1. Every thing is an agent that is any way necessary or conducing to an

effect. The doctrine of second causes does not destroy agency. It no

more proves that those causes do not act because something has acted

before them, than that they do not exist, because something has existed

before them. The theological writers on this side of the question

affirm, I think improperly, that God or the first cause is the sole

agent in the universe, to which all second causes are to be referred as

instruments, having no real efficacy of their own. If so, all events are

produced immediately by the divine agency, that is, all second causes

are parts of the divine essence, and in all that we see or hear or feel,

we must conceive of something far more deeply interfused, a spirit and a

motion that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and

breathes through all things. This doctrine is that of Spinoza: but upon

this supposition second causes, as the immediate operation of the Deity

are and must be real and efficient. On the other hand, if to exclude

this system of pantheism, we consider the things and appearances about

us as merely natural, still what are called second causes must be real

and efficient causes, or they could not produce their effects. If

nothing can operate but the first cause, then whatever produces effects

is the Deity: but if this conclusion be thought objectionable, then we

must allow other causes of events to be really and truly such in

themselves: for from that which is no cause, which has no power, any

more than nothing, nothing can follow. All second causes, that is, all

things that exist are, therefore, either parts of the Deity or parts of

nature, and in neither case can they be absolutely insignificant,

worthless, null, and of no account. Dr. Priestley is for having men

refer all the good in the universe to God as the author of it, and all

the evil that takes place to man or to second causes. I cannot think

that this is sound philosophy nor practical wisdom. The necessarians

have evidently borrowed their notions of agency and second causes from

the advocates for liberty: for taking up the same unfounded assumption

of the libertarians, that action is the absolute beginning of motion,

and that any thing short of this is no action at all, and finding that

the will was not a cause in the absurd sense supposed by their

adversaries, they have concluded that it was no cause at all; not

considering whether a cause might not be more properly defined that

which produces an effect in consistency with other things than that

which produces it independently of them. Action then in any sense of the

word is the same as co-operation. It may be asked, whether this account

does not destroy the distinction between active and passive. I answer

that it does, if by active be meant unconnected action, and by passive

connected action; but not else. That is, if by action be understood the

positive determinate tendency or the additional impulse to the

production of any effect, and by passiveness an indifference in any

agent to this or that motion, except as it is acted upon by, and

transmits the efficacy of other causes, this distinction will remain as

broad and palpable as ever. Any thing is so far active as it modifies

and re-acts upon the original impulse; it is passive in as far as it

neither adds to, nor takes from that original impulse, but merely has a

power of receiving and continuing it. This I take to be the practical

and philosophical meaning of the terms. This distinction therefore,

applies equally to matter and mind. The explosion of gunpowder cannot be

attributed entirely or principally to the spark which ignites it,

because the effect is increased a thousand-fold by the inherent

qualities of the gunpowder. The motion communicated by one body to

another in void space is considered as the mere passive result of the

former, because the effect in the second agent is simply the

continuation of what it was in the first. So it is in the mind. Motives

do not act upon it simply or absolutely; but according to the dictates

of the understanding or the bias of the will. At one time we yield to

any idle inclination that happens to prevail, and at others resist to

the utmost the strongest motives. That is, the mind is itself an agent,

one chief determining cause of our volitions. It is on the view taken by

the mind of motives, on our disposition to attend to or neglect them, to

compare and weigh them, that their effect depends. But the necessarians

have always delighted to illustrate the operations of the mind in

volition by referring to the impulse communicated by one billiard-ball

to another, or to different weights in a pair of scales. Both which

illustrations are as little applicable as possible, because in neither

of them is there supposed to be the least activity of action; that is,

the least capacity to resist or increase or alter the impressed force in

the thing acted upon. That is, the mind in these similes is requisite as

a merely passive agent, by which I mean a thing perfectly indifferent

and nugatory, a mere cypher without any character of its own, that is

neither good nor bad, neither deserving of praise nor blame; a cameleon,

colourless kind of thing, the sport of external impulses and accidental

circumstances, or of a necessity in which it has itself no share. Thus

the responsibility of the mind has been taken from it, and transferred

to outward circumstances, and all characters in themselves rendered

alike indifferent. This is the necessary consequence of abstracting the

influence of motives from the mind on which and by which they act. I

prefer exceedingly to the modern instances of a couple of

billiard-balls, or a pair of scales, the illustration of Chrysophus, the

stoic in Cicero, who says, ‘Ille igitur qui protrusit cylindrum dedit ei

principium motionis, volubilitatem autem non dedit: sic visum objectum

imprimet quidem et quasi signabit in animo suam speciem, sed assensio

erit in potestate nostrâ.’ That is, suppose I push against a heavy body;

if it be square it will not move: if it be cylindrical it will. What the

difference of form is to the stone, the difference of disposition is to

the mind. In fact, the necessarians, to maintain this doctrine of the

nullity of second causes, have been forced to consider every thing as a

succession of simple impulses passing from hand to hand: so that there

being no fixed point, no resting-place for the imagination, we are

perpetually obliged to shift the cause from one object to another: every

thing has to be accounted for, and referred back to something else, and

in this ceaseless whirl of fleeting causes all ideas of power or agency

seem to slide from under us. Lest the mind should prove refractory, to

the laws ascribed to it, they thought it most prudent to deprive it of

all activity and power of resistance. They were very absurdly afraid

that without this their whole scheme might be overturned, as if though

the mind were freed from being the servile drudge of external impulses,

it would not still follow the bent of its own nature. The above

distinction will, I conceive, set the mind free from one of the shackles

imposed on it by the necessarians, namely, that imbecility,

helplessness, and indifference, which they have superadded to the

regular connexion of cause and effect, though it makes no essential part

of it. The mind, according to the advocates for free-will, is a

perfectly detached, unconnected, independent cause: according to the

necessarians, it is no cause at all: neither branch of the antithesis is

true.

2. According to the definition of liberty above given, freedom, that is

free agency, is applicable to mind as well as to matter. Free-will does

not, because will does not, belong to it. By a free agent, I understand,

with Hobbes, one that is not hindered from acting according to his

natural or determinate bias. The body is free when it can obey the

impulse of the mind; so also a billiard-ball might be said to be free

while it is not fixed to the table, or hindered from being impelled by

the stroke of the mace. In the same sense, the water, as Mr. Hobbes

observes, is said to descend freely along the channel of the river,

while no obstacle intercepts its progress. But though necessarians allow

liberty to the body, and to inanimate things, they deny that it is in

any sense applicable to the mind or will.

ON LOCKE’S ESSAY ON THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING

This work owes its present rank among philosophical productions, to its

embodiment of the great principle first brought forward by Hobbes. All

its author’s attempts to modify this principle or reconcile it to common

notions have been gradually exploded, and have given place to the more

severe and logical deductions of Hobbes from the same general principle.

Mr. Locke took the faculties of the mind as he found them in himself and

others, and endeavoured to account for them on _a new principle_. By

this compromise with candour and common sense, he prepared the way for

the introduction of the principle, which being once established, very

soon overturned all the trite opinions and vulgar prejudices which were

improperly associated with it. There was in fact no place for them in

the new system.

The great defect with which the ‘Essay on the Human Understanding’ is

chargeable is, that there is not really a word about the nature of the

understanding in it, nor any attempt to show what it is or whether it is

or is not any thing, distinct from the faculty of simple perception. The

operations of thinking, comparing, discerning, reasoning, willing, and

the like, which Mr. Locke ascribes to it, are the operations of nothing,

or of I know not what. All the force of his mind seems to have been so

bent on exploding innate ideas, and tracing our thoughts to their

external source, that he either forgot or had not leisure to examine

what the internal principle of all thought is. He took for his basis a

bad simile—that the mind is like a blank sheet of paper, originally void

of all characters whatever; for this, though true as far as relates to

innate ideas, that is, to any impressions actually existing in it, is

not true of the mind itself, which is not like a sheet of paper, the

passive receiver and retainer of the impressions made upon it. The

inference from this simile has however been that the understanding is

nothing in itself, nor the cause of any thing; never acting, but always

acted upon; that it is but a convenient repository for the straggling

images of things, a sort of empty room into which ideas are conveyed

from without through the doors of the senses, as you would carry goods

into an unfurnished lodging; and hence it has been found necessary by

succeeding writers to get rid of those different faculties and

operations which Mr. Locke elsewhere allows to belong to the mind, but

which are in truth only compatible with the active powers and

independent nature of the understanding. I will first state Mr. Locke’s

account of the origin of our ideas in his own words, and will then

endeavour to show in what that account is defective; that is, what other

act or faculty of the mind I conceive to be necessary to the formation

of our ideas, besides sensation or simple perception. After employing

eighty pages in a very laborious, and for the most part sensible

refutation of the doctrine of innate ideas, which was popular at the

time, but which Hobbes has not deigned to notice, their impossibility

being implied in the general principle that all our ideas are derived

from the senses, Mr. Locke proceeds in the second book to treat of

Ideas, and their origin. He then says:

‘Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks, and that which his

mind is applied about whilst thinking being the ideas that are there, it

is past doubt that men have in their minds several ideas, such are those

expressed by the words, _whiteness_, _hardness_, _sweetness_,

_thinking_, _motion_, _man_, _elephant_, _army_, _drunkenness_, and

others: it is in the first place then to be inquired how he comes by

them. I know it is a received doctrine that men have native ideas and

original characters stamped upon their minds in their very first being.

This opinion I have at large examined already: but I suppose what I have

said will be much more easily admitted when I have shewn whence the

understanding may get all the ideas it has, and by what ways and degrees

they may come into the mind, for which I shall appeal to every one’s own

observation and experience. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we

say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: how comes

it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy

and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, in an almost endless

variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To

this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE: in that all our knowledge

is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself....

‘First, our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do

convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according

to those various ways, wherein those objects do affect them; and thus we

come by those ideas we have of _yellow_, _white_, _heat_, _cold_,

_soft_, _hard_, _bitter_, _sweet_, and all those which we call sensible

qualities, which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean,

they from external objects convey into the mind what produces there

those perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have,

depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the

understanding, I call SENSATION.

‘Secondly, the other fountain from whence experience furnisheth the

understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own

mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got: which

operations when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish

the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from

things without: and such are _perception_, _thinking_, _doubting_,

_believing_, _reasoning_, _knowing_, _willing_, and all the different

actings of our own minds; which we being conscious of, and observing in

ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct

ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas

every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having

nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might

properly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other

sensation, so I call this REFLECTION; the ideas it affords being such

only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within

itself.... These two I say, _viz._ external, material things, as the

objects of sensation, and the operations of our own minds within as the

objects of REFLECTION, are to me the only originals from whence all our

ideas take their beginnings. The term _operations_ here I use in a large

sense, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about its

ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from them, such as is

the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought.’

‘The understanding,’ proceeds Mr. Locke, ‘seems to me not to have the

least glimmering of any ideas, which it doth not receive from one of

these two. External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible

qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us;

and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own

operations. These, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their

several modes, combinations, and relations, we shall find to contain all

our whole stock of ideas: and that we have nothing in our minds, which

did not come in one of these two ways.’—_Essay_, vol. I. p. 84.

Again, page 150, he says:

‘I pretend not to teach but to inquire, and therefore cannot but confess

here again, that external and internal sensation are the only passages

that I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far

as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this dark

room. For methinks the understanding is not much unlike a closet, wholly

shut from light, with only some little opening left, to let in external

visible resemblances, or ideas of things without: would the pictures

coming into such a dark room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be

found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a

man in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.’

