[861] P. 22, 23.

100. It would be easy to quote many paragraphs of uncommon vivacity and acuteness from this forgotten treatise. The style is eminently spirited and eloquent; a little too figurative, like that of Locke, but less blameably, because Glanvil is rather destroying than building up. Every bold and original thought of others finds a willing reception in Glanvil’s mind, and his confident, impetuous style gives them an air of novelty which makes them pass for his own. He stands forward as a mutineer against authority, against educational prejudice, against reverence for antiquity.[862] No one thinks more intrepidly for himself; and it is probable that, even in what seems mere superstition, he had been rather misled by some paradoxical hypothesis of his own ardent genius, than by slavishly treading in the steps of others.[863]

[862] “Now, if we inquire the reason why the mathematics and mechanic arts have so much got the start in growth of other sciences, we shall find it probably resolved into this as one considerable cause, that their progress hath not been retarded by that reverential awe of former discoveries, which hath been so great a hindrance to theorical improvements. For, as the noble Lord Verulam hath noted, we have a mistaken apprehension of antiquity, calling that so which in truth is the world’s non-age. Antiquitas sæculi est juventus mundi. ‘Twas this vain idolising of authors which gave birth to that silly vanity of impertinent citations, and inducing authority in things neither requiring nor deserving it.—Methinks it is a pitiful piece of knowledge that can be learned from an index, and a poor ambition to be rich in the inventory of another’s treasure. To boast a memory, the most that these pedants can aim at, is but a humble ostentation.” P. 104.

[863] “That the fancy of one man should bind the thoughts of another, and determine them to their particular objects, will be thought impossible; which yet, if we look deeply into the matter, wants not its probability.” P. 146. He dwells more on this, but the passage is too long to extract. It is remarkable that he supposes a subtle æther (like that of the modern Mesmerists), to be the medium of communication in such cases; and had also a notion of explaining these sympathies by help of the anima mundi, or mundane spirit.

101. Glanvil sometimes quotes Lord Bacon, but he seems to have had the ambition of contending with the Novum Organum in some of its brilliant passages, and has really developed the doctrine of idols with uncommon penetration, as well as force of language. “Our initial age is like the melted wax to the prepared seal, capable of any impression from the documents of our teachers. The half-moon or cross are indifferent to its reception; and we may with equal facility write on this rasa tabula Turk or Christian. To determine this indifferency our first task is to learn the creed of our country, and our next to maintain it. We seldom examine our receptions, more than children do their catechisms, but by a careless greediness swallow all at a venture. For implicit faith is a virtue, where orthodoxy is the object. Some will not be at the trouble of a trial, others are scared from attempting it. If we do, ’tis not by a sun-beam or ray of light, but by a flame that is kindled by our affections, and fed by the fuel of our anticipations. And thus, like the hermit, we think the sun shines nowhere but in our cell, and all the world to be darkness but ourselves. We judge truth to be circumscribed by the confines of our belief and the doctrines we were brought up in.”[864] Few books, I think, are more deserving of being reprinted than the Scepsis Scientifica of Glanvil.

[864] P. 95.

His Plus Ultra. 102. Another bold and able attack was made on the ancient philosophy by Glanvil in his “Plus Ultra, or the Progress and Advancement of Knowledge since the days of Aristotle, 1668.” His tone is peremptory and imposing, animated and intrepid, such as befits a warrior in literature. Yet he was rather acute by nature, than deeply versed in learning, and talks of Vieta and Descarte’s algebra so as to show he had little knowledge of the science, or of what they had done for it.[865] His animosity against Aristotle is unreasonable, and he was plainly an incompetent judge of that philosopher’s general deserts. Of Bacon and Boyle he speaks with just eulogy. Nothing can be more free and bold than Glanvil’s assertion of the privilege of judging, for himself in religion;[866] and he had doubtless a perfect right to believe in witchcraft.

[865] Plus Ultra, p. 24 and 33.

[866] P. 142.

