JOHN LOCKE AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING A section-by-section summary by Torrey Wang Ch. 1: Introduction. Bk. I. 1. Shedding light in our understanding, making it its own object, will bring great advantage in directing our thoughts in the search of other things. 2. Locke states that his intention is wholly to inquire into the discerning faculties of a man, as they are employed about the objects, which they have to do with, and not with physical considerations of the mind, or by what motions of our spirits, or alterations of our bodies, we come to have sensation by our organs, or any ideas in our understandings, or whether these ideas in their formation depend on matter. He wants to give an account of the ways our understandings come to have the notions of things that they do, and the grounds of those persuasions, which are so various and often contradictory. 3. Methodology: Locke wants to search out the bounds between knowledge and opinion. The first part deals with the original of those ideas, notions, that a man observes and is conscious to himself he has in his mind. He wants to find the ways whereby the understanding comes to be stocked with them. The second deals with the kind of knowledge the understanding gets through those ideas, and the certainty, evidence, and extent of it. The third deals with the nature and grounds of opinion and faith, and will investigate the reasons and degrees of assent. 4. Knowing thus the extent of our comprehension is useful for letting us know when the mind has reached the limits of its understanding, so that the busy mind of man will know when to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things of which it is not possible for us to have any notions at all. 6-7. This knowledge is useful to guide us when things escape our ignorance, so we need not be troubled by the lure of skepticism, and give in to idleness as a result. The Essay was thus written to combat skepticism, which to Locke lies in setting out the capacities of our understandings, which then will see men, instead of multiplying disputes by raising improper questions, and thereby being compelled to skepticism, set their minds on what we know to be comprehensible by us. 8. Locke says that he will use the term idea pervasively. It expresses whatever is the object of the understanding that is, whatever the mind can be employed about in thinking. Ch. I. Of ideas in general, and their original. Bk. II. 1. Locke explains that he wants to seek out how man come to have ideas in the first place, which is what the mind employs when it is thinking. He says that he will debunk the notion that ideas are innate. 2. Whence has [the mind] all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience: in that, all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself. Locke adds that experience can be supplied by, and hence divided into, two kinds, or fountains of knowledge : observation about external, sensible objects, and observation of the internal operations of our minds. 1
3. Our senses, which are conversant about particular sensible objects, convey into our minds perceptions of things, which are ways that those things affect our senses. (E.g., we have perception of yellow, or hard, or sweet.) Locke calls these perceptions, which depend wholly on our senses, collectively sensation, which he states is the great source of most of the ideas we have that we receive into our understanding. 4. The other fountain of knowledge is the perception of the operations of our own minds within us. Awareness of these operations, such as willing, perception, thinking, doubting, believing, cannot be had from external objects; it is only by the soul s awareness of them that we acquire them as distinct ideas, which we receive into our understanding. Locke calls this awareness reflection. Thus, there are two kinds of objects of experience, from which all our ideas take their beginnings: the objects of sensation (external, material objects), and the objects of reflection (operations of our own minds). 5. [One who examines his own thoughts, and thoroughly searches into his understanding] will, upon taking a strict view, see, that he has not any idea in his mind, but what one of these two have imprinted; though, perhaps, with infinite variety compounded and enlarged by the understanding... 6. The child kept in a place thought-experiment: if a child were kept in one room that only ever allowed him to perceive black or white, he would have no more ideas of scarlet or green, than he that from his childhood never tasted an oyster, or a pineapple, has of those particular relishes. 7. The number of (simple) ideas that man acquires from reflection is increased in the like manner that the number of (simple) ideas that man acquires from sensation is increased: through attention toward the operations of his mind. 8. Reflective ideas are gotten at a later stage in a child s development, as these require the mind s attention, i.e., to turn inwards upon itself, to reflect on its own operations, in order to leave deep impressions in the mind that constitute objects of experience. 9-10. The soul doesn t always think. Having ideas and perception are the same, so that to ask at what time a man has first any ideas is to ask when he begins to perceive. Thinking is no more essential to the soul than moving is essential to the body; it is, rather, an operation. Further, this proposition wants proof - experiential proof, Locke means. 11-12. One might object to 9-10 by saying that the soul does always think; we just aren t aware of it all the time, as when a man sleeps and thinks. Locke argues that a criterion for personal identity is a soul s capacity for feeling happiness and misery, which are associated with certain of the soul s thoughts. If the soul can think apart from the body, without the person s being conscious of it, and hence feel happiness or misery, it would follow that, Socrates sleeping is different from Socrates awake. Locke gives this thought-experiment to make vivid his argument above: suppose Castor s soul could think apart from his body, which is asleep and unconscious. Imagine then that while he was asleep, his soul separated from his body and migrated to Pollux s body, which is sleeping without a soul. Locke argues that this is conceivable if one grants that a soul can think while sound asleep. Further, Pollux wakes up intermittently throughout the night and thus is aware of some of the thoughts that Castor s sleeping soul in him entertains, while Castor s body, whose soul is absent, is never aware of the soul s perceptions. Thus there are two bodies, with only one soul between them. This, Locke thinks, is absurd. The recourse to physicalism (that doctrine that personhood supervenes on the particles that make up the person) is not available, Locke argues, because that would imply that no person is the same person from one temporal moment to the next, as we lose and gain particles all the time. Thus, to forestall this 2
