This work owes its present rank among philosophical productions, to its embodiment of the great principle first brought forward by Hobbes. All its author’s attempts to modify this principle or reconcile it to common notions have been gradually exploded, and have given place to the more severe and logical deductions of Hobbes from the same general principle. Mr. Locke took the faculties of the mind as he found them in himself and others, and endeavoured to account for them on a new principle. By this compromise with candour and common sense, he prepared the way for the introduction of the principle, which being once established, very soon overturned all the trite opinions and vulgar prejudices which were improperly associated with it. There was in fact no place for them in the new system.

The great defect with which the ‘Essay on the Human Understanding’ is chargeable is, that there is not really a word about the nature of the understanding in it, nor any attempt to show what it is or whether it is or is not any thing, distinct from the faculty of simple perception. The operations of thinking, comparing, discerning, reasoning, willing, and the like, which Mr. Locke ascribes to it, are the operations of nothing, or of I know not what. All the force of his mind seems to have been so bent on exploding innate ideas, and tracing our thoughts to their external source, that he either forgot or had not leisure to examine what the internal principle of all thought is. He took for his basis a bad simile—that the mind is like a blank sheet of paper, originally void of all characters whatever; for this, though true as far as relates to innate ideas, that is, to any impressions actually existing in it, is not true of the mind itself, which is not like a sheet of paper, the passive receiver and retainer of the impressions made upon it. The inference from this simile has however been that the understanding is nothing in itself, nor the cause of any thing; never acting, but always acted upon; that it is but a convenient repository for the straggling images of things, a sort of empty room into which ideas are conveyed from without through the doors of the senses, as you would carry goods into an unfurnished lodging; and hence it has been found necessary by succeeding writers to get rid of those different faculties and operations which Mr. Locke elsewhere allows to belong to the mind, but which are in truth only compatible with the active powers and independent nature of the understanding. I will first state Mr. Locke’s account of the origin of our ideas in his own words, and will then endeavour to show in what that account is defective; that is, what other act or faculty of the mind I conceive to be necessary to the formation of our ideas, besides sensation or simple perception. After employing eighty pages in a very laborious, and for the most part sensible refutation of the doctrine of innate ideas, which was popular at the time, but which Hobbes has not deigned to notice, their impossibility being implied in the general principle that all our ideas are derived from the senses, Mr. Locke proceeds in the second book to treat of Ideas, and their origin. He then says:

‘Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks, and that which his mind is applied about whilst thinking being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt that men have in their minds several ideas, such are those expressed by the words, whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness, and others: it is in the first place then to be inquired how he comes by them. I know it is a received doctrine that men have native ideas and original characters stamped upon their minds in their very first being. This opinion I have at large examined already: but I suppose what I have said will be much more easily admitted when I have shewn whence the understanding may get all the ideas it has, and by what ways and degrees they may come into the mind, for which I shall appeal to every one’s own observation and experience. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, in an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE: in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself....

‘First, our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways, wherein those objects do affect them; and thus we come by those ideas we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those which we call sensible qualities, which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they from external objects convey into the mind what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call SENSATION.

‘Secondly, the other fountain from whence experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got: which operations when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without: and such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds; which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other sensation, so I call this REFLECTION; the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself.... These two I say, viz. external, material things, as the objects of sensation, and the operations of our own minds within as the objects of REFLECTION, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings. The term operations here I use in a large sense, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about its ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from them, such as is the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought.’

‘The understanding,’ proceeds Mr. Locke, ‘seems to me not to have the least glimmering of any ideas, which it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us; and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations. These, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several modes, combinations, and relations, we shall find to contain all our whole stock of ideas: and that we have nothing in our minds, which did not come in one of these two ways.’—Essay, vol. I. p. 84.

Again, page 150, he says:

‘I pretend not to teach but to inquire, and therefore cannot but confess here again, that external and internal sensation are the only passages that I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this dark room. For methinks the understanding is not much unlike a closet, wholly shut from light, with only some little opening left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without: would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.’

This account of the origin of every thing that exists in the mind differs from the simplicity of Hobbes’s system, and of the modern philosophy, in supposing that there is another distinct source of ideas, besides sensation, namely, reflection on the operations of our own minds. I confess this addition appears to me to be very awkwardly and inartificially made. For, in the first place, it is obvious to remark that in most at least, if not all the instances enumerated by the author, the operations themselves are the proper and immediate sources of our ideas, not this kind of reflection on them, which seems to be nothing but the repetition or recollection of the first conscious impression, the perception of a perception. For example, Mr. Locke includes among operations of our own minds ‘some sort of passions arising from our ideas,’ i.e. as he explains it, the sense of pleasure and pain. Now it is surely a little preposterous to make, not the original feeling itself, but the after consideration or reflection on that feeling, the source of our idea of pleasure or pain. In this sense, reflection must be the source of all our ideas, whether of external objects, or the operations of our own minds, for in the same sense it may be argued, that the first impression of a sensible object is not the source of the idea we have of it, till the soul comes to reflect on and consider that original impression. But it might be said with equal propriety, that we have one source of ideas, viz., sensation, and another source of ideas, viz. ideas. From the view which Mr. Locke has here taken of the subject, though the passions, or the satisfaction and uneasiness attending certain things are ranked among the operations of the mind, yet it is not quite clear whether we are supposed to have any consciousness of them or not; whether they are not as remote from any thing like perception, as the lifeless objects without us, till coming to be afterwards reflected on and taken notice of by the mind, they furnish the understanding with a new set of ideas. The same reasoning may be applied to the other operations of perception, thinking, &c. for it seems to me that the original act of perceiving or thinking is the source of my idea of those mental operations, just as the first impression of any sensible object is the source of my idea of that object. Not sensation and reflection, therefore, but sensation and the operations of our own minds are more properly the sources of our ideas, that is, these two furnish materials for our reflection. I should not have dwelt so long upon this distinction, which may be thought of little importance in itself, but that I believe it has led to most of the errors of the ‘Essay.’ For in consequence of separating the operations of the mind in a manner from the mind itself, and making them exist only as objects for its contemplation, Mr. Locke has been satisfied with considering those operations as acting upon the mind like external things, not as emanating from it. Thus, by a general formula, all our ideas of every kind are represented as communicated to the mind by something foreign to it, instead of growing out of, and being a part of its own nature and essence.

