Chapter XXXIV · (continued 2)

¹ For instance, his view of the unconscious modifications of the mind, or latent mental modifications.

Bayle, the author of the Historical and Critical Dictionary, exercised a pretty wide influence on philosophical opinions.¹ He had a sceptical cast of mind, and directed his shafts against all forms of dogmatism, often indulging in sallies of ironical humour. He was a man of considerable erudition, an acute critic, and endowed with much logical tact and metaphysical subtlety. There are other philosophers whose works I should have deemed it necessary to notice, if I had been writing a complete history of philosophy, such as Malebranche, De la Forge, Sylvain Regis, Arnauld, P. Nicole, Pascal, Du Hamel, Wolff, and others.

¹ Born 1647, died 1706.

Turning to English philosophy, it may be noted that at the present time many in England are conversant with the philosophy of Germany and of France; and the influence of the speculations of both these nations on the English thought of the nineteenth century is probably much greater than is commonly believed. While in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially in the latter, English philosophy greatly influenced the philosophy of France, and in a less degree that of Germany, and in the present century all sides have influenced each other; although it appears that German speculation has recently been in the ascendant in some quarters of England, and even in Scotland.

The place of Lord Bacon in the history of philosophy has often been very differently estimated, according to the standpoint of those who have essayed to discuss the subject.¹ Bacon’s avowed aim was to increase the power of man by enlarging the range of his knowledge. But to affect this, the mind must be freed from prejudice and superstition of every sort, so that it may be enabled to apprehend things in their real relations. Knowledge must begin with experience, starting from observation and experiment, whence by induction it should proceed methodically, first to the simpler propositions, and then to others of higher generality, rising gradually step by step to higher universality; and then finally, from these to descend to the particular, and thus to arrive at discoveries which should extend the power of man over nature. To attain such results he insisted strongly on the value and the necessity of a patient collection and accurate comparison of facts.

¹ Born 1561, died 1625.

Bacon’s plan for the reorganisation of the sciences embraced a general review of the whole intellectual field. This was followed by his doctrine of method, and then by an exposition of the sciences themselves, with their application to new discoveries. His conception was grand, and his end highly laudable; but the development of the principles of his method is far from complete. His own attempts at original investigation in applying his method is often crude, and fall much below some of the efforts of his own contemporaries. Still, he succeeded in indicating several of the fundamental points of induction; and thus he became the founder of the empirical school of modern philosophers, though he himself was greater as a critic than as a philosopher. His greatest merit was that he emphatically insisted on the importance of the collection, arrangement, and comparison of facts. On the other hand, he undervalued the method of deduction, and the value of the syllogism for deductive and mediate knowledge.

His writings have had much influence in Britain, and in other countries of Europe, especially in France; and thus his method of induction has contributed at home and abroad to the progress of physical science.¹

¹ An excellent account of Bacon and his philosophy is given by Kuno Fischer in a work entitled, “Franz Baco von Verulam, die Real-philosophie und ihr Zeitalter,” 1856.

The eccentric Lord Herbert of Cherbury was a writer of some note.¹ In his remarkable work, “De Veritate,” he treated on various points of mental philosophy. He distinguished the faculties of the mind into four, namely, natural instinct, the inner sense, the external sense, and the discursive faculty. Each of these powers affords a certain class of truths, and all truth must become known to us through one or other of these faculties. But the truths of natural instinct are relatively higher and more certain than any other. By this faculty (which might have been called intellectual instinct) we apprehend the common notions touching the relations of things, and especially those which tend to our own preservation. They are implanted in us by nature, and represent something of the divine image and wisdom. They are primary notions, since they are necessary, independent, universal, certain, and instantaneous in their manifestation.

¹ Born 1581, died 1648.

The inner sense under the direction of natural instinct, or the common notions, embraces all the powers which are associated with the particular forms of the agreeable and the disagreeable, of good and evil, whether these are dependent on the body or on the mind. The chief internal sense is conscience, which judges what is good and evil in their various relations, and thus determines what ought to be done.

The external senses depend on the special effects of external objects upon our external organs, jointly with the corresponding internal senses and the natural instincts. The discursive faculty gives that knowledge of objects presented by the internal and external senses, which depends on special capacities for investigation, and on the common notions; and it has reference to existence, qualities, quantities, relations, and especially to their causes.

He was also the author of several religious treatises and historical works. He distinguished man from animals, not merely by the gift of reason, but specially by the capacity of religion, which is peculiar to the former. He held that all men had the five following notions of religion:​—That there is a God; that He ought to be worshipped; that virtue and piety are the chief elements of worship; that repentance is a duty; and that there is a future life, with rewards and punishments. He maintained that a revelation is possible to individuals, and affirmed that a special revelation was made to himself; but, since nothing can be admitted as revealed which contradicts the five common notions, and anything beyond these can be of no importance to the human race, therefore, no such revelation should be made public. His views had some influence on the subsequent lines of English thought, and he has sometimes been signalised as the earliest of that class of writers called the English Deists.

But the most famous English philosopher of the Rebellion period was Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Born in 1588, he was in the prime of life when the struggle between the parliament and Charles I. began in earnest. Hobbes firmly maintained the view that the King had an unquestionable right to absolute and supreme power in the State; and it is palpably evident that his philosophy, and especially his political and religious speculations, were much influenced by the struggles of his own day in England. He was deeply touched by the sight which the Civil War presented, and the imprisonment and execution of the King, the religious rancour and the hypocrisy which were mingled in the conflict, and the consequent suffering of the nation. In such circumstances, with his prepossessions, it would be unreasonable to expect from him sound opinions and conclusions on politics; nevertheless, he was an original thinker of great power, and a man of varied accomplishments. None of his philosophical or political works were published till he was past fifty years of age, so they were not the crude performances of youth, but the deliberate outcome of his matured thought. In his different treatises and works, however, he again and again repeated his chief psychological views and political doctrines, in slightly varied language, but identically the same in ideas and thought.

In his “Elements of Philosophy,” published in 1655, and divided into four parts, which treated of logic, of the first grounds of philosophy, of the proportions of motions and magnitudes, and of physics, he defines philosophy as the knowledge of effects by their causes, and of causes from their observed effects, by means of true inferences. The end of philosophy is the application of our knowledge of effects to the utmost of our strength, for the benefit of human life, as the end of knowledge is power, which should result in action. The utility of philosophy is especially seen in physical science, in geometry, in astronomy, and in navigation. From his conception of philosophy, he excluded the doctrine of God, because He is “eternal, ingenerable, incomprehensible, and in Whom there is nothing either to divide or compound, or any generation to be conceived”;¹ and also knowledge acquired by divine inspiration, and all false doctrines, such as astrology and divinations: for all that which we know by legitimate deduction can neither be false nor doubtful. I may state that Hobbes’s idea of God was entirely negative. In his “Leviathan,” after running over a number of terms and expressions which should not be applied to God, he says:​—“He that will attribute to God nothing but what is warranted by natural reason, must either use such negative attributes as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; or most high, most great; or indefinite, as good, just, holy; and in such sense as if he meant not to declare what he is.... There is but one name to signify our conception of his nature, and that is, I AM; and but one name of his relation to us, and that is God.” He distinguished philosophy into natural and civil. But in order to understand the properties of a commonwealth, it is necessary first to know the dispositions and manners of men; and so civil philosophy is divided into two parts, the one treating of men’s dispositions and manners, called ethics, and the other treating of their civil duties, called political philosophy.² In the Leviathan, published in 1651, he gives a kind of classification of the sciences, a pretty complete formulation of the knowledge and science of the time. He reduced everything to consequences. Matter or bodies being assumed, motion and quantity are placed at the top of the scale; while consequences from quantity, and motion indeterminate, which being the principles or first foundation of philosophy, “philosophia prima,” forms the basis of the whole. Then follow consequences from quantity, and motion determined​—Mathematics, Geometry; consequences from motion and quantity determined​—Cosmography, Astronomy, Geography, and so on, politics being classed with physics as a part of natural philosophy.³

¹ Part I., Chapter I., Section 2, et seq. All my references are to the collective ♦edition of Hobbes’s English works, by Sir William Molesworth.

² Leviathan, Part II., Chapter XXXI.

³ Part I., Chapter IX.

