of ‘the ideas of primary and secondary qualities of bodies.’ The
distinction between them he states as follows. The primary qualities
of bodies are ‘the bulk, figure, number, situation, motion, and rest
of their solid parts; these are in them, whether we perceive them
or no; and when they are of that size that we can discover them, we
have by these an idea of the thing as it is in itself.’ ... Thus
‘the ideas of primary qualities are resemblances of them, and their
patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves. But the ideas
produced in us by the secondary qualities have no resemblance of them
at all. There is nothing like them existing in the bodies themselves.
They are in the bodies, we denominate from them, only a power to
produce these sensations in us; and what is sweet, blue, or warm in
idea is but the certain bulk, figure, and motion of the insensible
parts in the bodies themselves which we call so.’ This power is then
explained to be of two sorts: _(a)_ ‘The power that is in any body,
by reason of its insensible primary qualities, to operate after a
peculiar manner on any of our senses, and thereby produce in us the
different ideas of several colours, sounds, smells, tastes, &c. These
are usually called sensible qualities, _(b)_ The power that is in
any body, by reason of the particular constitution of its primary
qualities, to make such a change in the bulk, figure, texture, and
motion of another body, as to make it operate differently on our
senses from what it did before. Thus the sun has a power to make wax
white, and fire to make lead fluid. These are usually called powers.’
(Book II. chap. viii. sec. 15, 23.)
‘Simple idea’ represented as involving a theory of its own cause.
20. What we have here is a theory of the causes of simple ideas; but
we shall find Locke constantly representing this theory as a simple
idea itself, or the simple idea as involving this theory. By this
unconscious device he is enabled readily to exhibit the genesis of
knowledge out of ‘simple ideas,’ but it is at the cost of converting
these into ‘creations of the mind,’ which with him are the antitheses
of ‘facts’ or ‘reality.’ The process of conversion takes a different
form as applied respectively to the ideas of primary and to those
of secondary qualities. We propose to follow it in the latter
application first.
Phrases in which this is implied.
21. The simple idea caused by a quality he calls the idea _of_ that
quality. Under cover of this phrase, he not only identifies the idea
of a primary quality with the quality itself of which he supposes it
to be a copy, but he also habitually regards the idea of a secondary
quality as the consciousness of a quality _of a thing_, though under
warning that the quality as it is to consciousness is not as it is in
the thing. This reservation rather adds to the confusion. There are
in fact, according to Locke, as appears from his distinction between
the ‘nominal’ and ‘real essence,’ two different things denoted by
every common noun; the thing as it is in itself or in nature, and
the thing as it is for consciousness. The former is the thing as
constituted by a certain configuration of particles, which is only
an object for the physical philosopher, and never fully cognisable
even by him; [1] the latter is the thing as we see and hear and
smell it. Now to a thing in this latter sense, according to Locke,
such a simple idea as to the philosopher is one of a secondary
quality (_i.e._ not a copy, but an effect, of something in a body),
is already in the origin of knowledge referred as a quality, though
without distinction of primary and secondary. He does not indeed
state this in so many words. To have done so might have forced him to
reconsider his doctrine of the mere passivity of the mind in respect
of simple ideas. But it is implied in his constant use of such
phrases as ‘reports of the senses,’ ‘inlet through the senses’--which
have no meaning unless something is reported, something let in--and
in the familiar comparison of the understanding to a ‘closet, wholly
shut from light, with only some little opening left, to let in
external visible resemblances, or ideas, of things without.’ (Book
II. chap. xi. sec. 17.)
[1] This distinction is more fully treated below, paragraphs 88, &c.
Feeling and felt thing confused.
22. Phraseology of this kind, the standing heritage of the philosophy
which seeks the origin of knowledge in sensation, assumes that the
individual sensation is from the first consciously representative;
that it is more than what it is simply in itself--fleeting,
momentary, unnameable (because, while we name it, it has become
another), and for the same reason unknowable, the very negation of
knowability; that it shows the presence of something, whether this
be a ‘body’ to which it is referred as a quality, or a mind of which
it is a modification, or be ultimately reduced to the permanent
conditions of its own possibility. This assumption for the present
has merely to be pointed out; its legitimacy need not be discussed.
