No More Learning

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.


## p. 338 (#360) ############################################

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.


## p. 339 (#361) ############################################

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. ' This
agreement or disagreement is said to be of four sorts: identity
or diversity; relation; co-existence or necessary connection; real
existence. Each of these kinds of knowledge raises its own
questions; but, broadly speaking, one distinction may be taken
as fundamental. In the same paragraph in which he restricts
knowledge to the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, he
admits one kind of knowledge which goes beyond the ideas
themselves to the significance which they have for real existence.
When the reference does not go beyond the ideas in the mind,'
the problems that arise are of one order; when there is a further re-
ference to real things, another problem arises. The preceding books
have prepared the way for the solution of both sets of problems.
When ideas are together in the mind, we can discover their
relations to one another; so long as they are not taken to
represent archetypes outside the mind, there is no obstacle to
certainty of knowledge: for 'all relation terminates in, and is
ultimately founded on, those simple ideas we have got from sen-
sation or reflection. ' In this way, Locke vindicates the certainty
of mathematics: the science is merely ideal, and its propositions
do not hold of things outside the mind. He thinks, also, that
'morality is capable of demonstration as well as mathematics. '
But, in spite of the entreaties of his friend Molyneux, he never
set out his ethical doctrine in detail. In the second book he had
reduced moral good and evil to the pleasure and pain which—as
reward and punishment-come to us from some lawgiver; thus
they point to a source outside the mind. But his ground for
maintaining the demonstrative character of morality is that moral
ideas are 'mixed modes' and, therefore, mental products, so that
their 'precise real essence . . . may be perfectly known. ' He
ventures upon two examples only of this demonstrative morality;
and neither of them is more than verbal or gives any information
about good or evil. Yet the doctrine is significant as showing the
influence upon Locke of another type of thought, of which there
are many traces, both in the Essay and in his other works.
The real existences to which knowledge extends are self, God,
22-2


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340
John Locke
a
1
and the world of nature. Of the first we have, says Locke, an
/ intuitive knowledge, of the second a demonstrative knowledge, of
the third a sensitive knowledge. This view he proceeds to explain
and defend. - Locke holds that the existence of the self is known
by immediate intuition. Like Descartes, he thinks that doubt on
this head is excluded. But he fails to point out how self can be an
idea and thus belong to the material of knowledge. An idea of
self cannot come from sensation; and the simple ideas of reflection
are all of mental operations, and not of the subject or agent of
these operations. On the other hand, when he had occasion to
discuss personal identity, he followed his new way of ideas, and
made it depend on memory. His proof of the existence of God
belongs to the order called by philosophers cosmological. It starts
with the existence of a thinking self or mind, and argues from this
position to the necessity for an intelligent first cause. Locke
assumes, without question, the validity of the causal principle even
beyond the range of possible experience. It was left for David
Hume to take the momentous step of questioning this principle.
Regarding self and God, therefore, Locke does not show any special
originality of view. It is when he faces the question of the real
existence of external bodies that his doctrine of ideas as the sole
immediate object of the understanding comes into play, and casts
uncertainty upon the propositions of natural science. He does
not, indeed, question the transition from the presence of an idea of
sensation to the existence at that time' of a thing which causes
the idea in us? . Here, he thinks, we have 'an assurance that
deserves the name of knowledge, although he admits that it is
‘not altogether so certain as our intuitive knowledge, or the de-
ductions of our reason employed about the clear abstract ideas of
our own minds. ' Knowledge of this sort is merely sensitive; it does
not extend beyond the present testimony of our senses employed
about particular objects that do then affect them. ' Necessary
connection here is beyond our reach. Any assertion about things,
except in respect of their immediate presence to the sensesmall
the generalisations of natural science, therefore-fall short of
knowledge strictly so called. "God has set some things in broad
daylight*'; but the science of nature is not one of them; there,
as in many other matters, we have only the twilight of proba-
bility’; but probability is sufficient for our purposes. This sober
practical note marks the outcome of the whole enquiry:
1 Bk. iv, chap. XI, sec. 2.
2 Bk. iv, chap. XI, sec. 3.
3 Bk. iv, chap. XI, seo. 9.
4 Bk. iv, chap. XII, sec. 1.
6


