expression in Hume, lies in its being an effort to think to
their logical issue certain notions which since then have become
commonplaces with educated Englishmen, but which, for that reason, we
must detach ourselves from popular controversy to appreciate rightly.
We are familiar enough with these in the form to which adaptation to
the needs of plausibility has gradually reduced them, but because
we do not think them out with the consistency of their original
exponents, we miss their true value. They do not carry us, as they
will do if we restore their original significance, by an intellectual
necessity to those truer notions which, in fact, have been their
sequel in the development of philosophy, but have not yet found their
way into the ‘culture’ of our time. An attempt to restore their
value, however, if this be the right view of its nature, cannot but
seem at first sight invidious. It will seem as if, while we talk of
their value, we were impertinently trying to ‘pull them to pieces.’
But those who understand the difference between philosophical
failures, which are so because they are anachronisms, and those which
in their failure have brought out a new truth and compelled a step
forward in the progress of thought, will understand that a process,
which looks like pulling a great philosopher to pieces, may be the
true way of showing reverence for his greatness. It is a Pharisaical
way of building the sepulchres of philosophers to profess their
doctrine or extol their genius without making their spirit our own.
The genius of Locke and Hume was their readiness to follow the lead
of Ideas: their spirit was the spirit of Rationalism--the spirit
which, however baffled and forced into inconsistent admissions,
is still governed by the faith that all things may ultimately be
understood. We best do reverence to their genius, we most truly
appropriate their spirit, in so exploring the difficulties to which
their enquiry led, as to find in them the suggestion of a theory
which may help us to walk firmly where they stumbled and fell.
Locke’s problem and method.
6. About Locke, as about every other philosopher, the essential
questions are, What was his problem, and what was his method?
Locke, as a man of business, gives us the answers at starting. His
problem was the origin of ‘ideas’ in the individual man, and their
connection as constituting knowledge: his method that of simply
‘looking into his own understanding and seeing how it wrought.’
These answers commend themselves to common sense, and still form
the text of popular psychology. If its confidence in their value,
as explained by Locke, is at all beginning to be shaken, this is
not because, according to a strict logical development, they issued
in Hume’s unanswered scepticism, which was too subtle for popular
effect, but because they are now open to a rougher battery from the
physiologists. Our concern at present is merely to show their precise
meaning, and the difficulties which according to this meaning they
involve.
His notion of the ‘thinking thing’.
7. There are two propositions on which Locke is constantly insisting:
one, that the object of his investigation is _his own_ mind; the
other, that his attitude towards this object is that of mere
observation. He speaks of his own mind, it is to be noticed, just
as he might of his own body. It meant something born with, and
dependent on, the particular animal organism that first saw the
light at Wrington on a particular day in 1632. It was as exclusive
of other minds as his body of other bodies, and he could only infer
a resemblance between them and it. With all his animosity to the
coarse spiritualism of the doctrine of innate ideas, he was the
victim of the same notion which gave that doctrine its falsehood and
grotesqueness. He, just as much as the untutored Cartesian, regarded
the ‘minds’ of different men as so many different things; and his
refutation of the objectionable hypothesis proceeds wholly from this
view. Whether the mind is put complete into the body, or is born and
grows with it; whether it has certain characters stamped upon it to
begin with, or receives all its ideas through the senses; whether it
is simple and therefore indiscerptible, or compound and therefore
perishable--all these questions to Locke, as to his opponents,
concern a multitude of ‘thinking things’ in him and them, merely
individual, but happening to be pretty much alike.
This he will passively observe.
8. This ‘thinking thing,’ then, as he finds it in himself, the
philosopher, according to Locke, has merely and passively to observe,
in order to understand the nature of knowledge. ‘I could look into
nobody’s understanding but my own to see how it wrought,’ he says,
but ‘I think the intellectual faculties are made and operate alike
in most men. But if it should happen not to be so, I can only make
it my humble request, in my own name and in the name of those that
are of my size, who find their minds work, reason, and know in the
same low way that mine does, that the men of a more happy genius will
show us the way of their nobler flights.’ (Second Letter to Bishop of
Worcester.) As will appear in the sequel, it is from this imaginary
method of ascertaining the origin and nature of knowledge by passive
observation of what goes on in one’s own mind that the embarrassments
of Locke’s system flow. It was the function of Hume to exhibit the
radical flaw in his master’s method by following it with more than
his master’s rigour.
