with the attribution of existence to every idea? The answer of
course will be, that when he speaks of ideas as not conforming to
existence, and makes knowledge or the agreement of ideas with each
other something different from their agreement with existence, he
means and generally says ‘real actual existence,’ or the ‘existence
of _things_,’ _i.e._ an existence, whatever it be, which is opposed
to mere existence in consciousness. Doubtless he so means, but this
implies that upon mere consciousness, or the simple presence of
ideas, there has supervened a distinction, which has to be accounted
for, of ideas from things which they represent on the one hand, and
from a mind of which they are affections on the other. Even in the
passage first quoted (Book II. chap. vii. sec. 7), where existence is
ascribed to every idea, on looking closely we find this distinction
obtruding itself, though without explicit acknowledgment. In the
very same breath, so to speak, in which the idea of existence is
said to be suggested by every idea, it is further described as being
either of two considerations--either the consideration of an idea
as actually in our mind, or of a thing as actually without us. Such
considerations at once imply the supervention of that distinction
between ‘mind’ and ‘thing,’ which gives a wholly new meaning to
‘existence.’ They are not, in truth, as Locke supposed, two separate
considerations, one or other of which, as the case may be, is
interchangeable with the ‘idea of existence.’ One is correlative with
the other, and neither is the same as simple feeling. Considered as
actually in the mind, the feeling is distinguished from the mind as
an affection from the subject thereof, and just in virtue of this
distinction is referred to a thing as the cause of the affection, or
becomes representative of a thing. But for such consideration there
would for us, if the doctrine of ideas means anything, be no ‘thing
without us’ at all. To ‘consider things as actually without us’ is to
consider them as causes of the ideas in our mind, and this is to have
an idea of existence quite different from mere consciousness. It is
to have an idea of it which at once suggests the question whether the
existence is real or apparent; in other words, whether the thing, to
which an affection of the mind is referred as its cause, is really
its cause or no.
By confusion of these two meanings, reality and its conditions are
represented as given in simple feeling.
32. Between these two meanings of existence--its meaning as
interchangeable with simple consciousness, and its meaning as
reality--Locke failed to distinguish. Just as, having announced
‘ideas’ to be the sole ‘materials of knowledge,’ he allows himself
at his convenience to put ‘things’ in the place of ideas; so having
identified existence with momentary consciousness or the simple
idea, he substitutes for existence in this sense _reality_, and in
consequence finds reality given solely in the simple idea. Thus when
the conceptions of cause or substance, or relations of any kind, come
under view, since these cannot be represented as given in momentary
consciousness, they have to be pronounced not to exist, and since
existence is reality, to be unreal or ‘fictions of the mind.’ But
without these unreal relations there could be no knowledge, and if
they are not given in the elements of knowledge, it is difficult
to see how they are introduced, or to avoid the appearance of
constructing knowledge out of the unknown. Given in the elements of
knowledge, however, they cannot be, if these are simple ideas or
momentary recurrences of the ‘it is felt.’ But by help of Locke’s
equivocation between the two meanings of existence, they can be
covertly introduced as the real. Existence is given in the simple
idea, existence equals the real, therefore the real is given in the
simple idea. But think or speak of the real as we will, we find that
it exhibits itself as substance, as cause, and as related; _i.e._
according to Locke as a ‘complex’ or ‘invented’ or ‘superinduced’
idea.
Yet reality involves complex ideas which are made by the mind.
33. In the second book of his Essay, which treats of ideas, he
makes the grand distinction between ‘the simple ideas which are all
from things themselves, and of which the mind can have no more or
other than what are suggested to it,’ and the ‘complex ideas which
are the workmanship of the mind.’ (Book II. chap. xii.) In his
account of the latter there are some curious cross-divisions, but he
finally enumerates them as ideas either of _modes_, _substances_,
or _relations_. The character of these ideas he then proceeds to
explain in the order given, one after the other, and as if each were
independent of the rest; though according to his own statement the
idea of mode presupposes that of substance, and the idea of substance
involves that of relation. ‘Modes I call such complex ideas, which,
however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting
by themselves, but are considered as dependencies on, or affections
of, substances; such are the ideas signified by the words ‘triangle,’
‘gratitude,’ ‘murder,’ &c. Of these there are two sorts. First, 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, as being contained
within the bounds of one simple idea. Secondly, there are others
compounded of simple ideas of several kinds, put together to make
one complex one; e. g. beauty, ... and these I call _mixed modes_.’
