813 



LOCKE, JOHN. 



LOCKE, JOHN. 



914 



sensible objects or the operations of our minds. Hence there are 

 two kinds of ideas, ideas of sensation and ideas of reflection. Reflec- 

 tion might properly be called an internal sense. The latter are 

 subsequent to the former, and are inferior in distinctness to those 

 furnished to the mind through the sensuous impressions of outwarc 

 objects. Without consciousness it is, according to Locke, impossible 

 to have an idea ; for to have an idea and to be conscious of it is the 

 same thing. He accordingly maintains, at great length, against 

 Descartes, that the mind does not always think, and that its essence 

 does not consist in thinking. 



Xoiv all ideas, whether of sensation or reflection, correspond to 

 their objects, and there is no knowledge of things possible except as 

 determined by our ideas. These ideas are either simple, and not 

 admitting of further reduction, or complex. The simple rise from the 

 inner or outer sense ; and they are ultimately the sole materials ol 

 all knowledge, for all complex ideas may be resolved into them. The 

 understanding cannot originate any simple ideas, or change them, but 

 must passively receive them as they are presented to it. Locke here 

 makes the first attempt to give an analysis of the sensuous faculty, 

 to refer to each of the senses the ideas derived from them separately, 

 or from the combined operation of several. Thus light and colour 

 are derived from vision alone, but extension and figure from the 

 joint action of sight and touch. While the outer sense gives the 

 ideas of solidity, space, extension, figure, motion, and rest, and 

 those of thought and will are furnished by the inner sense or reflec- 

 tion, it is by the combined operation of both that we acquire the ideas 

 of existence, unity, power, and the like. In reference to the agree- 

 ment of ideas with their objects, Locke draws an important distinc- 

 tion between primary and secondary qualities : the former belong 

 really to objects, and are inseparable from them, and are extension, 

 solidity, figure, and motion; the latter, which are colour, smell, 

 sounds, and tastes, cannot be considered as real qualities of objects, 

 but still, as they are powers in objects themselves to produce various 

 sensations in the mind, their reality must in so far be admitted. Of 

 the operations of the understanding upon its ideas, perception and 

 retention are passive, but discerning is active. By perception Locke 

 understands the consciousness or the faculty of perceiving whatever 

 takes place within the mind ; it is the inlet of knowledge, while reten- 

 tion is the general power by which ideas once received are preserved. 

 This faculty acts either by keeping the ideas brought into it for some 

 time actually in view, which is called contemplation or attention, the 

 pleasure or pain by which certain ideas are impressed on the senses 

 contributing to fix them in the mind ; or else by repetition, when the 

 mind exerts a power to revive ideas which after being imprinted have 

 disappeared. This is memory, which is, as it were, the storehouse of 

 ideas. The ideas thus often ' refreshed,' or repeated, fix themselves 

 most clearly and lastingly in the mind. But in memory the mind is 

 oftentimes more than barely passive, the re-appearance of obliterated 

 pictures or idea* depending on the will. Discerning, by which term 

 he designates the logical activity of the intellect, consists in comparing 

 and compounding certain simple ideas, or in conceiving them apart 

 from certain relations of time and place. This is called abstraction, 

 by means of which particular ideas are advanced to generals. By 

 composition the mind forms a multitude of complex ideas, which are 

 either modes, substances, or relations. 



Locke then proceeds to show in detail how certain complex ideas 

 are formed out of simple ones. The idea of space is got by the 

 senses of sight and touch together ; certain combinations of relations 

 in space are measures, and the power of adding measure to measure 

 without limits is that which gives the idea of immensity. 



Figure is the relation which the parts of the termination of a cir- 

 cumscribed space have within themselves. He then proceeds to refute 

 the Cartesian doctrine, that body and extension are the same ; and 

 maintains that while body is full space is empty, and that all bodies 

 may easily pass into it ; and while the latter is not physically divisible, 

 that is, has not moveable parts, the parts of the former are moveable, 

 and iUelf is physically divisible. What however space is actually, is 

 left undetermined. He asserts the existence of a vacuum beyond the 

 utmost bounds of body, and this is proved by the power of annihilation 

 and the possibility of motion. The idea of succession arises from the 

 perception of a continued series of sensations, and by observing the 

 distance between two parts of the series we gain the idea of duration, 

 which, when determined by a certain measure, suggests that of time ; 

 and as we arrive at the idea of immensity by the perception that we 

 can enlarge any given extension without limit, so the unchecked 

 repetition of succession originates that of eternity. That of power is 

 formed partly by a perception that outward objects are produced and 

 destroyed by others, partly by that of the action of objects ou the 

 senses, but chiefly from that of the mind's internal operations. The 

 latter suggests the idea of active power, the former of passive. Now 

 the will is the power of producing the presence or absence of a parti- 

 cular idea, or to produce motion or rest, and liberty is the power to 

 think or not, to act or not to act, according as appears good to the 

 mind. The will is determined by the understanding, which itself is 

 influenced by a feeling of the unfitness of a present state, which is 

 called desire. 



