43. In the first of these remarkable passages we begin with the familiar opposition between ideas as ‘the creatures of the mind’ and real things. Ideas, and the words which express them, may be general, but things cannot. ‘They are all of them particular in their existence.’ Then the ideas and words themselves appear as things, and as such ‘in their existence’ can only be particular. It is only in its signification, i.e. in its relation to other ideas which it represents, that an idea, particular itself, becomes general, and this relation does not belong to the ‘existence’ of the idea or to the idea in itself, but ‘by the mind of man is added to it.’ The relation being thus a fictitious addition to reality, ‘general and universal are mere inventions and creatures of the understanding.’ The next passage, in spite of the warning that all ideas are particular in their existence, still speaks of general ideas, but only as ‘set up in the mind.’ To these ‘particular things existing are found to agree,’ and the agreement is expressed in such judgments as ‘this is a man, that a horse; this is justice, that cruelty;’ the ‘this’ and ‘that’ representing ‘particular existing things,’ ‘horse’ and ‘cruelty’ abstract general ideas to which these are found to agree.
Generality an invention of the mind.
44. One antithesis is certainly maintained throughout these passages—that between ‘real existence which is always particular, and the workmanship of the mind,’ which ‘invents’ generality. Real existence, however, is ascribed (a) to things themselves, (b) to words and ideas, even those which become of general signification, (c) to mixed modes, for in the proposition ‘this is justice,’ the ‘this’ must represent a mixed mode. (Cf. II. xii. 5.) The characteristic of the ‘really existent,’ which distinguishes it from the workmanship of the mind, would seem to be mere individuality, exclusive of all relation. The simple ‘this’ and ‘that,’ apart from the relation expressed in the judgment, being mere individuals, are really existent; and conversely, ideas, which in themselves have real existence, when a relation, in virtue of which they become significant, has been ‘added to them by the mind,’ become ‘inventions of the understanding.’ This consists with the express statement in the chapter on ‘relation’ (II. xxv. 8), that it is ‘not contained in the existence of things, but is something extraneous and superinduced.’ Thus generality, as a relation between any one of a multitude of single (not necessarily simple) ideas, e.g. single ideas of horses, and all the rest—a relation which belongs not to any one of them singly—is superinduced by the understanding upon their real, i.e. their single existence. Apart from this relation, it would seem, or in their mere singleness, even ideas of mixed modes, e.g. this act of justice, may have real existence.
The result is, that the feeling of each moment is alone real.
45. The result of Locke’s statement, thus examined, clearly is that real existence belongs to the present momentary act of consciousness, and to that alone. Ascribed as it is to the ‘thing itself,’ to the idea which, as general, has it not, and to the mixed mode, it is in each case the momentary presence to consciousness that constitutes it. To a thing itself, as distinct from the presentation to consciousness, it cannot belong, for such a ‘thing’ means that which remains identical with itself under manifold appearances, and both identity and appearance imply relation, i.e. ‘an invention of the mind.’ As little can it belong to the content of any idea, since this is in all cases constituted by relation to other ideas. Thus if I judge ‘this is sweet,’ the real existence lies in the simple ‘this,’ in the mere form of presentation at an individual now, not in the relation of this to other flavours which constitutes the determinate sweetness, or to a sweetness at other times tasted. If I judge ‘this is a horse,’ a present vision really exists, but not so its relation to other sensations of sight or touch, closely precedent or sequent, which make up the ‘total impression;’ much less its relation to other like impressions thought of, in consideration of which a common name is applied to it. If, again, I judge ‘this is an act of justice,’ the present thought of the act, as present, really exists; not so those relations of the act which either make it just, or make me apply the name to it. It is true that according to this doctrine the ‘really existent’ is the unmeaning, and that any statement about it is impossible. We cannot judge of it without bringing it into relation, in which it ceases to be what in its mere singleness it is, and thus loses its reality, overlaid by the ‘invention of the understanding.’ Nay, if we say that it is the mere ‘this’ or ‘that,’ as such—the simple ‘here’ and ‘now’—the very ‘this,’ in being mentioned or judged of, becomes related to other things which we have called ‘this,’ and the ‘now’ to other ‘nows.’ Thus each acquires a generality, and with it becomes fictitious. As Plato long ago taught—though the lesson seems to require to be taught anew to each generation of philosophers—a consistent sensationalism must be speechless. Locke, himself, in one of the passages quoted, implicitly admits this by indicating that only through relations or in their generality are ideas ‘significant.’
