idea of or the from idea of body? that substance and relations each presuppose the other, so Do we body presupposes the primary qualities as so many relations derive the which form its essence or make it what it is, while these body from again presuppose body as the matter which they determine. primary qualities, It is because Locke substitutes for this intellectual order of mutual presupposition a succession of sensations in time, that primary he finds himself in the confusion we have noticed-now qualities giving the priority to sensations in which the idea of body is supposed to be conveyed, and from it deriving the ideas of the primary qualities, now giving it to these ideas themselves, and deriving the idea of body from their complication. This is just such a contradiction as it would be to put to-day before yesterday. We may escape it by the consideration that in the case before us it is not a succession of sensations in time that we have to do with at all; that the real' is an intellectual order, or mind, in which every element, being correlative to every other, at once presupposes and is presupposed by every other; but that this order communicates itself to us piecemeal, in a process of which the first condition on our part is the conception that there is an order, or something related to something else; and that thus the conception of qualified substance, which in its definite articulation is the end of all our knowledge, is yet in another form, that may be called indifferently either abstract or confused,' its beginning. This way of escape, however, was not open to Locke, because with him it was the condition of reality in the idea of the body and its qualities that they should be actually present sensations.' The priority then of body to the relations of extension, distance, &c., as of that in which these relations are found, must, if body and extension are to be more than nominal essences, be a priority of sensations in time. But, on the other hand, the priority of the idea of space to the ideas of its several modes, and of these again to the idea of body, as of the simpler to the more complex, must no less than the other, if the ideas in question are to be real, be one in time. Locke's contradiction, then, is that of supposing that of two sensations each is actually present, of two impacts on the sensitive tablet each is actually made, before the other. 112. From such a contradiction, even though he was not Indifferently either abstract or confused,' because of the conception that is most confused the least can be Mathematical ideas, though ⚫ barely an ideal existence,' distinctly aware of it, he could not but seek a way of escape. From his point of view two ways might at first sight seem to be open the priority in sensitive experience, and with it reality, might be assigned exclusively either to the idea of body or to that of space. To whichever of the two it is assigned, the other must become a nominal essence. If it is the idea of body that is conveyed to the mind directly from without through sensation, then it must be by a process in the mind that the spatial relations are abstracted from it; and conversely, if it is the latter that are given in sensation, it must be by a mental operation of compounding that the idea of body is obtained from them. Now, according to Locke's fundamental notion, that the reality of an idea depends upon its being in consciousness a copy through impact of that which is not in consciousness, any attempt to retain it in the idea of space while sacrificing it in that of body would be obviously self-destructive. Nor, however we might re-write his account of the relations of space as found in bodies,' could we avoid speaking of them as relations of some sort; and if relations, then derived from the mind's carrying its view from one thing to another,' and not 'actually present sensations.' We shall not, then, be surprised to find Locke tending to the other alternative, and gradually forgetting his assertion that a circle or a square are the same whether in idea or in existence,' and his elaborate maintenance of the real existence' of a vacuum, i.e., extension without body. (Book II. chap. xiii. secs. 21 and the following, and xvii. 4.) In the Fourth Book it is body alone that has real existence, an existence revealed by actually present sensation, while all mathematical ideas, the ideas of the circle and the square, have barely an ideal existence' (Book IV. chap. iv. sec. 6); and this means nothing else than the reduction of the primary qualities of body to a nominal essence. Our ideas of them are general (Book IV. chap. iii. sec. 24), or merely in the mind. There is no individual parcel of matter, to which any of these qualities are so annexed as to be essential to it or inseparable from it.' (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 6.) How should there be, when the 'individual parcel' means that which copies itself by impact in the present sensation, while the qualities in question are relations which cannot be so copied? Yet, except as attaching to such a parcel, they have no real existence;' and, 6 conversely, the 'body,' from which they are inseparable, not being an individual parcel of matter in the above sense, inust itself be unreal and belong merely to the mind. The 'body' which is real has for us no qualities, and that reference to it of the actually present sensation' by which such sensation is distinguished from other feeling, is a reference to something of which nothing can be said. It is a reference which cannot be stated in any proposition really true; and the difference which it constitutes between 'bare vision' and the feeling to which reality corresponds, must be either itself unreal or unintelligible. 