History of Modern Philosophy · Chapter 12Part 12
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But how is the unextended soul capable of cognizing extended body? Only through the medium of ideas. The ideas occupy an intermediate position between objects, whose archetypes they are, and representations in the soul, whose causes they are. The ideas, after the pattern of which God has created things, and the relations among them (necessary truths), are eternal, hence uncaused; they constitute the wisdom of God and are not dependent on his will. Things are in God in archetypal form, and are cognized through these their archetypes in God. Ideas are not produced by bodies, by the emission of sensuous images,[1] nor are they originated by the soul, or possessed by it as an innate possession. But God is the cause of knowledge, although he neither imparts ideas to the soul in creation nor produces them in it on every separate occasion. The ideas or perfections of things are in God and are beheld by spirits, who likewise dwell in God as the universal reason. As space is the place of bodies, so God is the place of spirits. As bodies are modes of extension, so their ideas are modifications of the idea of extension or of "intelligible extension." The principle stated at the beginning, that things are perceived in God, is, therefore, supported in the following way: we perceive bodies (through ideas, which ideas, and we ourselves, are) in God.
[Footnote 1: Malebranche's refutation of the emanation hypothesis of the Peripatetics is acute and still worthy of attention. If bodies transmitted to the sense-organs forms like themselves, these copies, which would evidently be corporeal, must, by their departure, diminish the mass of the body from which they came away, and also, because of their impenetrability, obstruct and interfere with one another, thus destroying the possibility of clear impressions. A further point against the image theory is furnished by the increase in the size of an object, when approached. And, above all, it can never be made conceivable how motion can be transformed into sensations or ideas.]
As the knowledge of truth has been found to consist in seeing things as God sees them, so morality consists in man's loving things as God loves them, or, what amounts to the same thing, in loving them to that degree which is their due in view of their greater or less perfection. If, in the last analysis, all cognition is knowledge of God, so all volition is loving God; there is implanted in every creature a direction toward the Creator. God is not only the primordial, unlimited being, he is also the highest good, the final end of all striving. As the ideas of things are imperfect participations in, or determinations of universal being, the absolute perfection of God, so the particular desires, directed toward individual objects, are limitations of the universal will toward the good. How does it happen that the human will, so variously mistaking its fundamental direction toward God, attaches itself to perishable goods, and prefers worthless objects to those which have value, and earthly to heavenly pleasure? The soul is, on the one hand, united to God, on the other, united to the body. The possibility of error and sin rests on its union with the body, since with the ideas (as representations of the pure understanding) are associated sensuous images, which mingle with and becloud them, and passions with the inclinations (or the will of the soul, in so far as it is pure spirit). This gives, however, merely the possibility of the immoral, sensuous, God-estranged disposition, which becomes actual only through man's free act, when he fails to stand the test. For sin does not consist in having passions, but in consenting to them. The passion is not caused by the corporeal movement of which it is the sequel, but only occasioned by it; and the same is true of the movement of the limbs and the decision of the will. The one true cause of all that happens is God. It is he who produces affections in the soul, and motion in the material world. For the body possesses only the capacity of being moved; and the soul cannot be the cause of the movement, since it would then have to know how it produces the latter. In fact those who lack a medical training have no idea of the muscular and nervous processes involved. Without God we cannot even move the tongue. It is he who raises our arm, even when we use it contrary to his law.
Anxious to guard his pantheism from being identified with that of Spinoza, Malebranche points out that, according to his views, the universe is in God, not, as with Spinoza, that God is in the universe; that he teaches creation, which Spinoza denies; that he distinguishes, which Spinoza had not done, between the world in God (the ideas of things) and the world of created things, and between intelligible and corporeal extension. It may be added that he maintains the freedom of God and of man, which Spinoza rejects, and that he conceives God, who brings everything to pass, not as nature, but as omnipotent will. Nevertheless, as Kuno Fischer has shown, he approaches the naturalism of Spinoza more nearly than he is himself conscious, when he explains finite things as limitations (hence as modes) of the divine existence, posits the will of God in dependence on his wisdom (the uncreated world of ideas), thus limiting it in its omnipotence, and, which is decisive, makes God the sole author of motion, i.e., a natural cause. His attempt at a Christian pantheism was consequently unsuccessful. But its failure has not shattered the well-grounded fame of its thoughtful author as the second greatest metaphysician of France.
