®'' therefore can it be doubted ? The matter of fact is clear, I confess ; but when we would a little nearer look into it, and consider how it is done, there I think we are at a loss.
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412 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. both in the one and the other ; and can as little understand
—♦*— how the parts of body cohere, as how we ourselves perceive
Chap. qj. move. I would have any one intelligibly exj^lain to me,
how the parts of gold, or brass, (that but now in fusion were
as loose from one another as the particles of water, or the
sands of an hour-glass,) come in a few moments to be so
united, and adhere so strongly one to another, that the utmost
force of men's arms cannot separate them ? A considering
man will, I suppose, be here at a loss to satisfy his own, or
another man's understanding.
The cause %6, The little bodies that compose that fluid we call water,
cnce of^ are so extremely small, that I have never heard of any one,
atoms in who, by a microscope, (and yet I have heard of some that
subsuuTces have magnified to ten thousand ; nay, to much above a
incompre- hundred thousand times,) pretended to perceive their distinct
hensible. ,,, ^ .,, .^- -
bulk, figure, or motion ; and the particles of water are also so perfectly loose one from another, that the least force sen- sibly separates them. Nay, if we consider their perpetual motion, we must allow them to have no cohesion one with another ; and yet let but a sharp cold come, and they unite, they consolidate ; these little atoms cohere, and are not, with- out great force, separable. He that could find the bonds that tie these heaps of loose little bodies together so firmly ; he that could make known the cement that makes them stick so fast one to another, would discover a great and yet unknown secret : and yet when that was done, would he be far enough from making the extension of body (which is the cohesion of its solid parts) intelligible, till he could show wherein con- sisted the union, or consolidation of the parts of those bonds, or of that cement, or of the least particle of matter that exists. Whereby it appears that this primary and supposed obvious quality of body will be found, when examined, to be as incomprehensible as anything belonging to our minds, and a solid extended substance as hard to be conceived as a thinking immaterial one, whatever difficulties some would raise against it. The sup. 27. For, to extend our thoughts a little further, that DrcMure P^'^ssure which is brought to explain the cohesion of bodies to is as unintelligible as the cohesion itself. For if matter be
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Our Complex Ideas of Substances. 413
considered, as no doubt it is, finite, let any one send his book 11. contemplation to the extremities of the universe, and there — *♦- see what conceivable hoops, what bond he can imagine to ^tfj hold this mass of matter in so close a pressure together ; ^^^^^ from whence steel has its firmness, and the parts of a diamond cohesion their hardness and indissolubility. If matter be finite, it must Hgibil^ have its extremes ; and there must be something to hinder it from scattering asunder. If, to avoid this difficulty, any one will throw himself into the supposition and abyss of infinite matter, let him consider what light he thereby brings to the cohesion of body, and whether he be ever the nearer making it intelligible, by resolving it into a supposition the most absurd and most incomprehensible of all other : so far is our extension of body (which is nothing but the cohesion of solid parts) from being clearer, or more distinct, when we would inquire into the nature, cause, or manner of it, than the idea of thinking.
28. Another idea we have of body is, the power ofcommu' Communi- nication of motion by impulse \ and of our souls, the power ^Motion^by exciting motion by thought. These ideas, the one of body, the Impulse, other of our minds, every day's experience clearly furnishes Thought, us with : but if here again we inquire how this is done, we are ^^^jj. equally in the dark. For, in the communication of motion by gible. impulse, wherein as much motion is lost to one body as is got to the other, which is the ordinariest case, we can have no other conception, but of the passing of motion out of one body into another ; which, I think, is as obscure and inconceivable as how our minds move or stop our bodies by thought, which we every moment find they do. The increase of motion by impulse, which is observed or believed sometimes to happen, is yet harder to be understood. We have by daily experience clear evidence of motion produced both by impulse and by thought ; but the manner how, hardly comes within our com- prehension : we are equally at a loss in both. So that, how- ever we consider motion, and its communicatioif, either from body or spirit, the idea which belongs to spirit is at least as clear as that which belongs to body. And if we consider the active power of moving, or, as I may call it, motivity, it is much clearer in spirit than body ; since two bodies, placed by
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414 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. one another at rest, will never afford us the idea of a power — ^^— in the one to move the other, but by a borrowed motion: Y vtn whereas the mind every day affords us ideas of an active power of moving of bodies ; and therefore it is worth our considera- tion, whether active power be not the proper attribute of spirits, and passive power of matter. Hence may be con- jectured that created spirits are not totally separate from matter, because they are both active and passive. Pure spirit, viz. God, is only active ; pure matter is only passive ; those beings that are both active and passive, we may judge to partake of both. But be that as it will, I think, we have as many and as clear ideas belonging to spirit as we have belonging to body, the substance of each being equally un- known to us ; and the idea of thinking in spirit, as clear as of extension in body ; and the communication of motion by thought, which we attribute to spirit, is as evident as that by impulse, which we ascribe to body. Constant experience makes us sensible of both these, though our narrow under- standings can comprehend neither. For, when the mind would look beyond those original ideas we have from sensa- tion or reflection, and penetrate into their causes, and manner of production, we find still it discovers nothing but its own short-sightedness ^.
Summaiy. 29. To conclude. Sensation convinces us that there are solid extended substances ; and reflection, that there are thinking ones : experience assures us of the existence of such beings, and that the one hath a power to move body by impulse, the other by thought ; this we cannot doubt of. Experience, I say, every moment furnishes us with the clear ideas both of the one and the other. But beyond these ideas, as received from their proper sources, our faculties will not reach. If we would inquire further into their nature, causes, and manner, we perceive not the nature of extension clearer than we d^ of thinking. If we would explain them any further, one is as easy as the other; and there is no more
^ * The ultimate cause of the impns* is perfectly inexplicable by human sioMS which arise from the senses reason.' (Hume, Tnaiisi, pt. i. sect. 5.)
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Our Complex Ideas of Substances. 415
Chap. XXIII.
difficulty to conceive how a substance we know not should, book 11, by thought, set body into motion, than how a substance we know not should, by impulse, set body into motion. So that we are no moreable to discover wherein the ideas belonging to body consist, than those belonging to spirit. From whence it seems probable^ to me, that the simple ideas we receive from sensation and reflection are the boundaries of our thoughts ; beyond which the mind, whatever efforts it would make, is not able to advance one jot ; nor can it make any discoveries, when it would pry into the nature and hidden causes of those ideas.
30. So that, in short, the idea we have of spirit, compared Our idea with the idea we have of body, stands thus : the substance of ^nd our^ spirits is unknown to us ; and so is the substance of body >^^ ^^ equally unknown to us *• Two primary qualities or properties compared.
^ He here rests the main thesis of the Elssay on the ground of pro- bability. The particular substances that exist can be known by us only in the manifestations which they make of themselves, and the perceived changes which they cause ; though if we had other senses, or additional faculties of reflection, we might dis- cover much in material and in spiritual substances that we are now ignorant of. But to know them perfectly we should need to know all the relations of each substance to every other sub- stance, which presupposes omni- science. Locke however seems to imply that even such knowledge must remain ignorant of ' substance.*
* The independent or substantive existence of solid, extended, and move- able things is what Berkeley after- wards argued against as an illusion, when he raised the question. What is to be understood by matter^ The notion of corporeal substance is in his view not merely di£Bcult but self-con- tradictory, when matter is put in anti- thesis to thought ; while the substan- tive, i.e. independent, existence of our own thinking being is manifested by our consciousness of it. We are thus
conscious of a spiritual substance, but we have no perception, nor conscious- ness in any way, of material substance, all even of the so-called primary quali- ties of matter revealing their necessary dependence upon a percipient, when we examine them carefully. Thus when Hylas objects that, according to this reasoning, it should follow, that what is called a spiritual substance is only ' a system of floating ideas,' Philonous re- plies,—' I know or am conscious of my own ideas ; and that / mysdf am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a think- ing active pnncipU^ that perceives, knows, wills, and operates about ideas. But I am not in like manner conscious either of the existence or essence of matter. On the contrary, I know that nothing inconsistent can exist, and that the existence of matter implies an inconsistency. Further, I know what I mean when I affirm that there is a spiritual substance, or support of ideas, that is, that a spirit knows and per- ceives ideas. But I do not know what is meant when it is said, that an unper" ceivmg substance hath inherent in it and supports either ideas or the arche- types of ideas. There is therefore upon the whole no pari^ of case between
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4i6 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. of body, VIZ. solid coherent parts and impuke, we have distinct clear ideas of: so likewise we know, and have distinct clear ideas, of two primary qualities or properties of spirit, viz. thinking, and a power of action ; i. e. a power of beginning or stopping several thoughts or motions. We have also the
Chap. XXIII.
spirit and matter.* {Third Dialogti*^ That spirit as well as matter is only an aggregate of abstract fnanifestationsy without a concrete sMis/loifor manifested, so that all substance is impossible, was the essence of Hume's scepticism. *For my part,' he argues, 'when I enter most intimately into what I call myself I always stumble on some par- ticular perception or other, I can never catch myself at any time without a perception. We only * feign the con- tinued existence of the perceptions of our senses, and run into the notion of a soul, self, or substance.' (Treatise, pt. iv. sect 6.) Language breaks down under the stress of this analysis, and Hume has to contradict himself in order to state it. The substantiality of spirit is thus explained by Lotze : — ' We have found it impossible to con- ceive the world as built up out of a disconnected multiplicity of real ele- ments of matter ; just as little, on the other hand, have we considered indi- vidual souls to be indestructible exist- ences : to us they and these occasions mean simply actions of the one genuine Being or Existence ; only that they are gifted with the strange capacity, which no knowledge can further explain, of feeling and knowing themselves as active centres of a life which goes out from them. Only because they do this, and so far as they do this, do we give them the name of existences or substances. Still we have so named them ; and now the question arises, whether it would not— but for the exigences of imagination — be better to avoid even that name, and the in- ferences into which it will never cease to seduce men. ... If the soul in a perfectly dreamless sleep feels and
wills nothing, is the soul then at aO. and what is it? How often has the answer been given that if this could ever happen, the soul would have no being. Why have we not had the courage to say that, as often as this happens, the soul is not. Doubtless if the [human] soul were alone in the world, it would be impossible to under- stand an alternation of existence and non-existence ; but why should not its life be a melody with pauses, while the prime eternal source still acts, of which the existence and activity of the [human] soul is a single deed, and from which that existence and activity arise. From it again the soul would once more arise, and its new existence would be the consistent continuation of the old, so soon as those pauses are gone by, during which the conditions of its reappearance were being repro- duced by other deeds of the same Primal Being.' (Metaphysics, % 907.) This is to apply to the finite spirit the theory by which Berkeley explains the real and continued existence of sensible things, according to which their interrupted existence in finite percipients is sustained by God. But when Lotze and others translate the continuity of the finite spirit into a ' stream * of consciousness, is not this substituting a metaphor for a unique, in- definable fact ? If the primal or eternal Substance is the only real substance, and if finite spirits are alternately existent and non-existent, or exist as a stream exists, this must be in a sense that is reconcileable with the retro- spect of memory in each person, and with the moral responsibility of the ' new existence ' for the acts of the old existence.
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Our Complex Ideas of Suisfances. 417
ideas of several qualities inherent in bodies, and have the clear book it. distinct ideas of them; which qualities are but the various ~**" modifications of the extension of cohering solid parts, and ^xiii their motion. We have likewise the ideas of the several modes of thinking viz. believing, doubting, intending, fearing, hoping ; all which are but the several modes of thinking. We have also the ideas of willing, and movii^ the body consequent to it, and with the body itself too ; for, as has been shown, spirit is capable of motion.
31. Lastly, if this notion of immaterial spirit may have. The perhaps, some difficulties in it not easily to be explained, we sf^^T* ^^ have therefore no more reason to deny or doubt the existence involves of such spirits, than we have to deny or doubt the existence rJi^uUy of body ; because the notion of body is cumbered with some *?J* ^^^ difficulties very hard, and perhaps impossible to be explained Body. or understood by us. For I would fain have instanced any- thing in our notion of spirit more perplexed, or nearer a contradiction, than the very notion of body includes in it ; the divisibility in infinitum of any finite extension involving us^ whether we grant or deny it, in consequences impossible to be explicated or made in our apprehensions consistent ; consequences that carry greater difficulty, and more apparent absurdity, than an}^ing can follow from the notion of an immaterial knowing substance ^.
33. Which we are not at all to wonder at, since we having We know but some few superficial ideas of things, discovered to us only "f ^in|s by the senses from without, or by the mind, reflecting on what beyond it experiments in itself within, have no knowledge beyond that, id([i^"Sf ^ much less of the internal constitution, and true nature of things, **»«°*- being destitute of faculties to attain it. And therefore ex- perimenting and dbcovering in ourselves knowledge, and the power of voluntary motion, as certainly as we experiment, or discover in things without us, the cohesion and separation of solid parts, which is the extension and motion of bodies ; we have as much reason to be satisfied with our notion of imma- terial spirit, as with our notion of body, and the existence of the one as well as the other. For it being no more a con-
^ Ct with note on last page. VOL. I. E e
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41 8 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. tradiction that thinking should exist separate and indepen- "^^^ dent from solidity, than it is a contradiction that solidity
xxm ^^^"'^ ^yCvsX. separate and independent from thinking, they being both but simple ideas, independent one from another : and having as dear and distinct ideas in us of thinking, as of solidity, I know not why we may not as well allow a thinking thing without solidity, i. e. immaterial, to exist, as a solid thing without thinking, i. e. matter, to exist ; espe- cially since it is not harder to conceive how thinking should exist without matter, than how matter should think. For whensoever we would proceed beyond these simple ideas we have from sensation and reflection, and dive further into the nature of things, we fall presently into darkness and obscurity, perplexedness and difficulties, and can discover nothing further but our own blindness and ignorance. But whichever of these complex ideas be clearest, that of body, or immaterial spirit, this is evident, that the simple ideas that make them up are no other than what we have received from sensation or reflection : and so is it of all our other ideas of substances, even of God himself.
Our com- 33. For if we examine the idea we have of the incomprehen- ofGod.** sible Supreme Being ^, we shall find that we come by it the same way ; and that the complex ideas we have both of God, and separate spirits, are made of the simple ideas we receive from reflection: v.g. havii^, from what we experiment in our- selves, got the ideas of existence and duration ; of knowledge and power ; of pleasure and happiness ; and of several other qualities and powers, which it is better to have than to be without ; when we would frame an idea the most suitable we can to the Supreme Being, we enlaige every one of these with our idea of infinity ; and so putting them t(^ether, make our complex idea of God ^ For that the mind has such a power
^ This is again the old refrain. We * In what follows, to the end of
are bom in ignorance of eveiything, sect 36, he considera the ideas we can
and all that we can conceive of things have of the Divine Substance. He
must consist of their ideas or pheno* argues that men can attribute to God
mena, gradually presented either in our only what is in analogy with the
senses, or in the successive operations operations of their own spirits ; as
of our self-conscious spirits. otherwise the words they apply to God
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Our Complex Ideas of Substances. 419
of enlarging some of its ideas, received from sensation and book 11. reflection, has been already shown^ •
vrould be to them meaningless. This inadequacy of our theological concep- tions Locke acknowledges to Anthony Collins (June 99, 1704): — *' I<^™ content with my own mediocrity. And though I call the thinking faculty in me» mind ; yet I cannot, because of that name, equal it in anything to that infinite and incomprehensible Being, which, for want of right and distinct concep- tions, is called tnmd also, or (he Eternal Mind^ What might seem to be an inconsistency between the account of our ideas of God given in this chapter, and that in the fourth Book, is thus referred to by Molyneux (March 3, 1693) : — * In Bk. IV. ch. xvii ( 9, you say the existence of all things without us (except only of God) is had by our senses. And in Bk. II. ch. xxiii. §( 33- 36, you show how the idea we have of God is made up of the ideas we have gotten by our senses [i. e. by reflection on ' what we experience in ourselves, or in external sense'].^ Now this, though no repugnancy, yet to unwary readers may seem one. To me it is plain that in Bk. IV. ch. xvii, you speak barely of the existence of Qod ; and in Bk. II. ch. xxiii, you speak of the ideas that are ingredient in the complex idea of God ; i. e. you say that '< all the ideas ingredient in the idea of God are had from sense," and in Bk. IV you only assert that the existence of this God, or that really there are united in one Being all these ideas, is had, not from sense, but demonstration.' To which Locke replies (March a8) :— < The seeming contradiction is just as you take it, and I hope so clearly expressed that it cannot be mistaken, but by a very unwary reader, who cannot dis- tinguish between an idea in the mind, and the real existence of something out of the mind answering that idea.' Locke explicitly recognises, after Des- cartes, that we have ideas of 'three
£
sorts of substances* (cf. ch. xiii. ( 18; ch. xxvil § 9 ; Bk. IV. chh. ix, x, xi) ; God alone existing in absolute inde- pendence, or per se\ bodies and finite spirits existing partly m alio ; because dependent on God for continued exist- ence and all their so-called powers, so that Spinoza conceived them as only modifications of God, and God as the one possible substance.
* Cf. ch. xvii. % § 8-10, i3>9o. The self- contradiction implied in an imagina- tion of an infinite quantity, and the de- monstrable impossibility of an idea of the infinite in this sense, is consistent with a conception (inadequate) of Divine Substance, as revealed to us in and through the presented phenomena of body and spirit. Ability to con- ceive and know God, ' in part,' accord^ ing to the imperfect revelation given in our experience of the universe ; and also as the necessary rational and moral implicate of this experience, must not be confounded with inability to know or conceive infinitely great or infinitely little quantity, in abstract space or duration; or to know and conceive substance and cause, unre- vealed in any phenomena, or in any efiects. A conception and knowledge of the universe (t6 iray), real so far as it goes, is consistent with the in- adequacy of that conception and know* ledge ; and also with the inextricable contradictions in which we become involved when we treat this conception as if it were adequate, and as if limited and one-sided experience could be identified with Omniscience. Hence the 'antinomies' of Kant*s 'Dialektik' ; and cross-purpose in recent contro* versy about infinity, and a possible knowledge of it, under the limitations of human thought, with which the names of Cousin, Hamilton, Mansel, and Professor Calderwood are con-^ nected.
e 2
Chap.
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God in hia own essence incog- nisable.
420 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
34. If I find that I know some few thii^rs, and some of them, or all, perhaps imperfectly, I can frame an idea of knowii^ twice as many ; which I can double again, as often as I can add to number; and thus enlarge my idea of knowledge, by extending its comprehension to all things existii^, or possible The same also I can do of knowing them more perfectly; i.e. all their qualities, powers, causes, consequences, and relations, &c., till all be perfectly known that is in them, or can any way relate to them : and thus frame the idea of infinite or boundless knowledge The same may also be done of power, till we come to that we call infinite ; and also of the duration of existence, without beginning or end, and so frame the idea of an eternal being. The d^prees or extent wherein we ascribe existence, power, wisdom, and all other perfections (which we can have any ideas of) to that sovereign Being, which we call God, being all boundless and infinite, we frame the best idea of him our minds are capable of: all which is done, I say, by enlarging those simple ideas we have taken from the operations of our own minds, by reflec- tion ; or by our senses, from exterior thii^s, to that vastness to which infinity can extend them *.
35. For it is infinity, which, joined to our ideas of existence, power, knowledge, &c., makes that complex idea, whereby we represent to ourselves, the best we can, the Supreme Being. For, though in his own essence (which certainly we do not know, not knowing the real essence of a pebble, or a fly, or of our own selves ') God be simple and uncompounded ; yet I think I may say we have no other idea of him, but a complex one of existence, knowledge, power, happiness, &c, infinite and eternal : which are all distinct ideas, and some of them.
^ C£ Descartes, MiditaHon Troisiemg — < De Dieu ; Qu'il existe ' ; also S. Augustine, Con/ess, lib. x. c. 6 ; lib. zii c S'* Sec '^so Berkeley's account in AlciphroHf Dial, iv, of the manner in which existence and character of God are revealed to man in His lan- guage of vision ; so that a man may be said to see God in the same way as he sees his fellow men, but with an even fuller and more constant evidence of
His existence, in the intelligible order of the world of sense.
' Cf. Berkeley, PrmdpUs, § loi, on the ' exaggeration ' of ' our blindness as to the true and real nature of things.' Locke shrinks finom the ultimate questions. He does not here consider the relation between matter and finite spirits ; or between both and substance in its highest meaning, in God. Cf. Bk. IV.chh.ix,x, xi.
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Our Complex Ideas of Substances. 421
being relative, are again compounded of others: all which bogkii. being, as has been shown, originally got from sensation and "■"•*"" reflection, go to make up the idea or notion we have of God ^. xxm 36. This further is to be observed, that there is no idea we no ideas attribute to God, bating infinity, which is not also a part of our >» ^^\
,., /.«.. Tfc «• ^ifi- complex
complex idea of other spirits. Because^ being capable of no ideas of other simple ideas, belonging to anything but body, but those ^^^"hosc which by reflection we receive from the operation of our own got from minds, we can attribute to spirits no other but what we receive or Refle " from thence* : and all the difference we can put between them, tJon. in our contemplation of spirits, is only in the several extents and degrees of their knowledge, power, duration, happiness, &c. For that in our ideas, as well of spirits as of other things, we are restrained to those we receive from sensation and reflect tion^ is evident from hence, — That, in our ideas of spirits *, how much soever advanced in perfection beyond those of bodies, even to that of infinite, we cannot yet have any idea of the manner wherein they discover their thoughts one to another : though we must necessarily conclude that separate spirits, which are beings that have perfecter knowledge and greater happiness than we, must needs have also a perfecter way of communicating their thoughts than we have, who are fain to make use of corporeal signs, and particular sounds ; which are therefore of most general use, as being the best and quickest we are capable of. But of immediate communication ^ having
^ That is, we can only conceive God conception ourselves. Did we not
according to our experience of what is perceive some degrees of wisdom we
highest in ourselves. Our own self- could not call Him All-wise ; did we
consciousness enables us to presuppose not feel power and understand what it
intelligentiy the Supreme Universal is we could not ascribe Omnipotence to
Consciousness; but without the former, God. For our idea of God is onlyfonned
the words expressive of the latter could by adding infinite to eveiy perfection
for us have no meaning. Locke always that we have any knowledge of.' (/?f*
leans to the Deistic conception of God, marks upon tht Fable of the Bees, p. 30,
as an individual spirit among other by William Law.) That perfect wisdom
spirits, rather than as Active Reason, and goodness are attributable to God is,
immanentin nature and spirit, the neces- according to Locke, an induction from
sary presupposition of all that is actual experience, rather than self-evident
* 'from thence,' i.e. from reflection • Of 'separate' or unembodied
upon the operations from our own spirits, that is to say.
minds. ' We cannot ascribe anything * ' immediate,* i. e. independenUy of
to God of which we have not some sense organs.
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422 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. no experiment in ourselves, and consequently no notion of it at all, we have no idea how spirits, which use not words, can with quickness ^ ; or much less how spirits that have no bodies can be masters of their own thoughts, and communicate or conceal them at pleasure, though we cannot but necessarily suppose they have such a power *.
Chap.
XXIII.
Recapitu- lation.
37. And thus we have seen what kind of ideas we have of substances of all kinds ^ wherein they consist, and how we came by them. From whence, I think, it is very evident.
First, That all our ideas of the several sorts of substances are nothing but collections of simple ideas : with a supfiosition of something to which they belong, and in which they subsist : though of this supposed something we have no clear distinct idea at all ^
Secondly, That all the simple ideas, that thus united in one common substratum, make up our complex ideas of several sorts of substances, are no other but such as we have received from sensation or reflection *. So that even in those which we think we are most intimately acquainted with, and that come nearest the comprehension of our most enlarged conceptions, we cannot go beyond those simple ideas. And even in those which seem most remote from all we have to do with, and do infinitely surpass anything we can perceive in ourselves by re- flection ; or discover by sensation in other things, we can attain to nothing but those simple ideas, which we originally received from sensation or reflection ; as is evident in the complex ideas we have of angels, and particularly of God himself.
Thirdly, That most of the simple ideas that make up our complex ideas of substances, when truly considered, are only powers, however we are apt to take them for positive qualities;
' 'Can with quickness,' i.e. can communicate with quickness.
• Cf. Bk. I. ch. iii. %% 8-17 ; Bk. II. ch. XV. %% a, la ; Bk. IV. ch. x ; xvii. % a, regarding our complex idea and knowledge of God, in its gradual de- velopment. Our complex idea of God determines for us ultimately the sort of universe we are living in, and is thus the
most humanly interesting of aU ideas.
' The virtue of this < something^ ' is that, by assuming it, < simple ideas ' or phenomena are transformed from «6- siracttd motUs into etmcnit ikiftgs.
* So that we cannot attribute in- telligenUy to things, or to God, what we have experienced nothings analo- gous to in sense or reflection.
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Our Complex Ideas of Substances. 423
Chap.
XXIII.
v.g. the greatest part of the ideas that make our complex idea book it. of g-old are yellowness, great weight, ductility, fusibility, and solubility in aqua regia^ &c., all united together in an un- known substratum : all which ideas are nothing else but so many relations to other substances ; and are not really in the gold, considered barely in itself \ though they depend on those real and primary qualities of its internal constitution ^ whereby it has a fitness differently to operate, and be operated on by several other substances *.
^ As its 'primary qualities are.' They are assumed to be really in the things itself as they are perceived, and not merely to be revealed in and through its effects in something else.
* Cr. ch. viii. % 13, and the many passages, in this and other chapters, in "which dependence of the secondary qualities and powers of bodies upon their primary atoms is taken for granted.
' This chapter, upon our complex ideas of substances, material and spiri- tual, including the idea of 'substance in general/ may be compared with Bk. I. cb. iii. h 18; Bk. II. ch.xiii. %% 17-90; Bk. III. ch. vi; Bk. IV.chh. iii, ix-xi. The whole has been the occasion of much criticism and controversy. The chief occasion of Stillingfleet's assault was, that Locke had ' almost discarded substance out of the reasonable part of the world,'— in making the general idea of it *• obscure,' ' an idea of something we know not what/ and < which we neither have nor can have by sen- sation or reflection ' ; while in fact it is the foundation of all reasoning about the concrete and real Locke's first Lttt^ (pp. 4-5o)» and t^^ird LOUr (pp. 370-408), show how difficult it was for him to reconcile a due recog- nition of the idea of *■substance with a strict interpretation of his theory of the origin of our ideas, and of the dependence of knowledge upon ' dear and distinct ' ideas. Instead of an idea formed by arbitrary generalisation, it vittually becomes, in the exigencies of
controversy, a sUnpk idea which we are obliged to form, because the want of it is repugnant in reason to our first conceptions of things ; while its ' ob- scurity ' makes him confess, more ex- plicitly than in the Essay, that ideas need not be irrational because they are obscure, and that this and other ideas at the root of knowledge are necessarily inadequate and mysterious. The development of speculation soon discarded maUnal substance out of the world ; for to Berkeley it ' became evident that there is not any other substance than spirit, or that which perceives'; while Hume, unable to find * any impression corresponding to the general idea of substance,' in discard- ing substance altogether, illustrated the intellectual value and significance of an idea that must be presupposed as the alternative to philosophic nihilism. Locke and Hume in this relation are compared in an essay by Edmund Koenig, Uber dm SubsUmshegriff M Locke und Hutne (Leipsig, 1881), one of the signs of revived interest in Locke in Germany. Green, among recent English critics, sees scepticism latent in Locke, inasmuch as, while reality implies substance, Locke tells us that it is only * complex idea,' made arbitrarily by the individual mind, not, like our 'simple ideas,' taken from things themselves — a mere fiction of the mind, which has no existence in the things known— all which Locke himself often and emphatically repu- diates in his Letters to Stillingfleet.
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Chap. XXIV.
CHAPTER XXIV.
OF COLLECTIVE IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES.
BOOK II. I. Besides these complex ideas of several sif^U substances, as of man, horse, gold, violet, apple, &c., the mind hath also complex collective ideas of substances ; which I so call, because A coilec- such ideas are made up of many particular substances con- tive idea sidered together, as united into one idea, and which so joined Idea. are looked on as one; v.g. the idea of such a collection of men as make an army^ though consisting of a great number of distinct substances, is as much one idea as the idea of a man : and the great collective idea of all bodies whatsoever, signified by the name worlds is as much one idea as the idea of any the least particle of matter in it ; it sufficing to the unity of any idea, that it be considered as one representation or picture, though made up of ever so many particulars. Made by %. These collective ideas of substances the mind makes, by Jizo^^^ its power of composition, and uniting severally either simple P/^>"? *J or complex ideas into one, as it does, by the same faculty, make the complex ideas of particular substances, consisting of an aggr^ate of divers simple ideas, united in one substance. And as the mind, by putting tc^ether the repeated ideas of unity, makes the collective mode, or coihplex idea, of any number, as a score, or a gross, &c., — so, by putting together several particular substances, it makes collective ideas of sub- stances, as a troop, an army, a swarm, a city, a fleet; each of which every one finds that he represents to his own mind by one idea, in one view; and so under that notion considers those several things as perfectly one, as one ship, or one atom. Nor is it harder to conceive how an army of ten thousand men should make one idea, than how a man should make one idea ;
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Collective Ideas of Substances.
425
it being as easy to the mind to unite into one the idea of a great number of men, and consider it as one, as it is to unite into one particular all the distinct ideas that make up the composition of a man, and consider them all together as one. 3. Amongst such kind of collective ideas are to be counted most part of artificial things, at least such of them as are made up of distinct substances : and^ in truth, if we consider all these collective ideas aright, as armyy constellation^ uni- verse^ as they are united into so many single ideas, they are but the artificial draughts of the mind ; bringing things very remote, and independent on one another, into one view, the better to contemplate and discourse of them, united into one conception, and signified by one name. For there are no things so remote, nor so contrary, which the mind cannot, by this art of composition, bring into one idea ; as is visible in that signified by the name universe ^
BOOK II.
Chap.
XXIV.
Artificia] things that are made up of distinct substances are our collective Ideas.
' ' Universe * sometimes means the system of sensible things only ; again, the system of finite things and finite spirits — ' the creation ' ; again, all that exists, or the worlds of matter and spirit, united in God, i.e. rh vay. Locke's ultimate idea of rd nw seems to be — an indefinite number of finite substanas, placed and timed, and the
Divine substance; — with their modts, which may be considered abstractly, in simple or mixed combinations, and either finite or infinite in quantity ; and existing in infinitely numerous rela- turns to one another, only a few of which, and these imperfectly, can be formed into the complex ideas oi a human understanding.