This account of the origin of every thing that exists in the mind

differs from the simplicity of Hobbes’s system, and of the modern

philosophy, in supposing that there is another distinct source of ideas,

besides sensation, namely, reflection on the operations of our own

minds. I confess this addition appears to me to be very awkwardly and

inartificially made. For, in the first place, it is obvious to remark

that in most at least, if not all the instances enumerated by the

author, the operations themselves are the proper and immediate sources

of our ideas, not this kind of reflection on them, which seems to be

nothing but the repetition or recollection of the first conscious

impression, the perception of a perception. For example, Mr. Locke

includes among operations of our own minds ‘some sort of passions

arising from our ideas,’ _i.e._ as he explains it, the sense of pleasure

and pain. Now it is surely a little preposterous to make, not the

original feeling itself, but the after consideration or reflection on

that feeling, the source of our idea of pleasure or pain. In this sense,

reflection must be the source of all our ideas, whether of external

objects, or the operations of our own minds, for in the same sense it

may be argued, that the first impression of a sensible object is not the

source of the idea we have of it, till the soul comes to reflect on and

consider that original impression. But it might be said with equal

propriety, that we have one source of ideas, viz., sensation, and

another source of ideas, viz. ideas. From the view which Mr. Locke has

here taken of the subject, though the passions, or the satisfaction and

uneasiness attending certain things are ranked among the operations of

the mind, yet it is not quite clear whether we are supposed to have any

consciousness of them or not; whether they are not as remote from any

thing like perception, as the lifeless objects without us, till coming

to be afterwards reflected on and taken notice of by the mind, they

furnish the understanding with a new set of ideas. The same reasoning

may be applied to the other operations of perception, thinking, &c. for

it seems to me that the original act of perceiving or thinking is the

source of my idea of those mental operations, just as the first

impression of any sensible object is the source of my idea of that

object. Not sensation and reflection, therefore, but sensation and the

operations of our own minds are more properly the sources of our ideas,

that is, these two furnish materials for our reflection. I should not

have dwelt so long upon this distinction, which may be thought of little

importance in itself, but that I believe it has led to most of the

errors of the ‘Essay.’ For in consequence of separating the operations

of the mind in a manner from the mind itself, and making them exist only

as objects for its contemplation, Mr. Locke has been satisfied with

considering those operations as acting upon the mind like external

things, not as emanating from it. Thus, by a general formula, all our

ideas of every kind are represented as communicated to the mind by

something foreign to it, instead of growing out of, and being a part of

its own nature and essence.

Secondly, another objection to this division of our ideas into those of

sensation and reflection is, that it does not differ in any decisive

manner from the more simple statement of Hobbes and others, who derive

all our ideas from sensation. For by sensation these writers do not

understand merely the external image, but the perception or feeling

which accompanies it, and they contend that all our other ideas are

continuations, modifications, or different arrangements of the original

impressions, produced by objects on the senses. Now there is nothing in

the extract above given to disprove this statement: and if so, the

original hypothesis will remain in its full force. Indeed Mr. Locke

himself does not seem to have made up his mind, whether it were so or

not. For though he speaks of the mind as furnishing the understanding

with ideas, and with the materials of reason and knowledge, and

enumerates and explains the several operations of the mind in comparing,

distinguishing, &c. yet he elsewhere speaks of ideas as existing in the

understanding like pictures in a gallery, or as if the whole process of

the intellect were resolvable into the power of receiving, retaining,

carrying, and transposing the gross materials furnished by the senses.

In this case, I think the simplest way at once is to make sensation the

foundation of all our other ideas and faculties. For my own part, the

reason why I cannot assent to this doctrine is, that I believe there is

another act or faculty of the mind implied in all our ideas, for which

neither sensation nor any of its modes can ever account, and which I

shall here proceed to explain.

The principle which I shall attempt to prove is, that ideas are the

offspring of the understanding, not of the senses. By a sensation is

meant the perception produced by the impression of the several parts of

an outward object, each by itself, on the correspondent parts of an

organised sentient being: by an idea I mean the conception produced by a

number of these together on the same conscious principle. Besides the

succession or juxtaposition of different sensible impressions, I suppose

that there is a common principle of thought, a superintending faculty,

which alone perceives the relations of things, and enables us to

comprehend their connexions, forms, and masses. This faculty is properly

the understanding, and it is by means of this faculty that man indeed

becomes a reasonable soul. What has led more than any thing else to the

exclusion of the understanding as a distinct faculty of the mind, and to

the principle of resolving the acts of judging, reasoning, &c., into

mere association, or succession of ideas, has been the considering ideas

themselves, or those particular objects which are marked by one name, or

strike at once upon the senses, as _simple things_. Mr. Locke, it is

true, has avoided this error as far as relates to our ideas of

substances, but he reckons among simple ideas of the qualities of things

several ideas, which are evidently complex, such as extension, figure,

motion, and number. Hence, having laid in a certain stock of ideas

without the necessity of the understanding, it was thought an easy

matter to build up the whole structure of the human mind without it, as

we build a house with stones. The method, therefore, which I shall take

to establish the point I have in view, will be by showing that there is

no one of these simple ideas, or ideas of particular things, which are

made the foundation of all the rest, that is not itself an aggregate of

many things, or that can subsist a moment but in the understanding. I

can conceive of a being endued with the power of sensation, or simple

perception, so as to receive the direct impressions of things, and also

with memory, so as to retain them for any length of time, as they were

severally and unconnectedly presented, yet without the smallest degree

of understanding, or without ever having so much as a single thought.

The state of such a being would be that of animal life, and something

more with the addition of memory, but it would not amount to intellect;

which implies, besides actual, living impressions, the power of

perceiving their relations to one another, of comparing and contrasting

them, and of regarding the different parts of any object as making one

whole. Without this ‘discourse of reason,’ this surrounding and forming

power, we could never have the idea of a single object, as of a table or

a chair, a blade of grass, or a grain of sand. Every one of these

includes a certain configuration, hardness, colour, &c., _i.e._ ideas of

different things, received by different senses, which must be put

together by the understanding before they can be referred to any

particular thing, or considered as one idea. Without this faculty, all

our ideas would be necessarily decomposed, and crumbled down into their

original elements and fluxional parts. We could assuredly never carry on

a chain of reasoning on any subject, for the very links of which this

chain must consist would be ground to powder. There would be an infinite

divisibility in the impressions of the mind, as well as in the objects

of matter. There would be a total want of union, fellowship, and mutual

intelligence between them, for each impression must remain absolutely

simple and distinct, unknown to, and unconscious of the rest, shut up in

the narrow cell of its own individuality. No two of these atomic

impressions could ever club together to form even a sensible point, much

less should we be able to arrive at any of the larger masses, or nominal

descriptions of things. The most that sensation could possibly do for

us, would be to furnish us with the ideas of what Mr. Locke calls the

simple qualities of objects, as of colour or pressure, though not as a

general notion or diffused feeling; for it is certain that no one idea

could ever contain more than the tinge of a single ray of light, or the

puncture of a single particle of matter. Let us, however, for a moment

suppose that the several parts of objects are to be considered as

individual things, or ideal units; and then see whether, without the

cementing power of the understanding, we shall be able to conceive of

them as forming a complete whole, or any one entire object. Thus we may

have a notion of the legs and arms of a chair as so many distinct,

positive things; but without the power of perceiving them together in

their several proportions and situations, we could not have the idea of

a chair as one thing, or as a piece of furniture, intended for a

particular use. It is the mind (if I may be allowed such an expression)

that makes up the idea of the chair, and fits it together: that is in

this case the cabinet-maker, who unites the loose, disjointed parts, and

makes them one firm and well-compacted object. I might instance to the

same purpose a statue. Will any one say, that if the head and limbs and

different parts of a fine statue were to be taken asunder, broken in

pieces, and strewed about the floor, and first shown to him in that

state, he would have the same idea of the beauty, proportions, posture,

and effect of the whole, as if he had seen it in its original state? But

the idea which such a person might have of the statue in this way would

be completeness and harmony itself, compared with any idea which could

result from the sensible impression of the several parts. For he might

still in fancy piece together the broken, mutilated fragments, prop up

the limbs, set the head upon the shoulders, and make out a crazy image

of the whole; but without the understanding reacting on the senses, and

informing the eye with judgment and knowledge, there would be no

possibility whatever of comparing the different impressions received: no

one part could have the slightest reference to any other part or to the

whole; there would be no principle of cohesion left: we might have an

infinite number of microscopic impressions and fractions of ideas, but

there being nothing to unite them together, the most perfect grace and

symmetry would be only one mass of unmeaning, unconscious confusion. All

nature, all objects, all parts of all objects would be equally ‘without

form and void.’ _The mind alone is formative_, to use the expression of

a great German writer; or it is that alone which by its pervading and

elastic energy unfolds and expands our ideas, that gives order and

consistency to them, that assigns to every part its proper place, and

fixes it there, and that frames the idea of the whole. Or, in other

words, it is the understanding alone that perceives relation, but every

object is made up of relation. In short, there is no object or idea

which does not consist of a number of parts arranged in a certain

manner, but of this arrangement the parts themselves cannot be sensible.

To make each part conscious of its relation to the rest is to suppose an

infinite number of intellects instead of one; and to say that a

knowledge or perception of each part separately, without a reference to

the rest, can produce a conception of the whole; that is, that a

knowledge where no two impressions are or ever can be compared, can

include a comparison between them and many others, is a contradiction

and an absurdity.

It may be said perhaps, that not the sensation excited by any of the

parts of an object separately, but the sum of our sensations, excited by

all the parts, produces our idea of the whole. But it is not possible

that in a given number of impressions, where the mind never has

perception of more than a single part, there should be contained

notwithstanding a view of the whole at once. For as a single part cannot

of itself represent the whole object, so neither can this part by being

actually joined to others, which by the supposition are never perceived

to be joined with it, produce that idea, any more than if those other

parts had no existence. If the impression of the parts of an object,

absolutely and individually considered, were the same thing as the idea

of the object, any number of actual impressions, arranged in any manner

whatever, would necessarily be the same object. But this is contrary to

all fact. For then a curve line, consisting of the same number of

points, would not be distinguishable from a straight one, nor a square

from a triangle of the same dimensions, and so on. In a being endued

only with a power of sensation, and supposed to be simple and undivided,

there could be no room for more than an individual impression at once.

Our sensations must always succeed each other. One thought must have

completely passed away, before another could supply its place. Our ideas

would leave no traces of themselves, like the bubbles that rise and

disappear on the water, or the snow that melts as it falls. There would

be nothing in their fugitive, momentary existence to bind them together.

Ere we could stop to compare any one impression with any other, it would

be lost for ever in the dark abyss of time. Nothing could be connected

with any thing else, either coexisting with it, or going before or after

it. If on the other hand, we suppose any merely sentient being to be

extended and compounded, or to be capable of receiving more than one

impression at once, we shall yet gain little by it. Such a sentient

being will be nothing but a number of distinct sentient beings. For as

in the former instance, no two impressions could co-exist together, so

in the latter, though they existed together, there could be no sort of

communication between them. They would be absolutely cut off from and

exclusive of each other. The mind in attending to any one must be wholly

absorbed by it, and insensible of the rest. Our sensations would to

every rational purpose be placed as completely out of the sphere of each

other’s consciousness, as if they were parcel of another intellect, or

floated in the region of the moon. That any number of detached,

unconnected, actual sensations, impressed on different sentient beings,

would not of themselves imply a conception of any one entire object is

what every one is ready to grant:—it would be equally clear, that this

idea could not arise from the impression of the different parts of an

object on the different parts of the same organized, extended, sentient

substance, but that in this case we involuntarily transfer our own

consciousness to a being incapable of it, and identify these distinct

sensible impressions in the same common intellect.

It is strange that Mr. Locke should rank among simple ideas that of

number, which he defines to be the idea of unity repeated. But how this

idea of successive or distinct units can ever give the idea of

repetition unless the former instances are borne in mind, I cannot

conceive. There might be a transition from one unit to another, but no

addition or aggregate formed. As well might we suppose that a body of an

inch diameter by shifting from place to place might enlarge its

dimensions to a foot or a mile, as that a succession of units, perceived

separately, should produce the complex idea of number. The natural fool

that Mr. Hobbes speaks of, may be supposed to observe every stroke of

the clock, and nod to it, or say one, one, one: but he could never know

what hour it strikes, according to Mr. Hobbes, without the use of those

names of order, one, two, three, &c. nor according to my notion, without

the help of that orderly understanding which first invented those names,

and comprehends their meaning. On the material hypothesis, the mind can

have but one idea at a time, and the idea of number could never enter

into it.