Nor need we now discuss the attempts that have been made since Locke
to show that mere sensations, dumb to begin with, may yet become
articulate upon repetition and combination; which in fact endow them
with a faculty of inference, and suppose that though primarily they
report nothing beyond themselves, they yet somehow come to do so
as an explanation of their own recurrence. The sensational theory
in Locke is still, so to speak, unsophisticated. It is true that,
in concert with that ‘thinking gentleman,’ Mr. Molyneux, he had
satisfied himself that what we reckon simple ideas are often really
inferences from such ideas which by habit have become instinctive;
but his account of this habitual process presupposes the reference of
sensation to a thing. ‘When we set before our eyes a round globe of
any uniform colour, it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted in
our mind is of a flat circle, variously shadowed with several degrees
of light and brightness coming to our eyes. But we having by use been
accustomed to perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are wont
to make in us, what alterations are made in the reflections of light
by the difference of the sensible figures of bodies; the judgment
presently, by an habitual custom, alters the appearances into their
causes. So that from that which truly is variety of colour or shadow,
collecting the figure, it makes it pass for a mark of figure, and
frames to itself the perception of a convex figure, and an uniform
colour.’ (Book II. chap. ix. sec. 8.) The theory here stated involves
two assumptions, each inconsistent with the simplicity of the simple
idea. _(a)_ The actual impression of the ‘plane variously coloured’
is supposed to pronounce itself to be of something outward. Once
call the sensation an ‘impression,’ indeed, or call it anything, and
this or an analogous substantiation of it is implied. It is only
as thus reporting something ‘objective’ that the simple idea of
the plane variously coloured gives anything to be corrected by the
‘perception of the kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make
in us,’ _i.e._ ‘of the alterations made in the reflections of light
by the difference of the sensible figure of bodies.’ This perception,
indeed, as described, is already itself just the instinctive judgment
which has to be accounted for, and though this objection might be
met by a better statement, yet no statement could serve Locke’s
purpose which did not make assumption _(b)_ that sensations of light
and colour--‘simple ideas of secondary qualities’--are in the very
beginning of knowledge _appearances_, if not of _convex_ bodies, yet
of bodies; if not of bodies, yet of something which they reveal,
which remains there while they pass away.
The simple idea as ‘ectype’ other than mere sensation.
23. The same assumption is patent in Locke’s account of the
distinction between ‘real and fantastic,’ ‘adequate and inadequate,’
ideas. This distinction rests upon that between the thing as
archetype, and the idea as the corresponding ectype. Simple ideas he
holds to be necessarily ‘real’ and ‘adequate,’ because necessarily
answering to their archetypes. ‘Not that they are all of them images
or representations of what does exist: ... whiteness and coldness
are no more in snow than pain is: ... yet are they real ideas in
us, whereby we distinguish the qualities that are really in things
themselves. For these several appearances being designed to be the
marks whereby we are to know and distinguish things which we have
to do with, our ideas do as well serve us to that purpose, and are
as real distinguishing characters, whether they be only constant
effects, or else exact resemblances of something in the things
themselves.’ (Book II. chap. xxx. sec. 2.) The simple idea, then, is
a ‘mark’ or ‘distinguishing character,’ either as a copy or as an
effect, of something other than itself. Only as thus regarded, does
the distinction between real and fantastic possibly apply to it.
So too with the distinction between true and false ideas. As Locke
himself points out, the simple idea in itself is neither true nor
false. It can become so only as ‘referred to something extraneous
to it.’ (Book II. chap, xxxii. sec. 4.) For all that, he speaks of
simple ideas as true and necessarily true, because ‘being barely
such perceptions as God has fitted us to receive, and given power to
external objects to produce in us by established laws and ways ...
their truth consists in nothing else but in such appearances as are
produced in us, and must be suitable to those powers He has placed in
external objects, or else they could not be produced in us.’ (Book
II. chap, xxxii. sec. 14.) Here again we are brought to the same
point. The idea is an ‘appearance’ of something, necessarily true
when it cannot seem to be the appearance of anything else than that
of which it is the appearance. We thus come to the following dilemma.
