1. Life
John Locke was born at Wrington, a village in Somerset, on August 29,
1632. He was the son of a country solicitor and small landowner who,
when the civil war broke out, served as a captain of horse in the
parliamentary army. "I no sooner perceived myself in the world than I
found myself in a storm," he wrote long afterwards, during the lull in
the storm which followed the king's return. But political unrest does
not seem to have seriously disturbed the course of his education. He
entered Westminster school in 1646, and passed to Christ Church,
Oxford, as a junior student, in 1652; and he had a home there (though
absent from it for long periods) for more than thirty years — till
deprived of his studentship by royal mandate in 1684. The official
studies of the university were uncongenial to him; he would have
preferred to have learned philosophy from Descartes instead of from
Aristotle; but evidently he satisfied the authorities, for he was
elected to a senior studentship in 1659, and, in the three or four
years following, he took part in the tutorial work of the college. At
one time he seems to have thought of the clerical profession as a
possible career; but he declined an offer of preferment in 1666, and
in the same year obtained a dispensation which enabled him to hold his
studentship without taking orders. About the same time we hear of his
interest in experimental science, and he was elected a fellow of the
Royal Society in 1668. Little is known of his early medical studies.
He cannot have followed the regular course, for he was unable to
obtain the degree of doctor of medicine. It was not till 1674 that he
graduated as bachelor of medicine. In the following January his
position in Christ Church was regularized by his appointment to one of
the two medical studentships of the college.
His knowledge of medicine and occasional practice of the art led, in
1666, to an acquaintance with Lord Ashley (afterwards, from 1672, Earl
of Shaftesbury). The acquaintance, begun accidentally, had an
immediate effect on Locke's career. Without serving his connection
with Oxford, he became a member of Shaftesbury's household, and seems
soon to have been looked upon as indispensable in all matters domestic
and political. He saved the statesman's life by a skillful operation,
arranged a suitable marriage for his heir, attended the lady in her
confinement, and directed the nursing and education of her son —
afterwards famous as the author of Characteristics. He assisted
Shaftesbury also in public business, commercial and political, and
followed him into the government service. When Shaftesbury was made
lord chancellor in 1672, Locke became his secretary for presentations
to benefices, and, in the following year, was made secretary to the
board of trade. In 1675 his official life came to an end for the time
with the fall of his chief.
Locke's health, always delicate, suffered from the London climate.
When released from the cares of office, he left England in search of
health. Ten years earlier he had his first experience of foreign
travel and of public employment, as secretary to Sir Walter Vane,
ambassador to the Elector of Brandenburg during the first Dutch war.
On his return to England, early in 1666, he declined an offer of
further service in Spain, and settled again in Oxford, but was soon
induced by Shaftesbury to spend a great part of his time in London. On
his release from office in 1675 he sought milder air in the south of
France, made leisurely journeys, and settled down for many months at
Montpellier. The journal which he kept at this period is full of
minute descriptions of places and customs and institutions. It
contains also a record of many of the reflections that afterwards took
shape in the Essay concerning Human Understanding. he returned to
England in 1679, when his patron had again a short spell of office. He
does not seem to have been concerned in Shaftesbury's later schemes;
but suspicion naturally fell upon him, and he found it prudent to take
refuge in Holland. This he did in August 1683, less than a year after
the flight and death of Shaftesbury. Even in Holland for some time he
was not safe from danger of arrest at the instance of the English
government; he moved from town to town, lived under an assumed name,
and visited his friends by stealth. His residence in Holland brought
political occupations with it, among the men who were preparing the
English revolution. it had at least equal value in the leisure which
it gave him for literary work and in the friendships which it offered.
In particular, he formed a close intimacy with Philip van Limbroch,
the leader of the Remonstrant clergy, and the scholar and liberal
theologian to whom Epistola de Tolerantia was dedicated. This letter
was completed in 1685, though not published at the time; and, before
he left for England, in February 1689, the Essay concerning Human
Understanding seems to have attained its final form, and an abstract
of it was published in Leclerc'sBibliotheque universelle in 1688.
The new government recognized his services to the cause of freedom by
the offer of the post of ambassador either at Berlin or at Vienna. But
Locke was no place hunter; he was solicitous also on account of his
health; his earlier experience of Germany led him to fear the "cold
air" and "warm drinking"; and the high office was declined. But he
served less important offices at home. He was made commissioner of
appeals in May 1689, and, from 1696 to 1700, he was a commissioner of
trade and plantations at a salary of L1000 a year. Although official
duties called him to town for protracted periods, he was able to fix
his residence in the country. In 1691 he was persuaded to make his
permanent home at Oates in Essex, in the house of Francis and Lady
Masham. Lady Masham was a daughter of Cudworth, the Cambridge
Platonist; Lock had manifested a growing sympathy with his type of
liberal theology; intellectual affinity increased his friendship with
the family at Oates; and he continued to live with them till his death
on October 28, 1704.
2. Writings
With the exception of the abstract of the Essay and other less
important contributions to the Bibliotheque universelle, Locke had not
published anything before his return to England in 1689; and by this
time he was in his fifty-seventh year. But many years of reflection
and preparation made him ready at that time to publish books in rapid
succession. In March 1689 his Epistola de Tolerantia was published in
Holland; an English translation of the same, by William Popple,
appeared later in the same year, and in a corrected edition in 1690.
The controversy which followed this work led, on Locke's part, to the
publication of a Second Letter (1690), and then a Third Letter (1692).