Though Mr. Locke constantly supposes the mind to perceive relations, and

explains its operations in reasoning, comparing, &c. on this principle,

there is but one place in his work, in which he seems to have been upon

the point of discovering that this principle is at the bottom of all our

ideas whatever. He says, in the beginning of his chapter on Power, which

he classes among simple ideas, and which in my opinion has a much more

simple source than that which he assigns to it,—‘I confess power

includes in it _some kind of relation_ (a relation to action or change),

as indeed which of our ideas, of what kind soever, when attentively

considered, does not? For our ideas of extension, duration, and number,

do they not all contain in them a secret relation of the parts? Figure

and motion have something relative in them much more visibly: and

sensible qualities, as colours and smells, what are they but the powers

of different bodies in relation to our perception? and if considered in

the things themselves, do they not depend on the bulk, figure, texture,

and motion of the parts? All which include some kind of relation in

them. Our idea therefore of power I think may well have a place amongst

other simple ideas, and be considered as one of them, being one of those

that make a principal ingredient in our complex ideas of

substances.’—_Essay_, vol. i. p. 234. That is to say, in other words,

the idea of power, which is confessedly complex according to Mr. Locke,

as depending on the changes we observe produced in one thing by another,

is to pass for a simple idea, because it has as good a right to this

denomination as other complex ideas, which are usually classed as simple

ones. It is thus that the inquiring mind seems to be always hovering on

the brink of truth, but that timidity or indolence, or prejudice, which

is both combined, makes us shrink back, unwilling to trust ourselves to

the fathomless abyss.

I have thus endeavoured to give some account of what I mean by the

understanding, as the principle which is the foundation not only of

judgment, reason, choice, and deliberate action, but is included in

every idea of the mind, or conception even of sensible objects. I am

aware that what I have said may be looked upon as rhapsody and

extravagance by the strictest sect of those who are called philosophers.

The understanding has been set aside as an awkward incumbrance, since it

was conceived practicable to carry on the whole business of thought and

reason by a succession of external images and sensible points. The fine

network of the mind itself, the cords that bind and hold our scattered

perceptions together, and form the means of communication between them,

are dissolved and vanish before the clear light of modern metaphysics,

as the gossamer is dissipated by the sun. The adepts in this system

smile at the contradictions involved in the supposition of perceiving

the relations between different things, and say that this implies the

absurdity that the mind may have two ideas at once, which is with them

impossible. Now I shall only contend that if the mind cannot have two

ideas at the same time, it can never have any, since all the ideas we

know of consist of more than one: and though the consciousness we have

of attending to different objects at once, when we compare, judge,

reason, will, &c., has been resolved into a deception of the mind in

mistaking a rapid succession of objects for one general impression, yet

it will hardly be pretended that we deceive ourselves in thinking we

have any ideas at all. Mr. Horne Tooke, who is certainly one of the

ablest commentators on the doctrines of that school, says that it is as

absurd to talk of a complex idea as of a complex star, meaning that our

ideas are as perfectly distinct from, and have as little to do with one

another, as the stars that compose a constellation. Other writers, to

avoid the seeming contradiction of supposing the mind to divide its

attention between different objects, have suggested the instant of its

passing from one to the other as the true point of comparison between

them; or that the time when it had an idea of both together, was the

time when it had an idea of neither. As it was evident that while the

mind was entirely taken up with one idea, it could not have any

knowledge of another which did not yet exist, or had passed away, and as

both impressions cannot be supposed to co-exist in the same conscious

understanding (for on this system there is no such faculty), this short,

precious interval, this moment of leisure from both, this lucky vacancy

of thought, is pitched upon as that in which the mind performs all its

functions, and contemplates its various ideas in their absence, as from

some vantage ground the traveller stops to survey the country on both

sides of him. To such absurdities are ingenious men driven by setting up

argument against fact, and denying the most obvious truths for which

they cannot account, like the sophist who denied the existence of

motion, because he could not understand its nature. It might be deemed a

sufficient answer to those who build systems and lay down formal

propositions on the principle that the mind can comprehend but one idea

at a time, to say that they consequently can have no meaning in what

they write, since when they begin a sentence they cannot have the least

idea of what will be the end of it, and by the time they get to the end

of it must totally forget the beginning. ‘Peace to all such!’

To show, however, that I am not quite singular in my notions on this

subject of consciousness, and to remove, as I think, every shadow of

doubt upon it, I beg leave to refer my readers to two passages, the one

in Rousseau, and the other in Abraham Tucker, in support of the almost

obsolete prejudice which I have here endeavoured to defend. The one is

an argument to prove that judgment and sensation are not the same, in

the Vicar’s profession of faith in ‘Emilius,’ and the other is the

chapter on the independent existence of mind in the ‘Light of Nature

Pursued.’

The passage in Rousseau seems evidently to have been intended as an

answer to the maxim of Helvetius that _to feel is to judge_, and to his

reasoning on this maxim, which is as follows:—

‘The question being reduced within these limits, I shall examine at

present whether the act of the mind in judging is any thing more than a

sensation. When I judge of the size or colour of the objects around me,

it is evident that the judgment formed of the different impressions,

which these objects make upon my senses, is properly only a sensation:

that I may say indiscriminately, either I _judge_, or I _feel_, that of

two objects, the one which I call _a yard_ makes upon me a different

impression from another which I call _a foot_: that the colour called

_red_, produces a different effect upon the sight from that which I call

_yellow_; and I conclude that in this case to judge is only to feel or

perceive by the senses. But it may be said, let us suppose that any one

desires to know whether strength of body is preferable to mere bulk; are

we certain that we can decide this point by means of the senses alone?

Most undoubtedly, I reply: for in order to my coming to a decision on

the subject, my memory must first retrace to me successively the

different situations in which I may happen most frequently to find

myself in the course of my life. In this case, then, to judge is to see

that in these different situations strength will be oftener an advantage

to me than size. But it may be retorted, when the question is to decide

whether in a king justice is preferable to mercy, is it conceivable that

the conclusion here formed depends entirely on sensation? The

affirmative has undoubtedly at first sight the air of a paradox:

nevertheless, in order to establish its truth, we will presuppose in any

one a knowledge of what is meant by good and evil, and also of the

principle that one action is worse than another, according as it is more

injurious to the well-being of society. On this supposition, what method

ought the orator or poet to take, in order to show most clearly that

justice, preferable in a king to mercy, preserves the greatest number of

citizens to the state?

‘The orator will present three several pictures to the imagination of

his supposed hearer: in the first he will represent a just king, who

condemns and gives orders for the execution of a criminal; in the

second, will be seen the good king, who opens the doors of his dungeon,

and strikes off the chains of the same criminal; in the third picture,

the criminal himself will be the principal figure, who, armed with a

poniard, on his escape from his cell hastens to assassinate fifty of his

fellow-citizens. But who is there that at the sight of these three

pictures will not instantly perceive that justice which, by the death of

a single individual, saves the lives of fifty persons, is preferable to

mercy? Nevertheless, this judgment is really nothing but a sensation. In

fact, if from the habit of connecting certain ideas with certain words,

the sound of these words may, as experience demonstrates, excite in us

almost the same sensations which we should feel from the actual presence

of the objects, it is evident that from the contemplation of these three

pictures, to judge that in a king justice is preferable to mercy, is to

feel and see that in the first picture a single citizen is sacrificed,

while in the third fifty are massacred; whence I conclude that every act

of the judgment is only a sensation.’—_Helvetius on the Mind_, p. 12.

On this statement I may be permitted to remark that as the author

affirms that sensation is the same thing as judgment, so he seems to

conceive that the assertion of any proposition is the same thing as the

proof of it. He supposes three several pictures to be presented to a man

of understanding, and that from an attentive contemplation and

comparison of the different objects and events contained in them, he

comes to a judgment or conclusion, _viz._ _That justice is preferable to

mercy_. ‘Nevertheless,’ he says, ‘this judgment is really nothing but a

sensation.’ This is all the proof he brings; and perhaps, considering

the language and country in which this celebrated author wrote, it is

reasoning good enough. Do I say this with any view to throw contempt on

that lively, ingenious, gay, social, and polished people? No; but

philosophy is not their _forte_: they are not in earnest in these remote

speculations. In order duly to appreciate their writings, we must

consider them not as the dictates of the understanding, but as the

effects of constitution. Otherwise we shall do them great injustice.

They pursue truth, like all other things, as far as it is agreeable;

they reason for their amusement; they engage in abstruse questions to

vary the topics of conversation. Whatever does not answer this purpose

is banished out of books and society as a morose and cynical philosophy.

To obtrude the dark and difficult parts of a question, or to enter into

an elaborate investigation of them, is considered as a piece of

ill-manners. Those writers, therefore, have been the most popular among

the French who have supplied their readers with the greatest number of

dazzling conclusions founded on the most slight and superficial

evidence, whose reasonings could be applied to every thing, because they

explained nothing, and who most effectually kept out of sight every

thing true or profound or interesting in a question. Who would ever

think of plunging into abstruse, metaphysical inquiries concerning the

nature of the understanding, when he may with entire ease to himself and

satisfaction to others solve all the phenomena of the mind by repeating

in three words, _Juger est sentir_. As it was the object of the

school-philosophy, by a jargon of technical distinctions, to sharpen the

eagerness of debate and give birth to endless verbal controversies, so

the modern system, transferring philosophy from the cloistered hall to

the toilette and the drawing-room, is calculated, by a set of portable

phrases, as familiar and as current as the forms of salutation, to

silence every difference of opinion, and to produce an euthanasia of all

thought. I have made these remarks not to prejudice the question, but to

prevent the prejudice arising on the other side, from seeing the writers

of a whole nation, not deficient in natural talents or in acquired

advantages, agree in delivering the most puerile absurdities as profound

and oracular truths.

The train of thought into which the author has fallen in the passage

above cited is pretty obvious. Having undertaken to prove that the ideas

of justice and mercy are mere sensations, and that the conclusion that

justice is preferable to mercy is also a mere sensation, in order to

shew the possibility of this he conjures up the ideas of a good and a

bad king, of a criminal, a prison, chains, a dagger, and fifty citizens

massacred before the eyes of the spectator, which form the subject of

three imaginary pictures, and which are in general considered as so many

sensible objects. All these sensible objects he supposes to be implied

in, and to be the materials out of which we frame the judgment or

conclusion, that justice is better than mercy; and therefore he infers

that there is nothing else implied in or necessary to that judgment, and

that consequently it is nothing but a sensation. Having succeeded in

resolving the compound and general ideas of justice and mercy, good and

evil, into a number of sensible appearances, his imagination is entirely

occupied with the novelty of the objects before him, and he drops

altogether the consideration, whether the combination and comparison of

these several objects or sensations which is absolutely necessary to

their forming the moral ideas or inference spoken of, is not the act of

some other faculty. In short, the principle that a judgment is nothing

but a sensation, is not only a perfectly gratuitous assertion, but an

assertion either without meaning, or a palpable contradiction. For the

single objects presented in the foregoing metaphysical pictures, and

which are supposed to constitute the judgment, are not one sensation,

but many. Now if it be meant that these single objects, as they are

perceived separately, or successively, one by one, without the

intervention of any reflex act of the mind combining and comparing them

together, constitute of themselves the judgment, ‘that justice is

preferable to mercy,’ this is to say, in so many words, that the mind

forms a comparison between things without comparing them, and judges of

their relations without perceiving them. On the other hand, if it be

meant to include the acts of the mind in comparing, judging, inferring,

&c. in the term _sensation_, then the proposition that judgment or

sensation are the same, will be nothing but an idle and insignificant

abuse of words, and will only prove that if to the sensation, or

perception of particular objects we add the faculty of comparing and

judging, nothing farther will be necessary for it to compare and judge.

I shall therefore dismiss this well known maxim as no better than a

misnomer, as an attempt to shorten the labour of thought by the

interposition of an unmeaning phrase, and to confound all the

distinctions of the understanding by an equivoque.

