His notions as to the soul. 114. In the language and probably the notions of Locke as to the nature of the soul there is an indistinctness more worthy of the Aristotelian schoolmen than of one conversant with the Cartesian philosophy. “Bodies,” he says, “manifestly produce ideas in us by impulse, the only way which we can conceive bodies to operate in. If then external objects be not united to our minds, when they produce ideas in it, and yet we perceive these original qualities in such of them as singly fall under our senses, it is evident that some motion must be thence continued by our nerves, or animal spirits, by some parts of our bodies to the brain, or the seat of sensation, there to produce in our minds the particular ideas we have of them. And since the extention, figure, number, and motion of bodies of an observable bigness may be perceived at a distance by the sight, it is evident some singly imperceptible bodies must come from them to the eyes, and thereby convey to the brain some motion which produces those ideas, which we have of them, in us.” He so far retracts his first position afterwards, as to admit, “in consequence of what Mr. Newton has shown in the Principia on the gravitation of matter towards matter” that God not only can put into bodies powers and ways of operation above what can be explained from what we know of matter, but that he has actually done so. And he promises to correct the former passage, which however he has never performed. In fact, he seems, by the use of phrases which recur too often to be thought merely figurative, to have supposed that something in the brain comes into local contact with the mind. He was here unable to divest himself, any more than the schoolmen had done, of the notion that there is a proper action of the body on the soul in perception. The Cartesians had brought in the theory of occasional causes and other solutions of the phenomena, so as to avoid what seems so irreconcilable with an immaterial principle. No one is so lavish of a cerebral instrumentality in mental images as Malebranche; he seems at every moment on the verge of materialism; he coquets, as it were, with an Epicurean physiology; but if I may be allowed to continue the metaphor, he perceives the moment where to stop, and retires, like a dexterous fair one, with unsmirched honour to his immateriality. It cannot be said that Locke is equally successful.
And its immateriality. 115. In another and a well-known passage, he has thrown out a doubt whether God might not superadd the faculty of thinking to matter; and though he thinks it probable that this has not been the case, leaves it at last a debatable question, wherein nothing else than presumptions are to be had. Yet he has strongly argued against the possibility of a material Deity upon reasons derived from the nature of matter. Locke almost appears to have taken the union of a thinking being with matter for the thinking of matter itself. What is there, Stillingfleet well asks, like self-consciousness in matter? “Nothing at all,” Locke replies, “in matter as matter. But that God cannot bestow on some parcels of matter a power of thinking, and with it self-consciousness, will never be proved by asking how it is possible to apprehend that mere body should perceive that it doth perceive.” But if that we call mind, and of which we are self-conscious, were thus superadded to matter, would it the less be something real? In what sense can it be compared to an accident or quality? It has been justly observed that we are much more certain of the independent existence of mind than of that of matter. But that, by the constitution of our nature, a definite organization, or what will be generally thought the preferable hypothesis, an organic molecule, should be a necessary concomitant of this immaterial principle, does not involve any absurdity at all, whatever want of evidence may be objected to it.
116. It is remarkable that in the controversy with Stillingfleet on this passage, Locke seems to take for granted that there is no immaterial principle in brutes; and as he had too much plain sense to adopt the Cartesian theory of their insensibility, he draws the most plausible argument for the possibility of thought in matter by the admitted fact of sensation and voluntary motion in these animal organizations. “It is not doubted but that the properties of a rose, a peach, or an elephant superadded to matter change not the properties of matter, but matter is in these things matter still.” Few perhaps at present who believe in the immateriality of the human soul, would deny the same to an elephant; but it must be owned that the discoveries of zoology have pushed this to consequences which some might not readily adopt. The spiritual being of a sponge revolts a little our prejudices; yet there is no resting-place, and we must admit this, or be content to sink ourselves into a mass of medullary fibre. Brutes have been as slowly emancipated in philosophy as some classes of mankind have been in civil polity; their souls we see, were almost universally disputed to them at the end of the seventeenth century, even by those who did not absolutely bring them down to machinery. Even within the recollection of many, it was common to deny them any kind of reasoning faculty, and to solve their most sagacious actions by the vague word instinct. We have come of late years to think better of our humble companions; and as usual in similar cases, the predominant bias seems rather too much of a levelling character.
His love of truth and originality. 117. No quality more remarkably distinguishes Locke than his love of truth. He is of no sect or party, has no oblique design, such as we so frequently perceive, of sustaining some tenet which he suppresses, no submissiveness to the opinions of others, nor what very few lay aside, to his own. Without having adopted certain dominant ideas, like Descartes and Malebranche, he follows with inflexible impartiality and unwearied patience the long process of analysis to which he has subjected the human mind. No great writer has been more exempt from vanity, in which he is very advantageously contrasted with Bacon and Descartes; but he is sometimes a little sharp and contemptuous of his predecessors. The originality of Locke is real and unaffected; not that he has derived nothing from others, which would be a great reproach to himself or to them, but in whatever he has in common with other philosophers, there is always a tinge of his own thoughts, a modification of the particular tenet, or at least a peculiarity of language which renders it not very easy of detection. “It was not to be expected,” says Stewart, “that in a work so composed by snatches, to borrow a phrase of the author, he should be able accurately to draw the line between his own ideas and the hints for which he was indebted to others. To those who are well acquainted with his speculations it must appear evident that he had studied diligently the metaphysical writings both of Hobbes and Gassendi, and that he was no stranger to the Essays of Montaigne, to the philosophical works of Bacon, and to Malebranche’s Inquiry after Truth. That he was familiarly conversant with the Cartesian system may be presumed from what we are told by his biographer, that it was this which first inspired him with a disgust at the jargon of the schools, and led him into that train of thinking which he afterwards prosecuted so successfully. I do not however recollect that he has anywhere in his Essay mentioned the name of any one of those authors. It is probable that when he sat down to write, he found the result of his youthful reading so completely identified with the fruits of his subsequent reflections, that it was impossible for him to attempt a separation of the one from the other, and that he was thus occasionally led to mistake the treasures of memory for those of invention. That this was really the case may be further presumed from the peculiar and original cast of his phraseology, which though in general careless and unpolished, has always the merit of that characteristical unity and raciness of style, which demonstrate that while he was writing he conceived himself to be drawing only from his own resources.”[874]
[874] Preliminary Dissertation.