In February 1690 the book entitled Two Treatises of Government was
published, and in March of the same year appeared the long expected
Essay concerning Human Understanding, on which he had been at work
intermittently since 1671. it met with immediate success, and led to a
voluminous literature of attack and reply; young fellows of colleges
tried to introduce it at the universities, and heads of houses sat in
conclave to devise means for its suppression. To one of his critics
Locke replied at length. This was Edward Stillingfleet, bishop of
Worcester, who, in his Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity
(1696), had attacked the new philosophy. It was the theological
consequences which were drawn from the doctrines of theEssay, not so
much by Locke himself as by Toland, in his Christianity not
Mysterious, that the bishop had chiefly in view; in philosophy for its
own sake he does not seem to have been interested. But his criticism
drew attention to one of the least satisfactory (if also one of the
most suggestive) doctrines of the Essay — its explanation of the idea
of substance; and discredit was thrown on the "new way of ideas" in
general. In January 1697 Locke replied in A Letter to the Bishop of
Worcester. Stillingfleet answered this in May; and Locke was ready
with a second letter in August. Stillingfleet replied in 1698, and
Locke's lengthy third letter appeared in 1699. The bishop's death,
later in the same year, put an end to the controversy. The second
edition of the Essay was published in 1694, the third in 1695, and the
fourth in 1700. The second and fourth editions contained important
additions. An abridgement of it appeared in 1696, by John Wynne,
fellow of Jesus College, Oxford; it was translated into Latin and into
French soon after the appearance of the fourth edition. The later
editions contain many modifications due to the author's correspondence
with William Molyneux, of Trinity College, Dublin, a devoted disciple,
for whom Locke had a worm friendship. Other correspondents and
visitors to Oates during these years were Isaac Newton and Anthony
Collins, a young squire of the neighborhood, who afterwards made his
mark in the intellectual controversies of the time.
Other interests also occupied Locke during the years following the
publication of his great work. The financial difficulties of the new
government led in 1691 to his publication of Some Considerations of
the Consequences of Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of
Money, and of Further Considerations on the latter question, four
years later. In 1693 he published Some Thoughts concerning Education,
a work founded on letters written to a friend, and in 1695 appeared
The Reasonableness of Christianity, and later A Vindication of the
same against certain objections; and this was followed by a second
vindication two years afterwards. Locke's religious interest had
always been strongly marked, and, in he later years of his life, much
of his tie was given to theology. Among the writings of his which were
published after his death are commentaries on the Pauline epistles,
and a Discourse on Miracles, as well as a fragment of aFourth Letter
for Toleration. The posthumously published writings include further An
Examination of Father Malebranche's Opinion of Seeing all things in
God, Remarks on Some of Mr Norris's Books, and — most important of all
— the small treatise on The Conduct of the Understanding which had
been originally designed as a chapter of the Essay.
a. Plan of the Essay
Locke's greatest philosophical contribution is his Essay, and we have
his own account of the origin of that work. In the winter of 1670,
five or six friends were conversing in his room, probably in London.
The topic was the "principles of morality and revealed religion," but
difficulties arose and no progress was made. Then, he goes on to say,
"it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course, and that before
we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to
examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings
were, or were not, fitted to deal with." At the request of his
friends, Locke agreed to set down his thoughts on this question at
their next meeting, and he expected that a single sheet of paper would
suffice for the purpose. Little did he realize the magnitude of the
issue which he raised, and that it would occupy his leisure for nearly
twenty years.
Locke's interest centers on traditional philosophical topics: the
nature of the self, the world, God, and the grounds of our knowledge
of them. We reach these questions only in the fourth and last book of
the Essay. The first three books are preliminary, though they have,
and Locke saw that they had, an importance of their own. His
introductory sentence makes this plain:
Since it is the understanding that sets man above the rest of
sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he
has over them; it is certainly a subject, even for its nobleness,
worth our labour to inquire into. The understanding, like the eye,
while it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice
of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and
make it its own object. But whatever be the difficulties that lie in
the way of this inquiry; whatever it be that keeps us so much in the
dark to ourselves; sure I am that all the light we can let in upon our
minds, all the acquaintance we can make with our own understandings,
will not only be very pleasant, but bring us great advantage, in
directing our thoughts in the search of other things.
Locke will not "meddle with the physical consideration of the mind";
he has no theory about its essence or its relation to the body; at the
same time, he has no doubt that, if due pains be taken, the
understanding can be studied like anything else: we can observe its
object and the ways in which it operates upon them. The Essay is
divided into four books; the first is a polemic against the doctrine
of innate principles and ideas. The second deals with ideas, the third
with words, and the fourth with knowledge.
i. Ideas in General
All the objects of the understanding are described as ideas, and ideas
are spoken of as being in the mind (Intro. 2; Bk. 2:1:5; Bk. 2:8:8).
Locke's first problem, therefore, is to trace the origin and history
of ideas, and the ways in which the understanding operates upon them,
in order that he may be able to see what knowledge is and how far it
reaches. This wide use of the term "idea" is inherited from Descartes.
The contemporary term which corresponds with it most nearly is
"presentation". But presentation is, strictly, only one variety of
Locke's idea, which includes also representation and image,
perception, and concept or notion. His usage of the term thus differs
so widely from the old Platonic meaning that the danger of confusion
between them is not great. It suited the author's purpose also from
being a familiar word in ordinary discourse as well as in the language
of philosophers. Herein, however, lays danger from which he did not
escape. In common usage "idea" carries with it a suggestion of
contrast with reality; this is not supposed in Locke's use.
