an essays concerning human understanding

Preface

In his “ Epistle to the Reader ’ Locke refers to the way in which the Essay was written—‘ by catches and many long intervals of interruption ’—as being ‘apt to cause some repetitions ’. ‘I will not deny,’ he says, ‘ but possibly it might be reduced to a narrower compass than it is. But, to confess the truth, I am now too lazy or too busy to make it shorter.’ If the length of the Essay and its endless repetitions called for some apology, even on its first appearance, when the ‘ new way of ideas ’ might be deemed unfamiliar to its first readers, these qualities tell with tenfold force against it to-day. Partly owing to the extraordinary extent to which the Essay permeated popular thought in the succeeding century, many of the ideas which Locke considered ‘ new and out of the ordinary way ’, have become accepted commonplaces. Doctrines, on the other hand, which he is never weary of returning to demolish have only a languid historical interest for the present generation. It is to be feared that the natural impatience produced in the modern reader by Locke’s prolixity and the apparent triteness of much of his matter havealready had theeffect of discouraging the first-hand study of the Essay by students of philosophy. But, in spite of its defects, Locke’s work is a philosophical classic in the best sense of the term, and its doctrines fill far too large a space in modern thought to be learned from tne colourless abstracts in Histories of Philosophy. Locke gives us the first characteristically modern statement of the questions about human knowledge which meet us again in Hume and iv Preface

Kant, and which to a certain extent are still with us to-day. It is impossible to understand either Berkeley or Hume or Kant without reference to Locke : and Locke’s own analysis and philosophical conclusions possess a freshness, an independence, and a transparent honesty of purpose which make them well worthy of independent study. The more carefully they are studied, the more suggestive will they appear, and the more relevant to our modern questions. The more also will the reader learn to hold their author in affection and to relish his robust and often racy, on occasion even eloquent, English style.

The object of the present edition is to promote the independent study of the Essay by doing for the text what Locke had not the leisure or the patience to do himself. In the first instance, by the omission of unnecessary repetitions it has been reduced to almost exactly half its original length, and in the second place an attempt has been made by means of an Introduction and Notes to keep before the modern reader the main trend of Locke’s conclusions, to direct attention to his most significant recurring ideas, and in general to guide the student to the philosophically important sections of the work. It is not possible to do this service for Locke simply by picking out a few of the more obviously important chapters and publishing them separately. For these chapters themselves contain many repetitions, as well as much matter that is merely distracting to the modern student. And, what is more important, a true appreciation of Locke’s meaning in © such chapters can only be reached through a knowledge of the scheme of the Essay as a whole. It is only in the light of the First Book, for example, antiquated and superfluous as much of the discussion now seems, that the analysis of the Second Book can be fully understood and fairly interpreted. And,

Preface v again, owing to Locke’s ‘ discontinued way of writing’, his dominant ideas are apt to recur in different settings. From different starting-points the discussion winds round into some familiar train of thought which never fails to warm Locke’s style with a touch of enthusiasm or of honest indignation. So it happens that a pointed statement of his general position or one of his happiest passages may often be found embedded in disquisitions which, as a whole, may be neglected with impunity. The present volume is, in its idea, not so much a series of selections from the Essay as an ‘ edition with omissions’. The external framework of the Essay is retained, even to the extent of supplying the titles of chapters from which no extracts are given. The aim has been to leave out nothing that was in any way characteristic of Locke’s thinking, and for that reason there will still be found repetitions and re-inculcations of favourite ideas. Without such recurrences Locke would be unrecognizable. Moreover their rigorous excision would falsify our impression of Locke’s scheme by obscuring the relative importance of his various positions in his own mind. In a question of omitting and retaining no two editors are likely to agree in every detail. Some students may miss an occasional passage on which they have been accustomed to lay stress. But if so, I am reasonably confident that they will find in the text of this edition equally characteristic expressions with an entirely identical sense. Other readers may think that the process of compression might have been carried farther with advantage ; but each teacher can suggest to his pupils such further omissions as the time at their disposal or his sense of the importance of the subject suggests. The present version has been made with the needs of university teachers and students in view, and the editor’s aim has been, vi Preface while pruning the text somewhat severely of its redundancies, to leave with the reader an authentic picture of the Essay as it shaped itself in its author’s mind, and so to retain in academic use one of the classical documents of English philosophy.

