11 СНАР. for more or less as he pleases, without being one jot the BOOK IV, richer, or without even knowing how much a pound, shilling, or penny is, but only that one is contained in the other VIII. twenty times, and contains the other twelve: which a man. may also do in the signification of words, by making them, in respect of one another, more or less, or equally comprehensive. 11. Though yet concerning most words used in discourses, Thirdly, Using equally argumentative and controversial, there is this more Words to be complained of, which is the worst sort of trifling, and variously is trifling which sets us yet further from the certainty of knowledge with them. we hope to attain by them, or find in them; viz. that most writers are so far from instructing us in the nature and knowledge of things, that they use their words loosely and uncertainly, and do not, by using them constantly and steadily in the same significations 1, make plain and clear deductions of words one from another, and make their discourses coherent and clear, (how little soever they were instructive); which were not difficult to do, did they not find it convenient to shelter their ignorance or obstinacy under the obscurity and perplexedness of their terms: to which, perhaps, inadvertency and ill custom do in many men much contribute. Barely verbal propositions may be Marks of verbal Proposi Predica 12. To conclude. known by these following marks: First, All propositions wherein two abstract terms are tions. affirmed one of another, are barely about the signification of First, sounds. For since no abstract idea can be the same with any tion in other but itself, when its abstract name is affirmed of any Abstract. other term, it can signify no more but this, that it may, or ought to be called by that name; or that these two names signify the same idea. Thus, should any one say that parsimony is frugality, that gratitude is justice, that this or that action is or is not temperate: however specious these and the like propositions may at first sight seem, yet when 1 Also when a speaker or writer reasons in words, he may reason with demonstrable verbal consistency, according to his own definitions of the words, but in meanings different from BOOK IV. we come to press them, and examine nicely what they contain, we shall find that it all amounts to nothing but the signification of those terms. СНАР. VIII. Secondly, 13. Secondly, All propositions wherein a part of the comA part plex idea which any term stands for is predicated of that of the Definition term, are only verbal: v. g. to say that gold is a metal, or predicated heavy. And thus all propositions wherein more comprehensive1 words, called genera, are affirmed of subordinate or less comprehensive 1, called species, or individuals, are barely verbal. of any Term. When by these two rules we have examined the propositions that make up the discourses we ordinarily meet with, both in and out of books, we shall perhaps find that a greater part of them than is usually suspected are purely about the signification of words, and contain nothing in them but the use and application of these signs. This I think I may lay down for an infallible rule, That, wherever the distinct idea any word stands for is not known and considered, and something not contained in the idea is not affirmed or denied of it2, there our thoughts stick wholly in sounds, and are able to attain no real truth or falsehood. This, perhaps, if well heeded, might save us a great deal of useless amusement and dispute; and very much shorten our trouble and wandering in the search of real and true knowledge. 16 'Comprehensive,' i. e. 'extensive,' according to the best usage, in which a notion is of comprehensive quantity according to the greater or smaller of qualities contained in it, and forming the essence of its name, and extensive in proportion to the number of species and individuals contained under it, or of which it is the genus. In affirmative propositions the subject is logically subordinate to, i. e. less extensive than, the predicate, when the proposition is interpreted according to the logical extent of its terms. 2 When the 'distinct idea any word stands for,' according to custom, is 'not known and considered,' and when no other meaning is predicated of it, then of course the word must be empty, and the proposition sticks wholly in sounds,' as Locke seems ironically to suggest. CHAPTER IX. OF OUR THREEFOLD KNOWLEDGE OF EXISTENCE. CHAP. IX. tions that are certain not Existence. 1. HITHERTO1 we have only considered the essences of BOOK IV. things2; which being only abstract ideas, and thereby removed in our thoughts from particular existence, (that being the proper operation of the mind, in abstraction, to consider an Proposiidea under no other existence but what it has in the understanding,) gives us no knowledge of real existence at all. concern Where, by the way, we may take notice, that universal Ex propositions of whose truth or falsehood we can have certain knowledge concern not existence and further, that all particular affirmations or negations that would not be certain if they were made general, are only concerning existence; they declaring only the accidental union or separation of ideas in things existing, which, in their abstract natures, have no known necessary union or repugnancy 5. 2. But, leaving the nature of propositions, and different 1 'Hitherto'-especially in chh. vviii; also Bk. III. chh. v, vi. 26 essences of things,' i. e. the essences of the names applied to them, called by Locke nominal essences. 