In the first book of the Essay, on the subject of innate ideas, Locke
points to the variety of human experience, and to the difficulty of
forming general and abstract ideas, and he ridicules the view that any
such ideas can be antecedent to experience. All the parts of our
knowledge, he insists, have the same rank and the same history
regarding their origin in experience. It is in its most extreme form
that the doctrine of innate ideas is attacked; but he cannot seen any
middle ground between that extreme doctrine and his own view that all
ideas have their origin in experience. Indeed, it is difficult to
determine against whom the argument is directed. But when we note
Locke's polemical interest in the question, and remember the
significance for him of the empirical origin of all the elements of
human knowledge, we can be content to see in it an earnest protest
against the principle of authority, a vindication of our right to
examine critically all the so-called "principles" of human knowledge.
Locke wishes to avoid any presupposition about matter, or mind, or
their relation. It is not difficult to see that the notions which he
has expelled often re-enter. But the peculiar value of his approach
consists in his attempt to keep clear of them. He begins neither with
ind nor matter, but with ideas. Their existence needs no proof:
"everyone is conscious of them in himself, and men's words and actions
will satisfy him that they are in others." His first inquiry is "how
they come into the mind"; has next business is to show that they
constitute the whole material of our knowledge. In his answer to the
former question we discover the influence of traditional philosophy,
or rather of ordinary common sense views of existence, upon his views.
All our ideas, he says, come from experience. The mind has no innate
ideas, but it has innate faculties: it perceives, remembers, and
combines the ideas that come to it from without; it also desires,
deliberates, and wills; and these mental activities are themselves the
source of a new class of ideas. Experience is therefore twofold. Our
observation may be employed either about external sensible objects, or
about the internal operations of our minds. The former is the source
of most of the ideas which we have, and, as it depends "wholly upon
our senses," is called "sensation." The latter is a source of ideas
which "every man has wholly in himself," and it might be called
"internal sense"; to it he gives the name "reflection."
ii. Simple and Complex Ideas
There are no innate ideas "stamped upon the mind" from birth; and yet
impressions of sense are not the only source of knowledge: "The mind
furnishes the understanding with ideas" (Bk. 2:1:5). No distinction is
implied here between "mind" and "understanding", so that the sentence
might run, "the mind furnishes itself with ideas." As to what these
ideas are, we are not left in doubt: they are "ideas of its own
operations." When the mind acts, it has an idea of its action, that
is, it is self-conscious, and, as such, is assumed to be an original
source of our knowledge. Hume and Condilac both refused to admit
reflection as an original source of ideas, and both, accordingly,
found that they had to face the problem of tracing the growth of
self-consciousness out of a succession of sensations. According to
Locke, reflection is an original, rather than an independent, source
of ideas. Without sensation mind would have nothing to operate upon,
and therefore could have no ideas of its operations. It is "when he
first has any sensation" that "a man begins to have any ideas" (Bk.
2:1:23). The operations of the mind are not themselves produced by
sensation, but sensation is required to give the mind material for
working on.
The ideas which sensation gives "enter by the senses simple and
unmixed" (Bk. 2:2:1); they stand in need of the activity of mind to
bind them into the complex unities required for knowledge. The complex
ideas of substance, modes, and relations are all the product of the
combining and abstracting activity of mind operating upon simple
ideas, which have been given, without any connection, by sensation or
reflection. Locke's account of knowledge thus has two sides. On the
one side, all the material of knowledge is traced to the simple idea.
On the other side, the processes which transform this crude material
into knowledge are activities of mind which themselves cannot be
reduced to ideas. Locke's metaphors of the tabula rasa, "white paper"
(Bk. 2:2:1), and "dark room" misled his critics and suggested to some
of his followers a theory very different from his own. The metaphors
only illustrate what he had in hand at the moment. Without experience,
no characters are written on the "tablets" of the mind; except through
the "windows" of sensation and reflection, no light enters the
understanding. No ideas are innate; and there is no source of new
simple ideas other than those two. But knowledge involves relations,
and relations are the work of the mind; it requires complex ideas, and
complex ideas are mental formations. Simple ideas do not, of
themselves, enter into relation and form complex ideas. Locke does
not, like Hobbes before him and Hume and Condillac after him, look to
some unexplained natural attraction of idea for idea as bringing about
these formations. Indeed, his treatment of "the association of ideas"
is an afterthought, and did not appear in the earlier editions of the
Essay.
Starting from the simple ideas which we get from sensation, or from
observing mental operations as they take place, Locke has two things
to explain: the universal element, that is, the general conceptions
with which knowledge is concerned or which it implies; and the
reference to reality which it claims. With the former problem Locke
deals at great length; and the general method of his exposition is
clear enough. Complex ideas arise from simple ideas by the processes
of combination and abstraction carried out by the mind. It would be
unfair to expect completeness from his enterprise: but it cannot be
denied that his intricate and subtle discussions left many problems
unsolved. Indeed, this is one of his great merits. He raised questions
in such a way as to provoke further enquiry. Principles such as the
causal relation, apart from which knowledge of nature would be
impossible, are quietly taken for granted, often without any enquiry
into the grounds for assuming them. Further, the difficulty of
accounting for universals is unduly simplified by describing certain
products as simple ideas, although thought has obviously been at work
upon them.
In this connection an important inconsistency becomes apparent in his
account of the primary data of experience. It is, indeed, impossible
even to name the mere particular — the "this, here, and now" of sense
— without giving it a flavor of generality. But, at the outset, Locke
tries to get as near it as possible. Simple ideas (of sensation) are
exemplified by yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, and so forth
(Bk. 2:1:3). But, towards the end of the second book (Bk. 2:21:75), a
very different list is given: extension, solidity, and mobility (from
sensation); perceptivity and motivity (from reflection); and
existence, duration, and number (from both sensation and reflection).
