order to make Locke’s doctrine of the particular relation of identity
correspond with his general doctrine of the fictitiousness of
relations. To complete the consistency, however, his whole account of
the origin of the relation (or of the idea in which it consists) must
be changed, since it supposes it to be derived from an observation
of things or existence, which again is to suppose sameness to be
in the things or to be real. This change made, philosophy would
have to start anew with the problem of accounting for the origin of
the fictitious idea. It would have to explain how it comes to pass
that the mind, if its function consists solely in reproducing and
combining given ideas, or again in ‘abstracting’ combined ideas from
each other, should be able to invent a relation which is neither a
given idea, nor a reproduction, combination, or abstract residuum
of given ideas. This is the great problem which we shall find Hume
attempting. Locke really never saw its necessity, because the
dominion of language--a dominion which, as he did not recognise it,
he had no need to account for--always, in spite of his assertion that
simple ideas are the sole _data_ of consciousness, held him to the
belief in another _datum_ of which ideas are the appearances, viz., a
thing having identity, because the same with itself in the manifold
times of its appearance. This _datum_, under various guises, but
in each demonstrably, according to Locke’s showing, a ‘creation of
thought,’ has met us in all the modes of his theory, as the condition
of knowledge. As the ‘abstract idea’ of substance it renders
‘perishing’ ideas into qualities by which objects may be discerned.
(Book II. chap. xi. sec. 1.) As the relative idea of cause, it makes
them ‘affections’ to be accounted for. As the fiction of a universal,
it is the condition of their mutual qualification as constituents of
a whole. Finally, as the ‘superinduced’ relation of sameness, the
direct negative of the perpetual beginning and ending of ‘ideas,’ it
constitutes the ‘very being of things.’
Transition to Locke’s doctrine of essence.
77. ‘The very being of things,’ let it be noticed, according to
what Locke reckoned their ‘real,’ as distinct from their ‘nominal,’
essence. The consideration of this distinction has been hitherto
postponed; but the discussion of the relation of identity, as
subsisting between the parts of a ‘continued body,’ brings us upon
the doctrine of matter and its ‘primary qualities,’ which cannot be
properly treated except in connection with the other doctrine (which
Locke unhappily kept apart) of the two sorts of ‘essence.’ So far,
it will be remembered, the ‘facts’ or _given_ ideas, which we have
found him unawares converting into theories or ‘invented’ ideas, have
been those of the ‘secondary qualities of body.’ [1] It is these
which are united into things or substances, having been already
‘found in them:’ it is from these that we ‘infer’ the relation of
cause and effect, because as ‘vicissitudes of things’ or ‘affections
of sense’ they presuppose it: it is these again which, as ‘received
from without,’ testify the present existence of something, because
in being so received they are already interpreted as ‘appearances
of something.’ That the ‘thing,’ by reference to which these ideas
are judged to be ‘real,’ ‘adequate,’ and ‘true’--or, in other words,
become elements of a knowledge--is yet itself according to Locke’s
doctrine of substance and relation a ‘fiction of thought,’ has been
sufficiently shown. That it is so no less according to his doctrine
of essence will also appear. The question will then be, whether
by the same showing the ideas of body, of the self, and of God,
can be other than fictions, and the way will be cleared for Hume’s
philosophic adventure of accounting for them as such.
[1] See above, paragraph 20.
This repeats the inconsistency found in his doctrine of substance.
78. In Locke’s doctrine of ‘ideas of substances,’ the ‘thing’
appeared in two inconsistent positions: on the one hand, as that in
which they ‘are found;’ on the other, as that which results from
their concretion, or which, such concretion having been made, we
accustom ourselves to suppose as its basis. This inconsistency,
latent to Locke himself in the theory of substance, comes to the
surface in the theory of essence, where it is (as he thought)
overcome, but in truth only made more definite, by a distinction of
terms.
Plan to be followed.
