stated, the antithesis lies between body as it is in itself and
body as it is for us, not between body as it is for us in ‘actual
sensation,’ and body as it is for us according to ‘ideas in the
mind.’ The primary qualities ‘are in bodies whether we perceive them
or no.’ (Book II. chap. viii. sec. 23.) As he puts it elsewhere (Book
II. chap. xxxi. sec. 2), it is just because ‘solidity and extension
and the termination of it, figure, with motion and rest, whereof we
have the ideas, would be really in the world as they are whether
there were any sensible being to perceive them or no,’ that they are
to be looked on as the _real_ modifications of matter. A change in
them, unlike one in the secondary qualities, or such as is relative
to sense, is a _real_ alteration _in body_. ‘Pound an almond, and the
clear white colour will be altered into a dirty one, and the sweet
taste into an oily one. What alteration can the beating of the pestle
make in any body, but an alteration of the texture of it?’ (Book II.
chap. viii. sec. 20.) It is implied then in the notion of the real as
body that it should be outside consciousness. It is that which seems
to remain when everything belonging to consciousness has been thought
away. Yet it is brought within consciousness again by the supposition
that it has qualities which copy themselves in our ideas and are ‘the
exciting causes of all our various sensations from bodies.’ (Book
II. chap. xxxi. sec. 3.) Again, however, the antithesis between the
real and consciousness prevails, and the qualities of matter or body
having been brought within the latter, are opposed to a ‘substance
of body’--otherwise spoken of as ‘the nature, cause, or manner of
producing the ideas of primary qualities’--which remains outside it,
unknown and unknowable. (Book II. chap, xxiii. sec. 30, &c.)
How can primary qualities be outside consciousness, and yet knowable?
100. The doctrine of primary qualities was naturally the one upon
which the criticism of Berkeley and Hume first fastened, as the
most obvious aberration from the ‘new way of ideas.’ That the very
notion of the senses as ‘reporting’ anything, under secondary no
less than under primary qualities, implies the presence of ‘fictions
of thought’ in the primitive consciousness, may become clear upon
analysis; but it lies on the surface and is avowed by Locke himself
(Book II. chap. viii. secs. 2, 7), that the conception of primary
qualities is only possible upon distinction being made between ideas
as in our minds, and the ‘nature of things existing without us,’
which cannot be given in the simple feeling itself. This admitted,
the distinction might either be traced to the presence within
intelligent consciousness of another factor than simple ideas, or
be accounted for as a gradual ‘invention of the mind.’ In neither
way, however, could Locke regard it and yet retain his distinction
between fact and fancy, as resting upon that between the nature of
things and the mind of man. The way of escape lay in a figure of
speech, the figure of the wax or the mirror. ‘The ideas of primary
qualities are resemblances of them.’ (Book II. chap, viii. sec. 15.)
These qualities then may be treated, according to occasion, either
as primitive data of consciousness, or as the essence of that which
is the unknown opposite of consciousness--in the latter way when the
antithesis between nature and mind is in view, in the former when
nature has yet to be represented as knowable.
Locke answers that they copy themselves in ideas--Berkeley’s
rejoinder. Locke gets out of the difficulty by his doctrine of
solidity.
101. How, asked Berkeley, can an idea be like anything that is not
an idea? Put the question in its proper strength--How can an idea be
like that of which the sole and simple determination is just that it
is not an idea (and such with Locke is body ‘in itself’ or as the
real)--and it is clearly unanswerable. The process by which Locke
was prevented from putting it to himself is not difficult to trace.
‘Body’ and ‘the solid’ are with him virtually convertible terms.
Each indifferently holds the place of the substance, of which the
primary qualities are so many determinations. [1] It is true that
where solidity has to be defined, it is defined as an attribute of
body, but conversely body itself is treated as a ‘texture of solid
parts,’ _i.e._ as a mode of the solid. Body, in short, so soon as
thought of, resolves itself into a relation of bodies, and the
solid into a relation of solids, but Locke, by a shuffle of the two
terms--representing body as a relation between solids and the solid
as a relation between bodies--gains the appearance of explaining
each in turn by relation to a simpler idea. Body, as the unknown,
is revealed to us by the idea of solidity, which sense conveys to
us; while solidity is explained by reference to the idea of body.