problem, we need to maintain that the soul cannot think without it being conscious of the fact that it s thinking. 19. To suppose the soul to think, and the man not to perceive it, is, as has been said, to make two persons in one man. Locke derides this tenet, comparing it to the hypothesis that a body is extended without having parts, or that a man is hungry without feeling it. 20-25. Thus, Locke concludes that he sees no reason therefore to believe that the soul thinks before the senses have furnished it with ideas to think on. So the impressions that are made on our senses by the outward objects and the mind s own operations are the original of all knowledge. Locke also believes that the reception of simple ideas in the understanding is mostly a passive activity, since the objects of our senses, do, many of them, obtrude their particular ideas upon our minds, whether we will or no. Ch. II. Of simple ideas. 1. The qualities (softness, warmness, whiteness, etc.) that are in themselves united and blended in the things that produce our ideas of them are, in the ideas, simple and unmixed. That is, simple ideas are uncompounded and as distinct as the ideas that come in to our understanding by the different senses. 2. Our mind can repeat, compare, and unite simple ideas to an almost infinite variety at pleasure. However, no mind can invent or destroy new ideas not generated in the ways abovementioned (i.e., not generated either through sensation or reflection). 3. This is why we cannot imagine other qualities which aren t objects of one of our five senses, even though we think it possible that God could have made a creature with senses that can receive those qualities. Ch. III. Of ideas of one sense. 1. Locke divides the simple ideas of sensation into the ways in which they make themselves perceivable by us, and hence conveyed into materials of knowledge. There are four ways: (1) Some are perceivable through one sense only. (2) Some are perceivable through multiple senses. (3) Some are had from reflection only. (4) Some are suggested to the mind from by all the ways of sensation and reflection. Examples of (1): colors, light, sounds, tastes, smells. 2. Few simple ideas have names. Ch. IV. Of solidity. 1. Locke identifies solidity as that idea than which none other is more constantly received from sensation. It is that which hinders the approach of two bodies, when they are moving towards one another, and we are are mostly aware of it in masses of matter of a bulk sufficient to cause a sensation in us. Solidity, Locke opines, seems the idea most intimately connected with and essential to body, so as nowhere to be found or imagined, but only in matter. We find it inseparably inherent in body, wherever, or however modified. 3. (Pure) Space is differentiated from solidity, in that the former is capable neither of resistance nor 3
motion. Solidity of whatever softness or hardness will produce resistance. (Locke gives example of a drop of water, which will resist all the bodies in the world pressing it on all sides.) 4. Hardness is differentiated from solidity, in that the former relates to whether or not a body is easily susceptible to changes in its figure, and is relational to the constitutions of our own bodies - we call hard that which causes pain, rather than how soon it changes figure due to pressure from any part of our bodies, and soft that which changes the situation of its parts upon an easy, and unpainful touch. 5. So the extension of body is nothing but the cohesion or continuity of solid, separable, movable parts, while the extension of space the continuity of unsolid, inseparable, and immovable parts. 6. Solidity can be found out only through experience; we can t teach it any more than we can teach light to a blind man s world of darkness. Ch. V. Of simple ideas of divers senses. Locke gives examples of (2) from III.1 (above): The ideas we get by more than one sense, are of space, or extension, figure, rest, and motion. These can be received into our minds via both sight and our sense of touch. Ch. VI. Of simple ideas of reflection. 1. Locke gives examples of (3) from III.1. (above). Simple ideas of reflection arise from the mind s turning inward upon the ideas of sensation received in the manners foregoing, and observing its actions (attitudes?) about those ideas it has. 2. Locke states that the two principal actions of the mind are understanding and willing. Understanding is the power of thinking, and willing is the power of volition. These two powers are denominated faculties. (Apparently, these actions are sort of like attitudes, as Locke says of some of the modes of the simple ideas of reflection, such as are remembrance, discerning, reasoning, judging, knowledge, faith, &c. I shall have occasion to speak hereafter. ) Ch. VII. Of simple ideas of both sensation and reflection. 1. Locke gives examples of (4) from III.1. (above) - ideas which convey themselves into the mind, by all the ways of sensation and reflection. They are: Pleasure, or delight, and its opposite. Pain, or uneasiness. Power. Existence. Unity. 2. Pleasure/delight or pain/uneasiness are associated with almost all of ideas (of both sensation and reflection). 7. Existence is an idea that is suggested to the understanding by ideas of reflection and sensation because, in the one case, we consider the ideas of reflection to be really in our minds when we consider them, just as we consider things to be really without us when we consider our ideas of sensation. And unity is 4
