[1] ‘All impressions are perishing existences.’—Hume. See below, paragraph 208.
This is the real thing from which abstraction is supposed to start.
48. ‘The complex idea of a species,’ spoken of in the passage last quoted, corresponds to what, in Locke’s theory of substance, is called the ‘idea of a particular sort of substance.’ In considering that theory we saw that, according to his account, the beginning of the process by which the ‘abstract idea of substance’ was formed, was either that abstract idea itself, the mere ‘something,’ or by a double contradiction the ‘complex idea of a particular sort of substance’ which yet we only come to haveafterthe abstract idea has been formed. In the passage now before us there is no direct mention of the abstraction of the ‘substratum,’ as such, but only of the quality, and hence there is no ambiguity about the paralogism. It is not a mere ‘something’ that the man ‘lights upon,’ and thus it is not this that holds the place at once of the given and the derived but a something having manifold qualities to be abstracted. In other words, it is the ‘idea of a particular sort of substance’ that he starts from, and it is just this again to which as a ‘complex idea of a species,’ his understanding is supposed gradually to lead him. The understanding, indeed, according to Locke, is never adequate to nature, and accordingly the qualities abstracted and recombined in the complex idea always fall vastly short of the fulness of those given in the real thing; or as he states it in terms of the multiplication table (Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 10), ‘some who have examined this species more accurately could, I believe, enumerate ten times as many properties in gold, all of them as inseparable from its internal constitution, as its colour or weight; and it is probable if any one knew all the properties that are by divers men known of this metal, there would an hundred times as many ideas go to the complex idea of gold, as any one man has yet in his; and yet perhaps that would not be the thousandth part of what is to be discovered in it.’ These two million properties, and upwards, which await abstraction in gold, are all, it must be noted, according to Locke’s statement elsewhere (Book II. chap xxiii. sec. 37), ‘nothing but so many relations to other substances.’ It is just on account of these multitudinous relations of the real thing that the understanding is inadequate to its comprehension. Yet according to Locke’s doctrine of relation these must all be themselves ‘superinductions of the mind,’ and the greater the fulness which they constitute, the further is the distance from themereindividuality which elsewhere, in contrast with the fictitiousness of ‘generals,’ appears as the equivalent of real existence.
Yet, according to the doctrine of relation, a creation of thought.
49. The real thing and the creation of the understanding thus change places. That which is given to the understanding as the real, which it finds and does not make, is not now the bare atom upon which relations have to be artificially superinduced. Nor is it the mere present feeling, which has ‘by the mind of man’ to be made ‘significant,’ or representative of past experience. It is itself an inexhaustible complex of relations, whether they are considered as subsisting between it and other things, or between the sensations which it is ‘fitted to produce in us.’ These are the real, which is thus a system, a community; and if the ‘general,’ as Locke says, is that which ‘has the capacity of representing many particulars,’ the real thing itself is general, for it represents—nay, is constituted by—the manifold particular feelings which, mediately or immediately, it excites in us. On the other hand, the invention of the understanding, instead of giving ‘significance’ or content to the mere individuality of the real, as it does according to Locke’s theory of ‘generals,’ now appears as detaching fragments from the fulness of the real to recombine them in an ‘abstract essence’ of its own. Instead of adding complexity to the simple, it subtracts from the complex.
Summary of the above contradictions.
50. To gather up, then, the lines of contradiction which traverse Locke’s doctrine of real existence as it appears in his account of general and complex ideas:—The idea of substance is an abstract general idea, not given directly in sensation or reflection, but ‘invented by the understanding,’ as by consequence must be ideas of particular sorts of substances which presuppose the abstract idea. On the other hand, the ideas of sensation and reflection, from which the idea of substance is abstracted, and to which asrealit as aninventionis opposed, are ideas of ‘something,’ and are only real as representative of something. But this idea of something = the idea of substance. Therefore the idea of substance is the presupposition, and the condition of the reality, of the very ideas from which it is said to be derived. Again, if the general idea of substance is got by abstraction, it must be originally given in conjunction with the ideas of sensation or reflection from which it is afterwards abstracted,i.e.separated. But in such conjunction it constitutes the ideas of particular sorts of substances. Therefore these latter ideas, which yet we ‘come to have’ after the general idea of substance, form the prior experience from which this general idea is abstracted. Further, this original experience, from which abstraction starts, being of ‘sorts of substances,’ and these sorts being constituted by relations, it follows that relation is given in the original experience. But that which is so given is ‘real existence’ in opposition to the invention of the understanding. Therefore these relations, and the community which they constitute, really exist. On the other hand, mere individuals alone really exist, while relations between them are superinduced by the mind. Once more, the simple idea given in sensation or reflection, as it is madefornotbyus, has or results from real existence, whereas general and complex ideas are the workmanship of the mind. But this workmanship consists in the abstraction of ideas from each other, and from that to which they are related as qualities. It thus presupposes at once the general idea of ‘something’ or substance, and the complex idea of qualities of the something. Therefore it must be general and complex ideas that are real, as made for and not by us, and that afford the inventive understanding its material. Yet if so—if they aregiven—why make them over again by abstraction and recomplication?
They cannot be overcome without violence to Locke’s fundamental principles.
51. We may get over the last difficulty, indeed, by distinguishing between the complex and confused, between abstraction and analysis. We may say that what is originally given in experience is the confused, which to us is simple, or in other words has no definite content, because, till it has been analysed, nothing can be said of it, though in itself it is infinitely complex; that thus the process, which Locke roughly calls abstraction, and which, as he describes it, consists merely in taking grains from the big heap that is given in order to make a little heap of one’s own, is yet, rightly understood, the true process of knowledge—a process which may be said at once to begin with the complex and to end with it, to take from the concrete and to constitute it, because it begins with that which is in itself the fulness of reality, but which only becomes so for us as it is gradually spelt out by our analysis. To put the case thus, however, is not to correct Locke’s statement, but wholly to change his doctrine. It renders futile his easy method of ‘sending a man to his senses’ for the discovery of reality, and destroys the supposition that the elements of knowledge can be ascertained by the interrogation of the individual consciousness. Such consciousness can tell nothing of its own beginning, if of this beginning, as of the purely indefinite, nothing can be said; if it only becomes defined through relations, which in its state of primitive potentiality are not actually in it. The senses again, so far from being, in that mere passivity which Locke ascribes to them, organs of ready-made reality, can have nothing to tell, if it is only through the active processes of ‘discerning, comparing, and compounding,’ that they acquire a definite content. But to admit this is nothing else than, in order to avoid a contradiction of which Locke was not aware, to efface just that characteristic of his doctrine which commends it to ‘common sense’—the supposition, namely, that the simple datum of sense, as it is for sense or in its mere individuality, is the real, in opposition to the ‘invention of the mind.’ That this supposition is to make the real the unmeaning, the empty, of which nothing can be said, he did not see because, under an unconscious delusion of words, even while asserting that the names of simple ideas are undefinable (Book III. chap. iv. sec. 4), which means that nothing can be said of such ideas, and while admitting that the processes of discerning, comparing, and compounding ideas, which mean nothing else than the bringing them into relation [1] or the superinduction upon them of fictions of the mind, are necessary to constitute even the beginnings of knowledge, he yet allows himself to invest the simple idea, as the real, with those definite qualities which can only accrue to it, according to his showing, from the ‘inventive’ action of the understanding.
