the step has been already taken, which Hume ignored, from feeling
to thought. His doctrine on the matter arises from that mental
equivocation, of which the effects on Locke have been already
noticed, [1] between the mere singleness of a feeling in time and the
individuality of the object of thought as a complex of relations.
If the impression is the single feeling which disappears with a
turn of the head, and the idea a weaker impression, every idea must
indeed be in one sense ‘individual,’ but in a sense that renders
all predication impossible because it empties the idea of all
content. Really, according to Hume’s doctrine of general names, it is
individual in a sense which is the most remote opposite of this, as a
multitude of ‘different resemblances and relations’ in ‘simplicity.’
It is just such an individual as Locke supposed to be found (so to
speak) ready-made in nature, and from which he supposed the mind
successively to abstract ideas less and less determinate. Such an
object Hume, coming after Berkeley, could not regard in Locke’s
fashion as a separate material existence outside consciousness. The
idea with him is a ‘copy’ not of a thing but of an ‘impression,’
but to the impression he transfers all that individualization by
qualities which Locke had ascribed to the substance found in nature;
and from the impression again transfers it to the idea which ‘is but
the weaker impression.’ Thus the singleness in time of the impression
becomes the ‘simplicity’ of an object ‘containing many different
resemblances and relations,’ and the individuality of the subject
of a proposition, instead of being regarded in its true light as a
temporary isolation from other relations of those for the time under
view--an individuality which is perpetually shifting its limits as
thought proceeds--becomes an individuality fixed once for all by what
is given in the impression. Because, as is supposed, I can only ‘see’
a globe as of a certain colour and material, I can only think of it
as such. If the ‘sight’ of it had been rightly interpreted as itself
a complex work of thought, successively detaching felt things from
the ‘flux’ of feelings and determining these by relations similarly
detached, the difficulty of thinking certain of these--_e.g._ those
designated as ‘figure’--apart from the rest would have disappeared.
It would have been seen that this was merely to separate in
reflective analysis what had been gradually put together in the
successive synthesis of perception. But such an interpretation of the
supposed _datum_ of sense would have been to elevate thought from the
position which Hume assigned to it, as a ‘decaying sense,’ to that of
being itself the organizer of the world which it knows. [2]
[1] See above, paragraphs 47, 95, &c.
[2] The phrase ‘decaying sense’ belongs to Hobbes, but its meaning is
adopted by Hume.
Result is a theory which admits predication, but only as singular.
222. Here, then, as elsewhere, the embarrassment of Hume’s doctrine
is nothing which a better statement of it could avoid. Nay, so
dexterous is his statement, that only upon a close scrutiny does
the embarrassment disclose itself. To be faithful at once to his
reduction of the impression to simple feeling, and to his account of
the idea as a mere copy of the impression, was really impossible. If
he had kept his word in regard to the impression, he must have found
thought filling the void left by the disappearance, under Berkeley’s
criticism, of that outward system of things which Locke had commonly
taken for granted. He preferred fidelity to his account of the
idea, and thus virtually restores the fiction which represents the
real world as consisting of so many, materially separate, bundles
of qualities--a fiction which even Locke in his better moments
was beginning to outgrow--with only the difference that for the
separation of ‘substances’ in space he substitutes a separation of
‘impressions’ in time. That thought (the ‘idea’) can but faintly
copy feeling (the ‘impression’) he consistently maintains, but he
avails himself of the actual determination of feeling by reference
to an object of thought--the determination expressed by such phrases
as impression of a man, impression of a globe, &c.--to charge the
feeling with a content which it only derives from such determination,
while yet he denies it. By this means predication can be accounted
for, as it could not be if our consciousness consisted of mere
feelings and their copies, but only in the form of the singular
proposition; because the object of thought determined by relations,
being identified with a single feeling, must be limited by the ‘this’
or ‘that’ which expresses this singleness of feeling. It is really
_this_ or _that_ globe, _this_ or _that_ man, that is the subject
of the proposition, according to Hume, even when in form it is
general. It is true that the general name ‘globe’ or ‘man’ not merely
represents a ‘particular’ globe or man, though that is all that is
presented to the mind, but also ‘raises up a custom which produces
any other individual idea for which we may have occasion.’ As this
custom, however, is neither itself an idea nor affects the singleness
of the subject idea, it does not constitute any distinction between
singular and general propositions, but only between two sorts of the
singular proposition according as it does, or does not, suggest an
indefinite series of other singular propositions, in which the same
qualities are affirmed of different individual ideas to which the
subject-name has been applied.
