Immagini della pagina
PDF
ePub

a blade of grass; or how the bones grow in the womb of her who is with child; and yet we would persuade ourselves that we understand the nature and generation of our ideas."

It is however a matter of comparatively little consequence to ascertain, what were the notions which Locke himself annexed to his words, if it shall appear clearly, that the interpretation which I have put upon them coincides exactly with the meaning annexed to them by the most distinguished of his successors. How far this is the case, my readers will be enabled to judge by the remarks which I am to state in the next chapter.†

"Selon Leibnitz, l'âine est une concentration, un miroir vivant de tont l'univers, qui a eu soi toutes les idées confuses de toutes les modifications de ce monde présentes, passées, et futures," &c. &c.

"Chose étrange, nous ne savons pas comment la terre produit un brin d'herbe, comment une femme fait un enfant, et on croit savoir, comment nous faisons des idées." (See the chapter in Voltaire's account of Newton's Discoveries, entitled De l'Ame et des Idées.)

[blocks in formation]

CHAPTER THIRD.

INFLUENCE OF LOCKE'S ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF OUR KNOWLEDGE ON THE SPECULATIONS OF VARIOUS EMINENT WRITERS SINCE HIS TIME, MORE PARTICULARLY ON THOSE OF BERKELEY AND of Hume.

"We are percipient of nothing," says Bishop Berkeley, "but of our own perceptions and ideas."-"It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses,* or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind,† or lastly, ideas formed by help of memory and imagination, either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways." ‡ "Light and colors," he elsewhere observes, "heat and cold, extension and figure; in a word, the things we see and feel, what are they, but so many sensations, notions, ideas, or impressions on the senses; and is it possible to separate, even in thought, any of these from perception? For my own part, I might as easily divide a thing from itself." §

No form of words could show more plainly, that, according to Berkeley's construction of Locke's language, his account of the origin of our ideas was conceived to involve, as an obvious corollary, "that all the immediate objects of human knowledge exist in the mind itself, and fall under the direct cognizance of consciousness, as much as our sensations of heat and cold, or of pleasure and pain.'

Mr. Hume's great principle with respect to the origin of our ideas, which (as I before hinted) is only that of Locke under a new form, asserts the same doctrine, with greater conciseness, but in a manner still less liable to misinterpretation.

"All our ideas are nothing but copies of our impres

Ideas of Sensation.

† Ideas of Reflection. Principles of Human Knowledge, Sect. 1. Principles of Human Knowledge, Sect. 5.

sions; or, in other words, it is impossible for us to think of any thing which we have not antecedently felt,* either by our external or our internal senses." Mr. Hume tells us elsewhere, that "nothing can be present to the mind but an image or perception. The senses are only the inlets through which these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object." I

That both of these very acute writers, too, understood, in its literal sense, the word resemblance, as employed by Locke, to express the conformity between our ideas of primary qualities and their supposed archetypes, is demonstrated by the stress which they have laid on this very word, in their celebrated argument against the existence of the material world. This argument (in which Hume entirely acquiesces) is thus stated by Berkeley:

"As for our senses, by them we have the knowledge only of our sensations, ideas, or those things that are immediately perceived by sense, call them what you will; but they do not inform us, that things exist without a mind, or unperceived;—like to those which are perceived." On the contrary, " as there can be no notion or thought but in a thinking being, so there can be no sensation but in a sentient being; it is the act or feeling of a sentient being; its very essence consists in being felt. Nothing can resemble a sensation, but a similar sensation in the same, or in some other mind. To think that any quality in a thing inanimate can resemble a sensation is absurd, and a contradiction in terms."

It was already observed, how inconsistent this account of the origin of our ideas, as given by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, is, with some conclusions to which we were led, in a former part of this discussion ;—our conclusions, for example, with respect to the origin of our notions concerning our own existence, and our personal identity. Neither of these notions are derived im

•The word feeling, whether used here literally or figuratively, can, it is evident, be applied only to what is the immediate subject of consciousness.

Of the Idea of Necessary Connexion, Part I.

Essay on the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy.

Principles of Human Knowledge, Sect. 18.

mediately from consciousness; nor yet are they copies of any thing of which the human mind could ever have been conscious; and accordingly Mr. Hume, true to his principles, rejects the belief, not only of the existence of the material world, but of the human mind itself, and of every thing else but impressions and ideas, The force of his argument on this subject, as well as of that alleged by Berkeley to disprove the existence of matter, (both of which I consider as demonstratively deduced from Locke's Theory,) I propose to examine afterwards in a separate Essay. At present, I only wish to infer from what has been stated, that, according to the most probable interpretation of Locke's own meaning, and according to the unquestionable interpretation given to his words by Berkeley and Hume, his account of the origin of our ideas amounts to this, that we have no knowledge of any thing which we do not either learn from consciousness, at the present moment, or which is not treasured up in our minds, as a copy of what we were conscious of on some former occasion.

The constant reference which is made, in these times, by philosophers of every description, to sensation and reflection, as the sources of all our knowledge; and the variety of acceptations in which this language may be understood, render it a matter of essential importance, in the examination of any particular system, that it should be distinctly ascertained, not only in what precise sense the author has adopted this very indefinite and ambiguous principle, but whether he has adhered uniformly to the same interpretation of it, in the course of his reasonings. In one sense of the proposition, (that, I mean, in which it stands opposed to the innate ideas of Descartes) I have already said, that it appears to myself to express a truth of high importance in the science of mind; and it has probably been in this obvious and unsuspicious acceptation, that it has been so readily and so generally assented to by modern philosophers. The great misfortune has been, that most of these, after having adopted the propositon in its most unexceptionable form have, in the subsequent study of the applications made of it by Locke, unconsciously imbibed, as an es

sential part of it, a scholastic prejudice with which it happened to be blended in his imagination, and which, since his time, has contributed more than any other error, to mislead the inquiries of his successors.

In order to illustrate a little further this very abstract subject, I shall add to the quotations already produced two short extracts from Dr. Hutcheson; an author by no means blind to Locke's defects, but who evidently acquiesced implicitly in his account of the origin of our ideas, according to the most exceptionable interpretation of which it admits.

"All the ideas, or the materials of our reasoning and judging, are received by some immediate powers of perception, internal or external, which we may call senses. Reasoning or intellect seems to raise no new species of ideas, but to discover or discern the relations of those received." Of the full import of this proposition in the writer's own mind, he has put it in our power to judge, by a passage in another of his publications, where he has remarked, with singular acuteness, that "extension, figure, motion, and rest, seem to be more properly ideas accompanying the sensations of sight and touch, than the sensations of either of those senses." The exception made by Hutcheson with respect to the particular ideas here enumerated, affords a satisfactory comment on the meaning which he annexed to Locke's principle, in its general applications. From the cautious and doubtful manner in which it is stated, it is more than probable that he regarded this exception as almost, if not altogether solitary. The peculiarity which Hutcheson had the merit of first remarking, with respect to our ideas of extension, figure, and motion, might, one should have thought, have led him to conjecture that Locke's principle, when applied to some of the other objects of our knowledge, would perhaps require an analogous latitude of construction. But no hint of such a suspicion occurs, as far as I recollect, in any part of his writings; nor does it appear that he was at all aware of the importance of the criticism on which he had stumbled. The fact is, as I shall have occasion to show in another essay, he had anticipated the very instances

« IndietroContinua »