Pierre Poiret[1] (1646-1719; for some years a preacher in Hamburg; lived later in Rhynsburg near Leyden) was rendered hostile to Cartesianism through the influence of mystical writings (among others those of Antoinette Bourignon, which he published), and through the perception of the results to which it had led in Spinoza. All cognition is taking up the form of the object. The perfection of man is based more on his passive capacities than on his active reason, which is concerned with mere ideas, unreal shadows; the mathematical spirit leads to fatalism, to the denial of freedom. The passive faculties, on the contrary, are in direct intercourse with reality, the senses with external material objects, and the arcanum of the mind, the basis of the soul, the intellect, with spiritual truths and with God, whose existence is more certain than our own. Man is not unconcerned in the development of the highest power of the mind, he must offer himself to God in sincere humility. In subordination to the passive intellect, the external faculty, the active reason, is also to be cultivated; it deserves care, like the skin. Evil consists in the absurdity that the creature, who apart from God is nothing, ascribes to himself an independent existence.
[Footnote 1: Poiret: Cogitationes Rationates de Deo, Anima, et Malo, 1677, the later editions including a vehement attack on the atheism of Spinoza: L'Économie Divine, 1682; De Eruditione Solida, Superficiaria, et Falsa, 1692; Fides et Ratio Collatae, against Locke, 1707.]
Le Vayer and Huet, who have been already mentioned (pp. 50-51), mediate between the founders of skepticism and Bayle, its most gifted representative. The latter of these two wrote a Criticism of the Cartesian Philosophy, 1689, besides a Treatise on the Impotence of the Human Mind, which did not appear until after his death. He opposes, among other things, the criterion of truth based on evidence, since there is an evidence of the false not to be distinguished from that of the true, as well as the position that God becomes a deceiver in the bestowal of a weak and blind reason—for he gives us, at the same time, the power to know its deceptive character.
As the last among those influenced by Descartes but who advanced beyond him, may be mentioned the acute Pierre Bayle (1647-1706; professor in Sedan and Rotterdam; Works, 1725-31[1]), who greatly excited the world of letters by his occasional and polemic treatises, and still more by the journal, Nouvelles de la République des Lettres from 1684, and his Historical and Critical Dictionary, in two volumes, 1695 and 1697. Nowhere do the most opposite antitheses dwell in such close proximity as in the mind of Bayle. Along with an ever watchful doubt he harbors a most active zeal for knowledge, with a sincere spirit of belief (which has been wrongly disputed by Lange, Zeller, and Pünjer) a demoniacal pleasure in bringing to light absurdities in the doctrines of faith, with absolute confidence in the infallibility of conscience an entirely pessimistic view of human morality. His strength lies in criticism and polemics, his work in the latter (aside from his hostility to fanaticism and the persecution of those differing in faith) being directed chiefly against optimism and the deistic religion of reason, which holds the Christian dogmas capable of proof, or, at least, faith and knowledge capable of reconciliation. The doctrines of faith are not only above reason, incomprehensible, but contrary to reason; and it is just on this that our merit in accepting them depends. The mysteries of the Gospel do not seek success before the judgment seat of thought, they demand the blind submission of the reason; nay, if they were objects of knowledge they would cease to be mysteries. Thus we must choose between religion and philosophy, for they cannot be combined. For one who is convinced of the untrustworthiness of the reason and her lack of competence in things supernatural, it is in no wise contradictory or impossible to receive as true things which she declares to be false; he will thank God for the gift of a faith which is entirely independent of the clearness of its objects and of its agreement with the axioms of philosophy. Even, when in purely scientific questions he calls attention to difficulties and shows contradictions on every hand, Bayle by no means intends to hold up principles with contradictory implications as false, but only as uncertain.[2] The reason, he says, generalizing from his own case, is capable only of destruction, not of construction; of discovering error, not of finding truth; of finding reasons and counter-reasons, of exciting doubt and controversy, not of vouchsafing certitude. So long as it contents itself with controverting that which is false, it is potent and salutary; but when, despising divine assistance, it advances beyond this, it becomes dangerous, like a caustic drug which attacks the healthy flesh after it has consumed that which was diseased.
