"If by this inquiry into the nature of the understanding," he added, “I can discover the powers thereof, how far they reach, to what things they are in any degree proportionate, and where they fail us, I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension, to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether, and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things. which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities. We should not then, perhaps, be so forward, out of an affectation of an universal knowledge, to raise questions, and perplex ourselves and others with disputes, about things to which our understandings are not suited. and of which we cannot frame in our minds any clear or distinct perceptions, or whereof (as it has perhaps too often happened) we have not any notions at all. If we can find out how far the understanding can extend its view, how far it has faculties to attain certainty, and in what cases it can only judge and guess, we may learn to content ourselves with what is attainable by us in this state." 1

The excellent meaning of those sentences must not be lost sight of. Locke never varied in his assertion that truth is the noblest pursuit of man; but he held that truth is only to be attained by knowledge, and knowledge by intelligence or understanding. Let us do all we can, he said in effect, to find out what we can understand, and, as a preliminary thereto, how we can understand. Let us study the anatomy of our minds, their original nature and composition, their capacities for expansion and development, and the best ways of expanding and developing them. Unless we do that, we shall not know what material we are working with or what work it is fit for. But when that is done, as far as we are able to do it, we must take care that we make right use of our minds. Let us always remember that they can only be used in the acquisition of knowledge, that we are bound to store them with all the knowledge they are capable of; and also, that it is not possible to store them with knowledge for which they have not capacities, and that to attempt to do this is as useless and injurious as to abstain from supplying them with such knowledge as they have power to apprehend. We can know nothing that we do not understand, and they alone are philosophers who educate themselves into avoidance of the unknowable as well as into acquisition of that which can be known. There is a "quiet ignorance" to which the wisest men must resign themselves, just as there is a quiet ignorance "with which none but fools will be content." The old-world sophists, whether pre-Socratic or post-Aristotelian, who professed to know

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1 Concerning Human Understanding,' b. i., ch. i., § 4.

1687.

Æt. 55.

THE PURPOSE AND METHOD OF THE ESSAY.

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everything, strayed as far from the paths of wisdom as the mindless sensualists whose whole theory of life was expressed in the motto, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." The modern disciples of Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, who, each in their own rival ways, undertook to solve all the secrets of the universe, were as impotent instructors as they who taught that there were no secrets in the universe to be solved. If we would make good use of our intellects, we must find out their strength and capacity, and, while learning all we can, steer clear of what cannot be learned.

"When we know our own strength," said Locke, "we shall the better know what to undertake with hopes of success; and when we have well surveyed the powers of our own minds, and made some estimate what we may expect from them, we shall not be inclined either to sit still and not set our thoughts on work at all, in despair of knowing anything, or, on the other side, question everything and disclaim all knowledge because some things are not to be understood. It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean. It is well he knows that it is long enough to reach the bottom at such places as are necessary to direct his voyage and caution him against running upon shoals that may ruin him. Our business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct. If we can find out those measures whereby a rational creature, put in that state in which man is in . this world, may and ought to govern his opinions, and actions depending thereon, we need not to be troubled that some other things escape our knowledge." We must not expect to understand everything; but we are bound to understand all we can. "It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant, who would not attend his business by candle-light, to plead that he had not broad sunshine. The candle that is set in us shines bright enough for all our purposes." "If we will disbelieve everything because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do much-what as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly." 1

Having thus explained the scope and purport of the discussion on which he proposed to embark, Locke, before proceeding to the discussion itself, interpolated three chapters on innate principles. He had to disprove the erroneous opinions that were in vogue before he could build up his own system of intellectual activity. "To clear my way," he said, "to those foundations which I conceive are the only true ones whereon to establish those notions we

1 Concerning Human Understanding,' b. i., ch. i., §§ 6, 5.

can have of our own knowledge, it hath been necessary for me to give an account of the reasons I had to doubt of innate principles. And since the arguments which are against them do some of them rise from common received opinions, I have been forced to take several things for granted. which is hardly avoidable to any one whose task is to show the falsehood or improbability of any tenet; it happening in controversial discourses as it does in assaulting of towns, where, if the ground be but firm whereon the batteries are erected, there is no farther inquiry of whom it is borrowed nor whom it belongs to, so it affords but a fit rise for the present purpose.' "1 Locke only borrowed from himself the groundwork that he had done his best to establish in the later, but apparently earlier written portions of his work.

"There is nothing more commonly taken for granted," he said, referring especially to the Cartesians, and generally to the great majority of theologians, "than that there are certain principles, both speculative and practical (for they speak of both), universally agreed upon by all mankind, which therefore, they argue, must needs be constant impressions, which the souls of men receive in their first beings, and which they bring into the world with them, as necessarily and really as they do any of their inherent faculties." 2 This assumption he proceeded to controvert with care and skill that were not wasted in his own day, seeing that he had all the pseudo-Aristotelian schoolmen and their benighted successors, as well as all the Cartesians, to contend against. But his arguments on this score are now chiefly noteworthy as antique weapons which did good service in their own day, but for which the need has almost passed away. In the course of his argument, however, he took occasion to give an excellent summary of his own theory as to the way in which knowledge is acquired.

