that, being human, is somehow intermediate between omniscience and sense, participating in both.

logical

The Essay was the first deliberate attempt, in modern A mixed philosophy, to engage in what might now be called epistemo epistemological inquiry, but mixed up by Locke with inquiry. questions logical, psychological, and ontological; all subordinated in his design to what may be of use to us, in our present state,' and to 'our concerns as human beings 1.' Locke inaugurated the modern epistemological era, characteristic of philosophy in the eighteenth century, which culminated in Kant-the reaction against medieval dogmatism of authority, and against the abstract ontology of Spinoza and physiological materialism of Hobbes, in the seventeenth century, which last involve questions that Locke expressly avoids. I shall not meddle with the physical consideration of the mind,' he tells us at the outset 2, 'or trouble myself to examine wherein its essence consists [i. e. whether its substance is material or spiritual], or by what motions of our [animal] spirits, or alterations of our bodies, we come to have . . . ideas in our understandings; and whether these ideas do, in their formation, any or all of them, depend on matter or not.'

The abstract demonstrations of Spinoza, and even the Its modest physiological psychology of Hobbes, were foreign to the forecast. modest introspection of the Essay. Locke warns his

1 Molyneux, in one of his letters (Dec. 22, 1692), suggests that it is difficult to place the Essay in any of the recognised philosophical sciences (a tribute to its independent individuality), and that it might succeed better if its contents could be elaborated into a system of 'logic and metaphysics' by its author. To which Locke replies (Jan. 20, 1693) :— 'That which you propose of turning my Essay into a body of logic and metaphysics, accommodated to the usual forms, though I thank you very kindly for it, and plainly see in it the care you have of the education of young scholars, yet I feel I shall scarce find time to do it. Besides

that, if you have, in this book of
mine, what you think the matter of
these two sciences, or what you will
call them, I like the method it is in
better than that of the schools,' &c.
In return Molyneux is fully con-
vinced by the arguments you give
me, for not turning your book into
the scholastic form of logic and
metaphysics; and I had no other
reason to advise the other, but
merely to get it promoted the easier
in our [Dublin] university; one of
the businesses of which place is to
learn according to the old forms.'
(March 2, 1693.)

2 Introduction, § 2.

readers 'not to expect undeniable cogent demonstrations' of the conclusions which he maintains; and 'professes no more than to lay down, candidly and freely, his own conjectures, concerning a subject lying somewhat in the dark, without any other design than an unbiassed inquiry into truth.' It is no dialectical deduction of what knowledge in the abstract must be that he promises, but a matterof-fact account of what seem to be the resources of human understanding, for comprehending the attributes and powers of the material and spiritual substances that actually exist, in a so-called science that, instead of omniscience, is not raised far above sense. 'If by this inquiry into the nature of the [human] understanding, I can discover the powers thereof: how far they reach: to what things they are in any degree proportionate: and where they fail us-I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities. . . . For I thought that the first step towards satisfying several inquiries the mind of man was very apt to run into, was, to take a view of our own understanding, examine our own powers, and see to what things they were adapted. Till that was done I suspected we began at the wrong end, and in vain sought for satisfaction in a quiet and sure possession of truths that most concerned us, whilst we let loose our thoughts into the vast ocean of Being; as if all that boundless extent were the natural and undoubted possession of our understandings.' The 'truths which concern us,' he insists, are those which determine human character, not satisfaction of merely speculative curiosity. business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct. If we can find out those measures whereby a rational creature, put in that state in which man is in this world, may and ought to govern his opinions, and actions depending thereon, we need not to be troubled that some other things escape our knowledge.' He thus

1 Bk. I. ch. iii. § 25.

prepares us for finding that man's knowledge of the qualities and behaviour of existing realities, is of the intermediate sort-neither nescience nor omniscience, but, if one may use the word, fiduscience, or science that is at last a reasonable faith, in lack of omniscience. Things are what they are, and not other things than they are; why therefore should we allow ourselves to be deceived regarding the possible extent of our knowledge, or regarding anything else? This is Locke's attitude.

of human

is in the

An answer of genuine worth for human purposes to Its the questions about Knowledge, is what is sought for analysis throughout the Essay. So one naturally turns first to its knowledge definition of Knowledge. This comes out at the beginning Fourth of the Fourth, not, as might have been expected, at the Book. beginning of the First Book. In fact the Fourth Book is in some respects more in its place when treated as the first, with the other three as a supplement; and there is some ground for the conjecture that, in preparing this 'Discourse, written by incoherent parcels,' the investigations proper to the Fourth Book were those which engaged Locke at the outset, and that those now appropriated to the other three were entered on, when his conception of his enterprise became more comprehensive. To the end he recognised faults in the structure of the Essay, but pleaded age and want of leisure as an excuse for not reducing and reconstructing it. This need not now hinder an expositor from passing at once from the 'Introduction' to the part of the Essay where the elements that are essential to human knowledge are distinguished from one another. The lines of inquiry in the rest of the Essay are then seen to radiate from the definition of knowledge as a centre.