I will only add that the text was adjusted and arrangements made for publication as far back as Igo9, but pressure of other work caused the project to be temporarily laid aside. The text has been repeatedly revised in the interval and is now as near my idea as I can hope to make it. Locke’s own summaries have been retained at the head of the sections, except where they are merely repetitions of the text, and the italics of the original editions, although unusual in modern books of the kind, have been occasionally reproduced where they seemed to be a guide to the emphasis in Locke’s mind as he wrote.

In the proof-reading and collation with the original editions and in the preparation of the Index I have been greatly indebted to my friend, Mr. H. F. Hallett, to whom I desire to express my warm thanks.

EDINBURGH, January 1924.

Contents

PREFACE . 4 5 : : ; c - : ° EpiTor’s INTRODUCTION - : . 6 6 ° ° AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING THE EPISTLE TO THE READER . : . : . .

Book I Of Innate Notions Chap

I. Introduction II. No Innate speculative Principles III. No Innate practical Principles .

IV. Other Considerations concerning innate Principles, both speculative and practical . : : ° BOOK II OF IDEAS I. Of Ideas in general, and their el, II. Of simple Ideas c : : III. Of Ideas of one Sense IV. Of Solidity V. Of simple Ideas of more than one Sense. VI. Of simple Ideas of Reflection VII. Of simple Ideas of both Sensation and Reflection VIII. Some farther Considerations concerning our simple Ideas IX. Of Perception a 4 a 2 : dj X. Of Retention .

XI. Of Discerning, and other Operations « of the Mind XII. Of complex Ideas XIII. Of Space, and its simple Modes XIV. Of Duration, and its simple Modes XV. Of Duration and ee considered together . XVI. Of Number : : XVII. Of Infinity . [XVIII. Of other simple Modes] XIX. Of the Modes of Thinking [XX. Of the Modes of Pleasure and Pain) XXI. Of Power : ; 0 XXII. Of mixed Modes : > - XXIII. Of our complex Ideas of Substances . XXIV. Of collective Ideas of Substances

CHAP.

XXVI.

XXVII.

XXVIII.

XXIX.

XXX.

XXXI.

XXXII.

XXXIII.

. Of trifling Propositions :

Contents

Of Cause and Effect, and other re Ps x .

Of Identity and Diversity 3 ‘ : Of other Relations 3 i.

Of clear and obscure, distinct and confused Ideas < Of real and fantastical Ideas ‘ .

Of adequate and inadequate Ideas .

Of true and false Ideas . . P : F 4 Of the Association of Ideas . - ‘ -

Book III Of Words

Of Words or Language in general. : ‘ Of the Signification of Words . : . : a Of general Terms . : : é Of the Names of simple Ideas" » - Of the Names of mixed Modes and Relations . ‘ Of the Names of Substances . ° “ . .

Of Particles]

. Of abstract and concrete Terms ‘ - o

Of the Imperfection of Words

Of the Abuse of Words

Of the Remedies of the foregoing Imperfections and Abuses]

BOOK IV OF KNOWLEDGE AND OPINION Of Knowledge in general

Of the Degrees of our Knowledge . ° Of the Extent of Human Knowledge F

Of the Reality of our Knowledge Of Truth in general

Of Universal Propositions, their Truth and Certainty Of Maxims

Of our Knowledge of Existence -

Of our Knowledge of the Existence of a God . Of our Knowledge of the Existence of other Things . Of the Improvement of our Knowledge .

