a rough sketch of the doctrines in which he instructed his friends in the Exeter House chamber, and ultimately instructed the world. In his common-place book he made a notable entry beginning thus: "Sic cogitavit de intellectu humano Johannes Locke, anno 1671. Intellectus humanus cum cognitionis certitudine et assensus firmitate. I imagine that all knowledge is founded on, and ultimately derives itself from, sense or something analogous to it, and may be called sensation, which is done by our senses conversant about particular objects, which gives us the simple ideas or images of things, and thus we come to have ideas of heat and light, hard and soft, which are nothing but the reviving again in our minds these imaginations which those objects, when they affected our senses, caused in us, whether by motion or otherwise it matters not here to consider; and thus we do when we conceive heat or light, yellow or blue, sweet or bitter. And therefore I think that those things which we call sensible qualities are the simplest ideas we have, and the first object of our understanding."1

Long before 1671, from the time when, as an Oxford undergraduate, he began to study Descartes, it is clear that Locke had thought much "de intellectu humano," and had gradually arrived at very distinct opinions of his own, altogether opposed to the doctrine of innate ideas which Descartes had reinforced with so many new and powerful arguments. Before that date, too, it is evident that he had become a diligent and wise student of Hobbes, and had learnt quite as much from his Treatise of Human Nature' and his 'Leviathan,' as from the 'Discours de la Méthode' and the 'Meditationes' of Descartes.2

1 Lord King, p. 6.

2

* It is impossible to doubt that, when writing the paragraph quoted above,

If not before 1671, moreover, he made in subsequent years as wise and diligent study of the writings of other men who helped to make the seventeenth century famous

Locke had very clearly in his mind the opinions of Hobbes "de intellectu humano," though even then he may have so assimilated and modified them, and made them his own, that he had half forgotten the source from which he obtained them. As Hobbes is not much read now-a-days, and as it is important that his influence upon Locke should be understood, I here append a few representative extracts from his writings.

"The thoughts of man," he said, "are every one a representation or appearance of some quality or other accident of a body without us, which is commonly called an object; which object worketh upon the eyes, ears and other parts of a man's body, and, by diversity of working, produceth diversity of appearances. The original of them all is that which we call sense, for there is no conception in a man's mind which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from that original." "The cause of sense is the external body or object which keepeth the organ proper to each sense, either immediately, as in taste and touch, or mediately, as in seeing, hearing and smelling; which pressure, by the mediation of the nerves and other strings and membranes of the body, continueth inwards to the brain and heart, and causeth there a resistance or counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart to deliver itself, which endeavour, because outward, seemeth to be some matter without; and this seeming or fancy is what men call sense, and consisteth, as to the eye in a light or colour figured, to the ear in a sound, to the nostril in an odour, to the tongue and palate in a savour, and to the rest of the body in heat, cold, hardness, softness, and such other qualities as we discern by feeling: all which qualities, called sensible, are, in the object that causeth them, but so many motions of the matter by which it presseth our organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed are they anything else but divers motions; for motion produceth nothing but motion. But their appearance to us is fancy." "But the philosophy schools, through all the universities of Christendom, grounded upon certain texts of Aristotle, teach another doctrine, and say, for the cause of vision, that the thing seen sendeth forth on every side a visible species-in English, a visible show, apparition or aspect, or a being seen, the receiving whereof in the eye is seeing; and, for the cause of hearing, that the thing heard sendeth forth an audible species, that is, an audible aspect, which, entering at the ear, maketh hearing; nay, for the

for philosophical research, and yet more for philosophical suggestion, Gassendi being the chief of all these others, and the one to whom unquestionably Locke owed most.

cause of understanding also, they say the thing understood sendeth forth an intelligible species, which, coming into the understanding, makes us understand."—Leviathan,' part i., ch. i.

From that bold and bald theory of sense, or, as we should call it, sensation, different altogether from the Aristotelian view, Hobbes proceeded to develope his equally original theory of imagination-what James Mill has taught us to call ideation. Imagination he aptly defined as "the remains of past sense," "sense decaying or weakened by the absence of the object." (De Corpore,' ch. xxv., § 7.) “That when a thing lies still," he said, "unless somewhat else stir it, it will lie still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that, when a thing is in motion, it will be eternally in motion, unless somewhat else stay it, though the reason be the same, namely, that nothing can change itself, is not so easily assented to. For men measure, not only other men, but all other things, by themselves; and, because they find themselves subject, after motion, to pain and lassitude, think everything else grows weary of motion and seeks repose of its own accord, little considering whether it be not some other motion wherein that desire of rest they find in themselves consisteth. From hence it is that the schools say heavy bodies fall downwards out of an appetite to rest and to conserve their nature in that place which is most proper for them; ascribing appetite and knowledge of what is good for their conservation, which is more than man has, to things inanimate, absurdly. When a body is in motion, it moveth, unless something else hinder it, eternally; and whatsoever hindereth it cannot in an instant, but in time and by degrees, quite extinguish it; and, as we see in the water, though the wind cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after, so also it happeneth in that motion which is made in the internal parts of a man; for after the object is removed, or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the thing seen, though more obscure than when we see it. And this is it the Latins call imagination, from the image made in seeing, and apply the same, though improperly, to all the other senses; the Greeks call it fancy, which signifies appearance, and is as proper to one sense as to another. Imagination, therefore, is nothing but decaying sense." "This decaying sense, when we would express the thing itself, I mean fancy itself, we call imagination; but when we would express the decay, and signify that the sense is fading, old, and past, it is called memory. So that

