It is not the momentary, isolated consciousness, but the
representation of a thing determined by relations to other things
in an order of nature, and causing an infinite series of resembling
sensations to which a common name is applied. Thus in all the
instances of sensuous testimony mentioned in the chapter before
us, it is not really a simple sensation that is spoken of, but a
sensation referred to a thing--not a mere smell, or taste, or sight,
or feeling, but the smell of a rose, the taste of a pine-apple, the
sight of the sun, the feeling of fire. (Book IV. chap. xi. secs.
4-7.) Immediately afterwards, however, reverting or attempting to
revert to his strict doctrine of the mere individuality of the
simple idea, he says that the testimony of the senses is a ‘present
testimony employed about particular objects, that do then affect
them,’ and that sensitive knowledge extends no farther than such
testimony. This statement, taken by itself, is ambiguous. Does it
mean that sensation testifies to the momentary presence to the
individual of a continuous existence, or is the existence itself as
momentary as its presence to sense? The instance that follows does
not remove the doubt. ‘If I saw such a collection of simple ideas
as is wont to be called _man_, existing together one minute since,
and am now alone; I cannot be certain that the same man exists now,
since there is no necessary connection of his existence a minute
since with his existence now.’ (Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 9.) At first
sight, these words might seem to decide that the existence is merely
coincident with the presence of the sensation--a decision fatal to
the distinction between the real and fantastic, since, if the thing
is only present with the sensation, there can be no combination
of qualities in reality other than the momentary coincidence of
sensations in us. Memory or imagination, indeed, might recall these
in a different order from that in which they originally occurred;
but, if this original order had no being after the occurrence, there
could be no ground for contrasting it with the order of reproduction
as the real with the merely apparent.
Such restriction, if maintained, would render the testimony unmeaning.
65. In the very sentence, however, where Locke restricts the
testimony of sensation to existence present along with it, he uses
language inconsistent with this restriction. The particular existence
which he instances as ‘testified to’ is that of ‘such a collection
of simple ideas as is wont to be called man.’ But these ideas can
only be present in succession. (See Book II. chap. vii. sec. 9, and
chap. xiv. sec. 3.) Even the surface of the man’s body can only be
taken in by successive acts of vision; and, more obviously, the
states of consciousness in which his qualities of motion and action
are presented occupy separate times. If then sensation only testifies
to an existence present along with it, how can it testify to the
co-existence (say) of an erect attitude, of which I have a present
sight, with the risibility which I saw a minute ago? How can the
‘collection of ideas wont to be called man,’ _as co-existing_, be
formed at all? and, if it cannot, how can the present existence of
an object so-called be testified to by sense any more than the past?
The same doctrine, which is fatal to the supposition of ‘a necessary
connexion between the man’s existence a minute since and his
existence now,’ is in fact fatal to the supposition of his existence
as a complex of qualities at all. It does not merely mean that, for
anything we know, the man may have died. Of course he may, and yet
there may be continuity of existence according to natural laws,
though not one for which we have the testimony of present sense,
between the living body and the dead. What Locke had in his mind
was the notion that, as existence is testified to only by present
sensation, and each sensation is merely individual and momentary,
there could be no testimony to the continued existence of anything.
He could not, however, do such violence to the actual fabric of
knowledge as would have been implied in the logical development of
this doctrine, and thus he allowed himself to speak of sense as
testifying to the co-existence of sensible qualities in a thing,
though the individual sensation could only testify to the presence of
one at a time, and could never testify to their _nexus_ in a common
cause at all. This testimony to co-existence in a present thing once
admitted, he naturally allowed himself in the further assumption
that the testimony, on its recurrence, is a testimony to the same
co-existence and the same thing. The existence of the same man (he
evidently supposes), to which sensation testified an hour ago, may be
testified to by a like sensation now. This means that resemblance of
sensation becomes identity of a thing--that like sensations occurring
at different times are interpreted as representing the same thing,
which continuously exists, though not testified to by sense, between
the times.
But it is not maintained: the testimony is to operation of permanent
identical things.
