* may be best learned by the account he gives of the difference between them and our ideas of secondary_qualities, in the paragraph immediately following. Flame is denominated hot and light; snow, white and cold; and manna, white and sweet; from the ideas they produce in us: which qualities are commonly thought to be the same in those bodies that those ideas are in us, the one the perfect resemblance of the other, as they are in a mirror; and it would by most men be judged very extravagant, if one should say otherwise." "I pretend not," says the same author in a subsequent chapter, "to teach, but to inquire; and, therefore, cannot 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 unlike a closet, wholly shut from light, with only some little openings left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without; would the pictures coming into 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." '+ I have been induced to multiply these quotations, as some writers have alleged, that an undue advantage has been taken of the unguarded use which Locke has made in them of the word resemblance; which, it has been asserted, he could not possibly mean to be understood in its literal sense. On this point I must leave my readers to judge from his own language; remarking only, that if this language be considered as at all metaphorical or figurative, the most important inferences, drawn both by himself and his successors, from his celebrated theory concerning the origin of our ideas, amount to nothing better than a play upon words. For my own part, I can see no good reason for sup *For light read luminous. Locke, Book ii. Chap. xi. § 17. See Priestley's Examination of Reid, &c. p. 28. et seq. posing that Locke did not believe that our ideas of primary qualities are really resemblances or copies of these qualities, when we know for certain that, till our own times, this has been the universal doctrine of the schools, from Aristotle downwards. Even Leibnitz himself, while he rejected the supposition of these ideas coming into the mind from without, expresses no doubt of their resemblance to the archetypes which they enable us to think of. The soul he considered as a living mirror of the whole universe; possessing within itself confused or imperfect ideas of all the modifications of things external, whether present, past, or to come: that is to say, he retained that part of the scholastic doctrine which is the most palpably absurd and unintelligible; the supposition, that we can think of nothing, unless either the original or the copy be actually in the mind, and the immediate subject of consciousness. The truth is, that all these philosophers have been misled by a vain anxiety to explain the incomprehensible causes of the phenomena of which we are conscious, in the simple acts of thinking, perceiving, and knowing; and they seem all to have imagined that they had advanced a certain length in solving these problems, when they conjectured, that in every act of thought there exists some image or idea in the mind, distinct from the mind itself; by the intermediation of which its intercourse is carried on with things remote or absent. The chief difference among their systems has turned on this, that whereas many have supposed the mind to have been originally provided with a certain portion of its destined furniture, independently of any intercourse with the material world; the prevailing opinion, since Locke's time has been, that all our simple ideas, excepting those which the power of reflection collects from the phenomena of thought, are images or representations of certain external archetypes with which our different organs of sense are conversant; and that, out of these materials, thus treasured up in the repository of the understanding, all the possible objects of human knowledge are manufactured. "What inconsistency!" might Voltaire well exclaim," We know not how the earth produces a blade of grass; or how the bones grow in the womb of her who is with child; and yet we would persuade ourselves that we understand the nature and generation of our ideas." * It is however a matter of comparatively little consequence to ascertain, what were the notions which Locke himself annexed to his words, if it shall appear clearly, that the interpretation which I have put upon them coincides exactly with the meaning annexed to them by the most distinguished of his successors. How far this is the case, my readers will be enabled to judge by the remarks which I am to state in the next chapter.† * "Selon Leibnitz, l'âme est une concentration, un miroir vivant de tont l'univers, qui a en soi toutes les idées confuses de toutes les modifications de ce monde présentes, passées, et futures," &c. &c. "Chose étrange, nous ne savons pas comment la terre produit un brin d'herbe, comment une femme fait un enfant, et on croit savoir, comment nous faisons des idées." (See the chapter in Voltaire's account of Newton's Discoveries, entitled De l'Ame et des Idées.) CHAPTER THIRD. INFLUENCE OF Locke's ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF OUR KNOWLEDGE ON THE SPECULATIONS OF VARIOUS EMINENT WRITERS SINCE HIS TIME, MORE PARTICULARLY ON THOSE OF BERKELEY And of hume. "WE are percipient of nothing," says Bishop Berkeley, "but of our own perceptions and ideas.""It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses,* or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind,† or lastly, ideas formed by help of memory and imagination, either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways."‡ "Light and colors," he elsewhere observes, "heat and cold, extension and figure; in a word, the things we see and feel, what are they, but so many sensations, notions, ideas, or impressions on the senses; and is it possible to separate, even in thought, any of these from perception? For my own part, I might as easily divide a thing from itself." S No form of words could show more plainly, that, according to Berkeley's construction of Locke's language, his account of the origin of our ideas was conceived to involve, as an obvious corollary, "that all the immediate objects of human knowledge exist in the mind itself, and fall under the direct cognizance of consciousness, as much as our sensations of heat and cold, or of pleasure and pain. Mr. Hume's great principle with respect to the origin of our ideas, which (as I before hinted) is only that of Locke under a new form, asserts the same doctrine, with greater conciseness, but in a manner still less liable to misinterpretation. ++ "All our ideas are nothing but copies of our impres *Ideas of Sensation. † Ideas of Reflection. Principles of Human Knowledge, Sect. 1. Principles of Human Knowledge, Sect. 5. sions; or, in other words, it is impossible for us to think of any thing which we have not antecedently felt,* either by our external or our internal senses." Mr. Hume tells us elsewhere, that "nothing can be present to the mind but an image or perception. The senses are only the inlets through which these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object.” ‡ That both of these very acute writers, too, understood, in its literal sense, the word resemblance, as employed by Locke, to express the conformity between our ideas of primary qualities and their supposed archetypes, is demonstrated by the stress which they have laid on this very word, in their celebrated argument against the existence of the material world. This argument (in which Hume entirely acquiesces) is thus stated by Berkeley: "As for our senses, by them we have the knowledge only of our sensations, ideas, or those things that are immediately perceived by sense, call them what you will; but they do not inform us, that things exist without a mind, or unperceived;-like to those which are perceived." § On the contrary," as there can be no notion or thought but in a thinking being, so there can be no sensation but in a sentient being; it is the act or feeling of a sentient being; its very essence consists in being felt. Nothing can resemble a sensation, but a similar sensation in the same, or in some other mind. To think that any quality in a thing inanimate can resemble a sensation is absurd, and a contradiction in terms." It was already observed, how inconsistent this account of the origin of our ideas, as given by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, is, with some conclusions to which we were led, in a former part of this discussion ;—our conclusions, for example, with respect to the origin of our notions concerning our own existence, and our personal identity. Neither of these notions are derived im The word feeling, whether used here literally or figuratively, can, it is evident, be applied only to what is the immediate subject of consciousness. † Of the Idea of Necessary Connexion, Part I. Essay on the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy. |