BOOK IV. 1441 CHAP. X. We are is a God. CHAPTER X. OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXISTENCE OF A GOD 1. 1. THOUGH God has given us no innate ideas of himself; though he has stamped no original characters on our minds, wherein we may read his being 2; yet having furnished us capable of with those faculties our minds are endowed with, he hath not knowing left himself without witness: since we have sense, perception, certainly that there and reason, and cannot want a clear proof of him, as long as we carry ourselves about us. Nor can we justly complain of our ignorance in this great point; since he has so plentifully provided us with the means to discover and know him; so far as is necessary to the end of our being, and the great concernment of our happiness. But, though this be the most obvious truth that reason discovers, and though its evidence be (if I mistake not) equal to mathematical certainty: yet it requires thought and attention; and the mind must apply itself to a regular deduction of it from some part of our intuitive knowledge, or else we shall be as uncertain and ignorant of this as of other propositions, which are in themselves capable of clear demonstration 3. To show, therefore, that we are 1 'A God,' instead of 'God,' suggests the inadequacy of Locke's idea of God. 2 Cf. Bk. I. ch. iii. §§ 8-16, where the innateness of the idea of God, and of the assertion 'God exists' is argued against, whilst here he goes on to show that it is as demonstrable, on self-evident principles, as any truth in mathematics. The possibility of men remaining ignorant that God exists; the fact that men may remain all their lives without any distinct knowledge of God; and the need for intellectual and spiritual activity on the part of each man, as the condition of its attainment-are marks that distinguish the knowledge of God-demonstrable with mathematical certainty,' according to Locke -from any knowledge that could be called innate,' in his meaning of innateness. capable of knowing, i.e. being certain that there is a God, and BOOK IV. how we may come by this certainty, I think we need go no further than ourselves, and that undoubted knowledge we have of our own existence. CHAP. X. knows exists. 2. I think it is beyond question, that man has a clear idea For Man of his own being; he knows certainly he exists, and that he is that he something. He that can doubt whether he be anything or himself no, I speak not to; no more than I would argue with pure nothing, or endeavour to convince nonentity that it were something. If any one pretends to be so sceptical as to deny his own existence, (for really to doubt of it is manifestly impossible,) let him for me enjoy his beloved happiness of being nothing, until hunger or some other pain convince him of the contrary. This, then, I think I may take for a truth, which every one's certain knowledge assures him of, beyond the liberty of doubting, viz. that he is something that actually exists 1. also that 3. In the next place, man knows, by an intuitive certainty, He knows that bare nothing can no more produce any real being, than it Nothing can be equal to two right angles. If a man knows not that cannot 1 Cf. ch. ix. § 3, which asserts that each man intuitively perceives the 6 agreement' of the idea of 'existence' with the idea of 'himself'; so that the former is at least tacitly predicated of the latter in every conscious act. 2 This is an appeal to the 'maxim or axiom,' that whatever begins to exist must find a concrete cause into which its existence may be refunded— here treated as a universal and necessary principle, 'known by an intuitive certainty.' Yet in Bk. II. ch. xxi. § 1, and ch. xxvi. § 1, which explain the origin of the idea of cause, it is said to arise from our' observation' of changes. Unless this observation is merely the occasion on which intellect 'suggests' the universal necessity of a cause of change, the use made in this chapter of the causal maxim is not justified by that account of its origin. But in arguing with Stillingfleet, he makes the principle 'that everything that has CHAP. X. produce a BOOK IV. nonentity, or the absence of all being, cannot be equal to two right angles, it is impossible he should know any demonstration in Euclid. If, therefore, we know there is some real Being; being, and that nonentity cannot produce any real being, it is therefore an evident demonstration, that from eternity there has been Something must have something1; since what was not from eternity had a beginexisted ning; and what had a beginning must be produced by someEternity. thing else. from And that eternal Being must be most powerful. And most knowing. 4. Next, it is evident, that what had its being and beginning from another, must also have all that which is in and belongs to its being from another too. All the powers it has must be owing to and received from the same source 2. This eternal source, then, of all being must also be the source and original of all power; and so this eternal Being must be also the most powerful3. 5. Again, a man finds in himself perception and knowledge. We have then got one step further; and we are certain now that there is not only some being, but some knowing, intelligent being in the world. There was a time, then, when there was no knowing being, and when knowledge began to be; or 1 This is virtually equivalent to the three first propositions and the fifth of Samuel Clarke's Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, published in 1704, fourteen years after the first edition of the Essay. In these propositions, Clarke claims to demonstrate the eternal existence of Something independent, that exists by a necessity in the rational nature of things-on the ground that 'something now is Locke, on the ground that I now am, and that I had a beginning. 