66. In short, as we have seen the simple idea of sensation emerge
from Locke’s inquiry as to the beginning of knowledge transformed
into the judgment, ‘I have an idea different from other ideas
which I did not make for myself,’ so now from the inquiry as to
the correspondence between knowledge and reality it emerges as the
consciousness of a thing now acting upon me, which has continued
to exist since it acted on me before, and in which, as in a common
cause, have existed together powers to affect me which have never
affected me together. If in the one form the operation of thought in
sense, the ‘creation of the understanding’ within the simple idea,
is only latent or potential, in the other it is actual and explicit.
The relations of substance and quality, of cause and effect, and of
identity--all ‘inventions of the mind’--are necessarily involved in
the immediate, spontaneous testimony of passive sense.
Locke’s treatment of relations of cause and identity.
67. It will be noticed that it is upon the first of these, the
relation of substance and quality, that our examination of Locke’s
Essay has so far chiefly gathered. In this it follows the course
taken by Locke himself. Of the idea of substance, _eo nomine_, he
treats at large: of cause and identity (apart from the special
question of personal identity) he says little. So, too, the ‘report
of the senses’ is commonly exhibited as announcing the sensible
qualities of a thing rather than the agency of a cause or continuity
of existence. The difference, of course, is mainly verbal. Sensible
qualities being, as Locke constantly insists, nothing but ‘powers
to operate on our senses’ directly or indirectly, the substance
or thing, as the source of these, takes the character of a cause.
Again, as the sensible quality is supposed to be one and the same in
manifold separate cases of being felt, it has identity in contrast
with the variety of these cases, even as the thing has, on its part,
in contrast with the variety of its qualities. Something, however,
remains to be said of Locke’s treatment of the ideas of cause and
identity in the short passages where he treats of them expressly.
Here, too, we shall find the same contrast between the given and the
invented, tacitly contradicted by an account of the given in terms of
the invented.
That from which he derives idea of cause pre-supposes it.
68. The relation of cause and effect, according to Locke’s general
statement as to relation, must be something ‘not contained in the
real existence of things, but extraneous and superinduced.’ (Book II.
chap. xxv. sec. 8.) It is a ‘complex idea,’ not belonging to things
as they are in themselves, which the mind makes by its own act.
(Book II. chap xii. secs. 1, 7, and chap. xxv. sec. 1.) Its origin,
however, is thus described:--‘In the notice that our senses take
of the constant vicissitude of things, we cannot but observe that
several particular, both qualities and substances, begin to exist;
and that they receive this their existence from the due application
and operation of some other being. From this observation we get
our ideas of cause and effect. That which produces any simple or
complex idea we denote by the general name cause; and that which is
produced, effect. Thus, finding that in that substance which we call
wax, fluidity, which is a simple idea that was not in it before,
is constantly produced by the application of a certain degree of
heat, we call the simple idea of heat, in relation to fluidity in
wax, the cause of it, and fluidity the effect. So, also, finding
that the substance, wood, which is a certain collection of simple
ideas so-called, by the application of fire is turned into another
substance called ashes, _i.e._ another complex idea, consisting of a
collection of simple ideas, quite different from that complex idea
which we call wood; we consider fire, in relation to ashes, as cause,
and the ashes as effect.’ Here we find that the ‘given,’ upon which
the relation of cause and effect is ‘superinduced’ or from which the
‘idea of it is got’ (to give Locke the benefit of both expressions),
professedly, according to the first sentence of the passage quoted,
involves the complex or derived idea of substance. The sentence,
indeed, is a remarkable instance of the double refraction which
arises from redundant phraseology. Our senses are supposed to ‘take
notice of a constant vicissitude of things,’ or substances. Thereupon
we observe, what is necessarily implied in this vicissitude, a
beginning of existence in substances or their qualities, ‘received
from the due application or operation of some other being.’ Thereupon
we infer, what is simply another name for existence thus given
and received, a relation of cause and effect. Thus not only does
the _datum_ of the process of ‘invention’ in question, _i.e._ the
observation of change in a thing, involve a _derived_ idea, but a
derived idea which presupposes just this process of invention.