Secondly, another objection to this division of our ideas into those of sensation and reflection is, that it does not differ in any decisive manner from the more simple statement of Hobbes and others, who derive all our ideas from sensation. For by sensation these writers do not understand merely the external image, but the perception or feeling which accompanies it, and they contend that all our other ideas are continuations, modifications, or different arrangements of the original impressions, produced by objects on the senses. Now there is nothing in the extract above given to disprove this statement: and if so, the original hypothesis will remain in its full force. Indeed Mr. Locke himself does not seem to have made up his mind, whether it were so or not. For though he speaks of the mind as furnishing the understanding with ideas, and with the materials of reason and knowledge, and enumerates and explains the several operations of the mind in comparing, distinguishing, &c. yet he elsewhere speaks of ideas as existing in the understanding like pictures in a gallery, or as if the whole process of the intellect were resolvable into the power of receiving, retaining, carrying, and transposing the gross materials furnished by the senses. In this case, I think the simplest way at once is to make sensation the foundation of all our other ideas and faculties. For my own part, the reason why I cannot assent to this doctrine is, that I believe there is another act or faculty of the mind implied in all our ideas, for which neither sensation nor any of its modes can ever account, and which I shall here proceed to explain.

The principle which I shall attempt to prove is, that ideas are the offspring of the understanding, not of the senses. By a sensation is meant the perception produced by the impression of the several parts of an outward object, each by itself, on the correspondent parts of an organised sentient being: by an idea I mean the conception produced by a number of these together on the same conscious principle. Besides the succession or juxtaposition of different sensible impressions, I suppose that there is a common principle of thought, a superintending faculty, which alone perceives the relations of things, and enables us to comprehend their connexions, forms, and masses. This faculty is properly the understanding, and it is by means of this faculty that man indeed becomes a reasonable soul. What has led more than any thing else to the exclusion of the understanding as a distinct faculty of the mind, and to the principle of resolving the acts of judging, reasoning, &c., into mere association, or succession of ideas, has been the considering ideas themselves, or those particular objects which are marked by one name, or strike at once upon the senses, as simple things. Mr. Locke, it is true, has avoided this error as far as relates to our ideas of substances, but he reckons among simple ideas of the qualities of things several ideas, which are evidently complex, such as extension, figure, motion, and number. Hence, having laid in a certain stock of ideas without the necessity of the understanding, it was thought an easy matter to build up the whole structure of the human mind without it, as we build a house with stones. The method, therefore, which I shall take to establish the point I have in view, will be by showing that there is no one of these simple ideas, or ideas of particular things, which are made the foundation of all the rest, that is not itself an aggregate of many things, or that can subsist a moment but in the understanding. I can conceive of a being endued with the power of sensation, or simple perception, so as to receive the direct impressions of things, and also with memory, so as to retain them for any length of time, as they were severally and unconnectedly presented, yet without the smallest degree of understanding, or without ever having so much as a single thought. The state of such a being would be that of animal life, and something more with the addition of memory, but it would not amount to intellect; which implies, besides actual, living impressions, the power of perceiving their relations to one another, of comparing and contrasting them, and of regarding the different parts of any object as making one whole. Without this ‘discourse of reason,’ this surrounding and forming power, we could never have the idea of a single object, as of a table or a chair, a blade of grass, or a grain of sand. Every one of these includes a certain configuration, hardness, colour, &c., i.e. ideas of different things, received by different senses, which must be put together by the understanding before they can be referred to any particular thing, or considered as one idea. Without this faculty, all our ideas would be necessarily decomposed, and crumbled down into their original elements and fluxional parts. We could assuredly never carry on a chain of reasoning on any subject, for the very links of which this chain must consist would be ground to powder. There would be an infinite divisibility in the impressions of the mind, as well as in the objects of matter. There would be a total want of union, fellowship, and mutual intelligence between them, for each impression must remain absolutely simple and distinct, unknown to, and unconscious of the rest, shut up in the narrow cell of its own individuality. No two of these atomic impressions could ever club together to form even a sensible point, much less should we be able to arrive at any of the larger masses, or nominal descriptions of things. The most that sensation could possibly do for us, would be to furnish us with the ideas of what Mr. Locke calls the simple qualities of objects, as of colour or pressure, though not as a general notion or diffused feeling; for it is certain that no one idea could ever contain more than the tinge of a single ray of light, or the puncture of a single particle of matter. Let us, however, for a moment suppose that the several parts of objects are to be considered as individual things, or ideal units; and then see whether, without the cementing power of the understanding, we shall be able to conceive of them as forming a complete whole, or any one entire object. Thus we may have a notion of the legs and arms of a chair as so many distinct, positive things; but without the power of perceiving them together in their several proportions and situations, we could not have the idea of a chair as one thing, or as a piece of furniture, intended for a particular use. It is the mind (if I may be allowed such an expression) that makes up the idea of the chair, and fits it together: that is in this case the cabinet-maker, who unites the loose, disjointed parts, and makes them one firm and well-compacted object. I might instance to the same purpose a statue. Will any one say, that if the head and limbs and different parts of a fine statue were to be taken asunder, broken in pieces, and strewed about the floor, and first shown to him in that state, he would have the same idea of the beauty, proportions, posture, and effect of the whole, as if he had seen it in its original state? But the idea which such a person might have of the statue in this way would be completeness and harmony itself, compared with any idea which could result from the sensible impression of the several parts. For he might still in fancy piece together the broken, mutilated fragments, prop up the limbs, set the head upon the shoulders, and make out a crazy image of the whole; but without the understanding reacting on the senses, and informing the eye with judgment and knowledge, there would be no possibility whatever of comparing the different impressions received: no one part could have the slightest reference to any other part or to the whole; there would be no principle of cohesion left: we might have an infinite number of microscopic impressions and fractions of ideas, but there being nothing to unite them together, the most perfect grace and symmetry would be only one mass of unmeaning, unconscious confusion. All nature, all objects, all parts of all objects would be equally ‘without form and void.’ The mind alone is formative, to use the expression of a great German writer; or it is that alone which by its pervading and elastic energy unfolds and expands our ideas, that gives order and consistency to them, that assigns to every part its proper place, and fixes it there, and that frames the idea of the whole. Or, in other words, it is the understanding alone that perceives relation, but every object is made up of relation. In short, there is no object or idea which does not consist of a number of parts arranged in a certain manner, but of this arrangement the parts themselves cannot be sensible. To make each part conscious of its relation to the rest is to suppose an infinite number of intellects instead of one; and to say that a knowledge or perception of each part separately, without a reference to the rest, can produce a conception of the whole; that is, that a knowledge where no two impressions are or ever can be compared, can include a comparison between them and many others, is a contradiction and an absurdity.

