[1] This distinction is more fully treated below, paragraphs 88, &c.
Feeling and felt thing confused.
22. Phraseology of this kind, the standing heritage of the philosophy which seeks the origin of knowledge in sensation, assumes that the individual sensation is from the first consciously representative; that it is more than what it is simply in itself—fleeting, momentary, unnameable (because, while we name it, it has become another), and for the same reason unknowable, the very negation of knowability; that it shows the presence of something, whether this be a ‘body’ to which it is referred as a quality, or a mind of which it is a modification, or be ultimately reduced to the permanent conditions of its own possibility. This assumption for the present has merely to be pointed out; its legitimacy need not be discussed. Nor need we now discuss the attempts that have been made since Locke to show that mere sensations, dumb to begin with, may yet become articulate upon repetition and combination; which in fact endow them with a faculty of inference, and suppose that though primarily they report nothing beyond themselves, they yet somehow come to do so as an explanation of their own recurrence. The sensational theory in Locke is still, so to speak, unsophisticated. It is true that, in concert with that ‘thinking gentleman,’ Mr. Molyneux, he had satisfied himself that what we reckon simple ideas are often really inferences from such ideas which by habit have become instinctive; but his account of this habitual process presupposes the reference of sensation to a thing. ‘When we set before our eyes a round globe of any uniform colour, it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted in our mind is of a flat circle, variously shadowed with several degrees of light and brightness coming to our eyes. But we having by use been accustomed to perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make in us, what alterations are made in the reflections of light by the difference of the sensible figures of bodies; the judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters the appearances into their causes. So that from that which truly is variety of colour or shadow, collecting the figure, it makes it pass for a mark of figure, and frames to itself the perception of a convex figure, and an uniform colour.’ (Book II. chap. ix. sec. 8.) The theory here stated involves two assumptions, each inconsistent with the simplicity of the simple idea. (a) The actual impression of the ‘plane variously coloured’ is supposed to pronounce itself to be of something outward. Once call the sensation an ‘impression,’ indeed, or call it anything, and this or an analogous substantiation of it is implied. It is only as thus reporting something ‘objective’ that the simple idea of the plane variously coloured gives anything to be corrected by the ‘perception of the kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make in us,’ i.e. ‘of the alterations made in the reflections of light by the difference of the sensible figure of bodies.’ This perception, indeed, as described, is already itself just the instinctive judgment which has to be accounted for, and though this objection might be met by a better statement, yet no statement could serve Locke’s purpose which did not make assumption (b) that sensations of light and colour—‘simple ideas of secondary qualities’—are in the very beginning of knowledge appearances, if not of convex bodies, yet of bodies; if not of bodies, yet of something which they reveal, which remains there while they pass away.
The simple idea as ‘ectype’ other than mere sensation.
23. The same assumption is patent in Locke’s account of the distinction between ‘real and fantastic,’ ‘adequate and inadequate,’ ideas. This distinction rests upon that between the thing as archetype, and the idea as the corresponding ectype. Simple ideas he holds to be necessarily ‘real’ and ‘adequate,’ because necessarily answering to their archetypes. ‘Not that they are all of them images or representations of what does exist: … whiteness and coldness are no more in snow than pain is: … yet are they real ideas in us, whereby we distinguish the qualities that are really in things themselves. For these several appearances being designed to be the marks whereby we are to know and distinguish things which we have to do with, our ideas do as well serve us to that purpose, and are as real distinguishing characters, whether they be only constant effects, or else exact resemblances of something in the things themselves.’ (Book II. chap. xxx. sec. 2.) The simple idea, then, is a ‘mark’ or ‘distinguishing character,’ either as a copy or as an effect, of something other than itself. Only as thus regarded, does the distinction between real and fantastic possibly apply to it. So too with the distinction between true and false ideas. As Locke himself points out, the simple idea in itself is neither true nor false. It can become so only as ‘referred to something extraneous to it.’ (Book II. chap, xxxii. sec. 4.) For all that, he speaks of simple ideas as true and necessarily true, because ‘being barely such perceptions as God has fitted us to receive, and given power to external objects to produce in us by established laws and ways … their truth consists in nothing else but in such appearances as are produced in us, and must be suitable to those powers He has placed in external objects, or else they could not be produced in us.’ (Book II. chap, xxxii. sec. 14.) Here again we are brought to the same point. The idea is an ‘appearance’ of something, necessarily true when it cannot seem to be the appearance of anything else than that of which it is the appearance. We thus come to the following dilemma. Either the simple idea is referred to a thing, as its pattern or its cause, or it cannot be regarded as either real or true. If it is still objected that it need not be so referred in the beginning of knowledge, though it comes to be so in the developed intelligence, the answer is the further question, how can that be knowledge even in its most elementary phase—the phase of the reception of simple ideas —which is not a capacity of distinction between real and apparent, between true and false? If its beginning is a mode of consciousness, such as mere sensation would be—which, because excluding all reference, excludes that reference of itself to something else without which there could be no consciousness of a distinction between an ‘is’ and an ‘is not,’ and therefore no true judgment at all—how can any repetition of such modes give such a judgment? [1]
[1] Cf. the ground of distinction between clearness and obscurity of ideas; (Book II. chap. xxix. sec. 2) ‘Our simple ideas are clear when they are such as the objects themselves, whence they are taken, did or might in a well-ordered sensation or perception, present them.’ As Locke always assumes that immediate consciousness can tell whether an idea is clear or not, it follows that immediate consciousness must tell of ‘the object itself, whence the idea is taken.’
