A Treatise of Human Nature · David Hume
GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO VOL. I.
97. It is of these circumstances, as the constituents of the real, that he is thinking in the passage last quoted. As qualified by ‘circumstances of place’ the real is a parcel of matter, and under this designation Locke thought of it as a subject of ‘primary qualities of body.’ [1] These, indeed, as he enumerates them, may be shown to imply relations going far beyond that of simple distinctness between atoms, and thus to involve much more of the creative action of thought; but we need be the less concerned for this usurpation on the part of the particular being, since that which he illegitimately conveys to it as derived from ‘circumstances of place,’ he virtually takes away from it again by limitation in time. The ‘particular being’ has indeed on the one hand a real essence, consisting of certain primary qualities, but on the other it has no continued identity. It is only real as present to feeling at this or that time. The particular being of one moment is not the particular being of the next.
Thus the primary qualities which are a real essence, _i.e._ an essence of a particular being, at one moment, are not its real essence at the next, because, while they as represented in the mind remain the same, the ‘it,’ the particular being is different. An _immutable_ essence for that very reason cannot be real. The immutability can only lie in a relation between a certain abstract (_i.e._ unreal) idea and a certain sound. (Book III. chap. iii. sec. 19.) ‘The real constitution of things,’ on the other hand, ‘begin and perish with them. All things that exist are liable to change.’ (_Ibid_.) Locke, it is true (as is implied in the term _change_ [2]) never quite drops the notion of there being a real identity in some unknown background, but this makes no difference in the bearing of his doctrine upon the possibility of ‘real’ knowledge. It only means that for an indefinite particularity of ‘beings’ there is substituted one ‘being’ under an indefinite peculiarity of forms. Though the reality of the thing _in itself_ be immutable, yet its reality _for us_ is in perpetual flux. ‘In itself’ it is a substance without an essence, a ‘something we know not what’ without any ideas to ‘support;’ a ‘parcel of matter,’ indeed, but one in which no quality is really essential, because its real essence, consisting in its momentary presentation to sense, changes with the moments. [3]
98. We have previously noticed [1] Locke’s pregnant remark, that ‘things whose existence is in succession’ do not admit of identity. (Book II. chap, xxvii. sec. 2.) So far, then, as the ‘real,’ in distinction from the ‘abstract,’ is constituted by particularity in time, or has its existence in succession, it excludes the relation of identity. ‘It perishes in every moment that it begins.’ Had Locke been master of this notion, instead of being irregularly mastered by it, he might have anticipated all that Hume had to say. As it is, even in passages such as those to which reference has just been made, where he follows its lead the farthest, he is still pulled up by inconsistent conceptions with which common sense, acting through common language, restrains the most adventurous philosophy. Thus, even from his illustration of the liability of all existence to change--‘that which was grass to-day is to-morrow the flesh of a sheep, and within a few days after will become part of a man’ [2]--we find that, just as he does not pursue the individualization of the real in space so far but that it still remains ‘a constitution of parts,’ so he does not pursue it in time so far but that a coexistence of real elements over a certain duration is possible.
To a more thorough analysis, indeed, there is no alternative between finding reality in relations of thought, which, because relations of thought, are not in time and therefore are immutable, and submitting it to such subdivision of time as excludes all real coexistence because what is real, as present, at one moment is unreal, as past, at the next. This alternative could not present itself in its clearness to Locke, because, according to his method of interrogating consciousness, he inevitably found in its supposed beginning, which he identified with the real, those products of thought which he opposed to the real, and thus read into the simple feeling of the moment that which, if it were the simple feeling of the moment, it could not contain. Thus throughout the Second Book of the Essay the simple idea is supposed to represent either as copy or as effect a permanent reality, whether body or mind: and in the later books, even where the _representation_ of such reality in knowledge comes in question, its existence as constituted by ‘primary qualities of body’ is throughout assumed, though general propositions with regard to it are declared impossible. It is a feeling referred to body, or, in the language of subsequent psychology, a feeling of the _outward_ sense, [3] that Locke means by an ‘actual present sensation,’ and it is properly in virtue of this reference that such sensation is supposed to be, or to report, the real.
99. According to the doctrine of primary qualities, as originally stated, the antithesis lies between body as it is in itself and body as it is for us, not between body as it is for us in ‘actual sensation,’ and body as it is for us according to ‘ideas in the mind.’ The primary qualities ‘are in bodies whether we perceive them or no.’ (Book II. chap. viii. sec. 23.) As he puts it elsewhere (Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 2), it is just because ‘solidity and extension and the termination of it, figure, with motion and rest, whereof we have the ideas, would be really in the world as they are whether there were any sensible being to perceive them or no,’ that they are to be looked on as the _real_ modifications of matter. A change in them, unlike one in the secondary qualities, or such as is relative to sense, is a _real_ alteration _in body_. ‘Pound an almond, and the clear white colour will be altered into a dirty one, and the sweet taste into an oily one. What alteration can the beating of the pestle make in any body, but an alteration of the texture of it?’ (Book II. chap. viii. sec. 20.) It is implied then in the notion of the real as body that it should be outside consciousness. It is that which seems to remain when everything belonging to consciousness has been thought away. Yet it is brought within consciousness again by the supposition that it has qualities which copy themselves in our ideas and are ‘the exciting causes of all our various sensations from bodies.’ (Book II. chap. xxxi. sec. 3.) Again, however, the antithesis between the real and consciousness prevails, and the qualities of matter or body having been brought within the latter, are opposed to a ‘substance of body’--otherwise spoken of as ‘the nature, cause, or manner of producing the ideas of primary qualities’--which remains outside it, unknown and unknowable. (Book II. chap, xxiii. sec. 30, &c.)
