No More Learning

Here, too, the discourses' are arranged according to
subject rather than chronologically, and, as in Milward's alpha-
betical disposition, the series of sayings is thus deprived of not
a little of its biographical interest and significance? Yet the
reporter of Selden's Table-Talk chooses, as the motto of his col-
lection, the words Distingue tempora! In the latter part of the
sixteenth, and during the course of the seventeenth century, were
put forth not a few collections of the sayings or conversations of
eminent French scholars, from the redoubtable younger Scaliger
down to Gilles Ménage, renowned alike as a not very laborious
1 Cf. Köstlin, J. , Martin Luther, sein Leben und seine Schriften, 3rd ed. Elberfeld,
1883, vol. II, pp. 487 ff.
21
6
E. L. VIII,
CH. XIII.


## p. 322 (#344) ############################################

322
Legal Literature
lexicographer and as a devotee to the pleasures of the great
world! In England, on the other hand, the era proper of ana had
not yet been reached, although collections of the sayings of kings
and magnates had become popular from the middle of the seven-
teenth century onwards? , and although great wits and profound
scholars of the succeeding generations continued to unbend in
occasional converse in coffee-house or common-room, as they had
indulged their humour at the Mermaid in the days of Ben Jonson
and of Selden himself, or as Jonson had (if the phrase be per-
mitted) let himself go in his harangues-called Conversations-
addressed to Drummond at Hawthornden. The golden era of
this species was inaugurated by Boswell's Life of Johnson; but
Johnson himself, whose conversations, like Martin Luther's collo-
quies, cover a far wider ground and possess a far wider, as well as
more intimately human, interest than can be ascribed to Selden's
Table-Talk, pronounced this English collection superior to any
of its French rivals:.
Unfortunately, the original manuscript of Table-Talk is lost, so
that some passages of the printed texts are of composite origin or
actuallyuncertain; but the authenticity of the whole may be regarded
as established, notwithstanding the cavils of Wilkins, the editor of
Selden's Works (1726). The period during which Milward stated
that he had collected his materials from the lips of his patron ex-
tended over twenty years—clearly the last two decades of Selden's
life, for, in the section Tithes, Selden speaks of himself as having
written his History of Tythes (published in 1618) "about forty
years ago. ' Milward neither says nor implies that his manuscript
was in any way revised or approved by Selden. There is not any
need, it may be added, for calling in the evidence of style in order
to determine the date of the utterances recorded in Table-Talk.
Aubrey, no doubt, refers to Selden's writings when stating that
he quite left off the obscurity which he affected in his younger
years; and Clarendon, whose character of Selden is one of the
earliest, as it is one of the most generous, tributes of friendship
enshrined in the Life of the great historian“, while noting that
1 For a list of these French ana see preface to The Table-Talk of John Selden, ed.
Irving, David, Edinburgh, 1854, pp. xxii-XXV.
2 See for some earlier English collections of ana, bibliography to the present
section.
8 See Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Hill, G. B. , vol. v, p. 311. Boswell, when, in
self-defence, discussing publications of a kind similar to his own, also mentions
Spence's Anecdotes, which, however, is rather different in scheme and remained in
manuscript till 1820.
• Vol. I, p. 35, ed. 1827.


## p. 323 (#345) ############################################

Topics and Characteristics of Table-Talk 323
his friend's style, in all his writings, seemed 'harsh and sometimes
obscure,' was careful to add that 'in his conversation he was the
most clear discourser, and had the best faculty of making hard
things easy, and of presenting them to the understanding, of any
man that hath been known. ' The essential qualities, and the
supreme merit, of the style of Table-Talk could not have been
more admirably summarised, though Clarendon's intimacy with
Selden must have dated from about seven years before that (1642)
which saw it end with the great lawyer's definitive resolution to
cast in his lot with the parliament rather than with the king.
On the whole, the references in Table-Talk to the political
events and transactions in which Selden had borne part, even
before he became a member of Charles I's second parliament in
1626, are but few. It is only incidentally that he mentions either
'the imprisoning of the parliament men,' of whom he was one,
'3° Caroli",' or any of the proceedings of the Long parliament
(except the removal of bishops 'out of the house? '). He is less
reticent concerning the doings of the Westminster assembly of
divines, of which, in common with other parliament men, he was
chosen a member, and in whose debates Whitelock states him to
have taken active part, at times 'totally silencing' some of the
divines by comparing their biblical quotations with the original
Greek and Hebrew texts. But the times were manifestly not such
as to invite individual comment on the action of public bodies;
for, during practically the whole of the period which can be sup-
posed to be covered by Table-Talk, peace seemed as far off as
ever, and, 'though we had peace, yet 'twill be a great while ere
things be settled; though the wind lie, yet after a storm the sea
will work a while4. ' Thus, 'the wisest way for men in these times
is to say nothing. ' Personal references or allusions, such as light
up the hearthside or tavern talk of Luther or Johnson, are, there-
fore, scanty in Selden's observations-save for a few seasonable
illustrations from the sayings of king James, or references to
eccentrics like Sir Kenelm Digby or Sir Robert Cotton.
The distinctive characteristics of Selden's deliverances at his
1
9
* See 'LX. Incendiaries. '
See . VII. Bishops in the Parliament. '
8 Memorials, p. 71, cited by Reynolds, 8. H. , in the introduction to his edition of
Table-Talk, p. xviii. In CXV. Presbytery,' Selden speaks with some satisfaction of
the suspicious delay of the divines in the assembly in answering the queries of parlia-
ment as to the proofs of the presbytery's possession of the jus divinum. • Their
delaying to answer makes us think there's no such thing there. "
• See O. Peace. '
6 Ibid.
21-2


