LOCKE By S. ALEXANDER M.A., LL.D., PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER LONDON ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE &r CO LTD 1908 A PREFATORY NOTE I DESIRE to acknowledge my obligations to Prof. Campbell Eraser's books on Locke (especially the introduction to his edition of the Essay), and to Mr. H. R. Fox Bourne's very valuable Life of John Locke (London, 1876). In the concluding chapters I have derived help from Sidgwick's History of Ethics, Stephen's History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, and Prof. Ch. Bastide's John Locke : ses theories politiques (Paris, 1906). I am indebted to Prof. G. F. Stout for several useful suggestions. S. A. 280217 CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE i. LIFE 1 TI. PHILOSOPHY (THE ESSAY) 24 in. OBSERVATIONS ON THE ESSAY .... 52 iv. ETHICS 69 v. POLITICS .75 vi. RELIGION ........ 84 BOOKS WHICH MAY BE CONSULTED 91 LOCKE CHAPTER I LIFE LOCKE'S life is one of those, not rare in the history of English letters and science, in which the scholar is doubled with the man of the world and of public affairs. His instinct for speculation and his delicate health marked him out for a life of academic retirement; his talent for business and his practical capacity secured him weight in politics, and put within his reach, had he chosen to accept them, important state employments. He combined scholarly seclusion with public in- fluence. In his latest years he held for a time high office as a commissioner of trade; and all his life he was in the background of politics, the trusted adviser of Shaftesbury, of the party who aimed at the establishment of William of Orange, and finally, of Somers and Charles Montague. Though he was always known as a man of eminent parts, his fame as a writer was confined to his last A i LOCKE fifteen years. He himself chose as his profes- sion the more active work of medicine, though he practised it only for a few years in Shaftes- bury's family, and occasionally afterwards. His life was in fact that of a savant, who lived in close relation to the men of science of his time, such as Boyle, Sydenham, and Newton, and who, like Lord Acton in our own day, was at the same time the confidential friend of statesmen. It cannot be doubted that his intellectual and practical interests acted and reacted upon each other. Though not himself the author of great public measures, he took his share in many and he voiced the principles of liberty which inspired them. On the other hand, the devotion to truth which compels him to see things for himself, as they are, within the limits of his vision, is accom- panied in him by a native sagacity and caution, an insight, perhaps acquired in affairs, into the character of men, and a sympathy with the needs of the plain average man, which fitted him to be the exponent of a new method of thinking and to set the tone of thought to the century which succeeded him. More than in the case of most philosophers, Locke's history is varied with incident and involved with the history of the anxious and seminal time in which he lived. 2 LIFE He was born at Wrington, a village in Somerset- \ > shire, on the 29th of August 1632. His father, John Locke, was Clerk to the Justices of the Peace, one of whom Alexander Popham took command of a volunteer regiment of horse raised in the parliamentary cause in 1642. The elder Locke took up arms under him as a captain. He suffered heavily in property by the Civil War. Of his mother the younger John Locke expressed himself in affectionate terms. His father educated him with great care, treating him with rigour as a child, but admitting him to friendship as he grew up, a practice which Locke approves. A letter to his father is preserved which testifies to the tenderness Locke felt for him. Early years are impressionable, and Locke writes in 1661, ' I no sooner perceived myself in the world, but I found myself in a storm which has lasted almost hitherto/ By Popham's offices he was sent, pro- bably in 1646, to Westminster School, then under the government of the famous Dr. Richard Busby, and was there put through an incessant drilling in Greek and Latin, which may have made Locke the good scholar he was, but may also explain the depreciation which he afterwards, in his Thoughts upon Education, expressed for such exercises. From Westminster he proceeded in 1652, as a 3 LOCKE junior student, to Christchurch, Oxford, the Dean of which was then Dr. John Owen, appointed by Cromwell. Owen was also Vice -Chancellor of the University, and he and his Puritan colleagues worked with a will towards redeeming the Univer- sity from the idleness and contempt of learning into which it had fallen. Owen proclaimed and taught the doctrine of toleration a fact not to be forgotten in the life of the future author of the Letters concerning Toleration. Locke did not relish the studies of the place, and regretted that his father had sent him to Oxford. He disliked the public disputations in the schools, which he thought ' invented for wrangling and ostentation, rather than to discover truth.' He regarded his early years at Oxford as wasted, because the only philosophy then known there 'was the peripatetic, perplexed with obscure terms and useless ques- tions/ He spent, we hear, a good part of his first years in the University in reading romances. But he attended the lectures of the mathematicians Wallis and Ward, and was intimate with Pocock, the professor of Arabic. It was, however, the study of Descartes which first ' gave him a relish of philosophical things. He was rejoiced in read- ing them, because, though he very often differed in opinion from this writer, he yet found that 4 LIFE what he said was very intelligible, from whence he was encouraged to think that his not having understood others had possibly not proceeded from a defect in his understanding/ It is not easy to make out the sources of Locke's philo- sophical thought except Descartes, and the Port Royal Logic. Bacon he knew, and also Hobbes (though, he says, not intimately), and he appears to have been influenced by the atomism of Gassendi. Leibniz he knew little, and expressed in later life a low opinion of him. 1 Malebranche he studied and criticised. But we can well believe his own statement that he learned more from intercourse with men than from books. Locke became a senior student of Christchurch . in 1659, and the emoluments of that office were, with a small property inherited from his father of about 70 a year, his main source of income till 1684, when he was deprived of his studentship. Even when he lived in London, he paid frequent and long visits to Oxford. After the Restoration, a new order of things arose in the University, which Locke welcomed. His bringing up as a Puritan, combined with his disappointment with 1 The Nouveaux Essais, in which Leibniz expounded and reviewed the Essay, Locke never saw, and indeed, owing to Locke's death, it was not published in Leibniz's lifetime. 