LOCKE AND LEIBNIZ.--INNATE IDEAS.
The reader, impatient of what may have seemed an over-long
introduction, has perhaps been asking when he was to be brought to the
subject under consideration,--the relations of Leibniz to Locke. But
it has been impossible to come to this question until we had formed for
ourselves an outline of the philosophical position of Leibniz. Nowhere
in the "Nouveaux Essais" does Leibniz give a connected and detailed
exposition of his philosophy, either as to his standpoint, his
fundamental principles, or his method.
Some preliminary view of his position is therefore a necessity. The
demand for this preliminary exposition becomes more urgent as we
recognize that Leibniz's remarks upon Locke are not a critique of Locke
from the standpoint of the latter, but are the application of his own
philosophical conclusions. Criticism from within, an examination of
a system of thought with relation to the consistency and coherency
of its results, the connection between these results and the method
professedly employed, investigation which depends not at all upon the
position of the critic, but occupies itself with the internal relations
of the system under discussion,--such criticism is a product of the
present century. What we find in the "Nouveaux Essais" is a comparison
of the ideas of Locke with those of Leibniz himself, a testing of the
former by the latter as a standard, their acceptance when they conform,
their rejection when they are opposed, their completion when they are
in partial harmony.
The value of this sort of criticism is likely to be small and
evanescent. If the system used as a standard is meagre and narrow,
if it is without comprehensiveness and flexibility, it does not repay
after-examination. The fact that the "Nouveaux Essais" of Leibniz
have escaped the oblivion of the philosophical criticism of his day is
proof, if proof still be needed, of the reasoned basis, the width of
grasp, the fertility of suggestion which characterize the thought of
Leibniz. But the fact that the criticism is, after all, external and
not internal has made necessary the foregoing extended account of his
method and general results.
On the other hand, what of Locke? How about him who is the recipient
of the criticism? I assume that no extended account of his ideas
is here necessary, and conceive myself to be justified in this
assumption by the fact that we are already better acquainted with
Locke. This acquaintance, indeed, is not confined to those who have
expressly studied Locke. His thought is an inheritance into which
every English-speaking person at least is born. Only he who does not
think escapes this inheritance. Locke did the work which he had to do
so thoroughly that every Englishman who will philosophize must either
build upon Locke's foundations, or, with conscious purpose, clear the
ground before building for himself. And it would be difficult to say
that the acceptance of Locke's views would influence one's thought
more than their rejection. This must not, of course, be taken too
literally. It may be that one who is a lineal descendant of Locke in
the spiritual generations of thought would not state a single important
truth as Locke stated it, or that those who seek their method and
results elsewhere have not repudiated the thought of Locke as expressly
belonging to him.
But the fundamental principles of empiricism: its conception of
intelligence as an individual possession; its idea of reality as
something over against and distinct from mind; its explanation of
knowledge as a process of action and reaction between these separate
things; its account of our inability to know things as they really
are,--these principles are congenital with our thinking. They are so
natural that we either accept them as axiomatic, and accuse those who
reject them of metaphysical subtlety, or, staggered perchance by some
of their results, give them up with an effort. But it is an effort, and
a severe one; and there is none of us who can tell when some remnant
of the conception of intelligence as purely particular and finite
will catch him tripping. On the other hand, we realize much better
than those who have behind them a Leibniz and a Kant, rather than a
Locke and a Hume, the meaning and the thorough-going necessity of the
universality of intelligence. Idealism must be in some ways arbitrary
and superficial to him who has not had a pretty complete course of
empiricism.