(Book II. chap. xii. secs. 4, 5.) So soon as he comes to speak more
in detail of simple modes, he falls into apparent contradiction with
his doctrine that, as complex ideas, they are the mere workmanship
of the mind. All particular sounds and colours are simple modes of
the simple ideas of sound and colour. (Book II. chap, xviii. sees. 3,
4.) Again, the ideas of figure, place, distance, as of all particular
figures, places, and distances, are simple modes of the simple idea
of space. (Book II. chap, xiii.) To maintain, however, that the ideas
of space, sound, or colour _in general_ (as simple ideas) were taken
from things themselves, while those of _particular_ spaces, sounds,
and colours (as complex ideas) were ‘made by the mind,’ was for Locke
impossible. Thus in the very next chapter after that in which he
has opposed all complex ideas, those of simple modes included, as
made by the mind to all simple ones as taken from things themselves,
he speaks of simple modes ‘either _as found in things existing_,
or as made by the mind within itself.’ (Book II. chap. xiii. sec.
1.) It was not for Locke to get over this confusion by denying the
antithesis between that which the mind ‘makes’ and that which it
‘takes from existing things’ and for the present we must leave it as
it stands. We must further note that a mode being considered ‘as an
affection of a substance,’ space must be to the particular spaces
which are its simple modes, as a substance to its modifications.
So too colour to particular colours, &c., &c. But the idea of a
substance is a complex idea ‘framed by the mind.’ Therefore the idea
of space--at any rate such an idea as we have of it when we think of
distances, places, or figures, and when else do we think of it at
all?--must be a complex and artificial idea. But according to Locke
the idea of space is emphatically a simple idea, given immediately
_both_ by sight and touch, concerning which if a man enquire, he
‘sends him to his senses.’ (Book II. chap, v.)
Such are substance and relation which must be found in every object
of knowledge.
34. These contradictions are not avoidable blunders, due to
carelessness or want of a clear head in the individual writer, ‘The
complex idea of substance’ will not be exorcised; the mind will show
its workmanship in the very elements of knowledge towards which its
relation seems most passive--in the ‘existing things’ which are
the conditions of its experience no less than in the individual’s
conscious reaction upon them. The interrogator of the individual
consciousness seeks to know that consciousness, and just for that
reason must find in it at every stage those formal conceptions,
such as substance and cause, without which there can be no object
of knowledge at all. He thus substantiates sensation, while he
thinks that he merely observes it, and calls it a sensible thing.
Sensations, thus unconsciously transformed, are for him the real, the
actually existent. Whatever is not given by immediate sense, outer or
inner, he reckons a mere ‘thing of the mind.’ The ideas of substance
and relation, then, not being given by sense, must in his eyes be
things of the mind, in distinction from, really existent things. But
speech bewrayeth him. He cannot state anything that he knows save
in terms which imply that substance and relation are in the things
known; and hence an inevitable obtrusion of ‘things of the mind’ in
the place of real existence, just where the opposition between them
is being insisted on. Again, as a man seems to observe consciousness
in himself and others, it has nothing that it has not received. It
is a blank to begin with, but passive of that which is without, and
through its passivity it becomes informed. If the ‘mind,’ then, means
this or that individual consciousness, the things of the mind must be
gradually developed from an original passivity. On the other hand,
let anyone try to know this original passive consciousness, and in
it, as in every other known object-matter, he must find these things
of the mind, substance and relations. If nature is the object, he
must find them in nature; if his own self-consciousness, he must
find them in that consciousness. But while nature knows not what is
in herself, self-consciousness, it would seem, _ex vi termini_, does
know. Therefore not merely substance and relation must be found in
the original consciousness, but the knowledge, the ideas, of them.