These are said to be "our original ideas," and the rest to be
"derived" form or to "depend" on them. It is difficult to compare the
two lists, instance by instance; but one example may be taken.
According to the first list, hard is a simple idea; according to the
second list, solidity is the original (and therefore simple) idea, and
hard will be derived from it and depend on it. It is clear that, in
making the former list, Lock was trying to get back to the primary
data of our individual experience; whereas, in the second list, he is
rather thinking of the objective reality on which our experience
depends and which, he assumes, it reveals. But he does not observe the
difference. He seems to forget his view that the original of all
knowledge is to be found in the particular, in something "simple and
unmixed." Thus he says without hesitation, "If any one asks me, what
this solidity is, I send him to the senses to inform him. Let him put
a flint of a football between his hands, and then endeavour to join
them, and he will know" (Bk. 2:4:4). But he will not know without
going a long way beyond the simple idea. The simple ideas in the case
are certain muscular and tactual sensations; and he interprets these
by other means (including knowledge of external objects and his own
organism) when he says that the flint or the football is solid.
His doctrine of modes is also affected by this same inattention of the
fact that a simple idea must be really simple. Thus he holds that
"space and extension" is a simple idea given both by sight and by
touch (Bk. 2:4). One would expect, therefore, that the original and
simple idea of space would be the particular patch seen at any moment
or the particular "feel" of the exploring limb. But we are told that
"each idea of any different distance, or space, is a simple mode" or
the idea of space (Bk. 2:8:4). Here again the simple idea is
generalized. He professes to begin with the mere particulars of
external and internal sense, and to show how knowledge — which is
necessarily general — is evolved from them. But, in doing so, he
assumes a general or universal element as already given in the simple
idea.
Having gone so far, he might almost have been expected to take a
further step and treat the perceptions of particular things as modes
of the simple idea substance. But this he does not do. Substance is an
idea regarding which he was in earnest with his own fundamental theory
(however, he was perplexed about the origin of the idea of "substance
in general" as well as of the ideas of "particular sorts of
substances; Bk. 2:23:2-3). He admits that substance is a complex idea;
that is to say, it is formed by the mind's action out of simple ideas.
Now, this idea of substance marks the difference between having
sensations and perceiving things. Its importance, therefore, is clear;
but there is no clearness in explaining it. We are told that there is
a "supposed or confused idea of substance" to which are joined, for
example, "the simple idea of a dull whitish colour, with certain
degrees of weight, hardness, ductility and fusibility," and, as a
result, "we have the idea of lead."
A difficulty might have been avoided if substance could have been
interpreted as simply the combination by the understanding of white,
hard, etc., or some similar cluster of ideas of sensation. But it was
not Locke's way thus to ignore facts. He sees that something more is
needed than these ideas of sensation. They are only joined to "the
supposed or confused idea of substance," which is there and "always
the first and chief" (Bk. 2:12:6). He holds to it that the idea is a
complex idea and so mad by the mind; but he is entirely at a loss to
account for the materials out of which it is made. We cannot imagine
how simple ideas can subsist by themselves, and so "we accustom
ourselves to suppose some substratum wherein they do subsist," and
this we call substance. In one place, he even vacillates between the
assertions that we have no clear idea of substance and that we have no
idea of it at all " (Bk. 1:3:19). It is "a supposition of he knows not
what." This uncertainty, as will appear presently, throws its shadow
over our whole knowledge of nature.
iii. Primary and Secondary Qualities
The "new way of ideas" is thus hard put to it in accounting for the
universal element in knowledge; it has even greater difficulties to
face in defending the reality of knowledge. And, in the latter case,
the author does not see the difficulties so clearly. His view is that
the simple idea is the test and standard of reality. Whatever the mind
contributes to our ideas removes them further from the reality of
things; in becoming general, knowledge loses touch with things. But
not all simple ideas carry with them the same significance for
reality. Colours, smells, tastes, sounds, and the like are simple
ideas, yet nothing resembles them in the bodies themselves; but, owing
to a certain bulk, figure, and motion of their insensible parts,
bodies have "a power to produce those sensations in us." These,
therefore, as called "secondary qualities of bodies." On the other
hand, "solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number" are
also held by Locke to be simple ideas; and these are resemblances of
qualities in body; "their patterns do really exist in the bodies
themselves"; accordingly, they are "primary qualities of bodies." In
this way, by implication if not expressly, Locke severs, instead of
establishing, the connection between simple ideas and reality. The
only ideas which can make good their claim to be regarded as simple
ideas have nothing resembling them in things. Other ideas, no doubt,
are said to resemble bodily qualities (an assertion for which no proof
is given and none is possible); but these ideas have only a doubtful
claim to rank as simple ideas. Locke's prevailing tendency is to
identify reality with the simple idea, but he sometimes comes close to
the opposite view that the reference to reality is the work of
thought.
iv. Knowledge of Mathematics, Ethics, the Self, and God
In the fourth book of his Essay Locke applies the results of the
earlier books to determine the nature and extent of knowledge. As
ideas are the sole immediate objects of the mind, knowledge can be
nothing else than "the perception of the connexion of and agreement,
or disagreement and repugnancy, or any of our ideas." This agreement
or disagreement is said to be of four sorts: identity or diversity;
relation; co-existence or necessary connection; real existence. Each
of these kinds of knowledge raises its own questions; but, broadly
speaking, one distinction may be taken as fundamental. In the same
paragraph in which he restricts knowledge to the agreement or
disagreement of our ideas, he admits one kind of knowledge which goes
beyond the ideas themselves to the significance which they have for
real existence. When the reference does not go beyond the ideas "in
the mind," the problems that arise are of one order; when there is a
further reference to real things, another problem arises.
