MR. LOCKE A GREAT PLAGIARIST
| The Examiner.] | [February 25, 1816. |
Mr. Locke has at this day all over Europe the character of one of the most profound and original thinkers that ever lived, and he is perhaps, without any exception, the most barefaced, deliberate, and bungling plagiarist, that ever appeared in philosophy. The reputation which he has acquired, as the founder of the new system in philosophy, or of any part of that system, is a pure imposition. Hobbes was the undoubted founder of the system; and he not only laid the foundation, but he completed the building. Every one of the principles of the modern, material philosophy of the mind, is to be found in his works, perfect and entire, as it is in the latest commentators of the French school. He not only took for his basis the principle that there is no other original faculty in the mind but sensation: he also pushed this principle into all its consequences, with a severe, masterly, and honest logic, of which there is scarcely any other example. By thus shewing the full extent of his system, ‘the very head and front of his offending,’ without any disguise, he only got himself an ill name, and his system was consigned to infamy or oblivion. Mr. Locke adopted the first principle, with a clumsy addition to it, but so as to secure himself the reputation of an original thinker; and at the same time, by not following it in a bold and decided manner into any one of its necessary consequences, he avoided giving the alarm to popular apprehension, and made a temporary compromise with the common sense and prejudices of his readers. The door being however opened to the introduction of this philosophy, by the admission of the general principle, all the rest by degrees followed as a matter of course; and it has been the business of the ablest metaphysicians ever since to clear what has been considered as the philosophy of Locke, from the inconsistences and imperfections which he had suffered to creep into it: all which improvements on Locke’s Essay are only a recurrence to the principles laid down by Hobbes, in the most explicit and unequivocal manner. To shew how little this last writer has been read, even by professed metaphysicians, Hume attributes the doctrine, that there are no abstract ideas, to Berkeley as an original discovery, though the arguments used by Berkeley are almost word for word taken from those used by Hobbes on the same subject. Yet Locke, in order we suppose to prevent inquiry into the originality of his own claims, calls Hobbes ‘a justly exploded author.’ This question is curious (philosophy apart) as a branch of literary history. It is, we know, dangerous to tamper with established reputation; nor should we perhaps have ventured to hazard the accusation we have here made, if we had not been supported by the authority of so well informed, candid, and respectable a writer as Dugald Stewart, whose testimony is of the more value, as he does not seem to be aware of the general propensity of Mr. Locke to appropriate the ideas of others to his own use, without disguise or acknowledgement. To any one who takes the trouble to peruse Professor Stewart’s very elegant Dissertation just published, on the rise and progress of modern Metaphysics, it will be evident that every one of those original discoveries, to which the author of the Essay on Human Understanding owes his celebrity, and on which he particularly plumed himself, is taken in substance and almost in words from writers of whom he does not once make mention; for example, his proposed division of the sciences, brought forward with great parade and formality, into Physics, Ethics, and Logic, which is the old division of the Greek philosophy; his definition of words which are definable or not definable, which is taken expressly from Descartes; his account of the origin of our ideas, that of association, of the social compact, etc. which are borrowed from Hobbes; his distinction of the properties of matter into primary and secondary, and his theory of consciousness or reflection as a distinct source of ideas, which belong to Descartes; his hypothesis about animal spirits, as the medium of association of ideas, adopted from Malbranche; his account of judgment and wit, which is to be found in Hobbes, &c. &c. If it be asked, whether Mr. Locke has not had the merit of combining the materials thus derived from other sources into a complete and masterly system, the answer would be, that his work is one of the most confused, undigested, and contradictory, that has been published on the subject. There is no one to whom those lines of the poet were ever more applicable.
‘Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove.’
We should hope that Mr. Stewart will examine into and state his conviction on this question fully and clearly in the account of Mr. Locke’s Essay, which he has promised in the continuation of his work. If he would lend the sanction of his name to shew the real foundation on which Mr. Locke’s reputation rests, it would not be the least service he has rendered to philosophy. ‘To trace an error to its source is often the only way to refute it.’ The task is no doubt an invidious, but it is a necessary one. The name of Locke is in a manner dear to every lover of truth; but truth itself should be still dearer.