When he found indeed that Gassendi, before Hobbes's works were published, had propounded and deduced from

imagination and memory are but one thing, which for divers considerations hath divers names." (Leviathan,' part i., ch. ii. With Hobbes's explanation of memory,' compare Descartes's-that "the pores of the brain through which the spirits before took their entrance are more easily opened to the spirits which demand re-entrance, so that, finding those pores, they make their way sooner through them than through others.")

66

Hobbes proceeded to show how and why "much memory, or memory of many things, is called experience;" and how and why imagination and memory may be either simple, as when one imagineth a man or horse which he hath seen before," or compounded, as when, from the sight of a man at one time and of a horse at another, we conceive in our mind a He pointed out also that dreams are imaginations, or memories, more or less distorted; and that when we see apparitions and visions, "fairies or walking ghosts," we see them only through some physical disorder that stirs irregularly the organs by which, in a healthy state, true impressions come to us. Finally, "the imagination that is raised in man or any other creature endued with the faculty of imagination, by words or other voluntary signs, is that we generally call understanding, and is common to man and beast; for a dog, by custom, will understand the call or the rating of his master, and so will many other beasts." "That understanding which is peculiar to man is the understanding, not only his will, but his conceptions and thoughts, by the sequel and contexture of the names of things into affirmations, negations and other forms of speech." Leviathan,' part i, ch. ii.

On his basis of sensation, imagination and memory, Hobbes built up his theory of "the consequence or train of imagination, called, to distinguish it from discourse in words, mental discourse," which is now known as the association of ideas. This mental discourse is at first unguided; the thoughts are left to run in any channel that offers itself. "And yet in this wild ranging of the mind a man may ofttimes perceive the way of it, and the dependence of one thought on another. For, in a discourse of our present civil war, what could seem more impertinent than to ask, as one did, what was the value of a Roman penny? Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough for the thought of the war introduced the thought of the delivering up the king to his enemies; the thought of that brought in the thought of the delivering up of Christ; and that again the thought of the

Epicurus many of the doctrines that he had learnt from Hobbes, but in a form much more to his taste, and

thirty pence, which was the price of that treason; and thence easily followed that malicious question. And all this in a moment of time: for thought is quick." Yet more wonderful is the train of guided thought, which consists either in seeking out the causes of effects that are apparent to us, or in tracing out effects from causes under our control. Therein we use remembrance as to the past, conjecture as to the future.

These are the limits of human understanding. "Besides sense and thoughts, and the train of thoughts, the mind of man has no other motion, though by the help of speech and method the same faculties may be improved to such a height as to distinguish men from all other living creatures. Whatsoever we imagine is finite. Therefore there is no idea or conception of anything we call infinite. No man can have in his mind an image of infinite magnitude, nor conceive infinite time, or infinite force, or infinite power. When we say anything is infinite, we signify only that we are not able to conceive the ends and bounds of the things named; having no conception of the thing, but of our own inability. And therefore the name of God is used, not to make us conceive him, for he is incomprehensible, and his greatness and power are unconceivable, but that we may honour him." Leviathan,'

part i., ch. iii.

A few more sentences must be quoted. "The remembrance of succession of one thing to another, that is, of what was antecedent and what consequent and what concomitant, is called an experiment; whether the same be made by us voluntarily, as when a man putteth anything into the fire to see what effect the fire will produce upon it; or not made by us, as when we remember a fair morning after a red evening. To have had many experiments is what we call experience, which is nothing else but remembrance of what antecedents have been followed by what consequents." "When a man hath so often observed like antecedents to be followed by like consequents, that whensoever he seeth the antecedent he looketh again for the consequent, or when he seeth the consequent maketh account there hath been the like antecedent, then he calleth both the antecedent and the consequent signs one of another, as clouds are signs of rain to come, and rain of clouds past." "The signs are but conjectural; and, according as they have often or seldom failed, so their assurance is more or less, but never full and evident. Experience concludeth nothing universally."- Human Nature,' ch. iv.