Abstract idea of substance and complex ideas of particular sorts of
substance.
35. As we follow Locke’s treatment of these ideas more in detail, we
shall find the logical see-saw, here accounted for, appearing with
scarcely a disguise. His account of the origin of the ‘complex ideas
of substances’ is as follows. ‘The mind being furnished with a great
number of the simple ideas, conveyed in by the senses, as they are
found in exterior things, or by reflection on its own operations,
takes notice also that a certain number of these simple ideas go
constantly together; which being presumed to belong to one thing,
and words being suited to common apprehensions and made use of for
quick despatch, are called, so united in one subject, by one name;
which by inadvertency we are apt afterwards to talk of and consider
as one simple idea, which indeed is a complication of many ideas
together; because, as I have said, not imagining how these simple
ideas can subsist by themselves, we accustom ourselves to suppose
some _substratum_, wherein they do subsist, and from which they do
result; which therefore we call _substance_.’ (Book II. chap, xxiii.
sec. 1.) In the controversy with Stillingfleet, which arose out of
this chapter, Locke was constrained further to distinguish (as he
certainly did not do in the original text) between the ‘ideas of
distinct substances, such as man, horse,’ and the ‘general idea of
substance.’ It is to ideas of the former sort that he must be taken
to refer in the above passage, when he speaks of them as formed by
‘complication of many ideas together,’ and these alone are _complex_
in the strict sense. The _general_ idea of substance on the other
hand, which like all general ideas (according to Locke) is made
by abstraction, means the idea of a ‘substratum which we accustom
ourselves to suppose’ as that wherein the complicated ideas ‘do
subsist, and from which they do result.’ This, however, he regards as
itself one, ‘the first and chief,’ among the ideas which make up any
of the ‘distinct substances.’ (Book II. chap. xii. sec. 6.) Nor is
he faithful to the distinction between the general and the complex.
In one passage of the first letter to Stillingfleet, he distinctly
speaks of the _general_ idea of substance as a ‘_complex_ idea made
up of the idea of something plus that of relation to qualities.’ [1]
Notwithstanding this confusion of terms, however, he no doubt had
before him what seemed a clear distinction between the ‘abstract
general idea’ of substance, as such, _i.e._ of ‘something related
as a support to accidents,’ but which does not include ideas of any
particular accidents, and the composite idea of a substance, made up
of a multitude of simple ideas plus that of the something related to
them as a support. We shall find each of these ideas, according to
Locke’s statement, presupposing the other.
[1] Upon a reference to the chapter on ‘complex ideas’ (Book II.
chap, xii.), it will appear that the term is used in a stricter and
a looser sense. In the looser sense it is not confined to _compound_
ideas, but in opposition to simple ones includes those of relation
and even ‘abstract general ideas.’ When Locke thinks of the _general_
idea of substance apart from the complication of accidents referred
to it, he opposes it to the complex idea, according to the stricter
sense of that term. On the other hand, when he thinks of it as ‘made
up’ of the idea of _something_ plus that of relation to qualities (as
if there could be an idea of something apart from such relation), it
seems to him to have two elements, and therefore to be complex.
The abstract idea according to Locke at once precedes and follows the
complex.
36. In the passage above quoted, our aptness to consider a
complication of simple ideas, which we notice to go constantly
together, as one simple idea, is accounted for as the result of a
presumption that they belong to one thing. This presumption is again
described in the words that ‘we accustom ourselves to suppose some
substratum, wherein they do subsist, and from which they do result;
which therefore we call substance.’ Here it is implied that the idea
of substance, _i.e._ ‘the general idea of something related as a
support to accidents,’ is one gradually formed upon observation of
the regular coincidence of certain simple ideas. In the sequel (sec.
3 of the same chapter I. xxiii.) we are told that such an idea--‘an
obscure and relative idea of substance in general--being thus made,
we come to have the ideas of particular sorts of substances by
collecting such combinations of simple ideas as are, by experience
and observation of men’s senses, taken notice of to exist together.’
