VIII

LOCKE AS A MORALIST

THE question of Locke's position as a moralist is naturally suggested by what has gone before. Hardly any writer has had, in the long run, so great an influence on moral speculation; yet, so far as we know, he never handles the subject systematically. He lays down, indeed, its fundamental principles in his Essay, but he does not in any place work the matter out in detail, and in all its connections. It is, however, highly instructive, especially in reference to the later developments of the philosophy of which he was the founder, to see how Locke treated moral questions, and from what side he approached them. The very fact that he never applied his principles specifically to concrete subjects, as Paley and Bentham did long afterwards, and as Hobbes had done before him, gives peculiar clearness to the relation in which they stand to what we now call Utilitarianism.

The moral principles of the Essay on the Human Understanding are not easy to connect (as we shall

attempt to show in noticing his political works) with the principles on which he treats the origin of governments, the rights of subjects and rulers, and the like. Locke, like Hobbes, would appear to have stopped short in his speculations, and to have allowed his mind to be influenced by words of which his own theories, fully carried out to all their consequences, would have greatly reduced the importance. Hobbes was a utilitarian, and an enemy of abstractions which do not represent facts, if ever there was one; yet Hobbes found it necessary to base all his political speculations upon a supposed social contract, for the keeping of which his philosophy provided no reason. Locke was the great enemy of the doctrine of innate ideas, yet it is exceedingly difficult to understand his theory of rights and natural laws without resorting to some view of the nature of rights and laws which involves that doctrine in one shape or another.

The passages of the Essay on the Human Understanding which principally relate to this subject, and which contain the germs of much speculation which was afterwards most fruitful, occur principally in two chapters (xx. and xxi.) of the Second Book. Chapter xx. is headed, 'Of Modes of Pleasure and Pain,' and chapter xxi. 'Of Power.' Each belongs to that division of the whole work which is concerned with ideas, and to that branch of the subject which relates to ideas of reflection, though pain and pleasure are naturally enough rated as ideas of sensation as well.

Locke's views upon the fundamental questions of

morals are expressed in connection with these two heads, and grow out of his investigation of them. His definition of good and evil is almost verbally the same with that of Hobbes. Things are good and evil only in reference to pleasure and pain. That we call "good" which is apt to cause or increase pleasure or diminish pain in us. And, on the contrary,

we name that "evil" which is apt to produce or increase any pain or diminish any pleasure in us.' Good and evil, he tells us, are the hinges on which our passions turn'-not a very happy, or indeed a completely intelligible, metaphor; and he proceeds to enumerate and define the passions in a passage much inferior, as it appears to us, to Hobbes's brilliant effort on the same subject.

This part of the matter is despatched in a couple of pages; but the chapter on Power,' which shows how good and evil are connected with our conduct, is one of the longest and most elaborate, though not perhaps one of the happiest, in the book. The pure elementary notion of power, as Locke understood it, is not altogether perspicuous. By observing changes in all sorts of objects we get to 'consider in one thing the possibility of having any of its simple ideas changed, and in another the possibility of making that change'; and this possibility of changing or being changed is power, active or passive. Thus, for instance, fire and wax have respectively a power to melt and a power to be melted.

Our idea of power is derived principally from reflec

tion on the origin of voluntary motion in ourselves; for thinking and motion are the only sorts of action of which we have any idea, and the motion of the various parts of our own bodies at the impulse of our wills is the only kind of motion which we are able to connect directly with active power. The motions of inanimate bodies suggest at most nothing more than what Locke describes as passive power-that is to say, a capacity of receiving motion transmitted from something else.

This being the general notion of power, Locke goes on to point out that there are in us two powers—namely, will and understanding. Will is the power to begin or forbear, continue or end, several actions of our minds and motions of our bodies barely by a thought or preference of the mind.' Volition is the exercise of that power with regard to any particular act. Understanding is the power of perception, which is of three sorts, including the perception of ideas in our minds, the perception of the signification of signs, and the perception of the connection or repugnancy, agreement or disagreement, there is between any of our ideas.

Locke carefully observes, and it is one of the most judicious observations to be found in the whole of his book, that the will and the understanding are by no means to be regarded as distinct agents, with their distinct provinces and authorities, acting like so many individuals, but rather as distinct acts of the same unit—the man; just as seeing and crying are distinct

acts of the eye, or smelling and sneezing of the

nose.

This account of power introduces an account of liberty. Liberty exists where, and extends as far as, a man is able to think or not to think, to move or not to move, according to the preference of his own mind. Necessity exists either where thought is absent, or where the power to act according to the preference of the mind is absent. It is impossible that a man should not do that which he is both willing and able to do, or that he should willingly do that which he does not prefer; though he may do that which he does not desire, for his preference may amount only to a choice of evils as when we prefer a surgical operation to the continuance of a dangerous, though not painful, state of things which it is to

remove.

Locke thus conceives the will as being a bare power, to which it would be an abuse of terms to apply such an epithet as free. It is like so much gunpowder which, if lighted, will explode with a certain degree of force, but the direction of that force, its application to this or that particular purpose, and the result produced by it, depend upon surrounding circumstances altogether independent of the powder itself. The man who either exerts the will or allows it to lie dormant is free; but the will itself is either operative or not, and is subject to no other qualification.

Such being the nature of the will, what is it that