Chapter XXV: , Section 13

Hobbes’s politics need not detain us long, as his political theory is simple and distinct. He maintained that by nature all men were nearly equal: that all society and government originated, not in social feelings, or any elements of sympathy for each other, but in their mutual fear of one another; and that by nature every man was his own judge, and had a right to all things, but which in effect was no right at all; because in the state of nature mankind were continually at war and killing one another: then every man was an enemy to every other man, each depending on his own strength; and as there was no security, but everything uncertain, so there was no place for industry, no culture of the earth, no navigation or means of communication, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, and no society; and what was worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death prevailed; and the life of man was solitary and poor, brutish and short.¹

¹ _De Corpore Politico_, Part I., Chapter I., Sections 1, 3,
4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12; _Leviathan_, Part I., Chapter
XIII.; also his treatise, _Elements of Philosophy, or a True
Citizen_, Chapter I., Sections 2, 3, 10, 11, 12. He indeed
says, “It may perhaps be thought there never was such a
time, or condition of war as this; and I believe it was never
generally so over all the world: but there are many places
where they live so now in that brutish manner which I have
described.”――_Leviathan._

Such being the state of mankind originally, how to get out of it was the great problem. It seems reason at last dictated to every man that it was for his own good to seek after peace, as far as there was any hope of attaining it,¹ then to strengthen himself as much as he can for his own defence against those who would not come to terms of peace. And it follows from this law of reason or nature, that every man by common consent should divest himself of the right to all things which he has by nature, and to be content with a limited liberty.² Hobbes proceeded to describe the circumstances and the proceedings relating to that once famous “Contract Theory of Society,” when at some far-off and unknown period in the history of the race, a multitude of men assembled with the intention of uniting themselves, and thus established peace and regular government.³ When men met to form regular governments for the first time, then as to what they sanctioned, “it is to be understood that each man has consented to it, and not the majority only. Secondly, though thus assembled with intention to unite themselves, they are yet in that estate in which every man has right to everything, and consequently, as has been said, Chapter I., Section 10, in an estate of enjoying nothing. And, therefore, meum and tuum has no place amongst them. The first thing, therefore, they are to do, is expressly every man to consent to something, by which they may come near to their ends, which can be nothing else imaginable but this, that they allow the wills of the majority of their whole number, or the wills of the majority of some certain number of men by them determined and named; or lastly, the will of some one man, to involve and be taken for the wills of every man. And this done, they are united, and a body politic. And if the majority of their whole number be supposed to involve the wills of all the particulars, then they are said to be a democracy, that is, a government in which the whole number, or so many of them as please, being assembled together, are the sovereign, and every particular man a subject. If the majority of a certain number of men, named or distinguished from the rest, be supposed to involve the wills of every one of the particulars, then are they said to be an oligarchy or aristocracy, which two words signify the same thing, together with the diverse passions of those that use them.... Lastly, if their consent be such, that the will of one man, whom they name, shall stand for the wills of them all, then is their government or union called a monarchy, and that one man a sovereign, and all the rest subjects.

¹ “As long as this natural right of every man to everything
endures, there can be no security to any man, however strong
or wise he may be, of living out the time which nature
commonly allows men to live. And consequently, it is a
general rule of reason that every man ought to endeavour
peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he
cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all means to
defend himself.”――_Leviathan_, Part I., Chapter XIV.

² “From this fundamental law of nature, by which men are
commanded to endeavour peace, is derived this second law:
that a man be willing, when others are so, as far forth, as
for peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary,
to lay down this right to all things, and be content with so
much liberty against other men as he would allow other men
against himself.”――_Ibid._, also _De Corpore Politico_, Part
I., Chapter II., Sections 1, 2, 3.

³ _Leviathan_, Part I., Chapter XIV.

“And these several unions, governments, and subjection of man’s will, may be understood to be made absolutely for all future time, or for a limited time only. But as we speak here of a body politic, instituted for the perpetual benefit and defence of them that make it, which, therefore, men desire should last for ever, I will only treat of this class.”¹

¹ _De Corpore Politico_, Part II., Chapter I., Sections 2, 3, 4.