Is such observation possible?
9. As an observation of the ‘thinking thing,’ the ‘philosophy of
mind’ seems to assume the character of a natural science, and
thus at once acquires definiteness, and if not certainty, at
least plausibility. To deny the possibility of such observation,
in any proper sense of the word, is for most men to tamper with
the unquestioned heritage of all educated intelligence. Hence the
unpalatability of a consistent Positivism; hence, too, on the
other side, the general conviction that the Hegelian reduction of
Psychology to Metaphysics is either an intellectual juggle, or a
wilful return of the philosophy, which psychologists had washed, to
the mire of scholasticism. It is the more important to ascertain what
the observation in question precisely means. What observes, and what
is observed? According to Locke (and empirical psychology has never
substantially varied the answer) the matter to be observed consists
for each man firstly in certain impressions of his own individual
mind, by which this mind from being a mere blank has become
furnished--by which, in other words, his mind has become actually
a mind; and, secondly, in certain operations, which the mind, thus
constituted, performs upon the materials which constitute it. The
observer, all the while, is the constituted mind itself. The question
at once arises, how the developed man can observe in himself (and
it is only to himself, according to Locke, that he can look) that
primitive state in which his mind was a ‘tabula rasa.’ In the first
place, that only can be observed which is present; and the state in
question to the supposed observer is past. If it be replied that it
is recalled by memory, there is the farther objection that memory
only recalls what has been previously known, and how is a man’s own
primitive consciousness, as yet void of the content which is supposed
to come to it through impressions, originally known to him? How can
the ‘tabula rasa’ be cognisant of itself?
Why it seems so.
10. The cover under which this difficulty was hidden from Locke,
as from popular psychologists ever since, consists in the implicit
assumption of certain ideas, either as possessed by or acting upon
the mind in the supposed primitive state, which are yet held to be
arrived at by a gradual process of comparison, abstraction, and
generalisation. This assumption, which renders the whole system
resting upon the interrogation of consciousness a paralogism, is yet
the condition of its apparent possibility. It is only as already
charged with a content which is yet (and for the individual, truly)
maintained to be the gradual acquisition of experience, that the
primitive consciousness has any answer to give to its interrogator.
Locke’s account of origin of ideas.
11. Let us consider the passage where Locke sums up his theory of
the ‘original of our ideas.’ (Book II. chap. i. sec. 23, 24.) ‘Since
there appear not to be any ideas in the mind, before the senses have
conveyed any in, I conceive that ideas in the understanding are
coeval with sensation; which is such an impression, made in some part
of the body, as produces some perception in the understanding. It is
about these impressions made on our senses by outward objects, that
the mind seems first to employ itself in such operations as we call
perception, remembering, consideration, reasoning, &c. In time the
mind comes to reflect on its own operations about the ideas got by
sensation, and thereby stores itself with a new set of ideas, which
I call ideas of reflection. These impressions that are made on our
senses by outward objects, that are extrinsical to the mind; and
its own operations, proceeding from powers intrinsical and proper
to itself, which, when reflected on by itself, become also objects
of its contemplation, are, as I have said, the original of all
knowledge.’
Its ambiguities _(a)_ In regard to sensation.
12. Can we from this passage elicit a distinct account of the
beginning of intelligence? In the first place it consists in an
‘idea,’ and an idea is elsewhere (Introduction, sec. 8) stated
to be ‘whatsoever is the object of the understanding, when a man
thinks.’ But the primary idea is an ‘idea of sensation.’ Does this
mean that the primary idea _is_ a sensation, or is a distinction
to be made between the sensation and the idea thereof? The passage
before us would seem to imply such a distinction. Looking merely
to it, we should probably say that by _sensation_ Locke meant ‘an
impression or motion in some part of the body;’ by the _idea of
sensation_ ‘a perception in the understanding,’ which this impression
produces. The account of perception itself gives a different result.