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CHAPTER XXV.
OF RELATION.
BOOK II. I. Besides the ideas, whether simple or complex, that the mind has of things as they are in themselves, there are others it gets from their comparison one with another*. The under- standing, in the consideration of anything, is not confined to that precise object : it can carry any idea as it were beyond itself, or at least look beyond it, to see how it stands in con-
Chap. XXV.
Relation, what.
* It is the relations, considered ab- stradfyf which particular substances may have with one another that Locke has in view in what follows, not the relational constitution of knowledge as such. He here enters on our ideas of possible relations of substances to one another, in virtue of their respec- tive qualities and powers. This is in natural sequence to the preceding account, — first of the simple ideas in which things around us, and our own mental operations, are manifested, or which are suggested by the manifesta- tions; then of the simple and mixed modes of those manifestations, which the mind arbitrarily, or under intel- lectual necessity, abstracts from the substances in which they appear ; next of the idea of substance itself, presup- posed in the simple ideas, and in the elaboration of their modes,— all leading up to ideas of relation that result from, or are necessarily involved in, com- parison of substances with one another, knowledge of substances being know- ledge of these relations in concrete. The chapters on * complex ideas * may
be regarded as Locke's 'historica]' account of the order of intellectual ad- vance in the individual mind, as one gradually becomes aware of what is implied in that rational constitution or meaning of things and life, to the first dim consciousness of which we awake in sense. Green complains that, 'in his account of our complex ideas, Locke explains them under modes, substances, and relations, as if each of these three sorts were independent of the rest' and that he also degrades them, as ' unreal things ' of the mind. (Introduction to Hume, pp. ao, ai.) On the contrary, consecutive order and objectivity appear in the narration, when read as a history of the gradual awakening of the individual mind to an ever imperfect interpretation of the reality that is first presented in sense. It must also be kept in view that Locke, in this and the three following chap- ters, is considering * relations ' as ideas, simply apprehended by the mind, re- serving for the fourth Book questions about the validity and extent of know- ledge.
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Our Ideas of Relation. 427
formity to any other. When the mind so considers one thing, book 11. that it does as it were bring it to, ?ind set it by another, and "^^ carries its view from one to the other — this is, as the words ^^xv import, relation and respect ; and the denominations given to positive things, intimating that respect, and serving as marks to lead the thoughts beyond the subject itself denominated, to something distinct from it, are what we call relatives ; and the things so brought together, related. Thus, when the mind considers Caius as such a positive being, it takes nothing into that idea but what really exists in Caius ; v. g. when I con- j
sider him as a man, I have nothing in my mind but the |
complex idea of the species, man. So likewise, when I say Caius is a white man, I have nothing but the bare con- sideration of a man who hath that white colour. But when I give Caius the name husband, I intimate some other person ; and when I give him the name whiter, I intimate some other |
thing : in both cases my thought is led to something beyond I
Caius, and there are two things brought into consideration. And since any idea, whether simple or complex, may be the occasion why the mind thus brings two things together, and as it were takes a view of them at once, though still considered as distinct : therefore any of our ideas may be the foundation of relation. As in the above-mentioned instance, the contract and ceremony of marriage with Sempronia is the occasion of the denomination and relation of husband ; and the colour white the occasion why he is said to be whiter than free-stone.
2. These and the like relations, expressed by relative terms ideas of that have others answering them, with a reciprocal intimation, ^jfhou"^ as father and son, bigger and less, cause and effect, are very correlative obvious to every one, and everybody at first sight perceives easily ' the relation. For father and son, husband and wife, and such fPP*;^-
. t 1 hended.
Other correlative terms, seem so nearly to belong one to
another, and, through custom, do so readily chime and answer
one another in people's memories, that, upon the naming of
either of them, the thoughts are presently carried beyond the
thing so named ; and nobody overlooks or doubts of a relation,
where it is so plainly intimated. But where languages have
failed to give correlative names, there the relation is not always j
so easily taken notice of. Concubine is, no doubt, a relative
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428 Essay cofuerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. name, as well as wife : but in languages where this and the r**" like words have not a corrdative term, there people are not XXV. ^ *P* t^ ^^^ them to be so, as wanting that evident mark of relation which is between correlatives, which seem to explain one another, and not to be able to exist, but tc^ether. Hence it is, that many of those names, which, duly considered, do include evident relations, have been called external denomina- tions* But all names that are more than empty sounds must signify some idea^ which is either in the thing to which the name is applied, and then it is positive, and is looked on as united to and existing in the thing to which the denomination is given ; or else it arises from the respect the mind finds in it to something distinct from it, with which it considers it, and then it includes a relation. Some 3. Another sort of relative terms there is, which are not
ateSute ^ looked ou to be either relative, or so much as external denomi- Teras nations : which yet, under the form and appearance of signify- Reiations. ing something absolute in the subject, do conceal a tacit, though less observable, relation. Such are the seemingly positive terms of old^ great^ imperfect^ &c., whereof I shall have occasion to speak more at large in the following chapters. Relation 4. This further may be observed. That the ideas of relation from the "lay be the same in men who have far different ideas of the ^V t^ things that are related, or that are thus compared : v. g. those who have far different ideas of a man, may yet ag^ee in the notion of a father; which is a notion superinduced to the substance, or man, and refers only to an act of that thing ^ called man whereby he contributed to the generation of one of his own kind, let man be what it will. Change of 5. The nature therefore of relation consists in the referring may*bc o^ Comparing two things one to another ; from which com- without parison one or both comes to be denominated. And if either
any
Change of those things be removed, or cease to be, the relation ceases, things *"^ ^^ denomination consequent to it, though the other related, rcccivc in itsclf no alteration at all : v. g. Caius, whom I con- sider to-day as a father, ceases to be so to-morrow, only by the death of his son, without any alteration made in himself.
' Locke often applies < thing ' to persons.
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Our Ideas of Relation. 429
Nay, barely by the mind's changing the object to which it BOOK 11. compares anything, the same thing is capable of having con- ^** trary denominations at the same time : v. g. Caius, compared xxv. to several persons, may truly be said to be older and younger, stronger and weaker, &c.
6. Whatsoever doth or can exist, or be considered as one Relation thing is positive : and so not only simple ideas and substances, b^t^ixt but modes also, are positive beings : though the parts of which two they consist are very often relative one to another : but the *°^" whole together considered as one thing, and producing in us the complex idea of one thing, which idea is in our minds, as one picture, though an aggregate of divers parts, and under one name, it is a positive or absolute thing, or idea. Thus a triangle, though the parts thereof compared one to another be relative, yet the idea of the whole is a positive absolute idea. The same may be said of a family, a tune, &c. ; for there can be no relation but betwixt two things considered as two things. There must always be in relation two ideas or things, either in themselves really separate, or considered as distinct, and then a ground or occasion for their comparison.
7. Concerning relation in general, these things may be All Things considered: t^j'
First, That there is no one thing, whether simple idea, substance, mode, or relation, or name of either of them, which is not capable of almost an infim'te number of con- siderations in reference to other things: and therefore this makes no small part of men's thoughts and words : v. g. one single man may at once be concerned in, and sustain all these following relations, and many more, viz. father, brother, son, grandfather, grandson, father-in-law, son-in-law, husband, friend, enemy, subject, general, judge, patron, client, pro- fessor, European, Englishman, islander, servant, master, pos- sessor, captain, superior, inferior, bigger, less, older, younger, contemporary, like, unlike, &c., to an almost infinite number : he being capable of as many relations as there can be occa- sions of comparing him to other things, in any manner of agreement, disagreement, or respect whatsoever. For, as I said, relation is a way of comparing or considering two things together, and giving one or both of them some appellation
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430 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK 11. from that comparison ; and sometimes giving even the rela-
"7**^ tion Itself a name.
Chap.
XXV. ^* Secondly, This further may be considered concerning
Our relation, that though it be not contained in the real existence
RciSions ^^ things, but something extraneous and superinduced *, yet
often the ideas which relative words stand for are often clearer
t^h^ofthe^tnd more distinct than of those substances to which they
Subjects do bcloncf. The notion we have of a father or brother is
related
a great deal clearer and more distinct than that we have of a man ; or, if you will, paternity is a thing whereof it is easier to have a clear idea, than of humanity ; and I can much easier conceive what a friend is, than what God ; because the knowledge of one action, or one simple idea, is oftentimes sufficient to give me the notion of a relation ; but to the knowing of any substantial being, an accurate collection of sundry ideas is necessary. A man, if he compares two things together, can hardly be supposed not to know vidiat it is wherein he compares them : so that when he compares any things together, he cannot but have a very clear idea of that relation. The ideas, then, of relations, are capable at least of being more perfect and distinct in our minds than those of substances^. Because it is commonly hard to know all the simple ideas which are really in any substance, but for the most part easy enough to know the simple ideas that make up any relation I think on, or have a name for : v. g. comparing two men in reference to one common parent, it is very easy to frame the ideas of brothers, without having
^ The so-called ' individualism * and which are transient, while existence
' nominalism ' of Locke appear here. must be permanent. But relations are
TTie result deduced by Green from regarded by Locke only as abstract
this statement is, that * real existence possibilities of something actually exist-
can belong only to the present momen- ing conformable to them ; which be-
tary act of consciousness, and to that come real when embodied or exem-
alone * (p. 35) ; and that * the really pliRed in particular substances,
existent is the unmeaning, so that any * That is, our complex ideas of the
statement about it must be impossible ' particular substances which enter into
(p. 36). He holds Locke's position to a relation — ^apart from that in them by
be in antithesis to the conception of which the relation is constituted, and
'existence,* as consisting in, or con- of which we have this 'perfect and
stituted by, relations ; the withdrawal distinct idea ' — ^may be obscure and
of which leaves only chaotic feelings, inadequate.
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Our Ideas of Relation. 431
yet the perfect idea of a man. For significant relative words, book ii. as well as others, standing only for ideas; and those being "^^ all either simple, or made up of simple ones, it suffices for ^^y] the knowing the precise idea the relative term stands for> to have a clear conception of that which is the foundation of the relation ; which may be done without having a perfect and clear idea of the thing it is attributed to. Thus, having the notion that one laid the egg out of which the other was hatched, I have a clear idea of the relation of dam and ckick between the two cassiowaries in St. James's Park ; though perhaps I have but a vtry obscure and imperfect idea of those birds themselves.
9. Thirdly, Though there be a great number of considera- Relations tions wherein things may be compared one with another, and so minate in a multitude of relations, yet they all terminate in, and are con- simple cemed about those simple ideas, either of sensation or reflec- tion, which I think to be the whole materials of all our know- ledge. To clear this, I shall show it in the most considerable relations that we have any notion of; and in some that seem
to be the most remote from sense or reflection : which yet will appear to have their ideas from thence, and leave it past doubt that the notions we have of them are but certain simple ideas, and so originally derived from sense or reflection ^.
10. Fourthly, That relation being the considering of oneTcnns thing with another which is extrinsical to it, it is evident that {he*^M,^j| all words that necessarily lead the mind to any other ideas beyond than are supposed really to exist in that thing to which the su1>ject words are applied are relative words : v.g.a man^ blacky merry ^ denom- thaughtful^ thirsty^ angry ^ extended \ these and the like are all are reia- absolute, because they neither signify nor intimate anything '*^^- but what does or is supposed really to exist in the man thus
^ Relations presuppose correlative tional concept or category, and also
substances, in which they are embodied, the condition which must be fulfilled
and which are the occasion of our in order to an awakening of our appre-
intellectual apprehension of the rela- hension of it ; so that all relations, in
tion. Now Locke holds that the only this respect, < terminate in, and are
conceivable correlatives must be mani- concerned with,* simple phenomena
fested in simple ideas, either of sensa- presented in the senses or when we
tion or reflection. Simple ideas give reflect, the indispensable content to the rela-
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Chap. XXV.
432 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK IL denominated ^ ; but father^ brother^ kingy husband^ blacker, merrier, &c., are words which, together with the thing they denominate, imply also something else separate and exterior to the existence of that thing. All reia- II. Having laid down these premises concerning relation in up'of sim-^ general, I shall now proceed to show, in some instances^ how pie ideas, all the ideas we have of relation are made up, as the others are, only of simple ideas ; and that they all, how refined or remote from sense soever they seem, terminate at last in simple ideas*. I shall begin with the most comprehensive relation ^, wherein all things that do, or can exist, are con- cerned, and that is the relation of cause and effect : the idea whereof, how derived from the two fountains of all our know- ledge, sensation and reflection, I shall in the next place consider.
' All predicates imply relation.
* Unless simple ideas, i.e. qualities of substances, are presented in sense and reflection, none of the relations of the substances can be apprehended by us. Relation presupposes reality, but the relations into which real terms enter may be real as the terms them- selves; and as the same term may enter into various relations, it depends
upon the purpose or caprice of the elaborating mind whether it is placed under one relation or another.
' There is a point of view (and Locke inclines to it) at which the philosophy that regards phenomena as successiue, in, a certain ordirqfckanffts, i.e. under the relation of physical se- quence, is the philosophy of everything that exists.
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X
CHAPTER XXVI.
OF CAUSE AND EFFECT, AND OTHER RELATIONS.
I. In the notice that our senses take of the constant vicissi- book ir. tude of things \ we cannot but observe that several particular, ""**"" both qualities and substances, begin to exist ; and that they xxvi receive this their existence from the due application and whence operation of some other being. From this observation we get the ideas our ideas of cause and effect. That which produces any simple and effect or complex idea we denote by the general name, cause^ and tJtat 8^°^- which is produced^ effect^. Thus, finding that in that substance
* *The centre round which meta- physical inquiries, so far as their essence is concerned, will always move is the fact of change . . . Change completely dominates the whole range of reality. Its various forms — becoming and decay, action and suffering, motion and de- velopment— are, as a matter of fact, and history, the constant occasion of those inquiries, which, as forming a doctrine of the flux of things, in oppo- sition to the permanent being of ideas, have from antiquity been united under the name of metaphysic' (Lotze, Metaphysics, % i.) Notwithstanding the all>comprehending character of the relation of causality, Locke devotes only two sections to our idea of it, except so far as the discussion is antidpated in the chapter on * Power.' Cf. ch. XX. %% I, 4, where he refers the idea of 'power' to external and in- ternal observation and inductive infer- ence. In his first Letter to Stillingfleet he grants that it involves a necessary principle of reason. That ' everything
VOL. I. F
that has a beginning must have a cause is a true principle of reason, which we come to know by perceiving that the idea of beginning to he is necessarily connected yjiih. the tdea of some opera-- tion\ and the idea of operation with something operating, which we call a cause* (p. 135%
* * Should any one pretend to define a cause, by saying it is something pro- ductive of another, *tis evident he would say nothing. For what does he mean by production ? Can he give any definition of it, that will not be the same 'with that of causation ? If he can, I desire it may be produced. If he cannot, he here runs in a circle, and gives a synon3rmous term instead of a definition.' (Hume, Treatise, pt. iii. sect, ii.) ' Conduce,' * operate,' 'produce,* 'make,' are terms which profess to carry a new idea, implying that causality is a relation that means more than mere phenomenal con- tiguity and succession.
f
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Chap. XXVI.
434 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. which we call wax, fluidity, which is a simple idea that was not in it before, is constantly produced by the application of a certain d^jree of heat we call the simple idea of heat, in relation to fluidity in wax, the cause of it, and fluidity the effect. So also, finding that the substance, wood, which is a certain collection of simple ideas so called, by the applica- tion of fire, is turned into another substance, called ashes ; i.e., another complex idea, consisting of a collection of simple ideas, quite different from that complex idea which we call wood ; we consider fire, in relation to ashes, as cause, and the ashes, as effect. So that whatever is considered by us to conduce or operate to the producing any particular simple idea, or collection of simple ideas, whether substance or mode, which did not before exist, hath thereby in our minds ^ the relation of a cause, and so is denominated by us.
a. Having thus, from what our senses are able to discover in the operations of bodies * on one another, got the notion of cause and effect, viz. that a cause is that which makes any other thing, either simple idea, substance, or mode, b^n to be ; and an effect is that which had its beginning from some other thing ; the mind finds no great difficulty to distinguish the several originals of things into two sorts : —
First, When the thing is wholly made new, so that no part thereof did ever exist before ; as when a new particle of
Creation Genera- tion, making Alteration.
' * Hath thereby in our minds,' i. e. by a necessity of which Locke takes no account here, although, when he con- cludes the necessity of an eternal mind, as an application of the principle of causality (Bk. IV. ch. x), he implies the necessity and universality in the idea of causation that is recognised in his Letter to Stillingfleet (p. 434, note i). Hume himself thus recognises necessity: — * Shall we then rest content with these two relations ofcontigmtyund succession, as affording a complete idea of causa- tion ? By no means. An object may be contiguous and prior to another, with- out being considered as its cause. There is a NECESSARY CONNECTION to be taken into consideration ; and that relation is of much greater importance than any
of the other two above-mentioned.' {TreaHsi, pt iii. sect ii.) But then he proceeds to melt down the ' necessity ' into an issue of custom.
â– *our senses , . . bodies.' Here he makes the phenomena presented by bodies, the occasion of our havings the idea of causality, whereas, in ch. xzi, ' the clearest idea of active power ' is said to be got ' from spirit,' by reflec- tion. Now the senses present pheno- mena passing into other phenomena, but not what is signified by efficiency and origination : mere sense moreover does not afford an idea that is neces- sary in reason, and so of universal application, although universal ideas terminate in, and are concerned aboat those of sense.
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Ideas of RekUion of Cause and Effect. 435
matter doth begin to exist, in rerum natura^ which had before book ii. no being ^, and this we call creation. ""^^^
Secondly, When a thing is made up of particles, which did xxvi all of them before exist ; but that very thing, so constituted of pre-existing particles, which, considered all together, make up such a collection of simple ideas, had not any existence before, as this man, this egg, rose, or cherry, &c. And this, when referred to a substance, produced in the ordinary course of nature by internal principle, but set on work by, and received from, some external agent, or cause, and working by insensible ways which we perceive not, we call generation. When the cause is extrinsical, and the effect produced by a sensible separation, or juxta-position of discernible parts, we call it making ; and such are all artificial things. When any simple idea is produced, which was not in that subject before, we call it alteration. Thus a man is generated, a picture made ; and either of them altered, when any new sensible quality or simple idea is produced in either of them, which was not there before : and the things thus made to exist, which were not there before, are effects ; and those things which operated to the existence, causes. In which, and all other cases, we may observe, that the notion of cause and effect has its rise from* ideas received by sensation or reflec- tion ; and that this relation, how comprehensive soever, terminates at last in them ^. For to have the idea of cause and effect, it suffices to consider any simple idea or substance, as beginning to exist, by the operation of some other, without knowing the manner of that operation ^.
' Does this mean no actual exist- teriotis infinity,
ence ; though it existed potentially in ' < has its rise from ' — i. e. was
the Supreme Power I The question occasioned by, and ' concerned with.*
brings us back to the ii6ra/us and < Reflection ' is here conjoined with
MpTftia of Aristotle. The two sorts of < sensation,' each giving occasion to the
cause here distinguished correspond idea.
to the uncaused causation, exempli- ' Inasmuch as all the causes and
fied in free moral agency, and the effects of which we can have ideas
amsed causes of physical science; must be conceived by us as either
each of which (as formerly noted) in* moilcria/ors^m/Ma/substances — named
volves what is mysterious—the former causes, because changes are referred
an inconceivable beginning, the latter to them, or refunded into them,
an inconceivable regress into mys- * Locke prefers to deal with the uUa
Ff 2
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^
r
BOOK II.
Chap. XXVI.
Relations of Time.
Some ideas of Time supposed positive and found to be relative.
436 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
3. Time and place are also the foundations of very large relations ; and all finite beings at least are concerned in them. But having already shown in another place ^ how we get those ideas, it may suffice here to intimate, that most of the denominations of things received from tinu are only relations. Thus, when any one says that Queen Elizabeth lived sixty- nine, and reigned forty-five years, these words import only the relation of that duration to some other, and mean no more but this, That the duration of her existence was equal to sixty- nine, and the duration of her government to forty-five annual revolutions of the sun ; and so are all words, answering, How long? Again, William the Conqueror invaded England about the year 1066 ; which means this, That, taking the duration from our Saviour's time till now for one entire great length of time, it shows at what distance this invasion was from the two extremes; and so do all words of time answering to the question, When^ which show only the distance of any point of time from the period of a longer duration, from which we measure, and to which we thereby consider it as related ^.
4. There are yet, besides those, other words of time, that ordinarily are thought to stand for positive ideas, which yet will, when considered, be found to be relative; such as are, young, old, &c., which include and intimate the relation
of causality in the concrete, rather than with the abstract and ultimate idea. His account of what we mean by a cause and an effect refers each particular sequence to data of sense, but fails to show that sense explains the idea of efficiency in the cause; and fails to explain the intellectual inability to con- ceive change uncaused, or the intel- lectual obligation to assume that every change has been caused — all which seems to be involved in our complex idea of the relation. Yet, as already noted, he presupposes this universality and necessity when he applies the idea, in his proof of the existence of sen- sible things, and still more in his ' de- monstration ' of the existence of God. (Cf. Bk. IV. chh. X, xi.) In order to
be thus applicable, the idea of causality must be more than an empirical gene- ralisation, from either external or in- ternal sense — data which give too narrow a basis for a universal and absolute conclusion. But Locke's ac- count of the idea of causality seems to contain in solution both the empirical and the rational elements, which controversy has since articulately evolved.
' Cf. ch. V. § I ; ch. vii. § 9 ; chh. xiii and xiv.
• We have to conceive * time ' rela- tively to the concrete ideas or 'phe- nomena/ by which it is measured, and in which it is manifested to the sen- suous imagination.
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Ideas of Mathematical Relations. 437
an)^hing has to a certain length of duration, whereof we have book ii. the idea in our minds. Thus, having settled in our thoughts ""**~ the idea of the ordinary duration of a man to be seventy xxvi years, when we say a man is youngs we mean that his age is yet but a small part of that which usually men attain to ; and when we denominate him old^ we mean that his duration is run out almost to the end of that which men do not usually exceed. And so it is but comparing the particular age or duration of this or that man, to the idea of that duration which we have in our minds, as ordinarily belonging to that sort of animals : which is plain in the application of these names to other things ; for a man is called young at twenty years, and very young at seven years old : but yet a horse we call old at twenty, and a dog at seven years, because in each of these we compare their age to different ideas of duration, which are settled in our minds as belonging to these several sorts of animals, in the ordinary course of nature. But the sun and stars, though they have outlasted several generations of men, we call not old, because we do not know what period God hath set to that sort of beings. This term belonging properly to those things which we can observe in the ordinary course of things, by a natural decay, to come to an end in a certain period of time ; and so have in our minds, as it were, a standard to which we can compare the several parts of their duration ; and, by the relation they bear thereunto, call them young or old ; which we cannot, there- fore, do to a ruby or a diamond, things whose usual periods we know not.
5. The relation also that things have to one another in Relations their places and distances is very obvious to observe ; as ^^ g^- above, below, a mile distant from Charing-cross, in England, tension. and in London. But as in duration, so in extension and bulk, there are some ideas that are relative which we signify by names that are thought positive ; as great and little are truly relations. For here also, having, by observation, settled in our minds the id^s of the bigness of several species of things from those we have been most accustomed to, we make them as it were the standards, whereby to denominate the bulk of others. Thus we call a great apple, such a one as
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I
438 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
'BOOK II. is bigger than the ordinary sort of those we have been used
~**~ to ; and a little horse, such a one as comes not up to the size
xxvl ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ which we have in our minds to belong ordinarily
to horses ; and that will be a great horse to a Welchman,
which is but a little one to a Fleming; they two having,
from the different breed of their countries, taken several-sized
ideas to which they compare, and in relation to which they
denominate their great and their little ^.
Absolute 6. So likewise weak and strong are but relative denomina-
often stand tions of power, compared to some ideas we have at that time
for Rela- Qf orreater or less power. Thus, when we say a weak man,
tions. ** * "
we mean one that has not so much strength or power to move as usually men have, or usually those of his size have ; which is a comparing his strength to the idea we have of the usual strength of men, or men of such a size. The like when we say the creatures are all weak things ; weak there is but a relative term, signifying the disproportion there is in the power of God and the creatures*. And so abundance of words, in ordinary speech, stand only for relations (and perhaps the greatest part) which at first sight seem to have no such signification: v.g. the ship has necessary stores. Necessary and stores are both relative words; one having a relation to the accomplishing the voyage intended, and the other to future use. All which relations, how they are confined to, and terminate in ideas derived from sensation or reflection, is too obvious to need any explication^.
' ' Ces remarques,' says Leibniz, sense which manifests and measures
' sont trte-bonnes.' ' Space,' like time* their meaning. But if relation involves
is conceived by us relatively to the more than any of its particular mani-
sensuous objects by which^it is mea- festations, Locke's account is inade>
sured, and in which it 'terminates.' quate. Relation is more than the things
They form the standard of its quantity, or persons or modes related; on the
in particular instances. other hand, an idea of relation pre-
' Weinterpret' power,' like duration supposes related terms. A sensuous
and space, as embodied in the effects philosophy tends to rest in isolated
of which, in each particular example, substances, on which relations are
it is the correlative. contingenUy superinduced; extreme
' Terms which signify relations are idealism tends to reduce actual realiQr
' explained,' according to the analogy to a network of empty, colourless
of the Essay^ by that in the data of relations.
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CHAPTER XXVII.
[of identity and diversity ^]
[i. Another occasion the mind often takes of comparing, book ii. is the very being of things, when, considering anything as "^^ existing at any determined time and places we compare it with ^xvu itself existing at another time^ and thereon form the ideas of wherein identity and diversity. When we see anything to be in any Identity place in any instant of time, we are sure (be it what it will) that it is that very thing, and not another which at that same time exists in another place, how like and undistinguishable soever it may be in all other respects: and in this consists identity^ when the ideas it is attributed to vary not at all from what they were that moment wherein we consider their former existence, and to which we compare the present. For we never finding, nor conceiving it possible, that two things of the same kind should exist in the same place at the same time, we rightly conclude, that, whatever exists anywhere at any time, excludes all of the same kind, and is there itself alone. When therefore we demand whether anything be the same or no ^ it refers always to something that existed such
' This chapter was added in the equally apply to any of them, and hence
second edition, on the suggestion of they are all said to be of the sam^ nature
Molyneux. See Locke's letters to or appearance. When we say, -* This
Molyneux, Aug. 23, 1693, and March table is made of the same wood as that
d> i^5> other,' we only mean that the mate-
* Cf. Bk. I. ch. iii. $§ 4, 5 on the rial in the one is undistinguishable in
origin of the idea of identity. The quality from that of which the other
numerical sameness or identity here was constructed. This is the identity
is view must be distinguished from of similarity. Numerical sameness, on
generic or specific unity, i. e. simUarUy^ the contrary, does not necessarily imply
or the sameness that consists in a com- outward similarity in the changing
munity of quality. When several phenomena of the same substance, objects are alike, one description will
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440 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap.
XXVI I.
BOOK II. a time in such a place, which it was certain, at that instant, ~^^~ was the same with itself, and no other. From whence it follows, that one thing cannot have two beginnings of exist- ence, nor two things one beginning ; it being impossible for two things of the same kind to be or exist in the same instant, in the very same place ; or one and the same thing in different places ^. That, therefore, that had one beginning, is the same thing ; and that which had a different beginning in time and place from that, is not the same, but diverse^. That which has made the difficulty about this relation has been the little care and attention used in having precise notions of the things to which it is attributed *.
a. We have the ideas but of three sorts of substances: I. God. 2. Finite intelligences. 3. Bodies^.
First, God is without beginning, eternal, unalterable, and everywhere, and therefore concerning his identity there can be no doubts
Secondly, Finite spirits having had each its determinate time and place of beginning to exist, the relation to that time and place will always determine to each of them its identity, as long as it exists.
Thirdly, The same will hold of every particle of matter ^ to which no addition or subtraction of matter being made, it is the same. For, though these three sorts of substances, as we term them, do not exclude one another out of the same place, yet we cannot conceive but that they must necessarily each
Identity of Sub- stances.
^ Leibniz refuses to recognise these €xtental relations of time and place as adequate to constitute numerical same- ness, and argues for an internal prin- ciple of distinction [principium indivi- dtioiionis), in virtue of which things and persons are distinguishable in them- selves, independently of their times and places. This is adversely criticised by Kant
" So Hobbes, in First Grounds of Philosophy ^ ch. xi. §§ i, a, where he seeks to explain what it is for one thing to differ from another, and in what identity and individuation consist.
• Accordingly he proceeds to distin-
guish our idea of the relation of iden- tity, as it is found in substances and modes, organisms, men, and persons.
* Cf. ch. xxiii; also Bk. IV. chh. ix, x, xi on the three ultimate sub- stances— the EgOy God, and the World : God alone so existing as to need the existence of no other ; the other two existing in dependence on God. The ultimate relations of the three give rise to the antinomies of Kant.
^ It is with regard to JiniU sub- stances—organisms in which body is blended with spirit as in man — ^that the perplexities in the idea of identity arise which Locke meets in this chapter.
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Idea of the Relation of Identity. 441
of them exclude any of the same kind out of the same place : book ii. or else the notions and names of identity and diversity would â– ""**" be in vain, and there could be no such distinctions of sub- xxvil. stances, or anything else one from another ^. For example : could two bodies be in the same place at the same time; then those two parcels of matter must be one and the same, take them great or little ; nay, all bodies must be one and the same. For, by the same reason that two particles of matter may be in one place, all bodies may be in one place : which, when it can be supposed, takes away the distinction of identity and diversity of one and more, and renders it ridiculous. But it being a contradiction that two or more should be one, identity and diversity are relations and ways of comparing well founded, and of use to the understanding.
3. All other things being but modes or relations ultimately identity terminated in substances ^, the identity and diversity of each ^^^^61^- particular existence of them too 'will be by the same way tions. determined : only as to things whose existence is in succes- sion, such as are the actions of finite beings, v. g. motion and tfioughty both which consist in a continued train of succession, concerning their diversity there can be no question : because
each perishing the moment it begins, they cannot exist in different times, or in different places, as permanent beings can at different times exist in distant places; and therefore no motion or thought, considered as at different times, can be the same, each part thereof having a different beginning of existence ^.
4. From what has been said, it is easy to discover what is Princi-
so much inquired after, the principium indiifiduationis ; and ^^^ " '' that, it is plain, is existence itself; which determines a being tionis. of any sort to a particular time and place, incommunicable to
* Cf. ch. xziii. %% 19-ai, as to they are all ultimately referable to, and
Locke's meaning, where he supposes tenninate in, the substances that are
spirits to be subject to relations of place, (so iax) manifested to us in the simple
and speaks of God as omnipresent. ideas we have of them.