All propositions restricted in same way as Locke’s propositions about
real existence.
223. A customary sequence, then, of individual ideas upon each other
is the reality, which through the delusion of words (as we must
suppose) has given rise to the fiction of there being such a thing
as general knowledge. We say ‘fiction,’ for with the possibility of
general propositions, as the Greek philosophers once for all pointed
out, stands or falls the possibility of science. Locke was so far
aware of this that, upon the same principle which led him to deny the
possibility of general propositions concerning real existence, he
‘suspected’ a science of nature to be impossible, and only found an
exemption for moral and mathematical truth from this condemnation in
its ‘bare ideality.’ Hume does away with the exemption. He applies
to all propositions alike the same limitation which Locke applies to
those concerning real existence. With Locke there may very well be a
proposition which to the mind, as well as in form, is general--one of
which the subject is an ‘abstract general idea’--but such proposition
‘concerns not existence.’ As knowledge of real existence is limited
to the ‘actual present sensation,’ so a proposition about such
existence is limited to what is given in such sensation. It is a
real truth that this piece of gold is now being dissolved in aqua
regia, when the ‘particular experiment’ is going on under our eyes,
but the general proposition ‘gold is soluble’ is only an analysis of
a nominal essence. With Hume the distinction between propositions
that do, and those that do not, ‘concern existence’ disappears.
Every proposition is on the same footing in this respect, since it
must needs be a statement about an ‘idea,’ and every idea exists.
‘Every object that is presented must necessarily be existent. ...
Whatever we conceive, we conceive to be existent. Any idea we please
to form is the idea of a being; and the idea of a being is any idea
we please to form’. [1] But since, according to him, the idea cannot
be separated, as Locke supposed it could, from the conditions ‘that
determine it to this or that particular existence,’ propositions
of the sort which Locke understood by ‘general propositions
concerning substances,’ though if they were possible they would
‘concern existence’ as much as any, are simply impossible. Hume,
in short, though he identifies the real and nominal essences which
Locke had distinguished, yet limits the nominal essence by the same
‘particularity in space and time’ by which Locke had limited the real.
[1] p. 370 [Book I, part II., sec. VI.]
The question, how the _singular_ proposition is possible, the vital
one.
224. A great advance in simplification has been made when the false
sort of ‘conceptualism’ has thus been got rid of--that conceptualism
which opposes knowing and being under the notion that things,
though merely individual in reality, may be known as general. This
riddance having been achieved, as it was by Hume, the import of the
proposition becomes the central question of philosophy, the answer
to which must determine our theory of real existence just as much
as of the mind. The issue may be taken on the proposition in its
singular no less than in its general form. The weakness of Hume’s
opponents, indeed, has lain primarily in their allowing that his
doctrine would account for any significant predication whatever,
as distinct from exclamations prompted by feelings as they occur.
This has been the inch, which once yielded, the full ell of his
nominalism has been easily won; just as Locke’s empiricism becomes
invincible as soon as it is admitted that qualified things are ‘found
in nature’ without any constitutive action of the mind. As the only
effective way of dealing with Locke is to ask,--After abstraction
of all that he himself admitted to be the creation of thought, what
remains to be merely found?--so Hume must be met _in limine_ by the
question whether, apart from such ideas of relation as according to
his own showing are not simple impressions, so much as the singular
proposition is possible. If not, then the singularity of such
proposition does not consist in any singleness of presentation to
sense; it is not the ‘particularity in time’ of a present feeling;
and the exclusion of generality, whether in thoughts or in things,
as following from the supposed necessity of such singleness or
particularity, is quite groundless.
Not relations of resemblance only, but those of quantity also,
treated by Hume as feelings.
225. Hitherto the idea of relation which we have had specially in
view has been that of relation in the way of resemblance, and the
propositions have been such as represent the most obvious ‘facts of
observation’--facts about this or that ‘body,’ man or horse or ball.
