![it is unmeaning—that the things are first known as existing, and that
afterwards the idea of the relation in question is formed. But
according to Locke, as we have seen, [1] the first and simplest act of
knowledge possible is the perception of identity between ideas.
Either then the ‘things,’ upon consideration of which the idea of
identity is formed, are not known at all, or the knowledge of them
involves the very idea afterwards formed on consideration of them.
Locke, having at whatever cost of self-contradiction to make his
theory fit the exigencies of language, virtually adopts the latter
alternative, though with an ambiguity of expression which makes a
definite meaning difficult to elicit. We have, however, the positive
statement to begin with, that the comparison in which the relation
originates, is of a thing with itself as existing at another time. Again,
the ‘ideas’ (used interchangeably with ‘things’), to which identity is
attributed, ‘vary not at all from what they were at that moment
wherein we consider their former existence.’ It is here clearly implied
that ‘things’ or ‘ideas’ exist, i.e. are given to us in the spontaneous
consciousness which we do not make, as each one and the same
throughout a multiplicity of times. This, again, means that the
relation of identity or sameness, i.e. unity of thing under multiplicity
of appearance, belongs to or consists in the ‘very being’ of those
given objects of consciousness, which are in Locke’s sense the real,
and upon which according to him all relation is superinduced by an
after-act of thought. So long as each such object ‘continues to exist,’
so long its ‘sameness with itself must continue,’ and this sameness is
the complex idea, the relation, of identity. Just as before, following
Locke’s lead, we found the simple idea, as the element of
knowledge, become complex—a perceived identity of ideas; so now
mere existence, the ‘very being of things’ (which with Locke is only](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-18-320.jpg)
![another name for the simple idea), resolves itself into a relation,
which it requires ‘consideration by the mind’ to constitute.
[1] See above, paragraph 25.
Locke fails to distinguish between identity and mere unity.
74. The process of self-contradiction, by which a ‘creation of the
mind’ finds its way into the real or given, must also appear in a
contradictory conception of the real itself. Kept pure of all that Locke
reckons intellectual fiction, it can be nothing but a simple chaos of
individual units: only by the superinduction of relation can there be
sameness, or continuity of existence, in the minutest of these for
successive moments. Locke presents it arbitrarily under the
conception of mere individuality or of continuity, according as its
distinction from the work of the mind, or its intelligible content,
happens to be before him. A like see-saw in his account of the
individuality and generality of ideas has already been noticed. [1] In
his discussion of identity the contradiction is partly disguised by a
confusion between mere unity on the one hand, and sameness or
unity in difference, on the other. Thus, after starting with an account
of identity as belonging to ideas which are the same at different
times, he goes on to speak of a thing as the same with itself, at a
single instant. So, too, by the principium individuationis, he
understands ‘existence itself, which determines a being of any sort
to a particular time and place.’ As it is clear from the context that by
the principium individuationis he meant the source of identity or
sameness, it will follow that by ‘sameness’ he understood singleness
of a thing in a single time and place. Whence then the plurality,
without which ‘sameness’ is unmeaning? In fact, Locke, having
excluded it in his definition, covertly brings it back again in his](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-19-320.jpg)
![instance, which is that of ‘an atom, i.e. a continued body under one
immutable superficies, existing in a determined time and place.’ This,
‘considered in any instant of its existence, is in that instant the same
with itself.’ But it is so because—and, if we suppose the
consideration of plurality of times excluded, only because—it is a
‘continued’ body, which implies, though its place be determined, that
it exists in a plurality of parts of space. Either this plurality, or that of
instants of its existence, must be recognised in contrast with the
unity of body, if this unity is to become ‘sameness with itself.’ In
adding that not only at the supposed instant is the atom the same,
but ‘so must continue as long as its existence continues,’ Locke
shows that he really thought of the identical body under a plurality
of times ex parte post, if not ex parte ante.
[1] See above, paragraphs 43, and the following.
Feelings are the real, and do not admit of identity. How then can
identity be real?
75. But how is this continuity, or sameness of existence in plurality
of times or spaces, compatible with the constitution of ‘real
existence’ by mere individua? The difficulty is the same, according to
Locke’s premisses, whether the simple ideas by themselves are
taken for the real individua, or whether each is taken to represent a
single separate thing. In his chapter on identity he expressly says
that ‘things whose existence is in succession’ do not admit of
identity. Such, he adds, are motion and thought; ‘because, each
perishing the moment it begins, they cannot exist in different times
or in different places as permanent beings can at different times
exist in distant places.’ (Book I. chap, xxvii. sec. 2.) What he here
calls ‘thought’ clearly includes the passive consciousness in which](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-20-320.jpg)
![alone, according to his strict doctrine, reality is given. So elsewhere
(Book II. chap. vii. sec. 9), in accounting for the ‘simple idea of
succession,’ he says generally that ‘if we look immediately into
ourselves we shall find our ideas always, whilst we have any
thought, passing in train, one going and another coming, without
intermission.’ [1] No statement of the ‘perpetual flux’ of ideas, as
each having a separate beginning and end, and ending in the very
moment when it begins, can be stronger than the above. If ‘ideas’ of
any sort, according to this account of them, are to constitute real
existence, no sameness can be found in reality. It must indeed be a
relation ‘invented by the mind.’
[1] It is true that in this place Locke distinguishes between the
‘suggestion by our senses’ of the idea of succession, and that which
passes in our ‘minds,’ by which it is ‘more constantly offered us.’ But
since, according to him, the idea of sensation must be ‘produced in
the mind’ if there is to be any either sensation or idea at all (Book II.
chap, ix. secs. 3 and 4), the distinction between the ‘suggestion by
our senses’ and what passes in our minds’ cannot be maintained.
Yet it is from reality that the idea of it is derived.
76. This, it may be said, is just the conclusion that was wanted in
order to make Locke’s doctrine of the particular relation of identity
correspond with his general doctrine of the fictitiousness of relations.
To complete the consistency, however, his whole account of the
origin of the relation (or of the idea in which it consists) must be
changed, since it supposes it to be derived from an observation of
things or existence, which again is to suppose sameness to be in the
things or to be real. This change made, philosophy would have to
start anew with the problem of accounting for the origin of the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-21-320.jpg)
![and its ‘primary qualities,’ which cannot be properly treated except in
connection with the other doctrine (which Locke unhappily kept
apart) of the two sorts of ‘essence.’ So far, it will be remembered,
the ‘facts’ or given ideas, which we have found him unawares
converting into theories or ‘invented’ ideas, have been those of the
‘secondary qualities of body.’ [1] It is these which are united into
things or substances, having been already ‘found in them:’ it is from
these that we ‘infer’ the relation of cause and effect, because as
‘vicissitudes of things’ or ‘affections of sense’ they presuppose it: it is
these again which, as ‘received from without,’ testify the present
existence of something, because in being so received they are
already interpreted as ‘appearances of something.’ That the ‘thing,’
by reference to which these ideas are judged to be ‘real,’ ‘adequate,’
and ‘true’—or, in other words, become elements of a knowledge—is
yet itself according to Locke’s doctrine of substance and relation a
‘fiction of thought,’ has been sufficiently shown. That it is so no less
according to his doctrine of essence will also appear. The question
will then be, whether by the same showing the ideas of body, of the
self, and of God, can be other than fictions, and the way will be
cleared for Hume’s philosophic adventure of accounting for them as
such.
[1] See above, paragraph 20.
This repeats the inconsistency found in his doctrine of substance.
78. In Locke’s doctrine of ‘ideas of substances,’ the ‘thing’
appeared in two inconsistent positions: on the one hand, as that in
which they ‘are found;’ on the other, as that which results from their
concretion, or which, such concretion having been made, we
accustom ourselves to suppose as its basis. This inconsistency, latent](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-23-320.jpg)
![individuals than one; each of which, having in it a conformity to that
abstract idea, is (as we call it) of that sort.’ (Book III. chap. iii. sec.
6.) That which is given in immediate experience, as he proceeds to
explain, is this or that ‘particular existence,’ Peter or James, Mary or
Jane, such particular existence being already a complex idea. [1]
That it should be so is indeed in direct contradiction to his doctrine
of the primariness of the simple idea, but is necessary to his doctrine
of abstraction. Some part of the complex idea (it is supposed)—less
or more—we proceed to leave out. The minimum of subtraction
would seem to be that of the ‘circumstances of time and place,’ in
which the particular existence is given. This is the ‘separation of
ideas,’ first made, and alone suffices to constitute an ‘abstract idea,’
even though, as is the case with the idea of the sun, there is only
one ‘particular substance’ to agree with it. (Book III. chap. vi. sec.
1.) In proportion as the particular substances compared are more
various, the subtraction of ideas is larger, but, be it less or more, the
remainder is the abstract idea, to which a name—e.g. man—is
annexed, and to which as a ‘species’ or ‘standard’ other particular
existences, on being ‘found to agree with it,’ may be referred, so as
to be called by the same name. These ideas then, ‘tied together by a
name,’ form the essence of each particular existence, to which the
same name is applied (Book III. chap. iii. secs. 12 and the
following.) Such essence, however, according to Locke, is ‘nominal,’
not ‘real.’ It is a complex—fuller or emptier—of ideas in us, which,
though it is a ‘uniting medium between a general name and
particular beings,’ [2] in no way represents the qualities of the latter.
These, consisting in an ‘internal constitution of insensible parts,’ form
the ‘real essence’ of the particular beings; an essence, however, of
which we can know nothing. (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 21, and ix. sec.
12.)](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-25-320.jpg)
![[1] Book III. chap, iii, sec. 7, at the end.
[2] Book III chap. iii. sec. 13.
Only to nominal essences that general propositions relate, i.e. only
to abstract ideas having no real existence.
81. It is the formation of ‘nominal essences’ that renders general
propositions possible. ‘General certainty,’ says Locke, ‘is never to be
found but in our ideas. Whenever we go to seek it elsewhere in
experiment or observation without us, our knowledge goes not
beyond particulars. It is the contemplation of our own abstract ideas,
that alone is able to afford us general knowledge.’ (Book IV. chap. vi.
sec. 16.) ‘General knowledge,’ he says again, ‘lies only in our own
thoughts.’ [1] This use of ‘our ideas’ and ‘our own thoughts’ as
equivalent phrases, each antithetical to ‘real existence,’ tells the old
tale of a deviation from ‘the new way of ideas’ into easier paths.
According to this new way in its strictness, as we have sufficiently
seen, there is nowhere for anything to be found but ‘in our ideas.’ It
therefore in no way distinguishes general knowledge or certainty
that it cannot be found elsewhere. Locke, however, having allowed
himself in the supposition that simple ideas report a real existence,
other than themselves, but to which they are related as ectype to
archetype, tacitly proceeds to convert them into real existences, to
which ideas in general, as mere thoughts of our own, may be
opposed. Along with this conversion, there supervenes upon the
original distinction between simple and complex ideas, which alone
does duty in the Second Book of the Essay, another distinction,
essential to Locke’s doctrine of the ‘reality’ of knowledge—that
between the idea, whether simple or complex, as originally given in
sensation, and the same as retained or reproduced in the mind. It is](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-26-320.jpg)
![only in the former form that the idea, however simple, reports, and
thus (with Locke) itself is, a real existence. Such real existence is a
‘particular’ existence, and our knowledge of it a ‘particular’
knowledge. In other words, according to the only consistent doctrine
that we have been able to elicit from Locke, [2] ‘it is a knowledge
which consists in a consciousness, upon occasion of a present
sensation—say, a sensation of redness—that some object is present
here and now causing the sensation; an object which, accordingly,
must be ‘particular’ or transitory as the sensation. The ‘here and
now,’ as in such a case they constitute the particularity of the object
of consciousness, so also render it a real existence. Separate these
(‘the circumstances of time and place’ [3]) from it, and it at once
loses its real existence and becomes an ‘abstract idea,’ one of ‘our
own thoughts,’ of which as ‘in the mind’ agreement or disagreement
with some other abstract idea can be asserted in a general
proposition; e.g. ‘red is not blue.’ (Book IV. chap. vii. sec. 4.) [4]
[1] Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 13, cf. Book IV. chap. iii. sec. 31.
