highest perfection of human nature, to do otherwise.' Hence naturally flows the great variety of opinions concerning moral rules which are to be found. among men, according to the different sorts of happiness they have a prospect of, or propose to themselves; which could not be, if practical principles were innate and imprinted in our minds immediately by the hand of God.”1 Universal consent, Locke urged, would not in itself be a sufficient argument for the innateness of any moral rule that could be propounded; but it is the only argument adduced, and, since there is not a single moral rule that does obtain universal consent, the plea for its innateness is altogether unsupported. "When men have found some general propositions that could not be doubted of as soon as understood," he said, in concluding his preliminary discourse, "it was, I know, a short and easy way to conclude them innate. This being once received, it eased the lazy from the pains of search, and stopped the inquiry of the doubtful concerning all that was once styled innate; and it was of no small advantage to those who affected to be masters and teachers, to make this the principle of principles, that principles must not be questioned;' for having once established this tenet, that there are innate principles, it put their followers upon a necessity of receiving some doctrines as such; which was to take them off from the use of their own reason and judgment, and put them upon believing and taking them upon trust, without farther examination in which posture of blind credulity they might be more easily governed by, and made useful to, some sort of men, who had the skill and office to principle and guide them. Nor is it a small. power he gives one man over another, to have the authority to be the dictator of principles and teacher of unquestionable truths, and to make a man swallow that for an innate principle, which may serve to his purpose who teacheth them. Whereas, had they examined the ways whereby men came by the knowledge of many universal truths, they would have found them to result in the minds of men from the being of things themselves, when duly considered; and that they were discovered by the application of those faculties that were fitted by nature to receive and judge of them when duly employed about them." 2 In that first and introductory book, Locke, as he said, "endeavoured to prove that the mind is at first tabula rasa," and incidentally pointed out the mischievous effects of any other view. In the other three books he under 1 'Concerning Human Understanding,' b. i., ch. iii., §§ 2, 5, 6. took to show" the original from whence, and the ways whereby, we receive all the ideas our understandings are employed about in thinking." 1 The origin of all our ideas, he maintained, is experience: "in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself." And the two channels by which experience is acquired and knowledge is formed are sensation and reflection. The one includes every idea received directly through our senses, like those of colour, taste, and sound; and these vary according to the experience of the individual, a child who has never seen anything but black and white having "no more ideas of scarlet or green than he that from his childhood never tasted an oyster or a pineapple has of those particular relishes," and a person born blind having no idea at all of light or colour. The other includes all the ideas built up by reflection upon, or association of, the crude ideas of sensation." "If it shall be demanded, then, when a man begins to have any ideas, I think the true answer is, when he first has any sensation. For since there appear not to be any ideas in the mind before the senses have conveyed any in, I conceive that ideas in the understanding are coeval with sensation : which is such an impression or motion, made in some part of the body, as produces some perception in the understanding. In time 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 operations, proceeding from powers intrinsical and proper to itself; which, when reflected on by itself, becoming also objects of its contemplation, are, as I have said, the original of all knowledge. Thus the first capacity of human intellect is, that the mind is fitted to receive the impressions made on it, either through the senses, by outward objects, or by its own operations, when it reflects on them. This is the first step a man makes towards the discovery of anything, and the ground-work whereon to build all those notions which ever he shall have naturally in this world. All those sublime thoughts which tower above the clouds, and reach as high as heaven itself, take their rise and footing here: in all that good extent wherein the mind wanders, in those remote speculations it may seem to be elevated with, it stirs not one jot beyond those ideas which sense or reflection have offered for its contemplation," 3 1 The abstract written in 1687, and printed by Lord King, p. 362. 2 Concerning Human Understanding,' b. ii., ch. i., §§ 2—9, 20—22. 3 Ibid., b. ii., ch. i., §§ 23, 24. Locke was more careful in his definition than in his practice to distinguish between ideas and their causes. "Whatsoever immediate object, whatsoever perception, be in the mind when it thinks, that I call idea; and the power to produce any idea in the mind I call quality of the subject wherein that power is. Thus, whiteness, coldness, roundness, as they are sensations or perceptions in the understanding, I call ideas; as they are in the snowball which has the power to produce these ideas in the understanding, I call qualities. The original qualities that may be observed in bodies are solidity, extension, figure, number, motion, or rest; these, in whatsoever state body is put, are always inseparable from it." The ideas produced by these primary qualities are, he said, resemblances. Secondary qualities, not producing ideas by resemblance, are of two sorts. The first, "usually called sensible qualities," are "the power that is in every body, by reason of its sensible primary qualities, to operate after a peculiar manner on any of our senses, and thereby produce in us the different ideas of several colours, sounds, smells, tastes, etc." The second, "usually called powers," consist in "the power that is in any body, by reason of the particular constitution of its primary qualities, to make such a change in the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of another body as to make it operate on our senses differently from what it did before; thus the sun has a power to make wax white, and fire to make lead fluid." Locke's explanation of