Locke’s account of origin of ideas.
11. Let us consider the passage where Locke sums up his theory of the ‘original of our ideas.’ (Book II. chap. i. sec. 23, 24.) ‘Since there appear not to be any ideas in the mind, before the senses have conveyed any in, I conceive that ideas in the understanding are coeval with sensation; which is such an impression, made in some part of 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. In time the mind comes to reflect on its own operations about the ideas got by sensation, and thereby stores itself with a new set of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection. These impressions that are made on our senses by outward objects, that are extrinsical to the mind; and its own operations, 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 of all knowledge.’
Its ambiguities(a)In regard to sensation.
12. Can we from this passage elicit a distinct account of the beginning of intelligence? In the first place it consists in an ‘idea,’ and an idea is elsewhere (Introduction, sec. 8) stated to be ‘whatsoever is the object of the understanding, when a man thinks.’ But the primary idea is an ‘idea of sensation.’ Does this mean that the primary ideaisa sensation, or is a distinction to be made between the sensation and the idea thereof? The passage before us would seem to imply such a distinction. Looking merely to it, we should probably say that bysensationLocke meant ‘an impression or motion in some part of the body;’ by theidea of sensation‘a perception in the understanding,’ which this impression produces. The account of perception itself gives a different result. (Book II. chap. ix. sec. 3.) ‘Whatever impressions are made on the outward parts, if they are not taken notice of within, there is no perception. Fire may burn our bodies with no other effect than it does a billet, unless the motion be continued to the brain, and there thesenseof heat orideaof pain be produced in the mind, wherein consists actualperception.’ Here sensation is identified at once with the idea and with perception, as opposed to the impression on the bodily organs. [1] To confound the confusion still farther, in a passage immediately preceding the above, ‘Perception,’ here identified with the idea of sensation, has been distinguished from it, as ‘exercised about it.’ ‘Perception, as it is the first faculty of the mind exercised about our ideas, so it is the first and simplest idea we have from reflection.’ Taking Locke at his word, then, we find the beginning of intelligence to consist in having an idea of sensation. This idea, however, we perceive, and to perceive is to have an idea;i.e.to have an idea of an idea of sensation. But of perception again we have a simple or primitive idea. Therefore the beginning of intelligence consists in having an idea of an idea of an idea of sensation.
[1] Cf. Book II. chap. xix. sec. 1. ‘Theperception, 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 callsensation; which is, as it were, the actual entrance of any idea into the understanding by the senses.’
(b)In regard to ideas of reflection.
13. By insisting on Locke’s account of the relation between the ideas of sensation and those of reflection we might be brought to a different but not more luminous conclusion. In the passages quoted above, where this relation is most fully spoken of, it appears that the latter are essentially sequent to those of sensation. ‘In timethe mind comes to reflect on its own operations, about the ideas got by sensation, and thereby stores itself with a new set of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection.’ Of these only two are primary and original (Book II. c. xxi. sec. 73), viz. motivity or power of moving, with which we are not at present concerned, and perceptivity or power of perception. But according to Locke, as we have seen, there cannot be any, the simplest, idea of sensation without perception. If, then, theideaof perception is only given later and upon reflection, we must suppose perception to take place without any idea of it. But with Locke to have an idea and to perceive are equivalent terms. We must thus conclude that the beginning of knowledge is an unperceived perception, which is against his express statement elsewhere (Book II. c. xxvii. sec. 9), that it is ‘impossible for any one to perceive without perceiving that he does perceive.’
What is the ‘tablet’ impressed?
14. Meanwhile a perpetual equivocation is kept up between a supposed impression on the ‘outward parts,’ and a supposed impression on the ‘tablet of the mind.’ It is not the impression upon, or a motion in, the outward parts, as Locke admits, that constitutes the idea of sensation. It is not an agitation in the tympanum of the ear, or a picture on the retina of the eye, that we are conscious of when we see a sight or hear a sound. [1] The motion or impression, however, has only, as he seems to suppose, to be ‘continued to the brain,’ and it becomes an idea of sensation. Notwithstanding the rough line of distinction between soul and body, which he draws elsewhere, his theory was practically governed by the supposition of a cerebral something, in which, as in a third equivocal tablet, the imaginary mental and bodily tablets are blended. If, however, the idea of sensation, as an object of the understanding when a man thinks, differs absolutely from ‘a motion of the outward parts,’ it does so no less absolutely, however language and metaphor may disguise the difference, from such motion as ‘continued to the brain.’ An instructed man, doubtless, may come to think about a motion in his brain, as about a motion of the earth round the sun, but to speak of such motion as an idea of sensation or an immediate object of intelligent sense, is to confuse between the object of consciousness and a possible physical theory of the conditions of that consciousness. It is only, however, by such an equivocation that any idea, according to Locke’s account of the idea, can be described as an ‘impression’ at all, or that the representation of the mind as a tablet, whether born blank or with characters stamped on it, has even an apparent meaning. A metaphor, interpreted as a fact, becomes the basis of his philosophical system.
[1] Cf. Locke’s own statement (Book III. c. iv. sec. 10). ‘The cause of any sensation, and the sensation itself, in all the simple ideas of one sense, are two ideas; and two ideas so different and distant one from another, that no two can be more so.’
Does the mind make impressions on itself?
15. As applied to the ideas of reflection, indeed, the metaphor loses even its plausibility. In its application to the ideas of sensation it gains popular acceptance from the ready confusion of thought and matter in the imaginary cerebral tablet, and the supposition of actual impact upon this by ‘outward things.’ But in the case of ideas of reflection, it is the mind that at once gives and takes the impression. It must be supposed, that is, to make impressions on itself. There is the further difficulty that as perception is necessary in order to give anideaof sensation, the impress of perception must be taken by the mind in its earliest receptivity; or, in other words, it must impress itself while still a blank, still void of any ‘furniture’ wherewith to make the impression. There is no escape from this result unless we suppose perception to precede the idea of it by some interval of time, which lands us, as we have seen, in the counter difficulty of supposing an unperceived perception. Locke disguises the difficulty from himself and his reader by constantly shifting both the receptive subject and the impressive matter. We find the ‘tablet’ perpetually receding. First it is the ‘outward part’ or bodily organ. Then it is the brain, to which the impression received by the outward part must somehow be continued, in order to produce sensation. Then it is the perceptive mind, which takes an impression of the sensation or has an idea of it. Finally, it is the reflective mind, upon which in turn the perceptive mind makes impressions. But the hasty reader, when he is told that the mind is passively impressed with ideas of reflection, is apt to forget that the matter which thus impresses it is, according to Locke’s showing, simply its perceptive,i.e.its passive, self.
Source of these difficulties. The ‘simple’ idea, as Locke describes it, is a complex idea of substance and relation.
