abstract ideas having no real exis tence. 1.e. only to simple or complex, as originally given in sensation, and the same as retained or reproduced in the mind. It is only in the former form that the idea, however simple, reports, and thus (with Locke) itself is, a real existence. Such real existence is a particular' existence, and our knowledge of it a 'particular' knowledge. In other words, according to the only consistent doctrine that we have been able to elicit from Locke, it is a knowledge which consists in a consciousness, upon occasion of a present sensation-say, a sensation of redness-that some object is present here and now causing the sensation; an object which, accordingly, must be 'particular' or transitory as the sensation. The 'here and now,' as in such a case they constitute the particularity of the object of consciousness, so also render it a real existence. Separate these ('the circumstances of time and place' 2) from it, and it at once loses its real existence and becomes an 'abstract idea,' one of our own thoughts,' of which as 'in the mind' agreement or disagreement with some other abstract idea can be asserted in a general proposition; e.g. 'red is not blue.' (Book IV. chap. vii. sec. 4.) An ab stract idea may be a simple one. 82. It is between simple ideas, it will be noticed, that a relation is here asserted, and in this respect the proposition differs from such an one as may be formed when simple ideas have been compounded into the nominal essence of a thing, and in which some one of these may be asserted of the thing, being already included within the meaning of its name; e.g. a rose has leaves.' But as expressing a relation between ideas 'abstract' or 'in the mind,' in distinction from present sensations received from without, the two sorts of proposition, according to the doctrine of Locke's Fourth Book, stand on the same footing. It is a nominal essence with which both alike are concerned, and on this depends the general certainty or self-evidence, by which they are distinguished from 'experiment or observation without us.' These can never reach with certainty farther than the bare 1 See above, paragraph 56. In case there should be any doubt sec. 4) he distinctly speaks of the proposition red is not blue' as expressing a consideration of ideas in the understanding. It follows that it is not a proposition as to real existence. Already in Book 11. (chap. xxxi. sec. 12), the simple idea, as abstract, is spoken of as a nominal essence. NO GENERAL PROPOSITIONS ABOUT MATTER OF FACT. 67 instance' (Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 7): i.e., though the only channels by which we can reach real existence, they can never tell more than the presence of this or that sensation as caused by an unknown thing without, or the present disagreement of such present sensations with each other. As to the recurrence of such sensations, or any permanently real relation between them, they can tell us nothing. Nothing as to their recurrence, because, though in each case they show the presence of something causing the sensations, they show nothing of the real essence upon which their recurrence depends.' Nothing as to any permanently real relation between them, because, although the disagreement between ideas of blue and red, and the agreement between one idea of red and another, as in the mind, is self-evident, yet as thus in the mind they are not actual sensations' at all (Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 6), nor do they convey that 'sensitive knowledge of particular existence,' which is the only possible knowledge of it. (Book IV. chap. iii. sec. 21.) As actual sensations and indices of reality, they do indeed differ in this or that bare instance,' but can convey no certainty that the real thing or 'parcel of matter' (Book III. chap. iii. sec. 18), which now causes the sensation of (and thus is) red, may not at another time cause the sensation of (and thus be) blue." of nature 83. We thus come upon the crucial antithesis between How then relations of ideas and matters of fact, with the exclusion of is science general certainty as to the latter, which was to prove such possible? a potent weapon of scepticism in the hands of Hume. Of Cf. Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 5. 'If we could certainly know (which is impossible) where a real essence, which we know not, is-e.g. in what parcels of matter the real essence of gold is; yet could we not be sure, that this or that quality could with truth be affirmed of gold; since it is impossible for us to know that this or that quality or idea has a necessary connexion with a real essence, of which we have no idea at all.' Several passages, of course, can be adduced from Locke which are inconsistent with the statement in the text: e.g. Book rv. chap. iv. sec. 12. To make knowledge real concerning substances, the ideas must be taken from the real existence of things. Whatever simple ideas have been found to coexist 2 Cf. Book Iv. chap. iii. sec. 29; No 'uniformities of pheno mena' can be known. Locke not aware of the full effect of his own doctrine, its incompatibility with recognized science we can have no stronger sign than the fact that, after more than a century has elapsed since Locke's premisses were pushed to their legitimate conclusion, the received system of logic among us is one which, while professing to accept Locke's doctrine of essence, and with it the antithesis in question, throughout assumes the possibility of general propositions as to matters of fact, and seeks in their methodical discovery and proof that science of nature which Locke already suspected' to be impossible. (Book IV. chap. xii. sec. 10.) 84. That, so far as any inference from past to future uniformities is necessary to the science of nature, his doctrine does more than justify such suspicion,' is plain enough. Does it, however, leave room for so much as a knowledge of past uniformities of fact, in which the natural philosopher, accepting the doctrine, might probably seek refuge? At first sight, it might seem to do so. As, when our senses are actually employed about any object, we do know that it does exist; so by our memory we may be assured that heretofore things that affected our senses have existed-and thus we have knowledge of the past existence of several things, whereof our senses having informed us, our memories still retain the ideas.' (Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 11.) Let us see, however, how this knowledge is restricted. 