How Locke avoids this result.
46. He was not the man, however, to become speechless out of sheer consistency. He has a redundancy of terms and tropes for disguising from himself and his reader the real import of his doctrine. In the latter part of the passage quoted we find that the relation or community between ideas, which the understanding invents, is occasioned by a ‘similitude which it observes among things.’ The general idea having been thus invented, ‘things are found to agree with it’—as is natural since they suggested it. Hereupon we are forced to ask how, if all relation is superinduced upon real existence by the understanding, an observed relation of similitude among things can occasion the superinduction; and again how it happens, if all generality of ideas is a fiction of the mind, that ‘things are found to agree with general ideas.’ How can the real existence called ‘this’ or ‘that,’ which only really exists so far as nothing can be said of it but that it is ‘this’ or ‘that,’ agree with anything whatever? Agreement implies some content, some determination by properties, i.e. by relations, in the things agreeing, whereas the really existent excludes relation. How then can it agree with the abstract general idea, the import of which, according to Locke’s own showing, depends solely on relation?
The ‘particular’ was to him the individual qualified by general relations.
47. Such questions did not occur to Locke, because while asserting the mere individuality of things existent, and the simplicity of all ideas as given, i.e. as real, he never fully recognised the meaning of his own assertion. Under the shelter of the ambiguous ‘particular’ he could at any time substitute for the mere individual the determinate individual, or individual qualified by community with other things; just as, again, under covering of the ‘simple idea’ he could substitute for the mere momentary consciousness the perception of a definite thing. Thus when he speaks of the judgment ‘this is gold’ as expressing the agreement of a real (i.e. individual) thing with a general idea, he thinks of ‘this’ a& already having, apart from the judgment, the determination which it first receives in the judgment. He thinks of it, in other words, not as the mere ‘perishing’ sensation [1] or individual void of relation, but as a sensation symbolical of other possibilities of sensation which, as so many relations of a thing to us or to other things, are connoted by the common noun ‘gold.’ It thus ‘agrees’ with the abstract idea or conception of qualities, i.e. because it is already the ‘creature of the understanding,’ determined by relations which constitute a generality and community between it and other things. Such a notion of the really existent thing—wholly inconsistent with his doctrine of relation and of the general—Locke has before him when he speaks of general ideas as formed by abstraction of certain qualities from real things, or of certain ideas from other ideas that accompany them in real existence. ‘When some one first lit on a parcel of that sort of substance we denote by the word gold, … its peculiar colour, perhaps, and weight were the first he abstracted from it, to make the complex idea of that species … another perhaps added to these the ideas of fusibility and fixedness … another its ductility and solubility in aqua regia. These, or part of these, put together, usually make the complex idea in men’s minds of that sort of body we call gold.’ (Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 9.) Here the supposition is that a thing, multitudinously qualified, is given apart from any action of the understanding, which then proceeds to act in the way of successively detaching (‘abstracting’) these qualities and recombining them as the idea of a species. Such a recombination, indeed, would seem but wasted labour. The qualities are assumed to be already found by the understanding and found as in a thing; otherwise the understanding could not abstract them from it. Why should it then painfully put together in imperfect combination what has been previously given to it complete? Of the complex idea which results from the work of abstraction, nothing can be said but a small part of what is predicable of the known thing which the possibility of such abstraction presupposes.
[1] ‘All impressions are perishing existences.’—Hume. See below, paragraph 208.