B 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S 
 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 DISSER M;ON 
 
 NTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT Of THE REQHREMFNTS FOR 
 THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF Pi U O - PH Y IN THK GRADUATE 
 SCHOOL OF THE OHIO >i,i UNIVERSITY 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^'< i) GRi.',OL;-;V 
 
 WILMINGTON, OHIC) 
 H 
 
EXCHANGE 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S 
 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 DISSERTATION 
 
 PRESENTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR 
 
 THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE GRADUATE 
 
 SCHOOL OF THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY 
 
 BY 
 
 RAYMOND GREGORY 
 
 WILMINGTON, OHIO 
 1919 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 1. STANDPOINT OF THIS STUDY. The writer holds that reality 
 is a systematic whole, that the mind, the body, and the external 
 world are organic to one another. To insulate consciousness, to 
 divide the universe into a realm of knowledge and a realm of 
 external reality, he regards as an untenable position. In the words 
 of Green, "A within implies a without and we are not entitled to 
 say anything is without or outside consciousness ; for externality, 
 being a relation which, like any other relation, exists only in the 
 medium of consciousness, (only between certain objects as they 
 are for consciousness,) cannot be a relation between consciousness 
 and anything else."* 
 
 In so far as it denies irresoluble dualism, this standpoint is one 
 with so-called objective idealism, but it might just as well be called 
 realism. It unqualifiedly denies that that which is present in the 
 experience is therefore "in the mind," or that to be means to be 
 perceived. Sensations, if we can speak of such analyzed elements, 
 are external objects and not "ideas." On the other hand, it holds 
 that the finite knower is part of the universe and not a passive or 
 detached spectator. It affirms with Bosanquet that truth is the 
 whole, that the worlds of finite centers of experience are true in 
 so far as they correspond with the coherent whole of which they 
 are parts. It is obvious therefore why Locke's theory of knowl- 
 edge, embracing as it does the doctrine of ideas and of two worlds, 
 may be regarded as a typical antithesis to this standpoint. 
 
 2. METHOD. Locke's theory of knowledge, however, will not be 
 used as a mere foil for a rival theory, as is the case with the criti- 
 cisms of Liebnitz and Cousin. In the spirt of Socrates, the writer 
 will attempt to meet Locke on his own ground and criticize his 
 theory of knowledge with reference to his own statements and the 
 common facts of experience as accessible to him as to us. The 
 method of immanent criticism here adopted will doubtless lay this 
 study open to the danger of loose organization. Unity, it is hoped, 
 will be achieved by constant reference to the standpoint of this 
 study. 
 
 * (Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 73.) 
 
 425844 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 3. SCOPE. The chief concern of this study is Locke's theory of 
 knowledge; but to treat the thought- world as distinct from reality, 
 epistemology as distinct from metaphysics, would be to deny the 
 validity of the standpoint of organic realism ; therefore, a consid- 
 eration of Locke's metaphysical doctrines is essential. 
 
 4. LOCKE'S KNOWLEDGE OF PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE. Before 
 taking up his philosophic method it is of interest to note that 
 Locke had a wide acquaintance with philosophic and scientific 
 literature. In regard to the former it is said that before he ven- 
 tured to publish anything he wrote, "he had acquainted himself 
 with nearly every book of importance that had been offered to the 
 world for its enlightenment or mystification on those sub- 
 jects * *."f Special mention is made of Bacon, Hobbes, Gassendi, 
 and Descartes. Being a doctor of medicine himself and a member 
 of the Royal Society, he doubtless had a full and accurate knowl- 
 edge of current scientific opinions, especially of human anatomy 
 and physiology. He had a large number of friends among scien- 
 tific men. Of this number Boyle, Sydenham, and Newton are of 
 chief interest. The uncritical ease with which he adopted scientific 
 opinions is attested by Brewer who is quoted as saying, "The cele- 
 brated Locke, who was incapable of understanding the Trincipia' 
 from his want of geometrical knowledge, inquired of Huyghens if 
 all the mathematical propositions in that work were true. When 
 he was assured that he might depend upon -their certainty, he took 
 them for granted, and carefully examined the reasonings and 
 corollaries deduced from them. In this manner he acquired a 
 knowledge of the physical truths in the 'Principia,' and became a 
 firm believer in the discoveries it contained. In the same manner 
 he studied the treatise on 'Optic,' and made himself master of 
 every part of it which was not mathematical."* 
 
 5. LOCKE'S PROBLEM. Within this vast range of knowledge, as 
 will appear to the reader of the Essay, Locke fastens upon certain 
 doctrines here and there, each without reference to the others, 
 
 t(H. B. Fox Bourne, Life of John Locke, Vol. I. p. 72.) 
 (ibld. p. 216.) 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 and holds to them with childlike tenacity. In his philosophic work 
 he seeks to harmonize but never to discredit these doctrines. The 
 ones of most importance here are the following: the doctrine of 
 ideas, the duality of the universe, the mediating function of the 
 nervous system, and the existence of an external, unperceived 
 realm of atoms in motion. Locke's problem is to give an account 
 of knowledge, its nature, origin, extent, and validity, on the basis 
 of these doctrines. 
 
 6. LOCKE'S EMPIRICISM. On account of his psychological or 
 introspective method of dealing with the problem of knowledge, 
 Locke is usually classed as an empiricist. There is justification 
 
 for so classifying him. ?He holds that experience is the source of 
 all our ideas. "Whence has it [the mind] all the materials of 
 reason and knowledge ?" he asks. "To this I answer, in one word, 
 from experience; and in that all our knowledge is founded, and 
 from that it ultimately derives itself.* He insists that 
 observation and experience rather than hypothesis or assumed' 
 principle are the true sources of knowledge, f "The simple 
 ideas we receive from sensation and reflection) are the 
 boundaries of our thoughts; beyond which the mind, whatever 
 efforts it would make, is not able to advance one jot; nor can it 
 make any discoveries when it would pry into the nature and hid- 
 den causes of those ideas. "J, 
 
 He leads us to suppose that the mind is a passive receptacle 
 for ideas, a white paper on which things become written, a wax 
 tablet on which characters are impressed, a dark cabinet into 
 which ideas come. Knowledge is a fermentation of the raw mate- 
 rial thus supplied. Truths are produced by a kind of "logical 
 chemistry." This interpretation is further illustrated by his em- 
 phatic denial of innate ideas. There are no "innate principles," 
 "primary notions," innate impressions," "original notions or prin- 
 ciples," "truths," "maxims," or "propositions.'^ The principle of 
 contradiction is not innate, ** nor is identity.^* 
 
 II. i. 2. |I. ii, 1, 13, 17. 
 
 til. i. 2, 10, 21,; I. iv. 25. *!. iv. S. 
 $11. xxlii. 29 ttl. iv. 4. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 7. LOCKE'S RATIONALISM. On the other hand Locke is quite as 
 rationalistic as Descartes or Democratus. He believes that all 
 things may bs ultimately understood. Reality lies behind expe- 
 rience and true knowledge can be attained only by thought. "For 
 since the things the mind contemplates," he says, "are none of 
 them, besides itself, present to the understanding, it is necessary 
 that something else, as a sign or representation of the thing it 
 considers, should be present to it: and these are ideas."* He ad- 
 mits many ideas which can be ascribed neither to sensation nor 
 reflection, e. g. God, substance, relation. He admits all that a 
 temperate advocate of innate ideas could demand. There are 
 certain "principles of common reason/'f or "common sense.":): By 
 a certain inherent principle of repugnancy the mind "can not 
 but be satisfied that there doth something at that time really 
 exist without us." The "ready assent of the mind to some 
 truths"** depends upon a "faculty of the mind" by which a truth 
 is recognized by its "native evidence."ft This is "intuitive 
 knowledge. "it The ideas of relation the mind adds to the simple 
 ideas they are "creatures of the understanding." The percep- 
 tion of identity or diversity is "the first act of the mind, when it 
 has any sentiments or ideas at all."*** Likewise the idea of sub- 
 stance comes neither from sensation nor reflection, ftt The clear- 
 est and most certain knowledge that human frailty is capable of 
 is intuitive knowledge. It is irresistible as the "bright sun- 
 shine."JJJ All our knowledge, of whatever sort, depends upon 
 this for its certainty and evidence; J'That there is a God, and 
 what that God is, nothing can discover to us, nor judge in us, but 
 natural reason. For whatever discovery we receive any other way 
 must come originally from inspiration, which is an opinion or 
 persuasion in the mind whereof a man knows not the rise nor 
 reason, but is received there as a truth coming from an unknown 
 and therefore a supernatural cause, and not founded upon those 
 principles or observations in the way of reasoning which make 
 the understanding admit other things for truths. "* 
 
 *IV. xxi. 4. *!. ii. 11. ***IV. i. 4. 
 
 tl. iv. 10. ttlV. vii. 10. tttH. xxiii. 4. 
 
 II. iii. 4. ttlV. ii. 1. ttJIV. ii. 1. 
 
 IV. xi. 9. III. iii. 11. 
 
 * (Letter to Lord King, Fox Bourne's Life of John Locke, Vol. I. p. 162, 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 It is thus evident that Locke has two methods of investigation. 
 This ambiguity of method together with the inconsistent but in- 
 violable doctrines mentioned above preclude the possibility of a 
 consistent system of philosophy. It is no wonder that Victor 
 Cousin exclaims. "Nothing is so inconsistent as Locke."f 
 
 8. IDEAS AS CONTENT. Before we can proceed with an inves- 
 tigation of Locke's theory of knowledge it is necessary to deter- 
 mine what he means by ideas, mind, and external body. 
 
 In the first place idea stands for "whatever is the object of the 
 understanding when a man thinks. "J "Every one is conscious of 
 them in himself, and men's words and actions will satisfy him that 
 they are in others." Ideas "are nothing but the immediate objects 
 of our minds in thinking." "Every man is conscious to hims'elf 
 that he thinks, and that which his mind is applied about whilst 
 thinking, being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt, that men ' 
 have in their minds several ideas such as those experienced by the | 
 words whiteness, hardness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, j 
 army, drunkenness, and others."** The important point here is 
 that ideas are in the mind. 
 
 ^^^^^bMJHriVMH *wc~- ^ J 
 
 It must be assumed that Locke applies the term thinking to 
 whatever goes on in the mind, and means sense perception as well 
 as imagination or reasoning. What common sense regards as ob- 
 jects in the external world, trees, elephants, houses, are really in 
 the mind. These objects, whether.it be thinking itself or man, 
 are ideas that are there. ThatJa^ whatever is the object for an A 
 observing or thinking mind, is content. Ideas, then, are mental \ 
 content. Although ideas are in the mind, yet they are not part of 
 the mind. They appear to be foreign material over against which 
 the mind stands as an observer. The nature of this content, in 
 the perception of external objects, is, it is to be inferred from 
 
 t(History of Modern Phil., Vol. II. p. 253. N. Y. 1893.) 
 8 (Second Letter to the Bishop of Worcester.) **II. i. 1. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Locke's use of the terms "phantasm" and "species," imaginal. 
 What is in the mind is, not the real object, but an efflux or species. 
 We know external objects by means of these representations. 
 When the idea is of thinking, believing, or knowing, the idea is 
 still of the nature of an image, or representation, i. e., of the 
 mind's own activity. In either case there is something there that 
 stands for or is the mark or sign of the real thing or activity. 
 Ideas are all that the mind is aware of directly. They are its 
 only immediate objects. They are the boundaries of our own 
 thoughts beyond which the mind is not able to advance one jot.* 
 There are no unconscious ideas. An idea to be an idea must be 
 taken notice of; it must be before the mind. There are no ideas 
 that are not content. In the case of ideas, to be is to be perceived. 
 When ideas are said, figuratively, to be laid up in the repository 
 of the memory, that signifies merely that the mind has the power 
 to have again ideas it once had. Ideas in the memory are "actually 
 nowhere."! Impressions from the outside world may get as far 
 as the brain, the "presence room" of the mind, but they are not 
 ideas. "That which uses to produce the idea, though conveyed in 
 by the usual organ not being taken notice of in the understanding 
 and so imprinting no idea in the mind, there follows no sensation. 
 So that wherever there is sense or perception, there some idea is 
 actually produced and present in the understanding.'^ Ideas, 
 thus, appear' to be entities of some sort that are present in the 
 mind as its objects, but exist nowhere elseJ^From his metaphor 
 of the dark cabinet, we infer that ideas are entities, sui generis, 
 contained in the mind as in a receptacle. They are not external 
 real things, for they exist nowhere else but in the mind. Neither 
 are they parts of the mind or any modification of it. They are 
 neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, neither mind nor matter, but a tertium 
 quid, unique and unanalyzable. , 
 
 II. xxiii. 29. 
 til. x. 2. 
 til. ix. 4. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 9. IDEAS AS MODIFICATION. That ideas are content appears to 
 be the obvious conclusion. But when we consider the mind, as 
 Locke describes it, a passive substance, like a wax tablet or a 
 white paper on which ideas are impressed, it does seem as if he 
 intended us to regard ideas as modifications of the mind. Just as 
 the seal imprints a figure in the wax so we consider that the ex- 
 ternal object, through the agency of the sense organs and the 
 brain, imprints a more or less faithful picture or image of itself 
 on the mind. And just as the figure in the wax is a certain con- 
 formation or modification of the wax so the idea is a certain con- 
 formation or modification of the mind. This interpretation of 
 Locke finds further justification in the fact that he does not deny 
 the possibility that the mind is a material and hence impressible 
 substance.^. 
 
 Brown holds, as against Reid, that Locke's "ideas" are not fic- 
 titious or hybrid entities which mediate between the mind and 
 external objects, but are actually, according to Locke, himself, 
 modifications of the mind. He quotes Locke as saying, "Our 
 senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey 
 several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various 
 ways wherein those objects do affect them.* Now perception, it 
 is admitted, is an act of the mind. Here we find Locke using, 
 "perception" as an equivalent to "idea." Locke must mean, there- 
 fore, that the idea is the perception, and consequently a modifica- 
 tion or determination of mind. When Locke speaks of "percep- 
 tions" being conveyed in, the figurative language does not confuse 
 us. But he speaks of "ideas" in the same way, so why is not that 
 figurative also ? All this talk about ideas as separate entities con- 
 veyed into the dark cabinet of the mind through the sense "inlets," 
 is just so much metaphor. The "ideas" of Locke, thinks Browr, 
 are not substantially separate and distinct things in the mind, but 
 are acts or modifications of the mind.] To use Brown's exact 
 words, "I can not but think these, and the similar passages that 
 occur in the Essay, ought of themselves, to have convinced Dr. 
 
 * (Brown's Lectures, Vol. I. Lecture XXVI.) 
 
10 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Reid, that he who spoke of Perceptions, conveyed into the mind, 
 and of avenues provided for the reception of Sensations, might 
 also, when he spoke of the conveyance of ideas, have meant noth- 
 ing more than the simple external origin of these notions, or con- 
 ceptions, or feelings, or affections of the mind, to which he gave 
 the name ideas ; especially when there is not a single argumnt in 
 his Essay, or in any of his works, that is founded on the substan 
 tial reality of our ideas, as separate and distinct things in the 
 mind."* 
 
 Among the various opinions Locke expresses about "ideas," 
 "one, however," says Hamilton, "he has formally rejected, and 
 that is the very opinion attributed to him by Dr. Brown, that 
 the idea, or object of consciousness in perception, is only a modi- 
 fication of the mind itself." This formal rejection is to be found 
 in Locke's Examination of P. Malebranche's Opinion. I quote di- 
 rectly from Locke. "I see the purple color of the violet ; this, says 
 he, is a sentiment : I desire to know what sentiment is ; that, says 
 he, is a modification of the soul. I take the word, and desire to see 
 what I can conceive by it concerning my soul ; and here, I conf ess : 
 I can conceive nothing more, but that I have the idea of purple 
 / in my mind, which I had not before, without being able to appre- 
 hend anything the mind does or suffers in this, besides barely 
 having the idea of purple ; and so the good word modification sig- 
 nifies nothing to me more than I knew before : e. g., that I have 
 now the idea of purple in it, which I had not some minutes since."t 
 Hamilton now quotes : "But to examine their doctrine of modi- 
 fication a little further. Different sentiments are different modi- 
 fications of the mind. The mind or soul that perceives is one im- 
 material indivisible substance. Now I see the white and black on 
 this paper, I hear one singing in the next room, I feel the warmth 
 of the fire I sit by, and I taste the apple I am eating, and all this 
 at the same time. Now, I ask, take modification for what you 
 please, can the same unextended indivisible substance have differ- 
 ent, nay, inconsistent and opposite (as these of white and black 
 must be) modifications at the same time? Or must we suppose 
 
 '(Lecture XXVI.) 
 
 t(Exam. of P. M.s Opin. 39.) 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 11 
 
 distinct parts in an indivisible substance, one for black, another 
 for white, and another for red ideas, and so of the rest of those in- 
 finite sensations which we have in sorts and degrees; all which 
 we can distinctly perceive, and so are distinct ideas, some whereof 
 are opposite, as heat and cold, which man may feel at the same . 
 time? I was ignorant before how sensation was performed in 
 us ; this they call an explanation of it. Must I say now I under- 
 stand it better? If this is to cure one's ignorance, it is a very 
 slight disease, and the charm of two or three insignificant words 
 will at any time remove it, probatum est."* 
 
 It seems unavoidable to assume that Locke held, in one p>lace or 
 another, both these views in regard to the nature of ideas. \Where 
 he is most empirical, where he describes experience as he finds it, **' 
 ideas are for him entities, sui generis, neither parts nor modifi- 
 cations of the mind, which are what they appear as. But where ' 
 he is concerned with developing a theory of perception on the 
 assumption of an external world of material particles in motion, 
 he seems to regard the mind as an active-passive substance within 
 this world, which is bombarded by these material particles, and 
 which in turn reacts upon them. The scars of the conflict are 
 ideas, impressions made by these material things upon the cogni- 
 tive substance itself. There seems to be no use in twisting what 
 he says to make it conform to a system. Locke seems to have ac- 
 cepted two points of view which he was never able to harmonize, 
 and neither of which he was able to discard.^ 
 
 10. IDEAS AS OBJECTS. Locke states so emphatically that the 
 immediate obi ecFs before trie mind are ideas, beyond which we are 
 not able to advance one jot, that we are ifpt to conclude that ideas 
 are always and everywhere these immediate ^elf -contained ob- 
 jects. "Whatever the mind perceives in itself," he says, "or is 
 the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, 
 that I call idea."f Whether we regard idea as content or modifi- 
 cation of the mind, the term seems to be exhausted by the immedi- 
 ate object. The object is the idea, we say, and there is no idea 
 that is not an immediate object. Ideas make up the whole of what 
 
 *(Ibid. 39.) 
 til. viii. 8. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 is presented and there is no idea that is not a part or whole of 
 what is presented. That is, ideas (or objects) are what they ap- 
 pear as, as given matters of fact. Psychology, from this point 
 of view, is purely descriptive. It aims to state in an exact way 
 how these natural occurrences take place. We have consequently 
 the theory of association of ideas, by which we trace certain 
 sequences or combinations of ideas. Consistently with this view 
 Locke says, "some of our ideas have a natural correspondence 
 and connexion one with another : it is the office and excellency 
 of our reason to trace these, and hold them together in that union 
 and correspondence which is founded in their peculiar beings. 
 Besides this, there is another connexion of ideas wholly owing to 
 chance or custom, ideas'that in themselves are not all of kin, come 
 to be so united in some men's minds, that it is very hard to sepa- 
 rate them ; they always keep in company, and the one no sooner 
 at any time comes into the understanding, but its associate ap- 
 pears with it; and if they are more than two, which are thus 
 united, the whole gang, always inseparable, show themselves to- 
 gether."* 
 
 As far as psychology of this type depends upon internal obser- 
 vation, it is descriptive. But it can seek an explanation of these 
 observed sequences and "gangs" of ideas, in the neural processes 
 of the brain or of the whole nervous system. Locke does this. 
 "Custom," he says, "settles habits of thinking in the understand- 
 ing, as well as of determining in the will, and of motions of the 
 body; all which seem to be but trains of motion in the animal 
 spirits, which, once set agoing, continue in the same steps they 
 have been used to, which, by often treading, are worn into a 
 smooth path, and the motion in it becomes easy, and, as it were, 
 natural."! Now, ideas of sense, red, yellow, blue, tones, noises, 
 tastes, and smells, are caused, according to Locke, by the impres- 
 sions of certain objects upon appropriate sense organs, which im- 
 pressions set up a corresponding agitation in the animal spirits, 
 which is conducted along the nerve conduits to the brain, where 
 
 II. xxxili. 5. 
 til. XXXlii. 6. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 13 
 
 it causes the idea to appear to the mind. "And if these organs," 
 he says, "or the nerves, which are conduits to convey them from 
 without to their audience in the brain, the mind's presence room 
 (as I may so call it), are any of them disordered, as not to per- 
 form their functions, they have no postern to be admitted by ; no 
 other way to bring themselves into view, and be perceived by the 
 understanding."' "As the bodies that surround us do diversely 
 affect our organs, the mind is forced to receive the impressions, 
 and can not avoid the perception of those ideas that are annexed 
 to them."f 
 
 Locke is thus preparing the way for a complete explanation for 
 the appearance and combination of ideas according to neural pro- 
 cesses in the brain excited by outside objects, and continued or 
 repeated according to chance or habit. Then, appearance of every 
 idea is due to a neural process. Ideas are associated together in 
 various ways due to the paths formed in the brain. Ideas as they 
 appear to the observing mind arc so many independent objects. 
 All we can say is that they appear thus and thus in series or clus- 
 ters. But below the surface of observation, in the brain, there we 
 find the machinery for all these wonderful combinations. We can 
 thus see why ideas are objects and only objects. They can not be 
 more, from the side of the observing mind, than just what they 
 appear as. It would be only a step, and that a logical one, to say 
 that ideas are brain processes, that conscious processes are neural 
 processes of a peculiar quality. Just as islands are the tops of 
 mountains, so neural processes when they reach a certain level of 
 intensity or complexity, stick their heads up into the field of con- 
 sciousness, as it were. The real active agent in thinking would 
 then be the brain. The mind as a separate active cognitive agent 
 would be dropped. This is the precipice towards which his theory 
 is leading him. 
 
 11. IDEAS. AS MEANING. Ideas are, therefore, according to this 
 view of Locke, just mental content, i. e., objects. But, as Locke 
 points out, men make mistakes in their thinking. Objects before 
 the mind are thought to have a significance, which, in truth, they 
 
 II. iii. 1. 
 til. i. 25. 
 
14 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 do not have. Most of the disputes and manglings 
 come from confused or undetermined ideas.* In the case of sense 
 perception, when a man's idea of a leopard is confused or inade- 
 quate, when his idea of a leopard consists merely of a beast with 
 spots, he is apt to call every spotted beast a leopard. f He does 
 this because his idea of the leopard is not clear and distinct. But 
 if ideas are just objects before the mind, how can they be con- 
 fused or inadequate ? If all spotted beasts look alike to me, as far 
 as I am concerned, they are leopards. If a yellow rose and a pink 
 rose appear to have no difference of color in a jiim light, there is 
 no difference, for ideas are what they appear as^ 
 
 Here is a real difficulty and Locke meets itj. The confusion 
 comes in through the use of names, he says. There are various 
 names for various objects and each name is supposed to have a 
 determinate significance. The name leopard means a feline mam- 
 mal with spots in broken rings or rosettes. The name jaguar 
 means a feline mammal with spots in rosettes but with an addi- 
 tional spot in the center of the rosette. If one means by leopard 
 merely a spotted beast, the meaning or significance he attaches 
 to the name is inadequate, and he is apt to call every spotted beast 
 a leopard. But if he does attach determinate meanings both to 
 leopard and jaguar, when he sees a spotted animal with certain 
 characteristics among which is the central spot within the rosette, 
 he applies the name jaguar to it, or if it is without this central 
 spot, he applies the name leopard. The meaning of the different 
 words is thus clear and adequate because he can apply the name 
 correctly. But a man who can thus distinguish between meanings, 
 may fall into error and apply the wrong name to the spotted ani- 
 mal before him, if that animal is seen, say, in the twilight or 
 through a tangle of undergrowth. The immediate object, in this 
 case, is what it is, that is clear. The confusion lies in that it is 
 possible to apply two names with different determinate meanings 
 to the present object. The office of a name appears, therefore, to 
 be that of a carrier of meaning. It is a means or instrument by 
 
 * (Epistle to the Reader.) 
 til. xxix. 7. 
 $11. xxix. 6. 
 