Locke also distinguishes between two degrees of knowledge: intuition
and demonstration. In the former case, the agreement or disagreement
is immediately perceived; in the latter, it is perceived through the
mediation of a third idea, but each step in the demonstration is
itself an intuition, the agreement or disagreement between the two
ideas compared being immediately perceived. He believes that
mathematics and ethics are demonstrable. When ideas are together in
the mind, we can discover their relation to one another; so long as
they are not taken to represent archetypes outside the mind, there is
no obstacle to certainty of knowledge. "All relation terminates in,
and is ultimately founded on, those simple ideas we have got from
sensation or reflection" (Bk. 2:28:18). but "general and certain
truths, are only founded in the habitudes and relations of abstract
ideas" (Bk. 4:12:7). In this way Locke vindicates the certainty of
mathematics: although instructive, the science is merely idea, and its
propositions do not hold of things outside the mind. He thinks also
that "morality is capable of demonstration as well as mathematics."
But, in spite of the request of his friend Molyneux, he never set out
his ethic doctrine in detail. In Book II he reduced moral good and
evil to pleasure and pain which — as reward and punishment — come to
us from some lawgiver; thus they point to a source outside the mind.
But his ground for maintaining the demonstrative character of morality
is that moral ideas are "mixed modes," and therefore mental products,
so that their "precise real essence … may be perfectly known." He
ventures upon two examples only of this demonstrative morality; and
neither of them is more than verbal or gives any information about
good or evil. Yet the doctrine is significant as showing the influence
upon Locke of another type of demonstrative thought.
Thus, knowledge of mathematics and ethics may be firmly establish,
particularly as these subjects involve relations between ideas, and
thus make no claims about matters of real existence. When it comes to
knowledge of real existence, though, ultimately there are only two
certainties: the existence of ourselves (by intuition) and that of God
(by demonstration).
Concerning the self, Locke agrees with Descartes that the existence of
the self is implied in every state of consciousness. Every element of
our experience, every idea of which we are conscious, is a certificate
of our own existence, as the subject of that experience:
As for our own existence, we perceive it so plainly and so
certainly, that it neither needs nor is capable of any 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 of that. For if I know I feel pain, it is evident I have as
certain perception of my own existence, as of the pain I feel: or if I
know I doubt, I have ascertain perception of the existence of the
thing doubting, as of that thought which I call doubt.
However, Locke fails to point out how the self can be an idea and thus
belong to the material of knowledge. An idea of the self cannot come
from sensation; and the simple ideas of reflection are all of mental
operations, and not of the subject or agent of these operations. On
the other hand, when he had occasion to discuss personal identity, he
followed his new way of idea, and made it depend on memory.
Concerning God's existence, his proof is a cosmological-type argument.
From the certainty of our own existence that of the existence of God
immediately follows. A person knows intuitively that he is "something
that actually exists." Next a person knows with intuitive certainty,
that "bare nothing can no more produce any real being, than it can be
equal to two right angles." it is, therefore, "an evident
demonstration, that from eternity there has been something. And since
all the powers of all beings must be traced to this eternal Being, it
follows that it is the most powerful, as well as the most knowing,
that is, God. Eternal ind alone can produce "thinking, perceiving
beings, such as we find ourselves to be" (Bk. 4:10). Locke here
assumes, without question, the validity of the causal principle even
beyond the range of possible experience.
v. Sensitive Knowledge of the External World
Below the rank of knowledge proper (intuitive and demonstrative),
Locke recognizes a third degree of knowledge, not strictly entitled to
the name. This is our sensitive apprehension of external things, or of
real objects other than ourselves and God:
These two, namely, intuition and demonstration, are the degrees of
our knowledge; whatever comes short of one of these, with what
assurance soever embraced, is but faith or opinion, but not knowledge,
at least in all general truths. There is, indeed, another perception
of the mind, employed about the particular existence of finite beings
without us, which, going beyond bare probability, and yet not reaching
perfectly to either of the foregoing degrees of certainty, passes
under the name of knowledge. There can be nothing more certain than
that the idea we receive from an external object is in our minds: this
is intuitive knowledge. But whether there be anything more than barely
that idea in our minds; whether we can thence certainly infer the
existence of anything without us, which corresponds to that idea, is
that whereof some men think there may be a question made; because men
may have such ideas in their minds, when no such thing exists, no such
object affects their senses. (Bk. 4:14)
Does not the very definition of knowledge, as the perception of the
agreement or disagreement of ideas with one another, preclude the
perception of the agreement of ideas with non-ideal reality?
Locke's argument for the objective validity of sensitive knowledge
consists of several considerations. First, he urges, our ideas of
sensation differ from those of memory and imagination, that is from
mere ideas, in being produced in us without any action of our own, and
therefore "must necessarily be the product of things operating on the
mind, in a natural way, and producing therein those perceptions which
by the Wisdom and Will of our Maker they are ordained and adapted to."