(Book II. chap. ix. sec. 3.) ‘Whatever impressions are made on the
outward parts, if they are not taken notice of within, there is no
perception. Fire may burn our bodies with no other effect than it
does a billet, unless the motion be continued to the brain, and
there the _sense_ of heat or _idea_ of pain be produced in the mind,
wherein consists actual _perception_.’ Here sensation is identified
at once with the idea and with perception, as opposed to the
impression on the bodily organs. [1] To confound the confusion still
farther, in a passage immediately preceding the above, ‘Perception,’
here identified with the idea of sensation, has been distinguished
from it, as ‘exercised about it.’ ‘Perception, as it is the first
faculty of the mind exercised about our ideas, so it is the first and
simplest idea we have from reflection.’ Taking Locke at his word,
then, we find the beginning of intelligence to consist in having an
idea of sensation. This idea, however, we perceive, and to perceive
is to have an idea; _i.e._ to have an idea of an idea of sensation.
But of perception again we have a simple or primitive idea. Therefore
the beginning of intelligence consists in having an idea of an idea
of an idea of sensation.
[1] Cf. Book II. chap. xix. sec. 1. ‘The _perception_, which actually
accompanies and is annexed to any impression on the body, made by
an external object, being distinct from all other modifications of
thinking, furnishes the mind with a distinct idea which we call
_sensation_; which is, as it were, the actual entrance of any idea
into the understanding by the senses.’
_(b)_ In regard to ideas of reflection.
13. By insisting on Locke’s account of the relation between the
ideas of sensation and those of reflection we might be brought to a
different but not more luminous conclusion. In the passages quoted
above, where this relation is most fully spoken of, it appears that
the latter are essentially sequent to those of sensation. ‘_In
time_ the mind comes to reflect on its own operations, about the
ideas got by sensation, and thereby stores itself with a new set
of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection.’ Of these only two are
primary and original (Book II. c. xxi. sec. 73), viz. motivity or
power of moving, with which we are not at present concerned, and
perceptivity or power of perception. But according to Locke, as we
have seen, there cannot be any, the simplest, idea of sensation
without perception. If, then, the _idea_ of perception is only
given later and upon reflection, we must suppose perception to take
place without any idea of it. But with Locke to have an idea and
to perceive are equivalent terms. We must thus conclude that the
beginning of knowledge is an unperceived perception, which is against
his express statement elsewhere (Book II. c. xxvii. sec. 9), that it
is ‘impossible for any one to perceive without perceiving that he
does perceive.’
What is the ‘tablet’ impressed?
14. Meanwhile a perpetual equivocation is kept up between a supposed
impression on the ‘outward parts,’ and a supposed impression on the
‘tablet of the mind.’ It is not the impression upon, or a motion
in, the outward parts, as Locke admits, that constitutes the idea
of sensation. It is not an agitation in the tympanum of the ear,
or a picture on the retina of the eye, that we are conscious of
when we see a sight or hear a sound. [1] The motion or impression,
however, has only, as he seems to suppose, to be ‘continued to the
brain,’ and it becomes an idea of sensation. Notwithstanding the
rough line of distinction between soul and body, which he draws
elsewhere, his theory was practically governed by the supposition
of a cerebral something, in which, as in a third equivocal tablet,
the imaginary mental and bodily tablets are blended. If, however,
the idea of sensation, as an object of the understanding when a man
thinks, differs absolutely from ‘a motion of the outward parts,’
it does so no less absolutely, however language and metaphor may
disguise the difference, from such motion as ‘continued to the
brain.’ An instructed man, doubtless, may come to think about a
motion in his brain, as about a motion of the earth round the sun,
but to speak of such motion as an idea of sensation or an immediate
object of intelligent sense, is to confuse between the object of
consciousness and a possible physical theory of the conditions of
that consciousness. It is only, however, by such an equivocation that
any idea, according to Locke’s account of the idea, can be described
as an ‘impression’ at all, or that the representation of the mind as
a tablet, whether born blank or with characters stamped on it, has
even an apparent meaning. A metaphor, interpreted as a fact, becomes
the basis of his philosophical system.