[2] See above, paragraph 56.
[3] Book III. chap. iii. sec. 6.
[4] In case there should be any doubt as to Locke’s meaning in
this passage, it may be well to compare Book IV. chap. ix. sec. 1.
There he distinctly opposes the consideration of ideas in the
understanding to the knowledge of real existence. Here (Book IV.
chap. vii. sec. 4) he distinctly speaks of the proposition ‘red is not
blue’ as expressing a consideration of ideas in the understanding. It
follows that it is not a proposition as to real existence.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-27-320.jpg)
![An abstract idea may be a simple one.
82. It is between simple ideas, it will be noticed, that a relation is
here asserted, and in this respect the proposition differs from such
an one as may be formed when simple ideas have been
compounded into the nominal essence of a thing, and in which some
one of these may be asserted of the thing, being already included
within the meaning of its name; e.g. ‘a rose has leaves.’ But as
expressing a relation between ideas ‘abstract’ or ‘in the mind,’ in
distinction from present sensations received from without, the two
sorts of proposition, according to the doctrine of Locke’s Fourth
Book, stand on the same footing.’ [1] It is a nominal essence with
which both alike are concerned, and on this depends the general
certainty or self-evidence, by which they are distinguished from
‘experiment or observation without us.’ These can never ‘reach with
certainty farther than the bare instance’ (Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 7):
i.e., though the only channels by which we can reach real existence,
they can never tell more than the presence of this or that sensation
as caused by an unknown thing without, or the present
disagreement of such present sensations with each other. As to the
recurrence of such sensations, or any permanently real relation
between them, they can tell us nothing. Nothing as to their
recurrence, because, though in each case they show the presence of
something causing the sensations, they show nothing of the real
essence upon which their recurrence depends. [2] Nothing as to any
permanently real relation between them, because, although the
disagreement between ideas of blue and red, and the agreement
between one idea of red and another, as in the mind, is self-evident,
yet as thus in the mind they are not ‘actual sensations’ at all (Book
IV. chap. xi. sec. 6), nor do they convey that ‘sensitive knowledge of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-28-320.jpg)
![particular existence,’ which is the only possible knowledge of it.
(Book IV. chap. iii. sec. 21.) As actual sensations and indices of
reality, they do indeed differ in this or that ‘bare instance,’ but can
convey no certainty that the real thing or ‘parcel of matter’ (Book III.
chap. iii. sec. 18), which now causes the sensation of (and thus is)
red, may not at another time cause the sensation of (and thus be)
blue.’ [3]
[1] Already in Book II. (chap. xxxi. sec. 12), the simple idea, as
abstract, is spoken of as a nominal essence.
[2] Cf. Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 5. ‘If we could certainly know (which
is impossible) where a real essence, which we know not, is—e.g. in
what parcels of matter the real essence of gold is; yet could we not
be sure, that this or that quality could with truth be affirmed of gold;
since it is impossible for us to know that this or that quality or idea
has a necessary connexion with a real essence, of which we have no
idea at all.’
Several passages, of course, can be adduced from Locke which
are inconsistent with the statement in the text: e.g. Book IV. chap.
iv. sec. 12. ‘To make knowledge real concerning substances, the
ideas must be taken from the real existence of things. Whatever
simple ideas have been found to coexist in any substance, these we
may with confidence join together again, and so make abstract ideas
of substances. For whatever have once had an union in nature, may
be united again.’ In all such passages, however, as will appear
below, the strict opposition between the real and the mental is lost
sight of, the ‘nature’ or ‘substance,’ in which ideas ‘have a union,’ or
are ‘found to coexist,’ being a system of relations which, according to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-29-320.jpg)
![Locke, it requires a mind to constitute, and thus itself a ‘nominal
essence.’
[3] Cf. Book IV. chap. iii. sec. 29; Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 14; Book
IV. chap. xi. sec. 11.
How then is science of nature possible?
83. We thus come upon the crucial antithesis between relations of
ideas and matters of fact, with the exclusion of general certainty as
to the latter, which was to prove such a potent weapon of scepticism
in the hands of Hume. Of its incompatibility with recognized science
we can have no stronger sign than the fact that, after more than a
century has elapsed since Locke’s premisses were pushed to their
legitimate conclusion, the received system of logic among us is one
which, while professing to accept Locke’s doctrine of essence, and
with it the antithesis in question, throughout assumes the possibility
of general propositions as to matters of fact, and seeks in their
methodical discovery and proof that science of nature which Locke
already ‘suspected’ to be impossible. (Book IV. chap. xii. sec. 10.)
No ‘uniformities of phenomena’ can be known.
84. That, so far as any inference from past to future uniformities is
necessary to the science of nature, his doctrine does more than
justify such ‘suspicion,’ is plain enough. Does it, however, leave room
for so much as a knowledge of past uniformities of fact, in which the
natural philosopher, accepting the doctrine, might probably seek
refuge? At first sight, it might seem to do so. ‘As, when our senses
are actually employed about any object, we do know that it does
exist; so by our memory we may be assured that heretofore things
that affected our senses have existed—and thus we have knowledge](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-30-320.jpg)
![what he has the perception of from the thing itself. He takes care
that his idea be conformable to this archetype.’ (Book III. chap. vi.
secs. 46, 47.) ‘It is plain,’ however, ‘that the idea made after this
fashion by this archetype will be always inadequate.’
… about real essence in this sense there may be general
knowledge.
90. The nominal essence of a thing, then, according to this view,
being no other than the ‘complex idea of a substance,’ is a copy of
reality, just as the simple idea is. It is a picture or representation in
the mind of a thing that does exist by ideas of those qualities that
are discoverable in it.’ (Book II. chap. xxxi. secs. 6, 8.) It only differs
from the simple idea (which is itself, as abstract, a nominal essence)
[1] in respect of reality, because the latter is a copy or effect
produced singly and involuntarily, whereas we may put ideas
together, as if in a thing, which have never been so presented
together, and, on the other hand, never can put together all that
exist together. (Book II. chap. xxx. sec. 5, and xxxi. 10.) So far as
Locke maintains this view, the difficulty about general propositions
concerning real existence need not arise. A statement which
affirmed of gold one of the qualities included in the complex idea of
that substance, would not express merely an analysis of an idea in
the mind, but would represent a relation of qualities in the existing
thing from which the idea ‘has been taken.’ These qualities, as in the
thing, doubtless would not be, as in us, feelings (or, as Locke should
rather have said in more recent phraseology, possibilities of feeling),
but powers to produce feeling, nor could any relation between these,
as in the thing, be affirmed but such as had produced its copy or
effect in actual experience. No coexistence of qualities could be truly
affirmed, which had not been found; but, once found—being a](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-38-320.jpg)
![coexistence of qualities and not simply a momentary coincidence of
feelings—it could be affirmed as permanent in a general proposition.
That a relation can be stated universally between ideas collected in
the mind, no one denies, and if such collection ‘is taken from a
combination of simple ideas existing together constantly in things’
(Book II. chap, xxxii. sec. 18), the statement will hold equally of
such existence. Thus Locke contrasts mixed modes, which, for the
most part, ‘being actions which perish in the birth, are not capable
of a lasting duration,’ with ‘substances, which are the actors; and
wherein the simple ideas that make up the complex ideas designed
by the name have a lasting union.’ (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 42.)
[1] Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 12.
But such real essence a creature of thought.
91. In such a doctrine Locke, starting whence he did, could not
remain at rest. We need not here repeat what has been said of it
above in the consideration of his doctrine of substance. Taken
strictly, it implies that ‘real existence’ consists in a permanent
relation of ideas, said to be of secondary qualities, to each other in
dependence on other ideas, said to be of primary qualities. In other
words, in order to constitute reality, it takes ideas out of that
particularity in time and place, which is yet pronounced the condition
of reality, to give them an ‘abstract generality’ which is fictitious, and
then treats them as constituents of a system of which the ‘invented’
relations of cause and effect and of identity are the framework. In
short, it brings reality wholly within the region of thought,
distinguishing it from the system of complex ideas or nominal
essences which constitute our knowledge, not as the unknown
opposite of all possible thought, but only as the complete from the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-39-320.jpg)
![qualities equally essential; and everything, in each individual, will be
essential to it, or, which is more, nothing at all. For though it may be
reasonable to ask whether obeying the magnet be essential to iron;
yet I think it is very improper and insignificant to ask whether it be
essential to the particular parcel of matter I cut my pen with,
without considering it under the name iron, or as being of a certain
species.’ (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 5.) [1] Here, it will be seen, the
exclusion of the abstract idea from reality carries with it the
exclusion of that ‘standard made by nature,’ which according to the
passages already quoted, is the ‘thing itself from which the abstract
idea is taken, and from which, if correctly taken, it derives reality.
This exclusion, again, means nothing else than the disappearance
from ‘nature’ (which with Locke is interchangeable with ‘reality’) of
all essential difference. There remain, however, as the ‘real,’
‘particular beings,’ or ‘individuals,’ or ‘parcels of matter.’ In each of
these, ‘considered barely in itself, everything will be essential to it,
or, which is more, nothing at all.’
[1] To the same purpose is a passage in Book III. chap. x. sec. 19,
towards the end.
In this sense body is the mere individuum.
95. We have already seen, [1] that if by a ‘particular being’ is
meant the mere individuum, as it would be upon abstraction of all
relations which according to Locke are fictitious, and constitute a
community or generality, it certainly can have no essential qualities,
since it has no qualities at all. It is a something which equals
nothing. The notion of this bare individuum being the real is the
‘protoplasm’ of Locke’s philosophy to which, though he never quite
recognized it himself, after the removal of a certain number of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-42-320.jpg)
![accretions we may always penetrate. It is so because his
unacknowledged method of finding the real consisted in abstracting
from the formed content of consciousness till he came to that which
could not be got rid of. This is the momentarily present relation of
subject and object, which, considered on the side of the object,
gives the mere atom, and on the side of the subject, the mere ‘it is
felt.’ Even in this ultimate abstraction the ‘fiction of thought’ still
survives, for the atom is determined to its mere individuality by
relation to other individuals, and the feeling is determined to the
present moment or ‘the now’ by relation to other ‘nows.’
[1] See above, paragraph 45.
Body as qualified by circumstances of time and place.
96. To this ultimate abstraction, however, Locke, though
constantly on the road to it, never quite penetrates. He is farthest
from it—indeed, as far from it as possible—where he is most
acceptable to common sense, as in his ordinary doctrine of
abstraction, where the real, from which the process of abstraction is
supposed to begin, is already the individual in the fullness of its
qualities, James and John, this man or this gold. He is nearest to it
when the only qualification of the ‘particular being,’ which has to be
removed by thought in order to its losing its reality and becoming an
abstract idea, is supposed to consist in ‘circumstances of time and
place.’
Such body Locke held to be subject of ‘primary qualities’: but are
these compatible with particularity in time?