How can primary qualities be outside consciousness, and yet knowable? 100. The doctrine of primary qualities was naturally the one upon which the criticism of Berkeley and Hume first fastened, as the most obvious aberration from the ‘new way of ideas.’ That the very notion of the senses as ‘reporting’ anything, under secondary no less than under primary qualities, implies the presence of ‘fictions of thought’ in the primitive consciousness, may become clear upon analysis; but it lies on the surface and is avowed by Locke himself (Book II. chap. viii. secs. 2, 7), that the conception of primary qualities is only possible upon distinction being made between ideas as in our minds, and the ‘nature of things existing without us,’ which cannot be given in the simple feeling itself. This admitted, the distinction might either be traced to the presence within intelligent consciousness of another factor than simple ideas, or be accounted for as a gradual ‘invention of the mind.’ In neither way, however, could Locke regard it and yet retain his distinction between fact and fancy, as resting upon that between the nature of things and the mind of man. The way of escape lay in a figure of speech, the figure of the wax or the mirror. ‘The ideas of primary qualities are resemblances of them.’ (Book II. chap, viii. sec. 15.) These qualities then may be treated, according to occasion, either as primitive data of consciousness, or as the essence of that which is the unknown opposite of consciousness--in the latter way when the antithesis between nature and mind is in view, in the former when nature has yet to be represented as knowable.
Locke answers that they copy themselves in ideas--Berkeley’s rejoinder. Locke gets out of the difficulty by his doctrine of solidity. 101. How, asked Berkeley, can an idea be like anything that is not an idea? Put the question in its proper strength--How can an idea be like that of which the sole and simple determination is just that it is not an idea (and such with Locke is body ‘in itself’ or as the real)--and it is clearly unanswerable. The process by which Locke was prevented from putting it to himself is not difficult to trace. ‘Body’ and ‘the solid’ are with him virtually convertible terms. Each indifferently holds the place of the substance, of which the primary qualities are so many determinations. [1] It is true that where solidity has to be defined, it is defined as an attribute of body, but conversely body itself is treated as a ‘texture of solid parts,’ _i.e._ as a mode of the solid. Body, in short, so soon as thought of, resolves itself into a relation of bodies, and the solid into a relation of solids, but Locke, by a shuffle of the two terms--representing body as a relation between solids and the solid as a relation between bodies--gains the appearance of explaining each in turn by relation to a simpler idea.
Body, as the unknown, is revealed to us by the idea of solidity, which sense conveys to us; while solidity is explained by reference to the idea of body. The idea of solidity, we are told, is a simple idea which comes into the mind solely by the sense of touch. (Book II. chap. iii. sec. 1.) But no sooner has he thus identified it with an immediate feeling than, in disregard of his own doctrine, that ‘an idea which has no composition’ is undefinable (see Book III. chap. iv. sec. 7.), he converts it into a theory of the cause of that feeling. ‘It arises from the resistance which we find in body to the entrance of any other body into the place it possesses till it has left it;’ and he at once proceeds to treat it as the consciousness of such resistance. ‘Whether we move or rest, in what posture soever we are, we always feel something under us that supports us, and hinders our farther sinking downwards: and the bodies which we daily handle make us perceive that whilst they remain between them, they do by an insurmountable force hinder the approach of the parts of our hands that press them. That which then hinders the approach of two bodies, when they are moving one towards another, I call solidity.’ [2]
Strictly taken, this must mean that it is that of which nothing can be said, and some expression must be found by means of which it may do double duty as at once apart from consciousness and in it. This is done by converting ‘the primary qualities of body, though obviously complex ideas of relation, into simple feelings of touch,’ [2] and supposing the subject of this sensation to be related to its object as wax to the seal. If we suppose this relation, again, which is really within the mind and constituted by it, to be one between the mind itself, as passive, and the real, we obtain a ‘real’ which exists apart from the mind, yet copies itself upon it. The mind, then, so far as it takes such a copy, becomes an ‘outer sense,’ as to which it may be conveniently forgotten that it is a mode of mind at all. Thus every modification of it, as an ‘actual present sensation,’ comes to be opposed to every idea of memory or imagination, as that which is not of the mind to that which is; though there is no assignable difference between one and the other, except an indefinite one in degree of vivacity, that is not derived from the action of the mind in referring the one to an object, constituted by itself, to which it does not refer the other.