5 LOCKE the Puritan rule, may have fostered the bent of his mind towards latitudinarian views of theology, and towards dislike of extreme fanaticism or ' en- thusiasm/ He was appointed to lectureships at Christchurch usually held by clergymen. His father had designed him for the ministry. But Locke declined a tempting offer leading to prefer- ment in the Irish Church, not desiring to commit himself to a profession which he could not divest himself of, supposing that he failed in it. Finally, he decided upon the profession of medicine. He had for some years pursued the study of physical science, and had consorted with Boyle and the other members of the Oxford branch of the Royal Society. Boyle's History of the Air, which Locke edited after Boyle's death, contains observations registered by Locke from 1660 to 1667. He never obtained the doctorate in medicine, and there was some difficulty in securing for him the degree of Bachelor, because he had not attended the regular courses of lectures in medicine. He began practice at Oxford, as an amateur partner of his friend Dr. Thomas. In 1665 Locke obtained, in a way which is not clear, the appointment of secretary to Sir Walter Vane, who went to Cleves on a special embassy to the Elector of Brandenburg. Letters to his friend 6 LIFE John Strachey describe with somewhat heavy humour the incidents of his stay there. Locke must have shown his abilities, for, on his return, he was offered an appointment in an embassy to Spain. Though he was plainly much tempted, his good genius saved him from diplomacy for philosophy, and he remained at Oxford practising medicine. It was in 1667 that, by an accident arising out of his profession, he became acquainted with Shaftes- bury an event which determined his future life. Shaftesbury (then Lord Ashley) came to Oxford, to drink the waters of the village of Astrop, not far off, which were then much recommended. Owing to some delay in the supply of the waters, Locke, in the absence of Dr. Thomas, waited upon Ashley to explain. The impression the two men left upon each other was such as to lead to a lasting friendship. Locke went to London in 1667 at Ashley's invitation, and thenceforth became a member of Ashley's household. He acted as physician to the household, though he also prac- tised to some extent outside. Ashley himself owed his life to an operation performed by Locke. But he was not only the doctor, but was intrusted with intimate private affairs of the family, arrang- ing the marriage of Ashley's son, and becoming thereafter tutor of the little boy who was to be the LOCKE Shaftesbury of the Characteristics and to disown the philosophy of his tutor. More important still, he became Ashley's confidential adviser, though it is not necessary to suppose him privy to all the statesman's political actions. He helped in draw- ing up in 1663 the Fundamental Constitutions for the government of Carolina, of which settlement Ashley was one of the proprietors. A draft of the scheme exists in Locke's handwriting, and whether this scheme is due to him wholly or only in part, its liberal provisions for freedom of religion, if only belief in God is avowed, are in keeping with Locke's opinions. When Shaftesbury became Chancellor in 1672, Locke became secretary of presentations (to benefices), and later, secretary of the recently established Council of Trade and Foreign Plantations (or Colonies), an office which he retained till the Council was dissolved in 1675, though he does not appear to have received the salary due to him. While he was thus occupied in practical affairs, he still carried on his work in medicine, and was allied in friendship with Sydenham, who commends him in no measured terms in the preface to the third edition of his Method of curing Fevers (1676). In 1668, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. Though he was more than once a member of Council, he 8 LIFE does not, however, seem to have taken any active part in its proceedings. But about this time in a small circle of friends there occurred the famous meeting from which the Essay took its origin. ' Five or six friends,' he says, ' meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand by the difficulties that rose on every side. After we had awhile puzzled ourselves without coming nearer resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course, and that before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal with. This I proposed to the company, who all readily assented, and thereupon it was agreed that this should be our first inquiry. Some hasty and undigested thoughts, on a subject I had never before considered, which I set down against our next meeting gave the first entrance into this discourse/ We know the names of two of his friends, Tyrrell and Thomas, and that the dis- course was about the principles of worship and revealed religion. A short paragraph dated 1671 of his common-place book has been preserved, which marks the beginning of Locke's work. 9 LOCKE Relieved of his office in 1675, Locke spent the next four years in rest and travel in France. His chest always was weak, and from this time forward he had constantly to struggle against asthma, for which the smoke-laden air of London in the winter was peculiarly unfavourable. We possess journals of his sojourn in France, which enable us to follow his movements and the obser- vations he made there (e.g. his report on the vine- yards made for Shaftesbury ). Most of his time was spent at Montpellier, the great medical school, and Locke describes the initiation of a young doctor there, in terms which recall the famous passage of Moliere's Malade Imaginaire. Some consider- able time he also spent in Paris, in the society of learned friends. But he returned in 1670 to serve again as adviser to Shaftesbury during the troubled years of the Exclusion Bill and the Whig Plots, in which his movements can only obscurely be traced. Shaftesbury was obliged to escape to Holland in 1681, where he die.d the next year, and Locke, whose political associations brought him into suspicion, thought it prudent to leave England for Holland in 1683, and there h re- mained till after the Revolution, returning in 1689. In Holland he made many friends, one of them in particular Van Limborch, the head of the Re- 10 LIFE monstrant (or Arminian) College, to whom he addressed the Epistola de Tolerantia in its Latin form. After some travelling he settled at Utrecht in 1684, where he learned that Charles n. had compelled Fell, the Dean of Christchurch, to deprive him of his Studentship as having behaved 'factiously and undutifully to the Government/ He was left now for his support to his small private property and the annuity of 100 which Shaftesbury had provided for him. Not long after, his name was attached to a list of persons whom James n. requested the Dutch Government to hand over on suspicion of being implicated in Monmouth's insurrection, from which Locke had carefully held himself aloof. Locke remained in hiding for some time at Amsterdam and after- wards settled at Cleves under an assumed name. The danger was probably