Thus having found the state, he proceeded to develop his political philosophy. As a matter of logical sequence it fell to the state to determine the distinctions of right and wrong, of virtue and vice, of good and bad; and therefore, whatever the supreme power of the state sanctioned and commanded was good, and the opposite bad. Religion and superstition are both the same, in so far as they embody the fear of invisible powers, whether imaginary or believed on tradition; and whichever of these the state recognised, is religion, the others superstition. Anyone who places his private religious convictions in opposition to the faith sanctioned by the state, thereby commits a revolutionary act which tended to dissolve society; and, therefore, no man has any just pretence for making religion a cause of disobedience to the laws of the commonwealth. For God speaks through the supreme powers on earth, “by sovereign kings, or such as have sovereign authority as well as they.” But, though the rights of sovereignty should be as absolute as it is possible to make them, yet the sovereign has duties, namely, to procure the safety of the people, to which he is obliged by the law of nature, and to render an account of this to God, the author of that law, and to none but him. And for the same reason the sovereign authority is bound to establish that religion which in their conscience they believe to be best, inasmuch as eternal good is better than temporal; and unless they do this, it cannot really be said that they have done their utmost for their people.¹

¹ _De Corpore Politico_, Part II., Chapters VI., VII., IX.;
_Leviathan_, Part II., Chapters XVIII., XIX., XX., XXX.
This was the current view of the king’s power, which we find
so emphatically stated and reiterated in the Scots Acts of
Parliament from the Restoration to the Revolution.

But he is specially emphatic in placing the civil power above the ecclesiastical. He quoted an enormous quantity of Scripture, and treated at great length on its meaning and interpretation; and maintained throughout that the king himself was the supreme pastor of his people, and therefore he had a right to appoint all other pastors within his kingdom. The King also in virtue of his office, might preach and baptise if he pleased, and read lectures on science too, in any university within his kingdom. In short, Christian sovereigns have all manner of power over their subjects which can be given to man for the regulation of men’s external actions, both in policy and religion; and may make whatever laws they should think fittest for the government of their own subjects, as they are the commonwealth and the church, and both state and church being the same men.¹

¹ _Leviathan_, Part IV., Chapter XLII.

Hobbes has some good remarks on law, and on moral philosophy too, and clearly distinguished moral law and positive law. But owing to the conception and the necessities of his political views and opinions, he took a short cut, and made the positive or civil law the standard and measure of right and wrong: and consequently, whatever the supreme sovereign forbade was wrong, and whatever it commanded was right.¹ This feature of his ethical theory, as well as the heterodoxy of many of his religious and theological opinions, called forth a host of opponents.

¹ _De Corpore Politico_, Part II., Chapter X.

There is no evidence in Hobbes’s writings that he had any conception of the historical growth of society, or the gradual development of a nation. The complex organisation of human society can only be understood by a careful examination and study of the long processes of development. Man as we now find him is the product of many forces, which have operated for a long series of ages, and gradually modified his character. But Hobbes failed to grasp or even to recognise this, and hence we have his imaginary state of nature――continual war, and the equally imaginary social contract theory.

Some of Milton’s prose writings touched on political principles, and also on some important moral points, as in his treatise on divorce. Although he is not usually regarded as a philosopher, nevertheless he was a thinker of exceptional power, a masterly writer, vehement and impassioned, often abusive, and not always fair to his opponents. His pamphlets and controversial writings during the period of the great Rebellion and the Commonwealth form a study of themselves; and altogether he was one of the great men of the Commonwealth.

Milton threw the whole force of his mind into the anti-episcopal pamphlets, and they are extremely vehement and bold. He entered deeply and warmly into the Church questions which were then so fiercely contested; and in some of his pamphlets he wrote decidedly in favour of the democratic and presbyterian form of polity. In his pamphlet entitled, “Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England, and the causes that hitherto have hindered it,” he discussed both the question of fact and of reason involved in the subject, as why the English Church had not been thoroughly reformed. He made some scathing charges against the bishops, and concludes his work with a prayer, which for fire and force is unmatched in English literature.