Some farther Considerations concerning our r Knowledge) Of Judgement : . :

Of Probability

Of the Degrees of Assent

Of Reason

Ot Faith and Reason, and their distinct Provinces

Of Enthusiasm :

Of wrong Assent, or Error :

Of the Division of the Sciences

POLLOR OS LNTRODUGCTION

Born in 1632, in the same year as Spinoza and five years before the publication of Descartes’s Discourse on Method, Locke suffered at Oxford as an undergraduate from the scholastic Aristotelianism which still survived at that university. It seemed to him ‘ perplexed with obscure terms and useless questions ’, and its logical disputations invented for “wrangling and ostentation rather than to discover truth’. Hence, although he gave his own philosophy to the world only towards the close of a long life—the first edition of the Essay appeared in 1690—we still meet in his pages the attitude of mind familiar to us in Bacon and other pioneers of modern philosophy, the same disparaging criticism of scholastic philosophy and the Aristotelian logic, the same revolt against tradition and authority in all its forms. He returns again and again in the Essay to emphasize the mischief wrought by the indolent acceptance of traditional dogmas and unverified assumptions. ‘So much as we ourselves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so much we possess of real and true knowledge. The floating of other men’s opinions in our brains makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true.’ The very word ‘ principle’ has evil associations for him, for it seems to him to mean a doctrine upon which other doctrines are founded, but which is regarded as itself withdrawn from the criticism of reason. His whole polemic against ‘innate principles’ in Book I reveals itself in the closing paragraphs as a protest in the modern spirit against the tendency ‘ to take men off from the use of their own reason and judgement and put them upon believing and taking upon trust without further examination’.2 In the same spirit he

Berd 23° Sele AeA.

x Introduction protests in Book III against the tyranny of empty words. The first step in philosophy is to use no word without an idea, that is to say, without a clear and determinate meaning. However he may differ from Descartes in other respects, he accepts unreservedly the Cartesian criticism of truth as consisting in the possession of clear and distinct ideas and the apprehension of their necessary connexion. Every philosophical doctrine must justify itself in this fashion to the self-conscious reason of the individual thinker. Reason, as he finely says, is ‘ the candle of the Lord set up by himself in men’s minds’, } and to put out that candle would be to plunge us into Egyptian darkness. ‘ Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything.’? This attitude or temper of mind, while it carries us back to the fundamental principle of modern thought, helps also to explain how the Essay became, in England and France at least, ‘ the philosophical Bible ’ of the eighteenth century, the age of Enlightenment, the century par excellence of European rationalism.

Locke’s recorded statements, as well as the internal evidence of his writings, establish sufficiently the closeness of the historical relation between his own thought and the philosophy of Descartes. Although he was preceded in England by two thinkers of the first rank—Bacon and Hobbes—Locke derived little that is specific from either. Bacon’s theory of scientific method and his classification and organization of the sciences have little in common with Locke’s critical inquiry into the powers of the human mind. Locke may even be said ‘to be a philosopher in a sense in which Bacon was none; for in regard to knowledge Bacon occupies the standpoint of ordinary scientific thought, assuming its competency, and leaving unraised those questions as to the ultimate nature of Knowing and Being, and the relation of the two, which have been the peculiar business of modern philosophy. Locke’s question thus goes deeper than Bacon’s. Hobbes wrote systematically,

Relation to Descartes xi both on psychology and (in his own words) on ‘such premises as appertain to the nature of philosophy in general ’.1 But the questions about knowledge which occupy Locke, and most modern philosophers after him, are not raised by Hobbes, and consequently he has no theory of knowledge in the modern sense. Philosophy, defined by him as the knowledge of bodies, is simply the systematization of science, that is to say, of the theory of mechanical motion which was the great scientific discovery of his age.. He has been called ‘the founder of empirical psychology ’, but his psychology is presented by him as an application of the same fundamental doctrine of movement, and its interest for him lies in the basis it furnishes for his ethical and political theories. It was not unnatural, therefore, that his acute psychological work should be almost lost sight of in the storm of obloquy which these theories excited. Fora long time the influence of Hobbes upon English thought was confined to ethics and political philosophy, and was powerful there chiefly through the reaction it provoked. Locke refers, in controversy with the Bishop of Worcester, to the “ justly decried names ’ of Hobbes and Spinoza, as authors with whom he has but a slender acquaintance. In the Essay itself the ethical doctrines of the “ Hobbists ’ are incidentally referred to,” and it may be that in some other passages Locke has these doctrines and Hobbes’s notorious materialism in view. But at the points where influence might have been most naturally looked for there is no trace of it, and Locke was of too sincere a nature, and too modest about his own place as ‘an under-labourer ’* in the cause of knowledge, to disguise his obligations, had they existed, to a predecessor, however unpopular. The internal evidence of his writings confirms therefore his own repeated statements to Lady Masham that ‘ the first books which gave him a relish of philosophical things were those of Descartes ’.