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324
Legal Literature
6
hospitable board are of a different, and, perhaps, of a higher, order.
We have described them as deliverances rather than conversations;
the truth being that, in these communings, the speaker, quite con-
sciously, lays down the law, while it is only here and there that
room is found for objections offered by interlocutors or, more
probably, suggested by the autocrat of the table himself, and, in
any case, always supplied with a satisfactory answer. These
deliverances reveal to us the rapid working of a powerful intellect,
putting forth, without any effort of full exposition or sustained
argument, but with perfect frankness and freedom of expression,
opinions on subjects with which, however difficult or abstruse they
may at times seem, it is invariably found to be at home. To
occasional discourse of this sort, Selden, in the first instance,
brought an equipment of immense learning in law and legal his-
tory, together with the habit, which he indulged even in his
writings on legal history? , of illustrating his discourse from non-
legal, as well as legal, sources. It must, however, be allowed that
the reporting powers of Milward (who was not a lawyer)--and,
perhaps, his powers of memory-were but limited; for Table-Talk
not only contains few if any 'quotations from poetical writings in
various languages' such as 'embellish many of' Selden's written
'pages? ,' but it displays little interest in literature; indeed, the
section on 'Poetry' (CV) is not so much disappointing as flatly
paradoxical. However cautiously Selden, even among trusty
friends, may have abstained from an application of his analytical
powers to burning' questions of the day, it is clear that, in his later
years, his intellectual interests came more and more to concentrate
themselves upon matters of state and church. On the former head,
he was steadily and sturdily opposed to any encroachment upon
popular rights, when those rights had once found expression in
the existing law, and he disliked change in the institutions, popular
or other, whose growth had been a legal process. The longlived
theory which, about the time of the publication of Table-Talk,
was to assume control over the political philosophy of a series
of generations--the conception of a contract between governor
and governed-pervaded Selden's views as to the political conflict
. Cf. Hazeltine, H. D. , Selden as Legal Historian, p. 599.
2 Ibid.
8 The Crashaw whom Selden states he converted from writing against plays, was,
of course, William Crashaw, the puritan preacher and poet and not (as one of the
editors of Table-Talk has assumed) his more celebrated son. Selden entertained &
strong feeling against · lecturers,' as being another sort of friars (see LXXXIX.
Lecturers'); and it was in the former capacity that the elder Crashaw seems to have
began his ministrations.
>


## p. 325 (#347) ############################################

Selden on Politics and Religion 325
of which he had witnessed the development. At the bottom of all
political doubts and disputes lay to his mind the question: ‘Have
you agreed so? If you have, then it must remain till you have
altered it. ' A clear consequence was that a breach of the con-
tract on the one side justified resistance on the other:
To know what obedience is due to the prince, you must look into the
contract betwixt him and his people. . . . Where the contract is broken, and
there is no third person to judge, then the decision is by arms. And this is
the case between the prince and the subject 2.
Hence, Selden's advocacy of the right of resistance, and his oppo-
sition to conceptions, like those of Hobbes, which upheld the duty
of passive obedience on the part of the subjects to the monarch.
In its very bases, his system of political thought is irreconcilable
with the excesses against law that had been the real beginnings
of the English revolution. Without mentioning names, he points at
the 'incendiaries of the state,' who first set it on fire by swerving
from the path of legality, and, in order to provide the sovereign
with money, 'outran the constable4. ' But, though he reverences
an act of parliament as law, he is without any superstitious
reverence for parliament itself as an acting machine of govern-
ment; and no censure of an omnipotent chamber could be more
severe than that which he passes on the action of the parliament
party,' though he does not make any pretence of questioning the
authority of the assembly under its controle.
On religious subjects, Selden delivered himself with more ex-
pansiveness. It must be allowed that, like many of his contem-
poraries, he found it difficult to speak of the clergy, even of his
own church, without an impatience not far removed from dislike.
This prejudice, as he freely confesses, was a remnant of times when
it was not easy to find a 'parson' who was a 'gentleman' by birth
and breeding? But, of course, Selden's antipathy went deeper
than this. Though an advocate, in his own way, of 'set forms,
6
>
6
<
ICII. People.
3CXLVII. War. ' See, also, *XXVIII. Contraots,' where, however, there is a
touch of irony in the concluding epitome. '
3 'LX. Incendiaries. '
4 'LXXXIX. Money. '
O'XCVII. Parliament. ' This section concludes with a very seasonable protest
against pressure of any sort for the purpose of carrying a vote in parliament, winding
up with the odd assertion that a man is sent there, not to persuade others, but 'to
speak his own heart. ' Selden was suspicious of rhetoric, and, though he could not
rule its power out of court, declared that it is either very good, or stark naught'
(CX. Preaching').
& See ·XOVII. Parliament. '
? See `LXXXVIII. Minister Divine. '
8 See the rather paradoxical, but extremely interesting, CIX. Prayer. '
6