97. It is of these circumstances, as the constituents of the real,
that he is thinking in the passage last quoted. As qualified by](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-43-320.jpg)
![‘circumstances of place’ the real is a parcel of matter, and under this
designation Locke thought of it as a subject of ‘primary qualities of
body.’ [1] These, indeed, as he enumerates them, may be shown to
imply relations going far beyond that of simple distinctness between
atoms, and thus to involve much more of the creative action of
thought; but we need be the less concerned for this usurpation on
the part of the particular being, since that which he illegitimately
conveys to it as derived from ‘circumstances of place,’ he virtually
takes away from it again by limitation in time. The ‘particular being’
has indeed on the one hand a real essence, consisting of certain
primary qualities, but on the other it has no continued identity. It is
only real as present to feeling at this or that time. The particular
being of one moment is not the particular being of the next. Thus
the primary qualities which are a real essence, i.e. an essence of a
particular being, at one moment, are not its real essence at the next,
because, while they as represented in the mind remain the same,
the ‘it,’ the particular being is different. An immutable essence for
that very reason cannot be real. The immutability can only lie in a
relation between a certain abstract (i.e. unreal) idea and a certain
sound. (Book III. chap. iii. sec. 19.) ‘The real constitution of things,’
on the other hand, ‘begin and perish with them. All things that exist
are liable to change.’ (Ibid.) Locke, it is true (as is implied in the
term change [2]) never quite drops the notion of there being a real
identity in some unknown background, but this makes no difference
in the bearing of his doctrine upon the possibility of ‘real’ knowledge.
It only means that for an indefinite particularity of ‘beings’ there is
substituted one ‘being’ under an indefinite peculiarity of forms.
Though the reality of the thing in itself be immutable, yet its reality
for us is in perpetual flux. ‘In itself’ it is a substance without an
essence, a ‘something we know not what’ without any ideas to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-44-320.jpg)
![‘support;’ a ‘parcel of matter,’ indeed, but one in which no quality is
really essential, because its real essence, consisting in its momentary
presentation to sense, changes with the moments. [3]
[1] According to Locke’s ordinary usage of the terms, no
distinction appears between ‘matter’ and ‘body.’ In Book III. chap. X.
sec. 15, however, he distinguishes matter from body as the less
determinate conception from the more. The one implies solidity
merely, the other extension and figure also, so that we may talk of
the ‘matter of bodies,’ but not of the ‘body of matters.’ But since
solidity, according to Locke’s definition, involves the other ‘primary
qualities,’ this distinction does not avail him much.
[2] See above, paragraph 69.
[3] Cf. Book III. chap. vi. sec. 4: ‘Take but away the abstract ideas
by which we sort individuals and rank them under common names,
and then the thought of anything essential to any of them instantly
vanishes,’ &c.
How Locke avoids this question.
98. We have previously noticed [1] Locke’s pregnant remark, that
‘things whose existence is in succession’ do not admit of identity.
(Book II. chap, xxvii. sec. 2.) So far, then, as the ‘real,’ in distinction
from the ‘abstract,’ is constituted by particularity in time, or has its
existence in succession, it excludes the relation of identity. ‘It
perishes in every moment that it begins.’ Had Locke been master of
this notion, instead of being irregularly mastered by it, he might
have anticipated all that Hume had to say. As it is, even in passages
such as those to which reference has just been made, where he
follows its lead the farthest, he is still pulled up by inconsistent](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-45-320.jpg)
![conceptions with which common sense, acting through common
language, restrains the most adventurous philosophy. Thus, even
from his illustration of the liability of all existence to change—‘that
which was grass to-day is to-morrow the flesh of a sheep, and within
a few days after will become part of a man’ [2]—we find that, just as
he does not pursue the individualization of the real in space so far
but that it still remains ‘a constitution of parts,’ so he does not
pursue it in time so far but that a coexistence of real elements over
a certain duration is possible. To a more thorough analysis, indeed,
there is no alternative between finding reality in relations of thought,
which, because relations of thought, are not in time and therefore
are immutable, and submitting it to such subdivision of time as
excludes all real coexistence because what is real, as present, at one
moment is unreal, as past, at the next. This alternative could not
present itself in its clearness to Locke, because, according to his
method of interrogating consciousness, he inevitably found in its
supposed beginning, which he identified with the real, those
products of thought which he opposed to the real, and thus read
into the simple feeling of the moment that which, if it were the
simple feeling of the moment, it could not contain. Thus throughout
the Second Book of the Essay the simple idea is supposed to
represent either as copy or as effect a permanent reality, whether
body or mind: and in the later books, even where the representation
of such reality in knowledge comes in question, its existence as
constituted by ‘primary qualities of body’ is throughout assumed,
though general propositions with regard to it are declared
impossible. It is a feeling referred to body, or, in the language of
subsequent psychology, a feeling of the outward sense, [3] that
Locke means by an ‘actual present sensation,’ and it is properly in](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-46-320.jpg)
![virtue of this reference that such sensation is supposed to be, or to
report, the real.
[1] See above, paragraph 75.
[2] Book III. chap. iii. sec. 10.
[3] For the germs of the distinction between outer and inner
sense, see Locke’s Essay, Book II. chap. i. sec. 14: ‘This source of
ideas (the perception of the operations of the mind) 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.’ For the notion of outer sense cf.
Book II. chap. ix. sec. 6, where he is distinguishing the ideas of
hunger and warmth, which he supposes children to receive in the
womb from the ‘innate principles which some contend for.’ ‘These
(the ideas of hunger and warmth) being the effects of sensation, are
only from some affections of the body which happen to them there,
and so depend on something exterior to the mind, not otherwise
differing in their manner of production from other ideas derived from
sense, but only in the precedency of time.’
Body and its qualities supposed to be outside consciousness.
99. According to the doctrine of primary qualities, as originally
stated, the antithesis lies between body as it is in itself and body as
it is for us, not between body as it is for us in ‘actual sensation,’ and
body as it is for us according to ‘ideas in the mind.’ The primary
qualities ‘are in bodies whether we perceive them or no.’ (Book II.
chap. viii. sec. 23.) As he puts it elsewhere (Book II. chap. xxxi. sec.
2), it is just because ‘solidity and extension and the termination of it,
figure, with motion and rest, whereof we have the ideas, would be](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-47-320.jpg)
![viii. secs. 2, 7), that the conception of primary qualities is only
possible upon distinction being made between ideas as in our minds,
and the ‘nature of things existing without us,’ which cannot be given
in the simple feeling itself. This admitted, the distinction might either
be traced to the presence within intelligent consciousness of another
factor than simple ideas, or be accounted for as a gradual ‘invention
of the mind.’ In neither way, however, could Locke regard it and yet
retain his distinction between fact and fancy, as resting upon that
between the nature of things and the mind of man. The way of
escape lay in a figure of speech, the figure of the wax or the mirror.
‘The ideas of primary qualities are resemblances of them.’ (Book II.
chap, viii. sec. 15.) These qualities then may be treated, according to
occasion, either as primitive data of consciousness, or as the
essence of that which is the unknown opposite of consciousness—in
the latter way when the antithesis between nature and mind is in
view, in the former when nature has yet to be represented as
knowable.
Locke answers that they copy themselves in ideas—Berkeley’s
rejoinder. Locke gets out of the difficulty by his doctrine of solidity.
101. How, asked Berkeley, can an idea be like anything that is not
an idea? Put the question in its proper strength—How can an idea be
like that of which the sole and simple determination is just that it is
not an idea (and such with Locke is body ‘in itself’ or as the real)—
and it is clearly unanswerable. The process by which Locke was
prevented from putting it to himself is not difficult to trace. ‘Body’
and ‘the solid’ are with him virtually convertible terms. Each
indifferently holds the place of the substance, of which the primary
qualities are so many determinations. [1] It is true that where
solidity has to be defined, it is defined as an attribute of body, but](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-49-320.jpg)
![conversely body itself is treated as a ‘texture of solid parts,’ i.e. as a
mode of the solid. Body, in short, so soon as thought of, resolves
itself into a relation of bodies, and the solid into a relation of solids,
but Locke, by a shuffle of the two terms—representing body as a
relation between solids and the solid as a relation between bodies—
gains the appearance of explaining each in turn by relation to a
simpler idea. Body, as the unknown, is revealed to us by the idea of
solidity, which sense conveys to us; while solidity is explained by
reference to the idea of body. The idea of solidity, we are told, is a
simple idea which comes into the mind solely by the sense of touch.
(Book II. chap. iii. sec. 1.) But no sooner has he thus identified it
with an immediate feeling than, in disregard of his own doctrine,
that ‘an idea which has no composition’ is undefinable (see Book III.
chap. iv. sec. 7.), he converts it into a theory of the cause of that
feeling. ‘It arises from the resistance which we find in body to the
entrance of any other body into the place it possesses till it has left
it;’ and he at once proceeds to treat it as the consciousness of such
resistance. ‘Whether we move or rest, in what posture soever we
are, we always feel something under us that supports us, and
hinders our farther sinking downwards: and the bodies which we
daily handle make us perceive that whilst they remain between
them, they do by an insurmountable force hinder the approach of
the parts of our hands that press them. That which then hinders the
approach of two bodies, when they are moving one towards another,
I call solidity.’ [2]
[1] See Book II. chap. viii. sec. 23: The primary ‘qualities that are
in bodies, are the bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion or rest,
of their solid parts.’ Cf. Book II. chap. xiii. sec. 11: ‘Solidity is so
inseparable an idea from body, that upon that depends its filling of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-50-320.jpg)
![space, its contact, impulse, and communication of motion upon
impulse.’
[2] Book II. chap. iv. sec 7.
In which he equivocates between body as unknown opposite of
mind and body as a ‘nominal essence’.
102. Now ‘body’ in this theory is by no means outside
consciousness. It is emphatically ‘in the mind,’ a ‘nominal essence,’
determined by the relation which the theory assigns to it, and which,
like every relation according to Locke, is a ‘thing of the mind.’ This
relation is that of outwardness to other bodies, and among these to
the sensitive body through which we receive ‘ideas of sensation’—a
body which, on its side, as determined by the relation, has its
essence from the mind. It is, then, not as the unknown opposite of
the mind, but as determined by an intelligible relation which the
mind constitutes, and of which the members are each ‘nominal
essences,’ that body is outward to the sensitive subject. But to
Locke, substituting for body as a nominal essence body as the
unknown thing in itself, and identifying the sensitive subject with the
mind, outwardness in the above sense—an outwardness constituted
by the mind—becomes outwardness to the mind of an unknown
opposite of the mind. Solidity, then, and the properties which its
definition involves (and it involves all the ‘primary qualities’), become
something wholly alien to the mind, which ‘would exist without any
sensible being to perceive them.’ As such, they do duty as a real
essence, when the opposition of this to everything in the mind has
to be asserted. Yet must they be in some sort ideas, for of these
alone (as Locke fully admits) can we think and speak; and if ideas, in
the mind. How is this contradiction to be overcome? By the notion](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/8779-250708031249-38d6371c/85/Test-Bank-for-Guide-to-Oracle-10g-5th-Edition-Morrison-51-320.jpg)
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- 5. 1 Test Bank for Guide to Oracle 10g, 5th Edition: Morrison Full download chapter at: https://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-guide-to- oracle-10g-5th-edition-morrison/ Chapter 1: Client/Server Databases and the Oracle10g Relational Database TRUE/FALSE 1. In a data file, a record contains one piece of information such as a person’s last name. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 2 2. A DBMS is usually administered by several programmers. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 4 3. Redundant data is a big problem because it can become inconsistent. ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 4 4. A relational database was the earlier type of database, but is no longer used in modern computing. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 5 5. Relationships between entities in database tables are maintained using key fields. ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 5 6. NULL is a valid value for a primary key. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 6 7. A candidate key for a database table can change often as long as it is unique. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 6 8. Oracle can automatically generate surrogate keys. ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 7 9. A customer database table with columns first_name, last_name, and phone_number would probably need to use a surrogate key.