Leibniz seems to have been impressed with the Essay on the Human
Understanding at its first appearance. As early as 1696 we find
him writing a few pages of comment upon the book. Compared with his
later critique, these early "reflections" seem colorless, and give the
impression that Leibniz desired to minimize his differences from Locke
rather than to set them forth in relief. Comparatively slight as were
his expressions of dissent, they appear to have stung Locke when they
reached him. Meantime Locke's book was translated into French, and made
its way to a wider circle of readers. This seems to have suggested to
Leibniz the advisability of pursuing his comments somewhat further;
and in the summer of 1703 he produced the work which now occupies us. A
letter which Leibniz wrote at about this time is worth quoting at large
for the light which it throws upon the man, as well as for suggesting
the chief points in which he differed from Locke. Leibniz writes:--
"I have forgotten to tell you that my comments upon the work of Locke
are nearly done. As he has spoken in a chapter of his second book about
freedom, he has given me an opportunity to discuss that; and I hope
that I may have done it in such a way as will please you. Above all,
I have laid it upon myself to save the immateriality of the soul, which
Locke leaves doubtful. I justify also the existence of innate ideas,
and show that the soul produces their perception out of itself. Axioms,
too, I approve, while Locke has a low opinion of them. In contradiction
to him, I show that the individuality of man, through which he
preserves his identity, consists in the duration of the simple or
immaterial substance which animates him; that the soul is never without
representations; that there is neither a vacuum nor atoms; that matter,
or the passive principle, cannot be conscious, excepting as God unites
with it a conscious substance. We disagree, indeed, in numerous other
points, for I find that he rates too low the noble philosophy of the
Platonic school (as Descartes did in part), and substitutes opinions
which degrade us, and which may become hurtful to morals, though I am
persuaded that Locke's intention was thoroughly good. I have made these
comments in leisure hours, when I have been journeying or visiting, and
could not occupy myself with investigations requiring great pains. The
work has continued to grow under my hands, for in almost every chapter,
and to a greater extent than I had thought possible, I have found
matter for remark. You will be astonished when I tell you that I have
worked upon this as upon something which requires no great pains. But
the fact is, that I long ago established the general principles of
philosophic subjects in my mind in a demonstrative way, or pretty
nearly so, and that they do not require much new consideration from
me."
Leibniz goes on to add that he has put these reflections in the form of
a dialogue that they may be more attractive; has written them in the
popular language, rather than in Latin, that they may reach as wide a
circle as the work of Locke; and that he hopes to publish them soon,
as Locke is already an old man, and he wishes to get them before the
public while Locke may still reply.
But unfortunately this last hope was destined to remain
unrealized. Before the work of revision was accomplished, Locke
died. Leibniz, in a letter written in 1714, alludes to his controversy
with Locke as follows: "I do not like the thought of publishing
refutations of authors who are dead. These should appear during their
life, and be communicated to them." Then, referring to his earlier
comments, he says: "A few remarks escaped me, I hardly know how, and
were taken to England. Mr. Locke, having seen them, spoke of them
slightingly in a letter to Molineux. I am not astonished at it. We
were somewhat too far apart in principle, and that which I suggested
seemed paradoxical to him." Leibniz, according to his conviction here
expressed, never published his "Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement
Humain." Schaarschmidt remarks that another reason may have restrained
him, in that he did not wish to carry on too many controversies at once
with the English people. He had two on his hands then,--one with the
Newtonians regarding the infinitesimal calculus; the other with Bishop
Clarke regarding the nature of God, of time and space, of freedom, and
cognate subjects. However, in 1765, almost fifty years after the death
of Leibniz, his critique upon Locke finally appeared.
It is somewhat significant that one whose tendency was conciliatory,
who was eminently what the Germans delight to call him, a "mediator,"
attempting to unite the varied truths which he found scattered in
opposed systems, should have had so much of his work called forth
by controversy. Aside from the cases just mentioned, his other
chief work, the Theodicy, is, in form, a reply to Bayle. Many of
his minor pieces are replies to criticism or are developments of
his own thought with critical reference to Descartes, Malebranche,
and others. But Leibniz has a somewhat different attitude towards
his British and towards his Continental opponents. With the latter
he was always in sympathy, while they in turn gave whatever he
uttered a respectful hearing. Their mutual critiques begin and end
in compliments. But the Englishmen found the thought of Leibniz
"paradoxical" and forced. It seemed to them wildly speculative,
and indeed arbitrary guess-work, without any special reason for its
production, and wholly unverifiable in its results. Such has been the
fate of much of the best German thought since that time in the land of
the descendants of Newton and Locke. But Leibniz, on the other hand,
felt as if he were dealing, in philosophical matters at least, with
foemen hardly worthy of his steel. Locke, he says, had subtlety and
address, and a sort of _superficial_ metaphysics; but he was ignorant
of the method of mathematics,--that is to say, from the standpoint of
Leibniz, of the method of all science. We have already seen that he
thought the examination of a work which had been the result of the
continued labor of Locke was a matter for the leisure hours of his
courtly visits. Indeed, he would undoubtedly have felt about it what
he actually expressed regarding his controversy with Clarke,--that he
engaged in it
"Ludus et jocus, quia in philosophia
Omnia percepi atque animo mecum ante peregi."