' Locke thus recognises the supre» ' Substances are thus distinguished
macy of the complex idea of substance from modes, by their independence and
among our complex ideas. Modes and persistence. Hume virtually analyses
relations may be abstracted for sepa- knowledge and existence into Locke's
rate consideration, as in this Book; but abstract ' modes ' and ' relations.'
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442 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. two beings of the same kind ^. This, though it seems easier ""**" to conceive in simple substances or modes; yet, when re-
XXVII. fl^ct^ ^^i ^ i^ot more difficult in compound ones*, if care be taken to what it is applied : v. g. let us suppose an atom, i.e. a continued body under one immutable superficies, existing in a determined time and place ; it is evident, that, considered in any instant of its existence, it is in that instant the same with itself. For, being at that instant what it is, and nothing else, it is the same, and so must continue as long as its existence is continued ; for so long it will be the same, and no other. In like manner, if two or more atoms be joined together into the same mass, every one of those atoms will be the same, by the forgoing rule : and whilst they exist united together, the mass, consisting of the same atoms, must be the same mass, or the same body, let the parts be ever so differently jumbled. But if one of these atoms be taken away, or one new one added, it is no longer the same mass or the same body. In the state of living creatures, their identity depends not on a mass of the same particles, but on something else. For in them the variation of great parcels of matter alters not the identity : an oak gjrowing from a plant to a great tree, and then lopped, is still the same oak ; and a colt grown up to a horse, sometimes fat, sometimes lean, is all the while the same horse : though, in both these cases, there may be a manifest change of the parts; so that truly they are not either of them the same masses of matter, though they be truly one of them the same oak, and the other the same horse. The reason whereof is, that, in these two cases — a mass of matter and a living body — identity is not applied to the same thing *.
^ Molyneuz (March 2, 1693) exhorts separate particles. He has material
Locke to * insist more particularly and substances in view,
at large on the prmdpium indhtduO' * The idea we have of our memtal
Honis, * Le principe d'individuation ' individuality * contained in the con>
revient, dans les individus, au principe sciousness of each 1^ being a umt,
de distinction, dont je viens de parler.' separated from every other ^go, with a
(Leibniz.) Individuality must not be conscious Ufethat is private, or confined
confounded with personality. to itself alone, belongs to personality,
' ' Compound ones,* e. g. iiggmgai§8 of which afterwards, of atoms, as distinguished from the
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Of Identity of Organisms. 443
5. We must therefore consider wherein an oak differs from book ii.
a mass of matter, and that seems to me to be in this, that the J**"
Crap. one is only the cohesion of particles of matter any how united, xxvil.
the other such a disposition of them as constitutes the parts identity of
of an oak ; and such an organization of those parts as is fit to ^j^^^'
receive and distribute nourishment, so as to continue and frame
the wood, bark, and leaves, &c., of an oak, in which consists
the vegetable life. That being then one plant which has such
an organization -of parts in one coherent body, partaking of
one common life, it continues to be the same plant as long as
it partakes of the same life, though that life be communicated
to new particles of matter vitally united to the living plant, in
a like continued organization conformable to that sort of
plants. For this organization, being at any one instant in
any one collection of matter, is in that particular concrete
distinguished from all other, and is that individual life\ which
existing constantly from that moment both forwards and
backwards, in the same continuity of insensibly succeeding
parts united to the living body of the plant, it has that identity
which makes the same plant, and all the parts of it, parts
of the same plant, during all the time that they exist united
in that continued organization, which is fit to convey that
common life to all the parts so united ^.
6. The case is not so much different in brutes but that any identity of one may hence see what makes an animal and continues it the ^"™* ^•
^ It is only in a loose sense that the seem to be one and the same, in virtue
' organisation/ which is visible, can be of an immanent principle of life, so
identified with the ' life ' which is in- that when the parts are separated from
visible. the whole they lose their life. A branch
' He finds the identity of a ' mass ' separated from a tree, or a limb from
of unorganised matter in the identity an animal body, dissolves into its chemi-
of its aggregated atoms, whereas that cally and mechanically determined
of a living organism consists in particL elements, from which the life has de-
pation of continuous life on the part of parted ; whereas the separation of a
the continuously changing atoms that stone into fragments leaves the quali-
successively compose the organism, ties of the separated parts unaffected
In an organism the fleeting parts are by the change. In an organism the
maintained in their organic life by their parts are connected for a reason, and
connection with the whole, while in an their union expresses a principle, that
inorganic mass the whole is formed is inexplicable under merely mechani*
and constituted by mere aggregation cal law. of the parts. Oiganisms accordingly
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444 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. same. Something we have like this in machines, and may
-**" serve to illustrate it. For example, what is a watch ? It is Chap • •
XXVII. P^^^ ^t ^ nothing but a fit organization or construction of
parts to a certain end, which, when a sufficient force is added
to it, it is capable to attain. If we would suppose this machine
one continued body, all whose organized parts were repaired,
increased, or diminished by a constant addition or separation
of insensible parts, with one common life, we should have
something very much like the body of an animal ^ ; with this
difference. That, in an animal the fitness of the organization,
and the motion wherein life consists, begin together, the
motion coming from within ; but in machines the force
coming sensibly from without, is often away when the organ
is in order, and well fitted to receive it.
The 7. This also shows wherein the identity of the same num
ofManf consists; VIZ. in nothing but a participation of the same continued life, by constantly fleeting particles of matter, in succession vitally united to the same organized body. He that shall place the identity of man in anything else, but, like that of other animals, in one fitly organized body*, taken in any one instant, and from thence continued, under one organization of life, in several successively fleeting particles of matter united to it, will find it hard to make an embryo, one of years, mad and sober, the satne man, by any supposition, that will not make it possible for Seth, Ismael, Socrates, Pilate, St. Austin, and Caesar Borgia, to be the same man. For if the identity of sotd alone makes the same man ; and there be nothing in the nature of matter why the same individual spirit may not be united to diflerent bodies, it will be possible that those men, living in distant ages, and of diflerent tempers, may
^ A watch, by superficial analogy, physical identity, and is contrasted
and yet essential contrast, is an apt with the moral or personal identity
illustration of the difference between considered in the sequel. The identity
inorganic masses, conditioned only by of a man is manifested to the senses,
mechanical and chemical laws, and in his visible and tangible organism ;
bodies which are one and the same in identity of a person is manifested to
virtue of their continuous life. the person himself, primarily in his
' The identity of a man, placed in self-consciousness, and by inferences
' one fitly organized body,' is thus a founded on his organism.
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Identity of a Man. 445
have been the same man : which way of speaking must be book ii. from a very strange use of the word man, applied to an idea ""**" out of which body and shape are excluded ^. And that way xxvii. of speaking would agree yet worse with the notions of those philosophers who allow of transmigration, and are of opinion that the souls of men may, for their miscarriages, be detruded into the bodies of beasts, as fit habitations, with organs suited to the satisfaction of their brutal inclinations. But yet I think nobody, could he be sure that the soul of Heliogabalus were in one of his hogs, would yet say that hog were a man or Heliogabalus,
8. It is not therefore unity of substance that comprehends idea of all sorts of identity, or will determine it in every case ; but to suftedYo conceive and judge of it aright, we must consider what idea the Idea the word it is applied to stands for : it being one thing to be pUed to. the same substance^ another the same man^ and a third the same person^ \i person^ many and substance^ are three names standing
for three different ideas ; — ^for such as is the idea belonging to that name, such must be the identity ; which, if it had been a little more carefully attended to, would possibly have pre- vented a great deal of that confusion which often occurs about this matter, with no small seeming difficulties, especially con- cerning/^rj^?«tf/ identity, which therefore we shall in the next place a little consider.
9. An animal is a living organized body; and consequently Same man. the same animal, as we have observed, is the same continued
life communicated to different particles of matter, as they happen successively to be united to that organized living body. And whatever is talked of other definitions, ingenious observa- tion puts it past doubt, that the idea in our minds, of which the sound man in our mouths is the sign, is nothing else but of an animal of such a certain form. Since I think I may be confident, that, whoever should see a creature of his own shape
* ' Body and shape,' as well as self- its motions were determined by his
consciousness, being, he assumes, in- volitions, we could not, in propriety
eluded in the ordinary connotation of of speech, apply the name man to the
'man,* it is argued that if the con- living being thus endowed with a
sciousness of any man were transferred human consciousness, but in 'body
to the organism of a horse or a dog, so and shape,' a horse or a dog. that its body became his body, and
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446 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. or make, though it had no more reason all its life than a cat "â– **" or a parrot, would call him still a man ; or whoever should XXVII *^^^ a cat or a parrot discourse, reason, and philosophize, would call or think it nothing but a cat or z, parrot ; and say, the one was a dull irrational man, and the other a very intelli- gent rational parrot. [^ A relation we have in an author of great note^ is sufficient to countenance the supposition of a rational parrot. His words are : A rational * I had a mind to know, from Prince Maurice's own mouth. Parrot. ^^ account of a common, but much credited story, that I had heard so often from many others, of an old parrot he had in Brazil, during his government there, that spoke, and asked, and answered common questions, like a reasonable creature : so that those of his train there generally concluded it to be witchery or possession; and one of his chaplains, who lived long afterwards in Holland, would never from that time endure a parrot, but said they all had a devil in them. I had heard many particulars of this story, and assevered by people hard to be discredited, which made me ask Prince Maurice what there was of it He said, with his usual plainness and dryness in talk, there was something true, but a great deal false of what had been reported. I desired to know of him what there was of the first. He told me short and coldly, that he had heard of such an old parrot when he had been at Brazil ; and though he believed nothing of it, and it was a good way off, yet he had so much curiosity as to send for it : that it was a very great and a very old one ; and when it came first into the room where the prince was, with a great many Dutchmen about him, it said presently. What a company of white men are here I They asked it, what
^ What follows within brackets was seemed to recollect little else which
added in the fourth edition. they had learned from that work than
* Sir William Temple, in his Mtmoirs the story of this parrot.' The stoiy is
of what passed in Christendom from omitted in the French version of the
1679 to 1679, p. 66. See Stewart's Essay. If we met with an animal in
ElimgHtSf vol. iiL note H, for remarks outward appearance a parrot, but
on this story, of which he says that possessed of all intellectual and moral
< it must have left a deep impression on faculties supposed to be characteristic
the memory of all who have ever read of man, should we name that animal
Locke's Essay,' adding that * more a parrot or a man ? This is a verbal
than one of his professed admirers question of arbitrary definition.
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Identity of a Man. 447
it thought that man was, pointing to the prince. It answered, book ii. Some General or other. When they brought it close to him, "**~ he asked it, Uoii venez-votis? It answered, De Marinnan. xxvil The Prince, A qui estes-vous f The parrot, A un Portugais. The Prince, Que fais-tu Id f Parrot, Je garde les poulles. The Prince laughed, and said, Vousgardez les poulles f The parrot answered, Oui^moi; etjesfaibienfaire^ ; and made the chuck four or five times that people use to make to chickens when they call them. I set down the words of this worthy dialogue in French, just as Prince Maurice said them to me. I asked him in what language the parrot spoke, and he said in Brazilian. I asked whether he understood Brazilian ; he said No, but he had taken care to have two interpreters by him, the one a Dutchman that spoke Brazilian, and the other a Brazilian that spoke Dutch ; that he asked them separately and privately, and both of them agreed in telling him just the same thing that the parrot had said. I could not but tell this odd story, because it is so much out of the way, and from the first hand, and what may pass for a good one ; for I dare say this Prince at least believed himself in all he told me, having ever passed for a very honest and pious man : I leave it to naturalists to reason, and to other men to believe, as they please upon it ; however, it is not, perhaps, amiss to relieve or enliven a busy scene sometimes with such digressions, whether to the purpose or no.'
10. I have taken care that the reader should have the Same man. story at large in the author's own words, because he seems to me not to have thought it incredible ; for it cannot be imagined that so able a man as he, who had sufficiency enough to warrant all the testimonies he gives of himself, should take so much pains, in a place where it had nothing to do, to pin so close, not only a man whom he mentions as his friend, but on a Prince in whom he acknowledges
1 The parrot was asked, < Whence answered, 'I look after Uie chickens.*
come ye?' It replied, ' From Marin- The Prince laughed, and said, ' You
nan.' The Prince asked, 'To whom look after the chickens?* The parrot
do you belong? ' The parrot replied, answered, * Yes, I ; and I know well
* To a Portuguese.' * What do you enough how to do it.' there ? * asked the Prince. The parrot
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448 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. XXVII.
BOOK II. very g^eat honesty and piety, a story which, if he himself thought incredible, he could not but also think ridiculous*. The Prince, it is plain, who vouches this story, and our author, who relates it from him, both of them call this talker a parrot : and I ask any one else who thinks such a stcwy fit to be told, whether, if this parrot, and all of its kind, had always talked, as we have a prince's word for it this one did, — whether, I say, they would not have passed for a race of rational animals ; but yet, whether, for all that, they would have been allowed to be men, and not parrots'fl For I presume it is not the idea of a thinking or rational being alone that makes the idea of a man in most people's sense : but of a body, so and so shaped, joined to it ; and if that be the idea of a man, the same successive body not shifted all at once, must, as well as the same immaterial spirit, go to the making of the same man.
Personal Identity.
1 1 . This being premised, to find wherein personal identity consists, 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 itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places ; which it does only by that consciousness^ which is inseparable from thinking, and.
^ 'That Locke did not give this story of the rational parrot much credit,' says Stewart, 'may be pre- sumed from the cautious scepticism with which he expresses himself— a scepticism greater than might have been expected from that credulity in the admission of extraordinary facts, of which he has given so many proofs in the first Book of his Essay, and which seems to have been the chief defect in his intellectual character.* Leibniz describes a dog heard by him to converse with his master in articu- late language. Stewart suggests that this phenomenon might probably be explained, ' by supposing the master of the dog to have possessed that peculiar species of imitative power which is called ventriloquism.* The spectacle
of a rational parrot, or a rational dog, * would be,' Stewart adds, * in an ex- treme degree offensive and painful ; and it is so in some degree merely when presented to the imagination.* But why should one look with ' horror' at an animal differing in shape very widely from ourselves, but possessing similar powers of reason and speech ? ' What is *• offensive ' in the idea of the number of rational and responsible agents on this planet being greater than we had supposed ?
' ' Being and subsfance in this place stand for the same idea.' (Butler.)
' To the French version the follow- ing note on ' consciousness ' (consdeMa) is appended: 'Le mot Anglais est consciousness^ qu'on pourroit exprimer en Latin par celui de conscienHa, si so-
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449
Chap. XXVIL
as it seems to me, essential to it: it being impossible for book ii any one to perceive without perceiving that he does perceive. When we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will anythii^, we know that we do so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations and perceptions : and by this every one is to him- self that which he calls self \— it not being considered, in this case, whether the same self be continued in the same or divers substances. For, since consciousness always accom- panies thinking, and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self ^, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things, in this alone consists personal identity \ i.e. the sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person^; it is the same self now it was then ; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done*.
matur pro actu illo hominis qmsibi est conscius. £t c*cst en ce sens que les Latins ont souvent employ^ ce mot, t^moin cet endroit de Cic^ron {Epist, Lib. vi. Epist. 4). £n Francois nous n'avons k nos avis que les mots de senHmeMt et de conviction qui res- pondent en quelque sorte k cette id^e. Mais, en plusieurs endroits de ce cha- pitre, ils ne peuvent qu'exprimer fort imperfectement la pens6e de M. Locke.' The term ' consciousness/ in the sense of apprehension by the ego of its opera- tions and other states as its own, came into use in the seventeenth century, among the Cartesians and in Locke, who sometimes confuses direct con- sciousness with the reflex act in which self is explicitly recognised. Although recently in almost as constant use with some psychologists as the term ' idea ' is with Locke, * consciousness/ so often introduced in this chapter, hardly oc- curs in any other part of the Essay, See, however, ch. i. $$ 10-19.
* * Self consciousness/ says Ferrier, * crtates the ego ' — ' a being makes itself I by thinking itself L' Locke and
VOL. I. G
Ferrier so far regard the cogito as the presupposition of the sum^ instead of the sum as presupposed in the cogito ; but in the Essay the presupposition refers to the order of experience, ac- cording to which our idea of continued identity of person is formed.
* That is, any positive idea we have of what identity of person means is that given in memory.
' Here identity of person is limited to what is remembered — potentially as well as actually (?) 'Wherein/ asks Berkeley, ' consists identity of person T Not in actual consciousness ; for then I am not the same person I was this day twelvemonth, but only while I think of what I then did. Not in potential; for then all persons may be the same, for ought we know.' {C,P,B. Works, vol. iv. p. 481.)
* 'All attempts to define personal identity would but perplex it. Yet there is no difficulty at all in ascer- taining the iilea. For as upon two triangles being compared together, there arises to the mind the idea of similitude ; or upon twice two and four
g
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450 Essay concerning Human Understanding,
BOOK n. lo. But it IS further inquired, whether it be the same ~**~ identical substance. This few would think they had reason xxvii ^^ doubt of, if these perceptions, with their consciousness, ^^,„. always remained present in the mind, whereby the same sciousness thinking thing would be always consciously present, and, personal as would be thought, evidently the same to itself. But that Identity, ^hich seems to make the difficulty is this, that this conscious- ness being interrupted always by forgetfulness, there being no moment of our lives wherein we have the whole train of all our past actions before our eyes in one view, but even the best memories losing the sight of one part whilst they are viewing another' ; and we sometimes, and that the greatest part of our lives, not reflecting on our past selves, being intent on our present thoughts, and in sound sleep having no thoughts at all, or at least none with that consciousness which remarks our waking thoughts ^ — I say, in all these cases, our consciousness being interrupted, and we losing the sight of our past selves, doubts are raised whether we are the same thinking thing, i.e. the same substance or no. Which, how- ever reasonable or unreasonable, concerns not personal identity at all. The question being what makes the same person ; and not whether it be the same identical substance, which always thinks in the same person, which, in this case, matters not at all : different substances, by the same consciousness (where they do partake in it) being united into one person, as well as different bodies by the same life are united into one animal, whose identity is preserved in that change of sub- stances by the unity of one continued life^. For, it being the
the idea of egnaliiy ; so likewise upon that Locke is concerned with, in this
comparing the consciousness of one- Book, which deals with ideas, not
self in any two moments, there as with knowledge,
immediately arises to the mind the > Cf. ch. x. § 9.
idea of persotud idenHty. ... By re- ' Cf. ch. i. §§ 10-17.
fleeting on that which is myself now, ' In thus pressing a distinction be-
and that which was myself twenty tween identity of SM^si^^ and identity
years ago, I discern that they are not of person^ he seeks to show that the
two, but one and the same self. (Bp. latter is independent of the former,
Butler, Dissertatum on Personal Iden- and that the personality is continuous
Hty.) And it is the ' idea,' or ' what as far as memoiy (latent as wdl as
makes personal identity to ourselves' patent?) can go, whatever changes of
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Idea of Personal Identity.
451
Chap. XXVII.
same consciousness that makes a man be himself to himself, book ii. personal identity depends on that only\ whether it be an- nexed solely to one individual substance, or can be con- tinued in a succession of several substances*. For as far as any intelligent being can repeat the idea of any past action with the same consciousness it had of it at first, and with the same consciousness it has of any present action ; so far it is the same personal self. For it is by the consciousness it has of its present thoughts and actions, that it is self to itself now, and so will be the same self, as far as the same consciousness can extend to actions past or to come^ ; and would be by distance of time, or change of substance, no more two persons, than a man be two men by wearing other clothes to-day than he did yesterday, with a long or a short sleep between : the same consciousness uniting those distant
annexed bodily or spiritual substances may take place; especially if (as he elsewhere suggests) the substance of a man is perhaps 'material' — as it may ' have pleased God to make * con- sciousness one of the qualities or powers of organised matter. All that is essen- tial to the idea of personal identity is, that memoiy can bridge over the ap- parent interruptions in self-conscious life, whatever substance maybe united with that life.
* Here ' depends on/ not ' is consti- tuted by/ as in other passages. It is the Urms which contribute to the relation of personal identity — i. e. self now, and self in the past — in which this relation < terminates/ that Locke has in view. As to our conviction of the identity of those terms, BuUer remarks, *• But though we are certain that we are the same agents, living beings, or substances, now, which we were as far back as our remembrance reaches; yet it is asked whether we may not be deceived in it T And this question may be asked at the end of any demonstration whatever ; because it is a question concerning the truth of
Gg
perception by memory. And he who can doubt whether perception by memory may in this case be depended upon, may doubt also yNheih^T perception by deduction and reasoning which also include memory, or indeed whether intuitive perception can. Here then we can go no further. For it is ridiculous to attempt to prove the truth of those perceptions, whose truth we can no otherwise prove than by other percep- tions of exactly the same kind with them, and which there is just the same ground to suspect' {Dissertation on Personal Identity.)
' As in a change from the ' natural body ' to a * spiritual body ' — the per- son, and his accountability for his past conscious experience, remain- ing unchanged
' Making itself the same by its memory of itself, and thus in memoiy creating^ and not merely discovering, itself— if the expressions in the text are strictly interpreted ; the thinking substance 'contributing to the produc- tion* of the successive acts, which acts memoiy * unites' in one person. (C£ p. 415, note 2.)
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452 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. actions into the same person, whatever substances^ contri- "■•*" butcd to their production®.
Chap
XXVII ^^' '^^^^ ^^^s ^s ^> we have some kind of evidence in our Personal Very bodies, all whose particles, whilst vitally united to this Identity in same thinking conscious self, so that we feel when they are Sub- touched, and are affected by, and conscious of good or harm stence. ^^^ happens to them, are a part of ourselves; i.e. of our thinking conscious self. Thus, the limbs of his body are to every one a part of himself ; he sjrmpathizes and is concerned for them. Cut off a hand, and thereby separate it from that consciousness he had of its heat, cold, and other affections, and it is then no longer a part of that which is himself, any more than the remotest part of matter. Thus, we see the substance whereof personal self consisted at one time may be varied at another, without the change of personal identity ; there being no question about the same person, though the limbs which but now were a part of it, be cut off*. Person- 12. But the question is. Whether if the same substance
cS«c of which thinks be changed, it can be the same person ; or, re- Sub- maining the same, it can be different persons ?
stAnce
And to this I answer : First, This can be no question at all to those who place thought in a purely material animal con- stitution, void of an immaterial substance. For, whether
' ' change of substance/ e. g. by pour trouver I'identit^ morale par soi-
transmigration into another body — m6me,qu*ilyaitune mojvwM^/HnsofidSr
' whatever substances ' — whatever or- consdosite d'un 6tat voisin, ou mdme
ganised body, or other substance. un peu ^oign^ a Fautre, quand quelque
' Can the same persotuUiiy — ac- saut ou intervalle oubli^ y serait
countability — be 'annexed* to two or mt\€,' (Leibniz.) When Locke makes
fnore substaftcgs, which all contribute personal, i. e. moral identity depend
to the production of the memory by on memory, this may include poUniial
which the personality is constituted T memoiy, in which our whole past con-
' ' Je suis aussi de cette opinion, scious experience is possibly retained ;
que la conscience, ou le sentiment du and when he suggests the transmigra-
moi, prouve une identity morale ou tion of one man's memory into the
personnelle. Je ne voudrais point bodies of other men, or even of brutes,
dire que Vidmtite personmlU et m6me this may be taken as an emphatic illus-
le 501 ne demeurent point en nous, tration of the essential dependence of
et que je ne suis point le moi qui the idea of our personality upon seif-
ait 6ti dans le berceau, sous pr^texte consciousness only, but not as affirming
que je ne me souviens plus de rien that this transmigration actually occurs
de tout ce que j'ai fait alors. II suffit, under the present order of things.
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Idea of Personal Identity. 453
their supposition be true or no, it is plain they conceive book ii. personal identity preserved in something else than identity of ~**~ substance ; as animal identity is preserved in identity of life, ^x^l and not of substance ^ And therefore those who place thinking in an immaterial substance only, before they can come to deal with these men, must show why personal identity cannot be preserved in the change of immaterial sub- stances, or variety of particular immaterial substances, as well as animal identity is preserved in th^ change of material sub- stances, or variety of particular bodies : unless they will say, it is one immaterial spirit that makes the same life in brutes, as it is one immaterial spirit that makes the same person in men ; which the Cartesians at least will not admit, for fear of makii^ brutes thinking things too.
13. But next, as to the first part of the question, Whether, Whether if the same thinking substance (supposing immaterial sub- '^^iSSk?^*^ stances only to think) be changed, it can be the same person ? >ng Sub- I answer, that cannot be resolved but by those who know there can what kind of substances they are that do think * ; and whether ^ ^"* the consciousness of past actions can be transferred from one thinking substance to another ^ I grant were the same consciousness the same individual action it could not : but it being a present representation of a past action, why it may not be possible, that that may be represented to the mind to have been which really never was, will remain to be shown. And therefore how far the consciousness of past actions is annexed to any individual agent, so that another
^ The animal organism is continu- that is given in consdousness f Is not
ally changing its particles, and this, a person a spiritual substance man!-
according to Locke, is change of the festedT Here again he uses words which
* material substance.' Consciousness seem to imply that a substance, material
that he is the same person^ cannot be or spiritual, is one thing, and its mani^
consciousness that he is the same sub- Testations of itself another and different
sioHctj to one who makes his body his thing, by which too the substance is
substance. concealed rather than revealed. But is
' He maintains (ch. xxiii. $$5, 15, not our idea of personality rather the
&CC,) that we have as clear (or as highest form in which substance can
obscure) an idea of what spiritual sub- be conceived by usf On this subject
stances are as of material substances. see Lotze's Mtta^hysks^ Bk. III. ch. i.
' How does Locke thus distinguish passtm, especially the reference to
the spiritual substance from the self Kant, § 044.
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454 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. cannot possibly have it, will be hard for us to determine, till â– "â– ^*" we know what kind of action it is that cannot be done with-
xxvii ^"^ ^ reflex act of perception accompanying it, and how per- formed by thinking substances, who cannot think without being conscious of it. But that which we call the same consciousness, not being the same individual act, why one intellectual substance may not have represented to it, as done by itself, what it never did, and was perhaps done by some other agent — why, I ^y, such a representation may not possibly be without reality of matter of fact, as well as several representations in dreams are, which yet whilst dreaming we take for true — will be difficult to conclude from the nature of things *. And that it never is so, will by us, till we have clearer views of the nature of thinking sub- stances, be best resolved into the goodness of God ; who, as far as the happiness or misery of any of his sensible creatures is concerned in it, will not, by a fatal error of theirs, transfer from one to another that consciousness which draws reward or punishment with it '. How far this may be an argument against those who would place thinking in a system of fleet- ing animal spirits, I leave to be considered. But yet, to return to the question before us, it must be allowed, that, if the same consciousness (which, as has been shown, is quite a diflerent thing from the same numerical figure or motion in body) can be transferred from one thinking substance to another, it will be possible that two thinking substances may make but one person. For the same consciousness being preserved, whether in the same or different substances, the personal identity is preserved *.
^ In other words, we cannot be de- persons, that is, the same accountable
ceived in our presentative, but we agents or beings, now which we were as
may in our representative experience. far back as our remembrance reaches :
* Under the natural order of things, or as far as a perfectly just and good
which we are obliged to accept in God will cause it to reach.' (Per-
faith, the identity apparent to the ronet*s Vmdicaiion of Lockt^ p. si.)
person who feels himself the same, The last clause suggests a conscious
with its implied moral responsibility, revival of the latent stores of memory,
is intransferable in fact. which may include all the past ezpcri-
' 'According to Mr. Locke, we may ence of the person, always be sure that we are the same
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Idea of Personal Identity, 455
14. As to the second part of the question, Whether the Book 11. same immaterial substance remaining, there may be two ""^^ distinct persons ; which question seems to me to be built xxvii on this, — Whether the same immaterial being, being conscious whether, of the action of its past duration, may be wholly stripped *^* ^™? of all the consciousness of its past existence, and lose it Substance beyond the power of ever retrieving it again ^ : and so as it th"re ^°rf ' were beginning a new account from a new period, have a be two consciousness that cannot reach beyond this new state. All ^^^^^^' those who hold pre-existence are evidently of this mind; since they allow the soul to have no remaining consciousness of what it did in that pre-existent state, either wholly separate from body, or informing any other body ; and if they should not, it is plain experience would be against them ^. So that personal identity, reaching no further than consciousness^ reaches, a pre-existent spirit not having continued so many ages in a state of silence, must needs make different persons. Suppose a Christian Platonist or a Pythagorean should, upon God's having ended all his works of creation the seventh day, think his soul hath existed ever since ; and should imagine it has revolved in several human bodies; as I once met with one, who was persuaded his had been the soul of Socrates (how reasonably I will not dispute ; this I know, that in the post he filled, which was no inconsiderable one, he passed for a very rational man, and the press has shown that he wanted not parts or learning ;)— would any one say, that he, being not conscious of any of Socrates*s actions or thoughts, could be the same person with Socrates * ? Let any one reflect upon himself, and conclude that he has in himself an immaterial spirit, which is that which thinks in him, and, in the constant
^ There being in that case not only * But what if the conscious ezperi-
no actual, but no potential memory of ence of Socrates, is all the while lateHt
a past conscious life. in him, and capable of being recollected
* Hardly so, if the Platonic interpre- by him, as on the thread of his con-
tation of the universal ideas of reason, sciousness ? When the recollection
as reminiscence of what we were con- occurs, Locke would say, he finds him-
sciousof^ in a pre-existing state, is taken self the same person who then went
literally, as rendered in Wordsworth's under that name. Locke, is satirised
' Ode on Intimations of Immortality.' in Martinus Scriblerus for his paradox-
' < Consciousness,' i. e. memoiy, in* ical illustrations of the idea of personal
eluding its latent possibilities. identity.
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456 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. XXVII.
