states of fact. To deduce, from the maxim ex nihilo nihil fit, that there must always have been a Being of some sort, and that that Being must have been cogitative, and must have contained in itself from the first all the perfections that could ever exist afterwards; and further to assert that this Being could not be material and so forth, is in reality to manufacture knowledge out of ignorance, thinly disguised by words which are almost unmeaning.

Locke's theology, and his theories about the nature of the soul, form a sort of parenthesis in his system. which by no means harmonises with the rest of it. After his excursion into the region of a priori speculation in chap. x., he returns in chap. xi. to our knowledge of the existence of other things than God and ourselves, and here he immediately reverts to his natural tone. 'The knowledge of the existence of any other thing we can have only by sensation, for there being no necessary connection of real existence with any idea a man hath in his memory, nor of any other existence but that of God with the existence of any other being, no particular man can know the existence of any other being, but only when by actual operation upon him it makes itself perceived by him. For the having the idea of anything in our mind no more proves the existence of that thing than the picture of a man evidences his being in the world, or the visions of a dream make thereby a true history.' Many points of the rest of the book are admirable. For instance, the whole

doctrine of the degrees of assent, and of the means by which assent is produced, and especially his estimate of the nature and use of the syllogism, are out of all comparison superior to anything else written on such topics in his own days, or till very long afterwards.

We cannot affect to give within any moderate compass more than the barest sketch of the groundplan of a work like this; yet the very slightness of the sketch may give it a certain interest, as a few pencil-strokes will sometimes give a notion of a face more easy to take in and remember than an elaborate picture.

VIII

LOCKE AS A MORALIST

THE question of Locke's position as a moralist is naturally suggested by what has gone before. Hardly any writer has had, in the long run, so great an influence on moral speculation; yet, so far as we know, he never handles the subject systematically. He lays down, indeed, its fundamental principles in his Essay, but he does not in any place work the matter out in detail, and in all its connections. It is, however, highly instructive, especially in reference to the later developments of the philosophy of which he was the founder, to see how Locke treated moral questions, and from what side he approached them. The very fact that he never applied his principles specifically to concrete subjects, as Paley and Bentham did long afterwards, and as Hobbes had done before him, gives peculiar clearness to the relation in which they stand to what we now call Utilitarianism.

The moral principles of the Essay on the Human Understanding are not easy to connect (as we shall

tion on the origin of voluntary motion in ourselves; for thinking and motion are the only sorts of action of which we have any idea, and the motion of the various parts of our own bodies at the impulse of our wills is the only kind of motion which we are able to connect directly with active power. The motions of inanimate bodies suggest at most nothing more than what Locke describes as passive power-that is to say, a capacity of receiving motion transmitted from something else.

This being the general notion of power, Locke goes on to point out that there are in us two powers-namely, will and understanding. Will is the power to begin or forbear, continue or end, several actions of our minds and motions of our bodies barely by a thought or preference of the mind.' Volition is the exercise of that power with regard to any particular act. Understanding is the power of perception, which is of three sorts, including the perception of ideas in our minds, the perception of the signification of signs, and the perception of the connection or repugnancy, agreement or disagreement, there is between any of our ideas.

Locke carefully observes, and it is one of the most judicious observations to be found in the whole of his book, that the will and the understanding are by no means to be regarded as distinct agents, with their distinct provinces and authorities, acting like so many individuals, but rather as distinct acts of the same unit-the man; just as seeing and crying are distinct

6

morals are expressed in connection with these two heads, and grow out of his investigation of them. His definition of good and evil is almost verbally the same with that of Hobbes. Things are good and evil only in reference to pleasure and pain. That we call "good" which is apt to cause or increase pleasure or diminish pain in us. And, on the contrary, we name that "evil" which is apt to produce or increase any pain or diminish any pleasure in us.' Good and evil, he tells us, are the hinges on which our passions turn'-not a very happy, or indeed a completely intelligible, metaphor; and he proceeds to enumerate and define the passions in a passage much inferior, as it appears to us, to Hobbes's brilliant effort on the same subject.

6

This part of the matter is despatched in a couple of pages; but the chapter on 'Power,' which shows how good and evil are connected with our conduct, is one of the longest and most elaborate, though not perhaps one of the happiest, in the book. The pure elementary notion of power, as Locke understood it, is not altogether perspicuous. By observing changes in all sorts of objects we get to 'consider in one thing the possibility of having any of its simple ideas changed, and in another the possibility of making that change'; and this possibility of changing or being changed is power, active or passive. Thus, for instance, fire and wax have respectively a power to melt and a power to be melted.

Our idea of power is derived principally from reflec