They,
carry with them all he conformity which is intended; or which our
state requires: for they represent to us things under those
appearances which they are fitted to produce in us: whereby we are
enabled to distinguish the sorts of particular substances, to discern
the states they are in, and so to take them for our necessities, and
apply them to our uses. (Bk. 4:4:4)
Secondly, pleasure or pain often accompanies the sensation, and is
absent from the idea as it recurs in memory or imagination; and "this
certainty is as great as our happiness or misery, beyond which we have
no concernment to know or to be" (Bk. 4:2:14). Thirdly, our several
senses assist one another's testimony, and thus enable us to predict
our sensational experience. On these grounds Locke concludes that,
the certainty of things existing in rerum natura when we have the
testimony of our senses for it is not only as great as our frame can
attain to, but as our condition needs. For, our faculties being suited
no to the full extent of being, nor to a perfect, clear, comprehensive
knowledge of things free from all doubt and scruple; but to the
preservation of us, in whom they are; and accommodated to the use of
life: they serve to our purpose well enough, if they will but give us
certain notice of those things, which are convenient or inconvenient
to us. (Bk. 4:2:14)
The certainty which Locke attributes to sensitive knowledge is thus
seen to be practical, rather than theoretical; and it is impossible to
distinguish this degree of knowledge from the belief or opinion which
results from a balance of probabilities rather than from certain
perception.
But even granting that our sensitive apprehensions of external reality
possesses the certainty which is the characteristic of knowledge, as
distinguished from mere opinion, we must observe within how very
narrow limits it is confined:
When our senses do actually convey into our understandings any
idea, we cannot but be satisfied that there doth something at that
time really exist without us, which doth affect our senses, and by
them give notice of itself to our apprehensive faculties, and actually
produce that idea which we then perceive: and we cannot so far
distrust their testimony, as to doubt that such collections of simple
ideas as we have observed by our senses to be united together, do
really exist together. But this knowledge extends as far as the
present testimony of our senses, employed about particular objects
that do then effect them, and no further. (Bk. 4:11:9)
We cannot demonstrate the necessity of the co-existence of those ideas
which constitute the modes or qualities of substances; we cannot
perceive their "necessary connexion or repugnancy." The connection
between the secondary and the primary qualities remains inexplicable.
"And therefore there are very few general propositions to be made
concerning substances, which carry with them undoubted certainty" (Bk.
4:6:76). "Our knowledge in all these inquires reaches very little
further than our experience" (Bk. 4:3:13-14). Beyond the strict
warrant of experience, or the testimony of our senses, we may venture
upon "opinion" or "judgment" as to the co-existence of the qualities
of substances, but we cannot strictly "know". "Possibly inquisitive
and observing men may, by strength of judgment, penetrate further,
and, on probabilities taken from wary observation, and hints well laid
together, often guess right at what experience has not yet discovered
to them. But this is but guessing still; it amounts only to opinion,
and had not that certainty which is requisite to knowledge" (Bk.
4:6:13)
Locke finds himself compelled, therefore, to conclude that the
so-called "science" of which Bacon had talked so proudly, and of whose
achievements he had himself spoken so respectfully in the opening
pages of the Essay, is not, in the strict sense, science at all; that,
in his own words, there can be "no science of bodies." It is vain to
search for the "forms" of the various material substances, or to seek
to verify "the corpuscularian hypothesis" as to the connection of the
primary and the secondary qualities of things. "I am apt to doubt
that, how far soever human industry may advance useful and
experimental philosophy in physical things, scientifical will still be
out of our reach…. Certainty and demonstration are things we must not,
in these matters, pretend to" (Bk. 4:3:26).
If we cannot attain to a science of bodies, still less can we expect
"scientifical" understanding of spirits. Spiritual substance is, as we
have seen, as unknown as material substance; and Locke finds
additional reasons for limiting our knowledge in this sphere.
If we are at a loss in respect of the powers and operations of
bodies, I think it is easy to conclude we are much more in the dark in
reference to spirits; whereof we naturally 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 come within our observation. But how
inconsiderable rank the spirits that inhabit our bodies hold amongst
those various and possibly innumerable kinds of nobler beings; and how
far short they come of the endowments and perfections of cherubim and
seraphim, and infinite sorts of spirits above us, is what by a
transient hint in another place I have offered to my reader's
consideration.
vi. Judgment
The closing chapters of Book IV of the Essay are devoted to a
consideration of that kind of apprehension of reality which Locke
calls "judgment," as distinguished from "knowledge." "The faculty
which God has given man to supply the want of clear and certain
knowledge, in cases where that cannot be hand, is judgment: whereby
the mind takes its ideas to agree or disagree; or, which is the same,
any proposition to be true or false, without perceiving a
demonstrative evidence in the proofs" (Bk 4:19:1-2). So-called
"scientific" truths being generally of this kind, one would have
expected Locke to give here some account of the procedure of inductive
science, some directions for the careful and methodical study of the
facts, and cautions against the temptations to hasty and unwarranted
generalization, such as we find in Bacon's Novum Organum. But instead
of this, he contents himself with general observations on the degrees
of assent, on reason (and syllogism), on faith and reason, on
"enthusiasm," and on wrong assent, or error. The treatment of, that is
to say, is limited to general considerations regarding the function of
faith and the relations of faith and reason as guides of the human
mind.
What is especially significant here is Locke's refusal to oppose faith
and reason in the fashion of Bacon and Hobbes, and his refusal to
accept any authority which cannot vindicate itself through reason.
Even in his insistence upon the necessity of supplementing our
knowledge by faith, Locke emphasized the use of reason:
Faith is nothing but a firm assent of the mind: which, if it be
regulated, as is our duty, cannot be afforded to anything but upon
good reason; and so cannot be opposite to it. He that believes without
having any reason for believing, may be in love with his own fancies;
but neither seeks truth as he ought, nor pays the obedience due to his
maker…. (Bk. 4:27:24)
Locke is at one with the rationalist theologians of his century in
their antagonism to an "enthusiasm" which would substitute for the
insight of reason and of rational faith, the so called "revelation" of
private experience. Against such a view, he insists upon the necessity
of judging revelation by reason: "God when he makes the prophet does
not unmake the man. He leaves all his faculties in the natural state,
to enable him to judge of his inspirations, whether they be of divine
original or no…. Reason must be our last judge and guide in
everything" (Bk. 4:19:14).