## p. 341 (#363) ############################################

Government
341
our faculties being suited not to the full extent of being, nor to a perfect,
clear, comprehensive knowledge of things free from all doubt and scruple;
but to the preservation of us, in whom they are; and accommodated to the
use of lifel
In his other works Locke's practical interests find ample scope;
he deals with most of the questions that attracted the mind of the
day, and he left upon them the mark of his thought. In Two
Treatises of Government he has two purposes in view: to refute
the doctrine of absolute power, as it had been put forward by
Sir Robert Filmer, and to establish a theory which would reconcile
the liberty of the citizen with political order. The criticism of
Filmer is complete. His theory of the absolute sovereignty of
Adam, and so of kings as Adam's heirs, has lost all interest; and
Locke's argument has been only too effective: the exhaustive reply
to so absurd a thesis becomes itself wearisome. There is little
direct reference to the more enduring work of Hobbes; but this
work seems to have been in Locke's mind when he argued that the
doctrine of absolute monarchy leaves sovereign and subjects in the
state of nature towards one another. The constructive doctrines
which are elaborated in the second treatise became the basis of
social and political philosophy for many generations. Labour is
I
the origin and justification of property; contract or consent is the
ground of government, and fixes its limits. Behind both doctrines
lies the idea of the independence of the individual man. The state of
nature knows no government; but in it, as in political society, men
are subject to the moral law, which is the law of God. Men are
born free and equal in rights. Whatever a man ‘mixes his labour
with is his to use. Or, at least, this was so in the primitive
condition of human life in which there was enough for all and
'the whole earth was America. ' Locke sees that, when men have
multiplied and land has become scarce, rules are needed beyond
those which the moral law or law of nature supplies. But the
origin of government is traced not to this economic necessity, but
to another cause. The moral law is always valid, but it is not
always kept. In the state of nature, all men equally have the
right to punish transgressors: civil society originates when, for
the better administration of the law, men agree to delegate this
function to certain officers. Thus, government is instituted by a
social contract'; its powers are limited, and they involve recip-
rocal obligations; moreover, they can be modified or rescinded by
the authority which conferred them. Locke's theory is thus no
1 Bk. tv, chap. XI, sec. 8.
6


## p. 342 (#364) ############################################

342
John Locke
more historical than the absolutism of Hobbes. It is a rendering
of the facts of constitutional government in terms of thought, and
it served its purpose as a justification of the revolution settlement
in accordance with the ideas of the time.
Locke's writings on economic subjects do not rank in importance
with his treatises on government. They deal with particular ques-
tions raised by the necessities of the political situation. No attempt
had yet been made to isolate the fact of wealth and make it the
subject of a special science? . The direction of industry and
commerce was held to be part of the statesman's duty; but, in
the seventeenth century, it began to be carried out with less
thoroughness than before; and at the same time new problems
were opened up by the growth of the national life. The American
colonies, the enterprise of the East India company, the planting
of Ireland, the commercial rivalry with Holland and with France,
as well as questions regarding the rate of interest and the currency,
occupied the attention of a crowd of writers in the second half of
the century. Sir William Temple's career had made him familiar
with the economic condition both of Holland and of Ireland, and
he wrote on both (1672 and 1673), praising highly the industrial
methods of the Dutch? Sir Josiah Child, also, a great merchant
? .
who became chairman of the East India company, admired the
commercial conditions of Holland, specially the low rate of interest
so favourable to traders. This, he thought, was the true cause of
the greatness of the Dutch; in like manner, cheap money would
stimulate the enterprise of English merchants, and he urged that
a low rate should be fixed by law. After the revolution, the
economic policy of the whig House of Commons was criticised by
several writers of whom the most important were Charles Davenant
and Sir Dudley North. Davenant was the author of An Essay on
the East India Trade (1697), besides other works, and North
wrote Discourses upon Trade (1691). They were not free traders
in the modern sense, but they argued against the restrictions and
regulations adopted by the government for the encouragement
of English trade.
Of all the economists contemporary with Locke, Sir William
Petty was, in many ways, the most remarkable. Circumstances
made him acquainted with France, Holland and Ireland. He
studied medicine in Holland; in France he became intimate with
1 Cf. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, sec. 206.
? See post, chap. XVI, as to Temple's writings.


## p. 343 (#365) ############################################

Economical Writings
343
6
>
Hobbes; an appointment as army physician in Ireland, under the
lieutenant-governorship of Henry Cromwell, led to his undertaking
the 'Down survey' of forfeited lands, and thus determined both
his own fortunes and the character of his literary work. His
type of mind inclined him to experimental work and to the exact
sciences; and, as experiment is seldom possible in economic affairs,
he found a substitute for it in what is now called statistics. This
he himself styled 'political arithmetic': 'instead of using only
comparative and superlative words, and intellectual arguments,'
he states his intention to consider only such causes as have
visible foundations in nature,' and to express himself in terms of
number, weight, or measure. ' Thus he adopted the quantitative
method, and applied it to a variety of topics. At the time, there
were many complaints of national decay; Britannia languens
was vocal; rents (it was said) were falling; money was scarce;
trades were disappearing; the country was underpeopled; and
the people underemployed and overtaxed. Petty did not sym-
pathise with these complaints; he distrusted vague generalities,
and asked for exact statements of the resources of England as
compared with those of her rivals. The net results of his own
enquiry into the matter are given in his Political Arithmetic.
It was characteristic of Petty to look facts in the face, without
being too much overawed by the prevalent assumptions of states-
men and men of business. He did not share the fears of the
mercantilists regarding the danger of exporting the precious
metals: the country, he thinks, is not always the poorer for
having less money. On the subject of money, he gives two
definitions which are worth quoting. Interest is 'a reward for
forbearing the use of your own money for a term of time agreed
upon'; similarly, Exchange is 'local interest, or a reward for
having your money at such a place where you most need the use
of it. ' The sentence ‘labour is the father and active principle of
wealth, as lands are the mother' occurs in his Treatise of Taxes,
but is not introduced as original on the author's part.
Locke's own contributions to economics were occasioned by the
financial problems which faced the new government after the revo-
lution. His reflections on the rate of interest show the growing
disfavour with which appeals for state interference were beginning
to be met. He points out the obstacles to trade that are caused
when the rate of interest is fixed by law, and he argues in favour
of freedom for what he calls, in words which suggest Adam Smith,
'the natural interest of money. ' Money'turns the wheels of trade';


