cessarily led to deny it, to resolve it into a combination of the simple ideas of qualities, which are easily attained by sensation or reflection, and which his system admits and explains. Hence the systematic identification of substance and qualities, of being and phenomena, that is to say, the destruction of being, and consequently of beings. Nothing exists in itself, neither God, nor the world, neither you, nor myself. Every thing resolves itself into phenomena, into abstractions, into words and singular enough, it is the very fear of abstractions, and of verbal entities, the ill-understood taste for reality, that carries Locke into an absolute nominalism which ends in absolute nihilism. I shall pursue the examination of the second book of the Essay on the Human Understanding, and shall take up the idea of cause, and the idea of good and evil. 11 CONTENTS OF CHAPTER IV. General remarks on the foregoing results.-Continuation of the examination of the Second Book of the Essay on the Human Understanding. Of the idea of Cause.—Origin in sensation. Refutation. -Origin in reflection and the sentiment of the Will. Distinction between the idea of Cause, and the Principle of Causality.-That the principle of causality is inexplicable by the sentiment of will.Of the true formation of the principle of Causality. CHAPTER IV. of THE first fault of Locke in respect to the ideas of space, time, of the infinite, of personal identity, and of substance, is a fault of method. Instead of investigating and ascertaining, at the outset, by impartial observation, the characteristics which these ideas actually display in the human understanding, Locke begins with the exceedingly obscure and difficult question concerning the origin of those ideas. Then he resolves this question in respect to those ideas, by his general system concerning the origin of ideas, which consists in admitting no idea that is not formed by sensation, or by reflection. Now the ideas of Space, of Time, of the Infinite, of Personal Identity, and of Substance, with the characteristics by which they are undeniably marked, are inexplicable by sensation and reflection, and by consequence, incompatible with the system of Locke. There remained, then, but one resource to mutilate those ideas with their attributes, so as to reduce them to the measure of other ideas which really do come from sensation or reflection; for example, the ideas of body, of succession, of number, of the direct phenomena of consciousness and memory, of the attributes of outward objects and of our own attributes. But we believe we have shown that these latter ideas, while they are indeed the condition [the necessary occasion] of the acquisition of the former ideas, are nevertheless not the same as the former; they are the chronological antecedent, but not the logical reason of them; they precede, but do not engender nor explain them. Thus facts distorted and confused, save the system of Locke; re-established and distinguished with clearness, they overthrow it. |