[1] Cf. Locke’s own statement (Book III. c. iv. sec. 10). ‘The cause
of any sensation, and the sensation itself, in all the simple ideas
of one sense, are two ideas; and two ideas so different and distant
one from another, that no two can be more so.’
Does the mind make impressions on itself?
15. As applied to the ideas of reflection, indeed, the metaphor loses
even its plausibility. In its application to the ideas of sensation
it gains popular acceptance from the ready confusion of thought
and matter in the imaginary cerebral tablet, and the supposition
of actual impact upon this by ‘outward things.’ But in the case of
ideas of reflection, it is the mind that at once gives and takes
the impression. It must be supposed, that is, to make impressions
on itself. There is the further difficulty that as perception is
necessary in order to give an _idea_ of sensation, the impress of
perception must be taken by the mind in its earliest receptivity; or,
in other words, it must impress itself while still a blank, still
void of any ‘furniture’ wherewith to make the impression. There is no
escape from this result unless we suppose perception to precede the
idea of it by some interval of time, which lands us, as we have seen,
in the counter difficulty of supposing an unperceived perception.
Locke disguises the difficulty from himself and his reader by
constantly shifting both the receptive subject and the impressive
matter. We find the ‘tablet’ perpetually receding. First it is the
‘outward part’ or bodily organ. Then it is the brain, to which the
impression received by the outward part must somehow be continued,
in order to produce sensation. Then it is the perceptive mind, which
takes an impression of the sensation or has an idea of it. Finally,
it is the reflective mind, upon which in turn the perceptive mind
makes impressions. But the hasty reader, when he is told that the
mind is passively impressed with ideas of reflection, is apt to
forget that the matter which thus impresses it is, according to
Locke’s showing, simply its perceptive, _i.e._ its passive, self.
Source of these difficulties. The ‘simple’ idea, as Locke describes
it, is a complex idea of substance and relation.
16. The real source of these embarrassments in Locke’s theory,
it must be noted, lies in the attempt to make the individual
consciousness give an answer to its interrogator as to the beginning
of knowledge. The individual looking back on an imaginary earliest
experience pronounces himself in that experience to have been simply
sensitive and passive. But by this he means consciously sensitive
_of something_ and consciously passive _in relation to something_.
That is, he supposes the primitive experience to have involved
consciousness of a self on the one hand and of a thing on the other,
as well as of a relation between the two. In the ‘idea of sensation’
as Locke conceived it, such a consciousness is clearly implied,
notwithstanding his confusion of terms. The idea is a perception,
or consciousness _of a thing_, as opposed to a sensation proper or
affection of the bodily organs. Of the perception, again, there is
an idea, _i.e._ a consciousness by the man, in the perception, of
himself in negative relation to the thing that is his object, and
this consciousness (if we would make Locke consistent in excluding an
unperceived perception) must be taken to go along with the perceptive
act itself. No less than this indeed can be involved in any act that
is to be the beginning of knowledge at all. It is the minimum of
possible thought or intelligence, and the thinking man, looking for
this beginning in the earliest experience of the individual human
animal, must needs find it there. But this means no less than that he
is finding there already the conceptions of substance and relation.
Hence a double contradiction: firstly, a contradiction between the
primariness of self-conscious cognisance of a thing, as the beginning
of possible knowledge, on the one hand, and the primariness of
animal sensation in the history of the individual man on the other;
secondly, a contradiction between the primariness in knowledge of
the ideas of substance and relation, and the seemingly gradual
attainment of those ‘abstractions’ by the individual intellect. The
former of these contradictions is blurred by Locke in the two main
confusions which we have so far noticed: _(a)_ the confusion between
sensation proper and perception, which is covered under the phrase
‘idea of sensation;’ a phrase which, if sensation means the first act
of intelligence, is pleonastic, and if it means the ‘motion of the
outward parts continued to the brain,’ is unmeaning; and _(b)_ the
confusion between the physical affection of the brain and the act of
the self-conscious subject, covered under the equivocal metaphor of
impression. The latter contradiction, that concerning the ideas of
substance and relation, has to be further considered.