BOOK II. change of his body keeps him the same : and is that which he calls himself: let him also suppose it to be the same soul that was in Nestor or Thersites, at the si^e of Troy, (for souls being, as far as we know anything of them, in their nature indifferent to any parcel of matter, the supposition has no apparent absurdity in it,) which it may have been, as well as it is now the soul of any other man : but he now having^ no consciousness of any of the actions either of Nestor or Thersites, does or can he conceive himself the same person with either of them ? Can he be concerned in either of their actions'? attribute them to himself, or think them his own, more than the actions of any other men that ever existed ? So that this consciousness, not reaching to any of the actions of either of those men, he is no more one selfynih either of them than if the soul or immaterial spirit that now informs him had been created, and began to exist, when it began to inform his present body ; though it were never so true, that the same spirit that informed Nestor's or Thersites' body were numerically the same that now informs his ^. For this would no more make him the same person with Nestor, than if some of the particles of matter that were once a part of Nestor were now a part of this man ; the same immaterial substance, without the same consciousness, no more making the same person, by being united to any body, than the same particle of matter, without consciousness, united to any body, makes the same person. But let him once find himself con- scious of any of the actions of Nestor, he then finds himself the same person with Nestor. •Hie body, 15. And thus may we be able, without any difficulty, to thesoui*^ conceive the same person at the resurrection*, though in a
* That la, he cannot have the itUa of himself now, as one and the same with either of them ; being unable, by memoiy, to connect his present con- sciousness with theirs. The supposed identity of < spiritual substance' does not carry with it the idea of personal responsibility for the actions of Nestor, or of Thersites, unless he also finds himself conscious of their actions as
having been once his own. But is memory the only means for testing or discovering one's personal identity ?
' One of StiUingfleet's charges against the Essay was, that its doctrine regarding personality and personal identity was inconsistent with the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body. For sameness of person, in Locke's account of our idea of
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Idea of Personal Identity. 457
body not exactly in make or parts the same which he had book ii. here, — ^the same consciousness going along with the soul that J**" inhabits it. But yet the soul alone, in the change of bodies, xxvii. would scarce to any one but to him that makes the soul goes to the man, be enough to make the same man. For should ^*j^.^ ^^ the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the a Man. prince's past life, enter and inform the body of a cobbler, as soon as deserted by his own soul, every one sees he would be the same person with the prince, accountable only for the prince's actions : but who would say it was the same man ? The body too goes to the making the man, and would, I g^ess, to everybody determine the man in this case, wherein the soul, with all its princely thoughts about it, would not make another man : but he would be the same cobbler to every one besides himself^. I know that, in the ordinary way of speaking, the same person, and the same man, stand for one and the same thing. And indeed every one will always have a liberty to speak as he pleases, and to apply what articulate sounds to what ideas he thinks fit, and change them as often as he pleases. But yet, when we will inquire what makes the same spirit, many or person, we must fix the ideas of spirit, man, or person in our minds ; and having resolved with ourselves what we mean by them, it will not be hard to determine, in either of them, or the like, when it is the same, and when not '.
personal identity, is indifferent to it our duty to keep close to the words
sameness of body. < My idea of of the scripture/ (C£ Bk. IV. ch. xviii.
personal identity/ Locke replies, % 7.) The question of the identity
'makes the same body not to be neces- of the risen body, with any or all
sary to making the same person, either the ever fluctuating bodies with which
here or after death ; and even in this the person has been connected in this
life the particles of the bodies of the life, is irrelevant to Christianity,
same persons change every moment, ' Because sameness of person is
and there is thus no such identity in directly revealed only to the person,
the body as in the ptrstm^ Moreover, or spiritual substance, whose identity
while the resurrection of the dead is is in question ; but to all others
revealed in scripture, we find 'no such only indirectly, by those visible
express words there as that the body signs from which we infer the exist-
shall rise, or the resurrection of the ence and continued identity of other
body; and though I do not question men.
that the dead shall be raised with ' *No identity (other than perfect
bodies, as matter of revelation, I think likeness) in any mdividuals besides
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458 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II.
Chap.
XXVII.
Con- sciousness alone unites actions into the
Person.
Selfde. pends on
16. But though the same immaterial substance or soul does not alone, wherever it be, and in whatsoever state, make the same man ; yet it is plain, consciousness, as far as ever it can be extended — should it be to ages past — unites existences and actions very remote in time into the same person, as well as it does the existences and actions of the immediately preceding moment : so that whatever ^ has the consciousness of present and past actions, is the same person to whom they both belong. Had I the same consciousness that I saw the ark and Noah's flood, as that I saw an overflowing of the Thames last winter, or as that I write now, I could no more doubt that I who write this now, that saw the Thames overflowed last winter, and that viewed the flood at the general deluge, was the same self, — ^place that self in what substance you please — ^than that I who write this am the same myself now whilst I write (whether I consist of all the same substance, material or immaterial, or no) that I was yesterday. For as to this point of being the same self, it matters not whether this present self be made up of the same or other substances — I being as much concerned, and as justly accountable^ for any action that was done a thousand years since, appropriated to me now by this self-consciousness, as I am for what I did the last moment.
17. Self is that conscious thinking thing, — ^whatever sub-
persons/ says Berkeley (C. P. B. p. 486) ; but by ' person ' he means spiritual substance, and not merely (as Locke) a consciousness that is (ac- tually or potentially) aware of its own past, and can more or less anticipate its future.
* 'whatever.' Does this mean, whatever bting or suhstanc§^9& that on which the 'consciousness' de- pends? 'One should really think it self-evident.' says Bishop Butler, « that consciousness of personal identity pre- supposes, and therefore cannot consti- tute, personal identity, any more than knowledge in any other case can con- stitute the reality which it presup- poses.' But the presented facts in
which the presuppositions of reason are primarily embodied are, throughout the Essay, always apt to throw in the background the metaphysical presup- positions which they imply. Concrete examples supersede their principles. Locke prefers the practical considera- tion of particular facts given in con- sciousness to elaboration of abstract theories about their ' substance.*
' ' Accountability ' is with Locke a criterion of personality. We are ' per- sons ' only in respect to what is neces- sary for this. Person is a * forensic term.' (Cf. $ 96.) It does not mean a man, or any other living agent, merely as such, but only au ego that actually (or potentially?) appropriates
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stance made up of, (whether spiritual or material, simple or book ii. compounded, it matters not) — which is sensible or conscious "^^-^ of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is J^{i concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends *. ^^^^ Thus every one finds that, whilst comprehended under that scious- consciousness, the little finger is as much a part of himself on sub- as what is most so. Upon separation of this little finger, stance, should this consciousness go along with the little finger, and leave the rest of the body, it is evident the little finger would be the person, the same person ; and self then would have nothing to do with the rest of the body. As in this case it is the consciousness that goes along with the substance, when one part is separate^ from another, which makes the same person, and constitutes this inseparable self: so it is in refer- ence to substances remote in time. That with which the consciousness of this present thinking thing can join itself, makes the same person, and is one self with it, and with nothing else ; and so attributes to itself, and owns all the actions of that thing ^, as its own, as far as that consciousness reaches, and no further ; as every one who reflects will perceive *.
18. In this personal identity is founded all the right and Persons, justice of reward and punishment; happiness and misery g^ncM,
beine that for which every one is concerned for himself^ and the
. ft^ r r ... Objects of
not mattering what becomes of any substance^ not jomed to, Reward
or affected with that consciousness. For, as it is evident in ^^i^jj,
the instance I gave but now, if the consciousness went along ment.
with the little finger when it was cut off, that * would be the
past actions. No being that is not ' ' separate/ i. e. in place,
capable of recognising his own past * 'that thing,' i.e. that substance,
answers this description. So that a whether material or spiritual,
madman y though he is living and a ^ Facts alleged by physiologists in
man, is not, in Locke's forensic sense, evidence of inherited memoiy, through
a person. For he cannot be justly which, under abnormal conditions, a
punished for what the sane man did. person becomes conscious of acts and
Therefore more is necessary to the idea thoughts of an ancestor, as his own,
of a person than to the idea of a man ; are, so far, in analogy with the sug-
and that, Locke argues, is intelligent gestion that, in a sense, all men may
recognition of a past as his own past. constitute one person.
» What is this but a definition of a * * that,' i. c. that finger-conscious-
spirihtal subskmct^ ness. Appropriation of organ is with
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Which
shows
wherein
Personal
identity
consists.
Absolute oblivion separates what is thus for- gotten from the person, but not from the man.
460 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
same self which was concerned for the whole body yesterday, as making part of itself, whose actions then it cannot but admit as its own now. Though, if the same body should still live, and immediately from the separation of the little finger have its own peculiar consciousness, whereof the little finger knew nothing, it would not at all be concerned for it, as a part of itself, or could own any of its actions, or have any of them imputed to him.
19. This may show us wherein personal identity consists : not in the identity of substance, but, as I have said, in the identity of consciousness, wherein if Socrates and the pre- sent mayor of Queinborough agree, they are the same person : if the same Socrates ^ waking and sleeping do not partake of the same consciousness^ Socrates waking and sleeping is not the same person. And to punish Socrates waking for what sleeping Socrates thought, and waking Socrates was never conscious of, would be no more of right ^ than to punish one twin for what his brother-twin did, whereof he knew nothing, because their outsides were so like, that they could not be distinguished ; for such twins have been seen.
ao. But yet possibly it will still be objected, — Suppose I wholly lose the memory of some parts of my life, beyond a possibility of retrieving them, so that perhaps I shall never be conscious of them again ; yet am I not the same person that did those actions, had those thoughts that I once was conscious of, though I have now forgot them? To which I answer, that we must here take notice what the word / is applied to ; which, in this case, is the nuin only. And the same man being presumed to be the same person, I is easily here supposed to stand also for the same person. But if it
Locke determined by consciousness. But consciousnessi Leibniz remarks, is not the only means of determining the identity of a person. It can be proved, sufficiently for practical pur- poses, by certain external appearances, which sufficiently signify that the per- son continues to be the same, as in questions of personal identity in courts of justice.
^ 'same Socrates/ i.e. the bodily appearance which signifies the man Socrates.
* Because, although outwardly So- crates, he is not really Socrates, either man or person, if the apparent Socrates has ceased to partake of the same 'consciousness.' Disease sometimes deprives perscms of consciousness of their identity.
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be possible for the same man to have distinct incommunicable book ii. consciousness at different times ^, it is past doubt the same "**" man would at different times make different persons ; which, xxvn we see, is the sense of mankind in the solemnest declaration of their opinions, human laws not punishing the mad man for the sober man's actions, nor the sober man for what the mad man did, — thereby making them two persons : which is somewhat explained by our way of speaking in English when we say such an one is 'not himself/ or is * beside himself; in which phrases it is insinuated, as if those who now, or at least first used them, thought that self was changed ; the self- same person was no longer in that man.
ai. But yet it is hard to conceive that Socrates, the same Difference individual man, should be two persons. To help us a little in identit^ this, we must consider what is meant by Socrates, or the same of Man
.,.'.,, ^ and of
mdividual man. Person.
First, it must be either the same individual^ immaterial, thinking substance; in short, the same numerical soul, and nothing else.
Secondly, or the same animal, without any regard to an immaterial soul.
Thirdly, or the same immaterial spirit united to the same animal.
Now, take which of these suppositions you please, it is impossible to make personal identity to consist in anything but consciousness ; or reach any further than that does.
For, by the first of them, it must be allowed possible that a man bom of different women, and in distant times, may be the same man ^ A way of speaking which, whoever admits, must allow it possible for the same man to be two distinct persons, as any two that have lived in different ages without the knowledge of one another's thoughts. . By the second and third, Socrates, in this life and after it, cannot be the same man any way, but by the same conscious- ness'; and so making human identity to consist in the same
^ For curious cases of double, and sUtnce might conceivably be joined to
of alternate personality, see James's the different organisms.
Psychologyj voL i. pp. 379-99. ' Because the animal organism is
' Because the same thinking aub- changed.
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462 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. XXVII.
BOOK II. thing wherein we place personal identity, there will be no difficulty to allow the same man to be the same person. But then they who place human identity in consciousness only, and not in something else, must consider how they will make the infant Socrates the same man with Socrates after the resurrection *. But whatsoever to some men makes a man, and consequently the same individual man, wherein perhaps few are agreed, personal identity can by us be placed in nothing but consciousness, (which is that alone which makes what we call self^) without involving us in great absurdities *.
22. But is not a man drunk and sober the same person? why else • is he punished for the fact he commits when
^ This sentence may have suggested the following by Sir James Mackin- tosh : — * When the mind is purified from gross notions, it is evident that belief in a future state can no longer rest on the merely selfish idea of pre- serving its own individuality. When we make a further progress, it becomes indifferent whether the same indi- viduals who now inhabit the universe, or others who do not yet exist, are to reach that superior degree of virtue and happiness of which human nature seems to be capable. The object of desire is, the quantity of virtue and happiness, not the identical beings who are to act and enjoy. Even those who distinctly believe in the continued existence (after death) of their fellow men are unable to pursue their opinion through its consequences. The dis- similarity between Socrates at his death, and Socrates in a future state, ten thousand years after death, is so very great, that to call these two beings by the same name is rather consequence of the imperfection of language than of exact views in philo- sophy. There is no practical identity. The Socrates of Elysium can feel no interest in recollecting what befel the Socrates at Athens. He is infinitely more removed from his former state than Newton was in this world from his infancy.' {Lifij vol. ii. p. lao.) But
is this so, if the thread of self-con- sciousness is still maintained, and perhaps with the potential memory transformed into an actual conscious- ness in which all past experience is revived ?
' According to Locke, our idea of the identity of a man includes partici- pation in the same life by constantly changing particles of matter. Our idea of the identity of a person, on the other hand, is independent of parHdes of matter, organised orunorganised ; and involves only a conception of the self- conscious being or person as the same, as far back as memory extends, and without implying that connection with the same material or other substance is also continued. The same person might thus be incarnated in succession in a series of bodies. Locke's curious speculations on iden- tity of person may have suggested to Jonathan Edwards his paradoxical vindication of the responsibility of all men for Adam^s sin^ on the ground that personality is a consciousness arbitrarily sustained, by divine will, in a constant creation, so that all men, by divine appointment might make one person, all thus, in a revived con- sciousness, participating in the act by which mankind rebelled against God. (See Edwards on Original Sin.) (Cf. p. 415, note a.
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drunk, though he be never afterwards conscious of it? Just book ii as much the same person as a man that walks, and does other things in his sleep, is the same person, and is answer- able for any mischief he shall do in it. Human laws punish both, with a justice suitable to their way of knowledge ; — be- cause, in these cases, they cannot distinguish certainly what is real, what counterfeit : and so the ignorance in drunken- ness or sleep is not admitted as a plea. [^For, though punish- ment be annexed to personality, and personality to conscious- ness, and the drunkard perhaps be not conscious of what he did, yet human judicatures justly punish him ; because the fact is proved against him, but want of consciousness cannot be proved for him^.] But in the Great Day, wherein the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open, it may be reasonable
. ^ Added in fourth edition.
* * A man may be punished for any crime which he committed when drunk, whereof he is not conscious.^ Locke allows, in reply to an objection of Moljmeux to the statement in the text, that if a man may be justly punished for a crime committed when he was drunk, his theory of personal identity fails. *You doubt whether my answer be full in the case of the drunkard. To try whether it be or no, we must consider what I am there doing. As I remember (for I have not that chapter here by me) I am there showing that punishment is an- nexed to personality f and personality to consciousness : how then can a drunk- ard be punished for what he did whereof he is not conscious 1 To this I answer: human judicatures justly punish him, because the fact is proved against him ; but want 0/ consciousness cannot be proved for him. This you think not sufficient, but would have me add the common reason, — that drunkenness being a crime, one crime cannot be alleged in excuse for another. This reason, how good soever, cannot I think be used by me, as not reaching my case; for what has this to do with consciousness ?
Nay, it is an argument against me; for if a man may be punished for any crime which he committed when drunk, whereof he is allowed not to be conscious, it overturns my hypo- thesis' (19th Jan. 1694). In reply to this, Molyneux asks (Feb. 17, 1694^, ' How it comes to pass that want of consciousness cannot be proved for a drunkard, as well as for a frantic? One methinks is as manifest as the other: if drunkenness maybe counter- feit, so may a frenzy. Wherefore to me it seems that the law has made a difference in these two cases, on this account, viz. that drunkenness is com- monly incurred voluntarily and pre- meditately; whereas a frenzy is commonly without our consent, or impossible to be prevented.' In the end, Locke replies (May 96, 1694) : — • I agree with you that drunkenness, being a voluntary defect, want of con- sciousness ought not to be presumed in favour of the drunkard. But frenzy, being involuntary and a misfortune, not a fault, has a right to that excuse, which certainly is a just one, where it is truly a frenzy. And all that lies upon human justice is, to distinguish carefully between what is real, and what counterfeit in the case.'
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BOOK II. to think, no one shall be made to answer for what he knows
"**" nothing of; but shall receive his doom, his conscience accusing Chap. . i_* 1
XXVII ^^ excusing him *.
Con- ^3* Nothing but consciousness can unite remote existences
sciottsness Jq^q ^h^ same person : the identity of substance will not do unites it ; for whatever substance there is, however framed, without eSstencea co^sciousness there is no person : and a carcass may be a into one person, as well as any sort of substance be so, without
Person.
consciousness.
Could we suppose two distinct incommunicable conscious- nesses acting the same body, the one constantly by day, the other by night ; and, on the other side, the same conscious* ness, acting by intervals, two distinct bodies : I ask, in the first case, whether the day and the night — ^man would not be two as distinct persons as Socrates and Plato? And whether, in the second case, there would not be one person in two dis- tinct bodies, as much as one man is the same in two dis- tinct clothings ? Nor is it at all material to say, that this same, and this distinct consciousness, in the cases above mentioned, is owing to the same and distinct immaterial substances, bringing it with them to those bodies; which, whether true or no, alters not the case: since it is evident the personal identity would equally be determined by the consciousness, whether that consciousness were annexed to some individual immaterial substance or no. For, granting that the thinking substance in man must be necessarily sup- posed immaterial, it is evident that immaterial thinking thing may sometimes part with its past consciousness, and be re- stored to it again : as appears in the forgetfulness men often have of their past actions ; and the mind many times recovers the memory of a past consciousness, which it had lost for twenty years together. Make these intervals of memory and forgetfulness to take their turns regularly by day and night, and you have two persons with the same immaterial spirit,
^ His accountability depending upon to become, as suggested by Coleridge,
the possibility of awakening his latent the Book of Judgment, Mn the mys-
memory of all that he was ever terious hieroglyphics of which every
conscious of; which is thus capable idle word is recorded.'
pf being brought out of latency, so as
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as much as in the former instance two persons with the same book ii. body. So that self is not determined by identity or diversity ""**" of substance, which it cannot be sure of ^, but only by iden- xxvii. tity of consciousness.
24. Indeed it may conceive the substance whereof it is Not the now made up to have existed formerly, united in the same t^Jith*"^^ conscious being : but, consciousness removed, that substance which the
•^ ir 1 -^ /• -^ ^1. conscious-
is no more itself, or makes no more a part of it, than any ness other substance ; as is evident in the instance we have already ^^^^^ given of a limb cut off, of whose heat, or cold, or other affec- tions, having no longer any consciousness, it is no more of a man's self than any other matter of the universe. In like manner it will be in reference to any immaterial substance, which is void of that consciousness whereby I am myself to myself : [^ if there be any part of its existence which] I cannot upon recollection join with that present consciousness whereby I am now myself, it is, in that part of its existence, no more fnyself than any other immaterial being. For, whatsoever any substance has thought or done, which I cannot recollect, and by my consciousness make my own thought and action, it will no more belong to me, whether a part of me ' thought or did it, than if it had been thought or done by any other immaterial being anywhere existing.
25. I ag^ee, the more probable opinion is, that this con- Conscious- sciousness is annexed to, and the affection of, one individual "u^j^Jf^^ immaterial substance *. material or
But let men, according to their diverse hypotheses, resolve ^'^^the of that as they please. This every intelligent being, sensible of same per- happiness or misery, must grant — that there is something that
* Locke cannot mean, by this hu- manifestingitself to itself? Berkeley, morous illustration, to suggest the on the otherhand.sees in 'persons* the probability of a double personality in only substances — personality and sub- the same body being ever exemplified stantiality being identified. ' Nothing in fact, which would be a 'fatal error' properly but persons, i.e. conscious (§ 13) » God thereby putting our reason things, do exist. All other things are to confusion. not so much (independent ?) existences
' 'so that,* in second edition. as modes of the existence of persons.'
« I.e. my substance. (C.P.5. p. 469.) In this philosophy
* Is it only 'probable' that in 'con- personality and its identity is the sciousness ' the spiritual substance is ultimate basis of all actual existence.
VOL. I. H h
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466 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
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BOOK II. is himself^ that he is concerned for, and would have happy ; that this self has existed in a continued duration more than one instant, and therefore it is possible may exist, as it has done, months and years to come, without any certain bounds to be set to its duration ; and may be the same self, by the same consciousness continued on for the future. And thus, by this consciousness he finds himself to be the same self which did such and such an action some years since, by which he comes to be happy or miserable now. In all which account of self, the same numerical stibstance is not considered as making the same self ; but the same continued conscumsness^ in which several substances may have been united, and again separated from it, which, whilst they continued in a vital union with that wherein this consciousness then resided, made a part of that same self. Thus any part of our bodies, vitally united to that which is conscious in us, makes a part of ourselves : but upon separation from the vital union by which that consciousness is communicated, that which a moment since was part of ourselves, is now no more so than a part of another man's self is a part of me : and it is not impossible but in a little time may become a real part of another person. And so we have the same numerical substance become a part of two different persons ; and the same person preserved under the change of various substances. Could we. suppose any spirit^ wholly stripped of all its memory or consciousness of past actions \ as we find our minds always are of a great part of ours, and sometimes of them all' ; the union or separation of such a spiritual substance would make no variation of personal identity, any more than that of any particle of matter does. Any substance vitally united to the present thinking being is a part of that very same self which now is; anything united to it by a consciousness of former actions, makes also a part of the same self, which is the same both then and now.
a6. Person^ as I take it, is the name for this self. Wherever a man finds what he calls himself, there, I think, another
Person a
forensic
Term.
* Spirit, i. e. spiritual substance. ' So that its past actions were all incapable of being recollected — ^neither
patent nor latent in memoiy. ' For a time, e. g. in sleep.
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may say is the same person ^. It is a forensic term, appro- book it. priating actions and their merit; and so belongs only to intelligent agents, capable of a law, and happiness, and misery. This personality extends itself beyond present existence to what is past, only by consciousness, — whereby it becomes concerned and accountable ; owns and imputes to itself past actions, just upon the same ground imd for the same reason as it does the present '. All which is founded in a concern for happiness, the unavoidable concomitant of consciousness ; that which is conscious of pleasure and pain, desiring that that self that is conscious should be happy. And therefore whatever past actions it cannot reconcile or appropriate to that present self by consciousness, it can be no more con- cerned in than if they had never been done : and to receive pleasure or pain, i. e. reward or punishment, on the account of any such action, is all one as to be made happy or miserable
^ Throughout this discussion, what Locke means by 'person' must be kept in view. If person means the living agent, or the man, then appro- priation of past actions by present consciousness is not necessary to sameness of personality ; since they are the same living agents, whether conscious or not of past and present actions. But a 'person' with Locke means an agent who is aceountabU for past adions* Although present 'ap* propriation ' by consciousness of past actions is not implied in a living agent, it is necessary, â– according to the Essay, to our being persons, i.e. the proper objects of reward or punish- ment on account of them. If a man is not justly responsible for a past act, he is not the person by whom it was done, although he is the man or living agent through whom it was done ; as no man can justly be punished for an action that cannot be brought home to his consciousness and conscience, as in a Book of Judgment. We are thus responsible only for voluntary actions which can by consciousness be appro-
H
priated to ourselves; consciousness uniting the most distant actions in one and the same personality. Conscious- ness that I am the same person cannot, Locke would say, be consciousness that I am the same substance, to any one who makes his body his sub- stance. In short, we need not, he impUes, for determining personality, embarrass ourselves with subtle ques- tions about 'substances': they are irrelevant to the practical certainty that we are the same accountable agents, as iarback as our remembrance of actions as ours can be made to reach, by a just and good God. Cf. $ 11.
' The character of the self in former times and places, as it appears in the memoiy, is thereby appropriated, i. e. personified^ The name ' person' (/€r- soffa) was given originally to the mask worn by actors, through the mouthplace of which the voice sent forth its sounds (personuii) ; then to the mask itself; to the wearer of it, the actor ; to the character acted ; and at last to any assumed character.
h2
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468 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. in its first being \ without any demerit at alL For, supposing a man punished now for what he had done in another life, whereof he could be made to have no consciousness at all, what difference is there between that punishment and being created miserable ^ ? And therefore, conformable to this, the apostle tells us, that, at the great day, when every one shall ' receive according 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 substances soever that consciousness adheres to, are the same that committed those actions, and deserve that punishment for them ^
Supposi- 27* I am apt enough to think I have, in treating of this tionsthat subject, made some suppositions that will look strange to are some readers, and possibly they are so in themselves ^. But
paiSm- y^^» ^ think they are such as are pardonable, in this ignorance able in our we are in of the nature of that thinking thing that is in us, Ignorance. ^^^ ^hich we look on as ourselves *. Did we know what it
> * first being,' i. e. inasmuch as he could not personify, or appropriate them to himself, as/ortfteriy his.
* The past consciousness having been finally or for ever obliterated. This implies that his own conscious- ness in memory is the only means by which he could in reason be satisfied that the action was his.
' See $ 18, in which it is implied that a murderer for example is not accountable for a murder of which his organism was the instrument, if a consciousness of it, as his own past act, cannot be awakened in him I It follows (unless conscious experience is ultimately indelible) that any man who has forgotten that he committed a murder, did not personally commit it. Who, in that case, was the murderer t
* They called forth a host of critics, Sergeant, Stillingfleet, Lee, Clarke in controversy with Collins, Butler, and Reid, with Vincent Perronetand others in defence. The main objection is thus
put by Butler : — ' One should think it self-evident that consciousness prw- supposes, and cannot constihUe personal identity.' But Locke, it must be re- membered, defines personality from the forensic point of view. He also views its identity as manifested in consciousness, and not in the mystery of its ultimate constitution, the am- scious manifesiaHons concealing rather than revealing the substance on -which they depend.
* Cf. Bk. IV. ch. ix.— On our cer- tainty of 'our own existence.' We are apt to take for granted that the idea man can form of his own person- ality, and that of God, is more adequate to the reality than consists with the necessary limitations of our know- ledge. That the personality of men somehow rests on the personality of God is the language of religion, ac- cording to which God is all, and man can do nothing that is good without God.
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was ; or how it was tied to a certain system of fleeting animal book ii. spirits ; or whether it could or could not perform its opera- "^ tions of thinking and memory out of a body organized as xxvii. ours is ; and whether it has pleased God that no one such spirit shall ever be united to any but one such body, upon the right constitution of whose organs its memory should depend ; we might see the absurdity of some of those suppo- sitions I have made. But taking, as we ordinarily now do (in the dark concerning these matters,) the soul of a man for an immaterial substance, independent from matter, and in- different alike to it all ; there can, from the nature of things, be no absurdity at all to suppose that the same soul may at different times be united to diiferent bodies^ and with them make up for that time one man : as well as we suppose a part of a sheep s body yesterday should be a part of a man's body to-morrow, and in that union make a vital part of Meliboeus himself, as well as it did of his ram ^.
2A. To conclude : Whatever substance b^ns to exist, it The Diffi- must, during its existence, necessarily be the same : whatever fn ^use^of" compositions of substances begin to exist, during the union of Names. those substances, the concrete must be the same : whatsoever mode begins to exist, during its existence it is the same : and so if the composition be of distinct substances and different modest the same rule holds. Whereby it will appear, that the dif&culty or obscurity that has been about this matter rather rises from the names ill-used, than from any obscurity in things themselves. For whatever makes the specific idea to which the name is applied, if that idea be steadily kept to, the distinction of anything into the same and divers will easily be conceived, and there can arise no doubt about it
29. For, supposing a rational spirit be the idea of a man ^ Continu- ance of
^ In all this the connection between personality depends, the soul, or the self-conscious person, ' As in man, supposed to compre- and the body is assumed to be acci- hend spiritual and also material sub- dental or contingent ; so that the stance— soul and body, loss of the body by death or other- ' That is, if we exclude the body, wise, is irrelevant to the immortality as an accident and not of the essence of the soul, or to that continued Qp- of man, and mean by * man * only the propriatUm by consciousness of past soul or < rational spirit.* experience on which responsibility or
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that which we have made to be our com- plex idea of man makes the
it 18 easy to know what is the same man, viz. the same spirit — whether separate or in a body — will be the same man. Sup- posing a rational spirit vitally united to a body of a certain conformation of parts to make a man ^ ; whilst that rational spirit, with that vital conformation of parts, though continued in a fleeting successive body, remains, it will be the same man. But if to any one the idea of a man be but the vital union of parts in a certain shape ; as long as that vital union and shape remain in a concrete, no otherwise the same but by a con- tinued succession of fleeting particles, it will be the same num. For, whatever be the composition whereof the complex idea is made, whenever existence makes it one particular thing under any denomination ^ the same existence continued pre- serves it the same individual under the same denomination ^
* And this is what Locke means by 'a man.'
' The nominalism of Locke, who is apt to make questions of this sort questions about the meaning of words only, appears in all this.
' In the foregoing argument, Locke emphatically distinguishes the person from the man, and from the bodily sub- stance. Should we not rather say that it is in his personality and personal agency that than finds what is deepest and truest in himself; and, by analogy, in the constitution of the universe! Locke, working from sensation up- ward, makes his Book of Ideas cul- minate in the complex idea of our concrete continuous personality, and in the moral relations to which persons ought to conform, — in this and the following chapter. Transcendental philosophy, from Descartes to Hegel, working from thought downward, ends by making abstract self-con-
sciousness the key to the mysteries of existence.
By implication Locke appears to make the idea of our personal exist- ence a simple idea of reflection, which gives its meaning to the per- sonal pronoun ' I,' in the * perception * that I am. (Cf. Bk. IV. ch. ix.) The idea of our cohUmums personality, or personal identity, is a complex idea of relation between mysil/nawauid mysdf in the pasiy which ' terminates,* and is made concrete in actual conscious- nesses, past and present. The identity of myself now with myself in the past ; and my separateness from all that is not myself, in a private consciousness in which no other finite person can mingle, afibrd the unique experience of the spirit as distinguished from the mere animal in man. This experience of identical personal life and moral agency is thus the occasion of the most significant ideas in the human mind.
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CHAPTER XXVIII.
OF OTHER RELATIONS.