suggested to the understanding because whatever can consider as one thing, whether a being or an idea, we consider to be a unity. 8. Power is suggested by the fact that we can, and do think, and that we can move several parts of our bodies at will. Further, it is suggested by the fact that natural bodies produce effects in one another, which we observe through our senses every moment. 9. Succession is an idea that, though suggested by our senses, is more constantly offered us, by what passes in our own minds. This is because it is through an action of our mind looking inward that we observe our ideas to pass in train and without intermission. 10. These inlets of sensation and reflection are enough to generate materials for all knowledge, opinions, and fancies, just as 24 letters alone are enough to generate all the words of the English language. Ch. VIII. Some further considerations concerning our simple ideas. 1. Positive simple ideas may be caused by a privation in the subject. That is, privative causes may generate simple ideas, which are real. 2. Thus, ideas like heat/cold, light/darkness, white/color, are all equally positive ideas in the mind, though some of the causes that produce them are privations in those subjects, from whence our senses derives those ideas. To our understanding, when it merely views ideas, their causes are moot; each is as positive and distinct as the other. Locke adds that taking notice of the causes that produce the ideas is an inquiry not belonging to the idea, as it is in the understanding; but to the nature of the things existing without us. 3. Example of the penultimate statement in 2: a painter s idea of white and black is as distinct and clear and perfect in his understanding - perhaps more - than the philosopher s, who has busied himself in considering their natures, and thinks he knows how far either of them is in its cause positive or privative; and the idea of black is no less positive in his mind, than that of white, however the cause of that color in the external object, may be only a privation. 4. Locke conjectures that privative causes of positive ideas are possible because sensation in the human exists as a matter of degree and modes of motion, so that any abatement of any former motion...must as necessarily produce a new sensation, as the variation of increase of it. This new sensation itnroduces a new idea, which depends only on a difference in the motion of the animal spirits in that organ. 5. Experience confirms the above: a man draped in shadow produces in us an idea as positive and distinct as a man covered by clear sunshine. Our picture of the shadow in our mind produced by that man draped in shadow is a positive thing. Our vocabulary consists of many words that stand for positive ideas that have privative causes, such as insipid, dark, silent, etc. 6. Thus Locke states that we may be said to truly see, say, darkness. (NB. When Locke says subject, he is usually using it to refer to external objects, those responsible for producing ideas of sensation.) 7. Locke proposes to preempt terminological confusion by introducing a new word to refer to ideas that are modifications of matter in the bodies that cause perceptions in us, as opposed to those that are perceptions or ideas in our minds. He calls the former qualities, which we shouldn t assume our ideas to 5
resemble exactly. Locke says that our ideas of these qualities are no more the likeness of something existing without us, than the names, that stand for them are the likeness of our ideas... 8. Ex. for 7: A snowball has the power to produce in us ideas of white, cold, and round; these powers to produce ideas in our minds, as they exist in the snowball, are called its qualities. He says that he will sometimes refer to qualities as ideas in the things themselves. 9. Locke defines primary qualities: these are such qualities as are utterly inseparable from the body. Locke gives the famous example of a grain of wheat being divided by a pestle repeatedly, but yet still retains solidity, extension, figure, and mobility. So far as the divided parts continue to be sensible, they will retain these qualities no matter what alterations they go through. These are the original or primary qualities, which produce in us simple ideas. 10. Secondary qualities, however, are in truth not in the objects themselves, but are rather powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities. Examples of secondary qualities are: colors, sounds, tastes, etc. Ex.: the sensation of warmth that we are able to have an idea of from fire is due to its primary qualities, viz., the bulk, texture, and motion of its insensible parts. 11-12. Locke inquires how qualities produce their ideas. That is, how do bodies produce ideas in us? He answers by impulse. He starts with primary, original qualities. Since external objects aren t united to our minds, yet their original qualities are perceivable by us, at a distance even, Locke argues that tis evident some singly imperceptible bodies must come from them to the eyes, and thereby convey to the brain some motion, which produces these ideas, which we have of them in us. 13. Likewise, secondary qualities produce their ideas in us in the same manner, by the operation of insensible particles on our senses. So, a violet, by the impulse of such insensible particles of matter of peculiar figures, and bulks, and in different degrees and modifications of their motions, causes the ideas of the blue color, and sweet scent of that flower to be produced in our minds. 14. Likewise for tastes and sounds, in addition to what s been said of colors and smells. Whatever reality we, by mistake, attribute to them, are in truth nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us, and depend on those primary qualities, viz., bulk, figure, texture and motion of parts; as I have said. (added emphasis) 15. Locke thus concludes that while the ideas of primary qualities really are resemblances of qualities of the bodies, and that their patterns really do exist in the bodies themselves, ideas of secondary qualities have no resemblance of them at all. There is nothing like our ideas, existing in the bodies themselves. What s sweet or blue, or warm in idea, is but the certain bulk, figure, and motion of the insensible parts in the bodies themselves. 16-17. For those who doubt 15 and preceding, that secondary qualities aren t real qualities of their subjects, Locke asks them to consider the power of fire to produce both warmth and pain in us. We say at a sufficient distance that the fire is warm, but when we get too close, we say it causes pain in us. Yet while we say that the fire is really warm, why don t we say that it is really painful? Why the discrepancy? Thus, Locke argues that while the particular bulk, figure, and motion of the parts of fire or snow are really in them, whether we perceive them or not, and therefore are really qualities in the bodies, light, heat, whiteness or coldness, are no more really in them, than sickness or pain is in manna. He also says that if there were no senses to receive ideas of secondary qualities, they would simply vanish and be reduced to their causes - bulk, figure, and motion of parts. 18. Why do we consider the sickness and pain sometimes caused by manna when we consume it to be any less of a quality of it when we consider sweetness and whiteness to be real qualities existing in manna? 6