## p. 344 (#366) ############################################

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John Locke
therefore its course should not be stopped. At the same time, he
holds no general brief against the interference of the state in
matters of commerce; nor is the language of the mercantilists
foreign to him. Riches consist in plenty of gold and silver, for
these command all the conveniences of life. Now, 'in a country
not furnished with mines, there are but two ways of growing rich,
either conquest or commerce. ' For us commerce is the only way;
and Locke condemns 'the amazing politics of some late reigns
which had 'let in other competitors with us for the sea. ' In the
concluding portion of Some Considerations, dealing with the cur-
rency, Locke laid stress on the importance of a uniform and stable
measure of values; four years later, in his Further Considerations,
he defended his view against the proposals, involving a depreciation
of the standard, which William Lowndes, secretary of the treasury,
had set forth in An Essay for the amendment of the silver coins
(1695).
Locke's plea for toleration in matters of belief has become
classical. His Common-Place Book shows that his mind was clear
on the subject more than twenty years before the publication of
his first Letter. The topic, indeed, was in the air all through his life,
and affected him nearly. When he was a scholar at Westminster,
the powers of the civil magistrate in religious matters were the
subject of heated discussion between presbyterians and inde-
pendents in the assembly of divines that held its sessions within
a stone's throw of his dormitory; and, when he entered Christ
Church, John Owen, a leader of the independents, had been
recently appointed to the deanery. There had been many
arguments for toleration before this time, but they had come
from the weaker party in the state. Thus Jeremy Taylor's
Liberty of Prophesying appeared in 1646, when the fortunes of
his side had suffered a decline. For Owen the credit is claimed
that he was the first who argued for toleration 'when his party
was uppermost? ' He was called upon to preach before the House
of Commons on 31 January 1649, and performed the task without
making any reference to the tragic event of the previous day; but
to the published sermon he appended a remarkable discussion on
toleration. Owen did not take such high ground as Milton did,
ten years later, in his Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical
Causes-affirming that it is not lawful for any power on earth to
compel in matters of religion. ' He abounds in distinctions, and,
indeed, his position calls for some subtlety. He holds that the
· Orme, W. , 'Memoirs of John Owen,' prefixed to the latter's Works, 1826, vol. I, p. 76.


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Religion and Toleration
345
6
civil magistrate has duties to the church, and that he ought to
give facilities and protection to its ministers, not merely as
citizens, but as preachers of the truth'; on the other hand he
argues that civil or corporal penalties are inappropriate as
punishments for offences which are purely spiritual. The position
ultimately adopted by Locke is not altogether the same as this.
He was never an ardent puritan; he had as little taste for
elaborate theologies as he had for scholastic systems of philo-
sophy; and his earliest attempt at a theory of toleration was
connected with the view that, in religion, 'articles in speculative
opinions [should] be few and large, and ceremonies in worship
few and easy. ' The doctrines which he held to be necessary for
salvation would have seemed to John Owen a meagre and pitiful
creed. And he had a narrower view, also, of the functions of the
state.
The business of laws is not to provide for the truth of opinions, but for the
safety and security of the commonwealth, and of every particular man's
goods and person. And so it ought to be. For truth certainly would do well
enough, if she were once left to shift for herself. She seldom has received,
and I fear never will receive, much assistance from the power of great men,
to whom she is but rarely known, and more rarely welcome. She is not
taught by laws, nor has she any need of force, to procure her entrance into
the minds of men. Errors, indeed, prevail by the assistance of foreign and
borrowed succours. But if truth makes not her way into the understanding
by her own light, she will be but the weaker for any borrowed force violence
can add to her.
A church, according to Locke, is 'a free and voluntary society';
its purpose is the public worship of God; the value of this worship
depends on the faith that inspires it: 'all the life and power of
true religion consist in the inward and full persuasion of the
mind'; and these matters are entirely outside the jurisdiction of
the civil magistrate Locke, therefore, (to use later language) was
a voluntary in religion, as he was an individualist on questions of
state interference. There is an exception, however, to his doctrine
of the freedom of the individual in religious matters. The tolera-
tion extended to all others is denied to papists and to atheists;
and bis inconsistency, in this respect, has been often and severely
blamed. But it is clear that Locke made the exception not for
religious reasons but on grounds of state policy. He looked upon
the Roman Catholic as dangerous to the public peace because he
professed allegiance to a foreign prince; and the atheist was
excluded because, on Locke's view, the existence of the state
depends upon a contract, and the obligation of the contract, as
of all moral law, depends upon the Divine will.