AM to the origin of the idea of substance : wo often find certain 

 ideas connected together; and in consequence of this invariable asso- 



8100 BIT. VOl. III. 



ciation, we conceive of them as a single idea; and as the qualities 

 w hich originate these ideas have no separate subsistence in themselves, 

 we are driven to suppose the existence of a * somewhat ' as a support 

 of these qualities. To this somewhat we give the name of substance, 

 and relatively to it all qualities are called accidents. 



Of the ideas of relation, those of cause and effect are got fi'om the 

 observation that several particulars, both qualities and substances, 

 begin to exist, and receive their existence, from the due application 

 and operation of some.other being. In the same manner the ideas of 

 identity and diversity are derived from experience. When we compare 

 an object with itself at different times and places, and find it to be the 

 same, we arrive at the idea of identity. Whatever has the same 

 beginning in reference to time and place is the same, and a material 

 aggregate which neither decreases nor lessens is the same; but in 

 organical and living creatures, identity is determined not merely by 

 the duration of the material mass, but by that of the organical struc- 

 ture and the continuance of consciousness. Lastly, moral good and 

 evil are relations. Good and evil are nothing but that which occasions 

 pleasure and pain; and moral good and evil are the conformity of 

 human actions to some law whereby physical good or evil is produced 

 by the will and power of the law-maker. Law is of three kinds : 

 divine law, which measures siu and duty; civil, which determines 

 crime and innocence; and philosophical, or the law of opinion or 

 reputation, which measures virtue and vice. 



Having thus examined the origin and composition of ideas, Locke 

 proceeds to determine their general characters. He divides them 

 accordingly into clear and obscure, distinct and confused, into real and 

 fantastical, adequate and inadequate, and, lastly, into true and false. 

 In treating of this last distinction, he observes that all ideas are in 

 themselves true ; and they are not capable of being false until some 

 judgment is passed upon them, or, in other words, until something is 

 asserted or dented of them. But there is also this property in ideas, 

 that one suggests another, and this is the so-called associatiou of ideas. 

 There are associations of ideas which are natural and necessary, as 

 well as arbitrary, false, and unnatural combinations. The danger of 

 the last is vividly pointed out, which often arise from our having 

 seen objects connected together by chance. Hence the association, 

 which was originally purely accidental, is invariably connected in tho 

 imagination, which consequently biasses the judgment. Hence too a 

 number of errors, not only of opinion but of sentiment, giving rise to 

 unnatural sympathies and antipathies which not unfrequently closely 

 verge upon madness. This gives occasion to a variety of judicious 

 observations on the right conduct of education, the means of guarding 

 against the formation of such unnatural combinations of ideas, and 

 the method of correcting them when once formed, and of restoring the 

 regular and due associations which have their ground in the very 

 nature of the human mind aud its ideas. What however are the leading 

 laws of association, Locke has not attempted to determine. 



Before passing from this deduction of ideas to the examination of 

 the nature and extent of the knowledge which is acquired by means 

 of them, Locke devotes the third book of his ' Essay ' to the investiga- 

 tion of language and signs, which it is not important for our purpose 

 to state. 



Locke then proceeds to determine the nature, validity, and limits of 

 the human understanding. All knowledge, strictly defined, is the 

 perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas, and is conse- 

 quently limited to them. It extends therefore only so far as we are 

 able to perceive the validity of the combinations and relations of our 

 ideas, that is, so far as we are enabled to discover them by intuition, 

 demonstration, and sensation. Intuition, which Locke calls an imme- 

 diate perception of relation, does not apply to all ideas ; many must 

 be proved by means of some intermediate ideas. This is the province 

 of demonstration, every step of which however is an act of intuition. 

 Demonstration again does not apply to the proof of all ideas, since in 

 the case of many no middle ideas can be found by means of which the 

 comparison may be made. Sensation is still more limited, being con- 

 fined to what is actually passing in each sense. Generally, all know- 

 ledge directs itself to identity or diversity, co-existence, relation, and 

 the real existence of things. Identity and diversity are perceived by 

 intuition, aud we cannot have an idea without perceiving at the same 

 time that it is different from all others. With regard to co-existence 

 our knowledge is unlimited; for our ideas of substances are mere col- 

 lections or aggregates of certain single ideas in one subject; and from 

 the nature of these single ideas it is impossible to see how far they 

 are or are not combiuable with others. Hence we cannot determine 

 what qualities any object may possess in addition to those already 

 known to us. As to the actual existence of things, we have no intui- 

 tive knowledge thereof, except in the case of our existence ; that of 

 God is demonstrative, but of all other objects we only sensuously know 

 that they exist, that is, we perceive mediately by sensation their exist- 

 ence or presence. 



Locke next passes to an examination of propositions, axioms, and 

 definitions. The utility of axioms is denied on the ground that they 

 are not the only self-evident propositions, and because equal if not 

 greater certainty is contained in all particular identical propositions 

 aud limited cases. Moreover they do not serve to facilitate knowledge, 

 :or all particular propositions will find a more ready assent ; as, for 

 instance, the proposition, twice two are four, will be more easily 



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