ay, I should tell thee that five or six friends meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject v

course; and that, before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings w

mate establishment of some proposition relating to the nature or attributes of God. We may say then, without much exaggeration, that Locke was the first of modern writers to attempt at once an independent and a complete treatment of the phenomena of the human mind, of their mutual relations, of their causes and limits. His object was, as he himself phrases it, "to inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge; together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent." This task he undertakes not in the dogmatic spirit of his predecessors, but in the critical spirit which he may be said to have almost inaugurated. As far as it is possible for a writer to di

strike us so much as a thesis to be maintained as a conclusion arrived at after a vast amount of patient thought and inq

iples, some Primary Notions, κοινα? ?ννοιαι [Greek: koinai ennoiai], characters, as it were, stamped up

families suffer from these diseases in their mother's womb, but because they are born with a certain disposition or tendency to contract them." Here Descartes seems to have been on the very point of stumbling on the principle of heredity which, in the hands of recent physiologists and psychologists, has done so much towards reconciling rival theories on the nature and origin of knowledge and clearing up many of the difficulties which attach to this branch of speculation. It must be confessed, however, that in his better-known works he often employs unguarded and unexplained expressions which might easily suggest the crude form of the à priori theory attacked by Locke. Still more is this the case with other authors, such as Lord Herbert of Cherbury and Dr. Ralph Cudworth, whose works were in general circulation at the time when Locke was composing his Essay. Lord Herbert, though indeed he acknowledges that "common notions" (the expression by which he designates à priori prin

ows in the case of the five practical principles of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, give no sufficient reason why many other propositions, which they regard as secondary and derived, should not be admitted to the same rank with the so-called innate principles, which they assume to be primary and independent. Locke is here treading on safer ground than in many of his other criticisms. The fact is that it is impossible clearly to discriminate between those propositions which are axiomatic and those which are derived-or, in the language of the theory which Locke is combating, between those which are innate and those which are adventitious. Race, temperament, mental capacity, habit, education, produce such differences between man and man that a proposition which to one man appears self-evident and unquestionable will by another be admitted only after considerable hesitation, while a third will regard it as doubtful, o

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ished with its knowledge. Availing himself of a metaphor which had been commonly employed by the Stoics, but which reaches as far back as

om Experience: In that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either about external or sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceive

we come by those ideas we have of Yellow, White, Heat, Cold, Soft, Hard, Bitter, Sweet, and all those which we call Sensible Qualities, which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean they from externa

ur Understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself. And though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called Internal Sense. But as I call the other Sensation, so I call this REFLECTION, the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself. By Reflection, then, in the following part of this Discourse, I would be understood to mean that notice which the mind takes of its own o

two. External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions

ic words of Hobbes, standing in the forefront of the Leviathan, are:-"The original of all the thoughts of men is that which we call Sense, for there is no conception in a man's mind which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense." And Condillac, aiming at a theory still more simple, derives from sensations not only all our

sation and Reflection, and to resolve into them our other ideas, however complex. To follow Locke into these deta

unds, tastes, and smells, Heat and Cold, and the sensation of Resistance or Impenetrability, which Locke denom

nward upon itself, and observes its own actions about those ideas it has received fr

all the ways of Sensation and Reflection, namely, Pleasure or Delight

standing, by any quickness or variety of thoughts, to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways before mentioned. Nor can any force of the Understanding destroy those that are there: the dominion of man, in this little world of his own understanding, being much-what the same as it is in the great world of visible things, wherein his power, however managed by art and skill, reaches no farther than to com

The Understanding, before the entrance of simple ideas, is like a dark room, and external and internal sensation are the windows by which light is let in. But when the light has once penetrated into this dark recess, the Underst

d. For the materials in both being such as he has no power over, either to make or destroy, all that man can do i

stances, and relations. Here, however, my analysis must stop, and I must content myself with giving

out any effort to arrest it. "How often soever" a man doubles an unit of space, be it a "mile, or diameter of the earth, or of the Orbis Magnus," or any otherwise multiplies it, "he finds that, after he has continued this doubling in his thoughts and enlarged his idea as much as

y of his time, there is, in addition to all these qualities, a substratum in which they inhere, or, to use his own language, "wherein they do subsist, and from which they do result." Now of the various qualities we can form a clear idea and give a more or less intelligible account. But can we form a clear idea or give an intelligible account of the substratum? Locke h

e were demanded what is it that Solidity and Extension inhere in, he would not be in a much better case than the Indian who, saying that the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on? To which his answer was, a great tortoise. But, being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied, something, he knew not what. And thus here, as in all other cases, where we use words without having c

ts matter, and by Hume the same negative criticism which Berkeley confines to matter was boldly, and, as it seems to me, far less successfully and legitimately extended to mind. Indeed, were it not for his express assurance to the contrary, we should ofte

f exciting motion in body by Will or Thought." (§ 22.) Now, it is "no more a contradiction that Thinking should exist separate and independent from Solidity, than it is a contradiction that Solidity should exist separate and independent from Thinking, they being both but simple ideas independent one from another. And, having as clear and

to it another substance with a faculty of thinking." At the same time, he regarded it as no less than a contradiction to suppose that Matter, "which is evidently in its own nature void of sense and thought," should be the "eternal first thinking Being," or God Himself; and, in

atter and to Mind (whether finite or infinite), it appears to me that the word Substance assumes a very different meaning, and that the absurdities which it is possible to fix on the distinction between Matter and its attributes by no means extend to the distinction between Mind and its operations. For an union of certain forces or powers affecting our organisms in certain ways seems to exhaust our conception of external objects (the notion of externality, I conceive, being quite independent o