the way in which simple ideas of sensation enter the mind was not satisfactory. "Bodies operate upon one another by impulse," he said; "I can conceive no other way. When, then, they produce in us the ideas of any of their original qualities which are really in themlet us suppose that of extension or figure by the sight-it is evident that, the thing seen being at a distance, the impulse made on the organ must be by some insensible particles coming from the object to the eyes, and, by a continuation of that motion to the brain, those ideas are produced in us. For the producing, then, of the ideas of these original qualities in our understandings, we can find nothing but the impulse and motion of some insensible bodies. By the same way we may also conceive how the ideas of the colour and smell of a violet may as well be produced in us as of its figure, namely, by a certain impulse, on our eyes and noses, of particles of such a bulk, figure, number, and motion as those that come from violets when we see or smell them, and by the particular motion received in the organ and continued 1 The abstract printed by Lord King, p. 365. 24 Concerning Human Understanding,' b. ii., ch. viii., § 23. to the brain; it being no more impossible to conceive that God should annex such ideas to such motions with which they have no similitude, than that he should annex the idea of pain to the motion of a piece of steel dividing our flesh, with which that idea has also no resemblance." This notion of "impulses" involves contradictions of the teachings of modern science, both physical and physiological, which were not apparent to Locke and his disciples, still less to his opponents in his own day. In assuming, moreover, not only that "it is possible to conceive that God should annex certain ideas to certain motions with which they have no similitude," but that God actually does so, he offered a somewhat wavering front to the intuitional theories which he attacked, and exposed himself to much adverse criticism from his contemporaries and successors. But here he ventured upon ground on which no one before or after him has found a footing. Locke divided ideas into simple and complex. Simple ideas, "in the reception whereof the mind is only passive," he classified according to their derivation from one sense only, from various senses in combination, from sensation and reflection together, and from reflection alone. Complex ideas, in the formation of which the mind is active, he considered according as they are modes, substances, or relations. 66 Though the qualities that affect our senses," he said, are, in the things themselves, so united and blended that there is no separation, no distance between them, yet it is plain the ideas they produce in the mind enter by the senses, simple and unmixed. For though the sight and touch often take in from the same object, at the same time, different ideas, as the hand feels softness and warmth in the same piece of wax, yet the simple ideas thus united in the same subject are as perfectly distinct as those that come in by different senses; the coldness and hardness which a man feels in a piece of wax being as distinct ideas in the mind as the smell and whiteness of a lily, or as the taste of sugar and smell of a rose. And there is nothing can be plainer to a man than the clear and distinct perception he has of those simple ideas, which, being each in itself uncompounded, contains in itself nothing but one uniform appearance of the mind, and is not distinguishable into different ideas. These simple ideas, the materials of all our knowledge, are suggested and furnished to the mind only by those two ways, sensation and reflection. When the understanding is once stored with these simple ideas, it has the power to repeat, compare, and unite them, even to an almost 1 The abstract printed by Lord King, p. 365. This is a more precise account of Locke's view than he gave in the published essay. . 55 infinite variety, and so can make at pleasure new complex ideas. But it is not in the power of the most exalted wit or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways before mentioned, nor can any force of the understanding destroy those that are there; the dominion of man, in this little world of his own understanding, being much-what the same as it is in the great world of visible things, wherein his power, however managed by art and skill, reaches no farther than to compound and divide the materials that are made to his hand, but can do nothing towards the making the least particle of new matter or destroying one atom of what is already in being." 1 Among the simple ideas of sensation Locke specified solidity, extension, figure, sounds, tastes, colours and smells, motion and rest; among simple ideas of sensation and reflection combined, pleasure and pain, existence, unity, power, and succession; and the simple ideas of reflection alone which he described were perception, retention, discerning, comparing, compounding or enlarging, abstraction, and volition. Among complex ideas he treated especially of space and expansion, time and duration, number, and the like. His examination led him, not to cover, but to make large excursions over, the whole domain of metaphysics, and occasionally to cross the border into ethics. His method will be better shown by a few illustrations than by a bald analysis of the whole. 66 His remarks on pleasure and pain, and their issues, fairly represent Locke's power as a psychologist, and also curiously show how, taking from any source the notions that seemed to him most reasonable, he modified or altered them as his own judgment directed. In this case, as in many others, Hobbes was his immediate teacher, Aristotle his more remote one. "Delight or uneasiness," he said, one or other of them, join themselves to almost all our ideas, both of sensation and reflection; and there is scarce any affection of our senses from without, any retired thought of our mind within, which is not able to produce in us pleasure or pain. By pleasure and pain, I would be understood to signify whatsoever delights or molests us most, whether it arise from the thoughts of our minds, or anything operating on our bodies. For whether we call it satisfaction, delight, pleasure, happiness, etc., on the one side, or uneasiness, trouble, pain, torment, anguish, misery, etc., on the other, they are still but different degrees of the same thing, and belong to the ideas of pleasure and pain, delight or uneasiness." "Pain has the same efficacy and use to set us on work that pleasure 1. Concerning Human Understanding,' b. ii., ch. ii., §§ 1, 2. VOL. II. 8 |