qualities of substances, practically gets over this difficulty; how
he first projects out of the simple ideas, under relations which it
requires a mind to constitute, a cognisable system of things, and
then gives content and definiteness to the simple ideas in us by
treating them as manifestations of this system of things. In the
doctrine of propositions, the proper correlative to the reduction
of the real to the present simple idea, as that of which we cannot
get rid, would be the reduction of the ‘real proposition’ to the
mere ‘it is now felt.’ If the matter-of-fact is to be that in
consciousness which is independent of the ‘work of the mind’ in
comparing and compounding, this is the only possible expression
for it. It states the only possible ‘real essence,’ which yet is
an essence of nothing, for any reference of it to a thing, if the
thing is outside consciousness, is an impossibility; and if it is
within consciousness, implies an ‘invention of the mind’ both in
the creation of a thing, ‘always the same with itself,’ out of
perishing feelings, and in the reference of the feelings to such a
thing. Thus carried out, the antithesis between ‘fact’ and ‘creation
of the mind’ becomes self-destructive, for, one feeling being as
real as another, it leaves no room for that distinction between the
real and fantastic, to the uncritical sense of which it owes its
birth. To avoid this fusion of dream-land and the waking world,
Locke avails himself of the distinction between the idea (_i.e._
feeling) as in the mind, which is not convertible with reality,
and the idea as somewhere else, no one can say where--‘the actual
sensation’--which is so convertible. The distinction, however, must
either consist in degrees of liveliness, in which case there must be
a corresponding infinity of degrees of reality or unreality, or else
must presuppose a real existence from which the feeling, if ‘actual
sensation,’ _is_--if merely ‘in the mind’ _is not_--derived. Such a
real existence either is an object of consciousness, or is not. If it
is not, no distinction between one kind of feeling and another can
for consciousness be derived from it. If it is, then, granted the
distinction between given feelings and creations of the mind, it must
fall to the latter, and a ‘thing of the mind’ turns out to be the
ground upon which ‘fact’ is opposed to ‘things of the mind.’
Two meanings of real essence.
88. It remains to exhibit briefly the disguises under which these
inherent difficulties of his theory of essence appear in Locke.
Throughout, instead of treating ‘essence’ altogether as a fiction
of the mind--as it must be if feelings in simplicity and singleness
are alone the real--he treats indeed as a merely ‘nominal essence’
every possible combination of ideas of which we can speak, but still
supposes another essence which is ‘real.’ But a real essence of
what? Clearly, according to his statements, of the same ‘thing’ of
which the combination of ideas in the mind is the nominal essence.
Indeed, there is no meaning in the antithesis unless the ‘something,’
of which the latter essence is so nominally, is that of which it is
not so really. So says Locke, ‘the nominal essence of gold is that
complex idea the word gold stands for; let it be, for instance, a
body yellow, of a certain weight, malleable, fusible, and fixed. But
the real essence is the constitution of the insensible parts _of
that body_, on which those qualities and all the other properties of
gold depend.’ (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 2.) Here the notion clearly
is that of one and the same thing, of which we can only say that it
is a ‘body,’ a certain complex of ideas--yellowness, fusibility,
&c.--is the nominal, a certain constitution of insensible parts the
real, essence. It is on the real essence, moreover, that the ideas
which constitute the nominal depend. Yet while they are known, the
real essence (as appears from the context) is wholly unknown. In this
case, it would seem, the cause is not known from its effects.
According to one, it is a collection of ideas as qualities of a thing:
89. There are lurking here two opposite views of the relation between
the nominal essence and the real thing. According to one view, which
prevails in the later chapters of the Second Book and in certain
passages of the third, the relation between them is that with which
we have already become familiar in the doctrine of substance--that,
namely, between ideas as in us and the same as in the thing. (Book
II, chap. xxiii. secs. 9 and 10.) No distinction is made between the
‘idea in the mind’ and the ‘actual sensation.’ The ideas in the mind
are also in the thing, and thus are called its qualities, though for
the most part they are so only secondarily, _i.e._ as effects of
other qualities, which, as copied directly in our ideas, are called
primary, and relatively to these effects are called powers. These
powers have yet innumerable effects to produce in us which they have
not yet produced. (Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 10.) Those which have
been so far produced, being gathered up in a complex idea to which
a name is annexed, form the ‘nominal essence’ of the thing. Some of
them are of primary qualities, more are of secondary. The originals
of the former, the powers to produce the latter, together with powers
to produce an indefinite multitude more, will constitute the ‘real
essence,’ which is thus ‘a standard made by nature,’ to which the
nominal essence is opposed merely as the inadequate to the adequate.