It will not be amiss in this place to transcribe a passage from the

Logic of the Abbé Condillac (a work which may be regarded as the

quintessence of slender thought, and of the art of substituting words

for things) to show how far the doctrine of the origin of all our ideas

from sensation may be carried, and what an imbecility it produces in the

mind, and deadness to any but external objects. The design of the

passage is to prove that morality is a visible thing. This however is a

work of supererogation, even on the principle supposed: for it is not

necessary to refer morality to any thing visible or audible, or to any

other of the senses, but the sense of pleasure and pain; our feelings of

this kind being allowed to come from, and make a part of our original

sensations. But this system is not an improvement on reason, but a

progression in superficiality and absurdity, a vast vacuity, where

‘fluttering its pennons vain, the mind drops down ten thousand fathoms

deep.’

‘Moral ideas,’ says my author, ‘seem to elude the senses: they at least

elude the senses of those philosophers who deny that our knowledge

proceeds from sensation. They would gladly know of what colour virtue

is, or of what colour vice is. I answer that virtue consists in the

habitual performance of good actions, as vice consists in the habitual

performance of bad ones. Now these habits and these actions are visible.

‘What, then, is the morality of actions a thing which falls under the

cognizance of the senses! Wherefore should it not? Morality depends

solely on the conformity between our actions and the laws; but these

actions are visible, and the laws are so equally, since they are certain

conventions made by men.

‘But it will be said, if the laws are only things of convention, they

must be altogether arbitrary. They may indeed be sometimes arbitrary;

there are but too many such laws; but those which determine whether our

actions are good or bad, are not so, nor can they be so. They are the

work of man, it is true, because they are conventions which we have

made; nevertheless, we alone have not made them: nature made them as

well as we, she dictated them to us, and it was not in our power to make

others. The wants and the faculties of man being given, the laws which

are to regulate his conduct must necessarily follow: and though we

enacted them, God who has created us with such wants and such faculties,

is in truth our sole legislator. In obeying the laws which are

conformable to our nature, we render obedience to him who is the author

of our nature; and this is that which perfects the morality of

actions.’—Page 56.

For a work entitled Logic, there are a pleasant number of contradictions

in this passage. To pass over many of them, if the laws here spoken of

are such merely in consequence of their being visible, then all visible

objects are laws, and all laws are equally moral. But no! there are some

arbitrary laws. Now if the goodness of the law depends on their

conformity to our wants and faculties, neither of these are visible, any

more than God who is said to be our only lawgiver. So that ‘the latter

end of this system of law and divinity forgets the beginning.’ That

those actions are moral which are conformable to a moral law, and that

those laws are moral, which are agreeable to our nature and wants, may

be readily admitted: but I cannot myself think that this conformity is

an object of the senses, or that the true features of morality can ever

be discerned but by the eye of the understanding. The friends of

morality, it seems, according to our author, are not to despair, or to

suppose that the distinctions of right and wrong are banished entirely

out of the material system. They only become more clear and legible than

ever; we are still right in asserting virtue to have a real existence,

namely, on paper, and in supposing that we have some idea of it, as

consisting of the letters of the alphabet. Almost in the same manner,

Mr. Horne Tooke very gravely defines the essence of _law_ and _just_,

from the etymology of these words, to consist in their being something

_laid down_, and something _ordered_ (_jussum_); and when pressed by the

difficulty that there are many things laid down and ordered which are

neither laws nor just, he makes answer that their obligation depends on

a higher species of law and justice, to wit, a law which is no where

laid down, and a justice which is no where ordered, except indeed by the

nature of things, on which the etymology of these two words does not

seem to throw any light.

On all the other points of the modern metaphysical system, such as the

nature of abstraction, judgment and reasoning, the materiality of the

soul, free-will, the association of ideas, &c. Mr. Locke either halts

between two opinions, or else takes the common-place side of the

question. The motion of the system, which bears his name and which by

this very delay gained all that it wanted to become popular, was

retrograde in him, not progressive. The extracts I am about to give from

his work will I think establish this point. They will at the same time

show him to be a man of strong practical sense, of much serious thought

and inquiry, and considerable freedom of opinion, and a real lover of

truth, though not so bold and systematic a reasoner, or so great a

dealer in paradoxes as some others. Moderation, caution, a wish to

examine every side of a question, and an unwillingness to decide till

after the most mature and circumspect investigation, and then only

according to the clearness of the evidence, seem to have been the

characteristics of his mind, none of which denote the daring innovator,

or maker of a system. What there is of system in his work is Hobbes’s,

as I have already shown: the deviations from its common sense and

general observation are his own. There is throughout his reasoning the

same contempt for the schoolmen, and the same preference of native,

rustic reason to learned authority: the same notion of the necessity for

reforming the system of philosophy, and of the possibility of doing this

by a more exact use of words: there is the same dissatisfaction with the

prevailing system, but he at the same time entertained doubts of his

own. What he wanted was confidence and decision. The prolixity and

ambiguity of his style seem to have arisen from this source: for he is

never weary of examining and re-examining the same objection, and he

states his arguments with so many limitations and with such a variety of

expression to prevent misapprehension, that it is often difficult to

guess at his real meaning. There is it must be confessed a sort of

heaviness about him, a want of clearness and connection, which in spite

of all his pains, and the real plodding strength of his mind he was

never able to overcome. To return to his account of complex ideas: the

beginning of his observations on this subject is as follows:

‘We have hitherto considered those ideas, in the reception whereof the

mind is only passive, which are those simple ones received from

sensation and reflection before mentioned, whereof the mind cannot make

one to itself, nor have any idea which does not consist wholly of them.

But as the mind is wholly passive in the reception of all its simple

ideas, so it exerts several acts of its own, whereby out of its simple

ideas, as the materials and foundations of the rest, the other are

framed. The acts of the mind wherein it exerts its power over its simple

ideas, are chiefly these three.

‘1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all

complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether

simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another, so as to

take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one; in which way

it gets all its ideas of _relations_. 3. The third is separating them

from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence; this

is called _abstraction_: and thus all its general ideas are made. This

shows man’s power to be much about the same in the material and

intellectual world: for the materials in both being such as he has no

power over, either to make or destroy, all that man can do is either to

unite them together, or to set them by one another, or wholly to

separate them.’—Vol. i. p. 151.

The first great point which Mr. Locke labours to prove in his Essay, is

that there are no innate ideas, which he seems to have established very

fully and clearly, if indeed so obvious a truth required any formal

demonstration. His chief proofs are from the case of a man born blind,

who has no idea of colours, and from the ignorance which children and

idiots have of those first principles and universal maxims, which some

philosophers and theologians, confounding the faculties of the mind with

actual impressions, had supposed to be legibly engraven on the mind by

the hand of its author. For the supposing the understanding to be a

distinct faculty of the mind no more proves our ideas to be innate, than

the allowing perception to be a distinct original faculty of the mind,

which everybody does, proves that there must be innate sensations. These

two positions have, however, been sometimes considered as convertible by

the partisans on both sides of the question; the one arguing from the

existence of the soul and the power of thought to the positive

perception of certain truths, and the others concluding that by denying

any original inherent impressions, they had overturned the supposition

of the different faculties and powers which must be in the mind, to

account for the first production or subsequent modification of sensation

or of thought. For instance, it has been made a consequence of the

doctrine that there were no innate ideas, that there could be no such

thing as genius, or an original difference of capacity; as if the

capacity were not perfectly distinct from the actual impressions by the

very theory itself, and as if there might not be a difference in the

capacity of acquiring ideas as all experience shows, though none in the

knowledge acquired, because this capacity had never yet been exerted. As

well might we argue that of two houses that are just built one is as

commodious and capacious as the other, as well fitted for the reception

of guests and the disposal of furniture, because at present neither of

them is furnished or inhabited.

The following passages will show the manner in which our author treats

this part of his subject:

‘The child certainly knows that the nurse that feeds it is neither the

cat it plays with, nor the blackamoor it is afraid of: that the wormseed

or mustard it refuses is not the apple or sugar it cries for; this it is

certainly and undoubtedly assured of: but will any one say it is by

virtue of this principle, _That it is impossible for the same thing to

be and not to be_, that it so firmly assents to these and other parts of

its knowledge? Or that the child has any notion or apprehension of that

proposition at an age, wherein yet, it is plain, it knows a great many

other truths? He that will say, children join these several abstract

speculations with their sucking bottles and their rattles, may perhaps

with justice be thought to have more passion and zeal for his opinion,

but less sincerity and truth than one of that age. Though therefore

there be several general propositions that meet with constant and ready

assent as soon as proposed to men grown up, who have attained the use of

more general and abstract ideas, and names standing for them, yet they

not being to be found in those of tender years, who nevertheless know

other things, they cannot pretend to universal assent of intelligent

persons, and so by no means can be supposed innate: it being impossible,

that any truth which is innate (if there were any such) should be

unknown, at least to any one who knows any thing else. Since if they are

innate truths, they must be innate thoughts; there being nothing a truth

in the mind which it has never thought on.

‘That the general maxims we are discoursing of, are not known to

children, idiots, and a great part of mankind, we have already

sufficiently proved. But there is this farther argument against their

being innate, that these characters, if they were native and original

impressions, should appear fairest and clearest in those persons in whom

yet we find no footsteps of them. And it is in my opinion a strong

presumption that they are not innate, since they are least known to

those in whom if they were innate, they must need exert themselves with

most force and vigour. For children, idiots, savages, and illiterate

people being of all others the least corrupted by custom or borrowed

opinion, learning or education having not cast their native thoughts

into new moulds, nor by superinducing foreign and studied doctrines,

confounded those fair characters nature had written there; one might

reasonably imagine that in their minds these innate notions should lie

open fairly to every one’s view, as it is certain the thoughts of

children do. One would think according to these men’s principles that

all these native beams of light (were there any such) should in those

who have no reserves, no acts of concealment, shine out in their full

lustre, and leave us in no more doubt of their being there than we are

of their love of pleasure and abhorrence of pain. But alas, amongst

children, idiots, savages, and the grossly illiterate, what general

maxims are to be found? What universal principle of knowledge? Their

notions are few and narrow, borrowed only from those objects they have

had most to do with, and which have made upon their senses the

frequentest and strongest impressions. A child knows his nurse and his

cradle, and by degrees the playthings of a little more advanced age; and

a young savage has perhaps his head filled with love and hunting,

according to the fashion of his tribe. But he that from a child

untaught, or a wild inhabitant of the woods will expect these abstract

maxims and reputed principles of science, will I fear find himself

mistaken. Such kind of general propositions [as that which is, is; and

that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be] are seldom

mentioned in the huts of Indians, much less are they to be found in the

thoughts of children, or any impressions of them on the minds of

naturals. They are the language and business of the schools and

academies of learned nations, accustomed to that sort of conversation or

learning, where disputes are frequent: these maxims being suited to

artificial argumentation, and useful for conviction, but not much

conducing to the discovery of truth, or advancement of knowledge.’

I do not know that Mr. Locke has sufficiently distinguished between two

things which I cannot very well express otherwise than by a turn of

words, namely, an innate knowledge of principles, and innate principles

of knowledge. His arguments seem to me conclusive against the one, but

not against the other, for I think that there are certain general

principles or forms of thinking, something like the moulds in which any

thing is cast, according to which our ideas follow one another in a

certain order, though the knowledge, _i.e._, perception of what these

principles are, and the forming them into distinct propositions is the

result of experience. It is true, the child distinguishes between its

nurse and the blackamoor, between bitter and sweet: what hinders it from

confounding them? The ideas of _same_ and _different_ are not included

in these ideas themselves, nor are they peculiar to any of them, but

general terms. What then determines the child to annex them uniformly to

certain things and not to others? It is plain then, that our ideas are

not at liberty to run into clusters as they please or as it happens, but

are regulated by certain laws, to which they must conform; or that the

manner in which we conceive of things does not depend simply on the

particular nature of the things, but on the general nature of the

understanding. Mr. Locke is clear for certain innate practical

principles or general tendencies regulating all our actions, namely, the

love of pleasure, and aversion to pain. He does not however admit, as I

can find, of any thing similar to the operations of the understanding.