[Footnote 1: Cf. on Bayle, L. Feuerbach. 1838, 2d ed., 1844; Eucken in the Allgemeine Zeitung, supplement to Nos. 251, 252, October 27, 28, 1891.]
[Footnote 2: Thus, in regard to the problem of freedom, he finds it hard to comprehend how the creatures, who are not the authors of their own existence, can be the authors of their own actions, but, at the same time, inadmissible to think of God as the cause of evil. He seeks only to show the indemonstrability and incomprehensibility of freedom, not to reject it. For he sees in it the condition of morality, and calls attention to the fact that the difficulties in which those who deny freedom involve themselves are far greater than those of their opponents. He shows himself entirely averse to the determinism and pantheism of Spinoza.]
He who seeks to refute skepticism must produce a criterion of truth. If such exists, it is certainly that advanced by Descartes, the evidence, the evident clearness of a principle. Well, then, the following principles pass for evident: That one, who does not exist, can have no responsibility for an evil action; that two things, which are identical with the same thing, are identical with each other; that I am the same man to-day that I was yesterday. Now, the revealed doctrines of original sin and of the Trinity show that the first and second of these axioms are false, and the Church doctrine of the preservation of the world as a continuous creation, that the last principle is uncertain. Thus if not even self-evidence furnishes us a criterion of truth, we must conclude that none whatever exists. Further, in regard to the origin of the world from a single principle, its creation by God, we find this supported, no doubt, both by the conclusions of the pure reason and by the consideration of nature, but controvened by the fact of evil, by the misery and wickedness of man. Is it conceivable that a holy and benevolent God has created so unhappy and wicked a being?
Bayle's motives in defending faith against reason were, on the one hand, his personal piety, on the other, his conviction of the unassailable purity of Christian ethics. All the sects agree in regard to moral principles, and it is this which assures us of the divinity of the Christian revelation. Nevertheless, he does not conceal from himself the fact that possession of the theoretical side of religion is far from being a guarantee of practice in conformity with her precepts. It is neither true that faith alone leads to morality nor that unbelief is the cause of immorality. A state composed of atheists would be not at all impossible, if only strict punishments and strict notions of honor were insisted upon.
The judgments of the natural reason in moral questions are as certain and free from error as its capacity is shown to be weak and limited in theoretical science. The idea of morality never deceives anyone; the moral law is innate in every man. Although Christianity has given the best development of our duties, yet the moral law can be understood and followed by all men, even by heathen and atheists. We do not need to be Christians in order to act virtuously; the knowledge given by conscience is not dependent upon revelation. From the knowledge of the good to the practice of it is, it is true, a long step; we may be convinced of moral truth without loving it, and God's grace alone is able to strengthen us against the power of the passions, by adding to the illumination of the mind an inclination of the heart toward the good. Temperament, custom, self-love move the soul more strongly than general truths. As in life pleasure is far outbalanced by pain and vexation, so far more evil acts are done than good ones: history is a collection of misdeeds, with scarcely one virtuous act for a thousand crimes. It is not the external action that constitutes the ethical character of a deed, but the motive or disposition; almsgiving from motives of pride is a vice, and only when practiced out of love to one's neighbors, a virtue. God looks only at the act of the will; our highest duty, and one which admits of no exceptions, is never to act contrary to conscience.
After the Cartesian philosophy had given decisive expression to the tendencies of modern thought, and had been developed through occasionalism to its completion in the system of Spinoza, the line of further progress consisted in two factors: Descartes's principles—one-sidedly rationalistic and abstractly scientific, as they were—were, on the one hand, to be supplemented by the addition of the empirical element which Descartes had neglected, and, on the other, to be made available for general culture by approximation to the interests of practical life. England, with its freer and happier political conditions, was the best place for the accomplishment of both ends, and Locke, a typically healthy and sober English thinker, with a distaste for extreme views, the best adapted mind. Descartes, the rationalist, had despised experience, and Bacon, the empiricist, had despised mathematics; but Locke aims to show that while the reason is the instrument of science, demonstration its form, and the realm of knowledge wider than experience, yet this instrument and this form are dependent for their content on a supply of material from the senses. The emphasis, it is true, falls chiefly on the latter half of this programme, and posterity, especially, has almost exclusively attended to the empirical side of Locke's theory of knowledge in giving judgment concerning it.
