CHAP. XI. BOOK IV. Concerning this matter are beyond our reach. For however true it may be, v.g., that all the intelligent spirits that God ever created do still exist, yet it can never make a part of our certain knowledge1. These and the like propositions we may assent to, as highly probable, but are not, I fear, in this state capable of knowing. We are not, then, to put others upon demonstrating, nor ourselves upon search of universal certainty in all those matters; wherein we are not capable of any other knowledge, but what our senses give us in this or that particular. Only particular 13. By which it appears that there are two sorts of proProposi- positions: (1) There is one sort of propositions concerning tions con- the existence of anything answerable to such an idea: as cerning concrete having the idea of an elephant, phoenix, motion, or an angel, Existences in my mind2, the first and natural inquiry is, Whether such knowable. a thing does anywhere exist? And this knowledge is only of particulars. No existence of anything without us, but only of God, can certainly be known further than our senses inform us3. (2) There is another sort of propositions, wherein are then founds on it a charge of scep- and to take refuge in Christianity and faith.' Cousin rightly adds that only through a petitio principii is the way into this world of faith here open to him. The alleged paralogism disappears when we see that Locke is not here speaking of his own existence as a self-conscious spirit, but of the existence of angels and other spirits disclosed in the Christian revelation. This makes the present existence of 'all the intelligent spirits that God ever created,' except our own, a matter of probability, not of the absolute certainty that belongs to knowledge. 2 in my mind,' i. e. in an idea of which there is neither sense-consciousness nor self-consciousness. Cf. P. 337, n. 3. 3 Locke here tells us that our senses,' i. e. ideas or phenomena actually presented in the senses, are our criteria for testing the reality of ideas of which we are conscious in is expressed the agreement or disagreement of our abstract BOOK IV. ideas, and their dependence on one another. Such propo- CHAP. XI. sitions may be universal and certain. So, having the idea of God and myself, of fear and obedience, I cannot but be sure that God is to be feared and obeyed by me: and this proposition will be certain, concerning man in general, if I have made an abstract idea of such a species, whereof I am one particular. But yet this proposition, how certain soever, that 'men ought to fear and obey God' proves not to me the existence of men in the world; but will be true of all such creatures, whenever they do exist1: which certainty of such general propositions depends on the agreement or disagree-ment to be discovered in those abstract ideas. are known abstract 14. In the former case, our knowledge is the consequence And all of the existence of things, producing ideas in our minds by general Proposiour senses in the latter, knowledge is the consequence of tions that the ideas (be they what they will) that are in our minds, pro- to be true ducing there general certain propositions3. Many of these concern are called aeternae veritates, and all of them indeed are so; Ideas. not from being written, all or any of them, in the minds of all men; or that they were any of them propositions in any one's mind, till he, having got the abstract ideas, joined or separated them by affirmation or negation. But wheresoever we can suppose such a creature as man is, endowed with such faculties, and thereby furnished with such ideas as we have, memory or imagination. What we remember or imagine is tested by ideas presented in sense; but these last must be accepted without any ulterior criterion, on the ground of their inherent accordance with the intelligible order of nature. And this certainty of sense is confined to particular things now and here present, excluding general assertions, which are incapable of being guaranteed by sense-perception, and involve more or less a leap in the dark. 1 If the proposition in question is meant as an abstract proposition only, it is absolutely certain, he means to say, but if as a concrete proposition, in which the real existence of other 2 So that the ideas or phenomena 3 The contingent element that is introduced in sense-data, presented in time, and determined by ultimately unknown powers, and under imperfectly known conditions, being here eliminated, so that the propositions are no longer only hypothetically true. 1 CHAP. XI. BOOK IV. we must conclude, he must needs, when he applies his thoughts to the consideration of his ideas, know the truth of certain propositions that will arise from the agreement or disagreement which he will perceive in his own ideas. Such propositions are therefore called eternal truths, not because they are eternal propositions actually formed, and antecedent to the understanding that at any time makes them; nor because they are imprinted on the mind from any patterns that are anywhere out of the mind, and existed before: but because, being once made about