79. This latter theory has so far become part and parcel of the
‘common sense’ of educated men, that it might seem scarcely to need
restatement. It is generally regarded as completing the work, which
Bacon had begun, of transferring philosophy from the scholastic
bondage of words to the fruitful discipline of facts. In the
process of transmission and popular adaptation, however, its true
significance has been lost sight of, and it has been forgotten that
to its original exponent implicitly--explicitly to his more logical
disciple--though it did indeed distinguish effectively between things
and the meaning of words, it was the analysis of the latter only,
and not the understanding of things, that it left as the possible
function of knowledge. It will be well, then, in what follows, first
briefly to restate the theory in its general form; then to show
how it conflicts with the actual knowledge which mankind supposes
itself to have attained; and finally to exhibit at once the necessity
of this conflict as a result of Locke’s governing ideas, and the
ambiguities by which he disguised it from himself.
What Locke understood by essence.
80. The essence of a thing with Locke, in the only sense in which
we can know or intelligibly speak of it, is the meaning of its
name. This, again, is an ‘abstract or general idea,’ which means
that it is an idea ‘separated from the circumstances of time and
place, and any other ideas that may determine it to this or that
particular existence. By this way of abstraction it is made capable
of representing more individuals than one; each of which, having
in it a conformity to that abstract idea, is (as we call it) of
that sort.’ (Book III. chap. iii. sec. 6.) That which is given in
immediate experience, as he proceeds to explain, is this or that
‘particular existence,’ Peter or James, Mary or Jane, such particular
existence being already a complex idea. [1] That it should be so is
indeed in direct contradiction to his doctrine of the primariness of
the simple idea, but is necessary to his doctrine of abstraction.
Some part of the complex idea (it is supposed)--less or more--we
proceed to leave out. The minimum of subtraction would seem to
be that of the ‘circumstances of time and place,’ in which the
particular existence is given. This is the ‘separation of ideas,’
first made, and alone suffices to constitute an ‘abstract idea,’ even
though, as is the case with the idea of the sun, there is only one
‘particular substance’ to agree with it. (Book III. chap. vi. sec.
1.) In proportion as the particular substances compared are more
various, the subtraction of ideas is larger, but, be it less or more,
the remainder is the abstract idea, to which a name--_e.g._ man--is
annexed, and to which as a ‘species’ or ‘standard’ other particular
existences, on being ‘found to agree with it,’ may be referred, so
as to be called by the same name. These ideas then, ‘tied together
by a name,’ form the essence of each particular existence, to which
the same name is applied (Book III. chap. iii. secs. 12 and the
following.) Such essence, however, according to Locke, is ‘nominal,’
not ‘real.’ It is a complex--fuller or emptier--of ideas in us,
which, though it is a ‘uniting medium between a general name and
particular beings,’ [2] in no way represents the qualities of the
latter. These, consisting in an ‘internal constitution of insensible
parts,’ form the ‘real essence’ of the particular beings; an essence,
however, of which we can know nothing. (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 21,
and ix. sec. 12.)
[1] Book III. chap, iii, sec. 7, at the end.
[2] Book III chap. iii. sec. 13.
Only to nominal essences that general propositions relate, _i.e._
only to abstract ideas having no real existence.
81. It is the formation of ‘nominal essences’ that renders general
propositions possible. ‘General certainty,’ says Locke, ‘is never to
be found but in our ideas. Whenever we go to seek it elsewhere in
experiment or observation without us, our knowledge goes not beyond
particulars. It is the contemplation of our own abstract ideas, that
alone is able to afford us general knowledge.’ (Book IV. chap. vi.