Dalgarno. 103. George Dalgarno, a native of Aberdeen, conceived, and, as it seemed to him, carried into effect the idea of an universal language and character. His Ara Signorum, vulgo Character Universalis et Lingua Philosophica, Lond., 1661, is dedicated to Charles II. in this philosophical character, which must have been as great a mystery to the sovereign as to his subjects. This dedication is followed by a royal proclamation in good English, inviting all to study this useful art, which had been recommended by divers learned men, Wilkins, Wallis, Ward, and others, “judging it to be of singular use for facilitating the matter of communication and intercourse between people of different languages.” The scheme of Dalgarno is fundamentally bad, in that he assumes himself, or the authors he follows, to have given a complete distribution of all things and ideas; after which his language is only an artificial scheme of symbols. It is evident that until objects are truly classified, a representative method of signs can only rivet and perpetuate error. We have but to look at his tabular synopsis to see that his ignorance of physics, in the largest sense of the word, renders his scheme deficient; and he has also committed the error of adopting the combinations of the ordinary alphabet, with a little help from the Greek, which, even with his slender knowledge of species, soon leave him incapable of expressing them. But Dalgarno has several acute remarks; and it deserves especially to be observed, that he anticipated the famous discovery of the Dutch philologers, namely, that all other parts of speech may be reduced to the noun, dexterously, if not successfully, resolving the verb substantive into an affirmative particle.[867]

[867] Tandem mihi affulsit clarior lux; accuratius enim examinando omnium notionum analysin logicam, percepi nullam esse particulam quæ non derivetur a nomine aliquo prædicamentali, et omnes particulas esse vere casus seu modos notionum nominalium, p. 120. He does not seem to have arrived at this conclusion by etymological analysis, but by his own logical theories.

The verb-substantive, he says, is equivalent to ita. Thus, Petrus est in domo, means, Petrus—ita—in domo. That is, it expresses an idea of apposition or conformity between a subject and predicate. This is a theory to which a man might be led by the habit of considering propositions logically, and thus reducing all verbs to the verb-substantive; and it is not deficient, at least, in plausibility.

Wilkins. 104. Wilkins, bishop of Chester, one of the most ingenious men of his age, published in 1668 his Essay towards a Philosophical Language, which has this advantage over that of Dalgarno, that it abandons the alphabet, and consequently admits of a greater variety of characters. It is not a new language, but a more analytical scheme of characters for English. Dalgarno seems to have known something of it, though he was the first to publish, and glances at “a more difficult way of writing English.” Wilkins also intimates that Dalgarno’s compendious method would not succeed. His own has the same fault of a premature classification of things; and it is very fortunate that neither of these ingenious but presumptuous attempts to fasten down the progressive powers of the human mind by the cramps of association had the least success.[868]

[868] Dalgarno, many years afterwards, turned his attention to a subject of no slight interest, even in mere philosophy, the instruction of the deaf and dumb. His Didascalocophus is perhaps the first attempt to found this on the analysis of language. But it is not so philosophical as what has since been effected.

Locke on human Understanding. 105. But from these partial and now very obscure endeavours of English writers in metaphysical philosophy we come at length to the work that has eclipsed every other, and given to such inquiries whatever popularity they ever possessed, the Essay, of Locke on the human Understanding. |The merits.| Neither the writings of Descartes, as I conceive, nor perhaps those of Hobbes, so far as strictly metaphysical, had excited much attention in England beyond the class of merely studious men. But the Essay on Human Understanding was frequently reprinted within a few years from its publication, and became the acknowledged code of English philosophy.[869] The assaults it had to endure in the author’s lifetime, being deemed to fail, were of service to its reputation; and considerably more than half a century was afterwards to elapse before any writer in our language (nor was the case very different in France, after the patronage accorded to it by Voltaire) could with much chance of success question any leading doctrine of its author. Several circumstances no doubt conspired with its intrinsic excellence to establish so paramount a rule in an age that boasted of peculiar independence of thinking, and full of intelligent and inquisitive spirits. The sympathy of an English public with Locke’s tenets as to government and religion was among the chief of these; and the reaction that took place in a large portion of the reading classes towards the close of the eighteenth century turned in some measure the tide even in metaphysical disquisition. It then became fashionable sometimes to accuse Locke of preparing the way for scepticism; a charge which, if it had been truly applicable to some of his opinions, ought rather to have been made against the long line of earlier writers with whom he held them in common; sometimes, with more pretence, to alledge that he had conceded too much to materialism; sometimes to point out and exaggerate other faults and errors of his Essay, till we have seemed in danger of forgetting that it is perhaps the first, and still the most complete chart of the human mind which has been laid down; the most ample repertory of truths relating to our intellectual being; and the one book which we are compelled to name as the first in metaphysical science. Locke had not, it may be said, the luminous perspicacity of language we find in Descartes, and, when he does not soar too high, in Malebranche; but he had more judgment, more caution, more patience, more freedom from paradox, and from the sources of paradox, vanity and love of system, than either. We have no denial of sensation to brutes, no reference of mathematical truths to the will of God, no oscillation between the extremes of doubt and of positiveness, no bewildering mysticism, no unintelligible chaos of words. Certainly neither Gassendi nor even Hobbes could be compared with him; and it might be asked of the admirers of later philosophers, those of Berkeley, or Hume, or Hartley, or Reid, or Stewart, or Brown, without naming any on the continent of Europe, whether in the extent of their researches, or in the originality of their discoveries, any of these names ought to stand on a level with that of Locke. One of the greatest I have mentioned, and one, who though candid towards Locke, had no prejudice whatever, in his favour, has extolled the first two books of the Essay on Human Understanding, which yet he deems in many respects inferior to the third and fourth, as “a precious accession to the theory of the human mind; as the richest contribution of well-observed and well-described facts which was ever bequeathed by a single individual; and as the indisputable, though not always acknowledged, source of some of the most refined conclusions with respect to the intellectual phenomena, which have been since brought to light by succeeding inquirers.”[870]