It involves a judgment in which mind and thing are distinguished.
24. The fact is that the ‘simple idea’ with Locke, as the beginning of knowledge, is already, at its minimum, the judgment, ‘I have an idea different from other ideas, which I did not make for myself.’ His confusion of this judgment with sensation is merely the fundamental confusion, on which all empirical psychology rests, between two essentially distinct questions—one metaphysical, What is the simplest element of knowledge? the other physiological, What are the conditions in the individual human organism in virtue of which it becomes a vehicle of knowledge? Though he failed, however, to distinguish these questions, their difference made itself appear in a certain divergence between the second and fourth books of his Essay. So far we have limited our consideration to passages in the second book, in which he treats eo nomine of ideas; of simple ideas as the original of knowledge, of complex ones as formed in its process. Here the physical theory is predominant. The beginning of knowledge is that without which the animal is incapable of it, viz. sensation regarded as an impression through ‘animal spirits’ on the brain. But it can only be so represented because sensation is identified with that which later psychology distinguished from it as Perception, and for which no physical theory can account. As we have seen, the whole theory of this (the second) book turns upon the supposition that the simple idea of sensation is in every case an idea of a sensible quality, and that it is so, not merely for us, considering it ex parte post, but consciously for the individual subject, which can mean nothing else than that it distinguishes itself from, and refers itself to, a thing. Locke himself, indeed, according to his plan of bringing in a ‘faculty of the mind’ whenever it is convenient, would perhaps rather have said that it is so distinguished and referred ‘by the mind.’ He considers the simple idea not, as it truly is, the mind itself in a certain relation, but a datum or material of the mind, upon which it performs certain operations as upon something other than itself, though all the while it is constituted, at least in its actuality, by this material. Between the reference of the simple idea to the thing, however, by itself and ‘by the mind,’ there is no essential difference. In either case the reference is inconsistent with the simplicity of the simple idea; and if the latter expression avoids the seeming awkwardness of ascribing activity to the idea, it yet ascribes it to the mind in that elementary stage in which, according to Locke, it is merely receptive.
And is equivalent to what he afterwards calls ‘knowledge of identity’. Only as such can it be named.
25. So much for the theory ‘of ideas.’ As if, however, in treating of ideas he had been treating of anything else than knowledge, he afterwards considers ‘knowledge’ in a book by itself (the fourth) under that title, and here the question as to the relation between idea and thing comes before him in a somewhat different shape. According to his well-known definition, knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of any of our ideas. The agreement or disagreement may be of four sorts. It may be in the way (1) of identity, (2) of relation, (3) of co-existence, (4) of real existence. In his account of the last sort of agreement, it may be remarked by the way, he departs at once and openly from his definition, making it an agreement, not of idea with idea, but of an idea with ‘actual real existence.’ The fatal but connatural wound in his system, which this inconsistency marks, will appear more fully below. For the present, our concern is for the adjustment of the definition of knowledge to the doctrine of the simple idea as the beginning of knowledge. According to the definition, it cannot be the simple idea, as such, that constitutes this beginning, but only the perception of agreement or disagreement between simple ideas. ‘There could be no room,’ says Locke distinctly, ‘for any positive knowledge at all, if we could not distinguish any relation between our ideas.’ (Book IV. chap. i. sec. 5.) Yet in the very context where he makes this statement, the perception of relation is put as a distinct kind of knowledge apart from others. In his account of the other kinds, however, he is faithful to his definition, and treats each as a perception (i.e. a judgment) of a relation in the way of agreement or disagreement. The primary knowledge is that of identity—the knowledge of an idea as identical with itself. ‘A man infallibly knows, as soon as ever he has them in his mind, that the ideas he calls white and round, are the very ideas they are, and not other ideas which he calls red and square.’ (Book IV. chap. i. sec. 4.) Now, as Hume afterwards pointed out, identity is not simple unity. It cannot be predicated of the ‘idea’ as merely single, but only as a manifold in singleness. To speak of an idea as the ‘same with itself’ is unmeaning unless it mean ‘same with itself in its manifold appearances’ i.e. unless the idea is distinguished, as an object existing continuously, from its present appearance. Thus ‘the infallible knowledge,’ which Locke describes in the above passage, consists in this, that on the occurrence of a certain ‘idea’ the man recognises it as one, which at other times of its occurrence he has called ‘white.’ Such a ‘synthesis of recognition,’ however, expressed by the application of a common term, implies the reference of a present sensation to a permanent object of thought, in this case the object thought under the term ‘white,’ so that the sensation becomes an idea of that object. Were there no such objects, there would be no significant names, but only noises; and were the present sensation not so referred, it would not be named. It may be said indeed that the ‘permanent object of thought’ is merely the instinctive result of a series of past resembling sensations, and that the common name is merely the register of this result. But the question is thus merely thrown further back. Unless the single fleeting sensation was, to begin with, fixed and defined by relation to and distinction from something permanent—in other words, unless it ceased to be a mere sensation—how did it happen that other sensations were referred to it, as different cases of an identical phenomenon, to which the noise suggested by it might be applied as a sign?