Hence another view of real essence as unknown qualities of unknown body.
92. It is saved, though at the cost of abandoning the ‘new way of ideas,’ as it had been followed in the Second Book, by the transfer of real existence from the thing in which ideas are found, and whose qualities the complex of ideas in us, though inadequate, represents, to something called ‘body,’ necessarily unknown, because no ideas in us are in any way representative of it. To such an unknown body unknown qualities are supposed to belong under the designation ‘real essence.’ The subject of the nominal essence, just because its qualities, being matter of knowledge, are ideas in our minds, is a wholly different and a fictitious thing.
How Locke mixes up these two meanings in ambiguity about body.
93. This change of ground is of course not recognized by Locke himself. It is the perpetual crossing of the inconsistent doctrines that renders his ‘immortal Third Book’ a web of contradictions. As was said above, he constantly speaks as if the subject of the real essence were the same with that of the nominal, and never explicitly allows it to be different. The equivocation under which the difference is disguised lies in the use of the term ‘body.’ A ‘particular body’ is the subject both of the nominal and real essence ‘gold’ But ‘body,’ as that in which ‘ideas are found,’ and in which they permanently coexist according to a natural law, is one thing; ‘body,’ as the abstraction of the unknown, is quite another. It is body in the former sense that is the real thing when nominal essence (the complex of ideas in us) is treated as representative, though inadequately so, of the real thing; it is body in the latter sense that is the real thing when this is treated as wholly outside possible consciousness, and its essence as wholly unrepresented by possible ideas. By a jumble of the two meanings Locke obtains an amphibious entity which is at once independent of relation to ideas, as is body in the latter sense, and a source of ideas representative of it, as is body in the former sense—which thus carries with it that opposition to the mental which is supposed necessary to the real, while yet it seems to manifest itself in ideas. Meanwhile a third conception of the real keeps thrusting itself upon the other two—the view, namely, that body in both senses is a fiction of thought, and that the mere present feeling is alone the real.
Body as ‘parcel of matter’ without essence.
94. Where Locke is insisting on the opposition between the real essence and any essence that can be known, the former is generally ascribed either to a ‘particular being’ or to a ‘parcel of matter.’ The passage which brings the opposition into the strongest relief is perhaps the following:—‘I would ask any one, what is sufficient to make an essential difference in nature between any two particular beings, without any regard had to some abstract idea, which is looked upon as the essence and standard of a species? All such patterns and standards being quite laid aside, particular beings, considered barely in themselves, will be found to have all their qualities equally essential; and everything, in each individual, will be essential to it, or, which is more, nothing at all. For though it may be reasonable to ask whether obeying the magnet be essential to iron; yet I think it is very improper and insignificant to ask whether it be essential to the particular parcel of matter I cut my pen with, without considering it under the name iron, or as being of a certain species.’ (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 5.) [1] Here, it will be seen, the exclusion of the abstract idea from reality carries with it the exclusion of that ‘standard made by nature,’ which according to the passages already quoted, is the ‘thing itself from which the abstract idea is taken, and from which, if correctly taken, it derives reality. This exclusion, again, means nothing else than the disappearance from ‘nature’ (which with Locke is interchangeable with ‘reality’) of all essential difference. There remain, however, as the ‘real,’ ‘particular beings,’ or ‘individuals,’ or ‘parcels of matter.’ In each of these, ‘considered barely in itself, everything will be essential to it, or, which is more, nothing at all.’
[1] To the same purpose is a passage in Book III. chap. x. sec. 19, towards the end.
In this sense body is the mere individuum.
95. We have already seen, [1] that if by a ‘particular being’ is meant the mere individuum, as it would be upon abstraction of all relations which according to Locke are fictitious, and constitute a community or generality, it certainly can have no essential qualities, since it has no qualities at all. It is a something which equals nothing. The notion of this bare individuum being the real is the ‘protoplasm’ of Locke’s philosophy to which, though he never quite recognized it himself, after the removal of a certain number of accretions we may always penetrate. It is so because his unacknowledged method of finding the real consisted in abstracting from the formed content of consciousness till he came to that which could not be got rid of. This is the momentarily present relation of subject and object, which, considered on the side of the object, gives the mere atom, and on the side of the subject, the mere ‘it is felt.’ Even in this ultimate abstraction the ‘fiction of thought’ still survives, for the atom is determined to its mere individuality by relation to other individuals, and the feeling is determined to the present moment or ‘the now’ by relation to other ‘nows.’
[1] See above, paragraph 45.