[5]. The passage in Locke is as follows:
‘If in having our ideas in the memory ready at hand, consists quickness of parts, in this of having them unconfused and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where there is but the least difference, consists in a great measure the exactness of judgment and clearness of reason, which is to be observed in one man above another. And hence perhaps may be given some reason of that common observation that men who have a great deal of wit and prompt memories, have not always the clearest judgment, or deepest reason. For wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting them together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy; judgment on the contrary lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully one from another ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude and by affinity to take one thing for another.’—Locke’s Essay, vol. i. p. 143.
[6]. This relates to what Mr. Locke says of unity, whom all succeeding writers have made a point of bringing forward on all occasions, merely for the purpose of differing from him. They set him up as the standard, or ne plus ultra of profound wisdom, and yet they always contrive to go beyond him. I will just add, by the bye, on this argument about number, that the fair way of putting it is by asking whether one combination of ideas is not different from another, or whether one foot or one inch is the same with thirty-six feet, or thirty-six inches, not whether one foot is the same as thirty-six inches. Otherwise there will remain a real distinction of number, both in idea and in fact.
[7]. The two men of the greatest ability in modern times as metaphysicians, that is, with the greatest power of seeing things in the abstract, and of pursuing a principle into all its consequences, are in my opinion Hobbes and Berkeley: after them come Hume and Hartley. Compared with these Locke was a mere common practical man: of the four, I think Hobbes was at the head, as the others only worked out the materials with which he furnished them.
[8]. This, if the translation is correct, is proving a great deal more than Leibnitz’s restriction of Locke’s doctrine requires, and is, as it appears to me, the great stumbling block in Kant’s Philosophy. It is quite enough to shew, not that there are certain notions à priori or independent of sensation, but certain faculties independent of the senses or sensible objects, which are the intellect itself, and necessary, after the objects are given, to form ideas of them. That is to say, ideas are the result of the action of objects on such and such faculties of the mind. Kant’s notions à priori, seem little better than the innate ideas of the schools, or the Platonic ideas or forms, which are to me the forms of nothing. The sole and simple question is, whether there are not certain intellectual faculties distinct from the senses, which exist before any ideas can be formed, as it is not denied by any one, that there are certain sensitive faculties which must exist before any sensations can be received. The one supposition no more implies innate ideas, than the other implies innate sensations.
[9]. Now Kant, by thus classing, as he apparently does, the representations of space and time as forms of the sensitive faculty, throws up the whole argument: for if these very complex (not to say distracted) ideas, can be referred to mere sensation, I do not see why all the rest may not. Time is obviously an idea of succession or memory, and cannot be the result of an immediate sensible impression. The only power of the sensitive faculty is to receive blind, unconscious, unconnected impressions; the only category of the understanding is to perceive the relations between these impressions, so as to connect them consciously together, or to form ideas. To this category of relation, all the other general categories of quantity, totality, cause and effect, etc. as well as the ideas of space and time, are necessarily consequent and subordinate.
[10]. See to the same purpose Hobbes’s Human Nature, p. 25, and Leviathan, p. 14. Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge, p. 15 and 24. Hume’s Treatise, p. 46. Helvetius on the Mind, p. 10, and Condillac’s Logic, p. 54.
[11]. ‘Lastly, that there is some one principle or substance, absolutely simple in its nature, and distinct from every composition of matter, which is the seat of thought, the soul of man, and the bond of our existence, will appear evident to any one who considers the nature of judgment and comparison: where both terms of the one, and both branches of the other must be apprehended together, in order to determine between them. Let one man be ever so well acquainted with St. Peter’s at Rome, and another with St. Paul’s in London, they can never tell which is the larger, the handsomer, or make any other comparison between the two buildings by virtue of this knowledge. But you will say, the one may communicate his knowledge to the other: but then that other has the idea of both before him in his imagination, and it is from this that he forms his judgment. Nor is the case different with respect to the parts of a percipient being: let the idea of an elephant be impressed upon particle a, and that of a mouse upon particle b, they can never know either jointly or separately which is the larger creature: nor can a judgement be formed till the ideas of both coincide in one and the same individual. This is the common sense of mankind. For when we make use of the pronouns, I, He, You, &c. and say, I heard such a sound; I saw such a sight; or felt such a sensation; are not these different impressions all referred by implication to the same simple individual? Or were I to say, that in looking at a chess-board for instance, one part of me saw the yellow king, another the black, another the queen, another the bishop, and so on, should I not be laughed at by every body as not knowing what I was talking about?’—Tucker’s Light of Nature pursued, chapter on the Independent Existence of Mind. See also Rousseau’s reasoning in Answer to Helvetius, Emile, tom. 3. And Bentley’s Sermons at the Boyle Lecture.
[12]. So little has this principle of the unity of thought and consciousness been understood, that even Professor Stewart, the great champion of the intellectual philosophy, utterly rejects it, and supposes that the idea which the mind forms of any visible figure is nothing but a rapid succession of the ideas of the several parts. See his reasoning on this subject most ably confuted in a work lately published, entitled ‘An Essay on Consciousness, by John Fearn.’—This Essay, in spite of the disadvantage of the mechanical hypothesis with which it is encumbered, and the technical obscurity of the style, contains, I think, more close and original observation on the individual processes of the human mind, than any work published in this country in the last fifty years.
[13]. The faces of N. Poussin want expression, as his figures want grace; but the landscape part of his historical compositions was never surpassed. In his plague of Athens the buildings seem stiff with horror. His Giants seated on the tops of their fabled mountains, and playing on their Pan’s pipes are as natural and familiar as ‘silly shepherds sitting in a row.’ The finest of his landscapes is his picture of the Deluge. The sun is just seen wan and drooping in his course, the sky is bowed down with a weight of waters, and heaven and earth seem commingling.