LOCKE.
The founder of the realistic course and the father of modern Empiricism
and Materialism, is _John Locke_, an Englishman. _Thomas Hobbes_
(1588-1679) was his predecessor and countryman, whose name we need here
only mention, as it has no importance except for the history of natural
rights.
John Locke was born at Wrington, 1632. His student years he devoted to
philosophy and prominently to medicine, though his weak health prevented
him from practising as a physician. Few cares of business interrupted
his leisure, and he devoted his time mostly to literary pursuits. His
friendly relations with Lord Anthony Ashley, afterwards Earl of
Shaftesbury, exerted a weighty influence upon his course in life. At the
house of this distinguished statesman and author he always found the
most cordial reception, and an intercourse with the most important men
of England. In the year 1670 he sketched for a number of friends the
first plan of his famous _Essay on the Human Understanding_, though the
completed work did not appear till 1689. Locke died aged 72 in the year
1704. His writings are characterized by clearness and precision,
openness and determinateness. More acute than profound in his
philosophizing, he does not in this respect belie the characteristic of
his nation. The fundamental thoughts and results of his philosophy have
now become common property, especially among the English, though it
should not therefore be forgotten that he is the first who has
scientifically established them, and is, on this account, entitled to a
true place in the history of philosophy, even though his principle was
wanting in an inner capacity for development.
Locke’s Philosophy (_i. e._ his theory of knowledge, for his whole
philosophizing expends itself in investigating the faculty of knowing)
rests upon two thoughts, to which he never ceases to revert: first
(negatively), there are no innate ideas; second (positively), all our
knowledge arises from experience.
Many, says Locke, suppose that there are innate ideas which the soul
receives coetaneous with its origin, and brings with it into the world.
In order to prove that these ideas are innate, it is said that they
universally exist, and are universally valid with all men. But admitting
that this were so, such a fact would prove nothing if this universal
harmony could be explained in any other way. But men mistake when they
claim such a fact. There is, in reality, no fundamental proposition,
theoretical or practical, which would be universally admitted. Certainly
there is no such practical principle, for the example of different
people as well as of different ages shows that there is no moral rule
universally admitted as valid. Neither is there a theoretical one, for
even those propositions which might lay the strongest claim to be
universally valid, _e. g._ the proposition,—“what is, is,” or—“it is
impossible that one and the same thing should be and not be at the same
time,”—receive by no means a universal assent. Children and idiots have
no notion of these principles, and even uncultivated men know nothing of
these abstract propositions. They cannot therefore have been imprinted
on all men by nature. If ideas were innate, then they must be known by
all from earliest childhood. For “to be in the understanding,” and “to
become known,” is one and the same thing. The assertion therefore that
these ideas are imprinted on the understanding while it does not know
it, is hence a manifest contradiction. Just as little is gained by the
subterfuge, that these principles come into the consciousness _so soon_
as men use their reason. This affirmation is directly false, for these
maxims which are called universal come into the consciousness much later
than a great deal of other knowledge, and children, _e. g._ give many
proofs of their use of reason before they know that it is impossible
that a thing should be and at the same time not be. It is only correct
to say that no one becomes conscious of these propositions without
reasoning,—but to say that they are all known with the first reasoning
is false. Moreover, that which is first known is not universal
propositions, but relates to individual impressions. The child knows
that sweet is not bitter long before he understands the logical
proposition of contradiction. He who carefully bethinks himself, will
hesitate before he affirms that particular dicta as “sweet is not
bitter,” are derived from universal ones. If the universal propositions
were innate, then must they be the first in the consciousness of the
child; for that which nature has stamped upon the human soul must come
into consciousness antecedently to any thing which she has not written
there. Consequently, if there are no innate ideas, either theoretical or
practical, there can be just as truly no innate art nor science. The
understanding (or the soul) is essentially a _tabula rasa_,—a blank and
void space, a white paper on which nothing is written.