Locke argues that these ideas are all just effects of the operations of manna on several parts of our bodies by the size, figure, number and motion of its parts. Why those produced by our eyes and palate rather than our stomach and guts should be thought to be really in the manna when they are not seen or tasted but not really to be in the manna when they don t cause pain or sickness needs explanation, says Locke. 19-20. Locke argues that colors are secondary qualities. Consider porphyry absent light. It becomes dark, not the red and white that it is associated with. What can explain this other than that its texture, a certain configuration of particles, makes light rebound off its surface in such a way as to produce in us the sensations of white and red? Locke argues next that taste also is secondary. Consider an almond, that is sweet. Once it s been pounded, its sweet taste changes to an oily one. What real alteration can the beating of the pestle make in any body, but an alteration of the texture of it? 21. This explains how the same water may, at the same time, produce the idea of cold in one hand and the idea of warm in the other. This would be impossible if the ideas of warm and cold were really in the water. Rather, the sensation of heat and cold is nothing but the increase or diminution of the motion of the minute parts of our bodies, caused by the corpuscles of any other body. 22. Again, the real, primary qualities are: solidity, extension, figure, number, motion or rest. These are sometimes perceivable by us when the bodies they are in are large enough to be discerned from those secondary and imputed qualities, which are but the powers of several combinations of those primary ones... 23. To recap, the 3 sorts of qualities in bodies are: (1) Primary qualities: bulk, figure, number, situation, motion, or rest. When the bodies they are in are of perceivable size, we have an idea of the things as they are in themselves. (2) Sensible (secondary) qualities: the power that is in any body to produce certain ideas of sensation in us owing to their insensible primary qualities, such as colors, sounds, smells, tastes, etc. (3) Powers: the power of the configuration of primary qualities in one body to affect the configuration of primary qualities in another so as to make the latter affect our senses differently from before. Example: the sun s (secondary) power of heat to make wax white. (1) is in the things themselves; (2) & (3) are only powers to act differently upon other things. 24. Locke argues that the warmth and light of the sun that are perceptions in us when we are warmed are no otherwise in the sun than changes in a piece of wax, such as when it is blanched or melted, that are occasioned by its being heated by the sun. They are all of them equally powers in the sun, depending on its primary qualities. 25. Locke explains the reason why we think more that heat and warmth are really in the sun than whiteness or blanchedness is in the sun is because while we receive the ideas of warmth and heat from the sun, we only see a piece of wax receive change of color from the sun. Thus, we take the former to be real resemblances of the sun, and not the latter. But like in 24, these are both just effects on our senses of the primary qualities of the subjects. 26. Locke proposes new terms to describe (2) and (3) in 23: (2) are secondary qualities immediately perceivable, (3) are secondary qualities mediately perceivable. Ch. IX. Of perception. 1. Perception is the first faculty of the mind exercised about our ideas. It is the first and simplest idea 7
we have from reflection. Locke says that while some call perception thinking, thinking in ordinary English signifies an active, voluntary action of the mind, an operation of the mind about its ideas, whereas perceiving is wholly passive, as it cannot avoid perceiving what it does perceive. 2. Perception is only when the mind receives the impression - that is, when he reflects on what passes in his own mind. 3. So there is no perception if, whatever impressions are made on a body s parts, they are not taken notice of within. That is, there is pain only where there is an idea of pain; there is heat only where there is an idea of heat. 4....Wherever there is sense, or perception, there some idea is actually produced, and present in the understanding. 5. Children in the womb have ideas, but none are innate. They receive these ideas from the exercise of their senses about objects that affect them in the womb...before they are born, as the unavoidable effects, either of the bodies that environ them, or else of those wants or diseases they suffer; amongst which I think the ideas of hunger and warmth are two. 6. From 5, Locke says that there are no innate principles, which do not depend on accidental alterations in, or operations on the body but which are like original characters impressed upon it in the very first moment of its being and constitution. 8-9. Locke gives a famous thought-experiment (due, he says, to Irish scientist William Molyneux), which he thinks supports, in a limited way, his thesis that whatever we judge of our ideas, these have their bases in sensation, so that without the sensation, we don t have the judgment. Suppose a blind man has only ever been taught to distinguish spheres from cubes by touch, but he is one day, in adulthood, made able to see. Locke argues that not having had the experience of determining by sight what makes a cube different from a sphere, he is unable, based on his experience in feeling cubes apart from spheres, to judge them apart by sight. To do this requires habitual custom of framing a perception to the qualities we notice, without which the cube/sphere appears to us as a planar figure. This, he thinks, explains how we can judge that something is a, say, sphere, based on our idea of sensation produced by it, which is just a flat circle variously colored. 