It may be said perhaps, that not the sensation excited by any of the parts of an object separately, but the sum of our sensations, excited by all the parts, produces our idea of the whole. But it is not possible that in a given number of impressions, where the mind never has perception of more than a single part, there should be contained notwithstanding a view of the whole at once. For as a single part cannot of itself represent the whole object, so neither can this part by being actually joined to others, which by the supposition are never perceived to be joined with it, produce that idea, any more than if those other parts had no existence. If the impression of the parts of an object, absolutely and individually considered, were the same thing as the idea of the object, any number of actual impressions, arranged in any manner whatever, would necessarily be the same object. But this is contrary to all fact. For then a curve line, consisting of the same number of points, would not be distinguishable from a straight one, nor a square from a triangle of the same dimensions, and so on. In a being endued only with a power of sensation, and supposed to be simple and undivided, there could be no room for more than an individual impression at once. Our sensations must always succeed each other. One thought must have completely passed away, before another could supply its place. Our ideas would leave no traces of themselves, like the bubbles that rise and disappear on the water, or the snow that melts as it falls. There would be nothing in their fugitive, momentary existence to bind them together. Ere we could stop to compare any one impression with any other, it would be lost for ever in the dark abyss of time. Nothing could be connected with any thing else, either coexisting with it, or going before or after it. If on the other hand, we suppose any merely sentient being to be extended and compounded, or to be capable of receiving more than one impression at once, we shall yet gain little by it. Such a sentient being will be nothing but a number of distinct sentient beings. For as in the former instance, no two impressions could co-exist together, so in the latter, though they existed together, there could be no sort of communication between them. They would be absolutely cut off from and exclusive of each other. The mind in attending to any one must be wholly absorbed by it, and insensible of the rest. Our sensations would to every rational purpose be placed as completely out of the sphere of each other’s consciousness, as if they were parcel of another intellect, or floated in the region of the moon. That any number of detached, unconnected, actual sensations, impressed on different sentient beings, would not of themselves imply a conception of any one entire object is what every one is ready to grant:—it would be equally clear, that this idea could not arise from the impression of the different parts of an object on the different parts of the same organized, extended, sentient substance, but that in this case we involuntarily transfer our own consciousness to a being incapable of it, and identify these distinct sensible impressions in the same common intellect.

It is strange that Mr. Locke should rank among simple ideas that of number, which he defines to be the idea of unity repeated. But how this idea of successive or distinct units can ever give the idea of repetition unless the former instances are borne in mind, I cannot conceive. There might be a transition from one unit to another, but no addition or aggregate formed. As well might we suppose that a body of an inch diameter by shifting from place to place might enlarge its dimensions to a foot or a mile, as that a succession of units, perceived separately, should produce the complex idea of number. The natural fool that Mr. Hobbes speaks of, may be supposed to observe every stroke of the clock, and nod to it, or say one, one, one: but he could never know what hour it strikes, according to Mr. Hobbes, without the use of those names of order, one, two, three, &c. nor according to my notion, without the help of that orderly understanding which first invented those names, and comprehends their meaning. On the material hypothesis, the mind can have but one idea at a time, and the idea of number could never enter into it.

Though Mr. Locke constantly supposes the mind to perceive relations, and explains its operations in reasoning, comparing, &c. on this principle, there is but one place in his work, in which he seems to have been upon the point of discovering that this principle is at the bottom of all our ideas whatever. He says, in the beginning of his chapter on Power, which he classes among simple ideas, and which in my opinion has a much more simple source than that which he assigns to it,—‘I confess power includes in it some kind of relation (a relation to action or change), as indeed which of our ideas, of what kind soever, when attentively considered, does not? For our ideas of extension, duration, and number, do they not all contain in them a secret relation of the parts? Figure and motion have something relative in them much more visibly: and sensible qualities, as colours and smells, what are they but the powers of different bodies in relation to our perception? and if considered in the things themselves, do they not depend on the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of the parts? All which include some kind of relation in them. Our idea therefore of power I think may well have a place amongst other simple ideas, and be considered as one of them, being one of those that make a principal ingredient in our complex ideas of substances.’—Essay, vol. i. p. 234. That is to say, in other words, the idea of power, which is confessedly complex according to Mr. Locke, as depending on the changes we observe produced in one thing by another, is to pass for a simple idea, because it has as good a right to this denomination as other complex ideas, which are usually classed as simple ones. It is thus that the inquiring mind seems to be always hovering on the brink of truth, but that timidity or indolence, or prejudice, which is both combined, makes us shrink back, unwilling to trust ourselves to the fathomless abyss.

I have thus endeavoured to give some account of what I mean by the understanding, as the principle which is the foundation not only of judgment, reason, choice, and deliberate action, but is included in every idea of the mind, or conception even of sensible objects. I am aware that what I have said may be looked upon as rhapsody and extravagance by the strictest sect of those who are called philosophers. The understanding has been set aside as an awkward incumbrance, since it was conceived practicable to carry on the whole business of thought and reason by a succession of external images and sensible points. The fine network of the mind itself, the cords that bind and hold our scattered perceptions together, and form the means of communication between them, are dissolved and vanish before the clear light of modern metaphysics, as the gossamer is dissipated by the sun. The adepts in this system smile at the contradictions involved in the supposition of perceiving the relations between different things, and say that this implies the absurdity that the mind may have two ideas at once, which is with them impossible. Now I shall only contend that if the mind cannot have two ideas at the same time, it can never have any, since all the ideas we know of consist of more than one: and though the consciousness we have of attending to different objects at once, when we compare, judge, reason, will, &c., has been resolved into a deception of the mind in mistaking a rapid succession of objects for one general impression, yet it will hardly be pretended that we deceive ourselves in thinking we have any ideas at all. Mr. Horne Tooke, who is certainly one of the ablest commentators on the doctrines of that school, says that it is as absurd to talk of a complex idea as of a complex star, meaning that our ideas are as perfectly distinct from, and have as little to do with one another, as the stars that compose a constellation. Other writers, to avoid the seeming contradiction of supposing the mind to divide its attention between different objects, have suggested the instant of its passing from one to the other as the true point of comparison between them; or that the time when it had an idea of both together, was the time when it had an idea of neither. As it was evident that while the mind was entirely taken up with one idea, it could not have any knowledge of another which did not yet exist, or had passed away, and as both impressions cannot be supposed to co-exist in the same conscious understanding (for on this system there is no such faculty), this short, precious interval, this moment of leisure from both, this lucky vacancy of thought, is pitched upon as that in which the mind performs all its functions, and contemplates its various ideas in their absence, as from some vantage ground the traveller stops to survey the country on both sides of him. To such absurdities are ingenious men driven by setting up argument against fact, and denying the most obvious truths for which they cannot account, like the sophist who denied the existence of motion, because he could not understand its nature. It might be deemed a sufficient answer to those who build systems and lay down formal propositions on the principle that the mind can comprehend but one idea at a time, to say that they consequently can have no meaning in what they write, since when they begin a sentence they cannot have the least idea of what will be the end of it, and by the time they get to the end of it must totally forget the beginning. ‘Peace to all such!’