He regarded the English as superficial and without grasp of principles,
as they thought him over-deep and over-theoretical.
From this knowledge of the external circumstances of the work of
Leibniz and its relation to Locke, it is necessary that we turn to
its internal content, to the thought of Leibniz as related to the
ideas of Locke. The Essay on the Human Understanding is, as the name
implies, an account of the nature of knowledge. Locke tells us that
it originated in the fact that often, when he had been engaged in
discussions with his friends, they found themselves landed in insoluble
difficulties. This occurred so frequently that it seemed probable that
they had been going at matters from the wrong side, and that before
they attempted to come to conclusions about questions they ought to
examine the capacity of intelligence, and see whether it is fitted to
deal with such questions. Locke, in a word, is another evidence of that
truth which lies at the basis of all forms of philosophical thought,
however opposed they may be to one another,--the truth that knowledge
and reality are so organic to each other that to come to any conclusion
about one, we must know something about the other. Reality equals
objects known or knowable, and knowledge equals reality dissolved in
ideas,--reality which has become translucent through its meaning.
Locke's Essay is, then, an account of the origin, nature, extent, and
limitations of human knowledge. Such is its subject-matter. What is
its method? Locke himself tells us that he uses the "plain historical
method." We do not have to resort to the forcing of language to learn
that this word "historical" contains the key to his work. Every page
of the Essay is testimony to the fact that Locke always proceeds
by inquiring into the way and circumstances by which knowledge of
the subject under consideration came into existence and into the
conditions by which it was developed. Origin means with Locke, not
logical dependence, but temporal production; development means temporal
succession. In the language of our day, Locke's Essay is an attempt to
settle ontological questions by a psychological method. And as we have
before noticed, Leibniz meets him, not by inquiry into the pertinence
of the method or into the validity of results so reached, but by the
more direct way of impugning his psychology, by substituting another
theory of the nature of mind and of the way in which it works.
The questions with which the discussion begins are as to the existence
of innate ideas, and as to whether the soul always thinks,--questions
which upon their face will lead the experienced reader of to-day to
heave a sigh in memory of hours wasted in barren dispute, and which
will create a desire to turn elsewhere for matter more solid and
more nutritive. But in this case, under the form which the discussion
takes at the hands of Leibniz, the question which awaits answer under
the meagre and worn-out formula of "innate ideas" is the function of
intelligence in experience.
Locke denies, and denies with great vigor, the existence of innate
ideas. His motives in so doing are practical and theoretical. He
sees almost every old idea, every hereditary prejudice, every vested
interest of thought, defended on the ground that it is an innate
idea. Innate ideas were sacred, and everything which could find no
defence before reason was an innate idea. Under such circumstances
he takes as much interest in demolishing them as Bacon took in
the destruction of the "eidols." But this is but a small portion
of the object of Locke. He is a thorough-going empiricist; and the
doctrine of innate ideas appears to offer the greatest obstacle to the
acceptance of the truth that all the furnishing of the intellect comes
from experience. Locke's metaphors for the mind are that it is a blank
tablet, an empty closet, an unwritten book. The "innate idea" is only a
sentence written by experience, but which, deified by a certain school
of philosophers, has come to be regarded as eternally imprinted upon
the soul.
Such, indeed, is Locke's understanding of the nature of innate
ideas. He conceives of them as "characters _stamped_, as it were,
upon the mind of man, which the soul has received in its first being
and brings into the world with it;" or they are "constant _impressions_
which the souls of men receive in their first beings." They are "truths
_imprinted_ upon the soul." Having this conception of what is meant by
"innate ideas," Locke sets himself with great vigor, and, it must be
confessed, with equal success, to their annihilation.