A STUDY OP LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 16 
 
 which we apply meaning or significance to the immediate object 
 before the mind. When I say, "This is a leopard," I am placing 
 the present object in that system which I call my knowledge of the 
 animal world, i. e., the present object means something. When 
 
 ^ Locke speaks of clear and obscure, distinct and confused, adequate 
 and inadequate ideas, he is talking about meaning or significance, 
 and not about the immediate objects before the mind. 
 
 12. IDEAS AND SENSATIONS. We saw, while discussing ideas as 
 modifications of mind, how Locke uses perception and sensation as 
 equivalent to idea. This use of these terms is hard to justify. 
 
 ^There is an idea of perception, of course, but perception is not an 
 idea. This loose way of using perception and sensation can lead 
 only to confusion, and whenever they are found with articles the 
 or a, they should be translated into the exact terms signified. 
 "Thus the perception," he says, "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, fur- 
 nishes the mind with a distinct idea, which we call sensation ; 
 which is, as it were, the actual entrance of any idea into the under- 
 standing by the senses."* ; r This probably means that when the . 
 mind has an idea which is caused by or annexed to an impression 
 on the body made by an external object, the mind has the power 
 to observe this having-an-idea-so-caused as a distinct object or 
 idea. Having-an-idea-so-caused is perception, so if we call it sen- 
 sation, sensation is a part of perception. Neither one is an object 
 at first, both can be objects when the mind reflects upon its own 
 processes. We can not say we have a sensation in the sense that 
 we have an object or idea. All we can say is that we have the idea 
 of perception or sensation. The only valid use of the term "sensa- 
 tion" is that it is that part of perception which refers to the 
 mind's having ideas caused by or annexed to impressions on the 
 body by an external object. Sensation or perception is the power 
 or quality of the mind by virtue of which the mind has ideas. 
 Sensation or perception is to be considered in the light of some- 
 
 II. xix. 1. 
 
Iff A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 thing the mind does or of something that happens to it. It is a 
 process, not an object. Locke himself says, "the perception of 
 ideas being (as I conceive) to the soul, what motion is to the body, 
 not its essence, but one of its operations.** If the mind is in- 
 tently occupied it takes no notice of impressions coming through 
 the sense inlets. "Want of sensation, in this case," he says, "is not 
 through any defect of the organ," etc. "And so imprinting no 
 idea in the mind, there follows no sensation."f Here, he probably 
 means that "sense" or "sensation," which he equates with "per- 
 ception," is the-having-an-idea, the experiencing, not the object 
 experienced. Since we have ideas of another class or from an- 
 other source, sensation is one class of ideas, referred to the sense 
 "inlets" and their source or cause. "This great source of most of 
 the ideas we have, depending w T holly upon our senses, and derived 
 by. them to the understanding, I call Sensation. "t 
 
 But Locke has at least two other meanings for_sensations. 
 In the first place, they are the same thing as ideas. Speaking of 
 secondary qualities, he says they are nothing but the powers "in 
 things to excite certain sensations or ideas in us." "Those ideas 
 of whiteness and coldness, pain, etc., being in us the effects of 
 powers in things without us, ordained by our Maker, to produce in 
 us such sensations, they are real ideas in us, whereby we distin- 
 guish the qualities that are really in things themselves."** In 
 showing the radical difference between knowledge about and ac- 
 quaintance with, between the idea of the cause of light and the 
 idea of light itself, sensation appears to be merely content, i. e., 
 idea. He says, "For the cause of any sensation, and the sensation 
 itself, in all the simple ideas of one sense, are two ideas ; and two 
 ideas so different and distant from one another, that no two can 
 be more so."ft 
 
 In the next place sensation means some impression or motion 
 in the body, some disturbance in the sense organ or nervous sys- 
 tem or perhaps an agitation of the animal spirits. At any rate, 
 the sensation is not in the mind but in the body. It appears to be 
 
 *II. 1. 10. "II. xxx. 2. 
 
 til. Ix. 4. n. xxxi. 2. 
 
 tn. i. s. ttin. iv. 10. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 17 
 
 the bodily correlate of the ideal "If it shall be demanded, then, 
 when a man begins to have any ideas? I think the true answer 
 is, when he first has any sensation. For since there appear not to 
 be any ideas in the mind, before the senses have conveyed any in, 
 I conceive that ideas in the understanding are coeval with the 
 sensation ; which is such an impression or motion, made in some 
 part of the body, as produces some perception in the understand- 
 ing/'* In speaking of the same water feeling hot to one hand and 
 cold to the other he says, "for if we imagine warmth, as it is in 
 our hands, to be nothing but a certain sort and degree of motion 
 in the minute particles of our nerves or "animal spirits, we may 
 understand how it is possible that the same water may, at the 
 same time, produce the sensations of heat in one hand and cold in 
 the other."f The sensation, we see, is in the hand, not in the 
 mind, and that the heat sensation consists of motion in the minute 
 particles of the nerves or animal spirits, and the cold sensation a 
 less active motion. 
 
 13. SIMPLE IDEAS AS GIVEN, ft look at a tree. It is an object 
 before the mind, a complex of colors, etc., and my mind may be 
 said to be occupied about it. In this experience I can distinguish 
 two separate provinces or fields of this occupation, viz., external 
 sense and internal sense.J These two kinds of occupation or 
 thinking are called by Locke, respectively, ideas from sensation 
 and ideas from reflection. Ideas of the one sort are just external 
 things of the common-sense physical world which are objects be- 
 fore the mind ; and ideas of the other sort are those objects which 
 the mind has when it reflects or observes its own processes or occu- 
 pation when it has ideas^ 
 
 LAmong ideas from sensation, or ideas from reflection, there 
 may be distinguished, thinks Locke, two kinds of ideas, viz., 
 simple ideas and complex ideas. When my mind is said to be occu- 
 pied about a tree, there are certain unchanging elementary objects 
 in my mind, certain atomic unanalyzable sensations, as greenness, 
 
 *II. i. 23. 
 til. viii. 21. 
 
 tn. i. 4. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 grayness, roughness, smoothness, sheer odors and sounds. These 
 are simple ideas. There are other objects, which are groups or 
 combinations of these "sensa," of varying degrees of complexity 
 and relationship, such as bark, leaves, rustling of leaves, ''woodsy" 
 odor, or even the tree itself. These are complex ideas. Among 
 ideas from reflection there is the same distinction between simple 
 and complex ideas. Suppose I am sitting under a tree and an 
 apple falls to the ground. I pick up the apple, estimate its weight, 
 look up into the tree and calculate its final velocity, and at last 
 formulate a law of motion. When I tell my neighbor about this 
 experience, I illustrate simple and complex ideas from reflection, 
 In the first place my mind was occupied about the apple, i. e., I 
 perceived the apple. But as Locke says, "it being impossible for 
 any one to perceive, without perceiving that he does perceive,* I 
 get the simple object perceiving-that-I-perceive, which is the first 
 simple idea from reflection. If in my occupation about the apple, 
 I doubt or believe, my reflection upon these furnishes me with two 
 other simple ideas from reflection. In these cases, the mind's 
 operation about its object is observed by the mind itself as an 
 operation. A complex idea from reflection is the result of a com- 
 bination, separation, or comparison of these simple objects of 
 thinking. Thus, in telling my neighbor my experience, recounting 
 my difficulties, hopes, fears, and at last my solution, that experi- 
 ence, regarded as a whole, is clearly a complex of the simple ideas 
 from reflection/ 
 
 Apparently simple ideas are as obvious to Locke as the grains 
 in a heap of sand or the b t eads of a rosary. They enter by the 
 senses, simple and unmixed. The coldness of ice, the whiteness of 
 a lily, the taste of sugar, or the smell of a rose, are clear and dis- 
 tinct, i. e., pure and unanalyzable.f They are the simplest forms 
 we apprehend in perception. They are as obvious "to children, 
 idiots, and a great part of mankind," and to philosophers, as the 
 stars and the sun... 
 
 14. As THE RESULT OF ANALYSIS. What are some of these 
 simple ideas, say, from external sense? Locke says they are 
 
 *H. xxvii. 9. 
 til. ii. 1. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 19 
 
 whiteness, sweetness, coldness, hardness, etc. Now, how are we 
 going to point out to a child whiteness, for example, simple and 
 unmixed? Who, even among philosophers, ever saw just white- 
 ness? Simple ideas of this sort are not a part of our experience. 
 There are no instances of such simple ideas. What we show the 
 child is white milk, or white sugar. ; Whiteness is the product of ( 
 analysis, not of direct apprehension. "It is true," he is compelled ! 
 to say, "solidity can not exist without extension, neither can scar- 
 let colour exist without extension; but this hinders not but they 
 are distinct ideas. Many ideas require others as necessary to their \ 
 existence or conception, which yet are very distinct ideas."* To 
 see white as such, without the mixture or association of any other 
 idea, one would have to experience it without size or shape. 
 
 Simple ideas from reflection are still more difficult to substan- 
 tiate. Experience gives us no pure perception, or believing, or 
 thinking but all these are operations of one mind impossible of 
 being immediately apprehended as separate and simple. These 
 simple ideas are what the mind finds when it reflects upon and 
 generalizes its own processes. Obviously simple ideas are found 
 only by analysis. 
 
 In summing up "the steps by which the mind attains several 
 truths" he says, "the senses at first let in particular ideas, and 
 furnish the yet empty cabinet ; and the mind by degrees growing 
 familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, and 
 names got to them: afterward the mind, proceeding farther. al>/ 
 stracts them, and by degrees LearnaJthfiLjjse of general name^"tj 
 Again he says, "ideas become general, by separating from them'\ 
 the circumstances of time, and place, and any other ideas that! 
 may determine them to this or to that particular existence.":}: As j 
 a matter of fact, the examples of simple ideas that Locke gives, i 
 are just the general ideas or abstractions, which he here declares 
 come before the mind as distinct objects only after a series of pre- 
 liminary steps. Whiteness is a general idea which has to be ab- 
 stracted from a number of instances of white things. There is 
 
 II. viii. 11. 
 tl. ii. 15. 
 till. iiL 6. 
 
*u 
 
 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 thus no evidence that the elements into which we may analyze 
 sensational data are at any time in the mind as pure unmixed 
 elements.] 
 
 15. IDEAS ACCORDING TO LOCKE, MAY THEREFORE SIGNIFY : 
 
 1. Immediate objects of the mind as content. 
 
 2. Immediate objects of the mind as modifications of itself. 
 
 3. The meaning of these immediate objects. 
 
 . These objects regarded as immediately apprehended. 
 
 5. These objects regarded as the result of analysis or abstraction. 
 
 16. SUBSTANCE. When Locke is most empirical, the idea of sub- 
 stance appears to be little more than a fancy, the supposition of 
 an unknowable substratum ; but when he is most rationalistic, he 
 makes much of it. There are three kinds of substance and it has 
 various qualities which he enumerates. His empirical account 
 may be outlined as follows: The idea of substance arises from 
 the fact that the mind observes "that a certain number of these 
 simple ideas go constantly together ; which being presumed to be- 
 long to one thing, and words being suited to common apprehen- 
 sions, and made use of for quick dispatch are called, so united in 
 one subject, by one name; which by inadvertency, we are apt 
 afterward to talk of and consider as one simple idea, which is 
 indeed a complication of many ideas toether: because, as I have 
 said, not imagining how these simple ideas can subsist by them- 
 selves, we accustom ourselves to suppose some substratum where- 
 in they do subsist, and from which they do result, and which, 
 therefore, we call substance."* The substance, then, of any con- 
 stant group of ideas, for example iron, is just the name of this 
 group, considered as a group, applied to it for the sake of con- 
 venience; just as it is a matter of economy to speak of the Smiths 
 or Browns instead of naming each member of the family. The 
 substance of iron is merely a short-hand expression for a group 
 of ideas that go constantly together. Common sense, of course, 
 speaks inadvertently of iron or wood as if that meant something 
 more. But when questioned it must answer, "I know not what." 
 
 *II. xxiii. 1. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 21 
 
 There is really no idea of substance, but only a supposition, a trick 
 of language, due to the practical needs of speech. The affirmation 
 of a substance or substratum is only a verbal proposition. It 
 amounts to the proposition "x exists," where x means merely a 
 certain constant group of ideas. The only demand for such a sub- 
 stratum is that any x about which we affirm or deny anything 
 must exist. When this x is critically examined the demand van- 
 ishes. The inconsistency in the idea of substance Locke does not 
 hesitate to point out. "If any one should be asked, what is the 
 subject wherein color or weight inheres? he would have nothing 
 to say, but the solid extended parts: and if he were demanded, 
 what is it that solidity and extension inhere in? he would not 
 be in a much better case than the Indian before mentioned, who, 
 saying the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked 
 what the elephant rested on? to which his answer was a great 
 tortoise. But being again pressed to know what gave support to 
 the broad-backed tortoise replied, something he knew not what. 
 And thus here, as in all cases where we use words without having 
 clear and distinct ideas, we talk like children; who being ques- 
 tioned what such a thing is which they know not, readily give this 
 satisfactory answer, that it is something; which, in truth, signifies 
 no more, when so used, either by children or men, but that they 
 know not what; and that the thing they pretend to know and 
 talk of, is what they have no distinct idea of at all, and so are 
 perfectly ignorant of it, and in the dark."** The demand for a 
 substratum, Locke thus shows, is childish and contradictory. f 
 
 Those who pretend to get more out of substance than simple 
 ideas are taking words for things.J They feign knowledge where 
 they have none, "by making a noise with sounds, without clear 
 and distinct significations." "They who first ran into the notion 
 of accidents as a sort of real beings that needed something to in- 
 here in, were forced to find out the word substance to support 
 them.* * * * And he that inquired might have taken it for as good 
 an answer from the Indian philosopher, that substance, without 
 knowing what it is, is that which supports the earth, as we take 
 
 **II. xxiil. 2. 
 tn. xxlii. 87. 
 JII. xiii. 18. 
 
22 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 it for a sufficient answer, and good doctrine, from our European 
 philosophers, that substance, without knowing what it is, is that 
 which supports accidents. So that of substance we have no idea 
 of what it is, but only a confused obscure one of what it does."* 
 Substance is thus a word, not an idea. It is a name for something 
 that occurs among ideas. It devolves upon those that use the 
 word, thinks Locke, to show of what use it is in deciding questions 
 of philosophy. t For Locke, the term explains nothing, but is a 
 mockery. It is as if one should say all learned books consist of 
 paper and letters, and that letters are things inhering in paper, 
 and paper a thing that holds forth letters "a notable way of 
 having clear ideas of letters and paper!" On the other hand, 
 when this problem of substance is brought squarely before him by 
 Stillingfleet, Locke gives up his empiricism. Notwithstanding 
 that he affirms over and over again that we can know nothing 
 beyond our simple ideas, and that our ideas of substances are con- 
 fused, childish, and born of ignorance, yet, almost in the same 
 paragraph he asserts that "sensation convinces us that there are 
 solid extended substances, and reflection, that there are thinking 
 ones; experience assures us of the existence of such beings, and 
 that the one hath a power to move body by impulse, the other by 
 thought; this we can not doubt of. Experience, I say, every 
 moment furnishes us with the clear ideas both of the one and the 
 other." And notwithstanding that the demand for an outside 
 cause of what is present in experience leads to the indefinite re- 
 gress of the elephant and tortoise, and that such an explanation 
 not only is obscure and confused but is a mockery, yet he affirms 
 that God, that being who possesses infinite power, wisdom, excel- 
 lence, and all the virtues known to man raised to the nth power, 
 exists as the upholder and ruler of the universe because what is 
 present in experience must have an adequate cause. Far from 
 being obscure, the existence and attributes of God partake of the 
 clearness and certainty of mathematical demonstration.} Still- 
 ingfleet justly inferred from Locke's account that substance is 
 
 *TT y^j 1Q 
 til. Xill. 20. 
 
 JIV. x. 1-7. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 23 
 
 not grounded upon true reason. Accidents and modes must, there- 
 fore, subsist of themselves. Simple ideas need no tortoise to 
 support them, and could get along very well by themselves but 
 for some fancies men have accustomed themselves to. In reply, 
 Locke says that ideas of substances are made by abstraction,* 
 although he admits that what he says in Chapter XXIII, might 
 lead one to suppose that he held they were not. What he is really 
 talking about here is, not the being of substance, but the idea of 
 substance. "I cannot be supposed to question or doubt the being 
 of substance." "So that, I think, the being of substance is not 
 shaken by what I have said ; and if the idea of it should be, yet, 
 (the being of things depending not on our ideas) the being of 
 substance would not be all shaken by my saying, we had but an 
 obscure imperfect idea of it, and that that idea came from our 
 accustoming ourselves to suppose some substratum : or indeed, if 
 I should say so, we had no idea of substance at all. For a great 
 many things may be, and are granted to" have a being, and be in 
 nature, of which we have no ideas. For example : It can not be 
 doubted that there are distinct species of separate spirits, of 
 which yet we have no distinct ideas at all."t In his chapter ne 
 throws the burden of proof on those philosophers who uphold 
 substance ; here, in his letter, he shifts the responsibility. Locke's 
 objection to substance was not, primarily, that the idea of it is 
 confused, but that when critically examined there is no logical 
 demand for it; that if we entertain the idea, provisionally, we 
 see that it leads to an indefinite regress; and that in asking for 
 a substance as the support of ideas, we are asking for we know 
 not what, and are fooling ourselves with a mere word. Now, he 
 says, because our idea of substance is confused, or because we 
 have no idea of it at all, is no proof that there is no substance. 
 He says, in his first letter to the Bishop of Worcester, that he has 
 everywhere affirmed and built upon the supposition that a man is 
 a substance. The idea of man as an identical substance, either 
 material or spiritual, he readily admits is otiose and childish, but 
 
 *III. iii. 6., II._ii. 9. 
 
 rsz i.euer to .tJTshop of Worcester.) 
 
24 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 the being of man as such a substance, he maintains, he has never 
 doubted, and that nothing- he has said about tne imperfect and 
 ill-grounded idea in the least applies to the being of man as a sub- 
 stance. The expression "idea of man as a substance" appears, 
 from his discussion, to be one of those "uncouth, "affected," and 
 "unintelligible" terms, one of those "vague and insignificant forms 
 of speech, and abuse of language," from which can be expected 
 nothing but "obscurity and confusion."* But when we talk about 
 the being of man, is not that something the mind considers? Is 
 not the mind employed about that, and as an object of thinking, 
 is it not an idea? In short how can we consider the being of 
 substance apart from the idea of substance? Locke would prob- 
 ably say that idea of substance is different from the idea of being 
 of substance. What is the difference? The idea of man as a sub- 
 stance, he has shown, is confused and useless. Now, if we are 
 to turn about and affirm and build upon the idea of man as a 
 substance, all our careful reasoning, all our precise choice of 
 words, and all our trouble to get clear and distinct ideas, come 
 to naught. With this distinction between idea and being, the 
 great master builders, Boyle, Sydenham, and Newton, could have 
 been vanquished. Let some one say to Newton : "I have the idea 
 of a round square." If Newton objects that his idea is ill-grounded 
 and confused and absolutely useless in science and practical 
 affairs, he could, after the manner of Locke, reply, "I admit that 
 the idea is confused, ill-grounded, and useless; I will admit fur- 
 ther, on second thought, that I have no idea of it at all, but this 
 is nothing against its being. The being of a round square is what 
 I affirm and build upon." The difference then between the idea of 
 man as a substance and the idea of the being of man as a sub- 
 stance is, that, in discarding the one as ill-grounded and useless, 
 I am trying to be rational, and in accepting the other I have given 
 up being rational. 
 
 17. MIND. "We have the idea of but three sorts of substances," 
 
 * (Epistle to the reader.) 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OP KNOWLEDGE 25 
 
 says Locke: "1. God. 2. Finite intelligences. 3. Bodies."* Since, 
 of course, he holds that they exist, there are consequently, three 
 sorts of beings. But clearly this is not the most fundamental 
 classification. In a fundamental sense God and finite intelligences 
 are in the same class. It is better to take what he says in another 
 place. "There are/' he says, "but two sorts of beings in the world, 
 that man knows or conceives. First, such as are purely material, 
 without sense, perception, or thought, as the clippings of our 
 beards, or parings of our nails. Secondly, sensible, thinking, per- 
 ceiving beings, such as we find ourselves to be, which, if you 
 please, we will hereafter call cognitive and incognitive beings ; 
 which to our present purpose, if for nothing else, are perhaps 
 better terms than material and immaterial."! Tha*t God is in the 
 same general class with finite beings appears from our idea of 
 Him. From our experience we get the ideas of infinity, existence, 
 duration, power, knowledge, pleasure, happiness, and several other 
 qualities and powers. Among these ideas we find there are some 
 "which it is better to have than to be without." Enlarging these 
 to infinity, and putting them together in a complex idea, we have 
 the idea of God. J God is thus an idealized man ; and in a funda- 
 mental classification would have to be classed as a cognitive being. 
 There are then two kinds of being, cognitive and incognitive. 
 But when Locke comes to consider the stuff of cognitive beings 
 he is very cautious. "We have the ideas of matter and thinking," 
 he says, "but possibly shall ne'ver be able to know, whether any 
 mere material being thinks or no ; it being impossible for us, by 
 the contemplation of our ideas without revelation, to discover, 
 whether omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter, 
 fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think, or else joined and 
 fixed to matter so disposed, a thinking immaterial substance; it 
 being, in respect to our notions, not much more remote from our 
 comprehension to conceive, that God can, if he pleases, superadd 
 to matter the faculty of thinking; since we know not wherein 
 thinking consists, nor to what sort of substances the Almighty 
 
 II. xxxii. 2. 
 
 trv. x. 9. 
 
 tn. xxiii. 33. 
 
26 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 has been pleased to give that power, which can not be in any 
 created being, but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of the 
 Creator/'* 
 
 "I grant that I have not proved," he writes to the Bishop of 
 Worcester, "nor, upon my principles can it be proved (your Lord- 
 ship meaning, as I think you do, demonstratively proved), that 
 there is an immaterial substance in us that thinks. Though I pre- 
 sume, from what I have said about this supposition of a system of 
 matter, thinking (which there demonstrates that God is immate- 
 rial) will prove it in the highest degree probable, that the thinking 
 substance in us, is immaterial." 
 
 The nature of the mind, or that which thinks, according to 
 Locke, at this place, is unknown to us. It may be material or it 
 may be immaterial, he does not know, but probably the latter. 
 Empirically, it is "that which thinks." Taken in conjunction 
 with what he says about substance, that it is merely a name ap- 
 plied to certain group of ideas, and is nothing apart from thi 
 simple ideas themselves, the mind means nothing more than the 
 system of ideas from reflection; just a center of experience, which 
 for convenience, we speak of as a substantial being which has 
 experience. The substance of a horse or a stone is just the com- 
 plication or collection of certain simple ideas. So, "the same 
 happens concerning the operations of the mind, viz. : thinking, 
 reasoning, fearing, etc., which we, concluding not to subsist of 
 themselves, nor apprehending how they can belong to body, or be 
 produced by it, we are apt to think these the actions of some other 
 substance, which we call spirit : whereby it is evident, that having 
 no other idea or notion of matter, but something wherein those 
 many sensible qualities which affect our senses, do subsist; by 
 supporting a substance, wherein thinking, knowing, doubting, and 
 a power of moving, etc., do subsist, we have as clear a notion of 
 the substance of spirit, as we have of the body; the one thing sup- 
 posed to be (without knowing what it is) the substratum to those 
 simple ideas we have from without; and the other supposed (with 
 
 IV. iii. 6. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 27 
 
 a like ignorance of what it is) to be the substratum to those oper- 
 ations we experience in ourselves within."* Mind may mean, 
 therefore, nothing more than the unity of experience, a system, a 
 center, or a law of experience. 
 