sec. 16.) ‘General knowledge,’ he says again, ‘lies only in our own
thoughts.’ [1] This use of ‘our ideas’ and ‘our own thoughts’ as
equivalent phrases, each antithetical to ‘real existence,’ tells
the old tale of a deviation from ‘the new way of ideas’ into easier
paths. According to this new way in its strictness, as we have
sufficiently seen, there is nowhere for anything to be found but ‘in
our ideas.’ It therefore in no way distinguishes general knowledge
or certainty that it cannot be found elsewhere. Locke, however,
having allowed himself in the supposition that simple ideas report a
real existence, other than themselves, but to which they are related
as ectype to archetype, tacitly proceeds to convert them into real
existences, to which ideas in general, as mere thoughts of our own,
may be opposed. Along with this conversion, there supervenes upon
the original distinction between simple and complex ideas, which
alone does duty in the Second Book of the Essay, another distinction,
essential to Locke’s doctrine of the ‘reality’ of knowledge--that
between the idea, whether simple or complex, as originally given in
sensation, and the same as retained or reproduced in the mind. It is
only in the former form that the idea, however simple, reports, and
thus (with Locke) itself is, a real existence. Such real existence
is a ‘particular’ existence, and our knowledge of it a ‘particular’
knowledge. In other words, according to the only consistent doctrine
that we have been able to elicit from Locke, [2] ‘it is a knowledge
which consists in a consciousness, upon occasion of a present
sensation--say, a sensation of redness--that some object is present
here and now causing the sensation; an object which, accordingly,
must be ‘particular’ or transitory as the sensation. The ‘here and
now,’ as in such a case they constitute the particularity of the
object of consciousness, so also render it a real existence. Separate
these (‘the circumstances of time and place’ [3]) from it, and it
at once loses its real existence and becomes an ‘abstract idea,’
one of ‘our own thoughts,’ of which as ‘in the mind’ agreement or
disagreement with some other abstract idea can be asserted in a
general proposition; _e.g._ ‘red is not blue.’ (Book IV. chap. vii.
sec. 4.) [4]
[1] Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 13, cf. Book IV. chap. iii. sec. 31.
[2] See above, paragraph 56.
[3] Book III. chap. iii. sec. 6.
[4] In case there should be any doubt as to Locke’s meaning in this
passage, it may be well to compare Book IV. chap. ix. sec. 1. There
he distinctly opposes the consideration of ideas in the understanding
to the knowledge of real existence. Here (Book IV. chap. vii. sec.
4) he distinctly speaks of the proposition ‘red is not blue’ as
expressing a consideration of ideas in the understanding. It follows
that it is not a proposition as to real existence.
An abstract idea may be a simple one.
82. It is between simple ideas, it will be noticed, that a relation
is here asserted, and in this respect the proposition differs from
such an one as may be formed when simple ideas have been compounded
into the nominal essence of a thing, and in which some one of these
may be asserted of the thing, being already included within the
meaning of its name; _e.g._ ‘a rose has leaves.’ But as expressing a
relation between ideas ‘abstract’ or ‘in the mind,’ in distinction
from present sensations received from without, the two sorts of
proposition, according to the doctrine of Locke’s Fourth Book, stand
on the same footing.’ [1] It is a nominal essence with which both
alike are concerned, and on this depends the general certainty or
self-evidence, by which they are distinguished from ‘experiment
or observation without us.’ These can never ‘reach with certainty
farther than the bare instance’ (Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 7): _i.e._,
though the only channels by which we can reach real existence, they
can never tell more than the presence of this or that sensation as
caused by an unknown thing without, or the present disagreement of
such present sensations with each other. As to the recurrence of such
sensations, or any permanently real relation between them, they can
tell us nothing. Nothing as to their recurrence, because, though in
each case they show the presence of something causing the sensations,
they show nothing of the real essence upon which their recurrence
depends. [2] Nothing as to any permanently real relation between
them, because, although the disagreement between ideas of blue and
red, and the agreement between one idea of red and another, _as in
the mind_, is self-evident, yet as thus in the mind they are not
‘actual sensations’ at all (Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 6), nor do they
convey that ‘sensitive knowledge of particular existence,’ which is
the only possible knowledge of it. (Book IV. chap. iii. sec. 21.)
As actual sensations and indices of reality, they do indeed differ
in this or that ‘bare instance,’ but can convey no certainty that
the real thing or ‘parcel of matter’ (Book III. chap. iii. sec. 18),
which now causes the sensation of (and thus _is_) red, may not at
another time cause the sensation of (and thus _be_) blue.’ [3]
[1] Already in Book II. (chap. xxxi. sec. 12), the simple idea, as
abstract, is spoken of as a nominal essence.
[2] Cf. Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 5. ‘If we could certainly know (which
is impossible) where a real essence, which we know not, is--_e.g._ in
what parcels of matter the real essence of gold is; yet could we not
be sure, that this or that quality could with truth be affirmed of
gold; since it is impossible for us to know that this or that quality
or idea has a necessary connexion with a real essence, of which we
have no idea at all.’