We have seen that these already suppose the thought of an object
qualified, not transitory as are feelings, but one to which feelings
are referred on their occurrence as resemblances or differences
between it and other objects; but that by an equivocation, which
unexamined phraseology covers, between the thought of such an object
and feeling proper--as if because we talk of seeing a man, therefore
a man were a feeling of colour--Hume is able to represent them as
mere data of sense, and thus to ignore the difference between related
feelings and ideas of relation. Thus the first step has been taken
towards transferring to the sensitive subject, as merely sensitive,
the power of thought and significant speech. The next is to transfer
to it ideas of those other relations [1] which Hume classifies as
‘relations of time and place, proportion in quantity or number,
degrees in any quality’. [2] This done, it is sufficiently equipped
for achieving its deliverance from metaphysics. An animal, capable of
experiments concerning matter of fact, and of reasoning concerning
quantity and number, would certainly have some excuse for throwing
into the fire all books which sought to make it ashamed of its
animality. [3]
[1] The course which our examination of Hume should take was marked
out, it will be remembered, by his enumeration of the ‘_natural_’
relations that regulate the association of ideas. It might seem
a departure from this course to proceed, as in the text, from
the relation of resemblance to ‘relations of time and place,
proportion in quantity or number, and degrees of any quality,’
since these appear in Hume’s enumeration, not of ‘_natural_’ but
of ‘_philosophical_’ relations. Such departure, however, is the
consequence of Hume’s own procedure. Whether he considered these
relations merely equivalent to the ‘natural ones’ of resemblance
and contiguity, he does not expressly say; but his reduction of the
principles of mathematics to data of sense implies that he did so.
The treatment of degrees in quality and proportions in quantity as
sensible implies that the difference between resemblance and measured
resemblance, between contiguity and measured contiguity, is ignored.
[2] p. 368 [Book I, part II., sec. V.]
[3] If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or
school-metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, _Does it contain
any abstract reasoning for quantity or number?_ No. _Does it
contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and
existence?_ No. _Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain
nothing but sophistry and illusion.’_--‘Inquiry concerning the Human
Understanding,’ at the end.
He draws the line between certainty and probability at the same point
as Locke; but is more definite as to probability,
226. In thus leaving mathematics and a limited sort of experimental
physics (limited by the exclusion of all general inference from the
experiment) out of the reach of his scepticism, and in making them
his basis of attack upon what he conceived to be the more pretentious
claims of knowledge, Hume was again following the course marked out
for him by Locke. It will be remembered that Locke, even when his
‘suspicion’ of knowledge is at its strongest, still finds solid
ground _(a)_ in ‘particular experiments’ upon nature, expressed
in singular propositions as opposed to assertions of universal or
necessary connexion, and _(b)_ in mathematical truths which are at
once general, certain, and instructive, because ‘barely ideal.’ All
speculative propositions that do not fall under one or other of these
heads are either ‘trifling’ or merely ‘probable.’ Hume draws the line
between certainty and probability at the same point, nor in regard
to the ground of certainty as to ‘matter of fact or existence’ is
there any essential difference between him and his master. As this
ground is the ‘actual present sensation’ with the one, so it is the
‘impression’ with the other; and it is only when the proposition
becomes universal or asserts a necessary connection, that the
certainty, thus given, is by either supposed to fail. It is true that
with Locke this authority of the sensation is a derived authority,
depending on its reference to a ‘body now operating upon us,’ while
with Hume, so far as he is faithful to his profession of discarding
such reference, it is original. But with each alike the fundamental
notion is that a feeling must be ‘true _while it lasts_,’ and that
in regard to real existence or matter of fact no other truth can
be known but this. Neither perceives that a truth thus restricted
is no truth at all--nothing that can be stated even in a singular
proposition; that the ‘particularity in time,’ on which is supposed
to depend the real certainty of the simple feeling, is just that
which deprives it of significance [1]--because neither is really
faithful to the restriction. Each allows himself to substitute for
the momentary feeling an object qualified by relations, which are the
exact opposite of momentary feelings. ‘If I myself see a man walk
on the ice,’ says Locke (IV, xv. 5), ‘it is past probability, it is
knowledge:’ nor would Hume, though ready enough on occasion to point
out that what is seen must be a colour, have any scruple in assuming
that such a complex judgment as the above so-called ‘sight’ has the
certainty of a simple impression. It is only in bringing to bear upon
the characteristic admission of Locke’s Fourth Book, that no general
knowledge of nature can be more than probable, a more definite notion
of what probability is, and in exhibiting the latent inconsistency
of this admission with Locke’s own doctrine of ideas as effects of
a causative substance, that he modifies the theory of _physical_
certainty which he inherited. In their treatment of mathematical
truths on the other hand, of propositions involving relations of
distance, quantity and degree, a fundamental discrepancy appears
between the two writers. The ground of certainty, which Hume admits
in regard to propositions of this order, must be examined before we
can appreciate his theory of probability as it affects the relations
of cause and substance.