 The mind or self according to this interpretation of Locke, 
 appears to be the empirically discovered form or system in the 
 ideas from reflection. The mind is not an entity over against its 
 ideas, something got by abstraction, but a recognized system or 
 organization of these ideas, i. e., it is concrete not abstract. This 
 interpretation is rendered more probable by Locke's discussion 
 of the identity of self. Identity of the self does not consist, ac- 
 cording to Locke, in an identity of soul substance, either material 
 or immaterial. It is the consciousness that I am the same self 
 that I was yesterday, that gives personal identity. If this con- 
 sciousness is present, if the thinking remembers and owns a series 
 of past actions, the self persists, and the actions are the actions 
 of an identical self. "Self," he says, "is that conscious thinking 
 thing (whatever substance made of, whether spiritual or material, 
 simple or compound, it matters not) which is sensible, or con- 
 scious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and 
 so is concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends. 
 Thus every one finds, that whilst comprehended under that con- 
 sciousness, the little finger is as much a part of himself, as what 
 is most so. Upon separation of this little finger, should this con- 
 sciousness go along with this little finger, and leave the rest of the 
 body, it is evident the little finger would be the person, the same 
 person ; and self then would have nothing to do with the rest of 
 the body. As in this case it is the consciousness that goes along 
 with the substance, and when one part is separate from another, 
 which makes the same person, and constitutes this inseparable 
 self; so it is in reference to substances remote in time. That 
 which the consciousness of this present thinking thing can join 
 itself, makes the same person, and is one self with it, and with 
 nothing else ; and so attributes to itself, and owns all the actions 
 
 *II. 
 
28 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 of that thing as its own, as far as that consciousness reaches, and 
 no farther; as every one who reflects will perceive."* Ideas may 
 not occur apart from some substance or support, just as a phono- 
 graphic record has to have a support of some kind, something in 
 which the record inheres. The record may be made in wax and 
 transferred to tin-foil or vulcanite. What constitutes it the same 
 record is not the support. The substratum of ideas may be 
 material substance or spiritual substance, or at one time material 
 and at another time spiritual, that is not the essential factor. 
 What constitutes a self an identical being is the consciousness of 
 the same. Let us assume transmigration of souls. "Let any one 
 reflect upon himself," says Locke, "and conclude that he has in 
 himself an immaterial spirit, which is that which thinks in him, 
 and in the constant change of his body keeps him the same ; and 
 this is what he calls himself: let him also suppose it to be the same 
 soul that was in Nestor or Thersites at the siege of Troy (for 
 souls being, as far as we know anything of them, in their nature 
 indifferent to any parcel of matter, the supposition has no appar- 
 ent absurdity in it) , which it may have been, as weir as it is now 
 the soul of some other man : but he now having no consciousness of 
 any of the actions either of Nestor or Thersites, does or can he 
 conceive himself the same person with either of them?"f Lock 
 thinks not. "The same immaterial substance, without the same 
 consciousness, no more making the same person by being united 
 to any body, than the same particle of making without conscious- 
 ness, united to anybody, makes the same person." 
 
 On the other hand, if the same consciousness is united now with 
 one soul and again with another, the self will be identical. If 
 the same consciousness "can be transferred from one thinking 
 substance to another, it will be possible that two thinking sub- 
 stances may make but one person. For the same consciousness 
 being preserved, whether in the same or different substances, the 
 personal identity is preserved."} 
 
 Locke goes on to found the right to reward or to punish upon 
 
 II. xxvii. 17. 
 til. xxvil. 14. 
 til. xxvii. 13. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 29 
 
 this consciousness of personal identity. "If the consciousness 
 went along with the little finger when it was cut off, that would be 
 the same self which was concerned for the whole body yesterday, 
 as making part of itself, whose actions then it can not but admit as 
 its own now."* "If Socrates and the present Mayor of Queen- 
 borough agree, they are the same person: if the same Socrates 
 waking and sleeping do not partake of the same consciousness, 
 Socrates waking and sleeping is not the same person. And to 
 punish Socrates waking for what sleeping Socrates thought, and 
 waking Socrates was never conscious of, would be no more right, 
 than to punish one twin for what his brother twin did whereof he 
 knew nothing, because their outsides were so like that they could 
 not be distinguished."! There is no doubt, therefore, that Locke 
 means by identity, not the same substance, or continuity of 
 change, but identity of organization. He errs, if he does err, in 
 assuming that consciousness infallibly reveals this organization. 
 In illustrating identity from plant life, he says, "That being then 
 one plant which has such an organization of parts in one coherent 
 body partaking of one common life, it continues to be the same 
 plant as long as it partakes of the same life, though that life be 
 communicated to new particles of matter vitally united to the 
 HVing plant, in a like continued organization conformable to that 
 sort of plants. For this organization being any one instant 
 in any one collection of matter, is in that particular 
 concrete, distinguished from all other, and is that indiv- 
 idual life which is existing constantly from that moment both 
 forwards and backwards, in the same continuity of insensibly 
 succeeding parts united to the living body of the plant, it has that 
 identity, which makes the same plant, and all the parts of it, parts 
 of the same plant, during all the time that they exist united in that 
 continued organization, which is fit to convey that common life to 
 all the parts so united."} So whatever Locke may imply about the 
 infallibility of consciousness in revealing identity, the funda- 
 
 *II. xxvii. 18. 
 
 til. xxvii. 19. (Cf. Reid, Intel. Pwrs. Essay III. Chap. V.) 
 
 ill. xxvii. 4. 
 
80 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 mental thing is that the self is a ' 'concrete/' a coherent organiza- 
 tion, and that identity must consist in identity of organization. 
 This much is in harmony with our standpoint. But Locke goes 
 farther in believing that a self so conceived must necessarily be 
 conscious of itself as it is. Just as it is impossible for one to 
 perceive without perceiving that he perceives, so it is impossible 
 for a self to be a coherent system without being conscious of it- 
 self as a coherent system. The self, according to Locke as ac- 
 cording to Royce, is a self-representative system. 
 
 Notwithstanding Locke affirms, in speaking of the real essence 
 of things,, that "it is evident the internal constitution, whereon 
 their properties depend, is unknown to us, 'that' our faculties 
 carry us on farther toward the knowledge and distinction of sub- 
 stances, than a collection of those sensible ideas which we observe 
 in them ; which, however, made with the greatest diligence and 
 exactness we are capable of, yet it is more remote from the true 
 internal constitution from which those qualities flow, than, as I 
 said, a countryman's idea is from the inward contrivance of that 
 famous clock at Strasburgh, whereof he only sees the outward 
 figure and motions," and that "a blind man may as soon sort things 
 by their colors, and he that has lost his smell as well distinguish 
 a lily and a rose by odors, as by those internal constitutions which 
 he knows not,"* yet he tells us, with persistent inconsistency, that 
 we have clear and distinct ideas of the kinds of substances, and 
 gives us a list of their powers and qualities. The mind is not 
 only a substance, but it is a cognitive substance, and it has the 
 qualities or powers of perception or thinking, motivity, or the 
 power of moving, existence, duration, and number.! The mind as 
 a substance is thus very far from being unknowable. "Notwith- 
 standing anything I have said," he writes Stillingfleet, "the idea 
 of a substance or substratum is grounded upon this : That we can 
 not conceive how simple ideas of sensible qualities should subsist 
 alone; and therefore we suppose them to exist in, and to be sup- 
 ported by some common subject; which support we denote by the 
 
 *m. vi. 9. 
 
 tn. xxi. 73, 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 31 
 
 name substance.' Which, I think, is a true reason, because it is 
 the same your lordship grounds the supposition of a substratum 
 on, in this very page ; even on the repugnancy to our conceptions, 
 that modes and accidents should subsist by themselves." The 
 point to be noted here is that the idea of substance is inferred 
 according to true reason. That is, I infer my existence as a sub- 
 stantial being because I can not conceive how my simple ideas 
 from reflection could subsist alone unsupported. 
 
 What does "repugnancy" mean? What it should mean, and 
 what it actually does mean in Locke's discussion of the identity 
 of the self, is that we can not help regarding the elements of our 
 inner experience as parts of a systematic organization. Applied 
 to both inner and outer experience, it means that we can not but 
 regard the universe as a systematic whole. "Repugnancy" is the 
 logical demand for coherence. But here Locke interprets it to 
 mean the demand for a substratum. He implies that coherence 
 can be obtained in no other way. The mind or soul, therefore, has 
 a substantial existence. 
 
 It is to be noted that, according to Locke, we infer these 
 qualities or powers to belong to the mind as a substance, just as 
 we infer the substance of mind itself, from the actual presence of 
 the simple ideas from reflection. "It is plain," he says, "then, 
 that the will is nothing but one power or ability, and freedom 
 another power or ability ; so that to ask, whether the will has free- 
 dom, is to ask whether one power has another power, one ability 
 another ability? a question at first sight too grossly absurd to 
 make a dispute, or need an answer. For who is it that sees not 
 that powers belong only to agents, and are attributes only of sub- 
 stances, and not of powers themselves?"* Thus we infer that 
 there is a soul substance because we can not conceive the simple 
 ideas from reflection as uncaused or unsupported by a substratum 
 or a substance. Likewise we infer that this soul substance has the 
 various powers and attributes which are present in our experience 
 as simple ideas from reflection ; because such powers can not but 
 
 II. xxi. 16. 
 
32 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 be powers of an agent, and such attributes attributes of a sub- 
 stance. I am what the powers and attributes of my soul substance 
 are. If I can think clearly and perceive distinctly that is because 
 my soul substance possesses the power of thinking and the power 
 of perceiving in a high degree of perfection. Every peculiarity of 
 thought, every trick of expression, every idiosyncrasy of character 
 or action, is due to an oddity or peculiarity among the powers or 
 attributes of my soul substance. If I reason today in the same 
 manner that I reasoned yesterday, or if I speak today with the 
 fluency or hesitation with which I spoke yesterday, that is because 
 the powers or attributes of my soul substance act today in the 
 same manner they acted yesterday. What I call my personality 
 depends wholly upon the powers and attributes of my substantial 
 soul. If "I am the same I that I was yesterday it is because my 
 soul substance with its powers and attributes is the same. If I 
 am not the same it is because it is not the same. Personal identity, 
 thus, depends upon identity of soul substance. To assume the 
 same consciousness or self to persist with a changing or with an 
 altogether different soul substance, or vice versa, would be "too 
 grossly absurd to make a dispute." 
 
 Locke clinches the substantial existence of the soul with an 
 argument very like that of St. Augustine or Descartes. The soul 
 is not only inferred but its existence is intuitively known. This 
 knowledge is comparable only to the intuitive knowledge of ideas 
 themselves. "As for our own existence, we perceive it is so 
 plainly, and so certainly, that it neither needs nor is capable of 
 proof. For nothing can be more evident to us than our own 
 existence ; I think, I reason, I feel pleasure and pain : can any of 
 these be more eVident to me than my own existence? If I doubt 
 of all other things, that very doubt makes me perceive my own 
 existence and will not suffer me to doubt that. For if I know I 
 feel pain, it is evident I have as certain perception of my own ex- 
 istence, as of the existence of the pain I feel, or if I know I doubt, 
 I have as certain perception of the existence of the thing doubting, 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 33 
 
 as of that thought which I call doubt. Experience then convinces 
 us that we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence, and 
 an internal infallible perception that we are. In every act of 
 sensation, reasoning, of thinking, we are conscious to ourselves of 
 our own being; and, in this matter, come not short of the highest 
 degree of certainty."* The "I" referred to here is, of course, am- 
 biguous. It may refer to the soul, the cognitive substance, or it 
 may refer to the empirical self, the "concrete" of ideas from reflec- 
 tion, the systematic unity in thinking. Upon reflection we see 
 there is a coherent organization in our inner experience, which 
 gives a meaning to the "myself" and "I" of conversation. Locke, 
 it seems, referred to the former meaning. Man "knows certainly 
 that he exists, and that he is something."! He bases his demon- 
 stration that God, as a spiritual substance, exists, upon this. Since 
 man is something that exists, and since something can not be pro- 
 duced by nothing, then there must be a real being as a producer 
 of finite beings. It is likewise evident, reasons Locke, that this 
 being has existed from all eternity, that he is the source and origin 
 of all power and therefore most powerful, that as the producer of 
 knowledge he is most intelligent, and so on for the other attri- 
 butes of God. Locke regards God as a spiritual substance, for he 
 says just that. In the same connection he speaks of men as finite 
 substances. So there seems to be no doubt that Locke means for 
 the "cogito ergo sum" to apply to the soul substance. Windelband 
 says Locke's treatment of the cogito ergo sum "refers only to our 
 states and activities, not to our essence; it shows us, indeed, im- 
 mediately and without doubt, that we are, but not wJmt we are."J 
 This, it appears, is not the most plausible interpretation. Locke 
 does not mean that we have an idea of the soul in the sense of an 
 object like a tree or a stone, but that we get an idea of what it is 
 in the sense of a meaning. The soul substance is that which 
 thinks, perceives, believes, etc. The soul has these powers and 
 attributes. Clearly, he is not referring merely to the states or 
 ideas themselves. Locke may not draw upon the cog ito ergo sum 
 *rv. ix. 3. tiv. x. 2. 
 
 11. xxvii. 2. $(Hist. of Phil. Tuffs trans, p. 469.) 
 
31 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 to prove what the soul's powers and attributes are, but he cer- 
 tainly means that that which possesses these powers and attri- 
 butes which are present in my experience and which demand a 
 substratum, is that which I intuitively know as myself. He iden- 
 tifies the inferred substratum with the intuitively known subject. 
 His argument for God is that since finite cognitive substances 
 with finite powers and attributes are intuitively known to exist, 
 therefore there must be an infinite substance with infinite powers 
 and attributes as the producer and sustainer of finite substances. 
 We demonstratively know God to be an infinite substance as we 
 intuitively know ourselves to be finite substances. Locke has, 
 therefore, two distinct doctrines of the soul, one empirical, one 
 rationalistic. 
 
 18. BODIES.. Whatever Locke may say about the idea of mate- 
 rial or incognitive substance, he never doubts its existence. Al- 
 though he says the idea of it is confused yet he also says it is clear 
 and distinct. 
 
 Incognitive substance stands to ideas from sensation in the 
 same relation of a support or substratum as cognitive substance 
 stands to ideas from reflection. But there is this difference: 
 whereas we haVe no intuitive knowledge of cognitive substance, 
 in the case of the soul substance we do have. Knowledge of our 
 own existence has a higher, degree of certainty than the existence 
 of incognitive substance. [But whether Locke's various utterances 
 are consistent or not, incognitive substance, according to his rea- 
 soning, is certainly not unknowable. We not only know that it 
 exists but we know many of its qualities. This will be evident when 
 we discuss primary and secondary qualities of bodies. But what 
 does Locke mean by bodies? Presumably, in distinguishing be- 
 tween primary and secondary qualities of bodies, and in affirming 
 that colors, sounds, and smells are not qualities of bodies in them- 
 selves, but that certain others are, Locke is explaining the human 
 mind to anjntelligent common-sense man, who has not considered 
 this before.! We, as his readers, evidently hold to the practical 
 common-sense view that bodies are things variously shaped and 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 35 
 
 colored, which exist outside ourselves, and are really so colored 
 and shaped regardless of any of our own determinations. \ Bodies 
 in this sense are not correlated groups of ideas, but are real ex- 
 ternal and independent entities. Now, when Locke states that the 
 objects the mind immediately perceives, trees, stones, houses, are 
 its ideas, he forever annihilates the common-sense view. Bodies 
 then become, for the neophyte, groups of ideas. In the next place, 
 Locke shows, by a certain logical principle a repugnancy of the 
 mind to rest with ideas alone that we must assume an unper- 
 ceived cause for these ideas. This cause is the thing in itself, the 
 real body. What we at first naively took to be qualities of bodies, 
 are now seen to be simple ideas in complex ideas. When I say 
 the rose is red and of a certain shape and size, all I am warranted 
 in meaning is that a certain complex idea, rose, has in it the simple 
 ideas, redness, form, and extension. The term qualities is not 
 applicable to common-sense bodies, but only to things in them- 
 selves, to critical bodies. Critical bodies have qualities, but they 
 are much fewer in number than the simple ideas in common-sense 
 bodies. There are no qualities in critical bodies like the simple 
 ideas of redness, sweetness, sourness, loudness, but they do have 
 qualities, such as extension, figure, and motion, which are like the 
 simple ideas of extension, figure, and motion. We might be said 
 now to have completed our novitiate. Never again can Locke pre- 
 sume on our philosophic innocenceri 
 
 We have now defined denotatively the substantive elements of 
 Locke's theory of knowledge and find that the terms that stand for 
 them are ambiguous and inconsistent. Ideas may be modifications 
 of the mind, content, or meaning. Substance may be a trick of 
 language or a real existence. Mind may be merely the unity of 
 organization or a cognitive soul substance. Bodies may be groups 
 of ideas or real material substances. Thus at the very beginning 
 we find Locke involved in a knot of equivocation. Next is the 
 question : How does he set these elements to work ? 
 
36 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 19. ATOMIC STRUCTURES.-4As we have seen, Locke divides sub- 
 stances, when he considers them as real, into cognitive and incog- 
 nitive, rather than into spiritual and material, although he be- 
 lieves the latter is the correct division. The one is the logically 
 necessary and intuitively known support, cause, or substratum of 
 ideas from reflection; the other holds the same relation, aside 
 from intuition, to ideas from sensation. The cognitive substance 
 of finite beings is not diffused but exists as simple unitary soul- 
 corpuscles minds or spirits. God fills all space and is thus not 
 even figuratively atomic. The world of finite intelligences is an 
 atomic world, a world of cognitive corpuscles or atoms, simple and 
 indivisible. Incognitive substance seems to be more diffused than 
 cognitive substance, but even it, in the last analysis, probably ex- 
 ists in the atomic or granular form. Locke appears to regard the 
 external physical world as a mixed, though perhaps not dis- 
 ordered, mass of atoms in motion. Physical phenomena are due 
 in one way or another to the impact of these flying particles. 
 Chemical and electrical changes seem to be entirely ignored by 
 Locke. Locke's material world is the world of Newtonian physics. 
 He accepts the omission theory of light. "And since the exten- 
 sion, figure, number, and motion of bodies, of an observable big- 
 ness, may be perceived at a distance by the sight, it is evident 
 some singly imperceptible bodies must come from them to the 
 eyes, and thereby convey to the brain some motion, which produces 
 these ideas we have of them in us/'* "I think the perception we 
 have of bodies at a distance from ours may be accounted for, as 
 far as we are capable of understanding it, by the motion of par- 
 ticles of matter coming from them and striking on our organs."f 
 "In feeling and tasting there is immediate contact. Sound is not 
 unintelligibly explained by a vibrating motion communicated to 
 the medium, and the effluviums of the odorous bodies will, without 
 any great difficulties, account for smells."J "Besides the springy 
 particles of pure air, the atmosphere is made up of several streams 
 or minute particles of several sorts arising from the earth and the 
 
 II. viii. 12. 
 
 t(Exam. of P. M.'s Opin. 9.) 
 
 tdbid.) 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 37 
 
 waters, and floating in the air, which is a fluid body, and though 
 much finer and thinner, may be considered in respect to its fluidity 
 to be like water, and so capable, like other liquors, of having 
 heterogeneous particles floating in it."* After considering great 
 masses of matter, the stars, planets, stones, plants, and animals, 
 he says, "it may be now fit to consider what these sensible bodies 
 are made of, and that is of inconceivably small bodies or atoms, 
 out of whose various combinations bigger moleculae are made."-} 
 "By the figure, bulk, texture, and motion of these small and insen- 
 sible corpuscles," he concludes, "all the phenomena of bodies may 
 be explained." Thus we see that Locke's universe, with the excep- 
 tion of God, is atomic: material atoms, soul atoms, and ideas. 
 Perception and knowledge is possible, for Locke, either on the 
 assumption of interaction between cognitive and incognitive 
 atoms, or on the assumption of some sort of meditation by God, as 
 occasionalism or pre-established harmony. ] 
 
 20. OCCASIONALISM. Although Locke wrote a paper exposing 
 the absurdity of seeing things in God, yet, .in his Essay he has 
 more than once expressed himself in a manner not inconsistent 
 with the occasionalism of Malebranche. "Impressions made on 
 the retina by rays of light," he says, even in his examination of 
 Malebranche's opinion, "I think I understand; and motions from 
 thence continued to the brain may be conceived, and that these 
 produce ideas in our minds, I am persuaded, but in a man- 
 ner to me incomprehensible. This I can resolve only into the good 
 pleasure of God, whose ways are past finding out. And, I think, 
 I know-it as well when I am told these are ideas that the motion of 
 animal spirits, by a law established by God, produces in me, as 
 when I am told they are ideas I see in God. The ideas, it is certain 
 I have, and God both ways is the original cause of having them ; 
 but the manner how I came by them, how it is I perceive, I confess 
 I understand not ; though it be plain motion has to do in the pro- 
 ducing of them : motion so modified, is appointed to be the cause 
 
 * (Elements of Nat. Phil. ch. VI.) 
 t (Ibid. ch. XII.) 
 
38 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 of our having them."f It would seem to follow from this that our 
 ideas from sensation haVe co-ordinate substrata, two causes. The 
 Cartesians emphasized the sole causality of God. Since Locke 
 holds that we perceive only our ideas and that their cause is an 
 I-know-not-what, it seems strange that he should introduce a 
 realm of hypothetical material causes, which as causes he some- 
 times admits are inconceivable, instead of making God the sole 
 ground of our ideas. But admitting a world of material particles 
 in motion, Locke has a parallelism on his hands. Certain motions 
 among particles of the brain occur, and concomitant with these 
 motions certain ideas occur in the mind. That an idea should 
 produce a motion in a material body, or that the motion of a mate- 
 rial body should produce an idea in the mind, seeing they are so 
 different, he says, is inconceivable. "We are fain to quit our rea- 
 son, go beyond our ideas, and attribute it wholly to the good 
 pleasure of our Maker."t "We can attribute their connexion to 
 nothing else but the arbitrary determination of that all-wise 
 agent, who has made them to be, and to operate as they do, in a 
 way wholly above our weak understanding to conceive."} What 
 this amounts to is, that in a purely hypothetical realm of things 
 (which consist of something I know not what, and whose essence 
 is unknowable, and whose existence is only inferred because of 
 our repugnancy to uncaused ideas, which repugnancy might be 
 and is equally satisfied by the assumption of God) there are 
 assumed to be motions, which are unknowable, but which pre- 
 cede or accompany certain of our ideas (which are the material 
 objects of common sense) , but which as the cause of these ideas 
 are wholly inconceivable, so that in the end we must throw up our 
 hands and say that these ideas are wholly due to the good pleasure 
 of God. The difference between Locke and Malebranche seems to 
 be one of words. But Locke, although he admits that a metaphysi- 
 cal realm of unknowable particles in motion is useless, 1 yet since 
 iso much of his system is bound up with an assumption of this 
 realm, and since he bases so much of his doctrine upon the casual 
 
 flV. ill. 6. 
 tlV. iii. 28. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 39 
 
 efficacy of these unknowable motions, he retains it in spite of its 
 absurdity. 
 
 21. INTERACTIONISM. Locke may haVe harmonized his occa- 
 sionalism, with his interactionism, in his own mind, by admitting 
 that, ultimately, of course, God is the sole cause of whatever we 
 experience, changes caused by one material thing acting upon an- 
 other as well as ideas in our minds, but that on a less ultimate 
 level of thought, not metaphysically but scientifically, i. e., psycho- 
 logically, we can speak of motions in the brain causing ideas in the 
 mind. Once getting over the difficulty, it would be easy to drop 
 back to a more metaphysical way of regarding causes. But, how- 
 ever he may have made peace with himself about this matter, he 
 is clearly an interactionist. 
 