- 6. 2 ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 7 10. A foreign key value must exist in the table where it is a primary key. ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 9 11. A composite key usually comprises fields that are foreign keys in other tables. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 10
- 7. 3 12. Database design is usually a very simple task since it is always obvious what tables should be created and how they are related. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 11 13. There are two main tasks involved with the design of a database: developing an entity-relationship (ER) model and regulating the database tables. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 11 14. In an ER diagram a 1:M relationshipshows a simple straight line between two entities. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 11-12 15. A student can take many different classes in the same term, and each class can be composed of many different students; this is an example of a many-to-many relationship. ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 12 16. During the design of the actual database tables, the N:M relationship is broken down into a series of two or more 1:M relationships through the use of a linking table in the process of normalization. ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 12 17. The purpose of normalization is to store data efficiently in the least possible amount of space. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 12 18. Data is considered to be normalized as long as a primary key has been designated. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 13 19. First normal form means that the data has been organized in such a manner that it has a primary key and no repeating groups. ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 14 20. A shorthand method of identifying a table and its contents is to give the name of the table followed by a list of the column names and data types, separated by commas, within a set of square brackets. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 14 21. A transitive dependencymeans that the fields within the table are dependent only on part of the primary key. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 16 22. The final step in the normalization process is to convert the tables to fourth normal form (4NF). ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 16
- 8. 4 23. During the normalization process, it is common to decrease the number of tables in the database design. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 16-17 24. A terminalis a program that requests and uses server resources. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 17 25. MS Access is an example of a client/server database. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 18 26. It is possible to use a personal database in a multiuser environment. ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 18 27. A personal database should only be used for non-mission-critical applications. ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 19 28. Personal databases are preferred for database applications that retrieve and manipulate small amounts of data from databases containing large numbers of records. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 21 29. Client/server databases create a lot of network traffic because the entire database is sent between the client and server for every request. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 21 30. It is not necessary to specify a data type for all database columns - only the ones that you want the database to perform error checking on. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 23 MULTIPLE CHOICE 1. In a data file, fields are also called . a. columns c. rows b. records d. entities ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 2 2. Who typically installs and maintains a database? a. the project leader c. a dba b. a manager d. any programmer ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 4
- 9. 5 3. Most modern databases are databases. a. hierarchical c. object-oriented b. relational d. structured ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 5 4. What is the preferred data type for primary key fields? a. text c. numeric b. date d. character ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 6 5. Why is an address a bad choice for a primary key? a. it can change c. it contains letters and numbers b. it is too long d. not everyone has an address ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 6 6. If no candidate keys exist in a table, which of the following is used? a. surrogate key c. primary key b. dummy key d. index key ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 7 7. Which data type do surrogate keys have? a. numeric c. character b. boolean d. text ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 7 8. What type of key may be helpful in eliminating redundant data from a table? a. link c. duplicate b. foreign d. composite ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 8 9. If your database table has a lot of redundant data, how can you fix it? a. delete the redundant data b. eliminate the table c. split the table into two and use a foreign key d. split the table into two and use a composite key ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 8 10. When two fields are combined to form a unique value, this is known as a key. a. double c. surrogate b. composite d. foreign ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 10
- 10. 6 11. Which of the following is used to represent entities in ER models? a. squares c. circles b. lines d. diamonds ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 11 12. Which relationship type cannot be physically represented in the database and requires the use of a link table? a. one-to-one c. one-to-many b. many-to-one d. many-to-many ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 12 13. Which normal form is the highest level usually achieved by database designers? a. unnormalized c. second normal form b. first normal form d. third normal form ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 16 14. Which of the following characterizes unnormalized data? a. does not have a foreign key identified b. does not have a primary key identified and/or contains repeating groups c. has transitive dependencies d. has partial dependencies ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 13 15. A dependency means that a field is dependent on another field within the table that is no th t e primary key field. a. indirect c. transitive b. direct d. partial ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 16 16. In a relational database which of the following allows a user to interact with the database? a. database applications c. database server process b. dba d. database server ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 17 17. A does not perform any processing - it sends keyboard input and displays output from a central computer. a. workstation c. terminal b. server d. laptop ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 17
- 11. 7 18. What is the definition of a server? a. an expensive computer b. a computer with more than one processor c. a computer that shares resources with other computers d. a computer that is used by many people ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 17 19. How many users typically use a personal database? a. 1 c. 20 b. 5 d. 4000 ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 18 20. When a personal database is shared by more than one user, where do the database files typically reside? a. on one user’s workstation c. on a file server b. on the Internet d. on a cd ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 18-19 21. What is a disadvantage of using a personal database over a network? a. slow c. hard to save data b. creates a lot of network traffic d. not secure ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 19 22. What is meant by the term “transaction processing”? a. processing over a network b. processing by a bank or other financial institution c. grouping database changes into one unit of work that must succeed or fail together d. pre-processing data with a separate program before it is saved in the database ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 19 23. What is the term for reversing changes to a database? a. undo c. delete b. roll back d. backup ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 20 24. The name of the utility which handles all client and server communication in Oracle is . a. Oracle Server c. Oracle Socket b. Oracle Net d. Oracle Protocol ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 21 25. Which of the following is the utility used for creating and testing queries in Oracle 10g? a. Forms Builder c. SQL*Plus b. Reports Builder d. EnterpriseManager ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 22
- 12. 8 26. A field is also called a(n) . a. row c. table b. column d. item ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 2 27. A(n) stores all organizational data in a central location. a. database administrator c. database b. record d. index ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 4 28. In database terminology, a(n) is an object about which you want to store data. a. component c. file b. record d. entity ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 5 29. A key is a field in a relational database table whose value must be unique for each row. a. foreign c. secondary b. primary d. link ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 6 30. A key is any column that could be used as the primary key. a. surrogate c. possible b. foreign d. candidate ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 6 31. To connect information about different entities, you must create , which are links that show how different records are related. a. relationships c. rows b. records d. foreign keys ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 5 32. A key is a column that you create to be the record’s primary key identifier. a. foreign c. surrogate b. secondary d. composite ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 7 33. relationships are rare in a relational database; usually you work with relationships. a. One-to-many, one-to-one c. One-to-one, many-to-one b. One-to-one, one-to-many d. Many-to-one, many-to-many ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 11
- 13. 9 34. A table is in 2NF if it fulfills these two conditions: it is in 1NF, and it has dependencies. a. no partial c. all partial b. no total d. all total ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 14 35. A is a computer that shares its resources with other computers. a. client c. parallel b. server d. user ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 17 36. The Microsoft Access personal database stores all data for a database in a single file with a(n) extension. a. .doc c. .mdb b. .xls d. .odb ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 19 37. As a general rule, database developers should use a personal database only for applications. a. business c. mission-critical b. experimental d. non-mission-critical ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 19 38. A key is a unique key that you create by combining two or more columns. a. composite c. foreign b. primary d. secondary ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 10 39. data takes up extra storage space. a. Inconsistent c. Overused b. Redundant d. Foreign ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 8 40. In Oracle, you can use a(n) to automatically generate surrogate keys. a. algorithm c. link b. generating key d. sequence ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 7 COMPLETION 1. In a data file describing a student, each characteristic of the student such as first name, last name, telephone number is known as a(n) . ANS: field PTS: 1 REF: 2
- 14. 10 2. In a data file, a(n) is a collection of related fields that contain related information. ANS: record PTS: 1 REF: 2 3. A(n) stores all organizational data in a central location. ANS: database PTS: 1 REF: 4 4. In a database, the performs all routine data handling operations. ANS: DBMS database management system PTS: 1 REF: 4 5. A(n) database stores data in tabular format. ANS: relational PTS: 1 REF: 5 6. In a database, a(n) is an object about which you want to store data. ANS: entity PTS: 1 REF: 5 7. In a relational database, relationships among entities are established through fields. ANS: key PTS: 1 REF: 5 8. It is best to use values for primary keys rather than text values. ANS: number numeric PTS: 1 REF: 6
- 15. 11 9. A(n) key has no real relationship to the row to which it is assigned, other than to identify the row uniquely. ANS: surrogate PTS: 1 REF: 7 10. A(n) is a sequential list of numbers that the database automatically generates and that guarantee that each primary key value will be unique. ANS: sequence PTS: 1 REF: 7 11. A(n) key is a column in a table that is a primary key in another table. ANS: foreign PTS: 1 REF: 8 12. In a relational database, relationships are created using keys. ANS: foreign PTS: 1 REF: 8 13. A(n) model is designed to help you identify which entities need to be included in the database. ANS: ER Entity-Relationship PTS: 1 REF: 11 14. When depicting a one-to-many relationship,the ER model uses a straight line with a(n) on the ‘many’ portion of the relationship. ANS: crow’s foot PTS: 1 REF: 12 15. The shorthand for a many-to-many relationship is . ANS: N:M PTS: 1 REF: 12
- 16. 12 16. To convert a table to 1NF, _ groups must be removed. ANS: repeating PTS: 1 REF: 14 17. A table that is in 1NF and does not have a(n) key must be in 2NF. ANS: composite PTS: 1 REF: 15-16 18. The normal procedure to follow after converting all tables in the database to 3NF is to double-check each table and make certain that all tables representing entities that have a relationship are linked through the use of keys. ANS: foreign PTS: 1 REF: 16 19. A(n) key is a unique key that you create by combining two or more columns. ANS: composite PTS: 1 REF: 10 20. A(n) is a program that listens for requests for resources from clients and responds to those requests. ANS: server process PTS: 1 REF: 17 21. When theDBMS and the database applications run on the same workstation and appear to the user as a single integrated application this is known as a (n) database. ANS: personal PTS: 1 REF: 18 22. is the dominant personal database on the market today. ANS: Microsoft Access MS Access Access PTS: 1 REF: 18
- 17. Exploring the Variety of Random Documents with Different Content
- 18. it is unmeaning—that the things are first known as existing, and that afterwards the idea of the relation in question is formed. But according to Locke, as we have seen, [1] the first and simplest act of knowledge possible is the perception of identity between ideas. Either then the ‘things,’ upon consideration of which the idea of identity is formed, are not known at all, or the knowledge of them involves the very idea afterwards formed on consideration of them. Locke, having at whatever cost of self-contradiction to make his theory fit the exigencies of language, virtually adopts the latter alternative, though with an ambiguity of expression which makes a definite meaning difficult to elicit. We have, however, the positive statement to begin with, that the comparison in which the relation originates, is of a thing with itself as existing at another time. Again, the ‘ideas’ (used interchangeably with ‘things’), to which identity is attributed, ‘vary not at all from what they were at that moment wherein we consider their former existence.’ It is here clearly implied that ‘things’ or ‘ideas’ exist, i.e. are given to us in the spontaneous consciousness which we do not make, as each one and the same throughout a multiplicity of times. This, again, means that the relation of identity or sameness, i.e. unity of thing under multiplicity of appearance, belongs to or consists in the ‘very being’ of those given objects of consciousness, which are in Locke’s sense the real, and upon which according to him all relation is superinduced by an after-act of thought. So long as each such object ‘continues to exist,’ so long its ‘sameness with itself must continue,’ and this sameness is the complex idea, the relation, of identity. Just as before, following Locke’s lead, we found the simple idea, as the element of knowledge, become complex—a perceived identity of ideas; so now mere existence, the ‘very being of things’ (which with Locke is only