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nt given by Hume (Human Nature, Pt. I., § 4; Essays on Human Understanding, § 3), of the same phenomena. Locke appears to have been the first author to use the exact2 expression "Association of Ideas," and it is curious to find in this chapter (§ 5) the word "inseparable," so familiar to the readers of recent works on psychology, alread

n the use of this expression. In Liv. IV., ch. ii., art. 9, La Chambre speaks of "l' Union et la Lia

sociations of antipathy affords a good instance of

have made the great pleasure of their lives. There are rooms convenient enough, that some men cannot study in, and fashions of vessels, which though never so clean and commodious, they cannot drink out of, and that by reason of some accidental ideas which are annexed to them and make them offensive. And who is there that

n that, after treating of "Ideas," mainly as regarded in themselves, it was desirable to consider them as combined in Judgments or Propositions, and to estimate the various degrees of assent which we give or ought to give to such judgments, when formed. The Fourth Book thus, to a certain extent, takes the place, and was probably designed to take the place, of the Logic of the Schools. "But,"

rd against the delusions produced by misleading or inadequate language-those "Idola Fori" which Bacon describes as the most troublesome of the phantoms which beset the

xioms, or laws of thought; of the evidence for the existence of a God; of Faith and Reason; of the Degrees of Assent; of Enthusiasm; of Error. Into these attractive regions it is impossible that I can follow my author, but the read

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limits than the former, and indeed, amongst the multiplicity of subjects which invite attention, I must confine m

edge could not be left where Locke had left it; that our à posteriori experiences presuppose and are only intelligible through certain à priori perceptions and conceptions which the mind itself imposes upon them; or, to use more accurate language, through certain à priori elements in our perceptions and conceptions, which the mind contributes from itself. Thus the child appears, as soon as it is capable of recognizing any source of its impressions, to regard an object as situated in space, an event as happening in time, circumstances which have occurred together as likely to occur together again. But Kant's own account was defective in leaving this à priori element of our knowledge unexplained, or, at least, in attempting no explanation of it. The mind, according to him, is possessed of certain Forms and Categories, which shape and co-ordinate the impressions received from the external world, being as necessary to the acquisition of experience, as experience is necessary to eliciting them into consciousness. But here his analysis ends. He does not ask how the mind comes to be possessed of these Forms and Categories, nor does he satisfactorily determine the precise relation in which they stand to the empirical elements of knowledge. When studying his philosophy, we seem indeed to be once more receding to the mysterious region of Innate Ideas. But the mystery is removed at least several stages back, if we apply to the solution of these mental problems the principle of Heredity, which has recently b

es facilitating the formation of certain general conceptions concurrently, or almost concurrently, with the presentation of individual experiences, did not occur to him as an element in the solution of the problem he had undertaken to answer, nor, in that stage of speculation, could it well have done so. His peculiar contribution to the task of solving this question consisted in his skilful and popular delineation of the à posteriori element in knowledge, and in his masterly exposure of the insufficiency of the account of the à priori element, as then commonly given. Locke's own theory was afterwards strained by Hume and Hartley, and still more by his professed followers in France, such as

" (Bk. II., ch. ii., § 2.) Moreover, amongst the simple ideas themselves are the ideas of Reflection, "being such as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations." The system, in fact, assumes an almost ceaseless activity of mind, after the simple ideas of sensation have once entered it. But where it fails is in not recognizing that mental reaction which is essential to the formation of even the simple ideas of sensation themselves, as well as that spontaneous activity of mind which often seems to assert itself independently of the application of any stimulus from without. Here again a more scientific psychology than was possible in Locke's day comes to our aid, and shows, as is done by Mr. Bain and other recent writers, that the nerves, stored with energy, often discharge themselves of their own accord, and that movement is at

gical discussion which he always pursues with sagacity, candour, and good sense, if not always with the

lled, though undoubtedly imperfect, for it requires to be supplemented by the study of the minds of other men, if not of the lower animals, as made known by their acts, and words, and history, is yet a great advance on the purely à priori, and often fanciful, methods which preceded it. Nor do we fail to find in the Essay some employment of that comparative method to which I have just alluded: witness the constant references to children and savages in the first book, and the stress which is laid on the variety of moral sentiment existing amongst mankind. This inductive treatment of philosophical problems, mainly introspective, but in some measure also comparative, which was extremely rare in Locke's time, became almost universal afterwards. Closely connected with the method of the book is its general purport. By turning the mind inwards upon itself, and "making it its own object," Locke surmises that all its ideas come either from without or from experience of its own operations. He finds, on examination and analysis, no ideas which cannot be referred to one or other of these two sources. The single word "experience" includes them both, and furnishes us with a good expression for marking the general drift of his philosophy. It was pre-eminently a philosophy of experience, both in its method and in its r

n, and J. S. Mill, who does not profess either to develope Locke's system, or to supplement, or to criticise it. Followers, antagonists, and critics alike seem to assume on the part of the reader a knowledge of the Essay on the Human Understanding, and to make that the starting-point of their own speculations. The o