 Each of the fundamental substances as agents has certain 
 powers, which may be considered as of two kinds, active powers 
 and passive powers. The one is that attribute or ability* by 
 virtue of which an agent is able to initiate any change ; the other 
 that by virtue of which it is able to suffer or transmit any change. 
 God is supposed to be that being who has only active powers, 
 matter has only passive powers, while created spirits possess 
 both active and passive powers. Leaving God out of the account, 
 it seems clear that whatever finite beings experience is due to 
 something that takes place in the unknown realm of substrata. 
 In the case of ideas from sensation, simple ideas are the result of 
 the meeting of the fundamental substances in their respective 
 atomic forms. The material corpuscles must imprintf themselves 
 upon the cognitive corpuscles, and the latter must somehow react 
 upon the former. This must be so because, in this hypothetical 
 realm which we have posited in order to explain the origin of 
 ideas, there are just these two kinds of substances, and they have 
 just the powers we have given them, and they are In the atomic 
 form. From this interaction, then come two results, viz., simple 
 ideas of sense and new changes or motions among material atoms. 
 In harmony with these assumptions we must regard the cognitive 
 
 *II. xxi. 16. 
 til. xxix. 3. 
 
40 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 corpuscle as something very similar to a protoplasmic cell. If it 
 is a purely spiritual substance, then, spiritual substance must 
 possess plasticity and mobility. This seems rather materialistic, 
 but if there is to be interaction how can we escape these assump- 
 tions? Ideas of sense are, therefore, modifications or dents im- 
 pressed upon the cognitive corpuscle, as upon a piece of wax,J 
 are the only objects of cognition, i. e., the mind or soul perceives 
 only its ideas. Not only can the soul initiate changes among the 
 material atoms, but also, manifestly, among the dents or impres- 
 sions on its plastic surface, and consequently on or within itself, 
 i. e., it must change its form by presumably amoeboid movements. 
 By these internal changes the soul thus re-distributes and re- 
 arranges the dents imprinted upon it, in a way characteristic of 
 its powers: reasoning, believing, knowing, etc. If the soul per- 
 ceives its dents and likewise the changes taking place among them, 
 it must perceive that dents are being made, hence simple ideas 
 from reflection. The soul, then, knows its own surface, by means 
 of the impressions upon it. Hence, cog ito ergo sum. 
 
 Dents imprinted upon this plastic surface are simple ideas of 
 sense; the folds or twists of this surface are simple ideas of re- 
 flection; a system or correlated arrangement of these dents is a 
 complex idea of sense; while the complex ideas of reflection are 
 the more involved turmoils of the surface. It is clear why simple 
 ideas are atomic, for atomic projectiles could make only atomic 
 dents. The fact that these projectiles come in swarms does not 
 lessen the simplicity and relative independence of the simple ideas. 
 
 The soul corpuscle, however, is not naked. It has an enclosing 
 ectoderm, the body. This ectoderm is composed of unknowable 
 material atoms, and it partially protects the soul from the external 
 bombardment. At the same time it is the material arrangement 
 by means of which the soul acts upon or effects changes among the 
 incognitive atoms of the external physical world. This ectoderm, 
 moreover, is not entire, but has various soft spots, traditionally 
 
 til. xxix. 3. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 41 
 
 enumerated as five, through which external agitation reaches the 
 soul. Each soft spot is of such a specific nature that only the 
 bombardment of certain kinds of projectiles are able to make an 
 impression upon the soul surface itself. The eye, not the eye of 
 anatomy but that system of unknowable material particles which 
 is the substratum of the eye of anatomy, is one of these soft spots ; 
 and it is impervious to all projectiles except very minute light 
 corpuscles of Newton's emission theory. Likewise with the other 
 sense inlets. 
 
 22. IDEAS AND QUALITIES OF BODIES. It is essential in Locke's 
 discussion of qualities that they should be carefully distinguished 
 from ideas. In regard to the raw material of knowledge, i. e., 
 simple ideas, the mind, he says, is wholly passive.* Simple ideas 
 are nothing but "the effects of certain powers in things, fitted and 
 ordained by God to produce such sensations [ideas] in us."f "It 
 is true," he says, "the things producing in us these simple ideas, 
 are but few of them denominated by us as if they were only the 
 causes of them, but as if those ideas were real beings in them. 
 For though fire be called painful to the touch, whereby is signi- 
 fied the power of producing in us the idea of pain, yet it is denom- 
 inated also heat and light ; as if light and heat were really some- 
 thing in the fire more than a power to excite these ideas in us, and 
 therefore are called qualities in, or of the fire. But these being 
 nothing, in truth, but powers to excite such ideas in us, I must in 
 that sense be understood when I speak of secondary qualities, as 
 being in things ; or of their ideas, as being the objects that excite 
 them in us. Such ways of speaking, though accommodated to the 
 vulgar notions, without which one can not be well understood, yet 
 truly signify nothing but those powers which are in things to ex- 
 cite certain sensations or ideas in us."J These powers that reside 
 in things themselves are the qualities of these things themselves. 
 "Thus a snowball having power to produce in us the ideas of 
 white, cold and round, the power to produce these ideas in us, as 
 they are in the snowball, I call qualities; and as they are sensa- 
 
 *II. xxx. 3. 
 til. xxxi. 2. 
 til. xxxi. 2. 
 
42 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 tions 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."** 
 
 We have now determined definitely that there are two ways of 
 regarding things or bodies and their qualities. 'There is the com- 
 mon-sense thing with its common-sense qualities, which is nothing 
 but a complex idea with simple ideas. There is the critical thing 
 or thing itself with primary or critical qualities. The critical 
 qualities are the powers of critical things to produce two kinds of 
 common-sense qualities in common-sense things, or what is the 
 same thing, the primary or critical qualities of things themselves 
 have the power to produce two kinds of ideas, viz., primary and 
 secondary ideas. When, therefore, we make a distinction between 
 primary and secondary qualities of things, we can mean only pri- 
 mary and secondary ideas. Critical things have only pri- 
 mary or critical qualities. \ 
 
 23. WHAT ARE SECONDARY CRITICAL QUALITIES? ,The primary 
 qualities of bodies are, according to Locke, solidity, extension, 
 existence, duration, figure, motion, or rest, and number. 
 These are the qualities which material substance really has. 
 These qualities do not depend upon the presence of a 
 percipient mind. They are the qualities things in 
 themselves have independent of any knowledge about them. 
 Manifestly there are no secondary critical qualities, for 
 secondary qualities, he says, such as colors, sounds, tastes, etc., 
 are really not in the things themselves but are the "powers to 
 produce various sensations (ideas) in us by their primary quali- 
 ties, i. e., by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their insen- 
 sible parts." f But as we have just seen primary qualities of 
 things themselves are just the powers they have of producing 
 ideas in us. And since Locke has shown that there is no sense 
 in speaking of one power having another powerj we are bound to 
 conclude that things themselves do not have secondary qualities^ 
 
 **II. vlii. 8. 
 til. viil 10. 
 III. xxi. 16. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 43 
 
 Suppose we take an example of a secondary idea. The simple 
 secondary idea of blue, according to the emission theory, is pro- 
 duced by a stream of exceedingly fine corpuscles, traveling at a 
 terrific speed, and impinging on the retina, where they set up a 
 motion. This motion is carried back to the brain along the optic 
 nerve, where it causes the simple idea to arise. Red is produced 
 in a like manner. The difference is that the red-producing cor- 
 puscles are large and smooth compared with the blue-producing 
 corpuscles. The latter may be also oblong instead of spherical. 
 Since sunlight is composed of a mixture of all the various color- 
 producing corpuscles, the question arises why do some objects re- 
 flect red-producing corpuscles while others reflect blue-producing 
 corpuscles? The proximate cause of the simple secondary idea 
 in the complex idea of blue flower, is ex hypothesi, the smallness 
 and oblongness of the corpuscles that are reflected from the thing 
 itself. Just this particular kind of corpuscles is reflected to the 
 eye on account of the texture or surface of the flower itself. The 
 red-producing corpuscles strike upon the petals just as the blue- 
 producing corpuscles do, but owing to their size and sphericity, 
 and to the texture of the petals, they are not reflected from its 
 surface. Thus, the cause of the idea blue, is primarily the par- 
 ticular form, size, shape, or number, etc., of the light corpuscles. 
 But more remotely, the cause of only one or another kind of cor- 
 puscles being reflected to the eye from an object is the particular 
 texture, grain, or conformation of its minute parts. [What then 
 are the secondary critical qualities? They are the particular in- 
 stances of the primary qualities. Red, let us say, is the effect of a 
 spherical form, blue of an oblong form. Form itself is primary. 
 No material substance exists without form. But the particular 
 form is secondary. Motion is a primary quality. Heat, as Locke 
 says, is an idea caused by the motions of the minute parts of 
 water, for example, on the sensible parts of our hands. But 
 whether the water will feel cold or hot, depends upon what kind 
 of a motion is conducted to the brain. The secondary quality is 
 
44 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 the particular motion, say of so many vibrations per second. We 
 can see now why primary and secondary ideas are so closely re- 
 lated, why we can never see pure extension without some second- 
 ary idea of color or touch. Secondary critical qualities, therefore, 
 do exist in things themselves as the specific or particular instances 
 of the primary qualities. Since bodies can not have motion, figure, 
 extension, etc., without some particular motion, figure, extension, 
 primary qualities are merely generalizations from secondary qual- 
 ities. Secondary qualities are the particulars, and primary 
 qualities are the universals. As Socrates would say, the argument 
 is laughing at us. We began by regarding secondary qualities as 
 derived from primary, and now we end by stating that primary 
 qualities are merely generalizations from secondary.' 
 
 Since "all things that exist being particulars,"* and since "uni- 
 versality belongs not to things themselves, which are all of them 
 particular in their existence ; even those words and ideas which in 
 their signification are general," and "when therefore we quit par- 
 ticulars, the generals that rest are only creatures, of our own 
 making ; their nature being nothing but the capacity they are put 
 into by the understanding, of signifying or representing many 
 particulars. For the signification they have is nothing but a rela- 
 tion, that by the mind of man is added to them."t [Primary criti- 
 cal qualities are thus general ideas used as signs in the classifi- 
 cation or sorting of secondary critical qualities. Secondary criti- 
 cal qualities are the only qualities of things themselves that really 
 exist. Primary critical qualities have only a nominal existence. 
 Thus there are no ideas like critical qualities. The idea of figure 
 has nothing like it in reality. "Figure is nothing but the termina- 
 tion of colour."} Redness is more primary than extension., 
 _ 24. IF COMMON-SENSE BODIES RESEMBLE CRITICAL BODIES. 
 Secondary common-sense qualities do not exist in things them- 
 selves "otherwise than as anything is in its cause-" Colors, sounds- 
 
 III. iii. 1. $(Elemts. of Nat. Phil. ch. X.) 
 
 tin. iii. 11. 11. xxiii. 9. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 45 
 
 smells, and tastes, in so far as they exist in things themselves, 
 exist as particular forms of primary qualities. They exist there, 
 i. e., there is something in things themselves that corresponds to 
 and is the cause of the secondary common-sense qualities, but 
 what exists there does not resemble its effect in us. But on the 
 other hand, in the case of the primary common-sense qualities, 
 what exists in things themselves as the cause of primary ideas in 
 us, does resemble these ideas. "The ideas of primary qualities of 
 bodies," he says, "are resemblances of them, and their patterns do 
 really exist in the bodies themselves ; but the ideas produced in us 
 by these secondary qualities have no resemblance to them at all."* 
 "The particular bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts of 
 fire, or snow, are really in them, whether any one's senses perceive 
 them or no, and therefore they may be called real qualities, be- 
 cause they really exist in those bodies."f Now, what is it for one 
 thing to be like another? One thing is like another in one partic- 
 ular if they both have one identical quality. If an orange and a 
 ball resemble each other in form, they both have the quality of 
 sphericity. If two things resemble each other in all particulars 
 except numerical identity, they have identical qualities. Two 
 things are alike in so far as they possess identical qualities. If, 
 therefore, common-sense bodies resemble the critical bodies which 
 underlie them, they are identical in respect of these qualities. 
 Common-sense primary ideas are, consequently, identical with 
 critical primary qualities. Ideas of motion are motion, ideas of 
 extension are extension. The common-sense body which has ideas 
 of motion, extension, figure, etc., has the primary qualities 
 of motion, extension, figure, etc. Now, a material body is that 
 which has these primary qualities. Common-sense bodies, then, 
 are material bodies. Since common-sense bodies are complex ideas 
 in the mind, there are material bodies, with the qualities, of ex- 
 tension, figure, motion, existence, etc., in the mind. The mind 
 thus has within itself a material world which resembles an ex- 
 ternal material world in respect of these primary qualities. This 
 
 II. viil. 15. 
 til, viii. 17. 
 
46 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 internal material world differs from the external material world 
 in that it possesses an indefinite number of secondary qualities, 
 which do not resemble the secondary critical qualities which are 
 their causes. Since ideas themselves are not substantial exist- 
 ences, but the effects of the interaction between substantial exist- 
 ences, we have the result that there exists as a complex object 
 before the mind, a material world which has the qualities of 
 extension, motion, figure, existence, etc., but which does not 
 require a support or substratum for these qualities. But if we 
 regard ideas, not as a tertium quid, but as parts or modifications 
 of the soul substance itself, then we must conclude that the soul 
 substance possesses all the qualities of material substance. Cog- 
 nitive substance would thus include all substance, and the distinc- 
 tion between cognitive and incognitive substance would be the 
 distinction Between the whole and the part. But this Locke for- 
 bids us to do. We must therefore declare that the common-sense 
 external world is a real material world without a substratum, or 
 else that common-sense bodies do not resemble critical bodies in 
 respect of their primary qualities. 
 
 If a common-sense body can be said to be like a critical body 
 only in so far as it possess the same or identical qualities, and if 
 the likeness is greater in so far as the number of identical 
 qualities is greater, it follows that common-sense bodies, whatever 
 they are or however they are caused, possess these critical quali- 
 ties in their own right. That they have these qualities is conse- 
 quently no ground for supposing that they are caused or that they 
 have an unknowable substratum. If we assert that they are 
 caused or need a support, we must do so from some other ground 
 than that of the mere presence of these qualities. But this is the 
 very argument that Locke uses to prove a substratum. Hence it 
 appears that he must give up his external real world as a useless 
 assumption, or else deny that this real world has bodies similar to 
 the bodies of the common-sense world. If he would do this, then 
 he could not assert that the real external world has solidity, exist- 
 ence, duration, figure, motion or rest, or number. His whole 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 47 
 
 rationalistic scheme of atoms in motion, of sense organs and 
 animal spirits, would go to pieces. Since existence is a primary 
 quality, he could not assert that his hypothetical external world 
 actually existed. It would be truly unknowable and incompre- 
 hensible. Apparently the only escape from this dilemma is to 
 abandon the doctrine of ideas and assert that the common-sense 
 external world is the external world. 
 
 25. THE GROUND OF DISTINCTION BETWEEN PRIMARY AND 
 SECONDARY QUALITIES. It appears that Locke divided qualities 
 of bodies into primary and secondary because he found that 
 solidity, extension, figure, duration, motion or rest, number, and 
 existence, are more important than the various sounds, colors, 
 tastes, smells, temperatures, and feelings of hardness, softness, 
 etc. But the importance of the former is that to a special natural 
 science, viz., physics. The so-called primary qualities are impor- 
 tant for physics on account of its special problems. It finds it 
 convenient for its special purposes to make this distinction. When 
 we come to examine the human understanding, surely we are not 
 studying a branch of physics. It may be that from this standpoint 
 the so-called secondary qualities are the most important. At least 
 it is not evident that the special problems of physics should domin- 
 ate our investigation. 
 
 In trying to justify the assumption of the first importance of 
 the qualities of solidity, figure, etc., Locke offers the following 
 proof : "Qualities thus considered in bodies are, first, such as are 
 utterly inseparable from the body, in what estate soever it be; 
 such as in all the alterations and changes it suffers, all the force 
 can be used upon it, it constantly keeps; and such as sense con- 
 stantly finds in every particle of matter which has bulk enough to 
 be perceived, and the mind finds inseparable from every particle 
 of matter, though less than to make itself singly perceived by our 
 senses: v. g., take a grain of wheat, divide it into two parts, each 
 part still has solidity, extension, figure, and mobility; divide it 
 again and it retains still the same qualities ; and so divide it on till 
 
48 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 the parts become insensible, they must retain still each of them 
 all those qualities : for division (which is all that a mill, or pestle, 
 or any other body does upon another, in reducing it to insensible 
 parts) can never take away either solidity, figure, or mobility 
 from any body, but only makes two or more distinct separate 
 masses of matter of that which was but one before; all which 
 distinct masses, reckoned as so many distinct bodies, after divi- 
 sion, make a certain number. These I call original or primary 
 qualities of body, which I think we may observe to produce simple 
 ideas in us, viz., solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and 
 number."* Secondary qualities, he says, "are nothing in the ob- 
 jects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations [ideas] 
 in us by their primary qualities." So far this is confusing and in- 
 conclusive. A grain of wheat is a common-sense body with color 
 as well as extension. The ideas of color, taste, and smell are in 
 the complex idea, grain of wheat, as well as, and of as much im- 
 portance as, the ideas of extension, mobility, or figure. When we 
 reduce the grain of wheat to particles so fine as to be impercep- 
 tible, the ideas of extension, mobility, and figure, cease to exist 
 along with the ideas of color, taste, and smell. Since he himself 
 says that figure is the limit of color, it is clear that when we get 
 no idea of color we get no idea of figure. He can not, therefore, 
 mean common-sense body, the complex idea, grain of wheat. But 
 he can not be thinking of the critical body of his theory, for that, 
 ex hypothesi, has only the so-called primary qualities. Here, his 
 task is to show why some qualities are more important than 
 others, and his theory must gain its plausibility from the results 
 of this investigation and not contrariwise. 
 
 In another passage, he says, "First the ideas of the primary 
 qualities of things, which are discovered by our senses, and are in 
 them even when we perceive them not ; such are the bulk, figure, 
 number, situation, and motion of the parts of bodies, which are 
 really in them, whether we take notice of them or not. Secondly, 
 the sensible secondary qualities, which depending on these, are 
 nothing but the powers those substances have to produce several 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 49 
 
 ideas in us by our senses ; which ideas are not in the things them- 
 selves, otherwise than as anything is in its cause."f What con- 
 stitutes importance for physics, apparently, is permanence. If a 
 quality is an abiding quality it is important and primary. If its 
 presence or condition depends upon the presence or condition of a 
 percipient it is not important and primary for physics. If Locke 
 is talking about the common-sense body, then, what he says 
 amounts to this : among the various qualities of the common-sense 
 body, there are some which persist whether we observe them or 
 not ; the other qualities, which are the effects of these on us, cease 
 to exist when we no longer observe them. But this implies that 
 an idea persists when it is not an object before the mind, and that 
 Locke denies. An alternative is that primary ideas and primary 
 qualities are identical, and that the object under discussion is 
 made partly of ideas and partly of real abiding qualities. But in 
 that case, the mind would perceive something other than its ideas, 
 which is also denied by Locke. Or, if primary qualities are ideas, 
 then we have some ideas as the cause and support of others, and 
 the occasion for an external world disappears. In fact, what he 
 means by body here, is something that can be regarded either in 
 a common-sense way or in a critical way, or half one and half the 
 other. That is, it means anything he wants it to mean at any 
 point in the argument. The only definite assertion is that some 
 qualities depend upon a perceiving mind and that some others do 
 not. 
 
 The proof of this assertion appears to be this : The color, heat, 
 or sound of a body changes with the surrounding conditions and 
 its relation to the sense organs. When the light ceases to strike 
 upon a piece of porphyry, for example, its colors vanish. Now, 
 the bulk and figure of this piece remain the same, whether it is in 
 the light or not, and whether we are looking at it or not. "Can 
 any one think any real alterations are made in the porphyry by the 
 presence or absence of light : and that those ideas of whiteness and 
 redness are really in porphyry in the light, when it is plain it has 
 
 til. xxiii. 9. 
 
50 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 no colour in the dark? It has, indeed, such a configuration of 
 particles, both night and day, as are apt by the rays of light re- 
 bounding from some parts of that hard stone, to produce in us 
 the idea of redness, and from others the idea of whiteness ; but 
 whiteness or redness are not in it at any time, but such a texture, 
 that hath the power to produce such a sensation in us."* 
 
 There are really two arguments here. One, that secondary 
 qualities depend upon the presence and functioning of the sense 
 organs, the other that secondary qualities are more unstable and 
 fluent than the primary. Suppose we take the latter first. It is 
 the argument from mechanical physics and does not necessarily 
 imply that some secondary qualities are not always present with 
 the primary. A quality that is important for physics is one that 
 lends itself to mathematical formulation. The spatial qualities 
 of bodies can be so formulated. By them events can be given a 
 numerical statement and their occurrence predicted. The laws or 
 ways in which they occur can be stated mathematically. The 
 reason why secondary qualities are unimportant for physics, is not 
 that a perceiving mind is necessary for their existence, but be- 
 cause they are qualities such as can not be dealt with mathemati- 
 cally. This, it will be admitted, is legitimate, if mathematical 
 statement is our purpose. But Locke implies that this statement 
 is equivalent to the statement that primary or spatial qualities 
 are unconditioned. This is an unwarranted implication and is not 
 demanded by mathematical physics. As Locke himself is forced 
 to admit, the ideas of primary qualities are conditioned as much 
 by the ideas of secondary qualities, as the secondary by the pri- 
 mary. What physics is dealing with, is not the critical objects, 
 but the common-sense objects. What it says is that the spatial 
 ideas are more important for its purposes than the so-called sec- 
 ondary ideas. But all the time it is dealing with the world we 
 know, the world of ideas, in Locke's sense. In the case of a sen- 
 sible object, it is the size, shape, or conformation of its parts that 
 is important. Its color, odor, etc., can be neglected. Physics is 
 
 II. viii. 19. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 51 
 
 interested in the length and the diameter of a vibrating string, 
 not in its color or taste. But this is not saying that it has no color 
 or taste, or that it is possible to have one without color or taste. 
 The thing we are talking about is an experiencible object, one 
 that we can see and touch. In the case of the insensible parts, the 
 molecules or atoms, if they are said to exist at all, they exist such 
 that, if our touch or sight were sensitive or acute enough, we could 
 actually feel or see them. It is a mere accident that we do not. 
 In lieu of seeing or touching them, we imagine ourselves seeing or 
 touching them. That is, they are of the same nature as the larger 
 objects. It is like looking at a page of fine print across the room. 
 What I see is a rectangular gray patch on the white paper. I say 
 that this gray patch is made up of three or four hundred black 
 letters of definite shapes, i. e., I mean that if I were close enough 
 to the page that is what I should see. These unseen letters are of 
 the nature of Locke's ideas. Atoms and molecules are not the 
 material substratum, but are the fine parts of our experienced 
 world. They are in the same class with distant objects or with 
 inaccessible objects, as the center of the earth. They are related 
 to and coherent with what we do experience. Locke and the physi- 
 cists can not say that primary ideas are unconditioned by second- 
 ary ideas. As has been admitted there are no pure primary ideas. 
 Extension is the extension of something seen or touched. What 
 Locke appears to say is that primary qualities, the qualities of the 
 real unknowable substrata which he thinks we are forced to as- 
 sume, are unconditioned by secondary ideas. Or, although pri- 
 mary qualities are like primary ideas, there are no secondary 
 qualities like secondary ideas. The reason is that, since primary 
 ideas are found to be important for mechanical physics while 
 secondary ideas can be ignored, therefore real qualities of things 
 themselves are like the primary ideas. This would be valid only in 
 case primary ideas are unconditioned by secondary ideas. But 
 since primary ideas are conditioned by secondary ideas, we are not 
 
52 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 warranted in concluding that there are no secondary qualities like 
 secondary ideas which condition the primary qualities. 
 