Thinking or reasoning is merely a process of computation, of addition and subtraction. He says, “to compute is either to collect the sum of many things that are added together, or to know what remains when one thing is taken out of another. Ratiocination, therefore, is the same with addition and subtraction; and if any man add multiplication and division, I will not be against it, seeing multiplication is nothing but addition of equals one to another, and division nothing but a subtraction of equals one from another, as often as possible. So that all ratiocination is comprehended in these two operations of the mind, addition and subtraction.” The same doctrine is stated in his “Leviathan,” and illustrated as applicable to all things that can be added together, or taken one out of another. Thus, “writers of politics add together pactions to find men’s duties; and lawyers, laws and facts, to find what is right and wrong in the actions of private men. In sum, in whatever matter there is place for addition and subtraction, there also is place for reason; and where these have no place, there reason has nothing at all to do.” Finally, reason considered as a faculty of the mind, is nothing but reckoning, “that is, adding and subtracting of the consequences of general names agreed upon for marking and signifying of our thoughts: I say, marking them, when we reckon by ourselves, and signifying, when we demonstrate our reckonings to other men.”¹

¹ Elements of Philosophy, Part I., Chapter I., Section 2. Leviathan, Chapter V., page 30.

This was Hobbes’s form of nominalistic doctrine, and he has some good remarks on names, the use of words, and the use and abuse of speech. He explained this branch of knowledge both in the “Elements of Philosophy” and in the “Leviathan” in the former at length, and in the latter briefly. “The general use of speech is to transfer our mental discourse into verbal, or the train of our thoughts into a train of words; and that for two purposes, whereof one is the registering of the consequences of our thoughts; which being apt to slip out of our memory, and put us to a new labour, may again be recalled, by such words as they were marked by. So that the first use of names is to serve for marks or notes of remembrance. Another is, when many use the same words, to signify, by their connection and order, one to another, what they conceive, or think of each matter; and also what they desire, fear, or have any other passion for. And for this use they are called signs. Special uses of speech are these: first to register what by cogitation we find to be the cause of anything, present or past, and what we find things present or past may produce or effect; which in sum, is acquiring of art. Secondly, to show to others that knowledge which we have attained, which is, to counsel and teach one another. Thirdly, to make known to others our wills and purposes, that we may have the mutual help of one another. Fourthly, to please and delight ourselves and others, by playing with our words, for pleasure or ornament, innocently.” To these uses of speech there are four corresponding abuses. When we register our thoughts wrong, by using improper words, and stating as our conception that which we never conceived, and thus deceive ourselves; when we use words in an unusual sense, and thereby deceive others; when we declare by words that to be true which we know to be false; when people use words to grieve one another: “for seeing nature has armed living creatures, some with teeth, some with horns, and some with hands, to grieve an enemy, it is but an abuse of speech to grieve him with the tongue, unless it be one whom we are obliged to govern; and then it is not to grieve, but to correct and to amend.”

He explained the use of different kinds of names, the necessity of definitions, and stated that everything which can enter into an account may be considered a subject for names. He gave four forms or scales of predicaments under the heads of body, quantity, quality, and relation, which are formed with great care. And further, he explained negative words, and then added: “All other names are but insignificant sounds, and those of two sorts; one when they are new, and yet their meaning not explained by definition, whereof there have been abundance coined by schoolmen and puzzled philosophers.”¹

¹ Elements of Philosophy, Part I., Chapter II.; Leviathan, Part I., Chapter IV.; also his treatise Human Nature, Chapter V.

Motion is the prime and fundamental idea in Hobbes’s philosophy. It runs through all his writings, and enters into almost every explanation which he has given of anything. He treated sense and sensation at length as a part of physics in his “Elements of Philosophy,” and in almost all his different works he touches more or less on this subject. His psychology has the merit of being pretty distinct; as sensation and thought both proceed from motion, their explanation is not a difficult matter. Concerning sense, he says: “I have shown that no motion is generated but by a body contagious and moved: whence it is manifest that the immediate cause of sense or perception consists in this, that the first organ of sense is touched or pressed. For when the uttermost part of the organ is pressed, it no sooner yields but the part next within it is pressed also; and, in this manner, the pressure or motion is propagated through all the parts of the organ to the innermost. And thus, also, the pressure of the uttermost part proceeds from the pressure of some remote body, and so continually till we come to that from which, as from its fountain, we derive the phantasm or idea that is made in us by our sense. And this, whatever it be, is what we commonly call the object. Sense, therefore, is some internal motion in the sentient, generated by some internal motion of the parts of the object, and propagated through all the media to the innermost part of the organ.... Moreover, I have shown that all resistance is endeavour opposite to another endeavour, that is to say, reaction...; so that when that endeavour inwards is the last action in the act of sense, then from the reaction, however little the duration of it be, a phantasm or idea has its being; which, by reason that the endeavour is now outwards, does always appear as something placed without the organ.” ... Then we get this definition: “Sense is a phantasm made by the reaction and endeavour outwards in the organ of sense, caused by an endeavour inwards from the object, remaining for some time more or less.” How much importance he attached to motion in the derivation of sensation, ideas, and thought is indicated in the following passages: “Now [that] all mutation or alteration is motion or endeavour (and endeavour also is motion), in the internal parts of the thing that is altered, as has been proved.... Sense, therefore, in the sentient, can be nothing else but motion in some of the internal parts of the sentient, and the parts so moved are parts of the organs of sense.” Again, “the original of life being in the heart, that motion in the sentient, which is propagated to the heart, must necessarily make some alteration or diversion of vital motion, namely, by quickening or slackening, helping or hindering the same. Now, when it helps, it is pleasure; when it hinders, it is pain, trouble, grief, and so on.... Now vital motion is the motion of the blood, perpetually circulating (as has been shown from many infallible signs and marks by Dr. Harvey, the first observer of it) in the veins and arteries. Which motion, when it is hindered by some other motion, made by the action of sensible objects, may be restored again, either by bending or setting straight the parts of the body; which is done when the spirits are carried now into these, now into other nerves, till the pain, as far as is possible, be quite taken away. But if vital motion be helped by motion made by sense, then the parts of the organ will be disposed to guide the spirits in such manner as conduces most to the preservation and augmentation of that motion, by the help of the nerves. And in animal motion this is the very first endeavour, and found even in the embryo; which while it is in the womb, moves its limbs with voluntary motion, for the avoiding of what troubles it, or for the pursuing of what pleases it. And this first endeavour, when it tends towards such things as are known by experience to be pleasant, is called appetite, that is, an approaching; and when it shuns what is troublesome, aversion, or flying from it.”¹ He goes on to associate appetite and will, and shows that the same thing is called both will and appetite. More briefly, he says that all ideas and thought originate from sensation, thus: “The original of them all is that which we call sense, for there is no conception in a man’s mind which has not at first, totally, or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from that original.” Again, originally, all conceptions proceed from the action of the thing itself, whereof it is the conception: now when the action is present, the conception it produces is also called sense; and the thing by whose action the same is produced, is called the object of the sense.² Hobbes stated the conditions of sensation and perception very well. In order to make them clear, he distinguished the subject and object of sense, the former being the perceiving person, and the latter the thing perceived; and it is more correct to say that we see the sun than that we see the light; because light and colour, heat, sound, and other qualities, are not properly objects, but ideas in the mind. He further stated that there must always be a variety and difference among the objects of perception, and discriminated other points.

¹ Elements of Philosophy, Past IV., Chapter XXV., Section 2; Sections 2, 12, 13.

² Leviathan, Part I., Chapter I.; Human Nature, Chapter II., Section 2.

In further explaining his views of mind, he calls imagination “a decaying sense,” by which he means the impressions, images, or ideas of external objects remaining in the mind after the sensations which caused them were past. His exposition of the subject is this:​—“That when a thing lies still, unless somewhat else stir it, it will lie still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that when a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat else stay it, though the reason be the same, namely, that nothing can change itself, is not so easily assented to.” ... Therefore, “when a body is once in motion, it moves, unless something else hinder it, eternally; and whatever hinders it, cannot in an instant, but in time, and by degrees; and as we see in the water, though the wind cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after; so also it happens in that motion which is made in the internal parts of a man, then, when he sees, dreams, and so on. For after the object is removed, or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the thing seen, though more obscure than when we see it. And this is it the Latins call imagination, from the image made in seeing.... But the Greeks call it a fancy, which signifies appearance, and is as proper to one sense as to another. Imagination, therefore, is nothing but decaying sense; and is found in men, and in many other living creatures, as well sleeping as waking.

“The decay of sense in men waking is not the decay of the motion made in sense but an obscuring of it, in such manner as the light of the sun obscures the light of the stars.... For as at a great distance of place, that which we look at appears dim and without distinction of the smaller parts, so also, after great distance of time, our imagination of the past is weak, and we lose, for example, of cities we have seen, many particular streets, and of actions, many particular circumstances. This decaying sense, when we would express the thing itself, I mean fancy itself, we call imagination; but when we would express the decay, and signify that the sense is fading, old, and past, it is called memory.” So that imagination and memory are but one thing with different names.¹

¹ Leviathan, Part I., Chapter II.; see also Human Nature, Chapter III., Sections 1, 7.

