sation, or is a distinction to be made between the sensation and the idea thereof? The passage before us would seem to imply such a distinction. Looking merely to it, we should probably say that by sensation Locke meant an impression or motion in some part of the body;' by the idea of sensation ' a perception in the understanding,' which this impression produces. The account of perception itself gives a different result. (Book II. chap. ix. sec. 3.) 'Whatever impressions are made on the outward parts, if they are not taken notice of within, there is no perception. Fire may burn our bodies with no other effect than it does a billet, unless the motion be continued to the brain, and there the sense of heat or idea of pain be produced in the mind, wherein consists actual perception.' Here sensation is identified at once with the idea and with perception, as opposed to the impression on the bodily organs. To confound the confusion still farther, in a passage immediately preceding the above, 'Perception,' here identified with the idea of sensation, has been distinguished from it, as 'exercised about it.' 'Perception, as it is the first faculty of the mind exercised about our ideas, so it is the first and simplest idea we have from reflection.' Taking Locke at his word, then, we find the beginning of intelligence to consist in having an idea of sensation. This idea, however, we perceive, and to perceive is to have an idea; i.e. to have an idea of an idea of sensation. But of perception again we have a simple or primitive idea. Therefore the beginning of intelligence consists in having an idea of an idea of an idea of sensation. ideas of 13. By insisting on Locke's account of the relation between (b) In rethe ideas of sensation and those of reflection we might be gard to brought to a different but not more luminous conclusion. In reflection. the passages quoted above, where this relation is most fully spoken of, it appears that the latter are essentially sequent to those of sensation. 'In time the mind comes to reflect on its own operations, about the ideas got by sensation, and thereby stores itself with a new set of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection.' Of these only two are primary and ori 1 Cf. Book II. chap. xix. sec. 1. "The perception, which actually accompanies and is annexed to any impression on the body, made by an external object, being distinct from all other modifications of thinking, furnishes the mind with a What is the 'tablet' impressed? ginal (Book II. c. xxi. sec. 73), viz. motivity or power of moving, with which we are not at present concerned, and perceptivity or power of perception. But according to Locke, as we have seen, there cannot be any, the simplest, idea of sensation without perception. If, then, the idea of perception is only given later and upon reflection, we must suppose perception to take place without any idea of it. But with Locke to have an idea and to perceive are equivalent terms. We must thus conclude that the beginning of knowledge is an unperceived perception, which is against his express statement elsewhere (Book II. c. xxvii. sec. 9), that it is impossible for any one to perceive without perceiving that he does perceive.' 14. Meanwhile a perpetual equivocation is kept up between a supposed impression on the outward parts,' and a supposed impression on the tablet of the mind.' It is not the impression upon, or a motion in, the outward parts, as Locke admits, that constitutes the idea of sensation. It is not an agitation in the tympanum of the ear, or a picture on the retina of the eye, that we are conscious of when we see a sight or hear a sound. The motion or impression, however, has only, as he seems to suppose, to be continued to the brain,' and it becomes an idea of sensation. Notwithstanding the rough line of distinction between soul and body, which he draws elsewhere, his theory was practically governed by the supposition of a cerebral something, in which, as in a third equivocal tablet, the imaginary mental and bodily tablets are blended. If, however, the idea of sensation, as an object of the understanding when a man thinks, differs absolutely from a motion of the outward parts,' it does so no less absolutely, however language and metaphor may disguise the difference, from such motion as continued to the brain.' An instructed man, doubtless, may come to think about a motion in his brain, as about a motion of the earth round the sun, but to speak of such motion as an idea of sensation or an immediate object of intelligent sense, is to confuse between the object of consciousness and a possible physical theory of the conditions of that consciousness. It is 1 Cf. Locke's own statement (Book III. iv. sec. 10). The cause of any sensation, and the sensation itself, in all the simple ideas of one sense, are two 6 ideas; and two ideas so different and distant one from another, that no two can be more so.' only, however, by such an equivocation that any idea, according to Locke's account of the idea, can be described as an 'impression' at all, or that the representation of the mind as a tablet, whether born blank or with characters stamped on it, has even an apparent meaning. A metaphor, interpreted as a fact, becomes the basis of his philosophical system. Does the mind make impres sions on 15. As applied to the ideas of reflection, indeed, the metaphor loses even its plausibility. In its application to the ideas of sensation it gains popular acceptance from the ready confusion of thought and matter in the imaginary cerebral itself? tablet, and the supposition of actual impact upon this by 'outward things.' But in the case of ideas of reflection, it is the mind that at once gives and takes the impression. It must be supposed, that is, to make impressions on itself. There is the further difficulty that as perception is necessary in order to give an idea of sensation, the impress of perception must be taken by the mind in its earliest receptivity; or, in other words, it must impress itself while still a blank, still void of any 'furniture' wherewith to make the impression. There is no escape from this result unless we suppose perception to precede the idea of it by some interval of time, which lands us, as we have seen, in the counter difficulty of supposing an unperceived perception. Locke disguises the difficulty from himself and his reader by constantly shifting both the receptive subject and the impressive matter. We find the 'tablet' perpetually receding. First it is the 'outward part' or bodily organ. Then it is the brain, to which the impression received by the outward part must somehow be continued, in order to produce sensation. Then it is the perceptive mind, which takes an impression of the sensation or has an idea of it. Finally, it is the reflective mind, upon which in turn the perceptive mind makes impressions. But the hasty reader, when he is told that the mind is passively impressed with ideas of reflection, is apt to forget that the matter which thus impresses it is, according to Locke's showing, simply its perceptive, i.e. its passive, self. culties. 