16. The real source of these embarrassments in Locke’s theory, it must be noted, lies in the attempt to make the individual consciousness give an answer to its interrogator as to the beginning of knowledge. The individual looking back on an imaginary earliest experience pronounces himself in that experience to have been simply sensitive and passive. But by this he means consciously sensitiveof somethingand consciously passivein relation to something. That is, he supposes the primitive experience to have involved consciousness of a self on the one hand and of a thing on the other, as well as of a relation between the two. In the ‘idea of sensation’ as Locke conceived it, such a consciousness is clearly implied, notwithstanding his confusion of terms. The idea is a perception, or consciousnessof a thing, as opposed to a sensation proper or affection of the bodily organs. Of the perception, again, there is an idea,i.e.a consciousness by the man, in the perception, of himself in negative relation to the thing that is his object, and this consciousness (if we would make Locke consistent in excluding an unperceived perception) must be taken to go along with the perceptive act itself. No less than this indeed can be involved in any act that is to be the beginning of knowledge at all. It is the minimum of possible thought or intelligence, and the thinking man, looking for this beginning in the earliest experience of the individual human animal, must needs find it there. But this means no less than that he is finding there already the conceptions of substance and relation. Hence a double contradiction: firstly, a contradiction between the primariness of self-conscious cognisance of a thing, as the beginning of possible knowledge, on the one hand, and the primariness of animal sensation in the history of the individual man on the other; secondly, a contradiction between the primariness in knowledge of the ideas of substance and relation, and the seemingly gradual attainment of those ‘abstractions’ by the individual intellect. The former of these contradictions is blurred by Locke in the two main confusions which we have so far noticed:(a)the confusion between sensation proper and perception, which is covered under the phrase ‘idea of sensation;’ a phrase which, if sensation means the first act of intelligence, is pleonastic, and if it means the ‘motion of the outward parts continued to the brain,’ is unmeaning; and(b)the confusion between the physical affection of the brain and the act of the self-conscious subject, covered under the equivocal metaphor of impression. The latter contradiction, that concerning the ideas of substance and relation, has to be further considered.
How this contradiction is disguised.
17. It is not difficult to show that to have a simple idea, according to Locke’s account of it, means to have already the conception of substance and relation, which are yet according to him ‘complex and derived ideas,’ ‘the workmanship of the mind’ in opposition to its original material, the result of its action in opposition to what is given it as passive. The equivocation in terms under which this contradiction is generally covered is that between ‘idea’ and ‘quality.’ ‘Whatever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, that I callidea; and the power to produce that idea I call quality of the subject wherein that power is. Thus a snowball having power to produce in us the ideas of white, cold, and round, the powers to produce these 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 object which produce them in us.’ (Book II. chap. viii. sec. 8.)
Locke’s way of interchanging ‘idea’ and ‘quality’ and its effects.
18. An equivocation is not the less so because it is announced. It is just because Locke allows himself at his convenience to interchange the terms ‘idea’ and ‘quality’ that his doctrine is at once so plausible and so hollow. The essential question is whether the ‘simple idea,’ as the original of knowledge, is on the one hand a mere feeling, or on the other a thing or quality of a thing. This question is the crux of empirical psychology. Adopting the one alternative, we have to face the difficulty of the genesis of knowledge, as an apprehension of the real, out of mere feeling; adopting the other, we virtually endow the nascent intelligence with the conception of substance. By playing fast and loose with ‘idea’ and ‘quality,’ Locke disguised the dilemma from himself. Here again the metaphor of Impression did him yeoman’s service. The idea, or ‘immediate object of thought,’ being confused with the affection of the sensitive organs, and this again being accounted for as the result of actual impact, it was easy to represent the idea itself as caused by the action of an outward body on the ‘mental tablet.’ Thus Locke speaks of the ‘objects of our senses obtruding their particular ideas on our minds, whether we will or no.’ (Book II. chap. i. sec. 25.) This sentence holds in solution an assumption and two fallacies. The assumption (with which we have no further concern here) is the physical theory that matter affects the sensitive organs in the way of actual impact. Of the fallacies, one is the confusion between this affection and the idea of which it is the occasion to the individual; the other is the implication that this idea, as such, in its prime simplicity, recognises itself as the result of, and refers itself as a quality to, the matter supposed to cause it. This recognition and reference, it is clearly implied, are involved in the idea itself, not merely made by the philosopher theorising it. Otherwise the ‘obtrusion’ would be described as of a property or effect, not of an idea, which means, it must be remembered, the object of consciousness just as the object of consciousness. Of the same purport is the statement that ‘the mind is furnished with simple ideas as they are found in exterior things.’ (Book II. chap, xxiii. sec. 1.) It only requires a moment’s consideration, indeed, to see that the beginning of consciousness cannot be a physical theory, which, however true it may be and however natural it may have become to us, involves not only the complex conception of material impact, but the application of this to a case having no palpable likeness to it. But the ‘interrogator of consciousness’ finds in its primitive state just what he puts there, and thus Locke, with all his pains ‘to set his mind at a distance from itself,’ involuntarily supposes it, in the first element of intelligence, to ‘report’ that action of matter upon itself, which, as the result of a familiar theory—involving not merely the conceptions of substance, power, and relation, but special qualifications of these—it reports to the educated man.
Primary and secondary qualities of bodies.
19. This will appear more clearly upon an examination of his doctrine of ‘the ideas of primary and secondary qualities of bodies.’ The distinction between them he states as follows. The primary qualities of bodies are ‘the bulk, figure, number, situation, motion, and rest of their solid parts; these are in them, whether we perceive them or no; 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.’ … Thus ‘the ideas of primary qualities are resemblances of them, and their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves. But the ideas produced in us by the secondary qualities have no resemblance of them at all. There is nothing like them existing in the bodies themselves. They are in the bodies, we denominate from them, only a power to produce these 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.’ This power is then explained to be of two sorts:(a)‘The power that is in any body, by reason of its insensible primary qualities, to operate after a peculiar manner on any of our senses, and thereby produce in us the different ideas of several colours, sounds, smells, tastes, &c. These are usually called sensible qualities,(b)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 differently on our senses 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 powers.’ (Book II. chap. viii. sec. 15, 23.)
‘Simple idea’ represented as involving a theory of its own cause.
20. What we have here is a theory of the causes of simple ideas; but we shall find Locke constantly representing this theory as a simple idea itself, or the simple idea as involving this theory. By this unconscious device he is enabled readily to exhibit the genesis of knowledge out of ‘simple ideas,’ but it is at the cost of converting these into ‘creations of the mind,’ which with him are the antitheses of ‘facts’ or ‘reality.’ The process of conversion takes a different form as applied respectively to the ideas of primary and to those of secondary qualities. We propose to follow it in the latter application first.
Phrases in which this is implied.
21. The simple idea caused by a quality he calls the ideaofthat quality. Under cover of this phrase, he not only identifies the idea of a primary quality with the quality itself of which he supposes it to be a copy, but he also habitually regards the idea of a secondary quality as the consciousness of a qualityof a thing, though under warning that the quality as it is to consciousness is not as it is in the thing. This reservation rather adds to the confusion. There are in fact, according to Locke, as appears from his distinction between the ‘nominal’ and ‘real essence,’ two different things denoted by every common noun; the thing as it is in itself or in nature, and the thing as it is for consciousness. The former is the thing as constituted by a certain configuration of particles, which is only an object for the physical philosopher, and never fully cognisable even by him; [1] the latter is the thing as we see and hear and smell it. Now to a thing in this latter sense, according to Locke, such a simple idea as to the philosopher is one of a secondary quality (i.e.not a copy, but an effect, of something in a body), is already in the origin of knowledge referred as a quality, though without distinction of primary and secondary. He does not indeed state this in so many words. To have done so might have forced him to reconsider his doctrine of the mere passivity of the mind in respect of simple ideas. But it is implied in his constant use of such phrases as ‘reports of the senses,’ ‘inlet through the senses’—which have no meaning unless something is reported, something let in—and in the familiar comparison of the understanding to a ‘closet, wholly shut from light, with only some little opening left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas, of things without.’ (Book II. chap. xi. sec. 17.)