Hobbes manifested a fair knowledge of the operation of those principles which subsequent psychologists have termed the laws of association and mental modifications and ideas. He points out and distinguishes various ways in which ideas and thoughts are associated, though he does not use the term association of ideas, but uses the expressions, trains of imaginations, and trains of thoughts. But I can only afford space for a few of his illustrations:—

“When a man thinks on anything, his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently.... All fancies are motions within us, relics of those made in the sense: and those motions that immediately succeed one another in the sense, continue also together after sense; inasmuch as the former coming again to take place and be predominant, the latter follows, by coherence of the matter moved, in such manner as water upon a plain table is drawn which way any one part of it is guided by the finger.” Again, “The cause of the coherence or consequence of one conception to another, is their first coherence at that time when they are produced by sense; as, for example, from St. Andrew the mind runs to St. Peter, because their names are read together; from St. Peter to a stone, for the same cause; from stone to foundation, because we see them together; and for the same cause, from foundation to church, and from church to people, and from people to tumult: and according to this example, the mind may run almost from anything to anything. But as in the sense the conception of cause and effect may succeed one another, so may they after sense in the imagination: and for the most part they do so.” He stated and illustrated other ways in which the train of thoughts is regulated.

Of reminiscence he says: “Beginning with the appetite to recover something lost, proceeding from the present backwards, from thought of the place where we miss it, to the thought of the place whence we came last; and from the thought of that to the thought of a place before, till we have in our mind some place wherein we had the thing we miss: and this is called reminiscence.” Further, “The remembrance of succession of one thing to another, that is, of what was antecedent, and what consequent, and what concomitant, is called an experiment, whether the same be made by us voluntarily, as when a man puts anything into the fire, to see what effect the fire will produce upon it, or not made by us, as when we remember a fair morning after a red evening. To have had many experiments is what we call experience, which is nothing but remembrance of what antecedents have been followed by what consequents.”¹

¹ Leviathan, Part I., Chapter III.; Human Nature, Chapter IV., Sections 2, 5, 6.

On the side of feeling, emotion, and will, Hobbes’s psychology is of less value. His description of the passions, feelings, and emotions, though on some points clear and accurate, is, as a whole, imperfect and lacking in consistency. His theory of the will was this: “In deliberation, the last appetite, as also the last fear, is called will, namely, the last appetite, will to do, or will to omit. It is all one, therefore, to say will and last will. Will, therefore, is the last appetite in deliberating.... Appetite, fear, hope, and the rest of the passions, are not called voluntary, for they proceed not from, but are the will; and the will is not voluntary, for a man can no more say he will will, than he will will will, and so make an infinite repetition of the word will, which is absurd and insignificant. Forasmuch as will to do is appetite, and will to omit fear, the cause of appetite and fear is the cause also of our will.” With Hobbes, will and appetite are the same thing, till deliberation is brought into operation; so that the action of appetite is necessitated, “and, therefore, such a liberty as is free from necessity is not to be found either in the will of men or beasts.” But he admits the relation of will and belief.¹

¹ Human Nature, Chapter XII., Sections 2, 5, 6; Leviathan, Part I., Chapter VI. Elements of Philosophy, Part IV., Chapter XXV., Section 13.

Hobbes’s politics need not detain us long, as his political theory is simple and distinct. He maintained that by nature all men were nearly equal: that all society and government originated, not in social feelings, or any elements of sympathy for each other, but in their mutual fear of one another; and that by nature every man was his own judge, and had a right to all things, but which in effect was no right at all; because in the state of nature mankind were continually at war and killing one another: then every man was an enemy to every other man, each depending on his own strength; and as there was no security, but everything uncertain, so there was no place for industry, no culture of the earth, no navigation or means of communication, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, and no society; and what was worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death prevailed; and the life of man was solitary and poor, brutish and short.¹

¹ De Corpore Politico, Part I., Chapter I., Sections 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12; Leviathan, Part I., Chapter XIII.; also his treatise, Elements of Philosophy, or a True Citizen, Chapter I., Sections 2, 3, 10, 11, 12. He indeed says, “It may perhaps be thought there never was such a time, or condition of war as this; and I believe it was never generally so over all the world: but there are many places where they live so now in that brutish manner which I have described.”​—Leviathan.

Such being the state of mankind originally, how to get out of it was the great problem. It seems reason at last dictated to every man that it was for his own good to seek after peace, as far as there was any hope of attaining it,¹ then to strengthen himself as much as he can for his own defence against those who would not come to terms of peace. And it follows from this law of reason or nature, that every man by common consent should divest himself of the right to all things which he has by nature, and to be content with a limited liberty.² Hobbes proceeded to describe the circumstances and the proceedings relating to that once famous “Contract Theory of Society,” when at some far-off and unknown period in the history of the race, a multitude of men assembled with the intention of uniting themselves, and thus established peace and regular government.³ When men met to form regular governments for the first time, then as to what they sanctioned, “it is to be understood that each man has consented to it, and not the majority only. Secondly, though thus assembled with intention to unite themselves, they are yet in that estate in which every man has right to everything, and consequently, as has been said, Chapter I., Section 10, in an estate of enjoying nothing. And, therefore, meum and tuum has no place amongst them. The first thing, therefore, they are to do, is expressly every man to consent to something, by which they may come near to their ends, which can be nothing else imaginable but this, that they allow the wills of the majority of their whole number, or the wills of the majority of some certain number of men by them determined and named; or lastly, the will of some one man, to involve and be taken for the wills of every man. And this done, they are united, and a body politic. And if the majority of their whole number be supposed to involve the wills of all the particulars, then they are said to be a democracy, that is, a government in which the whole number, or so many of them as please, being assembled together, are the sovereign, and every particular man a subject. If the majority of a certain number of men, named or distinguished from the rest, be supposed to involve the wills of every one of the particulars, then are they said to be an oligarchy or aristocracy, which two words signify the same thing, together with the diverse passions of those that use them.... Lastly, if their consent be such, that the will of one man, whom they name, shall stand for the wills of them all, then is their government or union called a monarchy, and that one man a sovereign, and all the rest subjects.

¹ “As long as this natural right of every man to everything endures, there can be no security to any man, however strong or wise he may be, of living out the time which nature commonly allows men to live. And consequently, it is a general rule of reason that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all means to defend himself.”​—Leviathan, Part I., Chapter XIV.

² “From this fundamental law of nature, by which men are commanded to endeavour peace, is derived this second law: that a man be willing, when others are so, as far forth, as for peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things, and be content with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself.”​—Ibid., also De Corpore Politico, Part I., Chapter II., Sections 1, 2, 3.

³ Leviathan, Part I., Chapter XIV.

“And these several unions, governments, and subjection of man’s will, may be understood to be made absolutely for all future time, or for a limited time only. But as we speak here of a body politic, instituted for the perpetual benefit and defence of them that make it, which, therefore, men desire should last for ever, I will only treat of this class.”¹

¹ De Corpore Politico, Part II., Chapter I., Sections 2, 3, 4.

Thus having found the state, he proceeded to develop his political philosophy. As a matter of logical sequence it fell to the state to determine the distinctions of right and wrong, of virtue and vice, of good and bad; and therefore, whatever the supreme power of the state sanctioned and commanded was good, and the opposite bad. Religion and superstition are both the same, in so far as they embody the fear of invisible powers, whether imaginary or believed on tradition; and whichever of these the state recognised, is religion, the others superstition. Anyone who places his private religious convictions in opposition to the faith sanctioned by the state, thereby commits a revolutionary act which tended to dissolve society; and, therefore, no man has any just pretence for making religion a cause of disobedience to the laws of the commonwealth. For God speaks through the supreme powers on earth, “by sovereign kings, or such as have sovereign authority as well as they.” But, though the rights of sovereignty should be as absolute as it is possible to make them, yet the sovereign has duties, namely, to procure the safety of the people, to which he is obliged by the law of nature, and to render an account of this to God, the author of that law, and to none but him. And for the same reason the sovereign authority is bound to establish that religion which in their conscience they believe to be best, inasmuch as eternal good is better than temporal; and unless they do this, it cannot really be said that they have done their utmost for their people.¹

¹ De Corpore Politico, Part II., Chapters VI., VII., IX.; Leviathan, Part II., Chapters XVIII., XIX., XX., XXX. This was the current view of the king’s power, which we find so emphatically stated and reiterated in the Scots Acts of Parliament from the Restoration to the Revolution.