[1] Locke only states this explicitly of comparison, ‘an operation of the mind about its ideas, upon which depends all that large tribe of ideas, comprehended under relation.’ (Book II. chap. xi. sec. 4.) It is clear, however, that the same remark must apply to the ‘discernment of ideas,’ which is strictly correlative to comparison, and to their composition, which means that they are brought into relation as constituents of a whole.
That these three processes are necessary to constitute the beginnings of knowledge, according to Locke, appears from Book II. chap. xi. sec. 15, taken in connection with what precedes in that chapter.
As real existence, the simple idea carries with it ‘invented’ relation of cause.
52. Thus invested, it is already substance or symbolical of substance, not a mere feeling but a felt thing, recognised either under that minimum of qualification which enables us merely to say that it is ‘something,’ or (in Locke’s language) abstract substance, or under the greater complication of qualities which constitutes a ‘particular sort of substance’—gold, horse, water, &c. Real existence thus means substance. It is not the simple idea or sensation by itself that is real, but this idea as caused by a thing. It is the thing that is primarily the real; the idea only secondarily so, because it results from a power in the thing. As we have seen, Locke’s doctrine of the necessary adequacy, reality, and truth of the simple idea turns upon the supposition that it is, and announces itself as, an ‘ectype’ of an ‘archetype.’ But there is not a different archetype to each sensation; if there were, in ‘reporting’ it the sensation would do no more than report itself. It is the supposed single cause of manifold different sensations or simple ideas, to which a single name is applied. ‘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. … 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 single idea), and cannot but be adequate … and so all simple ideas are adequate.’ (Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 2.) The sugar, which is here the ‘archetype’ and the source of reality in the idea, is just what Locke elsewhere calls ‘a particular sort of substance,’ as the ‘something’ from which a certain set of sensations result, and in which, as sensible qualities, they inhere. Strictly speaking, however, according to Locke, that which inheres in the thing is not the quality, as it is to us, but a power to produce it. (Book II. chap. viii. sec. 28, and c. xxiii. 37.)
Correlativity of cause and substance.
53. In calling a sensation or idea the product of a power, substance is presupposed just as much as in calling it a sensible quality; only that with Locke ‘quality’ conveyed the notion of inherence in the substance, power that of relation to an effect notinthe substance itself. ‘Secondary qualities are nothing but the powers whichsubstanceshave to produce several ideas in us by our senses, which ideas are not in the things themselves, otherwise than as anything is in its cause.’ (Book II. chap, xxiii. sec. 9.) ‘Most of the simple ideas, that make up our complex ideas of substances, are only powers … or relations to other substances (or, as he explains elsewhere, ‘relations to our perceptions,’ [1]), and are not really in the substance considered barely in itself.’ (Book II. chap, xxiii. sec. 37, and xxxi. 8.) That this implies the inclusion of the idea of cause in that of substance, appears from Locke’s statement that ‘whatever is considered by us to operate to the producing any particular simple idea which did not before exist, hath thereby in our minds the relation of a cause.’ (Book II. chap. xxvi. sec. 1.) Thus to be conscious of the reality of a simple idea, as that which is not made by the subject of the idea, but results from a power in a thing, is to have the idea of substance as cause. This latter idea must be the condition of the consciousness of reality. If the consciousness of reality is implied in the beginning of knowledge, so must the correlative ideas be of cause and substance.
[1] Book II. chap. xxi. sec. 3.
How do we know that ideas correspond to reality of things? Locke’s answer.
54. On examining Locke’s second rehearsal of his theory in the fourth book of the Essay—that ‘On Knowledge’—we are led to this result quite as inevitably as in the book ‘On Ideas.’ He has a special chapter on the ‘reality of human knowledge,’ where he puts the problem thus:—‘It is evident the mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention of the ideas it has of them. Our knowledge therefore is real only so far as there is a conformity between our ideas and the reality of things. But what shall be here the criterion? How shall the mind, when it perceives nothing but its own ideas, know that they agree with things themselves?’ (Book IV. chap. iv. sec. 3.) It knows this, he proceeds to show, in the case of simple ideas, because ‘since the mind can by no means make them to itself, they must be the product of things operating on the mind in a natural way. … Simple ideas are not fictions of our fancies, but the natural and regular productions of things without us, really operating upon us; and so carry with them all the conformity which is intended, or which our state requires, for they represent to us things under those appearances which they are fitted to produce in us; whereby we are enabled to distinguish the sorts of particular substances,’ &c. &c. (Book IV. chap. iv. sec. 4.) The whole force of this passage depends on the notion that simple ideas are already to the subject of them not his own making, but the product of a thing, which in its relation to these ideas is a ‘particular sort of substance.’ It is the reception of such ideas, so related, that Locke calls ‘sensitive knowledge of particular existence,’ or a ‘perception of the mind, employed about the particular existence of finite beings without us.’ (Book IV. chap. ii. sec. 14.) This, however, he distinguishes from two other ‘degrees of knowledge or certainty,’ ‘intuition’ and ‘demonstration,’ of which the former is attained when the agreement or disagreement of two ideas is perceived immediately, the latter when it is perceived mediately through the intervention of certain other agreements or disagreements (less or more), each of which must in turn be perceived immediately. Demonstration, being thus really but a series of intuitions, carries the same certainty as intuition, only it is a certainty which it requires more or less pains and attention to apprehend. (Book IV. chap. ii. sec. 4.) Of the ‘other perception of the mind, employed about the particular existence of finite beings without us,’ which ‘passes under the name of knowledge,’ he explains that although ‘going beyond bare probability, it reaches not perfectly to either of the foregoing degrees of certainty.’ ‘There can be nothing more certain,’ he proceeds, ‘than that the idea we receive from an external object is in our minds; this is intuitive knowledge. But whether there be anything more than barely that idea in our minds, whether we can thence certainly infer the existence of anything without us which corresponds to that idea, is that whereof some men think there may be a question made; because men may have such ideas in their minds, when no such thing exists, no such object affects their senses.’ (Book IV. chap. ii. sec. 14.)
It assumes that simple ideas are consciously referred to things that cause them.
55. It is clear that here in his very statement of the question Locke begs the answer. If the intuitive certainty is that ‘the idea wereceive from an external objectis in our minds,’ [1] how is it possible to doubt whether such an object exists and affects our senses? This impossibility of speaking of the simple idea, except as received from an object, may account for Locke’s apparent inconsistency in finding the assurance of the reality of knowledge (under the phrase ‘evidence of the senses’) just in that ‘perception’ which reaches not to intuitive or demonstrative certainty, and only ‘passes under the name of knowledge.’ In the passage just quoted he shows that he is cognizant of the distinction between the simple idea and the perception of an existence corresponding to it, and in consequence distinguishes this perception from proper intuition, but in the very statement of the distinction it eludes him. The simple idea, as he speaks of it, becomes itself, as consciously ‘received from an external object,’ the perception of existence; just as we have previously seen it become the judgment of identity or perception of the ‘agreement of an idea with itself,’ which is his first kind of knowledge.