not so great as he feared the Dutch Government would probably not have surrendered him. His friend Pembroke secured him James's pardon and begged him to return. Locke proudly declined the pardon as having been guilty of no crime. But the danger was past, and he was free to consult his own desire for leisure for study and removed to Rotterdam, where he lived in the house of a Quaker friend, Furly, and was in close association with the n LOCKE English exiles, more particularly Mordaunt, after- wards Peterborough, and it appears even with William of Orange himself. He followed William to England in 1689. With his return to London Locke's appear- ance as an author begins in England. In 1690 appeared both the Essay concerning Human Understanding and the Two Treatises of Govern- ment, the latter work anonymously. The Letter , concerning Toleration had appeared in its Latin form (Epistola de Tolerantia) in 1685, but the English translation (by William Popple) appeared ; in London in 1689. This was also anonymous, and great was Locke's anger when he discovered subsequently that his friend Limborch had di- vulged his authorship, even td an intimate friend. It was never acknowledged "by him except in his will. Locke is thus one of the great writers whose writings have appeared in advanced age, for in 1689 he was fifty-seven. But the entries in his common-place books and journals show that the Essay was in preparation ever since 1671, and had, as he said, been the subject of interrupted labours during his travels in France. There is evidence that a draft of it was seen by Shaftesbury before 1683, but it was finally prepared during his exile in Holland, where he had already published an 12 LIFE abstract of it in his friend Leclerc's Bibliographic Universelle in 1689. Nothing is more interesting than to trace the preparation in Locke's mind for his authentic deliverances, and the papers pre- served to us show rather how early than how late the central ideas of his various doctrines took shape. Of particular interest are writings which the industry of Mr. Fox Bourne has discovered among the Shaftesbury papers, written by Locke at various times and bearing specially on his views of religious liberty. One of these dates from 1660: 'Whether the civil magistrate may lawfully impoftfr and determine the use of indifferent things in reference to religious worship ' ; which shows Locke's impatience of the intolerance shown by the Puritans, and the hopes, doorned'to disappoint- ment, which he derived from the accession of Charles n. Another is a paper of * Reflections on the Roman Commonwealth' (written before 1667), in which Numa is praised for his moderation in what he regarded as the requirements of religion. A still more important ' Essay concerning Tolera- tion (1667) ' published in full by Mr. Fox Bourne anticipates almost completely the Letter. It ex- hibits the same desire towards non-interference of the civil power with religion, exposing also the folly of such interference; the same desire for 13 LOCKE a comprehensive religion which should unite all sects in one national church ; the same exception from toleration of atheists and also of sects like the Catholic in so far as they set up another temporal authority against the civil authority of the land. The main outlines of Locke's famous Letter have become part and parcel of our ordi- nary political thinking, and this diminishes our interest in it and perhaps leads us to forget the audacity and originality, which, though the Letter had precedents in previous writers in England and in the practice of Holland, we must still acknow r - ledge in it, and which gave it its influence over the mind of Europe. . All the more value attaches to the earlier writings which enable us to detect the existence of these doctrines in the history of Locke's own mind. Locke's years from 1690 to 1704, or at least from 1691, were spent in semi -retirement in Essex, varied by public business in London. He held office under the Crown as Commissioner of Appeals for eleven or twelve years, and in the more important office of a Commissioner of Trade from 1695, in which office he received a salary of 1000. He accepted this last office only under pressure. He appears to have been in fact the chief member of the Board, and projected im- 14 LIFE portant work in promotion of Irish linen manu- facture and of reform of the poor laws, though his proposals in these respects were not put into effect. His inability to bear the London winter led to an early resignation which Somers pressed him to reconsider, but he finally withdrew from office in 1700. His influence was, however, not confined to his official work. In the early years of William's reign, letters from Soiners show how much value was set upon his advice. One incident of peculiar interest occurred in 1689, when he was offered the post of ambassador to Frederick i. the Elector of Brandenburg. Again his good genius persuaded him to decline, on the pretext of his weak health, the cold climate, and his inability to support the ' warm drinking ' necessary in those parts for one who was to make himself acceptable. And though he was invited to go to Vienna instead, Locke persisted in his refusal. William showed the value he set upon Locke's services by summoning him urgently at a later date from Essex in the winter, for some purpose not sufficiently made out, but probably again of a diplomatic character; but the summons cost Locke several days of severe illness. During / these later years Locke concerned himself largely j with economic questions. In 1692, he published [ 15 LOCKE anonymously some letters (addressed, Mr. Fox Bourne thinks, to Somers) on c The consequences of the lowering of interest and raising the value of money' which had reference to a proposal that had been made to lower the rate of interest by law, and to the serious problem of the depreciation of the currency which caused Locke great anxiety. When Lowndes, the Secretary to the Treasury, made a proposal in 1695 for raising the value of money, Locke returned to the subject and rendered service to Somers and Montague, who had con- sulted him, in their legislation for reform of the coinage. In this year also some strictures which Locke had written on the Licensing Act (which maintained the censorship of the press) were read in a conference of the two Houses, and helped towards the demolition of the Act. Locke's country residence was at Gates, in Essex, where he finally took up his abode in 1691, in the house of Sir Francis Mashain, as soon as he could persuade that gentleman, at whose house Locke had frequently been a visitor, to accept him as a permanent guest upon suitable terms. Masham's wife was the daughter of Cudworth the Cambridge Platonist, with whose family Locke had long been on terms of friendship. Lady Masham devoted herself with unfailing affection to her friend, 16 LIFE whose declining years and fragile health she cheered with her intellectual companionship. Her letter to Leclerc, written after Locke's death, is a principal