Rationale of this ‘petitio principii’.
69. Here again it is necessary to guard against the notion that
Locke’s obvious _petitio principii_ might be avoided by a better
statement without essential change in his doctrine of ideas. It is
true that ‘a notice of the vicissitude of things’ includes that
‘invention of the understanding’ which it is supposed to suggest,
but state the primary knowledge otherwise--reduce the vicissitude of
things, as it ought to be reduced, in order to make Locke consistent,
to the mere multiplicity of sensations--and the appearance of
suggestion ceases. Change or ‘vicissitude’ is quite other than mere
diversity. It is diversity relative to something which maintains an
identity. This identity, which ulterior analysis may find in a ‘law
of nature,’ Locke found in ‘things’ or ‘substances.’ By the same
unconscious subreption, by which with him a sensible thing takes
the place of sensation, ‘vicissitude of things’ takes the place of
multiplicity of sensations, carrying with it the observation that
the changed state of the thing is due to something else. The mere
multiplicity of sensations could convey no such ‘observation,’ any
more than the sight of counters in a row would convey the notion
that one ‘received its existence’ from the other. Only so far as the
manifold appearances are referred, as its vicissitudes, to something
which remains one, does any need of accounting for their diverse
existence, or in consequence any observation of its derivation ‘from
some other being,’ arise. Locke, it is true, after stating that it
is upon a notice of the vicissitude of things that the observation
in question rests, goes on to speak as if an _origination_ of
substances, which is just the opposite of their vicissitude, might be
observed; and the second instance of production which he gives--that
of ashes upon the burning of wood--seems intended for an instance
of the production of a substance, as distinct from the production
of a quality. He is here, however, as he often does, using the term
‘substance’ loosely, for ‘a certain collection of simple ideas,’
without reference to the ‘substratum wherein they do subsist,’ which
he would have admitted to be ultimately the same for the wood and
for the ashes. The conception, indeed, of such a substratum, whether
vaguely as ‘nature,’ or more precisely as a ‘real constitution of
insensible parts’ (Book III. chap. iii. secs. 18, &c.), governed all
his speculation, and rendered to him what he here calls _substance_
virtually a _mode_, and its production properly a ‘vicissitude.’
Relation of cause has to be put into sensitive experience in order to
be got from it.
70. We thus find that it is only so far as simple ideas are referred
to things--only so far as each in turn, to use Locke’s instance,
is regarded as an appearance ‘in a substance which was not in it
before’--that our sensitive experience, the supposed _datum_ of
knowledge, is an experience of the vicissitudes of things; and again,
that only as an experience of such vicissitude does it furnish the
‘observation from which we get our ideas of cause and effect.’ But
the reference of a sensation to a sensible thing means its reference
to a cause. In other words, the invented relation of cause and effect
must be found in the primary experience in order that it may be got
from it. [1]
[1] Locke’s contradiction of himself in regard to this relation might
be exhibited in a still more striking light by putting side by side
with his account of it his account of the idea of power. The two are
precisely similar, the idea of power being represented as got by a
notice of the alteration of simple ideas in things without (Book II.
chap. xxi. sec. 1), just as the idea of cause and effect is. Power,
too, he expressly says, is a relation. Yet, although the idea of it,
both as derived and as of a relation, ought to be complex, he reckons
it a simple and original one, and by using it interchangeably with
‘sensible quality’ makes it a primary _datum_ of sense.
Origin of the idea of identity according to Locke.
71. The same holds of that other ‘product of the mind,’ the
relation of identity. This ‘idea’ according to Locke, is formed
when, ‘considering anything as existing at any determined time and
place, we compare it with itself existing at another time.’ ‘In this
consists identity,’ he adds, ‘when the ideas it is attributed to,
vary not at all from what they were that moment wherein we consider
their former existence, and to which we compare the present; for we
never finding nor conceiving it possible that two things of the same
kind should exist in the same place at the same time, we rightly
conclude that whatever exists anywhere, at any time, excludes all of
the same kind, and is there itself alone. When, therefore, we demand
whether anything be the same or no? it refers always to something
that existed such a time in such a place, which it was certain at
that instant was the same with itself, and no other; from whence it
follows that one thing cannot have two beginnings of existence, nor
two things one beginning; it being impossible for two things of the
same kind to be or exist in the same instant in the very same place,
or one and the same thing in different places. That, therefore, that
had one beginning, is the same thing; and that which had a different
beginning in time and place from that is not the same, but diverse.’