[1] I do not now raise the question, What are here the ideas, which must be immediately perceived to agree or disagree in order to make it a case of ‘intuitive certainty’ or knowledge according to Locke’s definition. See below, paragraphs 59, 101, and 147.
Lively ideas real, because they must be effects of things.
56. In short, with Locke the simple idea, the perception of existence corresponding to the idea, and the judgment of identity, are absolutely merged, and in mutual involution, sometimes under one designation, sometimes under another, are alike presented as the beginning of knowledge. As occasion requires, each does duty for the other. Thus, if the ‘reality of knowledge’ be in question, the simple idea, which is given, is treated as involving the perception of existence, and the reality is established. If in turn this perception is distinguished from the simple idea, and it is asked whether the correspondence between idea and existence is properly matter of knowledge, the simple idea has only to be treated as involving the judgment of identity, which again involves that of existence, and the question is answered. So in the context under consideration (Book IV. chap. ii. sec. 14), after raising the question as to the existence of a thing corresponding to the idea, he answers it by the counter question, ‘whether anyone is not invincibly conscious to himself of a different perception, when he looks on the sun by day, and thinks on it by night; when he actually tastes wormwood, or smells a rose, or only thinks on that savour or odour? We as plainly find the difference there is between any idea revived in our minds by our own memory, and actually coming into our minds by our senses, as we do between any two distinct ideas.’ The force of the above lies in its appeal to the perception of identity, or—to apply the language in which Locke describes this perception—the knowledge that the idea which a man calls the smell of a rose is the very idea it is. [1] The mere difference in liveliness between the present and the recalled idea, which, as Berkeley and Hume rightly maintained, is the only difference between them as mere ideas, cannot by itself constitute the difference between the knowledge of the presence of a thing answering to the idea and the knowledge of its absence. It can only do this if the more lively idea isidentifiedwith past lively ideas as a representation of one and the same thing which ‘agrees with itself’ in contrast to the multiplicity of the sensations, its signs. Only in virtue of this identification can either the liveliness of the idea show that the thing—the sun or the rose—is there, or the want of liveliness that it is not, for without it there would be no thing to be there or not to be there. It is because this identification is what Locke understands by the first sort of perception of agreement between ideas, and because he virtually finds this perception again in the simple idea, that the simple idea is to him the index of reality. But if so, the idea in its primitive simplicity is the sign of a thing that is ever the same in the same relations, and we find the ‘workmanship of the mind,’ its inventions of substance, cause, and relation, in the very rudiments of knowledge.
[1] See above, paragraph 25.
Present sensation gives knowledge of existence.
57. With that curious tendency to reduplication, which is one of his characteristics, Locke, after devoting a chapter to the ‘reality of human knowledge,’ of which the salient passage as to simple ideas has been already quoted, has another upon our ‘knowledge of existence.’ Here again it is the sensitive knowledge of things actually present to our senses, which with him is merely a synonym for the simple idea, that is the prime criterion. (Book IV. chap. iii. secs. 5 and 2, and chap. ii. sec. 2.) After speaking of the knowledge of our own being and of the existence of a God (about which more will be said below), he proceeds, ‘No particular man can know the existence of any other being, but only when, by actually operating upon him, it makes itself perceived by him. For the having the idea of anything in our mind no more proves the existence of that thing, than the picture of a man evidences his being in the world, or the visions of a dream make thereby a true history. It is therefore the actual receiving of ideas from without, that gives us notice of the existence of other things, and makes us know that something doth exist at that time without us, which causes that idea in us, though perhaps we neither know nor consider how it does it; for it takes not from the certainty of our senses and the ideas we receive by them, that we know not the manner wherein they are produced;e.g.whilst I write this, I have, by the paper affecting my eyes, that idea produced in my mind, which, whatever object causes, I callwhite; by which I know that the quality or accident (i.e.whose appearance before my eyes always causes that idea) doth really exist, and hath a being without me. And of this the greatest assurance. I can possibly have, and to which my faculties can attain, is the testimony of my eyes, which are the proper and sole judges of this thing, whose testimony I have reason to rely on, as so certain, that I can no more doubt whilst I write this, that I see white and black, and that something really exists that causes that sensation in me, than that I write and move my hand.’ (Book IV. chap. xi. secs. 1, 2.)
Reasons why its testimony must be trusted.
58. Reasons are afterwards given for the assurance that the ‘perceptions’ in question are produced in us by ‘exterior causes affecting our senses.’ The first(a)is, that ‘those that want the organs of any sense never can have the ideas belonging to that sense produced in their mind.’ The next(b), that whereas ‘if I turn my eyes at noon toward the sun, I cannot avoid the ideas which the light or the sun then produces in me;’ on the other hand, ‘when my eyes are shut or windows fast, as I can at pleasure recall to my mind the ideas of light or the sun, which former sensations had lodged in my memory, so I can at pleasure lay them by.’ Again(c), ‘many of those ideas are produced in us with pain which afterwards we remember without the least offence. Thus the pain of heat or cold, when the idea of it is revived in our minds, gives us no disturbance; which, when felt, was very troublesome, and is again, when actually repeated; which is occasioned by the disorder the external object causes in our body, when applied to it.’ Finally (d), ‘our senses in many cases bear witness to the truth of each other’s report, concerning the existence of sensible things without us. He that sees a fire may, if he doubt whether it be anything more than a bare fancy, feel it too.’ Then comes the conclusion, dangerously qualified: ‘When our senses do actually convey into our understandings any idea, we cannot but be satisfied that there doth something at that time really exist without us, which doth affect our senses, and by them give notice of itself to our apprehensive faculties, and actually produce that idea which we then perceive; and we cannot so far distrust their testimony as to doubt that such collections of simple ideas, as we have observed by our senses to be united together, actually exist together. But this knowledge extends as far as the present testimony of our senses, employed about particular objects, that do then affect them, and no farther. For if I saw such a collection of simple ideas as is wont to be called man, existing together one minute since, and am now alone; I cannot be certain that the same man exists now, since there is no necessary connexion of his existence a minute since with his existence now. By a thousand ways he may cease to be, since I had the testimony of my senses for his existence.’ (Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 9.)
How does this account fit Locke’s definition of knowledge?
59. Upon the ‘knowledge of the existence of things,’ thus established, it has to be remarked in the first place that, after all, according to Locke’s explicit statement, it is not properly knowledge. It is ‘an assurance that deserves the name of knowledge’ (Book IV. chap. ii. sec. 14, and xi. sec. 3), yet being neither itself an intuition of agreement between ideas, nor resoluble into a series of such intuitions, the definition of knowledge excludes it. Only if existence were itself an ‘idea,’ would the consciousness of the agreement of the idea with it be a case of knowledge; but to make existence an idea is to make the whole question about the agreement of ideas, as such, with existence, as such, unmeaning. To seek escape from this dilemma by calling the consciousness of the agreement in question an ‘assurance’ instead of knowledge is a mere verbal subterfuge. There can be no assurance of agreement between an idea and that which is no object of consciousness at all. If, however, existence is an object of consciousness, it can, according to Locke, be nothing but an idea, and the question as to theassuranceof agreement is no less unmeaning than the question as to theknowledgeof it. The raising of the question in fact, as Locke puts it, implies the impossibility of answering it. It cannot be raised with any significance, unless existence is external to and other than an idea. It cannot be answered unless existence is, or is given in, an object of consciousness,i.e.an idea.