Either the simple idea is referred to a thing, as its pattern or its
cause, or it cannot be regarded as either real or true. If it is
still objected that it need not be so referred in the beginning of
knowledge, though it comes to be so in the developed intelligence,
the answer is the further question, how can that be knowledge even in
its most elementary phase--the phase of the reception of simple ideas
--which is not a capacity of distinction between real and apparent,
between true and false? If its beginning is a mode of consciousness,
such as mere sensation would be--which, because excluding all
reference, excludes that reference of itself to something else
without which there could be no consciousness of a distinction
between an ‘is’ and an ‘is not,’ and therefore no true judgment at
all--how can any repetition of such modes give such a judgment? [1]
[1] Cf. the ground of distinction between clearness and obscurity of
ideas; (Book II. chap. xxix. sec. 2) ‘Our simple ideas are clear when
they are such as the objects themselves, whence they are taken, did
or might in a well-ordered sensation or perception, present them.’ As
Locke always assumes that immediate consciousness can tell whether an
idea is clear or not, it follows that immediate consciousness must
tell of ‘the object itself, whence the idea is taken.’
It involves a judgment in which mind and thing are distinguished.
24. The fact is that the ‘simple idea’ with Locke, as the beginning
of knowledge, is already, at its minimum, the judgment, ‘I have
an idea different from other ideas, which I did not make for
myself.’ His confusion of this judgment with sensation is merely
the fundamental confusion, on which all empirical psychology rests,
between two essentially distinct questions--one metaphysical, What is
the simplest element of knowledge? the other physiological, What are
the conditions in the individual human organism in virtue of which
it becomes a vehicle of knowledge? Though he failed, however, to
distinguish these questions, their difference made itself appear in a
certain divergence between the second and fourth books of his Essay.
So far we have limited our consideration to passages in the second
book, in which he treats _eo nomine_ of ideas; of simple ideas as
the original of knowledge, of complex ones as formed in its process.
Here the physical theory is predominant. The beginning of knowledge
is that without which the animal is incapable of it, viz. sensation
regarded as an impression through ‘animal spirits’ on the brain. But
it can only be so represented because sensation is identified with
that which later psychology distinguished from it as Perception, and
for which no physical theory can account. As we have seen, the whole
theory of this (the second) book turns upon the supposition that
the simple idea of sensation is in every case an idea of a sensible
quality, and that it is so, not merely for us, considering it _ex
parte post_, but consciously for the individual subject, which can
mean nothing else than that it distinguishes itself from, and refers
itself to, a thing. Locke himself, indeed, according to his plan of
bringing in a ‘faculty of the mind’ whenever it is convenient, would
perhaps rather have said that it is so distinguished and referred ‘by
the mind.’ He considers the simple idea not, as it truly is, the mind
itself in a certain relation, but a datum or material of the mind,
upon which it performs certain operations as upon something other
than itself, though all the while it is constituted, at least in its
actuality, by this material. Between the reference of the simple
idea to the thing, however, by itself and ‘by the mind,’ there is no
essential difference. In either case the reference is inconsistent
with the simplicity of the simple idea; and if the latter expression
avoids the seeming awkwardness of ascribing activity to the idea,
it yet ascribes it to the mind in that elementary stage in which,
according to Locke, it is merely receptive.
And is equivalent to what he afterwards calls ‘knowledge of
identity’. Only as such can it be named.
25. So much for the theory ‘of ideas.’ As if, however, in treating
of ideas he had been treating of anything else than knowledge, he
afterwards considers ‘knowledge’ in a book by itself (the fourth)
under that title, and here the question as to the relation between
idea and thing comes before him in a somewhat different shape.
According to his well-known definition, knowledge is the perception
of the agreement or disagreement of any of our ideas. The agreement
or disagreement may be of four sorts. It may be in the way (1)
of identity, (2) of relation, (3) of co-existence, (4) of real
existence. In his account of the last sort of agreement, it may
be remarked by the way, he departs at once and openly from his
definition, making it an agreement, not of idea with idea, but of an
idea with ‘actual real existence.’ The fatal but connatural wound in
his system, which this inconsistency marks, will appear more fully
below. For the present, our concern is for the adjustment of the
definition of knowledge to the doctrine of the simple idea as the
beginning of knowledge. According to the definition, it cannot be
the simple idea, as such, that constitutes this beginning, but only
the perception of agreement or disagreement between simple ideas.