To show, however, that I am not quite singular in my notions on this subject of consciousness, and to remove, as I think, every shadow of doubt upon it, I beg leave to refer my readers to two passages, the one in Rousseau, and the other in Abraham Tucker, in support of the almost obsolete prejudice which I have here endeavoured to defend. The one is an argument to prove that judgment and sensation are not the same, in the Vicar’s profession of faith in ‘Emilius,’ and the other is the chapter on the independent existence of mind in the ‘Light of Nature Pursued.’

The passage in Rousseau seems evidently to have been intended as an answer to the maxim of Helvetius that to feel is to judge, and to his reasoning on this maxim, which is as follows:—

‘The question being reduced within these limits, I shall examine at present whether the act of the mind in judging is any thing more than a sensation. When I judge of the size or colour of the objects around me, it is evident that the judgment formed of the different impressions, which these objects make upon my senses, is properly only a sensation: that I may say indiscriminately, either I judge, or I feel, that of two objects, the one which I call a yard makes upon me a different impression from another which I call a foot: that the colour called red, produces a different effect upon the sight from that which I call yellow; and I conclude that in this case to judge is only to feel or perceive by the senses. But it may be said, let us suppose that any one desires to know whether strength of body is preferable to mere bulk; are we certain that we can decide this point by means of the senses alone? Most undoubtedly, I reply: for in order to my coming to a decision on the subject, my memory must first retrace to me successively the different situations in which I may happen most frequently to find myself in the course of my life. In this case, then, to judge is to see that in these different situations strength will be oftener an advantage to me than size. But it may be retorted, when the question is to decide whether in a king justice is preferable to mercy, is it conceivable that the conclusion here formed depends entirely on sensation? The affirmative has undoubtedly at first sight the air of a paradox: nevertheless, in order to establish its truth, we will presuppose in any one a knowledge of what is meant by good and evil, and also of the principle that one action is worse than another, according as it is more injurious to the well-being of society. On this supposition, what method ought the orator or poet to take, in order to show most clearly that justice, preferable in a king to mercy, preserves the greatest number of citizens to the state?

‘The orator will present three several pictures to the imagination of his supposed hearer: in the first he will represent a just king, who condemns and gives orders for the execution of a criminal; in the second, will be seen the good king, who opens the doors of his dungeon, and strikes off the chains of the same criminal; in the third picture, the criminal himself will be the principal figure, who, armed with a poniard, on his escape from his cell hastens to assassinate fifty of his fellow-citizens. But who is there that at the sight of these three pictures will not instantly perceive that justice which, by the death of a single individual, saves the lives of fifty persons, is preferable to mercy? Nevertheless, this judgment is really nothing but a sensation. In fact, if from the habit of connecting certain ideas with certain words, the sound of these words may, as experience demonstrates, excite in us almost the same sensations which we should feel from the actual presence of the objects, it is evident that from the contemplation of these three pictures, to judge that in a king justice is preferable to mercy, is to feel and see that in the first picture a single citizen is sacrificed, while in the third fifty are massacred; whence I conclude that every act of the judgment is only a sensation.’—Helvetius on the Mind, p. 12.

On this statement I may be permitted to remark that as the author affirms that sensation is the same thing as judgment, so he seems to conceive that the assertion of any proposition is the same thing as the proof of it. He supposes three several pictures to be presented to a man of understanding, and that from an attentive contemplation and comparison of the different objects and events contained in them, he comes to a judgment or conclusion, viz. That justice is preferable to mercy. ‘Nevertheless,’ he says, ‘this judgment is really nothing but a sensation.’ This is all the proof he brings; and perhaps, considering the language and country in which this celebrated author wrote, it is reasoning good enough. Do I say this with any view to throw contempt on that lively, ingenious, gay, social, and polished people? No; but philosophy is not their forte: they are not in earnest in these remote speculations. In order duly to appreciate their writings, we must consider them not as the dictates of the understanding, but as the effects of constitution. Otherwise we shall do them great injustice. They pursue truth, like all other things, as far as it is agreeable; they reason for their amusement; they engage in abstruse questions to vary the topics of conversation. Whatever does not answer this purpose is banished out of books and society as a morose and cynical philosophy. To obtrude the dark and difficult parts of a question, or to enter into an elaborate investigation of them, is considered as a piece of ill-manners. Those writers, therefore, have been the most popular among the French who have supplied their readers with the greatest number of dazzling conclusions founded on the most slight and superficial evidence, whose reasonings could be applied to every thing, because they explained nothing, and who most effectually kept out of sight every thing true or profound or interesting in a question. Who would ever think of plunging into abstruse, metaphysical inquiries concerning the nature of the understanding, when he may with entire ease to himself and satisfaction to others solve all the phenomena of the mind by repeating in three words, Juger est sentir. As it was the object of the school-philosophy, by a jargon of technical distinctions, to sharpen the eagerness of debate and give birth to endless verbal controversies, so the modern system, transferring philosophy from the cloistered hall to the toilette and the drawing-room, is calculated, by a set of portable phrases, as familiar and as current as the forms of salutation, to silence every difference of opinion, and to produce an euthanasia of all thought. I have made these remarks not to prejudice the question, but to prevent the prejudice arising on the other side, from seeing the writers of a whole nation, not deficient in natural talents or in acquired advantages, agree in delivering the most puerile absurdities as profound and oracular truths.

The train of thought into which the author has fallen in the passage above cited is pretty obvious. Having undertaken to prove that the ideas of justice and mercy are mere sensations, and that the conclusion that justice is preferable to mercy is also a mere sensation, in order to shew the possibility of this he conjures up the ideas of a good and a bad king, of a criminal, a prison, chains, a dagger, and fifty citizens massacred before the eyes of the spectator, which form the subject of three imaginary pictures, and which are in general considered as so many sensible objects. All these sensible objects he supposes to be implied in, and to be the materials out of which we frame the judgment or conclusion, that justice is better than mercy; and therefore he infers that there is nothing else implied in or necessary to that judgment, and that consequently it is nothing but a sensation. Having succeeded in resolving the compound and general ideas of justice and mercy, good and evil, into a number of sensible appearances, his imagination is entirely occupied with the novelty of the objects before him, and he drops altogether the consideration, whether the combination and comparison of these several objects or sensations which is absolutely necessary to their forming the moral ideas or inference spoken of, is not the act of some other faculty. In short, the principle that a judgment is nothing but a sensation, is not only a perfectly gratuitous assertion, but an assertion either without meaning, or a palpable contradiction. For the single objects presented in the foregoing metaphysical pictures, and which are supposed to constitute the judgment, are not one sensation, but many. Now if it be meant that these single objects, as they are perceived separately, or successively, one by one, without the intervention of any reflex act of the mind combining and comparing them together, constitute of themselves the judgment, ‘that justice is preferable to mercy,’ this is to say, in so many words, that the mind forms a comparison between things without comparing them, and judges of their relations without perceiving them. On the other hand, if it be meant to include the acts of the mind in comparing, judging, inferring, &c. in the term sensation, then the proposition that judgment or sensation are the same, will be nothing but an idle and insignificant abuse of words, and will only prove that if to the sensation, or perception of particular objects we add the faculty of comparing and judging, nothing farther will be necessary for it to compare and judge. I shall therefore dismiss this well known maxim as no better than a misnomer, as an attempt to shorten the labour of thought by the interposition of an unmeaning phrase, and to confound all the distinctions of the understanding by an equivoque.