Locke’s account of the testimony of sense renders his question as to its veracity superfluous.
60. As usual, Locke disguises this difficulty from himself, because in answering the question he alters it. The question,as he asks it, is whether, given the idea, we can have posterior assurance of something else corresponding to it. The question,as he answers it, is whether the idea includes the consciousness of a real thing as a constituent; and the answer consists in the simple assertion, variously repeated, that it does. It is clear, however, that this answer to the latter question does not answer, but renders unmeaning, the question as it is originally asked. If, according to Locke’s own showing, there is nowhere for anything to be found by us but in our ‘ideas’ or our consciousness—if thethingis given in and with the idea, so that the idea is merely the thingex parte nostrâ—then to ask if the idea agrees with the thing is as futile as to ask whether hearing agrees with sound, or the voice with the words it utters. That the thing is so given is implied throughout Locke’s statement of the ‘assurance we have of the existence of material beings,’ as well as of the confirmations of this assurance. If the ‘idea which I call white’ means the knowledge that ‘the property or accident (i.e.whose appearance before my eyes always causes that idea) doth really exist and hath a being without me,’ then consciousness of existence—outward, permanent, substantive, and causative existence—is involved in the idea, and no ulterior question of agreement between idea and existence can properly arise. But unless the simple idea is so interpreted, the senses have no testimony to give. If it is so interpreted, no extraneous ‘reason to rely upon the testimony’ can be discovered, for such reason can only be a repetition of the testimony itself.
Confirmations of the testimony turn upon the distinction between ‘impression’ and ‘idea’.
61. This becomes clearer upon a view of the confirmations of the testimony, as Locke gives them. They all, we may remark by the way, presuppose a distinction between the simple idea as originally represented and the same as recalled or revived. This distinction, fixed by the verbal one between ‘impression’ and ‘idea,’ we shall find constantly maintained and all-important in Hume’s system; but in Locke, though upon it (as we shall see) rests his distinction between real and nominal essence and his confinement of general knowledge to the latter, it seems only to turn up as an afterthought. In the account of the reality and adequacy of ideas it does not appear at all. There the distinction is merely between the simple idea, as such, and the complex, as such, without any further discrimination of the simple idea as originally produced from the same as recalled. So, too, in the opening account of the reception of simple ideas (Book II. chap. xii. sec. 1), ‘Perception,’ ‘Retention,’ and ‘Discerning’ are all reckoned together as alike forms of thepassivityof the mind, in contrast with its activity in combination and abstraction, though retention and discerning have been previously described in terms which imply activity. In the ‘confirmations’ before us, however, the distinction between the originally produced and the revived is essential.
They depend on language which presupposes the ascription of sensation to an outward cause.
62. The first turns upon the impossibility of producing an ideade novowithout the action of sensitive organs; the two next upon the difference between the idea as produced through these organs and the like idea as revived at the will of the individual. It is hence inferred that the idea as originally produced is the work of a thing, which must existin rerum naturâ, and by way of a fourth ‘confirmation’ the man who doubts this in the case of one sensation is invited to try it in another. If, on seeing a fire, he thinks it ‘bare fancy,’i.e.doubts whether his idea is caused by a thing, let him put his hand into it. This last ‘confirmation’ need not be further noticed here, since the operation of a producing thing is as certain or as doubtful for one sensation as for another. [1] Two certainties are not more sure than one, nor can two doubts make a certainty. The other ‘confirmations’ alike lie in the words ‘product’ and ‘organ.’ A man has a certain ‘idea:’ afterwards he has another like it, but differing in liveliness and in the accompanying pleasure or pain. If he already has, or if the ideas severally bring with them, the idea of a producing outward thing to which parts of his body are organs, on the one hand, and of a self ‘having power’ on the other, then the liveliness, and the accompanying pleasure or pain, may become indications of the action of the thing, as their absence may be so of the action of the man’s self; but not otherwise. Locke throughout, in speaking of the simple ideas as produced or recalled, implies that they carry with them the consciousness of a cause, either an outward thing or the self, and only by so doing can he find in them the needful ‘confirmations’ of the ‘testimony of the senses.’ This testimony is confirmed just because it distinguishes of itself between the work of ‘nature,’ which is real, and the work of the man, which is a fiction. In other words, the confirmation is nothing else than the testimony itself—a testimony which, as we have seen, since it supposes consciousness, as such, to be consciousnessof a thing, eliminates by anticipation the question as to the agreement of consciousness with things, as with the extraneous.
[1] To feel the object, in the sense of touching it, had a special significance for Locke, since touch with him was the primary ‘revelation’ of body, as the solid. More will be said of this when we come to consider his doctrine of ‘real essence,’ as constituted by primary qualities of body. See below, paragraph 101.
This ascription means the clothing of sensation with invented relations.
63. The distinction between the real and the fantastic, according to the passages under consideration, thus depends upon that between the work of nature and the work of man. It is the confusion between the two works that renders the fantastic possible, while it is the consciousness of the distinction that sets us upon correcting it. Where all is the work of man and professes to be no more, as in the case of ‘mixed modes,’ there is no room for the fantastic (Book II. chap. xxx. sec. 4, and Book IV. chap. iv. sec. 7); and where there is ever so much of the fantastic, it would not be so for us, unless we were conscious of a ‘work of nature,’ to which to oppose it. But on looking a little closer we find that to be conscious of an idea as the work of nature, in opposition to the work of man, is to be conscious of it under relations which, according to Locke, are the inventions of man. It is nothing else than to be conscious of it as the result of ‘something having power to produce it’ (Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 2),i.e.of a substance, to which it is related as a quality. ‘Nature’ is just the ‘something we know not what,’ which is substance according to the ‘abstractidea’ thereof. Producing ideas, it exercises powers, as it essentially belongs to substance to do, according to ourcomplexidea of it. (Book II. chap, xxiii. secs. 9, 10.) But substance, according to Locke, whether as abstract or complex idea, is the ‘workmanship of the mind,’ and power, as a relation (Book II. chap. xxi. sec. 3, and chap. xxv. sec. 8), ‘is not contained in the real existence of things.’ Again, the idea of substance, as a source of power, is the same as the idea of cause. ‘Whatever is considered by us to operate to the producing any particular simple idea, which did not before exist, hath thereby in our minds the relation of a cause.’ (Book II. chap. xxvi. sec. 1.) But the idea of cause is not one ‘that the mind has of things as they are in themselves,’ but one that it gets by its own act in ‘bringing things to, and setting them by, one another.’ (Book II. chap. xxv. sec. 1.) Thus it is with the very ideas, which are the workmanship of man, that the simple idea has to be clothed upon, in order to ‘testify’ to its being real,i.e.(in Locke’s sense) not the work of man.
What is meant by restricting the testimony of sense topresentexistence?