The ideas, that is to say, which are indicated by the name of a
thing, have been really ‘found in it’ or ‘produced by it,’ but are
only a part of those that remain to be found in it or produced by it.
It is in this sense that Locke opposes the adequacy between nominal
and real essence in the case of mixed modes to their perpetual
inadequacy in the case of ideas of substances. The combination in
the one case is artificially made, in the other is found and being
perpetually enlarged. This he illustrates by imagining the processes
which led Adam severally to the idea of the mixed mode ‘jealousy’ and
that of the substance ‘gold.’ In the former process Adam ‘put ideas
together only by his own imagination, not taken from the existence
of anything ... the standard there was of his own making.’ In the
latter, ‘he has a standard made by nature; and therefore being to
represent that to himself by the idea he has of it, even when it is
absent, he puts no simple idea into his complex one, but what he has
the perception of from the thing itself. He takes care that his idea
be conformable to this archetype.’ (Book III. chap. vi. secs. 46,
47.) ‘It is plain,’ however, ‘that the idea made after this fashion
by this archetype will be always inadequate.’
... about real essence in this sense there may be general knowledge.
90. The nominal essence of a thing, then, according to this view,
being no other than the ‘complex idea of a substance,’ is a
copy of reality, just as the simple idea is. It is a picture or
representation in the mind of a thing that does exist by ideas of
those qualities that are discoverable in it.’ (Book II. chap. xxxi.
secs. 6, 8.) It only differs from the simple idea (which is itself,
as abstract, a nominal essence) [1] in respect of reality, because
the latter is a copy or effect produced singly and involuntarily,
whereas we may put ideas together, as if in a thing, which have
never been so presented together, and, on the other hand, never can
put together all that exist together. (Book II. chap. xxx. sec. 5,
and xxxi. 10.) So far as Locke maintains this view, the difficulty
about general propositions concerning real existence need not arise.
A statement which affirmed of gold one of the qualities included
in the complex idea of that substance, would not express merely an
analysis of an idea in the mind, but would represent a relation
of qualities in the existing thing from which the idea ‘has been
taken.’ These qualities, as in the thing, doubtless would not be,
as in us, feelings (or, as Locke should rather have said in more
recent phraseology, possibilities of feeling), but powers to produce
feeling, nor could any relation between these, as in the thing,
be affirmed but such as had produced its copy or effect in actual
experience. No coexistence of qualities could be truly affirmed,
which had not been found; but, once found--being a coexistence of
qualities and not simply a momentary coincidence of feelings--it
could be affirmed as permanent in a general proposition. That a
relation can be stated universally between ideas collected in
the mind, no one denies, and if such collection ‘is taken from a
combination of simple ideas _existing together constantly in things_’
(Book II. chap, xxxii. sec. 18), the statement will hold equally of
such existence. Thus Locke contrasts mixed modes, which, for the
most part, ‘being actions which perish in the birth, are not capable
of a lasting duration,’ with ‘substances, which are the actors; and
wherein the simple ideas that make up the complex ideas designed by
the name have a lasting union.’ (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 42.)
[1] Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 12.
But such real essence a creature of thought.