source of our knowledge of his life. Masham's daughter Esther (his child by a former wife) became a great friend of Locke, and a lively correspondence passed when either was away from home between ' Laudabridis' and 'Joannes/ While at Gates, Locke carried on the greater part of the immense literary work of his later life. The details may be mentioned briefly. A second letter concerning Toleration had appeared in 1690, in answer to a criticism of the first by Jonas Proast, and the long third letter published in 1692, was a rejoinder to Proast's rejoinder. In 1693 Locke published his Thoughts concerning Education, containing the substance of letters written from Holland to his friend Clarke about the education of Clarke's son. Locke used his medical know- ledge with much effect in the earlier part of his treatise. The general body of the work reveals his sagacious care for the growth of character, and his aversion to studies calculated to cul- tivate address, rather than progress in knowledge. In all the methods of education, he looked to their effect upon the pupil's mind. But he put virtue and practical wisdom first and learning B 17 LOCKE last. 1 Probably Locke under-rates the value of learning as itself a means of educating character the topic on which it was reserved for Herbart to insist. But his work deserves its place in educational literature for its wisdom and sense of life, and it has the historical importance of having affected the Emile of Eousseau. Locke was engaged continually in modifying the Essay, of which a second edition appeared in 1694, and a much amended fourth edition in 1700. In 1695, he published anonymously his Reasonable- ness of Christianity (followed by two ' Vindica- tions ' of it). Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, recognised in the writer of this work the author of the Essay ; and when Toland, the deistical writer, published next year his Christianity not Mysterious, which he professed to found upon Locke's Essay, attacked the Essay itself by way of a defence of the Trinity against Toland and the Unitarians. Locke replied to Stillingfleet's attacks in a series of letters, between 1697 and 1 R. H. Quick (Educational Reformers], observes that this work should be read in connection with the Conduct of the Understanding, where instead of considering subjects of study from the point of view of their usefulness for a young gentle- man (as in the Thoughts], Locke considers them as means of training, and urges that the value of study is to enable the youth to use his reason for himself hereafter. 18 LIFE 1699, which supplemented in certain respects the doctrine of the Essay, and overwhelmed his op- ponent with argument and irony. Of Locke's posthumous writings the most important philo- sophically are a paper on Malebranche and The Conduct of the Understanding. Many friends came to see Locke during his re- tirement at Gates, or received visits from him. Among these was Newton, between whom and Locke there subsisted a real affection. Locke took some part in securing for Newton his ap- pointment at the Mint. But Newton was not always easy to deal with. Once, in consequence of prolonged insomnia (due to dozing by the fire in his room), he imagined a grievance against Locke. A reader who remembers the greatness of the two men will find something very touching in the letter in which Newton contritely asks forgiveness for entertaining and expressing an evil opinion of his friend, and in Locke's reply of surprise and generous affection. Another friend of this later time, whom the Essay brought him, was William Molyneux, 'the ingenious gentle- man' of the Essay 'whom I am proud to call my friend/ an Irish patriot before Swift, who introduced the Essay into Trinity College, Dublin, where it was to be read shortly by the young 19 LOCKE Berkeley, and has ever since remained a text- book. Molyneux' discussion of the Essay helped Locke to several amendments, and he visited Locke at Gates. Another new friend was Anthony Collins, a young neighbouring squire, who after- wards wrote one of the best known of the deistical writings. Locke took a warm interest in a rela- tion of his, Peter King, a young lawyer and member of Parliament, who became his sole executor. It was King's descendant, Lord Chan- cellor King, who published in 1829 the Life of John Locke. Still another young friend de- serves mention, Pierre Coste, French tutor to the boy Francis Masham, who wrote of Locke in Bayle's magazine Les Nouvelles de la Rtpublique des Lettres. Locke died on the 28th of October 1704, and was buried in the churchyard at High Laver, the parish where he used to attend service. Locke's capacity of friendship, which included love of children and young people, is apparent from his whole history. Lady Masham and Coste have left us a charming and amiable picture of his personality 4 his singular humanity and good breeding, which made him alike conversible with all sorts of people,' and made him lead people to talk of what they understood best; his fondness of raillery and banter, * though rarely if ever, to 20 LIFE the least offence of any person, but rather to dwell on some very slight fault, or else that which was usually commendable and for their honour to be known ' ; his wit in conversation ; his kindness and charity, which, however, were always directed to encourage industry. 'He was a great lover of economy, and an exact keeper of accounts ' and he was very neat in his dress and habits, without any affectation or singularity. He was quick- tempered and sometimes against unfair assailants he did not conceal his anger, but he was easily appeased. When some one quoted in his hearing some words of Horace, 'Ah/ said Locke, ' I am like Horace in both these things. I love the warmth of the sun, and though I am prone to be angry, my hot temper soon goes down/ If we had not his letters and the testimony of these friends, we could easily guess from the style of his writing and particularly of the Essay what manner of man he was. It suggests a man saga- cious, cautious, skilled in the knowledge of men and regardful above all things of what it concerns man's happiness to know and to be, a foe to ' en- thusiasm/ but of broad spirit and sympathy. He writes leisurely, as if he were talking out of a full mind ; determined to see things clearly ; anxious to make his meaning plain; yet not over-care- 21 LOCKE ful of precision, but content, as a man of the world, to allow one part of his discourse to supply the qualification of another part. Prolix his style is, exceeding the measure of our less spacious times, and when it is controversial, protracted into tedi- ousness. Its uniform level is diversified here and there by phrases of striking and even pungent wit (' God when he makes the prophet doth not un- make the man'), more often by quiet humour ('every drowsy nod shakes their doctrine who teach that the soul is always thinking ') or irony, which is always courteous (and therefore more effective) except when it is directed against an unworthy criticism. It betrays