John Locke (1632-1704)

Life. John Locke was born at Wrington, a village in Somerset, on August 29, 1632. He was the son of a country solicitor and small landowner who, when the civil war broke out, served as a captain of horse in the parliamentary army. "I no sooner perceived myself in the world than I found myself in a storm," he wrote long afterwards, during the lull in the storm which followed the king's return. But political unrest does not seem to have seriously disturbed the course of his education. He entered Westminster school in 1646, and passed to Christ Church, Oxford, as a junior student, in 1652; and he had a home there (though absent from it for long periods) for more than thirty years -- till deprived of his studentship by royal mandate in 1684. The official studies of the university were uncongenial to him; he would have preferred to have learned philosophy from Descartes instead of from Aristotle; but evidently he satisfied the authorities, for he was elected to a senior studentship in 1659, and, in the three or four years following, he took part in the tutorial work of the college. At one time he seems to have thought of the clerical profession as a possible career; but he declined an offer of preferment in 1666, and in the same year obtained a dispensation which enabled him to hold his studentship without taking orders. About the same time we hear of his interest in experimental science, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1668. Little is known of his early medical studies. He cannot have followed the regular course, for he was unable to obtain the degree of doctor of medicine. It was not till 1674 that he graduated as bachelor of medicine. In the following January his position in Christ Church was regularized by his appointment to one of the two medical studentships of the college.

His knowledge of medicine and occasional practice of the art led, in 1666, to an acquaintance with Lord Ashley (afterwards, from 1672, Earl of Shaftesbury). The acquaintance, begun accidentally, had an immediate effect on Locke's career. Without serving his connection with Oxford, he became a member of Shaftesbury's household, and seems soon to have been looked upon as indispensable in all matters domestic and political. He saved the statesman's life by a skillful operation, arranged a suitable marriage for his heir, attended the lady in her confinement, and directed the nursing and education of her son -- afterwards famous as the author of Characteristics. He assisted Shaftesbury also in public business, commercial and political, and followed him into the government service. When Shaftesbury was made lord chancellor in 1672, Locke became his secretary for presentations to benefices, and, in the following year, was made secretary to the board of trade. In 1675 his official life came to an end for the time with the fall of his chief.

Locke's health, always delicate, suffered from the London climate. When released from the cares of office, he left England in search of health. Ten years earlier he had his first experience of foreign travel and of public employment, as secretary to Sir Walter Vane, ambassador to the Elector of Brandenburg during the first Dutch war. On his return to England, early in 1666, he declined an offer of further service in Spain, and settled again in Oxford, but was soon induced by Shaftesbury to spend a great part of his time in London. On his release from office in 1675 he sought milder air in the south of France, made leisurely journeys, and settled down for many months at Montpellier. The journal which he kept at this period is full of minute descriptions of places and customs and institutions. It contains also a record of many of the reflections that afterwards took shape in the Essay concerning Human Understanding. he returned to England in 1679, when his patron had again a short spell of office. He does not seem to have been concerned in Shaftesbury's later schemes; but suspicion naturally fell upon him, and he found it prudent to take refuge in Holland. This he did in August 1683, less than a year after the flight and death of Shaftesbury. Even in Holland for some time he was not safe from danger of arrest at the instance of the English government; he moved from town to town, lived under an assumed name, and visited his friends by stealth. His residence in Holland brought political occupations with it, among the men who were preparing the English revolution. it had at least equal value in the leisure which it gave him for literary work and in the friendships which it offered. In particular, he formed a close intimacy with Philip van Limbroch, the leader of the Remonstrant clergy, and the scholar and liberal theologian to whom Epistola de Tolerantia was dedicated. This letter was completed in 1685, though not published at the time; and, before he left for England, in February 1689, the Essay concerning Human Understanding seems to have attained its final form, and an abstract of it was published in Leclerc's Bibliotheque universelle in 1688. The new government recognized his services to the cause of freedom by the offer of the post of ambassador either at Berlin or at Vienna. But Locke was no place hunter; he was solicitous also on account of his health; his earlier experience of Germany led him to fear the "cold air" and "warm drinking"; and the high office was declined. But he served less important offices at home. He was made commissioner of appeals in May 1689, and, from 1696 to 1700, he was a commissioner of trade and plantations at a salary of L1000 a year. Although official duties called him to town for protracted periods, he was able to fix his residence in the country. In 1691 he was persuaded to make his permanent home at Oates in Essex, in the house of Francis and Lady Masham. Lady Masham was a daughter of Cudworth, the Cambridge Platonist; Lock had manifested a growing sympathy with his type of liberal theology; intellectual affinity increased his friendship with the family at Oates; and he continued to live with them till his death on October 28, 1704.