[1] This distinction is more fully treated below, paragraphs 88, &c.
Feeling and felt thing confused.
22. Phraseology of this kind, the standing heritage of the philosophy which seeks the origin of knowledge in sensation, assumes that the individual sensation is from the first consciously representative; that it is more than what it is simply in itself—fleeting, momentary, unnameable (because, while we name it, it has become another), and for the same reason unknowable, the very negation of knowability; that it shows the presence of something, whether this be a ‘body’ to which it is referred as a quality, or a mind of which it is a modification, or be ultimately reduced to the permanent conditions of its own possibility. This assumption for the present has merely to be pointed out; its legitimacy need not be discussed. Nor need we now discuss the attempts that have been made since Locke to show that mere sensations, dumb to begin with, may yet become articulate upon repetition and combination; which in fact endow them with a faculty of inference, and suppose that though primarily they report nothing beyond themselves, they yet somehow come to do so as an explanation of their own recurrence. The sensational theory in Locke is still, so to speak, unsophisticated. It is true that, in concert with that ‘thinking gentleman,’ Mr. Molyneux, he had satisfied himself that what we reckon simple ideas are often really inferences from such ideas which by habit have become instinctive; but his account of this habitual process presupposes the reference of sensation to a thing. ‘When we set before our eyes a round globe of any uniform colour, it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted in our mind is of a flat circle, variously shadowed with several degrees of light and brightness coming 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 figures of bodies; the judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters the appearances into their causes. So that from that which truly is variety of colour or shadow, 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.’ (Book II. chap. ix. sec. 8.) The theory here stated involves two assumptions, each inconsistent with the simplicity of the simple idea.(a)The actual impression of the ‘plane variously coloured’ is supposed to pronounce itself to be of something outward. Once call the sensation an ‘impression,’ indeed, or call it anything, and this or an analogous substantiation of it is implied. It is only as thus reporting something ‘objective’ that the simple idea of the plane variously coloured gives anything to be corrected by the ‘perception of the kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make in us,’i.e.‘of the alterations made in the reflections of light by the difference of the sensible figure of bodies.’ This perception, indeed, as described, is already itself just the instinctive judgment which has to be accounted for, and though this objection might be met by a better statement, yet no statement could serve Locke’s purpose which did not make assumption(b)that sensations of light and colour—‘simple ideas of secondary qualities’—are in the very beginning of knowledgeappearances, if not ofconvexbodies, yet of bodies; if not of bodies, yet of something which they reveal, which remains there while they pass away.
The simple idea as ‘ectype’ other than mere sensation.
23. The same assumption is patent in Locke’s account of the distinction between ‘real and fantastic,’ ‘adequate and inadequate,’ ideas. This distinction rests upon that between the thing as archetype, and the idea as the corresponding ectype. Simple ideas he holds to be necessarily ‘real’ and ‘adequate,’ because necessarily answering to their archetypes. ‘Not that they are all of them images or representations of what does exist: … whiteness and coldness are no more in snow than pain is: … yet are they real ideas in us, whereby we distinguish the qualities that are really in things themselves. For these several appearances being designed to be the marks 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, whether they be only constant effects, or else exact resemblances of something in the things themselves.’ (Book II. chap. xxx. sec. 2.) The simple idea, then, is a ‘mark’ or ‘distinguishing character,’ either as a copy or as an effect, of something other than itself. Only as thus regarded, does the distinction between real and fantastic possibly apply to it. So too with the distinction between true and false ideas. As Locke himself points out, the simple idea in itself is neither true nor false. It can become so only as ‘referred to something extraneous to it.’ (Book II. chap, xxxii. sec. 4.) For all that, he speaks of simple ideas as true and necessarily true, because ‘being barely such perceptions as God has fitted us to receive, and given power to external objects to produce in us by established laws and ways … their truth consists in nothing else but in such appearances as are produced in us, and must be suitable to those powers He has placed in external objects, or else they could not be produced in us.’ (Book II. chap, xxxii. sec. 14.) Here again we are brought to the same point. The idea is an ‘appearance’ of something, necessarily true when it cannot seem to be the appearance of anything else than that of which it is the appearance. We thus come to the following dilemma. Either the simple idea is referred to a thing, as its pattern or its cause, or it cannot be regarded as either real or true. If it is still objected that it need not be so referred in the beginning of knowledge, though it comes to be so in the developed intelligence, the answer is the further question, how can that be knowledge even in its most elementary phase—the phase of the reception of simple ideas —which is not a capacity of distinction between real and apparent, between true and false? If its beginning is a mode of consciousness, such as mere sensation would be—which, because excluding all reference, excludes that reference of itself to something else without which there could be no consciousness of a distinction between an ‘is’ and an ‘is not,’ and therefore no true judgment at all—how can any repetition of such modes give such a judgment? [1]
[1] Cf. the ground of distinction between clearness and obscurity of ideas; (Book II. chap. xxix. sec. 2) ‘Our simple ideas are clear when they are such as the objects themselves, whence they are taken, did or might in a well-ordered sensation or perception, present them.’ As Locke always assumes that immediate consciousness can tell whether an idea is clear or not, it follows that immediate consciousness must tell of ‘the object itself, whence the idea is taken.’
It involves a judgment in which mind and thing are distinguished.
24. The fact is that the ‘simple idea’ with Locke, as the beginning of knowledge, is already, at its minimum, the judgment, ‘I have an idea different from other ideas, which I did not make for myself.’ His confusion of this judgment with sensation is merely the fundamental confusion, on which all empirical psychology rests, between two essentially distinct questions—one metaphysical, What is the simplest element of knowledge? the other physiological, What are the conditions in the individual human organism in virtue of which it becomes a vehicle of knowledge? Though he failed, however, to distinguish these questions, their difference made itself appear in a certain divergence between the second and fourth books of his Essay. So far we have limited our consideration to passages in the second book, in which he treatseo nomineof ideas; of simple ideas as the original of knowledge, of complex ones as formed in its process. Here the physical theory is predominant. The beginning of knowledge is that without which the animal is incapable of it, viz. sensation regarded as an impression through ‘animal spirits’ on the brain. But it can only be so represented because sensation is identified with that which later psychology distinguished from it as Perception, and for which no physical theory can account. As we have seen, the whole theory of this (the second) book turns upon the supposition that the simple idea of sensation is in every case an idea of a sensible quality, and that it is so, not merely for us, considering itex parte post, but consciously for the individual subject, which can mean nothing else than that it distinguishes itself from, and refers itself to, a thing. Locke himself, indeed, according to his plan of bringing in a ‘faculty of the mind’ whenever it is convenient, would perhaps rather have said that it is so distinguished and referred ‘by the mind.’ He considers the simple idea not, as it truly is, the mind itself in a certain relation, but a datum or material of the mind, upon which it performs certain operations as upon something other than itself, though all the while it is constituted, at least in its actuality, by this material. Between the reference of the simple idea to the thing, however, by itself and ‘by the mind,’ there is no essential difference. In either case the reference is inconsistent with the simplicity of the simple idea; and if the latter expression avoids the seeming awkwardness of ascribing activity to the idea, it yet ascribes it to the mind in that elementary stage in which, according to Locke, it is merely receptive.