[1] See above, paragraphs 45 and 97.
... and does not admit opposition of mathematical to physical
certainty--here following Berkeley.
227. It has been shown [1] that Locke’s opposition of mathematical to
physical certainty, with his ascription to the former of instructive
generality on the ground of its bare ideality--the ‘ideal’ in this
regard being opposed to what is found in sensation--strikes at the
very root of his system. It implies that thought can originate, and
that what it originates is in some sort real--nay, as being nothing
else than the ‘primary qualities of matter,’ is the source of all
other reality. Here was an alien element which ‘empiricism’ could not
assimilate without changing its character. Carrying such a conception
along with it, it was already charged with an influence which must
ultimately work its complete transmutation by compelling, not the
admission of an ideal world of guess and aspiration alongside of
the empirical, but the recognition of the empirical as itself ideal
The time for this transmutation, however, was not yet. Berkeley, in
over-hasty zeal for God, had missed that only true way of finding God
in the world which lies in the discovery that the world is Thought.
Having taken fright at the ‘mathematical Atheism,’ which seemed to
grow out of the current doctrines about primary qualities of matter,
instead of applying Locke’s own admissions to show that these were
intelligible and merely intelligible, he fancied that he had won the
battle for Theism by making out that they were merely feelings or
sequences of feelings. From him Hume got the text for all he had to
say against the metaphysical mathematicians; but, for the reason that
Hume applied it with no theological interest, its true import becomes
more apparent with him than with Berkeley.
[1] See above, paragraphs 117 and 125.
His criticisms of the doctrine of primary qualities.
228. His account of mathematical truths, as contained in Part II.
of the First Book of the ‘Treatise on Human Nature,’ cannot be
fairly read except in connection with the chapters in Part IV.
on ‘Scepticism with regard to the Senses,’ and on ‘the Modern
Philosophy.’ The latter chapter is expressly a polemic against
Locke’s doctrine of primary qualities, and its drift is to reverse
the relations which Locke had asserted between them and sensations,
making the primary qualities depend on sensations, instead of
sensations on the primary qualities. In Locke himself we have
found that two inconsistent views on the subject perpetually cross
each other. [1] According to one, momentary sensation is the sole
conveyance to us of reality; according to the other, the real is
constituted by qualities of bodies which not only ‘are in them
whether we perceive them or not,’ but which only complex ideas
of relation can represent. The unconscious device which covered
this inconsistency lay, we found, [2] in the conversion of the
mere feeling of touch into the touch _of a body_, and thus into an
experience of solidity. By this conversion, since solidity according
to Locke’s account carries with it all the primary qualities,
these too become data of sensation, while yet, by the retention of
the opposition between them and ideas, the advantage is gained of
apparently avoiding that identification of what is real with simple
feeling, which science and common sense alike repel.
[1] See above, paragraph 99 and following.
[2] See above, paragraph 101.
It will not do to oppose bodies to our feeling when only feeling can
give idea of body.
229. Hume makes a show of getting rid of this see-saw. Instead of
assuming at once the reality of sensation on the strength of its
relation to the primary qualities and the reality of these on the
strength of their being given in tactual experience, he pronounces
sensations alone the real, to which the primary qualities must be
reduced, if they are not to disappear altogether. ‘If colours,
sounds, tastes, and smells be merely perceptions, nothing we
can conceive is possessed of a real, continued, and independent
existence’. [1] That they are perceptions is of course undoubted.