[869] It was abridged at Oxford, and used by some tutors as early as 1695. But the heads of the university came afterwards to a resolution to discourage the reading of it. Stillingfleet, among many others, wrote against the Essay; and Locke, as is well known, answered the bishop. I do not know that the latter makes altogether so poor a figure as has been taken for granted; but the defence of Locke will seem in most instances satisfactory. Its success in public opinion contributed much to the renown of his work; for Stillingfleet, though not at all conspicuous as a philosopher, enjoyed a great deal of reputation, and the world can seldom understand why a man who excels in one province of literature should fail in another.

[870] Stewart’s Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopædia, part ii.

Its defects. 106. It would be an unnecessary prolixity to offer in this place an analysis of so well-known a book as the Essay on the Human Understanding. Few have turned their attention to metaphysical inquiries without reading it. It has however no inconsiderable faults, which, though much over-balanced, are not to be passed over in a general eulogy. The style of Locke is wanting in philosophical precision; it is a very fine model of English language; but too idiomatic and colloquial, too indefinite and figurative, for the abstruse subjects with which he has to deal. We miss in every page the translucent simplicity of his great French predecessors. This seems to have been owing, in a considerable degree, to an excessive desire of popularising the subject, and shunning the technical pedantry which had repelled the world from intellectual philosophy. Locke displays in all his writings a respect which can hardly be too great, for men of sound understanding unprejudiced by authority, mingled with a scorn, perhaps a little exaggerated, of the gown-men or learned world; little suspecting that the same appeal to the people, the same policy of setting up equivocal words and loose notions, called the common sense of mankind, to discomfit subtle reasoning, would afterwards be turned against himself, as it was, very unfairly and unsparingly, by Reid and Beattie. Hence he falls a little into a laxity of phrase, not unusual, and not always important, in popular and practical discourse, but an inevitable source of confusion in the very abstract speculations which his Essay contains. And it may perhaps be suspected, without disparagement to his great powers, that he did not always preserve the utmost distinctness of conception, and was liable as almost every other metaphysician has been, to be entangled in the ambiguities of language.

Origin of ideas, according to Locke. 107. The leading doctrine of Locke, as is well known, is the derivation of all our ideas from sensation and from reflection. The former present no great difficulty; we know what is meant by the expression; but he is not very clear or consistent about the latter. He seems in general to limit the word to the various operations of our own minds in thinking, believing, willing, and so forth. This, as has been shown formerly, is taken from, or at least coincident with, the theory of Gassendi in his Syntagma Philosophicum. It is highly probable that Locke was acquainted with that work; if not immediately, yet through the account of the Philosophy of Gassendi, published in English by Dr. Charleton, in 1663, which I have not seen, or through the excellent and copious abridgment of the Syntagma by Bernier. But he does not strictly confine his ideas of reflection to this class. Duration is certainly no mode of thinking; yet the idea of duration is reckoned by Locke among those with which we are furnished by reflection. The same may perhaps be said, though I do not know that he expresses himself with equal clearness, as to his account of several other ideas, which cannot be deduced from external sensation, nor yet can be reckoned modifications or operations of the soul itself; such as number, power, existence.