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346 (#368) ############################################

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John Locke
Locke's theological writings exhibit the characteristic qualities
which his other works have rendered familiar. The traditions of
theologians are set aside in them much as philosophical tradition
was discarded in the Essay. He will search the Scriptures for
religious doctrine just as he turned to experience for his philosophy,
and he follows a method equally straightforward. Locke does
not raise questions of Biblical criticism, such as Hobbes had
already suggested and some of his own followers put forward soon
afterwards, and the conclusions at which he arrives are in harmony
with the Christian faith, if without the fulness of current doctrine.
At the same time, his work belongs to the history of liberal
theology, and was intimately connected with the deism which
followed; it treats religion like any other subject, and interprets
the Bible like any other book; and, in his view of the nature of
religion, he tends to describe it as if it consisted almost entirely in
an attitude of intellectual belief-a tendency which became more
prominent in the course of the eighteenth century.
Locke's Thoughts concerning Education and his conduct of
the Understanding occupy an important place in the history of
educational theory, though only a scanty reference can be made
to them here. The subject had a right to prominence in his
thought. The stress he laid on experience in the growth of mind
led him to magnify, perhaps overmuch, the power of education.
He held that 'the minds of children (are) as easily turned, this
way or that, as water itself. ' He underrated innate differences:
'we are born with faculties and powers, capable almost of any-
thing'; but, 'as it is in the body, so it is in the mind, practice
makes it what it is. ' Along with this view went a profound
conviction of the importance of education, and of the breadth of
its aim. It has to fit men for life-for the world, rather than for
the university. Instruction in knowledge does not exhaust it; it
is essentially a training of character.
6
6
Locke had the gift of making philosophy speak the language of
ordinary life. As a consequence, his writings were followed by a
whole literature of attack and defence. Of his critics Stillingfleet
was the most prominent; he breathed an atmosphere of controversy,
and his powers were displayed on many fields; he was not Locke's
equal in intellectual fence; but he was a formidable opponent, and
the difficulties in Locke's doctrine were pressed home by him with
no little power. Among Locke's other critics were John Sergeant
(who asserted Solid Philosophy against the fancies of the Ideists'),


## p. 347 (#369) ############################################

Richard Burthogge
347
Henry Lee, William Sherlock, archbishop King, John Broughton,
and Thomas Burnet (author of Sacra telluris theoria). Another
Thomas Burnet, of Kemnay, in Aberdeenshire, was the intermediary
through whom Locke received the Reflexions of Leibniz upon the
Essay. The Nouveaux Essais of Leibniz, in which the doctrines
of the Essay were criticised, section by section, were ready for
publication when Locke's death occurred, but, owing to this event,
their appearance was postponed indefinitely. Amongst the writers
who sided with Locke were Samuel Bold, Vincent Perronet, and
Mrs Catherine Cockburn. Two other writers of the period deserve
further mention on their own account. These are Richard
Burthogge and John Norris.
Burthogge had no great reputation in his own day, and was
almost entirely forgotten afterwards, till recent historians drew
attention to his merits. His chief work, An Essay upon Reason
and the Nature of Spirits, was published in 1694 and dedicated to
Locke'as to a person . . . acknowledged by all the learned world
for one of the greatest masters of reason. ' But he cannot be
counted either as a follower or as a critic of Locke. His charac-
teristic doctrines had been expressed in an earlier work, Organum
vetus et novum, published in 1678. He had come into contact
independently with the Cartesian reform; he was acquainted
(though he did not sympathise) with the work of Malebranche;
and he may have been influenced directly by Geulincx, who was
lecturing in the university of Leyden when Burthogge studied
medicine there and, in 1662, graduated M. D. Burthogge’s object
was to reconcile the experimental or mechanical with the scholastic
method. His most striking doctrine, however, concerns the sub-
jective factor in knowledge, and this led to his assertion of the
relativity of all knowledge. What Descartes and Locke had said
of the secondary qualities is generalised. The understanding
apprehends things only by its own notions: these are to it what
colours are to the eye or sounds to the ear; whole and part,
substance and accident, cause and effect are but 'entities of
reason conceived within the mind,' and 'have no more of any real
true existence without it, than colours have without the eye, or
sounds without the ear. With this radical doctrine of relativity,
Burthogge combined a neoplatonic metaphysic. He held that
there is one spirit that actuates and acts in all, in men as well as
in nature, and that the spirit of nature is not (as Henry More
taught) an incorporeal substance, but simply the 'plastic faculty'
of the spirit of God.


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John Locke
j
John Norris, fellow of All Souls, and rector of Bemerton, was a
man of much greater and more enduring reputation. He was also
a voluminous author of discourses, letters, and poems, as well as of
the longer and more systematic work on which his fame depends,
An Essay towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World,
the first part of which was published in 1701, and the second in
1704. In temper of mind, Norris may be regarded as the antithesis
of Locke. - He represents mysticism as against the latter's critical
empiricism. But it would be a mistake to regard him as lacking in
clearness of logical faculty. He was diffuse, and his argument would
sometimes break off into devotional reflection, or into verse; but,
from these digressions, he would return to the argument refreshed
and ready to abide by its logic. Different as he is from Locke, both
exhibit the powerful influence that swept over European thought
from the mind of Descartes. But Locke was critical of the more
speculative elements in the philosophy of Descartes, whereas
these were the thoughts that appealed most strongly to Norris.
The course of his studies, especially in Plato and St Augustine,
and the tone of his mind, made him welcome the speculative, if
mystical, development of Cartesianism due to Father Malebranche.
Malebranche had a number of followers in England at this time;
and two translations of the Recherche de la Vérité appeared in the
year 1694; but Norris was the only writer of note who adopted his
views; and his importance is due to the fact that he was no mere
follower. He had thought out-one may even say, he had lived-
the theory for himself. In his work, he considers the ideal theory,
first, as it is in itself, and then, in its relation to our knowledge.
He holds that the very nature or essences of things (as distinguished
from their existence) are Divine ideas or degrees of being in the
Divine naturel'; and by the same theory he explains our perception
of things. "'Tis generally allowed that the things without us are not
perceived immediately by themselves, but by their ideas. The only
question is, by what ideas, or what these ideas are ? ' His answer
to this question is, that they are the Divine ideas, or, in the words
of Malebranche, that we see all things in God? . '
1 Ideal or Intelligible World, vol. I, p. 232.
Ibid. vol. II, pp. 442–3.
6


## p. 349 (#371) ############################################

CHAPTER XV
THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE
With one or two exceptions—astronomy on the physical side,
human anatomy on the biological—the reawakening in science
lagged a century or more behind the renascence in literature and
in art. What the leaders of thought and of practice in the arts of
writing, of painting and of sculpture in western Europe were
effecting in the latter part of the fifteenth and throughout the
sixteenth century began to be paralleled in the investigations of
the physical laws of nature only at the end of the sixteenth
century and throughout the first three quarters of the seventeenth.
Writing broadly, we may say that, during the Stewart time, the
sciences, as we now class them, were slowly but surely separating
themselves out from the general mass of learning, segregating
into secondary units; and, from a general amalgam of scientific
knowledge, mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology,
mineralogy, zoology, botany, agriculture, even physiology (the off-
spring of anatomy and chemistry) were beginning to assert claims
to individual and distinct existence. It was in the Stewart reigns
that, in England at any rate, the specialist began to emerge from
those who hitherto had 'taken all knowledge to be'their province. '
Certain of the sciences, such as anatomy, physiology and, to a
great extent, zoology and botany, had their inception in the art of
medicine. But the last two owed much to the huntsman and the
agriculturist. During the preceding century, the great Belgian
anatomist Vesalius had broken loose from the bond of the written
word which had strangled research for a thousand years, and had
looked at the structure of the human body for himself; he taught
what he could himself see and what he could show to his pupils.
Under him, anatomy was the first of the natural sciences to break
loose from the scholastic domination which had hitherto ever
placed authority above experiment.
As anatomy on the biological side, so astronomy on the physical,


## p. 350 (#372) ############################################

350 The Progress of Science
led the way.
Copernicus had claimed that the sun was the
centre of our system; but it was not until the following century,
when the truth of his views was mathematically proved, that, first,
men of science, and, later, the world at large, abandoned the views
of Ptolemy, which, like those of Aristotle, of Galen and of Hippo-
crates, had obsessed the learned world since classical times.
The great outburst of scientific enquiry which occurred during
the seventeenth century was partly the result, and partly the
cause, of the invention of numerous new methods and innumerable
new instruments, by the use of which advance in natural knowledge
was immensely facilitated. Early in the century (1614), Napier
of Merchiston had made known his discovery of logarithms, and
logarithmic tables were first published in 1617. Seven years later,
the slide rule, which today plays a large part in physical and en-
gineering science, was invented by Edmund Gunter. Decimals were
coming into use and, at the close of the sixteenth century, algebra
was being written in the notation we still employ. William Gilbert,
physician to queen Elizabeth, published his experiments on
electricity and magnetism in the last year of the sixteenth century.
Galileo was using his newly constructed telescope ; and, for the
first time, Jupiter's satellites, the mountains in the moon and
Saturn's rings were seen by human eye. The barometer, the
thermometer and the air pump, and, later, the compound micro-
scope, all came into being at the earlier part of our period, and by
the middle of the century were in the hands of whoever cared
to use them. Pepys, in 1664, acquired
a microscope and a scotoscope. For the first I did give him £5. 10. 0, a
great price, but a most curious bauble it is, and he says, as good, nay, the
best he knows in England. The other he gives me, and is of value; and a
curious curiosity it is to discover objects in a dark room with.
6
>
Two years later, on 19 August 1666 'comes by agreement Mr
Reeves, bringing me a lantern'-it must have been a magic
lantern—'with pictures in glass, to make strange things appear on
a wall, very pretty. '
As we pass from Elizabethan to Stewart times, we pass, in
most branches of literature, from men of genius to men of talent,
clever men, but not, to use a Germanism, epoch-making men. In
science, however, where England led the world, the descent became
an ascent. We leave Dr Dee and Edward Kelly, and we arrive at
Harvey and Newton.
The gap between the medieval science which still obtained in


## p. 351 (#373) ############################################

The Heritage of Bacon 351
queen Elizabeth's time and the science of the Stewarts was bridged
by Francis Bacon, in a way, but only in a way. He was a reformer
of the scientific methodl. He was no innovator in the inductive
method; others had preceded him, but he, from his great position,
clearly pointed out that the writers and leaders of his time observed
and recorded facts in favour of ideas other than those hitherto
sanctioned by authority.
Bacon left a heritage to English science. His writings and his
thoughts are not always clear, but he firmly held, and, with the
authority which his personal eminence gave him, firmly proclaimed,
that the careful and systematic investigation of natural phenomena
and their accurate record would give to man a power in this world
which, in his time, was hardly to be conceived. What he believed,
what he preached, he did not practise. “I only sound the clarion,
but I enter not into the battle’; and yet this is not wholly true,
for, on a wintry March day, 1626, in the neighbourhood of Barnet,
he caught the chill which ended his life while stuffing a fowl with
snow, to see if cold would delay putrefaction. Harvey, who was
working whilst Bacon was writing, said of him: 'He writes
philosophy like a Lord Chancellor. ' This, perhaps, is true, but
his writings show him a man, weak and pitiful in some respects,
yet with an abiding hope, a sustained object in life, one who
sought through evil days and in adverse conditions 'for the glory
of God and the relief of man's estate. '
Though Bacon did not make any one single advance in natural
knowledge—though his precepts, as Whewell reminds us, are now
practically useless '-yet he used his great talents, his high position,
to enforce upon the world a new method of wrenching from nature
her secrets and, with tireless patience and untiring passion,
impressed upon his contemporaries the conviction that there was
'a new unexplored Kingdom of Knowledge within the reach and
grasp of man, if he will be humble enough, and patient enough, and
truthful enough to occupy it. '
The most sublime of English poets survived into our period by
a few years. A comparison between Dante's and Milton's great
epics affords some indication of the advance in knowledge of this
world and in the outlook on a future state which measures the
progress made between the Middle Ages and the seventeenth
century. As a poet (and, indeed, often in other activities of his life)
Milton stood above, or at least, outside, the stream of tendency of
the times through which he lived. Yet, in his poems (not in his
1 Cf. as to Bacon and the new method,' ante, vol. iv, pp. 278 ff.
6


## p. 352 (#374) ############################################

352
The Progress of Science
political tractates—the most ephemeral of all literature) we see
effects of the rising tide of science on literature.
Milton, one must never forget-and indeed, it is not easy to do
80-was, for some years, a schoolmaster. He took a view of his
profession which even now would be thought liberal; he advocated
the teaching of medicine, agriculture and fortification, and, when
studying the last of these, remarked that it would be seasonable
to learn the use of the Globes and all the maps. Like lord
Herbert of Cherbury, he held that the student should acquire some
knowledge of medicine, he should know the tempers, the humours,
the seasons and how to manage a crudity. Himself, a sufferer
from gout, he learnt, at any rate, the lesson of moderation.
Mathematics, in his curriculum, led to the 'instrumental science of
Trigonometry and from thence to Fortification, Architecture,
Enginry or Navigation. '
At the time of the writing of Paradise Lost, the learned had
accepted the theory of Copernicus, although the mathematical
proof afforded a few years later by Newton was still lacking. But
the world at large still accepted the Ptolemaic system, a system
which, as a schoolmaster, Milton taught. Mark Pattison has
pointed out that these two
systems confront each other in the poem, in much the same relative position
which they occupied in the mind of the public. The ordinary, habitual mode
of speaking of celestial phenomena is Ptolemaiol; the conscious or doctrinal
exposition of the same phenomena is Copernican 2.
But the incongruity between these two statements is no greater
than will be found today in authors writing of subjects still sub
judice. Further, we must not forget that Milton never saw either
of his great epics in writing or in print. His power of impressing
his visions on the world was, however, such that Huxley held that
it was not the cosmogony of Genesis but the cosmogony of Milton
which had enthralled and misled the world.
More distinctly than in his epics, Milton, in his history, showed
a leaning to the scientific method. Firth has lately told us that 'bis
conclusions are roughly those of modern scholars, and his reasoning
practically that of a scientific historian. ' In one respect, however,
he was less than lukewarm. He had no sympathy with antiquarian
researches and sneered at those who take pleasure to be all their
lifetime raking the foundations of old abbeys and cathedrals. '
1 Mark Pattison cites Paradise Lost, vii, 339—-356; III, 420, 481. And yet, in 1639,
Milton had visited Galileo.
? See ibid. vin, 77, 122-140.


## p. 353 (#375) ############################################

Lord Herbert of Cherbury
353
a
To turn to other evidence, the better diaries of any age afford
us, when faithfully written, as fair a clue as do the dramatists of
the average intelligent man's attitude towards the general outlook
of humanity on the problems of his age, as they presented them-
selves to society at large. The seventeenth century was unusually
rich in volumes of autobiography and in diaries which the reading
world will not readily let die. Some account has been already
given of the autobiography of the complaisant lord Herbert of
Cherbury; it is again noticed here as giving an interesting account
of the education of a highly-born youth at the end of the sixteenth
and the beginning of the seventeenth century. Lord Herbert seems
to have had a fair knowledge of Latin and Greek and of logic
when, in his thirteenth year, he went up to University college,
Oxford. Later, he did attain the knowledge of the French,
Italian and Spanish languages,' and, also, learnt to sing his part at
first sight in music and to play on the lute. He approved of 'so
much logic as to enable men to distinguish between truth and
falsehood and help them to discover fallacies, sophisms and that
which the schoolmen call vicious arguments'; and this, he con-
sidered, should be followed by some good sum of philosophy. ' He
held it also requisite to study geography, and this in no narrow
sense, laying stress upon the methods of government, religions and
manners of the several states as well as on their relationships
inter se and their policies. Though he advocated an acquaintance
with the use of the celestial globes,' he did not conceive yet the
knowledge of judicial astronomy so necessary, but only for general
predictions ; particular events being neither intended by nor
collected out of the stars. Arithmetic and geometry he thought
fit to learn, as being most useful for keeping accounts and en-
abling a gentleman to understand fortifications.
Perhaps the most characteristic feature of lord Herbert's
acquirements was his knowledge of medicine and subjects allied
thereto. He conceived it a 'fine study, and worthy a gentleman to
be a good botanic, that so he may know the nature of all herbs and
plants. Further, it will become a gentleman to have some know-
. '
ledge in medecine, especially the diagnostic part'; and he urged
that a gentleman should know how to make medicines himself.
He gives us a list of the 'pharmacopaeias and anechodalies' which
he has in his own library and certainly he had a knowledge of
anatomy and of the healing art-he refers to a wound which
penetrated to his father's 'pia mater,' a membrane for a mention
· See ante, vol. VII, pp. 204–5.
23
E. L. VIII.
CH. XV.


## p. 354 (#376) ############################################

354
The Progress of Science
of which we should look in vain among the records of modern
ambassadors and gentlemen of the court. His knowledge, however,
was entirely empirical and founded on the writings of Paracelsus and
his followers; nevertheless, he prides himself on the cures he effected,
and, if one can trust the veracity of so self-satisfied an amateur
physician, they certainly fall but little short of the miraculous.
John Evelyn, another example of a well-to-do and widely
cultivated man of the world', was acquainted with several foreign
languages, including Spanish and German, and took interest in hiero-
glyphics. He studied medicine in 1645 at Padua, and there acquired
those 'rare tables of veins and nerves' which he afterwards gave
to the Royal Society; attended Le Felure's course of chemistry at
Paris in 1647, was skilled in more than one musical instrument,
learned dancing and, above all, devoted himself to horticulture.
When travelling abroad, he made a point of visiting the
cabinets' of collectors, for, at that time, public museums, which,
in fact, grew out of these cabinets, were non-existent. The follow-
ing quotation records the sort of curiosities at which men marvelled
in the year 1645 :
Feb. 4th. We were invited to the collection of exotic rarities in the
museum of Ferdinando Imperati, a Neapolitan nobleman, and one of the
most observable palaces in the citty, the repository of incomparable rarities,
Amongst the naturall herbals most remarkable was the Byssus marina and
Pinna marina; the male and female cameleon; an Onacratulus; an extra-
ordinary greate crocodile; some of the Orcades Anates, held here for a great
rarity; likewise a salamander; the male and female Manucodiata, the male
having an hollow in the back, in wch 'tis reported the female both layes and
batches her egg; the mandragoras of both sexes; Papyrus made of severall
reedes, and some of silke; tables of the rinds of trees written wth Japonią
characters; another of the branches of palme; many Indian fruites; a
chrystal that had a quantity of uncongealed water within its cavity; a petri.
fied fisher's net; divers sorts of tarantulas, being a monstrous spider with
lark-like clawes, and somewhat bigger.
But Evelyn's chief contribution to science, as already indicated,
was horticultural. He was devoted to his garden, and, both at his
native Wotton, and, later, at Sayes court, Deptford, spent much time
in planting and planning landscape gardens, then much the fashion.
In the middle of the sixteenth century, the fact that 'nitre'
promoted the growth of plants was beginning to be recognised.
Sir Kenelm Digby and the young Oxonian John Mayow, experi-
mented de Sal-Nitro; and, in 1675, Evelyn writes: 'I firmly
believe that where saltpetre can be obtained in plenty we should
not need to find other composts to ameliorate our ground. ' His
1 See ante, chap. x.


