there may be general knowledge.

It is

stance,' is a copy of reality, just as the simple idea is.
a picture or representation in the mind of a thing that does
exist by ideas of those qualities that are discoverable in it.'
(Book II. chap. xxxi. secs. 6, 8.) It only differs from the
simple idea (which is itself, as abstract, a nominal essence)1 in
respect of reality, because the latter is a copy or effect pro-
duced singly and involuntarily, whereas we may put ideas
together, as if in a thing, which have never been so presented
together, and, on the other hand, never can put together all
that exist together. (Book II. chap. xxx. sec. 5, and xxxi. 10.)
So far as Locke maintains this view, the difficulty about
general propositions concerning real existence need not arise.
A statement which affirmed of gold one of the qualities included
in the complex idea of that substance, would not express
merely an analysis of an idea in the mind, but would repre-
sent a relation of qualities in the existing thing from which
the idea has been taken.' These qualities, as in the thing,
doubtless would not be, as in us, feelings (or, as Locke should
rather have said in more recent phraseology, possibilities of
feeling), but powers to produce feeling, nor could any rela-
tion between these, as in the thing, be affirmed but such as
had produced its copy or effect in actual experience. No
coexistence of qualities could be truly affirmed, which had
not been found; but, once found-being a coexistence of
qualities and not simply a momentary coincidence of feel-
ings-it could be affirmed as permanent in a general pro-
position. That a relation can be stated universally between
ideas collected in the mind, no one denies, and if such
collection is taken from a combination of simple ideas
existing together constantly in things' (Book II. chap. xxxii.
sec. 18), the statement will hold equally of such existence.
Thus Locke contrasts mixed modes, which, for the most
part, being actions which perish in the birth, are not
capable of a lasting duration,' with 'substances, which are
the actors; and wherein the simple ideas that make up
the complex ideas designed by the name have a lasting
union.' (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 42.)

91. In such a doctrine Locke, starting whence he did, could not remain at rest. We need not here repeat what has been said of it above in the consideration of his doctrine of substance. Taken strictly, it implies that 'real existence'

Book 11. chap. xxxi. sec. 12.

essence a

consists in a permanent relation of ideas, said to be of But such secondary qualities, to each other in dependence on other real ideas, said to be of primary qualities. In other words, in order creature of to constitute reality, it takes ideas out of that particularity thought. in time and place, which is yet pronounced the condition of reality, to give them an abstract generality' which is fictitious, and then treats them as constituents of a system of which the 'invented' relations of cause and effect and of identity are the framework. In short, it brings reality wholly within the region of thought, distinguishing it from the system of complex ideas or nominal essences which constitute our knowledge, not as the unknown opposite of all possible thought, but only as the complete from the incomplete. To one who logically carried out this view, the ground of distinction between fact and fancy would have to be found in the relation between thought as 'objective,' or in the world, and thought as so far communicated to us. Here, however, it could scarcely be found by Locke, with whom thought' meant simply a faculty of the 'thinking thing,' called a 'soul,' which might ride in a coach with him from Oxford to London. (Book II. chap. xxiii. sec. 20.) Was the distinction then to disappear altogether?

view of

real

essence as

unknown qualities of unknown body.

92. It is saved, though at the cost of abandoning the new Hence way of ideas,' as it had been followed in the Second Book, another by the transfer of real existence from the thing in which ideas are found, and whose qualities the complex of ideas in us, though inadequate, represents, to something called 'body,' necessarily unknown, because no ideas in us are in any way representative of it. To such an unknown body unknown qualities are supposed to belong under the designation 'real essence.' The subject of the nominal essence, just because its qualities, being matter of knowledge, are ideas in our minds, is a wholly different and a fictitious thing.

How Locke mixes up

uity about

93. This change of ground is of course not recognized by Locke himself. It is the perpetual crossing of the inconthese two sistent doctrines that renders his immortal Third Book' a meanings web of contradictions. As was said above, he constantly in ambigspeaks as if the subject of the real essence were the same with that of the nominal, and never explicitly allows it to be different. The equivocation under which the difference is disguised lies in the use of the term 'body.' A' particular body' is the subject both of the nominal and real essence

body.

Body as

matter'

without essence.

'gold' But body,' as that in which ideas are found,' and in which they permanently coexist according to a natural law, is one thing; 'body,' as the abstraction of the unknown, is quite another. It is body in the former sense that is the real thing when nominal essence (the complex of ideas in us) is treated as representative, though inadequately so, of the real thing; it is body in the latter sense that is the real thing when this is treated as wholly outside possible consciousness, and its essence as wholly unrepresented by possible ideas. By a jumble of the two meanings Locke obtains an amphibious entity which is at once independent of relation to ideas, as is body in the latter sense, and a source of ideas representative of it, as is body in the former sense-which thus carries with it that opposition to the mental which is supposed necessary to the real, while yet it seems to manifest itself in ideas. Meanwhile a third conception of the real keeps thrusting itself upon the other two --the view, namely, that body in both senses is a fiction of thought, and that the mere present feeling is alone the real.