John Locke was born at Wrington, not far from Bristol, in 1632. At Oxford he busied himself with philosophy, natural science, and medicine, being repelled by the Scholastic thinkers, but strongly attracted by the writings of Descartes. In 1665 he became secretary to the English ambassador to the Court of Brandenburg. Returning thence to Oxford he made the acquaintance of Lord Anthony Ashley (from 1672 Earl of Shaftesbury; died in Holland 1683), who received him into his own household as a friend, physician, and tutor to his son (the father of Shaftesbury, the moral philosopher), and with whose varying fortunes Locke's own were henceforth to be intimately connected. Twice he became secretary to his patron (once in 1667—with an official secretaryship in 1672, when Shaftesbury became Lord Chancellor—and again in 1679, when he became President of the Council), but both times he lost his post on his friend's fall. The years 1675-79 were spent in Montpellier and Paris. In 1683 he went into voluntary exile in Holland (where Shaftesbury had died in January of the same year), and remained there until 1689, when the ascension of the throne by William of Orange made it possible for him to return to England. Here he was made Commissioner of Appeals, and, subsequently, one of the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations (till 1700). He died in 1704 at Gates, in Essex, at the house of Sir Francis Masham, whose wife was the daughter of Cudworth, the philosopher.
Locke's chief work, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, which had been planned as early as 1670, was published in 1689-90, a short abstract of it having previously appeared in French in Le Clerc's Bibliothèque Universelle, 1688. His theoretical works include, further, the two posthumous treatises, On the Conduct of the Understanding (originally intended for incorporation in the fourth edition of the Essay, which, however, appeared in 1700 without this chapter, which probably had proved too extended) and the Elements of Natural Philosophy. To political and politico-economic questions Locke contributed the two Treatises on Government, 1690, and three essays on money and the coinage. In the year 1689 appeared the first of three Letters on Tolerance, followed, in 1693, by Some Thoughts on Education, and, in 1695, by The Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures. The collected works appeared for the first time in 1714, and in nine volumes in 1853; the philosophical works (edited by St. John) are given in Bonn's Standard Library (1867-68).[1]
[Footnote 1: Lord King and Fox Bourne have written on Locke's life, 1829 and 1876. A comparison of Locke's theory of knowledge with Leibnitz's critique was published by Hartenstein in 1865, and one by Von Benoit (prize dissertation) in 1869, and an exposition of his theory of substance by De Fries in 1879. Victor Cousin's Philosophie de Locke has passed through six editions. [Among more recent English discussions reference may be made to Green's Introduction to Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, 1874 (new ed. 1890), which is a valuable critique of the line of development, Locke, Berkeley, Hume; Fowler's Locke, in the English Men of Letters, 1880; and Fraser's Locke, in Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, 1890.—TR.]]
%(a) Theory of Knowledge.%—Locke's theory of knowledge is controlled by two tendencies, one native, furnished by the Baconian empiricism, and the other Continental, supplied by the Cartesian question concerning the origin of ideas. Bacon had demanded the closest connection with experience as the condition of fruitful inquiry. Locke supports this commendation of experience by a detailed description of the services which it renders to cognition, namely, by showing that, in simple ideas, perception supplies the material for complex ideas, and for all the cognitive work of the understanding. Descartes had divided ideas, according to their origin, into three classes: those which are self-formed, those which come from without, and those which are innate (p. 79), and had called this third class the most valuable. Locke disputes the existence of ideas in the understanding from birth, and makes it receive the elements of knowledge from the senses, that is, from without. He is a representative of sensationalism,—not in the stricter sense, first put into the term by those who subsequently continued his endeavors, that thought arises from perception, that it is transformed sensation—but in the wider sense, that thought is (free) operation with ideas, which are neither created by it nor present in it from the first, but given to it by perception, that, consequently, the cognitive process begins with sensation and so its first attitude is a passive one. From the standpoint of the Cartesian problem, which he solves in a sense opposite to Descartes, Locke supplements the empiricism of Bacon by basing it on a psychologically developed theory of knowledge. That in the course of the inquiry he introduces a new principle, which causes him to diverge from the true empirical path, will appear in the sequel.