I. Besides the before-mentioned occasions of time^, place, book ii. and causality of comparing or referring things one to another, ""â– **" there are, as I have said, infinite others, some whereof I shall xxvni "mention. i^^33^f'
Propor-
First, The first I shall name is some one simple idea, which, tions. being capable of parts or degrees, aflTords an occasion of com- paring the subjects wherein it is to one another, in respect of that simple idea, v. g. whiter, sweeter, equal, more, &c. These relations depending on the equality and excess of the same simple idea, in several subjects, may be called^ if one will, proportional ; and that these are only conversant about those simple ideas received from sensation or reflection* is so evident that nothing need be said to evince it.
%. Secondly, Another occasion of comparing things together. Natural or considering one thing, so as to include in that consideration ''*^^**^®"- some other thing ^ is the circumstances of their origin or banning; which being not afterwards to be altered, make the relations depending thereon as lasting as the subjects to which they belong, v. g. father and son, brothers, cousin- germans, &c., which have their relations by one community of blood, wherein they partake in several d^frees : country- men, L e. those who were bom in the same country or tract
^ Our idea of personal identity' IS become aware through sensation or
with Locke our idea of a relation reflection, which arises under difference of time. ' An ' idea of relation ' thus means a
' That is, the abstract relation complex idea of one thing, regarded as
can be embodied or made concrete including some idea of another thing ;
only in phenomena of which we or of itself at another time or place.
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472 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. of ground ; and these I call natural relations : wherein we "â– **" may observe, that mankind have fitted their notions and
Chap
XXVIII words to the use of common life, and not to the truth and extent of things. For it is certain, that, in reality, the relation is the same betwixt the begetter and the begotten, in the several races of other animals as well as men ; but yet it is seldom said, this bull is the grandfather of such a calf, or that two pigeons are cousin-germans. It is very convenient that, by distinct names, these relations should be observed and marked out in mankind, there being occasion^ both in laws and other communications one with another, to mention and take notice of men under these relations : from whence also arise the obligations of several duties amongst men : whereas, in brutes, men having very little or no cause to mind these relations, they have not thought fit to give them distinct and peculiar names. This, by the way, may give us some light into the different state and growth of languages ; which being suited only to the convenience of communication, are pro- portioned to the notions men have, and the commerce of thoughts familiar amongst them ; and not to the reality or extent of things, nor to the various respects might be found among them ; nor the different abstract considerations might be framed about them. Where they had no philosophical notions, there they had no terms to express them : and it is no wonder men should have framed no names for those things they found no occasion to discourse of. From whence it is easy to imagine why, as in some countries, they may have not so much as the name for a horse ; and in others, where they are more careful of the pedigrees of their horses, than of their own, that there they may have not only names for particular horses, but also of their several relations of kindred one to another. Ideas of 3. Thirdly, Sometimes the foundation of considering things, or VoJun- with reference to one another, is some act whereby any one tary reia- comes by a moral right, power, or obligation to do something. Thus, a general is one that hath power to command an army; and an army under a general is a collection of armed men, obliged to obey one man. A citizen, or a burgher, is one who has a right to certain privileges in this or that place.
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Ideas of Moral Relations. 473
All this sort depending upon men's wills, or agreement in book ii. society, I call instituted^ or voluntary \ and may be dis- ""**" tinguished from the natural, in that they are most, if not xxvni all of them, some way or other alterable, and separable from the persons to whom they have sometimes belonged, though neither of the substances, so related, be destroyed. Now, though these are all reciprocal, as well as the rest, and contain in them a reference of two things one to the other; yet, because one of the two things often wants a relative name, importing that reference, men usually take no notice of it, and the relation is commonly overlooked: V. g. a patron and client are easily allowed to be relations, but a constable or dictator are not so readily at first hearing considered as such. Because there is no peculiar name for those who are under the command of a dictator or constable, expressing a relation to either of them ; though it be certain that either of them hath a certain power over some others, and so is so far related to them, as well as a patron is to his client, or general to his army.
4. Fourthly, There is another sort of relation, which is ideas of the conformity or disagreement men's voluntary actions have reUitions. to a rule to which they are referred, and by which they are judged of ; which, I think, may be called moral relation^ as being that which denominates our moral actions, and deserves well to be examined ; there being no part of knowledge wherein we should be more careful to get de- termined ideas, and avoid, as much as may be, obscurity and confusion^. Human actions, when with their various ends, objects, manners, and circumstances, they are framed into distinct complex ideas, are, as has been shown, so many mixed modes^ a great part whereof have names annexed to them*. Thus, supposing gratitude to be a readiness to acknowledge and return kindness received; polygamy to
^ We have our idea of Uie relation of a person able to reward and punish •
of moral good or evil when persons and moral good or evil, the agree-
are compared with a law or ruU, in ment or disagreement of the voluntary
respect of their voluntary ads; moral act with that manifested will,
law or rule being the manifested will * CL ch. xxii.
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474 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap.
XXVIII.
Moral Good and Evil.
BOOK II. be the having more wives than one at once : when we frame these notions thus in our minds, we have there so many determined ideas of mixed modes. But this is not all that concerns our actions: it is not enough to have determined ideas of them, and to know what names belong to such and such combinations of ideas. We have a further and greater concernment, and that is, to know whether such actions, so made up, are morally good or bad.
5. Good and evil, as hath been shown, (B. II. chap. xx. § a, and chap, xxl § 43,) are nothing but pleasure or pain, or that which occasions or procures pleasure or pain to us. Moral good and evil, then, is only the conformity or dis- agreement of our voluntary actions to some law^ whereby good or evil is drawn on usyfrom the will and power of the law- maker \ which good and evil, pleasure or pain, attending our observance or breach of the law by the decree of the law-maker, is that we call reward 2LnA punishment'^.
6. Of these moral rules or laws, to which men generally refer, and by which they judge of the rectitude or pravity of their actions, there seem to me to be three sortSy with their three different enforcements, or rewards and punish- ments. For, since it would be utterly in vain to suppose a rule set to the free actions of men, without annexing to it some enforcement of good and evil to determine his will, we must, wherever we suppose a law, suppose also some reward or punishment annexed to that law'. It would be in vain for one intelligent being to set a rule to the actions of an- other, if he had it not in his power to reward the compliance with, and punish deviation from his rule, by some good and evil, that is not the natural product and consequence of the action itself. For that, being a natural convenience or in- convenience, would operate of itself, without a law *. This,
Moral Rules,
1 Thus moral law must be enacted by a person who has power to annex natuxal good or evil to obedience or disobedience; and what is in moral relation with this law must be the voluntary act of a person, who is free either to obey or disobey the law. He proceeds to distinguish the per-
sons with whose laws men come into moral relation (§ 7).
' Cf. Butler on moral government by rewards and punishments, in Part L ch. ii. of the Analogy,
* This mig^t imply that what we call < natural' law, is not the ex- pression of Supreme Reason and
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Ideas of Moral Relations. 475
if I mistake not, is the true nature of all law^ properly so book ii. called. "**"
7. The laws that men generally refer their actions to, x^|jj to judge of their rectitude or obliquity, seem to me to be Laws, these three: — i. The divine law. %. The civil law. 3. [The
law of opinion or reputation ^, if I may so call it.] By the relation they bear to the first of these, men judge whether their actions are sins or duties ; by the second, whether they be criminal or innocent ; and by the third, whether they be virtues or vices.
8. First, ['the divine law^ whereby that law which God has Divine set to the actions of men, — whether promulgated to them by MeMure the light of nature, or the voice of revelation ^] That God has 2^ Sin and given a rule whereby men should govern themselves, I think " ^* there is nobody so brutish as to deny. He has a right to do
it ; we are his creatures : he has goodness and wisdom to direct our actions to that which is best: and he has power to enforce it by rewards and punishments of infinite weight and duration in another life ; for nobody can take us out of his hands. [*This is the only true touchstone of moral rectitude; and,] by comparing them to this law, it is that men judge of the most considerable moral good or evil of their actions ; that is, whether, as duties or sins, they are like to procure them happiness or misery fi-om the hands of the Almighty *.
Will. But the changes in the universe ^ Added in second edition,
are at once natural and super- * This implies that the happiness
natural — natural when regarded only and the misery annexed by Divine
at the point of view of physical law to men's actions, form our test
science; supernatural at the higher for distinguishing those which it is
point of view of philosophy or theo- our duty to perform from those which
logy. The ultimate immanence of are ' sinful ' ; and that the desire for
Divine active reason in all so-called eternal happiness is also the rightful
natural changes, is an idea foreign to motive to the performance of dutiful
Locke. actions. So P&ley afterwards, in his
^ In first edition — ^Ihit pkQosopkiad definition of virtue. But although
law.' Locke lays stress upon the pleasurable
* Added in second edition. and painful consequences of actions,
* ' revelation/ Le. miraculous, which as motives to their performance, he he distinguishes firom revelation has fSidth in the inherent obligation of thrx>ugh natural awakening of our moral law, as eternal and immutable, spiritual intuitions. He elsewhere calls independently of foresight of conse* reason < natural revektion.* (Bk. IV. quences.
ch. zix. \ 4.)
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476 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II.
Chap. XXVIII.
Civil Law the Measure of Crimes and Inno- cence.
Philo. sophical Law the Measure of Virtue and Vice.
9. Secondly, the civil law — ^the rule set by the common- wealth to the actions of those who belong to it — is another rule to which men refer their actions ; to judge whether they be criminal or no. This law nobody overlooks : the rewards and punishments that enforce it being ready at hand, and suitable to the power that makes it : which is the force of the Commonwealth, engaged to protect the lives, liberties, and possessions of those who live according to its laws, and has power to take away life, liberty, or goods, from him who disobeys ; which is the punishment of offences committed against his law.
10. [^ Thirdly, the law of opinion or reputation. Virtue and vice are names pretended and supposed everywhere to stand for actions in their own nature right and wrong : and as far as they really are so applied, they so far are coincident with the divine law above mentioned. But yet, whatever is pre- tended, this is visible, that these names, virtue and vice, in the particular instances of their application, through the several nations and societies of men in the world, are con- stantly attributed only to such actions as in each country and society are in reputation or discredit. Nor is it to be thought strange, that men everywhere should give the name of virtue to those actions, which amongst them are judged
^ Instead of this section, the first edition has the following: — 'The third — ^which I call the pkUosophical law, not because philosophers make it, but because they have most busied them- selves to inquire after it, and talk about it — is the law of Virtue and Vice ; which though it be more talked of possibly than either of the others, yet how it comes to be established with such authority as it has, to dis- tinguish and denominate the actions of men, and what are the true mea- sures of it, perhaps, is not so generally taken notice of. To comprehend this aright, we must consider that men's uniting into political societies, though they have resigned up to the public the disposal of all their force, so that
they cannot employ it against any fellow-citizen, any further than the law of their country directs — ^yet they still retain the power of thinking well or ill, approving or disapproving the actions of those they live amongst and converse with. If, therefore, we ex- amine it rig^t, we shall find, that the measure of what is everywhere called and esteemed * virtue* and *vice' is this approbation or dislike, praise or blame, which, by a secret and tacit consent, establishes itself in the several societies, tribes and clubs of men in the world; whereby several aot-ona come to find credit or disgrace amongst them, according to the judgment, maxims, or fashions of that place.'
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Ideas of Moral Relations. 477
praiseworthy ; and call that we, which they account blamable : book ii. since otherwise they would condemn themselves, if they should ""**" think anything right, to which they allowed not commenda- xxvill. tion, anything wrong, which they let pass without blame. Thus the measure of what is everywhere called and esteemed virtue and vice is this approbation or dislike, praise or blame, which, by a secret and tacit consent^, establishes itself in the several societies, tribes, and clubs of men in the world : whereby several actions come to find credit or disgrace amongst them^ according to the judgment, maxims, or fashion of that place. For, though men uniting into politic societies, have resigned up to the public the disposing of all their force, so that they cannot employ it against any fellow- citizens any further than the law of the country directs : yet they retain still the power of thinking well or ill, approving or disapproving of the actions of those whom they live amongst, and converse with: and by this approbation and dislike they establish amongst themselves what they will call virtue and vice.]
II. That this is the common measure of virtue and vice ^, The will appear to any one who considers, that, though thatJ^^jSg^ passes for vice in one country which is counted a virtue, or commonly at least not vice, in another, yet everywhere virtue and determine
' In vindicating the Essay against vtc€\ and if he had observed that, in some of its critics, Locke emphatically the place he quotes, / oniy rtportj as rejects the charge, that here or else- matters of fact, what others call virtue where he makes public opinion the and vice, he would not have found it ultimate nature of right and wrong, liable to any great exception.' An and not, as he intends, only the popular insinuation to the contrary by Burnet test of morality. In a letter to Tyrrell he repudiates, * as if I held the dis- in this reference, he explains that in tinction of virtue and vice was to be this passage he is showing what rules picked up by our eyes, or ears, or men often, in point of fact, take to be nostrils, showing so much ignorance, the standards of their actions, * it not or so much malice, in the insinuation, being of concernment to my purpose that he desires no other answer but in that chapter, whether they be as pity.' This is well argued in Mr. Cur- much as true or no' (August 4, 1690). tis's Outline of Locke'sEthical Philosophy As to Lowde*s objection, in like man- (Leipsic, 1890). The law of right and ner he remarks : — * If he had been at wrong is in itself eternal and unalter- pains to reflect on what I had said, he able, according to Locke, but he does would have known what I think of the not explain the ground on which this eternal and unalterable nature of right moral faith rests. and wrong, and what I call virtue and
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478 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. praise, vice and blame, go tc^ether. Virtue is eveiywhere, r**" that which is thought praiseworthy ; and nothing else but XXVIII. ^^^ which has the allowance of public esteem is called what they Virtue \ Virtue and praise are so united, that they are ^*d Vi*^^ called often by the same name. Sunt sua prcemia laudi^ says Viigil*; and so Cicero, Nihil habet natura prastantius, quam hanestatem^ quant laudem^ quam dignitatem^ quant decus \ which he tells you are all names for the same thii^. This is the language of the heathen philosophers, who well understood wherein their notions of virtue and vice con- sisted. And though perhaps, by the different temper, educa- tion, fashion, maxims, or interest of different sorts of men, it fell out, that what was thought praiseworthy in one place, escaped not censure in another ; and so in different societies, virtues and vices were changed : yet, as to the main, they for the most part kept the same everywhere. For, since nothing can be more natural than to encourage with esteem and repu- tation that wherein every one finds his advantage, and to blame and discountenance the contrary; it is no wonder that esteem and discredit, virtue and vice, should, in a great measure, everywhere correspond with the unchangeable rule of right and wrong, which the law of God hath established ; there being nothing that so directly and visibly secures and advances the general good of mankind in this world, as obe- dience to the laws he has set them, and nothing that breeds such mischiefs and confusion, as the neglect of them. And therefore men, without renouncing all sense and reason, and their own interest, which they are so constantly true to, could not generally mistake, in placing their commendation and blame on that side that really deserved it not. Nay, even those men whose practice was otherwise, failed not to give their approbation right, few being depraved to that d^;ree as not to condemn, at least in others, the faults they themselves were guilty of; whereby, even in the corruption
> See * Epistle to the Reader/ pre- Sunt lacrimse renim, tX mentem mor-
fized to the second edition of the talia tangunt' (^n. L 461.)
'S^s^^ (PP* 19? ^» where he refers to ' TuschL Quast; lib. ii ao. See
the criticisms of Mr. Lowde. the context
* * Sunt hie etiam sua praemia laudi ;
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Ideas of Moral Relations. 479
of manners, the true boundaries of the law of nature, which book it. ought to be the rule of virtue and vice, were pretty well "**" preferred. So that even the exhortations of inspired teachers, ^^yju have not feared to appeal to common repute : ^ Whatsoever is lovely, whatsoever is of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise,' &c. (PhiL iv. 8.)
12. If any one shall imagine that. I have forgot my own Itslnforce notion of a law, when I make the law, whereby men judge of commen- virtue and vice, to be nothing else but the consent of private dation and men, who have not authority enough to make a law : especially wanting that which is so necessary and essential to a law, a power to enforce it : I think I may say, that he who imagines commendation and disgrace not to be strong motives to men to accommodate themselves to the opinions and rules of those with whom they converse, seems little skilled in the nature or history of mankind : the greatest part whereof we shall find to govern themselves chiefly, if not solely, by this law of fashion ; and so they do that which keeps them in repu* tation with their company, little regard the laws of God, or the magistrate. The penalties that attend the breach of God's laws some, nay perhaps most men, seldom seriously reflect on: and amongst those that do, many, whilst they break the law, entertain thoughts of future reconciliation, and making their peace for such breaches. And as to the punishments due from the laws of the commonwealth, they frequently flatter themselves with the hopes of impunity. But no man escapes the punishment of their censure and dislike, who oflends against the fashion and opinion of the company he keeps, and would recommend himself to. Nor is there one of ten thousand, who is stiff and insensible enough, to bear up under the constant dislike and condemnation of his own club. He must be of a strange and unusual constitu- tion, who can content himself to live in constant disgrace and disrepute with his own particular society. Solitude many men have sought, and been reconciled to : but nobody that has the least thought or sense of a man about him, can live in society under the constant dislike and ill opinion of his familiars, and those he converses with. This is a burden too heavy for human sufferance : and he must be
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480 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II.
Chap. XXVIII.
These three Laws the Rules of moral Good and Evil.
Morality is the Relation of Volun- tary Actions to these Rules.
made up of irreconcileable contradictions, who can take pleasure in company, and yet be insensible of contempt and disg^ce from his companions.
13. These three then, first, the law of God ; secondly, the law of politic societies ; thirdly, the law of fashion, or private censure, are those to which men variously compare their actions: and it is by their conformity to one of these laws that they take their measures, when they would judge of their moral rectitude, and denominate their actions good or bad^
14. Whether the rule to which, as to a touchstone, we bring our voluntary actions, to examine them by, and try their goodness, and accordingly to name them, which is, as it were, the mark of the value we set upon them : whether, I say, we take that rule from the fashion of the country, or the will of a law-maker^, the mind is easily able to observe the relation any action hath to it, and to judge whether the action agrees or disagrees with the rule ; and so hath a notion of moral goodness or evil, which is either conformity or not conformity of any action to that rule : and therefore is often called moral rectitude. This rule being nothing but a col- lection of several simple ideas, the conformity thereto is but so ordering the action, that the simple ideas belonging to it may correspond to those which the law requires. And thus we see how moral beings and notions are founded on, and terminated in, these simple ideas we have received from sensation or reflection. For example: let us consider the complex idea we signify by the word murder : and when we have taken it asunder, and examined all the particulars, we shall find them to amount to a collection of simple ideas derived from reflection or sensation, viz. First, from reflection on the operations of our own minds, we have
^ Cf. Bk. I. ch. ii. \ 5, in which the grounds of obligation recognised by ' a christian, a Hobbist, and one of the old philosophers/ are distinguished.
' Again note that it is the nature and origin of the various ideas men form of moral good and evil, not the absolute standard of morality, that he
is concerned with, in this second Book, which deals with the ideas men have, and not with the ultimate nature of things. He is illustrating the various ideas of moral law that prevail among men, and the different standards of an abstract morality in itself immutable which they adopt.
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Ideas of Moral Relations. 481
the ideas of willing, considering, purposing beforehand, malice, book it. or wishing ill to another; and also of life, or perception, ""^^^ and self-motion. Secondly, from sensation we have the xxviii. collection of those simple sensible ideas which are to be found in a man, and of some action^ whereby we put an end to perception and motion in the man ; all which simple ideas are comprehended in the word murder. This collection of simple ideas, being found by me to agree or disagree with the esteem of the country I have been bred in, and to be held by most men there worthy praise or blame, I call the action virtuous or vicious: if I have the will of a supreme invisible Lawgiver for my rule, then, as I supposed the action commanded or forbidden by God, I call it good or evil, sin or duty: and if I compare it to the civil law, the rule made by the legislative power of the country, I call it lawful or unlawful, a crime or no crime. So that whencesoever we take the rule of moral actions ; or by what standard soever we frame in our minds the ideas of virtues or vices, they consist only, and are made up of collections of simple ideas, which we originally received from sense or reflection : and their rectitude or obliquity consists in the agreement or disagreement with those patterns prescribed by some law^.
15. To conceive rightly of moral actions, we must take Moral notice of them under this two-fold consideration. First, as may ^ they are in themselves, each made up of such a collection of regarded simple ideas. Thus drunkenness, or lying, signify such or absolutely, such a collection of simple ideas, which I call mixed modes : ®r *^ '5**^
, . , . , ^ , . . , , . , of relaUon.
and m this sense they are as much positive absolute ideas, as the drinking of a horse, or speaking of a parrot. Secondly, our actions are considered as good, bad, or indifferent ; and in this respect they are relative, it being their conformity to, or disagreement with some rule that makes them to be regular or irregular, good or bad ; and so, as far as they are compared with a rule, and thereupon denominated, they come under relation'. Thus the challenging and fighting with a
' The ideas we have of the concrete immutability which he says neces-
actions which we call virtuous or sarily belong to ideas of morality ?
vicious may be so formed, but what ' And it is under ' ideas of relation '
is the origin of the eternity and that they are here considered.
VOL. I. I i
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482 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II.
Chap.
XXVIII.
The De- nomina- tions of Actions often mis- lead us.
Relations innumer- able, and only the most con- siderable here men- tioned.
man, as it is a certain positive mode, or particular sort of action, by particular ideas, distinguished from all others, is called duelling \ which, when considered in relation to the law of God, will deserve the name of sin ; to the law of fashion, in some countries, valour and virtue ; and to the municipal laws of some governments, a capital crime. In this case, when the positive mode has one name, and another name as it stands in relation to the law, the distinction may as easily be observed as it is in substances, where one name, V. g. man, is used to signify the thing ; another, v. g. father^ to signify the relatioa
16. But because very frequently the positive idea of the action, and its moral relation, are comprehended together under one name, and the same word made use of to express both the mode or action, and its moral rectitude or obliquity : therefore the relation itself is less taken notice of; and there is often no distinction made between the positive idea of the action, and the reference it has to a rule. By which con- fusion of these two distinct considerations under one term, those who yield too easily to the impressions of sounds, and are forward to take names for things, are often misled in their judgment of actions. Thus, the taking from another what is his, without his knowledge or allowance, is properly called stealing', but that name, being commonly understood to signify also the moral pravity of the action, and to denote its contrariety to the law, men are apt to condemn whatever they hear called stealing, as an ill action, disagree- ing with the rule of right. And yet the private taking away his sword from a madman, to prevent his doing mis- chief, though it be properly denominated stealing, as the name of such a mixed mode ; yet when compared to the law of God, and considered in its relation to that supreme rule, it is no sin or transgression, though the name stealing ordi- narily carries such an intimation with it.
1 7. And thus much for the relation of human actions to a law, which, therefore, I call moral relations.
It would make a volume to go over all sorts of relations \ it is not, therefore, to be expected that I should here men- ^
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Ideas of Relations. 483
tion them all. It suffices to our present purpose to show book it; by these, what the ideas are we have of this comprehensive ^^ consideration called relation. Which is so various, and the xxviir. occasions of it so many, (as many as there can be of com- paring things one to another,) that it is not very easy to reduce it to rules, or under just heads. Those I have men- tioned, I think, are some of the most considerable ; and such as may serve to let us see from whence we get our ideas of relations, and wherein they are founded. But before I quit this argument, from what has been said give me leave to observe:
18. First, That it is evident, that all relation terminates in, All Rela-
and is ultimately founded on, those simple ideas we have got |*e^inate
from sensation or reflection: so that all we have in our in simple
thoughts ourselves, (if we think of anything, or have any
meaning,) or would signify to others, when we use words
standing for relations, is nothing but some simple ideas, or
collections of simple ideas, compared one with another ^. This
is so manifest in that sort called proportional, that nothing
can be more. For when a man says * honey is sweeter than
wax,' it is plain that his thoughts in this relation terminate in
this simple idea, sweetness ; which is equally true of all the
rest: though, where they are compounded, or decompounded,
the simple ideas they are made up of, are, perhaps, seldom
taken notice of: v.g. when the word father is mentioned:
first, there is meant that particular species, or collective idea,
signified by the word man ; secondly, those sensible simple
ideas, signified by the word generation ; and, thirdly, the
effects of it, and all the simple ideas signified by the word
child. So the word friend, being taken for a man who loves
and is ready to do good to another, has all these following
ideas to the making of it up : first, all the simple ideas, com-
> But as, according to Locke, the suhstanas themselves. He illustrates
idea of substana is presupposed in all this, by analysing the connotation of
our 'simple ideas/ the only ideas which some terms which enter into propo-
enter into relations, or form subjects sitions. There can be no actual relations
and predicates in our judgments, must unless there are things related, given
be those of abstracted modes of ma- by experience, which make the rela*
terial or spiritual substances, or those tions actual. of concrete (material or spiritual)
Ii2
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484 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. prehended in the word man, or intelligent being ; seccmdly, "**" the idea of love ; thirdly, the idea of readiness or disposition ; XXVIII. fourthly, the idea of action, which is any kind of thought or motion ; fifthly, the idea of good, which signifies an3rthing that may advance his happiness, and terminates at last, if examined, in particular simple ideas, of which the word good in general signifies any one ; but, if removed from all simple ideas quite, it signifies nothing at all. And thus abo all moral words terminate at last, though perhaps more remotely, in a collection of simple ideas : the immediate signification of relative words, being very often other supposed known relations ; which, if traced one to another, still end in simple ideas. We have 1 9. Secondly, That in relations, we have for the most part, asciea^a ^^ ^^t always, as clear a notion of the relation as we have of Notion those simple ideas wherein it is founded', agreement or dis- Relation, agreement, whereon relation depends, being things whereof sfnT fe**^ we have commonly as clear ideas as of any other whatsoever ; ideas in it being but the distinguishing simple ideas, or their degrees wWch it"is ^^^ f^om another, without which we could have no distinct founded, knowledge at all. For, if I have a clear idea of sweetness, light, or extension, I have, too, of equal, or more, or less, of each of these : if I know what it is for one man to be born of a woman, viz. Sempronia, I know what it is for another man to be bom of the same woman Sempronia ; and so have as clear a notion of brothers as of births, and perhaps clearer. For if I believed that Sempronia digged Titus out of the parsley-bed, (aslhey used to tell children,) and thereby became his mother ; and that afterwards, in the same manner, she digged Caius out of the parsley-bed, I had as clear a notion of the relation of brothers between them, as if I had all the skill of a midwife : the notion that the same woman contributed, as mother, equally to their births, (though I were ignorant or mistaken in the manner of it,) being that on which I grounded the relation ; and that they agreed in that circumstance of birth, let it be what it will. The comparing them then in their descent from the same person, without knowing the particular circumstances of that descent, is enough to found my notion of their having, or not having the relation of brothers. But
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Ideas of Relations. 485
though the ideas oi particular relations are capable of being as book ii. clear and distinct in the minds of those who will duly consider 7**^ them as those of mixed modes, and more determinate than xxviii. those of substances : yet the names belonging to relation are often of as doubtful and uncertain signification as those of substances or mixed modes ; and much more than those of simple ideas. Because relative words, being the marks of this comparison, which is made only by men's thoughts, and is an idea only in men's minds, men frequently apply them to different comparisons of things^, according to their own imaginations ; which do not always correspond with those of others using the same name.
ao. Thirdly, That in these I call moral relations^ I have a The true notion of relation, by comparing the action with the rule, Relation whether the rule be true or false. For if I measure anything *« *^« by a yard, I know whether the thing I measure be longer or whether shorter than that supposed yard, though perhaps the yard ^ Actron I measure by be not exactly the standard : which indeed is is com- another inquiry. For though the rule be erroneous, and I be'tnie^or mistaken in it ; yet the agreement or disagreement observable ^*lse. in that which I compare with, makes me perceive the relation. Though, measuring by a wrong rule, I shall thereby be brought to judge amiss of its moral rectitude ; because I have tried it by that which is not the true rule : yet I am not mistaken in the relation which that action bears to that rule I compare it to, which is agreement or disagreement.
^ The same things, in virtue of dif- have various names applied to them, ferent resembling qualities, may be according to the classes men find it referred to various classes, and so convenient to think them in.
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CHAPTER XXIX.
OF CLEAR AND OBSCURE, DISTINCT AND CONFUSED IDEAS.
BOOK II. I. Having shown the original of our ideas, and taken a "â– **" view of their several sorts : considered the difference betwreen
Chap.
XXIX. ^^^ simple and the complex ; zuid observed how the complex Ideas, ones are divided into those of modes, substances, and relations *^d d*^-^*^ —all which, I think, is necessary to be done by any one who tinct, would acquaint himself thoroughly with the progress of the obscure ^^^^9 '^^ 1^ apprehension and knowledge of things — it will, and con- perhaps, be thought I have dwelt long enough upon the "*^ examination of ideas. I must, nevertheless, crave leave to
offer some few other considerations concerning them.
The first is, that some are clear and others obscure ; some
distinct and others confused'^.
Clear and 2. The perception of the mind being most aptly explained
expUdned ^^ words relating to the sight, we shall best understand what
by Sight is meant by clear and obscure in our ideas, by reflecting on
what we call clear and obscure in the objects of sight. Light
being that which discovers to us visible objects, we give the
name of obscure to that which is not placed in a light sufficient
to discover minutely to us the figure and colours which are
observable in it, and which, in a better light, would be dis-
^ On the qualities of ideas (simple akin to that in the Port Royal Logk,
and complex) as cUar and obscure j dis- Pt. I. ch. ix. Descartes makes much of
tinct and con/usid, see Leibniz, Nou- clearness and distinctness as the ulti-
veaux Essais, Liv. II. ch. xxix. and in mate criterion of truth ; but Locke has
Mediiationes de Cogftifione, VeritaU, ti here to do with ideas and their
Ideist first published in 1684, in the quaUties, abstracted from the con-
Acta Erudiiorum^ five years before the sideration of questions about truth
Essay appeared, but of which Locke and knowledge. On the terms ' dear'
was probably ignorant Locke's ac- and < distinct/ cC 'Epistle to the
count of those distinctions is more Reader,' p. 83.
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Of Clear and Obscure Ideas. 487
cernible. In like manner, our simple ideas are clear^ when BOOK ir. they are such as the objects themselves from whence they "7**^ were taken did or might, in a well-ordered sensation or per- xxix. ception, present them. Whilst the memory retains them thus, and can produce them to the mind whenever it has occasion to consider them, they arc clear ideas. So far as they either want anything of the original exactness, or have lost any of their first freshness, and are, as it were, faded or tarnished by time, so far are they obscure. Complex ideas, as they are made up of simple ones, so they are clear, when the ideas that go to their composition are clear, and the number and order of those simple ideas that are the ingredients of any complex one is determinate and certain.