Vague use of the word idea. 108. Stewart has been so much struck by this indefiniteness, with which the phrase “ideas of reflection” has been used in the Essay on the Human Understanding, that he “does not think, notwithstanding some casual expressions which may seem to favour the contrary supposition, that Locke would have hesitated for a moment to admit, with Cudworth and Price, that the understanding is the source of new ideas.”[871] And though some might object that this is too much in opposition, not to casual expressions, but to the whole tenor of Locke’s Essay, his language concerning substance almost bears it out. Most of the perplexity which has arisen on this subject, the combats of some metaphysicians with Locke, the portentous errors into which others have been led by want of attention to his language, may be referred to the equivocal meaning of the word idea. The Cartesians understood by this whatever is the object of thought, including an intellection as well as an imagination. By an intellection they meant that which the mind conceives to exist, and to be the subject of knowledge, though it may be unimaginable and incomprehensible. Gassendi and Locke limit the word idea to something which the mind sees and grasps as immediately present to it. “That,” as Locke not very well expresses it “which the mind is applied about while thinking being the ideas that are there.” Hence, he speaks with some ridicule of “men who persuade themselves that they have clear comprehensive ideas of infinity.” Such men can hardly have existed; but it is by annexing the epithets clear and comprehensive, that he shows the dispute to be merely verbal. For that we know the existence of infinities as objectively real, and can reason upon them, Locke would not have denied: and it is this knowledge to which others gave the name of idea.

[871] Prelim. Dissertation.

109. The different manner in which this all-important word was understood by philosophers is strikingly shown when they make use of the same illustration. Arnauld, if he is author of L’Art de Penser, mentions the idea of a chiliagon, or figure of 1,000 sides, as an instance of the distinction between that which we imagine, and that which we conceive or understand. Locke has employed the same instance to exemplify the difference between clear and obscure ideas. According to the former, we do not imagine a figure with 1,000 sides at all; according to the latter, we form a confused image of it. We have an idea of such a figure, it is agreed by both; but in the sense of Arnauld, it is an idea of the understanding alone; in the sense of Locke, it is an idea of sensation, framed, like other complex ideas, by putting together those we have formerly received, though we may never have seen the precise figure. That the word suggests to the mind an image of a polygon with many sides is indubitable; but it is urged by the Cartesians, that as we are wholly incapable of distinguishing the exact number, we cannot be said to have, in Locke’s sense of the word, any idea, even an indistinct one of a figure with 1,000 sides; since all we do imagine is a polygon. And it is evident that in geometry we do not reason from the properties of the image, but from those of a figure which the understanding apprehends. Locke, however, who generally preferred a popular meaning to one more metaphysically exact, thought it enough to call this a confused idea. He was not I believe, conversant with any but elementary geometry. Had he reflected upon that which in his age had made such a wonderful beginning, or even upon the fundamental principles of it, which might be found in Euclid, the theory of infinitesimal quantities, he must, one would suppose, have been more puzzled to apply his narrow definition of an idea. For what image can we form of a differential, which can pretend to represent it in any other sense than as d x represents it, by suggestion, not by resemblance?

110. The case is, however, much worse when Locke deviates, as in the third and fourth books he constantly does, from this sense that he has put on the word idea, and takes it either in the Cartesian meaning or in one still more general and popular. Thus, in the excellent chapter on the abuse of words, he insists upon the advantage of using none without clear and distinct ideas; he who does not this “only making a noise without any sense or signification.” If we combine this position with that in the second book, that we have no clear and distinct idea of a figure with 1,000 sides, it follows, with all the force of syllogism, that we should not argue about a figure of 1,000 sides at all, nor, by parity of reason, about many other things of far higher importance. It will be found, I incline to think, that the large use of the word idea for that about which we have some knowledge, without limiting it to what can be imagined, pervades the third and fourth books. Stewart has ingeniously conjectured that they were written before the second, and probably before the mind of Locke had been much turned to the psychological analysis which that contains. It is however certain that in the Treatise upon the Conduct of the Understanding, which was not published till after the Essay, he uses the word idea with full as much latitude as in the third and fourth books of the latter. We cannot, upon the whole, help admitting that the story of a lady who, after the perusal of the Essay on the Human Understanding, laid it down with a remark, that the book would be perfectly charming were it not for the frequent recurrence of one very hard word, idea, though told, possibly, in ridicule of the fair philosopher, pretty well represents the state of mind in which many at first have found themselves.