Writings. With the exception of the abstract of the Essay and other less important contributions to the Bibliotheque universelle, Locke had not published anything before his return to England in 1689; and by this time he was in his fifty-seventh year. But many years of reflection and preparation made him ready at that time to publish books in rapid succession. In March 1689 his Epistola de Tolerantia was published in Holland; an English translation of the same, by William Popple, appeared later in the same year, and in a corrected edition in 1690. The controversy which followed this work led, on Locke's part, to the publication of a Second Letter (1690), and then a Third Letter (1692). In February 1690 the book entitled Two Treatises of Government was published, and in March of the same year appeared the long expected Essay concerning Human Understanding, on which he had been at work intermittently since 1671. it met with immediate success, and led to a voluminous literature of attack and reply; young fellows of colleges tried to introduce it at the universities, and heads of houses sat in conclave to devise means for its suppression. To one of his critics Locke replied at length. This was Edward Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester, who, in his Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity (1696), had attacked the new philosophy. It was the theological consequences which were drawn from the doctrines of the Essay, not so much by Locke himself as by Toland, in his Christianity not Mysterious, that the bishop had chiefly in view; in philosophy for its own sake he does not seem to have been interested. But his criticism drew attention to one of the least satisfactory (if also one of the most suggestive) doctrines of the Essay -- its explanation of the idea of substance; and discredit was thrown on the "new way of ideas" in general. In January 1697 Locke replied in A Letter to the Bishop of Worcester. Stillingfleet answered this in May; and Locke was ready with a second letter in August. Stillingfleet replied in 1698, and Locke's lengthy third letter appeared in 1699. The bishop's death, later in the same year, put an end to the controversy. The second edition of the Essay was published in 1694, the third in 1695, and the fourth in 1700. The second and fourth editions contained important additions. An abridgement of it appeared in 1696, by John Wynne, fellow of Jesus College, Oxford; it was translated into Latin and into French soon after the appearance of the fourth edition. The later editions contain many modifications due to the author's correspondence with William Molyneux, of Trinity College, Dublin, a devoted disciple, for whom Locke had a worm friendship. Other correspondents and visitors to Oates during these years were Isaac Newton and Anthony Collins, a young squire of the neighborhood, who afterwards made his mark in the intellectual controversies of the time.

Other interests also occupied Locke during the years following the publication of his great work. The financial difficulties of the new government led in 1691 to his publication of Some Considerations of the Consequences of Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of Money, and of Further Considerations on the latter question, four years later. In 1693 he published Some Thoughts concerning Education, a work founded on letters written to a friend, and in 1695 appeared The Reasonableness of Christianity, and later A Vindication of the same against certain objections; and this was followed by a second vindication two years afterwards. Locke's religious interest had always been strongly marked, and, in he later years of his life, much of his tie was given to theology. Among the writings of his which were published after his death are commentaries on the Pauline epistles, and a Discourse on Miracles, as well as a fragment of a Fourth Letter for Toleration. The posthumously published writings include further An Examination of Father Malebranche's Opinion of Seeing all things in God, Remarks on Some of Mr Norris's Books, and -- most important of all -- the small treatise on The Conduct of the Understanding which had been originally designed as a chapter of the Essay.

Plan of the Essay. Locke's greatest philosophical contribution is his Essay, and we have his own account of the origin of that work. In the winter of 1670, five or six friends were conversing in his room, probably in London. The topic was the "principles of morality and revealed religion," but difficulties arose and no progress was made. Then, he goes on to say, "it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course, and that before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with." At the request of his friends, Locke agreed to set down his thoughts on this question at their next meeting, and he expected that a single sheet of paper would suffice for the purpose. Little did he realize the magnitude of the issue which he raised, and that it would occupy his leisure for nearly twenty years.

