Locke neither disguises these contradictions, nor attempts to overcome them.
135. Here as elsewhere we have to be thankful that the contradiction had not been brought home so strongly to Locke as to make him seek the suppression of either of its alternatives. He was aware neither of the burden which his philosophy tended to put upon the self which ‘can consider itself as itself in different times and places’—the burden of replacing the stable world, when ‘the new way of ideas’ should have resolved the outward thing into a succession of feelings—nor of the hopelessness of such a burden being borne by a ‘perishing’ consciousness, ‘of which no two parts exist together, but follow each other in succession.’ [1] When he ‘looked into himself,’ he found consciousness to consist in the succession of ideas, ‘one coming and another going:’ he also found that ‘consciousness alone makes what we call self,’ and that he was the same self at any different points in the succession. He noted the two ‘facts of consciousness’ at different stages of his enquiry, and was apparently not struck by their contradiction. He could describe them both, and whatever he could describe seemed to him to be explained. Hence they did not suggest to him any question either as to the nature of the observed object or as to the possibility of observing it, such as might have diverted philosophy from the method of self-observation. He left them side by side, and, far from disguising either, put alongside of them another fact—the presence among the perpetually perishing ideas of that of a consciousness identical with itself, not merely in different times and places, but in all times and places. Such an idea, under the designation of an eternal wise Being, he was ‘sure he had’ (Book II. chap. xvii. sec. 14).
[1] Cf. Book II. chap. xiv. sec. 32—‘by observing what passes in our minds, how our ideas there in train constantly some vanish and others begin to appear, we come by the idea of succession; and by observing a distance in the parts of this succession, we get the idea of duration’—with chap. xv. sec. 12. ‘Duration is the idea we have of perishing distance, of which no two parts exist together, but follow each other in succession.’
Is the idea of God possible to a consciousness given in time?
136. The remark will at once occur that the question concerning the relation between our consciousness, as in succession, and the idea of God, is essentially different from that concerning the relation between this consciousness and the self identical throughout it, inasmuch as the relation in the one case is between a fact and an idea, in the other between conflicting facts. The identity of the self, which Locke asserts, is one of ‘real being,’ and this is found to lie in consciousness, in apparent conflict with the fact that consciousness is a succession, of which ‘no two parts exist together.’ There is no such conflict, it will be said, between the idea of a conscious being, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever—the correspondence to which of any reality is a farther question—and the fact of our consciousness being in succession. Allowing for the moment the validity of this distinction, we will consider first the difficulties that attach to Locke’s account of the idea of God, as an idea.
Locke’s account of this idea.
137. This idea, with him, is a ‘complex idea of substance.’ It is the idea each man has of the ‘thinking thing within him, enlarged to infinity.’ It is beset then in the first place with all the difficulties which we have found to belong to his doctrine of substance generally and of the thinking substance in particular. [1] These need not be recalled in detail. When God is the thinking substance they become more obvious. It is the antithesis to ‘material substance,’ as the source of ideas of sensation, that alone with Locke gives a meaning to ‘thinking substance,’ as the source of ideas of reflection: and if, as we have seen, the antithesis is untenable when it is merely the source of human ideas that is in question, much more must it be so in regard to God, to whom any opposition of material substance must be a limitation of his perfect nature. Of the generic element in the above definition, then, no more need here be said. It is the qualification of ‘enlargement to infinity,’ by which the idea of man as a thinking substance is represented as becoming the idea of God, that is the special difficulty now before us. Of this Locke writes as follows:—‘The complex idea we have of God is made up of the simple ones we receive from reflection. If I find that I know some few things, and some of them, or all perhaps, imperfectly, I can frame an idea of knowing twice as many: which I can double again as often as I can add to number, and thus enlarge my ideas of knowledge by extending its comprehension to all things existing or possible. The same I can do of knowing them more perfectly, i.e. all their qualities, powers, causes, consequences, and relations; and thus frame the idea of infinite or boundless knowledge. The same also may be done of power till we come to that we call infinite; and also of the duration of existence without beginning or end; and so frame the idea of an eternal being. … All which is done by enlarging the simple ideas we have taken from the operation of our own minds by reflection, or by our senses from exterior things, to that vastness to which infinity can extend them. For it is infinity which joined to our ideas of existence, power, knowledge, &c., makes that complex idea whereby we represent to ourselves the supreme being’ (Book II. chap. xxiii. sec. 33—35). What is meant by this ‘joining of infinity’ to our ideas?
[1] See above, paragraph 35 and the following, and 127 and the following.
‘Infinity,’ according to Locke’s account of it, only applicable to
God, if God has parts.
138. ‘Finite and infinite,’ says Locke, ‘are looked upon by the mind as the modes of quantity, and are to be attributed primarily only to those things that have parts and are capable of increase by the addition of any the least part’ (Book II. chap. xvii. sec. 1). Such are ‘duration and expansion.’ The applicability then of the term ‘infinite’ in its proper sense to God implies that he has expansion or duration; and it is characteristic of Locke that though he was clear about the divisibility of expansion and duration, as the above passage shows, he has no scruple about speaking of them as attributes of God, of whom as being ‘in his own essence simple and uncompounded’ he would never have spoken as ‘having parts.’ ‘Duration is the idea we have of perishing distance, of which no parts exist together but follow each other in succession; as expansion is the idea of lasting distance, all whose parts exist together.’ Yet of duration and expansion, thus defined, he says that ‘in their full extent’ (i.e. as severally ‘eternity and immensity’) ‘they belong only to the Deity’ (Book II. chap. xv. secs. 8 and 12). ‘A full extent’ of them, however, is in the nature of the case impossible. With a last moment duration would cease to be duration; without another space beyond it space would not be space. Locke is quite aware of this. When his conception of infinity is not embarrassed by reference to God, it is simply that of unlimited ‘addibility’—a juxtaposition of space to space, a succession of time upon time, to which we can suppose no limit so long as we consider space and time ‘as having parts, and thus capable of increase by the addition of parts,’ and which therefore excludes the very possibility of a totality or ‘full extent’ (Book II. chap. xvi. sec. 8, and xvii. sec. 13). The question, then, whether infinity of expansion and duration in this, its only proper, sense can be predicated of the perfect God, has only to be asked in order to be answered in the negative. Nor do we mend the matter if, instead of ascribing such infinity to God, we substitute another phrase of Locke’s, and say that He ‘fills eternity and immensity’ (Book II. chap. xv. sec. 8). Put for eternity and immensity their proper equivalents according to Locke, viz. unlimited ‘addibility’ of times and spaces, and the essential unmeaningness of the phrase becomes apparent.