Thus a _general_ idea of substance having been formed by one
gradual process, ideas of particular sorts of substances are formed
by another and later one. But then the very same ‘collection of
such combinations of simple ideas as are taken notice of to exist
together,’ which (according to sec. 3) constitutes the later process
and follows upon the formation of the _general_ idea of substance,
has been previously described as preceding and conditioning that
formation. It is the complication of simple ideas, noticed to go
constantly together, that (according to sec. 1) leads to the ‘idea
of substance in general.’ To this see-saw between the process
preceding and that following the formation of the idea in question
must be added the difficulty, that Locke’s account makes the general
idea precede the particular, which is against the whole tenor of
his doctrine of abstraction as an operation whereby ‘the mind makes
the particular ideas, received from particular objects, to become
general.’ (Book II. chap. xi. sec. 9.)
Reference of ideas to nature or God, the same as reference to
substance.
37. It may be said perhaps that Locke’s self-contradiction in
this regard is more apparent than real; that the two processes of
combining simple ideas are essentially different, just because
in the later process they are combined by a conscious act of the
mind as accidents of a ‘something,’ of which the _general_ idea
has been previously formed, whereas in the earlier one they are
merely presented together ‘by nature,’ and, _ex hypothesi_, though
they gradually suggest, do not carry with them any reference to a
‘substratum.’ But upon this we must remark that the presentation of
ideas ‘by nature’ or ‘by God,’ though a mode of speech of which Locke
in his account of the origin of knowledge freely avails himself,
means nothing else than their relation to a ‘substratum,’ if not
‘wherein they do subsist,’ yet ‘from which they do result.’ If then
it is for consciousness that ideas are presented together by nature,
they already carry with them that reference to a substratum which is
supposed gradually to result from their concurrence. If it is not for
consciousness that they are so presented, if they do not _severally_
carry with them a reference to ‘something,’ how is it they come to do
so in the gross? If a single sensation of heat is not referred to a
hot thing, why should it be so referred on the thousandth recurrence?
Because perhaps, recurring constantly in the same relations, it
compels the inference of permanent antecedents? But the ‘same
relations’ mean relations to the same things, and the observation of
these relations presupposes just that conception of _the thing_ which
it is sought to account for,
But it is explicitly to substance that Locke makes them refer
themselves.
38. We are estopped, however, from any such explanation of Locke as
would suggest these ulterior questions by his explicit statement
that ‘all simple ideas, all sensible qualities, carry with them a
supposition of a substratum to exist in, and of a substance wherein
they inhere.’ The vindication of himself against the pathetic
complaint of Stillingfleet, that he had ‘almost discarded substance
out of the reasonable part of the world,’ in which this statement
occurs, was certainly not needed. Already in the original text
the simple ideas, of which the association suggests the idea of
substance, are such as ‘the mind finds in exterior things or by
reflection on its own operations.’ But to find them in an exterior
thing is to find them in a substance, a ‘something it knows not
what,’ regarded as outward, just as to find them by reflection on
its own operations, as its own, is to find them in such a substance
regarded as inward. The process then by which, according to Locke,
the general idea of substance is arrived at, presupposes this idea
just as much as the process, by which ideas of particular sorts of
substances are got, presupposes it, and the distinction between the
two processes, as he puts it, disappears.
In the process by which we are supposed to arrive at complex ideas of
substances the beginning is the same as the end.