64. Thus invested, the simple idea has clearly lost its simplicity. It is not the momentary, isolated consciousness, but the representation of a thing determined by relations to other things in an order of nature, and causing an infinite series of resembling sensations to which a common name is applied. Thus in all the instances of sensuous testimony mentioned in the chapter before us, it is not really a simple sensation that is spoken of, but a sensation referred to a thing—not a mere smell, or taste, or sight, or feeling, but the smell of a rose, the taste of a pine-apple, the sight of the sun, the feeling of fire. (Book IV. chap. xi. secs. 4-7.) Immediately afterwards, however, reverting or attempting to revert to his strict doctrine of the mere individuality of the simple idea, he says that the testimony of the senses is a ‘present testimony employed about particular objects, that do then affect them,’ and that sensitive knowledge extends no farther than such testimony. This statement, taken by itself, is ambiguous. Does it mean that sensation testifies to the momentary presence to the individual of a continuous existence, or is the existence itself as momentary as its presence to sense? The instance that follows does not remove the doubt. ‘If I saw such a collection of simple ideas as is wont to be calledman, existing together one minute since, and am now alone; I cannot be certain that the same man exists now, since there is no necessary connection of his existence a minute since with his existence now.’ (Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 9.) At first sight, these words might seem to decide that the existence is merely coincident with the presence of the sensation—a decision fatal to the distinction between the real and fantastic, since, if the thing is only present with the sensation, there can be no combination of qualities in reality other than the momentary coincidence of sensations in us. Memory or imagination, indeed, might recall these in a different order from that in which they originally occurred; but, if this original order had no being after the occurrence, there could be no ground for contrasting it with the order of reproduction as the real with the merely apparent.
Such restriction, if maintained, would render the testimony unmeaning.
65. In the very sentence, however, where Locke restricts the testimony of sensation to existence present along with it, he uses language inconsistent with this restriction. The particular existence which he instances as ‘testified to’ is that of ‘such a collection of simple ideas as is wont to be called man.’ But these ideas can only be present in succession. (See Book II. chap. vii. sec. 9, and chap. xiv. sec. 3.) Even the surface of the man’s body can only be taken in by successive acts of vision; and, more obviously, the states of consciousness in which his qualities of motion and action are presented occupy separate times. If then sensation only testifies to an existence present along with it, how can it testify to the co-existence (say) of an erect attitude, of which I have a present sight, with the risibility which I saw a minute ago? How can the ‘collection of ideas wont to be called man,’as co-existing, be formed at all? and, if it cannot, how can the present existence of an object so-called be testified to by sense any more than the past? The same doctrine, which is fatal to the supposition of ‘a necessary connexion between the man’s existence a minute since and his existence now,’ is in fact fatal to the supposition of his existence as a complex of qualities at all. It does not merely mean that, for anything we know, the man may have died. Of course he may, and yet there may be continuity of existence according to natural laws, though not one for which we have the testimony of present sense, between the living body and the dead. What Locke had in his mind was the notion that, as existence is testified to only by present sensation, and each sensation is merely individual and momentary, there could be no testimony to the continued existence of anything. He could not, however, do such violence to the actual fabric of knowledge as would have been implied in the logical development of this doctrine, and thus he allowed himself to speak of sense as testifying to the co-existence of sensible qualities in a thing, though the individual sensation could only testify to the presence of one at a time, and could never testify to theirnexusin a common cause at all. This testimony to co-existence in a present thing once admitted, he naturally allowed himself in the further assumption that the testimony, on its recurrence, is a testimony to the same co-existence and the same thing. The existence of the same man (he evidently supposes), to which sensation testified an hour ago, may be testified to by a like sensation now. This means that resemblance of sensation becomes identity of a thing—that like sensations occurring at different times are interpreted as representing the same thing, which continuously exists, though not testified to by sense, between the times.
But it is not maintained: the testimony is to operation of permanent identical things.
66. In short, as we have seen the simple idea of sensation emerge from Locke’s inquiry as to the beginning of knowledge transformed into the judgment, ‘I have an idea different from other ideas which I did not make for myself,’ so now from the inquiry as to the correspondence between knowledge and reality it emerges as the consciousness of a thing now acting upon me, which has continued to exist since it acted on me before, and in which, as in a common cause, have existed together powers to affect me which have never affected me together. If in the one form the operation of thought in sense, the ‘creation of the understanding’ within the simple idea, is only latent or potential, in the other it is actual and explicit. The relations of substance and quality, of cause and effect, and of identity—all ‘inventions of the mind’—are necessarily involved in the immediate, spontaneous testimony of passive sense.
Locke’s treatment of relations of cause and identity.
67. It will be noticed that it is upon the first of these, the relation of substance and quality, that our examination of Locke’s Essay has so far chiefly gathered. In this it follows the course taken by Locke himself. Of the idea of substance,eo nomine, he treats at large: of cause and identity (apart from the special question of personal identity) he says little. So, too, the ‘report of the senses’ is commonly exhibited as announcing the sensible qualities of a thing rather than the agency of a cause or continuity of existence. The difference, of course, is mainly verbal. Sensible qualities being, as Locke constantly insists, nothing but ‘powers to operate on our senses’ directly or indirectly, the substance or thing, as the source of these, takes the character of a cause. Again, as the sensible quality is supposed to be one and the same in manifold separate cases of being felt, it has identity in contrast with the variety of these cases, even as the thing has, on its part, in contrast with the variety of its qualities. Something, however, remains to be said of Locke’s treatment of the ideas of cause and identity in the short passages where he treats of them expressly. Here, too, we shall find the same contrast between the given and the invented, tacitly contradicted by an account of the given in terms of the invented.
That from which he derives idea of cause pre-supposes it.
68. The relation of cause and effect, according to Locke’s general statement as to relation, must be something ‘not contained in the real existence of things, but extraneous and superinduced.’ (Book II. chap. xxv. sec. 8.) It is a ‘complex idea,’ not belonging to things as they are in themselves, which the mind makes by its own act. (Book II. chap xii. secs. 1, 7, and chap. xxv. sec. 1.) Its origin, however, is thus described:—‘In the notice that our senses take of the constant vicissitude of things, we cannot but observe that several particular, both qualities and substances, begin to exist; and that they receive this their existence from the due application and operation of some other being. From this observation we get our ideas of cause and effect. That which produces any simple or complex idea we denote by the general name cause; and that which is produced, effect. Thus, finding that in that substance 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 degree 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 application 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.’ Here we find that the ‘given,’ upon which the relation of cause and effect is ‘superinduced’ or from which the ‘idea of it is got’ (to give Locke the benefit of both expressions), professedly, according to the first sentence of the passage quoted, involves the complex or derived idea of substance. The sentence, indeed, is a remarkable instance of the double refraction which arises from redundant phraseology. Our senses are supposed to ‘take notice of a constant vicissitude of things,’ or substances. Thereupon we observe, what is necessarily implied in this vicissitude, a beginning of existence in substances or their qualities, ‘received from the due application or operation of some other being.’ Thereupon we infer, what is simply another name for existence thus given and received, a relation of cause and effect. Thus not only does thedatumof the process of ‘invention’ in question,i.e.the observation of change in a thing, involve aderivedidea, but a derived idea which presupposes just this process of invention.
Rationale of this ‘petitio principii’.