His argument is somewhat diffuse and scattered, but in substance it
is as follows: Whatever is in the mind, the mind must be conscious
of. "To be in the mind and not to be perceived, is all one as to say
that anything is and is not in the mind." If there be anything in the
mind which is innate, it must be present to the consciousness of all,
and, it would seem, of all at all times, savages, infants, and idiots
included. And as it requires little philosophical penetration to
see that savages do not ponder upon the principle that whatever is,
is; that infants do not dwell in their cradle upon the thought of
contradiction, or idiots ruminate upon that of excluded middle,--it
ought to be evident that such truths cannot be innate. Indeed, we must
admit, with Locke, that probably few men ever come to the explicit
consciousness of such ideas, and that these few are such as direct
their minds to the matter with some pains. Locke's argument may be
summed up in his words: If these are not notions naturally imprinted,
how can they be innate? And if they are notions naturally imprinted,
how can they be unknown?
But since it may be said that these truths are in the mind, but in such
a way that it is only when they are proposed that men assent to them,
Locke goes on to clinch his argument. If this be true, it shows that
the ideas are not innate; for the same thing is true of a large number
of scientific truths, those of mathematics and morals, as well as of
purely sensible facts, as that red is not blue, sweet is not sour,
etc.,--truths and facts which no one calls innate. Or if it be said
that they are in the mind implicitly or potentially, Locke points
out that this means either nothing at all, or else that the mind is
_capable_ of knowing them. If this is what is meant by innate ideas,
then all ideas are innate; for certainly it cannot be denied that the
mind is capable of knowing all that it ever does know, or, as Locke
ingenuously remarks, "nobody ever denied that the mind was capable of
knowing several truths."
It is evident that the force of Locke's contention against innate
ideas rests upon a certain theory regarding the nature of innate ideas
and of the relations of consciousness to intelligence. Besides this,
there runs through his whole polemic the assertion that, after all,
innate ideas are useless, as experience, in the sense of impressions
received from without, and the formal action of intelligence upon
them, is adequate to doing all they are supposed to do. It is hardly
too much to say that the nerve of Locke's argument is rather in this
positive assertion than in the negations which he brings against
this existence. Leibniz takes issue with him on each of these three
points. He has another conception of the very nature of innate ideas;
he denies Locke's opinions about consciousness; he brings forward
an opposed theory upon the relation of experience to reason. This
last point we shall take up in a chapter by itself, as its importance
extends far beyond the mere question as to the existence of ideas which
may properly be called innate. The other two questions, as to the real
character of innate ideas and the relation of an idea to consciousness,
afford material to occupy us for the present.
The metaphor which Locke constantly uses is the clew to his conception
of innate ideas. They are characters stamped or imprinted upon the
mind, they exist _in_ the mind. The mind would be just what it is,
even if they had no existence. It would not have quite so much "in"
it, but its own nature would not be changed. Innate ideas he conceives
as bearing a purely external relation to mind. They are not organic
to it, nor necessary instruments through which it expresses itself;
they are mechanically impressed upon it. But what the "intellectual"
school had meant by innate ideas was precisely that the relation of
ideas to intelligence is _not_ that of passive holding or containing
on the side of mind, and of impressions or stamps on the side of the
ideas. Locke reads the fundamental category of empiricism--mechanical
relation, or external action--into the nature of innate ideas, and
hence easily infers their absurdity. But the object of the upholders
of innate ideas had been precisely to deny that this category was
applicable to the whole of intelligence. By an innate idea they meant
an assertion of the dynamic relation of intelligence and some of its
ideas. They meant to assert that intelligence has a structure, which
necessarily functions in certain ways. While Locke's highest conception
of an innate idea was that it must be something ready made, dwelling
in the mind prior to experience, Leibniz everywhere asserts that it
is a connection and relation which forms the logical prius and the
psychological basis of experience. He finds no difficulty in admitting
all there is of positive truth in Locke's doctrine; namely, that we are
not conscious of these innate ideas until a period later than that in
which we are conscious of sensible facts, or, in many cases, are not
conscious of them at all. This priority in time of sensible experience
to rational knowledge, however, can become a reason for denying the
"innate" character of the latter only when we suppose that they are two
entirely different orders of fact, one knowledge due to experience,
the other knowledge already formed and existing in the mind prior to
"experience."
