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common subject;" which I with your Lordship call also substratum.

'What can be more consonant to itself than what your Lordship and I have said in these two passages is consonant to one another? Whereupon, my Lord, give me leave, I beseech you, to boast to the world, that what I have said. concerning our general idea of substance and the way how we come by it, has the honour to be confirmed by your Lordship's authority.'

He repeats the same conviction at a subsequent page. The following sentence, too, is tolerably significant; and the figure employed reminds one of those which have so often been resorted to by subsequent writers to illustrate the relation between the laws of the mind and the external conditions of their activity, as necessary to the evolution of all our cognitions:-'Nothing truer than that it is not the idea that makes us certain without reason or without the understanding; but it is as true that it is not reason, it is not the understanding, that makes us certain without ideas. It is not the sun makes me certain it is day without my eyes; nor it is not my sight makes me certain it is day without the sun; but the one employed about the other.'†

Lastly, we think that similar conclusions should, in fairness, be gathered from Locke's frequent and distinct admission of a law of immutable morality founded on the constitution of human nature—a law which, on similar grounds to those which have led to the parallel objections we have been considering, he has been erroneously supposed to call in question. Dugald Stewart clearly shows, in answer to the temperate strictures of Beattie, that there are passages in the 'Essay' which prove any such interpretation to be

* Vol. iii. p. 445.

† Vol. iii. pp. 59, 60.

unjust, and cites, among others, the one in which Locke speaks of a Law of Nature, as intelligible to a rational creature and studier of that law, as the positive laws of commonwealths.'

But many passages still stronger are to be found in his 'Reasonableness of Christianity,' and in his 'Commentary on Paul's Epistles.' The former work, whatever its doctrinal deficiencies, proves distinctly enough that Locke was both theologically and philosophically orthodox on the point in question. Thus, speaking of the universal moral law, he calls it 'that eternal law of right which is holy, just, and good; of which no one precept or rule is abrogated or repealed; nor indeed can be whilst God is an holy, just, and righteous God, and man a rational creature. The duties of that law, arising from the constitution of his very nature, are of eternal obligation; nor can it be taken away or dispensed with, without changing the nature of things, overturning the measures of right and wrong, and thereby introducing and authorising irregularity, confusion, and disorder in the world.' He shows the same in a subsequent part of the work, though he at the same time strenuously insists that, 'however agreeable to the nature of man' the principles of ethical truth may be, they never had, for whatever reason, received a uniform and symmetrical development; and that hence may be shown the utility of a precise and authoritative revelation.†

We cannot but think that an attentive perusal of

* Vol. vi. p. 112.

†The passages in which he proves the imperfections of merely human attempts to construct a perfect moral system, and vindicates the necessity on that (as well as other grounds) of the Christian revelation, are worthy, especially in these days, of universal perusal. See pp. 135-150. Works, vol. vi. Lond. 1824.

these writings of Locke would have materially altered Cousin's degrading estimate, given in his twentieth lecture, of Locke's ethical principles.

If there are many who think that Locke really adopts the fundamental principle of the sensational schools, there is, at all events, a phalanx of eminent critics who contend that this can be affirmed only by perverting what Locke has said, or in consequence of his own failure adequately to express what he meant to say. We can claim as his compurgators Dugald Stewart, Brown, Reid, and Sir W. Hamilton. Nor is it uninstructive to see how much more decidedly Dugald Stewart speaks in his 'Dissertation' than in his 'Philosophical Essays.' The first was published six years after the second; and when a very careful survey of the whole subject, with a view expressly to the history of metaphysical science, had qualified him for uttering a judicial opinion. Nor have sensationalists been wanting who have acknowledged that Locke can be their patron only by obliterating an essential feature of his system. It appears to me,' says Hartley, drolly imagining that he was improving (as Dugald Stewart says) on Locke's theory, 'that all the most complex ideas arise from sensation, and that reflection is not a distinct source, as Mr. Locke makes it.'

Leibnitz, one of the most strenuous defenders of the theory of 'innate ideas,' not indeed in the sense in which Locke denies them, but in the sense of innate capacities,' or fundamental laws of thought, and whose emendation of the saying 'There is nothing in the intellect but what was in the sense,' (to which he added, 'except the intellect itself,') has passed into epigrammatic notoriety, has clearly apprehended, as we think, that Locke's view is at bottom not irrecon

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cilable with his own. He at once admits that such innate ideas as those which Locke protests against have no existence; but at the same time contends, in our view most justly, that Locke's distinct admission of a second and independent source of ideas in reflection, really bridged over the apparent chasm between them. Thus he speaks in the Avant-propos' to his work on Locke's Essay; 'Il est vrai qu'il ne faut point s'imaginer qu'on puisse lire dans l'âme ces éternelles lois de la raison à livre ouvert, comme l'édit du Preteur se lit sur son album sans peine et sans recherche; mais c'est assez qu'on les puisse découvrir en nous à force d'attention, à quoi les occasions sont fournies par les sens Peut-être que nôtre habile auteur ne s'éloignera pas entièrement de mon sentiment. Car après avoir employé tout son premier livre à rejetter les lumières innées, prises dans un certain sens, il avoue pourtant au commencement du second et dans la suite, que les idées, qui n'ont point. leur origine dans la sensation, viennent de la réflection. Or, la réflection n'est autre chose qu'une attention à ce qui est en nous, et les sens ne nous donnent point ce que nous portons déjà avec nous.'* In the character of Theophile (his own pseudonym in the Dialogue) he gives expression to the same conviction.

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The similar decision of so competent a critic as Sir W. Hamilton is well worth noting. 'Had Descartes and Locke expressed themselves with due precision, the latter would not so have misunderstood the former, and both would have been found in harmony with each other and with truth.'†

Of Locke's First Book (generally admitted to be

* Nouveaux Essais. 4to. pp. 5-7.
† Appendix to Reid, A. Art. 50.

inferior to the rest) it can only be said, that if anybody did or does-and many disciples of Descartes and Herbert often expressed themselves as if they did-hold innate ideas in the sense there explained, Locke thoroughly explodes the theory. At the same time, we certainly have our doubts whether anybody ever did hold 'innate ideas' in the sense supposed, and whether the language which seems to imply them, were not the mere consequence of a want of clearness of conception. We have already observed, that men who enunciate great truths often content themselves with a rude metaphorical or analogical approximation to exact expression, the inadequacy of which they would readily admit if they could anticipate that their successors would interpret them with literal rigour.

It has been ingeniously surmised by Hallam, that there may be a doubt whether Locke in this first book does really refer to Descartes at all. It is certain that he never mentions his name; it is equally certain that if he had read all that Descartes has said on the subject, and especially the passages adduced in our recent article on him*, he ought to have seen that it was not fair to suppose the French philosopher to plead for the chimeras he ridicules. It is not improbable, certainly, that Locke had chiefly in his eye, some who had expressed themselves yet more laxly and inconsistently than Descartes, some of his followers, for example: perhaps Lord Herbert, whose expressions are often undoubtedly very strong. If Locke was referring to Descartes, it may be considered a curious retribution for thus in the First Book straining the French philosopher's phraseology, that his own in the Second Book has been as much strained

* Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1852.

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