little imagination, though occasionally there is a touch of tenderness and fancy as in the passage : ' The ideas as well as children of our youth often die before us ; and our minds represent those tombs to which we are approaching ; where though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time and the imagery moulders away ' ; or when he allows himself to consider the possibility of con- tinuous grades of spirits in the world, though there the imagination belongs rather to the thought than to the style. Often there are pas- sages of sustained eloquence like the concluding pages of the Reasonableness of Christianity. But 22 LIFE its general tone is that of equable common-sense, without emphasis, without enthusiasm, restrained in its judgment, careful of measure, never dull but reflecting evenly from a candid surface, modest when it is most original, because con- cerned with the faithful presentment of things, rather lambent than fiery, an inspired pedes- trianism. CHAPTER II PHILOSOPHY (THE ESSAY) NOTHING enables us so well to understand the meaning of a philosophic writer as to know the spirit in which he undertook his inquiries, and it is fortunate for us that the more personal and autobiographical method of writers like Descartes, Locke, and Spinoza (in one of his treatises) and others, admits us into this secret. Locke's spirit is that of criticism. The method of criticism in philosophy is principally associated with the name of Kant, who avowed and described it. It is the ^ method of determining the limits of our know- ledge by an inquiry into the instrument. In this sense Locke has been rightly described as ' the first critical philosopher/Jand different as his pro- cedure was from Kant's, and different as was the outcome of their thinking, their affinity of spirit is profounder than their divergence. The words in which Locke describes, at the opening of the Essay, the occasion of his writing it remind us of the later words of Kant in his preface to the 24 PHILOSOPHY Critique of Pure Reason. 'I thought,' Locke says, ' that the first step towards satisfying several inquiries the mind of man was very apt to run into, was to take a survey of our own understand- ings, examine our own powers, and see to what things they were adapted. Till that was done I suspected we began at the wrong end and in vain sought for satisfaction in a quiet and sure posses- sion of truths that most concerned us, whilst we let loose our thoughts into the vast ocean of being ; as if all that boundless extent were the natural and undoubted possession of our understandings, wherein there was nothing exempt from its de- cision, or that escaped its comprehension. Thus men extending their inquiries beyond their capac- ities, and letting their thoughts wander into those depths where they can find no sure footing, it is no wonder that they raise questions and multiply disputes, which, never coming to any clear resolu- tion, are proper only to continue and increase their doubts, and confirm them at last in perfect scepticism. Whereas were the capacities of our understandings well considered, the extent of our knowledge once discovered and the horizon found which sets the bounds between the enlightened and dark parts of things between what is and what is not comprehensible by us men would 25 LOCKE perhaps with less scruple acquiesce in the avowed ignorance of the one, and employ their thoughts and discourse with more advantage and satisfac- tion in the other.' With Locke the speculative impulse is an out-growth from practical needs. ' Our business here is not to know all things but those which concern our conduct/ He is per- suaded that for two evils to which the mind is liable : scepticism which bids us doubt everything because there are some things which cannot be understood ; and on the other hand extravagant pretensions to knowledge : there is but one cure, to know how much we can know. The Essay is thus a doctrine of the limits of knowledge. All its multifarious inquiries converge to this end. The extent of knowledge is indeed the proper subject of only one book, the fourth and last. Knowledge is to Locke the perception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, that is to say, of the objects of our understanding. A preliminary survey was therefore necessary of these ideas, and because to him words, the signs of ideas, were an index to the nature of ideas themselves, and the misuse of language was partly provoked by unclearness in our ideas, and partly provoked it, the study of ideas and the study of words are conjoined. These inquiries occupy the 26 PHILOSOPHY major part of the Essay in Books n. and in. [it is a method Locke describes as the 'plain, his- ( torical method/ But history means to him not \ simply or primarily the record of the origin and growth of our ideas, but rather it has the sense in which Bacon and Aristotle used the word before i him, and in which we still speak of Zoology as natural history. The history of our minds means a description of the contents of our mind as we find them, arranging them into sorts, and assign- ing them to their appropriate faculties.) Q^Ee second book of Locke's Essay, which is a survey of ideas, is in fact an inventory of our experience. But Locke does not distinguish the inquiry into the contents of our ideas from the inquiry into their origin, and hence arises one of the chief defects of the Essay. For in analysing our ideas into their simplest elements, which is his prin- cipal object, he implies and even says, that these simple elements exist first and that the more complex ones are constructed out of them. But the ' history ' which may be true as a description and an analysis is not necessarily true as an account of the order of growthj Locke's method has sometimes been described as psychological, and it has been made a charge against him as well as against his successors, 27 LOCKE Berkeley and Hume, that they give us psychology instead of philosophy. This charge is founded upon a misunderstanding of the spirit of their work. While they are founders of English psychology, their primary interest is philosophical or metaphysical, and they are only incidentally psychologists. The object of psychology is to describe the process by which the mind acquires its experiences. Necessarily such a classification as Locke gives of these experiences, referring them to the mental capacities by which we acquire them, supplies at the same time the material of a psychology. But Locke's object is to describe the different kinds of objects the mind thinks about; and in fact the processes of ob- servation, perception, willing and the like, which are the subject-matter of psychology (a word which Locke himself does not employ), are for him merely one portion of the contents of human experience, that which he describes as ideas of reflection. By ' idea ' (a term which he borrows from Des- cartes) Locke means 'whatever is the object of the understanding, when a man thinks ' or ' what- ever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking.' It