11. What separates the animals from inferior beings, i.e., plants, is that there is no perception in plants, which alter their figures and motions without any sensation in them, like how a rope shortens when it contact with water. 12. Perception, Locke thinks, is in all the animals, though there are differences in both the number of conduits for the reception of perception and the distinctness with which perception is received amongst them. Ch. X. Of retention. 1. The next step toward attaining knowledge is in the province of the faculty of retention, which keeps simple ideas acquired from sensation or reflection. Retention is done two ways: The first is through contemplation, which is just keeping the idea for some time in view. 2. The second way of retaining ideas is through memory. It is the power of the mind to revive perception, which it once had, with this additional perception annexed to them, that is has had them before. Locke adds that while in this sense, our ideas are said to be in our memories, they are actually 8
nowhere, since perception requires the mind s taking notice of the impression, which is stored when in the memory, and not taken notice of (from IX.2-3 above). So, memory is an ability of the mind to, as it were, paint [impressions] anew on itself. 5. Ideas fade in the memory for the most part unless refreshed. The constitution of our bodies and the make of our animal spirits may also have something to do with how long ideas in our memory are retained. 6. In the same vein, constantly repeated ideas of sensation and reflection can scarce be lost. 7-8. In remembering, the mind is often active, though sometimes formerly imprinted ideas offer themselves to the understanding. Memory is essential for an intellectual creature, and the next most important to perception. Without it, we could not gain knowledge, reason, or think beyond present objects. Locke identifies two defects of memory: (1) oblivion, or ignorance, which may be attributed to forgetfulness, and (2) slowness, which is a deficiency in the speed with which memory retrieves the ideas that it has laid up in store for the service of the mind in certain occasions. 10. Beasts have memories. Ch. XI. Of discerning, and other operations of the mind. 1. The faculty of discerning helps us to distinguish between the ideas that our minds have, and is so important as to be that on which the evidence and certainty of even some very general propositions depend. Locke says that it is not that they find universal assent that is the cause of their certainty; it is this faculty of the mind. 4. The faculty of comparing is that which our ability to contemplate relations between ideas depends. 6. Compounding is the operation of our mind when it puts together several simple ideas it has received either through sensation or reflection, and combines them into complex ones. 8. Naming is seen when children learn to apply the organs of speech to the framing of articulate sounds, i.e., when they make use of words, to signify their ideas to others, which they acquire in the beginning by repeated sensations. 9. Abstraction is our mind s power, for purposes of economy, of using the same name, e.g., whiteness, to signify the same quality wherever or howsoever met with, despite its origin in the person from a particular idea of sensation. That is, we abstract the quality out of the circumstances of its existence, which we are familiar with singly, apply a name to that quality, and then use it for all things we see with that like appearance. 10-11. Locke thinks beasts have no powers of abstraction, since they don t seem to use general signs for universal ideas - they don t talk, or use footsteps, as general signs, and hence they don t seem to have powers of abstraction. This is a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes. Locke gives this argument from experiencet: it s not that the brutes lack organs fit to frame articulate sounds, and so make no use of or have knowledge of general sounds, since they do make sounds and pronounce words distinctly enough, though never with any such application. But men, even if they lack the ability to express words, perhaps because of a congenital defect, still find ways to indicate universal ideas by signs. This is not to say that brutes don t reason, Locke says, because to be able to receive ideas implies the 9
ability to reason. But brutes reasoning is limited to the narrow bounds of particular ideas, and they cannot abstract. 15 & 17. Locke claims to have given an accurate account tracing the genealogy of human knowledge: whence the mind has its first objects, and by what steps it makes its progress to the laying in, and storing up those ideas, out of which is to be framed all the knowledge it is capable of. To verify its truth is to refer to experience and observation, Locke states, that is, to find out things as they really are, and not to conclude they are, as we fancy of ourselves, or have been taught by others to imagine. So, external and internal sensation are the only passages of knowledge to the understanding, the only windows to the dark room of the understanding. Ch. XII. Of complex ideas 1. The mind is passive in the reception of all its simple ideas; but it also exerts several acts of its own, whereby out of its simple ideas, as the materials and foundations of the rest, the other are framed. Locke identifies three ways this is done. (1) The mind combines several simple ideas into one compound idea, which is how complex ideas are made. (2) The mind brings together ideas, simple or complex, without uniting them, for the purposes of comparison. (3) The making of general ideas by separating the ideas it brings together from the circumstances of their real existence. (This is abstraction, outlined in XI.9.) Examples of (1): beauty, gratitude, a man, an army, the universe. These are complicated of various simple ideas, yet are considered by the mind to be one entire thing, and signified by one name. 2. The mind can have no more ideas, nor other, than what are suggested to it. But once it has gotten those ideas, whether of reflection or sensation, it can multiply objects of its own thought infinitely beyond what reflection or sensation furnished it with. 3-7. Complex ideas all reducible to