‘There could be no room,’ says Locke distinctly, ‘for any positive
knowledge at all, if we could not distinguish any relation between
our ideas.’ (Book IV. chap. i. sec. 5.) Yet in the very context
where he makes this statement, the perception of relation is put
as a distinct kind of knowledge apart from others. In his account
of the other kinds, however, he is faithful to his definition, and
treats each as a perception (_i.e._ a judgment) of a relation in the
way of agreement or disagreement. The primary knowledge is that of
identity--the knowledge of an idea as identical with itself. ‘A man
infallibly knows, as soon as ever he has them in his mind, that the
ideas he calls _white_ and _round_, are the very ideas they are,
and not other ideas which he calls _red_ and _square_.’ (Book IV.
chap. i. sec. 4.) Now, as Hume afterwards pointed out, identity is
not simple unity. It cannot be predicated of the ‘idea’ as merely
single, but only as a manifold in singleness. To speak of an idea
as the ‘same with itself’ is unmeaning unless it mean ‘same with
itself _in its manifold appearances_’ _i.e._ unless the idea is
distinguished, as an object existing continuously, from its present
appearance. Thus ‘the infallible knowledge,’ which Locke describes
in the above passage, consists in this, that on the occurrence of a
certain ‘idea’ the man _recognises_ it as one, which at other times
of its occurrence he has called ‘_white_.’ Such a ‘synthesis of
recognition,’ however, expressed by the application of a common term,
implies the reference of a present sensation to a permanent object of
thought, in this case the object thought under the term ‘white,’ so
that the sensation becomes an idea of that object. Were there no such
objects, there would be no significant names, but only noises; and
were the present sensation not so referred, it would not be named. It
may be said indeed that the ‘permanent object of thought’ is merely
the instinctive result of a series of past resembling sensations,
and that the common name is merely the register of this result. But
the question is thus merely thrown further back. Unless the single
fleeting sensation was, to begin with, fixed and defined by relation
to and distinction from something permanent--in other words, unless
it ceased to be a mere sensation--how did it happen that other
sensations were referred to it, as different cases of an identical
phenomenon, to which the noise suggested by it might be applied as a
sign?
The same implied in calling it an idea of an object.
26. This primary distinction and relation of the simple idea Locke
implicitly acknowledges when he substitutes for the simple idea,
as in the passage last quoted, the man’s knowledge that he has the
idea; for such knowledge implies the distinction of the idea from its
permanent conscious subject, and its determination by that negative
relation. [1] Thus determined, it becomes itself a permanent object,
or (which comes to the same) an idea _of an object_; a phrase which
Locke at his convenience substitutes for the mere idea, whenever it
is wanted for making his theory of knowledge square with knowledge
itself. Once become such an object, it is a basis to which other
sensations, like and unlike, may be referred as differentiating
attributes. Its identity becomes a definite identity.
[1] Cf. the passage in Book II. chap. vii. sec. 7. ‘When ideas are
in our minds, we consider them as being actually there.’ The mere
‘idea’ is in fact essentially different from the ‘consideration
of it as actually there,’ as sensation is different from thought.
The ‘consideration, &c.,’ really means the thought of the ‘idea’
(sensation) as determined by relation to the conscious subject.
Made _for_, not _by_, us, and therefore according to Locke really
existent.
27. Upon analysis, then, of Locke’s account of the most elementary
knowledge, the perception of identity or agreement of an idea with
itself, we find that like the ‘simple idea,’ which he elsewhere
makes the beginning of knowledge, it really means the reference
of a sensation to a conception of a permanent object or subject,
[1] either in such a judgment as ‘this is white’ (_sc._ a white
thing), or in the more elementary one, ‘this is an object to me.’
In the latter form the judgment represents what Locke puts as the
consciousness, ‘I have an idea,’ or as the ‘consideration that the
idea is actually there;’ in the former it represents what he calls
‘the knowledge that the idea which I have in my mind and which I call
white is the very idea it is, and not the idea which I call red.’
