Kationale of this 'petitio

duced by the application of a certain degree of heat, we call the simple idea of heat, in relation to fluidity in wax, the cause of it, and fluidity the effect. So, also, finding that the substance, wood, which is a certain collection of simple ideas so-called, by the application of fire is turned into another substance called ashes, i.e. another complex idea, consisting of a collection of simple ideas, quite different from that complex idea which we call wood; we consider fire, in relation to ashes, as cause, and the ashes as effect.' Here we find that the 'given,' upon which the relation of cause and effect is 'superinduced' or from which the idea of it is got' (to give Locke the benefit of both expressions), professedly, according to the first sentence of the passage quoted, involves the complex or derived idea of substance. The sentence, indeed, is a remarkable instance of the double refraction which arises from redundant phraseology. Our senses are supposed to take notice of a constant vicissitude of things,' or substances. Thereupon we observe, what is necessarily implied in this vicissitude, a beginning of existence in substances or their qualities, 'received from the due application or operation of some other being.' Thereupon we infer, what is simply another name for existence thus given and received, a relation of cause and effect. Thus not only does the datum of the process of 'invention' in question, i.e. the observation of change in a thing, involve a derived idea, but a derived idea which presupposes just this process of invention.

69. Here again it is necessary to guard against the notion that Locke's obvious petitio principii might be avoided by principii. a better statement without essential change in his doctrine. of ideas. It is true that 'a notice of the vicissitude of things' includes that invention of the understanding' which it is supposed to suggest, but state the primary knowledge otherwise-reduce the vicissitude of things, as it ought to be reduced, in order to make Locke consistent, to the mere multiplicity of sensations-and the appearance of suggestion ceases. Change or vicissitude' is quite other than mere diversity. It is diversity relative to something which maintains an identity. This identity, which ulterior analysis may find in a law of nature,' Locke found in 'things' or 'substances.' By the same unconscious subreption, by which with him a sensible thing takes the place of sensation, 'vicissitude of things' takes the place of multiplicity of sensa

tions, carrying with it the observation that the changed state of the thing is due to something else. The mere multiplicity of sensations could convey no such observation,' any more than the sight of counters in a row would convey the notion that one received its existence' from the other. Only so far as the manifold appearances are referred, as its vicissitudes, to something which remains one, does any need of accounting for their diverse existence, or in consequence any observation of its derivation from some other being,' arise. Locke, it is true, after stating that it is upon a notice of the vicissitude of things that the observation in question rests, goes on to speak as if an origination of substances, which is just the opposite of their vicissitude, might be observed; and the second instance of production which he gives-that of ashes upon the burning of wood-seems intended for an instance of the production of a substance, as distinct from the production of a quality. He is here, however, as he often does, using the term substance' loosely, for a certain collection of simple ideas,' without reference to the 'substratum wherein they do subsist,' which he would have admitted to be ultimately the same for the wood and for the ashes. The conception, indeed, of such a substratum, whether vaguely as nature,' or more precisely as a 'real constitution of insensible parts' (Book III. chap. iii. secs. 18, &c.), governed all his speculation, and rendered to him what he here calls substance virtually a mode, and its production properly a 'vicissitude.'

Relation of

cause has

to be put

into sensi

tive ex

perience in

order to be

got from

70. We thus find that it is only so far as simple ideas are referred to things-only so far as each in turn, to use Locke's instance, is regarded as an appearance in a substance which was not in it before '--that our sensitive experience, the supposed datum of knowledge, is an experience of the vicissitudes of things; and again, that only as an experience of such vicissitude does it furnish the observation from which it. we get our ideas of cause and effect.' But the reference of a sensation to a sensible thing means its reference to a cause. In other words, the invented relation of cause and effect must be found in the primary experience in order that it may be got from it. '

'Locke's contradiction of himself in regard to this relation might be exhibited in a still more striking light by putting side by side with his account of

it his account of the idea of power.
The two are precisely similar, the idea
of power being represented as got by a
notice of the alteration of simple ideas

Origin of

identity according to Locke.

71. The same holds of that other product of the mind,' the idea of the relation of identity. This 'idea' according to Locke, is formed when, considering anything as existing at any determined time and place, we compare it with itself existing at another time.' 'In this consists identity,' he adds, ‘when the ideas it is attributed to, vary not at all from what they were that moment wherein we consider their former existence, and to which we compare the present; for we never finding nor conceiving it possible that two things of the same kind should exist in the same place at the same time, we rightly conclude that whatever exists anywhere, at any time, excludes all of the same kind, and is there itself alone. When, therefore, we demand whether anything be the same or no? it refers always to something that existed such a time in such a place, which it was certain at that instant was the same with itself, and no other; from whence it follows that one thing cannot have two beginnings of existence, nor two things one beginning; it being impossible for two things of the same kind to be or exist in the same instant in the very same place, or one and the same thing in different places. That, therefore, that had one beginning, is the same thing; and that which had a different beginning in time and place from that is not the same, but diverse.' He goes on to inquire about the principium individuationis, which he decides is 'existence itself, which determines a being of any sort to a particular time and place, incommunicable to two beings of the same kind . . . for being at that instant what it is and nothing else, it is the same, and so must continue as long as its existence is continued; for so long it will be the same, and no other.' (Book II. chap. xxvii. secs. 1—3).