, Books of

mutual

Human knowledge, it there appears 1, is 'perception' of The four 'connexion or repugnancy, of agreement or disagreement,' the Essay between 'ideas.' The unit of knowledge is thus a mental in their proposition, not an idea. It is a judgment, in the ordinary relation. meaning of that term, but not exactly in Locke's restricted meaning; for in the Essay 'judgment' means 'presumption' or 'assent,' founded on probability—not a perceived absolute certainty of connexion or repugnance between ideas; and 1 Bk. IV. ch. i. § 1; cf. Bk. II. ch. xxi. § 5.

The phe

nomena

thus excludes the intellectual necessity which is essential to Locke's idea of 'knowledge,' when he employs that term (which he does not always do) with a rigorous meaning1. Proposition-spontaneous or reflective, mental or verbalbeing thus the unit of knowledge, it follows that no one of the elements essential to knowledge can, per se, constitute knowledge. Ideas are presupposed in knowledge; and it also presupposes relations of connexion or repugnance between ideas; as well as a living perception of those relations. But not one of those three elements, abstracted from the other two, makes knowledge. Without 'ideas mental propositions are empty and barren; without relations of connexion or repugnance ideas are unintelligible— the propositions have no copulas; without a living perception knowledge is dead or unconscious. The Essay, in its four Books, is throughout concerned with these three, logically separable, but actually inseparable, elements. The Second and Third Books deal especially with ideas and their verbal signs; the First Book with abstract principles, in refutation of the hypothesis that some of them are 'innate'; the Fourth Book, in its first thirteen chapters, describes the various perceptions of relations between ideas that, immediately or by demonstrated implication, are selfevident, thus offering an analytical description of human knowledge; the remaining chapters deal with the reasonable probabilities of presumptive faith, which, in lack of omniscience, do duty for knowledge, in a human understanding.

II. IDEAS, THE FIRST ELEMENT IN KNOWLEDGE.

Idea' is the most obtrusive and significant word in Locke's Essay, which has been charged with 'inventing a presented by external new way of knowing-by means of ideas.' The word could

and internal

realities,
whether
received,
retained,
or elabo.

rated, are
called
'ideas' by
Locke.

not but occur often in an inquiry about knowledge, when idea means what Locke makes it mean. For an idea in the Essay signifies the particular object immediately known, or of which there is consciousness, in any act of understanding. The particular phenomena of outward things, when they are actually presented in sense, or of our own minds when

1 See Bk. IV. ch. xiv. § 4.

we are self-conscious; the phenomena when represented in the particular mental images of memory, or of plastic imagination; and also the phenomena when, in our ‘abstract notions,' they are viewed universally, or as appearances such as more than one particular thing can correspond with and be represented by'all alike are 'ideas' in Locke's meaning of idea. Whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking,' Locke tells us (Introduction, § 8) is what is meant by an idea in the Essay; and as every one is assured that when he knows he is conscious of something, he thinks it is unnecessary to prove that men have ideas, or to raise subtle questions about how realities that are independent of the particular ideas of individual men can be manifested in and through their ideas. The withdrawal of all ideas would plainly make knowledge impossible, because there would then be nothing for us to know; so, although ideas per se are not knowledge, but only abstractions considered apart from the living knowledge to which they are essential, yet there can be no actual knowledge when there are no ideas of any sort before the mind. Our knowledge of reality may be said, accordingly, to originate in, and depend upon, our ideas of what the particular reality is by which it is manifested to our understandings 1. 'My new way of

1 Locke's 'ideas' must be divested of Platonic connotation. He uses the term in at least as wide a meaning as Descartes had sanctioned. Par le nom d'idée,' Descartes says, in answer to Hobbes, 'il veut seulement qu'on intime ici les images des choses matérielles dépeintes en la phantasie corporelle; et cela étant supposé, il lui est aisé de montrer qu'on ne peut avoir propre et véritable idée de Dieu ni d'un ange; mais j'ai souvent averti, et principalement en celui-là même, que je prends le nom d'idée pour tout ce qui est conçu immédiatement par l'esprit; en sorte que, lorsque je veux et que je crains, parceque je conçois en même temps que je veux et que je crains, ce vouloir et cette

crainte sont mis par moi en nombre des idées; et je me suis servi de ce mot, parcequ'il était déjà communément reçu par les philosophes pour signifier les formes des conceptions de l'entendement divin, encore que nous ne reconnoissions en Dieu aucune fantasie ou imagination corporelle.' The objections of Hobbes and Descartes' replies are determined by this primary difference between ideas as [sensuous] images, and ideas as unimaginable concepts that are nevertheless capable of being reasoned about. Gassendi denied anything to be an idea but what was imagined; and Locke says that all ideas are particular, and that particular ideas become general only by being taken