3 In propositions that concern real existence (as in Locke's fourth sort), and in those concerned with 'coexistence' of qualities and powers in substances (third sort), ideas are considered as manifestations of what exists in individual things, and not as mere subjective work of the individual understanding. How does this consist with his application, in the following chapter, of the causal judgment, in its universal 5 Thus we do not perceive a 'neces- CHAP. IX. A three BOOK IV. ways of predication to be considered more at large in another place1, let us proceed now to inquire concerning our knowledge of the existence of things, and how we come by it. I say, then, that we have the knowledge of our own existence by intuition; of the existence of God by demonstration; and ledge of Existence. of other things by sensation 3. fold Know 3. As for our own existence, we perceive it so plainly and 1 in another place.' Was this written before chh. v-viii, which treat of 'propositions' and 'predication'; also before Bk. III, which deals with common terms, and 'abstract ideas'? 2 Existence of things.' It is one of Locke's leading assumptions, that whatever really exists must be particular; so that there can be no known reality in ideas that are abstracted from particular substances in which they present themselves to our senses or reflection. 'Whatever exists,' he says emphatically in his criticism of Norris, 'whether in God or out of God, is singular' (Remarks, § 21). Cf. chh. i. §7; ii. § 14; iii. § 21; iv. §§ 1-4, 11-18. 3 He thus asserts that men come by' an irresistible perception, or absolute certainty, of each of the three final realities, in each of the three degrees of clearness that belong to human knowledge, described in ch. ii. 'Agreement' of all the ideas of which he is conscious with the idea of his own actual existence is an intuition, latent if not fully conscious, in the mind of every man who is conscious of any ideas at all, or who uses the personal pronoun 'I': this intuition of his own existence obliges all (who give the needful attention to the question) to perceive with the force of a mathematical demonstration, that the Supreme Mind we call God must exist eternally and our actual sensations, or ideas of sense, when interpreted in the light of our own existence, and the existence of God, are perceived to be'things' that thus make manifestation of their actual existence. Locke proceeds to explain and vindicate all this in the following section, and in the two following chapters. Human life as well as human knowledge turns on men's relations to these three final realities, and on their mode of thinking about them. While none of the three can be explained away, each may be so exaggerated as to overshadow the other two. Exaggerated or exclusive regard either to the first, the second, or the third, tends to a practically impossible Egoism or Solipsism, Pantheism or Acosmism, or Materialism. An exaggerated sense of the mysteries and seeming contradictions involved in the three distinct yet united, induces the Scepticism or Agnosticism which would discard from human understanding all questions about the ultimate realities by which human life is deepened and dignified, and would confine men to blind guesses about transitory phenomena, abstracted from all permanent realities. The his tory of religious and philosophical thought is a history of the changing hypotheses under which reflecting men have tried to conceive the three ultimate realities that, in some form, are presupposed in any interpretation of the phenomena of existence which can find response in the human spirit. Cf. Bk. II. chh. xxiii, and xxviii. § 2. 1441 CHAP. IX. Our ledge of our own is Intui so certainly, that it neither needs nor is capable of any proof. BOOK IV. For nothing can be more evident to us than our own existence. I think, I reason, I feel pleasure and pain: can any of these be more evident to me than my own existence? If I doubt Knowof all other things, that very doubt makes me perceive my own existence, and will not suffer me to doubt of that. For Existence if I know I feel pain, it is evident I have as certain perception tive. of my own existence, as of the existence of the pain I feel: or if I know I doubt, I have as certain perception of the existence of the thing doubting, as of that thought which I call doubt1. Experience then convinces us, that we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence, and an internal infallible perception that we are. In every act of sensation, reasoning, or thinking 3, we are conscious to ourselves of our own being; and, in this matter, come not short of the highest degree of certainty. predicated, in an act of intuitive perception? Does it include substances material and spiritual; or the spiritual substance only, or the pure personality only, independently of substance, as in the discussion on the idea of identity of person, in Bk. II. ch. xxvii? In the sentences that follow, this last seems to be in his view; but not exclusively in the forensic and moral aspect in which personality is presented in the second Book. All this corresponds with the cogito ergo sum of Descartes (Discours de la Méthode, iv.), even to the illustrations. Hume treats the whole as a vulgar error; the personal pronoun 'I' signifies only a succession of isolated impressions and ideas, and is otherwise a word without meaning, according to his Treatise, Bk. I. pt. iv. sect. 6. 2' Experience,' i. e. self-conscious experience, or the simple ideas of our own mental operations that are presented when we reflect. As we have seen, Locke sometimes uses expressions which might imply that the simple ideas of the senses keep us at ་ 3 In every conscious state through which we pass (he seems here to say) the idea signified by the personal pronoun 'I' (of which an insufficient account was given in Bk. II.) rises up, in 'agreement' with the idea of 'real existence,' so that I am obliged, tacitly at least, to assert that 'I exist,' whenever I am conscious of ideas of any sort. |