either: (1) Modes (2) Substances (3) Relations (1), of which gratitude, triangle, murder, &c, are examples, are to be considered as dependences on, or affections of substances. They have no independent existence. There are two kinds of modes: simple, and mixed. Simple modes are simply variations, or different combinations of the same simple idea, without the mixture of any other. Example: a dozen (because it signifies 12 units of whatever added together.) Mixed modes are combinations of several ideas of several kinds, such as theft, or beauty. (2), of which a flock of sheep (collective idea of substance), a man (idea of single substance), etc., are examples, are such combinations of simple ideas, as are taken to represent distinct particular things subsisting by themselves. (3) are the sort of complex ideas that consist in the consideration and comparison of one idea with another. Locke issues an IOU for examples of them. 8. All of our ideas, even those seemingly most abstruse and removed from either ideas of reflection or 10
sensation, or a combination of them, are compounded of them. Locke says he will prove this by showing that the ideas we have of space, time, and infinity, are attained by the mind s ordinary use of its faculties employed about the ideas that it receives from either objects of sense or the operations it observes in itself about those ideas. Ch. XXIII. Of our complex ideas of substance 1. We are apt to call substances those things that seem to be constantly accompanied by the same simple ideas. We consider them one simple idea, because we don t know how these simple ideas can subsist by themselves, and so suppose some substratum to underlie those simple ideas, from which they result. In reality, a substance is a complication of many ideas together. 2. The idea then we have, to which we give the general name substance, being nothing, but the supposed, but unknown support of those qualities [i.e., secondary qualities, maybe even primary], we find existing, which we imagine cannot subsist sine re substante, without something to support them, we call that support substantia, which, according to the true import of the word, is in plain English, standing under, or upholding. 3-4. Locke challenges anyone to say that our ideas of, say, a man or a horse or water, etc., are farther than of certain simple ideas coexisting together. In language, we tend to speak of our complex ideas of substances, say, a lodestone, as a thing having friability, hardness, the power to draw iron, etc., which implies that there is a support for those qualities beyond its extension, figure, motion, solidity, thinking, or other observable ideas, though we don t know what it is. Locke says that we have no clear or distinct idea of this thing that we propose as support, so while we talk about it, we are perfectly ignorant of it, and in the dark. 5. As we conceive of a substratum for the simple ideas we receive from external bodies, likewise, we conceive of a substratum for the operations of the mind about those simple ideas. Since we don t have a clear notion of either the former (corporeal substance) or latter (spiritual substance), we can t affirm either their existence or non-existence. 6. We can only say with certainty that the ideas we have of particular distinct sorts of substances are nothing but several combinations of simple ideas, coexisting in such, though unknown, cause if their union, as makes the whole subsist of itself. 7. The perfectest idea of a particular sort of substance requires that one has gathered and put together most of the simple ideas that exist in that particular sort of substance, in addition to its active powers and passive capacities, such as the power of drawing iron of the substance lodestone, and the passive capacity of the substance iron of being thus drawn by lodestone. The latter kinds of ideas are not simple. 8. The powers make up a great part of our complex ideas of substance, especially since these are secondary qualities of substances (cf. Bk II., ch. VIII, 23.), which we, lacking sensible insight into the primary qualities of bodies, use to distinguish one substance from another. 9. Locke again lists the three types of qualities, primary, immediately perceivable qualities (secondary), and mediately perceivable qualities (powers), and says that these constitute the ideas that make up our complex ideas of substance. 10. Powers make up a great part of our complex ideas of substance. 11
11. Locke states his opinion that, were we to have senses acute enough to sense the minute particles, the real constitution, on which the sensible qualities depend, secondary qualities would immediately disappear. We would then, e.g., see only texture where we used to see the color yellow. He asks us to think of looking into a microscope looking at a colored object. 12. The infinite wise contriver of us has given us senses, faculties, and organs enough to do the business we have to do here and that comport with the conveniences of life. Through them (dull and weak as they are), we are able to discover enough in the creatures, and be led to knowledge of God and our duty. Locke argues, however, that were our senses acuter, we would be ill-fit for life in this part of the universe. If our ears were 1000 times more sensitive to sound, e.g., how would a perpetual noise distract us, and if a man had sight 100000 times more sharp than the best microscope, he would not be able to discourse with men with ordinary sight, even though he would acquire ideas of the internal constitutions of things that he sees. Such a quickness and tenderness of sight, Locke opines, perhaps could not endure bright sunshine, or so much as open daylight. So our senses are fitted to our needs. 