And is equivalent to what he afterwards calls ‘knowledge of identity’. Only as such can it be named.
25. So much for the theory ‘of ideas.’ As if, however, in treating of ideas he had been treating of anything else than knowledge, he afterwards considers ‘knowledge’ in a book by itself (the fourth) under that title, and here the question as to the relation between idea and thing comes before him in a somewhat different shape. According to his well-known definition, knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of any of our ideas. The agreement or disagreement may be of four sorts. It may be in the way (1) of identity, (2) of relation, (3) of co-existence, (4) of real existence. In his account of the last sort of agreement, it may be remarked by the way, he departs at once and openly from his definition, making it an agreement, not of idea with idea, but of an idea with ‘actual real existence.’ The fatal but connatural wound in his system, which this inconsistency marks, will appear more fully below. For the present, our concern is for the adjustment of the definition of knowledge to the doctrine of the simple idea as the beginning of knowledge. According to the definition, it cannot be the simple idea, as such, that constitutes this beginning, but only the perception of agreement or disagreement between simple ideas. ‘There could be no room,’ says Locke distinctly, ‘for any positive knowledge at all, if we could not distinguish any relation between our ideas.’ (Book IV. chap. i. sec. 5.) Yet in the very context where he makes this statement, the perception of relation is put as a distinct kind of knowledge apart from others. In his account of the other kinds, however, he is faithful to his definition, and treats each as a perception (i.e.a judgment) of a relation in the way of agreement or disagreement. The primary knowledge is that of identity—the knowledge of an idea as identical with itself. ‘A man infallibly knows, as soon as ever he has them in his mind, that the ideas he callswhiteandround, are the very ideas they are, and not other ideas which he callsredandsquare.’ (Book IV. chap. i. sec. 4.) Now, as Hume afterwards pointed out, identity is not simple unity. It cannot be predicated of the ‘idea’ as merely single, but only as a manifold in singleness. To speak of an idea as the ‘same with itself’ is unmeaning unless it mean ‘same with itselfin its manifold appearances’i.e.unless the idea is distinguished, as an object existing continuously, from its present appearance. Thus ‘the infallible knowledge,’ which Locke describes in the above passage, consists in this, that on the occurrence of a certain ‘idea’ the manrecognisesit as one, which at other times of its occurrence he has called ‘white.’ Such a ‘synthesis of recognition,’ however, expressed by the application of a common term, implies the reference of a present sensation to a permanent object of thought, in this case the object thought under the term ‘white,’ so that the sensation becomes an idea of that object. Were there no such objects, there would be no significant names, but only noises; and were the present sensation not so referred, it would not be named. It may be said indeed that the ‘permanent object of thought’ is merely the instinctive result of a series of past resembling sensations, and that the common name is merely the register of this result. But the question is thus merely thrown further back. Unless the single fleeting sensation was, to begin with, fixed and defined by relation to and distinction from something permanent—in other words, unless it ceased to be a mere sensation—how did it happen that other sensations were referred to it, as different cases of an identical phenomenon, to which the noise suggested by it might be applied as a sign?
The same implied in calling it an idea of an object.
26. This primary distinction and relation of the simple idea Locke implicitly acknowledges when he substitutes for the simple idea, as in the passage last quoted, the man’s knowledge that he has the idea; for such knowledge implies the distinction of the idea from its permanent conscious subject, and its determination by that negative relation. [1] Thus determined, it becomes itself a permanent object, or (which comes to the same) an ideaof an object; a phrase which Locke at his convenience substitutes for the mere idea, whenever it is wanted for making his theory of knowledge square with knowledge itself. Once become such an object, it is a basis to which other sensations, like and unlike, may be referred as differentiating attributes. Its identity becomes a definite identity.
[1] Cf. the passage in Book II. chap. vii. sec. 7. ‘When ideas are in our minds, we consider them as being actually there.’ The mere ‘idea’ is in fact essentially different from the ‘consideration of it as actually there,’ as sensation is different from thought. The ‘consideration, &c.,’ really means the thought of the ‘idea’ (sensation) as determined by relation to the conscious subject.
Madefor, notby, us, and therefore according to Locke really existent.
27. Upon analysis, then, of Locke’s account of the most elementary knowledge, the perception of identity or agreement of an idea with itself, we find that like the ‘simple idea,’ which he elsewhere makes the beginning of knowledge, it really means the reference of a sensation to a conception of a permanent object or subject, [1] either in such a judgment as ‘this is white’ (sc.a white thing), or in the more elementary one, ‘this is an object to me.’ In the latter form the judgment represents what Locke puts as the consciousness, ‘I have an idea,’ or as the ‘consideration that the idea is actually there;’ in the former it represents what he calls ‘the knowledge that the idea which I have in my mind and which I call white is the very idea it is, and not the idea which I call red.’ It is only becausereferred, as above, that the sensation is in Locke’s phraseology ‘a testimony’ or ‘report’ of something. As we said above, his notion of the beginning of knowledge is expressed not merely in the formula ‘I have an idea different from other ideas,’ but with the addition, ‘which I did not make for myself.’ [2] The simple idea is supposed to testify to something without that caused it, and it is this interpretation of it which makes it with him the ultimate criterion of reality. But unless it were at once distinguished from and referred to both a thing of which it is an effect and a subject of which it is an experience, it could not in the first place testify to anything, nor secondly to a thing as made for, not by, the subject. This brings us, however, upon Locke’s whole theory of ‘real existence,’ which requires fuller consideration.
[1] For a recognition by Locke of the correlativity of these (of which more will have to be said below) cf. Book II. chap. xxiii. sec. 15. ‘Whilst I know by seeing or hearing, &c., 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.’
[2] Cf. Book II. chap. xii. sec. 1.
What did he mean by this?
28. It is a theory, we must premise, which is nowhere explicitly stated. It has to be gathered chiefly from those passages of the second book in which he treats of ‘complex’ or ‘artificial’ ideas in distinction from simple ones, which are necessarily real, and from the discussion in the fourth book of the ‘extent’ and ‘reality’ of knowledge. We have, however, to begin with, in the enumeration of simple ideas, a mention of ‘existence,’ as one of those ‘received alike through all the ways of sensation and reflection.’ It is an idea ‘suggested to the understanding by every object without and 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.’ (Book II. chap. vii. sec. 7.)
29. The two considerations here mentioned, of ‘ideas as actually in our minds,’ of ‘things as actually without us,’ are meant severally to represent the two ways of reflection and sensation, by which the idea of existence is supposed to be suggested. But sensation, according to Locke, is an organ of ‘ideas,’ just as much as reflection. Taking his doctrine strictly, there are no ‘objects’ but ‘ideas’ to suggest the idea of existence, whether by the way of sensation or by that of reflection, and no ideas that are not ‘in the mind.’ (Book II. chap. ix. sec. 3, &c.)
Existence as the mere presence of a feeling.