The question "How our ideas come into the mind" receives a negative answer (in the first book of the Essay): "There are no innate principles in the mind"[1] The doctrine of the innate character of certain principles is based on their universal acceptance. The asserted agreement of mankind in regard to the laws of thought, the principles of morality, the existence of God, etc., is neither cogent as an argument nor correct in fact. In the first place, even if there were any principles which everyone assented to, this would not prove that they had been created in the soul; the fact of general consent would admit of a different explanation. Granted that no atheists existed, yet it would not necessarily follow that the universal conviction of the existence of God is innate, for it might have been gradually reached in each case through the use of the reason—might have been inferred, for instance, from the perception of the purposive character of the world. Second, the fact to which this theory of innate ideas appeals is not true. No moral rule can be cited which is respected by all nations. The idea of identity is entirely unknown to idiots and to children. If the laws of identity and contradiction were innate they must appear in consciousness prior to all other truths; but long before a child is conscious of the proposition "It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be," it knows that sweet is not bitter, and that black is not white. The ideas first known are not general axioms and abstract concepts, but particular impressions of the senses. Would nature write so illegible a hand that the mind must wait a long time before becoming able to read what had been inscribed upon it? It is often said, however, that innate ideas and principles may be obscured and, finally, completely extinguished by habit, education, and other extrinsic circumstances. Then, if they gradually become corrupted and disappear, they must at least be discoverable in full purity where these disturbing influences have not yet acted; but it is especially vain to look for them in children and the ignorant. Perhaps, however, these possess such principles unconsciously; perhaps they are imprinted on the understanding, without being attended to? This would be a contradiction in terms. To be in the mind or the understanding simply means "to be understood" or to be known; no one can have an idea without being conscious of it. Finally, if the attempt be made to explain "originally in the mind" in so wide a sense that it would include all truths which man can ever attain or is capable of discovering by the right use of reason, this would make not only all mathematical principles, but all knowledge in general, all sciences, and all arts innate; there would be no ground even for the exclusion of wisdom and virtue. Therefore, either all ideas are innate or none are. This is an important alternative. While Locke decides for the second half of the proposition, Leibnitz defends the first by a delicate application of the concept of unconscious representation and of implicit knowledge, which his predecessor rejects out of hand.
[Footnote 1: According to Fox Bourne this first book was written after the others. Geil (Ueber die Abhängigkeit Lockes von Descartes, Strassburg, 1887, chap, iii.) has endeavored to prove that, since the arguments controverted are wanting in Descartes, the attack was not aimed at Descartes and his school, but at native defenders of innate ideas, as Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the English Platonists (Cudworth, More, Parker, Gale). That along with these the Cartesian doctrine was a second and chief object of attack is shown by Benno Erdmann in his discussion of the treatises by G. Geil and R. Sommer (Lockes Verhältnis zu Descartes, Berlin, 1887) in the Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, ii, pp. 99-121.]
Locke's positive answer to the question concerning the origin of ideas is given in his second book. Ideas are not present in the understanding from the beginning, nor are they originated by the understanding, but received through sensation. The understanding is like a piece of white paper on which perception inscribes its characters. All knowledge arises in experience. This is of two kinds, derived either from the external senses or the internal sense. The perception of external objects is termed Sensation, that of internal phenomena (of the states of the mind itself) Reflection. External and internal perception are the only windows through which the light of ideas penetrates into the dark chamber of the understanding. The two are not opened simultaneously, however, but one after the other; since the perceptions of the sensible qualities of bodies, unlike that of the operations of the mind itself, do not require an effort of attention, they are the earlier. The child receives ideas of sensation before those of reflection; internal perception presupposes external perception.