The idea of solidity, we are told, is a simple idea which comes
into the mind solely by the sense of touch. (Book II. chap. iii.
sec. 1.) But no sooner has he thus identified it with an immediate
feeling than, in disregard of his own doctrine, that ‘an idea which
has no composition’ is undefinable (see Book III. chap. iv. sec.
7.), he converts it into a theory of the cause of that feeling. ‘It
arises from the resistance which we find in body to the entrance of
any other body into the place it possesses till it has left it;’
and he at once proceeds to treat it as the consciousness of such
resistance. ‘Whether we move or rest, in what posture soever we are,
we always feel something under us that supports us, and hinders our
farther sinking downwards: and the bodies which we daily handle make
us perceive that whilst they remain between them, they do by an
insurmountable force hinder the approach of the parts of our hands
that press them. That which then hinders the approach of two bodies,
when they are moving one towards another, I call solidity.’ [2]
[1] See Book II. chap. viii. sec. 23: The primary ‘qualities that
are in bodies, are the bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion
or rest, _of their solid parts_.’ Cf. Book II. chap. xiii. sec. 11:
‘Solidity is so inseparable an idea from body, that upon that depends
its filling of space, its contact, impulse, and communication of
motion upon impulse.’
[2] Book II. chap. iv. sec 7.
In which he equivocates between body as unknown opposite of mind and
body as a ‘nominal essence’.
102. Now ‘body’ in this theory is by no means outside consciousness.
It is emphatically ‘in the mind,’ a ‘nominal essence,’ determined
by the relation which the theory assigns to it, and which, like
every relation according to Locke, is a ‘thing of the mind.’ This
relation is that of outwardness to other bodies, and among these to
the sensitive body through which we receive ‘ideas of sensation’--a
body which, on its side, as determined by the relation, has its
essence from the mind. It is, then, not as the unknown opposite
of the mind, but as determined by an intelligible relation which
the mind constitutes, and of which the members are each ‘nominal
essences,’ that body is outward to the sensitive subject. But to
Locke, substituting for body as a nominal essence body as the unknown
thing in itself, and identifying the sensitive subject with the
mind, outwardness in the above sense--an outwardness constituted by
the mind--becomes outwardness to the mind of an unknown opposite of
the mind. Solidity, then, and the properties which its definition
involves (and it involves all the ‘primary qualities’), become
something wholly alien to the mind, which ‘would exist without any
sensible being to perceive them.’ As such, they do duty as a real
essence, when the opposition of this to everything in the mind has
to be asserted. Yet must they be in some sort ideas, for of these
alone (as Locke fully admits) can we think and speak; and if ideas,
in the mind. How is this contradiction to be overcome? By the notion
that though not in or of the mind, they yet copy themselves upon it
in virtue of an impulse in body, correlative to that resistance of
which touch conveys the idea. (Book II. chap. viii. sec. 11). [1]
This explanation, however, is derived from the equivocation between
the two meanings of mind and body respectively. The problem to be
explained is the relation between the mind and that which is only
qualified as the negation of mind; and the explanation is found in
a relation, only existing for the mind, between a sensitive and a
non-sensitive body.
[1] Cf. also the passage from Book II. chap. xiii. sec. 11, quoted
above, paragraph 101, note [1].
Rationale of these contradictions.
103. The case then stands as follows. All that Locke says of body
as the real thing-in-itself, and of its qualities as the essence of
such thing, comes according to his own showing of an action of the
mind which he reckons the source of fictions. ‘Body in itself’ is a
substratum of ideas which the mind ‘accustoms itself to suppose.’
It perpetually recedes, as what was at first a substance becomes in
turn a complex of qualities for which a more remote substratum has
to be supposed--a ‘substance of body,’ a productive cause of matter.