Leibniz's conception of the matter is brought out when he says that it
is indeed true that we begin with particular experiences rather than
with general principles, but that the order of nature is the reverse,
for the ground, the basis of the particular truths is in the general;
the former being in reality only instances of the latter. General
principles, he says, enter into _all_ our thoughts, and form their
soul and interconnection. They are as necessary for thought as muscles
and tendons are for walking, although we may not be conscious of their
existence. This side of the teaching of Leibniz consists, accordingly,
in the assertion that "innate" knowledge and knowledge derived from
experience are not two kinds of knowledge, but rather two ways of
considering it. If we consider it as it comes to us, piecemeal and
fragmentary, a succession of particular instances, to be gathered up at
a future time into general principles, and stated in a rational form,
it is seen as empirical. But, after all, this is only a superficial
and external way of looking at it. If we examine into it we shall see
that there are contained in these transitory and particular experiences
certain truths more general and fundamental, which condition them, and
at the same time constitute their meaning.
If we inquire into the propriety of calling these truths "innate,"
we find it is because they are native to intelligence, and are not
acquisitions which it makes. Indeed, it may be said that they _are_
intelligence, so close and organic is their relation, just as the
muscles, the tendons, the skeleton, are the body. Thus it is that
Leibniz accepts the statement, _Nihil est in intellectu quod non
fuerit in sensu_, with the addition of the statement _nisi ipse
intellectus_. The doctrine of the existence of innate ideas is thus
shown to mean that intelligence exists with a real content which counts
for something in the realm of experience. If we take intelligence
and examine into its structure and ascertain its modes of expression,
we find organically inherent in its activity certain conceptions like
unity, power, substance, identity, etc., and these we call "innate." An
idea, in short, is no longer conceived as something existing in the
mind or in consciousness; it is an activity of intelligence. An innate
idea is a necessary activity of intelligence; that is, such an activity
as enters into the framework of all experience.
Leibniz thus succeeds in avoiding two errors into which philosophers
whose general aims are much like his have fallen. One is dividing _a
priori_ and _a posteriori_ truths from each other by a hard and fixed
line, so that we are conceived to have some knowledge which comes
wholly from experience, while there is another which comes wholly
from reason. According to Leibniz, there is no thought so abstract
that it does not have its connection with a sensible experience,
or rather its embodiment in it. And, on the other hand, there is no
experience so thoroughly sensuous that it does not bear in itself
traces of its origin in reason. "_All_ our thoughts come from the
depths of the soul," says Leibniz; there are none that "come" to us
from without. The other error is the interpretation of the existence
of innate ideas or "intuitions" (as this school generally calls them)
in a purely formal sense. They are thus considered as truths contained
in and somehow expressed by intelligence, but yet not so connected with
it that in knowing them we necessarily know intelligence itself. They
are considered rather as arbitrary determinations of truths by a power
whose own nature is conceivably foreign to truth, than as so many
special developments of an activity which may indifferently be called
"intelligence" or "truth." Leibniz, however, never fails to state that
an innate truth is, after all, but one form or aspect of the activity
of the mind in knowing.