 If those qualities which are important are the only ones belong- 
 ing to real things, it remains to be shown why the purposes of 
 physics are to be taken into consideration rather than the pur- 
 poses of the musician or colorist, for example. To explain a 
 musical composition or a painting in terms of vibrations of certain 
 amplitudes and frequencies would hardly be allowed by the musi- 
 cian or painter. Just as the physicist would have to admit that his 
 primary qualities are not unconditioned by the others, so the 
 musician would have to admit that certain spatial qualities are 
 present as conditions of musical expression, but with the same 
 right by which the physicist ignores certain qualities as unim- 
 portant the musician can ignore these spatial qualities. The 
 important qualities for him are other than these. When we con- 
 sider all the various purposes and the peculiar qualities that are 
 important for them, the innumerable practical and social pur- 
 poses, the aesthetic, moral, and religious purposes, the singling 
 out just those qualities which are important for mechanical 
 physics as the only qualities belonging to material reality, seems 
 to need more cogent argument than Locke has offered. It must 
 be noted, however, that Locke is dealing only with the primary 
 qualities of material substance. 
 
 In his second argument by which he attempts to show that sec- 
 ondary qualities are not qualities of things themselves because 
 they are nothing but effects in us of the primary qualities, Locke 
 feels that he has proved his thesis conclusively. Redness and 
 whiteness are not in the porphyry, because these qualities change 
 with the alterations of light. The piece of porphyry is unchanged 
 whether it is in the light or not. It has its primary spatial 
 qualities just the same. This reference to a change of illumina- 
 tion, however, is not necessary to his argument. What he means 
 is that a well-lighted piece of porphyry has neither redness nor 
 whiteness unless there is a man there, with his eyes in normal 
 condition, looking at it. It is the redness and whiteness of the 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 63 
 
 porphyry that I am now observing under favorable conditions, 
 and which I believe, as a common-sense observer, to be the quali- 
 ties of the porphyry, that are not in the porphyry at all but are in 
 me. Locke offers as a test case, the fact that when one hand is 
 cold and the other hot, tepid water will feel hot to the cold hand 
 and cold to the hot hand. "Ideas being thus distinguished and 
 understood, we may be able to give an account how the same 
 water, at the same time, may produce the ideas of cold by one hand 
 and heat by the other; whereas it is impossible that the same 
 water, if those ideas are really in it [are we to imply that primary 
 ideas are in it?], should at the same time be both hot and cold : for 
 if we imagine warmth, as it is in our hands, to be nothing but a 
 certain sort and degree of motion in the minute particles of our 
 nerves or animal spirits, we may understand how it is possible that 
 the same water may, at the same time produce the sensations of 
 heat in one hand, and cold in the other; which yet figure never 
 does, that never producing the idea of a square by one hand, 
 which has produced the idea of globe by the other.'** There is 
 another experiment in perception known to Aristotle and common 
 among school children of our day which from its simplicity might 
 well have been known to Locke. Take the two hands. If we hold 
 a small marble or a pea between the thumb and finger of one hand 
 we get the idea of a primary quality, number. We feel one 
 marble. If we touch the crossed fingers of the other hand with 
 the same marble we get the idea of two marbles from that hand. 
 At one and the same time, the same object gives us the primary 
 idea of one-ness from one hand and of two-ness from the other. 
 In general, Locke's test for the permanence of spatial qualities 
 is that they are not subject to illusions. His assumption is that 
 those qualities which change with the varying conditions of obser- 
 vation are secondary, those that do not are primary. A very 
 elementary knowledge of sense illusion, however, shows that the 
 so-called primary qualities are quite as subject to illusion as the 
 secondary. Without going into a modern discussion of illusion 
 n. via. 21. 
 
54 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 this is very evident. We can cite from Locke himself the illusory 
 character of certain ideas of primary qualities. "When we set 
 before our eyes a round globe, of any uniform color, v. g., gold, 
 alabaster, or jet, it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted in 
 our mind is of a flat circle variously shadowed, with several de- 
 grees of light and brightness coming to our eyes."f We judge this 
 flat circle to be a spherical body evidently by correlating it with 
 our ideas from touch. The illusion of a painting, he implies, is 
 due to this customary judgment. That sight does not give us the 
 third dimension he admits in his answer to Molineaux's problem 
 of the blind man who regains his sight. He is of the opinion, he 
 says, "that the blind man, at first sight, would not be able with 
 certainty to say, which was the globe, which the cube, whilst he 
 only saw them."J In criticising Malebranche's assertion about 
 our perception of a cube that "we see all its sides equal," he says, 
 "This, I think, is a mistake; and I have in another place shown 
 how the idea we have of a regular solid, is not the true idea of that 
 solid, but such an one by custom (as the name of it goes), seems 
 to excite our judgment to form such an one."f There is an illusion 
 of motion, which is not given by Locke, but which requires no 
 erudition or elaborate apparatus. The perception of motion is 
 usually attributed to a movement of the image on the retina. This 
 occurs and we have the perception of movement, whether the eye 
 is stationary and the object moving, or whether the object is sta- 
 tionary and the eye quickly moving. But when one sights down 
 a gun barrel at a distant object and then without moving the eye 
 focusses the eye on the rear sight, the object is seen to move. 
 Evidently this perception of movement is due to a judgment, based 
 probably on the movement of the closed eye. Ideas 
 of primary qualities from sight, can not therefore be said to 
 resemble the primary qualities themselves. The eye is subject 
 to illusions of size, form, number, motion, and solidity. Since the 
 senses of hearing and taste and smell are likewise subject to illu- 
 sion, and since Locke does not regard them as principal sources 
 tn. ix. s. 
 
 tdbid.) 
 
 tCExam. of P. M.'s Opin. 12.) 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 65 
 
 of our primary ideas,* we have only the sense of touch whereby 
 we can get true ideas of primary qualities. 
 
 If we give up all the senses but touch by what criterion are 
 we to judge it? If the eye deludes us in regard to the color and 
 shape of the piece of porphyry before us, how do we know that 
 touch is not doing the same thing? When an old soldier with his 
 leg amputated feels his lost foot extended in space, how is he going 
 to deny the reliability of his idea? What about the primary idea 
 of existence? In the case of vivid dreams and hallucinations the 
 case for touch seems to fall to pieces. Reality, therefore, can not 
 be sought in primary spatial qualities. 
 
 v26. THE HOPELESS CONFUSION OF LOCKE'S THOUGHT. The 
 seeming plausibility of Locke's argument for primary qualities 
 is due to his confusion of the common-sense body with his hypo- 
 thetical or "real" body, and of primary ideas with primary quali- 
 ties. He says, "I hope I shall be pardoned this little excursion 
 into natural philosophy, it being necessary in our present inquiry 
 to distinguish the primary and real qualities of bodies, which are 
 always in them (viz., solidity, figure, number, and motion or rest ; 
 and are sometimes perceived by us, viz., when the bodies they are 
 in are big enough singly to be discerned) from the secondary and 
 imputed qualities, which are but the powers of several combina- 
 tions of those primary ones, when they operate, without being 
 distinctly discerned; whereby we may also come to know what 
 ideas are, and what they are not, resemblances of something really 
 existing in the bodies we denominate from them."t This sen- 
 tence is eloquent of the confusion into which he has fallen. He 
 is talking about "real" bodies, the things themselves, not complex 
 ideas. He says these real bodies have in them real primary qual- 
 ities. We are not concerned at present in denying this statement. 
 Let us suppose there are such real bodies, and that their real 
 qualities are solidity, extension, figure, etc. Now he goes on to 
 say that under ordinary conditions, i. e., when the bodies are not 
 of microscopic dimensions or less, these primary qualities are 
 
 II. xllL 2. 
 fll. viil. 22. 
 
56 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 perceived by us. He has taught us before that primary qualities 
 are not and from their nature can not be perceived by us. What- 
 jsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of 
 perception, thought, or understanding, that I call idea; and the 
 power to produce any idea in our mind I call quality of the subject 
 wherein that power is. Thus a snowball having the power to 
 produce in us ideas of white, cold, and round, the powers to pro- 
 duce those 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/'* Round, which is a primary idea in the com- 
 plex idea, snowball, is produced in us by a power in the real snow- 
 ball. This power is the real primary quality residing in the thing 
 itself. The most that can be said for the primary idea is that it is 
 like the primary quality. Now he says that these primary qual- 
 ities are perceived by us. In another place, he says, in most sen- 
 sible things "we can not avoid observing their sensible qualities, 
 nay, their very substances, to be in a continual flux/'J But since 
 whatever is an object when a man thinks is an idea, primary qual- 
 ities are, sometimes at least, ideas. Thus primary qualities are 
 and can not be ideas. We recall that he says, "which ideas, if I 
 speak of sometimes as the things themselves, I would be under- 
 stood to mean those qualities in the objects which produce them 
 in us," and in another place we find him saying "powers" and 
 "substance" when he means simple ideas and complex ideas, as 
 "therefore it is that I have reckoned these powers among simple 
 ideas, which make the complex ones of the sorts of substances; 
 though these powers, considered in themselves, are truly complex 
 ideas. And in their looser sense I crave leave to be understood, 
 when I name any of these potentialities among the simple ideas 
 which we collect in our minds, when we think of particular sub- 
 stances.'^ Let us take him at his word. In the sentence at the 
 beginning of this paragraph, he speaks of real qualities being per- 
 ceived by us. Evidently, therefore, according to the indulgence 
 he allows himself, whereby words are all things to all men, we can 
 
 *II. viii. 8. 
 JII. xxi. 4. 
 $11. xxiii. 7. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 67 
 
 interpret the sentence in question as meaning that there are pri- 
 mary ideas in common-sense bodies or complex ideas, which are 
 perceived by us. The "sometimes" now becomes anomalous. Are 
 there primary ideas which are not objects perceived ? What other 
 meaning can be given to the word? But an idea is that which is 
 an immediate object. We are forced to conclude that an idea is 
 and may not be an immediate object before the mind. But to con- 
 tinue the substitution of "ideas" for "qualities" in the sentence in 
 question, we see that secondary and imputed ideas are but the 
 powers of several combinations of those primary ones. Primary 
 ideas are, consequently, powers of complex ideas to produce in us 
 secondary ideas. Complex ideas, thus, are made up only of pri- 
 mary ideas ; secondary ideas are the product of complex ideas. 
 But, on the other hand, we have learned that complex ideas are 
 just those constellations of ideas of whatever sort which come 
 together, concomitantly or serially. Secondary ideas are, part of 
 that which is their cause. Consequently, they are and are not 
 primary. Again, what can Locke mean by speaking of primary 
 qualities operating "without being distinctly discerned?" If he 
 means the qualities of things themselves which are the causes of 
 ideas in us they are not only not distinctly discerned but not dis- 
 cerned at all. But if he means primary ideas, then some ideas 
 operate. But ideas are nothing but effects in us. Therefore some 
 ideas are causes which are nothing but effects. Thus Locke comes 
 to the conclusion of his sentence, "whereby we may also come to 
 know what ideas are, and what are not, resemblances of some- 
 thing really existing in the bodies we' denominate from them." It 
 is clear that we can not substitute here. He implies that he has 
 shown that some ideas resemble and that some do not resemble the 
 qualities in things themselves which are their causes. If we sub- 
 stituted as before Locke would be saying that some ideas resemble 
 other ideas and that some ideas do not. At this point Locke's 
 empiricism and rationalism meet and result in a nest of an- 
 

 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 tinomies. Aside from the truth or falsity of anything he says, it 
 is impossible to give a coherent statement to his doctrine of pri- 
 mary and secondary qualities. The most serious charge that can 
 be brought against him at this point is that, expressly and with 
 malice prepense, he gives himself the license to say one thing and 
 mean another. 
 
 27. THE ORIGIN OF PRIMARY IDEAS. Locke says, as we have 
 seen, that secondary qualities exist in things themselves only in 
 so far as anything exists in its cause. By this he admits that 
 there is something in things themselves corresponding to, but not 
 resembling, secondary common-sense qualities. If we assume 
 some cognitive being who is capable of perceiving things them- 
 selves with, their primary or real qualities, as probably Locke's 
 angels or as God apprehends them, that being would apprehend 
 that a body to which man imputes, or which is the cause of, red- 
 ness, is different from a body to which man imputes blueness. He 
 would perceive a difference in the surface, texture, or coagmenta- 
 tion of parts. Locke could not escape this conclusion. We can 
 not, even theoretically, say that two bodies are identical in respect 
 of their primary qualities, but differ in respect of their secondary 
 common-sense qualities. The very fact that two bodies differ in 
 respect of their secondary or imputed qualities, shows, prima 
 facie, that there are powers in the bodies themselves adequate to 
 these effects. His doctrine of the cause of ideas depends upon this. 
 But this forces us to our former conclusion that the powers which 
 produce secondary common-sense qualities in us, are the particular 
 kinds of primary qualities. Primary qualities as such have only 
 nominal existence. If a real body produces any idea in us, it does 
 so by virtue of its particular powers. How is it possible, we may 
 ask, for primary ideas to arise? They could arise only through 
 that which causes secondary ideas. But this cause seems to be 
 exhausted in producing secondary ideas. Whence comes this addi- 
 tional effect? The only mode in which such additional effects 
 could exist would be as particular extensions, forms, motions, etc. 
 General ideas, as he maintains, are abstractions. There would be 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 59 
 
 in the mind, when some real body produced ideas in us, distinct 
 ideas of color, taste, smell, etc., as the case may be, and, in addi- 
 tion, distinct ideas of particular extension, figure, ^notion, etc. 
 The cause of secondary ideas would thus be the cause of primary 
 ideas. Since primary ideas have no sense inlets of their own, they 
 have to come in more or less freely, through the inlets of secondary 
 ideas. But when I look at a red rose, the complex idea in my 
 mind, I see clearly, according to the corpuscular theory of light, 
 that that which causes the distinct idea redness, is not the cause 
 of the particular idea of extension or figure I perceive. I get the 
 same idea of redness whether I look at the whole rose, at a single 
 petal, or a part of a petal. The cause of the idea of redness, is, 
 by the theory, due to the fine parts of the flower, and not to its 
 gross outlines. How do these gross outlines get before the mind 
 on the backs of the configuration of the fine parts? If we take 
 Locke's assertion that figure is the limit of color, in a visual object, 
 then we regard the real body as having a gross extensity and form 
 made up of finer extensities and forms, which fine extensities and 
 forms are the cause of the secondary ideas. The gross parts are 
 nothing but the aggregation of the fine parts. But the fine parts 
 produce ideas which are not like them. How, then, can any aggre- 
 ation of fine parts produce an idea that is like it? At this point 
 on the real petal the fine parts produce the idea of redness, at 
 other points the fine parts do the same. How can the summation 
 of effects produce anything but just redness? Locke might say 
 that the addition of effects would be observed by the mind as more 
 and more, and hence the idea of voluminousness and extension. 
 But this, if true, is introspective evidence. There is nothing in his 
 doctrine to show why the powers which produce secondary ideas 
 At the same time produce primary ideas. He himself says it is 
 inconceivable how primary qualities of bodies produce secondary 
 Ideas in us so Unlike their causes. It is likewise inconceivable, 
 if they do, how they could produce anything else. But when Locke 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 speaks of the cause of primary and secondary ideas, he seems to 
 regard the effect of the fine parts of the body as secondary ideas, 
 and the body as an extended whole as the cause of primary ideas. 
 He seems to regard the cause of primary ideas as in some way en- 
 tirely distinct from the cause of secondary ideas. But as we see, 
 the cause of secondary ideas has the load to carry. Besides pro- 
 ducing secondary ideas, it must produce various other primary 
 ideas than extension. In the case of the red rose, besides the 
 particular extension and figure, it must produce the idea of dura- 
 tion, rest or motion, solidity, and more remarkable than all, the 
 idea of existence. But the existence of what, since there are no 
 universals? Existence of the body with its primary powers, 
 which powers produce ideas in us. But how the quality of exist- 
 ence can produce the idea of existence is the most incomprehensi- 
 ble of all Locke's assumptions. Why does the idea of real existence 
 attach itself just to the primary ideas? Why does it attach itself 
 to itself? Moreover, how can we distinguish dreams, hallucina- 
 tions, or everyday illusions, from reality? If we say false judg- 
 ment, then reality is perceived by true judgment and the idea of 
 real existence is a product of judgment, and not an effect in us 
 like the ideas of red or sweet, or particular form. Locks leaves 
 unexplained, therefore, the origin of primary ideas. 
 
 28. PRIMARY QUALITIES OF MIND. In the case of primary qual- 
 ities of mind, there are peculiarities not found in the case of pri- 
 mary qualities of material bodies. In the first place the mind is an 
 "intermediary" or active-passive substance. It may be conjectured, 
 he says, that "Pure spirit, viz., God, is only active ; pure matter is 
 only passive; those things that are both active and passive, we 
 may judge to partake of both."* The ideas from reflection are 
 produced in the mind by itself. The mind perceives its own pro- 
 cesses. These processes are active or self-caused processes and 
 receptive processes. In time, the receptive processes come first. 
 "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 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 61 
 
 ideas, which I call ideas from reflection." Again there are no 
 sense organs or inlets for ideas from reflection. Nor does the 
 distinction between primary and secondary qualities, if there be 
 such a distinction, rest upon the same ground as the same distinc- 
 tion with respect to those of material bodies. In regard to the 
 primary ideas which are common to minds and material bodies, the 
 way in which these qualities produce ideas in us is necessarily 
 different, but the idea is the same. In the case of the mind we 
 have a new application of immediate apprehension. Instead of 
 being applied only to ideas, it is applied, in respect of existence 
 for example, to the quality itself. There are other ideas, as that 
 of relation, which present unique problems. The status of con- 
 viction, beliefs, and revelation is also of peculiar importance. In 
 the first place, what are the qualities of mind? 
 
 The original causes of our ideas from reflection, Locke says, 
 are "perceptivity, or the power of perception or thinking ; motiv- 
 ity, or the power of moving," or "the power of beinning or stop- 
 ping several thoughts or motions,"* and existence, duration, and x 
 number, f The primary ideas corresponding to these powers of 
 the mind are perception, volition, existence, duration, and number. 
 It is thus seen that the mind has only two distinctive primary 
 powers. "The ideas we have belonging and peculiar to spirit are 
 thinking and will, or a power of putting body into motion by 
 thought, and, which is consequent to it, liberty. For as body can 
 not but communicate its motion by impulse to another body, which 
 it meets with at rest, so the mind can put bodies into motion, or 
 forbear to do so, as it pleases."J Motivity is a power of the mind 
 not only to cause movements among material things but to move 
 the mind itself in space. "There is no reason why it should be 
 thought strange, that I make mobility belong to the spirit: for 
 haVing no other idea of motion but change of distance with other 
 beings that are considered as at rest, and finding that spirits, 
 as well as bodies, can not operate but where they are, and that 
 spirits do operate at several times in several places, I can not 
 
 II. xxiii. 80. 
 til. xxl. 78. 
 *II. xzlil. 18. 
 
82 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 but attribute change of place to all finite spirits (for of the in- 
 finite spirit I speak not here). For my soul being a real being, 
 as well as my body, is certainly capable of changing distance with 
 any other body, or being, as body itself, and so is capable of 
 motion. " The mind thus considered is an intermediate sub- 
 stance between God and matter, or at least partaking of the 
 powers both of pure spirit and pure matter. Although Locke 
 uses thinking and perceptivity as equivalent, it seems possible 
 that the former is a more inclusive term, meaning whatever goes 
 on in the mind. "Believing, doubting, intending, fearing, hoping ; 
 all which are but the several modes of thinking." But perception 
 as we shall see is regarded by Locke as a passive power, while 
 thinking seems for him to include volition or active power. 
 Thinking, however, is not used by him to include the power to 
 move our bodies. Thinking, and volition seem to partially over- 
 lap, but perception and volition do not. 
 
 29. SECONDARY QUALITIES OF MIND. Primary qualities of 
 bodies are distinguished from secondary qualities for two reasons, 
 as we saw : the former are more important for mechanical physics, 
 and they do not depend upon the presence of a percipient being. 
 Secondary qualities of bodies are made up of or are the specific 
 instances of the primary. There is no conceivable connection be- 
 tween the primary quality and secondary idea. Does or can Locke 
 make this distinction with respect to the qualities of mind ? If we 
 were to treat mind as we do matter, the symmetrical way would 
 be to study, not ourselves but other minds. But of these, he says, 
 "we have no ideas but what we draw from that of our own, by 
 reflecting on the operations of our own souls within us, as far as 
 they can come within our observation."! "That there are minds 
 and thinking beings in other men as well as himself, every man 
 has a reason from their words and actions, to be satisfied."} 
 Other minds produce no ideas in us. We have then only ourselves 
 to observe in determining the qualities of mind. Locke, however, 
 leaves us in the dark about secondary qualities, although from his 
 
 JII. xxlil. 19. 
 rv. in. 17. 
 rv. in. 27. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 63 
 
 precise designation of primary qualities it is to be inferred 
 that there are secondary qualities. He seems to include secondary 
 ideas by classifying all the ideas from reflection under one of 
 the five primary ideas. Believing, doubting, fearing, knowing, 
 loving, hating, and the like are just kinds of perceptions or think- 
 ing. One should think that ideas of emotion would be most suit- 
 ably classed as secondary, either from perception or volition, but 
 he does not do it. I may perceive that I fear or hate, but fearing 
 or hating is not perceiving. Locke could say, just as he does in 
 the other case, that it is inconceivable how certain combinations 
 of perceptivity, motivity, existence, duration, and number pro- 
 duce these ideas of emotion in us, but that God has ordained that 
 such emotions be annexed to such combinations. It being as in- 
 conceivable how the perceiving of a bear can cause the idea of 
 fear, as how a certain texture of a flower petal can cause the idea 
 of blue. Since emotions are fleeting, while perceptivity, motivity, 
 etc., we have always, whether we have ideas or not, it would seem 
 that emotions are the most suitable ideas from reflection to be re- 
 garded as secondary. The same inconsistencies would develop 
 here as in the other case, but it would make his discussion more 
 symmetrical. 
 
 The ideas of pleasure and pain are received according to Locke, 
 both from sensation and reflection.* In the case of pleasure and 
 pain from sensation, it is clear that they are secondary ideas due 
 to the primary qualities of material bodies, as in cuts, burns, and 
 bruises. But Locke insists these ideas are caused also by reflec- 
 tion. They must therefore be secondary. Thus, ideas of love, 
 hate, joy, sorrow, hope, fear, anger, despair, and envy, may be 
 secondary ideas from reflection, depending on and caused by some 
 conformation or combination of perceptivity, motivity, existence, 
 duration, and number. 
 
 If we suppose these ideas of emotion, which Locke treats gen- 
 erally as modes of pleasure and pain,f to be the same, whether 
 caused by primary qualities of material bodies or of minds, the 
 
 n. xx. vii.. 
 tn. xx. 
 
64 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 question arises how two such diverse causes can produce the same 
 effects. Locke does not answer this question except in so far as to 
 say that the infinitely wise Author of our being has annexed these 
 ideas "to almost all our ideas." As to pleasure, "if this were 
 wholly separated from all our outward sensations and inward 
 thoughts, we should have no reason to prefer one thought or action 
 to another ; negligence to attention, or motion to rest. And so we 
 should neither stir our bodies, nor employ our minds, but let our 
 thoughts (if I may so call it) run adrift, without any direction 
 or design; and suffer the ideas of our minds, like unregarded 
 shadows, to make their appearances there, as it happened, without 
 attending to them."! "Pain has the same efficiency and use to set 
 us on work that pleasure has, we being as ready to employ our 
 faculties to avoid that, as to pursue this."f The part in which 
 we are interested here is not the divine purpose in the presence 
 of ideas of pleasure and pain, but that such ideas are annexed, as 
 an effect to a cause, to the primary qualities both of mind and 
 matter. Locke goes on to say, "only this is worth our considera- 
 tion, that pain is often produced by the same objects and ideas 
 that produce pleasure in us." Ignoring this illegitimate use of 
 "ideas," it must be admitted that experience furnishes some justi- 
 fication for the assertion. The same degree of heat may be either 
 pleasant or unpleasant, the same intellectual activity may likewise 
 bring pleasure or pain. This peculiarity can better be explained 
 in the realm of sense experience than in that of reflection. We 
 can account for the first by considering the condition and office 
 of the sense organs, but in ideas from reflection there are no sense 
 organs. How, for example, can a certain complex idea from re- 
 flection, an ideal of life, at one time give pleasure and at another 
 pain ? There would seem to be an immediate relation of acquaint- 
 ance in each case, and no room for any disquieting factor to enter. 
 If we may say that the ideal fits into our life and personality at 
 one time, but after we have developed, that there is no longer 
 harmony, then we have adopted a new cause for ideas of pleasure 
 
 *II. vii. 3. 
 tH. vii. 4. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 65 
 
 and pain. But without some such explanation, we must fall back 
 on the good pleasure of God. But however we try to explain their 
 presence and their numerous modes, the explanation that fits the 
 ideas of pleasure and pain from sensation will not fit those from 
 reflection. We are left with mystery. Secondary ideas from re- 
 flection are thus treated by Locke with more vagueness, if that 
 be possible, than secondary ideas from sensation. 
 