It is only because _referred_, as above, that the sensation is in
Locke’s phraseology ‘a testimony’ or ‘report’ of something. As we
said above, his notion of the beginning of knowledge is expressed
not merely in the formula ‘I have an idea different from other
ideas,’ but with the addition, ‘which I did not make for myself.’
[2] The simple idea is supposed to testify to something without that
caused it, and it is this interpretation of it which makes it with
him the ultimate criterion of reality. But unless it were at once
distinguished from and referred to both a thing of which it is an
effect and a subject of which it is an experience, it could not in
the first place testify to anything, nor secondly to a thing as made
for, not by, the subject. This brings us, however, upon Locke’s whole
theory of ‘real existence,’ which requires fuller consideration.
[1] For a recognition by Locke of the correlativity of these (of
which more will have to be said below) cf. Book II. chap. xxiii. sec.
15. ‘Whilst I know by seeing or hearing, &c., that there is some
corporeal being without me, the object of that sensation, I do more
certainly know that there is some spiritual being within me that sees
and hears.’
[2] Cf. Book II. chap. xii. sec. 1.
What did he mean by this?
28. It is a theory, we must premise, which is nowhere explicitly
stated. It has to be gathered chiefly from those passages of the
second book in which he treats of ‘complex’ or ‘artificial’ ideas in
distinction from simple ones, which are necessarily real, and from
the discussion in the fourth book of the ‘extent’ and ‘reality’ of
knowledge. We have, however, to begin with, in the enumeration of
simple ideas, a mention of ‘existence,’ as one of those ‘received
alike through all the ways of sensation and reflection.’ It is an
idea ‘suggested to the understanding by every object without and
every idea within. When ideas are in our minds, we consider them as
being actually there, as well as we consider things to be actually
without us; which is, that they exist, or have existence.’ (Book II.
chap. vii. sec. 7.)
29. The two considerations here mentioned, of ‘ideas as actually
in our minds,’ of ‘things as actually without us,’ are meant
severally to represent the two ways of reflection and sensation,
by which the idea of existence is supposed to be suggested. But
sensation, according to Locke, is an organ of ‘ideas,’ just as much
as reflection. Taking his doctrine strictly, there are no ‘objects’
but ‘ideas’ to suggest the idea of existence, whether by the way of
sensation or by that of reflection, and no ideas that are not ‘in the
mind.’ (Book II. chap. ix. sec. 3, &c.)
Existence as the mere presence of a feeling.
30. The designation of the idea of existence, then, as ‘suggested
by every idea within,’ covers every possible suggestion. It can
mean nothing else than that it is given in every act and mode of
consciousness; that it is inseparable from feeling as such, being
itself at the same time a distinct simple idea. This, we may remark
by the way, involves the conclusion that every idea is composite,
made up of whatever distinguishes it from other ideas together with
the idea of existence. Of this idea of existence itself, however,
it will be impossible to say anything distinctive; for, as it
accompanies all possible objects of consciousness, there will be no
cases where it is absent to be distinguished from those where it is
present. Not merely will it be undefinable, as every simple idea is;
it will be impossible ‘to send a man to his senses’ (according to
Locke’s favourite subterfuge) in order to know what it is, since it
is neither given in one sense as distinct from another, nor in all
senses as distinct from any other modification of consciousness. Thus
regarded, to treat it as a simple idea alongside of other simple
ideas is a palpable contradiction. It is the mere ‘It is felt,’ the
abstraction of consciousness, no more to be reckoned as one among
other ideas than colour in general is to be co-ordinated with red,
white, and blue. Whether I smell a rose in the summer or recall the
smell in winter; whether I see a horse or a ghost, or imagine a
centaur or think of gravitation or the philosopher’s stone--in every
case alike the idea or ‘immediate object of the mind’ _exists_. Yet
we find Locke distinguishing between real ideas, as those that ‘have
a conformity with the existence of things,’ and fantastic ideas, as
those which have no such conformity (Book II. chap. xxx. sec. 1); and
again in the fourth book (chap. i. sec. 7, chap. iii. sec. 21, &c.)
he makes the perception of the agreement of an idea with existence a
special kind of knowledge, different from that of agreement of idea
with idea; and having done so, raises the question whether we have
such a knowledge of existence at all, and decides that our knowledge
of it is very narrow.
Existence as reality.