60. As usual, Locke disguises this difficulty from himself, because in answering the question he alters it. The question, as he asks it, is whether, given the idea, we can have posterior assurance of something else corresponding to it. The question, as he answers it, is whether the idea includes the consciousness of a real thing as a constituent; and the answer consists in the simple assertion, variously repeated, that it does. It is clear, however, that this answer to the latter question does not answer, but renders unmeaning, the question as it is originally asked. If, according to Locke’s own showing, there is nowhere for anything to be found by us but in our ‘ideas’ or our consciousness—if the thing is given in and with the idea, so that the idea is merely the thing ex parte nostrâ—then to ask if the idea agrees with the thing is as futile as to ask whether hearing agrees with sound, or the voice with the words it utters. That the thing is so given is implied throughout Locke’s statement of the ‘assurance we have of the existence of material beings,’ as well as of the confirmations of this assurance. If the ‘idea which I call white’ means the knowledge that ‘the property or accident (i.e. whose appearance before my eyes always causes that idea) doth really exist and hath a being without me,’ then consciousness of existence—outward, permanent, substantive, and causative existence—is involved in the idea, and no ulterior question of agreement between idea and existence can properly arise. But unless the simple idea is so interpreted, the senses have no testimony to give. If it is so interpreted, no extraneous ‘reason to rely upon the testimony’ can be discovered, for such reason can only be a repetition of the testimony itself.
Confirmations of the testimony turn upon the distinction between ‘impression’ and ‘idea’.
61. This becomes clearer upon a view of the confirmations of the testimony, as Locke gives them. They all, we may remark by the way, presuppose a distinction between the simple idea as originally represented and the same as recalled or revived. This distinction, fixed by the verbal one between ‘impression’ and ‘idea,’ we shall find constantly maintained and all-important in Hume’s system; but in Locke, though upon it (as we shall see) rests his distinction between real and nominal essence and his confinement of general knowledge to the latter, it seems only to turn up as an afterthought. In the account of the reality and adequacy of ideas it does not appear at all. There the distinction is merely between the simple idea, as such, and the complex, as such, without any further discrimination of the simple idea as originally produced from the same as recalled. So, too, in the opening account of the reception of simple ideas (Book II. chap. xii. sec. 1), ‘Perception,’ ‘Retention,’ and ‘Discerning’ are all reckoned together as alike forms of the passivity of the mind, in contrast with its activity in combination and abstraction, though retention and discerning have been previously described in terms which imply activity. In the ‘confirmations’ before us, however, the distinction between the originally produced and the revived is essential.
They depend on language which presupposes the ascription of sensation to an outward cause.
62. The first turns upon the impossibility of producing an idea de novo without the action of sensitive organs; the two next upon the difference between the idea as produced through these organs and the like idea as revived at the will of the individual. It is hence inferred that the idea as originally produced is the work of a thing, which must exist in rerum naturâ, and by way of a fourth ‘confirmation’ the man who doubts this in the case of one sensation is invited to try it in another. If, on seeing a fire, he thinks it ‘bare fancy,’ i.e. doubts whether his idea is caused by a thing, let him put his hand into it. This last ‘confirmation’ need not be further noticed here, since the operation of a producing thing is as certain or as doubtful for one sensation as for another. [1] Two certainties are not more sure than one, nor can two doubts make a certainty. The other ‘confirmations’ alike lie in the words ‘product’ and ‘organ.’ A man has a certain ‘idea:’ afterwards he has another like it, but differing in liveliness and in the accompanying pleasure or pain. If he already has, or if the ideas severally bring with them, the idea of a producing outward thing to which parts of his body are organs, on the one hand, and of a self ‘having power’ on the other, then the liveliness, and the accompanying pleasure or pain, may become indications of the action of the thing, as their absence may be so of the action of the man’s self; but not otherwise. Locke throughout, in speaking of the simple ideas as produced or recalled, implies that they carry with them the consciousness of a cause, either an outward thing or the self, and only by so doing can he find in them the needful ‘confirmations’ of the ‘testimony of the senses.’ This testimony is confirmed just because it distinguishes of itself between the work of ‘nature,’ which is real, and the work of the man, which is a fiction. In other words, the confirmation is nothing else than the testimony itself—a testimony which, as we have seen, since it supposes consciousness, as such, to be consciousness of a thing, eliminates by anticipation the question as to the agreement of consciousness with things, as with the extraneous.