Locke's interest centers on traditional philosophical topics: the nature of the self, the world, God, and the grounds of our knowledge of them. We reach these questions only in the fourth and last book of the Essay. The first three books are preliminary, though they have, and Locke saw that they had, an importance of their own. His introductory sentence makes this plain:

Since it is the understanding that sets man above the rest of sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has over them; it is certainly a subject, even for its nobleness, worth our labour to inquire into. The understanding, like the eye, while it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own object. But whatever be the difficulties that lie in the way of this inquiry; whatever it be that keeps us so much in the dark to ourselves; sure I am that all the light we can let in upon our minds, all the acquaintance we can make with our own understandings, will not only be very pleasant, but bring us great advantage, in directing our thoughts in the search of other things.

Locke will not "meddle with the physical consideration of the mind"; he has no theory about its essence or its relation to the body; at the same time, he has no doubt that, if due pains be taken, the understanding can be studied like anything else: we can observe its object and the ways in which it operates upon them. The Essay is divided into four books; the first is a polemic against the doctrine of innate principles and ideas. The second deals with ideas, the third with words, and the fourth with knowledge.

Ideas in General. All the objects of the understanding are described as ideas, and ideas are spoken of as being in the mind (Intro. 2; Bk. 2:1:5; Bk. 2:8:8). Locke's first problem, therefore, is to trace the origin and history of ideas, and the ways in which the understanding operates upon them, in order that he may be able to see what knowledge is and how far it reaches. This wide use of the term "idea" is inherited from Descartes. The contemporary term which corresponds with it most nearly is "presentation". But presentation is, strictly, only one variety of Locke's idea, which includes also representation and image, perception, and concept or notion. His usage of the term thus differs so widely from the old Platonic meaning that the danger of confusion between them is not great. It suited the author's purpose also from being a familiar word in ordinary discourse as well as in the language of philosophers. Herein, however, lays danger from which he did not escape. In common usage "idea" carries with it a suggestion of contrast with reality; this is not supposed in Locke's use.

In the first book of the Essay, on the subject of innate ideas, Locke points to the variety of human experience, and to the difficulty of forming general and abstract ideas, and he ridicules the view that any such ideas can be antecedent to experience. All the parts of our knowledge, he insists, have the same rank and the same history regarding their origin in experience. It is in its most extreme form that the doctrine of innate ideas is attacked; but he cannot seen any middle ground between that extreme doctrine and his own view that all ideas have their origin in experience. Indeed, it is difficult to determine against whom the argument is directed. But when we note Locke's polemical interest in the question, and remember the significance for him of the empirical origin of all the elements of human knowledge, we can be content to see in it an earnest protest against the principle of authority, a vindication of our right to examine critically all the so-called "principles" of human knowledge.

Locke wishes to avoid any presupposition about matter, or mind, or their relation. It is not difficult to see that the notions which he has expelled often re-enter. But the peculiar value of his approach consists in his attempt to keep clear of them. He begins neither with ind nor matter, but with ideas. Their existence needs no proof: "everyone is conscious of them in himself, and men's words and actions will satisfy him that they are in others." His first inquiry is "how they come into the mind"; has next business is to show that they constitute the whole material of our knowledge. In his answer to the former question we discover the influence of traditional philosophy, or rather of ordinary common sense views of existence, upon his views. All our ideas, he says, come from experience. The mind has no innate ideas, but it has innate faculties: it perceives, remembers, and combines the ideas that come to it from without; it also desires, deliberates, and wills; and these mental activities are themselves the source of a new class of ideas. Experience is therefore twofold. Our observation may be employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds. The former is the source of most of the ideas which we have, and, as it depends "wholly upon our senses," is called "sensation." The latter is a source of ideas which "every man has wholly in himself," and it might be called "internal sense"; to it he gives the name "reflection."