30. The designation of the idea of existence, then, as ‘suggested by every idea within,’ covers every possible suggestion. It can mean nothing else than that it is given in every act and mode of consciousness; that it is inseparable from feeling as such, being itself at the same time a distinct simple idea. This, we may remark by the way, involves the conclusion that every idea is composite, made up of whatever distinguishes it from other ideas together with the idea of existence. Of this idea of existence itself, however, it will be impossible to say anything distinctive; for, as it accompanies all possible objects of consciousness, there will be no cases where it is absent to be distinguished from those where it is present. Not merely will it be undefinable, as every simple idea is; it will be impossible ‘to send a man to his senses’ (according to Locke’s favourite subterfuge) in order to know what it is, since it is neither given in one sense as distinct from another, nor in all senses as distinct from any other modification of consciousness. Thus regarded, to treat it as a simple idea alongside of other simple ideas is a palpable contradiction. It is the mere ‘It is felt,’ the abstraction of consciousness, no more to be reckoned as one among other ideas than colour in general is to be co-ordinated with red, white, and blue. Whether I smell a rose in the summer or recall the smell in winter; whether I see a horse or a ghost, or imagine a centaur or think of gravitation or the philosopher’s stone—in every case alike the idea or ‘immediate object of the mind’exists. Yet we find Locke distinguishing between real ideas, as those that ‘have a conformity with the existence of things,’ and fantastic ideas, as those which have no such conformity (Book II. chap. xxx. sec. 1); and again in the fourth book (chap. i. sec. 7, chap. iii. sec. 21, &c.) he makes the perception of the agreement of an idea with existence a special kind of knowledge, different from that of agreement of idea with idea; and having done so, raises the question whether we have such a knowledge of existence at all, and decides that our knowledge of it is very narrow.
Existence as reality.
31. How are such a distinction and such a question to be reconciled with the attribution of existence to every idea? The answer of course will be, that when he speaks of ideas as not conforming to existence, and makes knowledge or the agreement of ideas with each other something different from their agreement with existence, he means and generally says ‘real actual existence,’ or the ‘existence ofthings,’i.e.an existence, whatever it be, which is opposed to mere existence in consciousness. Doubtless he so means, but this implies that upon mere consciousness, or the simple presence of ideas, there has supervened a distinction, which has to be accounted for, of ideas from things which they represent on the one hand, and from a mind of which they are affections on the other. Even in the passage first quoted (Book II. chap. vii. sec. 7), where existence is ascribed to every idea, on looking closely we find this distinction obtruding itself, though without explicit acknowledgment. In the very same breath, so to speak, in which the idea of existence is said to be suggested by every idea, it is further described as being either of two considerations—either the consideration of an idea as actually in our mind, or of a thing as actually without us. Such considerations at once imply the supervention of that distinction between ‘mind’ and ‘thing,’ which gives a wholly new meaning to ‘existence.’ They are not, in truth, as Locke supposed, two separate considerations, one or other of which, as the case may be, is interchangeable with the ‘idea of existence.’ One is correlative with the other, and neither is the same as simple feeling. Considered as actually in the mind, the feeling is distinguished from the mind as an affection from the subject thereof, and just in virtue of this distinction is referred to a thing as the cause of the affection, or becomes representative of a thing. But for such consideration there would for us, if the doctrine of ideas means anything, be no ‘thing without us’ at all. To ‘consider things as actually without us’ is to consider them as causes of the ideas in our mind, and this is to have an idea of existence quite different from mere consciousness. It is to have an idea of it which at once suggests the question whether the existence is real or apparent; in other words, whether the thing, to which an affection of the mind is referred as its cause, is really its cause or no.
By confusion of these two meanings, reality and its conditions are represented as given in simple feeling.
32. Between these two meanings of existence—its meaning as interchangeable with simple consciousness, and its meaning as reality—Locke failed to distinguish. Just as, having announced ‘ideas’ to be the sole ‘materials of knowledge,’ he allows himself at his convenience to put ‘things’ in the place of ideas; so having identified existence with momentary consciousness or the simple idea, he substitutes for existence in this sensereality, and in consequence finds reality given solely in the simple idea. Thus when the conceptions of cause or substance, or relations of any kind, come under view, since these cannot be represented as given in momentary consciousness, they have to be pronounced not to exist, and since existence is reality, to be unreal or ‘fictions of the mind.’ But without these unreal relations there could be no knowledge, and if they are not given in the elements of knowledge, it is difficult to see how they are introduced, or to avoid the appearance of constructing knowledge out of the unknown. Given in the elements of knowledge, however, they cannot be, if these are simple ideas or momentary recurrences of the ‘it is felt.’ But by help of Locke’s equivocation between the two meanings of existence, they can be covertly introduced as the real. Existence is given in the simple idea, existence equals the real, therefore the real is given in the simple idea. But think or speak of the real as we will, we find that it exhibits itself as substance, as cause, and as related;i.e.according to Locke as a ‘complex’ or ‘invented’ or ‘superinduced’ idea.
Yet reality involves complex ideas which are made by the mind.
33. In the second book of his Essay, which treats of ideas, he makes the grand distinction between ‘the simple ideas which are all from things themselves, and of which the mind can have no more or other than what are suggested to it,’ and the ‘complex ideas which are the workmanship of the mind.’ (Book II. chap. xii.) In his account of the latter there are some curious cross-divisions, but he finally enumerates them as ideas either ofmodes,substances, orrelations. The character of these ideas he then proceeds to explain in the order given, one after the other, and as if each were independent of the rest; though according to his own statement the idea of mode presupposes that of substance, and the idea of substance involves that of relation. ‘Modes I call such complex ideas, which, however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are considered as dependencies on, or affections of, substances; such are the ideas signified by the words ‘triangle,’ ‘gratitude,’ ‘murder,’ &c. Of these there are two sorts. First, there are some which are only variations or different 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 several kinds, put together to make one complex one; e. g. beauty, … and these I callmixed modes.’ (Book II. chap. xii. secs. 4, 5.) So soon as he comes to speak more in detail of simple modes, he falls into apparent contradiction with his doctrine that, as complex ideas, they are the mere workmanship of the mind. All particular sounds and colours are simple modes of the simple ideas of sound and colour. (Book II. chap, xviii. sees. 3, 4.) Again, the ideas of figure, place, distance, as of all particular figures, places, and distances, are simple modes of the simple idea of space. (Book II. chap, xiii.) To maintain, however, that the ideas of space, sound, or colourin general(as simple ideas) were taken from things themselves, while those ofparticularspaces, sounds, and colours (as complex ideas) were ‘made by the mind,’ was for Locke impossible. Thus in the very next chapter after that in which he has opposed all complex ideas, those of simple modes included, as made by the mind to all simple ones as taken from things themselves, he speaks of simple modes ‘eitheras found in things existing, or as made by the mind within itself.’ (Book II. chap. xiii. sec. 1.) It was not for Locke to get over this confusion by denying the antithesis between that which the mind ‘makes’ and that which it ‘takes from existing things’ and for the present we must leave it as it stands. We must further note that a mode being considered ‘as an affection of a substance,’ space must be to the particular spaces which are its simple modes, as a substance to its modifications. So too colour to particular colours, &c., &c. But the idea of a substance is a complex idea ‘framed by the mind.’ Therefore the idea of space—at any rate such an idea as we have of it when we think of distances, places, or figures, and when else do we think of it at all?—must be a complex and artificial idea. But according to Locke the idea of space is emphatically a simple idea, given immediatelybothby sight and touch, concerning which if a man enquire, he ‘sends him to his senses.’ (Book II. chap, v.)