16. The real source of these embarrassments in Locke's Source of theory, it must be noted, lies in the attempt to make the in- these diffidividual consciousness give an answer to its interrogator as to the beginning of knowledge. The individual looking back on an imaginary earliest experience pronounces himself in that experience to have been simply sensitive and passive. The scribes it, How this contradic tion is disguised. But by this he means consciously sensitive of something and consciously passive in relation to something. That is, he supposes the primitive experience to have involved consciousness of a self on the one hand and of a thing on the other, as well as of a relation between the two. In the idea of sensation' as Locke conceived it, such a consciousness is clearly implied, notwithstanding his confusion of terms. The idea is a perception, or consciousness of a thing, as opposed to a sensation proper or affection of the bodily organs. Of the perception, again, there is an idea, i.e. a consciousness by the man, in the perception, of himself in negative relation to the thing that is his object, and this consciousness (if we would make Locke consistent in excluding an unperceived perception) must be taken to go along with the perceptive act itself. No less than this indeed can be involved in any act that is to be the beginning of knowledge at all. It is the minimum of possible thought or intelligence, and the thinking man, looking for this beginning in the earliest experience of the individual human animal, must needs find it there. But this means no less than that he is finding there already the conceptions of substance and relation. Hence a double contradiction: firstly, a contradiction between the primariness of self-conscious cognisance of a thing, as the beginning of possible knowledge, on the one hand, and the primariness of animal sensation in the history of the individual man on the other; secondly, a contradiction between the primariness in knowledge of the ideas of substance and relation, and the seemingly gradual attainment of these abstractions' by the individual intellect. The former of these contradictions is blurred by Locke in the two main confusions which we have so far noticed: (a) the confusion between sensation proper and perception, which is covered under the phrase 'idea of sensation;' a phrase which, if sensation means the first act of intelligence, is pleonastic, and if it means the 'motion of the outward parts continued to the brain,' is unmeaning; and (b) the confusion between the physical affection of the brain and the act of the self-conscious subject, covered under the equivocal metaphor of impression. The latter contradiction, that concerning the ideas of substance and relation, has to be further considered. 17. It is not difficult to show that to have a simple idea, according to Locke's account of it, means to have already the conception of substance and relation, which are yet according to him 'complex and derived ideas,' 'the workmanship of the mind' in opposition to its original material, the result of its action in opposition to what is given it as passive. The equivocation in terms under which this contradiction is generally covered is that between 'idea' and 'quality.' 'Whatever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, that I call idea; and the power to produce that idea I call quality of the subject wherein that power is. Thus a snowball having power to produce in us the ideas of white, cold, and round, the powers to produce these ideas in us, as they are in the snowball, I call qualities; and as they are sensations or perceptions in our understandings, I call them ideas; which ideas, if I speak of sometimes as in the things themselves, I would be understood to mean those qualities in the object which produce them in us.' (Book 11. chap. viii. sec. 8.) way of interchanging idea' and quality,' 18. An equivocation is not the less so because it is an- Locke's nounced. It is just because Locke allows himself at his convenience to interchange the terms 'idea' and 'quality' that his doctrine is at once so plausible and so hollow. The essential question is whether the 'simple idea,' as the original and its of knowledge, is on the one hand a mere feeling, or on the effects. other a thing or quality of a thing. This question is the crux of empirical psychology. Adopting the one alternative, we have to face the difficulty of the genesis of knowledge, as an apprehension of the real, out of mere feeling; adopting the other, we virtually endow the nascent intelligence with the conception of substance. By playing fast and loose with 'idea' and 'quality,' Locke disguised the dilemma from himself. Here again the metaphor of Impression did him yeoman's service. The idea, or immediate object of thought,' being confused with the affection of the sensitive organs, and this again being accounted for as the result of actual impact, it was easy to represent the idea itself as caused by the action of an outward body on the 'mental tablet.' Thus Locke speaks of the objects of our senses obtruding their particular ideas on our minds, whether we will or no.' (Book II. chap. i. sec. 25.) This sentence holds in solution an assumption and two fallacies. The assumption (with which we have no further concern here) is the physical theory that matter affects the sensitive organs in the way of actual |