His treatise entitled, “The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,” was published a fortnight after the King’s execution, and a week after the Republic was proclaimed. The chief aim of the treatise was to argue for the democratic principle, on which he insisted strongly. Touching the right of a nation to depose a king who had become a tyrant, Milton followed Buchanan’s line of argument. He assumed throughout that Charles I. was unquestionably a tyrant, and explicitly avowed that the people were justified in bringing the King, and such as he, to account and punishment. In short, he justified Cromwell and his colleagues in bringing the King to trial and execution. He continued a warm and powerful defender of the Commonwealth and its leaders.

I will quote a single specimen of Milton’s power as a defender of the Commonwealth, from his attack on Salmasius’s “Defence of Charles I.” Salmasius himself was a voluminous writer and commentator, a very learned man, with a European reputation; but he had oftener than once changed some of his opinions, and now appeared as the defender of the late King. So it fell to Milton to reply to this learned man’s book; and the following quotation is a specimen of how he executed his task: ――“Who are you that bark at us? You, a learned man, who seem rather to have been turning over lexicons and glossaries and collections of extracts all your life, than to have read good authors with judgment and profit; whence your chatter is of nothing but codices, various readings, disarrangements and corruptions of text, while you show that you have not imbibed even the smallest drop of more real learning? You a wise man, who are constantly quarrelling about the merest minutiæ, and carrying on beggarly wars, and making railing attacks, now on astronomers, now on medical men, of good credit in their respective sciences, though yourself without skill or accomplishment in either; who, if anyone should try to snatch from you the petty glory of a little word, or a little letter, restored by you in some copy, would interdict him, if you could, from fire and water? And yet you are angry, and yet you show your teeth, because people call you a grammarian. In some trifling book of yours, you openly call Hammond, the beloved and most favoured of the late King’s chaplains, a rascal, merely because he had called you a grammarian; and you would be ready, I believe, to say the same of the King himself, and to retract this whole defence of him, if you heard that he had approved of his chaplain’s criticism of you. Take notice then how I, one of those English, whom you dare to describe as ‘fanatical, unlearned, obscure, blackguardly,’ do here on my private account (for that the English nation itself should publicly think anything at all about a weevil like you would be a degradation), do here, I say, on my private account, despise you and make a laughing-stock of you, declaring that, turn you upside down, downside up, round about, or anyhow, you are still nothing but a Grammarian; ay, and that, as if you had made a more foolish promise to some god than even Midas did, whatever you touch, except when you commit solecisms, is still only grammar. Whoever, then, of these ‘dregs of the common people,’ that you so denounce (for those truly noble men among us, whose wisdom, virtue, and nobility are proved by their illustrious acts, I will not so dishonour as to think of comparing you to them or them to you), whoever, I say, of these dregs of the common people, has only persuaded himself to this principle, that he was not born for kings, but for God and his country, is a far more learned, far wiser, far better, man than you are, and deserves to be esteemed of far greater worth to all time. For he is learned without letters; you have letters but no learning, who know so many languages, turn over so many volumes, write so many yourself, and are but a sheep after all.”¹

¹ Masson’s _Life of Milton_, Volume IV., pages 264‒265.

As an advocate of freedom, Milton has great merit, though he is not always consistent. His “Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing,” was a scathing and powerful attack on the existing laws of censorship of the press and licensing of books. It is comparatively short, but it has much historic interest, though the doctrine which he so ably pleaded for is now fully admitted in Britain.

James Harrington was the author of a political romance, entitled “The Commonwealth of Oceana,” which was published in 1656, and attracted some attention. In 1658 he issued another treatise, called “The Prerogative of Popular Government,” reasserting his views in a more direct style. He drew up a constitution for a commonwealth, the legislative part consisting of two houses, and both to be elected by the people. One of the houses should have the power of proposing and debating laws; while the other, which was to be the largest body, should have the power of passing or rejecting the laws thus proposed by the smaller house. Further, it was proposed that a third of the members of both houses should retire every year, not to be re-eligible for a considerable time, and their places filled by newly-elected members: thus the whole membership of both houses would be entirely renewed every third year.