includes thus the simplest experiences like heat, and the most complex like 28 PHILOSOPHY those of civilisation or mathematical relations ; and not merely experience of things, but of events, whether in the external world, or, like the process of conceiving, in the mind itself; not only ideas of particular things but general or abstract ideas. Careless as Locke's use of language is, there is never any doubt as to his use of this word. Sometimes he describes an idea by reference to the capacity which supplies it an idea of sensa- tion is thus an idea supplied by sense ; sometimes by reference to its contents, as when he speaks of an idea of heat, in other words heat so far as it is experienced. They are objects of mind: they would not be what they are if they were not ex- perienced ; but they are objects still. They are in fact the appearances of things, in so far as these appearances are presented to the mind, or as Locke and his followers more often say 'are in the mind/ Butjhe does not answer, because he does not raise, the question as to what the nature of these ideas is or how they arise. He is content to say that when a hot thing excites the skin and the movement is continued to the brain, it pro- duces in the mind the idea of heat in this case an idea of sensation or perception. He assumes that there is an external thing, and a mind, and that upon suitable occasion the mind apprehends 29 LOCKE an idea related to the thing. But while these ideas are for Locke appearances of things, they cannot be described as being identical with things in so far as the things appear to us under different aspecT^PThe ideas are not attributes of the things themselves, they are to Locke copies of the things to which they refer. Locke insists that we can only know reality through ideas which are its copies, that ideas or their relations are the proper objects of mind, and in fact his whole effort is to determine just how much, in extent and in kind, these ideas can tell us of the real world which he assumes. The world of ideas constitutes therefore (to neglect certain qualifications to be mentioned hereafter) a body of representations of real thingij But while he thus assumes that the objects of mind are themselves mental in character Locke never describes them in the modern phrase of ' states of consciousness/ He never says (and does not believe) that we know nothing but our own states. He does indeed constantly speak of ideas as being ' in the mind/ and it is easy to find passages which suggest that the ideas are mental .affections. ' The pictures drawn in our minds/ he says, ' of the ideas of memory ' (what we should now call the images of memory) ' are laid in fading colours, and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish 30 PHILOSOPHY and disappear/ But it is clear that an idea of perception, e.g. the idea of a tree is not an affec- tion of the mind in the same sense as the act of perception itself is. Nor does Locke, who main- tains that mathematical ideas have a reality of their own, mean that a triangle is a mere affec- tion of the mind which vanishes when we cease to think of it. Locke does not in the Essay raise the problem which is involved in this phrase affec- tion or modification of mind a problem which agitated the followers of Descartes; and when he meets it in his posthumous treatise on Male- branche he is impatient of it and pushes it aside. To have the modification of mind involved in seeing the purple colour of a violet (Malebranche called this sensation a ' sentiment ' in distinction from the idea), is the same thing as ' to have the idea of purple in my mind.' To Locke what is important is that ' when we think of a colour or a figure which we did not think of before there is some alteration in the mind/ But how we come to have ideas he cannot explain. ' I see or per- ceive or have ideas when it pleases God that I should, but in a way that I cannot comprehend/ r'The phrase, that ideas are in the mind, cannot ^therefore be pressed it might be replaced by the phrase, ideas are before the mind. The word 'idea/ LOCKE therefore, contains for Locke no theory ; it means simply an_ object of the understanding when we think. Unfortunately he also did not inquire J what was involved in assigning to ideas a twilight existence between the things they represent and the mind which understands them. That he did not do so is a philosophical deffcfjQjput if we are to apprehend his meaning, we must beware of import- ing into his philosophy doctrines that he does not maintain. Let us follow Locke in mis inventory of ideas. They may be distinguished, in the first place, according to their 'original/ All our ideas, all the materials of our thought and knowledge, are derived directly or indirectly from experience, and from two sources of it, sensation and reflection. External sensible objects supply us with the one set of ideas, ideas of sensation; our own opera- tions about the ideas got by sensation, when the mind comes to reflect upon these operations, supply us with the other set, the ideas of reflec- tion : such ideas as the acts of perceiving, willing, thinking, feeling. Apart from experience, then, directly or indirectly received, the mind is to Locke a White paper, void of all characters, with- out any ideas, a tabula rasa ; or it is compared to a dark cabinet into which the senses let in light. 32 IX o PHILOSOPHY That we have no innate ideas, no objects of ex- perience not derived from these two sources, is the! implied doctrine, the subject-matter of Book iTl whose significance may be deferred. Nor does the mind think, except so far as it has ideas before itfwe cannot say with Descartes that because the essence of mind is to think, the mind is always actually thinking. ' Every drowsy nod shakes their doctrine who declare that the mind thinks always.! But, while the mind is passive in respect of tKese two sources of experience, sen- sation and reflection, the mind is also active : it can attend, it can compare, distinguish and abstract. Hence arisesfthe first important classi- fication of ideas into two classes simple and complex ideas. Simple ideas are the ultimate constituents of experience, the uncompounded ap- pearances of things ; complex ideas are the work- manship of the mmcy Simple ideas are either the ideas of the sensible qualities of things de- rived by sensation of all kinds, the ideas of white- ness, heat and the like, or else they are the ideas of the operations of our minds which come to us by reflection, or else they are like pleasure or pain or existence, ideas which convey themselves into the mind by sensation or reflection indiffer- ently, 'by all the ways of sensation and reflec- C 33 LOCKE tion.' These simple elements of experience the mind can neither make nor destroy, it can only receive ; had we fewer or more senses we should receive fewer or more such ideas.r Among simple ideas of sensation the most important distinction is that between the ideas of the primary qualities and the ideas of the secondary qualities of