The analogy, notwithstanding, holds exactly the same in both cases. For

the child is no more conscious of any such general practical principle

regulating all his desires, than of any speculative principle regulating

his notion of things: he gets the idea of both from experience of their

effects; but I think that if there were no such principles in the mind

itself, previous to the actual impression of objects, and merely

developed or called into action by them, we must be perfectly

indifferent both to the reception of pleasure and pain, as we should

feel no more repugnance to admit one conclusion than another, however

absurd or contradictory. The necessity we are under of perceiving

certain agreements or disagreements between our ideas is as much, and in

the same sense, the foundation of judgment and reasoning, as the general

desire of happiness and aversion to misery is the foundation of

morality.

This property of the understanding, by which certain judgments,

naturally follow certain perceptions, and are followed by other

judgments, is the faculty of reason, of order and proportion in the

mind, and is indeed nothing but the understanding acting by rule or

necessity. The long controversy between Locke and Leibnitz with respect

to innate ideas turned upon the distinction here stated, innate ideas

being thus referred not to the actual impressions of objects, but to the

forms or moulds existing in the mind, and in which those impressions are

cast. Leibnitz contended that there was a germ or principle of truth, a

pre-established harmony between its innate faculties and its acquired

ideas, implied in the essence of the mind itself. According to the one

it was like a piece of free stone, which the mason hews with equal ease

in all directions, and into any shape, as circumstances require:

according to the other, it resembles a piece of marble strongly

ingrained, with the figure of a man, or other animal, inclosed in it,

and which the sculptor has only to separate from the surrounding mass.

I will add one more passage to draw the attention of my readers to this

intricate subject, and to show that the difficulties surrounding it were

not completely cleared up or even apprehended by the author of the

‘Essay.’

‘Hath a child,’ he says, ‘an idea of impossibility and identity, before

it has of white or black, sweet or sour? Or is it from the knowledge of

this principle that it concludes that wormwood rubbed on the nipple hath

not the same taste that it used to receive from thence? Is it the actual

knowledge of _Impossibile est idem esse et non esse_ that makes a child

distinguish between its mother and a stranger, or that makes it fond of

the one, and fly the other? Or does the mind regulate itself and its

assent by ideas that it never had? Or the understanding draw conclusions

from principles which it never yet knew or understood? The names

_impossibility_ and _identity_ stand for two ideas, so far from being

innate, or born with us, that I think it requires great care and

attention to form them right in our understandings. They are so far from

being brought into the world with us, so remote from the thoughts of

infancy and childhood, that I believe upon examination it will be found

that many grown men want them.

‘If identity (to instance in that alone) be a native impression, and

consequently so clear and obvious to us that we must needs know it even

from our cradles; I would gladly be resolved by one of seven or seventy

years old, Whether a man, being a creature consisting of soul and body,

be the same man when his body is changed? Whether Euphorbus and

Pythagoras, having had the same soul, were the same man, though they

lived several ages asunder? Nay, whether the cock too, which had the

same soul, were not the same with both of them? Whereby perhaps it will

appear that our idea of sameness is not so settled and clear as to

deserve to be thought innate in us. For if those innate ideas are not so

clear and distinct as to be universally known and naturally agreed on,

they cannot be subjects of universal and undoubted truths, but will be

the unavoidable occasion of perpetual uncertainty. For I suppose every

one’s idea of identity will not be the same that Pythagoras and thousand

others of his followers have: and which then shall be true, which

innate? Or are these two different ideas of identity both innate?’—Page

60.

Two things are obvious to remark on this passage. First, it seems clear

that the child, before it can pronounce that one thing is or is not the

same as another, must have the idea of what _same_ is, _i.e._ of

identity: or it would be impossible for it to know what is or is not the

same. This idea, then, is necessarily included in or the result of the

first comparison it is able to make between any two of its impressions

as alike or unlike. Secondly, the difficulty of determining the question

proposed by Mr. Locke does not arise from the meaning of the word

_identity_, but of the word _man_. For if this is once clear and

settled, there will be no great effort of the understanding required to

determine whether a man is the same or not. They define him to be a

creature consisting of body and soul, and it is plain that if one of

these, the body, is altered, the man is not the same. The whole

question, therefore, here seems to turn on deciding what qualities are

essential to the idea of man, so that by keeping or leaving out some, he

will or will not retain his identity, in the practical and moral sense

of the term. It is the complex and general idea of man that the child

wants, not that of identity or sameness which is reflected to it from

every object it meets, and which it perceives to agree or disagree with

some other.

In a note to one of the chapters on Innate Ideas, there is some account

of the controversy between our author and the Bishop of Worcester

(Stillingfleet) on the question whether the idea of a God be innate and

universal. The Bishop is anxious to have the universal belief in a Deity

understood in a strict sense, while Mr. Locke thinks it must be reduced

to a very great and decided majority, there being instances of whole

nations without this idea. ‘This,’ he says ‘is all the universal consent

which truth of matter-of-fact will allow; and therefore all that can be

made use of to prove a God. I would crave leave to ask your lordship,

were there ever in the world any atheists or no? For if any one deny a

God, such a perfect universality of consent is destroyed, and if nobody

does deny a God, what need of arguments to convince atheists?’—Page 63.

This is the acutest turn he has any where given to an argument.

The concluding passage of his account of innate ideas is worth quoting.

It is a good description of the true spirit of philosophy, inclining a

little too much to self-opinion, from which, perhaps, it is not easily

separable:

‘What censure doubting thus of innate principles may deserve from men

who will be apt to call it pulling up the old foundations of knowledge

and certainty, I cannot tell; I persuade myself at least that the way I

have pursued, being conformable to truth, lays those foundations surer.

This I am certain, I have not made it my business to quit or follow any

authority in the ensuing discourse; truth has been my only aim; and

wherever that has appeared to lead, my thoughts have impartially

followed without minding whether the footsteps of any other lay that way

or no. Not that I want a due respect to other men’s opinions; but after

all the greatest reverence is due to truth; and I hope it will not be

thought arrogance to say, that perhaps we should make greater progress

in the discovery of rational and contemplative knowledge, if we sought

it in the fountain, _in the consideration of things themselves_, and

made use rather of our own thoughts than other men’s to find it. For I

think we may as rationally hope to see with other men’s eyes, as to know

by other men’s understandings. So much as we ourselves consider and

comprehend of truth and reason, so much we possess of real and true

knowledge. The floating of other men’s opinions in our brains makes us

not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true. What in

them was science, is in us but opiniatrety, whilst we give up our assent

only to reverend names, and do not, as they did, employ our own reason

to understand those truths which gave them reputation. Aristotle was

certainly a knowing man; but nobody ever thought him so, because he

blindly embraced and confidently vented the opinions of another. And if

the taking up of another’s principles, without examining them, made not

him a philosopher, I suppose it will hardly make any body else so. In

the sciences, every one has so much as he really knows and comprehends:

what he believes only and takes upon trust, are but shreds, which

however well in the whole piece, make no considerable addition to his

stock who gathers them. Such borrowed wealth, like fairy money, though

it were gold in the hand from which he received it, will be but leaves

and dust when it comes to use.’—Page 80.

In treating of the origin of our ideas, Mr. Locke labours to prove that

men think not always:—thinking, according to him, being to the soul what

motion is to the body; not its essence, but one of its operations. In

this opinion he may, as far as I know, be right: but I think his proof

of it drawn from the effects of sleep fails. The reason why I think so

is that I was never awakened suddenly but I found myself dreaming,

though in the interval required to awake gradually from sleep we

frequently forget our dreams before we are quite awake, the impressions

which objects have time to make upon our bodies taking place of and

obliterating the faint traces of our sleeping thoughts. The common

notion that the mind is then most awake when the body is asleep,

deserves the contempt with which Mr. Locke treats it. It is one of the

absurdities of _common sense_, which is not entirely free from them any

more than philosophy. Those who can find any argument in favour of the

immaterial nature and independent powers of the soul in the sublime

flights which it takes when emancipated from the intrusion of sensible

objects must have finer dreams than I have. It would be well for this

opinion if we could regularly forget the next morning the smart

repartees, magnificent sentiments and profound remarks we so often dream

we make. The singular significance which in sleep we attach to absolute

nonsense seems to arise from the very impotence of our efforts, as we

fancy that we can fly because we cannot move at all. In sleep, indeed,

the forms of imagination assume the appearance of reality, but this

advantage they seem to owe chiefly to what Hobbes calls the silence of

sense. That sleep, however, consists wholly in this silence of sense

(not affecting the mind itself) is so far from being true, that it is

not even necessary to it. Persons who walk in their sleep, as I know

from experience, get out of bed with their eyes open, see and feel the

objects about them, open the window, and leisurely survey the opposite

trees and houses, long before they recollect where they are, or before

the fresh air and the regular succession of known objects dispel the

drowsy phantoms of the night. The only essential difference between our

sleeping and waking thoughts I believe is, that in sleep the

comprehensive faculty flags and droops; so that being unable to consider

many things at once or to retain a succession of ideas in mind, we

confound things together, and pass from one object to another without

order or connexion, any single circumstance in which they agree being

sufficient to make us associate them together or substitute one for the

other. Our thoughts are, as it were, disentangled from the circumstances

and consequences which at other times clog their motions: they are let

loose, and left at liberty to wander in any direction that chance

presents. The greatest singularity observable in dreams is the faculty

of holding a dialogue with ourselves, as if we were really and

effectually two persons. We make a remark, and then expect the answer,

which we are to give ourselves, with the same gravity of attention, and

hear it with the same surprise as if it were really spoken by another

person. We are played upon by puppets of our own moving. We are

staggered in an argument by an unforeseen objection, or alarmed at a

sudden piece of information of which we have no apprehension till it

seems to proceed from the mouth of some one with whom we fancy ourselves

conversing. We have in fact no idea of what the question will be that we

put to ourselves, till the moment of its birth.

Mr. Locke in treating of our sensations as effects of the impressions of

the qualities of things, distinguishes these qualities according to the

usual opinion into primary and secondary. The former he considers as

really and in themselves the same as they appear to our senses: the

other as merely the effects produced by certain objects on the mind and

not existing out of it. As this question forms one of the common-places

of metaphysical inquiry, I shall give some account of it in his own

words.

‘The qualities that are in bodies, rightly considered, are of three

sorts.

‘First, The bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion or rest of their

solid parts; these are in them whether we perceive them or no; and we

have by these an idea of the thing as it is in itself: these I call

primary qualities.

‘Secondly, The power that is in any body by reason of its insensible

primary qualities to operate after a peculiar 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.

‘Thirdly, The power that is in any body, by reason of the particular

constitution of its primary qualities, to make such a change in the

bulk, figure, texture, and motion of another body, as to make it operate

on our senses differently from what it did before. Thus the sun has a

power to make wax white, and fire to make lead fluid. These are usually

called powers.

‘The first of these, as has been said, I think, may be properly called,

real, original, or primary qualities, because they are in the things

themselves, whether they are perceived or no: and upon their different

modifications it is that the secondary qualities depend. The other two

are only powers to act differently upon other things, which powers

result from the different modifications of those primary qualities.

‘But though these two latter sorts of qualities are powers barely, and

nothing but powers, relating to several other bodies, and resulting from

the different modifications of the original qualities, yet they are

generally thought otherwise of. For the second sort, viz., the powers to

produce several ideas in us by our senses, are looked upon as real

qualities in the things thus affecting us: but the third sort are called

and esteemed barely powers. For example, the ideas of heat or light,

which we receive by our eye or touch from the sun are commonly thought

real qualities, existing in the sun, and something more than mere powers

in it. But when we consider the sun in reference to wax which it melts

or blanches, we look on the whiteness and softness produced in the wax,

not as qualities in the sun, but effects produced by _powers_ in it:

whereas, if rightly considered, these qualities of light and warmth,

which are perceptions in me when I am warmed or enlightened by the sun,

are no otherwise in the sun than the changes made in the wax, when it is

blanched or melted, are in the sun. They are all of them equally powers

in the sun, depending on its primary qualities: whereby it is enabled in

the one case so to alter the bulk, figure, texture, or motion of some of

the insensible parts of my eyes or hands, as thereby to produce in me

the idea of light or heat; and in the other, it is able so to alter the

bulk, figure, texture, or motion of the insensible parts of the wax, as

to make them fit to produce in me the distinct ideas of white and fluid.