An error as to geometrical figure. 111. Locke, as I have just intimated seems to have possessed but a slight knowledge of geometry; a science which, both from the clearness of the illustrations it affords, and from its admitted efficacy in rendering the logical powers acute and cautious, may be reckoned, without excepting physiology, the most valuable of all to the metaphysician. But it did not require any geometrical knowledge, strictly so called, to avoid one material error into which he has fallen; and which I mention the rather, because even Descartes, in one place, has said something of the same kind, and I have met with it not only in Norris very distinctly and positively, but, more or less, in many or most of those who have treated of the metaphysics or abstract principles of geometry. “I doubt not,” says Locke,[872] “but it will be easily granted that the knowledge we have of mathematical truths is not only certain but real knowledge, and not the bare empty vision of vain insignificant chimeras of the brain; and yet if we well consider, we shall find, that it is only of our own ideas. The mathematician considers the truth and properties belonging to a rectangle or circle only as they are in idea in his own mind; for it is possible he never found either of them existing mathematically, that is, precisely true, in his life.... All the discourses of the mathematicians about the squaring of a circle, conic sections, or any other part of mathematics, concern not the existence of any of those figures; but their demonstrations, which depend on their ideas, are the same, whether there be any square or circle in the world or no.” And the inference he draws from this is, that moral as well as mathematical ideas being archetypes themselves, and so adequate and complete ideas, all the agreement or disagreement which he shall find in them will produce real knowledge, as well as in mathematical figures.

[872] B. iv., c. 8.

112. It is not perhaps necessary to inquire how far, upon the hypothesis of Berkeley, this notion of mathematical figures, as mere creations of the mind, could be sustained. But on the supposition of the objectivity of space, as truly existing without us, which Locke undoubtedly believed, it is certain that the passage just quoted is entirely erroneous, and that it involves a confusion between the geometrical figure itself and its delineation to the eye. A geometrical figure is a portion of space contained in boundaries determined by given relations. It exists in the infinite round about us, as the statue exists in the block.[873] No one can doubt, if he turns his mind to the subject, that every point in space is equidistant, in all directions, from certain other points. Draw a line through all these, and you have the circumference of a circle; but the circle itself and its circumference exist before the latter is delineated. The orbit of a planet is not a regular geometrical figure, because certain forces disturb it. But this disturbance means only a deviation from a line which exists really in space, and which the planet would actually describe, if there were nothing in the universe but itself and the centre of attraction. The expression therefore of Locke, “whether there be any square or circle existing in the world or no,” is highly inaccurate, the latter alternative being an absurdity. All possible figures, and that “in number numberless,” exist everywhere; nor can we evade the perplexities into which the geometry of infinities throws our imagination, by considering them as mere beings of reason, the creatures of the geometer, which I believe some are half disposed to do, nor by substituting the vague and unphilosophical notion of indefinitude for a positive objective infinity.

[873] Michael Angelo has well conveyed this idea in four lines, which I quote from Corniani.

Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto,
Che un marmo solo in se non circonscriva
Col suo soverchio, e solo a quello arriva
La mano che obbedisce all’intelletto.

The geometer uses not the same obedient hand, but he equally feels and perceives the reality of that figure which the broad infinite around him comprehends con suo soverchio.

113. This distinction between ideas of mere sensation and those of intellection, between what the mind comprehends, and what it conceives without comprehending, is the point of divergence between the two sects of psychology which still exist in the world. Nothing is in the intellect which has not before been in the sense, said the Aristotelian schoolmen. Every idea has its original in the senses, repeated the disciple of Epicurus, Gassendi. Locke indeed, as Gassendi had done before him, assigned another origin to one class of ideas; but these were few in number, and in the next century two writers of considerable influence, Hartley and Condillac, attempted to resolve them all into sensation. The Cartesian school, a name rather used for brevity, as a short denomination of all who, like Cudworth, held the same tenets as to the nature of ideas, lost ground both in France and England; nor had Leibnitz who was deemed an enemy to some of our great English names, sufficient weight to restore it. In the hands of some who followed in both countries, the worst phrases of Locke were preferred to the best; whatever could be turned to the account of pyrrhonism, materialism, or atheism, made a figure in the Epicurean system of a popular philosophy. The names alluded to will suggest themselves to the reader. The German metaphysicians from the time of Kant deserve at least the credit of having successfully withstood this coarse sensualism, though they may have borrowed much that their disciples take for original, and added much that is hardly better than what they have overthrown. The opposite philosophy to that which never rises above sensible images is exposed to a danger of its own; it is one which the infirmity of the human faculties renders perpetually at hand; few there are who in reasoning on subjects where we cannot attain what Locke has called “positive comprehensive ideas” are secure from falling into mere nonsense and repugnancy. In that part of physics which is simply conversant with quantity, this danger is probably not great, but in all such inquiries as are sometimes called transcendental, it has perpetually shipwrecked the adventurous navigator.

