376 



ON THE HYPOTHESIS 



which, in his own day, were supposed to consist of figure, extension, solidity 

 motion or rest, and number. These qualities being- real in the bodies in 

 which they appear, the ideas which really represent them are, in his opinion, 

 entitled to be called resemblances of them ; while the ideas of the secondary 

 qualities of bodies, or those which are not real but merely ostensible, or 

 which, in other words, do not intrinsically belong to the bodies in which they 

 appear, as colour, sound, taste, and smell, are not entitled to be called resem- 

 blances of them. Now, what does such observation upon these two sets of 

 qualities amount to? Plainly and unequivocally to this, and nothing more ; 

 that as the first set of ideas are real representatives of real qualities, and the 

 latter real representatives of ost'^nsible qualities, there is in the former case 

 a resemblance of reality, though there is no other resemblance, and, in the 

 latter case, no resemblance of reality, and, consequently, no resemblance 

 whatever. The resemblance is in respect to the reality of the qualities per- 

 ceived ; it is simply a resemblance of reality : here it begins, and here it ends. 

 But the adverse commentators before us contend, that it neither begins nor 

 ends here ; and that the word resemblance must necessarily import an actual 

 and material resemblance, — a corporeal copy or image ; and that, conse- 

 quently, the class of ideas referred to must necessarily be material and cor- 

 poreal things. So that it is not allowable to any man to say, that truth re- 

 sembles a rock, unless he means, and is prepared to prove, that truth is a 

 hard, stony mass of matter jutting into the sea, and fatal to ships that dash 

 against it. 



But many of Mr. Locke's own followers are said to have understood him 

 in this sense. Not, however, in regard to this distinction : though I am ready 

 to admit that many of those who have pretended to be his followers, have 

 misunderstood him upon the subject of ideas generally, and have affirmed, in 

 direct opposition to his own words, that, in the Essay on Human Under- 

 standing, all our ideas of sensation are supposed to be sensible representations 

 or pictures of the objects apprehended by the senses. This observation par- 

 ticularly applies to Locke's French commentators and followers, Condillac, 

 Turgot, Helvetius, Diderot, D'Alembert, Condorcet, Destutt-Tracy, and 

 Degerando : concerning whom Professor Stewart has made the following 

 just remark ; that while " these ingenious men have laid hold eagerly of this 

 common principle of reasoning, and have vied with each other in extolling 

 Locke for the sagacity which he has displayed in unfolding it, hardly two of 

 them can be named who have understood it precisely in the sense annexed 

 to it by the author. What is still more remarkable, the praise of Locke has 

 been loudest from those who seem to have taken the least pains to ascertain 

 the import of his conclusions."* 



The term object Mr. Locke has occasionally used in an equally figurative 

 sense. Thus book ii. ch. i. sect. 24: " In time," says he, "the mind comes 

 to reflect on its own operations about the ideas got by sensation ; and thereby 

 stores itself with a new set of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection. These 

 are the impressions that are made on our senses by outward objects that are 

 extrinsical to the mind, and its own operatioiis proceeding from powers intrin- 

 sical and proper to itself ; which, when reflected on by itself, becoming also 

 objects of its contemplation, are, as I have said, the originals of all know- 

 ledge." 



No words can more clearly prove that Locke regarded ideas of sensation 

 as impressions made by external objects, and not as objects themselves ; and 

 ideas of reflection as operations of the mind, and no more objects, literally so 

 considered, than in the preceding case. And hence, when, towards the close 

 of the above passage, he applies the term objects to these operations, he can 

 only in fairness be supposed to do it in a figurative sense : in which sense, 

 indeed, he applies the same term to ideas of all kinds in another place, where 

 he explains an idea to be " whatsoever is the object of the understanding 

 when a man thinks." And yet he has been accused, by the School of Com- 



* Essays, vol. i. p. 102. 