But he is specially emphatic in placing the civil power above the ecclesiastical. He quoted an enormous quantity of Scripture, and treated at great length on its meaning and interpretation; and maintained throughout that the king himself was the supreme pastor of his people, and therefore he had a right to appoint all other pastors within his kingdom. The King also in virtue of his office, might preach and baptise if he pleased, and read lectures on science too, in any university within his kingdom. In short, Christian sovereigns have all manner of power over their subjects which can be given to man for the regulation of men’s external actions, both in policy and religion; and may make whatever laws they should think fittest for the government of their own subjects, as they are the commonwealth and the church, and both state and church being the same men.¹

¹ Leviathan, Part IV., Chapter XLII.

Hobbes has some good remarks on law, and on moral philosophy too, and clearly distinguished moral law and positive law. But owing to the conception and the necessities of his political views and opinions, he took a short cut, and made the positive or civil law the standard and measure of right and wrong: and consequently, whatever the supreme sovereign forbade was wrong, and whatever it commanded was right.¹ This feature of his ethical theory, as well as the heterodoxy of many of his religious and theological opinions, called forth a host of opponents.

¹ De Corpore Politico, Part II., Chapter X.

There is no evidence in Hobbes’s writings that he had any conception of the historical growth of society, or the gradual development of a nation. The complex organisation of human society can only be understood by a careful examination and study of the long processes of development. Man as we now find him is the product of many forces, which have operated for a long series of ages, and gradually modified his character. But Hobbes failed to grasp or even to recognise this, and hence we have his imaginary state of nature​—continual war, and the equally imaginary social contract theory.

Some of Milton’s prose writings touched on political principles, and also on some important moral points, as in his treatise on divorce. Although he is not usually regarded as a philosopher, nevertheless he was a thinker of exceptional power, a masterly writer, vehement and impassioned, often abusive, and not always fair to his opponents. His pamphlets and controversial writings during the period of the great Rebellion and the Commonwealth form a study of themselves; and altogether he was one of the great men of the Commonwealth.

Milton threw the whole force of his mind into the anti-episcopal pamphlets, and they are extremely vehement and bold. He entered deeply and warmly into the Church questions which were then so fiercely contested; and in some of his pamphlets he wrote decidedly in favour of the democratic and presbyterian form of polity. In his pamphlet entitled, “Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England, and the causes that hitherto have hindered it,” he discussed both the question of fact and of reason involved in the subject, as why the English Church had not been thoroughly reformed. He made some scathing charges against the bishops, and concludes his work with a prayer, which for fire and force is unmatched in English literature.

His treatise entitled, “The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,” was published a fortnight after the King’s execution, and a week after the Republic was proclaimed. The chief aim of the treatise was to argue for the democratic principle, on which he insisted strongly. Touching the right of a nation to depose a king who had become a tyrant, Milton followed Buchanan’s line of argument. He assumed throughout that Charles I. was unquestionably a tyrant, and explicitly avowed that the people were justified in bringing the King, and such as he, to account and punishment. In short, he justified Cromwell and his colleagues in bringing the King to trial and execution. He continued a warm and powerful defender of the Commonwealth and its leaders.

I will quote a single specimen of Milton’s power as a defender of the Commonwealth, from his attack on Salmasius’s “Defence of Charles I.” Salmasius himself was a voluminous writer and commentator, a very learned man, with a European reputation; but he had oftener than once changed some of his opinions, and now appeared as the defender of the late King. So it fell to Milton to reply to this learned man’s book; and the following quotation is a specimen of how he executed his task:​—“Who are you that bark at us? You, a learned man, who seem rather to have been turning over lexicons and glossaries and collections of extracts all your life, than to have read good authors with judgment and profit; whence your chatter is of nothing but codices, various readings, disarrangements and corruptions of text, while you show that you have not imbibed even the smallest drop of more real learning? You a wise man, who are constantly quarrelling about the merest minutiæ, and carrying on beggarly wars, and making railing attacks, now on astronomers, now on medical men, of good credit in their respective sciences, though yourself without skill or accomplishment in either; who, if anyone should try to snatch from you the petty glory of a little word, or a little letter, restored by you in some copy, would interdict him, if you could, from fire and water? And yet you are angry, and yet you show your teeth, because people call you a grammarian. In some trifling book of yours, you openly call Hammond, the beloved and most favoured of the late King’s chaplains, a rascal, merely because he had called you a grammarian; and you would be ready, I believe, to say the same of the King himself, and to retract this whole defence of him, if you heard that he had approved of his chaplain’s criticism of you. Take notice then how I, one of those English, whom you dare to describe as ‘fanatical, unlearned, obscure, blackguardly,’ do here on my private account (for that the English nation itself should publicly think anything at all about a weevil like you would be a degradation), do here, I say, on my private account, despise you and make a laughing-stock of you, declaring that, turn you upside down, downside up, round about, or anyhow, you are still nothing but a Grammarian; ay, and that, as if you had made a more foolish promise to some god than even Midas did, whatever you touch, except when you commit solecisms, is still only grammar. Whoever, then, of these ‘dregs of the common people,’ that you so denounce (for those truly noble men among us, whose wisdom, virtue, and nobility are proved by their illustrious acts, I will not so dishonour as to think of comparing you to them or them to you), whoever, I say, of these dregs of the common people, has only persuaded himself to this principle, that he was not born for kings, but for God and his country, is a far more learned, far wiser, far better, man than you are, and deserves to be esteemed of far greater worth to all time. For he is learned without letters; you have letters but no learning, who know so many languages, turn over so many volumes, write so many yourself, and are but a sheep after all.”¹

¹ Masson’s Life of Milton, Volume IV., pages 264‒265.

As an advocate of freedom, Milton has great merit, though he is not always consistent. His “Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing,” was a scathing and powerful attack on the existing laws of censorship of the press and licensing of books. It is comparatively short, but it has much historic interest, though the doctrine which he so ably pleaded for is now fully admitted in Britain.

James Harrington was the author of a political romance, entitled “The Commonwealth of Oceana,” which was published in 1656, and attracted some attention. In 1658 he issued another treatise, called “The Prerogative of Popular Government,” reasserting his views in a more direct style. He drew up a constitution for a commonwealth, the legislative part consisting of two houses, and both to be elected by the people. One of the houses should have the power of proposing and debating laws; while the other, which was to be the largest body, should have the power of passing or rejecting the laws thus proposed by the smaller house. Further, it was proposed that a third of the members of both houses should retire every year, not to be re-eligible for a considerable time, and their places filled by newly-elected members: thus the whole membership of both houses would be entirely renewed every third year.

Richard Cumberland, bishop of Peterborough, was an ethical writer of historical note, and an opponent of the moral doctrines of Hobbes. His views were expressed in a work entitled “De Legibus Naturæ Disquisitio Philosophica,” etc., etc., which appeared in 1672, and an English translation of it was published in 1727. His chief aim was to show that there are moral laws made known by nature, but not in the way enunciated by Hobbes. He began with an exposition of the nature of man and of things, and whence proceeded to derive the special ethical duties. The fundamental law of morality was enunciated thus:​—“The greatest benevolence of every rational agent towards all, forms the happiest state of each and of all the benevolent, as far as in their power; and it is essentially requisite to the happiness which they can attain; and, therefore, the common good is the supreme law.”

He insisted that the mind has an original regulative faculty, and earnestly contended that the social feelings and the disinterested affections are original elements of man’s nature. The human mind is endowed with certain innate capacities, and has the power of apprehending first principles, and whence deducting conclusions. True propositions agree with the nature of things, and the dictates of practical reason are propositions which point out the ethical end, and the means by which it should be attained.

In the last half of the seventeenth century there arose in England a class of writers sometimes called Platonists, Cambridge men, or English Cartesians, but it should be observed that these writers held diverse views on some important points, though they generally agreed in assailing the psychology and the ethics of Hobbes. The most distinguished amongst them all was the learned Ralph Cudworth.¹ In his great work, “The Intellectual System of the Universe,” which he did not live to complete, he assumed a plastic principle in nature, and by this explained organic development. He supposed that this power, or unconscious force, possessed a general and a special activity which produced the results of design. He contended that the doctrine of efficient causes does not exclude the possibility of final causes. He attacked the position of the unlimited power of God as taught by Descartes, on the ground that it would annul logical and geometrical reasoning, and obliterate moral distinctions. He assailed Hobbes’s nominalism, and his limitation of the powers of the human mind to sense and fancy, and maintained that there was a higher faculty of reason. Cudworth exhibited an enormous amount of learning and considerable reasoning power. He gave many quotations from ancient writers, and those who have the courage and perseverance to read his “Intellectual System of the Universe,” will find that it is a curious and valuable work, and a great monument of erudition.²

¹ Born 1617, died 1688.

² The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 1678; compare Dr. Tulloch’s Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century, Volume II.

His “Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality,” and also one on “Free-will,” are unfinished fragments of long discussions, originally designed to complete his Intellectual System, and not published till long after his death. He argued for the independence of moral distinctions, and maintained that they were discovered directly by human reason.