 30. ORGANS OF INTERNAL SENSE. Locke says, "I pretend not 
 to teach, but to inquire, and therefore can not but confess here 
 again, that external and internal sensation are the only passages 
 that I can find of Knowledge to the understanding. These alone, 
 as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into 
 this dark room : for methinks the understanding is not much un- 
 like a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little opening 
 left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things 
 without: would the pictures coming into such a dark room but 
 stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would 
 very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to 
 all objects of sight and the ideas of them.'** It is not unlikely that 
 Locke was very familiar with the fact that in a darkened room a 
 small aperture in the blind will allow images of outside objects to 
 be projected against the walls. He doubtless knew the essential 
 facts of a camera obscura, and it is certain he knew of retinal 
 images. 
 
 Although this figure of the dark-room illustrates the entrance 
 of ideas from sensation it is confusing when applied to ideas from 
 reflection. Locke seems to put internal and external sense on an 
 equality. They are both inlets or posterns or windows through 
 which ideas enter. Each furnishes the mind with a unique kind 
 of ideas. The dark-room has two chinks; through one come re- 
 semblances or representations of external material objects; 
 through the other representations of the mind's own processes. 
 The first is evidently the sense organs and the brain with its 
 afferent connections. What is the second chink? To take the il- 
 n. xi. 17. 
 
66 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 lustration as it stands there would have to be an external-internal 
 world of causes for ideas from reflection. The mind would be 
 the passive observer for both kinds of ideas. The mind as ob- 
 server would need only its white paper passivity ; for the so-called 
 powers of mind would have to be given to those hypothetical ob- 
 jects in this external-internal world. Our repugnancy to uncaused 
 ideas would demand this. This realm of reflection would be the 
 proper place to put the substratum for memories and fancies. We 
 should thus have three realms. The external world, the internal 
 world, and the world of ideas. The substratum for ideas of either 
 sort would be an I-know-not-what. The mind, instead of being 
 illustrated as a protoplasmic cell with a protecting ectoderm, 
 would have to be regarded as a link or isthmus between the two 
 realms of reality like the neck of an hour-glass. If we imagine 
 this neck to be a dark cabinet with an opening on either side for 
 the entrance of the two kinds of ideas from their respective 
 realms, we have a beautifully symmetrical illustration. 
 
 It is evident that ideas from reflection can not be illustrated 
 thus. Since ideas from reflection are representations of the 
 mind's own processes, the mind has to get out of itself and observe 
 itself at work. In order to illustrate this by means of a dark- 
 room and a chink, it would be necessary to have two dark cabinets, 
 the internal sense cabinet adjoining the external sense cabinet 
 with an opening into it, by means of which representations or 
 images of what went on in the external sense cabinet might be 
 produced in the other. We should thus have one external world 
 and two cabinets for the reception and elaboration of its influ- 
 ences. This seems to illustrate Locke's saying, that we do not 
 perceive without perceiving that we perceive. We must neces- 
 sarily perceive that we perceive that we perceive. Hence an in- 
 definite regress. Supposing that this is not absurd, it remains to 
 be explained what and where this reflective peep-hole is. But 
 Locke gives us no account of internal sense organs. Presumably 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 67 
 
 there are none. But since Locke gives so much importance to our 
 external sense organs, and since he speaks of sensation and re- 
 flection as the two sources of all our ideas, we seem justified in 
 looking for internal sense organs; and it is surely against his 
 doctrine that we do not find them. 
 
 It seems that the mind perceives immediately its own processes, 
 i. e., it is self-conscious. I perceive that I perceive. Is it possible 
 to perceive that I do not perceive? What he says about ideas 
 from privative causes* leads us to suppose that it is possible. His 
 general position seems to demand it. If the mind can some way 
 observe what is going on in the dark-room, it must likewise ob- 
 serve that there is nothing going on there when the senses are 
 closed. It is thus theoretically possible, according to this position, 
 for the mind to observe itself in that original blank state, the 
 tabula rasa. But this is contradictory; for then the tabula rasa 
 would have on it "this is a tabula rasa." It is clear that the mind 
 can not perceive that it does not perceive. Ideas from privative 
 causes must be based upon something positive. There must be 
 some idea representative of some reality, which is the means by 
 which ideas of reflection come to be, the idea of something like a 
 sense organ. We must ask, does "the eye of the mind" have any 
 significance? Locke seems to regard the mind's eye as that idea 
 from reflection, active attention, i. e., the empirical system of 
 ideas, or self, which determintes and dominates what ideas shall 
 be objects. For example, he says, "How, as it were in an instant, 
 do our minds with one glance see all the parts of a demonstra- 
 tion, "f Now, since the ideas of the external sense organs come in 
 as other ideas do, it is nothing against the validity of our judg- 
 ment that they are caused by real sense organs, so we can say 
 that although the idea of attention comes in as other ideas from 
 reflection, that fact does not hinder it from being representative 
 of some real mind's eye. Locke seems to regard the mind as act- 
 ing as a whole in reflection, hence the mind must be its own 
 reflective sense organ. Just as the real bodily sense organs do not 
 "see" external objects but are the means of those objects produc- 
 
 II. viil. 1-6. 
 til. be. 10. 
 
63 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 ing those ideas in us, so the mind does not "see" itself ; but in its 
 capacity of a sense organ produces not only ideas of itself in itself, 
 i. e., the unity, system, and coherence among ideas, but also dis- 
 tinctive ideas of its own processes, perception, volition, believing, 
 knowing, etc., which appear as acts of the empirical self, just as 
 seeing, hearing, etc., appear as acts of the ideas of bodily sense 
 organs. 
 
 31. PERCEPTIVITY AND MOTIVITY. Locke is often understood 
 as teaching that the mind is at first purely passive. This is un- 
 warranted. Perceptivity and motivity, or perception and volition, 
 are primary qualities or powers of mind, and the distinctive pri- 
 mary qualities. Being primary they are both present in experi- 
 ence, even while the mind is being furnished. If perceptivity is, 
 as Locke says, "the first step and degree towards knowledge, and 
 the inlet of all materials of it,"* it is first in a logical sense not a 
 chronological one, although Locke inconsistently mentions the 
 temporal priority of these materials. The mind being a passive- 
 active being, it can not be in time at first passive and later active. 
 His purpose in treating the mind first as a tabula rasa, is, ob- 
 viously, that he can not treat all qualities of the mind at once, and 
 that since in a logical order the materials of knowledge must be 
 furnished before knowledge is possible, the mind in its passive 
 capacity should be regarded first. 
 
 We do not simply perceive or merely act, but we think, which 
 includes both. Thinking is that which takes place in the mind as 
 a matter of fact. Perception as well as volition are abstractions. 
 They are the results of an analysis of thinking. "Perception, as it 
 is the first faculty of the mind, exercised about our ideas ; so it is 
 the first and simplest idea we get from reflection, and is by some 
 called thinking in general. Though thinking, in the propriety of 
 the English tongue, signifies that sort of operation in the mind 
 about its ideas, wherein the mind is active ; where it, with some 
 degree of voluntary attention, considers anything. For in bare 
 perception, the mind is, for the most part, only passive ; and what 
 *n. ix. 15. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 69 
 
 it perceives, it can not avoid perceiving/" 1 But as Locke points 
 out the mind may be engrossed in some object to the exclusion of 
 all other ideas, so the mind by its quality of motivity may modify 
 if not wholly determine what ideas it shall perceive. "How often 
 may a man observe in himself, that whilst his mind is intently em- 
 ployed in the contemplation of some objects, and curiously sur- 
 veying some ideas that are there, it takes no notice of impressions 
 of sounding bodies made upon the organ of hearing with the same 
 alteration that uses to be for the producing of sound. A sufficient 
 impulse there may be on, the organ ; but if not reaching the obser- 
 vation of the mind, there follows no perception; and though the 
 motion that uses to produce the idea of sound be made in the ear, 
 yet no sound is heard. Want of sensation, in this case, is not 
 through any defect in the organ, or that the man's ears are less 
 affected than at other times when he does hear: but that which 
 uses to produce the idea, though conveyed in by the usual organ, 
 not being taken notice of in the understanding, and so imprinting 
 no idea in the mind, there follows no sensation."f It would appear 
 that the mind is, as a matter of fact, not merely a tabula rasa. 
 "The perception of ideas being (as I conceive) to the soul, what 
 motion is to the body, not its essence, but one of its operations/'^ 
 "Hence it is probable that thinking is the action, not the essence 
 of the soul." Logically perception or perceptivity, is purely 
 passive and volition or motivity is purely active. Thinking is 
 both. Perceptivity and motiVity are qualities the mind has from 
 the very first. 
 
 32. ACTIVE AND PASSIVE POWERS OF MIND AS ACTUALLY IN- 
 SEPARABLE.. Perception is the same thing as "having ideas."** 
 "What perception is, every one will know better by reflecting on 
 what he does himself, what he sees, hears, feels, etc., or thinks, 
 than by any discourse of mine. Whoever reflects on what passes 
 in his own mind, can not miss it, and if he does not reflect, all the 
 words in the world can not make him have any notion of it."ff 
 Locke speaks of ideas being "introduced," "imprinted," "pro- 
 
 *II. ix. 1. 11. xix. 4. 
 
 tH. ix. 4. **II. I. 9. 
 
 JII. i. 10. ttH. ix. 2. 
 
70 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 duced," "conveyed in," "received." The mind is "furnished" with 
 ideas; they "happen" to it; they are brought before it; they are 
 its objects. In having ideas, Locke appears to teach that the mind 
 is passive. This plastic power or quality is perception. Percep- 
 tion qua perception is passive. It is a sequacious power. In 
 treating the mind thus in respect of one of its qualities, Locke is 
 abstracting. The mind is not, according to Locke, purely passive 
 in perception. It is both active and passive, not one or the other. 
 "If our knowledge were altogether necessary, all men's knowledge 
 would not only be alike, but every man would know all that is 
 knowable : and if it were wholly voluntary, some men so little re- 
 gard or value it, that they would have extreme little or none at all. 
 Men that have senses can not choose but receive some ideas by 
 them ; and if they have memory, they cannot but retain some of 
 them; and if they have any distinguishing faculty, can not but 
 perceive the agreement or disagreement of some of them one with 
 another : as he that has eyes, if he will open them day by day, can 
 not but see some objects, and perceive a difference in them. But 
 though a man with his eyes open in the light, can not but see, yet 
 there be certain, objects, which he may choose whether he will turn 
 his eyes to ; there may be in his reach a book containing pictures 
 and discourses, capable to delight and instruct him, which yet he 
 may never have the will to open, never take the pains to look 
 into."* Although we can not know things as we please, yet there 
 is this voluntary element in all that we know. As John Burroughs 
 says, "You must have the bird in your heart before you can find 
 it in the bush." Locke is perfectly justified in treating the mind 
 in respect of its passive power, if by that he thinks he can get a 
 better understanding of the mind. But if by this procedure we 
 are led to judge that the mind, as a matter of fact, is passively 
 furnished with its ideas, our conclusion is erroneous. 
 
 In the case of ideas from reflection the mind is not passively 
 furnished, that is evident. The mind itself produces these ideas 
 
 IV. xili. 1. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 71 
 
 and its passivity can not be divorced from its activity. Just what 
 happens, say, when the mind has the simple idea of perception? 
 There is no awareness of the eternal object, the mind, or the im- 
 pression, as such. The idea of perception is produced by the mind 
 itself in itself. No external object can directly produce an idea 
 of perception. The mind itself is the agent or organ, of this pro- 
 duction. What is it that is produced? The conscious correlate 
 of the mind is the empirical self, the coherent system of all the 
 ideas of whatever sort. What appears is this empirical self in 
 relation to some idea from sensation. This relation, with its 
 terms is the idea of perception. It may be thought that Locke 
 teaches that in the case of simple ideas from sensation the mind 
 is so far purely passive. Not so. According to Locke we never 
 get any simple ideas from sensation, because the mind never per- 
 ceives without perceiving that it perceives. Hence, all our ideas 
 are ideas from reflection. Ideas from sensation are abstractions 
 from ideas from reflection. Therefore, the mind is not passively 
 furnished with ideas of any kind. All ideas are produced by the 
 mind as active. The mind itself has passivity in respect of out- 
 side impressions, but the ideas are produced, not by these impres- 
 sions but by the mind so impressed. Of the two powers or 
 qualities, motivity appears to be the most important. Whatever 
 Locke may say to the contrary this is the outcome of his premises. 
 That this is a true interpretation of Locke is shown, not only by 
 demonstraton based upon his premises, but also by his plain state- 
 ments. "These powers of the mind, viz., of perceiving, and of 
 preferring, are usually called by another name : and the ordinary 
 way of speaking is, that the understanding and will are two fac- 
 ulties of the mind ; a word proper enough, if it be used as all words 
 should be, so as not to breed confusion in men's thoughts, by being 
 supposed (as I suspect it has been) to stand for some real beings 
 in the soul, that performed those actions of the understanding and 
 volition. For when we say the will is the commanding and supe- 
 rior faculty of the soul; that it is, or is not free; that it deter- 
 
72 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 mines the inferior faculties; that it follows the dictates of the 
 understanding. etc->though these and the like expressions.by those 
 that carefully attend to their own ideas, and the conduct of their 
 thoughts more by the evidence of things than the sound of words, 
 may be understood in a clear and distinct sense ; yet I suspect, I 
 say, that this way of speaking of faculties has misled many into 
 a confused notion of so many distinct agents in us, which had their 
 several provinces and authorities, and did command, obey and 
 perform several actions, as so many distinct beings : which has 
 been no small occasion of wrangling, obscurity, and uncertainty 
 in questions relating to them."* Perception and volition are thus 
 not separate faculties or beings in the mind, as the assumption of 
 pure passive perception would have them. In showing that we 
 get the clearest idea of active power from spirit, he says, "Nor 
 have we of active power (which is the more proper signification 
 of the word power) fewer instances: since whatever change is 
 observed, the mind must collect a power somewhere able to make 
 that change, as well as a possibility in the thing itself to receive 
 it. But yet, if we will consider attentively, bodies, by our senses, 
 do not afford us so clear and distinct an idea of active power as 
 we have from reflection on the operation of our minds. For al) 
 power relating to action, and there being but two sorts of 
 action whereof we have any idea, viz., thinking and 
 motion, let us consider whence we have the clearest ideas 
 of the powers which produce these actions."f Thinking is the 
 manifestation of an active power, and perception is not distinct 
 from thinking. The efficacy whereby an idea is changed or pro- 
 duced, "however various, and the effects almost infinite, yet we 
 can, I think, conceive it, in intellectual agents, to be nothing else 
 but modes of thinking and willing."} 
 
 33. PERCEPTION. There are three kinds of perception : 1. The 
 percepTion^T'ldeas in our minds. 2, The perception of signifi- 
 cation of signs. 3. The perception of the connexion or repugnancy, 
 agreement or disagreement, that is between any of our ideas. 
 All these are attributed to the understanding, or the perceptive 
 
 II. xxi. 6. 
 til. xxl. 4. 
 JII. xxii. 11. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OP KNOWLEDGE 73 
 
 power, though it be the two latter only that use allows us to say 
 we understand " "There can be nothing more certain than that 
 the idea we receive from an eternal object is in our minds : this 
 is intuitive knowledge."** Since words are only a special kind of 
 ideas, the perception of the significance of signs, is the perception 
 of the significance of ideas. And as we shall see, all 
 simple ideas are held by Locke to be signs. The percep- 
 tion of agreement or disagreement of ideas, involves a number of 
 "a priori" principles, or as Locke says, "peculiar ways of agree- 
 ment or disagreement of our ideas." Locke denominates them 
 identity or diversity, relation, co-existence or necessary connection, 
 and real existence. Since these various kinds of perception are 
 knowledge, we can apply to them Locke's three degrees, viz., in- 
 tuitive, demonstrative, and sensitive. In the first there is an im- 
 mediate relation of acquaintance between the mind and its ideas. 
 This kind of perception gives the highest degree of certainty.J 
 "When the mind can not bring its ideas together, as by their im- 
 mediate comparison, and as it were juxta-position," it perceives 
 the agreement or disagreement by "intervening" ideas, and this 
 is reasoning. When clearly perceived it is demonstration. Lastly, 
 the perception of the existence of particular external objects com- 
 pletes the account. Yet, there appears to be another degree of 
 perception which has a higher certainty than any of these. This 
 is revelation. Here the mind is purely passive. No reaction or 
 doubt is possible, not even when the idea or proposition disagrees 
 with common experience and the ordinary course of things. "The 
 reason whereof is, because the testimony is of such an one as can 
 not deceive, nor be deceived, and that is of God himself. This 
 carries with it an assurance beyond doubt, evidence beyond excep- 
 tion. This is called by a peculiar name, revelation ; and our assent 
 to it, faith; which as absolutely determines our minds, and as 
 perfectly excludes all wavering, as our knowledge itself; and we 
 may as well doubt of our own being, as we can whether any revel- 
 ation from God be true." Evidently revelation has a peculiar 
 
 511. xxi. 5. JIV. ii. 1. 
 
 **IV. ii. 14 IV. xvl. 14. 
 
74 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 potency, but just what this is, is not evident. Locke says God 
 "illuminates the mind with a supernatural light.'* "If he would 
 have us to assent to the truth of any proposition, he either evi- 
 dences that truth by the usual methods of natural reason, or else 
 makes it known to be the truth which he would have us assent to, 
 by his authority; and convinces us that it is from him, by some 
 marks which reason can not be mistaken in."* Although reason 
 may be used to determine what is or what is not "inspired," yet 
 it has no power over the matter of revelation. Reason is like the 
 chirographist who determines who has written a given document, 
 but has no authority over the contents of the document. What 
 are these "marks" of revelation? Mere belief or enthusiasm is no 
 sign of inspiration. Neither is natural reason. "Thus we see the 
 holy men of old, who had revelations from God, had something 
 else besides that internal light of assurance in their own minds, to 
 testify to them that it was from God. They were not left to their 
 own persuasions alone, that those persuasions were from God; 
 but had outward signs to convince them of the author of those 
 revelations."! Thus we confront the miracles, the burning bush, 
 the loaves and fishes, the fiery furnace, and all the rest. When 
 God wishes to reveal something he not only has to excite the 
 proper ideas in the mind of the prophet but he has to back them 
 up with a supernatural occurrence. Those of us who get no revel- 
 ations have to depend upon natural reason and the Scriptures 
 which are attested revelation. But it is not clear that the far- 
 famed prestidigitator, the "Prince of Darkness," might not dup- 
 licate the genuine miracles, and have certain revelations of his 
 own attested in Scripture. Revelation now appears to be not a 
 different kind of perception, but just the perception of the signi- 
 fication of signs. The origin of the inspired ideas or their pecu- 
 liar combination, however, must be attributed directly to God and 
 not to sensation or reflection. 
 
 IV. xlx. 14. 
 
 try. xix. IB. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 ; 
 
 This completes our account of the nature and origin of knowl- 
 edge, according to Locke. Next comes the validity and extent of 
 knowledge. 
 
 34. ^CRITERION OF TRUTH. Locke's obvious criterion of truth 
 is correspondence or agreement. "Truth, then, seems to me, is 
 the proper import of the word, to signify nothing but the joining 
 or separating of signs, as the things signified by them agree or 
 disagree one with another. The joining or separating of signs, 
 here meant, is what by another name is called proposition. So 
 that truth properly belongs only to propositions; whereof there 
 are two sorts, viz., mental and verbal; as there are two sorts of 
 signs commonly made use of, viz., ideas and words."* "The ideas 
 in our minds being only so many perceptions, or appearances there, 
 none of them are false ; the idea of a centaur having no falsehood 
 in it, when it appears in our minds, than the name centaur has 
 falsehood in it when it is pronounced by our mouths or written 
 on paper. For truth or falsehood lying always in some affirma- 
 tion, or negation, mental or verbal, our ideas are not capable, any 
 of them, of being false, till the mind passes some judgment on 
 them, of being false; that is, affirms or denies something of 
 them."f "Whenever the mind refers any of its ideas to anything 
 extraneous to them, they are then capable to be called true or 
 false. Because the mind in such a reference makes a tacit suppo- 
 sition of their conformity to that thing ; which supposition, as it 
 happens to be true or false, so the ideas themselves come to be 
 denominated. "J There are three classes of things, extraneous to 
 ideas, to which ideas may be said to conform or agree. "First, 
 when the mind supposes any idea it has conformable to that in 
 other men's minds, called by the same common name," as justice, 
 temperance, religion. "Secondly, when the mind supposes any 
 idea it has in itself to be conformable to some real existence. 
 Thus the two ideas of a man and a centaur, supposed to be the 
 ideas of real substances, are the one true, and the other false; 
 the one having a conformity to what has really existed, the other 
 not." "Thirdly, when the mind refers any of its ideas to the real 
 *rv. v. 2. 
 
 til. MCXii. 8. 
 
 4. 
 
76 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 constitution and essence of anything whereon all its properties 
 depend: and thus the greatest part, if not all our ideas of sub- 
 stances are false."* "As to the truth or falsehood of our ideas, in 
 reference to the real existence of things ; when that is made the 
 standard of their truth, none of them can be termed false, but only 
 our complex ideas of substances." When I say that the violet 
 is blue, that is a true proposition because there is something in 
 the thing itself corresponding to that idea. Mere likeness or un- 
 likeness of an idea to the quality it represents, has nothing to do 
 with the question of truth. The point is, there must be an agree- 
 ment or conformity between the two if the proposition is true. 
 All simple ideas are therefore true, or rather they are neither true 
 nor false. Falsity comes in when complex ideas are compounded 
 of ideas in ways which nature never put together and which are 
 judged to represent some real existence. 
 
 In spite of all the care Locke spends in developing his agreement 
 criterion of truth, he is not able to apply it in a concrete case; 
 and from the nature of his universe he can not apply it. Only 
 God, or some of the superior angels could apply it. According to 
 his general theory the mind knows only its ideas. It does not per- 
 ceive the qualities of things, much less the essence of the substance 
 in which these qualities stick. The mind can not judge that any 
 idea is conformable to something that is not and can not be an 
 object for the mind. This criterion of truth is a useless piece of 
 machinery. 
 