Richard Cumberland, bishop of Peterborough, was an ethical writer of historical note, and an opponent of the moral doctrines of Hobbes. His views were expressed in a work entitled “De Legibus Naturæ Disquisitio Philosophica,” etc., etc., which appeared in 1672, and an English translation of it was published in 1727. His chief aim was to show that there are moral laws made known by nature, but not in the way enunciated by Hobbes. He began with an exposition of the nature of man and of things, and whence proceeded to derive the special ethical duties. The fundamental law of morality was enunciated thus:――“The greatest benevolence of every rational agent towards all, forms the happiest state of each and of all the benevolent, as far as in their power; and it is essentially requisite to the happiness which they can attain; and, therefore, the common good is the supreme law.”

He insisted that the mind has an original regulative faculty, and earnestly contended that the social feelings and the disinterested affections are original elements of man’s nature. The human mind is endowed with certain innate capacities, and has the power of apprehending first principles, and whence deducting conclusions. True propositions agree with the nature of things, and the dictates of practical reason are propositions which point out the ethical end, and the means by which it should be attained.

In the last half of the seventeenth century there arose in England a class of writers sometimes called Platonists, Cambridge men, or English Cartesians, but it should be observed that these writers held diverse views on some important points, though they generally agreed in assailing the psychology and the ethics of Hobbes. The most distinguished amongst them all was the learned Ralph Cudworth.¹ In his great work, “The Intellectual System of the Universe,” which he did not live to complete, he assumed a plastic principle in nature, and by this explained organic development. He supposed that this power, or unconscious force, possessed a general and a special activity which produced the results of design. He contended that the doctrine of efficient causes does not exclude the possibility of final causes. He attacked the position of the unlimited power of God as taught by Descartes, on the ground that it would annul logical and geometrical reasoning, and obliterate moral distinctions. He assailed Hobbes’s nominalism, and his limitation of the powers of the human mind to sense and fancy, and maintained that there was a higher faculty of reason. Cudworth exhibited an enormous amount of learning and considerable reasoning power. He gave many quotations from ancient writers, and those who have the courage and perseverance to read his “Intellectual System of the Universe,” will find that it is a curious and valuable work, and a great monument of erudition.²

¹ Born 1617, died 1688.

² _The True Intellectual System of the Universe_, 1678; compare
Dr. Tulloch’s _Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in
England in the Seventeenth Century_, Volume II.

His “Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality,” and also one on “Free-will,” are unfinished fragments of long discussions, originally designed to complete his Intellectual System, and not published till long after his death. He argued for the independence of moral distinctions, and maintained that they were discovered directly by human reason.

Henry More was the author of several theological and ethical works of an essentially Platonic and transcendental cast, interwoven with his own notions and dreams. The leading principle of his ethics was that moral goodness is simple and absolute, and that reason is the judge of its nature and truth; but its distinctive beauty is felt by a special capacity, a something like the moral sense of later writers. All moral goodness may be called intellectual and divine. By the aid of reason we are enabled to state the principles of ethics in propositions, and hence derive the special maxims and rules.

An Englishman who holds a distinguished place in the history of modern philosophy, and especially in psychology, now claims attention, namely, John Locke. In political theory he was the chief expounder of the principles of the Revolution of 1688; and indeed his political writings became the source whence the Whig politicians drew their arguments for several generations. But the “Social Contract Theory,” of which he was an able exponent, is now entirely obsolete.