Yet reason clearly limits the field of its own insight; it is only
reasonable to believe where we cannot know and yet must act. However,
as morality and religion cannot be compassed by reason, such knowledge
must be supplemented by faith if we are to fulfill our divine destiny.
This is the point of view, not only of the closing chapters of the
Essay, but of his Resonableness of Christianity (1695). The aim of
this treatise is to recall men from the contentions of the theological
schools to the simplicity of the gospel as the rule of human life.:
The writers and wranglers in religion fill it with niceties, and
dress it up with notions, which they make necessary and fundamental
parts of it; as if there were no way into the church, but through the
academy or lyceum. The greatest part of mankind have not leisure for
learning and logic, and superfine distinctions of the schools.
What people need is not intellectual insight or theological dogma, but
practical guidance. Locke seems less confident than he was in the
Essay of the possibility of a rational science of morals. "It should
seem, by the little that has hitherto been done in it, that it is too
hard a task for unassisted reason to establish morality, in all its
parts, upon its true foundation, with a clear and convincing light….
It is plain, in fact, that human reason unassisted failed men in its
great and proper business of morality."
b. Two Treatises of Government
In Two Treatises of Government he has two purposes in view: to refute
the doctrine of the divine and absolute right of the Monarch, as it
had been put forward by Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, and to establish a
theory which would reconcile the liberty of the citizen with political
order. The criticism of Filmer in the first Treatise is complete. His
theory of the absolute sovereignty of Adam, and so of kings as Adam's
heirs, has lost all interest; and Locke's argument has been only too
effective: his exhaustive reply to so absurd a thesis becomes itself
wearisome. Although there is little direct reference to Hobbes, Locke
seems to have had Hobbes in mind when he argued that the doctrine of
absolute monarchy leaves sovereign and subjects in the state of nature
towards one another. The constructive doctrines which are elaborated
in the second treatise became the basis of social and political
philosophy for generations. Labor is the origin and justification of
property; contract or consent is the ground of government and fixes
its limits. Behind both doctrines lies the idea of the independence of
the individual person. The state of nature knows no government; but in
it, as in political society, men are subject to the moral law, which
is the law of God. Men are born free and equal in rights. Whatever a
man "mixes his labour with" is his to use. Or, at least, this was so
in the primitive condition of human life in which there was enough for
all and "the whole earth was America." Locke sees that, when men have
multiplied and land has become scarce, rules are needed beyond those
which the moral law or law of nature supplies. But the origin of
government is traced not to this economic necessity, but to another
cause. The moral law is always valid, but it is not always kept. In
the state of nature all men equally have the right to punish
transgressors: civil society originates when, for the better
administration of the law, men agree to delegate this function to
certain officers. Thus government is instituted by a "social
contract"; its powers are limited, and they involve reciprocal
obligations; moreover, they can be modified or rescinded by the
authority which conferred them. Locke's theory is thus no more
historical than Hobbes's. It is a rendering of the facts of
constitutional government in terms of thought, and it served its
purpose as a justification of the Revolution settlement in accordance
with the ideas of the time.
c. Economic Writings
Locke's writings on economic subjects do not rank in importance with
his treatises on government. They deal with particular questions
raised by the necessities of the political situation. No attempt had
yet been made to isolate the fact of wealth and make it the subject of
a special science. The direction of industry and commerce was held to
be part of the statesman's duty; but, in the seventeenth century, it
began to be carried out with less thoroughness than before; and at the
same time new problems were opened up by the growth of the national
life. The American colonies, the enterprise of the East India Company,
the planting of Ireland, the commercial rivalry with Holland and withy
France, as well as questions regarding the rate of interest and the
currency, occupied the attention of a crowd of writers in the second
half of the century. Locke's own contributions were occasioned be the
financial problems which faced the new government after the
revolution. His reflections on the rate of interest show the growing
disfavor with which appeals for state interference were beginning to
be met. He points out the obstacles to trade that are caused when the
rate of interest is fixed by law, and he argues in favor of freedom
for what he calls, in words which suggest Adam Smith, "the natural
interest of money." Money "turns the wheels of trade"; therefore its
course should not be stopped. At the same time, he holds no general
brief against the interference of the state in matters of commerce;
nor is the language of the mercantilist foreign to him. Riches consist
in plenty of gold and silver, for these command all the conveniences
of life. Now, "in a country not furnished with mines, there are but
two ways of growing rich, either conquest or commerce." For us
commerce is the only way; and Locke condemns "the amazing politics of
some late reigns" which had "let in other competitors with us for the
sea." In the concluding portion of Some Considerations of the
Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of
Money (1691), Locke laid stress on the importance of a uniform and
stable measure of values; four years later, in hisFurther
Considerations he defended his view against the proposals involving a
depreciation of the standard, which William Lowndes, secretary of the
treasury, had set forth in An Essay for the amendment of the silver
coins (1695).
d. Letters on Religious Toleration
Locke's plea for toleration in matters of belief has become classical.