Henry More was the author of several theological and ethical works of an essentially Platonic and transcendental cast, interwoven with his own notions and dreams. The leading principle of his ethics was that moral goodness is simple and absolute, and that reason is the judge of its nature and truth; but its distinctive beauty is felt by a special capacity, a something like the moral sense of later writers. All moral goodness may be called intellectual and divine. By the aid of reason we are enabled to state the principles of ethics in propositions, and hence derive the special maxims and rules.

An Englishman who holds a distinguished place in the history of modern philosophy, and especially in psychology, now claims attention, namely, John Locke. In political theory he was the chief expounder of the principles of the Revolution of 1688; and indeed his political writings became the source whence the Whig politicians drew their arguments for several generations. But the “Social Contract Theory,” of which he was an able exponent, is now entirely obsolete.

In his “Essay concerning Human Understanding,” the fundamental idea is that all our knowledge is derived from experience. The work was mainly directed to the exposition of two questions, namely, first to ascertain the origin of human knowledge, and then to determine the limits and the degrees of objective truth. His method was that of observation, the object of investigation being his own mind, “looking into it and seeing how it wrought.” He could find no innate ideas or principles in the mind. The primary source of all our knowledge is sensation or external perception, and reflection or internal perception; the former embraced the apprehension of external objects through the senses, while the latter comprised the apprehension of mental objects by internal or self-reflection, a subjective operation of thought. The different objects of external perception are variously related to objective reality. Thus extension, figure, motion, and other qualities of bodies, belong to the external objects themselves; while colour, sound, and sensible qualities are only in ourselves, and not properly in the objects perceived, being signs not copies of changes which take place in external things. In the reception of simple ideas the mind is merely passive, it cannot refuse to have them, or blot them out, any more than a mirror can refuse to receive, alter, or obliterate the images reflected on it; all that man can do is to unite them together, classify them or separate them. By internal reflection we know the action of our thinking and willing faculties; while through sensation and reflection together we obtain the feelings of pleasure and pain, the ideas of power, unity, existence, and others, but we have no clear idea of substance.

The word idea has a wide meaning in Locke’s Essay, as he uses it to denote whatever we apprehend, whether it be a mental modification of an external object, or a subjective thought, the perception or consciousness of feelings and passions; as when I form a mental picture or image of anything, or am conscious of a pleasant sound​—when I see the moon or any external object, and when I remember any of these, again when I understand the meaning of right, of property, or any other abstract term​—in all such cases, according to Locke, I am having ideas. Thus he employed the term idea in its most unrestricted universality. The theory of knowledge requires some definite word or words to indicate the dependence of what is known on the power of knowing. Descartes, Locke, and others, used the word idea in this relation, sometimes with perception, and at a later date, with impression. At present some use the term phenomenon to express those aspects of existence of which we are conscious, rather than the words, ideas, perceptions, or impressions; others, again, use the word consciousness with a wide meaning, to express mental facts, modes, or states, in their relation to the knowing mind. But all terms thus used touch the prime assumption of philosophy, namely, that the universe and all things which exist can become known to us only through our mental and self-conscious experience; and thus arises the problem of the relation of the human mind to the external world.

Now as already indicated in this chapter, there is a real difficulty involved in understanding and stating the exact relation between mind and matter; and the nature of the relation of the object known and the knowing mind is still unknown. All that we know is that knowledge consists in a certain relation of the object known to the knowing subject. Of mind in itself or matter in itself we know nothing; simply because we know only the qualities of our own faculties of knowledge, as relations to their objects, and we only know the qualities of their objects as relations to our minds: thus all qualities both of mind and of matter are only known to us as relations, we know nothing in itself.¹

¹ Hamilton’s Reid, Note N., page 965.

In Locke’s Essay the word idea is used to recall the truth that external things become known to us through our presentative and representative conscious experience; but on the other side of his theory, ideas also represent qualities which exist external to our conscious mind; thus they are, as it were, “effects in us,” produced by powers that are independent of us: that is, he assumed that the mind is merely passive in the reception of simple ideas.

Locke devoted the First Book of his Essay to the refutation in detail of the doctrine of innate ideas. The argument that certain speculative and practical principles are universally accepted as true, he disputed, by showing that there was a mass of evidence against this alleged agreement, and that though it were otherwise, innate ideas would not be proved, as it might be shown that such agreement had arisen in other ways. He had little difficulty in proving that the principles of identity and of contradiction are unknown to children, and to all who are not specially educated: and, therefore, it could not be maintained that truths are inherent in the mind of which it has no consciousness and no knowledge. To say that an idea is imprinted on the mind, and yet at the same time to admit that the mind is ignorant of it, and never took notice of it, is to make this impression nothing. But it is true that the capacity to know is innate, though all actual knowledge is and must be acquired. And, therefore, those who adopt the theory of innate ideas should distinguish them from other ideas which are not innate; and thus they must hold that innate knowledge is from the first conscious knowledge, for to be in the understanding means to be understood. If it be asserted, that these principles are recognised and admitted by all men when they come to exercise their reason, this is not true or conclusive, whether in the sense that we know them deductively by the use of reason, or in the sense that we think them when we arrive at the use of reason, for we know many things before them. That the bitter is not sweet, that a rod and a cherry are not the same thing, are known by a child long before he understands and assents to the universal proposition that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be at the same moment. Practical principles stand upon the same footing as speculative ones, none of them being innate; and, moreover, they are not so clear or so universally received as the principle just indicated. If principles are innate, the ideas involved in them must also be innate. Now the most general principles contain the most abstract ideas, which are the furthest from the thoughts of children, and are unintelligible to them, and can only be clearly formed after they have attained some degree of attention and reflection. The ideas of identity of difference, possibility and impossibility, and others of a similar character, are not in the child’s consciousness at birth; and they are farthest removed in the order of development from the sensations of hunger and thirst, heat and cold, pleasure and pain, which in reality are the earliest conscious experiences of a child.

Locke strongly maintained that the idea of God is not innate. And he attempted to prove that some tribes in the lowest stages of civilisation had no idea of God at all. He also pointed out the fact that the ideas and conceptions which the various tribes and nations of mankind have of God differed greatly.

Having thus cleared the ground, Locke, in his Second Book, proceeded to show whence the understanding receives its ideas. He asks, “Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? Whence has it 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. Our observation employed either about external or sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understanding with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from which all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring.”¹ Thus experience is twofold, external and internal, sensation and reflection, according as its object is the outer world of things, or the internal operations of our own minds. The senses in contact with external objects supply the mind with the elements and materials of ideas; and thus we attain the ideas of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, and all those called sensible qualities. Then when the mind attends and thinks on its own internal operations, the understanding thence attains another set of ideas: such as perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different operations of our minds of which we are conscious and observe within ourselves.

¹ Book II., Chapter I., Section 2.

When the first impression is made on his senses, man begins to have ideas. But before the first sensible impression, the mind no more thinks than it does afterwards in a deep and dreamless sleep. That the mind always thinks is as groundless an assertion as that all bodies are continually in motion.

Some of our ideas are simple, others are complex; and of the former class, some come into the mind by one sense only, some by more senses than one, others through reflection, while some come both by the senses and reflection. The simple ideas received by touch are heat, cold, solidity, roughness, hardness, smoothness, and many others; by the sense of sight, the ideas of light and colours; while the ideas which we receive by more than one sense, by sight and touch, are those of space, figure, rest, and motion. The simple ideas of reflection which the mind acquires when it becomes conscious and observes its own operations, are mainly two, namely, perception or thinking, and volition or willing. But the other simple ideas acquired through all the channels of the senses and reflection, are those of pleasure and pain, power, existence, unity, and succession.

But most of the ideas of sensation are no more like anything existing externally to ourselves, than words are like the ideas for which they stand, and which they serve to recall to the mind. The inseparable qualities of bodies themselves are those of bulk, figure, number, position, motion and rest; and these he called the primary qualities of body. Now our ideas of these primary qualities of bodies are copies of these qualities; that is, they represent the thing mentally as it is in itself. But the secondary qualities of bodies affect us in a different way, they operate on the senses, and cause in us the sensations of colours, sounds, smells, and the like, which are not in the bodies themselves, but in our own minds. He further names a third class of qualities: these are the powers of some bodies, which, owing to the constitution of their primary qualities, make such changes in the bulk, figure, and motion of other bodies as cause them to operate upon our senses differently from what they did before; among these he instances the power of the sun to make wax white, and of fire to melt lead.¹

¹ Book II., Chapters I.‒VIII.