69. Here again it is necessary to guard against the notion that Locke’s obviouspetitio principiimight be avoided by a better statement without essential change in his doctrine of ideas. It is true that ‘a notice of the vicissitude of things’ includes that ‘invention of the understanding’ which it is supposed to suggest, but state the primary knowledge otherwise—reduce the vicissitude of things, as it ought to be reduced, in order to make Locke consistent, to the mere multiplicity of sensations—and the appearance of suggestion ceases. Change or ‘vicissitude’ is quite other than mere diversity. It is diversity relative to something which maintains an identity. This identity, which ulterior analysis may find in a ‘law of nature,’ Locke found in ‘things’ or ‘substances.’ By the same unconscious subreption, by which with him a sensible thing takes the place of sensation, ‘vicissitude of things’ takes the place of multiplicity of sensations, carrying with it the observation that the changed state of the thing is due to something else. The mere multiplicity of sensations could convey no such ‘observation,’ any more than the sight of counters in a row would convey the notion that one ‘received its existence’ from the other. Only so far as the manifold appearances are referred, as its vicissitudes, to something which remains one, does any need of accounting for their diverse existence, or in consequence any observation of its derivation ‘from some other being,’ arise. Locke, it is true, after stating that it is upon a notice of the vicissitude of things that the observation in question rests, goes on to speak as if anoriginationof substances, which is just the opposite of their vicissitude, might be observed; and the second instance of production which he gives—that of ashes upon the burning of wood—seems intended for an instance of the production of a substance, as distinct from the production of a quality. He is here, however, as he often does, using the term ‘substance’ loosely, for ‘a certain collection of simple ideas,’ without reference to the ‘substratum wherein they do subsist,’ which he would have admitted to be ultimately the same for the wood and for the ashes. The conception, indeed, of such a substratum, whether vaguely as ‘nature,’ or more precisely as a ‘real constitution of insensible parts’ (Book III. chap. iii. secs. 18, &c.), governed all his speculation, and rendered to him what he here callssubstancevirtually amode, and its production properly a ‘vicissitude.’
Relation of cause has to be put into sensitive experience in order to be got from it.
70. We thus find that it is only so far as simple ideas are referred to things—only so far as each in turn, to use Locke’s instance, is regarded as an appearance ‘in a substance which was not in it before’—that our sensitive experience, the supposeddatumof knowledge, is an experience of the vicissitudes of things; and again, that only as an experience of such vicissitude does it furnish the ‘observation from which we get our ideas of cause and effect.’ But the reference of a sensation to a sensible thing means its reference to a cause. In other words, the invented relation of cause and effect must be found in the primary experience in order that it may be got from it. [1]
[1] Locke’s contradiction of himself in regard to this relation might be exhibited in a still more striking light by putting side by side with his account of it his account of the idea of power. The two are precisely similar, the idea of power being represented as got by a notice of the alteration of simple ideas in things without (Book II. chap. xxi. sec. 1), just as the idea of cause and effect is. Power, too, he expressly says, is a relation. Yet, although the idea of it, both as derived and as of a relation, ought to be complex, he reckons it a simple and original one, and by using it interchangeably with ‘sensible quality’ makes it a primarydatumof sense.
Origin of the idea of identity according to Locke.
71. The same holds of that other ‘product of the mind,’ the relation of identity. This ‘idea’ according to Locke, is formed when, ‘considering anything as existing at any determined time and place, we compare it with itself existing at another time.’ ‘In this consists identity,’ he adds, ‘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 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 existence, 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.’ He goes on to inquire about theprincipium individuationis, which he decides is ‘existence itself, which determines a being of any sort to a particular time and place, incommunicable to two beings of the same kind … 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.’ (Book II. chap, xxvii. secs. 1-3).
Relation of identity not to be distinguished from idea of it.
72. It is essential to bear in mind with regard to identity, as with regard to cause and effect, that no distinction according to Locke can legitimately be made between the relation and the idea of the relation. As to substance, it is true, he was driven in his controversy with Stillingfleet to distinguish between ‘the being and the idea thereof,’ but in dealing with relation he does not attempt any such violence to his proper system. Between the ‘idea’ as such and ‘being’ as such, his ‘new way of ideas,’ as Stillingfleet plaintively called it, left no fair room for distinction. In this indeed lay its permanent value for speculative thought. The distinction by which alone it could consistently seek to replace the old one, so as to meet the exigencies of language and knowledge, was that between simple ideas, as given and necessarily real, and the reproductions or combinations in which the mind may alter them. But since every relation implies a putting together of ideas, and is thus always, as Locke avows, a complex idea or the work of the mind, a distinction between its being and the idea thereof, in that sense of the distinction in which alone it can ever be consistently admitted by Locke, was clearly inadmissible. Thus in the passages before us the relation of identity is not explicitly treated as an original ‘being’ or ‘existence,’ It is an idea formed by the mind upon a certain ‘consideration of things’ being or existent. But on looking closely at Locke’s account, we find that it is only so far as it already belongs to, nay constitutes, the things, that it is formed upon consideration of them.
This ‘invented’ relation forms the ‘very being of things’.
73. When it is said that the idea of identity, or of any other relation, is formed upon consideration of things as existing in a certain way, this is naturally understood to mean—indeed, otherwise it is unmeaning—that the things are firstknownas existing, and that afterwards the idea of the relation in question is formed. But according to Locke, as we have seen, [1] the first and simplest act of knowledge possible is the perception of identity between ideas. Either then the ‘things,’ upon consideration of which the idea of identity is formed, are not known at all, or the knowledge of them involves the very idea afterwards formed on consideration of them. Locke, having at whatever cost of self-contradiction to make his theory fit the exigencies of language, virtually adopts the latter alternative, though with an ambiguity of expression which makes a definite meaning difficult to elicit. We have, however, the positive statement to begin with, that the comparison in which the relation originates, is of a thing with itself as existing at another time. Again, the ‘ideas’ (used interchangeably with ‘things’), to which identity is attributed, ‘vary not at all from what they were at that moment wherein we consider their former existence.’ It is here clearly implied that ‘things’ or ‘ideas’exist,i.e.are given to us in the spontaneous consciousness which we do not make, as each one and the same throughout a multiplicity of times. This, again, means that the relation of identity or sameness,i.e.unity of thing under multiplicity of appearance, belongs to or consists in the ‘very being’ of those given objects of consciousness, which are in Locke’s sense the real, and upon which according to him all relation is superinduced by an after-act of thought. So long as each such object ‘continues to exist,’ so long its ‘sameness with itself must continue,’ and this sameness is the complex idea, the relation, of identity. Just as before, following Locke’s lead, we found the simple idea, as the element of knowledge, become complex—a perceived identity of ideas; so now mere existence, the ‘very being of things’ (which with Locke is only another name for the simple idea), resolves itself into a relation, which it requires ‘consideration by the mind’ to constitute.
[1] See above, paragraph 25.
Locke fails to distinguish between identity and mere unity.