94. Where Locke is insisting on the opposition between parcel of the real essence and any essence that can be known, the former is generally ascribed either to a particular being' or to a parcel of matter.' The passage which brings the opposition into the strongest relief is perhaps the following:-' I would ask any one, what is sufficient to make an essential difference in nature between any two particular beings, without any regard had to some abstract idea, which is looked upon as the essence and standard of a species? All such patterns and standards being quite laid aside, particular beings, considered barely in themselves, will be found to have all their qualities equally essential; and everything, in each individual, will be essential to it, or, which is more, nothing at all. For though it may be reasonable to ask whether obeying the magnet be essential to iron; yet I think it is very improper and insignificant to ask whether it be essential to the particular parcel of matter I cut my pen with, without considering it under the name iron, or as being of a certain species.' (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 5.)1 Here, it will be seen, the exclusion of the abstract idea from reality carries with it the exclusion of that standard made

end.

To the same purpose is a passage in Book 1. chap. x. sec. 19, towards the

IS IT A COMPLEX OF KNOWABLE QUALITIES? 77

by nature,' which according to the passages already quoted, is the thing itself' from which the abstract idea is taken, and from which, if correctly taken, it derives reality. This exclusion, again, means nothing else than the disappearance from nature' (which with Locke is interchangeable with 'reality') of all essential difference. There remain, however, as the 'real,' 'particular beings,' or 'individuals,' or 'parcels of matter.' In each of these, 'considered barely in itself, everything will be essential to it, or, which is more, nothing at all.'

95. We have already seen,' that if by a 'particular being' In this is meant the mere individuum, as it would be upon abstrac- sense body tion of all relations which according to Locke are fictitious, is the mere and constitute a community or generality, it certainly can viduum. have no essential qualities, since it has no qualities at all. It is a something which equals nothing. The notion of this bare individuum being the real is the protoplasm' of

Locke's philosophy, to which, though he never quite recognized it himself, after the removal of a certain number of accretions we may always penetrate. It is so because his unacknowledged method of finding the real consisted in abstracting from the formed content of consciousness till he came to that which could not be got rid of. This is the momentarily present relation of subject and object, which, considered on the side of the object, gives the mere atom, and on the side of the subject, the mere 'it is felt.' Even in this ultimate abstraction the 'fiction of thought' still survives, for the atom is determined to its mere individuality by relation to other individuals, and the feeling is determined to the present moment or the now' by relation to other

'nows.'

stances of

96. To this ultimate abstraction, however, Locke, though Body as constantly on the road to it, never quite penetrates. He is qualified farthest from it-indeed, as far from it as possible-where he by circunis most acceptable to common sense, as in his ordinary time and doctrine of abstraction, where the real, from which the place. process of abstraction is supposed to begin, is already the individual in the fullness of its qualities, James and John, this man or this gold. He is nearest to it when the only qualification of the particular being,' which has to be removed by thought in order to its losing its reality and 1 See above, paragraph 45.

Such body Locke held to be subject of primary qualities': but are

in time?

becoming an abstract idea, is supposed to consist in 'circumstances of time and place.'

97. It is of these circumstances, as the constituents of the real, that he is thinking in the passage last quoted. As qualified by circumstances of place' the real is a parcel of matter, and under this designation Locke thought of it as a subject of 'primary qualities of body." These, indeed, as he these com- enumerates them, may be shown to imply relations going far patible beyond that of simple distinctness between atoms, and thus with particularity to involve much more of the creative action of thought; but we need be the less concerned for this usurpation on the part of the particular being, since that which he illegitimately conveys to it as derived from 'circumstances of place,' he virtually takes away from it again by limitation in time. The particular being' has indeed on the one hand a real essence, consisting of certain primary qualities, but on the other it has no continued identity. It is only real as present to feeling at this or that time. The particular being of one moment is not the particular being of the next. Thus the primary qualities which are a real essence, i.e. an essence of a particular being, at one moment, are not its real essence at the next, because, while they as represented in the mind remain the same, the 'it,' the particular being is different. An immutable essence for that very reason cannot be real. The immutability can only lie in a relation between a certain abstract (i.e. unreal) idea and a certain sound. (Book III. chap. iii. sec. 19.) The real constitution of things,' on the other hand, begin and perish with them. All things that exist are liable to change.' (Ibid.) Locke, it is true (as is implied in the term change2) never quite drops the notion of there being a real identity in some unknown background, but this makes no difference in the bearing of his doctrine upon the possibility of 'real' knowledge. It only means that for an indefinite particularity of 'beings' there is substituted one 'being' under an indefinite peculiarity of forms. Though the reality of the thing in itself be immutable, yet its reality for

According to Locke's ordinary usage of the terms, no distinction appears between matter' and 'body.' In Book III. chap. x. sec. 15, however, he distinguishes matter from body as the less determinate conception from the more. The one implies solidity merely, the other extension and figure also, so that

we may talk of the matter of bodies,' but not of the 'body of matters.' But since solidity, according to Locke's definition, involves the other primary qualities,' this distinction does not avail him much.

2 See above, paragraph 69.