In his “Essay concerning Human Understanding,” the fundamental idea is that all our knowledge is derived from experience. The work was mainly directed to the exposition of two questions, namely, first to ascertain the origin of human knowledge, and then to determine the limits and the degrees of objective truth. His method was that of observation, the object of investigation being his own mind, “looking into it and seeing how it wrought.” He could find no innate ideas or principles in the mind. The primary source of all our knowledge is sensation or external perception, and reflection or internal perception; the former embraced the apprehension of external objects through the senses, while the latter comprised the apprehension of mental objects by internal or self-reflection, a subjective operation of thought. The different objects of external perception are variously related to objective reality. Thus extension, figure, motion, and other qualities of bodies, belong to the external objects themselves; while colour, sound, and sensible qualities are only in ourselves, and not properly in the objects perceived, being signs not copies of changes which take place in external things. In the reception of simple ideas the mind is merely passive, it cannot refuse to have them, or blot them out, any more than a mirror can refuse to receive, alter, or obliterate the images reflected on it; all that man can do is to unite them together, classify them or separate them. By internal reflection we know the action of our thinking and willing faculties; while through sensation and reflection together we obtain the feelings of pleasure and pain, the ideas of power, unity, existence, and others, but we have no clear idea of substance.

The word idea has a wide meaning in Locke’s Essay, as he uses it to denote whatever we apprehend, whether it be a mental modification of an external object, or a subjective thought, the perception or consciousness of feelings and passions; as when I form a mental picture or image of anything, or am conscious of a pleasant sound――when I see the moon or any external object, and when I remember any of these, again when I understand the meaning of right, of property, or any other abstract term――in all such cases, according to Locke, I am having ideas. Thus he employed the term idea in its most unrestricted universality. The theory of knowledge requires some definite word or words to indicate the dependence of what is known on the power of knowing. Descartes, Locke, and others, used the word idea in this relation, sometimes with perception, and at a later date, with impression. At present some use the term phenomenon to express those aspects of existence of which we are conscious, rather than the words, ideas, perceptions, or impressions; others, again, use the word consciousness with a wide meaning, to express mental facts, modes, or states, in their relation to the knowing mind. But all terms thus used touch the prime assumption of philosophy, namely, that the universe and all things which exist can become known to us only through our mental and self-conscious experience; and thus arises the problem of the relation of the human mind to the external world.

Now as already indicated in this chapter, there is a real difficulty involved in understanding and stating the exact relation between mind and matter; and the nature of the relation of the object known and the knowing mind is still unknown. All that we know is that knowledge consists in a certain relation of the object known to the knowing subject. Of mind in itself or matter in itself we know nothing; simply because we know only the qualities of our own faculties of knowledge, as relations to their objects, and we only know the qualities of their objects as relations to our minds: thus all qualities both of mind and of matter are only known to us as relations, we know nothing in itself.¹

¹ Hamilton’s _Reid_, Note N., page 965.

In Locke’s Essay the word idea is used to recall the truth that external things become known to us through our presentative and representative conscious experience; but on the other side of his theory, ideas also represent qualities which exist external to our conscious mind; thus they are, as it were, “effects in us,” produced by powers that are independent of us: that is, he assumed that the mind is merely passive in the reception of simple ideas.

Locke devoted the First Book of his Essay to the refutation in detail of the doctrine of innate ideas. The argument that certain speculative and practical principles are universally accepted as true, he disputed, by showing that there was a mass of evidence against this alleged agreement, and that though it were otherwise, innate ideas would not be proved, as it might be shown that such agreement had arisen in other ways. He had little difficulty in proving that the principles of identity and of contradiction are unknown to children, and to all who are not specially educated: and, therefore, it could not be maintained that truths are inherent in the mind of which it has no consciousness and no knowledge. To say that an idea is imprinted on the mind, and yet at the same time to admit that the mind is ignorant of it, and never took notice of it, is to make this impression nothing. But it is true that the capacity to know is innate, though all actual knowledge is and must be acquired. And, therefore, those who adopt the theory of innate ideas should distinguish them from other ideas which are not innate; and thus they must hold that innate knowledge is from the first conscious knowledge, for to be in the understanding means to be understood. If it be asserted, that these principles are recognised and admitted by all men when they come to exercise their reason, this is not true or conclusive, whether in the sense that we know them deductively by the use of reason, or in the sense that we think them when we arrive at the use of reason, for we know many things before them. That the bitter is not sweet, that a rod and a cherry are not the same thing, are known by a child long before he understands and assents to the universal proposition that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same moment. Practical principles stand upon the same footing as speculative ones, none of them being innate; and, moreover, they are not so clear or so universally received as the principle just indicated. If principles are innate, the ideas involved in them must also be innate. Now the most general principles contain the most abstract ideas, which are the furthest from the thoughts of children, and are unintelligible to them, and can only be clearly formed after they have attained some degree of attention and reflection. The ideas of identity of difference, possibility and impossibility, and others of a similar character, are not in the child’s consciousness at birth; and they are farthest removed in the order of development from the sensations of hunger and thirst, heat and cold, pleasure and pain, which in reality are the earliest conscious experiences of a child.