1 Concerning Body, Part I, ch. 1. 9. BP TES +5: 8 Epistle to the Reader, p. 7.

xii Tntroduction

But although he thus traced his philosophic awakening to Descartes, Locke was far from adopting an attitude of discipleship towards his predecessor. Not infrequently it is through explicit criticism of Cartesian doctrines that he works out his ownconclusions; and, as he proceeded, he may well have been more conscious of difference than of agreement with Descartes’s philosophy. The sweeping metaphysical claims of the system were alien to his more modest estimate of human capacity, and the semi-mystical developments of Cartesianism, when he was brought face to face with them in Malebranche and others, seemed hardly intelligible to his practical, and in the main unspeculative, habit of mind. Nevertheless the influence of Descartes was deeper and more pervasive than Locke consciously realized. It is seen not so much in specific doctrines taken over bythe younger thinker—for example, the restriction of ‘knowledge’ to the sphere of necessary truth—as in supplying the silent presuppositions on which the whole inquiry proceeds. Descartes’s start from the certainty of the subjective life—the known certainty of his own existence and of the ‘ideas’ or internal objects which formed the contents of his individual mind—determined the whole subsequent course of modern philosophy by the dualism thus created between the knower and the real world of objects commonly supposed to be revealed in sense-perception. Whether the dualism is the result of starting with the immediate certainty of our own internal experiences, or that start is to be regarded merely as a methodic device, itself the result of the previous dogmatic assumption of mind and matter as two independent substances,’ does not affect the situation. The gulf between the subject and the object has once for all been fixed, and it becomes the immediate task of philosophy to find a means of passing from the one to the other. The theory of Representa-

1 As Professor Kemp Smith maintains, Studies in the Cartesian

Philosophy, pp. 13-14. Cf. also Professor Gibson’s Locke’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 223.

Cartesian Dualism xiii tive Perception in one form or another is the first device ; and we find this both in Descartes and Locke as the historical starting-point of further developments. It was accordingly with a true sense of historic perspective that Reid, in the following century, confronted by the bankruptcy of British philosophy in the absolute scepticism of Hume, and reviewing the steps which led to that conclusion, declared the theories of Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, to be, all of them, modifications of a common ‘system of the human understanding ’, which, after all the improvements made upon it by these thinkers, ‘ may still be called the Cartesian system ’.1 As regards Locke it is sufficient to quote the words of his latest and most luminous interpreter: ‘ The whole conception of “ideas ”’ as the proper objects of knowledge is Cartesian in origin. Without the influence of the Cartesian view of knowledge and the Cartesian conception of self-consciousness, it is not too much to say that the Essay, as we know it, would never have been written.’ ?

In spite of this affiliation, however, the two thinkers differ profoundly in their conception of the task of philosophy and in their mode of procedure. It is not too much to say that Locke’s account of his own undertaking involved a new departure which was to give a permanent direction to subsequent philosophy. Descartes, after his provisional or methodic doubt has yielded him a criterion of truth as consisting in clear and distinct ideas, assumes the competence of human reason to deal with any problem that presents itself. He seeks, in point of fact, to elaborate a comprehensive system of metaphysics by a mathematically rigorous deduction from a few ‘simple notions’ or ultimate conceptions. He is thus, in Kant’s sense of the term, a Dogmatist, inasmuch as he employs traditional and current philosophical conceptions without investigating their competence for the task to which he puts them. He confidently uses the ideas of Substance and Cause,