Such are substance and relation which must be found in every object of knowledge.
34. These contradictions are not avoidable blunders, due to carelessness or want of a clear head in the individual writer, ‘The complex idea of substance’ will not be exorcised; the mind will show its workmanship in the very elements of knowledge towards which its relation seems most passive—in the ‘existing things’ which are the conditions of its experience no less than in the individual’s conscious reaction upon them. The interrogator of the individual consciousness seeks to know that consciousness, and just for that reason must find in it at every stage those formal conceptions, such as substance and cause, without which there can be no object of knowledge at all. He thus substantiates sensation, while he thinks that he merely observes it, and calls it a sensible thing. Sensations, thus unconsciously transformed, are for him the real, the actually existent. Whatever is not given by immediate sense, outer or inner, he reckons a mere ‘thing of the mind.’ The ideas of substance and relation, then, not being given by sense, must in his eyes be things of the mind, in distinction from, really existent things. But speech bewrayeth him. He cannot state anything that he knows save in terms which imply that substance and relation are in the things known; and hence an inevitable obtrusion of ‘things of the mind’ in the place of real existence, just where the opposition between them is being insisted on. Again, as a man seems to observe consciousness in himself and others, it has nothing that it has not received. It is a blank to begin with, but passive of that which is without, and through its passivity it becomes informed. If the ‘mind,’ then, means this or that individual consciousness, the things of the mind must be gradually developed from an original passivity. On the other hand, let anyone try to know this original passive consciousness, and in it, as in every other known object-matter, he must find these things of the mind, substance and relations. If nature is the object, he must find them in nature; if his own self-consciousness, he must find them in that consciousness. But while nature knows not what is in herself, self-consciousness, it would seem,ex vi termini, does know. Therefore not merely substance and relation must be found in the original consciousness, but the knowledge, the ideas, of them.
Abstract idea of substance and complex ideas of particular sorts of substance.
35. As we follow Locke’s treatment of these ideas more in detail, we shall find the logical see-saw, here accounted for, appearing with scarcely a disguise. His account of the origin of the ‘complex ideas of substances’ is as follows. ‘The mind being furnished with a great number of the simple ideas, conveyed in by the senses, as they are found in exterior things, or by reflection on its own operations, takes notice also that a certain number of these simple ideas go constantly together; which being presumed to belong to one thing, and words being suited to common apprehensions and made use of for quick despatch, are called, so united in one subject, by one name; which by inadvertency we are apt afterwards 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 somesubstratum, wherein they do subsist, and from which they do result; which therefore we callsubstance.’ (Book II. chap, xxiii. sec. 1.) In the controversy with Stillingfleet, which arose out of this chapter, Locke was constrained further to distinguish (as he certainly did not do in the original text) between the ‘ideas of distinct substances, such as man, horse,’ and the ‘general idea of substance.’ It is to ideas of the former sort that he must be taken to refer in the above passage, when he speaks of them as formed by ‘complication of many ideas together,’ and these alone arecomplexin the strict sense. Thegeneralidea of substance on the other hand, which like all general ideas (according to Locke) is made by abstraction, means the idea of a ‘substratum which we accustom ourselves to suppose’ as that wherein the complicated ideas ‘do subsist, and from which they do result.’ This, however, he regards as itself one, ‘the first and chief,’ among the ideas which make up any of the ‘distinct substances.’ (Book II. chap. xii. sec. 6.) Nor is he faithful to the distinction between the general and the complex. In one passage of the first letter to Stillingfleet, he distinctly speaks of thegeneralidea of substance as a ‘complexidea made up of the idea of something plus that of relation to qualities.’ [1] Notwithstanding this confusion of terms, however, he no doubt had before him what seemed a clear distinction between the ‘abstract general idea’ of substance, as such,i.e.of ‘something related as a support to accidents,’ but which does not include ideas of any particular accidents, and the composite idea of a substance, made up of a multitude of simple ideas plus that of the something related to them as a support. We shall find each of these ideas, according to Locke’s statement, presupposing the other.
[1] Upon a reference to the chapter on ‘complex ideas’ (Book II. chap, xii.), it will appear that the term is used in a stricter and a looser sense. In the looser sense it is not confined tocompoundideas, but in opposition to simple ones includes those of relation and even ‘abstract general ideas.’ When Locke thinks of thegeneralidea of substance apart from the complication of accidents referred to it, he opposes it to the complex idea, according to the stricter sense of that term. On the other hand, when he thinks of it as ‘made up’ of the idea ofsomethingplus that of relation to qualities (as if there could be an idea of something apart from such relation), it seems to him to have two elements, and therefore to be complex.
The abstract idea according to Locke at once precedes and follows the complex.
36. In the passage above quoted, our aptness to consider a complication of simple ideas, which we notice to go constantly together, as one simple idea, is accounted for as the result of a presumption that they belong to one thing. This presumption is again described in the words that ‘we accustom ourselves to suppose some substratum, wherein they do subsist, and from which they do result; which therefore we call substance.’ Here it is implied that the idea of substance,i.e.‘the general idea of something related as a support to accidents,’ is one gradually formed upon observation of the regular coincidence of certain simple ideas. In the sequel (sec. 3 of the same chapter I. xxiii.) we are told that such an idea—‘an obscure and relative idea of substance in general—being thus made, we come to have the ideas of particular sorts of substances by collecting such combinations of simple ideas as are, by experience and observation of men’s senses, taken notice of to exist together.’ Thus ageneralidea of substance having been formed by one gradual process, ideas of particular sorts of substances are formed by another and later one. But then the very same ‘collection of such combinations of simple ideas as are taken notice of to exist together,’ which (according to sec. 3) constitutes the later process and follows upon the formation of thegeneralidea of substance, has been previously described as preceding and conditioning that formation. It is the complication of simple ideas, noticed to go constantly together, that (according to sec. 1) leads to the ‘idea of substance in general.’ To this see-saw between the process preceding and that following the formation of the idea in question must be added the difficulty, that Locke’s account makes the general idea precede the particular, which is against the whole tenor of his doctrine of abstraction as an operation whereby ‘the mind makes the particular ideas, received from particular objects, to become general.’ (Book II. chap. xi. sec. 9.)
Reference of ideas to nature or God, the same as reference to substance.
37. It may be said perhaps that Locke’s self-contradiction in this regard is more apparent than real; that the two processes of combining simple ideas are essentially different, just because in the later process they are combined by a conscious act of the mind as accidents of a ‘something,’ of which thegeneralidea has been previously formed, whereas in the earlier one they are merely presented together ‘by nature,’ and,ex hypothesi, though they gradually suggest, do not carry with them any reference to a ‘substratum.’ But upon this we must remark that the presentation of ideas ‘by nature’ or ‘by God,’ though a mode of speech of which Locke in his account of the origin of knowledge freely avails himself, means nothing else than their relation to a ‘substratum,’ if not ‘wherein they do subsist,’ yet ‘from which they do result.’ If then it is for consciousness that ideas are presented together by nature, they already carry with them that reference to a substratum which is supposed gradually to result from their concurrence. If it is not for consciousness that they are so presented, if they do notseverallycarry with them a reference to ‘something,’ how is it they come to do so in the gross? If a single sensation of heat is not referred to a hot thing, why should it be so referred on the thousandth recurrence? Because perhaps, recurring constantly in the same relations, it compels the inference of permanent antecedents? But the ‘same relations’ mean relations to the same things, and the observation of these relations presupposes just that conception ofthe thingwhich it is sought to account for,
But it is explicitly to substance that Locke makes them refer themselves.