In this distinction between sensation and reflection, we may recognize an after-effect of the Cartesian dualism between matter and spirit. The antithesis of substances has become a duality in the faculties of perception. But while Descartes had so far forth ascribed precedence to the mind in that he held the self-certitude of the ego to be the highest and clearest of all truths and the soul to be better known than the body, in Locke the relation of the two was reversed, since he made the perception of self dependent on the precedent perception of external objects. This antithesis was made still sharper in later thinking, when Condillac made full use of the priority of sensation, which in Locke had remained without much effect; while Berkeley, on the other hand, reduced external perception to internal perception.
All original ideas are representations either of the external senses or of the internal sense, or of both. And since, in the case of ideas of sensation, there is a distinction between those which are perceived by a single one of the external senses and those which come from more than one, four classes of simple ideas result: (1) Those which come from one external sense, as colors, sounds, tastes, odors, heat, solidity, and the like. (2) Those which come from more than one external sense (sight and touch), as extension, figure, and motion. (3) Reflection on the operations of our minds yields ideas of perception or thinking (with its various modes, remembrance, judging, knowledge, faith, etc.), and of volition or willing. (4) From both external and internal perception there come into the mind the ideas of pleasure and pain, existence, power, unity, and succession. These are approximately our original ideas, which are related to knowledge as the letters to written discourse; as all Homer is composed out of only twenty-four letters, so these few simple ideas constitute all the material of knowledge. The mind can neither have more nor other simple ideas than those which are furnished to it by these two sources of experience.
Locke differs from Descartes again in regard to extension and thought. Extension does not constitute the essence of matter, nor thought the essence of mind. Extension and body are not the same; the former is presupposed by the latter as its necessary condition, but it is the former alone which yields mathematical matter. The essence of physical matter consists rather in solidity: where impenetrability is found there is body, and the converse; the two are absolutely inseparable. With space the case is different. I cannot conceive unextended matter, indeed, but I can easily conceive immaterial extension, an unfilled space Further, if the essence of the soul consisted in thought, it must be always thinking. As the Cartesians maintained, it must have ideas as soon as it begins to be, which is manifestly contrary to experience. Thinking is merely an activity of the mind, as motion is an activity of the body, and not its essential characteristic. The mind does not receive ideas until external objects occasion perception in it through impressions, which it is not able to avert. The understanding may be compared to a mirror, which, without independent activity and without being consulted, takes up the images of things. Some of the simple ideas which have been mentioned above represent the properties of things as they really are, others not. The former class includes all ideas of reflection (for we are ourselves the immediate object of the inner sense); but among the ideas of sensation those only which come from different senses, hence extension, motion and rest, number, figure, and, further, solidity, are to be accounted primary qualities, i. e., such as are actual copies of the properties of bodies. All other ideas, on the contrary, have no resemblance to properties of bodies; they represent merely the ways in which things act, and are not copies of things. The ideas of secondary or derivative qualities (hard and soft, warm and cold, colors and sounds, tastes and odors) are in the last analysis caused—as are the primary—by motion, but not perceived as such. Yellow and warm are merely sensations in us, which we erroneously ascribe to objects; with equal right we might ascribe to fire, as qualities inherent in it, the changes in form and color which it produces in wax and the pain which it causes in the finger brought into proximity with it. The warmth and the brightness of the blaze, the redness, the pleasant taste, and the aromatic odor of the strawberry, exist in these bodies merely as the power to produce such sensations in us by stimulation of the skin, the eye, the palate, and the nose. If we remove the perceptions of them, they disappear as such, and their causes alone remain—the bulk, figure, number, texture, and motion of the insensible particles. The ground of the illusion lies in the fact that such qualities as color, etc., bear no resemblance to their causes, in no wise point to these, and in themselves contain naught of bulk, density, figure, and motion, and that our senses are too weak to discover the material particles and their primary qualities.—The distinction between qualities of the first and second order—first advanced by the ancient atomists, revived by Galileo and Descartes on the threshold of the modern period, retained by Locke, and still customary in the natural science of the day—forms an important link in the transition from the popular view of all sense-qualities as properties of things in themselves to Kant's position, that spatial and temporal qualities also belong to phenomena alone, and are based merely on man's subjective mode of apprehension, while the real properties of things in themselves are unknowable.