Locke strongly maintained that the idea of God is not innate. And he attempted to prove that some tribes in the lowest stages of civilisation had no idea of God at all. He also pointed out the fact that the ideas and conceptions which the various tribes and nations of mankind have of God differed greatly.

Having thus cleared the ground, Locke, in his Second Book, proceeded to show whence the understanding receives its ideas. He asks, “Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with 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. Our observation employed either about external or sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understanding with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from which all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.”¹ Thus experience is twofold, external and internal, sensation and reflection, according as its object is the outer world of things, or the internal operations of our own minds. The senses in contact with external objects supply the mind with the elements and materials of ideas; and thus we attain the ideas of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, and all those called sensible qualities. Then when the mind attends and thinks on its own internal operations, the understanding thence attains another set of ideas: such as perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different operations of our minds of which we are conscious and observe within ourselves.

¹ Book II., Chapter I., Section 2.

When the first impression is made on his senses, man begins to have ideas. But before the first sensible impression, the mind no more thinks than it does afterwards in a deep and dreamless sleep. That the mind always thinks is as groundless an assertion as that all bodies are continually in motion.

Some of our ideas are simple, others are complex; and of the former class, some come into the mind by one sense only, some by more senses than one, others through reflection, while some come both by the senses and reflection. The simple ideas received by touch are heat, cold, solidity, roughness, hardness, smoothness, and many others; by the sense of sight, the ideas of light and colours; while the ideas which we receive by more than one sense, by sight and touch, are those of space, figure, rest, and motion. The simple ideas of reflection which the mind acquires when it becomes conscious and observes its own operations, are mainly two, namely, perception or thinking, and volition or willing. But the other simple ideas acquired through all the channels of the senses and reflection, are those of pleasure and pain, power, existence, unity, and succession.

But most of the ideas of sensation are no more like anything existing externally to ourselves, than words are like the ideas for which they stand, and which they serve to recall to the mind. The inseparable qualities of bodies themselves are those of bulk, figure, number, position, motion and rest; and these he called the primary qualities of body. Now our ideas of these primary qualities of bodies are copies of these qualities; that is, they represent the thing mentally as it is in itself. But the secondary qualities of bodies affect us in a different way, they operate on the senses, and cause in us the sensations of colours, sounds, smells, and the like, which are not in the bodies themselves, but in our own minds. He further names a third class of qualities: these are the powers of some bodies, which, owing to the constitution of their primary qualities, make such changes in the bulk, figure, and motion of other bodies as cause them to operate upon our senses differently from what they did before; among these he instances the power of the sun to make wax white, and of fire to melt lead.¹

¹ Book II., Chapters I.‒VIII.

Under the head of simple ideas acquired by reflection, he minutely investigated the faculties of perception, retention, discerning, compounding, abstracting, and other operations of the mind. The faculty of perception distinguished man from animal and plant. The faculty of memory is the power of preserving ideas by continued contemplation, or by reviving them after their temporary absence from the mind, which is too limited to be conscious at the same time of many ideas. Memory is common to man and the lower animals. The power of abstraction is peculiar to man. By this generalising faculty the ideas of single objects are separated from all accidental qualities, and raised to the rank of universal conceptions of the genera to which they belong.