In this way, by bringing to light a deeper and richer conception of
what in reality constitutes an innate idea, Leibniz answers Locke. His
reply is indirect; it consists rather in throwing a flood of new
light upon the matter discussed, than in a ponderous response and
counter-attack. But when Leibniz touches upon the conception of a
_tabula rasa_, of a mind which in itself is a mere blank, but has
the capacity for knowing, he assumes the offensive. The idea of a
bare capacity, a formal faculty, of power which does not already
involve some actual content within itself, he repudiates as a relic
of scholasticism. What is the soul, which has nothing until it gets
it from without? The doctrine of a vacuum, an emptiness which is real,
is always absurd; and it is doubly so when to this vacuum is ascribed
powers of feeling and thinking, as Locke does. Accepting for the
moment the metaphor of a _tabula rasa_, Leibniz asks where we shall
find a tablet which yet does not have some quality, and which is not
a co-operating cause, at least, in whatever effects are produced upon
it? The notion of a soul without thought, an empty tablet of the soul,
he says, is one of a thousand fictions of philosophers. He compares
it with the idea of "space empty of matter, absolute uniformity
or homogeneity, perfect spheres of the second element produced by
primordial perfect cubes, abstractions pure and simple, to which our
ignorance and inattention give birth, but of which reality does not
admit." If Locke admits then (as he does) certain capacities inherent
in the soul, he cannot mean the scholastic fiction of bare capacity
or mere possibility; he must mean "real possibilities,"--that is,
capacities accompanied with some actual tendency, an inclination, a
disposition, an aptitude, a preformation which determines our soul in a
certain direction, and which makes it necessary that the possibility
becomes actual. And this tendency, this actual inclination of
intelligence in one way rather than another, so that it is not a matter
of indifference to intelligence what it produces, is precisely what
constitutes an innate idea. So Leibniz feels certain that at bottom
Locke must agree with him in this matter if the latter is really in
earnest in rejecting the "faculties" of the scholastics and in wishing
for a real explanation of knowledge.
But the argument of Locke rests upon yet another basis. He founds
his denial of innate ideas not only upon a static conception of their
ready made existence "in" the soul, but also upon an equally mechanical
conception of consciousness. "Nothing can be in the mind which is not
in consciousness." This statement appears axiomatic to Locke, and by
it he would settle the whole discussion. Regarding it, Leibniz remarks
that if Locke has such a prejudice as this, it is not surprising that
he rejects innate ideas. But consciousness and mental activity are not
thus identical. To go no farther, the mere empirical fact of memory is
sufficient to show the falsity of such an idea. Memory reveals that
we have an indefinite amount of knowledge of which we are not always
conscious. Rather than that knowledge and consciousness are one, it
is true that actual consciousness only lays hold of an infinitesimal
fraction of knowledge. But Leibniz does not rely upon the fact of
memory alone. We must constantly keep in mind that to Leibniz the
soul is not a form of being wholly separate from nature, but is the
culmination of the system of reality. The reality is everywhere
the monad, and the soul is the monad with the power of feeling,
remembering, and connecting its ideas. The activities of the monad,
those representative changes which sum up and symbolize the universe,
do not cease when we reach the soul. They are continued. If the soul
has the power of attention, they are potentially conscious. Such as
the soul actually attends to, thus giving them relief and making them
distinct, are actually conscious. But all of them exist.
Thus it is that Leibniz not only denies the equivalence of soul and
consciousness, but asserts that the fundamental error of the psychology
of the Cartesians (and here, at least, Locke is a Cartesian) is in
identifying them. He asserts that "unconscious ideas" are of as great
importance in psychology as molecules are in physics. They are the link
between unconscious nature and the conscious soul. Nothing happens all
at once; nature never makes jumps; these facts stated in the law of
continuity necessitate the existence of activities, which may be called
ideas, since they belong to the soul and yet are not in consciousness.
When, therefore, Locke asks how an innate idea can exist and the soul
not be conscious of it, the answer is at hand. The "innate idea"
exists as an activity of the soul by which it represents--that is,
expresses--some relation of the universe, although we have not yet
become conscious of what is contained or enveloped in this activity. To
become conscious of the innate idea is to lift it from the sphere of
nature to the conscious life of spirit. And thus it is, again, that
Leibniz can assert that all ideas whatever proceed from the depths of
the soul. It is because it is the very being of the soul as a monad
to reflect "from its point of view" the world. In this way Leibniz
brings the discussion regarding innate ideas out of the plane of
examination into a matter of psychological fact into a consideration
of the essential nature of spirit. An innate idea is now seen to be
one of the relations by which the soul reproduces some relation which
constitutes the universe of reality, and at the same time realizes its
own individual nature. It is one reflection from that spiritual mirror,
the soul. With this enlarged and transformed conception of an idea apt
to be so meagre we may well leave the discussion. There has been one
mind at least to which the phrase "innate ideas" meant something worth
contending for, because it meant something real.