## p. 326 (#348) ############################################

326
Legal Literature
5
1
what irritated him in the clergy was the mixture which they pre-
sented of religious form and worldly motive— every religion,' he
could bring himself to say, 'is a getting religion? ' Yet, morality
and religion, to his mind, were inseparable, nor could the former
stand without the latter Selden also disliked the clergy because
of the incompleteness of their intellectual equipment; theology
was a study to which, from this point of view also, he had given
much thoughts, and he says—in words of which the humour may
have been heightened by the delivery: “There is all the reason you
should believe your minister, unless you have studied divinity as
well as he or more than he. At the same time, he could be just
to the position of English churchmen, at a time when it was de-
nounced as illogical and hypocritical", and, on historical grounds,
could defend both them and the bishops against unfounded charges.
The jus divinum claim for presbyteries, as has been seen, he de-
rided. But his protestantism was outspoken and deeprooted,
and one of the most incisive things in these discourses is the little
dialogue on the foundations of the contending forms of faith? . His
attitude towards the Bible may be described as frankly Erasmianº;
and, in general, bis religious standpoint is an enlightened accept-
ance of the creed and church of his fathers, equally removed from
fanaticism and from faithlessness.
The real fascination of Selden's utterances in Table-Talk lies
neither in the legal learning of which it furnishes constant evidence,
nor in the historical judgments which it pithily supplies or, by
means of a pregnant word or phrase, suggests, nor, again, in its
incidental illustrations of contemporary currents of opinion or
tendencies of feeling. Its charm lies in the play of mind, which,
passing from subject to subject, familiar to the speaker in its
depths as well as in its more superficial aspects, illuminates them
all in turn. Selden's wit has many varieties, and more than one
of these, half imperceptibly, reveals itself as true wisdom. By the
side of some instances of a coarse kind of wit, which still found
ready acceptance in Selden's age—especially in the form of
anecdotal illustrations, with which he evidently took pleasure in
6
i See CXVIII. Proverbs. '
See XC. Moral Honesty. '
3 See 'LXXXVIII. Minister Divine. '
* See CVII. Popery. '
• See . VI. Bishop before the Parliament. ' 6 See •CXV. Presbytery. '
? See CXXI. Religion. '
8 See ·V. Bible, Scripture. '
• Such as the rather sophistical •CL. Witches. ' It is amusing that even Selden
should not have escaped the impression common with elderly people that manners are
deteriorating, though he can hardly have been an old man when he gave utterance to
*LXXI. King of England. '


## p. 327 (#349) ############################################

Selden's Wit and Wisdom
327
clinching an argument—there are others of a trenchant wit, too
rough in flavour to suit the modern palate, and others, but not so
many, of a cynicism which tends, hardly less than coarseness, to
mar table-talk. But there are others of a pleasant wit betokening
a genial apprehension of the humorous side of things, besides
yet others where the speaker manifests that kind of insight
into the real nature of men and affairs which only the constant
application of the mind to prompt treatment of intricate problems
is capable of producing? . Finally, there are to be found in Table
Talk illustrations of that highest kind of wit which, by a winged
word, makes plain an everlasting truth-that gnomic wisdom
which is as pellucid as it is profound. Here, humility and per-
spicacity join hands, as in the plain moral which ends a homely
argument on Vows:: 'He that vows can mean no more in sense
than this; to do his utmost endeavour to keep his vow. '
Thus, a simple sheaf of sayings apprises us, were there nothing
else to show it, how, for this great lawyer and deeply read scholar,
the light of reason shone with the same clearness, calm rather than
cold, whether it fell upon the ancient tomes in his library, or lit up
the chambers of political or religious debate, or burnt in the lamp
hanging in the sanctuary.
2
1 A single instance may be cited from 'LXXXVI. Measure of things. ' Wo cry
down a rotten pear, and approve e rotten medlar; 'and yet, I warrant you, the pear
thinks as well of itself as the medlar does. '
2 By way of example, see the explanation of the custom of painting terrific
Saracens' heads as signs on inns in . CXLVIII. War. '
8 CXLIV.