3. The causes of obscurity, in simple ideas, seem to be Causes of either dull organs ; or very slight and transient impressions ^^^^"*y- made by the objects ; or else a weakness in the memory, not
able to retain them as received. For to return again to visible objects, to help us to apprehend this matter. If the organs, or faculties of perception, like wax over-hardened with cold, will not receive the impression of the seal, from the usual impulse wont to imprint it ; or, like wax of a temper too soft, will not hold it well, when well imprinted ; or else supposing the wax of a temper fit, but the seal not applied with a sufficient force to make a clear impression ^ : in any of these cases^ the print left by the seal will be obscure. This, I sup- pose,, needs no application to make it plainer.
4. As a clear idea is that whereof the mind has such a full Distinct and evident perception, as it does receive from an outward J^^^"' object operating duly on a well-disposed organ, so a distinct what. idea is that wherein the mind perceives a difference from all other ; and a confused idea is such an one as is not sufficiently distinguishable from another, from which it ought to be different ^.
^ There is a passage in the ThtaeU' as a whole from other ideas, and it is
ins in analogy with this. obseurt when confused with others ; it
' According to the usage of Leibniz is tUsHnd when, besides this, its several
and others, an idea is cUar when it is so constituent elements are discriminated
apprehended as to be distinguished from one another, and it is indistinct
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Chap. XXIX.
488 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. 5. If no idea be confused, but such as is not sufficiently distinguishable from another from which it should be different, it will be hard, may any one say, to find anywhere a confused Objection, i^^a. For, let any idea be as it will, it can be no other but such as the mind perceives it to be ; and that very perception sufficiently distinguishes it from all other ideas, which cannot be other, i.e. different, without being perceived to be so. No idea, therefore, can be undistinguishable from another from which it ought to be different, unless you would have it different from itself: for from all other it is evidently dif- ferent. Confusion 6. To remove this difficulty, and to help us to conceive 1^ jjj *** aright what it is that makes the confusion ideas are at any Reference time chargeable with, we must consider, that things ranked Names. under distinct names are supposed different enough to be dis- tinguished, that so each sort by its peculiar name may be marked, and discoursed of apart upon any occasion: and there is nothing more evident, than that the greatest part of different names are supposed to stand for different things. Now every idea a man has, being visibly what it is, and distinct from all other ideas but itself ; that which makes it confused, is, when it is such that it may as well be called by another name as that which it is expressed by ; the difference which keeps the things (to be ranked under those two different names) distinct, and makes some of them belong rather to the one and some of them to the other of those names, being left out ; and so the distinction, which was intended to be kept up by those different names, is quite lost. Defaults 7. The defaults which usually occasion this confusion, I m^c*Uiis think, are chiefly these following :
Confusion. First, when any complex idea (for it is complex ideas that First, com- are most liable to confusion) is made up of too small a number made uprof ^f simple ideas, and such only as are common to other things, loo few whereby the differences that make it deserve a different name,
when its several parts are not thus in detail. Locke*s method for relieving
discriminated. Thus one s idea of complex ideas of these defects would
another man may be clear enough be, to recall into the view of conscious*
to identify him, but not distinct enough ness, the simple ideas of which they
to represent the signs of his identity consist
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Of Distinct and Con/used Ideas. 489
are left out. Thus, he that has an idea made up of barely book ii. the simple ones of a beast with spots, has but a confused idea "T*" of a leopard ; it not being thereby sufficiently distinguished xxix. from a lynx, and several other sorts of beasts that are spotted, simple So that such an idea, though it hath the peculiar name leopard, ®"®^' is not distinguishable from those designed by the names lynx or panther, and may as well come under the name lynx as leopard. How much the custom of defining of words by general terms contributes to make the ideas we would express by them con- fused and undetermined, I leave others to consider. This is evident, that confused ideas are such as render the use of words uncertain, and take away the benefit of distinct names. When the ideas, for which we use different terms, have not a dif- ference answerable to their distinct names, and so cannot be distinguished by them, there it is that they are truly confused.
8. Secondly, Another fault which makes our ideas confused Secondly, is, when, though the particulars that make up any idea are in shnpie*^ number enough, yet they are so jumbled together, that it is ?"« not easily discernible whether it more belongs to the name disorderly that is given it than to any other. There is nothing properer together. to make us conceive this confusion than a sort of pictures, usually shown as surprising pieces of art, wherein the colours, as they are laid by the pencil on the table itself, mark out very odd and unusual figures, and have no discernible order in their position. This draught, thus made up of parts wherein no symmetry nor order appears, is in itself no more a confused thing, than the picture of a cloudy sky ; wherein, though there be as little order of colours or figures to be found, yet nobody thinks it a confused picture. What is it, then, that makes it be thought confused, since the want of symmetry does not ? As it is plain it does not : for another draught made barely in imitation of this could not be called confused. I answer. That which makes it be thought confused is, the applying it to some name to which it does no more discernibly belong than to some other : v.g. when it is said to be the picture of a man, or Caesar, then any one with reason counts it confused ; be- cause it is not discernible in that state to belong more to the name man, or Caesar, than to the name baboon, or Pompey : which are supposed to stand for different ideas from those
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490 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. signified by man, or Caesar. But when a cylindrical mirror, "â– *** placed right, had reduced those irr^^lar lines on the table ^^^^' into their due order and proportion, then the confusion ceases, and the eye presently sees that it is a man, or Caesar; i.e. that it belongs to those names ; and that it is sufficiently dis- tinguishable from a baboon, or Pompey ; i.e. from the ideas signified by those names. Just thus it is with our ideas, which are as it were the pictures of things. No one of these mental draughts, however the parts are put together, can be called confused (for they are plainly discernible as they are) till it be ranked under some ordinary name to which it cannot be discerned to belong, any more than it does to some other name of an allowed different signification. Thirdly, 9. Thirdly, A third defect that frequently gives the name simpie'^ of confused to our ideas, is, when any one of them is uncertain ones and undetermined. Thus we may observe men who, not for- and unde. bearing to use the ordinary words of their language till they termined. j^j^yg learned their precise signification, change the idea they make this or that term stand for, almost as often as they use it. He that does this out of uncertainty of what he should leave out, or put into his idea of church, or idolatry, every time he thinks of either, and holds not steady to any one precise combination of ideas that makes it up, is said to have a confused idea of idolatry or the church: though this be still for the same reason as the former, viz. because a mutable idea (if we will allow it to be one idea) cannot belong to one name rather than another, and so loses the distinction that distinct names are designed for \
* Of. ch xxii. § 7 ; also Bk. III. ch. repugnance among the ideas, as well
3^* §§ St 4> on our habit of using words as if we had a full comprehension of
without realising fully what each word them.' {Trtaiisi, Pt. I. sect. 7.) This
means. So too Hume: — 'We do not is further illustrated in Leibniz*s dis-
annex distinct and complete ideas to tinction between an intuitive and
any term we make use of; and in a symbolical apprehension of things.
talking of govtmftuni, chutxhj negoH- Human imagination cannot represent
o/fOMS, conquest, we seldom spread out a very complex idea as a whole, fiu*
m our minds all the simple ideas of less each of the simple ideas it con*
whick these complex ones are composed, tains ; in which case the verbal sign
Notwithstanding this imperfection we serves as an obscure substitute for the
may avoid talking nonsense on these idea, in sjrmbolical or Uind thought, in
subjects, and may be perceive any contnot to the intuitive thought in
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Of Distinct and Confused Ideas. 491
10. By what has been said, we may observe how much book 11. natnesy as supposed steady signs of things, and by their *"**" difference to stand for, and keep things distinct that in them- ^^IX. selves are different, are the occasion of denominating ideas confusion distinct or confused, by a secret and unobserved reference the ^*jl*®"* mind makes of its ideas to such names. This perhaps will be to Names, fuller understood, after what I say of Words in the third Book ^^^y
' ^ conceiv*
has been read and considered. But without taking notice of able. such a reference of ideas to distinct names, as the signs of dis- tinct things, it will be hard to say what a confused idea is. And therefore when a man designs, by any name, a sort of things, or any one particular thing, distinct from all others, the com- plex idea he annexes to that name is the more distinct, the more particular the ideas are, and the greater and more deter- minate the number and order of them is, whereof it is made up. For, the more it has of these, the more it has still of the perceivable differences, whereby it is kept separate and distinct from all ideas belonging to other names, even those that approach nearest to it, and thereby all confusion with them is avoided.
11. Confusion making it a difficulty to separate two things Confusion that should be separated, concerns always two ideas; and^^^^^J^^ those most which most approach one another. Whenever, Ideas, therefore, we suspect any idea to be confused, we must examine what other it is in danger to be confounded with, or
which it cannot easily be separated from ; and that will always be found an idea belonging to another name, and so should be a different thing, from which yet it is not sufficiently distinct : being either the same with it, or making a part of it, or at least as properly called by that name as the other it is ranked under; and so keeps not that difference from that other idea which the different names import.
I a. This, I think, is the confusion proper to ideas; which Causes of still carries with it a secret reference to names. At least, if j^^f *^
which we are conscious of the ideas with 999 sides. Its nature and pro- themselves. To repeat the common perties are intelligible to us, although illustration, one can reason about a the lower faculties of sense and sen- polygon with 1000 sides, without being suous imagination are not delicate able so to image this figure as to dis- enough for this discrimination, tinguish its image from that of one
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492 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK n. there be any other confusion of ideas, this is that which most
"â– **" of all disorders men s thoughts and discourses : ideas, as
Chap
XXIX. ranked under names, being those that for the most part men
reason of within themselves, and always those which they commune about with others. And therefore where there are supposed two different ideas, marked by two different names, which are not as distinguishable as the sounds that stand for them, there never fails to be confusion ; and where any ideas are distinct as the ideas of those two sounds they are marked by, there can be between them no confusion. The way to prevent it is to collect and unite into one complex idea, as precisely as is possible, all those ingredients whereby it is differenced from others ; and to them, so united in a deter- minate number and order, apply steadily the same name. But this neither accommodating men s ease or vanity, nor serving any design but that of naked truth, which is not always the thing aimed at, such exactness is rather to be wished than hoped for. And since the loose application of names, to undetermined, variable, and almost no ideas, serves both to cover our own ignorance, as well as to perplex and confound others, which goes for learning and superiority in knowledge, it is no wonder that most men should use it them- selves, whilst they complain of it in others. Though I think no small part of the confusion to be found in the notions of men might, by care and ingenuity, be avoided, yet I am far from concluding it everywhere wilful. Some ideas are so complex, and made up of so many parts, that the memory does not easily retain the very same precise combination of simple ideas under one name: much less are we able con- stantly to divine for what precise complex idea such a name stands in another man's use of it. From the first of these, follows confusion in a man's own reasonings and opinions within himself; from the latter, frequent confusion in dis- coursing and arguing with others. But having more at large treated of Words, their defects, and abuses, in the following Book, I shall here say no more of it. Complex 13. Our complex ideas, being made up of collections, and may be ^^ variety of simple ones, may accordingly be very clear and distinct in distinct in one part, and very obscure and confused in another.
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Of Distinct and Confused Ideas. 493
In a man who speaks of a chiliaedron^ or a body of a thousand book ii. sides, the ideas of the figure may be very confused, though r**~ that of the number be very distinct ; so that he being able to xxix. discourse and demonstrate concerning that part of his complex one Pait, idea which depends upon the number of thousand, he is apt to J"*^^jJ^' think he has a distinct idea of a chiliaedron ; though it be another, plain he has no precise idea of its figure, so as to distinguish it, by that, from one that has but 999 sides : the not observing whereof causes no small error in men's thoughts, and confusion in their discourses.
14. He that thinks he has a distinct idea of the figure of a This, if not chiliaedron^ let him for trial sake take another parcel of the ^u^' same uniform matter, viz. gold or wax of an equal bulk, and Confusion make it into a figure of 999 sides. He will, I doubt not, be ArguUigs. able to distinguish these two ideas one from another, by the number of sides ; and reason and argue distinctly about them, whilst he keeps his thoughts and reasoning to that part only
of these ideas which is contained in their numbers ; as that the sides of the one could be divided into two equal numbers, and of the others not, &c. But when he goes about to distin- guish them by their figure, he will there be presently at a loss, and not be able, I think, to frame in his mind two ideas, one of them distinct from the other, by the bare figure of these two pieces of gold ; as he could, if the same parcels of gold were made one into a cube, the other a figure of five sides. In which incomplete ideas, we are very apt to impose on ourselves, and wrangle with others, especially where they have particular and familiar names. For, being satisfied in that part of the idea which we have clear ; and the name which is familiar to us, being applied to the whole, containing that part also which is imperfect and obscure, we are apt to use it for that confused part, and draw deductions from it in the obscure part of its signification, as confidently as we do from the other.
15. Having frequently in our mouths the name Eternity^, instance we are apt to think we have a positive comprehensive idea of nity.
^ Locke imperfectly distinguishes suo%ts pempiion and itnagmaiion. We unimaginabU amctpts ofundtrstanding^ may be said to have a notion of eternity^ which admit of definition, from siH- but we cannot make a mental image of
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494 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOKIL it, which is as much as to say, that there is no part of that r**" duration which is not clearly contained in our idea \ It is XXIX« true that he that thinks so may have a dear idea of duration ; he may also have a clear idea of a very g^reat length of duration ; he may also have a dear idea of the comparison of that great one with still a g^reater : but it not being possible for him to indude in his idea of any duration, let it be as great as it will, the whole extent together of a duration^ where he supposes no end^^ that part of his idea^ which is still beyond the bounds of that large duration he represents to his own thoughts, is very obscure and undetermined. And hence it is that in disputes and reasonings concerning eternity, or any other infinite, we are very apt to blunder, and involve ourselves in manifest absurdities. Infinite 1 6. In matter, we have no clear ideas of the smallness of
bilitTof P<^^ much beyond the smallest that occur to any of our Matter. scnses: and therefore, when we talk of the divisibility of matter in infinitum^ though we have dear ideas of division and divisibility, and have also dear ideas of parts made out of a whole by division ; yet we have but very obscure and confused ideas of corpuscles, or minute bodies, so to be divided, when, by former divisions, they are reduced to a smallness much exceeding the perception of any of our senses ; and so all that we have clear and distinct ideas of is of what division in general or abstractedly is, and the rdation of totum and pars\ but of the bulk of the body, to be thus infinitely divided after certain progressions, I think, we have no dear nor distinct idea at all. For I ask any one, whether, taking the smallest atom of dust he ever saw, he has any distinct idea (bating still the number, which concerns not extension) betwixt the ioo,oooth and the i,coo,oocth part of it. Or if he think he can refine his ideas to that d^ree, without losing sight of them, let him add ten cyphers to each
it ; yet errors in our conclusions con- crete of sense and imagination ; the
ceming eternity need not arise from consideration of their generality, and
this weakness of our imagination. It its relation to words, belonging pixH
must be remembered that the second perly to the third Book.
Book of the Essay is properly con- ^ Here again he makes fUmify an
cemed with ideas, simple or complex, obscure complex idea composed of
chiefly as particular ideas, in the con- moments of time.
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Of Distinct and Confused Ideas. 495
of those numbers. Such a d^ree of smallness is not un- book 11* reasonable to be supposed ; since a division carried on so far ~"**" brings it no nearer the end of infinite division, than the first xxix, division into two halves does. I must confess, for my part, I have no clear distinct ideas of the different bulk or extension of those bodies, having but a very obscure one of either of them. So that, I think, when we talk of division of bodies in infinitum^ our idea of their distinct bulks, which is the subject and foundation of division, comes, after a little progression, to be confounded, and almost lost in obscurity. For that idea which is to represent only bigness must be very obscure and confused, which we cannot distinguish from one ten times as big, but only by number : so that we have clear distinct ideas, we may say, of ten and one, but no distinct ideas of two such extensions. It is plain from hence, that, when we talk of infinite divisibility of body or extension, our distinct and clear ideas are only of numbers: but the clear distinct ideas of extension, after some progress of division, are quite lost ; and of such minute parts we have no distinct ideas at all ; but it returns, as all our ideas of infinite do, at last to that of number always to be added \ but thereby never amounts to any distinct idea of actual infinite parts. We have, it is true, a clear idea of division, as often as we think of it ; but thereby we have no more a clear idea of infinite parts in matter, than we have a clear idea of an infinite number, by being able still to add new numbers to any assigned numbers we have : endless divisibility giving us no more a clear and distinct idea of actually infinite parts, than endless addibility (if I may so speak) gives us a clear and distinct idea of an actually infinite number : they both being only in a power still of increasing the number, be it already as great as it will. So that of what remains to be added {wherein consists the infinity) we have but an obscure, imperfect, and confused idea ; from or about which we can argfue or reason with no certainty or clearness, no more than we can in arithmetic, about a number of which we have no such distinct idea as we have of 4 or 100 ; but only this relative obscure one, that, compared to any other, it is still bigger : and we have no more a clear positive idea of it, when we say or conceive it is bigger, or more than 400,000,000,
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49^ Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. than if we should say it is bigger than 40 or 4 : 400,000,000 r*^ having no nearer a proportion to the end of addition or XXIX. number than 4. For he that adds only 4 to 4, and so proceeds, shall as soon come to the end of all addition, as he that adds 400,000,000 to 400,000,000. And so likewise in eternity ; he that has an idea of but four years, has as much a positive complete idea of eternity, as he that has one of 400,000,000 of years : for what remains of eternity beyond either of these two numbers of years, is as clear to the one as the other ; i.e. neither of them has any clear positive idea of it at all. For he that adds only 4 years to 4, and so on, shall as soon reach eternity as he that adds 400,000,000 of years, and so on ; or, if he please, doubles the increase as often as he will : the remaining abyss being still as far beyond the end of all these progressions as it is from the length of a day or an hour. For nothing finite bears any proportion to infinite ; and therefore our ideas, which are all finite, cannot bear any. Thus it is also in our idea of extension, when we increase it by addition, as well as when we diminish it by division, and would enlarge our thoughts to infinite space. After a few doublings of those ideas of extension, which are the largest we are accustomed to have, we lose the clear distinct idea of that space : it becomes a confusedly great one, with a surplus of still greater ; about which, when we would argue or reason, we shall always find ourselves at a loss ; confused ideas, in our arguings and deductions from that part of them which is confused, always leading us into confusion ^.
^ The complex ideas of infinity in data of experience — are also illiistra-
space and time, ' substance in general,' tions of the inevitable obscurity and
power and causation, personality and indistinctness which a human under-
its identity — which Locke uses as standing, measured by sense, finds
crucial instances in support of his itself enveloped in, when it tries to
fundamental principle of the depen- think them out, and finds that at last
dence of all our ideas of things upon omnia exeunt in mysten'a.
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CHAPTER XXX.
OF REAL AND FANTASTICAL IDEAS.
I. Besides what we have already mentioned concerning bookil ideas, other considerations belong to them, in reference to ""♦^^ things front whence they are taken^ or which they may be ^^ supposed to represent'^ \ and thus, I think, they may come ideas con- under a threefold distinction, and are : — sidered in
First, either real or fantastical ; to their
Secondly, adequate or inadequate ; t^"^V
Thirdly, true or false.
First, by real ideas^ I mean such as have a foundation in nature ; such as have a conformity with the real being and existence of things, or with their archetypes. Fantastical or chimerical, I call such as have no foundation in nature, nor have any conformity with that reality of being to which they are tacitly referred, as to their archetypes K If we examine
* In this and the two next chapters ■* Nothing/ says Berkeley, < seems our ideas are considered in their ot more importance towards erecting possible relation to what really exists, a firm system of sound and real know- Hitherto, for the most part (except in ledge than to lay the beginning in a chap, viii.), the inquiry has been con- distinct explication of what is meant fined to ideas per s»\ they have been by things rtaJiiy, extsUnce; for in vain viewed in abstraction from their re- shall we dispute concerning the real ality, adequacy, and truth, and thus existence of things, or pretend to any from the propositions into which they knowledge thereof, so long as we enter, or which ai-e presupposed in have not fixed the meaning of them. Locke here approaches those these words.' {Principles, % 89.) In considerations and so prepares for the the analysis of our ideas, in the questions about knowledge that belong second Book, Locke has not in* to the fourth Book. Cf. Bk. IV. chh. eluded the idea of reality. He refers iii, iv, ix, x, zi. to it here, but without inquiring VOL. I. K k
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498 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Chap. XXX.
Simple Ideas are all real appear- ances of things.
BOOK II. the several sorts of ideas before mentioned, we shall find
that,
2. First, Our simple ideas are all real, all agree to the reality of things : not that they are all of them the images or representations of what does exist ; the contrary whereof, in all but the primary qualities of bodies, hath been already shown. But, though whiteness and coldness are no more in snow than pain is ; yet those ideas of whiteness and coldness, pain, &c., being in us the effects of powers in thirds without us, ordained by our Maker to produce in us such sensations ; they are real ideas in us, whereby we distinguish the qualities that are really in things themselves. For, these several appearances being designed to be the mark whereby we are to know and distinguish things which we have to do with, our ideas do as well serve us to that purpose, and are as real distinguishing characters, -wYit^^x ^^yh^ovXy constant effects, or else exact resemblances of something in the things them- selves : the reality lying in that steady correspondence the>' have with the distinct constitutions of real beings. But whether they answer to those constitutions, as to causes ^ or patterns *, it matters not ; it suffices that they are constantly produced by them. And thus our simple ideas are all real and true, because they answer and agree to those powers of things which produce them in our minds ; that being all that is requisite to make them real, and not fictions at pleasure. For in simple ideas (as has been shown) the mind is wholly confined to the operation of things upon it, and can make to itself no simple idea, more than what it has received ^
whether it implies dependence on conscious mind ; the question which absorbed Berkeley, and which has since influenced the course of philo- sophy. ' Real and fantastical * here virtually correspond to that difference between perception and imaginaHon^ which Berkeley finds in the intelligible coherence of what is perceived, but which Hume reduces to the degree of intensity of feeling which belongs to ' impressions ' or perceptions, as compared with ideas of imagination.
That the ultimate mteUigUriHiy of things is the test of their reality is the con- ception of the real, opposed to this of Hume, by HegeL
^ As the secondary qualities of bodies are supposed to do.
' As the primary qualities of bodies are supposed to be.
* In the ' simple ideas of sensation and reflection,' reality, he implies, manifests itself to us ; either direcSy, as in the primaxy or real qualities of matter, and in the operations of our
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Of Real and Fantastical Ideas.
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3. Though the mind be wholly passive in respect of its simple ideas ; yet, I think, we may say it is not so in respect of its complex ideas. For those being combinations of simple ideas put together, and united under one general name, it is plain that the mind of man uses some kind of liberty in forming those complex ideas: how else comes it to pass that one man's idea of gold, or justice, is different from another's, but because he has put in, or left out of his, some simple idea which the other has not* ? The question then is, Which of these are real, and which barely imaginary combinations? "What collections agree to the reality of things, and what not ? And to this I say tliat,
4. Secondly, Mixed modes and relations^ having no other reality but what they have in the minds of men, there is nothing more required h> this kind of ideas to make them real, but that they be so framed, that there be a possibility of existing conformable to them. These ideas themselves, being archetypes, cannot differ from their archetypes, and so cannot
BOOK II.
Chap. XXX.
Complex Ideas are voluntary Combina- tions.
Mixed Modes and Relations, made of consistent Ideas, are real.
self-conscious spirits, or indirtctiy in the sensations which, as secondary qualities, we * impute ' to bodies. It is, he maintains, in the simple ideas, or ap- pearances which the real thus presents that all our complex ideas * terminate,* including those of relation. Hence the momentous import of sense-per- ception with Reid and his followers ; as against the extremes of nihilism and pure idealism. <In its primary application, the real means something apprehended as existing in opposition to that which is not so apprehended, or in opposition to the absence of any appearance whatever. In the earliest conceivable form of perception there is something apprehended — not no- thing; and we mean by the real at first, the appeanmce, percept, impres- sion ['simple idea' of Locke], what- ever we come to call it, which is known to consciousness, as opposed to the blank or negation of it ; we call the impression rtaJ ; we speak of the absence of impression as the unreal. . • . Unless this form of reality is
Kk
given to us. we are powerless to think even of its relations to anything what- ever, before or after it. So far as this form of reality is concerned, there can hardly be any mistake about it The sensation I experience can only be the sensation of the moment ; the percept I have can^Dnly be the percept of the moment. . . It can only be as I a£Srm it. It exists as in consciousness.' (Prof. Veitch, Knowing and Being, pp. Z13-4.) This is in analogy with what, in other language Locke intends in assuming the necessaiy reality of the ' simple ideas,' or qualities of things, which are presented to us, not imagined by us. Various meanings of * Reality' are discussed in an interesting essay by Mr. Ritchie, in Prof. Schurman*8 PMHosopkieal Review {May , 1899).
' Accordingly Locke calls our com- plex ideas of things ' fictitious,' ' made by the mind,*&c., because they are often out of conformity with the modes and relations constituted by actually exist- ing substances, in the intelligible sys- tem of things.
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500 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. be chimerical, unless any one will jumble together in them J**" inconsistent ideas ^. Indeed, as any of them have the names
Chap
XXX. ^f ^ known language assigned to them, by which he that has them in his mind would signify them to others, so bare possibility of existing is not enough ; they must have a con- formity to the ordinary signification of the name that is given them, that they may not be thought fantastical : as if a man would give the name of justice to that idea which common use calls liberality. But this fantasticalness relates more to propriety of speech, than reality of ideas. For a man to be undisturbed in danger, sedately to consider what is fittest to be done, and to execute it steadily, is a mixed mode, or a complex idea of an action which may exist But to be undisturbed in danger, without using one's reason or industry, is what is also possible to be ; and so is as real an idea as the other. Though the first of these, having the name courage given to it, may, in respect of that name, be a right or wrong idea ; but the other, whilst it has not a common received name of any known language assigned to it, is not capable of any deformity, being made with no reference to anything but itself Complex 5. Thirdly, Our complex ideas of substances^ being made Sub^^ all of them in reference to things existing without us, and stances intended to be representations of substances as they really when they are, are no further i^al than as they are such combinations t£^x^*^ of simple ideas as are really united, and co-exist in things istenceof without US. On the contrary, those are fantastical which Things. ^^ made up of such collections of simple ideas as were
^ Is the 'consistency' which ex- mais non pas de Tesprit des hommes ;
eludes express self-contradiction the puisqu'il y a une Supreme Intelli-
only reality that can be attributed to gence qui les determine toutes en
' mixed modes ' and to our ' ideas of tous temps. Les modes mixies qui
relation' ; and that on the ground that sont distincts des relations, peuvent
these ideas are only capricious pro- etre des accidents r6els; mais soit
ducts of a human understanding? qu'ils dependent ou ne dependent
What of the intellectual necessity point de Tesprit, il suffit pour la r^it^
which determines our ideas of de leurs id^es, qu'ils soient possibles,
abstract relations like causation, iden- ou ce qui est la mftme chose, intelli-
tity, and morality? * Les relaHons* gibles distinctement' {Nouveaux Es'
says Leibniz, ' ont une r6alit6 d^pen* «au.)
dante de Tesprit, comme les veriUs;
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501
Chap. XXX.
really never united, never were found together in any sub- book li. stance: v. g. a rational creature, consisting of a horse's "^ head, joined to a body of human shape, or such as the cen- taurs are described : or, a body yellow, very malleable, fusible, and fixed, but lighter than common water : or an uniform, unorganized body, consisting, as to sense, all of similar parts, \dth perception and voluntary motion joined to it. Whether such substances as these can possibly exist or no, it is prob- able we do not know : but be that as it will, these ideas of substances, being made conformable to no pattern existing that we know ; and consisting of such collections of ideas as no substance ever showed us united together, they ought to pass with us for barely imaginary : but much more are those complex ideas so, which contain in them any inconsistency or contradiction of their parts ^.
' Men's complex ideas of Uie par- ticular substances and their relations, of which real existence consists, are largely the workmanship of the indi- vidual mind ; for they are often found to be at variance with reality, when tested by the simple ideas of sense, which ' all agree with the reality of things/ As Bacon would put it, men, in these ideas, often anticipate instead of interpreting nature, and substitute idols of the human mind for the Ideas of the Divine Mind. Our concep- tions of particular substances, and of their concrete relations to one another — not given in immediate perception, as are our simple ideas of sensation and reflection— are * things of the [individual] mind,' which
vaiy with the intellectual power and experience of the individual, con- forming more and more to the real as science and philosophy advance. With Locke, our simple ideasj in which the real is actually manifested in sense, external and internal, and our ideas of particular substances, are the only sorts of ideas which can have other than subjective reality ; and as the reality of our ' simple ideas ' is presupposed (by him), the problem of reality is concerned exclusively with the existence, attributes, and powers of finite substances and God. But what of the reality of moral and mathematical relations, and the ap- plicability of pure mathematics to real things?
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CHAPTER XXXL
OF ADEQUATE AND INADEQUATE IDEAS.
BOOK II.
Chap. XXXI.
Adequate Ideas are such as perfectly represent their Arche- types.
Simple Ideas all adequate.
I. Of our real ideas, some are adequate, and some are inadequate. Those I call adequate^ which perfectly represent those archetypes which the mind supposes them taken from : which it intends them to stand for, and to which it refers them. Inadequate ideas are such, which are but a partial or incomplete representation of those archetypes to which they are referred *. Upon which account it is plain,
a. First, that all our simple ideas are adequate. Because, being nothing but the effects of certain powers in things, fitted and ordained by God to produce such sensations in us, they cannot but be correspondent and adequate to those powers : and we are sure they agree to the reality of things. For, if sugar produce in us the ideas which we call whiteness and sweetness, we are sure there is a power in sugar to produce those ideas in our minds, or else they could not have been produced by it. And so each sensation answering the power that operates on any of our senses, the idea so produced is a real idea, (and not a fiction of the mind, which has no power to produce any simple idea); and cannot but be adequate, since it ought only to answer that power :
* The 'adequacy' of any idea in an individual mind thus involves its rela- tion to a corresponding reality that is independent of the mind whose idea it is. It presupposes a fixed standard external to our transitory idea, and also perfect correspondence with that
standard. 'Inadequacy/ Locke goes on to show, is characteristic only of our ideas of substanets (material and spiritual), which are aU necessarily m» adequate: simple ideas are all adequate so far as they go ; as also modes and ideas of relation.