It will not be amiss in this place to transcribe a passage from the Logic of the Abbé Condillac (a work which may be regarded as the quintessence of slender thought, and of the art of substituting words for things) to show how far the doctrine of the origin of all our ideas from sensation may be carried, and what an imbecility it produces in the mind, and deadness to any but external objects. The design of the passage is to prove that morality is a visible thing. This however is a work of supererogation, even on the principle supposed: for it is not necessary to refer morality to any thing visible or audible, or to any other of the senses, but the sense of pleasure and pain; our feelings of this kind being allowed to come from, and make a part of our original sensations. But this system is not an improvement on reason, but a progression in superficiality and absurdity, a vast vacuity, where ‘fluttering its pennons vain, the mind drops down ten thousand fathoms deep.’

‘Moral ideas,’ says my author, ‘seem to elude the senses: they at least elude the senses of those philosophers who deny that our knowledge proceeds from sensation. They would gladly know of what colour virtue is, or of what colour vice is. I answer that virtue consists in the habitual performance of good actions, as vice consists in the habitual performance of bad ones. Now these habits and these actions are visible.

‘What, then, is the morality of actions a thing which falls under the cognizance of the senses! Wherefore should it not? Morality depends solely on the conformity between our actions and the laws; but these actions are visible, and the laws are so equally, since they are certain conventions made by men.

‘But it will be said, if the laws are only things of convention, they must be altogether arbitrary. They may indeed be sometimes arbitrary; there are but too many such laws; but those which determine whether our actions are good or bad, are not so, nor can they be so. They are the work of man, it is true, because they are conventions which we have made; nevertheless, we alone have not made them: nature made them as well as we, she dictated them to us, and it was not in our power to make others. The wants and the faculties of man being given, the laws which are to regulate his conduct must necessarily follow: and though we enacted them, God who has created us with such wants and such faculties, is in truth our sole legislator. In obeying the laws which are conformable to our nature, we render obedience to him who is the author of our nature; and this is that which perfects the morality of actions.’—Page 56.

For a work entitled Logic, there are a pleasant number of contradictions in this passage. To pass over many of them, if the laws here spoken of are such merely in consequence of their being visible, then all visible objects are laws, and all laws are equally moral. But no! there are some arbitrary laws. Now if the goodness of the law depends on their conformity to our wants and faculties, neither of these are visible, any more than God who is said to be our only lawgiver. So that ‘the latter end of this system of law and divinity forgets the beginning.’ That those actions are moral which are conformable to a moral law, and that those laws are moral, which are agreeable to our nature and wants, may be readily admitted: but I cannot myself think that this conformity is an object of the senses, or that the true features of morality can ever be discerned but by the eye of the understanding. The friends of morality, it seems, according to our author, are not to despair, or to suppose that the distinctions of right and wrong are banished entirely out of the material system. They only become more clear and legible than ever; we are still right in asserting virtue to have a real existence, namely, on paper, and in supposing that we have some idea of it, as consisting of the letters of the alphabet. Almost in the same manner, Mr. Horne Tooke very gravely defines the essence of law and just, from the etymology of these words, to consist in their being something laid down, and something ordered (jussum); and when pressed by the difficulty that there are many things laid down and ordered which are neither laws nor just, he makes answer that their obligation depends on a higher species of law and justice, to wit, a law which is no where laid down, and a justice which is no where ordered, except indeed by the nature of things, on which the etymology of these two words does not seem to throw any light.

On all the other points of the modern metaphysical system, such as the nature of abstraction, judgment and reasoning, the materiality of the soul, free-will, the association of ideas, &c. Mr. Locke either halts between two opinions, or else takes the common-place side of the question. The motion of the system, which bears his name and which by this very delay gained all that it wanted to become popular, was retrograde in him, not progressive. The extracts I am about to give from his work will I think establish this point. They will at the same time show him to be a man of strong practical sense, of much serious thought and inquiry, and considerable freedom of opinion, and a real lover of truth, though not so bold and systematic a reasoner, or so great a dealer in paradoxes as some others. Moderation, caution, a wish to examine every side of a question, and an unwillingness to decide till after the most mature and circumspect investigation, and then only according to the clearness of the evidence, seem to have been the characteristics of his mind, none of which denote the daring innovator, or maker of a system. What there is of system in his work is Hobbes’s, as I have already shown: the deviations from its common sense and general observation are his own. There is throughout his reasoning the same contempt for the schoolmen, and the same preference of native, rustic reason to learned authority: the same notion of the necessity for reforming the system of philosophy, and of the possibility of doing this by a more exact use of words: there is the same dissatisfaction with the prevailing system, but he at the same time entertained doubts of his own. What he wanted was confidence and decision. The prolixity and ambiguity of his style seem to have arisen from this source: for he is never weary of examining and re-examining the same objection, and he states his arguments with so many limitations and with such a variety of expression to prevent misapprehension, that it is often difficult to guess at his real meaning. There is it must be confessed a sort of heaviness about him, a want of clearness and connection, which in spite of all his pains, and the real plodding strength of his mind he was never able to overcome. To return to his account of complex ideas: the beginning of his observations on this subject is as follows:

‘We have hitherto considered those ideas, in the reception whereof the mind is only passive, which are those simple ones received from sensation and reflection before mentioned, whereof the mind cannot make one to itself, nor have any idea which does not consist wholly of them. But as the mind is wholly passive in the reception of all its simple ideas, so it exerts several acts of its own, whereby out of its simple ideas, as the materials and foundations of the rest, the other are framed. The acts of the mind wherein it exerts its power over its simple ideas, are chiefly these three.

‘1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another, so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one; in which way it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence; this is called abstraction: and thus all its general ideas are made. This shows man’s power to be much about the same in the material and intellectual world: for the materials in both being such as he has no power over, either to make or destroy, all that man can do is either to unite them together, or to set them by one another, or wholly to separate them.’—Vol. i. p. 151.