38. We are estopped, however, from any such explanation of Locke as would suggest these ulterior questions by his explicit statement that ‘all simple ideas, all sensible qualities, carry with them a supposition of a substratum to exist in, and of a substance wherein they inhere.’ The vindication of himself against the pathetic complaint of Stillingfleet, that he had ‘almost discarded substance out of the reasonable part of the world,’ in which this statement occurs, was certainly not needed. Already in the original text the simple ideas, of which the association suggests the idea of substance, are such as ‘the mind finds in exterior things or by reflection on its own operations.’ But to find them in an exterior thing is to find them in a substance, a ‘something it knows not what,’ regarded as outward, just as to find them by reflection on its own operations, as its own, is to find them in such a substance regarded as inward. The process then by which, according to Locke, the general idea of substance is arrived at, presupposes this idea just as much as the process, by which ideas of particular sorts of substances are got, presupposes it, and the distinction between the two processes, as he puts it, disappears.
In the process by which we are supposed to arrive at complex ideas of substances the beginning is the same as the end.
39. The same paralogism appears under a slightly altered form when it is stated (in the first letter to Stillingfleet) that the idea of substance as the ‘general indetermined idea ofsomethingis by the abstraction of the mind derived from the simple ideas of sensation and reflection.’ Now ‘abstraction’ with Locke means the ‘separation of an idea from all other ideas that accompany it in its real existence.’ (Book II. chap. xii. sec. 1.) It is clear then that it is impossible to abstract an idea which is notthere, in real existence, to be abstracted. Accordingly, if the ‘general idea of something’ is derived by abstraction from simple ideas of sensation and reflection, it must be originally given with these ideas, or it would not afterwards be separated from them. Conversely they must carry this idea with them, and cannot be simple ideas at all, but compound ones, each made up of ‘the general idea of something or being,’ and of an accident which this something supports. How then does the general idea of substance or ‘something,’as derived, differ from the idea of ‘something,’ as given in the original ideas of sensation and reflection from which the supposed process of abstraction starts? What can be said of the one that cannot be said of the other? If the derived general idea is of something related to qualities, what, according to Locke, are the original ideas but those of qualities related to something? It is true that the general idea is of something, of which nothing further is known, related to qualities in general, not to any particular qualities. But the ‘simple idea’ in like manner can only be of an indeterminate quality, for in order to any determination of it, the idea must be put together with another idea, and so cease to be simple; and the ‘something,’ to which it is referred, must for the same reason be a purely indeterminate something. If, in order to avoid concluding that Locke thus unwittingly identified the abstract general idea of substance with any simple idea, we say that the simple idea, because not abstract, is not indeterminate but of a real quality, defined by manifold relations, we fall upon the new difficulty that, if so, not only does the simple idea become manifoldly complex, but just such an ‘idea of a particular sort of substance’ as, according to Locke, is derived from the derived idea of substance in general. As an idea of a quality, it is also necessarily an idea of a correlative ‘something;’ and if it is an idea of a quality in its reality,i.e.as determined by various relations, it must be an idea of a variously qualified something,i.e.of a particular substance. Then not merely the middle of the twofold process by which we are supposed to get at ‘complex ideas of substances’—i.e.theabstractsomething; but its end—i.e.theparticularsomething—turns out to be the same as its beginning.
Doctrine of abstraction inconsistent with doctrine of complex ideas.
40. The fact is, that in making the general idea of substance precede particular ideas of sorts of substances (as he certainly however confusedly does, in the 23rd chapter of the Second Book, [1] as well as by implication in his doctrine of modes. Book II. chap. xii. sec. 4), Locke stumbled upon a truth which he was not aware of, and which will not fit into his ordinary doctrine of general ideas: the truth that knowledge is a process from the more abstract to the more concrete, not the reverse, as is commonly supposed, and as Locke’s definition of abstraction implies. Throughout his prolix discussion of ‘substance’ and ‘essence’ we find two opposite notions perpetually cross each other: one that knowledge begins with the simple idea, the other that it begins with the real thing as particularized by manifold relations. According to the former notion, simple ideas being given, void of relation, as the real, the mind of its own act proceeds to bring them into relation and compound them: according to the latter, a thing of various properties (i.e.relations [2]) being given as the real, the mind proceeds to separate these from each other. According to the one notion the intellectual process, as one of complication, ends just where, according to the other notion, as one of abstraction, it began.
[1] See above, paragraph 35.
[2] Cf. Book II. chap, xxiii. sec. 37. Most of the simple ideas that make up our complex ideas of substances are only powers …e.g.the greater part of the ideas which make up our complex idea of gold … are nothing elsebut so many relations to other substances.’
The confusion covered by use of ‘particulars’.
41. The chief verbal equivocation, under which Locke disguises the confusion of these two notions, is to be found in the use of the word ‘particular,’ which is sometimes used for the mere individual having no community with anything else, sometimes for the thing qualified by relation to a multitude of other things. The simple idea or sensation; the ‘something’ which the simple idea is supposed to ‘report,’ and which Locke at his pleasure identifies with it; the complex idea; and the thing as the collection of the properties which the simple idea ‘reports,’ all are merged by Locke under the one term ‘particulars.’ As the only consistency in his use of the term seems to lie in its opposition to ‘generals,’ we naturally turn to the passage where this opposition is spoken of most at large.
Locke’s account of abstract general ideas.
42. ‘General and universal belong not to the real existence of things, but are the inventions and creatures of the understanding, made by it for its own use, and concern only signs, whether words or ideas. Words are general when used for signs of general ideas, and so are applicable indifferently to many particular things; and ideas are general, when they are set up as the representatives of many particular things; but universality belongs not to things themselves, which are all of them particular in their existence, even those words and ideas which in their signification are general. When therefore we quit particulars, the generals that rest are only creatures of our own making, their general nature being nothing but the capacity they are put into by the understanding, of signifying or representing many particulars. For the signification they have is nothing but a relation that by the mind of man is added to them. … The sorting of things under names is the workmanship of the understanding, taking occasion from the similitude it observes among them to make abstract general ideas, and set them up in the mind, with names annexed to them, as patterns or forms (for in that sense the word form has a very proper signification), to which as particular things are found to agree, so they come to be of that species, have that denomination, or are put into that classis. For when we say this is a man, that a horse; this justice, that cruelty, what do we else but rank things under different specific names, as agreeing to those abstract ideas, of which we have made those names the signs? And what are the essences of those species, set out and marked by names, but those abstract ideas in the mind; which are, as it were, the bonds between particular things that exist, and the names they are to be ranked under?’ (Book III. chap. iii. secs. 11 and 13.)
‘Things not general.’