91. In such a doctrine Locke, starting whence he did, could not
remain at rest. We need not here repeat what has been said of it
above in the consideration of his doctrine of substance. Taken
strictly, it implies that ‘real existence’ consists in a permanent
relation of ideas, said to be of secondary qualities, to each other
in dependence on other ideas, said to be of primary qualities. In
other words, in order to constitute reality, it takes ideas out of
that particularity in time and place, which is yet pronounced the
condition of reality, to give them an ‘abstract generality’ which is
fictitious, and then treats them as constituents of a system of which
the ‘invented’ relations of cause and effect and of identity are
the framework. In short, it brings reality wholly within the region
of thought, distinguishing it from the system of complex ideas or
nominal essences which constitute our knowledge, not as the unknown
opposite of all possible thought, but only as the complete from the
incomplete. To one who logically carried out this view, the ground
of distinction between fact and fancy would have to be found in the
relation between thought as ‘objective,’ or in the world, and thought
as so far communicated to us. Here, however, it could scarcely be
found by Locke, with whom ‘thought’ meant simply a faculty of the
‘thinking thing,’ called a ‘soul,’ which might ride in a coach with
him from Oxford to London. (Book II. chap, xxiii. sec. 20.) Was the
distinction then to disappear altogether?
Hence another view of real essence as unknown qualities of unknown
body.
92. It is saved, though at the cost of abandoning the ‘new way of
ideas,’ as it had been followed in the Second Book, by the transfer
of real existence from the thing in which ideas are found, and whose
qualities the complex of ideas in us, though inadequate, represents,
to something called ‘body,’ necessarily unknown, because no ideas
in us are in any way representative of it. To such an unknown body
unknown qualities are supposed to belong under the designation ‘real
essence.’ The subject of the nominal essence, just because its
qualities, being matter of knowledge, are ideas in our minds, is a
wholly different and a fictitious thing.
How Locke mixes up these two meanings in ambiguity about body.
93. This change of ground is of course not recognized by Locke
himself. It is the perpetual crossing of the inconsistent doctrines
that renders his ‘immortal Third Book’ a web of contradictions.
As was said above, he constantly speaks as if the subject of the
real essence were the same with that of the nominal, and never
explicitly allows it to be different. The equivocation under which
the difference is disguised lies in the use of the term ‘body.’
A ‘particular body’ is the subject both of the nominal and real
essence ‘gold’ But ‘body,’ as that in which ‘ideas are found,’ and
in which they permanently coexist according to a natural law, is one
thing; ‘body,’ as the abstraction of the unknown, is quite another.
It is body in the former sense that is the real thing when nominal
essence (the complex of ideas in us) is treated as representative,
though inadequately so, of the real thing; it is body in the latter
sense that is the real thing when this is treated as wholly outside
possible consciousness, and its essence as wholly unrepresented by
possible ideas. By a jumble of the two meanings Locke obtains an
amphibious entity which is at once independent of relation to ideas,
as is body in the latter sense, and a source of ideas representative
of it, as is body in the former sense--which thus carries with it
that opposition to the mental which is supposed necessary to the
real, while yet it seems to manifest itself in ideas. Meanwhile a
third conception of the real keeps thrusting itself upon the other
two--the view, namely, that body in both senses is a fiction of
thought, and that the mere present feeling is alone the real.
Body as ‘parcel of matter’ without essence.
94. Where Locke is insisting on the opposition between the real
essence and any essence that can be known, the former is generally
ascribed either to a ‘particular being’ or to a ‘parcel of matter.’
The passage which brings the opposition into the strongest relief is
perhaps the following:--‘I would ask any one, what is sufficient to
make an essential difference in nature between any two particular
beings, without any regard had to some abstract idea, which is looked
upon as the essence and standard of a species? All such patterns
and standards being quite laid aside, particular beings, considered
barely in themselves, will be found to have all their qualities
equally essential; and everything, in each individual, will be
essential to it, or, which is more, nothing at all. For though it
may be reasonable to ask whether obeying the magnet be essential
to iron; yet I think it is very improper and insignificant to ask
whether it be essential to the particular parcel of matter I cut my
pen with, without considering it under the name _iron_, or as being
of a certain species.’ (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 5.) [1] Here, it
will be seen, the exclusion of the abstract idea from reality carries
with it the exclusion of that ‘standard made by nature,’ which
according to the passages already quoted, is the ‘thing itself from
which the abstract idea is taken, and from which, if correctly taken,
it derives reality. This exclusion, again, means nothing else than
the disappearance from ‘nature’ (which with Locke is interchangeable
with ‘reality’) of all essential difference. There remain, however,
as the ‘real,’ ‘particular beings,’ or ‘individuals,’ or ‘parcels of
matter.’ In each of these, ‘considered barely in itself, everything
will be essential to it, or, which is more, nothing at all.’
