ideas, but he entirely neglects this last question. It was already venturing much to put one question before the other; for it was seeking at the outset an hypothesis, with the exception of afterwards confronting the hypothesis with reality; but what will this amount to when even this chance of return to truth is interdicted, when the fundamental question of the inventory of our ideas and of their actual characters is wholly omitted?

This is the first error of Locke. He recognizes and proclaims the experimental method; he proposes to apply it to the phenomena of the understanding, to ideas; but not having sufficiently fathomed this method which was then in its infancy, he has not discerned all the questions to which it gives rise; he has not arranged these questions in due order; he has misconceived. and omitted the most important experimental question, the observation of the actual characters of our ideas; at the very outset he has fallen into a question which should have been adjourned, the obscure and difficult question of the origin of our ideas. What, therefore, will be the result? Either Locke will hit upon the true origin of our ideas by a sort of good fortune and divination, at which I should rejoice; but however true it may be in itself, this origin will be demonstrated to be true, will be legitimately established only on this condition, that Locke should subsequently demonstrate that the characters of our ideas are all, and in their whole extent, explicable and explained by the origin supposed. Or indeed Locke will be deceived: but, if he is deceived, an error of this kind will not be a particular error concentrated upon a single point and without influence upon the rest; it will be a general error, an immense error, which will corrupt, even at its source, the whole of psychology, and thereby the whole of metaphysics. In order to be faithful to his hypothesis, to the origin which he shall have assigned to all ideas without understanding them fully, he will be obliged to sacrifice all ideas which shall refuse to be referred to this false origin. The falsity of the origin will be extended even to the actual state of the intelligence, and will conceal from the eyes of consciousness

itself the real characters of our ideas; hence, from applications to applications, that is, from aberrations to aberrations, the human understanding and human nature will be more and more misconceived, reality will be destroyed, and science perverted.

Such is the rock; it was necessary to point it out. We know not whether Locke has been wrecked upon it; for we know not yet what he has done, whether he has had the good fortune to divine correctly, or whether he has had the fate of most diviners and of those who start at venture upon a route which they have not measured. We suppose ourselves now to be ignorant of it, we shall subsequently examine it; but we are already able to remark, that it is in great part from Locke that, in the eighteenth century, in his whole school, comes the systematic habit of placing the question of the origin and the generation of ideas at the head of all philosophical researches. In metaphysics, this school is preoccupied with inquiring what are the first ideas which enter into the mind of man; in morals, the actual state of man's moral nature being neglected, what are the first ideas of good and evil, which arise in man considered in the savage state or in infancy, two states in which observation is not very sure and may easily be arbitrary; in politics, what is the origin of societies, of governments, of laws. In general, it searches for right in fact, and philosophy is reduced for it to history, and to history the most obscure, that of the first age of humanity. Hence the political theories of this school, often opposite in their results, yet identical in the method which presides in them. Some, plunging into ante-historical or anti-historical conjectures, find at the origin of society the empire of force and conquerors: the first government which history presents to them is despotic; therefore the idea of government is the very idea of despotism. Others, on the contrary, in the convenient obscurity of the primitive state, think they perceive a contract, reciprocal stipulations, and titles of liberty which despotism subsequently caused to disappear, and which the present time should re-establish. In either case, the legitimate state of society is deduced from its first form, from that

form which it is almost impossible to find, and the rights of humanity are at the mercy of a venturous erudition, at the mercy of an hypothesis. Finally, from origin to origin, the true nature of man has even been sought for in the most absurd geological hypotheses: the last term of this deplorable tendency is the celebrated work of Maillet, Telliamed.

To recapitulate, the most general character of the philosophy of Locke is independence; and here, with all the necessary reservations, I openly rank myself under his banner, if not side by side with the chief, at least side by side with his followers. As to method, that of Locke is the psychological or ideological method, for the name is of little consequence; and here again I declare myself of his school. But, as he did not sufficiently fathom the psychological method, I accuse Locke of having commenced by an order of researches which necessarily puts psychology on the road of hypothesis, and deprives it more or less of its experimental character, and here I differ from him.

Let us understand at what point we are in this examination. We have seen Locke upon a perilous route; but has he had the good fortune, in spite of this bad choice, to arrive at the truth, that is, at the veritable explanation of the origin of our ideas? What, according to him, is this origin? This is the foundation of the Essay on the Human Understanding, the system to which Locke has attached his name. This will be the subject of our future lectures.

* On the dangers into which, in all these orders of researches, the question of origins, prematurely undertaken, throws us, see especially Vol. 3 of the first Series, Lecture 7, p. 260, etc.

LECTURE XVII.

ESSAY. FIRST BOOK, INNATE IDEAS. SECOND BOOK, OF SPACE. First Book of the Essay on the Human Uunderstanding. Of innate ideas.Second Book. Experience, the source of all ideas. Sensation and reflection. Of the operations of the mind. According to Locke, they are exercised only upon sensible data. Basis of sensualism.-Examination of the doctrine of Locke concerning the idea of space. That the idea of space, in the system of Locke, should be reduced and is reduced to that of body.This confusion is contradicted by facts and by Locke himself. Distinction of the actual characters of the ideas of body and of space.-Examination of the question of the origin of the idea of space. Distinction between the logical order and the chronological order of our ideas.-The idea of space is the logical condition of the idea of body; the idea of body is the chronological condition of the idea of space.-Of reason and experience, considered in turn as the reciprocal condition of their mutual development.— Merit of Locke's system.-Its vices: 1st, it confounds the measure of space with space; 2d, the condition of the idea of space with this idea itself.

LOCKE, doubtless, is not the first who instituted the question concerning the origin of ideas; but it is Locke who first made it a great philosophical question, and since Locke, it has preserved this rank in his school. Besides, if this question is not that which a severe method should first agitate, it is certain that in its place, it is of the highest importance: let us see how Locke has resolved it.

In entering upon the investigation of the origin of ideas, Locke encounters an opinion which, if it were well founded, would cut short the question; I mean the doctrine of innate ideas. In fact, if ideas are innate, that is, if, as the word seems to indicate, ideas are already in the mind at the moment when it begins to enter into exercise, it does not acquire them, it possesses them from the first day, precisely as they will be at the last; and, properly speaking, they have no progress, no generation, and no