1 Inquiry into the Human Mind, ch. 7. 2 Gibson, op. cit., p. 207.

xiv Introduction for example, to determine the nature and activity of God and of the human mind. His metaphysics is, in fact, largely a development of the implications of these abstract conceptions, without considering whether they are appropriate or valid in such a sphere, or whether the human mind possesses any resources which would enable it to deal with such a subject-matter. Now the Essay concerning Human Understanding is expressly announced by its author as an attempt ‘ to examine our own abilities and see what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal with’. The understanding itself is the object investigated, or, as he puts it in another place,* the subject of his inquiry is ‘ the certainty, evidence, and extent ’ of human knowledge. By this formulation of the question, Locke impressed upon philosophy the epistemological character which it has retained during most of the modern period. He has thus some right to be considered the second founder of modern philosophy. For Hume and Kant, as well as for most of the thinkers of the nineteenth century, philosophy has been primarily a theory of knowledge; and, as anticipating in his own way the Kantian demand for a systematic criticism of reason, Locke has sometimes been enrolled as the first critical philosopher.* There is, indeed, a striking similarity between the language in which Locke describes the motives and occasion of his inquiry, and the description afterwards given by Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason and in the Prolegomena, of his own investigation. The presentation of philosophy as a doctrine of the /imits of human reason, with the sharp distinction between the knowable and the unknowable, is common to both, and the similarity extends even to the metaphors in which they clothe their thesis.

Locke’s account of his purpose in writing explains the structure of the Essay as it eventually took shape. It is divided into four Books, the last of which, ‘ Of Knowledge and

1 Epistle to the Reader, p. 4. et OR Re * By Riehl, for example, in his Philosophischer Kriticismus.

Second Founder of Modern Philosophy xv

Opinion’, contains the execution of Locke’s original design, giving us the conclusions he arrived at about the nature and extent of our Knowledge as distinguished from the Probability (Opinion, Faith, Belief, Judgement, are used by him as equivalent terms) ity which we have to content ourselves ‘in the greatest part of our concernment’.t It has been suggested that this Book, which contains few references to what precedes, and which really depends little on the special investigations _.

of the earlier Books, may have been the first written. But the opening definition of knowledge, as consisting in ‘ the perception of the agreement or disagreement of any of our ideas ’,? naturally suggests some preliminary elucidation of what we mean by these ‘ideas ’, which are declared in the context to be the only ‘ immediate object ’ of the mind, and which Locke habitually refers to as ‘the instruments or materials of our knowledge’. The Second Book (‘ Of Ideas’) gives us, accordingly, an account of ‘ the original of our ideas ’ and ‘ a view of their several sorts’. It contains Locke’s celebrated theory of the way in which the mind ‘ comes to be furnished’ with simple ideas of sensation and reflection which it subsequently manipulates so as to form complex ideas of modes, substances, and relations. It is here that Locke applies what he calls his ‘historical plain method’, and he claims to have given “a short but true history of the first beginnings of human Boke ’6 Tdeas are not in themselves knowledge but only “the materials of thinking’ ;* being in themselves ‘ polite but bare appearances, or perceptions in our own minds’, they are neither true nor false. Truth or falsehood ae supposes affirmation or negation, and it is only “when the mind refers any of its ideas to anything extraneous to them’ ® that they may intelligibly be spoken of as the one or the other. In the concluding paragraph of the Second Book he reminds

Vint A. 2, BRN S D2 Seles tOne Cilla Tae. eel 20, \T. Sle l a2 SOUT It. 15; Seer, 2. Se llnszate Seo 2 As va A y xvi Introduction us, therefore, that, after all that has been said about ideas, we have still in front of us the question “what use the wnderseeias ing makes of them, and what knowledge we have by them ’. This, as already explained, is the subject of Book IV. a standpoint of the Second Book is thus professedly psychological in the modern sense of the term, although Locke does not consistently maintain himself at that point of view. Ideas are treated as mental facts or occurrences, to be analysed into their elements and referred to their causes. In the Fourth Book, on the contrary, ideas are treated as they occur in propositions or judgements, that is to say, as vehicles of © ‘meaning’, as giving us information, true or false, about reality. The standpoint of the Fourth Book is therefore epistemological. To employ a familiar distinction, Book II deals with the question of origin, Book IV with the question of validity. The latter question was the one whee Lackesat set out to solve; it is the properly philosophical question. But Book IV has been overshadowed in the historical sequel by the reputation of