43. In the first of these remarkable passages we begin with the familiar opposition between ideas as ‘the creatures of the mind’ and real things. Ideas, and the words which express them, may be general, but things cannot. ‘They are all of them particular in their existence.’ Then the ideas and words themselves appear as things, and as such ‘in their existence’ can only be particular. It is only in its signification,i.e.in its relation to other ideas which it represents, that an idea, particular itself, becomes general, and this relation does not belong to the ‘existence’ of the idea or to the idea in itself, but ‘by the mind of man is added to it.’ The relation being thus a fictitious addition to reality, ‘general and universal are mere inventions and creatures of the understanding.’ The next passage, in spite of the warning that all ideas are particular in their existence, still speaks of general ideas, but only as ‘set up in the mind.’ To these ‘particular things existing are found to agree,’ and the agreement is expressed in such judgments as ‘this is a man, that a horse; this is justice, that cruelty;’ the ‘this’ and ‘that’ representing ‘particular existing things,’ ‘horse’ and ‘cruelty’ abstract general ideas to which these are found to agree.
Generality an invention of the mind.
44. One antithesis is certainly maintained throughout these passages—that between ‘real existence which is always particular, and the workmanship of the mind,’ which ‘invents’ generality. Real existence, however, is ascribed(a)to things themselves,(b)to words and ideas, even those which become of general signification,(c)to mixed modes, for in the proposition ‘this is justice,’ the ‘this’ must represent a mixed mode. (Cf. II. xii. 5.) The characteristic of the ‘really existent,’ which distinguishes it from the workmanship of the mind, would seem to be mere individuality, exclusive of all relation. The simple ‘this’ and ‘that,’ apart from the relation expressed in the judgment, being mere individuals, are really existent; and conversely, ideas, which in themselves have real existence, when a relation, in virtue of which they become significant, has been ‘added to them by the mind,’ become ‘inventions of the understanding.’ This consists with the express statement in the chapter on ‘relation’ (II. xxv. 8), that it is ‘not contained in the existence of things, but is something extraneous and superinduced.’ Thus generality, as a relation between any one of a multitude ofsingle(not necessarilysimple) ideas,e.g.single ideas of horses, and all the rest—a relation which belongs not to any one of them singly—is superinduced by the understanding upon theirreal,i.e.theirsingleexistence. Apart from this relation, it would seem, or in their mere singleness, even ideas of mixed modes,e.g.this actof justice, may have real existence.
The result is, that the feeling of each moment is alone real.
45. The result of Locke’s statement, thus examined, clearly is that real existence belongs to the present momentary act of consciousness, and to that alone. Ascribed as it is to the ‘thing itself,’ to the idea which,as general, has it not, and to the mixed mode, it is in each case the momentary presence to consciousness that constitutes it. To a thing itself, as distinct from the presentation to consciousness, it cannot belong, for such a ‘thing’ means that which remains identical with itself under manifold appearances, and both identity and appearance imply relation,i.e.‘an invention of the mind.’ As little can it belong to thecontentof any idea, since this is in all cases constituted by relation to other ideas. Thus if I judge ‘this is sweet,’ the real existence lies in the simple ‘this,’ in the mere form of presentation at an individualnow, not in the relation of this to other flavours which constitutes the determinate sweetness, or to a sweetness at other times tasted. If I judge ‘this is a horse,’ a present vision really exists, but not so its relation to other sensations of sight or touch, closely precedent or sequent, which make up the ‘total impression;’ much less its relation to other like impressions thought of, in consideration of which a common name is applied to it. If, again, I judge ‘this is an act of justice,’ the present thought of the act, as present, really exists; not so those relations of the act which either make it just, or make me apply the name to it. It is true that according to this doctrine the ‘really existent’ is the unmeaning, and that any statement about it is impossible. We cannot judge of it without bringing it into relation, in which it ceases to be what in its mere singleness it is, and thus loses its reality, overlaid by the ‘invention of the understanding.’ Nay, if we say that it is the mere ‘this’ or ‘that,’ as such—the simple ‘here’ and ‘now’—the very ‘this,’ in being mentioned or judged of, becomes related to other things which we have called ‘this,’ and the ‘now’ to other ‘nows.’ Thus each acquires a generality, and with it becomes fictitious. As Plato long ago taught—though the lesson seems to require to be taught anew to each generation of philosophers—a consistent sensationalism must be speechless. Locke, himself, in one of the passages quoted, implicitly admits this by indicating that only through relations or in their generality are ideas ‘significant.’
How Locke avoids this result.
46. He was not the man, however, to become speechless out of sheer consistency. He has a redundancy of terms and tropes for disguising from himself and his reader the real import of his doctrine. In the latter part of the passage quoted we find that the relation or community between ideas, which the understanding invents, is occasioned by a ‘similitude which it observes among things.’ The general idea having been thus invented, ‘things are found to agree with it’—as is natural since they suggested it. Hereupon we are forced to ask how, if all relation is superinduced upon real existence by the understanding, anobservedrelation of similitude among things can occasion the superinduction; and again how it happens, if all generality of ideas is a fiction of the mind, that ‘things are found to agree with general ideas.’ How can the real existence called ‘this’ or ‘that,’ which only really exists so far as nothing can be said of it but that it is ‘this’ or ‘that,’ agree with anything whatever? Agreement implies some content, some determination by properties,i.e.by relations, in the things agreeing, whereas the really existent excludes relation. How then can it agree with the abstract general idea, the import of which, according to Locke’s own showing, depends solely on relation?
The ‘particular’ was to him the individual qualified by general relations.
47. Such questions did not occur to Locke, because while asserting the mere individuality of things existent, and the simplicity of all ideas asgiven,i.e.as real, he never fully recognised the meaning of his own assertion. Under the shelter of the ambiguous ‘particular’ he could at any time substitute for themereindividual thedeterminateindividual, or individual qualified by community with other things; just as, again, under covering of the ‘simple idea’ he could substitute for the mere momentary consciousness the perception of a definite thing. Thus when he speaks of the judgment ‘this is gold’ as expressing the agreement of a real (i.e.individual) thing with a general idea, he thinks of ‘this’ a& already having, apart from the judgment, the determination which it first receives in the judgment. He thinks of it, in other words, not as the mere ‘perishing’ sensation [1] or individual void of relation, but as a sensation symbolical of other possibilities of sensation which, as so many relations of athingto us or to other things, are connoted by the common noun ‘gold.’ It thus ‘agrees’ with the abstract idea or conception of qualities,i.e.because it is already the ‘creature of the understanding,’ determined by relations which constitute a generality and community between it and other things. Such a notion of the really existent thing—wholly inconsistent with his doctrine of relation and of the general—Locke has before him when he speaks of general ideas as formed by abstraction of certain qualities from real things, or of certain ideas from other ideas that accompany them in real existence. ‘When some one first lit on a parcel of that sort of substance we denote by the wordgold, … its peculiar colour, perhaps, and weight were the first he abstracted from it, to make the complex idea of that species … another perhaps added to these the ideas of fusibility and fixedness … another its ductility and solubility in aqua regia. These, or part of these, put together, usually make the complex idea in men’s minds of that sort of body we callgold.’ (Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 9.) Here the supposition is that a thing, multitudinously qualified, is given apart from any action of the understanding, which then proceeds to act in the way of successively detaching (‘abstracting’) these qualities and recombining them as the idea of a species. Such a recombination, indeed, would seem but wasted labour. The qualities are assumed to be already found by the understanding and found as in a thing; otherwise the understanding could not abstract them from it. Why should it then painfully put together in imperfect combination what has been previously given to it complete? Of the complex idea which results from the work of abstraction, nothing can be said but a small part of what is predicable of the known thing which the possibility of such abstraction presupposes.