6 certain or as doubtful for one sensation as for another.' Two certainties are not more sure than one, nor can two doubts make a certainty. The other confirmations' alike lie in the words 'product' and 'organ.' A man has a certain idea :' afterwards he has another like it, but differing in liveliness and in the accompanying pleasure or pain. If he already has, or if the ideas severally bring with them, the idea of a producing outward thing to which parts of his body are organs, on the one hand, and of a self having power' on the other, then the liveliness, and the accompanying pleasure or pain, may become indications of the action of the thing, as their absence may be so of the action of the man's self; but not otherwise. Locke throughout, in speaking of the simple ideas as produced or recalled, implies that they carry with them the consciousness of a cause, either an outward thing or the self, and only by so doing can he find in them the needful confirmations' of the testimony of the senses.' This testimony is confirmed just because it distinguishes of itself between the work of nature,' which is real, and the work of the man, which is a fiction. In other words, the confirmation is nothing else than the testimony itself -a testimony which, as we have seen, since it supposes consciousness, as such, to be consciousness of a thing, eliminates by anticipation the question as to the agreement of consciousness with things, as with the extraneous. means the invented 63. The distinction between the real and the fantastic, This asaccording to the passages under consideration, thus depends cription upon that between the work of nature and the work of man. clothing of It is the confusion between the two works that renders the sensation fantastic possible, while it is the consciousness of the distinc- with tion that sets us upon correcting it. Where all is the work relations. of man and professes to be no more, as in the case of mixed modes,' there is no room for the fantastic (Book II. chap. xxx. sec. 4, and Book IV. chap. iv. sec. 7); and where there is ever so much of the fantastic, it would not be so for us, unless we were conscious of a work of nature,' to which to oppose it. But on looking a little closer we find that to be conscious of an idea as the work of nature, in opposition to we come to consider his doctrine of What is meant by restricting the testimony of sense to present existeuce? the work of man, is to be conscious of it under relations which, according to Locke, are the inventions of man. It is nothing else than to be conscious of it as the result of something having power to produce it' (Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 2), i. e. of a substance, to which it is related as a quality. 'Nature' is just the something we know not what,' which is substance according to the abstract idea' thereof. Producing ideas, it exercises powers, as it essentially belongs to substance to do, according to our complex idea of it. (Book II. chap. xxiii. secs. 9, 10.) But substance, according to Locke, whether as abstract or complex idea, is the workmanship of the mind,' and power, as a relation (Book II. chap. xxi. sec. 3, and chap. xxv. sec. 8), ' is not contained in the real existence of things.' Again, the idea of substance, as a source of power, is the same as the idea of cause. 'Whatever is considered by us to operate to the producing any particular simple idea, which did not before exist, hath thereby in our minds the relation of a cause.' (Book II. chap. xxvi. sec. 1.) But the idea of cause is not one that the mind has of things as they are in themselves,' but one that it gets by its own act in bringing things to, and setting them by, one another.' (Book II. chap. xxv. sec. 1.) Thus it is with the very ideas, which are the workmanship of man, that the simple idea has to be clothed upon, in order to 'testify to its being real, i. e. (in Locke's sense) not the work of man. 64. Thus invested, the simple idea has clearly lost its simplicity. It is not the momentary, isolated consciousness, but the representation of a thing determined by relations to other things in an order of nature, and causing an infinite series of resembling sensations to which a common name is applied. Thus in all the instances of sensuous testimony mentioned in the chapter before us, it is not really a simple sensation that is spoken of, but a sensation referred to a thing-not a mere smell, or taste, or sight, or feeling, but the smell of a rose, the taste of a pine-apple, the sight of the sun, the feeling of fire. (Book IV. chap. xi. secs. 4-7.) Immediately afterwards, however, reverting or attempting to revert to his strict doctrine of the mere individuality of the simple idea, he says that the testimony of the senses is a 'present testimony employed about particular objects, that do then affect them, and that sensitive knowledge extends no farther than such testimony. This statement, taken by itself, is ambiguous. Does it mean that sensation testifies to the momentary presence to the individual of a continuous existence, or is the existence itself as momentary as its presence to sense? The instance that follows does not remove the doubt. If I saw such a collection of simple ideas as is wont to be called man, existing together one minute since, and am now alone; I cannot be certain that the same man exists now, since there is no necessary connection of his existence a minute since with his existence now.' (Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 9.) At first sight, these words might seem to decide that the existence is merely coincident with the presence of the sensation-a decision fatal to the distinction between the real and fantastic, since, if the thing is only present with the sensation, there can be no combination of qualities in reality other than the momentary coincidence of sensations in us. Memory or imagination, indeed, might recall these in a different order from that in which they originally occurred; but, if this original order had no being after the occurrence, there could be no ground for contrasting it with the order of reproduction as the real with the merely apparent. if main render the testimony ing. 65. In the very sentence, however, where