 35. PROPOSITIONS. Making a proposition, according to Locke, 
 is the joining or separating of signs, whether words or ideas. 
 Verbal propositions are words joined or separated to make an 
 affirmation or denial. Mental propositions are ideas likewise 
 related. Purely verbal propositions are trifling and give us no 
 knowledge. For example, when two abstract terms are affirmed 
 one of the other, the significance is merely of sounds, as the 
 proposition, "gratitude is justice." Or again, when part of a com- 
 plex idea which any term stands for is predicated of that term, 
 e. g., that "gold is a metal." The general rule for purely verbal 
 
 11. xxxli. 5. 
 til. xxxii. II. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 77 
 
 propositions is that "whenever the distinct idea any real word 
 stands for is not known and considered, and something not con- 
 tained in the idea is not affirmed or denied of it: there our 
 thoughts stick wholly in sounds, and we are able to attain no real 
 truth or falsehood/'* Mental propositions are nothing but the 
 perception of the connection or separation of ideas, which ideas 
 have been joined or separated by the mind itself. True proposi- 
 tions are those in which the ideas joined or separated agree with 
 or conform to the connection or separation of the real things of 
 which they are signs. False propositions are those in which they 
 do not. "Our knowledge, therefore, is real, only so far as there 
 is a conformity between our ideas and the reality of things. "f 
 But where ideas are added or separated, when their certain agree- 
 ment or disagreement is not perceived, but presumed to be so: 
 that is judgment.":!: All knowledge is thus prepositional and true. 
 Judgment may or may not be true. "Knowledge being to be had 
 only of visible and certain truth, error is not a fault of our knowl- 
 edge but a mistake of our judgment, giving assent to that which 
 is not true." Since the mind is not able in all cases to construct 
 certainly true propositions, many of our propositions are judg- 
 ments whose truth is only probable. Now, probability is the 
 appearance of truth. A probable proposition is one that the mind 
 forms by the process of demonstration from fallible proofs. The 
 perception is not immediate and certain, hence probability is 
 fallibility. "Our knowledge, as has been shown, being very nar- 
 row, and we not happy enough to find certain truth in everything 
 which we have occasion to consider ; most of the propositions we 
 think, reason, discourse, nay act upon, are such, as we can not 
 have undoubted knowledge of their truth : yet some of them border 
 so near upon certainty, that we make no doubt at all about them ; 
 but assent to them as firmly, and act according to that assent, as 
 resolutely, as if they were infallibly demonstrated, and that our 
 knowledge of them was perfect and certain. But there being de- 
 grees herein from the very neighborhood of certainty and demon- 
 
 IV. vlil. 18. tlV. xiv. 4. 
 
 tiv. iv. t. irv. xx. i. 
 
78 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 stration, quite down to improbability and unlikeness, even to the 
 confines of impossibility: and also degrees of assent from full 
 assurance and confidence, quite down to conjecture, doubt, and 
 distrust."* Why does the mind separate or join ideas? Evidently 
 the mind is actuated by a truth purpose. The mind makes propo- 
 sitions which it impresses upon itself with the purpose of con- 
 structing something that conforms to or agrees with reality. 
 Since all knowledge is prepositional, the mind's whole system of 
 knowledge, whether of nature or mind, is a construction made by 
 the mind from the raw material of impressions by means of its 
 various powers or qualities, and impressed upon itself by itself, 
 and appearing before the mind as ideas variously arranged, with 
 the additional idea that the proposition is made by the mind. But 
 this conclusion annihilates Locke's agreement criterion of truth. 
 36. AN EXAMPLE OF A TRUE PROPOSITION. Locke has led us 
 to believe that a true mental proposition is one in which the ideas 
 are joined or separated in a manner corresponding to the way in 
 which the things of which the ideas are marks or signs, are joined 
 or separated. As we have already learned, the things of which 
 ideas are marks or signs are the primary and secondary qualities, 
 critically regarded, as has been explained, and are not and can not 
 be, objects for the mind. The criterion of agreement or corre- 
 spondence implies comparison. But in this case we have to com- 
 pare the system of ideas, which we make and know, with the 
 qualities of which we are "incurably ignorant." At best, we are, 
 as he says, in the "twilight of probability." "It is evident the 
 mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention 
 of the ideas it has of them."f But qualities are not things them- 
 selves. They inhere in substance ; but of the real essence of sub- 
 stance we are more incurably ignorant than we are of its qualities. 
 Qualities are the elephant that supports ideas ; real essence is the 
 tortoise that supports qualities. To inquire whether there is some 
 support for real essence carries us so far into this mythology that 
 it is difficult to find words to make even a verbal judgment. In 
 
 rv. xv. 2. 
 trv. iv, 3, 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 79 
 
 some way, however, God must be the final support. Yet, to know 
 a true proposition by the criterion of agreement it would appear 
 that we should compare it not only with qualities but with es- 
 sences, if not finally with the divine substance and plan of the 
 universe. Locke does nothing of the kind. 'In respect of one kind 
 of ideas at least, he openly uses the coherence criterion. "Our 
 complex ideas of modes," he says, "being voluntary collections of 
 simple ideas, which the mind puts together without reference to 
 any real archetypes or standing patterns existing anywhere, are 
 and cannot but be adequate ideas. Because they not being intended 
 for copies of things really existing, but for archetypes made by the 
 mind to rank and denominate things by, can not want anything; 
 they having each of them that combination of ideas, and thereby 
 that perfection which the mind intended they should."* The 
 example he gives of such an idea is a triangle. Perfections or logical 
 coherence makes the idea true and adequate. The only example 
 he sets over against trifling propositions is this : "We can know 
 the truth, and so may be certain in propositions, which affirm 
 something of another, which is a necessary consequence of its 
 precise complex idea, but not contained in it ; as that the external 
 angle of all triangles are bigger than either of the opposite in- 
 ternal angles ; which relation of the outward angle to either of the 
 opposite internal angles making no part of the complex idea sig- 
 nified by the name triangle, this is a real truth, and conveys with 
 it instructive real knowledge."! It would seem that the criterion 
 of coherence made use of here, would not be inoperative in other 
 complex ideas. Sense illusion shows that the mere presence of a 
 constellation of simple ideas does not make this constellation true 
 or adequate. 
 
 Locke holds in accordance with his nominalism, that what usu- 
 ally passes for the essence of anything, as man or gold, is an 
 abstraction and has no counter-part in reality. As a matter of 
 convenience the mind binds things into bundles and ranks them 
 into sorts, J and annexes names to them. This abstraction 
 
 II. xxxi. 3. 
 
 trv. viii. s. 
 
 III. zzzlt 8. 
 
80 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 he calls the nominal essence. It is artificial and has no 
 real existence. That is, there is no essence man, or gold. 
 But on the other hand, the real constitution of things, the "being 
 of anything, whereby it is what it is," that on which qualities 
 depend,* is, as he says, not without reason held to be wholly un- 
 known. "And thus the greatest part, if not all our ideas of sub- 
 stances, are false."t "Our complex ideas of substances being re- 
 ferred to patterns in things themselves, may be false. That they 
 are all false, when looked upon as the representations of the un- 
 known essences of things, is so evident, that there needs nothing 
 to be said of it. I shall therefore pass over that chimerical sup- 
 position, ***"f f All we have left then for propositions to conform 
 to are qualities. But we arrive at qualities only by inference. 
 Ideas must have a cause, we say, therefore there is a cause ade- 
 quate to this result. But we can not test the truth of propositions 
 by saying that ideas correspond to the real qualities. By our in- 
 ference they must correspond. Qualities are the conclusion not 
 the premises. By such a procedure there could be no such thing 
 as illusion or error. But only simple ideas, by the above infer- 
 ence, can be said to be adequate. A proposition is a complex idea. 
 Hence we are cut off even from inferential connection with the 
 conjunction or disjunction of qualities. Moreover, according to 
 Locke's theory of pleasure and pain, not only may the same causes 
 produce ideas of either, but also diverse causes may produce the 
 same ideas of either. The argument from adequate causation 
 thus falls to pieces, and we are left with ideas. 
 
 Let us now take up an example of a true proposition, and see 
 just what makes it true. This proposition must be one of those 
 that increases our knowledge. Locke's so-called trifling proposi- 
 tions of identity, as "substance is substance," of predicating a 
 part of the whole, as "lead is a metal," of affirming part of the 
 definition of the term defined, as "gold is yellow," are very certain, 
 but they concern only the signification of words and are not in- 
 structive, hence we can not use them. Also our example can not 
 be expressed in general or abstract terms. We must affirm or 
 
 III. ill. 15. 
 
 til. xxxii. 5. - 
 
 fll. xxxil. 18. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 81 
 
 deny something of a "this," since there are only particular exist- 
 ences. To say that gold is hard, malleable, heavy, yellow, soluble 
 in aqua regia, etc., is not going outside the definition of gold and is 
 not instructive, according to Locke. Let us take a common fact 
 of astronomy : "The sun is 93,000,000 miles from an observer on 
 the earth." That seems to satisfy Locke's demands. It is par- 
 ticular; the predication is not contained in the subject; it is not 
 verbal. It is based upon careful observation "and calculation. We 
 are instructed by it. 
 
 The terms of this proposition are all within the realm of ideas. 
 The sun we are talking about is this particular bright disk mov- 
 ing across the sky, which, if we were closer and could exist as 
 observers, we should see to be a huge flaming gaseous sphere. 
 That we do not see it as a huge flaming sphere does not put it as 
 such outside the world of ideas. The bluish gray mass yonder on 
 the sky-line is a clump of trees. The so-called real appearance of 
 the trees is that appearance in a certain class of appearances 
 which I judge from practical or scientific reasons to be typical. 
 The real tree of common-sense and science, is, in the terminology 
 of Locke, a particular group of ideas, out of a class of such ideas, 
 judged to be primary and typical for a certain purpose. If this 
 purpose is to regard the cellular structure of the tree, then the 
 "i*eal" tree is that group or correlation of groups of ideas we get 
 by looking though a microscope. If it is the molecular or atomic 
 structure we are after, we regard those groups of ideas real which 
 we get by looking through the imagination. We should see the 
 atoms like so many pollen grains if our eyes were only sharp 
 enough. So the real sun for science is that group of ideas we 
 should get if we were in such a position as the purposes of astron- 
 omy demand. We supply the deficiency by imagining how it would 
 look under certain conditions of observation, and describe it in 
 accordance with this. After this fashion, the selenographer may 
 draw us a picture of a lunar landscape, or the geologist a restora- 
 tion of prehistoric monsters, or the historian "a morning's walk 
 
82 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 in Rome under the reign of Commodus." Most of our realities are 
 "restorations," ideal constructions; but which are nevertheless 
 part of and continuous with "ideas" ; soul of their soul and flesh 
 of their flesh. This then is what we mean by the sun : an idea, in 
 the mind, in Locke's sense. 
 
 Likewise the observer and the earth are ideas. The term, 
 93,000,000 miles must be considered as a sign of ideas we can 
 never get at once. Our best way of comprehending this distance 
 is by illustrations. A cannon shot, with the velocity of 2,500 feet 
 per second, would require over six years to reach the sun. A 
 railroad train with a speed of 60 miles an hour would require, it 
 is said, 175 years. If we represent the sun by a globe two feet 
 in diameter, the earth on the same scale would be the size of a 
 very small pea, at a distance of two hundred and twenty feet. 
 Feet, miles, railroad trains, and projectiles, are in Locke's realm 
 of ideas. There is plenty of good every day space there. The 
 world of the scientist is an interpretation and extension and com- 
 pletion of ordinary experience. The world of science is no un- 
 knowable mysterious substratum, as Locke at times would have 
 us think. It is a perfectly good, sensible world, one that we can 
 see, and feel, and hear. What we soon find out is that this 
 world which is of one piece with experience can not be had all 
 at once and some of it cannot be had at all but can only be "re- 
 stored" by rigid proof. That the sun is 93,000,000 miles away is 
 one of those propositions that requires proof. There are various 
 methods, as calculations based on observations of the transit of 
 Venus ; as the velocity or aberration of light, motion of the moon, 
 etc. What these proofs do is to construct that which can be ex- 
 perienced only in the imagination, and show how it is connected 
 and indissolubly bound up with that which is experienced. With- 
 out thus being concreted with experience they have no meaning. 
 All these proofs are demonstrations that our world is harmoni- 
 ously extended beyond experience, that the world is a consistent 
 whole. The proposition about the distance of the sun is true 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 83 
 
 because it is in harmony with such other propositions as "this 
 stick is three feet long." Thus, complicated scientific propositions 
 are true because they are consistent with or in harmony with other 
 propositions. These other propositions which are called facts, 
 are true because they represent or agree with certain "ideas/' 
 For example, the proposition "this stick is thirty-six inches long," 
 is true because of a certain complex idea, yard stick. The actual 
 criterion of truth is both agreement and consistency. But the 
 agreement is not between propositions and unknowable reality, 
 but between propositions and experience. Thus true propositions 
 must have empirical consistency. Since propositions are ideas, it 
 is seen that the truth of a proposition depends upon something 
 in the mind, in Locke's sense. 
 
 Locke has a great deal to say about patterns and archetypes, 
 and that propositions are true if they conform to them and false 
 if they do not.* But what is an archetype? Our idea of a horse 
 if its existence is affirmed, is true because there is such an animal, 
 but our idea of a centaur is false because there is no such animal 
 in nature. This is Locke's argument. But existing in nature 
 means just those complex ideas from sensation. There are no 
 such complex ideas as centaurs. But in all this we do not have to 
 go beyond the realm of ideas. Locke's fundamental assumption 
 of "ideas" does not demand it. Then there is an uncertainty about 
 what he means by knoweledge. Sometimes he says knowledge is 
 the agreement or disagreement of ideas. This would seem to 
 leave out any extramental comparison. It would be in vain, how- 
 ever, to try to get a coherent theory of knowledge and truth from 
 Locke. His confusion of idea and quality is marked in these in- 
 stances. After laying all the corner stones of the above coherence 
 theory of truth, and which he. can not escape from, he quietly in- 
 serts quality for idea and then begins to talk about conformity t< 
 archetypes. But Locke can not talk about any sun that does not 
 belong to the realm of ideas. When he thinks he is, we might 
 train some of his own guns upon him. In criticising Male- 
 branche's hypothesis of "Seeing things in God," he asks, "how can 
 
 II. xxxii. 26. 
 
84 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 he know that there is any such real being in the world as the sun? 
 Did he ever see the sun ? No ; but on occasion of the presence of 
 the sun to his eyes, he has seen the idea of sun in God, which 
 God has exhibited to him ; but the sun, because it can not be united 
 to his soul, he can not see. How does he know that there is a sun, 
 a sun which he never saw? And since God does all things by the 
 most compendious ways, what need is there that God should make 
 a sun that we might see its idea in him when he pleased to exhibit 
 it, when this might as well be done without any real sun at all/'* 
 So far as the divine economy is concerned it is just as useless for 
 God to make a real sun and have to annex ideas to certain of its 
 motions as to occasion ideas when these certain motions obtain. 
 The only difference seems to be that in the one case ideas are con- 
 nected with certain motions as permanent appendages annexed 
 once and for all, while in the other case God has to keep busy con- 
 necting the appropriate ideas to their causes. If Malebranche sees 
 the sun in God, Locke sees the sun in his own mind. If Male- 
 branche never sees the real sun, neither does Locke: if the one 
 does not know of its existence, neither does the other. But Locke's 
 criticism is perfectly just, applied either to Malebranche or to 
 himself; and it removes the least ground for an agreement cri- 
 terion of truth in the sense that a true proposition agrees with or 
 conforms to some pattern or archetype not an idea and external to 
 the mind. 
 
 37. IDEAS ARE MARKS OF SOMETHING OTHER. Although Locke 
 holds that there are simple ideas, yet he maintains just as vigor- 
 ously that ideas either simple or complex, are marks or signs of 
 something other than themselves. But an idea can not be simple 
 and significant at the same time. If it is a sign, besides being 
 what it is, it must have some other idea annexed to it, by which it 
 points to or indicates that of which it is said to be the sign. Here 
 we come to the essential inconsistency of Locke's system. His 
 system consists of two quests : the genesis of knowledge and the 
 validity of knowledge. In the first place, in the case of material 
 
 *(Exam. P. M.'s Opin. 20.) 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OP KNOWLEDGE 85 
 
 bodies, Locke makes his hypothesis of an external world of incog- 
 nitive substances that have certain primary qualities, which cause 
 ideas in the mind. This hypothesis is verified if it can explain the 
 facts of experience better than any other. Locke believes that it 
 does. But the central thing in the origin of knowledge is the sim- 
 ple idea. All knowledge is composed of simple unanalyzable ob- 
 jects. But these are effects in the mind. These ideas are simple 
 because as effects they are simple. Being simple they are neces- 
 sarily independent. The simple idea of whiteness, although con- 
 nected or associated with the idea of coldness, in the case of a 
 snowball, is nevertheless independent and distinct. This follows 
 from the hypothesis ; for whiteness is produced by an entirely dis- 
 tinct and independent cause, viz., a peculiar conformation of snow 
 crystals which reflect white producing corpuscles, which in turn 
 affect only the eye. By no other channel can whiteness be pro- 
 duced, and just this peculiar chain of causes and no other produces 
 the idea of whiteness. Even in this, however, Locke is not con- 
 sistent; because the ideas of pleasure and pain and the primary 
 ideas are produced by no independent channel, and no simple sec- 
 ondary idea can free itself from them. But we must ignore this, 
 as Locke does, in treating the origin of knowledge. Just as two 
 or more telegraphic messages may be sent over the same wire at 
 the same time, so we may suppose that in some way, physically 
 possible, the proximate causes of simple ideas are independent, 
 notwithstanding they come in by the same route. The simple idea 
 is .necessary, not only to Locke's doctrine of the association and 
 compounding of ideas, but also to the distinction between primary 
 and secondary qualities. If the idea of extension be not simple 
 and independent, then Locke could never separate it from the 
 secondary ideas in order to show the more permanent and impor- 
 tant nature of its cause. But without this distinction, Locke's 
 hypothetical real material world would have to be revised. A 
 simple idea, according to Locke, is a simple effect in the mind 
 which can not be analyzed into parts, and his material world is in- 
 
86 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 vented for the express purpose of supplying these simple effects. 
 
 In this connection, the reason why there is an external material 
 world is the mind's innate repugnancy to the affirmation of un- 
 caused ideas. The mind is here like a cashier in a large depart- 
 ment store which is fitted with a system of pneumatic tubes 
 through which money to and from every part of the store is sent 
 from and to him. Shut up in his office, he can be imagined to 
 reason thus : "Here are certain coins and bills. Sometimes they 
 come singly and sometimes together, but in all cases, I can distin- 
 guish certain definite unanalyzable units. I do not make this 
 money ; but it is here, and I can not suppose that it has not been 
 made, therefore, it has been made somewhere and sent in through 
 these tubes to me. All I can do is to arrange or classify it or send 
 it out again. Of the real constitution and essence of this external 
 realm I am incurably ignorant. But that there is such a realm I 
 am certain. I am therefore justified in making an hypothesis 
 about this external realm. But my hypothesis must explain the 
 presence of these simple objects here. If my hypothesis on the 
 other hand, based on the assumption that there is a real external 
 realm, forces me to the conclusion that these objects I get are not 
 simple and unanalyzable, I have then to choose between what I 
 have supposed my innate repugnancy forces me to presume, i. e., 
 an external realm of causes, and what I intuitively perceive, i. e., 
 these simple unanalyzable objects. But if my hypothesis forces me 
 to deny my intuitive knowledge, it is evidently unreliable." 
 
 When Locke comes to consider ideas from the side of the 
 validity of knowledge, his hypothesis of an external material 
 world does force the conclusion that ideas are never simple. This 
 conclusion is patent but not acknowledged by Locke. 
 
 In explaining what he means by clear and obscure ideas, he 
 says, "The perception of the mind being most aptly explained by 
 words relating to sight, we shall best understand what is meant 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OP KNOWLEDGE 87 
 
 by clear and obscure in our ideas by reflecting on what discovers 
 to us visible objects, we give the name obscure to that which is not 
 placed in a light sufficient to discover minutely to us the figure 
 and colors which are observable in it, and which in a better light, 
 would be discernable. In like manner our simple ideas are clear 
 when they are such as the objects themselves, from whence they 
 are taken, did or might, in a well-ordered sensation or perception, 
 present them."* This, of course, is confused. What he is really 
 talking about is ideas of ideas. I have the idea of a tree, i. e., I 
 perceive a tree. When I no longer see the tree, I may remember it 
 and make propositions about it. The idea I have of the tree when 
 I no longer see it, may be clear or confused. "Whilst the memory 
 retains them thus, and can produce them to the mind, whenever it 
 has occasion to consider them, they are clear ideas."f But these 
 ideas, which can be said to have meanings, are manifestly, not 
 simple ideas from sensation, yet he treats them as if they were, 
 and gives simple ideas from sensation the character of significance 
 which belongs properly to remembered ideas. The cause of this 
 confusion is the old story of identifying idea with quality. Locke 
 probably thinks he is treating simple ideas as clear and obscure, 
 and hence, as signs. "The causes of obscurity in simple ideas," 
 he explains, "seem to be either dull organs, or very slight or tran- 
 sient impressions made by the objects, or else a weakness in the 
 memory not able to retain them as received."} But the last cause 
 clearly can not be admitted, for memory is the "power in many 
 cases to revive perceptions which it [the mind] once had, with 
 this additional perception annexed to them, that it has had them 
 before." Remembered ideas are necessarily complex, so the 
 causes of obscurity in simple ideas are dull organs and slight im- 
 pressions. He also says, "As a clear idea is that whereof the mind 
 has such a full and evident perception, as it does receive from 
 an outward object operating duly on a well-disposed organ; so a 
 distinct idea is that wherein the mind perceives a difference from 
 all other; and a confused idea is such a one as is not sufficiently 
 
88 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 distinguishable from another, from which it ought to be differ- 
 ent."* These remarks might apply to a remembered idea but not 
 to a simple idea, for an idea caused by an external impression is 
 just what it is whether the organ be well-disposed or ill-disposed. 
 
 Ideas are also either real or fantastical, adequate or inadequate, 
 true or false. Let us take the first as typical. He means such 
 ideas "as have a foundation in nature ; such as have a conformity 
 with the real being and existence of things, or with their arche- 
 types. Fantastical or chimerical I call such as have no foundation 
 in nature, nor have any conformity to that reality of being to 
 which they are tacitly referred as to their archetypes."** The 
 agreement criterion is now working smoothly. All simple ideas 
 are real, he says, not that they are all exact images of what really 
 exists, but that they are the "constant" effects in us of things 
 themselves, ordained by our Maker to be such as they are: "the 
 reality lying in that steady correspondence they have with the 
 distinct constitutions of real beings."J Simple ideas are "as- 
 signed to be the marks whereby we are to know and distinguish 
 things which we have to do with." How we can have a confused 
 simple idea which is at the same time real is not clear. 
 
 If we stop to consider what these archetypes or patterns are, to 
 which Locke refers, it is evident that they can not be the real 
 essence of things. It would be absurd to say that we ever know 
 that ideas correspond to that of which we are incurably ignorant. 
 But when we consider the facts of sense illusion, it appears that 
 we get simple ideas which have no essential archetypes. In cer- 
 tain pathological states everything is doubled, or of a character- 
 istic color. "Though a man in a fever should from sugar have a 
 bitter taste, which at another time would produce a sweet one, 
 yet the idea of bitter in that man's mind would be as clear and 
 as distinct from the idea of sweet as if he had tasted only gall. 
 Nor does it make any more confusion between the two ideas of 
 
 II. xxix. 4. ill. xxx. 2. 
 
 **n. xxx. 1. (Ibi(L) 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 89 
 
 sweet and bitter, that the same sort of body produces at one time 
 one, and at another time another idea by the taste, than that it 
 makes a confusion in two ideas of white and sweet, or white and 
 round, that the same piece of sugar produces them both in the 
 mind at the same time."* Locke would say, probably, that in 
 these cases the sense organ is deranged so that the motion it sets 
 up in the animal spirits corresponds not to the actual external 
 impression but to another impression which under normal condi- 
 tions would give this motion. He can not avoid asserting that, 
 if everything appears yellow to a man with jaundice, the yellow is 
 a true, adequate, and right, simple idea. If this be his conclusion, 
 and he has made no reservations, the archetypes or patterns of 
 which ideas are marks or signs are the last motions in the animal 
 spirits or brain that occur just before the idea arises in the mind.f 
 The chain of motions from the external real thing are beset with 
 so many hazards and modifications, that the only thing, which 
 God has ordained to produce such and such ideas, is the last link 
 in this chain. After the manner of Locke on Malebranche, ir? the 
 words of Berkley, we might venture to ask how he knows that the 
 whole choir of Heaven and furniture of the earth is not a mere 
 ferment in his skull established and ordained by God. But since 
 his skull is a part of the furniture of the earth, where is the final 
 motion to take place ? Or, on the other hand, if the archetypes of 
 which simple ideas are marks or signs, are the primary qualities 
 of things, and we know when an idea is true and right and ade- 
 quate, as "sensible matter of fact/' then the whole apparatus of 
 ideas, sense organs, nerves, animal spirits, the dark cabinet and 
 all the rest, appear to be altogether useless. If I know things as 
 they are, what is the use of signs or marks ? 
 