Under the head of simple ideas acquired by reflection, he minutely investigated the faculties of perception, retention, discerning, compounding, abstracting, and other operations of the mind. The faculty of perception distinguished man from animal and plant. The faculty of memory is the power of preserving ideas by continued contemplation, or by reviving them after their temporary absence from the mind, which is too limited to be conscious at the same time of many ideas. Memory is common to man and the lower animals. The power of abstraction is peculiar to man. By this generalising faculty the ideas of single objects are separated from all accidental qualities, and raised to the rank of universal conceptions of the genera to which they belong.

The simple ideas being the elements of the complex ones, he reduced complex ideas to three classes, namely, modes, substances, and relations. Modes are complex ideas, but not involving existence by themselves, being merely modifications of simple ideas when their elements are similar, and mixed modes or modifications when their elements are dissimilar. Ideas of substances are those combinations of simple ideas employed to represent things existing by themselves. The ideas of relation arise from the comparison of one idea with another. To the purely modal ideas belong the mental modifications of space, time, thought, power, and other abstract conceptions. Our own experience and observation of the constant change of ideas in the mind, partly depending on the impressions of external objects, and partly on our own choice, soon leads the understanding to the conclusion that the same changes as have already been observed will continue to take place in the same objects through the same causes; accordingly, the understanding conceives in one thing or object a liability to change its form, and in another, the possibility of being the agent of that change, and thus the mind attains the idea of a power. Thus the clearest idea of power is derived from observing the activities of our own minds, as internal experience teaches us that by a mere volition we can set in motion parts of the body which were before at rest. If a substance possessing a power manifest it by an action, it is called a cause; and that which it brings to pass is called its effect. A cause is that through which something else begins to be; an effect is that which depends for its existence on something besides itself. The idea of substance itself contains nothing but the supposition of an unknown something serving as a support for qualities; we have no clear idea of it. Nor is our idea of material substance more distinct than our idea of spiritual substance. There is no reason for assuming that a spiritual substance cannot exist; we have no more reason to doubt or deny the existence of spirits, than we have to deny the existence of bodies. Locke, in his treatment of the term substance​—the term which plays so great a part in the systems of Descartes and Spinoza​—plainly admitted his impotence. He says, “If anyone will examine himself concerning his notion of pure substance in general, he will find he has no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not what support of such qualities, which are capable of producing simple ideas in us; which qualities are commonly called accidents. If anyone should be asked, what is the subject wherein colour or weight inheres, he would have nothing to say, but the solid, extended parts; and if he were demanded, what is it that solidity and extension adheres in,” he would be in much the same plight as the Indian was who supported the world on the broad-backed tortoise. “And thus here, as in all other cases where we use words without having clear and distinct ideas, we talk like children.... The idea then we have, to which we give the general name substance, being nothing but the supposed, but unknown support of those qualities we find existing, which we imagine cannot subsist without something to support them, we call that support, substantia, which means in plain English, standing under, or upholding.” But again, in comparing our ideas of spirit and of body, he says, “In short, the idea we have of spirit, compared with the idea we have of body, stands thus: the substance of spirit is unknown to us; and so is the substance of body equally unknown to us.”¹ An idea of substance in itself, that is, apart from any qualities in relation to our minds, is utterly barren; as we only conceive it as inconceivable​—as nothing at all.

¹ Chapter XXIII., Section 2, Section 30.

He treated at length of relations, including that of cause and effect, of identity and diversity, of clear and distinct, obscure and confused ideas, of adequate and inadequate ideas, of real and fanatical ideas, of true and false ideas. Strictly speaking, truth and falsehood belong only to propositions; but ideas are sometimes termed true or false, though when so styled, there is some tacit proposition assumed, as ideas are but bare perceptions in our own minds, and cannot in themselves be said to be true or false. Any idea which we have in our minds, whether it accords or not with the existence of things, or with any ideas in the minds of other men, cannot properly for this alone be called false. But an idea is false when formed of inconsistent qualities or elements, or when it is judged to contain in it the real essence of any existing body, whereas it only contains a few of these; or again, when the mind judges its own idea to be the same as it is in other men’s minds, signified by the same word, when in fact it is not the same. He closed the Second Book with a short and interesting chapter on the “Association of Ideas.” He was among the first to use this expression which is now so familiar to all students of psychology.

In the Third Book, Locke treated on language at length as the medium of stating and expressing our ideas and thoughts. Words are signs and marks which are necessary for communication​—general terms and names of our ideas, considered as aids to the acquisition of knowledge, and for recording and communicating our thoughts. This part of the work is valuable, and contains some of Locke’s best thoughts. He sums up his view of general terms in the following sentence:​—“All the great business of genera and species, and their essences, amounts to no more but this, that men, making abstract ideas, and settling them in their minds, with names annexed to them, do thereby enable themselves to consider things, and to discourse of them, as it were in bundles, for the easier and readier improvement and communication of their knowledge; which would advance but slowly were their words and thoughts confined only to particulars.”¹

¹ Chapter III., Section 30.

The Fourth Book dealt with knowledge and opinion, and extended to twenty-one chapters, in which many important and interesting matters are handled with great candour and ability. Such as the degrees, the limits, and the reality of our knowledge, of truth, universal propositions, maxims, the existence of God; the improvement of our knowledge, probability, and the degrees of assent; reason, faith and reason, and the causes of error, were all handled.

According to Locke, knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas; this agreement being fourfold, namely, identity or diversity, relation, co-existence or necessary connection, and real existence. He explained these kinds of knowledge and relations of ideas at length, and proceeded to show that we know our own existence, and the existence of God. His reasoning and arguments to prove the existence of God are founded on the principle of mediate inference, the only method which his system of the mind permitted; but on this ground he argues well and wisely.

Locke discussed the provinces of faith and reason, and though faith in divine revelation transcends rational knowledge, nevertheless nothing can be regarded as a revelation which directly contradicts well ascertained and distinct rational knowledge.¹

¹ Chapter XVIII.

In the discussion of the limits of human knowledge, though he made many true and sagacious statements, yet it was here, perhaps, that his main inconsistency culminated. Notwithstanding his doctrine that we have only an obscure and relative idea of substance, he adopted and expounded the distinction between the primary and the secondary qualities of bodies, describing the primary qualities as those which are inseparable from the conception of body. The primary qualities are really in bodies, whether our senses perceive them or not, and when we do perceive primary qualities, our ideas of them are resemblances of qualities really existing in these bodies. His own words are “that the ideas of primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them, and their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves.” While, on the other hand, “the ideas produced in us by these secondary qualities have no resemblance of them at all. There is nothing like our ideas existing in the bodies themselves.” Thus it seems we know primary qualities, not simply as manifested to us, but as they exist in themselves; thus too the primary qualities of bodies must be independent of the human mind. Hence when he came to treat of the limits of knowledge, no necessary connection between the primary and the secondary qualities could be discovered; because the ideas obtained through the primary qualities of bodies were entirely different from the ideas obtained through the secondary qualities, there was no common root among these ideas for comparison, and consequently no knowledge. There was no science of bodies, or definite physics: “because we want perfect and adequate ideas of those very bodies which are nearest to us, and most under our command. Those which we have ranked into classes under names, and we think ourselves best acquainted with, we have but very imperfect and incomplete ideas of.... Adequate ideas, I suspect, we have not of any body.”¹ Here the door was opened for the scepticism which Hume deduced from the principles of Locke’s Essay. In treating on the limits of our knowledge, Locke says:​—“He that knows anything, knows this in the first place, that he need not seek long for instances of his ignorance. The meanest and most obvious things that come in our way have dark sides, that the quickest sight cannot penetrate into. The clearest and most enlarged understandings of thinking men find themselves puzzled, and at a loss, in every particle of matter. We shall the less wonder to find it so when we consider the causes of our ignorance, which, I suppose, will be found to be chiefly these three:​—1. Want of ideas; 2. Want of discoverable connection between the ideas we have; 3. Want of tracing and examining our ideas.”

¹ Book II., Chapter VIII.; Book IV., Chapter III.

I have not space to speak of Locke’s other writings, and restrict myself to a few words on his ethical doctrines. He maintained that morality is solely based on the Will of God, and that what is most conducive to the public welfare is to be regarded as the expression of the Divine Will. Each man is required by the Divine Law to do all the good and prevent all the evil that he can; and good and evil being resolved into pleasure and pain, the ultimate test of moral conduct is its tendency to promote the pleasures and to avert the pains of mankind. Book I., Chapter III., Section 6; Book II., Chapter XXVIII.

Locke also maintained that morality is a science which can be demonstrated as clearly as mathematics. Book IV., Chapter III., Section 18; Chapter IV., Section 7; Chapter XII., Section 8.

Touching the will, he held that though a man is free to act, the will itself is always determined by motives; this theory is usually called determinism. Book II., Chapter XXI.