But the substance, however remote, is determined by the qualities to
which it is correlative, as the cause by its effects; and every one
of these--whether the most primary, solidity, or those which ‘the
mind finds inseparable from every particle of matter,’ _i.e._ from
the ‘solid parts of a body,’ [1]--as defined by Locke, is a relation
such as the mind, ‘bringing one thing to and setting it by another’
(Book II. chap. xxv. sec. 1), can alone constitute. To Locke,
however, overcome by the necessity of intelligence, as gradually
developing itself in each of us, to regard the intelligible world as
there before it is known, the real must be something which would be
what it is if thought were not. Strictly taken, this must mean that
it is that of which nothing can be said, and some expression must be
found by means of which it may do double duty as at once apart from
consciousness and in it. This is done by converting ‘the primary
qualities of body, though obviously complex ideas of relation, into
simple feelings of touch,’ [2] and supposing the subject of this
sensation to be related to its object as wax to the seal. If we
suppose this relation, again, which is really within the mind and
constituted by it, to be one between the mind itself, as passive,
and the real, we obtain a ‘real’ which exists apart from the mind,
yet copies itself upon it. The mind, then, so far as it takes such a
copy, becomes an ‘outer sense,’ as to which it may be conveniently
forgotten that it is a mode of mind at all. Thus every modification
of it, as an ‘actual present sensation,’ comes to be opposed to every
idea of memory or imagination, as that which is not of the mind to
that which is; though there is no assignable difference between one
and the other, except an indefinite one in degree of vivacity, that
is not derived from the action of the mind in referring the one to an
object, constituted by itself, to which it does not refer the other.
[1] Cf Book II. chap. viii. sec. 9. The primary qualities of body are
‘such as sense constantly finds in every particle of matter, which
has bulk enough to be perceived, and the mind finds inseparable from
every particle of matter, though less than to make itself singly be
perceived by our senses.’
[2] I write advisedly ‘touch’ only, not ‘sight and touch,’ because,
though Locke (Book II. chap, v.) speaks of the ideas of extension,
figure, motion, and rest of bodies, as received both by sight and
touch, these are all involved in the previous definition of solidity,
of which the idea is ascribed to touch only.
What knowledge can feeling, even as referred to a ‘solid’ body,
convey?
104. Let us now consider whether by this reference to body, feeling
becomes any the more a source of general knowledge concerning
matters of fact. As we have seen, if we identify the real with
feeling simply, its distinction from ‘bare vision’ disappears. This
difficulty it is sought to overcome by distinguishing feeling as
merely in the mind from actually present sensation. But on reflection
we find that sensation after all is feeling, and that one feeling
is as much present as another, though present only to become at
the next moment past, and thus, if it is the presence that is the
condition of reality, unreal. The distinction then must lie in the
_actuality_ of the sensation. But does not this actuality mean simply
derivation from the real, _i.e._ derivation from the idea which has
to be derived from it? If, in the spirit of Locke, we answer, ‘No,
it means that the feeling belongs to the outer sense’; the rejoinder
will be that this means either that it is a feeling of touch--and
what should give the feeling of touch this singular privilege over
other feelings of not being in the mind while they are in it?--or
that it is a feeling referred to body, which still implies the
presupposition of the real, only under the special relations of
resistance and impulse. The latter alternative is the one which
Locke virtually adopts, and in adopting it he makes the actuality,
by which sensation is distinguished from ‘feelings in the mind,’
itself a creation of the mind. But though it is by an intellectual
interpretation of the feeling of touch, not by the feeling itself,
that there is given that idea of body, by reference to which actual
sensation is distinguished from the mere idea, still with Locke the
feeling of touch is necessary to the interpretation. Thus, supposing
his notion to be carried out consistently, the actual present
sensation, as reporting the real, must either be a feeling of touch,
or, if of another sort, _e.g._, sight or hearing, must be referable
to an object of touch. In other words, the real will exist for us
so long only as it is touched, and ideas in us will constitute a
real essence so long only as they may be referred to an object now
touched. Let the object cease to be touched, and the ideas become
a nominal essence in the mind, the knowledge which they constitute
ceases to be real, and the proposition which expresses it ceases to
concern matter of fact. Truth as to matters of fact or bodies, then,
must be confined to singular propositions such as ‘this is touched
now,’ ‘that was touched then;’ ‘what is touched now is bitter,’ ‘what
was then touched was red.’ [1]
[1] Thus the conviction that an object seen is not ‘bare fancy,’
which is gained by ‘putting the hand to it’ (Book IV. chap. xi. sec.
