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SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAYS.
APPENDIX.
A CRITICAL EXPOSITION OF A FALLACY IN LOCKE'S USE OF THE ARGUMENT AGAINST THE POSSIBILITY OF MATTER THINKING ON GROUNDS OF ITS BEING INCONCEIVABLE THAT IT SHOULD.
Lest it should be thought that I am doing injustice to the views of this illustrious theist, I here quote his own words:—"We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks or no, it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter fitly disposed a power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter so disposed a thinking immaterial substance; it being, in respect of our notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that God can, if He pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that He should superadd to it another substance with a faculty of thinking; since we know not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort of substance the Almighty has been pleased to give that power, which cannot be in any created being, but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of the Creator. For I see no contradiction in it that the first eternal thinking being should, if he pleased, give to certain systems of created senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought: though, as I think, I have proved, lib. iv., ch. 10 and 14, &c., it is no less than a contradiction to suppose matter (which is evidently in its own nature void of sense and thought) should be that eternal first-thinking being. What certainty of knowledge can any one have that some perceptions, such as, e.g., pleasure and pain, should not be in some bodies themselves, after a certain manner modified and moved, as well as that they should be in an immaterial substance upon the motion of the parts of body? Body, as far as we can conceive, being able only to strike and affect body; and motion, according to the utmost reach of our ideas, being able to produce nothing but motion: so that when we allow it to produce pleasure or pain, or the idea of a colour or sound, we are fain to quit our reason, go beyond our ideas, and attribute it wholly to the good pleasure of our Maker. For since we must allow He has annexed effects to motion which we can no way conceive motion able to produce, what reason have we to conclude that He could not order them as well to be produced in a subject we cannot conceive capable of them, as well as in a subject we cannot conceive the motion of matter can any way operate upon? I say not this, that I would any way lessen the belief of the soul's immateriality, &c.... It is a point which seems to me to be put out of the reach of our knowledge; and he who will give himself leave to consider freely, and look into the dark and intricate part of each hypothesis, will scarce find his reason able to determine him fixedly for or against the soul's materiality. Since on which side soever he views it, either as an unextended substance or as a thinking extended matter, the difficulty to conceive either will, whilst either alone is in his thoughts, still drive him to the contrary side. An unfair way which some men take with themselves, who, because of the inconceivableness of something they find in one, throw themselves violently into the contrary hypothesis, though altogether as unintelligible to an unbiassed understanding."
This passage, I do not hesitate to say, is one of the most remarkable in the whole range of philosophical literature, in respect of showing how even the strongest and most candid intellect may have its reasoning faculty impaired by the force of a preformed conviction. Here we have a mind of unsurpassed penetration and candour, which has left us side by side two parallel trains of reasoning. In the one, the object is to show that the author's preformed conviction as to the being of a God is justifiable on grounds of reason; in the other, the object is to show that, granting the existence of a God, and it is not impossible that he may have endowed matter with the faculty of thinking. Now, in the former train of reasoning, the whole proof rests entirely upon the fact that "it is impossible to conceive that ever bare incogitative matter should produce a thinking intelligent being." Clearly, if this proposition is true, it must destroy one or other of the trains of reasoning; for it is common to them both, and in one of them it is made the sole ground for concluding that matter cannot think, while in the other it is made compatible with the supposition that matter may think. This extraordinary inconsistency no doubt arose from the fact that the author was antecedently persuaded of the existence of an Omnipotent Mind, and having been long accustomed in his intellectual symbols to regard it presumptuous in him to impose any limitations on this almighty power, when he asked himself whether it would be possible for this almighty power, if it so willed, to endow matter with the faculty of thinking, he argued that it might be possible, notwithstanding his being unable to conceive the possibility. But when he banished from his mind the idea of this personal and almighty power, and with that idea banished all its associations, he then felt that he had a right to argue more freely, and forthwith made his conceptive faculty a test of abstract possibility. Yet the sum total of abstract possibility, in relation to him, must have been the same in the two cases; so that in whichever of the two trains of reasoning his argument was sound, in the other it must certainly have been null.
We may well feel amazed that so able a thinker can have fallen into so obvious an error, and afterwards have persisted in it through pages and pages of his work. It will be instructive, however, to those who rely upon Locke's exposition of the argument from Inconceivability to see how effectually he has himself destroyed it. For this purpose, therefore, I shall make some further quotations from the same train of reasoning. The statement of Locke's opinion that the Almighty could endow matter with the faculty of thinking if He so willed, called down some remonstrances and rebukes from the then Bishop of Worcester. Locke's reply was a very lengthy one, and from it the following extracts are taken. I merely request the reader throughout to substitute for the words God, Creator, Almighty, Omipotency, &c., the words Summum genus of Possibility.