The reason why the one are ordinarily taken for real qualities, and the

other only for bare powers, seems to be, because the ideas we have of

distinct colours, sounds, &c., containing nothing at all in them of

bulk, figure, or motion, we are not apt to think them the effects of

those primary qualities which appear not to our senses to operate in

their production, and with which they have not any apparent congruity or

conceivable connexion. Hence it is that we are so forward to imagine

that those ideas are the resemblances of something really existing in

the objects themselves. But in the other case, in the operation of

bodies, changing the qualities, one of another, we plainly discover that

the quality produced hath commonly no resemblance with any thing in the

thing producing it; wherefore we look on it as a bare effect of power.

For though receiving the idea of heat or light from the sun, we are apt

to think it is a perception and resemblance of such a quality _in_ the

sun, yet when we see wax or a fair face receive change of colour from

the sun, we cannot imagine that to be the perception or resemblance of

any thing in the sun, because we find not those different colours in the

sun itself. For our senses being able to observe a likeness or

unlikeness of sensible qualities in two different external objects, we

forwardly enough conclude the production of any sensible quality in any

subject to be an effect of bare power, and not the communication of any

quality, which was really in the efficient, when we find no such

sensible quality in the thing that produced it. But ourselves not being

able to discover any unlikeness between the idea produced in us and the

quality of the object producing it, we are apt to imagine that our ideas

are resemblances of some thing in the objects, and not the effects of

certain powers placed in the modification of their primary qualities,

with which primary qualities the ideas produced in us have no

resemblance.’ Vol. i. page 127.

From the secondary qualities later writers, as Hume and Berkeley, have

proceeded to the primary ones, and have endeavoured to shew that they

have not a real existence out of the mind, any more than the others.

Hume says, ‘The fundamental principle of the modern philosophy is the

opinion concerning colours, sounds, tastes, smells, heat and cold,’ &c.;

and Bishop Berkeley has made use of the same principle to banish the

least particle of matter out of the universe. What Hume has said is

merely taken from Berkeley, from whom his opinions are generally

borrowed. As I do not know that I shall have a better opportunity, I

will here state Berkeley’s arguments against the existence of these

primary qualities, or his _ideal_ system, in his own words. I will only

first observe, on the argument against the existence of the secondary

qualities of things, from their different effects in different

circumstances and on different persons, which Hume considers as the only

solid one, but which Berkeley thinks more doubtful, seems to me no

argument at all; for that an object changes its colour, or food its

taste, is in consequence of distance or of the interposition of another

object, or of the indisposition of the organ, and does not prove that

the object has not a particular colour, or the food a particular taste,

but that colour is combined with and altered by the colour of the air,

and that taste is combined with and altered by another taste in the

mouth or stomach. The logical inference is merely that one object has

not the same sensible qualities as another, or, as Berkeley has

remarked, that we do not know what the true or natural qualities of any

object are.

‘It is evident,’ says Bishop Berkeley, ‘to any one who takes a survey of

the objects of Human Knowledge, that they are either ideas actually

imprinted on the senses, or else such as are perceived by attending to

the passions and operations of the mind, or, lastly, ideas formed by

help of memory and imagination; either compounding, dividing, or barely

representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways. By sight

I have the ideas of light and colours, with their several degrees and

variations. By touch I perceive hard and soft, heat and cold, motion and

resistance, &c. and of all these more and less, either as to quantity or

degree. Smelling furnishes me with odours: the palate with tastes; and

hearing conveys sounds to the mind in all their variety of tone and

composition. And as several of these are observed to accompany each

other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one

thing. Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell, figure, and

consistence, having been observed to go together, are accounted one

distinct thing, signified by the name _apple_. Other collections of

ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things;

which, as they are pleasing or disagreeable, excite the passions of

love, hatred, joy, grief, &c.

‘2. But besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of

knowledge, there is likewise something which knows and perceives them,

and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering, &c.

about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call _mind_,

_spirit_, _soul_, or _myself_. By which words I do not denote any one of

my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist,

or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived, for the

existence of an idea consists in being perceived.

‘3. That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the

imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow; and

to me it is no less evident that the various sensations or ideas

imprinted on the sense, however blended or combined together, (that is,

whatever objects they compose,) cannot exist otherwise than in a mind

perceiving them. I think an intuitive knowledge may be obtained of this,

by any one that shall attend to what is meant by the term _exist_, when

applied to sensible things. The table I write on, I say, exists; _i.e._

I see and feel it, and if I were out of my study, I should say it

existed, meaning thereby, that if I was in my study I might perceive it,

or that some other spirit actually does perceive it. There was an odour,

_i.e._ it was smelt; there was a sound, _i.e._ it was heard; a colour or

figure, and it was perceived by sight or touch. This is all that I can

understand by these and the like expressions. For as to what is said of

the absolute existence of unthinking things without any relation to

their being perceived, that is to me perfectly unintelligible. Their

_esse_ is _percipi_, nor is it possible they should have any existence,

out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them.

‘4. It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing among men, that houses,

mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence

natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the

understanding. But with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever

this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find

in his heart to call it in question, may, if I mistake not, perceive it

to involve a manifest contradiction. For what are the forementioned

objects but the things we perceive by sense, and what, I pray you, do we

perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? And is it not plainly

repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should

exist unperceived?

‘5. If we thoroughly examine this tenet, it will, perhaps, be found at

bottom to depend on the doctrine of _abstract ideas_. For can there be a

nicer strain of abstraction than to distinguish the existence of

sensible objects from their being perceived, so as to conceive them

existing unperceived? Light and colours, heat and cold, extension and

figures, in a word, the things we see and feel, what are they but so

many sensations, notions, ideas, or impressions on the sense; and is it

possible to separate, even in thought, any of these from perception? For

my part, I might as easily divide a thing from itself. I may, indeed,

divide in my thoughts, or conceive apart from each other, those things

which, perhaps, I never perceived by sense so divided. Thus I imagine

the trunk of a human body without the limbs, or conceive the smell of a

rose without thinking on the rose itself. So far I will not deny I can

abstract, if that may be properly called _abstraction_ which extends

only to the conceiving separately such objects as it is possible may

really exist or be actually perceived asunder. But my conceiving or

imagining power does not extend beyond the possibility of real existence

or perception. Hence, as it is impossible for me to see or feel any

thing without an actual sensation of that thing, so it is impossible for

me to conceive in my thoughts any sensible thing or object distinct from

the sensation or perception of it. In truth, the object and the

sensation are the same thing, and cannot therefore be extracted from

each other.

‘6. Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man

need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to

be, viz. that all the choir of heaven, and furniture of the earth, in a

word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have

not any subsistence without a mind, that their _esse_ is to be perceived

or known; that consequently, so long as they are not actually perceived

by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit,

they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind

of some eternal spirit: it being perfectly unintelligible, and involving

all the absurdity of abstraction, to attribute to any single part of

them an existence independent of a spirit. To make this appear with all

the light and evidence of an axiom, it seems sufficient if I can but

awaken the reflection of the reader, that he may take an impartial view

of his own meaning, and turn his thoughts upon the subject itself, free

and disengaged from all embarrass of words and prepossession in favour

of received mistakes.

‘7. From what has been said, it is evident there is not any other

substance than spirit, or that which perceives. But for the fuller

demonstration of this point, let it be considered, the sensible

qualities are colour, figure, motion, smell, taste, &c.; _i.e._ the

ideas perceived by sense. Now, for an idea to exist in an unperceiving

thing is a manifest contradiction; for to have an idea is all one as to

perceive; that, therefore, wherein colour, figure, &c. exist must

perceive them. Hence it is clear there can be no unthinking substance or

_substratum_ of those ideas.

‘8. But, say you, though the ideas themselves do not exist without the

mind, yet there may be things like them whereof they are copies or

resemblances, which things exist without the mind, in an unthinking

substance. I answer, an idea can be like nothing but an idea, a colour

or figure, can be like nothing but another colour or figure. If we look

but never so little into our thoughts, we shall find it impossible for

us to conceive a likeness except only between our ideas. Again, I ask

whether those supposed originals, or external things, of which our ideas

are the pictures or representations, be themselves perceivable or no? If

they are, then they are ideas, and we have gained our point; but if you

say they are not, I appeal to any one whether it be sense to assert a

colour is like something which is invisible: hard or soft, like

something which is intangible, and so of the rest.

‘9. Some there are who make a distinction between _primary_ and

_secondary_ qualities; by the former, they mean extension, figure,

motion, rest, solidity or impenetrability, and number; by the latter,

they denote all other sensible qualities, as colours, sounds, tastes,

&c. The ideas we have of these they acknowledge not to be the

resemblances of any thing existing without the mind, or unperceived, but

they will have our ideas of the primary qualities to be patterns or

images of things which exist without the mind, in an unthinking

substance, which they call _matter_. By matter, therefore, we are to

understand an inert, useless substance, in which extension, figure,

motion, &c. do actually subsist. But it is evident from what we have

already shewn, that extension, figure, and motion are only ideas

existing in the mind, and that consequently neither they nor their

archetypes can exist in an unperceiving substance. Hence it is plain

that the very notion of what is called _matter_ or _corporeal substance_

involves a contradiction in it, insomuch that I should not think it

necessary to spend more time in exposing its absurdity; but because the

tenet of the existence of matter seems to have taken so deep a root in

the minds of philosophers, and draws after it so many ill consequences,

I choose rather to be thought prolix and tedious, than omit any thing

that might conduce to the full discovery and extirpation of that

prejudice.

‘10. They who assert that figure, motion, and the rest of the primary or

original qualities do exist without the mind, in unthinking substances,

do at the same time acknowledge that colours, sounds, heat, cold, &c. do

not, which they tell us are sensations existing in the mind alone, that

depend on, and are occasioned by the different size, texture, motion,

&c. of the minute particles of matter. This they take for an undoubted

truth, which they can demonstrate beyond all exception. Now if it be

certain that those original qualities are inseparably united with the

other sensible qualities, and not, even in thought, capable of being

abstracted from them, it plainly follows that they exist only in the

mind. But I desire any one to reflect and try whether he can, by any

abstraction of thought, conceive the extension and motion of a body,

without all other sensible qualities. For my own part, I see evidently

that it is not in my power to form an idea of a body extended and

moving, but I must withal give it some colour or other sensible quality,

which is acknowledged to exist only in the mind. In short, extension,

figure, and motion, abstracted from all other qualities, are

inconceivable. Where, therefore, the other sensible qualities are, there

must these be also, _i.e._ in the mind, and no where else.

‘11. Again, _great_ and _small_, _swift_ and _slow_, are allowed to

exist nowhere without the mind, being entirely relative, and changing as

the frame or position of the organs of sense varies. The extension,

therefore, which exists without the mind, is neither great nor small,

the motion neither swift nor slow; that is, they are nothing at all.

But, say you, they are extension in general and motion in general. Thus

we see how much the tenet of extended, moveable substances, existing

without the mind, depends on that strange doctrine of _abstract ideas_.

And here I cannot but remark, how nearly the vague and indeterminate

description of matter, or corporeal substance, which the modern

philosophers are run into by their own principles, resembles that

antiquated and so much ridiculed notion of _materia prima_, to be met

with in Aristotle and his followers. Without extension, solidity cannot

be conceived; since, therefore, it has been shown that extension exists

not in an unthinking substance, the same must also be true of solidity.

‘12. That number is entirely the creature of the mind, even though the

other qualities be allowed to exist without it, will be evident to

whoever considers that the same thing bears a different denomination of

number, as the mind views it with different aspects. Thus the same

extension is one, or three, or thirty-six, according as the mind

considers it with reference to a yard, a foot, or an inch. Number is so

visibly relative, and dependent on men’s understandings, that it is

strange to think how any one should give it an absolute existence

without the mind. We say _one_ book, _one_ page, _one_ line, &c., all

these are equally units, though some contain several of the others; and

in each instance it is plain the unit relates to some particular

combination of ideas arbitrarily put together by the mind.