14. I say our specific ideas of substances are nothing else but a collection of a certain number of simple ideas, considered as united in one thing 15. By the simple ideas we have taken from those operations of our own minds, which we experiment daily in our own selves, as thinking, understanding, willing, knowing, and power of beginning motion, &c. coexisting in some substance, we are able to frame the complex idea of an immaterial spirit. And thus by putting together the ideas of thinking, perceiving, liberty, and power of moving themselves and other things, we have as clear a perception, and notion of immaterial substances, as we have of material 16-19. We thus don t even have an idea of abstract substance. Locke says at end of 16 that we have no more clearer primary ideas belonging to body than we do belonging to the immaterial spirit. (Resumes in 22.) With respect to bodies, Locke says our original ideas of them that are unique to them are cohesion of separable parts of solids (figure, he says, is really the consequence of finite extension/cohesion) and their power of communicating motion by impulse. With respect to spirits, he says that our original ideas of them that are unique to them are thinking and motivity. The former is our power to put body into motion by thought, while the latter is liberty. The ideas of duration, existence, and mobility, Locke says, are common to both [body and spirit, I m guessing?]. In 19, Locke says that spirits are capable of motion, since spirits, like bodies, cannot operate but where they are, and they do change places (probable exception: the infinite spirit). 20. The soul (Locke seems to be using spirit/mind/soul interchangeably) can think, will, and operate on his body, in the place where it is, but cannot operate on a body, or in a place, an hundred miles distant from it. 22. Our complex ideas of immaterial spirit and of body, then, can be described as, in the former, a substance that thinks and has a power of exciting motion in body by will, and in the latter, an extended solid substance that is capable of communicating motion by impulse. Locke argues that we can no more comprehend an extended thing than we can a thinking thing, contra those who argue that complex ideas of body are less obscure. 12
23. Locke s argument is that the cohesion of solid parts in a body is as hard to conceive as thinking is in a soul (cohesion of thoughts might be thought of as a parallel). While we might be able to explain a solid s cohesion of its parts by appeal to pressure in particles of air, nothing can explain the cohesion of the particles of air themselves. We may appeal to some subtler matter to explain the cohesion of those particles, but, Locke seems to suggest, this would lead to a regress. We d still need to explain the cause of the unity of the corpuscles making up the subtle matter. 25. So we can as little understand how the parts of body cohere, as how we ourselves perceive, or move 28. Locke explains that he thinks the mind s power of exciting motion by thought is more conceivable than the communication of motion by impulse between external bodies, because in the one case, our mind everyday affords ideas of an active power of moving of bodies, whereas in the case of two bodies placed side to side, they can never produce in us an idea of motivity except by a borrowed motion. It may thus be worth considering the power of motivity in pure matter to be a passive power, while the one in pure spirit to be an active power. 30. Recap of preceding + clarification of what the modes of thinking (thinking, again, is a primary quality of spirit) are: they are such ways of thinking as believing, doubting, intending, fearing, hoping. 31. From the above, it follows that we shouldn t deny that the spirit exists, because just as we don t deny the existence of bodies simply because there seem to be insurmountable difficulties explaining, say, how there are infinite parts in each body, we don t deny something as evident as that there is a spirit that thinks. 32. Locke echoes Descartes, and argues that because we can think of thinking itself as a simple, separate idea from solidity, and vice versa, that we may as well allow a thinking thing without solidity, i.e. immaterial to exist; as a solid without thinking, i.e. matter, to exist. He says that our idea of the substance God is acquired in a like manner as all our other complex ideas of substance - namely, they are acquired from simple ideas of sensation or reflection. 33-35. Our idea of God comes from our simple ideas of reflection, which the mind frames other, better ideas out of by considering what s suitable for the supreme being (e.g., from the idea we have of duration that we receive from either ideas of sensation or reflection, we attribute infinite duration to God), and then enlarging upon those simple ideas, finally putting them together and calling that complex idea God. Thus, it is infinity, which joined to our ideas of existence, power, knowledge, &c. makes that complex idea, whereby we represent to ourselves the best we can, the supreme being. Locke claims that the only thing we know of God s essence is that he is simple and uncompounded. 37. Recap of preceding: 1st, we have no clear idea of the substrata, by which we distinguish sorts of substances, that we suppose to underlie the collections of simple ideas that we regularly find together. 2 nd, all the simple ideas that make up the complex ideas of several sorts of substances, which we unite into substrata, are received either from sensation or reflection. So we cannot reach beyond these simple ideas in our comprehension of these substances. 3 rd, most of the simple ideas that make up our complex ideas of particular sorts of substances, when truly considered, are only powers, however we are apt to take them for positive qualities. E.g., in gold, which we generally identify by its correlative complex idea complicated of simple ideas of yellowness, great weight, ductility, solubility in aqua regia, etc., these simple ideas are mostly not real qualities in the gold 13
itself, but relations to other substances. They do, however, depend on those real, and primary qualities of its internal constitution Ch. XXVI. Of causes and effect, and other relations 1. We notice in experience that simple ideas, substances, and qualities/modes begin to exist from the due application and operation of some other being. This is what gives us our ideas of cause and effect. We call cause that which we notice to conduce or operate to the producing any particular simple idea, or collection of simple ideas, and its produced idea effect. 2. Locke defines the notions of creation, generation, and making alteration. Creation is when something is created ex nihilo. Generation is when something s constituting particles did before exist, but that constituted thing, which is now arranged together into a particular collection of simple ideas that did not before exist, as a man, or egg, or rose, etc., comes into being. Generation is produce in the ordinary course of nature. Making is when the effect is produced by either a sensible separation, or juxtaposition of discernible parts. This is done not in the ordinary course of nature, but is an artificial process. Alteration is when any simple idea is produced, which was not in that subject before. 