Locke restricts Such rethe testimony of sensation to existence present along with it, striction, he uses language inconsistent with this restriction. The tained, particular existence which he instances as testified to' is would that of such a collection of simple ideas as is wont to be called man.' But these ideas can only be present in succes- unmeansion. (See Book II. chap. vii. sec. 9, and chap. xiv. sec. 3.) Even the surface of the man's body can only be taken in by successive acts of vision; and, more obviously, the states of consciousness in which his qualities of motion and action are presented occupy separate times. If then sensation only testifies to an existence present along with it, how can it testify to the co-existence (say) of an erect attitude, of which I have a present sight, with the risibility which I saw a minute ago? How can the collection of ideas wont to be called man,' as co-existing, be formed at all? and, if it cannot, how can the present existence of an object so-called be testified to by sense any more than the past? The same doctrine, which is fatal to the supposition of a necessary connexion between the man's existence a minute since and his But it is not main testimony is to opera manent identical things. existence now,' is in fact fatal to the supposition of his existence as a complex of qualities at all. It does not merely mean that, for anything we know, the man may have died. Of course he may, and yet there may be continuity of existence according to natural laws, though not one for which we have the testimony of present sense, between the living body and the dead. What Locke had in his mind was the notion that, as existence is testified to only by present sensation, and each sensation is merely individual and momentary, there could be no testimony to the continued existence of anything. He could not, however, do such violence to the actual fabric of knowledge as would have been implied in the logical development of this doctrine, and thus he allowed himself to speak of sense as testifying to the co-existence of sensible qualities in a thing, though the individual sensation could only testify to the presence of one at a time, and could never testify to their nexus in a common cause at all. This testimony to co-existence in a present thing once admitted, he naturally allowed himself in the further assumption that the testimony, on its recurrence, is a testimony to the same co-existence and the same thing. The existence of the same man (he evidently supposes), to which sensation testified an hour ago, may be testified to by a like sensation now. This means that resemblance of sensation becomes identity of a thing that like sensations occurring at different times are interpreted as representing the same thing, which continuously exists, though not testified to by sense, between the times. 66. In short, as we have seen the simple idea of sensation emerge from Locke's inquiry as to the beginning of knowtained: the ledge transformed into the judgment, I have an idea different from other ideas which I did not make for myself,' so now tion of per- from the inquiry as to the correspondence between knowledge and reality it emerges as the consciousness of a thing now acting upon me, which has continued to exist since it acted on me before, and in which, as in a common cause, have existed together powers to affect me which have never affected me together. If in the one form the operation of thought in sense, the creation of the understanding' within the simple idea, is only latent or potential, in the other it is actual and explicit. The relations of substance and quality, of cause and effect, and of identity-all inventions of the mind—are necessarily involved in the immediate, spontaneous testimony of passive sense. of rela 67. It will be noticed that it is upon the first of these, the Locke's relation of substance and quality, that our examination of treatment Locke's Essay has so far chiefly gathered. In this it follows tions of the course taken by Locke himself. Of the idea of substance, cause and identity. eo nomine, he treats at large: of cause and identity (apart from the special question of personal identity) he says little. So, too, the report of the senses' is commonly exhibited as announcing the sensible qualities of a thing rather than the agency of a cause or continuity of existence. The difference, of course, is mainly verbal. Sensible qualities being, as Locke constantly insists, nothing but 'powers to operate on our senses' directly or indirectly, the substance or thing, as the source of these, takes the character of a cause. Again, as the sensible quality is supposed to be one and the same in manifold separate cases of being felt, it has identity in contrast with the variety of these cases, even as the thing has, on its part, in contrast with the variety of its qualities. Something, however, remains to be said of Locke's treatment of the ideas of cause and identity in the short passages where he treats of them expressly. Here, too, we shall find the same contrast between the given and the invented, tacitly contradicted by an account of the given in terms of the invented. which supposes 68. The relation of cause and effect, according to Locke's That from general statement as to relation, must be something 'not contained in the real existence of things, but extraneous and idea of superinduced.' (Book II. chap. xxv. sec. 8.) It is a com- cause preplex idea,' not belonging to things as they are in themselves, it." which the mind makes by its own act. (Book II. chap xii. secs. 1, 7, and chap. xxv. sec. 1.) Its origin, however, is thus described:-'In the notice that our senses take of the constant vicissitude of things, we cannot but observe that several particular, both qualities and substances, begin to exist; and that they receive this their existence from the due application and operation of some other being. From this observation we get our ideas of cause and effect. That which produces any simple or complex idea we denote by the general name cause; and that which is produced, effect. Thus, finding that in that substance which we call wax, fluidity, which is a simple idea that was not in it before, is constantly pro |