The simple ideas being the elements of the complex ones, he reduced complex ideas to three classes, namely, modes, substances, and relations. Modes are complex ideas, but not involving existence by themselves, being merely modifications of simple ideas when their elements are similar, and mixed modes or modifications when their elements are dissimilar. Ideas of substances are those combinations of simple ideas employed to represent things existing by themselves. The ideas of relation arise from the comparison of one idea with another. To the purely modal ideas belong the mental modifications of space, time, thought, power, and other abstract conceptions. Our own experience and observation of the constant change of ideas in the mind, partly depending on the impressions of external objects, and partly on our own choice, soon leads the understanding to the conclusion that the same changes as have already been observed will continue to take place in the same objects through the same causes; accordingly, the understanding conceives in one thing or object a liability to change its form, and in another, the possibility of being the agent of that change, and thus the mind attains the idea of a power. Thus the clearest idea of power is derived from observing the activities of our own minds, as internal experience teaches us that by a mere volition we can set in motion parts of the body which were before at rest. If a substance possessing a power manifest it by an action, it is called a cause; and that which it brings to pass is called its effect. A cause is that through which something else begins to be; an effect is that which depends for its existence on something besides itself. The idea of substance itself contains nothing but the supposition of an unknown something serving as a support for qualities; we have no clear idea of it. Nor is our idea of material substance more distinct than our idea of spiritual substance. There is no reason for assuming that a spiritual substance cannot exist; we have no more reason to doubt or deny the existence of spirits, than we have to deny the existence of bodies. Locke, in his treatment of the term substance――the term which plays so great a part in the systems of Descartes and Spinoza――plainly admitted his impotence. He says, “If anyone will examine himself concerning his notion of pure substance in general, he will find he has no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not what support of such qualities, which are capable of producing simple ideas in us; which qualities are commonly called accidents. If anyone should be asked, what is the subject wherein colour or weight inheres, he would have nothing to say, but the solid, extended parts; and if he were demanded, what is it that solidity and extension adheres in,” he would be in much the same plight as the Indian was who supported the world on the broad-backed tortoise. “And thus here, as in all other cases where we use words without having clear and distinct ideas, we talk like children.... The idea then we have, to which we give the general name substance, being nothing but the supposed, but unknown support of those qualities we find existing, which we imagine cannot subsist without something to support them, we call that support, substantia, which means in plain English, standing under, or upholding.” But again, in comparing our ideas of spirit and of body, he says, “In short, the idea we have of spirit, compared with the idea we have of body, stands thus: the substance of spirit is unknown to us; and so is the substance of body equally unknown to us.”¹ An idea of substance in itself, that is, apart from any qualities in relation to our minds, is utterly barren; as we only conceive it as inconceivable ――as nothing at all.

¹ Chapter XXIII., Section 2, Section 30.

He treated at length of relations, including that of cause and effect, of identity and diversity, of clear and distinct, obscure and confused ideas, of adequate and inadequate ideas, of real and fanatical ideas, of true and false ideas. Strictly speaking, truth and falsehood belong only to propositions; but ideas are sometimes termed true or false, though when so styled, there is some tacit proposition assumed, as ideas are but bare perceptions in our own minds, and cannot in themselves be said to be true or false. Any idea which we have in our minds, whether it accords or not with the existence of things, or with any ideas in the minds of other men, cannot properly for this alone be called false. But an idea is false when formed of inconsistent qualities or elements, or when it is judged to contain in it the real essence of any existing body, whereas it only contains a few of these; or again, when the mind judges its own idea to be the same as it is in other men’s minds, signified by the same word, when in fact it is not the same. He closed the Second Book with a short and interesting chapter on the “Association of Ideas.” He was among the first to use this expression which is now so familiar to all students of psychology.

In the Third Book, Locke treated on language at length as the medium of stating and expressing our ideas and thoughts. Words are signs and marks which are necessary for communication――general terms and names of our ideas, considered as aids to the acquisition of knowledge, and for recording and communicating our thoughts. This part of the work is valuable, and contains some of Locke’s best thoughts. He sums up his view of general terms in the following sentence:――“All the great business of genera and species, and their essences, amounts to no more but this, that men, making abstract ideas, and settling them in their minds, with names annexed to them, do thereby enable themselves to consider things, and to discourse of them, as it were in bundles, for the easier and readier improvement and communication of their knowledge; which would advance but slowly were their words and thoughts confined only to particulars.”¹

¹ Chapter III., Section 30.