Relation of identity not to be

dis

72. It is essential to bear in mind with regard to identity, as with regard to cause and effect, that no distinction according to Locke can legitimately be made between the tinguished relation and the idea of the relation. As to substance, it is true, he was driven in his controversy with Stillingfleet to distinguish between the being and the idea thereof,' but in dealing with relation he lence to his proper system.

from idea

of it.

in things without (Book 11. chap. xxi.
sec. 1), just as the idea of cause and
effect is. Power, too, he expressly says,
is a relation. Yet, although the idea of
it, both as derived and as of a relation,

does not attempt any such vioBetween the 'idea' as such and

ought to be complex, he reckons it a simple and original one, and by using it interchangeably with sensible quality' makes it a primary datum of sense.

'being' as such, his new way of ideas,' as Stillingfleet
plaintively called it, left no fair room for distinction. In
this indeed lay its permanent value for speculative thought.
The distinction by which alone it could consistently seek to
replace the old one, so as to meet the exigencies of language
and knowledge, was that between simple ideas, as given and
necessarily real, and the reproductions or combinations in
which the mind may alter them. But since
But since every relation
implies a putting together of ideas, and is thus always, as Locke
avows, a complex idea or the work of the mind, a distinction
between its being and the idea thereof, in that sense of the
distinction in which alone it can ever be consistently admitted
by Locke, was clearly inadmissible. Thus in the passages
before us the relation of identity is not explicitly treated as
an original being' or 'existence.' It is an idea formed by
the mind upon a certain consideration of things' being or
existent. But on looking closely at Locke's account, we find
that it is only so far as it already belongs to, nay constitutes,
the things, that it is formed upon consideration of them.

vented' reforms the

lation

'very being of things.'

73. When it is said that the idea of identity, or of any other This inrelation, is formed upon consideration of things as existing in a certain way, this is naturally understood to mean-indeed, otherwise it is unmeaning-that the things are first known as existing, and that afterwards the idea of the relation in question is formed. But according to Locke, as we have seen,' the first and simplest act of knowledge possible is the perception of identity between ideas. Either then the 'things,' upon consideration of which the idea of identity is formed, are not known at all, or the knowledge of them involves the very idea afterwards formed on consideration of them. Locke, having at whatever cost of self-contradiction to make his theory fit the exigencies of language, virtually adopts the latter alternative, though with an ambiguity of expression which makes a definite meaning difficult to elicit. We have, however, the positive statement to begin with, that the comparison in which the relation originates, is of a thing with itself as existing at another time. Again, the 'ideas' (used interchangeably with things'), to which identity is attributed, 'vary not at all from what they were at that moment wherein we consider their former existence.' It is here clearly implied that 'things' or 'ideas' exist, i.e. are

1 See above, paragraph 25.

Locke fails to dis

tinguish

between

identity and mere unity.

given to us in the spontaneous consciousness which we do not make, as each one and the same throughout a multiplicity of times. This, again, means that the relation of identity or sameness, i.e. unity of thing under multiplicity of appearance, belongs to or consists in the 'very being' of those given objects of consciousness, which are in Locke's sense the real, and upon which according to him all relation is superinduced by an after-act of thought. So long as each such object 'continues to exist,' so long its 'sameness with itself must continue,' and this sameness is the complex idea, the relation, of identity. Just as before, following Locke's lead, we found the simple idea, as the element of knowledge, become complex-a perceived identity of ideas; so now mere existence, the 'very being of things' (which with Locke is only another name for the simple idea), resolves itself into a relation, which it requires consideration by the mind' to constitute.

74. The process of self-contradiction, by which a 'creation of the mind' finds its way into the real or given, must also appear in a contradictory conception of the real itself. Kept pure of all that Locke reckons intellectual fiction, it can be nothing but a simple chaos of individual units: only by the superinduction of relation can there be sameness, or continuity of existence, in the minutest of these for successive moments. Locke presents it arbitrarily under the conception of mere individuality or of continuity, according as its distinction from the work of the mind, or its intelligible content, happens to be before him. A like see-saw in his account of the individuality and generality of ideas has already been noticed. In his discussion of identity the contradiction is partly disguised by a confusion between mere unity on the one hand, and sameness or unity in difference, on the other. Thus, after starting with an account of identity as belonging to ideas which are the same at different times, he goes on to speak of a thing as the same with itself, at a single instant. So, too, by the principium individuationis, he understands 'existence itself, which determines a being of any sort to a particular time and place.' As it is clear from the context that by the principium individuationis he meant the source of identity or sameness, it will follow that by 'sameness' he understood singleness of a thing in a single time and place. Whence then the plurality, without which 'sameness' is 1 See above, paragraphs 43, and the following.