74. The process of self-contradiction, by which a ‘creation of the mind’ finds its way into the real or given, must also appear in a contradictory conception of the real itself. Kept pure of all that Locke reckons intellectual fiction, it can be nothing but a simple chaos of individual units: only by the superinduction of relation can there be sameness, or continuity of existence, in the minutest of these for successive moments. Locke presents it arbitrarily under the conception of mere individuality or of continuity, according as its distinction from the work of the mind, or its intelligible content, happens to be before him. A like see-saw in his account of the individuality and generality of ideas has already been noticed. [1] In his discussion of identity the contradiction is partly disguised by a confusion between mere unity on the one hand, and sameness or unity in difference, on the other. Thus, after starting with an account of identity as belonging to ideas which are the sameat different times, he goes on to speak of a thing as the same with itself,at a single instant. So, too, by theprincipium individuationis, he understands ‘existence itself, which determines a being of any sort to a particular time and place.’ As it is clear from the context that by theprincipium individuationishe meant the source of identity or sameness, it will follow that by ‘sameness’ he understood singleness of a thing in a single time and place. Whence then the plurality, without which ‘sameness’ is unmeaning? In fact, Locke, having excluded it in his definition, covertly brings it back again in his instance, which is that of ‘an atom,i.e.a continued body under one immutable superficies, existing in a determined time and place.’ This, ‘considered in any instant of its existence, is in that instant the same with itself.’ But it is so because—and, if we suppose the consideration of plurality oftimesexcluded, only because—it is a ‘continued’ body, which implies, though its place be determined, that it existsin a plurality of parts of space. Either this plurality, or that of instants of its existence, must be recognised in contrast with the unity of body, if this unity is to become ‘sameness with itself.’ In adding that not only at the supposed instant is the atom the same, but ‘so must continue as long as its existence continues,’ Locke shows that he really thought of the identical body under a plurality of timesex parte post, if notex parte ante.
[1] See above, paragraphs 43, and the following.
Feelings are the real, and do not admit of identity. How then can identity be real?
75. But how is this continuity, or sameness of existence in plurality of times or spaces, compatible with the constitution of ‘real existence’ by mereindividua? The difficulty is the same, according to Locke’s premisses, whether the simple ideas by themselves are taken for the realindividua, or whether each is taken to represent a single separate thing. In his chapter on identity he expressly says that ‘things whose existence is in succession’ do not admit of identity. Such, he adds, are motion and thought; ‘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.’ (Book I. chap, xxvii. sec. 2.) What he here calls ‘thought’ clearly includes the passive consciousness in which alone, according to his strict doctrine, reality is given. So elsewhere (Book II. chap. vii. sec. 9), in accounting for the ‘simple idea of succession,’ he says generally that ‘if we look immediately into ourselves we shall find our ideas always, whilst we have any thought, passing in train, one going and another coming, without intermission.’ [1] No statement of the ‘perpetual flux’ of ideas, as each having a separate beginning and end, and ending in the very moment when it begins, can be stronger than the above. If ‘ideas’ of any sort, according to this account of them, are to constitute real existence, no sameness can be found in reality. It must indeed be a relation ‘invented by the mind.’
[1] It is true that in this place Locke distinguishes between the ‘suggestion by our senses’ of the idea of succession, and that which passes in our ‘minds,’ by which it is ‘more constantly offered us.’ But since, according to him, the idea of sensation must be ‘produced in the mind’ if there is to be any either sensation or idea at all (Book II. chap, ix. secs. 3 and 4), the distinction between the ‘suggestion by our senses’ and what passes in our minds’ cannot be maintained.
Yet it is from reality that the idea of it is derived.
76. This, it may be said, is just the conclusion that was wanted in order to make Locke’s doctrine of the particular relation of identity correspond with his general doctrine of the fictitiousness of relations. To complete the consistency, however, his whole account of the origin of the relation (or of the idea in which it consists) must be changed, since it supposes it to be derived from an observation of things or existence, which again is to suppose sameness to be in the things or to be real. This change made, philosophy would have to start anew with the problem of accounting for the origin of the fictitious idea. It would have to explain how it comes to pass that the mind, if its function consists solely in reproducing and combining given ideas, or again in ‘abstracting’ combined ideas from each other, should be able to invent a relation which is neither a given idea, nor a reproduction, combination, or abstract residuum of given ideas. This is the great problem which we shall find Hume attempting. Locke really never saw its necessity, because the dominion of language—a dominion which, as he did not recognise it, he had no need to account for—always, in spite of his assertion that simple ideas are the soledataof consciousness, held him to the belief in anotherdatumof which ideas are the appearances, viz., a thing having identity, because the same with itself in the manifold times of its appearance. Thisdatum, under various guises, but in each demonstrably, according to Locke’s showing, a ‘creation of thought,’ has met us in all the modes of his theory, as the condition of knowledge. As the ‘abstract idea’ of substance it renders ‘perishing’ ideas into qualities by which objects may be discerned. (Book II. chap. xi. sec. 1.) As the relative idea of cause, it makes them ‘affections’ to be accounted for. As the fiction of a universal, it is the condition of their mutual qualification as constituents of a whole. Finally, as the ‘superinduced’ relation of sameness, the direct negative of the perpetual beginning and ending of ‘ideas,’ it constitutes the ‘very being of things.’
Transition to Locke’s doctrine of essence.
77. ‘The very being of things,’ let it be noticed, according to what Locke reckoned their ‘real,’ as distinct from their ‘nominal,’ essence. The consideration of this distinction has been hitherto postponed; but the discussion of the relation of identity, as subsisting between the parts of a ‘continued body,’ brings us upon the doctrine of matter and its ‘primary qualities,’ which cannot be properly treated except in connection with the other doctrine (which Locke unhappily kept apart) of the two sorts of ‘essence.’ So far, it will be remembered, the ‘facts’ orgivenideas, which we have found him unawares converting into theories or ‘invented’ ideas, have been those of the ‘secondary qualities of body.’ [1] It is these which are united into things or substances, having been already ‘found in them:’ it is from these that we ‘infer’ the relation of cause and effect, because as ‘vicissitudes of things’ or ‘affections of sense’ they presuppose it: it is these again which, as ‘received from without,’ testify the present existence of something, because in being so received they are already interpreted as ‘appearances of something.’ That the ‘thing,’ by reference to which these ideas are judged to be ‘real,’ ‘adequate,’ and ‘true’—or, in other words, become elements of a knowledge—is yet itself according to Locke’s doctrine of substance and relation a ‘fiction of thought,’ has been sufficiently shown. That it is so no less according to his doctrine of essence will also appear. The question will then be, whether by the same showing the ideas of body, of the self, and of God, can be other than fictions, and the way will be cleared for Hume’s philosophic adventure of accounting for them as such.
[1] See above, paragraph 20.
This repeats the inconsistency found in his doctrine of substance.
78. In Locke’s doctrine of ‘ideas of substances,’ the ‘thing’ appeared in two inconsistent positions: on the one hand, as that in which they ‘are found;’ on the other, as that which results from their concretion, or which, such concretion having been made, we accustom ourselves to suppose as its basis. This inconsistency, latent to Locke himself in the theory of substance, comes to the surface in the theory of essence, where it is (as he thought) overcome, but in truth only made more definite, by a distinction of terms.
Plan to be followed.
79. This latter theory has so far become part and parcel of the ‘common sense’ of educated men, that it might seem scarcely to need restatement. It is generally regarded as completing the work, which Bacon had begun, of transferring philosophy from the scholastic bondage of words to the fruitful discipline of facts. In the process of transmission and popular adaptation, however, its true significance has been lost sight of, and it has been forgotten that to its original exponent implicitly—explicitly to his more logical disciple—though it did indeed distinguish effectively between things and the meaning of words, it was the analysis of the latter only, and not the understanding of things, that it left as the possible function of knowledge. It will be well, then, in what follows, first briefly to restate the theory in its general form; then to show how it conflicts with the actual knowledge which mankind supposes itself to have attained; and finally to exhibit at once the necessity of this conflict as a result of Locke’s governing ideas, and the ambiguities by which he disguised it from himself.