His Common-Place Book shows that his mind was clear on the subject
more than twenty years before the publication of his first Letter. The
topic, indeed, was in the air all through his life, and affected him
nearly. When he was a scholar at Westminster, the powers of the civil
magistrate in religious matters were the subject of heated discussion
between Presbyterians and independents in the assembly of divines that
held its sessions within a stone's throw of his dormitory; and, when
he entered Christ Church, John Owen, a leader of the independents, had
been recently appointed to the deanery. There had been many arguments
for toleration before this time, but they had come from the weaker
party in the state. Thus Jeremy Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying
appeared in 1646, when the fortunes of his side had suffered a
decline. For Owen the credit has been claimed that he was the first
who argued for toleration "when his party was uppermost." He was
called upon to preach before the House of Commons on January 31, 1649,
and performed the task without making any reference to the tragic
event of the previous day; but to the published sermon he appended a
remarkable discussion on toleration. Owen did not take such high
ground as Milton did, ten years later, in his Treatise of Civil Power
in Ecclesiastical Causes — affirming that "it is not lawful for any
power on earth to compel in matters of religion." He abounds in
distinctions, and indeed his position calls for some subtlety. He
holds that the civil magistrate has duties to the church, and that he
ought to give facilities and protection to its ministers, not merely
as citizens but as preachers of "the truth"; on the other hand he
argues that civil or corporeal penalties are inappropriate as
punishments for offences which are purely spiritual.
The position ultimately adopted by Locke is not altogether the same as
this. He was never an ardent puritan; he had as little taste for
elaborate theologies as he had for scholastic systems of philosophy;
and his earliest attempt at a theory of toleration was connected with
the view that in religion, "articles in speculative opinions [should]
be few and large, and ceremonies in worship few and easy." The
doctrines which he held to be necessary for salvation would have
seemed to John Owen a meager and pitiful creed. And he had a narrower
view also of the functions of the state. "The business of laws," he
says,
is not to provide for the truth of opinions, but for the safety
and security of the commonwealth, and of every particular man's goods
and person. And so it ought to be. For truth certainly would do well
enough, if she were once left to shift for herself. She seldom has
received, and I fear never will receive, much assistance from the
power of great men, to whom she is but rarely known, and more rarely
welcome. She is not taught by laws, nor has she any need of force, to
procure her entrance into the minds of men. Errors, indeed, prevail by
the assistance of foreign and borrowed succors. But if truth makes not
her way into the understanding by her own light, she will be but the
weaker for any borrowed force violence can add to her.
A church, according to Locke, is "a free and voluntary society"; its
purpose is the public worship of God; the value of worship depends on
the faith that inspires it: "all the life and power of true religion
consists in the inward and full persuasion of the mind;" and these
matters are entirely outside the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate.
Locke therefore (to use later language) was a voluntary in religion,
as he was an individualist on questions of state interference. There
is an exception, however, to his doctrine of the freedom of the
individual in religious matters. The toleration extended to all others
is denied to papists and to atheists; and his inconsistency in this
respect has been often and severely criticized. But it is clear that
Locke made the exception not for religious reasons but on grounds of
state policy. He looked upon the Roman Catholic as dangerous to the
public peace because he professed allegiance to a foreign prince; and
the atheist was excluded because, on Locke's view, the existence of
the state depends upon a contract, and the obligation of the contract,
as of all moral law, depends upon the divine will.
e. Theological Writings
Locke's theological writings exhibit the characteristic qualities
which his other works have rendered familiar. The traditions of
theologians are set aside in them much as philosophical tradition was
discarded in the Essay. He will search the Scriptures for religious
doctrine just as he turned to experience for his philosophy, and he
follows a method equally straightforward. Locke does not raise
questions of Biblical criticism, such as Hobbes had already suggested
and some of his own followers put forward soon afterwards; and the
conclusions at which he arrives are in harmony with the Christian
faith, if without the fulness of current doctrine. At the same time,
his work belongs to the history of liberal theology and is intimately
connected with the deism which followed; it treats religion like any
other subject, and interprets the Bible like any other book; and, in
his view of the nature of religion, he tends to describe it as if it
consisted almost entirely in an attitude of intellectual belief — a
tendency which became more prominent in the course of the eighteenth
century.
f. Educational Writings
Locke's Thoughts concerning Education and his Conduct of the
Understanding occupy an important place in the history of educational
theory, though only a scanty reference can be made to them here. The
subject had a right to prominence in his thought. The stress he laid n
experience in the growth of mind led him to magnify, perhaps overmuch,
the power of education. He held that "the minds of children [are] as
easily turned, this way or that, as water itself." He underrated
innate differences: "we are born with faculties and powers, capable
almost of anything;" and, "as it is in the body, so it is in the mind,
practice makes it what it is." Along with this view went a profound
conviction of the importance of education, and of the breadth of its
aim. It has to fit men for life — for the world, rather than for the
university. Instruction in knowledge does not exhaust it; it is
essentially a training of character.
3. References and Further Reading
* Letter on Toleration (1689)
* Second Letter on Toleration (1690)
* Two Treatises of Government (1690)
* Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690)
* Some Considerations of the Consequences of Lowering of Interest,
and Raising the Value of Money (1691)
* Third Letter on Toleration (1692)
* Some Thoughts concerning Education (1693)
* Further Considerations concerning Raising the Value of Money (1693)
* The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)
* A Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)
* A Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)
* A Letter to the Bishop of Worcester (1697)
* Discourse on Miracles (posthumous)
* Fourth Letter for Toleration (posthumous)
* An Examination of Father Malebranche's Opinion of Seeing all
things in God (posthumous)
* Remarks on Some of Mr Norris's Books (posthumous)
* Conduct of the Understanding (posthumous)
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