It will perhaps be amusing to the reader (though not initiated in such studies) to see the manner in which an idea is bandied about, in these speculations, from author to author, to no sort of purpose. ‘In one of Mr. Locke’s most noted remarks,’ (says the learned Professor) ‘he has been anticipated by Malbranche, on whose clear yet concise statement he does not seem to have thrown much new light by his very diffuse and wordy commentary.’—‘If in having our ideas in the memory ready at hand, consists quickness of parts; in this of having them unconfused, and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where there is but the least difference, consists, in a great measure, the exactness of judgment and clearness of reason; which is to be observed in one man above another. And hence perhaps may be given some reason of that common observation, that men who have a great deal of wit and prompt memories, have not always the clearest judgment or deepest reason. For Wit, lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy: Judgment on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude and by affinity to take one thing for another.’—Essay, etc. B. ii. c. xi. § 2.
‘Il y a donc des esprits de deux sortes. Les uns remarquent aisément les différences des choses, et ce sont les bons esprits. Les autres imaginent et supposent de la ressemblance entr’elles, et ce sont les esprits superficielles.’—Recherche de la Vérité.
‘At an earlier period, Bacon had pointed out the same cardinal distinction in the intellectual characters of individuals.
“The greatest and as it were radical distinction of geniuses, in respect of philosophy and science, is this; that some are more able and apt at noting the differences of things; others at noting their similitudes. For steady and acute minds can fix their contemplations, and remain and dwell on every subtlety of distinction; whereas more lofty and discursive imaginations recognize and compound even the slightest and commonest resemblances of things.”
‘That strain I heard was of a higher mood!—It is evident that Bacon has here seized, in its most general form, the very important truth perceived by his two ingenious successors in particular cases. Wit, which Locke contrasts with Judgment, is only one of the various talents connected with what Bacon calls the discursive genius; and indeed a talent very subordinate in dignity to most of the others.’—Note to the Dissertation, p. 116.
Mr. Locke, by Wit, in the passage here referred to, evidently means ingenuity or fancy generally speaking; for in the last hundred years, the use of this term has undergone a great alteration. He however borrowed his definition immediately from ‘that exploded author,’ Hobbes, who says in the Leviathan, p. 32,—‘Whereas, in the succession of thoughts, there is nothing to observe in the things we think on, but either in what they be like one another, or in what they be unlike;—those that observe their similitudes, in case they be such as are but rarely observed by others, are said to have a good wit, by which is meant on this occasion a good fancy. But they that observe their differences and dissimilitudes, which is called distinguishing and discerning and judging between thing and thing, in case such discerning be not easy, are said to have a good judgment; and particularly in matters of conversation and business, wherein times, places, and persons, are to be discerned, this virtue is called Discretion.’
What is most remarkable in this traditional definition of wit and judgment, is, that it is altogether unfounded; for as Harris, the author of Hermes, has very well observed, the finding out the equality of the three angles of a triangle to two right ones, would, upon the principles here stated, be a sally of wit, instead of an act of the understanding, and Euclid’s Elements a collection of bon mots.
It may be said in explanation, that wit discovers false resemblances only. But neither is this true. Wit consists in an illustration of an idea by some lucky coincidence or contrast, which idea may be either false or true, as it happens. But the best wit is always the truest. When the French punsters the other day changed the title of some loyal order from Compagnons du Lys into Compagnons d’Ulysse, the wit lost none of its efficacy, because there was a lurking suspicion in the mind that the insinuation was true. When Mr. Grattan, some years ago, said, that the only resources of Ministers were ‘the guinea or the gallows,’ the alliteration proved nothing, but neither did it disprove any thing. When the late ingenious Professor Porson, in reply to some enthusiast of the modern school of poetry, who was exclaiming ‘that some contemporary bards would be admired when Homer and Virgil were forgotten,’ made answer,—‘And not till then,’—he shewed more wit, and perhaps not less judgment, than his antagonist. Besides, the wit here consisted in the distinction.