'Seeing water at this instant, it is an unquestionable truth to me that water doth exist; and remembering that I saw it yesterday, it will also be always true, and as long as my memory retains it, always an undoubted proposition to me, that water did exist the 18th of July, 1688; as it will also be equally true that a certain number of very fine colours did exist, which at the same time I saw on a bubble of that water; but being now quite out of sight both of the water and bubbles too, it is no more certainly known to me that the water doth now exist, than that the bubbles and colours therein do so; it being no more necessary that water should exist to-day because it existed yesterday, than that the colours or bubbles exist to-day because they existed yesterday.'-(Ibid.) 85. The result is that though I may enumerate a multitude of past matters-of-fact about water, I cannot gather them up in any general statement about it as a real exist ence. So soon as I do so, I pass from water as a real 6 existence to its 'nominal essence,' i.e., to the ideas retained in my mind and put together in a fictitious substance, to which I have annexed the name 6 water.' If we proceed to apply this doctrine to the supposed past matters-of-fact themselves, we shall find these too attenuating themselves to nonentity. Subtract in every case from the particular existence' of which we have 'sensitive knowledge' the qualification by ideas which, as retained in the mind, do not testify to a present real existence, and what remains? There is a certainty, according to Locke (Book Iv. chap. xi. sec. 11), not, indeed, that water exists to-day because it existed yesterday-this is only 'probable '—but that it has, as a past matter-of-fact, at this time and that continued long in existence,' because this has been observed;' which must mean (Book IV. chap. ii. secs. 1, 5, and 9), because there has been a continued actual sensation' of it. 'Water,' however, is a complex idea of a substance, and of the elements of this complex idea those only which at any moment are given in 'actual sensation' may be accounted to 'really exist.' First, then, must disappear from reality the 'something,' that unknown substratum of ideas, of which the idea is emphatically 'abstract.' This gone, we naturally fall back upon a fact of co-existence between ideas, as being a reality, though the 'thing' be a fiction. But if this co-existence is to be real or to represent a reality, the ideas between which it obtains must be actual sensations.' These, whatever they may be, are at least opposed by Locke to ideas retained in the mind, which only form a nominal essence. But it is the association of such nominal essence, in the supposed observation of water, with the actual sensation that alone gives the latter a meaning. Set this aside as unreal, and the reality, which the sensation reveals, is at any rate one of which nothing can be said. It cannot be a relation between sensations, for such relation implies a consideration of them by the mind, whereby, according to Locke, they must cease to be 'real existences.' (Book II. chap. xxv. sec. 1.) It cannot even be a single sensation as continuously observed, for every present moment of such observation has at the next become a past, and thus the sensation observed in it has lost its 'actuality,' and cannot, as a real existence,' qualify the sensation observed in the next. Restrict the real existence,' in short, as Locke does, to an actual present sensa 6 which is, to make the real an abstract residuum of consciousness. 6 tion,' which can only be defined by opposition to an idea retained in the mind, and at every instant of its existence it has passed into the mind and thus ceased really to exist. Reality is in perpetual process of disappearing into the unreality of thought. No point can be fixed either in the flux of time or in the imaginary process from without' to 'within' the mind, on the one side of which can be placed 'real existence,' on the other the mere idea.' It is only because Locke unawares defines to himself the actual sensation' as representative of a real essence, of which, however, according to him, as itself unknown, the presence is merely inferred from the sensation, that the actual sensation' itself is saved from the limbo of nominal essence, to which ideas, as abstract or in the mind, are consigned. Only, again, so far as it is thus illogically saved, are we entitled to that distinction between 'facts' and 'things of the mind,' which Locke once for all fixed for English philosophy. 86. By this time we are familiar with the difficulties which this antithesis has in store for a philosophy which yet admits that it is only in the mind or in relation to consciousness -in one word, as 'ideas '-that facts are to be found at all, while by the mind' it understands an abstract generalization from the many minds which severally are born and grow, sleep and wake, with each of us. The antithesis itself, like every other form in which the impulse after true knowledge finds expression, implies a distinction between the seeming and the real; or between that which exists for the consciousness of the individual and that which really exists. But outside itself consciousness cannot get. It is there that the real must, at any rate, manifest itself, if it is to be found at all. Yet the original antithesis between the mind and its unknown opposite still prevails, and in consequence that alone which, though indeed in the mind, is yet given to it by no act of its own, is held to represent the real. This is the notion which dominates Locke. He strips from the formed content of consciousness all that the mind seems to have done for itself, and the abstract residuum, that of which the individual cannot help being conscious at each moment of his existence, is or reports the real, in opposition to the mind's creation. This is Feeling; or more strictly-since it exists, and. whatever does so must exist as one in a number (Book II. chap. vii. sec. 7)-it is the multitude |