l7), as it conveys the idea of solidity, is properly, according to
Locke’s doctrine, not one among other ‘confirmations of the testimony
of the senses,’ but the source of all such testimony, as a testimony
to the real, _i.e._ to body. See above, paragraph 62.
Only the knowledge that something is, not what it is.
105. All that is gained, then, by the conversion of the feeling of
touch, pure and simple, into the idea of a body touched, is the
supposition that _there is_ a real existence which does not come and
go with the sensations. As to _what_ this existence is, as to its
real essence, we can have no knowledge but such as is given in a
present sensation. [1] Any essence of it, otherwise known, could only
be a nominal essence, a relation of ideas in our minds: it would lack
the condition in virtue of which alone a datum of consciousness can
claim to be representative of reality, that of being an impression
made by a body now operating upon us. (Book III. chap. v. sec. 2, and
Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 1.) The memory of such impression, however
faithful, will still only report a _past_ reality. It will itself
be merely ‘an idea in the mind.’ Neither it nor its relation to any
present sensation result from the immediate impact of body, and in
consequence neither ‘really exists.’ All that can be known, then, of
the real, in other words, the whole real essence of body, as it is
for us, reduces itself to that which can at any moment be ‘revealed’
in a single sensation apart from all relation to past sensations; and
this, as we have seen, is nothing at all.
[1] Cf. Book III. chap. vi. sec. 6: ‘As to the real essences of
substances, we only suppose their being, without precisely knowing
what they are.’ The appearance of the qualification ‘precisely,’ as
we shall see below, marks an oscillation from the view, according
to which ‘real essence’ is the negation of the knowable to the view
according to which our knowledge of it is merely inadequate.
How it is that the real essence of things, according to Locke,
perishes with them, yet is immutable.
106. Thus that reduction of reality to that of which nothing can be
said, which follows from its identification with particularity in
time, follows equally from its identification with the resistance
of body, or (which comes to the same) from the notion of an ‘outer
sense’ being its organ; since it is only that which _now_ resists,
not a general possibility of resistance nor a relation between the
resistances of different times, that can be regarded as outside the
mind. In Locke’s language, it is only a particular parcel of matter
that can be so regarded. Of such a parcel, as he rightly says, it is
absurd to ask what is its essence, for it can have none at all. (See
above, paragraph 94.) As real, it has no quality save that of being
a body or of being now touched--a quality, which as all things real
have it and have none other, cannot be a _differentia_ of it. When
we consider that this quality may be regarded equally as immutable
and as changing from moment to moment, we shall see the ground of
Locke’s contradiction of himself in speaking of the real thing
sometimes as indestructible, sometimes as in continual dissolution.
‘The real constitutions of things begin and perish with them.’ (Book
III. chap. iii. sec. 19.) That is, the thing at one moment makes an
impact on the sensitive tablet--in the fact that it does so lie at
once its existence and its essence--but the next moment the impact
is over, and with it thing and essence, _as real_, have disappeared.