The Fourth Book dealt with knowledge and opinion, and extended to twenty-one chapters, in which many important and interesting matters are handled with great candour and ability. Such as the degrees, the limits, and the reality of our knowledge, of truth, universal propositions, maxims, the existence of God; the improvement of our knowledge, probability, and the degrees of assent; reason, faith and reason, and the causes of error, were all handled.

According to Locke, knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas; this agreement being fourfold, namely, identity or diversity, relation, co-existence or necessary connection, and real existence. He explained these kinds of knowledge and relations of ideas at length, and proceeded to show that we know our own existence, and the existence of God. His reasoning and arguments to prove the existence of God are founded on the principle of mediate inference, the only method which his system of the mind permitted; but on this ground he argues well and wisely.

Locke discussed the provinces of faith and reason, and though faith in divine revelation transcends rational knowledge, nevertheless nothing can be regarded as a revelation which directly contradicts well ascertained and distinct rational knowledge.¹

¹ Chapter XVIII.

In the discussion of the limits of human knowledge, though he made many true and sagacious statements, yet it was here, perhaps, that his main inconsistency culminated. Notwithstanding his doctrine that we have only an obscure and relative idea of substance, he adopted and expounded the distinction between the primary and the secondary qualities of bodies, describing the primary qualities as those which are inseparable from the conception of body. The primary qualities are really in bodies, whether our senses perceive them or not, and when we do perceive primary qualities, our ideas of them are resemblances of qualities really existing in these bodies. His own words are “that the ideas of primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them, and their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves.” While, on the other hand, “the ideas produced in us by these secondary qualities have no resemblance of them at all. There is nothing like our ideas existing in the bodies themselves.” Thus it seems we know primary qualities, not simply as manifested to us, but as they exist in themselves; thus too the primary qualities of bodies must be independent of the human mind. Hence when he came to treat of the limits of knowledge, no necessary connection between the primary and the secondary qualities could be discovered; because the ideas obtained through the primary qualities of bodies were entirely different from the ideas obtained through the secondary qualities, there was no common root among these ideas for comparison, and consequently no knowledge. There was no science of bodies, or definite physics: “because we want perfect and adequate ideas of those very bodies which are nearest to us, and most under our command. Those which we have ranked into classes under names, and we think ourselves best acquainted with, we have but very imperfect and incomplete ideas of.... Adequate ideas, I suspect, we have not of any body.”¹ Here the door was opened for the scepticism which Hume deduced from the principles of Locke’s Essay. In treating on the limits of our knowledge, Locke says:――“He that knows anything, knows this in the first place, that he need not seek long for instances of his ignorance. The meanest and most obvious things that come in our way have dark sides, that the quickest sight cannot penetrate into. The clearest and most enlarged understandings of thinking men find themselves puzzled, and at a loss, in every particle of matter. We shall the less wonder to find it so when we consider the causes of our ignorance, which, I suppose, will be found to be chiefly these three:――1. Want of ideas; 2. Want of discoverable connection between the ideas we have; 3. Want of tracing and examining our ideas.”

¹ Book II., Chapter VIII.; Book IV., Chapter III.

I have not space to speak of Locke’s other writings, and
restrict myself to a few words on his ethical doctrines. He
maintained that morality is solely based on the Will of God,
and that what is most conducive to the public welfare is to
be regarded as the expression of the Divine Will. Each man is
required by the Divine Law to do all the good and prevent all
the evil that he can; and good and evil being resolved into
pleasure and pain, the ultimate test of moral conduct is its
tendency to promote the pleasures and to avert the pains of
mankind. Book I., Chapter III., Section 6; Book II., Chapter
XXVIII.

Locke also maintained that morality is a science which can
be demonstrated as clearly as mathematics. Book IV., Chapter
III., Section 18; Chapter IV., Section 7; Chapter XII.,