Book II with its famous thesi thesis of Experience as the sounge of

~all our knowledge, And in view of the acuteness and sagacity of Locke’s introspective analysis this reputation is not undeserved ; even to-day Book II remains the most attractive and stimulating section of the Essay. Book I (‘ Of Innate Notions’)

and Book III (‘Of Words ’) may be regarded respectively as an

Introduction and an Appendix to Book II. ‘ The established opinion among some men that there are in the understanding certain innate principles, some primary notions . . . which the soul brings into the world with it ’,2 must first be demolished before he proceeds to show, by positive appeal to facts and the actual analysis of our ideas, that the whole fabric of our knowledge may be_sufficiently “explained _from_ experience ‘alone. And when his analysis of our main ideas is completed, “the close connexion between ideas and words induces him to interpolate his Third Book on the various imperfections of iT, 33, 19. oe

Plan of the Essay xvii language as an instrument of exact thinking, along with some suggestions for remedying these defects. This Book, although it contains some of Locke’s characteristic doctrines, is in the main a practical treatise on the improvement of the understanding, recalling and perhaps suggested by similar chapters in the Port Royal Logic, the Cartesian manual on The Art of Thinking, published in 1662, which circulated widely during the remainder of the seventeenth century.

There are two main issues prominent in the Essay, in regard to which it is important to define Locke’s exact position. In their ultimate consequences and in the various forms they assume, the two issues may have significant relations to one

another, but in an initial statement at least they can be clearly enough distinguished. The first is the controversy between Empiricism and Rationalism (or, in its modern form, Transcendentalism) as regards the origin or source of our knowledge, or at least of its constitutive concepts ; the second is that between Realism and Idealism or Mentalism, concerning the immediate object of perception or the nature of our knowledge of the external world. In both cases Locke’s individual position has been seriously misrepresented in consequence of the historical perspective in which he is regarded. Hisstatements have been read in the light of later developments. And as he almost _ | boasts that he is ‘not nice about phrases’, it is not always easy to determine what a particular doctrine precisely meant for Locke himself. That isa problem of interpretation which can only be solved by a careful comparison of his different utterances, a consideration of the setting in which the doctrines in question occur, and an appreciation of the counter-doctrines in opposition to which they are propounded. This is particularly the case with the Empiricism usually attributed to him. By the famous opening sections of the Second Book Locke has written himself down as the founder of the English Philosophy of Experience. ‘ Whence has [the mind] all the 1103 b

XViii © Introduction

‘ materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience : in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself.’ In virtue of this statement and many others like it, Locke stands irrevocably in the historic succession that leads through Berkeley to Hume. His doctrine was also developed by Condillac in France into a pure Sensationalism. Empiricism, when it is pure and consistent, reduces itself, in fact, necessarily to Sensationalism ; and Association, as we find it in Hume or in James Mill, becomes the sole cohesive force by which it is sought to explain our apparent knowledge of a world of reality. But on the strength

~ of this historic affiliation it has been too common for critics and historians to visit upon Locke the sins of his latest descendants and to read into his phrases about ‘ experience ’” a meaning intelligible only in the light of the sharper distinctions due to the subsequent development. Thus Cousin, in his course of lectures on Locke, criticizes him exclusively as the progenitor of the ‘ Ecole sensualiste ’, and Sir William Hamilton regards ‘ Locke and Gassendi as exactly upon a par’, and declares that ‘ Condillac must be viewed as having simplified the doctrine of his master, without doing the smallest violence to its spirit ’.1_ So again, T. H. Green, in his massive Introduction to Hume (published in 1874), although he devotes no fewer than 130 pages to the discussion of Locke’s philosophy, would certainly have been accused by its author of ‘ sticking in the incidents’ and ignoring the main design. Viewing Locke’s theory simply as the first step on the road to the sensationalistic scepticism of Hume, Green seizes upon the passages which admit, in the light of the sequel, of being interpreted in terms of pure sensationalism. He isolates certain ideas which he thinks he finds in Locke—often, it must be confessed, by putting a forced sense on Locke’s expressions—and, after developing them mercilessly into their consequences, proceeds to demonstrate their inadequacy in the