Simple and Complex Ideas. There are no innate ideas "stamped upon the mind" from birth; and yet impressions of sense are not the only source of knowledge: "The mind furnishes the understanding with ideas" (Bk. 2:1:5). No distinction is implied here between "mind" and "understanding", so that the sentence might run, "the mind furnishes itself with ideas." As to what these ideas are, we are not left in doubt: they are "ideas of its own operations." When the mind acts, it has an idea of its action, that is, it is self-conscious, and, as such, is assumed to be an original source of our knowledge. Hume and Condilac both refused to admit reflection as an original source of ideas, and both, accordingly, found that they had to face the problem of tracing the growth of self-consciousness out of a succession of sensations. According to Locke, reflection is an original, rather than an independent, source of ideas. Without sensation mind would have nothing to operate upon, and therefore could have no ideas of its operations. It is "when he first has any sensation" that "a man begins to have any ideas" (Bk. 2:1:23). The operations of the mind are not themselves produced by sensation, but sensation is required to give the mind material for working on.

The ideas which sensation gives "enter by the senses simple and unmixed" (Bk. 2:2:1); they stand in need of the activity of mind to bind them into the complex unities required for knowledge. The complex ideas of substance, modes, and relations are all the product of the combining and abstracting activity of mind operating upon simple ideas, which have been given, without any connection, by sensation or reflection. Locke's account of knowledge thus has two sides. On the one side, all the material of knowledge is traced to the simple idea. On the other side, the processes which transform this crude material into knowledge are activities of mind which themselves cannot be reduced to ideas. Locke's metaphors of the tabula rasa, "white paper" (Bk. 2:2:1), and "dark room" misled his critics and suggested to some of his followers a theory very different from his own. The metaphors only illustrate what he had in hand at the moment. Without experience, no characters are written on the "tablets" of the mind; except through the "windows" of sensation and reflection, no light enters the understanding. No ideas are innate; and there is no source of new simple ideas other than those two. But knowledge involves relations, and relations are the work of the mind; it requires complex ideas, and complex ideas are mental formations. Simple ideas do not, of themselves, enter into relation and form complex ideas. Locke does not, like Hobbes before him and Hume and Condillac after him, look to some unexplained natural attraction of idea for idea as bringing about these formations. Indeed, his treatment of "the association of ideas" is an afterthought, and did not appear in the earlier editions of the Essay.

Starting from the simple ideas which we get from sensation, or from observing mental operations as they take place, Locke has two things to explain: the universal element, that is, the general conceptions with which knowledge is concerned or which it implies; and the reference to reality which it claims. With the former problem Locke deals at great length; and the general method of his exposition is clear enough. Complex ideas arise from simple ideas by the processes of combination and abstraction carried out by the mind. It would be unfair to expect completeness from his enterprise: but it cannot be denied that his intricate and subtle discussions left many problems unsolved. Indeed, this is one of his great merits. He raised questions in such a way as to provoke further enquiry. Principles such as the causal relation, apart from which knowledge of nature would be impossible, are quietly taken for granted, often without any enquiry into the grounds for assuming them. Further, the difficulty of accounting for universals is unduly simplified by describing certain products as simple ideas, although thought has obviously been at work upon them.

In this connection an important inconsistency becomes apparent in his account of the primary data of experience. It is, indeed, impossible even to name the mere particular -- the "this, here, and now" of sense -- without giving it a flavor of generality. But, at the outset, Locke tries to get as near it as possible. Simple ideas (of sensation) are exemplified by yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, and so forth (Bk. 2:1:3). But, towards the end of the second book (Bk. 2:21:75), a very different list is given: extension, solidity, and mobility (from sensation); perceptivity and motivity (from reflection); and existence, duration, and number (from both sensation and reflection). These are said to be "our original ideas," and the rest to be "derived" form or to "depend" on them. It is difficult to compare the two lists, instance by instance; but one example may be taken. According to the first list, hard is a simple idea; according to the second list, solidity is the original (and therefore simple) idea, and hard will be derived from it and depend on it. It is clear that, in making the former list, Lock was trying to get back to the primary data of our individual experience; whereas, in the second list, he is rather thinking of the objective reality on which our experience depends and which, he assumes, it reveals. But he does not observe the difference. He seems to forget his view that the original of all knowledge is to be found in the particular, in something "simple and unmixed." Thus he says without hesitation, "If any one asks me, what this solidity is, I send him to the senses to inform him. Let him put a flint of a football between his hands, and then endeavour to join them, and he will know" (Bk. 2:4:4). But he will not know without going a long way beyond the simple idea. The simple ideas in the case are certain muscular and tactual sensations; and he interprets these by other means (including knowledge of external objects and his own organism) when he says that the flint or the football is solid.