- 19. another name for the simple idea), resolves itself into a relation, which it requires ‘consideration by the mind’ to constitute. [1] See above, paragraph 25. Locke fails to distinguish between identity and mere unity. 74. The process of self-contradiction, by which a ‘creation of the mind’ finds its way into the real or given, must also appear in a contradictory conception of the real itself. Kept pure of all that Locke reckons intellectual fiction, it can be nothing but a simple chaos of individual units: only by the superinduction of relation can there be sameness, or continuity of existence, in the minutest of these for successive moments. Locke presents it arbitrarily under the conception of mere individuality or of continuity, according as its distinction from the work of the mind, or its intelligible content, happens to be before him. A like see-saw in his account of the individuality and generality of ideas has already been noticed. [1] In his discussion of identity the contradiction is partly disguised by a confusion between mere unity on the one hand, and sameness or unity in difference, on the other. Thus, after starting with an account of identity as belonging to ideas which are the same at different times, he goes on to speak of a thing as the same with itself, at a single instant. So, too, by the principium individuationis, he understands ‘existence itself, which determines a being of any sort to a particular time and place.’ As it is clear from the context that by the principium individuationis he meant the source of identity or sameness, it will follow that by ‘sameness’ he understood singleness of a thing in a single time and place. Whence then the plurality, without which ‘sameness’ is unmeaning? In fact, Locke, having excluded it in his definition, covertly brings it back again in his
- 20. instance, which is that of ‘an atom, i.e. a continued body under one immutable superficies, existing in a determined time and place.’ This, ‘considered in any instant of its existence, is in that instant the same with itself.’ But it is so because—and, if we suppose the consideration of plurality of times excluded, only because—it is a ‘continued’ body, which implies, though its place be determined, that it exists in a plurality of parts of space. Either this plurality, or that of instants of its existence, must be recognised in contrast with the unity of body, if this unity is to become ‘sameness with itself.’ In adding that not only at the supposed instant is the atom the same, but ‘so must continue as long as its existence continues,’ Locke shows that he really thought of the identical body under a plurality of times ex parte post, if not ex parte ante. [1] See above, paragraphs 43, and the following. Feelings are the real, and do not admit of identity. How then can identity be real? 75. But how is this continuity, or sameness of existence in plurality of times or spaces, compatible with the constitution of ‘real existence’ by mere individua? The difficulty is the same, according to Locke’s premisses, whether the simple ideas by themselves are taken for the real individua, or whether each is taken to represent a single separate thing. In his chapter on identity he expressly says that ‘things whose existence is in succession’ do not admit of identity. Such, he adds, are motion and thought; ‘because, each perishing the moment it begins, they cannot exist in different times or in different places as permanent beings can at different times exist in distant places.’ (Book I. chap, xxvii. sec. 2.) What he here calls ‘thought’ clearly includes the passive consciousness in which
- 21. alone, according to his strict doctrine, reality is given. So elsewhere (Book II. chap. vii. sec. 9), in accounting for the ‘simple idea of succession,’ he says generally that ‘if we look immediately into ourselves we shall find our ideas always, whilst we have any thought, passing in train, one going and another coming, without intermission.’ [1] No statement of the ‘perpetual flux’ of ideas, as each having a separate beginning and end, and ending in the very moment when it begins, can be stronger than the above. If ‘ideas’ of any sort, according to this account of them, are to constitute real existence, no sameness can be found in reality. It must indeed be a relation ‘invented by the mind.’ [1] It is true that in this place Locke distinguishes between the ‘suggestion by our senses’ of the idea of succession, and that which passes in our ‘minds,’ by which it is ‘more constantly offered us.’ But since, according to him, the idea of sensation must be ‘produced in the mind’ if there is to be any either sensation or idea at all (Book II. chap, ix. secs. 3 and 4), the distinction between the ‘suggestion by our senses’ and what passes in our minds’ cannot be maintained. Yet it is from reality that the idea of it is derived. 76. This, it may be said, is just the conclusion that was wanted in order to make Locke’s doctrine of the particular relation of identity correspond with his general doctrine of the fictitiousness of relations. To complete the consistency, however, his whole account of the origin of the relation (or of the idea in which it consists) must be changed, since it supposes it to be derived from an observation of things or existence, which again is to suppose sameness to be in the things or to be real. This change made, philosophy would have to start anew with the problem of accounting for the origin of the
- 22. fictitious idea. It would have to explain how it comes to pass that the mind, if its function consists solely in reproducing and combining given ideas, or again in ‘abstracting’ combined ideas from each other, should be able to invent a relation which is neither a given idea, nor a reproduction, combination, or abstract residuum of given ideas. This is the great problem which we shall find Hume attempting. Locke really never saw its necessity, because the dominion of language—a dominion which, as he did not recognise it, he had no need to account for—always, in spite of his assertion that simple ideas are the sole data of consciousness, held him to the belief in another datum of which ideas are the appearances, viz., a thing having identity, because the same with itself in the manifold times of its appearance. This datum, under various guises, but in each demonstrably, according to Locke’s showing, a ‘creation of thought,’ has met us in all the modes of his theory, as the condition of knowledge. As the ‘abstract idea’ of substance it renders ‘perishing’ ideas into qualities by which objects may be discerned. (Book II. chap. xi. sec. 1.) As the relative idea of cause, it makes them ‘affections’ to be accounted for. As the fiction of a universal, it is the condition of their mutual qualification as constituents of a whole. Finally, as the ‘superinduced’ relation of sameness, the direct negative of the perpetual beginning and ending of ‘ideas,’ it constitutes the ‘very being of things.’ Transition to Locke’s doctrine of essence. 77. ‘The very being of things,’ let it be noticed, according to what Locke reckoned their ‘real,’ as distinct from their ‘nominal,’ essence. The consideration of this distinction has been hitherto postponed; but the discussion of the relation of identity, as subsisting between the parts of a ‘continued body,’ brings us upon the doctrine of matter
- 23. and its ‘primary qualities,’ which cannot be properly treated except in connection with the other doctrine (which Locke unhappily kept apart) of the two sorts of ‘essence.’ So far, it will be remembered, the ‘facts’ or given ideas, which we have found him unawares converting into theories or ‘invented’ ideas, have been those of the ‘secondary qualities of body.’ [1] It is these which are united into things or substances, having been already ‘found in them:’ it is from these that we ‘infer’ the relation of cause and effect, because as ‘vicissitudes of things’ or ‘affections of sense’ they presuppose it: it is these again which, as ‘received from without,’ testify the present existence of something, because in being so received they are already interpreted as ‘appearances of something.’ That the ‘thing,’ by reference to which these ideas are judged to be ‘real,’ ‘adequate,’ and ‘true’—or, in other words, become elements of a knowledge—is yet itself according to Locke’s doctrine of substance and relation a ‘fiction of thought,’ has been sufficiently shown. That it is so no less according to his doctrine of essence will also appear. The question will then be, whether by the same showing the ideas of body, of the self, and of God, can be other than fictions, and the way will be cleared for Hume’s philosophic adventure of accounting for them as such. [1] See above, paragraph 20. This repeats the inconsistency found in his doctrine of substance. 78. In Locke’s doctrine of ‘ideas of substances,’ the ‘thing’ appeared in two inconsistent positions: on the one hand, as that in which they ‘are found;’ on the other, as that which results from their concretion, or which, such concretion having been made, we accustom ourselves to suppose as its basis. This inconsistency, latent
- 24. to Locke himself in the theory of substance, comes to the surface in the theory of essence, where it is (as he thought) overcome, but in truth only made more definite, by a distinction of terms. Plan to be followed. 79. This latter theory has so far become part and parcel of the ‘common sense’ of educated men, that it might seem scarcely to need restatement. It is generally regarded as completing the work, which Bacon had begun, of transferring philosophy from the scholastic bondage of words to the fruitful discipline of facts. In the process of transmission and popular adaptation, however, its true significance has been lost sight of, and it has been forgotten that to its original exponent implicitly—explicitly to his more logical disciple —though it did indeed distinguish effectively between things and the meaning of words, it was the analysis of the latter only, and not the understanding of things, that it left as the possible function of knowledge. It will be well, then, in what follows, first briefly to restate the theory in its general form; then to show how it conflicts with the actual knowledge which mankind supposes itself to have attained; and finally to exhibit at once the necessity of this conflict as a result of Locke’s governing ideas, and the ambiguities by which he disguised it from himself. What Locke understood by essence. 80. The essence of a thing with Locke, in the only sense in which we can know or intelligibly speak of it, is the meaning of its name. This, again, is an ‘abstract or general idea,’ which means that it is an idea ‘separated from the circumstances of time and place, and any other ideas that may determine it to this or that particular existence. By this way of abstraction it is made capable of representing more
- 25. individuals than one; each of which, having in it a conformity to that abstract idea, is (as we call it) of that sort.’ (Book III. chap. iii. sec. 6.) That which is given in immediate experience, as he proceeds to explain, is this or that ‘particular existence,’ Peter or James, Mary or Jane, such particular existence being already a complex idea. [1] That it should be so is indeed in direct contradiction to his doctrine of the primariness of the simple idea, but is necessary to his doctrine of abstraction. Some part of the complex idea (it is supposed)—less or more—we proceed to leave out. The minimum of subtraction would seem to be that of the ‘circumstances of time and place,’ in which the particular existence is given. This is the ‘separation of ideas,’ first made, and alone suffices to constitute an ‘abstract idea,’ even though, as is the case with the idea of the sun, there is only one ‘particular substance’ to agree with it. (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 1.) In proportion as the particular substances compared are more various, the subtraction of ideas is larger, but, be it less or more, the remainder is the abstract idea, to which a name—e.g. man—is annexed, and to which as a ‘species’ or ‘standard’ other particular existences, on being ‘found to agree with it,’ may be referred, so as to be called by the same name. These ideas then, ‘tied together by a name,’ form the essence of each particular existence, to which the same name is applied (Book III. chap. iii. secs. 12 and the following.) Such essence, however, according to Locke, is ‘nominal,’ not ‘real.’ It is a complex—fuller or emptier—of ideas in us, which, though it is a ‘uniting medium between a general name and particular beings,’ [2] in no way represents the qualities of the latter. These, consisting in an ‘internal constitution of insensible parts,’ form the ‘real essence’ of the particular beings; an essence, however, of which we can know nothing. (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 21, and ix. sec. 12.)
- 26. [1] Book III. chap, iii, sec. 7, at the end. [2] Book III chap. iii. sec. 13. Only to nominal essences that general propositions relate, i.e. only to abstract ideas having no real existence. 81. It is the formation of ‘nominal essences’ that renders general propositions possible. ‘General certainty,’ says Locke, ‘is never to be found but in our ideas. Whenever we go to seek it elsewhere in experiment or observation without us, our knowledge goes not beyond particulars. It is the contemplation of our own abstract ideas, that alone is able to afford us general knowledge.’ (Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 16.) ‘General knowledge,’ he says again, ‘lies only in our own thoughts.’ [1] This use of ‘our ideas’ and ‘our own thoughts’ as equivalent phrases, each antithetical to ‘real existence,’ tells the old tale of a deviation from ‘the new way of ideas’ into easier paths. According to this new way in its strictness, as we have sufficiently seen, there is nowhere for anything to be found but ‘in our ideas.’ It therefore in no way distinguishes general knowledge or certainty that it cannot be found elsewhere. Locke, however, having allowed himself in the supposition that simple ideas report a real existence, other than themselves, but to which they are related as ectype to archetype, tacitly proceeds to convert them into real existences, to which ideas in general, as mere thoughts of our own, may be opposed. Along with this conversion, there supervenes upon the original distinction between simple and complex ideas, which alone does duty in the Second Book of the Essay, another distinction, essential to Locke’s doctrine of the ‘reality’ of knowledge—that between the idea, whether simple or complex, as originally given in sensation, and the same as retained or reproduced in the mind. It is
- 27. only in the former form that the idea, however simple, reports, and thus (with Locke) itself is, a real existence. Such real existence is a ‘particular’ existence, and our knowledge of it a ‘particular’ knowledge. In other words, according to the only consistent doctrine that we have been able to elicit from Locke, [2] ‘it is a knowledge which consists in a consciousness, upon occasion of a present sensation—say, a sensation of redness—that some object is present here and now causing the sensation; an object which, accordingly, must be ‘particular’ or transitory as the sensation. The ‘here and now,’ as in such a case they constitute the particularity of the object of consciousness, so also render it a real existence. Separate these (‘the circumstances of time and place’ [3]) from it, and it at once loses its real existence and becomes an ‘abstract idea,’ one of ‘our own thoughts,’ of which as ‘in the mind’ agreement or disagreement with some other abstract idea can be asserted in a general proposition; e.g. ‘red is not blue.’ (Book IV. chap. vii. sec. 4.) [4] [1] Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 13, cf. Book IV. chap. iii. sec. 31. [2] See above, paragraph 56. [3] Book III. chap. iii. sec. 6. [4] In case there should be any doubt as to Locke’s meaning in this passage, it may be well to compare Book IV. chap. ix. sec. 1. There he distinctly opposes the consideration of ideas in the understanding to the knowledge of real existence. Here (Book IV. chap. vii. sec. 4) he distinctly speaks of the proposition ‘red is not blue’ as expressing a consideration of ideas in the understanding. It follows that it is not a proposition as to real existence.