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and so all simple ideas are adequate ^. It is true, the things book it. producing in us these simple ideas are but few of them ""**" denominated by us, as if they were only the causes of Yvjri them ; but as if those ideas were real beings in them ^. For, though fire be called painful to the touch, whereby is signified the power of producing in us the idea of pain, yet it is denominated also light and hot; as if light and heat were really something in the fire, more than a power to excite these ideas in us ; and therefore are called qualities in or of the fire. But these being nothing, in truth, but powers to excite such ideas in us, I must in that sense be understood, when I speak of secondary qualities as being in things ; or of their ideas as being the objects that excite them in us. Such ways of speaking, though accommodated to the vulgar notions, without which one cannot be well understood, yet truly signify nothing but those powers which are in things to excite certain sensations or ideas in us. Since were there no fit organs to receive the impressions fire makes on the sight and touch, nor a mind joined to those organs to receive the ideas of light and heat by those impressions from the fire or sun, there would yet be no more light or heat in the world than there would be pain if there were no sensible creature to feel it, though the sun should continue just as it is now, and Mount i£tna fiame higher than ever it did. Solidity and extension, and the termina- tion of it, figure, with motion and rest, whereof we have the ideas, would be really in the world as they are, whether there were any sensible being to perceive them or no : and therefore we have reason to look oa those as the real modi- fications of matter, and such as are the exciting causes of all our various sensations from bodies^* But this being an in- quiry not belonging to this place, I shall enter no further
^ This founds our faith in the senses, here insists on, is, so far, just Berke-
and in self-consciousness upon our ley*s argument for the dependent
faith in God. and relative nature of a// the qualities
' Cf. ch. viii. $ 93. in which the material world is mani-
' The dependence of all stcondary fested ; which, he argues, a// equtdly
qualities of things upon a sentient presuppose percipient mind, without
intelligence — ^their merely relative which they could not become ideas or
existence, as perceived— which Locke phenomena.
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504 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. into it, but proceed to show what complex ideas are adequate, 7**~ and what not.
XXXI. 3' Secondly, our complex ideas of modes y being voluntary Modes collections of simple ideas, which the mind puts t<^^her, ^dT ^^ te ^*®"* reference to any real archet)T)es, or standing patterns, existing anywhere, are and cannot but be adequate ideas^. Because they, not being intended for copies of things really existing, but for archetypes made by the mind, to rank and denominate things by, cannot want anything ; they having each of them that combination of ideas, and thereby that perfection, which the mind intended they should : so that the mind acquiesces in them, and can find nothing wanting. Thus, by having the idea of a figure with three sides meeting at three angles, I have a complete idea, wherein I require nothing else to make it perfect. That the mind is satisfied with the perfection of this its idea is plain, in that it does not conceive that any understanding hath, or can have, a more complete or perfect idea of that thing it signifies by the word triangle, supposing it to exist, than itself has, in that complex idea of three sides and three angles, in which is contained all that is or can be essential to it, or necessary to complete it, wherever or however it exists. But in our ideas of substances it is otherwise. For there, desiring to copy things as they really do exist, and to represent to ourselves that constitution on which all their properties depend, we perceive our ideas attain not that perfection we intend: we find they still want something we should be glad were in them ; and so are all inadequate. But mixed modes and relations^ being archetypes without patterns, and so having nothing to represent but themselves, cannot but be adequate, everything being so to itself. He that at first put together the idea of danger perceived, absence of disorder from fear, sedate consideration of what was justly to be done, and executing that without disturb- ance, or being deterred by the danger of it, had certainly in his mind that complex idea made up of that combination: and intending it to be nothing else but what is, nor to have
^ What of the simpU motUs of our as in our ideas of Immensity and £ter- simpleideas, e.g.ofs];>ace and duration, nity? Are /^'adequate 'to the reality?
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in it any other simple ideas but what it hath, it could not bookil also but be an adequate idea: and laying this up in his *' memory, with the name courage annexed to it, to signify xxxi. to others, and denominate from thence any action he should observe to agree with it, had thereby a standard to measure and denominate actions by, as they agreed to it. This idea, thus made and laid up for a pattern, must necessarily be adequate, being referred to nothing else but itself, nor made by any other original but the good liking and will of him that first made this combination.
4. Indeed another coming after, and in conversation learning Modes, in from him the word caurage^ may make an idea, to which he [^ s^t?ed gives the name courage, different from what the first author Names, applied it to, and has in his mind when he uses it. And in adequat^* this case, if he designs that his idea in thinking should be conformable to the other's idea, as the name he uses in speak- ing is conformable in sound to his from whom he learned it,
his idea may be very wrong and inadequate : because in this case, making the other man's idea the pattern of his idea in thinking, as the other man's word or sound is the pattern of his in speaking, his idea is so far defective and inadequate, as it is distant from the archetype and pattern he refers it to, and intends to express and signify by the name he uses for it ; which name he would have to be a sign of the other man's idea, (to which, in its proper use, it is primarily an- nexed,) and of his own, as agreeing to it : to which if his own does not exactly correspond, it is faulty and inadequate.
5. Therefore these complex ideas of modesy which they are Because referred by the mind, and intended to correspond to the ^^^ .^^ ideas in the mind of some other intelligent being, expressed propriety by the names we apply to them, they may be very deficient, ^ corre- ' wrong, and inadequate ; because they agree not to that which spo*!^ ^° the mind designs to be their archetype and pattern : in in some which respect only any idea of modes can be wrong, im- ^^^^ perfect, or inadequate. And on this account our ideas of mixed modes are the most liable to be faulty of any other;
but this refers more to proper speaking than knowing right ^.
^ If our ideas of abstract modes can are viewed in relation to the ideas l>e called ' inadequate * only when they which other men choose to express
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5o6 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II.
Chap. XXXI.
Ideas of Sub- stances, as referred to real Essences, not ade- quate.
6. Thirdly, what ideas we have of substances^ I have above shown ^. Now, those ideas have in the mind a double reference: i. Sometimes they are referred to a supposed real essence of each species of things, a. Sometimes they are only designed to be pictures and representations in the mind of things that do exist, by ideas of those qualities that are discoverable in them. In both which ways these copies of those originals and archetypes are imperfect and inade- quate.
First, it is usual for men to make the names of substances stand for things as supposed to have certain real essences, whereby they are of this or that species : and names standing for nothing but the ideas that are in men's minds, they must constantly refer their ideas to such real essences, as to their archetypes. That men (especially such as have been bred up in the learning taught in this part of the world) do suppose certain specific essences of substances, which each individual in its several kinds is made conformable to and partakes of, is so far from needing proof that it will be thought strange if any one should do otherwise*. And thus they ordinarily apply the specific names they rank particular substances under, to things as distinguished by such specific real essences. Who is there almost, who would not take it amiss if it should be doubted whether he called himself a man, with any other meaning than as having the real essence of a man ? And yet if you demand what those real essences are, it is plain men
by the words which stand for them, it would follow that the convention of language is the only standard for determining their adequacy or inade- quacy. Whence then the controversies about mixed modes, such as rdigUm^ courage^ jusHce^ and the virtues and vices generally f Are all these dis* putes only about the proper use of words, which can be settled by their customary connotation, or is there not something deeper involved ? What has been called the * nominalism* of Locke here appears.
^ Ch. zxiii.
' He refers of course to the scho-
lastic theory of the real isaouis which individual substances exemplify or participate in. With Locke this means (in the case of material sub- stances) the primary constitution of the atoms of which they are composed, and on which all their * imputed' qualities are supposed to depend. This he contrasts with their nominal essence, i. e. the connotation of their class name: in virtue of which the name b applic- able to all actual (or imaginary) things, in which the connoted attributes are to be found. But the subject belongs properly to the third Book, especially in ch. vi.
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Of Aclequate and Inadequate Ideas. 507
are ignorant, and know them not. From whence it follows, book n. that the ideas they have in their minds, being referred to real â– "**" essences, as to archetypes which are unknown, must be so far ^^^| from being adequate that they cannot be supposed to be any representation of them at all. The complex ideas we have of substances are, as it has been shown *, certain collections of simple ideas that have been observed or supposed constantly to exist together. But such a complex idea cannot be the real essence of any substance; for then the properties we discover in that body would depend on that complex idea, and be deducible from it, and their necessary connexion with it be known ; as all properties of a triangle depend on, and, as far as they are discoverable, are deducible from the complex idea of three lines including a space. But it is plain that in our complex ideas of substances are not contained such ideas, on which all the other qualities that are to be found in them do depend. The common idea men have of iron is, a body of a certain colour, weight, and hardness ; and a property that they look on as belonging to it, is malleableness. But yet this property has no necessary connexion with that complex idea, or any part of it : and there is no more reason to think that malleableness depends on that colour, weight, and hardness, than that colour or that weight depends on its malleableness. And yet, though we know nothing of these real essences, there is nothing more ordinary than that men should attribute the sorts of things to such essences. The particular parcel of matter which makes the ring I have on my finger is forwardly by most men supposed to have a real essence, whereby it is gold ; and from whence those qualities flow which I find in it, viz. its peculiar colour, weight, hard- ness, fusibility, fixedness, and change of colour upon a slight touch of mercury, &c. This essence, from which all these properties flow, when I inquire into it and search after it, I plainly perceive I cannot discover : the furthest I can go is, only to presume that, it being nothing but body, its real essence or internal constitution, on which these qualities depend, can be nothing but the figure, size, and connexion of its solid parts ; of neither of which having any distinct per-
^ Chap. xxiu.
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5o8 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. ception at all can I have any idea of its essence : which is the ""**" cause that it has that particular shining yellowness ; a greater XXXI. weight than anything I know of the same bulk ; and a fitness to have its colour changed by the touch of quicksilver. If any one will say, that the real essence and internal constitution, on which these properties depend, is not the figure, size, and arrangement or connexion of its solid parts, but something else, called its particular y^w, I am further from having any idea of its real essence than I was before. For I have an idea of figure, size, and situation of solid parts in general, though I have none of the particular figure, size, or putting together of parts, whereby the qualities above mentioned are produced ; which qualities I find in that particular parcel of matter that is on my finger, and not in another parcel of matter, with which I cut the pen I write with. But, when I am told that something besides the figure, size, and posture of the solid parts of that body in its essence, something called substantial form ^, of that I confess I have no idea at all, but only of the sound form ; which is far enough from an idea of its real essence or constitution. The like ignorance as I have of the real essence of this particular substance, I have also of the real essence of all other natural ones : of which essences I confess I have no distinct ideas at all ; and, I am apt to suppose, others, when they examine their own knowledge, will find in themselves, in this one point, the same sort of ignorance. ^^^*faf 7. Now, then, when men apply to this particular parcel of not the matter on my finger a general name already in use, and ewences denominate it gold^ do they not ordinarily, or are they not of sub- understood to give it that name, as belonging to a particular species of bodies, having a real internal essence ; by having
^ The Aristotelian 'substantial form,' primary atoms of sensible things, and
with the relative distinction between is thus a physical essence in which
form (fTSos) and matter (CA17), which matter and form are already combined.
pUys so important a part in Peri- According to the Peripatetics, the 'sub*
patetic philosophy, is not -what stantial form' of anything is, that which
Locke means by the 'real essence' makes it be the thing it actually is,
of a substance. For Locke's real giving it the reality and specific nature
essence is the (by us) impercep- which it has, and by which it is dis-
tible constitution and motions of the tinguished from other substances.
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Stances.
Of Adequate and Inadequate Ideas. 509
of which essence this particular substance comes to be of that book ii. species, and to be called by that name ? If it be so, as it is ** plain it is, the name by which things are marked as having xxxi. that essence must be referred primarily to that essence ; and consequently the idea to which that name is given must be referred also to that essence, and be intended to represent it. Which essence, since they who so use the names know not, their ideas of substances must be all inadequate in that respect, as not containing in them that real essence which the mind intends they should.
8. Secondly, those who, neglecting that useless supposition ideas of unknown real essences, whereby they are distinguished, g^^^^^^g endeavour to copy the substances that exist in the world, by when re-
Erarded as
putting together the ideas of those sensible qualities which coilec- are found co-existing in them \ though they come much ^^P^? ^^ nearer a likeness of them than those who imagine they know Qualities, not what real specific essences : yet they arrive not at perfectly ad^mite " adequate ideas of those substances they would thus copy into their minds : nor do those copies exactly and fully contain all that is to be found in their archetypes. Because those qualities and powers of substances, whereof we make their complex ideas, are so many and various, that no man's complex idea contains them all. That our complex ideas of substances do not contain in them all the simple ideas that are united in the things themselves is evident, in that men do rarely put into their complex idea of any substance all the simple ideas they do know to exist in it. Because, endeavouring to make the signification of their names as clear and as little cumbersome
^ In * neglecting/ that is to say, the cannot have an exhaustive complex
metaphysical presupposition of a ' sub- idea of any of them. In a word, we
stantial form,' and even the presupposi- can have no positive idea of the sub-
tion of a ph3rs]cal constitution, deter- stantial form of a substance ; hardly
mined by primary qualities, on which any idea of the concrete constitution
all the ' powers ' of the substance of its elementary atoms (assuming that
depend; and forming our ideas of sub- it originally consists of such); and a
stances solely from the phenomena very inadequate idea of the qualities or
which they actually present to our powers in which it might manifest
observation, our ideas of them are itself to observation. This limitation
still necessarily inadequate. No one of our adequate ideas does not bar the
can observe all the causal relations of faith that there must bi an essence in
all substances; and without this one each thing, on which its nature depends.
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5IO Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. as they can, they make their specific ideas of the sorts of "•*^ substance, for the most part, of a few of those simple ideas XXXI ^^^^'^ ^^^ *^ ^ found in them : but these having no original precedency, or right to be put in, and make the specific idea, more than others that are left out, it is plain that both these ways our ideas of substances are deficient and inadequate. The simple ideas whereof we make our complex ones of substances are all of them (bating only the figure and bulk of some sorts ^) powers ; which being relations to other substances, we can never be sure that we know all the powers that are in any one body, till we have tried what changes it is fitted to give to or receive from other substances in their several ways of application : which being impossible to be tried upon any one body, much less upon all, it is impossible we should have adequate ideas of any substance made up of a collection of all its properties. Their 9. Whosoever first lighted on a parcel of that sort of sub-
usuaSy stance we denote by the word gold^ could not rationally take make up the bulk and figure he observed in that lump to depend on its piex^ideas ^^ essence, or internal constitution. Therefore those never of sub- went into his idea of that species of body ; but its peculiar colour, perhaps, and weight, were the first he abstracted from it, to make the complex idea of that species* Which both are but powers ; the one to affect our eyes after such a manner, and to produce in us that idea we call yellow ; and the other to force upwards any other body of equal bulk, they being put into a pair of equal scales, one against another. Another perhaps added to these the ideas of fusibility and fixedness, two other passive powers, in relation to the operation of fire upon it ; another, its ductility and solubility in agtiaregia^ two other powers, relating to the operation of other bodies, in changing its outward figure, or separation of it into insensible parts. These, or parts of these, put together, usually make the complex idea in men's minds of that sort of body we call gold. Sub- ^o* But no one who hath considered the properties of
stances bodies in general, or this sort in particular, can doubt that numerable this, called go/d^ has infinite other properties not contained in norcoll- ^^^* complex idea. Some who have examined this species
' ' some sorts/ i. e. bodks only, not spiritual substances.
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more accurately could, I believe, enumerate ten times as many book ii, properties in gold, all of them as inseparable from its internal q^^ constitution, as its colour or weight : and it is probable, if any xxxi. one knew all the properties that are by divers men known of taincd in this metal, there would be an hundred times as many ideas p"cx*^idâ„¢as go to the complex idea of gold as any one man yet has in his; of them, and yet perhaps that not be the thousandth part of what is to be discovered in it The changes that that one body is apt to receive, and make in other bodies, upon a due application, exceeding far not only what we know, but what we are apt to imagine. Which will not appear so much a paradox to any one who will but consider how far men are yet from knowing all the properties of that one, no very compound figure, a triangle ; though it be no small number that are already by mathematicians discovered of it.
11. So that all our complex ideas of substances are imper- Ideas feet and inadequate. Which would be so also in mathematical stances figures, if we were to have our complex ideas of them, only by being got collecting their properties in reference to other figures. How collecting uncertain and imperfect would our ideas be of an ellipsis, if *^®*!'. . we had no other idea of it, but some few of its properties ? are all in- Whereas, having in our plain idea the wkoU essence of that *<^^<i"**<^- figure, we from thence discover those properties, and demonstratively see how they flow, and are inseparable
from it.
12. Thus the mind has three sorts of abstract ideas or Simple
I Ideas,
nominal essences : lirrwra.
First, simple ideas, which are €K-nma or copies ; but yet ^^^
. , f ^ , . . , , adequate.
certainly adequate. Because, being intended to express nothing but the power in things to produce in the mind such a sensation, that sensation, when it is produced, cannot but be the effect of that power. So the paper I write on, having the power in the light (I speak according to the common notion of light) to produce in men the sensation which I call white, it cannot but be the effect of such a power in something without the mind ; since the mind has not the power to produce any such idea in itself: and being meant for nothing else but the effect of such a power, that simple idea is real and adequate ;
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512 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. the sensation of white, in my mind, being the effect of that power which is in the paper to produce it, is perfectly adequate to that power ; or else that power would produce a different
Chap. XXXI.
idea.
and in- adequate
Ideas 13* Secondly, the complex ideas of substances are ectypes,
suncesare ^^P^^^ ^^^ » ^"^ ^^* perfect ones, not adequate : which is very IcTviro, evident to the mind, in that it plainly perceives, that whatever collection of simple ideas it makes of any substance that exists, it cannot be sure that it exactly answers all that are in that substance. Since, not having tried all the operations of all other substances upon it, and found all the alterations it would receive from, or cause in, other substances, it cannot have an exact adequate collection of all its active and passive capacities ; and so not have an adequate complex idea of the powers of any substance existing, and its relations ; which is that sort of complex idea of substances we have. And, after all, if we would have, and actually had, in our complex idea, an exact collection of all the secondary qualities or powers of any substance, we should not yet thereby have an idea of the essence of that thing. For, since the powers or qualities that are observable by us are not the real essence of that substance, but depend on it, and flow from it, any collection whatsoever of these qualities cannot be the real essence of that thing. Whereby it is plain, that our ideas of substances are not adequate ; are not what the mind intends them to be. Besides, a man has no idea of substance in general, nor knows what substance is in itself.
Ideas of Modes and Rela- tions are Arche- types, and cannot be adequate.
14. Thirdly, complex ideas of modes and relations are originals, and archetypes ; are not copies, nor made after the pattern of any real existence, to which the mind intends them to be conformable, and exactly to answer. These being such collections of simple ideas that the mind itself puts together, and such collections that each of them contains in it precisely all that the mind intends that it should, they are archetypes and essences of modes that may exist ; and so are designed only for, and beloi^ only to such modes as, when they do exist, have an exact conformity with those complex ideas.
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Of Adequate and Inadequate Ideas. 5 1 3
The ideas, therefore, of modes and relations cannot but be book ii. adequate '.
^ Thus, according to Locke in this and the preceding chapter, our com- plex ideas of the qualities and powers of substancn — ^finite substances, ma- terial or spiritual, and God — are the only ideas that need to be brought into conformity with what really exists, or to be made more adequate. Our shnph ideasj so far as they go, are as real and adequate as they can be, being the appearances presented by bodies in sense-perception, and by our own minds in self-conscious-
Chap. XXXI.
ness. Our complex ideas of modes^ and of abstract rdaiums, having no other reality than that they are ideas in a human mind, there is nothing more required to make thtm real than that they be ' so formed that there is a possibility of substances existing con- formable to them.' As complex ideas of which we are actually conscious, they cannot be unreal; unless 'any one will jumble together in them in- consistent ideas,' in which case they cannot even be formed.
VOL. L
Ll
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CHAPTER XXXII.
OF TRUE AND FALSE IDEAS.
BOOK II.
Chap. XXXII.
Truth and Falsehood properly belong to Proposi- tions, not to Ideas.
Ideas and words may be said to be true,
1. Though truth and falsehood beloi^, in propriety of speech, only to propositions ^ : yet ideas are oftentimes termed true or false (as what words are there that are not used with great latitude, and with some deviation from their strict and proper significations?) Though I think that when ideas themselves are termed true or false, there is still some secret or tacit proposition, which is the foundation of that denomina- tion : as we shall see, if we examine the particular occasions wherein they come to be called true or false. In all which we shall find some kind of affirmation or negation, which is the reason of that denomination. For our ideas, being nothing but bare appearances ^ or perceptions in our minds ^ cannot properly and simply in themselves be said to be true or false, no more than a single name of anything can be said to be true or false ^.
2. Indeed both ideas and words may be said to be true, in a metaphysical sense of the word truth ; as all other things that any way exist are said to be true, i. e. really to be such as
' Propositions may be either mental or verbal.
^ 'in our minds,* i.e. which are mentally apprehended by us.
' Until we (expressly or tacitly) affirm or deny something of the ideas we have of things, the idea itself cannot be called either true or ialse ; for its truth or falsehood consists in the relation to reality of some
judgmtni into which it enters. As the second Book of the Essay professedly treats of ideas ^ in abstracHon Jrom the judgments into whtch they enter, the consideration of their truth and false- hood rightly belongs to the fourth Book, which deals with the relations of simple and complex ideas in pro- positions and reasonings.
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Of True and False Ideas. 5 1 5
they exist ^. Though in things called true, even in that book ii. sense, there is perhaps a secret reference to our ideas, looked 'T*^ upon as the standards of that truth; which amounts to a xxxil. mental proposition, though it be usually not taken notice of. inasmuch
3. But it is not in that metaphysical sense of truth which we ^J^^ inquire here, when we examine, whether our ideas are capable ideas and of being true or false, but in the more ordinary acceptation ^°'^*" of those words : and so I say that the ideas in our minds, as an * being only so many perceptions or appearances there, none Appcar- of them are false ; the idea of a centaur having no more the Mind, falsehood in it when it appears in our minds, than the name or^^abe™*^ centaur has falsehood in it, when it is pronounced by our mouths, or written on paper. For truth or falsehood lying always in some affirmation or negation, mental or verbal, our
ideas are not capable, any of them, of being false, till the mind passes some judgment on them ; that is, affirms or denies something of them.
4. Whenever the mind refers any of its ideas to anything Ideas extraneous to them, they are then capable to be called true ^^^^^^ or false. Because the mind, in such a reference, makes a extra- tacit supposition of their conformity to that thing ; which them may supposition, as it happens to be true or false, so the ideas ^ ^â„¢^ ^^ themselves come to be denominated. The most usual cases wherein this happens, are these following :
5. First, when the mind supposes any idea it has conform^ Other able to that in other men's minds, called by the same common ^^^. ^eai name; v.g. when the mind intends or judges its ideas of Existence; justice, temperance, religion, to be the same with what other ^scd"reai men give those names to. Essences,
are w^hat
Secondly, when the mind supposes any idea it has in itself Men to be conformable to some real existence. Thus the two ideas JJ^^f i-j^eir of a man and a centaur, supposed to be the ideas of real sub- ideas to. stances, are the one true and the other false ; the one having a conformity to what has really existed, the other not.
^ In that sense all ideas are equally imply that a centaur actually exists,
true. It is as true that / havt the idea nuUpendenily of this individual and
of a centaur, when I am imagining one, transitory idea, then this idea (or rather
as that / havt the idea of a man, when this judgment, latent in the idea) is
I am imagining a man. But if I tacitly false.
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Chap. XXXII.
516 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. Thirdly, when the mind refers any of its ideas to that real constitution and essence of anything, whereon all* its properties depend : and thus the greatest part, if not all our ideas of substances, are false, liie cause 6. These suppositions the mind is very apt tacitly to make Reference. Concerning its own ideas. But yet, if we will examine it, we shall find it is chiefly, if not only, concerning its abstract complex ideas*. For the natural tendency of the mind being towards knowledge; and finding that, if it should proceed by and dwell upon only particular things, its pro- gress would be very slow, and its work endless ; therefore, to shorten its way to knowledge, and make each perception more comprehensive, the first thing it does, as the foundation of the easier enlarging its knowledge, dther by contemplation of the things themselves that it would know, or conference with others about them, is to bind them into bundles, and rank them so into sorts, that what knowledge it gets of any of them it may thereby with assurance extend to all of that sort ; and so advance by larger steps in that which is its great business, knowledge. This, as I have elsewhere shown*, is the reason why we collect things under com- prehensive ideas, with names annexed to them, into genera and species ; i. e. into kinds and sorts. Names of 7. If therefore we will warily attend to the motions of supped ^h^ mind, and observe what course it usually takes in its to carry ^^y to knowledge, we shall I think find, that the mind
m them , ', . ,** ,...,.,. • /. . ,
knowledge havmg got an idea which it thinks it may have use of either
es^nces *^ contemplation or discourse, the first thing it does is to
abstract it, and then get a name to it ; and so lay it up in its
storehouse, the memory, as containing the essence ' of a sort
of things, of which that name is always to be the mark.
^ I. e. its general ideas, or general- (Bk. IV. ch. xvii. § 8.) He is always
isations, which Locke calls ^ abstract shy of the universal, disparages it as
ideas.* an instrument of discovery, and views
^ Bk. III. ch. iii. Here and else- common terms chiefly as means of
where Locke regards unwersaliiy as relieving the memory, otherwise op-
but accidental to our knowledge, the pressed by the multiplicity of particu-
whole and utmost of which consists in lar substances, and of their simple
' perception of the agreement or dis- ideas or qualities,
agreement of our particular ideas.' ' Nominal essence.
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Of True and False Ideas, 5 1 7
Hence it is, that we may often observe that, when any one book ii. sees a new thing of a kind that he knows not, he presently 7**" asks, what it is ; meaning by that inquiry nothing but the x^^ name. As if the name carried with it the knowledge of the species, or the essence of it ; whereof it is indeed used as the mark, and is generally supposed annexed to it.
8. But this abstract wfe^i, being something in the mind, How men between the thing that exists, and the name that is given thrfSeir to it ; it is in our ideas that both the rightness of our ideas must knowledge, and the propriety and intelHgibleness of ours^Jto speaking, consists. And hence it is that men are so forward t^»ng9» ^^ to suppose, that the abstract ideas they have in their minds customary are such as agree to the things existing without them, to"^?*"^^ which they are referred; and are the same also to which
the names they give them do by the use and propriety of that language belong. For without this double conformity of their ideas, they find they should both think amiss of things in themselves, and talk of them unintelligibly to others.
9. First, then, I say, that when the truth of our ideas is simple judged of by the conformity they have to the ideas which bl^se^hi other men have, and commonly signify by the same name, reference they may be any of them false. But yet simple ideas are^fSie^" least of all liable to be so mistaken. Because a man, by^â„¢^
« t J t . .1 . / Name, but
his senses and every days observation, may easily satisfy are least himself what the simple ideas are which their several names jj*^^* *°
* l>e so.
that are in common use stand for; they being but few in number, and such as, if he doubts or mistakes in, he may easily rectify by the objects they are to be found in. There- fore it is seldom that any one mistakes in his names of simple ideas, or applies the name red to the idea green ^, or the name sweet to the idea bitter : much less are men apt to confound the names of ideas belonging to different senses, and call a colour by the name of a taste, &c. Whereby it is evident that the simple ideas they call by any name are commonly the same that others have and mean when they use the
^ As in cases of colour blindness. sim[4e ideas of the things of sense,
' Here Locke must have in view our for men are often at cross purposes
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5i8 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BCK>K II. lo. Complex ideas are much more liable to be false in
--**— this respect ; and the complex ideas of mixed modes^ much
■scYYTi °^^^^ ^^VL those of substances ; because in substances (espe-
ideasof ^^^Y those which the common and unborrowed names of
mixed any language are applied to) some remarkable sensible
raosniable qualities, serving ordinarily to distinguish one sort from
to be false another, easily preserve those who take any care in the use
Sense. of their words, from applying them to sorts of substances to
which they do not at all belong. But in mixed modes we
are much more uncertain ; it being not so easy to determine
of several actions, whether they are to be called justice or
cruelty^ liberality or prodigality. And so in referring our
ideas to those of other men, called by the same names, ours
may be false ; and the idea in our minds, which we express
by the word justice^ may perhaps be that which ought to
have another name ^.
Or at least II. But whether or no our ideas of mixed modes are more
thought lisible than any sort to be different from those of other men,
false. which are marked by the same names, this at least is certain,
That this sort of falsehood is much more familiarly attributed
to our ideas of mixed modes than to any other. When a
man is thought to have a false idea of justice^ or gratitude^
or glory^ it is for no other reason, but that his agrees not
with the ideas which each of those names are the signs of
in other men.
And why. 13. The reason whereof seems to me to be this: That
the abstract ideas of mixed modes, being men's voluntary
combinations of such a precise collection of simple ideas,
and so the essence of each species being made by men
alone, whereof we have no other sensible standard ^ existing
anywhere but the name itself, or the definition of that name ;
we having nothing else to refer these our ideas of mixed
modes to, as a standard ' to which we would conform them,
about their simple ideas of reflec- there being no obvious standard by tion, with the result of much merely which to determine their meaning, verbal controversy in theology and Take the word * religion,' for exam- philosophy, pie.
^ In fact, there are endless varieties ' Is this true of all mixed modes ?
of connotation annexed to some of Is there no other 'standard' for any of
the terms which signify 'mixed modes,' them than either a ' sensible one,' or
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Of True and False Ideas. 519
but the ideas of those who are thought to use those names in book ii. their most proper significations ; and, so as our ideas conform "T**^ or differ from them^ they pass for true or false. And thus xxxil. much concerning the truth and falsehood of our ideas, in reference to their names.
13. Secondly, as to the truth and falsehood of our ideas, As re- in reference to the real existence of things. When that is ^^^ *^ made the standard of their truth, none of them can be termed Existence, false but only our complex ideas of substances. our Ideas
14. First, our simple ideas, being barely such perceptions ca° *>« as God has fitted us to receive, and given power to external those objects to produce in us by established laws and ways, suitable o^Sub- to his wisdom and goodness, though incomprehensible to us, pj^^^ their truth consists in nothing else but in such appearances simple
as are produced in us, and must be suitable to those powers this Sense he has placed in external objects or else they could not be no^^a^c* produced in us : and thus answering those powers, they are what they should be, true ideas. Nor do they become liable to any imputation of falsehood, if the mind (as in most men I believe it does) judges these ideas to be in the things them- selves. For God in his wisdom having set them as marks of distinction in things, whereby we may be able to discern one thing from another, and so choose any of them for our uses as we have occasion ; it alters not the nature of our simple idea, whether we think that the idea of blue be in the violet itself, or in our mind only ; and only the power of producing it by the texture of its parts, reflecting the particles of light after a certain manner, to be in the violet itself. For that texture in the object, by a regular and constant operation producing the same idea of blue in us, it serves us to distin- guish, by our eyes, that from any other thing ; whether that distingfuishing mark, as it is really in the violet, be only a peculiar texture of parts, or else that very colour, the idea whereof (which is in us) is the exact resemblance. And it
that constituted by the conventional inquiry deeper. But what of the eternal
use of words t Men are no doubt apt and immutable ideas of morality, and
to be satisfied with one or other of the ultimate ideas of mathematics and
these standards, without pushing the physics ?