[1] To the same purpose is a passage in Book III. chap. x. sec. 19,
towards the end.
In this sense body is the mere individuum.
95. We have already seen, [1] that if by a ‘particular being’ is
meant the mere _individuum_, as it would be upon abstraction of all
relations which according to Locke are fictitious, and constitute
a community or generality, it certainly can have no essential
qualities, since it has no qualities at all. It is a something which
equals nothing. The notion of this bare _individuum_ being the
real is the ‘protoplasm’ of Locke’s philosophy to which, though he
never quite recognized it himself, after the removal of a certain
number of accretions we may always penetrate. It is so because his
unacknowledged method of finding the real consisted in abstracting
from the formed content of consciousness till he came to that which
could not be got rid of. This is the momentarily present relation
of subject and object, which, considered on the side of the object,
gives the mere atom, and on the side of the subject, the mere ‘it is
felt.’ Even in this ultimate abstraction the ‘fiction of thought’
still survives, for the atom is determined to its mere individuality
by relation to other individuals, and the feeling is determined to
the present moment or ‘the now’ by relation to other ‘nows.’
[1] See above, paragraph 45.
Body as qualified by circumstances of time and place.
96. To this ultimate abstraction, however, Locke, though constantly
on the road to it, never quite penetrates. He is farthest from
it--indeed, as far from it as possible--where he is most acceptable
to common sense, as in his ordinary doctrine of abstraction, where
the real, from which the process of abstraction is supposed to begin,
is already the individual in the fullness of its qualities, James
and John, this man or this gold. He is nearest to it when the only
qualification of the ‘particular being,’ which has to be removed by
thought in order to its losing its reality and becoming an abstract
idea, is supposed to consist in ‘circumstances of time and place.’
Such body Locke held to be subject of ‘primary qualities’: but are
these compatible with particularity in time?
97. It is of these circumstances, as the constituents of the real,
that he is thinking in the passage last quoted. As qualified by
‘circumstances of place’ the real is a parcel of matter, and under
this designation Locke thought of it as a subject of ‘primary
qualities of body.’ [1] These, indeed, as he enumerates them, may be
shown to imply relations going far beyond that of simple distinctness
between atoms, and thus to involve much more of the creative action
of thought; but we need be the less concerned for this usurpation on
the part of the particular being, since that which he illegitimately
conveys to it as derived from ‘circumstances of place,’ he virtually
takes away from it again by limitation in time. The ‘particular
being’ has indeed on the one hand a real essence, consisting of
certain primary qualities, but on the other it has no continued
identity. It is only real as present to feeling at this or that
time. The particular being of one moment is not the particular being
of the next. Thus the primary qualities which are a real essence,
_i.e._ an essence of a particular being, at one moment, are not its
real essence at the next, because, while they as represented in the
mind remain the same, the ‘it,’ the particular being is different.
An _immutable_ essence for that very reason cannot be real. The
immutability can only lie in a relation between a certain abstract
(_i.e._ unreal) idea and a certain sound. (Book III. chap. iii. sec.
19.) ‘The real constitution of things,’ on the other hand, ‘begin
and perish with them. All things that exist are liable to change.’