## p. 328 (#350) ############################################

CHAPTER XIV
JOHN LOCKE
JOHN LOCKE may be regarded as, on the whole, the most
important figure in English philosophy. Others excelled him in
genius ; he had not the comprehensive grasp of Hobbes, or the
speculative originality of Berkeley, or the subtlety of Hume; but
he was surpassed by none in candour, sagacity and shrewdness.
These qualities recommended him to his countrymen, and the
width of his interests reconciled them to his philosophy. He was
a physician, always on the outlook for new knowledge, an adviser
of statesmen, a sufferer in the cause of freedom and an amateur
theologian. His writings on economics, on politics and on religion
expressed the best ideas of the time—the ideas that were about
to become dominant. He was the philosopher of the revolution
settlement; and, when the settlement was made, he came home to
publish the books which he had prepared in exile. Even his great
work, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, may have
seemed only to show the grounds in the human mind for the
lessons of honesty, liberty and toleration which he constantly
inculcated. It is almost with a shock of surprise that one realises
that this same Essay, by its historical plain method,' gave a new
direction to European philosophy, and provided a new basis for
the science of psychology.
Locke was born at Wrington, a village in Somersetshire, on
29 August 1632. He was the son of a country solicitor and small
landowner who, when the civil war broke out, served as a captain
of horse in the parliamentary army. 'I no sooner perceived
myself in the world than I found myself in a storm,' he wrote
long afterwards, during the lull in the storm which followed
the king's return. But political unrest does not seem to have
seriously disturbed the course of his education. He entered
Westminster school in 1646, and passed to Christ Church, Oxford,
as a junior student, in 1652; and he had a home there (though
absent from it for long periods) for more than thirty years—till
a


## p. 329 (#351) ############################################

Locke and Shaftesbury 329
deprived of his studentship by royal mandate in 1684. The
official studies of the university were uncongenial to him; he
would have preferred to have learned philosophy from Descartes
instead of from Aristotle; but, evidently, he satisfied the au-
thorities, for he was elected to a senior studentship in 1659, and,
in the three or four years following, he took part in the tutorial
work of the college. At one time, he seems to have thought of
the clerical profession as a possible career; but he declined an
offer of preferment in 1666, and, in the same year, obtained a
dispensation which enabled him to hold his studentship without
taking orders. About the same time, we hear of his interest in
experimental science, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal
Society in 1668. Little is known of his early medical studies.
He cannot have followed the regular course, for he was unable
to obtain the degree of doctor of medicine. It was not till 1674
that he graduated as bachelor of medicine. In the following
January, his position in Christ Church was regularised by his
appointment to one of the two medical studentships of the college.
His knowledge of medicine and occasional practice of the art
led, in 1666, to an acquaintance with lord Ashley (afterwards,
from 1672, earl of Shaftesbury). The acquaintance, begun ac-
cidentally, had an immediate effect on Locke's career. Without
severing his connection with Oxford, he became a member of
Shaftesbury's household, and seems soon to have been looked
upon as indispensable in all matters domestic and political. He
saved the statesman's life by a skilful operation, arranged a
suitable marriage for his heir, attended the lady in her confine-
ment, and directed the nursing and education of her son-
afterwards famous as the author of Characteristics. He assisted
Shaftesbury, also, in public business, commercial and political,
and followed him into the government service. When Shaftesbury
was made lord chancellor in 1672, Locke became his secretary for
presentation to benefices, and, in the following year, was made
secretary to the board of trade. In 1675, his official life came
to an end, for the time, with the fall of his chief.
Locke's health, always delicate, suffered from the London
climate. When released from the cares of office, he left England
in search of health.
Ten years earlier, he had had his first ex-
perience of foreign travel, and of public employment, as secretary
to Sir Walter Vane, ambassador to the elector of Brandenburg
during the first Dutch war. On his return to England, early in
1666, he declined an offer of further service in Spain, and settled