[1] To feel the object, in the sense of touching it, had a special significance for Locke, since touch with him was the primary ‘revelation’ of body, as the solid. More will be said of this when we come to consider his doctrine of ‘real essence,’ as constituted by primary qualities of body. See below, paragraph 101.
This ascription means the clothing of sensation with invented relations.
63. The distinction between the real and the fantastic, according to the passages under consideration, thus depends upon that between the work of nature and the work of man. It is the confusion between the two works that renders the fantastic possible, while it is the consciousness of the distinction that sets us upon correcting it. Where all is the work of man and professes to be no more, as in the case of ‘mixed modes,’ there is no room for the fantastic (Book II. chap. xxx. sec. 4, and Book IV. chap. iv. sec. 7); and where there is ever so much of the fantastic, it would not be so for us, unless we were conscious of a ‘work of nature,’ to which to oppose it. But on looking a little closer we find that to be conscious of an idea as the work of nature, in opposition to the work of man, is to be conscious of it under relations which, according to Locke, are the inventions of man. It is nothing else than to be conscious of it as the result of ‘something having power to produce it’ (Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 2), i.e. of a substance, to which it is related as a quality. ‘Nature’ is just the ‘something we know not what,’ which is substance according to the ‘abstract idea’ thereof. Producing ideas, it exercises powers, as it essentially belongs to substance to do, according to our complex idea of it. (Book II. chap, xxiii. secs. 9, 10.) But substance, according to Locke, whether as abstract or complex idea, is the ‘workmanship of the mind,’ and power, as a relation (Book II. chap. xxi. sec. 3, and chap. xxv. sec. 8), ‘is not contained in the real existence of things.’ Again, the idea of substance, as a source of power, is the same as the idea of cause. ‘Whatever is considered by us to operate to the producing any particular simple idea, which did not before exist, hath thereby in our minds the relation of a cause.’ (Book II. chap. xxvi. sec. 1.) But the idea of cause is not one ‘that the mind has of things as they are in themselves,’ but one that it gets by its own act in ‘bringing things to, and setting them by, one another.’ (Book II. chap. xxv. sec. 1.) Thus it is with the very ideas, which are the workmanship of man, that the simple idea has to be clothed upon, in order to ‘testify’ to its being real, i.e. (in Locke’s sense) not the work of man.
What is meant by restricting the testimony of sense to present existence?
64. Thus invested, the simple idea has clearly lost its simplicity. It is not the momentary, isolated consciousness, but the representation of a thing determined by relations to other things in an order of nature, and causing an infinite series of resembling sensations to which a common name is applied. Thus in all the instances of sensuous testimony mentioned in the chapter before us, it is not really a simple sensation that is spoken of, but a sensation referred to a thing—not a mere smell, or taste, or sight, or feeling, but the smell of a rose, the taste of a pine-apple, the sight of the sun, the feeling of fire. (Book IV. chap. xi. secs. 4-7.) Immediately afterwards, however, reverting or attempting to revert to his strict doctrine of the mere individuality of the simple idea, he says that the testimony of the senses is a ‘present testimony employed about particular objects, that do then affect them,’ and that sensitive knowledge extends no farther than such testimony. This statement, taken by itself, is ambiguous. Does it mean that sensation testifies to the momentary presence to the individual of a continuous existence, or is the existence itself as momentary as its presence to sense? The instance that follows does not remove the doubt. ‘If I saw such a collection of simple ideas as is wont to be called man, existing together one minute since, and am now alone; I cannot be certain that the same man exists now, since there is no necessary connection of his existence a minute since with his existence now.’ (Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 9.) At first sight, these words might seem to decide that the existence is merely coincident with the presence of the sensation—a decision fatal to the distinction between the real and fantastic, since, if the thing is only present with the sensation, there can be no combination of qualities in reality other than the momentary coincidence of sensations in us. Memory or imagination, indeed, might recall these in a different order from that in which they originally occurred; but, if this original order had no being after the occurrence, there could be no ground for contrasting it with the order of reproduction as the real with the merely apparent.