bodies a distinction inherited by Locke from Descartes but introduced mto philosoplry, in its modern shape, by Galileo. V Extension, figure, number, motion or rest, solraity, these are qualities which bodies possess no matter what changes they undergo. Pound an almond or melt wax, the colours may change, but some figure and exten- sion they still have. These qualities, then, are powers in bodies themselves, and really in them, whether any one's senses perceive them or no: in virtue of which they produce exactly corre- sponding ideas in us. But secondary qualities, like colour, taste, and smell, which change with varying circumstances, which may vanish for ex- ample with the absence of illumination, or be unfelt by a person who suffers from a cold, or may change in character according to the condi- tion of the percipient, are not qualities in bodies themselves, but are powers which they possess of producing certain ideas in us, in virtue of their 34 PHILOSOPHY internal structure ; that is, in virtue of the primary qualities of the insensible particles of which they are composed, for Locke assumes material bodies to be ultimately atomic in structure. It may be added that there is a third sort of qualities of bodies, powers which they possess to affect .other external bodies, like the power of the sun to melt wax. It is these last which are commonly called powers. The ideas of the secondary qualities are, therefore, in one important respect, unlike those of the primary qualities; they do not resemble anything in the object, though popular thought thinks that bodies are in themselves red or sweet, in the same way as they are extended. \ ^Simple ideas of reflection may be grouped under theTtwo heads of thinking and willing. Sensible objects give us ideas. The acts of the mind, as engaged upon these ideas, give us the ideas of reflection by a kind of inner sense. \ Perception is the simplest operation we can tfius be aware of, for apparently the act of sensation is nothing but bodily motion in the brain ; the simplest idea of sensation is really an idea of perception. Re- tention, discrimination, comparison, abstraction (which puts a limit between man and brutes), are other examples. It is characteristic of Locke's imperfect consideration of what an idea is, that, 35 LOCKE while strictly speaking, it is only * retention' or 'memory' itself that should be an idea of re- fledlion, he yet constantly speaks of remembered objects as ideas of reflection; though, in itself, a remembered person is no more an object of reflec- tion than a perceived person. By doing so he seems to make the inner sense not only a source of ideas of mental operations, but a source of ideas which are not operations at all but in some sense a special mental reduplication of ideas of sensa- tion a doctrine full of fatal significance for sub- sequent thought. \ The complex ideas introduce distinctions which present at once more interest and greater diffi- culty r\ They are the voluntary creations of the miiid, which manipulates the materials derived from sensation and reflection; or they might be described as resoluble into these elements to- gether with an active element of construction referable to the mind itself. [^Locke distinguishes three sorts, Modes, Substances, and Relations, of which Modes and Relations stand on an alto- gether different footing from Substances. Modes are complex ideas like jumping, triangle, grati- tude, which are not regarded as self-subsistent but as affections of substances. They are either simple, or mixed, according as their simple con- 36 PHILOSOPHY stituents are of the same or different sorts. Thus, twelve is a mere repetition of unity ; beauty is re- soluble into the heterogeneous elements of colour, U figure, pleasure, etc. Simple modes are thus variations of one simple idea e.g. the different figures of extension, different sorts of motion, different numbersTj One particularly interesting mode is infinity or immensity, whether of space or duration, which we get by (or is resoluble into) the addition of unit to unit and joining to this the negative idea that the process of addition may be carried on without limit, never coming to an end. Anticipating the more famous discussion of the same problem by Kant,jjjpcke denies in- finity to be a positive idea there is no idea of a positive completed infinite ' you cannot adapt /^ a standing measure to a growing bulk.' The chief V examples of mixed modes (those which are re- soluble into heterogeneous elements) are to be found in moral ideas, e.g. motive, justice. \ It is true that combinations of qualities inTne real world may correspond to these ideas, or even suggest them. But in themselves they are put together arbitrarily by the mind, and the im- portant consequence follows (for these and simple modes as well), that they have no standard ex- ternal to themselves with which they can be com- 37 LOCKE pared: they are their own archetypes, they are their own guarantee of reality, f This same account applies to ideas of Relation, such as relation of king and subject, identity, cause and effect, and the like. All of them ' terminate in simple ideas/ are 'concerned with their simple ideas/ and are products of the mind's activity in considering them, ' so as to carry its view from one to the other/ \Some of the more special sorts of relations, and TrTparticular moral relations, will occupy us later. < The ideas of Substances are of a different nature. They, too, are the workmanship of the mind. We find a number of ideas of simple qualities going together in our experience, and we combine these ideas together under a single name, and regard them as belonging to one thing, but we also go on to suppose some support or sub- stratum to the qualities in the thing which pro- duces these simple ideas in us. We do not know what that support is, any more than the Indian philosopher Locke loves to quote, who declared that the world was supported by an elephant, the elephant by a tortoise, and the tortoise by he knew not what. This obscure idea of some support we know not what is the idea we have of substance in general, land ' it is the same every- --*8 PHILOSOPHY where.' 1 A particular kind of substance is then nothing but a group of simple ideas, regarded as so supported, and as flowing from the internal constitution of this unknown somewhat. The Church, in the person of the Bishop of Worcester, alleged, in alarm for the doctrine of the Trinity, that Locke was almost discarding substance out of the world. Locke could answer easily enough, that so far from discarding it, he had catalogued it, vague as it was, in his in- ventory of experience, and had explained what kind of an idea it was. ^Lpcke might have been more embarrassed if he had been asked to explain how the mind could not only group together simple ideas as the ideas of one thing, but was\ able to invent the new idea of a support however/ indefinite. He was content to note in his in- ventory the. existence of this idea without more narrowly analysing its nature. A BulTtwo consequences he'clrew from his account of substance, which are of great importance. The first is, that the idea of a spiritual substance is no less clear than that of a material one. A material substance is the unknown support of sensible qualities ; spiritual substance is the unknown support of the qualities corresponding to the 1 First letter to the Bishop of Worcester. 