If, in the spirit of Locke, we answer, ‘No, it means that the feeling belongs to the outer sense’; the rejoinder will be that this means either that it is a feeling of touch--and what should give the feeling of touch this singular privilege over other feelings of not being in the mind while they are in it?--or that it is a feeling referred to body, which still implies the presupposition of the real, only under the special relations of resistance and impulse. The latter alternative is the one which Locke virtually adopts, and in adopting it he makes the actuality, by which sensation is distinguished from ‘feelings in the mind,’ itself a creation of the mind. But though it is by an intellectual interpretation of the feeling of touch, not by the feeling itself, that there is given that idea of body, by reference to which actual sensation is distinguished from the mere idea, still with Locke the feeling of touch is necessary to the interpretation. Thus, supposing his notion to be carried out consistently, the actual present sensation, as reporting the real, must either be a feeling of touch, or, if of another sort, _e.g._, sight or hearing, must be referable to an object of touch.
In other words, the real will exist for us so long only as it is touched, and ideas in us will constitute a real essence so long only as they may be referred to an object now touched. Let the object cease to be touched, and the ideas become a nominal essence in the mind, the knowledge which they constitute ceases to be real, and the proposition which expresses it ceases to concern matter of fact. Truth as to matters of fact or bodies, then, must be confined to singular propositions such as ‘this is touched now,’ ‘that was touched then;’ ‘what is touched now is bitter,’ ‘what was then touched was red.’ [1] [1] Thus the conviction that an object seen is not ‘bare fancy,’ which is gained by ‘putting the hand to it’ (Book IV. chap. xi. sec. l7), as it conveys the idea of solidity, is properly, according to Locke’s doctrine, not one among other ‘confirmations of the testimony of the senses,’ but the source of all such testimony, as a testimony to the real, _i.e._ to body. See above, paragraph 62. Only the knowledge that something is, not what it is.
105. All that is gained, then, by the conversion of the feeling of touch, pure and simple, into the idea of a body touched, is the supposition that _there is_ a real existence which does not come and go with the sensations. As to _what_ this existence is, as to its real essence, we can have no knowledge but such as is given in a present sensation. [1] Any essence of it, otherwise known, could only be a nominal essence, a relation of ideas in our minds: it would lack the condition in virtue of which alone a datum of consciousness can claim to be representative of reality, that of being an impression made by a body now operating upon us. (Book III. chap. v. sec. 2, and Book IV. chap. xi. sec. 1.) The memory of such impression, however faithful, will still only report a _past_ reality. It will itself be merely ‘an idea in the mind.’ Neither it nor its relation to any present sensation result from the immediate impact of body, and in consequence neither ‘really exists.’ All that can be known, then, of the real, in other words, the whole real essence of body, as it is for us, reduces itself to that which can at any moment be ‘revealed’ in a single sensation apart from all relation to past sensations; and this, as we have seen, is nothing at all.
(Book III. chap. iii. sec. 19.) That is, the thing at one moment makes an impact on the sensitive tablet--in the fact that it does so lie at once its existence and its essence--but the next moment the impact is over, and with it thing and essence, _as real_, have disappeared. Another impact, and thus another thing, has taken its place. But of this the real essence is just the same as that of the previous thing, namely, that it may be touched, or is solid, or a body, or a parcel of matter; nor can this essence be really lost, since than it there is no other reality, all difference of essence, as Locke expressly says, [1] being constituted by abstract ideas and the work of the mind. It follows that _real_ change is impossible. A parcel of matter at one time is a parcel of matter at all times. Thus we have only to forget that the relation of continuity between the parcels, not being an idea caused by impact, should properly fall to the unreal--though only on the same principle as should that of distinctness between the times--and we find the real in a continuity of matter, unchangeable because it has no qualities to change.
It may seem strange that when this notion of the formless continuity of the real being gets the better of Locke, a man should be the real being which he takes as his instance. ‘Nothing I have is essential to me. An accident or disease may very much alter my colour or shape; a fever or fall may take away my reason or memory, or both; and an apoplexy leave neither sense nor understanding, no, nor life.’ (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 4.) But as the sequel shows, the man or the ‘I’ is here considered simply as ‘a particular corporeal being,’ _i.e._ as the ‘parcel of matter’ which alone (according to the doctrine of reality now in view) can be the real in man, and upon which all qualities are ‘superinductions of the mind.’ [2] [1] Book III. chap. vi. sec. 4: ‘Take but away the abstract ideas by which we sort individuals, and then the thought of anything essential to any of them instantly vanishes.’ [2] See a few lines below the passage quoted: ‘So that if it be asked, whether it be essential to me, or any other particular corporeal being, to have reason? I say, no; no more than it is essential to this white thing I write on to have words in it.’ Only about qualities of matter, as distinct from matter itself, that Locke feels any difficulty.
107. We may now discern the precise point where the qualm as to clothing reality with such superinductions commonly returns upon Locke. The conversion of feeling into body felt and of the particular time of the feeling into an individuality of the body, and, further, the fusion of the individual bodies, manifold as the times of sensation, into one continued body, he passes without scruple. So long as these are all the traces of mental fiction which ