Lockes Works

Substance and Causality.

Locke is too faithful to facts to overlook the ultimate mysteries in human experience. This is illustrated in his acknowledgment of the inconceivable that is at the root of our idea of Substance which he admits cannot be re solved into a mere succession of phenomena. The phenomena must be attributed to something, but he was perplexed by this "confused negative" idea. So for him the word substance means "only an uncertain supposition of we know not what." Our only positive idea is of an aggregate of phenomena.

Locke's thoughts about Causality and Active Power are es pecially noteworthy, for he rests our knowledge ,of God and of the external universe on those ultimate ideas. He is content to trace the idea of "cause and effect," to our "constant observation" that "qualities and finite substances begin to exist, and receive their existence from other beings which produce them." We find that this connection is what gives intelligibility to ceaseless and what seemed chaotic changes. Locke seems hardly to realize all that is implied in scientific prevision or expectation of change. Anything, as far as "constant observation" tells us, might a priori have been the natural cause of anything ; and no finite number of "observed" sequences, per se, can guarantee universality and necessity. The idea of power, or active causation, on the other hand, "is got," he acknowledges, not through the senses, but "through our consciousness of our own voluntary agency, and therefore through reflection" (bk. ii. ch. In bodies we observe no active agency, only a sustained natural order in the succession of passive sensuous phenomena. The true source of change in the material world must be analogous to what we are conscious of when we exert volition. Locke here unconsciously approaches the spiritual view of active power in the physical universe after wards taken by Berkeley.

Ideas and Words.

The third book is concerned with Words, or the sensible signs of ideas. Here he analyses "abstract ideas," and instructively illustrates the confusion apt to be produced in them by the inevitable imperfection of words. He unfolds the relations between verbal signs and the several sorts of ideas; words being the means for enabling us to treat ideas as typical, abstract and general.

Fourfold Classification of Knowledge.

Bk. iv. on Knowl edge proper and Probability describes knowledge as perception of relations among ideas ; it is expressed in our affirmations and negations; and real knowledge is discernment of the relations of ideas to what is real. Here he is concerned with intuitive "judg

ment" and demonstrative "reasoning," also with judgments and reasonings about matters of fact and the narrow extent of knowledge. Knowledge is concerned either with (a) relations of identity and difference among ideas, as when we say that "blue is not yellow"; or (b) with mathematical relations, as that "two triangles upon equal bases between two parallels must be equal"; or (c) in assertions that one quality does or does not coexist with another in the same substance, as that "iron is susceptible of magnetical impressions, or that ice is not hot"; or (d) with onto logical reality, independent of our perceptions, as that "God exists" or "I exist" or "the universe exists." The first sort is analytical ; mathematical and ethical knowledge represents the second ; physical science forms the third ; real knowledge of self, God and the world constitutes the fourth.

Of these four knowable relations, which are strictly known either by mathematical demonstration or by intuition, the first is the only one in which our knowledge is coextensive with our ideas; we cannot be conscious at all without distinguishing, and every affirmation necessarily implies negation. The second sort of knowable relation is sometimes intuitively and sometimes demonstrably discernible. Morality, Locke thinks, as well as mathematical quantity, is capable of being demonstrated. Turn ing to concrete relations of coexistence and succession among phe nomena—the third set of knowable relations—Locke finds the light of pure reason disappear; although these relations form "the greatest and most important part of what we desire to know." Man cannot attain perfect and infallible science of bodies. For natural science depends on knowledge of the relations between their secondary qualities on the one hand, and the mathematical qualities of their atoms on the other, or else "on something yet more remote from our comprehension." Now, as perception of these atoms and their relations is beyond us, we must be satisfied with inductive presumptions, for which "experimental verifica tion" affords, after all, only conclusions that wider experience may prove inadequate.