## p. 330 (#352) ############################################

330
John Locke
again in Oxford, but was soon induced by Shaftesbury to spend
a great part of his time in London. On his release from office, in
1675, he sought milder air in the south of France, made leisurely
journeys, and settled down for many months at Montpellier. The
journal which he kept at this period is full of minute descriptions
of places and customs and institutions. It contains, also, a record
of many of the reflections that afterwards took shape in the Essay
concerning Human Understanding. He returned to England in
1679, when his patron had again a short spell of office. He does
not seem to have been concerned in Shaftesbury's later schemes ;
but suspicion naturally fell upon him, and he found it prudent
to take refuge in Holland. This he did in August 1683, less
than a year after the flight and death of Shaftesbury. Even in
Holland, for some time, he was not safe from danger of arrest
at the instance of the English government; he moved from town
to town, lived under an assumed name and visited his friends
by stealth. His residence in Holland brought political occupations
with it, among the men who were preparing the English revolution.
It had at least equal value in the leisure which it gave him for
literary work, and in the friendships which it offered. In parti-
cular, he formed a close intimacy with Philip van Limborch, the
leader of the Remonstrant clergy, and the scholar and liberal
theologian to whom Epistola de Tolerantia was dedicated.
This letter was completed in 1685, though not published at the
time; and, before he left for England, in February 1689, the
Essay concerning Human Understanding seems to have attained
its final form, and an abstract of it was published in Leclerc's
Bibliothèque universelle in 1688.
The new government recognised his services to the cause of
freedom by the offer of the post of ambassador either at Berlin
or at Vienna. But Locke was no place hunter; he was solicitous,
also, on account of his health ; his earlier experience of Germany
led him to fear the cold air' and 'warm drinking’; and the high
office was declined. But he served less important offices at
home. He was made commissioner of appeals in May 1689, and,
from 1696 to 1700, he was a commissioner of trade and plantations
at a salary of £1000 a year. Although official duties called him
to town for protracted periods, he was able to fix his residence in
the country. In 1691, he was persuaded to make his permanent
home at Oates in Essex, in the house of Sir Francis and lady
Masham. Lady Masham was a daughter of Cudworth, the
Cambridge Platonist; Locke had manifested a growing sympathy


## p. 331 (#353) ############################################

An Essay concerning Human Understanding 331
with his type of liberal theology ; intellectual affinity increased his
friendship with the family at Oates ; and he continued to live with
them till his death on 28 October 1704.
With the exception of the abstract of the Essay and other
less important contributions to the Bibliothèque universelle,
Locke had not published anything before his return to England
in 1689; and, by this time, he was in his fifty-seventh year. But
many years of reflection and preparation made him ready now
to send forth books from the press in rapid succession. In March
1689, his Epistola de Tolerantia was published in Holland ; an
l
English translation of the same, by William Popple, appeared
later in the same year, and, in a corrected edition, in 1690. The
controversy which followed this work led, on Locke's part, to
the publication of a Second Letter, and then of a Third Letter,
in 1690 and 1692 respectively. In February 1690, the book
entitled Two Treatises of Government was published, and in
March of the same year appeared the long expected Essay con-
cerning Human Understanding, on which he had been at work
intermittently since 1671. It met with immediate success, and
led to a voluminous literature of attack and reply; young
fellows of colleges tried to introduce it at the universities, and
heads of houses sat in conclave to devise means for its suppression.
To one of his critics Locke replied at length. This was Edward
Stillingfieet, bishop of Worcester, who, in his Vindication of the
Doctrine of the Trinity (1696), had attacked the new philosophy.
It was the theological consequences which were drawn from the
doctrines of the Essay not so much by Locke himself as by
Toland, in his Christianity not mysterious, that the bishop had
chiefly in view; in philosophy for its own sake he does not seem
to have been interested. But his criticism drew attention to
one of the least satisfactory (if, also, one of the most suggestive)
doctrines of the Essay—its explanation of the idea of substance;
and discredit was thrown on the 'new way of ideas' in general.
In January 1697, Locke replied in A Letter to the Bishop of
Worcester. Stillingfleet answered this in May; and Locke was
ready with a second letter in August. Stillingfleet replied in
1698, and Locke's lengthy third letter appeared in 1699. The
bishop's death, later in the same year, put an end to the con-
troversy. The second edition of the Essay was published in 1694,
the third in 1695, and the fourth in 1700. The second and fourth
editions contained important additions. An abridgment of it
appeared in 1696, by John Wynne, fellow of Jesus college,


## p. 332 (#354) ############################################

332
John Locke
1
1
Oxford; it was translated into Latin and into French soon after
the appearance of the fourth edition. The later editions contain
many modifications due to the author's correspondence with
William Molyneux, of Trinity college, Dublin, a devoted disciple, for
whom Locke conceived a warm friendship. Other correspondents
and visitors to Oates during these years were Sir Isaac Newton
and Anthony Collins, a young squire of the neighbourhood, who
afterwards made his mark in the intellectual controversies of the
time!
Other interests also occupied Locke during the years following
the publication of his great work. The financial difficulties of the
new government led, in 1691, to his publication of Some Con-
siderations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, and
Raising the Value of Money, and of Further Considerations
on the latter question, four years later. In 1693 he published
Some Thoughts concerning Education, a work founded on letters
written to a friend, and, in 1695, appeared The Reasonableness of
Christianity, and, later, A Vindication of the same against certain
objections; and this was followed by a second vindication two
years afterwards.
Locke's religious interest had always been
strongly marked, and, in the later years of his life, much of his
time was given to theology. Among the writings of his which
were published after his death are commentaries on the Pauline
epistles, and a Discourse on Miracles, as well as a fragment of
a fourth Letter on Toleration. The posthumously published
writings include, further, An Examination of Father Male-
branche's Opinion of seeing all things in God, Remarks on Some
of Mr Norris's Books, and most important of all—the small
treatise on The Conduct of the Understanding, which had been
originally designed as a chapter of the Essay.
Locke opened a new way for English philosophy. Stillingfleet
saw dangers ahead in that way; but its discovery was Locke's
title to fame. It was no new thing, certainly, to lay stress upon
- method. Herein, he followed the example of Bacon and Hobbes
and other pioneers of modern philosophy. Bacon had done more:
he had found dangers and defects in the natural working of men's
minds, and had devised means to correct them. But Locke went
a step further, and undertook a systematic investigation of the
human understanding with a view to determining something else
-namely, the truth and certainty of knowledge, and the grounds
* The productions of Collins, Toland, and the other deistical writers will be dealt
with in the next volume of this work.