How now does the understanding become possessed of ideas? Only through
experience, upon which all knowledge rests, and on which as its
principle all knowledge depends. Experience itself is twofold; either it
arises through the perception of external objects by means of the sense,
in which case we call it sensation; or it is a perception of the
activities of our own understanding, in which case it is named the inner
sense, or, better, reflection. Sensation and reflection give to the
understanding all its ideas; they are the windows through which alone
the light of ideas falls upon the naturally dark space of the mind;
external objects furnish us with the ideas of sensible qualities, and
the inner object, which is the understanding itself, offers us the ideas
of its own activities. To show the derivation and to give an explanation
of all the ideas derived from both is the problem of the Lockian
philosophy. For this end Locke divides ideas (representations or
notions) into _simple_ and _compound_. _Simple ideas_, he names those
which are impressed from without upon the understanding while it remains
wholly passive, just as the images of certain objects are represented in
a mirror. These simple ideas are _partly_ such as come to the
understanding through an individual sense, _e. g._ the ideas of color,
which are furnished to the mind through the eye, or those of sound,
which come to it through the ear, or those of solidity or
impenetrability, which we receive through the touch; _partly_ such as a
number of senses have combined to give us, as those of space and of
motion, of which we become conscious by means of the sense both of touch
and of sight; _partly_ such as we receive through reflection, as the
idea of thought and of will; and _partly_, in fine, such as arise from
both sensation and reflection combined, _e. g._ power, unity, &c. These
simple ideas form the material, as it were the letters of all our
knowledge. But now as language arises from a manifold combination of
letters, syllables and words, so the understanding forms complex ideas
by the manifold combination of simple ideas with each other. The complex
ideas may be referred to three classes, viz.: the ideas of mode, of
substance, and of relation. Under the ideas of mode, Locke considers the
modifications of space (as distance, measurement, immensity, surface,
figure, &c.), of time (as succession, duration, eternity), of thought
(perception, memory, abstraction, &c.), of number, power, &c. Special
attention is given by Locke to the conception of substance. He explains
the origin of this conception in this way, viz.: we find both in
sensation and reflection, that a certain number of simple ideas seem
often to be connected together. But as we cannot divest ourselves of the
impression that these simple ideas have not been produced through
themselves, we are accustomed to furnish them with a ground in some
existing substratum, which we indicate with the word substance.
Substance is something unknown, and is conceived of as possessing those
qualities which are necessary to furnish us with simple ideas. But from
the fact that substance is a product of our subjective thinking, it does
not follow that it has no existence outside of ourselves. On the
contrary, this is distinguished from all other complex ideas in the fact
that this is an idea which has its archetype distinct from ourselves,
and possesses objective reality, while other complex ideas are formed by
the mind at pleasure, and have no reality corresponding to them external
to the mind. We do not know what is the archetype of substance, and of
the substance itself we are acquainted only with its attributes. From
considering the conception of substance, Locke next passes over to the
idea of _relation_. A relation arises when the understanding has
connected two things with each other, in such a way, that in considering
them it passes over from the one to the other. Every thing is capable of
being brought by the understanding into relation, or what is the same
thing, to be transformed into something relative. It is consequently
impossible to enumerate the sum of every possible relation. Hence Locke
treats only of some of the more weighty conceptions of relation, among
others, that of identity and difference, but especially that of cause
and effect. The idea of cause and effect arises when our understanding
perceives that any thing whatsoever, be it substance or quality, begins
to exist through the activity of another. So much concerning ideas. The
combination of ideas among themselves gives the conception of knowing.
Hence knowledge stands in the same relation to the simple and complex
ideas as a proposition does to the letters, syllables and words which
compose it. From this it follows that our knowledge does not pass beyond
the compass of our ideas, and hence that it is bounded by experience.
These are the prominent thoughts in the Lockian philosophy. Its
empiricism is clear as day. The mind, according to it, is in itself
bare, and only a mirror of the outer world,—a dark space which passively
receives the images of external objects; its whole content is made by
the impressions furnished it by material things. _Nihil est in
intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu_—is the watchword of this
standpoint. While Locke, by this proposition, expresses the undoubted
preponderance of the material over the intellectual, he does so still
more decisively when he declares that it is possible and even probable
that the mind is a material essence. He does not admit the reverse
possibility, that material things may be classed under the intellectual
as a special kind. Hence with him mind is the secondary to matter, and
hence he is seen to take the characteristic standpoint of realism (_cf._
§ XXVII). It is true that Locke was not always logically consistent, and
in many points did not thoroughly carry out his empiricism: but we can
clearly see that the road which will be taken in the farther development
of this direction, will result in a thorough denial of the ideal factor.
The empiricism of Locke, wholly national as it is, soon became the
ruling philosophy in England. Standing on its basis we find _Isaac
Newton_, the great mathematician (1642-1727), _Samuel Clarke_, a
disciple of Newton, whose chief attention was given to moral philosophy
(1675-1729), the English moralists of this period, _William Wollaston_
(1659-1724), the Earl of _Shaftesbury_ (1671-1713), _Francis Hutcheson_
(1694-1746), and even some opponents of Locke, as _Peter Brown_, who
died 1735.