‘13. Unity, I know, some will have to be a simple or uncompounded idea,

accompanying all other ideas into the mind. That I have any such idea

answering the word _unity_ I do not find, and if I had, methinks I could

not miss finding it; on the contrary, it should be the most familiar to

my understanding, since it is said to accompany all other ideas, and to

be perceived by all the ways of sensation and reflection.[6] To say no

more, it is an _abstract idea_.

‘14. I shall farther add, that after the same manner as modern

philosophers prove colours, tastes, &c., to have no existence in matter,

or without the mind, the same thing may be likewise proved of all other

sensible qualities whatever. Thus for instance, it is said, that heat

and cold are affections only of the mind, and not at all patterns of

real beings existing in the corporeal substances which excite them, for

that the same body which appears cold to one hand, seems warm to

another. Now, why may we not as well argue, that figure and extension

are not patterns or resemblances of qualities existing in matter,

because to the same eye at different stations, or eyes of a different

texture at the same station, they appear various, and cannot therefore

be the images of any thing settled and determinate without the mind?

Again, ’tis proved that sweetness is not really in the sapid thing,

because the thing remaining unaltered, the sweetness is changed into

bitter, as in case of a fever, or otherwise vitiated palate. Is it not

as reasonable to say, that motion is not without the mind, since if the

succession of ideas in the mind become swifter, the motion, it is

acknowledged, shall appear slower without any external alteration.

‘15. In short, let any one consider those arguments which are thought

manifestly to prove that colours, tastes, &c. exist only in the mind,

and he will find they may with equal force be brought to prove the same

thing of extension, figure, and motion. Though it must be confessed this

method of arguing does not so much prove that there is no extension,

colour, &c. in an outward object, as that we do not know by sense which

is the true extension or colour of the object. But the foregoing

arguments plainly show it to be impossible that any colour or extension

at all, or other sensible quality whatsoever, should exist in an

unthinking subject without the mind, or in truth, that there should be

any such thing as an outward object.’—_Principles of Human Knowledge_,

pp. 54, &c.

Again, he says, page 58:—

‘But though it were possible that solid, figured movable substances may

exist without the mind, corresponding to the ideas we have of bodies,

yet how is it possible for us to know this? Either we must know it by

sense or by reason. As for our senses, by them we have the knowledge

only of our sensations, ideas, or those things that are immediately

perceived by sense, call them what you will; but they do not inform us

that things exist without the mind, or unperceived, like to those which

are perceived. This the materialists themselves acknowledge. It remains,

therefore, that if we have any knowledge at all of external things, it

must be by reason, inferring their existence from what is immediately

perceived by sense. But I do not see what reason can induce us to

believe the existence of bodies without the mind, from what we perceive,

since the very patrons of matter themselves do not pretend there is any

necessary connexion betwixt them and our ideas. I say it is granted on

all hands (and what happens in dreams, frenzies, and the like, puts it

beyond dispute) that it is possible we might be affected with all the

ideas we have now, though there were no bodies existing without

resembling them. Hence it is evident the supposition of external bodies

is not necessary for the producing our ideas, since it is granted they

are produced sometimes, and might possibly be produced always, in the

same order we see them in at present, without their concurrence. But

though we might possibly have all our sensations without them, yet

perhaps it may be thought easier to conceive and explain the manner of

their production, by supposing external bodies in their likeness rather

than otherwise, and so it might be at least probable there are such

things as bodies that excite their ideas in our minds. But neither can

this be said, for though we give the materialists their external bodies,

they, by their own confession, are never the nearer knowing how our

ideas are produced, since they own themselves unable to comprehend in

what manner body can act upon spirit, or how it is possible it should

imprint any idea in the mind. Hence it is evident the production of

ideas or sensations in our minds, can be no reason why we should suppose

matter or corporeal substances, since that is acknowledged to remain

equally inexplicable with, or without this supposition. If therefore it

were possible for bodies to exist without the mind, yet to hold they do

so, must needs be a very precarious opinion; since it is to suppose,

without any reason at all, that God has created innumerable beings that

are entirely useless, and serve to no manner of purpose.

‘But say what we can, some one perhaps might be apt to reply, he will

still believe his senses, and never suffer any arguments, how plausible

soever, to prevail over the certainty of them. Be it so, assert the

evidence of sense as high as you please, we are willing to do the same.

That what I see and hear, and feel, doth exist, _i.e._ is perceived by

me, I no more doubt than I do of my own being: but I do not see how the

testimony of sense can be alleged as a proof for the existence of any

thing which is not perceived by sense. We are not for having any man

turn sceptic, and disbelieve his senses; on the contrary, we give them

all the stress and assurance imaginable, nor are there any principles

more opposite to scepticism than those we have laid down, as shall be

hereafter clearly shown. Secondly, it will be objected that there is a

great difference between real fire, for instance, and the idea of fire,

betwixt dreaming or imagining oneself burnt and actually being so: if

you suspect it to be only the idea of fire which you see, do but put

your hand into it, and you’ll be convinced with a witness. This and the

like may be urged in opposition to our tenets. To all which the answer

is evident from what hath been already said, and I shall only add in

this place, that if real fire be very different from the idea of fire,

so also is the real pain that it occasions very different from the idea

of the same pain, and yet nobody will pretend that real pain either is,

or can possibly be, in an unperceiving thing or without the mind, any

more than its idea.’

Now with regard to this system, whatever we may think of the solidity of

the foundation, the superstructure is as light and elegant as possible.

There is a peculiar character in the metaphysical writings of Berkeley

which is to be found no where else. With all the closeness and subtilty

of the deepest reflection, they combine the ease and vivacity of a

common essay: so that the most violent paradoxes and elaborate

distinctions are rendered familiar by the simplicity of the style. His

writings show that he had thought with the utmost intensity on almost

every subject, yet he has the same careless freedom of manner as if he

had never thought at all. He is never entangled in the labyrinth of his

own thoughts, and the buoyancy of his spirit surmounts every objection

with a singular felicity, as if his mind had wings. It is perhaps worth

remarking that the ‘Principles of Human Knowledge’ were published in

1710, at a time when the author was only five-and-twenty, as was the

‘Essay on Vision,’ the greatest by far of all his works, and the most

complete example of elaborate analytical reasoning and particular

induction joined together that perhaps ever existed. It is also

generally free from that air of paradox and fanciful hypothesis which

runs through his other writings.[7] I mention this the more because I

believe that the greatest efforts of intellect have almost always been

made while the passions are in their greatest vigour, and before hope

loses its hold on the heart, and is the elastic spring which animates

all our thoughts.

On the reasoning I have just quoted I will make one or two remarks

without pretending to enter into the real difficulties of the question.

First, it seems to me that the argument against the existence of the

secondary qualities, drawn from the various effects produced by them on

different minds or in different circumstances, which Hume mentions as

the only solid one, and which Berkeley thinks more doubtful, is no

argument at all. That an object at a distance, for example, does not

look like the same object near is in consequence of the interposition of

the air, which gives it a different hue; the logical inference merely is

that one object has not the same sensible qualities as another, or as

Berkeley has remarked, since the effect depends upon the combination and

reaction of a number of things that we do not know what the true or

natural qualities of each object are.

2. The proof of the non-existence of the primary qualities or of matter

altogether, as inconceivable by the mind, goes upon the supposition that

what is different cannot be the same. ‘An idea,’ says Berkeley, ‘can be

like nothing but an idea, a perception like nothing but a perception.’

But it might be proved in this manner that a print cannot resemble a

picture, because that which has colour cannot be represented by any

thing without colour. That as far as our ideas are perceptions they do

not resemble any thing in matter is true, but no one ever supposed that

in this respect there was any resemblance between them, or that matter

thought. That they cannot be alike in any thing does not seem to me

proved by this mode of reasoning: for that our ideas of things are not

mere perceptions is evident from this, that they are different among

themselves, that is, have other distinguishing qualities besides being

perceived.

3. Berkeley’s argument against the existence of matter not merely as the

object or archetype, but as the cause of our sensations, is founded on

the notion that we have a right to reject every general conclusion in

which there is the least flaw or difficulty. Common sense is brought to

the bar, like an old offender, and condemned upon the slightest shadow

of evidence. If the vulgar system is vulnerable in any part, it is taken

for granted that it ought to be discarded, to make room for a perfectly

rational and philosophical account, the sufficiency of the understanding

being never once doubted. But all this severe logic and scrutiny into

the perfect connexion of our ideas vanishes, when the author comes to

explain the cause of our external impressions, or to find a substitute

for matter. This, he says, is God or an all-powerful spirit, and yet he

affirms that we have no more idea of spirit than of matter, and

consequently the one ought upon this theory to pass for a nonentity as

much as the other.

‘We perceive a continual succession of ideas, some are anew excited,

others are changed or totally disappear. There is therefore some cause

of those ideas, whereon they depend, and which produces and changes

them. That this cause cannot be any quality or idea or combination of

ideas, is clear from what has been said. It must therefore be a

substance, but it has been shewn that there is no corporeal or material

substance. It remains therefore that the cause of ideas is an

incorporeal active substance or spirit.

‘A spirit is one simple, undivided, active being: as it perceives ideas,

it is called the understanding, and as it produces or otherwise operates

about them, it is called the will. Hence there can be no idea formed of

a soul or spirit. For all ideas whatever being passive and inert, they

cannot represent unto us by way of image or likeness that which acts.

Such is the nature of spirit or that which acts, that it cannot be

itself perceived, but only by the effects which it produceth. If any man

shall doubt of the truth of what is here delivered, let him but reflect

and try if he can frame the idea of any power or active being. A little

attention will make it plain to any one, that to have an idea which

shall be like that active principle of motion and change of ideas, is

absolutely impossible.’ That is to say, matter is here excluded from

being the cause or in any way the occasion of our ideas, because we know

not what it is, and the inference is, that the cause of our ideas must

be spirit, of which we are equally ignorant. The reasoning might have

been reversed. But it is thus that philosophy seems to be in general

nothing else but ‘reason pandering will.’ The literal conclusion from

the foregoing argument is, that there is nothing in the universe but

oneself, nor even that, but only the present idea: all other words must

signify nothing.

To return to Mr. Locke. He has treated on the same question in the

second volume, but without advancing any thing remarkable on it, and it

is the only place in which he loses his temper, and substitutes ridicule

for argument.

In the chapter on Perception, there are some observations on the manner

in which our judgments alter the impressions of sensible objects, which

are well worth notice, and show that the author was well acquainted with

what may be called the practical processes of the human mind.

He says, p. 130, ‘We are farther to consider concerning perception, that

the ideas we receive by sensation are often in grown people altered by

the judgment without our taking notice of it. When we set before our

eyes a round globe of any uniform colour, _e.g._ gold, alabaster, or

jet, 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 shadow or colour, collecting the figure,

it makes it pass for a mark of figure, and frames to itself the

perception of a convex figure and an uniform colour, when the idea we

receive from thence is only a plane variously coloured; as is evident in

painting. To which purpose I shall here insert a problem of that very

ingenious and studious promoter of real knowledge, the learned and

worthy Mr. Molineux, which he was pleased to send me in a letter some

months since: and it is this: “Suppose a man born blind, and now adult,

and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of

the same metal and nigh of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt

the one and the other, which is the cube, which the sphere. Suppose then

the cube and sphere placed on a table, and the blind man made to see:

Quere, whether by his sight, before he touched them, he could now

distinguish and tell which is the globe, which the cube?” To which the

acute and judicious proposer answers, “No. For though he has obtained

the experience of how a globe, how a cube affects his touch, yet he has

not yet attained the experience that what affects his touch so or so,

must affect his sight so or so; or that a protuberant angle in the cube

that pressed his hand unequally, shall appear to his eye as it does in

the cube.” I agree’ (says Mr. Locke) ‘with this thinking gentleman, whom

I am proud to call my friend, in his answer to this his problem; and am

of opinion that the blind man at first sight, would not be able with

certainty to say, which was the globe, which the cube, whilst he only

saw them; though he could unerringly name them by his touch, and

certainly distinguish them by the difference of their figures felt. This

I have set down, and leave with my reader as an occasion for him to

consider how much he may be beholden to experience, improvement, and

acquired notions, where he thinks he has not the least use of, or help

from them, and the rather, because this observing gentleman farther

adds, that having upon the occasion of my book, proposed this to divers

very ingenious men, he hardly ever met with one that at first gave the

answer to it which he thinks true, till by hearing his reasons they were

convinced.’ Mr. Locke then adds other instances to the same effect, as

‘That a man who reads or hears with attention and understanding takes

little notice of the characters or sounds, but of the ideas that are

excited in him by them. How frequently do we in a day cover our eyes

with our eyelids, without at all perceiving that we are in the dark! Men

that by custom have got the use of a by-word do almost in every sentence

pronounce sounds, which though taken notice of by others, they

themselves neither hear nor observe: and therefore it is not so strange

that our mind should often change the idea of its sensation into that of

its judgment, and make one serve only to excite the other without our

taking notice of it.’