Several passages, of course, can be adduced from Locke which are
inconsistent with the statement in the text: _e.g._ Book IV. chap.
iv. sec. 12. ‘To make knowledge real concerning substances, the ideas
must be taken from the real existence of things. Whatever simple
ideas have been found to coexist in any substance, these we may
with confidence join together again, and so make abstract ideas of
substances. For whatever have once had an union in nature, may be
united again.’ In all such passages, however, as will appear below,
the strict opposition between the real and the mental is lost sight
of, the ‘nature’ or ‘substance,’ in which ideas ‘have a union,’ or
are ‘found to coexist,’ being a system of relations which, according
to Locke, it requires a mind to constitute, and thus itself a
‘nominal essence.’
[3] Cf. Book IV. chap. iii. sec. 29; Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 14; Book
IV. chap. xi. sec. 11.
How then is science of nature possible?
83. We thus come upon the crucial antithesis between relations of
ideas and matters of fact, with the exclusion of general certainty as
to the latter, which was to prove such a potent weapon of scepticism
in the hands of Hume. Of its incompatibility with recognized science
we can have no stronger sign than the fact that, after more than a
century has elapsed since Locke’s premisses were pushed to their
legitimate conclusion, the received system of logic among us is
one which, while professing to accept Locke’s doctrine of essence,
and with it the antithesis in question, throughout assumes the
possibility of general propositions as to matters of fact, and seeks
in their methodical discovery and proof that science of nature which
Locke already ‘suspected’ to be impossible. (Book IV. chap. xii. sec.
10.)
No ‘uniformities of phenomena’ can be known.
84. That, so far as any inference from past to future uniformities
is necessary to the science of nature, his doctrine does more than
justify such ‘suspicion,’ is plain enough. Does it, however, leave
room for so much as a knowledge of past uniformities of fact, in
which the natural philosopher, accepting the doctrine, might probably
seek refuge? At first sight, it might seem to do so. ‘As, when our
senses are actually employed about any object, we do know that it
does exist; so by our memory we may be assured that heretofore things
that affected our senses have existed--and thus we have knowledge
of the past existence of several things, whereof our senses having
informed us, our memories still retain the ideas.’ (Book IV. chap.
xi. sec. 11.) Let us see, however, how this knowledge is restricted.
‘Seeing water at this instant, it is an unquestionable truth to me
that water doth exist; and remembering that I saw it yesterday, it
will also be always true, and as long as my memory retains it, always
an undoubted proposition to me, that water did exist the 18th of
July, 1688; as it will also be equally true that a certain number of
very fine colours did exist, which at the same time I saw on a bubble
of that water; but being now quite out of sight both of the water and
bubbles too, it is no more certainly known to me that the water doth
now exist, than that the bubbles and colours therein do so; it being
no more necessary that water should exist to-day because it existed
yesterday, than that the colours or bubbles exist to-day because they
existed yesterday.’ (_Ibid_.)
Locke not aware of the full effect of his own doctrine ...
85. The result is that though I may enumerate a multitude of past
matters-of-fact about water, I cannot gather them up in any general
statement about it as a real existence. So soon as I do so, I pass
from water as a real existence to its ‘nominal essence,’ _i.e._,
to the ideas retained in my mind and put together in a fictitious
substance, to which I have annexed the name ‘water.’ If we proceed to
apply this doctrine to the supposed past matters-of-fact themselves,
we shall find these too attenuating themselves to nonentity.