He goes on to inquire about the _principium individuationis_, which
he decides is ‘existence itself, which determines a being of any sort
to a particular time and place, incommunicable to two beings of the
same kind ... for being at that instant what it is and nothing else,
it is the same, and so must continue as long as its existence is
continued; for so long it will be the same, and no other.’ (Book II.
chap, xxvii. secs. 1-3).
Relation of identity not to be distinguished from idea of it.
72. It is essential to bear in mind with regard to identity, as
with regard to cause and effect, that no distinction according to
Locke can legitimately be made between the relation and the idea
of the relation. As to substance, it is true, he was driven in his
controversy with Stillingfleet to distinguish between ‘the being
and the idea thereof,’ but in dealing with relation he does not
attempt any such violence to his proper system. Between the ‘idea’ as
such and ‘being’ as such, his ‘new way of ideas,’ as Stillingfleet
plaintively called it, left no fair room for distinction. In
this indeed lay its permanent value for speculative thought. The
distinction by which alone it could consistently seek to replace the
old one, so as to meet the exigencies of language and knowledge,
was that between simple ideas, as given and necessarily real, and
the reproductions or combinations in which the mind may alter them.
But since every relation implies a putting together of ideas, and
is thus always, as Locke avows, a complex idea or the work of the
mind, a distinction between its being and the idea thereof, in that
sense of the distinction in which alone it can ever be consistently
admitted by Locke, was clearly inadmissible. Thus in the passages
before us the relation of identity is not explicitly treated as an
original ‘being’ or ‘existence,’ It is an idea formed by the mind
upon a certain ‘consideration of things’ being or existent. But on
looking closely at Locke’s account, we find that it is only so far as
it already belongs to, nay constitutes, the things, that it is formed
upon consideration of them.
This ‘invented’ relation forms the ‘very being of things’.
73. When it is said that the idea of identity, or of any other
relation, is formed upon consideration of things as existing in a
certain way, this is naturally understood to mean--indeed, otherwise
it is unmeaning--that the things are first _known_ as existing, and
that afterwards the idea of the relation in question is formed. But
according to Locke, as we have seen, [1] the first and simplest act
of knowledge possible is the perception of identity between ideas.
Either then the ‘things,’ upon consideration of which the idea of
identity is formed, are not known at all, or the knowledge of them
involves the very idea afterwards formed on consideration of them.
Locke, having at whatever cost of self-contradiction to make his
theory fit the exigencies of language, virtually adopts the latter
alternative, though with an ambiguity of expression which makes a
definite meaning difficult to elicit. We have, however, the positive
statement to begin with, that the comparison in which the relation
originates, is of a thing with itself as existing at another time.
Again, the ‘ideas’ (used interchangeably with ‘things’), to which
identity is attributed, ‘vary not at all from what they were at
that moment wherein we consider their former existence.’ It is here
clearly implied that ‘things’ or ‘ideas’ _exist_, _i.e._ are given
to us in the spontaneous consciousness which we do not make, as each
one and the same throughout a multiplicity of times. This, again,
means that the relation of identity or sameness, _i.e._ unity of
thing under multiplicity of appearance, belongs to or consists in
the ‘very being’ of those given objects of consciousness, which
are in Locke’s sense the real, and upon which according to him all
relation is superinduced by an after-act of thought. So long as each
such object ‘continues to exist,’ so long its ‘sameness with itself
must continue,’ and this sameness is the complex idea, the relation,
of identity. Just as before, following Locke’s lead, we found the
simple idea, as the element of knowledge, become complex--a perceived
identity of ideas; so now mere existence, the ‘very being of things’
(which with Locke is only another name for the simple idea), resolves
itself into a relation, which it requires ‘consideration by the mind’
to constitute.