On the problem above stated, which has been often made a subject of

dispute, I shall only remark that the answer given to it, with which Mr.

Locke agrees, is directly repugnant to his doctrine of the real

existence of the primary qualities of matter, namely figure and

extension. For it is plain, that if there is any thing in external

objects answering to their ideas in our minds, the ideas we have of

those qualities and which are conveyed by different senses, must be like

one another. If the ideas of figure as a visible and tangible thing have

no resemblance to themselves, it is ridiculous to suppose that they can

coincide with any thing out of them in nature. Secondly, it appears to

me that the mind must recognise a certain similarity between the

impressions of different senses in this case. For instance, the sudden

change or discontinuity of the sensation, produced by the sharp angles

of the cube, is something common to both ideas, and if so, must afford a

means of comparing them together. Berkeley, in his ‘Essay on Vision,’

goes so far as to deny that there is any intuitive analogy between the

ideas of number as conveyed by different senses, and asserts that the

distinction between the two legs of a statue, for instance, as perceived

by the touch or by the sight would not imply any idea of like or same. I

grant this consequence to be true, on the principle maintained by him

that there are no abstract ideas in the mind, for on this principle

there can be no idea answering to the words _same_ or _different_, but

then this argument would destroy all kind of coincidence not only

between ideas of different senses, but between repeated impressions of

the same sense. The ‘Essay on Vision,’ of which I have already spoken,

apparently originated in the problem here inserted, and is a more

complete exemplification of the effects of association with respect to

objects of sight than is to be found even in Hartley’s account of this

subject.

Mr. Locke’s account of the distinction between wit and understanding I

have already noticed; his explanation of the difference between idiots

and madmen has been often referred to, and is as follows:

‘The defect in naturals seems to proceed from want of quickness,

activity, and motion in the intellectual faculties, whereby they are

deprived of reason: whereas madmen, on the other side, seem to suffer by

the other extreme. For they do not appear to me to have lost the faculty

of reasoning; but having joined together some ideas very wrongly, they

mistake them for truths; and they err as men do that argue right from

wrong principles: for, by the violence of their imaginations, having

taken their fancies for realities, they make right deductions from them.

Thus you shall find a distracted man, fancying himself a king, with a

right inference require suitable attendance, respect, and obedience:

others, who have thought themselves made of glass, have used the caution

necessary to preserve such brittle bodies. Hence it comes to pass, that

a man who is very sober, and of a right understanding in all other

things, may in one particular be as frantic as any in Bedlam, if either

by any sudden very strong impression, or long fixing his fancy upon one

sort of thoughts, incoherent ideas have been cemented together so

powerfully as to remain united. But there are degrees of madness, as of

folly; the disorderly jumbling together of ideas is in some more, and

some less. In short, herein seems to lie the difference between idiots

and madmen: that madmen put wrong ideas together, and so make wrong

propositions, but argue and reason right from them: but idiots make very

few or no propositions, and reason scarce at all.’

Mr. Locke’s account of Liberty and Necessity, contained in his chapter

‘On Power,’ has been commented upon in the previous Essay. As is there

remarked, it is one which has been more found fault with than any other

part of his work, I think without reason. He seems evidently to have

admitted the definition of necessity, but not the name, which is not

much to be wondered at, considering the improper use to which it is

liable, and which can scarce be separated from it in the closest

reasoning, much less as a term of general signification: in other words,

he denies the power of the mind to act without a cause or motive, or, in

any manner, in any circumstances, from mere indifference and absolute

self motion; but he at the same time denies the inference which has been

drawn from this principle, that the mind is not an agent at all, but

altogether subject to external force, or blind impulse.

Mr. Locke, in treating of complex ideas, divides them into three sorts,

those of modes, substances, and relations.

First, ‘Modes,’ he says, ‘I call such complex ideas, which, however

compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by

themselves, but are considered as dependences on, or affections of

substances: such are the ideas signified by the words _triangle_,

_gratitude_, _murder_, &c. Of these modes there are two sorts. 1. 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. 2. There are others, compounded

of simple ideas of several kinds put together, to make one complex one;

_e.g._ _beauty_, consisting of a certain composition of colour and

figure, causing delight in the beholder; _theft_, which being the

concealed change of the possession of any thing, without the consent of

the proprietor, contains, as is visible, a combination of several ideas

of several kinds, and these I call _mixed modes_.’

With respect to modes, the author endeavours to shew, I think

improperly, that as they are put together arbitrarily by the mind,

according to circumstances, that they have no real existence in nature,

and that the ideas we form of them are always correct. Neither of these

consequences will be found to follow: _i.e._ the circumstances and

actions which constitute theft do actually exist without the mind and

are necessary to that idea, though it is arbitrary in me according to

the occasion or the purpose in view, to think of that collection of

ideas or another, which shall constitute robbery; that is, I may add or

leave out the circumstance of violence, as it happens; secondly, I may,

without being aware of it, add or leave out some circumstance necessary

to the combination of ideas spoken of, and thus confuse one idea with

another, and not merely miscal, as Mr. Locke supposes, but misconceive

the mode in question. We then merely miscal when though we give a wrong

name to a thing, the idea is kept perfectly distinct and clear from

other ideas, otherwise we confound both names and things. But it will

not be contended, that the ideas of theft, robbery, and fraud, for

instance, are always kept clear in every one’s mind, so that he is at no

loss ever to define them, or can immediately in all cases refer any

action to the class to which it belongs. Every collection of ideas which

the mind puts together is undoubtedly that collection and no other; but

in forming the ideas of mixed modes, the mind does something more than

this, or it supposes one collection of ideas to be the same as another

which it has had at a former time, and gives a certain name to, and in

this supposition it often errs.

On this subject, the author is a good deal puzzled with the question,

how it is possible for the mind ever to confound one idea with another?

It is indeed a puzzling question, but the answer which he gives to it in

resolving it into a mistake of words, is very unsatisfactory. For there

is no more reason why we should mistake one name or sign of an idea for

another, than why we should mistake the ideas themselves. If every

circumstance belonging to our ideas was necessarily clear and

self-evident to the mind, the sign affixed to it, which is one of those

circumstances, would be so too, and we find that in those things with

which we have a thorough acquaintance, we never confound one name with

another, or if we should, it does not disturb the idea, and is of no

consequence.

Among the second sort of complex ideas Mr. Locke classes those of

substances. These, he says, are such combinations of simple ideas as are

taken to represent distinct, particular things, subsisting by

themselves, in which the supposed or confused idea of substance, such as

it is, is always the first or chief. Thus, if to substance be joined the

simple idea of a certain dull whitish colour, with certain degrees of

weight, hardness, ductility and fusibility, we have the idea of lead;

and a combination of the ideas of a certain sort of figure, with the

power of motion, thought, and reasoning, joined to substance, make the

ordinary idea of a man. Now of substances also there are two sorts of

ideas; one of single substances, as they exist separately, as of a man

or a sheep; the other of several of those put together, as an army of

men or a flock of sheep: which collective ideas of several substances

are as much each of them one single idea as that of a man or an unit.’

He then adds, ‘and the third sort of complex ideas is that which we call

relative, which consists in the consideration and comparing one idea

with another.’ This last sort of ideas seems to me the only ones that

are perfectly simple and indivisible: things themselves are always

complex. Mr. Locke considers rightly that we know nothing of the nature

of substance, and that we can only define it as an abstract idea of some

thing, that supports accidents or connects different sensible qualities

together. For this modest confession of his own ignorance he was however

called to a very severe account by the learned of the time, Bishop

Stillingfleet and others, who thought they knew more of the matter, and

could penetrate the essence of things. The ‘Essay on the Human

Understanding’ is swelled out with repeated and long extracts from this

controversy, and they are not the least valuable part of the work, as

they show to what shifts men can be driven, to defend systematically not

truth but their own opinion, who become blind and obstinate by implicit

faith, and who by adhering to every established prejudice drive others

into all the absurdities of paradox.

Mr. Locke’s own account of our ideas of substance is a good deal spun

out, and is enriched with as many illustrations from the qualities of

gold, as if he had been candidate for the place of assay-master of the

mint. The chapter ‘On Identity’ is perhaps the best reasoned and the

most full of thought and observation of any in the Essay: though the

author sets out with an observation which seems to augur differently.

For after explaining identity as it relates to individuality, or implies

that a thing is the same with itself, he says, ‘From what has been said

it is easy to discover what is so much inquired after, the _principium

individuationis_: and that, it is plain, is existence itself, which

determines a being of any sort to a particular time and place,

incommunicable to two beings of the same kind.’ He then, very wisely

quitting this principle which would certainly be of no use to him,

proceeds directly to account for the identity of different things from a

continuance, not of the same substance, but of the same essence, or of

the characteristic properties of any thing, carried on in succession; as

a river is the same while it flows through the same channel, or an oak

while it retains the same organization, and a man while he retains the

same life and continued consciousness.

In the chapter entitled ‘Of true and false Ideas,’ the author supposes

truth to depend on some mental or verbal proposition, and does not, like

Hobbes and the modern metaphysical writers, make it consist entirely in

a form of words. In the last chapter of the first volume he treats of

the association of ideas. This chapter was added after the first edition

of the work, and he confesses, that the subject was something new to

him. He has treated it in that mixed way of observation and reasoning,

in which the peculiar force of his mind lay. The account he has given of

it does not form a system, but the fragments of a system, something like

the French memoirs that are to serve for the materials of a history. He

does not appear to have laid down any general theorem on the subject, or

to have been aware of the possibility of applying this principle to

account in a plausible manner for the whole chain of our thoughts and

feelings, as Hobbes and Hartley have done. Sound, practical, good sense,

and a kind of discursive observation, neither grovelling in vulgar

common place, nor soaring into the regions of paradox, are in fact the

general characteristics of his mind, which has not been understood by

his admirers and commentators. A short passage will suffice to show his

manner of considering this doctrine of association.

‘Many children,’ he says, ‘imputing the pain they endured at school to

their books they were corrected for, so join those ideas together that a

book becomes their aversion, and they are never reconciled to the study

and use of them all their lives after: and thus reading becomes a

torment to them, which otherwise possibly they might have made the great

pleasure of their lives. There are rooms convenient enough that some men

cannot study in, and fashions of vessels, which though ever so clean and

commodious they cannot drink out of, and that by reason of some

accidental ideas which are annexed to them, and make them offensive: and

who is there that has not observed some man to flag at the appearance,

or in the company of some certain person, not otherwise superior to him,

but because having once on some occasion got the ascendant, the idea of

authority and distance goes along with that of the person? And he that

has been thus subjected is not able to separate them. Instances of this

kind are so plentiful every where, that if I add one more, it is only

for the pleasant oddness of it: it is of a young gentleman, who having

learned to dance, and that to great perfection, there happened to stand

an old trunk in the room where he learned: the idea of this remarkable

piece of household stuff had so mixed itself with all the turns and

steps of his dances, that though in that chamber he could dance

exceedingly well, yet it was only whilst that trunk was there; nor could

he perform well in any other place, unless that, or some such other

trunk had its due position in the room.’

The following passage approaches the nearest to the statement of a

general principle: