664 PSTCHOLOOT. 



three angles are equal to two right ones ? It is true also of a triangle 

 wherever it really exists. Whatever other figure exists that is not ex- 

 actly answerable to that idea in his mind is not at all concerned in that 

 proposition. And therefore he is certain all his knowledge concerning 

 such ideas is real knowledge: because, intending things no farther than 

 they agree with those his ideas, he is sure what he knows concerning 

 those figures when they have barely an ideal existence in his mind will 

 hold true of them also when they have a real existence in matter." But 

 "that any or what bodies do exist, that we are left to our senses to 

 discover to us as far as they can." * 



Locke accordingly distinguishes between ' mental truth ' 

 and 'real truth.' t The former is intuitively certain ; the 

 latter dependent on experience. Only hypotheticaUy can we 

 affirm intuitive truths of real things — by supposing, namely, 

 that real things exist which corresj^ond exactly -with the 

 ideal subjects of the intuitive propositions. 



If our senses corroborate the supposition all goes well. 

 But note the strange descent in Locke's hands of the dig- 

 nity of a priori projjositions. By the ancients they were 

 considered, without farther question, to reveal the constitu- 

 tion of Reality. Archetypal things existed, it was assumed, 

 in the relations in which we had to think them. The mind's 

 necessities were a warrant for those of Being ; and it was not 

 till Descartes' time that scepticism had so advanced (in * dog- 

 matic ' circles) that the warrant must itself be warranted, 

 and the veracity of the Deity invoked as a reason for hold- 

 ing fast to our natural belieis. 



But the intuitive propositions of Locke leave us as re- 

 gards outer reality none the better for their possession. 

 We still have to "go to our senses" to find what the 

 reality is. The vindication of the intuitionist position 

 is thus a barren victory. The eternal verities w^hich 

 the very structure of our mind lays hold of do not neces- 

 sarily themselves lay hold on extra-mental being, nor have 

 ,they, as Kant pretended later,:}: a legislating character even 



* Book IV. chaps, ix. § 1; vri. 14. 



f Chap. V. §§ 6, 8. 



:j: Kaut, by the way, made a strange tactical blunder in his way of 

 showing that the forms of our necessary thought are underived from ex- 

 perience. He insisted on tliought-forms with which experience largely 

 agrees, forgetting that the only forms which could not by any possibility 