[1] See above, paragraph 25.
Locke fails to distinguish between identity and mere unity.
74. The process of self-contradiction, by which a ‘creation of the
mind’ finds its way into the real or given, must also appear in a
contradictory conception of the real itself. Kept pure of all that
Locke reckons intellectual fiction, it can be nothing but a simple
chaos of individual units: only by the superinduction of relation
can there be sameness, or continuity of existence, in the minutest
of these for successive moments. Locke presents it arbitrarily under
the conception of mere individuality or of continuity, according
as its distinction from the work of the mind, or its intelligible
content, happens to be before him. A like see-saw in his account of
the individuality and generality of ideas has already been noticed.
[1] In his discussion of identity the contradiction is partly
disguised by a confusion between mere unity on the one hand, and
sameness or unity in difference, on the other. Thus, after starting
with an account of identity as belonging to ideas which are the same
_at different times_, he goes on to speak of a thing as the same
with itself, _at a single instant_. So, too, by the _principium
individuationis_, he understands ‘existence itself, which determines
a being of any sort to a particular time and place.’ As it is clear
from the context that by the _principium individuationis_ he meant
the source of identity or sameness, it will follow that by ‘sameness’
he understood singleness of a thing in a single time and place.
Whence then the plurality, without which ‘sameness’ is unmeaning? In
fact, Locke, having excluded it in his definition, covertly brings
it back again in his instance, which is that of ‘an atom, _i.e._
a continued body under one immutable superficies, existing in a
determined time and place.’ This, ‘considered in any instant of its
existence, is in that instant the same with itself.’ But it is so
because--and, if we suppose the consideration of plurality of _times_
excluded, only because--it is a ‘_continued_’ body, which implies,
though its place be determined, that it exists _in a plurality of
parts of space_. Either this plurality, or that of instants of its
existence, must be recognised in contrast with the unity of body,
if this unity is to become ‘sameness with itself.’ In adding that
not only at the supposed instant is the atom the same, but ‘so must
continue as long as its existence continues,’ Locke shows that he
really thought of the identical body under a plurality of times _ex
parte post_, if not _ex parte ante_.
[1] See above, paragraphs 43, and the following.
Feelings are the real, and do not admit of identity. How then can
identity be real?
75. But how is this continuity, or sameness of existence in plurality
of times or spaces, compatible with the constitution of ‘real
existence’ by mere _individua_? The difficulty is the same, according
to Locke’s premisses, whether the simple ideas by themselves are
taken for the real _individua_, or whether each is taken to represent
a single separate thing. In his chapter on identity he expressly
says that ‘things whose existence is in succession’ do not admit
of identity. Such, he adds, are motion and thought; ‘because, each
perishing the moment it begins, they cannot exist in different times
or in different places as permanent beings can at different times
exist in distant places.’ (Book I. chap, xxvii. sec. 2.) What he
here calls ‘thought’ clearly includes the passive consciousness in
which alone, according to his strict doctrine, reality is given. So
elsewhere (Book II. chap. vii. sec. 9), in accounting for the ‘simple
idea of succession,’ he says generally that ‘if we look immediately
into ourselves we shall find our ideas always, whilst we have any
thought, passing in train, one going and another coming, without
intermission.’ [1] No statement of the ‘perpetual flux’ of ideas,
as each having a separate beginning and end, and ending in the very
moment when it begins, can be stronger than the above. If ‘ideas’ of
any sort, according to this account of them, are to constitute real
existence, no sameness can be found in reality. It must indeed be a
relation ‘invented by the mind.’
[1] It is true that in this place Locke distinguishes between the
‘suggestion by our senses’ of the idea of succession, and that which
passes in our ‘minds,’ by which it is ‘more constantly offered us.’
But since, according to him, the idea of sensation must be ‘produced
in the mind’ if there is to be any either sensation or idea at all
(Book II. chap, ix. secs. 3 and 4), the distinction between the
‘suggestion by our senses’ and what passes in our minds’ cannot be
maintained.
Yet it is from reality that the idea of it is derived.