## p. 355 (#377) ############################################

Evelyn and Pepys
355
well known Sylva, published in 1664, had an immediate and a
widespread effect, and was, for many years, the standard book on
the subject of the culture of trees. It is held to be responsible for
a great outbreak of tree-planting. The introduction to Nisbet's
edition gives figures which demonstrate the shortage in the avail-
able supply of oak timber during the seventeenth century. The
charm of Evelyn's style and the practical nature of his book, which
ran into four editions before the author's death, arrested this
decline ('be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, when
ye're sleeping' as the laird of Dumbiedykes counselled his son),
and to the Sylva of John Evelyn is largely due the fact that the
oaken timber used for the British ships which fought the French in
the eighteenth century sufficed, but barely sufficed, for the national
needs.
Pepys, whose naïve and frank self-revelations have made him the
most popular and the most frequently read of diarists, was not quite
of the same class of student to which lord Herbert of Cherbury or
John Evelyn belonged. But, gifted as he was with an undying and
insatiable curiosity, nothing was too trivial or too odd for his
notice and his record; and, being an exceptionally able and hard-
working government servant, he took great interest in anything
which was likely to affect the navy. He discoursed with the
ingenious Dr Kuffler "about his design to blow up ships' noticed
the strange nature of the sea-water in a dark night, that it seemed
like fire upon every stroke of the oar'-an effect due, of course, to
phosphorescent organisms floating near the surface—and interested
himself incessantly in marine matters. His troubled eyesight and
his love of music account for the attention he paid to optical
appliances, the structure of the eye, musical instruments of every
kind and musical notation; for this last, he seems to have invented
a system which is still preserved at Magdalene college, but which
no one now understands.
Physiology and mortuary objects had, for him, an interest which
was almost morbid. He is told that 'negroes drounded look white,
and lose their blackness, which I never heard before,' describes how
‘one of a great family was. . . hanged with a silken halter. . . of his
own preparing, not for the honour only' but because it strangles
more quickly. He attended regularly the early meetings of the
Royal Society at Gresham college, and showed the liveliest interest
in various investigations on the transfusion of blood, respiration
under reduced air pressure and many other ingenious experiments
1 See ante, chap. . .
a
23-2


## p. 356 (#378) ############################################

356
The Progress of Science
2
and observations by Sir George Ent and others. On 20 January
1665, he took home Micrographia, Hooke's book on microscopy-
'a most excellent piece, of which I am very proud. '
Although Pepys had no scientific training-he only began to
learn the multiplication table when he was in his thirtieth year,
but, later, took the keenest pleasure in teaching it to Mrs Pepys-
he, nevertheless, attained to the presidentship of the Royal Society.
He had always delighted in the company of the virtuosos' and, in
1662, three years after he began to study arithmetic, he was
admitted a fellow of their—the Royal Society. In 1681, he was
elected president. This post he owed, not to any genius for science,
or to any great invention or generalisation, but to his very ex-
ceptional powers as an organiser and as a man of business, to his
integrity and to the abiding interest he ever showed in the cause
of the advancement of knowledge.
If we pass from the interest taken in scientific progress by men
of superior intelligence to the obstacles opposed to it by popular
ignorance and superstition, we are brought face to face with the
long-lived crew of witches, wizards and alchemists. It is often
said that the more rationalistic outlook of the seventeenth century,
due to Hobbes and others, did much to discredit these practitioners.
But the observant dwellers in our cities or remote country villages,
pestered as they are with advertisements of those who practise
palmistry, and of those who predict the future by crystal-gazing
or by the fall of sand, of followers of the sporting prophet,
and of far more presumptuous and more dangerous impostors,
or confronted by the silent, indomitable belief of the rustic in
the witchery of his ancestors, may well hold the opinion that the
stock of superstition is a constant stock and permeates now, as it
did in Elizabeth's time, every class of society. What improvement
there was in the seventeenth century, and it is extremely doubtful
if there was much, was largely due to the advent of James I and
the later rise of puritanism, associated as they were with the most
cruel and most inhuman torture of sorcerers.