39 LOCKE ideas of reflection.? At the same time, this victori- ous conclusion needs to be qualified. Bodies and souls are alike the unknown supports of attri- butes. But bodies to Locke have a microscopic atomic constitution : a notion familiar to him from the speculations of Gassendi, or indeed from those of Bacon. It is but the coarseness of our senses and of our intelligence which conceals this constitution from us. Spirits more finely endowed than ours, like the angels', may penetrate further than ours into the constitution of bodies. But/in regard to the soul, there is a peculiar obscurity. A substance it is, but we do not know whether it is an immaterial substance, or merely a material substance to which God has attached the power of thinking.^ The first hypothesis may be the more probable, and only those ' whose thoughts are immersed in matter' find it harder to con- ceive a spiritual than a bodily substance. But though God Himself, from whom all proceeds, is certainly an immaterial substance, there is no con- tradiction in the second hypothesis, which holds Him to have added thought to certain systems of senseless matter. ' All the great ends of worship and religion are well enough secured without philosophical proofs of the soul's immateriality.' The identity of the soul, whichever view be 40 PHILOSOPHY taken of it, consists in the identity of conscious- ness. "jfThe second conclusion is of a different nature. A distinction was current in the schools, between the real essence of substances and the nominal essence or definition. Locke spends himself in argument to prove that we know only nominal essences, and that they are the names of sorts of things by which we identify a particular thing as belonging to a class, they are groups of ideas (J connected together by names. They are thus general ideas formed by abstraction. The real essence is ' that real constitution of anything, which is the foundation of the qualities combined in the nominal essence/ it is to him that minute ' microscopic constitution, from which the obvious sensible qualities combined in the definition are supposed to flow. This real essence of things we do not know, because our senses fail to carry us so far. It follows, to anticipate a little, that our knowledge of substances is confined to the abstract collections of ideas which a besides belief in one God, are taught by Jesus and by His apostles as the condition of the new covenant : faith and repentance believ- ing Jesus to be the Messiah, and through this faith adopting a good life. This replaced the Mosaic law of works and the morality of the heathen. All else contained in the Scriptures beyond these fundamental articles, though truths and to be believed by one who knows them, a man may still be ignorant of and yet be saved, or may interpret differently from other men accord- ing to his lights. That there is one God, that Jesus is the Messiah, and that we must live a good life, are enough. The essential reasonableness of Christianity consisted, to Locke, therefore, in its declaration of God's unity, no longer restricted to one people but delivered to all mankind, and its bringing to righteousness through this faith weak men who cannot by reason attain to rules of morality. 'Natural religion in its full extent nowhere had been taken care of by the force of natural reason.' ' Nobody that I know before our Saviour's time ever did or went about to give us 87 LOCKE a morality . . . which mankind might have re- course to as their unerring rule. Such a law of morality Jesus Christ hath given us in the New Testament, but by the latter of these ways, by revelation.' It is plain, therefore, from the spirit of this work (as well as from the little posthumous Discourse on Miracles) that^for Locke not only the belief in Christian revelation but in the miracles by which it was supported depended on the evidence which the revelation supplies of the < ends aimed at by God.' ' The miracles are to be judged by the doctrine, not the doctrine by the miracles.' 1 Their significance to him lies not so much in their con- trariety to ordinary events, as in the light they threw upon the divine nature, which could use them to enforce a system of morality, thoroughly acceptable to the human reason^\ Locke's pro- found belief in the concern which God has for His universe which He creates, and his willingness to base our theoretical conviction of God's existence on a precarious use of the conception of causality, leave as many questions unsolved as they solve. But at least they do not blur the problem by omitting one portion of the data. 1 From the Journal. See Fox Bourne, vol. i. p. 464 (quoted by Fraser). 88 RELIGION The rationalism of Locke made him the parent of Deism, which neglected the faith which he com- bined with his rationalism. In the controversy over the question whether natural or rational religion could be reconciled with Christianity as a revealed religion supported by miracles, the Deists were those who upheld natural religion and directly and indirectly, with irony more or less concealed, depreciated Christianity. The latitude practised by the orthodox writers made them not always or easily distinguishable from the Deists, one of whom indeed claimed Archbishop Tillotson as the source of Deism. It is not strange, therefore, that though Locke must be reckoned on the side of the ortho- dox, the Deists should have derived their inspira- tion from him. The circumstances have been related which brought Locke into conflict with Stillingfleet. Toland's argument to show that the Gospels contained nothing ' above reason' was based by him on Locke's Essay and repudiated by Locke. Collins who had been an ardent pupil of Locke wrote in his Discourse of Free-thinking one of the deistical books which excited the live- liest controversy. jThe deistical doctrine passed through various phases in England during the first half of the eighteenth century and then died out. But it left its traces in two minds of the first G 89 LOCKE order. In England it led to Hume's Essay on Miracles and his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. Abroad it led to the deism of Voltaire, who left England in 1728 to become the mission- ary in Europe of the philosophy of Newton and Locke. Hume and Voltaire represent (not in religion only) the disintegrating and sceptical tendency, which was one, but only one element in Locke's philosophy. A new construction followed in the latter part of the century, first in Rousseau and then in Kant, 90 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BO 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. 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