Although we have now a more scientific psychology than was possible in Locke’s day, nevertheless, his “Essay concerning Human Understanding” is a great monument of his genius, and one of the most interesting works in this department of literature. Its merit consists in its method, its general scope, its vast variety of topics, and the spirit of candour which pervades it. It has had a wide and remarkable influence on subsequent speculation, and on psychology, though at first it met with opposition in various quarters.

At any given time, the causes favourable to the success of a novel line of thought are various and complicated, and without at all pretending to exhaust them, I may indicate some of the conditions which conduced to the acceptance of Locke’s philosophy. A well-marked though slow transformation of thought had been proceeding in Europe for several centuries prior to Locke, which embraced in its sweep with more or less distinctness physical science, religion, ethics, and politics, while its social effects were manifested partly in the long political struggles of the different nations among themselves, and especially in the civil wars and internal conflicts of each nation within itself. This vast movement had a general tendency throughout toward greater freedom of thought, and religious and political liberty; but these results were more keenly and earnestly fought for, and sooner obtained in some of the nations than in others; in Britain the struggle for political and religious freedom was very severe but not prolonged. Hence Locke’s philosophy being in accord with the general movement of the period, and more directly in unison with the intellectual and social tendencies of England, as manifested in the Revolution of 1688, it became a great power in history.¹

¹ Soon after the publication of Locke’s Essay, opponents and critics, as well as defenders of it appeared, and Locke himself entered the field to defend some of his views, his controversy with Stillingfleet is well-known; indeed, many attacks were made upon his philosophy, but it is unnecessary to particularise them here.

There is a correlation between the creeds of a community and its political and social organisation. The belief in the divine right and the absolute power of a king, or a caste, the prevalence of certain moral views touching the nature of marriage, or the highest ends of national life, are often necessary for the continuance of a certain order of society. When the belief is modified, the order shakes and disappears, and the ties which hold a community together then assume a somewhat different form. Anything which involves an attack upon the theories implied in the existing social order, may modify the principles or notions upon which power rests. As a struggle between two different forms of government compels each to consider its own constitution, this may issue in strengthening or in weakening the chief features of their respective beliefs. In short, anything which really stirs the social organism, afford a chance for the progress of fresh seeds of thought and belief.¹

¹ It is mainly by the thorough investigation of the subjects indicated above, in the two preceding paragraphs, and other cognate matters, ♦and the proper use of the sources of facts thus obtained, that philosophers can hope that at some future day there will be a science of sociology. “Then we shall unravel the laws of the growth of the social organism, and determine the conditions of its health or disease. Then, and not till then, will it be possible to present political science as a coherent body of doctrines, deduced from certain axioms of universal validity, but leading to different conclusions, according to the varying conditions of human society. We shall be able to say what form of government is most favourable to the happiness of a nation at any given period of its development.... But we are still so far from possessing anything like a science of politics, that most of the current maxims involve conceptions which could hardly find place in a scientific system. Fragments of the old theories by which men endeavoured to explain the origin of government, or to show how it might be best administered, still perplex our discussions, and hinder the attempt to lay a sound foundation of theory.

“The difficulty of discovering anything approaching to an historical development of political theory is the greater, inasmuch as theories have followed, more than they have guided, events. Happy is the nation which has no political philosophy, for such philosophy is generally the offspring of a recent, or the symptom of an approaching revolution. During the quieter hours of the eighteenth century, Englishmen rather played with political theories than seriously discussed them. The interest in politics was chiefly personal. References to general principles are introduced in rhetorical flourishes, but do not form the basis of serious argument. In the mass of pamphlets and speeches which fill our library shelves, it is rare to find even the show of political philosophy. The Tory argument is that De Foe has been put in the pillory; the Whig argument is that the French wear wooden shoes. Walpole’s friends rail at the Pope and the Pretender; and Bolingbroke’s friends abuse the excise and the Hanoverian subsidies.”​—Stephen’s History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, Volume II., pages 130‒131.

Before the close of the seventeenth century, the discoveries in physical science, wider geographical knowledge than formerly, and many other influences, had enlarged men’s conceptions of the universe. This was modifying religious ideas, while a marked tendency towards rationalism was manifesting itself in the current theology, as well as in philosophy. The movement in England appeared in various forms. Discussions and disputes touching the immortality of the soul began in the seventeenth century, increased amazingly after the Revolution, and were continued through the greater part of the eighteenth century. Locke had stated that matter might be endowed with the power of thinking. The opponents of Christianity maintained that the future existence of the soul was impossible, and many writers engaged in the discussion of this subject.

English Deism was in some degree effected by the philosophy of Locke. But the deistic creed was not essentially strong, as it was not founded on the deepest convictions, or associated with the most powerful emotions of the human breast, while its leaders lacked the glowing sympathetic feeling, and the warm aspiration, the intense earnestness, and the simple note of sincerity, which characterise the genuine apostles of mankind. The conception of the Supreme Being which the Deists presented, could not excite fervour in the heart of worshippers; yet, though Deism soon decayed and died, rationalism and scepticism have continued to spread.

Among the most eminent of the Deists who assailed the doctrines of Christianity, were John Toland, Matthew Tindal, and Anthony Collins; while on the other side may be mentioned, Samuel Clark, Bishop Berkeley, and Dr. Butler, and many other less known men. But the grounds and the methods of the attack and the defence of Christianity have undergone a transformation since the middle of the eighteenth century.

Toland published in 1696, “Christianity not Mysterious.” The aim of this work was to show that there is nothing in the New Testament contrary to reason, or above it, and, therefore, no Christian doctrine can properly be called a mystery. Adopting Locke’s definition of knowledge, he explained what was within man’s reach of knowing; and maintained that statements which contradicted reason cannot be admitted, and if above reason they cannot be understood. Reason was our only safe guide; and Christianity itself does not claim to be mysterious. Many of his explanations, however, were crude and unsatisfactory.¹

¹ Toland is the author of many pamphlets and unfinished fragments, political, religious, and on other subjects. A full account of his writings was given in Leland’s View of the Principal Deistical Writers, 1754‒56; compare Skelton’s Deism Revealed, 2 volumes, 1749; A. F. Farrar’s Critical History of Free Thought.

Anthony Collins was a prominent representative of Deism, and is the author of several treatises, which were famous in their day. His “Discourse on Free Thinking” appeared in 1713, and in it he argued that all sound belief must be based on free inquiry, and seemed anxious to show that the adoption of this tenet would not necessitate the relinquishment of a belief in the supernatural. In 1724 he published his work entitled, “A Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion,” containing a plausible attack on Christianity. But the most important of his works is the “Inquiry concerning Human Liberty and Necessity,” and he gives the following account of its scope:​—“1. Though I deny not liberty in a certain meaning of that word, yet I contend for liberty, as it signifies a power in man to do as he wills or pleases. 2. When I affirm necessity, I contend only for moral necessity, meaning thereby that man, who is an intelligent and sensible being, is determined by his reason and senses; and I deny man to be subject to such necessity, as in clocks, watches, and such other things, which for want of intelligence are subject to an absolute physical and mechanical necessity. 3. I have undertaken to show that the notions advanced are so far from being inconsistent with, that they are the sole foundations of morality and laws, and of awards and punishments in society; and that the notions I explode are subversive of them.” The arguments which he advanced in support of his theory were six, namely: “1. From experience; 2. From the impossibility of liberty; 3. From the imperfection of liberty, and the perfection of necessity; 4. From the consideration of the divine prescience; 5. From the nature and use of rewards and punishments; 6. From the nature of morality.” He worked out these arguments with much skill and ingenuity, and the following six objections were concisely but ably answered:​—“1. That if men are necessary agents, punishments are unjust; 2. And are useless; 3. Reasoning, entreaties, blame, and praise, are useless; 4. Also the use of physical remedies is useless; 5. The reproaches of conscience are groundless; 6. The murder of Julius Cæsar could not possibly have been murder.” The treatise is characteristic throughout, and had some influence on subsequent speculation.

Mathew Tindal held a fellowship in All Souls at Oxford, and was past seventy years of age when the first volume of his work, “Christianity as Old as the Creation,” was published in 1732. Though the work was not remarkable for its method or grasp of thought, the arrangement being confused and abounding in repetitions, yet it attracted much attention. Tindal maintained that natural religion is complete and sufficient, consequently a revelation is unnecessary, so there can be no obligation to accept it. All religion must have one aim, which is to attain human perfection of character by a life in accord with human nature. In a word, his theory is this: “Whosoever so regulates his natural appetites as will conduce most to the exercise of his reason, the health of his body, and the pleasures of his senses, taken and considered altogether, since herein his happiness consists, may be certain he can never offend his Maker; who, as He governs all things according to their natures, cannot but expect His rational creatures should act according to their natures.” He stated that there is no difference between religion and morality, save that the one is acting according to the reason of things considered in themselves, the other according to the same reason of things considered as the rule of God; Christianity being only a republication of the law of nature.¹

¹ Christianity as Old as the Creation, pages 2, 14, et seq., page 270; compare Stephen’s History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, Volume I., pages 134‒145.

Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, may be noticed among those whose writings have influenced subsequent ethical views. He was essentially a moralist, his chief aim being to show how a rational scheme of life might be formed. A belief in God was an element of his system. “For whoever thinks that there is a just God, and pretends formally to believe that He is just and good, must suppose that there is independently such a thing as justice and injustice, truth and falsehood, right and wrong, according to which he pronounces that God is just, righteous, and true. If the mere will, decree, or law of God be said absolutely to constitute right and wrong, then are these latter words of no significance at all.” Thus it seems a sound theism follows from morality, not morality from theism. Hence also religion, according to the conception which it presents of the character of God, “is capable of doing great good or harm, and atheism nothing positive in either way.”¹ Atheism indicates an unhealthy state of mind, as nothing can be more distressing “than the thought of living in a distracted universe from which many ills may be suspected, and where nothing good or lovely presents itself, nothing which can satisfy in contemplation or raise any passion, besides that of contempt, hatred, and dislike.” This tends to embitter the temper, and “to impair and ruin the very principle of virtue, namely, natural and kind affection.” In the main, he argued that whoever has a firm belief in a just and benignant God has a far stronger incentive to virtuous action than those who have no such belief; and there is thus a relation between virtue and piety, as where piety is wanting “there can neither be the same benignity, firmness, or constancy, the same good composure of the affections, or uniformity of mind.”²

¹ Characteristics: An Inquiry concerning Virtue, Book I., Part 3, Section 2.

² Ibid., Section 3.

He contended strongly for the existence of disinterested affection in man, and used the term “moral sense” to express his doctrine. He indicated the rise of this moral sense, and argued that it has a foundation in nature. “There is in reality no rational creature whatsoever who knows not that when he voluntarily offends or does harm to anyone, he cannot fail to create an apprehension and fear of like harm, and consequently a resentment and animosity in everyone that observes him. So that the offender must be conscious of being liable to such treatment from everyone, as if he had in some degree offended all ... of this the wickedest creature living must have a sense. So that if there be any farther meaning in this sense of right and wrong, if in reality there be any sense of this kind which an absolutely wicked creature has not, it must consist in a real antipathy or aversion to injustice or wrong, and in a real affection towards equity and right for its own sake, and on account of its natural beauty and worth.

“It is impossible to suppose a mere sensible creature, originally so ill-conditioned and unnatural, as that from the moment he comes to be tried by sensible objects, he should have no good passion towards his kind, no foundation either of piety, love, kindness, or social affection. It is fully as impossible to conceive that a rational creature coming first to be tried by rational objects, and receiving into his mind the images or representations of justice, generosity, gratitude, or other virtue, should have no liking of these, or dislike of their contraries, but be found absolutely indifferent towards whatsoever is presented to him of this sort. A soul, indeed, may as well be without a sense, as without admiration in the things of which it has any knowledge.... Sense of right and wrong, therefore, being as natural to us as natural affection itself, and being a first principle in our constitution, there is no speculative idea or belief which is capable immediately or directly to exclude or destroy it.”¹ From these passages and from others of a similar import, it may be observed that several of Shaftesbury’s ethical views were transferred into Scottish philosophy. His influence is also notable on Kant’s doctrine of the relation between Morality and Religion.

¹ Inquiry concerning Virtue, Part II., Section 3; Part III., Section 1; Moralist, Part III., Section 3.

Shaftesbury was a real optimist, and held that there was no positive evil in the world. He exerted all his eloquence and ingenuity in efforts to exalt the wondrous harmonies of nature. “Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” In the opening section of the “Inquiry concerning Virtue,” he argued that there can be no real ill in the universe. “If everything which exists be according to good, and for the best, then, of necessity, there is no such thing as real ill in the universe, nothing ill with respect to the whole.... To believe, therefore, that everything is governed, ordered, and regulated for the best, by a designing principle or mind, necessarily good and permanent, is to be a perfect theist.”¹

¹ Part I., Section 2; also his Moralist, Part III., Section 1. The influence of these views is observable in the theory of the harmony between the kingdoms of nature and grace, developed in the “Théodicée” of Leibnitz; indeed, Shaftesbury’s views had considerable influence in various directions.

His usual method of arguing is that of placing alternatives before the mind; he manifests no great metaphysical grasp of principles, and his power of exposition was very limited. He often repeats himself, and his style, though sometimes vigorous, is diffuse and stilted.

Dr. Samuel Clarke was a great authority in his day, both in theology and in philosophy. But as his method of philosophising has almost ceased to have influence in Britain, I will only give a brief statement of his ethical theory and views.

His moral theory may be shortly stated as follows:​—All existing things have their necessary relations one to another. Man must attribute the same law of perception to every being to whom he attributes thought, and, therefore, he must believe that the sum of the relations of all things to each other must have always been present to God; and these relations, then, are eternal, however recent the things may be between which they subsist; and the whole together constitute truth. These eternal different relations of things, one to another, involve a consequent eternal fitness in the application of things one to another, with regard to which the will of God always chooses, and which also ought to determine the wills of all subordinate rational beings. Such eternal relations make it fit and reasonable for the creatures thus to act; and, indeed, it becomes their duty so to act, prior to and independent of any foreseen advantage or reward.¹

¹ Being and Attributes of God, Proposition 12; Evidence of Natural and Revealed Religion.

The three great classes of primary duties, namely, the duties we owe to God, to each other, and to ourselves, might be deduced in the same way as the propositions of geometry. Thus Clarke attempted to give the rules of morality a mathematical cast; and his theory also sought to found moral distinctions solely upon reason. But reason can never be a complete basis for morality, because it does not afford the motives of action. “The abusive extension of the term reason to the moral faculties, one of the predominant errors of ancient and modern times, has arisen from causes which it is not difficult to discover. Reason does in truth perform a great part in every case of moral sentiment. To reason often belong the preliminaries of the act; to reason altogether belongs the choice of the means of execution. The operations of reason, in both cases, are comparatively slow and lasting, they are capable of being distinctly recalled by memory. The emotion which intervenes between the previous and succeeding exertions of reason is often faint, generally transient, and scarcely ever capable of being reproduced by an effort of the mind. Hence the name of reason is applied to this mixed state of mind, more especially when the feeling, being of a cold and general nature, and scarcely ruffling the surface of the soul, such as those of prudence, and ordinary kindness, and propriety, almost passes unnoticed, and is irretrievably forgotten. Hence the mind is, in such conditions, said by the moralists to act from reason, in contra-distinction to its more excited and disturbed state, when it is said to act from passion. The calmness of reason gives to the whole compound the appearance of unmixed reason. The illusion is further promoted by a mode of expression used in most languages. A man is said to act reasonably when his conduct is such as may be reasonably expected.”¹

¹ Mackintosh’s Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy, pages 155‒156, 1837.

Bishop Berkeley is the author of a form of idealism, explained in several works which appeared at different periods of his life. He maintained that the external world had no real existence in itself, apart from thinking and reasoning beings. By this he meant that matter and all external objects have only a phenomenal existence, an appearance, but no real existence at all, distinct from their being perceived by some person, or mind and spirit. If, therefore, we detach external objects from perception, they cease to be, because they have no existence apart from perception. All the choir of heaven, and all the bodies composing the mighty frame of the world, have not any substance without a mind; and that their very being is to be perceived as part of the significant sense-experience of a conscious person; “consequently, so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not actually exist in my mind, or in that of any created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or they must exist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit.”¹

¹ Compare. Berkeley’s Works, edited by Professor Fraser, and the excellent volume by the same author on Berkeley and his Philosophy, in the series of “Philosophical Classics for English Readers.”

Thus in result, Berkeley’s external world consisted of spirits, as it were, external to his own spirit; conscious, in concert with himself, of intelligible sense-impressions, by which they could communicate with one another. By a refined process of thought, he arrived at the conclusion that there was an external will and an external intellect, and that will and intellect constituted spirit. This was his explanation of the problem of the relation of the human mind to the external world.

In the later stage of the development of his views, he attempted to explain what is meant by God. He maintained that the supreme power is Spirit; God is more than the unknowable behind the phenomena of nature. God means the eternally sustaining spirit​—the active conscious reason of the universe; the Supreme Spirit or Universal Mind. But he did not intend to reduce all to God and phenomena; he recognises the existence of finite free agents, responsible and subject to a moral government. Still he seemed to approach the principle of pantheism.