The first great point which Mr. Locke labours to prove in his Essay, is that there are no innate ideas, which he seems to have established very fully and clearly, if indeed so obvious a truth required any formal demonstration. His chief proofs are from the case of a man born blind, who has no idea of colours, and from the ignorance which children and idiots have of those first principles and universal maxims, which some philosophers and theologians, confounding the faculties of the mind with actual impressions, had supposed to be legibly engraven on the mind by the hand of its author. For the supposing the understanding to be a distinct faculty of the mind no more proves our ideas to be innate, than the allowing perception to be a distinct original faculty of the mind, which everybody does, proves that there must be innate sensations. These two positions have, however, been sometimes considered as convertible by the partisans on both sides of the question; the one arguing from the existence of the soul and the power of thought to the positive perception of certain truths, and the others concluding that by denying any original inherent impressions, they had overturned the supposition of the different faculties and powers which must be in the mind, to account for the first production or subsequent modification of sensation or of thought. For instance, it has been made a consequence of the doctrine that there were no innate ideas, that there could be no such thing as genius, or an original difference of capacity; as if the capacity were not perfectly distinct from the actual impressions by the very theory itself, and as if there might not be a difference in the capacity of acquiring ideas as all experience shows, though none in the knowledge acquired, because this capacity had never yet been exerted. As well might we argue that of two houses that are just built one is as commodious and capacious as the other, as well fitted for the reception of guests and the disposal of furniture, because at present neither of them is furnished or inhabited.

The following passages will show the manner in which our author treats this part of his subject:

‘The child certainly knows that the nurse that feeds it is neither the cat it plays with, nor the blackamoor it is afraid of: that the wormseed or mustard it refuses is not the apple or sugar it cries for; this it is certainly and undoubtedly assured of: but will any one say it is by virtue of this principle, That it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be, that it so firmly assents to these and other parts of its knowledge? Or that the child has any notion or apprehension of that proposition at an age, wherein yet, it is plain, it knows a great many other truths? He that will say, children join these several abstract speculations with their sucking bottles and their rattles, may perhaps with justice be thought to have more passion and zeal for his opinion, but less sincerity and truth than one of that age. Though therefore there be several general propositions that meet with constant and ready assent as soon as proposed to men grown up, who have attained the use of more general and abstract ideas, and names standing for them, yet they not being to be found in those of tender years, who nevertheless know other things, they cannot pretend to universal assent of intelligent persons, and so by no means can be supposed innate: it being impossible, that any truth which is innate (if there were any such) should be unknown, at least to any one who knows any thing else. Since if they are innate truths, they must be innate thoughts; there being nothing a truth in the mind which it has never thought on.

‘That the general maxims we are discoursing of, are not known to children, idiots, and a great part of mankind, we have already sufficiently proved. But there is this farther argument against their being innate, that these characters, if they were native and original impressions, should appear fairest and clearest in those persons in whom yet we find no footsteps of them. And it is in my opinion a strong presumption that they are not innate, since they are least known to those in whom if they were innate, they must need exert themselves with most force and vigour. For children, idiots, savages, and illiterate people being of all others the least corrupted by custom or borrowed opinion, learning or education having not cast their native thoughts into new moulds, nor by superinducing foreign and studied doctrines, confounded those fair characters nature had written there; one might reasonably imagine that in their minds these innate notions should lie open fairly to every one’s view, as it is certain the thoughts of children do. One would think according to these men’s principles that all these native beams of light (were there any such) should in those who have no reserves, no acts of concealment, shine out in their full lustre, and leave us in no more doubt of their being there than we are of their love of pleasure and abhorrence of pain. But alas, amongst children, idiots, savages, and the grossly illiterate, what general maxims are to be found? What universal principle of knowledge? Their notions are few and narrow, borrowed only from those objects they have had most to do with, and which have made upon their senses the frequentest and strongest impressions. A child knows his nurse and his cradle, and by degrees the playthings of a little more advanced age; and a young savage has perhaps his head filled with love and hunting, according to the fashion of his tribe. But he that from a child untaught, or a wild inhabitant of the woods will expect these abstract maxims and reputed principles of science, will I fear find himself mistaken. Such kind of general propositions [as that which is, is; and that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be] are seldom mentioned in the huts of Indians, much less are they to be found in the thoughts of children, or any impressions of them on the minds of naturals. They are the language and business of the schools and academies of learned nations, accustomed to that sort of conversation or learning, where disputes are frequent: these maxims being suited to artificial argumentation, and useful for conviction, but not much conducing to the discovery of truth, or advancement of knowledge.’

I do not know that Mr. Locke has sufficiently distinguished between two things which I cannot very well express otherwise than by a turn of words, namely, an innate knowledge of principles, and innate principles of knowledge. His arguments seem to me conclusive against the one, but not against the other, for I think that there are certain general principles or forms of thinking, something like the moulds in which any thing is cast, according to which our ideas follow one another in a certain order, though the knowledge, i.e., perception of what these principles are, and the forming them into distinct propositions is the result of experience. It is true, the child distinguishes between its nurse and the blackamoor, between bitter and sweet: what hinders it from confounding them? The ideas of same and different are not included in these ideas themselves, nor are they peculiar to any of them, but general terms. What then determines the child to annex them uniformly to certain things and not to others? It is plain then, that our ideas are not at liberty to run into clusters as they please or as it happens, but are regulated by certain laws, to which they must conform; or that the manner in which we conceive of things does not depend simply on the particular nature of the things, but on the general nature of the understanding. Mr. Locke is clear for certain innate practical principles or general tendencies regulating all our actions, namely, the love of pleasure, and aversion to pain. He does not however admit, as I can find, of any thing similar to the operations of the understanding. The analogy, notwithstanding, holds exactly the same in both cases. For the child is no more conscious of any such general practical principle regulating all his desires, than of any speculative principle regulating his notion of things: he gets the idea of both from experience of their effects; but I think that if there were no such principles in the mind itself, previous to the actual impression of objects, and merely developed or called into action by them, we must be perfectly indifferent both to the reception of pleasure and pain, as we should feel no more repugnance to admit one conclusion than another, however absurd or contradictory. The necessity we are under of perceiving certain agreements or disagreements between our ideas is as much, and in the same sense, the foundation of judgment and reasoning, as the general desire of happiness and aversion to misery is the foundation of morality.

This property of the understanding, by which certain judgments, naturally follow certain perceptions, and are followed by other judgments, is the faculty of reason, of order and proportion in the mind, and is indeed nothing but the understanding acting by rule or necessity. The long controversy between Locke and Leibnitz with respect to innate ideas turned upon the distinction here stated, innate ideas being thus referred not to the actual impressions of objects, but to the forms or moulds existing in the mind, and in which those impressions are cast. Leibnitz contended that there was a germ or principle of truth, a pre-established harmony between its innate faculties and its acquired ideas, implied in the essence of the mind itself. According to the one it was like a piece of free stone, which the mason hews with equal ease in all directions, and into any shape, as circumstances require: according to the other, it resembles a piece of marble strongly ingrained, with the figure of a man, or other animal, inclosed in it, and which the sculptor has only to separate from the surrounding mass.

