IDEAS, 31 



to. For it is evident we observe no footsteps in them of 

 making use of general signs for universal ideas ; from which 

 we have reason to imagine, that they have not the faculty of 

 abstracting, or making general ideas, since they have no use 

 of words, or any other general signs. 



"Nor can it be imputed to their want of fit organs to frame 

 articulate sounds that they have no use or knowledge of general 

 words ; since many of them, we find, can fashion such sounds, 

 and pronounce words distinctly enough, but never with any 

 such application ; and, on the other side, men, who through 

 some defect in the organs want words, yet fail not to express 

 their universal ideas by signs, which serve them instead of 

 general words ; a faculty which we see beasts come short in. 

 And therefore I think we may suppose, that it is in this that 

 the species of brutes are discriminated from men ; and it is 

 that proper difference wherein they are wholly separated, and 

 which at last widens to so vast a distance ; for if they have 

 any ideas at all, and are not bare machines (as some would 

 have them), we cannot deny them to have some reason. It 

 seems evident to me, that they do some of them in certain 

 instances reason, as that they have sense ; but it is only in 

 particular ideas, just as they received them from their senses. 

 They are the best of them tied up within those narrow bounds, 

 and have not (as 1 think) the faculty to enlarge them by any 

 kind of abstraction." * 



* Htwtan Understanding, bk. ii., chap, ii., lo, II. To this passage Berkeley 

 objected that it is impossible to form an abstract idea of quality as apart from any 

 concrete idea of object ; e.g. an idea of motion distinct from that of any body 

 moving. (See Principles of Human J^iiowledge, Introd. vii.-xix.). This is 

 a point which I cannot fully treat without going into the philosophy of the 

 great discussion on Nominalism, Realism, and Conceptualism — a matter which 

 would take me beyond the strictly psychological limits within which I desire to 

 confine my work. It will, therefore, be enough to point out that Berkeley's 

 criticism here merely amounts to showing that Locke did not pursue sufficiently 

 far his philosophy of Nominalism. What Locke did was to see, and to state, that 

 a general or abstract idea embodies a perception of likeness between individuals 

 of a kind while disregarding the differences ; what he failed to do was to take the 

 further step of showing that such an idea is not an idea in the sense of being a 

 mental image ; it is merely an intellectual symbol of an actually imposi«ible 

 existence, namely, of quality apart from object. Intellectual symbolism of this 