6 Locke's to the real 113. We have now pursued the antithesis between reality Summary and the work of the mind along all the lines which Locke view of indicates, and find that it everywhere eludes us. The dis- difficulties tinction, which only appeared incidentally in the doctrine of in regard substance, between the being and the idea thereof '-between substance as found' and substance as that which 'we accustom ourselves to suppose 'becomes definite and explicit as that between real and nominal essence, but it does so only that the essence, which is merely real, may disappear. Whether we suppose it the quality of a mere sensation, as such, or of mere body, as such, we find that we are unawares defining it by relations which are themselves the work of the mind, and that after abstraction of these nothing remains to give the antithesis to the work of the mind any meaning. Meanwhile the attitude of thought, when it has cleared the antithesis of disguise, but has not yet found that each of the opposites derives itself from thought as much as the other, is so awkward and painful that an instinctive reluctance to make the clearance is not to be wondered at. Over against the world of knowledge, which is the work of the mind, stands a real world of which we can say nothing but that it is there, that it makes us aware of its presence in every sensation, while our interpretation of what it is, the system of relations which we read into it, is our own invention. The interpretation is not even to be called a shadow, for a shadow, however dim, still reflects the reality; it is an arbitrary fiction, and a fiction. of which the possibility is as unaccountable as the inducement to make it. It is commonly presented as consisting in abstraction from the concrete. But the concrete, just so far as concrete, i.e., a complex world of relations, cannot be the Why they do not trouble him more. They reappear in his doctrine of propositions. real if the separation of the real from the work of the mind is to be maintained. It must itself be the work of the compounding mind, which must be supposed again in abstraction to decompose what it has previously compounded. Now, it is of the essence of the doctrine in question that it denies all power of origination to the mind except in the way of compounding and abstracting given impressions. Its supposition is, that whatever precedes the work of composition and abstraction must be real because the mind passively receives it: a supposition which, if the mind could originate, would not hold. How, then, does it come to pass that a 'nominal essence,' consisting of definite qualities, is constructed by a mind, which originates nothing, out of a 'real' matter, which, apart from such construction, has no qualities at all? And why, granted the construction, should the mind in abstraction' go through the Penelopean exercise of perpetually unweaving the web which it has just woven? 114. It is Hume's more logical version of Locke's doctrine that first forces these questions to the front. In Locke himself they are kept back by inconsistencies, which we have already dwelt upon. For the real, absolutely void of intelligible qualities, because these are relative to the mind, he is perpetually substituting a real constituted by such qualities, only with a complexity which we cannot exhaust. By so doing, though at the cost of sacrificing the opposition between the real and the mental, he avoids the necessity of admitting that the system of the sciences is a mere language, well-or ill-constructed, but unaccountably and without reference to things. Finally, he so far forgets the opposition altogether as to find the reality of moral and mathematical' knowledge in their bare ideality' itself. (Book IV. chap. iv. sec. 6, &c.) Thus with him the divorce between knowledge and reality is never complete, and sometimes they appear in perfect fusion. A consideration of his doctrine of propositions will show finally how the case between them stands, as he left it. 115. In the Fourth Book of the Essay the same ground has to be thrice traversed under the several titles of knowledge,' 'truth,' and 'propositions.' Knowledge being the 16 'Simple ideas, since the mind can operating on the mind.' (Book IV. by no means make them to itself, must chap. v. sec. 4.) necessarily be the product of things perception of agreement or disagreement between ideas, the proposition is the putting together or separation of words, as the signs of ideas, in affirmative or negative sentences (Book IV. chap. v. sec. 5), and truth-the expression of certainty-consists in the correspondence between the conjunction or separation of the signs and the agreement or disagreement of the ideas. (Book IV. chap. v. sec. 2.) Thus, the question between the real and the mental affects all these. Does this or that perception of agreement between ideas represent an agreement in real existence? Is its certainty a real certainty? Does such or such a proposition, being a correct expression of an agreement between ideas, also through this express an agreement between things? Is its truth real, or merely verbal ? real, 116. To answer these questions, according to Locke, we The must consider whether the knowledge, or the proposition knowledge expressed which expresses it, concerns substances, i.e., 'the co-existence by a proof ideas in nature,' on the one hand; or, on the other, either position, though certhe properties of a mathematical figure or 'moral ideas.' If tain, may it is of the latter sort, the agreement of the ideas in the not be mind is itself their agreement in reality, since the ideas themselves are archetypes. (Book Iv. chap. iv. secs. 6, 7.) It is only when the ideas are ectypes, as is the case when the proposition concerns substances, that the doubt arises whether the agreement between them represents an agreement in reality. The distinction made here virtually corresponds to that which appears in the chapters on the reality and adequacy of ideas in the Second Book, and again in those on names' in the Third. There the complex ideas of modes and relation' are pronounced necessarily real adequate and true, because, 'being themselves archetypes, they cannot differ from their archetypes.' (Book 11. chap. xxx. sec. 4.)' With them are contrasted simple ideas and complex ideas of substances, which are alike ectypes, but it, and by certainty,' in distinction Certainty of truth' is, in like man- 2 Cf. Book 11. chap. xxxi. sec. 3, and xxxii. sec. 17. |