Subtract in every case from the ‘particular existence’ of which we
have ‘sensitive knowledge’ the qualification by ideas which, as
retained in the mind, do not testify to a present real existence,
and what remains? There is a certainty, according to Locke (Book IV.
chap. xi. sec. 11), not, indeed, that water exists to-day because
it existed yesterday--this is only ‘probable’--but that it has,
as a past matter-of-fact, at this time and that ‘continued long
in existence,’ because this has been ‘observed;’ which must mean
(Book IV. chap. ii. secs. 1, 5, and 9), because there has been a
continued ‘actual sensation’ of it. ‘Water,’ however, is a complex
idea of a substance, and of the elements of this complex idea
those only which at any moment are given in ‘actual sensation’ may
be accounted to ‘really exist.’ First, then, must disappear from
reality the ‘something,’ that unknown substratum of ideas, of which
the idea is emphatically ‘abstract.’ This gone, we naturally fall
back upon a fact of co-existence between ideas, as being a reality,
though the ‘thing’ be a fiction. But if this co-existence is to be
real or to represent a reality, the ideas between which it obtains
must be ‘actual sensations.’ These, whatever they may be, are at
least opposed by Locke to ideas retained in the mind, which only
form a nominal essence. But it is the association of such nominal
essence, in the supposed observation of water, with the actual
sensation that alone gives the latter a meaning. Set this aside as
unreal, and the reality, which the sensation reveals, is at any
rate one of which nothing can be said. It cannot be a relation
between sensations, for such relation implies a consideration of
them by the mind, whereby, according to Locke, they must cease to
be ‘real existences.’ (Book II. chap. xxv. sec. 1.) It cannot even
be a single sensation _as continuously observed_, for every present
moment of such observation has at the next become a past, and thus
the sensation observed in it has lost its ‘actuality,’ and cannot,
_as a ‘real existence_,’ qualify the sensation observed in the next.
Restrict the ‘real existence,’ in short, as Locke does, to an ‘actual
present sensation,’ which can only be defined by opposition to an
idea retained in the mind, and at every instant of its existence it
has passed into the mind and thus ceased really to exist. Reality is
in perpetual process of disappearing into the unreality of thought.
No point can be fixed either in the flux of time or in the imaginary
process from ‘without’ to ‘within’ the mind, on the one side of which
can be placed ‘real existence,’ on the other the ‘mere idea.’ It is
only because Locke unawares defines to himself the ‘actual sensation’
as representative of a real essence, of which, however, according
to him, as itself unknown, the presence is merely inferred from the
sensation, that the ‘actual sensation’ itself is saved from the limbo
of nominal essence, to which ideas, as abstract or in the mind, are
consigned. Only, again, so far as it is thus illogically saved, are
we entitled to that distinction between ‘facts’ and ‘things of the
mind,’ which Locke once for all fixed for English philosophy.
... which is to make the real an abstract residuum of consciousness.
86. By this time we are familiar with the difficulties which this
antithesis has in store for a philosophy which yet admits that it
is only in the mind or in relation to consciousness--in one word,
as ‘ideas’--that facts are to be found at all, while by the ‘mind’
it understands an abstract generalization from the many minds which
severally are born and grow, sleep and wake, with each of us. The
antithesis itself, like every other form in which the impulse after
true knowledge finds expression, implies a distinction between
the seeming and the real; or between that which exists for the
consciousness of the individual and that which really exists. But
outside itself consciousness cannot get. It is there that the real
must, at any rate, manifest itself, if it is to be found at all. Yet
the original antithesis between the mind and its unknown opposite
still prevails, and in consequence that alone which, though indeed
in the mind, is yet given to it by no act of its own, is held to
represent the real. This is the notion which dominates Locke. He
strips from the formed content of consciousness all that the mind
seems to have done for itself, and the abstract residuum, that of
which the individual cannot help being conscious at each moment of
his existence, is or ‘reports’ the real, in opposition to the mind’s
creation. This is Feeling; or more strictly--since it exists, and
whatever does so must exist as one in a number (Book II. chap. vii.
sec. 7)--it is the multitude of single feelings, ‘each perishing the
moment it begins’ (Book II. chap, xxvii. sec. 2), from which all the
definiteness that comes of composition and relation must be supposed
absent. Thus, in trying to get at what shall be the mere fact in
detachment from mental accretions, Locke comes to what is still
consciousness, but the merely indefinite in consciousness. He seeks
the real and finds the void. Of the real as outside consciousness
nothing can be said; and of that again within consciousness, which is
supposed to represent it, nothing can be said.
Ground of distinction between actual sensation and ideas in the mind
is itself a thing of the mind.