3. All words answering how long are relations to some other duration. That is, most of the denominations of things, received from time, are only relations. 5-6. Many terms of extension and place that seem absolute, like those of time, are really relative. So, great, big, little, etc., are denominations for things that are larger than what we are accustomed to seeing in size of a particular species of thing. Similarly, apparently absolute terms like weak and strong are really relative terms that we compare to some idea that we have at the time, and which is subject to change, as to what is greater or less power. Ch. XXVII. Of identity and diversity. 1. We also compare a thing s being at a particular time and place with it at another time and place, from which we form ideas of identity and diversity. Locke argues for the validity of the principles of identity and diversity. E.g., we are sure, when we see something at a particular time, to be that very thing, not another thing existing in another place, however indistinguishable that other looks like the thing in question in all other respects than place and time. This is an argument from inconceivability: because we can t conceive it possible that two things of the same kind should exist in the same place at the same time, Locke says, we rightly conclude that whatever exists anywhere at any time, excludes all of the same kind, and is there itself alone. Locke argues (apparently also from inconceivability) that it is just as evident that the same thing cannot exist in different places. (Double-slit experiment in physics disproves this assumption!) So, Locke says, things that we can use beginning of existence to establish identity and diversity: whatever has the same beginning is the same thing, whatever don t are different things. 14
2. We have ideas of three sorts of substances: (1) God, (2) finite intelligences, (3) bodies. If we want to maintain the principles of identity and diversity given above, we must not allow that two substances of the same kind can exist in the same place at the same time. (We can allow that different kinds of substances can exist in the same place at the same time, God and each one of us finite intelligences, e.g.) Locke argues that these principles show that no motion or thought considered as at different times can be the same, each part thereof having a different beginning of existence. This is distinguished from permanent beings, which can at different times exist in different places. This appears to establish/be an argument that motions and thoughts aren t substances, but are modes. 3. In the state of living creatures, their identity depends not on a mass of the same particles; but on something else. For in them the variation of great parcels of matter alters not the identity: an oak, growing from a plant to a great tree, and then lopped is still the same oak: and a colt grown up to a horse, sometimes fat, sometimes lean, is all the while the same horse: though, in both these cases, there may be a manifest change of the parts: so that truly they are not either of them the same masses of matter, though they be truly one of them the same oak, and the other same horse. The reason whereof is, that in these two cases of a mass of matter, and a living body, identity is not applied to the same thing. 4. What distinguishes say, an oak, from a mere mass of matter? Locke responds that it is that while in the latter, it is a cohesion of particles anyhow united, an oak is a specific organization of parts in a body, such as is fit to continue to distribute nourishments to the bark, leaves, and wood in which the vegetable life consists. This oak continues to be the same oak, then, so long as it partakes of the same life, though that life be communicated to new particles of matter vitally united to the living plant, in a like continued organization, conformable to that sort of plants. 5. and of animals from masses of matter? Locke says it is much like with vegetables. He compares the life in animals, as distinguished from the matter that they re in, with that of the force (battery?) that is added to a watch, which is nothing but a fit organization, construction of parts, to a certain end, and which preserves its identity throughout all the repairs, part replacements, etc., that may be performed on it in its lifetime. The only difference is that the life necessarily begins with the fit organization of parts at the same time in animals, while in machines, the fit organization can often be found temporarily (or even permanently) without the force, which if added, would make them functional. 6. What about man? Same as with animals. Locke emphasizes the fact that the identity of man doesn t consist in just the individual spirit, but in the organized body to which it is united, which participates in the life of the spirit, despite its constantly fleeting particles of matter. He said that if this weren t so, it would be possible that Seth, Ismael, Socrates, Pilate, etc., are all the same man. So, there must be something in the nature of matter that prevents the same individual spirit from being united to different bodies. That is, the idea of man includes both body and shape. Worse, the souls of man may be detruded into the bodies of beasts. 7. Thus, Locke says that we need to reexamine what identity really means, as it seems that from the above, identity is not the same when applied separately to substance, to person, and to man. 8. It seems that one would call a parrot that philosophized and reasoned a parrot, and would call a man who wasn t able to reason or philosophize still a man. So it seems that in the idea of a man, it isn t the idea of a thinking or rational being alone that makes it, but of a body so and so shaped joined to it. 9. Personal identity, Locke argues, consists in an intelligent being s being able to consider itself as itself and the same thinking thing in different times and places. This is possible through consciousness, which Locke says is present at every moment of perception and thinking. Thus, the sameness of a rational being (personal identity) consists in one s consciousness of one s thoughts and actions, and extends as far back 15