## p. 333 (#355) ############################################

The Main Problems of the Essay 333
of belief, on all matters about which men are in the habit of
making assertions. In this way he introduced a new department,
or a new method, of philosophical enquiry, which has come to be
known as theory of knowledge, or epistemology; and, in this
respect, he was the precursor of Kant and anticipated what Kant
called the critical method.
We have Locke's own account of the origin of the problem
in his mind. He struck out a new way because he found the
old paths blocked. Five or six friends were conversing in his
room, probably in London and in the winter of 1670—1, 'on a
subject very remote from this'; the subject, as we learn from
another member of the party, was the 'principles of morality
and revealed religion’; but difficulties arose on every side, and
no progress was made. Then, he goes on to say,
it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course, and that before we
set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine ou;
own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, or were not,
fitted to deal with.
At the request of his friends, Locke agreed to set down his
thoughts on this question against their next meeting; and he
expected that a single sheet of paper would suffice for the purpose.
So little did he realise the magnitude of the issues which he raised
"and which were to occupy his leisure for nearly twenty years.
Locke's interest centres in the traditional problems—the nature
of self, the world and God, and the grounds of our knowledge
of them. We reach these questions only in the fourth and last
book of the Essay. But to them the enquiry of the first three
books is preliminary, though it has, and Locke saw that it had,
an importance of its own. His introductory sentences make this
plain :
Since it is the understanding that gets man above the rest of sensible
beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has over
them; it is certainly a subject, even for its nobleness, worth our labour to
inquire into. The understanding, like the eye, while it makes us see and
perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and
pains to set it at a distance and make it its own object. But whatever be the
difficulties that lie in the way of this inquiry; whatever it be that keeps us so
much in the dark to ourselves; sure I am that all the light we can let in upon
our minds, all the acquaintance we can make with our own understandings,
will not only be very pleasant, but bring us great advantage, in directing our
thoughts in the search of other things.
Locke will not ‘meddle with the physical consideration of
the mind'; he has no theory about its essence or its relation
to the body; at the same time, he has no doubt that, if due pains


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334
John Locke
be taken, the understanding can be studied like anything else:
we can observe its objects and the ways in which it operates upon
them. All the objects of the understanding are described as
ideas, and ideas are spoken of as being in the mind'. Locke's
first problem, therefore, is to trace the origin and history of
ideas, and the ways in which the understanding operates upon
them, in order that he may be able to see what knowledge is
and how far it reaches. This wide use of the term 'idea' is
inherited from Descartes. The term in modern psychology which
corresponds with it most nearly is ‘presentation. ' But presentation
is, strictly, only one variety of Locke's idea, which includes, also,
representation and image, percept, and concept or notion. His
usage of the term thus differs so widely from the old Platonic
meaning that the danger of confusion between them is not great.
It suited the author's purpose, also, from being a familiar word
in ordinary discourse as well as in the language of philosophers.
Herein, however, lay a danger from which he did not escape.
In common usage 'idea' carries with it a suggestion of contrast
with reality; and the opposition which the 'new way of ideas'
excited was due to the doubt which it seemed to cast on the claim
of knowledge to be a knowledge of real things.
The Essay is divided into four books; the first is a polemic
against the doctrine of innate principles; the others deal with ideas,
with words, and with knowledge respectively. The first book is
remarkable for the way in which the author brings to bear upon
the question all the facts that could then be ascertained regarding
the ideas and beliefs of primitive and savage races. He points to
the variety of human experience, and to the difficulty of forming
general and abstract ideas, and he ridicules the view that any
such ideas can be antecedent to experience. It is in its most
extreme form that the doctrine of innate ideas is attacked; but he
cannot see any alternative between that form and his own view
that all ideas have their origin in experience.
Locke wishes to avoid any presupposition about matter, or
mind, or their relation. It is not difficult to see that the notions
which he has expelled often re-enter unbidden. But the peculiar
value of his psychology consists in his attempt to keep clear of
them. He begins neither with mind nor with matter, but with
ideas. Their existence needs no proof: 'everyone is conscious of
them in himself, and men's words and actions will satisfy him that
they are in others. ' His first enquiry is 'how they come into the
* Cf. Essay, introduction, sec. 2; bk. II, chap. I, sec. 5; bk. 11, chap. VIII, sec. 8.