39. The same paralogism appears under a slightly altered form when
it is stated (in the first letter to Stillingfleet) that the idea
of substance as the ‘general indetermined idea of _something_ is
by the abstraction of the mind derived from the simple ideas of
sensation and reflection.’ Now ‘abstraction’ with Locke means the
‘separation of an idea from all other ideas that accompany it in its
real existence.’ (Book II. chap. xii. sec. 1.) It is clear then that
it is impossible to abstract an idea which is not _there_, in real
existence, to be abstracted. Accordingly, if the ‘general idea of
something’ is derived by abstraction from simple ideas of sensation
and reflection, it must be originally given with these ideas, or it
would not afterwards be separated from them. Conversely they must
carry this idea with them, and cannot be simple ideas at all, but
compound ones, each made up of ‘the general idea of something or
being,’ and of an accident which this something supports. How then
does the general idea of substance or ‘something,’ _as derived_,
differ from the idea of ‘something,’ as given in the original ideas
of sensation and reflection from which the supposed process of
abstraction starts? What can be said of the one that cannot be said
of the other? If the derived general idea is of something related
to qualities, what, according to Locke, are the original ideas
but those of qualities related to something? It is true that the
general idea is of something, of which nothing further is known,
related to qualities in general, not to any particular qualities.
But the ‘simple idea’ in like manner can only be of an indeterminate
quality, for in order to any determination of it, the idea must be
put together with another idea, and so cease to be simple; and the
‘something,’ to which it is referred, must for the same reason be
a purely indeterminate something. If, in order to avoid concluding
that Locke thus unwittingly identified the abstract general idea of
substance with any simple idea, we say that the simple idea, because
not abstract, is not indeterminate but of a real quality, defined
by manifold relations, we fall upon the new difficulty that, if so,
not only does the simple idea become manifoldly complex, but just
such an ‘idea of a particular sort of substance’ as, according to
Locke, is derived from the derived idea of substance in general. As
an idea of a quality, it is also necessarily an idea of a correlative
‘something;’ and if it is an idea of a quality in its reality, _i.e._
as determined by various relations, it must be an idea of a variously
qualified something, _i.e._ of a particular substance. Then not
merely the middle of the twofold process by which we are supposed
to get at ‘complex ideas of substances’--_i.e._ the _abstract_
something; but its end--_i.e._ the _particular_ something--turns out
to be the same as its beginning.
Doctrine of abstraction inconsistent with doctrine of complex ideas.
40. The fact is, that in making the general idea of substance precede
particular ideas of sorts of substances (as he certainly however
confusedly does, in the 23rd chapter of the Second Book, [1] as well
as by implication in his doctrine of modes. Book II. chap. xii.
sec. 4), Locke stumbled upon a truth which he was not aware of, and
which will not fit into his ordinary doctrine of general ideas: the
truth that knowledge is a process from the more abstract to the more
concrete, not the reverse, as is commonly supposed, and as Locke’s
definition of abstraction implies. Throughout his prolix discussion
of ‘substance’ and ‘essence’ we find two opposite notions perpetually
cross each other: one that knowledge begins with the simple idea,
the other that it begins with the real thing as particularized by
manifold relations. According to the former notion, simple ideas
being given, void of relation, as the real, the mind of its own act
proceeds to bring them into relation and compound them: according
to the latter, a thing of various properties (_i.e._ relations [2])
being given as the real, the mind proceeds to separate these from
each other. According to the one notion the intellectual process, as
one of complication, ends just where, according to the other notion,
as one of abstraction, it began.
[1] See above, paragraph 35.
[2] Cf. Book II. chap, xxiii. sec. 37. Most of the simple ideas that
make up our complex ideas of substances are only powers ... _e.g._
the greater part of the ideas which make up our complex idea of gold
... are nothing else _but so many relations to other substances_.’
The confusion covered by use of ‘particulars’.
41. The chief verbal equivocation, under which Locke disguises the
confusion of these two notions, is to be found in the use of the
word ‘particular,’ which is sometimes used for the mere individual
having no community with anything else, sometimes for the thing
qualified by relation to a multitude of other things. The simple idea
or sensation; the ‘something’ which the simple idea is supposed to
‘report,’ and which Locke at his pleasure identifies with it; the
complex idea; and the thing as the collection of the properties which
the simple idea ‘reports,’ all are merged by Locke under the one term
‘particulars.’ As the only consistency in his use of the term seems
to lie in its opposition to ‘generals,’ we naturally turn to the
passage where this opposition is spoken of most at large.
Locke’s account of abstract general ideas.