His doctrine of modes is also affected by this same inattention of the fact that a simple idea must be really simple. Thus he holds that "space and extension" is a simple idea given both by sight and by touch (Bk. 2:4). One would expect, therefore, that the original and simple idea of space would be the particular patch seen at any moment or the particular "feel" of the exploring limb. But we are told that "each idea of any different distance, or space, is a simple mode" or the idea of space (Bk. 2:8:4). Here again the simple idea is generalized. He professes to begin with the mere particulars of external and internal sense, and to show how knowledge -- which is necessarily general -- is evolved from them. But, in doing so, he assumes a general or universal element as already given in the simple idea.

Having gone so far, he might almost have been expected to take a further step and treat the perceptions of particular things as modes of the simple idea substance. But this he does not do. Substance is an idea regarding which he was in earnest with his own fundamental theory (however, he was perplexed about the origin of the idea of "substance in general" as well as of the ideas of "particular sorts of substances; Bk. 2:23:2-3). He admits that substance is a complex idea; that is to say, it is formed by the mind's action out of simple ideas. Now, this idea of substance marks the difference between having sensations and perceiving things. Its importance, therefore, is clear; but there is no clearness in explaining it. We are told that there is a "supposed or confused idea of substance" to which are joined, for example, "the simple idea of a dull whitish colour, with certain degrees of weight, hardness, ductility and fusibility," and, as a result, "we have the idea of lead."

A difficulty might have been avoided if substance could have been interpreted as simply the combination by the understanding of white, hard, etc., or some similar cluster of ideas of sensation. But it was not Locke's way thus to ignore facts. He sees that something more is needed than these ideas of sensation. They are only joined to "the supposed or confused idea of substance," which is there and "always the first and chief" (Bk. 2:12:6). He holds to it that the idea is a complex idea and so mad by the mind; but he is entirely at a loss to account for the materials out of which it is made. We cannot imagine how simple ideas can subsist by themselves, and so "we accustom ourselves to suppose some substratum wherein they do subsist," and this we call substance. In one place, he even vacillates between the assertions that we have no clear idea of substance and that we have no idea of it at all " (Bk. 1:3:19). It is "a supposition of he knows not what." This uncertainty, as will appear presently, throws its shadow over our whole knowledge of nature.

Primary and Secondary Qualities. The "new way of ideas" is thus hard put to it in accounting for the universal element in knowledge; it has even greater difficulties to face in defending the reality of knowledge. And, in the latter case, the author does not see the difficulties so clearly. His view is that the simple idea is the test and standard of reality. Whatever the mind contributes to our ideas removes them further from the reality of things; in becoming general, knowledge loses touch with things. But not all simple ideas carry with them the same significance for reality. Colours, smells, tastes, sounds, and the like are simple ideas, yet nothing resembles them in the bodies themselves; but, owing to a certain bulk, figure, and motion of their insensible parts, bodies have "a power to produce those sensations in us." These, therefore, as called "secondary qualities of bodies." On the other hand, "solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number" are also held by Locke to be simple ideas; and these are resemblances of qualities in body; "their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves"; accordingly, they are "primary qualities of bodies." In this way, by implication if not expressly, Locke severs, instead of establishing, the connection between simple ideas and reality. The only ideas which can make good their claim to be regarded as simple ideas have nothing resembling them in things. Other ideas, no doubt, are said to resemble bodily qualities (an assertion for which no proof is given and none is possible); but these ideas have only a doubtful claim to rank as simple ideas. Locke's prevailing tendency is to identify reality with the simple idea, but he sometimes comes close to the opposite view that the reference to reality is the work of thought.