 Passing over these objections, it is certain that Locke holds that 
 simple ideas are the representations or appearances as marks or 
 signs of something other than themselves. Every simple idea, 
 even the very first one, must be something like this : "I am what 
 
 *II. xi. 3. 
 
 t(Exam. of P. M.'a Opin. 10.) 
 
90 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 I am, and I am also the sign of some real existence other than 
 what I am." 
 
 To take up the idea of the cashier, supposing him to believe in 
 a hard money basis, and supposing only paper money comes to 
 him through the pneumatic tubes, we can imagine him reasoning 
 thus : "Here are various bills which are the signs of real money 
 which has actual existence in the external world. To be sure these 
 green-backs do not say that there is gold or silver deposited in the 
 treasury to redeem them, but I know from my science of political 
 economy that the real basis for them is actual gold and silver. 
 Green-backs are only secondary money and represent no real ex- 
 istence in the external world. They are simply the secondary 
 effects of real money. On the other hand, these gold or 
 silver certificates are primary effects of real money. Real money 
 exists out there whether I have any certificates of it or not. But 
 I am now confronted with a peculiar problem in the case of coun- 
 terfeit money. There are true green-backs and counterfeit 
 green-backs, true gold and silver certificates and counterfeit 
 certificates; but how am I to tell the true from the false? 
 Theoretically I know that the true bills correspond to some real 
 existence other than themselves of which the Government in its 
 wisdom has ordained they shall be the marks or signs. But the 
 counterfeit bills come in through the tubes just as the real ones 
 do, and since I do not make them, I am compelled, by a certain 
 repugnancy of my mind to assert that they correspond to some 
 real existence, and consequently are true bills. All simple bill? 
 are true, adequate, and right. The Government that has estab- 
 lished and regulates this pneumatic system and the financial world 
 beyond has ordained that just these bills and no others shall come 
 to me ; otherwise I should not have them. Falsity comes in when 
 I classify them with bills which are not what they claim on their 
 face to be. But this does not seem to help me. How can I know 
 that a bill is not what it claims to be ? Since I can not get out into 
 the external world, whatever I do must be done here in my office. 
 I must seek for principles and uniformities among these bills. I 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OP KNOWLEDGE 91 
 
 must discover a system of classification. When I have done this, 
 I shall judge those bills counterfeits which, classified as what they 
 claim to be, do not harmonize with this system. My hypothesis of 
 an external world is thus entirely useless to me. Perhaps I have 
 been wrong in supposing there is an external world and a pneu- 
 matic system. Instead of being enclosed in a small office, I may be 
 in a large room, running across these bills here and there. Per- 
 haps this big room, with bills floating about, is one complete 
 system, and that my repugnancy to uncaused bills is just my in- 
 nate desire to discover this system. I can never discover the 
 absolute truth of this system until I get all of it." This is just the 
 case with Locke's "ideas." If they are signs of an external reality 
 we have no way of determining their truth or falsity. The 
 assumption of an external world is of no use to us. We are com- 
 pelled to adopt the theory of the organic unity of experience. 
 
 38. THE DOCTRINE OF Two WORLDS. Notwithstanding that the 
 body with its so-called sense organs, nerves, and brain is a part 
 of the internal material, the world of ideas, it is altogether prob- 
 able that Locke assumes their real external existence, in his sense, 
 from the very first. Supposing this is true, it is easy to see why 
 he clings so tenaciously to his unperceived external world. He 
 probably began as a common-sense observer noting the concom- 
 itant variations between the condition of his eyes, ears, and skin, 
 and the presence, condition, or absence of the objects in his expe- 
 rience. One does not perceive real bodies immediately, Locke 
 probably reasoned, but by means of the sense organs, nerves, and 
 brain. Thus there exists between the perceiving mind and the 
 real objects these organic structures. What takes place in them, 
 when we perceive objects, is motions of one sort or another. It 
 is obvious that these motions are not like the objects we perceive. 
 Therefore, these motions, or rather, the last motion that occurs 
 in the brain, is the cause of our perceiving an object; and more- 
 over the object we perceive can not be the real object but a repre- 
 sentation which is the sign of the real object. All the objects we 
 
92 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 perceive are in the mind. All this is clear and obvious ; for does 
 not anatomy and physiology show that the eye is adapted for the 
 receiving and transmitting just those motions of the light cor- 
 puscles, and is not the ear adapted for receiving and transmitting 
 motions of the air? When our eyes are afflicted with cataracts 
 or when our ears have no drums, is it not a fact we see or hear 
 imperfectly or not at all? "It is plain those perceptions are pro- 
 duced in us by exterior causes affecting our senses : because those 
 that want the organs of any sense never can have the ideas belong- 
 ing to that sense produced in their minds. This is too evident to 
 be doubted: and therefore we can not but be assured that they 
 come by the organs of that sense, and no other way. The organs 
 themselves, it is plain, do not produce them ; for then the eyes of 
 a man in the dark would produce colors, and his nose smell roses in 
 the winter : but we see nobody gets the relish of a pineapple till he 
 goes to the Indies, where it is, and tastes it."* It thus seems 
 certain to Locke that we perceive only the effects of the motions 
 in our minds. It is probable therefore that his doctrine of ideas 
 was subsequent to and adopted to harmonize with his adopted 
 theory of the sense organs and nervous system. The genetic order 
 of his reasoning begins with an external world, proceeds to the 
 sense organs, nerves, and brain, and culminates in his doctrine 
 of ideas. Having shut himself in a dark cabinet, he is able to show 
 the validity of his knowledge only by a tour de force. This he does 
 by a direct appeal to common-sense. But the external world he 
 adopts is not the external world of common-sense, and this appeal 
 gives him no support. 
 
 This doctrine of two worlds, the world of ideas which includes 
 all that we experience, and the world of real things which we do 
 not experience but which is the cause of what we do experience, is 
 devised to explain the correspondence between the structure and 
 condition of the body and its organs and the perception or the 
 having of objects. The doctrine of two worlds is involved not 
 only in interactionalism but also in parallelism and epiphenomin- 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 93 
 
 alism. The peculiar thing about this doctrine is, that the propo- 
 sition that there are two worlds, is involved both in the premises 
 and in the conclusion. We begin by affirming that whatever is 
 perceived by means of a medium either as a cause or parallel con- 
 dition is only an effect or an accompanying occurrence of some 
 cause or other occurrence. The body is seen to be the proximate 
 cause or parallel condition of our perceiving objects. Therefore, 
 what we perceive is not a real object but only an effect or parallel 
 occurrence. In other words, I perceive immediately an external 
 world of uniformity and law. I also perceive immediately that 
 this world of uniformity and law is perceived by me only on the 
 condition and hazard of one part of it, my body. Therefore, what 
 is perceived immediately is not perceived immediately. I perceive 
 my body to be the condition or cause of my having or perceiving 
 objects, yet as a part of the external real world I do not and can 
 not perceive it at all. 
 
 This correspondence between "body and mind" takes place in 
 our one world of experience. Why we should not be like pure 
 spirits is indeed a mystery. But it is a mystery in our one world 
 of experience. But the doctrine of two worlds does not dispel this 
 mystery. Interactionism, parallelism, or epiphenominalism, are 
 just as incomprehensible and mysterious as that which they at- 
 tempt to explain. It must be admitted that parallelism, if it is 
 given, not as an explanation but as an attempt to state the facts 
 of this mystery, is much to be preferred, i. e., a parallelism in 
 one world of experience. But besides being as mysterious and in- 
 comprehensible as that which it attempts to explain, the doctrine 
 of two worlds, like Royce's self-representative series, multiplies 
 the mystery indefinitely. The same mysterious correspondence 
 breaks put in this world of ideas. Here is the idea of my body 
 with its eyes and ears, and skin and nose and palate: all ideas. 
 Here is the idea of the external object, the vibrating air and 
 Newtonian corpuscles : all ideas. When the idea of the eye shuts, 
 
94 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 the ideas of external objects no longer appear. When the idea of 
 the eye has the idea of cataract in it, ideas of visible objects 
 appear imperfectly or not at all. Thus we have a full set of 
 grounds for splitting up the world of ideas into external and in- 
 ternal realm. This internal world can likewise be dichotomised, 
 and so on indefinitely. 
 
 Locke has shown us how diseased and imperfect organs of sense 
 interfere with external sense perception. We have supposed that 
 the correspondence between the condition of the sense organs and 
 perceived objects, determined Locke to his doctrine of ideas or two 
 worlds. Quite as strong a case can be made out, by the same 
 method, for the dependence of ideas from reflection upon the con- 
 dition of the body, especially the brain. A blow on the head puts 
 an end to ideas from reflection quite as effectually as closing the 
 eye puts an end to ideas of visible objects. Locke himself fur- 
 nishes instances of a man cured of madness by a surgical opera- 
 tion.* The effects of alcohol, drugs, coffee, tea, and tobacco, upon 
 ideas from reflection were well known to Locke. Just as a similar 
 class of facts forces him to attribute a mediating function to 
 the sense organs, nerves and brain, in respect of ideas from sen- 
 sation, so this class of facts must force him to attribute a like 
 function to some part of the body, presumably the brain, in re- 
 spect of ideas from reflection. Some certain parts of the brain, 
 and not the mind itself, are the internal sense organs. Without 
 presuming too much upon modern physiological psychology, it 
 seems certain that the argument leads to some form of localization 
 in the brain of the proximate causes of all ideas. The mind con- 
 sequently either does not have active powers or it is duplex, with 
 the brain as a partition. Locke can not admit the former. The 
 perception of ideas from reflection is then a sort of intellectual 
 osmosis. But this is against Locke's concept of the mind as a 
 unitary substance. The argument has thus brought Locke into 
 a veritable cul de sac. It plays havoc not only with his conception 
 of the mind itself but with the external world as well. The brain, 
 being the "mind's presence room," is the location of the proximate 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 06 
 
 causes of all ideas. These causes mix freely together in the pres- 
 ence room. Not only does the motion set up by one material body 
 get transformed into the motion properly set up by another, as 
 when sugar tastes bitter, but also motions set up by material 
 bodies, as alcohol or opium, produce modifications among the 
 causes of ideas from reflection, and are in no way due to the active 
 mind substance. It is now certain that the mere claim of an idea 
 to be the mark of such and such a thing can not be taken at its 
 face value. We can never be certain an idea from reflection has 
 not been set up by some material motion, or that an idea from 
 sensation is not due to the active powers of the mind. 
 
 39. REAL EXISTENCE. In the case of his external world, Locke 
 puts forward what he calls knowledge of real existence. "It is 
 therefore the actual receiving of ideas from without, that gives 
 us notice of the existence of other things, and makes us know that 
 something doth exist at that time without us, which causes that 
 idea in us, though perhaps we neither know nor consider how it 
 does it : for it takes not from the certainty of our senses, and the 
 ideas we receive by them, that we know not the manner wherein 
 they are produced, v. g., whilst I write this I have, by the paper 
 affecting my eyes, that idea produced in my mind which, what- 
 ever object causes, I call white; by which I know that that quality 
 or accident (i. e., whose appearance before my eyes always causes 
 that idea) doth really exist, and hath a being without me. And of 
 this, the greatest assurance I can possibly have, and to which my 
 faculties can attain, is the testimony of my eyes, which are the 
 proper and sole judges of this thing, whose testimony I have rea- 
 son to rely on as so certain, that I can no more doubt, whilst I 
 write this, that I see white and black, and that something really 
 exists, that causes that sensation in me, than that I write or move 
 my hand : which is a certainty as great as human nature is capable 
 of, concerning the existence of anything but a man's self alone, 
 and of God."* Although this knowledge is not so certain as in- 
 rv. xi. a. 
 
96 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 tuition or deductions of our reason, "yet it is an assurance that 
 deserves the name of knowledge." "I think nobody can, in earn- 
 est, be so skeptical as to be uncertain of the existence of those 
 things which he sees and feels. At least, he that can doubt so far 
 (whatever he may have with his own thoughts) will never have 
 any controversy with me; since he can never be sure I say any- 
 thing contrary to his own opinion. As to myself, I think God has 
 given me assurance enough of the existence of things without me ; 
 since by their different application I can produce in myself both 
 pleasure and pain, which is one great concernment of my present 
 state. This is certain, the confidence that our faculties do not 
 herein deceive us is the greatest assurances we are capable of, con- 
 cerning the existence of material beings. For we cannot act any- 
 thing but by our faculties ; nor talk of knowledge itself, but by the 
 helps of those faculties which are fitted to apprehend even what 
 knowledge is."* Locke's course of thought here runs very little 
 above common-sense. With his characteristic ambiguity at cru- 
 cial stages in his reasoning, he uses two kinds of external worlds : 
 the common-sense external world and his own hypothetical ex- 
 ternal world. What cogency there is in his argument applies to 
 the former ; but he appropriates it for the latter. 
 
 Locke says that his eyes are the proper and sole judges of visible 
 objects, yet by his own theory and assertions they deceive him in 
 regard to all the visible secondary qualities and some of the pri- 
 mary. He says that he can not doubt that he sees white and black 
 and that something really exists which causes these "sensations" 
 (ideas) in him. The first part of this statement no one doubts. 
 There is the experience of black letters on a white surface. But 
 that something really exists distinct from the paper and ink as 
 this constellation of ideas, and in a space distinct from this system 
 of related ideas, as say in a fourth dimension, that not only may 
 be doubted, but it is also not even demanded by natural science 
 or common-sense. The book on the shelf before me, call it a com- 
 plex idea if you like, is just as real a thing as I want. If there is 
 
 *IV. xi. 3. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 97 
 
 some mysterious fourth dimensional reality supporting it, which 
 I do not experience and can not experience, it does not interest me. 
 I experience no repugnancy at all in resting with this "complex 
 idea." I call this constellation of "ideas," that interests me, a real 
 thing, a book. It is related by various systems of relations to 
 other real things. I do not seek for a cause aside from other 
 "complex ideas" ; the paper mill, printing press, author, and book 
 agent. 
 
 Another consideration, according to Locke, that proves the real 
 existence of his external world, is the fact that an idea from sen- 
 sation is distinct from an idea from memory. "There is a mani- 
 fest difference between the ideas laid up in my memory (over 
 which, if they were there only, I should have constantly the same 
 power to dispose of them, and lay them by at pleasure) and those 
 which force themselves upon me, and I can not avoid having. 
 And therefore it must needs be some exterior cause, and the brisk 
 acting of some objects without me, whose efficacy I can not resist, 
 that produces those ideas in my mind, whether I will or no. Be- 
 sides, there is nobody who doth not perceive the difference in him- 
 self between contemplating the sun, as he hath the idea of it in 
 his memory, and actually looking upon it; of which two his per- 
 ception is so distinct, that few of his ideas are more distinguish- 
 able one from another. And therefore he hath certain knowledge, 
 that they are not both memory, or the actions of his mind, and 
 fancies only within him ; but that actual seeing hath a cause with- 
 out."* Locke assumes that ideas from memory and fancy can be 
 disposed of at will. But there is a stubbornness about both mem- 
 ories and fancies quite comparable to that of ideas from sensation. 
 Locke gives an account of how he came to write this Essay. Can 
 he dispose of that memory at his pleasure? To be sure he can turn 
 his attention to something else, but so he can do with the sun. 
 He can shut his eyes. And as he himself says, one can be so en- 
 grossed in some train of thought as to be entirely oblivious to the 
 solicitations of the senses. But the ideas of memory and fancy 
 
 IV. xi. 6. 
 
98 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 have causes, i. e., the mind itself, and apparently there is no reason 
 for not identifying their causes with that which causes ideas from 
 sensation, except upon the ground that there is this distinction in 
 causes, which distinction is jmt now the point at issue. It will 
 be readily granted that there is a difference between the idea of 
 the sun f rofci sensation and the idea of the sun from memory. This 
 is a statement of fact. But what is the difference? We have his 
 own word that a remembered idea is the same idea we had before 
 with the additional idea that we had it before. Suppose the re- 
 membered idea is the weaker, there is nothing against supposing 
 that it is produced by some weaker external material cause, say 
 some echoing motion of the brain. This would be supported by 
 the fact that the simple ideas of the remembered idea are of just 
 the same kind as those of the idea from sensation. If the dis- 
 tinction insisted upon is, not that one is weaker than the other, but 
 that there is an accompanying idea that " I have had this before," 
 that would not apply to ideas from fancy. But to consider only 
 memory, do not ideas from sensation have an accompanying idsa 
 that, "I have not had this before?" What these significant ideas 
 are is an apprehension of my biography; remembered ideas fit 
 into it in one place and sensational ideas fit into it in another. So 
 the mere presence of a sign or mark that dates an idea now or in 
 the past is no guarantee that an idea of one sort has not the same 
 cause or ground as one of another. 
 
 "Pleasure or pain which accompanies actual sensation, accom- 
 panies not the returning of those ideas," says Locke, "without the 
 external objects,***." Thus the pain of heat or cold, when the idea 
 of it is revived in our minds, gives us no disturbance ; which, when 
 felt, was very troublesome, and is again, when actually repeated ; 
 which is occasioned by the disorder the external object causes in 
 our bodies when applied to it. And we remember the pains of 
 hunger, thirst, or the headache, without any pain at all; which 
 would either never disturb us, or else constantly do it, as often as 
 we thought of it, were there nothing more but ideas floating in 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 99 
 
 our minds, and appearances entertaining our fancies, without the 
 real existence of things affecting us from abroad. The same may 
 be said of pleasure accompanying several actual sensations, and 
 though mathematical demonstrations depend not upon sense, yet 
 the examining them by diagrams gives great credit to the evidence 
 of our sight, and seems to give it a certainty approaching to that 
 of demonstration itself."* Now, pleasure and pain, as he has told 
 us, are "only different constitutions of the mind, sometimes occa- 
 sioned by disorder in the body, sometimes by thoughts of the 
 mind."t "By pleasure and pain, delight and uneasiness, I must all 
 along be understood (as I have above intimated) to mean, not 
 only bodily pain and pleasure, but whatsoever delight or uneasi- 
 ness is felt by us, whether arising from any grateful or unaccept- 
 able sensation or reflection."! And again: "Delight or uneasi- 
 ness, one or the other of them, joins themselves to almost all our 
 ideas, both of reflection and sensation: and there is scarce any 
 affection of our senses from without, any retired thought of our 
 mind within, which is not able to produce in us pleasure or pain." 
 Juxtaposing these quotations seems sufficient to invalidate his ar- 
 gument. How can pleasure and pain be a guarantee of external 
 reality when they attach themselves to all kinds of ideas? The 
 fancies of the misanthrope, the hallucinations of the insane, the 
 imaginings of one suffering from the delirium of a fever ; and the 
 dreams and nightmares, the sorrows, disappointments, and 
 wranglings of ordinary life, all carry their pains, more acute, if 
 we are to judge by the accounts, than purely physical pains. And 
 likewise the pleasure of good company, rational thinking, right- 
 eous behavior, poetry, fiction, and a thousand others, are com- 
 parable and usually supposed superior to the pleasures of our 
 senses. Not the least among the pleasures is that of philosophy. 
 "I here put into thy hands," says Locke to the reader, "what has 
 been the diversion of some of my idle and heavy hours : if it has 
 the good luck to prove so of any of thine, and thou hast but half 
 so much pleasure in reading, as I had in writing it, thou will as 
 *rv. xi. e. tn. xx. 15. 
 
 flL xx. 2. 11. vll. 2. 
 
100 A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 little think of thy money, as I do my pains, ill bestowed." 
 
 Locke says that although actual hunger and thirst are painful, 
 remembered hunger and thirst are not. What does this prove? 
 Obviously that a present idea from sensation is different from the 
 memory of it. Locke here is assuming that the alternative to his 
 explanation is that all common-sense objects are fancies of the 
 mind. But why not say that these objects are mere ideas of the 
 mind? Locke himself has tried to show that the mind perceives 
 only its ideas, and thus he horrifies common-sense. Now he tries 
 to exploit this horror for his own use. But because I rest with 
 common-sense objects, every-day houses, books, trees, and refuse 
 to postulate an unperceived and unperceivable realm of causes 
 for them, does not convict me of calling them fancies of my mind. 
 If any one has tried to show that common-sense objects are fancies 
 of the mind, Locke is that one. 
 
 Nothwithstanding that Locke speaks so confidently about the 
 real existence of his external world, yet he feels that he has not 
 made out a good case. It is foolish and vain, he thinks, for a man 
 to doubt very plain and clear truths just because they are not 
 capable of sure and certain demonstration and are open to the 
 "pretense of doubting."* A belief in the existence of the external 
 world is necessary to carry on the practical affairs of life. This 
 uncertainty of his is more apparent because of his refusal to meet 
 the objections to his doctrine. He admits that it can be doubted 
 but calls it folly to do so. It is folly, presumably, because we have 
 to act upon the assumption of the external world. Its truth is 
 pragmatic. But the world that concerns us as practical beings is 
 the common-sense external world, or the world of ideas from sen- 
 sation according to Locke. Nobody doubts this external world. 
 Locke's ugly mathematical realm, steeped in infinite darkness and 
 silence, more gruesome and abominable than the City of Dreadful 
 Night, thi3 is the world that is of no practical importance and 
 whose existence may be doubted. 
 *rv. XL 10. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 101 
 
 In regard to sense experience Locke says, "If any one say, a 
 dream may do the same thing, and all these ideas may be produced 
 without any external objects ; he may please to dream that I make 
 him this answer: 1. That it is no great matter, whether I re- 
 move this scruple or no: where all is but dream, reasoning and 
 arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing. 2. That 
 I believe he will allow very manifest difference between dreaming 
 of being in the fire, and being actually in) it."f The supposition 
 that our ideas may not have an external cause, is admitted by 
 Locke to be a possible and therefore a rational supposition. To 
 call this a dream is thus merely figurative. Add to this Locke's 
 admission that the way in which an external object can cause an 
 idea in us is incomprehensible, and the obvious conclusion that 
 all ideas are ideas from reflection, i. e., caused by the mind acting 
 upon itself, it does not appear to be irrational to make such a 
 supposition, 
 try. a 14. 
 
10$ A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 40. CONCLUSION. This study of Locke's theory of knowledge is 
 therefore an argument for the organic unity of experience. Ac- 
 cording to Locke the world of knowledge is distinct and separate 
 from reality. This doctrine of two worlds has been attacked at 
 all points. The reasons for choosing it have been sought for and 
 shown to be insufficient. The rationalistic lumber Locke has piled 
 upon this foundation has been examined and has been found con- 
 fusing, unnecessary ad contradictory. At every turn, in contra- 
 distinction to Locke's dualism, the adequacy of "organic experi- 
 entialism," as Dr. J. A. Leighton calls it, has been pointed out. 
 Electrons and stars, knowledge and facts, thoughts and reality, 
 all belong to one world of experience. There are no isolated atoms, 
 independent facts, irreducible pluralisms, or absolute insulations : 
 this has been the contention. The universe is not pluralistic but 
 organic. Locke's Essay in a large part is in harmony with organic 
 experientialism. This harmony has been shown at length. Locke 
 beheld the truth from time to time between rifts in his rational- 
 istic fog, but for the most part he groped and stumbled. 
 
 The obvious loose and incoherent style of this study will be seen 
 after a consideration of these concluding remarks, to be a super- 
 ficial appearance due to the Socratic procedure. 
 
A STUDY OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 103 
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 
 
 I, Raymond Gregory, was born near New Antioch, Ohio, 
 October 1, 1879. I received my early education in a country 
 school. In 1897, I entered the High School at New Vienna, Ohio, 
 and completed the course in 1900. In January, 1910, I entered 
 Wilmington College, and in June, 1912, I received the degree of 
 Bachelor of Arts. The following school year I attended Haver- 
 ford College, and received the degree of Bachelor of Arts. The 
 next year I went to Harvard University and received the degree of 
 Master of Arts. In September, 1915, I entered the graduate 
 school of the Ohio State University, and continued in residence 
 until June, 1917. 
 
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