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.

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.

Locke’s Conduct of Understanding. 122. The same praiseworthy diligence in hunting error to its lurking-places distinguishes the short treatise on the Conduct of the Understanding; which, having been originally designed as an additional chapter to the Essay,[876] is as it were the ethical application of its theory, and ought always to be read with it, if, indeed, for the sake of its practical utility, it should not come sooner into the course of education. Aristotle himself, and the whole of his dialectical school, had pointed out many of the sophisms against which we should guard our reasoning faculties; but these are chiefly such as others attempt to put upon us in dispute. There are more dangerous fallacies by which we cheat ourselves; prejudice, partiality, self-interest, vanity, inattention and indifference to truth. Locke, who was as exempt from these as almost any man who has turned his mind to so many subjects where their influence is to be suspected, has dwelled on the moral discipline of the intellect in this treatise better, as I conceive, than any of his predecessors, though we have already seen, and it might appear far more at length to those who should have recourse to the books, that Arnauld and Malebranche, besides other French philosophers of the age, had not been remiss in this indispensable part of logic.

[876] See a letter to Molyneux, dated April, 1697. Locke’s Works (fol. 1759), vol. iii., p. 539.

123. Locke, throughout this treatise, labours to secure the honest inquirer from that previous persuasion of his own opinion, which generally renders all his pretended investigations of its truth little more than illusive and nugatory. But the indifferency he recommends to everything except truth itself, so that we should not even wish anything to be true before we have examined whether it be so, seems to involve the impossible hypothesis that man is but a purely reasoning being. It is vain to press the recommendation of freedom from prejudice so far; since we cannot but conceive some propositions to be more connected with our welfare than others, and consequently to desire their truth. These exaggerations lay a fundamental condition of honest inquiry open to the sneers of its adversaries; and it is sufficient, because nothing more is really attainable, first to dispossess ourselves of the notion that our interests are concerned where they are not, and next, even when we cannot but wish one result of our inquiries rather than another, to be the more unremitting in our endeavours to exclude this bias from our reasoning.

124. I cannot think any parent or instructor justified in neglecting to put this little treatise in the hands of a boy about the time when the reasoning faculties become developed. It will give him a sober and serious, not flippant or self-conceited, independency of thinking; and while it teaches how to distrust ourselves, and to watch those prejudices which necessarily grow up from one cause or another, will inspire a reasonable confidence in what he has well considered, by taking off a little of that deference to authority, which is the more to be regretted in its excess, that, like its cousin-german party-spirit, it is frequently united to loyalty of heart, and the generous enthusiasm of youth.

CHAPTER XXX.

Their truth questioned by some. 2. The Jesuits had, unfortunately for themselves, no writers at that time of sufficient ability to defend them; and being disliked by many who were not Jansenists, could make little stand against their adversaries, till public opinion had already taken its line. They have since not failed to charge Pascal with extreme misrepresentation of their eminent casuists, Escobar, Busenbaum, and many others, so that some have ventured to call the Provincial Letters the immortal liars (les immortelles menteuses). It has been insinuated, since Pascal’s veracity is hard to attack, that he was deceived by those from whom he borrowed his quotations. But he has declared himself, in a remarkable passage, not only that far from repenting of these letters he would make them yet stronger if it were to be done again, but that although he had not read all the books he has quoted, else he must have spent great part of his life in reading bad books, yet that he had read Escobar twice through, and with respect to the rest, he had not quoted a single passage without having seen it in the book, and examined the context before and after, that he might not confound an objection with an answer, which would have been reprehensible and unjust[877]: it is therefore impossible to save the honour of Pascal, if his quotations are not fair. Nor did he stand alone in his imputations on the Jesuit casuistry. A book called Morale des Jesuites, by Nicolas Perrault, published at Mons in 1667, goes over the same ground with less pleasantry but not less learning.

[877] Œuvres de Pascal, vol. i., p. 400.