I will add one more passage to draw the attention of my readers to this intricate subject, and to show that the difficulties surrounding it were not completely cleared up or even apprehended by the author of the ‘Essay.’

‘Hath a child,’ he says, ‘an idea of impossibility and identity, before it has of white or black, sweet or sour? Or is it from the knowledge of this principle that it concludes that wormwood rubbed on the nipple hath not the same taste that it used to receive from thence? Is it the actual knowledge of Impossibile est idem esse et non esse that makes a child distinguish between its mother and a stranger, or that makes it fond of the one, and fly the other? Or does the mind regulate itself and its assent by ideas that it never had? Or the understanding draw conclusions from principles which it never yet knew or understood? The names impossibility and identity stand for two ideas, so far from being innate, or born with us, that I think it requires great care and attention to form them right in our understandings. They are so far from being brought into the world with us, so remote from the thoughts of infancy and childhood, that I believe upon examination it will be found that many grown men want them.

‘If identity (to instance in that alone) be a native impression, and consequently so clear and obvious to us that we must needs know it even from our cradles; I would gladly be resolved by one of seven or seventy years old, Whether a man, being a creature consisting of soul and body, be the same man when his body is changed? Whether Euphorbus and Pythagoras, having had the same soul, were the same man, though they lived several ages asunder? Nay, whether the cock too, which had the same soul, were not the same with both of them? Whereby perhaps it will appear that our idea of sameness is not so settled and clear as to deserve to be thought innate in us. For if those innate ideas are not so clear and distinct as to be universally known and naturally agreed on, they cannot be subjects of universal and undoubted truths, but will be the unavoidable occasion of perpetual uncertainty. For I suppose every one’s idea of identity will not be the same that Pythagoras and thousand others of his followers have: and which then shall be true, which innate? Or are these two different ideas of identity both innate?’—Page 60.

Two things are obvious to remark on this passage. First, it seems clear that the child, before it can pronounce that one thing is or is not the same as another, must have the idea of what same is, i.e. of identity: or it would be impossible for it to know what is or is not the same. This idea, then, is necessarily included in or the result of the first comparison it is able to make between any two of its impressions as alike or unlike. Secondly, the difficulty of determining the question proposed by Mr. Locke does not arise from the meaning of the word identity, but of the word man. For if this is once clear and settled, there will be no great effort of the understanding required to determine whether a man is the same or not. They define him to be a creature consisting of body and soul, and it is plain that if one of these, the body, is altered, the man is not the same. The whole question, therefore, here seems to turn on deciding what qualities are essential to the idea of man, so that by keeping or leaving out some, he will or will not retain his identity, in the practical and moral sense of the term. It is the complex and general idea of man that the child wants, not that of identity or sameness which is reflected to it from every object it meets, and which it perceives to agree or disagree with some other.

In a note to one of the chapters on Innate Ideas, there is some account of the controversy between our author and the Bishop of Worcester (Stillingfleet) on the question whether the idea of a God be innate and universal. The Bishop is anxious to have the universal belief in a Deity understood in a strict sense, while Mr. Locke thinks it must be reduced to a very great and decided majority, there being instances of whole nations without this idea. ‘This,’ he says ‘is all the universal consent which truth of matter-of-fact will allow; and therefore all that can be made use of to prove a God. I would crave leave to ask your lordship, were there ever in the world any atheists or no? For if any one deny a God, such a perfect universality of consent is destroyed, and if nobody does deny a God, what need of arguments to convince atheists?’—Page 63. This is the acutest turn he has any where given to an argument.

The concluding passage of his account of innate ideas is worth quoting. It is a good description of the true spirit of philosophy, inclining a little too much to self-opinion, from which, perhaps, it is not easily separable:

‘What censure doubting thus of innate principles may deserve from men who will be apt to call it pulling up the old foundations of knowledge and certainty, I cannot tell; I persuade myself at least that the way I have pursued, being conformable to truth, lays those foundations surer. This I am certain, I have not made it my business to quit or follow any authority in the ensuing discourse; truth has been my only aim; and wherever that has appeared to lead, my thoughts have impartially followed without minding whether the footsteps of any other lay that way or no. Not that I want a due respect to other men’s opinions; but after all the greatest reverence is due to truth; and I hope it will not be thought arrogance to say, that perhaps we should make greater progress in the discovery of rational and contemplative knowledge, if we sought it in the fountain, in the consideration of things themselves, and made use rather of our own thoughts than other men’s to find it. For I think we may as rationally hope to see with other men’s eyes, as to know by other men’s understandings. So much as we ourselves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so much we possess of real and true knowledge. The floating of other men’s opinions in our brains makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true. What in them was science, is in us but opiniatrety, whilst we give up our assent only to reverend names, and do not, as they did, employ our own reason to understand those truths which gave them reputation. Aristotle was certainly a knowing man; but nobody ever thought him so, because he blindly embraced and confidently vented the opinions of another. And if the taking up of another’s principles, without examining them, made not him a philosopher, I suppose it will hardly make any body else so. In the sciences, every one has so much as he really knows and comprehends: what he believes only and takes upon trust, are but shreds, which however well in the whole piece, make no considerable addition to his stock who gathers them. Such borrowed wealth, like fairy money, though it were gold in the hand from which he received it, will be but leaves and dust when it comes to use.’—Page 80.