We shall shortly go more into this subject in three papers, which we propose to write, on Imagination, Wit, and Judgment, when we shall endeavour to shew that these faculties, though not the same, nor always found together, are not so incompatible as dullness on the one hand, and folly on the other, would lead the world to suppose. The most sensible man of our acquaintance is also the wittiest; and the most extravagant blockhead the dullest matter-of-fact man. The greatest poet that ever lived, had the most understanding of human nature and affairs. Martinus Scriblerus contains the best commentary on the Categories; and we shrewdly suspect that Voltaire and Moliere were two as wise men, that is, knew as many things that were true and useful, as Malbranche and Descartes. It would have been hard to persuade either of those laughing philosophers that they saw all things in God, or that animals were machines. These are ‘the laborious fooleries’ of the understanding.
Mr. Stewart has interspersed his history of the progress of opinions with some interesting biographical sketches. Of Anthony Arnaud, the author of the Port Royal Logic, we learn, that ‘he lived to the age of eighty-three, continuing to write against Malbranche’s opinions concerning Nature and Grace, to his last hour.’ He died, says his biographer, in an obscure retreat at Brussels, in 1692, without fortune, and even without the comfort of a servant; he, whose nephew had been a minister of state, and who might himself have been a cardinal. The pleasure of being able to publish his sentiments was to him a sufficient recompense. Nicole, his friend and companion in arms, worn out at length with these incessant disputes, expressed a wish to retire from the field, and to enjoy repose. ‘Repose!’ replied Arnaud; ‘won’t you have the whole of eternity to repose in?’—An anecdote which is told of his infancy, when considered in connection with his subsequent life, affords a good illustration of the force of impressions received in the first dawn of reason. He was amusing himself one day with some childish sport, in the library of the Cardinal du Perron, when he requested of the Cardinal to give him a pen:—And for what purpose? said the Cardinal.—To write books, like you, against the Huguenots. The Cardinal, it is added, who was old and infirm, could not conceal his joy at the prospect of so hopeful a successor: and, as he was putting the pen into his hand, said, ‘I give it to you as the dying shepherd Damaetas bequeathed his pipe to the little Corydon.’ Of the celebrated metaphysician Descartes, it appears that he was ‘a bold campaigner’ in his youth; that he served in Holland under Prince Maurice of Nassau; in Germany, under Maximilian of Bavaria, in the thirty years’ war; in Hungary, and at the siege of Rochelle, as a volunteer against the English. He passed his life in camps till the age of five-and-twenty, when he retired to spend the remainder of it—in proving his own existence! What then, it may be asked after all, is the use of such studies and pursuits? Of the same use as pursuing gilded butterflies, or any other toy that amuses the mind. Mr. Hume fixed his residence, while composing his Treatise of Human Nature, at the village of La Flèche, where Descartes was brought up. This is an interesting trait in the life of a philosopher, who was by no means of the romantic cast. We do not very well understand the lenity or rather the respect with which the memory of Mr. Hume is always treated by our author, who is so hard upon Hobbes and others. There is also too much notice taken of Adam Smith, who, whatever might be his merits as a political economist, was of a very subordinate class as a philosopher—
‘The tenth transmitter of a foolish creed.’
May we add, that the distinctions of Metaphysics and Geography have nothing in common, nor is truth of any particular country.
The learned Professor makes too little account of the German philosopher Kant, whose maxim that ‘the mind alone is formative,’ is the only lever by which the modern philosophy can be overturned. He has indeed overlaid this simple principle by his logical technicalities, his categories and stuff, as Locke has confounded all common sense with his ideas of sensation and ideas of reflection. Nothing can be done towards a true theory of the mind, till philosophers are convinced that all ideas are ideas of the understanding; and that it requires all the same faculties to have the idea of the stud of a brass nail in an old arm-chair, that is, the perception of connection, limits, form, difference, aye, and of abstraction, in this simple object, as in the highest speculations of theological or metaphysical science. The modern philosophers contend that the mind has no idea of any thing but sensible images: the way to turn the tables upon them is then to prove, that in the idea of every one of these sensible objects, there is necessarily involved the exercise of all those faculties, of which they deny the existence, and which are exerted, only in a different degree, in the most simple or the most refined operations of the understanding.