- 28. An abstract idea may be a simple one. 82. It is between simple ideas, it will be noticed, that a relation is here asserted, and in this respect the proposition differs from such an one as may be formed when simple ideas have been compounded into the nominal essence of a thing, and in which some one of these may be asserted of the thing, being already included within the meaning of its name; e.g. ‘a rose has leaves.’ But as expressing a relation between ideas ‘abstract’ or ‘in the mind,’ in distinction from present sensations received from without, the two sorts of proposition, according to the doctrine of Locke’s Fourth Book, stand on the same footing.’ [1] It is a nominal essence with which both alike are concerned, and on this depends the general certainty or self-evidence, by which they are distinguished from ‘experiment or observation without us.’ These can never ‘reach with certainty farther than the bare instance’ (Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 7): i.e., though the only channels by which we can reach real existence, they can never tell more than the presence of this or that sensation as caused by an unknown thing without, or the present disagreement of such present sensations with each other. As to the recurrence of such sensations, or any permanently real relation between them, they can tell us nothing. Nothing as to their recurrence, because, though in each case they show the presence of something causing the sensations, they show nothing of the real essence upon which their recurrence depends. [2] Nothing as to any permanently real relation between them, because, although the disagreement between ideas of blue and red, and the agreement between one idea of red and another, as in the mind, is self-evident, yet as thus in the mind they are not ‘actual sensations’ at all (Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 6), nor do they convey that ‘sensitive knowledge of
- 29. particular existence,’ which is the only possible knowledge of it. (Book IV. chap. iii. sec. 21.) As actual sensations and indices of reality, they do indeed differ in this or that ‘bare instance,’ but can convey no certainty that the real thing or ‘parcel of matter’ (Book III. chap. iii. sec. 18), which now causes the sensation of (and thus is) red, may not at another time cause the sensation of (and thus be) blue.’ [3] [1] Already in Book II. (chap. xxxi. sec. 12), the simple idea, as abstract, is spoken of as a nominal essence. [2] Cf. Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 5. ‘If we could certainly know (which is impossible) where a real essence, which we know not, is—e.g. in what parcels of matter the real essence of gold is; yet could we not be sure, that this or that quality could with truth be affirmed of gold; since it is impossible for us to know that this or that quality or idea has a necessary connexion with a real essence, of which we have no idea at all.’ Several passages, of course, can be adduced from Locke which are inconsistent with the statement in the text: e.g. Book IV. chap. iv. sec. 12. ‘To make knowledge real concerning substances, the ideas must be taken from the real existence of things. Whatever simple ideas have been found to coexist in any substance, these we may with confidence join together again, and so make abstract ideas of substances. For whatever have once had an union in nature, may be united again.’ In all such passages, however, as will appear below, the strict opposition between the real and the mental is lost sight of, the ‘nature’ or ‘substance,’ in which ideas ‘have a union,’ or are ‘found to coexist,’ being a system of relations which, according to
- 30. Locke, it requires a mind to constitute, and thus itself a ‘nominal essence.’ [3] Cf. Book IV. chap. iii. sec. 29; Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 14; Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 11. How then is science of nature possible? 83. We thus come upon the crucial antithesis between relations of ideas and matters of fact, with the exclusion of general certainty as to the latter, which was to prove such a potent weapon of scepticism in the hands of Hume. Of its incompatibility with recognized science we can have no stronger sign than the fact that, after more than a century has elapsed since Locke’s premisses were pushed to their legitimate conclusion, the received system of logic among us is one which, while professing to accept Locke’s doctrine of essence, and with it the antithesis in question, throughout assumes the possibility of general propositions as to matters of fact, and seeks in their methodical discovery and proof that science of nature which Locke already ‘suspected’ to be impossible. (Book IV. chap. xii. sec. 10.) No ‘uniformities of phenomena’ can be known. 84. That, so far as any inference from past to future uniformities is necessary to the science of nature, his doctrine does more than justify such ‘suspicion,’ is plain enough. Does it, however, leave room for so much as a knowledge of past uniformities of fact, in which the natural philosopher, accepting the doctrine, might probably seek refuge? At first sight, it might seem to do so. ‘As, when our senses are actually employed about any object, we do know that it does exist; so by our memory we may be assured that heretofore things that affected our senses have existed—and thus we have knowledge
- 31. of the past existence of several things, whereof our senses having informed us, our memories still retain the ideas.’ (Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 11.) Let us see, however, how this knowledge is restricted. ‘Seeing water at this instant, it is an unquestionable truth to me that water doth exist; and remembering that I saw it yesterday, it will also be always true, and as long as my memory retains it, always an undoubted proposition to me, that water did exist the 18th of July, 1688; as it will also be equally true that a certain number of very fine colours did exist, which at the same time I saw on a bubble of that water; but being now quite out of sight both of the water and bubbles too, it is no more certainly known to me that the water doth now exist, than that the bubbles and colours therein do so; it being no more necessary that water should exist to-day because it existed yesterday, than that the colours or bubbles exist to-day because they existed yesterday.’ (Ibid.) Locke not aware of the full effect of his own doctrine … 85. The result is that though I may enumerate a multitude of past matters-of-fact about water, I cannot gather them up in any general statement about it as a real existence. So soon as I do so, I pass from water as a real existence to its ‘nominal essence,’ i.e., to the ideas retained in my mind and put together in a fictitious substance, to which I have annexed the name ‘water.’ If we proceed to apply this doctrine to the supposed past matters-of-fact themselves, we shall find these too attenuating themselves to nonentity. Subtract in every case from the ‘particular existence’ of which we have ‘sensitive knowledge’ the qualification by ideas which, as retained in the mind, do not testify to a present real existence, and what remains? There is a certainty, according to Locke (Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 11), not, indeed, that water exists to-day because it existed yesterday—this is
- 32. only ‘probable’—but that it has, as a past matter-of-fact, at this time and that ‘continued long in existence,’ because this has been ‘observed;’ which must mean (Book IV. chap. ii. secs. 1, 5, and 9), because there has been a continued ‘actual sensation’ of it. ‘Water,’ however, is a complex idea of a substance, and of the elements of this complex idea those only which at any moment are given in ‘actual sensation’ may be accounted to ‘really exist.’ First, then, must disappear from reality the ‘something,’ that unknown substratum of ideas, of which the idea is emphatically ‘abstract.’ This gone, we naturally fall back upon a fact of co-existence between ideas, as being a reality, though the ‘thing’ be a fiction. But if this co-existence is to be real or to represent a reality, the ideas between which it obtains must be ‘actual sensations.’ These, whatever they may be, are at least opposed by Locke to ideas retained in the mind, which only form a nominal essence. But it is the association of such nominal essence, in the supposed observation of water, with the actual sensation that alone gives the latter a meaning. Set this aside as unreal, and the reality, which the sensation reveals, is at any rate one of which nothing can be said. It cannot be a relation between sensations, for such relation implies a consideration of them by the mind, whereby, according to Locke, they must cease to be ‘real existences.’ (Book II. chap. xxv. sec. 1.) It cannot even be a single sensation as continuously observed, for every present moment of such observation has at the next become a past, and thus the sensation observed in it has lost its ‘actuality,’ and cannot, as a ‘real existence,’ qualify the sensation observed in the next. Restrict the ‘real existence,’ in short, as Locke does, to an ‘actual present sensation,’ which can only be defined by opposition to an idea retained in the mind, and at every instant of its existence it has passed into the mind and thus ceased really to exist. Reality is in
- 33. perpetual process of disappearing into the unreality of thought. No point can be fixed either in the flux of time or in the imaginary process from ‘without’ to ‘within’ the mind, on the one side of which can be placed ‘real existence,’ on the other the ‘mere idea.’ It is only because Locke unawares defines to himself the ‘actual sensation’ as representative of a real essence, of which, however, according to him, as itself unknown, the presence is merely inferred from the sensation, that the ‘actual sensation’ itself is saved from the limbo of nominal essence, to which ideas, as abstract or in the mind, are consigned. Only, again, so far as it is thus illogically saved, are we entitled to that distinction between ‘facts’ and ‘things of the mind,’ which Locke once for all fixed for English philosophy. … which is to make the real an abstract residuum of consciousness. 86. By this time we are familiar with the difficulties which this antithesis has in store for a philosophy which yet admits that it is only in the mind or in relation to consciousness—in one word, as ‘ideas’—that facts are to be found at all, while by the ‘mind’ it understands an abstract generalization from the many minds which severally are born and grow, sleep and wake, with each of us. The antithesis itself, like every other form in which the impulse after true knowledge finds expression, implies a distinction between the seeming and the real; or between that which exists for the consciousness of the individual and that which really exists. But outside itself consciousness cannot get. It is there that the real must, at any rate, manifest itself, if it is to be found at all. Yet the original antithesis between the mind and its unknown opposite still prevails, and in consequence that alone which, though indeed in the mind, is yet given to it by no act of its own, is held to represent the
- 34. real. This is the notion which dominates Locke. He strips from the formed content of consciousness all that the mind seems to have done for itself, and the abstract residuum, that of which the individual cannot help being conscious at each moment of his existence, is or ‘reports’ the real, in opposition to the mind’s creation. This is Feeling; or more strictly—since it exists, and whatever does so must exist as one in a number (Book II. chap. vii. sec. 7)—it is the multitude of single feelings, ‘each perishing the moment it begins’ (Book II. chap, xxvii. sec. 2), from which all the definiteness that comes of composition and relation must be supposed absent. Thus, in trying to get at what shall be the mere fact in detachment from mental accretions, Locke comes to what is still consciousness, but the merely indefinite in consciousness. He seeks the real and finds the void. Of the real as outside consciousness nothing can be said; and of that again within consciousness, which is supposed to represent it, nothing can be said. Ground of distinction between actual sensation and ideas in the mind is itself a thing of the mind. 87. We have already seen how Locke, in his doctrine of secondary qualities of substances, practically gets over this difficulty; how he first projects out of the simple ideas, under relations which it requires a mind to constitute, a cognisable system of things, and then gives content and definiteness to the simple ideas in us by treating them as manifestations of this system of things. In the doctrine of propositions, the proper correlative to the reduction of the real to the present simple idea, as that of which we cannot get rid, would be the reduction of the ‘real proposition’ to the mere ‘it is now felt.’ If the matter-of-fact is to be that in consciousness which is
- 35. independent of the ‘work of the mind’ in comparing and compounding, this is the only possible expression for it. It states the only possible ‘real essence,’ which yet is an essence of nothing, for any reference of it to a thing, if the thing is outside consciousness, is an impossibility; and if it is within consciousness, implies an ‘invention of the mind’ both in the creation of a thing, ‘always the same with itself,’ out of perishing feelings, and in the reference of the feelings to such a thing. Thus carried out, the antithesis between ‘fact’ and ‘creation of the mind’ becomes self-destructive, for, one feeling being as real as another, it leaves no room for that distinction between the real and fantastic, to the uncritical sense of which it owes its birth. To avoid this fusion of dream-land and the waking world, Locke avails himself of the distinction between the idea (i.e. feeling) as in the mind, which is not convertible with reality, and the idea as somewhere else, no one can say where—‘the actual sensation’—which is so convertible. The distinction, however, must either consist in degrees of liveliness, in which case there must be a corresponding infinity of degrees of reality or unreality, or else must presuppose a real existence from which the feeling, if ‘actual sensation,’ is—if merely ‘in the mind’ is not—derived. Such a real existence either is an object of consciousness, or is not. If it is not, no distinction between one kind of feeling and another can for consciousness be derived from it. If it is, then, granted the distinction between given feelings and creations of the mind, it must fall to the latter, and a ‘thing of the mind’ turns out to be the ground upon which ‘fact’ is opposed to ‘things of the mind.’ Two meanings of real essence. 88. It remains to exhibit briefly the disguises under which these inherent difficulties of his theory of essence appear in Locke.