2 That is to say, that every cause must be a sufficient cause; so that nothing must be looked for in the actual effects which did not exist potentially in the cause. Thus, if matter consists only of molecules in motion, no motion of the molecules could per se become self-conscious mind; or even feel sensation, as in the secondary or imputed qualities. The causal principle, as interpreted by Locke, implies that effects which can be attributed to any particular cause must be already latent in that cause, and so capable of being evolved from it, and refunded into it. This differs from the causality recognised by empirical sceptics like Hume; according to whom any particular cause might à priori give rise to any effects, it being only the accidental custom of our experience that induces us to associate a particular change with anything in particular as its cause. 3 This (so far) is Samuel Clarke's tenth 'demonstrated' proposition about God; but whilst Locke's conclusion is only that the eternal Being must be 'most powerful,' Clarke 'demonstrates' that the necessary Being, the supreme Cause of all things, 'must of necessity have infinite power.' 1441 else there has been also a knowing being from eternity. If it BOOK IV. be said, there was a time when no being had any knowledge, CHAP. X. when that eternal being was void of all understanding; I reply, that then it was impossible there should ever have been any knowledge: it being as impossible that things wholly void of knowledge, and operating blindly, and without any perception, should produce a knowing being, as it is impossible that a triangle should make itself three angles bigger than two right ones. For it is as repugnant to the idea of senseless matter, that it should put into itself sense, perception, and knowledge, as it is repugnant to the idea of a triangle, that it should put into itself greater angles than two right ones1. therefore 6. Thus, from the consideration of ourselves, and what we And infallibly find in our own constitutions, our reason leads us to God. the knowledge of this certain and evident truth,-That there is an eternal, most powerful, and most knowing Being; which whether any one will please to call God, it matters not. The thing is evident2; and from this idea duly considered, will easily be deduced all those other attributes, which we ought to ascribe to this eternal Being. [3 If, nevertheless, any one should be found so senselessly arrogant, as to suppose man 1 Locke thus rejects absolute or ultimate materialism, on the ground that it is repugnant to reason, which forbids, by an intellectual necessity, that sense, perception, and living knowledge,' should be refunded into blind and meaningless molecular motions; although reason, he thinks, does not forbid the supposition that, in subordination to the Eternal Mind, the evolution of the human organism may have conscious intelligence annexed to it at some stage of the process. Cf. ch. iv. § 6. 2 This is not adequate to the 'complex idea' of God, described in Bk. II. ch. xxiii. §§ 33-36, where we are told (§ 35) that it is infinity which, joined to our ideas of substance, power, and knowledge, makes that complex idea whereby we represent to ourselves, as best we can, the Supreme Being.' But neither Locke nor Clarke professes to 3 Added in second edition. CHAP. X. BOOK IV. alone knowing and wise, but yet the product of mere ignorance and chance; and that all the rest of the universe acted only by that blind haphazard; I shall leave with him that very rational and emphatical rebuke of Tully (1. ii. De Leg.), to be considered at his leisure: What can be more sillily arrogant and misbecoming, than for a man to think that he has a mind and understanding in him, but yet in all the universe beside there is no such thing? Or that those things, which with the utmost stretch of his reason he can scarce comprehend, should be moved and managed without any reason at all?' Quid est enim verius, quam neminem esse oportere tam stulte arrogantem, ut in se mentem et rationem putet inesse, in cælo mundoque non putet? Aut ea quæ vix summa ingenii ratione comprehendat, nulla ratione moveri putet?] Our idea of a most perfect From what has been said, it is plain to me we have a more certain knowledge of the existence of a God, than of anything our senses have not immediately discovered to us1. Nay, I presume I may say, that we more certainly know that there is a God, than that there is anything else without us2. When I say we know, I mean there is such a knowledge within our reach which we cannot miss, if we will but apply our minds to that, as we do to several other inquiries 3. 7. How far the idea of a most perfect being, which a man may frame in his mind, does or does not prove the existence Being, not of a God, I will not here examine. For in the different 1 In the simple ideas of which we are percipient as qualities of things of sense. 2 This seems to imply that we know what is within us' more certainly than we know what is 'without us'; and also that God is 'without us' in the way that finite beings are. 3 The origin and progress of religious thought in the individual man only, not its historical growth in the different races of mankind, is chiefly considered by Locke. He contributes little to that natural history of religion which illus. trates in its different stages the development of the idea of God in the human mind. Apart from meta physical speculation, and as a stage in the history of mankind, monotheism is a comparatively late development of the answer to the question, Whether the evolution of the universe is a succession of blind purposeless changes, or the progressive manifestation of a perfectly reasonable and beneficent purpose. * This has been called the ontological, or pure à priori, argument. Anselm and Descartes among others took the mere idea of Perfect Being as proof that Perfect Being actually exists. As the idea of a triangle necessarily contains the idea of three-sidedness, so the idea of the Perfect necessarily contains |