What Locke understood by essence.
80. The essence of a thing with Locke, in the only sense in which we can know or intelligibly speak of it, is the meaning of its name. This, again, is an ‘abstract or general idea,’ which means that it is an idea ‘separated from the circumstances of time and place, and any other ideas that may determine it to this or that particular existence. By this way of abstraction it is made capable of representing more individuals than one; each of which, having in it a conformity to that abstract idea, is (as we call it) of that sort.’ (Book III. chap. iii. sec. 6.) That which is given in immediate experience, as he proceeds to explain, is this or that ‘particular existence,’ Peter or James, Mary or Jane, such particular existence being already a complex idea. [1] That it should be so is indeed in direct contradiction to his doctrine of the primariness of the simple idea, but is necessary to his doctrine of abstraction. Some part of the complex idea (it is supposed)—less or more—we proceed to leave out. The minimum of subtraction would seem to be that of the ‘circumstances of time and place,’ in which the particular existence is given. This is the ‘separation of ideas,’ first made, and alone suffices to constitute an ‘abstract idea,’ even though, as is the case with the idea of the sun, there is only one ‘particular substance’ to agree with it. (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 1.) In proportion as the particular substances compared are more various, the subtraction of ideas is larger, but, be it less or more, the remainder is the abstract idea, to which a name—e.g.man—is annexed, and to which as a ‘species’ or ‘standard’ other particular existences, on being ‘found to agree with it,’ may be referred, so as to be called by the same name. These ideas then, ‘tied together by a name,’ form the essence of each particular existence, to which the same name is applied (Book III. chap. iii. secs. 12 and the following.) Such essence, however, according to Locke, is ‘nominal,’ not ‘real.’ It is a complex—fuller or emptier—of ideas in us, which, though it is a ‘uniting medium between a general name and particular beings,’ [2] in no way represents the qualities of the latter. These, consisting in an ‘internal constitution of insensible parts,’ form the ‘real essence’ of the particular beings; an essence, however, of which we can know nothing. (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 21, and ix. sec. 12.)
[1] Book III. chap, iii, sec. 7, at the end.
[2] Book III chap. iii. sec. 13.
Only to nominal essences that general propositions relate,i.e.only to abstract ideas having no real existence.
81. It is the formation of ‘nominal essences’ that renders general propositions possible. ‘General certainty,’ says Locke, ‘is never to be found but in our ideas. Whenever we go to seek it elsewhere in experiment or observation without us, our knowledge goes not beyond particulars. It is the contemplation of our own abstract ideas, that alone is able to afford us general knowledge.’ (Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 16.) ‘General knowledge,’ he says again, ‘lies only in our own thoughts.’ [1] This use of ‘our ideas’ and ‘our own thoughts’ as equivalent phrases, each antithetical to ‘real existence,’ tells the old tale of a deviation from ‘the new way of ideas’ into easier paths. According to this new way in its strictness, as we have sufficiently seen, there is nowhere for anything to be found but ‘in our ideas.’ It therefore in no way distinguishes general knowledge or certainty that it cannot be found elsewhere. Locke, however, having allowed himself in the supposition that simple ideas report a real existence, other than themselves, but to which they are related as ectype to archetype, tacitly proceeds to convert them into real existences, to which ideas in general, as mere thoughts of our own, may be opposed. Along with this conversion, there supervenes upon the original distinction between simple and complex ideas, which alone does duty in the Second Book of the Essay, another distinction, essential to Locke’s doctrine of the ‘reality’ of knowledge—that between the idea, whether simple or complex, as originally given in sensation, and the same as retained or reproduced in the mind. It is only in the former form that the idea, however simple, reports, and thus (with Locke) itself is, a real existence. Such real existence is a ‘particular’ existence, and our knowledge of it a ‘particular’ knowledge. In other words, according to the only consistent doctrine that we have been able to elicit from Locke, [2] ‘it is a knowledge which consists in a consciousness, upon occasion of a present sensation—say, a sensation of redness—that some object is present here and now causing the sensation; an object which, accordingly, must be ‘particular’ or transitory as the sensation. The ‘here and now,’ as in such a case they constitute the particularity of the object of consciousness, so also render it a real existence. Separate these (‘the circumstances of time and place’ [3]) from it, and it at once loses its real existence and becomes an ‘abstract idea,’ one of ‘our own thoughts,’ of which as ‘in the mind’ agreement or disagreement with some other abstract idea can be asserted in a general proposition;e.g.‘red is not blue.’ (Book IV. chap. vii. sec. 4.) [4]
[1] Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 13, cf. Book IV. chap. iii. sec. 31.
[2] See above, paragraph 56.
[3] Book III. chap. iii. sec. 6.
[4] In case there should be any doubt as to Locke’s meaning in this passage, it may be well to compare Book IV. chap. ix. sec. 1. There he distinctly opposes the consideration of ideas in the understanding to the knowledge of real existence. Here (Book IV. chap. vii. sec. 4) he distinctly speaks of the proposition ‘red is not blue’ as expressing a consideration of ideas in the understanding. It follows that it is not a proposition as to real existence.
An abstract idea may be a simple one.
82. It is between simple ideas, it will be noticed, that a relation is here asserted, and in this respect the proposition differs from such an one as may be formed when simple ideas have been compounded into the nominal essence of a thing, and in which some one of these may be asserted of the thing, being already included within the meaning of its name;e.g.‘a rose has leaves.’ But as expressing a relation between ideas ‘abstract’ or ‘in the mind,’ in distinction from present sensations received from without, the two sorts of proposition, according to the doctrine of Locke’s Fourth Book, stand on the same footing.’ [1] It is a nominal essence with which both alike are concerned, and on this depends the general certainty or self-evidence, by which they are distinguished from ‘experiment or observation without us.’ These can never ‘reach with certainty farther than the bare instance’ (Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 7):i.e., though the only channels by which we can reach real existence, they can never tell more than the presence of this or that sensation as caused by an unknown thing without, or the present disagreement of such present sensations with each other. As to the recurrence of such sensations, or any permanently real relation between them, they can tell us nothing. Nothing as to their recurrence, because, though in each case they show the presence of something causing the sensations, they show nothing of the real essence upon which their recurrence depends. [2] Nothing as to any permanently real relation between them, because, although the disagreement between ideas of blue and red, and the agreement between one idea of red and another,as in the mind, is self-evident, yet as thus in the mind they are not ‘actual sensations’ at all (Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 6), nor do they convey that ‘sensitive knowledge of particular existence,’ which is the only possible knowledge of it. (Book IV. chap. iii. sec. 21.) As actual sensations and indices of reality, they do indeed differ in this or that ‘bare instance,’ but can convey no certainty that the real thing or ‘parcel of matter’ (Book III. chap. iii. sec. 18), which now causes the sensation of (and thusis) red, may not at another time cause the sensation of (and thusbe) blue.’ [3]