"The senses at first let in particular ideas," he said, "and furnish the yet empty cabinet, and, the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, and names got to them. Afterwards the mind, proceeding farther, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general names. In this manner the mind comes to be furnished with ideas and language, the materials about which to exercise its discursive faculty; and the use of reason becomes more visible as these materials that give it employment increase. But, though the having of general ideas and the use of general words and reason usually grow together, yet I see not how this any way proves them innate. The knowledge of some truths, I confess, is

1 Concerning Human Understanding,' b. i., ch. iv., § 25.

2 Ibid., b. i., ch. ii., § 2.

Et. 55.

very early in the mind, but in a way that shows them not to be innate. For, if we will observe, we shall find it still to be about ideas not innate but acquired; it being about those first which are imprinted by external things, with which infants have earliest to do, which make the most frequent impressions on their senses. In the ideas thus got the mind discovers that some agree and others differ, probably as soon as it has any use of memory, as soon as it is able to retain and perceive distinct ideas. But whether it be then or no, this is certain, it does so long before it has the use of words, or comes to that which we commonly call the use of reason.' For a child knows as certainly befor it can speak the difference between the ideas of sweet and bitter (that is, that sweet is not bitter) as it knows afterwards, when it comes to speak, that wormwood and sugar plums are not the same thing. A child knows not that three and four are equal to seven till he comes to be able to count seven, and has got the name and idea of equality; and then, upon explaining those words, he presently assents to, or rather perceives the truth of, that proposition. But neither does he then readily assent because it is an innate truth, nor was his assent wanting till then because he wanted the use of reason; but the truth of it appears to him as soon as he has settled in his mind the clear and distinct ideas that these names stand for; and then he knows the truth of that proposition upon the same grounds, and by the same means, that he knew before that a rod and a cherry are not the same thing, and upon the same grounds also that he may come to know afterwards that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be.'"1

"These characters," Locke urged further, "if they were native and original impressions, should appear fairest and clearest in whom we find no footsteps of them; and it is, in my opinion, a strong presumption that they are not innate, since they are least known to those in whom, if they were innate, they must needs exert themselves with most force and vigour. For children, idiots, savages, illiterate people, being of all others the least corrupted by custom or borrowed opinions-learning and education having not cast their native thoughts into new moulds, nor, by superinducing foreign or studied doctrines, confounded those fair characters nature had written there -one might reasonably imagine that in their minds these innate notions should lie open fairly to every one's view, as it is certain the thoughts of children do. It might very well be expected that these principles should be perfectly known to naturals, which, being immediately stamped on the soul (as these men suppose), can have no dependence on the constitutions or

1 Concerning Human Understanding,' b. i., ch. ii., §§ 15, 16.

organs of the body, the only confessed difference between them and others. One would think, according to these men's principles, that all these native beams of light, were there any such, should in those who have no reserves, no arts of concealment, shine out in their full lustre, and leave us in no more doubt of their being there than we are of their love of pleasure and abhorrence of pain. But, amongst children, idiots, savages, and the grossly illiterate, what general maxims are to be found? What universal principles of knowledge? Their notions are few and narrow, borrowed only from those objects they have most to do with, and which have made upon their senses the frequentest and strongest impressions. A child knows his nurse and his cradle, and, by degrees, the playthings of a little more advanced age; and a young savage has, perhaps, his head filled with love and hunting, according to the fashion of his tribe; but he that from a child untaught, or a wild inhabitant of the woods, will expect abstract maxims and reputed principles of science, will, I fear, find himself mistaken. Such kind of general propositions are seldom mentioned in the huts of Indians, much less are they to be found in the thoughts of children, or any impression of them on the minds of naturals. They are the language and business of the schools and academies of learned nations, accustomed to that sort of conversation or learning, where disputes are frequent." "And if the first principles of knowledge and science are found not to be innate, no other speculative maxim can, better right pretend to be so."1

I suppose, with Proving first that no speculative or intellectual principles or propositions are innate, Locke went on to prove by the same line of argument that there is no warrant for asserting that any moral or practical principles or propositions are innate. There are no moral rules, he declared, which men obey unless they are taught to do so by others, and unless they learn their propriety from their own experience. "Justice and keeping of contracts is that which most men seem to agree in ;" but what man is faithful or just who has not first discovered or fancied he has discovered the expediency of faithfulness and justice? "If a Christian who has the view of happiness and misery in another life, be asked why a man must keep his word, he will give this as his reason, 'Because God, who has the power of eternal life and death, requires it of us.' If a Hobbist be asked why, he will answer, 'Because the public requires it, and the Leviathan will punish you if you do not.' And, if one of the old philosophers had been asked, he would have answered, Because it is dishonest, below the dignity of a man, and opposite to virtue, the

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1 Concerning Human Understanding,' b. i., ch. ii., §§ 27,

28.