Taylor’s Ductor Dubitantium. 3. The most extensive and learned work on casuistry which has appeared in the English language is the Ductor Dubitantium of Jeremy Taylor, published in 1660. This, as its title shows, treats of subjective morality, or the guidance of the conscience. But this cannot be much discussed without establishing some principles of objective right and wrong, some standard by which the conscience is to be ruled. “The whole measure and rule of conscience,” according to Taylor, “is the law of God, or God’s will signified to us by nature or revelation; and by the several manners and times and parts of its communication it hath obtained several names:—the law of nature—the consent of nations—right reason—the Decalogue—the sermon of Christ—the canons of the apostles—the laws ecclesiastical and civil of princes and governors—fame or the public reputation of things, expressed by proverbs and other instances and manners of public honesty.... These being the full measures of right and wrong, of lawful and unlawful, will be the rule of conscience and the subject of the present book.”

Cudworth’s immutable morality. 6. A treatise concerning eternal and immutable morality, by Cudworth, was first published in 1731. This may be almost reckoned a portion of his Intellectual System, the object being what he has declared to be one of those which he had there in view. This was to prove that moral differences of right and wrong are antecedent to any divine law. He wrote therefore not only against the Calvinistic school, but in some measure against Taylor, though he abstains from mentioning any recent author except Descartes, who had gone far in referring all moral distinctions to the arbitrary will of God. Cudworth’s reasoning is by no means satisfactory, and rests too much on the dogmatic metaphysics which were going out of use. The nature or essence of nothing, he maintains, can depend upon the will of God alone; which is the efficient, but not the formal, cause of all things; a distinction not very intelligible, but on which he seems to build his theory.[878] For moral relations, though he admits that they have no objective existence out of the mind, have a positive essence, and therefore are not nothing; whence, it follows that they must be independent of will. He pours out much ancient learning, though not so lavishly as in the Intellectual System.

[878] P. 15.

Nicole—La Placette. 7. The urgent necessity of contracting my sails in this last period, far the most abundant as it is in the variety and extent of its literature, restrains me from more than a bare mention of several works not undeserving of regard. The Essais de Morale of Nicole are less read than esteemed, says a late biographer.[879] Voltaire however prophesied that they would not perish. “The chapter especially,” he proceeds, “on the means of preserving peace among men is a masterpiece to which nothing equal has been left to us by antiquity.”[880] These Essays are properly contained in six volumes; but so many other pieces are added in some editions that the collection under that title is very long. La Placette, minister of a French church at Copenhagen, has been called the Protestant Nicole. His Essais de Morale, in 1692 and other years, are full of a solid morality, rather strict in casuistry, and apparently not deficient in observation and analytical views of human nature. They were much esteemed in their own age. Works of this kind tread so very closely on the department of practical religion that it is sometimes difficult to separate them on any fixed principle. A less homiletical form, a comparative absence of scriptural quotation, a more reasoning and observing mode of dealing with the subject, are the chief distinctions. But in the sermons of Barrow and some others we find a great deal of what may be justly called moral philosophy.

[879] Biog. Univ.

[880] Siècle de Louis XIV.

Other writers. 8. A book by Sharrock, De Officiis secundum Rationis Humanæ Dictata, 1660, is occasionally quoted, and seems to be of a philosophical nature.[881] Velthuysen, a Dutch minister, was of more reputation. His name was rather obnoxious to the orthodox, since he was a strenuous advocate of toleration, a Cartesian in philosophy, and inclined to judge for himself. His chief works are De Principiis Justi et Decori, and De Naturali Pudore.[882] But we must now pass on to those who have exercised a greater influence in moral philosophy, Cumberland and Puffendorf, after giving a short consideration to Spinosa.

[881] Cumberland (in præfatione) De Legibus Naturæ.

[882] Biog. Univ., Barbeyrac’s notes on Puffendorf, passim.