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Sensation and Reflection 335
9
mind'; his next business is to show that they constitute the
whole material of our knowledge. In his answer to the former
question we discover the influence of traditional philosophy, or,
rather, of ordinary commonsense views of existence, upon his
thought. All our ideas, he says, come from experience. The
mind has no innate ideas, but it has innate faculties: it perceives,
remembers, and combines the ideas that come to it from without;
it also desires, wills, and deliberates; and these mental activities
are themselves the source of a new class of ideas. Experience is,
therefore, twofold. Our observation may be employed either
about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations
of our minds. The former is the source of most of the ideas which
we have, and, as it depends 'wholly upon our senses,' is called
“sensation. The latter is a source of ideas which 'every man has
wholly in himself,' and it might be called “internal sense’; to it
he gives the name 'reflection. '
Hence, the peculiarity of Locke's position. There are no
innate ideas 'stamped upon the mind' from birth ; and yet
impressions of sense are not the only source of knowledge : 'the
mind,' he says, 'furnishes the understanding with ideas. ' No
distinction is implied here between 'mind' and 'understanding,'
so that the sentence might run, 'the mind furnishes itself with
ideas. ' As to what these ideas are, we are not left in doubt : they
are 'ideas of its own operations. ' When the mind acts, it has
an idea of its action, that is, it is self-conscious. Reflection, there-
fore, means self-consciousness, and, as such, is assumed to be an
original source of our knowledge. Afterwards both Hume and
Condillac refused to admit reflection as an original source of
ideas, and both, accordingly, found that they had to face the
problem of tracing the growth of self-consciousness out of a
succession of sensations. According to Locke, reflection is an
original, rather than an independent, source of ideas. Without
sensation, mind would have nothing to operate upon, and, there-
fore, could have no ideas of its operations. It is 'when he first
has any sensation' that 'a man begins to have any ideas' The
operations of the mind are not themselves produced by sensation,
but sensation is required to give the mind material for working on.
The ideas which sensation gives 'enter by the senses simple
and unmixed; they stand in need of the activity of mind to
bind them into the complex unities required for knowledge. The
complex ideas of substances, modes and relations are all the
1 Bk. 11, chap. I, sec. 23.
2 Bk. 11, chap. II, seo. 1.
6
>


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336
John Locke
6
product of the combining and abstracting activity of mind
operating upon simple ideas, which have been given, without any
connection, by sensation or reflection. Locke's doctrine of know-
ledge has thus two sides. On the one side, all the material of
knowledge is traced to the simple idea. On the other side, the
processes which transform this crude material into knowledge
are activities of mind which themselves cannot be reduced to
ideas. Locke's metaphors of the tabula rasa, white paper,'
and dark room' misled his critics and suggested to some of his
followers a theory very different from his own. The metaphors
only illustrate what he had in hand at the moment. Without
experience, no characters are written on the tablets' of the
mind; except through the 'windows' of sensation and reflection,
no light enters the understanding. No ideas are innate; and
there is no source of new simple ideas other than those two. But
knowledge involves relations, and relations are the work of the
mind; it requires complex ideas, and complex ideas are mental
formations. Simple ideas do not, of themselves, enter into relation
and form complex ideas. Locke does not, like Hobbes before
him and Hume and Condillac after him, look to some un-
explained natural attraction of idea for idea as bringing about
these formations. Indeed, his treatment of the association of
ideas' is an afterthought, and did not appear in the earlier
editions of the Essay.
Starting from the simple ideas which we get from sensation,
or from observing mental operations as they take place, Locke
has two things to explain: the universal element, that is, the
general conceptions with which knowledge is concerned or which
it implies, and the reference to reality which it claims. With
the former problem Locke deals at great length; and the general
method of his exposition is clear enough. Complex ideas arise
from simple ideas by the processes of combination and abstraction
carried out by the mind. It would be unfair to expect complete-
ness from his enterprise ; but it cannot be denied that his intricate
and subtle discussions left many problems unsolved. Indeed, this
is one of his great merits. He raised questions in such a way
as to provoke further enquiry. Principles such as the causal
relation, apart from which knowledge would be impossible, are
quietly taken for granted, often without any enquiry into the
i The same metaphor is used by Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, bk. 1, chap. vr: "The
soul of man being therefore at the first as a book, wherein nothing is, and yet all
things may be imprinted. '