Defended in two cases. 118. The writer however whom we have just quoted has not quite done justice to the originality of Locke in more than one instance. Thus, on this very passage we find a note in these words: “Mr. Addison has remarked that Malebranche had the start of Locke by several years in his notions on the subject of duration. Some other coincidences not less remarkable might be easily pointed out in the opinions of the English and of the French philosopher.” I am not prepared to dispute, nor do I doubt, the truth of the latter sentence. But with respect to the notions of Malebranche and Locke on duration, it must be said, that they are neither the same nor has Addison asserted them to be so.[875] The one threw out an hypothesis with no attempt at proof; the other offered an explanation of the phenomena. What Locke has advanced as to our getting the idea of duration by reflecting on the succession of our ideas seems to be truly his own. Whether it be entirely the right explanation, is another question. It rather appears to me that the internal sense, as we may not improperly call it, of duration belongs separately to each idea, and is rather lost than suggested by their succession. Duration is best perceived when we are able to detain an idea for some time without change, as in watching the motion of a pendulum. And though it is impossible for the mind to continue in this state of immobility more perhaps than about a second or two, this is sufficient to give us an idea of duration as the necessary condition of existence. Whether this be an objective or merely a subjective necessity, is an abstruse question, which our sensations do not decide. But Locke appears to have looked rather at the measure of duration, by which we divide it into portions, than at the mere simplicity of the idea itself. Such a measure, it is certain, can only be obtained through the medium of a succession in our ideas.
[875] Spectator, No. 94.
119. It has been also remarked by Stewart, that Locke claims a discovery rather due to Descartes—namely, the impossibility of defining simple ideas. Descartes, however, as well as the authors of the Port-Royal Logic, merely says that words already as clear as we can make them do not require, or even admit, of definition. But I do not perceive that he has made the distinction we find in the Essay on the Human Understanding, that the names of simple ideas are not capable of any definition, while the names of all complex ideas are so. “It has not, that I know,” Locke says, “been observed by any body what words are and what are not capable of being defined.” The passage I have quoted in another place (chap. xx., p. 500), from Descartes’ posthumous dialogue, even if it went to this length, was unknown to Locke; yet he might have acknowledged that he had been in some measure anticipated in other observations by that philosopher.
His view of innate ideas. 120. The first book of the Essay on the Human Understanding is directed, as is well known, against the doctrine of innate ideas, or innate principles in the mind. This has been often censured, as combating in some places a tenet which no one would support, and as, in other passages, breaking in upon moral distinctions themselves, by disputing the universality of their acknowledgment. With respect to the former charge, it is not perhaps easy for us to determine what might be the crude and confused notions, or at least language, of many who held the theory of innate ideas. It is by no means evident that Locke had Descartes chiefly, or even at all, in his view. Lord Herbert, whom he distinctly answers, and many others, especially the Platonists, had dwelt upon innate ideas in far stronger terms than the great French metaphysician, if indeed he can be said to have maintained them at all. The latter and more important accusation rests upon no other pretext, than that Locke must be reckoned among those who have not admitted a moral faculty of discovering right from wrong to be a part of our constitution. But that there is a law of nature imposed by the Supreme Being, and consequently universal, has been so repeatedly asserted in his writings, that it would imply great inattention to question it. Stewart has justly vindicated Locke in this respect from some hasty and indefinite charges of Beattie; but I must venture to think that he goes much too far when he attempts to identify the doctrines of the Essay with those of Shaftesbury. These two philosophers were in opposite schools as to the test of moral sentiments. Locke seems always to adopt what is called the selfish system in morals, resolving all morality into religion, and all religion into a regard to our own interest. And he seems to have paid less attention to the emotions than to the intellectual powers of the soul.
General praise. 121. It would by no means be difficult to controvert other tenets of this great man. But the obligations we owe to him for the Essay on the Human Understanding are never to be forgotten. It is truly the first real chart of the coasts; wherein some may be laid down incorrectly, but the general relations of all are perceived. And we who find some things to censure in Locke have perhaps learned how to censure them from himself; we have thrown off so many false notions and films of prejudice by his help that we are become capable of judging our master. This is what has been the fate of all who have pushed onward the landmarks of science; they have made that easy for inferior men which was painfully laboured through by themselves. Among many excellent things in the Essay on Human Understanding none are more admirable than the whole third book on the nature of words, especially the three chapters on their imperfection and abuse. In earlier treatises of logic, at least in that of Port-Royal, some of this might be found; but nowhere are verbal fallacies, and, above all, the sources from which they spring so fully and conclusively exposed.