The question is, whether there is a real something beside and
beyond them, contrast with which is implied in speaking of them
as ‘_merely_ perceptions.’ The supposed qualities of such a real
are ‘motion, extension, and solidity’. [2] To modes of these the
other primary qualities enumerated by Locke are reducible; and of
these again motion and extension, according to Locke’s account no
less than Hume’s own, presuppose solidity. What then do we assert
of the real, in contrast with which we talk of perception, as
_mere_ perception, when we say that it is solid? ‘In order to form
an idea of solidity we must conceive two bodies pressing on each
other without any penetration. ... Now, what idea do we form of
these bodies? ... To say that we conceive them as solid is to run
on _ad infinitum_. To affirm that we paint them out to ourselves as
extended, either resolves them all into a false idea or returns in a
circle; extension must necessarily be conceived either as coloured,
which is a false idea, [3] or as solid, which brings us back to the
first question.’ Of solidity, then, the ultimate determination of
the supposed real, there is ‘no idea to be formed’ apart from those
perceptions to which, as independent of our senses, it is opposed.
‘After exclusion of colours, sounds, heat and cold from the rank of
external existences, there remains nothing which can afford us a just
and consistent idea of body.’
[1] p. 513 [Book I, part IV., sec. IV.]
[2] Ibid.
[3] ‘A false idea,’ that is, according to the doctrine that extension
is a primary quality, while colour is only an idea of a secondary
quality, not resembling the quality as it is in the thing.
Locke’s shuffle of ‘body,’ ‘solidity,’ and ‘touch,’ fairly exposed.
230. Our examination of Locke has shown us how it is that his
interpretation of ideas by reference to body is fairly open to this
attack. It is so because, in thus interpreting them, he did not know
what he was really about. He thought he was explaining ideas of sense
according to the only method of explanation which he recognises--the
method of resolving complex into simple ideas, and of ‘sending a man
to his senses’ for a knowledge of the simple. In fact, however, when
he explained ideas of sense as derived from the qualities of body,
he was explaining simple ideas by reference to that which, according
to his own showing, is a complex idea. To say that, as Locke
understood the derivation in question, the primary qualities are
an ἄιτιον γενέσεως to the ideas of secondary qualities, but not an
ἄιτιον γνώσεως [1]--that without our having ideas of them they cause
those ideas of sense from which afterwards our ideas of the primary
qualities are formed--is to suppose an order of reality other than
the order of our sensitive experience, and thus to contradict Locke’s
fundamental doctrine that the genesis of ideas is to be found by
observing their succession in ‘our own breasts.’ It is not thus that
Locke himself escapes the difficulty. As we have seen, he supposes
our ideas of sense to be from the beginning ideas of the qualities of
bodies, and virtually justifies the supposition by sending the reader
to his sense of touch for that idea of solidity in which, as he
defines it, all the primary qualities are involved. That the sense in
question does not really yield the idea is what Hume points out when
he says that, ‘though bodies are felt by means of their solidity, yet
the feeling is quite a different thing from the solidity, nor have
they the least resemblance to each other.’ In other words, having
come to suppose that there are solid bodies, we explain our feeling
as due to their solidity; but we may not at once interpret feeling
as the result of solidity, and treat solidity as itself a feeling.
It was by allowing himself so to treat it that Locke disguised
from himself the objection to his interpretation of feeling. Hume
tears off the disguise, and in effect gives him the choice of being
convicted either of reasoning in a circle or of explaining the simple
idea by reference to the complex. The solidity, which is to explain
feeling, can itself only be explained by reference to body. If body
is only a complex of ideas of sense, in referring tactual feeling to
it we are explaining a simple idea by reference to a compound one.
If it is not, how is it to be defined except in the ‘circular’ way,
which Locke in fact adopts when he makes body a ‘texture of solid
parts’ and solidity a relation of bodies? [2]
[1] [Greek ἄιτιον γενέσεως (aition geneseos) = cause of coming-to-be,
ἄιτιον γνώσεως (aition gnoseos) = cause of being known. Tr.]
[2] See above, paragraph 101.
True rationale of Locke’s doctrine.