- 36. Throughout, instead of treating ‘essence’ altogether as a fiction of the mind—as it must be if feelings in simplicity and singleness are alone the real—he treats indeed as a merely ‘nominal essence’ every possible combination of ideas of which we can speak, but still supposes another essence which is ‘real.’ But a real essence of what? Clearly, according to his statements, of the same ‘thing’ of which the combination of ideas in the mind is the nominal essence. Indeed, there is no meaning in the antithesis unless the ‘something,’ of which the latter essence is so nominally, is that of which it is not so really. So says Locke, ‘the nominal essence of gold is that complex idea the word gold stands for; let it be, for instance, a body yellow, of a certain weight, malleable, fusible, and fixed. But the real essence is the constitution of the insensible parts of that body, on which those qualities and all the other properties of gold depend.’ (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 2.) Here the notion clearly is that of one and the same thing, of which we can only say that it is a ‘body,’ a certain complex of ideas—yellowness, fusibility, &c.—is the nominal, a certain constitution of insensible parts the real, essence. It is on the real essence, moreover, that the ideas which constitute the nominal depend. Yet while they are known, the real essence (as appears from the context) is wholly unknown. In this case, it would seem, the cause is not known from its effects. According to one, it is a collection of ideas as qualities of a thing: 89. There are lurking here two opposite views of the relation between the nominal essence and the real thing. According to one view, which prevails in the later chapters of the Second Book and in certain passages of the third, the relation between them is that with which we have already become familiar in the doctrine of substance —that, namely, between ideas as in us and the same as in the thing.
- 37. (Book II, chap. xxiii. secs. 9 and 10.) No distinction is made between the ‘idea in the mind’ and the ‘actual sensation.’ The ideas in the mind are also in the thing, and thus are called its qualities, though for the most part they are so only secondarily, i.e. as effects of other qualities, which, as copied directly in our ideas, are called primary, and relatively to these effects are called powers. These powers have yet innumerable effects to produce in us which they have not yet produced. (Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 10.) Those which have been so far produced, being gathered up in a complex idea to which a name is annexed, form the ‘nominal essence’ of the thing. Some of them are of primary qualities, more are of secondary. The originals of the former, the powers to produce the latter, together with powers to produce an indefinite multitude more, will constitute the ‘real essence,’ which is thus ‘a standard made by nature,’ to which the nominal essence is opposed merely as the inadequate to the adequate. The ideas, that is to say, which are indicated by the name of a thing, have been really ‘found in it’ or ‘produced by it,’ but are only a part of those that remain to be found in it or produced by it. It is in this sense that Locke opposes the adequacy between nominal and real essence in the case of mixed modes to their perpetual inadequacy in the case of ideas of substances. The combination in the one case is artificially made, in the other is found and being perpetually enlarged. This he illustrates by imagining the processes which led Adam severally to the idea of the mixed mode ‘jealousy’ and that of the substance ‘gold.’ In the former process Adam ‘put ideas together only by his own imagination, not taken from the existence of anything … the standard there was of his own making.’ In the latter, ‘he has a standard made by nature; and therefore being to represent that to himself by the idea he has of it, even when it is absent, he puts no simple idea into his complex one, but
- 38. what he has the perception of from the thing itself. He takes care that his idea be conformable to this archetype.’ (Book III. chap. vi. secs. 46, 47.) ‘It is plain,’ however, ‘that the idea made after this fashion by this archetype will be always inadequate.’ … about real essence in this sense there may be general knowledge. 90. The nominal essence of a thing, then, according to this view, being no other than the ‘complex idea of a substance,’ is a copy of reality, just as the simple idea is. It is a picture or representation in the mind of a thing that does exist by ideas of those qualities that are discoverable in it.’ (Book II. chap. xxxi. secs. 6, 8.) It only differs from the simple idea (which is itself, as abstract, a nominal essence) [1] in respect of reality, because the latter is a copy or effect produced singly and involuntarily, whereas we may put ideas together, as if in a thing, which have never been so presented together, and, on the other hand, never can put together all that exist together. (Book II. chap. xxx. sec. 5, and xxxi. 10.) So far as Locke maintains this view, the difficulty about general propositions concerning real existence need not arise. A statement which affirmed of gold one of the qualities included in the complex idea of that substance, would not express merely an analysis of an idea in the mind, but would represent a relation of qualities in the existing thing from which the idea ‘has been taken.’ These qualities, as in the thing, doubtless would not be, as in us, feelings (or, as Locke should rather have said in more recent phraseology, possibilities of feeling), but powers to produce feeling, nor could any relation between these, as in the thing, be affirmed but such as had produced its copy or effect in actual experience. No coexistence of qualities could be truly affirmed, which had not been found; but, once found—being a
- 39. coexistence of qualities and not simply a momentary coincidence of feelings—it could be affirmed as permanent in a general proposition. That a relation can be stated universally between ideas collected in the mind, no one denies, and if such collection ‘is taken from a combination of simple ideas existing together constantly in things’ (Book II. chap, xxxii. sec. 18), the statement will hold equally of such existence. Thus Locke contrasts mixed modes, which, for the most part, ‘being actions which perish in the birth, are not capable of a lasting duration,’ with ‘substances, which are the actors; and wherein the simple ideas that make up the complex ideas designed by the name have a lasting union.’ (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 42.) [1] Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 12. But such real essence a creature of thought. 91. In such a doctrine Locke, starting whence he did, could not remain at rest. We need not here repeat what has been said of it above in the consideration of his doctrine of substance. Taken strictly, it implies that ‘real existence’ consists in a permanent relation of ideas, said to be of secondary qualities, to each other in dependence on other ideas, said to be of primary qualities. In other words, in order to constitute reality, it takes ideas out of that particularity in time and place, which is yet pronounced the condition of reality, to give them an ‘abstract generality’ which is fictitious, and then treats them as constituents of a system of which the ‘invented’ relations of cause and effect and of identity are the framework. In short, it brings reality wholly within the region of thought, distinguishing it from the system of complex ideas or nominal essences which constitute our knowledge, not as the unknown opposite of all possible thought, but only as the complete from the
- 40. incomplete. To one who logically carried out this view, the ground of distinction between fact and fancy would have to be found in the relation between thought as ‘objective,’ or in the world, and thought as so far communicated to us. Here, however, it could scarcely be found by Locke, with whom ‘thought’ meant simply a faculty of the ‘thinking thing,’ called a ‘soul,’ which might ride in a coach with him from Oxford to London. (Book II. chap, xxiii. sec. 20.) Was the distinction then to disappear altogether? Hence another view of real essence as unknown qualities of unknown body. 92. It is saved, though at the cost of abandoning the ‘new way of ideas,’ as it had been followed in the Second Book, by the transfer of real existence from the thing in which ideas are found, and whose qualities the complex of ideas in us, though inadequate, represents, to something called ‘body,’ necessarily unknown, because no ideas in us are in any way representative of it. To such an unknown body unknown qualities are supposed to belong under the designation ‘real essence.’ The subject of the nominal essence, just because its qualities, being matter of knowledge, are ideas in our minds, is a wholly different and a fictitious thing. How Locke mixes up these two meanings in ambiguity about body. 93. This change of ground is of course not recognized by Locke himself. It is the perpetual crossing of the inconsistent doctrines that renders his ‘immortal Third Book’ a web of contradictions. As was said above, he constantly speaks as if the subject of the real essence were the same with that of the nominal, and never explicitly allows it to be different. The equivocation under which the difference is disguised lies in the use of the term ‘body.’ A ‘particular body’ is the
- 41. subject both of the nominal and real essence ‘gold’ But ‘body,’ as that in which ‘ideas are found,’ and in which they permanently coexist according to a natural law, is one thing; ‘body,’ as the abstraction of the unknown, is quite another. It is body in the former sense that is the real thing when nominal essence (the complex of ideas in us) is treated as representative, though inadequately so, of the real thing; it is body in the latter sense that is the real thing when this is treated as wholly outside possible consciousness, and its essence as wholly unrepresented by possible ideas. By a jumble of the two meanings Locke obtains an amphibious entity which is at once independent of relation to ideas, as is body in the latter sense, and a source of ideas representative of it, as is body in the former sense—which thus carries with it that opposition to the mental which is supposed necessary to the real, while yet it seems to manifest itself in ideas. Meanwhile a third conception of the real keeps thrusting itself upon the other two—the view, namely, that body in both senses is a fiction of thought, and that the mere present feeling is alone the real. Body as ‘parcel of matter’ without essence. 94. Where Locke is insisting on the opposition between the real essence and any essence that can be known, the former is generally ascribed either to a ‘particular being’ or to a ‘parcel of matter.’ The passage which brings the opposition into the strongest relief is perhaps the following:—‘I would ask any one, what is sufficient to make an essential difference in nature between any two particular beings, without any regard had to some abstract idea, which is looked upon as the essence and standard of a species? All such patterns and standards being quite laid aside, particular beings, considered barely in themselves, will be found to have all their
- 42. qualities equally essential; and everything, in each individual, will be essential to it, or, which is more, nothing at all. For though it may be reasonable to ask whether obeying the magnet be essential to iron; yet I think it is very improper and insignificant to ask whether it be essential to the particular parcel of matter I cut my pen with, without considering it under the name iron, or as being of a certain species.’ (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 5.) [1] Here, it will be seen, the exclusion of the abstract idea from reality carries with it the exclusion of that ‘standard made by nature,’ which according to the passages already quoted, is the ‘thing itself from which the abstract idea is taken, and from which, if correctly taken, it derives reality. This exclusion, again, means nothing else than the disappearance from ‘nature’ (which with Locke is interchangeable with ‘reality’) of all essential difference. There remain, however, as the ‘real,’ ‘particular beings,’ or ‘individuals,’ or ‘parcels of matter.’ In each of these, ‘considered barely in itself, everything will be essential to it, or, which is more, nothing at all.’ [1] To the same purpose is a passage in Book III. chap. x. sec. 19, towards the end. In this sense body is the mere individuum. 95. We have already seen, [1] that if by a ‘particular being’ is meant the mere individuum, as it would be upon abstraction of all relations which according to Locke are fictitious, and constitute a community or generality, it certainly can have no essential qualities, since it has no qualities at all. It is a something which equals nothing. The notion of this bare individuum being the real is the ‘protoplasm’ of Locke’s philosophy to which, though he never quite recognized it himself, after the removal of a certain number of
- 43. accretions we may always penetrate. It is so because his unacknowledged method of finding the real consisted in abstracting from the formed content of consciousness till he came to that which could not be got rid of. This is the momentarily present relation of subject and object, which, considered on the side of the object, gives the mere atom, and on the side of the subject, the mere ‘it is felt.’ Even in this ultimate abstraction the ‘fiction of thought’ still survives, for the atom is determined to its mere individuality by relation to other individuals, and the feeling is determined to the present moment or ‘the now’ by relation to other ‘nows.’ [1] See above, paragraph 45. Body as qualified by circumstances of time and place. 96. To this ultimate abstraction, however, Locke, though constantly on the road to it, never quite penetrates. He is farthest from it—indeed, as far from it as possible—where he is most acceptable to common sense, as in his ordinary doctrine of abstraction, where the real, from which the process of abstraction is supposed to begin, is already the individual in the fullness of its qualities, James and John, this man or this gold. He is nearest to it when the only qualification of the ‘particular being,’ which has to be removed by thought in order to its losing its reality and becoming an abstract idea, is supposed to consist in ‘circumstances of time and place.’ Such body Locke held to be subject of ‘primary qualities’: but are these compatible with particularity in time? 97. It is of these circumstances, as the constituents of the real, that he is thinking in the passage last quoted. As qualified by