How this contradiction is disguised.
17. It is not difficult to show that to have a simple idea, according
to Locke’s account of it, means to have already the conception of
substance and relation, which are yet according to him ‘complex
and derived ideas,’ ‘the workmanship of the mind’ in opposition to
its original material, the result of its action in opposition to
what is given it as passive. The equivocation in terms under which
this contradiction is generally covered is that between ‘idea’
and ‘quality.’ ‘Whatever the mind perceives in itself, or is the
immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, that
I call _idea_; and the power to produce that idea I call quality
of the subject wherein that power is. Thus a snowball having
power to produce in us the ideas of white, cold, and round, the
powers to produce these ideas in us, as they are in the snowball,
I call qualities; and as they are sensations or perceptions in
our understandings, I call them ideas; which ideas, if I speak of
sometimes as in the things themselves, I would be understood to mean
those qualities in the object which produce them in us.’ (Book II.
chap. viii. sec. 8.)
Locke’s way of interchanging ‘idea’ and ‘quality’ and its effects.
18. An equivocation is not the less so because it is announced.
It is just because Locke allows himself at his convenience to
interchange the terms ‘idea’ and ‘quality’ that his doctrine is at
once so plausible and so hollow. The essential question is whether
the ‘simple idea,’ as the original of knowledge, is on the one hand
a mere feeling, or on the other a thing or quality of a thing.
This question is the crux of empirical psychology. Adopting the
one alternative, we have to face the difficulty of the genesis of
knowledge, as an apprehension of the real, out of mere feeling;
adopting the other, we virtually endow the nascent intelligence with
the conception of substance. By playing fast and loose with ‘idea’
and ‘quality,’ Locke disguised the dilemma from himself. Here again
the metaphor of Impression did him yeoman’s service. The idea, or
‘immediate object of thought,’ being confused with the affection
of the sensitive organs, and this again being accounted for as the
result of actual impact, it was easy to represent the idea itself as
caused by the action of an outward body on the ‘mental tablet.’ Thus
Locke speaks of the ‘objects of our senses obtruding their particular
ideas on our minds, whether we will or no.’ (Book II. chap. i. sec.
25.) This sentence holds in solution an assumption and two fallacies.
The assumption (with which we have no further concern here) is the
physical theory that matter affects the sensitive organs in the way
of actual impact. Of the fallacies, one is the confusion between this
affection and the idea of which it is the occasion to the individual;
the other is the implication that this idea, as such, in its prime
simplicity, recognises itself as the result of, and refers itself as
a quality to, the matter supposed to cause it. This recognition and
reference, it is clearly implied, are involved in the idea itself,
not merely made by the philosopher theorising it. Otherwise the
‘obtrusion’ would be described as of a property or effect, not of an
idea, which means, it must be remembered, the object of consciousness
just as the object of consciousness. Of the same purport is the
statement that ‘the mind is furnished with simple ideas as they are
found in exterior things.’ (Book II. chap, xxiii. sec. 1.) It only
requires a moment’s consideration, indeed, to see that the beginning
of consciousness cannot be a physical theory, which, however true it
may be and however natural it may have become to us, involves not
only the complex conception of material impact, but the application
of this to a case having no palpable likeness to it. But the
‘interrogator of consciousness’ finds in its primitive state just
what he puts there, and thus Locke, with all his pains ‘to set his
mind at a distance from itself,’ involuntarily supposes it, in the
first element of intelligence, to ‘report’ that action of matter upon
itself, which, as the result of a familiar theory--involving not
merely the conceptions of substance, power, and relation, but special
qualifications of these--it reports to the educated man.
Primary and secondary qualities of bodies.