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Simple and Complex Ideas 337
grounds for assuming them. Further, the difficulty of accounting
for universals is unduly simplified by describing certain products
as simple ideas, although thought has obviously been at work upon
them. At the outset of his enquiry, simple ideas are exemplified
by yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, and so forth; but, towards
the close of the second book, a very different list is given, which
includes space, time, solidity, motion, power. Having arrived at this
latter point, he seems to forget his view that all knowledge begins
with the particular, with something simple and unmixed. ' Indeed,
his whole doctrine of modes may be said to be based on oblivion
of the fact that a simple idea must be really simple. Instead of
showing how the idea of space is built up out of many particular
sensations (or simple ideas) of particular spaces, he regards
particular spaces as modes of the simple idea space; instead of
showing how the idea of time is evolved from our experience of
particular durations, he calls the latter modes of the simple idea
time; and so on. Unwittingly, he generalises the particular.
He professes to begin with the mere particulars of external or
internal sense, and to show how knowledge-which is necessarily
general-is evolved from them. But, instead of doing so, he
assumes a general or universal element as already given in the
simple idea, and then treats the particular experience as one of
its modes.
Having gone so far, he might almost have been expected to take
a further step and treat the perceptions of particular things as modes
of the simple idea substance. But this he does not do. Substance
is an idea regarding which he was in earnest with his own funda-
mental theory; and the difficulties in which his theory involved
him on this head were both provocative of criticism and fruitful
for the progress of thought. He admits that substance is a
complex idea; that is to say, it is formed by the mind's action
out of simple ideas. Now, this idea of substance marks the
difference between having sensations and perceiving things. Its
importance, therefore, is clear; but there is no clearness in
explaining it. We are told that there is a 'supposed or confused
idea of substance' to which are joined (say) ‘the simple idea
of a dull whitish colour, with certain degrees of weight, hardness,
ductility and fusibility,' and, as a result, we have the idea of
lead. A difficulty might have been avoided if substance could
have been interpreted as simply the combination by the under-
standing of white, hard, etc. , or some similar cluster of ideas of
sensation. But it was not Locke's way thus to ignore facts. He
22
6
E. L. VIII.
CH. XIV.


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338
John Locke
1)
sees that something more is needed than these ideas of sensation.
They are only joined to the supposed or confused idea of
substance, which is there and always the first and chief. He
holds to it that the idea is a complex idea and so made by the
mind; but he is entirely at a loss to account for the materials out
of which it is made. We cannot imagine how simple ideas can
subsist by themselves, and so 'we accustom ourselves to suppose
some substratum wherein they do subsist, and this we call
substance. In one place, he even vacillates between the assertions
that we have no clear idea of substance and that we have no idea
of it at all. It is 'a supposition of he knows not what. ' This
uncertainty, as will appear presently, throws its shadow over our
whole knowledge of nature.
The new way of ideas' is thus hard put to it in accounting for
the universal element in knowledge; it has even greater difficulties
to face in defending the reality of knowledge. And, in the latter
case, the author does not see the difficulties so clearly. His view
is that the simple idea is the test and standard of reality. What-
ever the mind contributes to our ideas removes them further
from the reality of things; in becoming general, knowledge loses
touch with things. But not all simple ideas carry with them the
same significance for reality. Colours, smells, tastes, sounds, and
the like are simple ideas, yet nothing resembles them in the bodies
themselves; but, owing to a certain bulk, figure and motion of their
insensible parts, bodies have a power to produce those sensa-
tions in us. ' These, therefore, are called 'secondary qualities of
bodies. On the other hand, “solidity, extension, figure, motion or
rest, and number' are also held by Locke to be simple ideas; and
these are resemblances of qualities in body; 'their patterns do really
exist in the bodies themselves,' and, accordingly, are 'primary
qualities of bodies? ' In this way, by implication if not expressly,
Locke severs, instead of establishing, the connection between simple
ideas and reality. The only ideas which can make good their claim
to be regarded as simple ideas have nothing resembling them in
things. Other ideas, no doubt, are said to resemble bodily qualities
(an assertion for which no proof is given and none is possible); but
these ideas have only a doubtful claim to rank as simple ideas.
Locke's prevailing tendency is to identify reality with the simple
>
1 A similar distinction between qualities of body was formulated by Galileo, Hobbes
and Descartes; its origin may be traced to Democritus; and the words 'primary' and
'secondary' were occasionally used in this connection by Robert Boyle, Origine of
Formes and Qualities (1666), pp. 10, 43, 100—1; cp. Tracts (1671), introduction, p. 18.


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Knowledge. Morality 339
idea, but he sometimes comes within an ace of the opposite view
that the reference to reality is the work of thought.
In the fourth book of his Essay, Locke proceeds to apply these
results so as to determine the nature and extent of knowledge. As
ideas are the sole immediate object of the mind, knowledge can be
nothing else than the perception of the connexion of and agree-
ment, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our ideas.