(_Ibid_.) Locke, it is true (as is implied in the term _change_ [2])
never quite drops the notion of there being a real identity in some
unknown background, but this makes no difference in the bearing of
his doctrine upon the possibility of ‘real’ knowledge. It only means
that for an indefinite particularity of ‘beings’ there is substituted
one ‘being’ under an indefinite peculiarity of forms. Though the
reality of the thing _in itself_ be immutable, yet its reality _for
us_ is in perpetual flux. ‘In itself’ it is a substance without
an essence, a ‘something we know not what’ without any ideas to
‘support;’ a ‘parcel of matter,’ indeed, but one in which no quality
is really essential, because its real essence, consisting in its
momentary presentation to sense, changes with the moments. [3]
[1] According to Locke’s ordinary usage of the terms, no distinction
appears between ‘matter’ and ‘body.’ In Book III. chap. X. sec. 15,
however, he distinguishes matter from body as the less determinate
conception from the more. The one implies solidity merely, the
other extension and figure also, so that we may talk of the ‘matter
of bodies,’ but not of the ‘body of matters.’ But since solidity,
according to Locke’s definition, involves the other ‘primary
qualities,’ this distinction does not avail him much.
[2] See above, paragraph 69.
[3] Cf. Book III. chap. vi. sec. 4: ‘Take but away the abstract
ideas by which we sort individuals and rank them under common names,
and then the thought of anything essential to any of them instantly
vanishes,’ &c.
How Locke avoids this question.
98. We have previously noticed [1] Locke’s pregnant remark, that
‘things whose existence is in succession’ do not admit of identity.
(Book II. chap, xxvii. sec. 2.) So far, then, as the ‘real,’ in
distinction from the ‘abstract,’ is constituted by particularity in
time, or has its existence in succession, it excludes the relation
of identity. ‘It perishes in every moment that it begins.’ Had Locke
been master of this notion, instead of being irregularly mastered
by it, he might have anticipated all that Hume had to say. As it
is, even in passages such as those to which reference has just been
made, where he follows its lead the farthest, he is still pulled up
by inconsistent conceptions with which common sense, acting through
common language, restrains the most adventurous philosophy. Thus,
even from his illustration of the liability of all existence to
change--‘that which was grass to-day is to-morrow the flesh of a
sheep, and within a few days after will become part of a man’ [2]--we
find that, just as he does not pursue the individualization of the
real in space so far but that it still remains ‘a constitution
of parts,’ so he does not pursue it in time so far but that a
coexistence of real elements over a certain duration is possible. To
a more thorough analysis, indeed, there is no alternative between
finding reality in relations of thought, which, because relations of
thought, are not in time and therefore are immutable, and submitting
it to such subdivision of time as excludes all real coexistence
because what is real, as present, at one moment is unreal, as past,
at the next. This alternative could not present itself in its
clearness to Locke, because, according to his method of interrogating
consciousness, he inevitably found in its supposed beginning, which
he identified with the real, those products of thought which he
opposed to the real, and thus read into the simple feeling of the
moment that which, if it were the simple feeling of the moment, it
could not contain. Thus throughout the Second Book of the Essay the
simple idea is supposed to represent either as copy or as effect a
permanent reality, whether body or mind: and in the later books, even
where the _representation_ of such reality in knowledge comes in
question, its existence as constituted by ‘primary qualities of body’
is throughout assumed, though general propositions with regard to it
are declared impossible. It is a feeling referred to body, or, in the
language of subsequent psychology, a feeling of the _outward_ sense,
[3] that Locke means by an ‘actual present sensation,’ and it is
properly in virtue of this reference that such sensation is supposed
to be, or to report, the real.
[1] See above, paragraph 75.
[2] Book III. chap. iii. sec. 10.
[3] For the germs of the distinction between outer and inner sense,
see Locke’s Essay, Book II. chap. i. sec. 14: ‘This source of ideas
(the perception of the operations of the mind) every man has wholly
in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with
external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough
be called internal sense.’ For the notion of outer sense cf. Book
II. chap. ix. sec. 6, where he is distinguishing the ideas of hunger
and warmth, which he supposes children to receive in the womb from
the ‘innate principles which some contend for.’ ‘These (the ideas
of hunger and warmth) being the effects of sensation, are only from
some affections of the body which happen to them there, and so depend
on something exterior to the mind, not otherwise differing in their
manner of production from other ideas derived from sense, but only in
the precedency of time.’
Body and its qualities supposed to be outside consciousness.