abstract ideas, so as to be true, they will, whenever they can be supposed to be made again at any time, past or to come, by a mind having those ideas, always actually be true. For names being supposed to stand perpetually for the same ideas, and the same ideas having immutably the same habitudes one to another, propositions concerning any abstract ideas that are once true must needs be eternal verities1. . eun. 1 The eternity and immutability of the relations of our abstract ideas are here rested on their being elaborations of our own understanding, and in this way independent of the powers at work in the universe of which we know so little. Whether any of them constitute à priori synthetic judgments, or whether they are all only analytical and explicative, he does not consider. CHAPTER XII. OF THE IMPROVEMENT OF OUR KNOwledge1. 1 CHAP. XII. not got I. IT having been the common received opinion amongst BOOK IV. men of letters, that maxims were the foundation of all knowledge; and that the sciences were each of them built upon Know. certain praecognita, from whence the understanding was to ledge is take its rise, and by which it was to conduct itself in its from inquiries into the matters belonging to that science, the Maxims. beaten road of the Schools has been, to lay down in the beginning one or more general propositions, as foundations whereon to build the knowledge that was to be had of that subject. These doctrines, thus laid down for foundations of any science, were called principles, as the beginnings from which we must set out, and look no further backwards in our inquiries1, as we have already observed2. Occasion 2. One thing which might probably give an occasion to this (The way of proceeding in other sciences, was (as I suppose) the of that good success it seemed to have in mathematics, wherein men, Opinion.) being observed to attain a great certainty of knowledge, these sciences came by pre-eminence to be called Maonμara, and Máoŋois, learning, or things learned, thoroughly learned, as having of all others the greatest certainty, clearness, and evidence in them. 1 It is as obstructions to free inquiry itself presupposes the 'maxim,' that and criticism that Locke warns against received maxims or axioms. This is not expressly to assert that experience is interpretable without presupposing more than is presented in its contingent data. Scientific verification rational order is immanent in nature; 2 Ch. vii. CHAP. XII. clear and distinct Ideas. BOOK IV. 3. But if any one will consider, he will (I guess) find, that the great advancement and certainty of real knowledge which men arrived to in these sciences, was not owing to the influence comparing of these principles, nor derived from any peculiar advantage they received from two or three general maxims, laid down in the beginning; but from the clear, distinct, complete ideas their thoughts were employed about, and the relation of equality and excess so clear between some of them, that they had an intuitive knowledge, and by that a way to discover it in others; and this without the help of those maxims. For I ask, Is it not possible for a young lad to know that his whole body is bigger than his little finger, but by virtue of this axiom, that the whole is bigger than a part; nor be assured of it, till he has learned that maxim? Or cannot a country wench know that, having received a shilling from one that owes her three, and a shilling also from another that owes her three, the remaining debts in each of their hands are equal? Cannot she know this, I say, unless she fetch the certainty of it from this maxim, that if you take equals from equals, the remainder will be equals, a maxim which possibly she never heard or thought of? I desire any one to consider, from what has been elsewhere said, which is known first and clearest by most people, the particular instance, or the general rule; and which it is that gives life and birth to the other1. These general rules are but the comparing our more general and abstract ideas, which are the workmanship of the mind2, made, and names given to them for the easier dispatch in its reasonings, and drawing into comprehensive terms and short rules its various and multiplied observations. But knowledge began in 1 Unless universality is implied, the 'particular instance' teaches nothing, except perhaps its own momentary presentation. But the implied universal, in abstraction from all particular instances, need not be present in consciousness, and doubtless is not in most cases. It is left to the philosopher to recognise its immanence. It is the particular instance that first quickens it into intellectual life, and in that way may be said to be its 'origin' in the history of perception, when perception is regarded as an event. 2 They are 'the workmanship of the mind,' inasmuch as, without intellectual activity in the individual, there can be no conscious recognition of a maxim, or self-evident principle, in its abstract form. Moreover the errors into which we fall, in accepting and applying abstract principles, show us that they are the workmanship' of a fallible human understanding. |