Another impact, and thus another thing, has taken its place. But of
this the real essence is just the same as that of the previous thing,
namely, that it may be touched, or is solid, or a body, or a parcel
of matter; nor can this essence be really lost, since than it there
is no other reality, all difference of essence, as Locke expressly
says, [1] being constituted by abstract ideas and the work of the
mind. It follows that _real_ change is impossible. A parcel of matter
at one time is a parcel of matter at all times. Thus we have only to
forget that the relation of continuity between the parcels, not being
an idea caused by impact, should properly fall to the unreal--though
only on the same principle as should that of distinctness between the
times--and we find the real in a continuity of matter, unchangeable
because it has no qualities to change. It may seem strange that when
this notion of the formless continuity of the real being gets the
better of Locke, a man should be the real being which he takes as his
instance. ‘Nothing I have is essential to me. An accident or disease
may very much alter my colour or shape; a fever or fall may take away
my reason or memory, or both; and an apoplexy leave neither sense nor
understanding, no, nor life.’ (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 4.) But as
the sequel shows, the man or the ‘I’ is here considered simply as ‘a
particular corporeal being,’ _i.e._ as the ‘parcel of matter’ which
alone (according to the doctrine of reality now in view) can be the
real in man, and upon which all qualities are ‘superinductions of the
mind.’ [2]
[1] Book III. chap. vi. sec. 4: ‘Take but away the abstract ideas by
which we sort individuals, and then the thought of anything essential
to any of them instantly vanishes.’
[2] See a few lines below the passage quoted: ‘So that if it be
asked, whether it be essential to me, or any other particular
corporeal being, to have reason? I say, no; no more than it is
essential to this white thing I write on to have words in it.’
Only about qualities of matter, as distinct from matter itself, that
Locke feels any difficulty.
107. We may now discern the precise point where the qualm as to
clothing reality with such superinductions commonly returns upon
Locke. The conversion of feeling into body felt and of the particular
time of the feeling into an individuality of the body, and, further,
the fusion of the individual bodies, manifold as the times of
sensation, into one continued body, he passes without scruple. So
long as these are all the traces of mental fiction which ‘matter,’
or ‘body,’ or ‘nature’ bears upon it, he regards it undoubtingly as
the pure ‘privation’ of whatever belongs to the mind. But so soon
as cognisable qualities, forming an essence, come to be ascribed to
body, the reflection arises that these qualities are on our side
ideas, and that so far as they are permanent or continuous they are
not ideas of the sort which can alone represent body as the ‘real’
opposite of mind; they are not the result of momentary impact; they
are not ‘actually present sensations.’ Suppose them, however, to have
no permanence--suppose their reality to be confined to the fleeting
‘now’--and they are no qualities, no essence, at all. There is then
for us no _real_ essence of body or nature; what we call so is a
creation of the mind.
These, as knowable, must be our ideas, and therefore not a ‘real
essence’.
108. This implies the degradation of the ‘primary qualities of
body’ from the position which they hold in the Second Book of the
Essay, as the real, _par excellence_, to that of a nominal essence.
In the Second Book, just as the complex of ideas, received and to
be received from a substance, is taken for the real thing without
disturbance from the antithesis between reality and ‘ideas in the
mind,’ so the primary qualities of body are taken not only as real,
but as the sources of all other reality. Body, the real thing,
copying itself upon the mind in an idea of sensation (that of
solidity), carries with it from reality into the mind those qualities
which ‘the mind finds inseparable from it,’ with all their modes. ‘A
piece of manna of a sensible bulk is able to produce in us the idea
of a round or square figure, and, by being removed from one place
to another, the idea of motion. This idea of motion represents it,
as it really is in the manna, moving; a circle or square are the
same, whether in idea or existence, in the mind or in the manna;
and this both motion and figure are really in the manna, whether
we take notice of them or no.’ (Book II. chap. viii. sec. 18.) To
the unsophisticated man, taking for granted that the ‘sensible
bulk’ of the manna is a ‘real essence,’ this statement will raise
no difficulties. But when he has learnt from Locke himself that the
‘sensible bulk,’ so far as we can think and speak of it, must consist
in the ideas which it is said to produce, the question as to the real
existence of these must arise. It turns out that they ‘really exist,’
so far as they represent the impact of a body copying itself in
actually present sensation, and that from their reality, accordingly,
must be excluded all qualities that accrue to the present sensation
from its relation to the past. Can the ‘primary qualities’ escape
this exclusion?
Are the ‘primary qualities’ then, a ‘nominal essence’?