- 44. ‘circumstances of place’ the real is a parcel of matter, and under this designation Locke thought of it as a subject of ‘primary qualities of body.’ [1] These, indeed, as he enumerates them, may be shown to imply relations going far beyond that of simple distinctness between atoms, and thus to involve much more of the creative action of thought; but we need be the less concerned for this usurpation on the part of the particular being, since that which he illegitimately conveys to it as derived from ‘circumstances of place,’ he virtually takes away from it again by limitation in time. The ‘particular being’ has indeed on the one hand a real essence, consisting of certain primary qualities, but on the other it has no continued identity. It is only real as present to feeling at this or that time. The particular being of one moment is not the particular being of the next. Thus the primary qualities which are a real essence, i.e. an essence of a particular being, at one moment, are not its real essence at the next, because, while they as represented in the mind remain the same, the ‘it,’ the particular being is different. An immutable essence for that very reason cannot be real. The immutability can only lie in a relation between a certain abstract (i.e. unreal) idea and a certain sound. (Book III. chap. iii. sec. 19.) ‘The real constitution of things,’ on the other hand, ‘begin and perish with them. All things that exist are liable to change.’ (Ibid.) Locke, it is true (as is implied in the term change [2]) never quite drops the notion of there being a real identity in some unknown background, but this makes no difference in the bearing of his doctrine upon the possibility of ‘real’ knowledge. It only means that for an indefinite particularity of ‘beings’ there is substituted one ‘being’ under an indefinite peculiarity of forms. Though the reality of the thing in itself be immutable, yet its reality for us is in perpetual flux. ‘In itself’ it is a substance without an essence, a ‘something we know not what’ without any ideas to
- 45. ‘support;’ a ‘parcel of matter,’ indeed, but one in which no quality is really essential, because its real essence, consisting in its momentary presentation to sense, changes with the moments. [3] [1] According to Locke’s ordinary usage of the terms, no distinction appears between ‘matter’ and ‘body.’ In Book III. chap. X. sec. 15, however, he distinguishes matter from body as the less determinate conception from the more. The one implies solidity merely, the other extension and figure also, so that we may talk of the ‘matter of bodies,’ but not of the ‘body of matters.’ But since solidity, according to Locke’s definition, involves the other ‘primary qualities,’ this distinction does not avail him much. [2] See above, paragraph 69. [3] Cf. Book III. chap. vi. sec. 4: ‘Take but away the abstract ideas by which we sort individuals and rank them under common names, and then the thought of anything essential to any of them instantly vanishes,’ &c. How Locke avoids this question. 98. We have previously noticed [1] Locke’s pregnant remark, that ‘things whose existence is in succession’ do not admit of identity. (Book II. chap, xxvii. sec. 2.) So far, then, as the ‘real,’ in distinction from the ‘abstract,’ is constituted by particularity in time, or has its existence in succession, it excludes the relation of identity. ‘It perishes in every moment that it begins.’ Had Locke been master of this notion, instead of being irregularly mastered by it, he might have anticipated all that Hume had to say. As it is, even in passages such as those to which reference has just been made, where he follows its lead the farthest, he is still pulled up by inconsistent
- 46. conceptions with which common sense, acting through common language, restrains the most adventurous philosophy. Thus, even from his illustration of the liability of all existence to change—‘that which was grass to-day is to-morrow the flesh of a sheep, and within a few days after will become part of a man’ [2]—we find that, just as he does not pursue the individualization of the real in space so far but that it still remains ‘a constitution of parts,’ so he does not pursue it in time so far but that a coexistence of real elements over a certain duration is possible. To a more thorough analysis, indeed, there is no alternative between finding reality in relations of thought, which, because relations of thought, are not in time and therefore are immutable, and submitting it to such subdivision of time as excludes all real coexistence because what is real, as present, at one moment is unreal, as past, at the next. This alternative could not present itself in its clearness to Locke, because, according to his method of interrogating consciousness, he inevitably found in its supposed beginning, which he identified with the real, those products of thought which he opposed to the real, and thus read into the simple feeling of the moment that which, if it were the simple feeling of the moment, it could not contain. Thus throughout the Second Book of the Essay the simple idea is supposed to represent either as copy or as effect a permanent reality, whether body or mind: and in the later books, even where the representation of such reality in knowledge comes in question, its existence as constituted by ‘primary qualities of body’ is throughout assumed, though general propositions with regard to it are declared impossible. It is a feeling referred to body, or, in the language of subsequent psychology, a feeling of the outward sense, [3] that Locke means by an ‘actual present sensation,’ and it is properly in
- 47. virtue of this reference that such sensation is supposed to be, or to report, the real. [1] See above, paragraph 75. [2] Book III. chap. iii. sec. 10. [3] For the germs of the distinction between outer and inner sense, see Locke’s Essay, Book II. chap. i. sec. 14: ‘This source of ideas (the perception of the operations of the mind) 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.’ For the notion of outer sense cf. Book II. chap. ix. sec. 6, where he is distinguishing the ideas of hunger and warmth, which he supposes children to receive in the womb from the ‘innate principles which some contend for.’ ‘These (the ideas of hunger and warmth) being the effects of sensation, are only from some affections of the body which happen to them there, and so depend on something exterior to the mind, not otherwise differing in their manner of production from other ideas derived from sense, but only in the precedency of time.’ Body and its qualities supposed to be outside consciousness. 99. According to the doctrine of primary qualities, as originally stated, the antithesis lies between body as it is in itself and body as it is for us, not between body as it is for us in ‘actual sensation,’ and body as it is for us according to ‘ideas in the mind.’ The primary qualities ‘are in bodies whether we perceive them or no.’ (Book II. chap. viii. sec. 23.) As he puts it elsewhere (Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 2), it is just because ‘solidity and extension and the termination of it, figure, with motion and rest, whereof we have the ideas, would be
- 48. really in the world as they are whether there were any sensible being to perceive them or no,’ that they are to be looked on as the real modifications of matter. A change in them, unlike one in the secondary qualities, or such as is relative to sense, is a real alteration in body. ‘Pound an almond, and the clear white colour will be altered into a dirty one, and the sweet taste into an oily one. What alteration can the beating of the pestle make in any body, but an alteration of the texture of it?’ (Book II. chap. viii. sec. 20.) It is implied then in the notion of the real as body that it should be outside consciousness. It is that which seems to remain when everything belonging to consciousness has been thought away. Yet it is brought within consciousness again by the supposition that it has qualities which copy themselves in our ideas and are ‘the exciting causes of all our various sensations from bodies.’ (Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 3.) Again, however, the antithesis between the real and consciousness prevails, and the qualities of matter or body having been brought within the latter, are opposed to a ‘substance of body’—otherwise spoken of as ‘the nature, cause, or manner of producing the ideas of primary qualities’—which remains outside it, unknown and unknowable. (Book II. chap, xxiii. sec. 30, &c.) How can primary qualities be outside consciousness, and yet knowable? 100. The doctrine of primary qualities was naturally the one upon which the criticism of Berkeley and Hume first fastened, as the most obvious aberration from the ‘new way of ideas.’ That the very notion of the senses as ‘reporting’ anything, under secondary no less than under primary qualities, implies the presence of ‘fictions of thought’ in the primitive consciousness, may become clear upon analysis; but it lies on the surface and is avowed by Locke himself (Book II. chap.
- 49. viii. secs. 2, 7), that the conception of primary qualities is only possible upon distinction being made between ideas as in our minds, and the ‘nature of things existing without us,’ which cannot be given in the simple feeling itself. This admitted, the distinction might either be traced to the presence within intelligent consciousness of another factor than simple ideas, or be accounted for as a gradual ‘invention of the mind.’ In neither way, however, could Locke regard it and yet retain his distinction between fact and fancy, as resting upon that between the nature of things and the mind of man. The way of escape lay in a figure of speech, the figure of the wax or the mirror. ‘The ideas of primary qualities are resemblances of them.’ (Book II. chap, viii. sec. 15.) These qualities then may be treated, according to occasion, either as primitive data of consciousness, or as the essence of that which is the unknown opposite of consciousness—in the latter way when the antithesis between nature and mind is in view, in the former when nature has yet to be represented as knowable. Locke answers that they copy themselves in ideas—Berkeley’s rejoinder. Locke gets out of the difficulty by his doctrine of solidity. 101. How, asked Berkeley, can an idea be like anything that is not an idea? Put the question in its proper strength—How can an idea be like that of which the sole and simple determination is just that it is not an idea (and such with Locke is body ‘in itself’ or as the real)— and it is clearly unanswerable. The process by which Locke was prevented from putting it to himself is not difficult to trace. ‘Body’ and ‘the solid’ are with him virtually convertible terms. Each indifferently holds the place of the substance, of which the primary qualities are so many determinations. [1] It is true that where solidity has to be defined, it is defined as an attribute of body, but
- 50. conversely body itself is treated as a ‘texture of solid parts,’ i.e. as a mode of the solid. Body, in short, so soon as thought of, resolves itself into a relation of bodies, and the solid into a relation of solids, but Locke, by a shuffle of the two terms—representing body as a relation between solids and the solid as a relation between bodies— gains the appearance of explaining each in turn by relation to a simpler idea. Body, as the unknown, is revealed to us by the idea of solidity, which sense conveys to us; while solidity is explained by reference to the idea of body. The idea of solidity, we are told, is a simple idea which comes into the mind solely by the sense of touch. (Book II. chap. iii. sec. 1.) But no sooner has he thus identified it with an immediate feeling than, in disregard of his own doctrine, that ‘an idea which has no composition’ is undefinable (see Book III. chap. iv. sec. 7.), he converts it into a theory of the cause of that feeling. ‘It arises from the resistance which we find in body to the entrance of any other body into the place it possesses till it has left it;’ and he at once proceeds to treat it as the consciousness of such resistance. ‘Whether we move or rest, in what posture soever we are, we always feel something under us that supports us, and hinders our farther sinking downwards: and the bodies which we daily handle make us perceive that whilst they remain between them, they do by an insurmountable force hinder the approach of the parts of our hands that press them. That which then hinders the approach of two bodies, when they are moving one towards another, I call solidity.’ [2] [1] See Book II. chap. viii. sec. 23: The primary ‘qualities that are in bodies, are the bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion or rest, of their solid parts.’ Cf. Book II. chap. xiii. sec. 11: ‘Solidity is so inseparable an idea from body, that upon that depends its filling of
- 51. space, its contact, impulse, and communication of motion upon impulse.’ [2] Book II. chap. iv. sec 7. In which he equivocates between body as unknown opposite of mind and body as a ‘nominal essence’. 102. Now ‘body’ in this theory is by no means outside consciousness. It is emphatically ‘in the mind,’ a ‘nominal essence,’ determined by the relation which the theory assigns to it, and which, like every relation according to Locke, is a ‘thing of the mind.’ This relation is that of outwardness to other bodies, and among these to the sensitive body through which we receive ‘ideas of sensation’—a body which, on its side, as determined by the relation, has its essence from the mind. It is, then, not as the unknown opposite of the mind, but as determined by an intelligible relation which the mind constitutes, and of which the members are each ‘nominal essences,’ that body is outward to the sensitive subject. But to Locke, substituting for body as a nominal essence body as the unknown thing in itself, and identifying the sensitive subject with the mind, outwardness in the above sense—an outwardness constituted by the mind—becomes outwardness to the mind of an unknown opposite of the mind. Solidity, then, and the properties which its definition involves (and it involves all the ‘primary qualities’), become something wholly alien to the mind, which ‘would exist without any sensible being to perceive them.’ As such, they do duty as a real essence, when the opposition of this to everything in the mind has to be asserted. Yet must they be in some sort ideas, for of these alone (as Locke fully admits) can we think and speak; and if ideas, in the mind. How is this contradiction to be overcome? By the notion
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