In treating of the origin of our ideas, Mr. Locke labours to prove that men think not always:—thinking, according to him, being to the soul what motion is to the body; not its essence, but one of its operations. In this opinion he may, as far as I know, be right: but I think his proof of it drawn from the effects of sleep fails. The reason why I think so is that I was never awakened suddenly but I found myself dreaming, though in the interval required to awake gradually from sleep we frequently forget our dreams before we are quite awake, the impressions which objects have time to make upon our bodies taking place of and obliterating the faint traces of our sleeping thoughts. The common notion that the mind is then most awake when the body is asleep, deserves the contempt with which Mr. Locke treats it. It is one of the absurdities of common sense, which is not entirely free from them any more than philosophy. Those who can find any argument in favour of the immaterial nature and independent powers of the soul in the sublime flights which it takes when emancipated from the intrusion of sensible objects must have finer dreams than I have. It would be well for this opinion if we could regularly forget the next morning the smart repartees, magnificent sentiments and profound remarks we so often dream we make. The singular significance which in sleep we attach to absolute nonsense seems to arise from the very impotence of our efforts, as we fancy that we can fly because we cannot move at all. In sleep, indeed, the forms of imagination assume the appearance of reality, but this advantage they seem to owe chiefly to what Hobbes calls the silence of sense. That sleep, however, consists wholly in this silence of sense (not affecting the mind itself) is so far from being true, that it is not even necessary to it. Persons who walk in their sleep, as I know from experience, get out of bed with their eyes open, see and feel the objects about them, open the window, and leisurely survey the opposite trees and houses, long before they recollect where they are, or before the fresh air and the regular succession of known objects dispel the drowsy phantoms of the night. The only essential difference between our sleeping and waking thoughts I believe is, that in sleep the comprehensive faculty flags and droops; so that being unable to consider many things at once or to retain a succession of ideas in mind, we confound things together, and pass from one object to another without order or connexion, any single circumstance in which they agree being sufficient to make us associate them together or substitute one for the other. Our thoughts are, as it were, disentangled from the circumstances and consequences which at other times clog their motions: they are let loose, and left at liberty to wander in any direction that chance presents. The greatest singularity observable in dreams is the faculty of holding a dialogue with ourselves, as if we were really and effectually two persons. We make a remark, and then expect the answer, which we are to give ourselves, with the same gravity of attention, and hear it with the same surprise as if it were really spoken by another person. We are played upon by puppets of our own moving. We are staggered in an argument by an unforeseen objection, or alarmed at a sudden piece of information of which we have no apprehension till it seems to proceed from the mouth of some one with whom we fancy ourselves conversing. We have in fact no idea of what the question will be that we put to ourselves, till the moment of its birth.

Mr. Locke in treating of our sensations as effects of the impressions of the qualities of things, distinguishes these qualities according to the usual opinion into primary and secondary. The former he considers as really and in themselves the same as they appear to our senses: the other as merely the effects produced by certain objects on the mind and not existing out of it. As this question forms one of the common-places of metaphysical inquiry, I shall give some account of it in his own words.

‘The qualities that are in bodies, rightly considered, are of three sorts.

‘First, The bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion or rest of their solid parts; these are in them whether we perceive them or no; and we have by these an idea of the thing as it is in itself: these I call primary qualities.

‘Secondly, The power that is in any body by reason of its insensible primary qualities to operate after a peculiar manner on any of our senses, and thereby produce in us the different ideas of several colours, sounds, smells, tastes, &c. These are usually called sensible qualities.

‘Thirdly, The power that is in any body, by reason of the particular constitution of its primary qualities, to make such a change in the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of another body, as to make it operate on our senses differently from what it did before. Thus the sun has a power to make wax white, and fire to make lead fluid. These are usually called powers.

‘The first of these, as has been said, I think, may be properly called, real, original, or primary qualities, because they are in the things themselves, whether they are perceived or no: and upon their different modifications it is that the secondary qualities depend. The other two are only powers to act differently upon other things, which powers result from the different modifications of those primary qualities.

‘But though these two latter sorts of qualities are powers barely, and nothing but powers, relating to several other bodies, and resulting from the different modifications of the original qualities, yet they are generally thought otherwise of. For the second sort, viz., the powers to produce several ideas in us by our senses, are looked upon as real qualities in the things thus affecting us: but the third sort are called and esteemed barely powers. For example, the ideas of heat or light, which we receive by our eye or touch from the sun are commonly thought real qualities, existing in the sun, and something more than mere powers in it. But when we consider the sun in reference to wax which it melts or blanches, we look on the whiteness and softness produced in the wax, not as qualities in the sun, but effects produced by powers in it: whereas, if rightly considered, these qualities of light and warmth, which are perceptions in me when I am warmed or enlightened by the sun, are no otherwise in the sun than the changes made in the wax, when it is blanched or melted, are in the sun. They are all of them equally powers in the sun, depending on its primary qualities: whereby it is enabled in the one case so to alter the bulk, figure, texture, or motion of some of the insensible parts of my eyes or hands, as thereby to produce in me the idea of light or heat; and in the other, it is able so to alter the bulk, figure, texture, or motion of the insensible parts of the wax, as to make them fit to produce in me the distinct ideas of white and fluid. The reason why the one are ordinarily taken for real qualities, and the other only for bare powers, seems to be, because the ideas we have of distinct colours, sounds, &c., containing nothing at all in them of bulk, figure, or motion, we are not apt to think them the effects of those primary qualities which appear not to our senses to operate in their production, and with which they have not any apparent congruity or conceivable connexion. Hence it is that we are so forward to imagine that those ideas are the resemblances of something really existing in the objects themselves. But in the other case, in the operation of bodies, changing the qualities, one of another, we plainly discover that the quality produced hath commonly no resemblance with any thing in the thing producing it; wherefore we look on it as a bare effect of power. For though receiving the idea of heat or light from the sun, we are apt to think it is a perception and resemblance of such a quality in the sun, yet when we see wax or a fair face receive change of colour from the sun, we cannot imagine that to be the perception or resemblance of any thing in the sun, because we find not those different colours in the sun itself. For our senses being able to observe a likeness or unlikeness of sensible qualities in two different external objects, we forwardly enough conclude the production of any sensible quality in any subject to be an effect of bare power, and not the communication of any quality, which was really in the efficient, when we find no such sensible quality in the thing that produced it. But ourselves not being able to discover any unlikeness between the idea produced in us and the quality of the object producing it, we are apt to imagine that our ideas are resemblances of some thing in the objects, and not the effects of certain powers placed in the modification of their primary qualities, with which primary qualities the ideas produced in us have no resemblance.’ Vol. i. page 127.

From the secondary qualities later writers, as Hume and Berkeley, have proceeded to the primary ones, and have endeavoured to shew that they have not a real existence out of the mind, any more than the others. Hume says, ‘The fundamental principle of the modern philosophy is the opinion concerning colours, sounds, tastes, smells, heat and cold,’ &c.; and Bishop Berkeley has made use of the same principle to banish the least particle of matter out of the universe. What Hume has said is merely taken from Berkeley, from whom his opinions are generally borrowed. As I do not know that I shall have a better opportunity, I will here state Berkeley’s arguments against the existence of these primary qualities, or his ideal system, in his own words. I will only first observe, on the argument against the existence of the secondary qualities of things, from their different effects in different circumstances and on different persons, which Hume considers as the only solid one, but which Berkeley thinks more doubtful, seems to me no argument at all; for that an object changes its colour, or food its taste, is in consequence of distance or of the interposition of another object, or of the indisposition of the organ, and does not prove that the object has not a particular colour, or the food a particular taste, but that colour is combined with and altered by the colour of the air, and that taste is combined with and altered by another taste in the mouth or stomach. The logical inference is merely that one object has not the same sensible qualities as another, or, as Berkeley has remarked, that we do not know what the true or natural qualities of any object are.