Moral system of Spinosa. 9. The moral system, if so it may be called, of Spinosa, has been developed by him in the fourth and fifth parts of his Ethics. We are not deceived in what might naturally be expected from the unhesitating adherence of Spinosa to a rigorous line of reasoning, that his ethical scheme would offer nothing inconsistent with the fundamental pantheism of his philosophy. In nature itself, he maintains as before, there is neither perfection nor imperfection, neither good nor evil; but these are modes of speaking, adopted to express the relations of things as they appear to our minds. Whatever contains more positive attributes capable of being apprehended by us than another contains, is more perfect than it. Whatever we know to be useful to ourselves, that is good; and whatever impedes our attainment of good is evil. By this utility Spinosa does not understand happiness, if by that is meant pleasurable sensation, but the extension of our mental and bodily capacities. The passions restrain and overpower these capacities; and coming from without, that is, from the body, render the mind a less powerful agent than it seems to be. It is only, we may remember in a popular sense, and subject to his own definitions, that Spinosa acknowledges the mind to be an agent at all; it is merely so, in so far as its causes of action cannot be referred by us to anything external. No passion can be restrained except by a stronger passion. Hence, even a knowledge of what is really good or evil for us can of itself restrain no passion; but only as it is associated with a perception of joy and sorrow, which is a mode of passion. This perception is necessarily accompanied by desire or aversion; but they may often be so weak as to be controlled by other sentiments of the same class, inspired by conflicting passions. This is the cause of the weakness and inconstancy of many, and he alone is wise and virtuous who steadily pursues what is useful to himself; that is, what reason points out as the best means of preserving his well-being, and extending his capacities. Nothing is absolutely good, nothing therefore is principally sought by a virtuous man, but knowledge, not of things external, which gives us only inadequate ideas, but of God. Other things are good or evil to us, so far as they suit our nature or contradict it; and so far as men act by reason, they must agree in seeking what is conformable to their nature. And those who agree with us in living by reason, are themselves of all things most suitable to our nature; so that the society of such men is most to be desired; and to enlarge that society by rendering men virtuous, and by promoting their advantage when they are so, is most useful to ourselves. For the good of such as pursue virtue may be enjoyed by all, and does not obstruct our own. Whatever conduces to the common society of mankind and promotes concord among them is useful to all; and whatever has an opposite tendency is pernicious. The passions are sometimes incapable of excess, but of this the only instances are joy and cheerfulness; more frequently they become pernicious by being indulged, and in some cases, such as hatred, can never be useful. We should therefore, for our own sakes, meet the hatred and malevolence of others with love and liberality. Spinosa dwells much on the preference due to a social above a solitary life, to cheerfulness above austerity, and alludes frequently to the current theological ethics with censure.

Cumberland’s De Legibus Naturæ. 13. The science of ethics, in the third quarter of the seventeenth century, seemed to be cultivated by three very divergent schools; by that of the theologians who went no farther than revelation, or at least than the positive law of God, for moral distinctions; by that of the Platonic philosophers, who sought them in eternal and intrinsic relations; and that of Hobbes and Spinosa, who reduced them all to selfish prudence. A fourth theory, which, in some of its modifications, has greatly prevailed in the last two centuries, may be referred to Richard Cumberland, afterwards bishop of Peterborough. His famous work, De Legibus Naturæ Disquisitio Philisophica, was published in 1672. It is contained in nine chapters, besides the preface or prolegomena.

15. By diligent observation of all propositions which can be justly reckoned general moral laws of nature, he finds that they may be reduced to one, the pursuit of the common good of all rational agents, which tends to our own good as part of the whole; as its opposite tends not only to the misery of the whole system, but to our own.[883] This tendency, he takes care to tell us, though he uses the present tense (conducit), has respect to the most remote consequences, and is so understood by him. The means which serve to this end, the general good, may be treated as theorems in a geometrical method.[884] Cumberland, as we have seen in Spinosa, was captivated by the apparent security of this road to truth.

[883] Prolegomena, sect. 9.

[884] Sect. 12.

16. This scheme, he observes, may at first sight want the two requisites of a law, a legislator, and a sanction. But whatever is naturally assented to by our minds, must spring from the author of nature. God is proved to be the author of every proposition which is proved to be true by the constitution of nature, which has him for its author.[885] Nor is a sanction wanting in the rewards, that is the happiness which attends the observance of the law of nature, and in the opposite effects of its neglect; and in a lax sense, though not that of the jurists, reward as well as punishment may be included in the word sanction.[886] But benevolence, that is love and desire of good towards all rational beings, includes piety towards God, the greatest of them all, as well as humanity.[887] Cumberland altogether abstains from arguments founded on revelation, and is perhaps the first writer on natural law who has done so, for they may even be found in Hobbes. And I think that he may be reckoned the founder of what is awkwardly and invidiously called the utilitarian school; for though similar expressions about the common good may sometimes be found in the ancients, it does not seem to have been the basis of any ethical system.