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520 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. is equally from that appearance to be denominated blue, "^^^ whether it be that real colour, or only a peculiar texture in XXXII. ^^' ^"^^ causes in us that idea : since the name, bliu^ notes properly nothing but that mark of distinction that is in a violet, discernible only by our eyes, whatever it consists in ; that being beyond our capacities distinctly to know, and per- haps would be of less use to us, if we had faculties to discern. Though 15. Neither would it carry any imputation of falsdiood
idM^f" ' to our simple ideas, if by the different structure of our Blue organs it were so ordered, that the same object should pro- different duce in several mefCs minds different ideas at the same time ; ^"^^"th ' ^' S* '^^ ^^ ^^^* ^^^ ^ violet produced in one man's mind by his eyes were the same that a marigold produced in another man's, and vice versd. For, since this could never be known, because one man's mind could not pass into an- other man's body, to perceive what appearances were pro- duced by those organs; neither the ideas hereby, nor the names, would be at all confounded, or any falsehood be in ^ either. For all things that had the texture of a violet, pro-
ducing constantly the idea that he called blue, and those which had the texture of a marigold, producing constantly the idea which he as constantly called yellow, whatever those appearances were in his mind ; he would be able as r^;ularly to distinguish things for his use by those appear- ances, and understand and signify those distinctions marked by the name blue and yellow, as if the appearances or ideas in his mind received from those two flowers were exactly the same with the ideas in other men's minds. I am neverthe- less very apt to think that the sensible ideas produced by any object in different men's minds, are most commonly very near and undiscernibly alike. For which opinion, I think, there might be many reasons offered : but that being besides my present business, I shall not trouble my reader with them ; but only mind him \ that the contrary supposition, if it could be proved, is of little use, either for the improvement of our knowledge, or conveniency of life, and so we need not trouble ourselves to examine it ^
^ 'Mind him/ i.e. ask him to take note. pendent on the individual organism, ' The subjective idea of colour, de« is not, he implies, necessarily the same
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Of True and False Ideas. 521
16. From what has been said concerning our simple ideas, book h. I think it evident that our simple ideas can none of them be ""**"
Chap
false in respect of things existing without us. For the truth of xxxil. these appearances or perceptions in our minds consisting, as simple has been said, only in their being answerable to the powers in ^^^^ ^*" external objects to produce by our senses such appearances them be in us, and each of them being in the mind such as it is, suit- |!^*^" able to the power that produced it, and which alone it repre- of real sents, it cannot upon that account, or as referred to such a **" *"^^* pattern, be false. Blue and yellow, bitter or sweet, can never be false ideas : these perceptions in the mind are just such as they are there, answering the powers appointed by God to produce them ; and so are truly what they are, and are intended to be. Indeed the names may be misapplied, but that in this respect makes no falsehood in the ideas ; as if a man ignorant in the English tongue should call purple scarlet*.
17. Secondly, neither can our complex ideas of modes, in Secondly, reference to the essence of anything really existing, be false ; faSl^can-'^ because whatever complex ideas I have of any mode, it hath »<>* ^
no reference to any pattern existing, and made by nature ; it reference is not supposed to contain in it any other ideas than what * r!^"*^^* it hath ; nor to represent anything but such a complication of ideas as it does *. Thus, when I have the idea of such an action of a man who forbears to aflford himself such meat, drink, and clothing, and other conveniences of life, as his riches and estate will be sufficient to supply and his station requires, I have no false idea ; but such an one as represents an action, either as I find or imagine it, and so is capable of neither truth nor falsehood. But when I give the name frugality or virtue to this action, then it may be called a false idea, if thereby it be supposed to agree with that idea to which, in propriety of speech, the name of frugality doth
in all men» as their ideas of size and actually presented by substances, are
situation are. This is illustrated by true, for the same reason that they are
the phenomena of colour blindness, all real and adequate. Cf. § 14, closely
(Prof. Rutherford reports rare cases followed in § 15.
in which the defective sense of colour ' What of the simpU modes of space
was limited to one eye, thus giving and duration I He seems to rank them
opportunity for comi>arison.) with simple ideas. Cf. Bk. III. ch. iv.
> All simple ideas, i.e. all phenomena § 17 ; ix. § 19.
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522 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. belong, or to be conformable to that law which is the standard â– "**"" of virtue and vice ^.
Chap
XXXII ^^' Thirdly, our complex ideas of substances, being all Thirdly, referred to patterns in things themselves, may be false. That ^f^h ^^^^ ^^^ ^^ false, when looked upon as the representations of stances the unknown essences of things, is so evident that there fkSein ^^^eds nothing to be said of it. I shall therefore pass over reference that chimerical supposition ^, and consider them as collections thing^*'"^^^ simple ideas in the mind, taken from combinations of simple ideas existing together constantly^ in things, of which patterns they are the supposed copies ; and in this reference of them to the existence of things, they are false ideas: — (i) When they put together simple ideas, which in the real existence of things have no union ; as when to the shape and size that exist together in a horse, is joined in the same complex idea the power of barking like a dog : which three ideas, however put together into one in the mind, were never united in nature ; and this, therefore, may be called a false idea of a horse. {%) Ideas of substances are, in this respect, also false, when, from any collection of simple ideas that do always exist together, there is separated, by a direct nega- tion, any other simple idea which is constantly joined with them. Thus, if to extension, solidity, fusibility, the peculiar weightiness, and yellow colour of gold, any one join in his thoughts the negation of a greater degree of fixedness than is in lead or copper, he may be said to have a false complex idea, as well as when he joins to those other simple ones the idea of perfect absolute fixedness. For either way, the com- plex idea of gold being made up of such simple ones as have no union in nature, may be termed false. But, if he leave out of this his complex idea that of fixedness quite, without either actually joining to or separating it from the rest in his
' ' Mixed modes * cannot be fabe, ' Cf. ch. xxxi. § 6.
he sajrs, because they are formed by » ' taken/ i. e. by observing the par-
the individual, and do not refer to real ticular substances in which they ap-
existence. Yet he recognises the refer- pear, correspondence with which con-
enceofsome of them to 'that law which stitutes their 'truth'; and 'existing
is the standard of virtue and vice/ the together constantly,^ so that they can
immutability and eternity of which he be the subjects of universal proposi.
elsewhere acknowledges. tions.
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Of True and False Ideas. 523
mind, it is, I think, to be looked on as an inadequate and ^Q|^ "- imperfect idea, rather than a false one ; since, though it con- ^^^^ tains not all the simple ideas that are united in nature, yet it xxxii. puts none together but what do really exist together.
10. Though, in compliance with the ordinary way of speak- Truth or
• T 1. \ • u a. J u .. J Falsehood
mg, I have shown m what sense and upon what ground our always ideas may be sometimes called tnie or false ; yet if we will JJ^j^*!^ look a little nearer into the matter, in all cases where any idea tion or is called true or false, it is from some judgfnent that the mind ^^8^***°"' makes, or is supposed to make, that is true or false. For truth or falsehood, being never without some affirmation or negation, express or tacit, it is not to be found but where signs are joined or separated, according to the agreement or disagreement of the things they stand for. The signs we chiefly use are either ideas or words; wherewith we make either mental or verbal propositions^. Truth lies in so joining or separating these representatives, as the things they stand for do in themselves agree or disagree; and falsehood in the contrary, as shall be more fully shown here- after«.
ao. Any idea, then, which we have in our minds, whether Ideas in conformable or not to the existence of things, or to any idea netSer^ in the minds of other men, cannot properly for this alone be ^® ^^^ called false. For these representations, if they have nothing in them but what is really existing in things without, cannot be thought false, being exact representations of something: nor yet if they have anything in them differing from the reality of things, can they properly be said to be false repre- sentations, or ideas of things they do not represent. But the mistake and falsehood is :
a I. First, when the mind having any idea, \t judges and^utare concludes it the same that is in other men's minds, signified i. when by the same name ; or that it is conformable to the ordinary ^"^^^y^ received signification or definition of that word, when indeed to another
Man's
it is not: which is the most usual mistake in mixed modes, idea,with-
though other ideas also are liable to it. o«t being
so. -
» Cf. Bk. IV. ch. xxi. § 4. « Cf. Bk. IV. chh. v-viii.
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524 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK IT. %%. (2) When it having a complex idea made up of such J**~ a collection of simple ones as nature never puts together, it XXXII. J'^^S^^ *t ^^ agree to a species of creatures really existing ; as
Secondly, when it joins the weight of tin to the colour, fusibility, and
Whe^ fixedness of gold.
judged
to agree ^3. (3) When in its complex idea it has united a certain ExStence "^"^^e^ ^^ simple ideas that do really exist together in some when Uiey sort of creatures, but has also left out others as much insepar- able, it judges this to be a perfect complete idea of a sort of things which really it is not ; v. g. having joined the ideas of substance, yellow, malleable, most heavy, and fusible, it takes that complex idea to be the complete idea of gold, when yet its peculiar fixedness, and solubility in aqua regia^ are as inseparable from those other ideas, or qualities, of that body as they are one from another.
a4. (4) The mistake is yet greater, when I judge that this complex idea contains in it the real essence of any body existing; when at least it contains but some few of those properties which flow from its real essence and constitution. I say only some few of those properties ; for those properties consisting mostly in the active and passive powers it has in reference to other things, all that are vulgarly known of any one body, of which the complex idea of that kind of things is usually made, are but a very few, in comparison of what a man that has several ways tried and examined it knows of that one sort of things ; and all that the most expert man knows are but a few, in comparison of what are really in that body, and depend on its internal or essential constitu- tion \ The essence of a triangle lies in a very little compass, consists in a very few ideas: three lines including a space make up that essence : but the properties that flow from this essence are more than can be easily known or enumerated. So I imagine it is in substances; their real essences lie in a little compass, though the properties flowing from that internal constitution are endless.
do not
Thirdly,
When
judged
adequate,
without
being so.
Fourthly, When judged to represent the real Essence.
^ This is a return to the assumption, so often made in the £ssay.— that the secondary qualities and other powers of bodies depend upon the primary
constitution and relations or ' texture of the atoms, in which Locke finds their ' real essence.' (Cf. Bk. III. ch. vi. and the annotations.)
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Of True and False Ideas. 525
25. To conclude, a man having no notion of anything with- book ii. out him, but by the idea he has of it in his mind, (which idea "**" he has a power to call by what name he pleases,) he may xxxil. indeed make an idea neither answering the reason of things, ideas, nor agreeing to the idea commonly signified by other people's "^^ words ; but cannot make a wrong or false idea of a thing false. which is no otherwise known to him but by the idea he has
of it : V. g. when I frame an idea of the legs, arms, and body of a man, and join to this a horse*s head and neck, I do not make a false idea of anything ; because it represents nothing without me. But when I call it a man or Tartar^ and imagine it to represent some real being without me, or to be the same idea that others call by the same name ; in either of these cases I may err. And upon this account it is that it comes to be termed a false idea ; though indeed the falsehood lies not in the idea, but in that tacit mental proposition, wherein a conformity and resemblance is attributed to it which it has not But yet, if, having framed such an idea in my mind, without thinking either that existence, or the name man or Tartar y belongs to it, I will call it man or Tartar^ I may be justly thought fantastical in the naming ; but not erroneous in my judgment ; nor the idea any way false.
26. Upon the whole matter, I think that our ideas, as they More are considered by the mind, — either in reference to the proper fQ^j^**^^^ signification of their names ; or in reference to the reality called of things, — may very fitly be called right or wrong ideas, ^rong!^ according as they agree or disagree to those patterns to which
they are referred. But if any one had rather call them true or false, it is fit he use a liberty, which every one has, to call things by those names he thinks best ; though, in propriety of speech, truth or falsehood will, I think, scarce agree to them, but as they, some way or other, virtually contain in them some mental proposition. The ideas that are in a man's mind, simply considered, cannot be wrong ; unless complex ones, wherein inconsistent parts are jumbled together. All other ideas are in themselves right, and the knowledge about them right and true knowledge ; but when we come to refer them to anything, as to their patterns and archetypes,- then
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BOOK 11. they are capable of being wrong, as far as they disagfree with "T^^ such archetypes ^.
Chap. ^^
XXXII
^ The ultimate ground of our fidth ances. The distinction between human
in the absolute reality, yet inadequacy, ideas and their reality implies, that
of human knowUdgt, is foreign to this individual men may, and often do, form
and the two preceding chapters. The complex ideas of substances that are
fourth Book is concerned with it, inconsistent with the real substances
especially chh. iv, ix, x, xi, and xiv-xx ; of which the universe consists, the
but in the second Book complex ideas, absolute reality being different from
and their simple elements, are con- what is apprehended as real by them
sidered apart from the reality of the — implies, in short, the possibility of
substances of which simple ideas are human error.
assumed to be the presented appear-
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[CHAPTER XXXIII.] [of the association of ideas ^]
[i. There is scarce any one that does not observe some- book ii thing that seems odd to him, and is in itself really extravagant, in the opinions, reasonings, and actions of other men. The
^ This chapter was inserted in the fourth edition, but was probably written some years before. In a letter to Molyneux (April a6, 1695), Locke mentions his intention to * make some additions to be put into your Latin translation, particularly concerning the coHtuctioH of ideas, which has not that I know been hitherto considered, and has, I guess, a greater influence upon our minds than is usually taken notice of/ The chapter appears in the Latin version, in 1701, entitled, De idearum consodaiiofu, as well as in the French and English versions the year before. Locke's statement in it, that the * connection of ideas has not been hitherto considered,* implies ignorance of its repeated recognition by Hobbes, not to speak of a succession of earlier writers, beginning with Aristotle. In Hobbes's Human Naiure (1650) we have a statement and illustration of the principle, ' That the cause of the coherence or consequence of one con- ception to another is their first co- herence or consequence at that time when they are produced by sense.' ;,Ch. iv. 9.) So also in the LiviatkaH, ch. iii : — * Of the Consequence or Train of Imaginations.' A hundred years after Hobbes this principle was syste-
matically applied by Hartley to explain human knowledge ; and under the name of ' custom' it is the constructive element in Hume's Inquiry. In its later developments, through the phenomena of heredity and law of evolution, it has been offered as the supreme law of organised life and intel- ligence, which brings man with other animals wholly under physical causa- tion. It is curious that Locke, midway chronologically between Hobbes and Hartley, introduces * association ' not, as they did, to explain human know- ledge, but with the opposite intent of accounting for human errors. In his Conduct of the Understanding (f. 41) he inquires further into < the remedies that ought to be applied,' having, he says, 'in the second book of my Essay treated of the association of ideas historically, as giving a view of the understanding in this as well as its several other ways of operating; — association being as frequent a cause of error in us as perhaps anything else that can be named, and a disease of the mind as hard to be cured as any ; it being a very hard thing to convince anyone that things are not so, and naturally 80, as they constantly appear to him.'
Chap.
xxxin.
Something unreason- able in most Men.
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BOOK II. least flaw of this kind, if at all different from his own, every
7**^ one is quick-sighted enough to espy in another, and will by
xxxni ^^ authority of reason forwardly condemn; though he be
guilty of much greater unreasonableness in his own tenets
and conduct, which he never perceives, and will very hardly,
if at all, be convinced of.
Not a. This proceeds not wholly from self-love, though that has
from Self- ^^*^^ * S^^^* \i^viA in it. Men of fair minds, and not given
love. up to the overweening of self-flattery, are frequently guilty of
it ; and in many cases one with amazement hears the arguings,
and is astonished at the obstinacy of a worthy man, who yields
not to the evidence of reason, though laid before him as clear
as daylight.
Not from 3. This sort of unreasonableness is usually imputed to
Education, education and prejudice, and for the most part truly enough,
though that reaches not the bottom of the disease, nor shows
distinctly enough whence it rises, or wherein it lies. Education
is often rightly assigned for the cause, and prejudice is a good
general name for the thing itself: but yet, I think, he ought
to look a little further, who would trace this sort of madness
to the root it springs from, and so explain it, as to show
whence this flaw has its original in very sober and rational
minds, and wherein it consists.
A Degree 4. I shall be pardoned for calling it by so harsh a name as
ness found niadness, when it is considered that opposition to reason
in most deserves that name, and is really madness ; and there is
scarce a man so free from it, but that if he should always, on
all occasions, argue or do as in some cases he constantly does,
would not be thought fitter for Bedlam than civil conversation.
I do not here mean when he is under the power of an unruly
passion, but in the steady calm course of his life. That which
will yet more apologize for this harsh name, and ungrateful
imputation on the greatest part of mankind, is, that, inquiring
a little by the bye into the nature of madness, (b. ii. ch. xi.
§ 13,) I found it to spring from the very same root, and to
depend on the very same cause we ai-e here speaking of. This
consideration of the thing itself, at a time when I thought not
the least on the subject which I am now treating of, suggested
it to me. And if this be a weakness to which all men are so
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Of the Association of Ideas. 529
liable, if this be a taint which so universally infects mankind, book 11. the greater care should be taken to lay it open under its due ""^^^ name, thereby to excite the greater care in its prevention xxxill and cure,
5. Some of our ideas have a natural correspondence and From a connexion one with another : it is the office and excellency of connexion our reason to trace these, and hold them together in that of Ideas, union and correspondence which is founded in their peculiar beings. Besides this, there is another connexion of ideas wholly owing to chance or custom. Ideas that in themselves
are not all of kin, come to be so united in some men's minds, that it is very hard to separate them ; they always keep in company, and the one no sooner at any time comes into the understanding, but its associate appears with it ; and if they are more than two which are thus united, the whole gang, always inseparable, show themselves together ^
6. This strong combination of ideas, not allied by nature ^, This Con- the mind makes in itself either voluntarily or by chance ; and made by hence it comes in different men to be very different, according custom. to their different inclinations, education, interests, &c. Custom settles habits of thinking in the understanding, as well as of determining in the will, and of motions in the body : all which seems to be but trains of motions in the animal spirits, which,
once set a going, continue in the same steps they have been used to ; which, by often treading, are worn into a smooth path, and the motion in it becomes easy, and as it were natural. As far as we can comprehend thinking, thus ideas seem to be produced in our minds ; or, if they are not, this may serve to explain their following one another in an habitual train, when once they are put into their track, as well as it
^ So farfrom trying toexplain reason, also from objective causality. by means of < association of ideas/ * Again Locke opposes association
Locke here expressly contrasts the of phenomena according to the reason
' natural* or rational relations of things that is in nature — what he elsewhere
withthatconnexionamongideas which calls ' the visible agreement that is in
is gradually generated, by their acci- the ideas themselves ' — to those asso-
dental coexistences and sequences in dations which issue from < the pre-
the mental experience of individuals. vailing custom of the individual mind
' Inseparable ' association, in an indi- joining them together.' See Conduct
vidual experience, is thus distinguished of the UnderstoHdingf % 41. from intrinsic necessity of reason, and
VOL. I. Mm
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530 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. does to explain such motions of the body ^, A musician used "**^ to any tune will find that, let it but once begin in his head, XXXIII. ^^ '"^Atzs of the several notes of it will follow one another orderly in his understanding, without any care or attention, as regularly as his fingers move orderly over the keys of the organ to play out the tune he has b^^n, though his un- attentive thoughts be elsewhere a wandering ^ Whether the natural cause of these ideas, as well as of that regular dancing of his fingers be the motion of his animal spirits, I will not determine, how probable soever, by this instance, it appears to be so : but this may help us a little to conceive of intellec- tual habits^ and of the tying together of ideas. Some 7. That there are such associations of them made by custom,
pathiesan '^ ^^ minds of most men, I think nobody will question, who Effect of it has well considered himself or others; and to this, perhaps, might be justly attributed most of the sympathies and anti- pathies observable in men, which work as strongly, and produce as regular effects as if they were natural ; and are therefore called so, though they at first had no other original but the accidental connexion of two ideas, which either the strength of the first impression, or future indulgence so united, that they always afterwards kept company together in that man's mind, as if they were but one idea ^. I say most of the antipathies, I do not say all ; for some of them are truly natural, depend upon our original constitution, and are bom with us ; but a great part of those which are counted natural, would have been known to be from unheeded, though perhaps
^ Locke thus makes little of those * So Hartley, Obsgntaiions on Man, physiological < explanations ' of the vol. i. p. 108, and Stewart s Elements^ associations among our ideas that refer pt. i. ch. ii. — ' Of Attention.* them to motions in the nerves, which ' The connexions thus formed, by have played so large a part in mate- accidents in the history of the indi- rialistic psychology since Hartley. vidual, and so in unreason, give rise to Hie cause therein supposed to explain Bacon's idols of the human mind, why ideas, when often united, are apt which fail to correspond to the objec- ever after to keep company, in the tive connexions in nature that express individual mind in which they were so Ideas of the Divine Mind. The corn- united, is alleged to be certain motions plex ideas of substances that possess in the nerves ; ' ideas ' themselves our minds thus come to be at cross being our fielwg of those motions, and purposes with the substances them- thus dependent for their order upon selves, as they exist in the inteUigible mechanical causes. system of nature.
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early, impressions, or wanton fancies at firsts which would book ii. have been acknowledged the original of them, if they had ""**" been warily observed. A grown person surfeiting with honey xiwcni no sooner hears the name of it^ but his fancy immediately carries sickness and qualms to his stomach, and he cannot bear the very idea of it ; other ideas of dislike, and sickness, and vomiting, presently accompany it, and he is disturbed ; but he knows from whence to date this weakness, and can tell how he got this indisposition. Had this happened to him by an over-dose of honey when a child, all the same effects would have followed ; but the cause would have been mistaken, and the antipathy counted natural.
8. I mention this, not out of any great necessity there is Influence in this present argument to distinguish nicely between natural Soifto*hi and acquired antipathies ; but I take notice of it for another watched purpose, viz. that those who have children, or the charge of youi^ their education, would think it worth their while diligently to children, watch, and carefully to prevent the undue connexion of ideas
in the minds of young people. This is the time most suscept- ible of lasting impressions ; and though those relating to the health of the body are by discreet people minded and fenced against, yet I am apt to doubt, that those which relate more peculiarly to the mind, and terminate in the understanding or passions, have been much less heeded than the thing deserves : nay, those relating purely to the understanding, have, as I suspect, been by most men wholly overlooked.
9. This wrong connexion in our minds of ideas in them- Wrong
selves loose and independent of one another, has such an of^dewT
influence, and is of so great force to set us awry in our actions, great
, ' , ^ . . . J X- Cause of
as well moral as natural, passions, reasonmgs, and notions Errors, themselves, that perhaps there is not any one thing that deserves more to be looked after.
10. The ideas of goblins and sprites have really no more to An
do with darkness than light : yet let but a foolish maid >n»^c<^- inculcate these often on the mind of a child, and raise them there together, possibly he shall never be able to separate them again so long as he lives, but darkness shall ever after- wards bring with it those frightful ideas, and they shall be so joined, that he can no more bear the one than the other.
M mz .
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532 Essay concerning Human Understanding.
BOOK II. II. A man receives a sensible injury from another, thinks
"~*^^ on the man and that action over and over, and by ruminating
xxxni ^"^ them strongly, or much, in his mind, so cements those two
Another ^^^^ together, that he makes them almost one; never thinks
instance, on the man, but the pain and displeasure he suffered comes
into his mind with it, so that he scarce distinguishes them,
but has as much an aversion for the one as the other. Thus
hatreds are often begotten from slight and innocent occasions,
and quarrels propagated and continued in the world.
A third 1 2. A man has suffered pain or sickness in any place ; he saw
instance, j^j^ fj-j^^ j ^jj^ \^ g^^j^ ^ room : though these have in nature
nothing to do one with another, yet when the idea of the place
occurs to his mind, it brings (the impression being once made)
that of the pain and displeasure with it : he confounds them
in his mind, and can as little bear the one as the other.
Why Time 13. When this combination is settled, and while it lasts, it
Disordera^ is not in the power of reason to help us, and relieve us from
in Uie the effects of it. Ideas in our minds, when they are there, will
whkh operate according to their natures and circumstances. And
Reason here we see the cause why time cures certain affections, which
cure. reason, though in the right, and allowed to be so, has not
power over, nor is able against them to prevail with those who
are apt to hearken to it in other cases. The death of a child
that was the daily delight of its mother's eyes, and joy of her
soul, rends from her heart the whole comfort of her life, and
gives her all the torment imaginable : use the consolations of
reason in this case, and you were^ as good preach ease to one
on the rack, and hope to allay, by rational discourses, the pain
of his joints tearing asunder. Till time has by disuse separated
the sense of that enjoyment and its loss, from the idea of the
child returning to her memory, all representations, though ever
so reasonable, are in vain ; and therefore some in whom the
union between these ideas is never dissolved, spend their lives
in mourning, and carry an incurable sorrow to their graves.
Another 14. A friend of mine knew one perfectly cured of madness
thc^Effect ^y ^ ^^ry harsh and offensive operation. The gentleman who
of the As- was thus recovered, with great sense of gratitude and acknow-
of Ideas. Icdgmcnt owned the cure all his life after, as the greatest
Sic
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obligation he could have received ; but, whatever gratitude book II. and reason suggested to him, he could never bear the sight of "7**^ the operator : that image brought back with it the idea of that xxxill. agony which he suffered from his hands, which was too mighty and intolerable for him to endure.
15. Many children, imputing the pain they endured at More school to their books they were corrected for, so join those *"' *"^^^' ideas together, that a book becomes their aversion, and they
are never reconciled to the study and use of them all their lives after; and thus reading becomes a torment to them, which otherwise possibly they might have made the great pleasure of their lives. There are rooms convenient enough, that some men cannot study in, and fashions of vessels, which, though ever so clean and commodious, they cannot drink out of^ and that by reason of some accidental ideas which are annexed to them, and make them offensive ; and who is there that hath not observed some man to flag at the appearance, or in the company of some certain person not otherwise superior to him, but because, having once on some occasion got the ascendant, the idea of authority and distance goes along with that of the person, and he that has been thus subjected, is not able to separate them.
16. Instances of this kind are so plentiful everywhere^ that a curious if I add one more, it is only for the pleasant oddness of it. It ^"stance. is of a young gentleman, who, having learnt to dance, and
that to great perfection, there happened to stand an old trunk in the room where he learnt. The idea of this remarkable piece of household stuff had so mixed itself with the turns and steps of all his dances, that though in that chamber he could dance excellently well, yet it was only whilst that trunk was there ; nor could he perform well in any other place, unless that or some such other trunk had its due position in the room. If this story shall be suspected to be dressed up with some comical circumstances, a little beyond precise nature, I answer for myself that I had it some years since from a very sober and worthy man, upon his own knowledge, as I report it ; and I dare say there are very few inquisitive persons who read this, who have not met with accounts, if not examples, of this nature, that may parallel, or at least justify this.
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BOOK II. 17. Intellectual habits and defects this way contracted, "~**^ are not less frequent and powerful, though less observed. X^lil ^* *^^ ideas of being and matter be strongly joined, either Influence by education or much thought ; whilst these are still com- of Associa- bined in the mind, what notions, what reasonings, will there inteiiec- be about separate spirits ? Let custotn from the very child- H^its ^ood h2LV^ joined figure and shape to the idea of God, and what absurdities will that mind be liable to about the Deity? Let the idea of infallibility be inseparably joined to any person, and these two constantly together possess the mind ; and then one body in two places at once, shall unexamined be swallowed for a certain truth, by an implicit faith, when- ever that imagined infallible person dictates and demands assent without inquiry ^. Observ- 1 8. Some such wrong and unnatural combinations of ideas opposHion will be found to establish the irreconcilable opposition between between different sects of philosophy and religion ; for we Sects of cannot imagine every one of their followers to impose wilfully and^of*^^^ on himself, and knowingly refuse truth offered by plain religion, reason. Interest, though it does a great deal in the case, yet cannot be thought to work whole societies of men to so universal a perverseness, as that every one of them to a man should knowingly maintain falsehood : some at least must be allowed to do what all pretend to, i.e. to pursue truth sincerely; and therefore there must be something that blinds their understandings, and makes them not see the falsehood of what they embrace for real truth. That which thus captivates their reasons, and leads men of sincerity blindfold from common sense, will, when examined, be found to be what we are speaking of : some independent ideas, of no alliance to one another, are, by education^ custom, and the constant din of their party^ so coupled in their minds, that they always appear there together; and they can no more separate them in their thoughts than if they were but one idea, and they operate as if they were so. This gives sense to jargon, demonstration to absurdities, and con- sistency to nonsense, and is the foundation of the greatest,
^ ' Cette remarque est importante et rait fortifier par une infinite d'exem- enti^remexit k mon gr^ et on la pour- pies.' (Nottveaux Essais.)
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I had almost said of all the errors in the world ; or, if it does book ii. not reach so far, it is at least the most dangerous one, "T**^ since, so far as it obtains, it hinders men from seeing and xxxill. examining. When two things, in themselves disjoined, ap- pear to the sight constantly united; if the eye 9&t& these things riveted which are loose, where will you begin to rectify the mistakes that follow in two ideas that they have been accustomed so to join in their minds as to substitute one for the other, and, as I am apt to think, often without perceiving it themselves? This, whilst they are under the deceit of it, makes them incapable of conviction, and they applaud themselves as zealous champions for truth, when indeed they are contending for error ; and the confusion of two different ideas, which a customary connexion of them in their minds hath to them made in effect but one, fills their heads with false views, and their reasonings with false consequences.
19. Having thus given an account of the original, sorts, Con- and extent of our IDEAS, with several other considerations *^*"sion. about these (I know not whether I may say) instruments, or materials of our knowledge, the method I at first proposed to myself would now require that I should immediately proceed to show, what use the understanding makes of them, and what KNOWLEDGE we have by them. This was that which, in the first general view I had of this subject, was all that I thought I should have to do : but, upon a nearer approach, I find that there is so close a connexion between ideas and WORDS, and our abstract ideas and general words have so constant a relation one to another, -that it is im- possible to speak clearly and distinctly of our knowledge, which all consists in propositions, without considering, first, the nature, use, and signification of Language ; which, there- fore, must be the business of the next Book.
END OF VOLUME I.
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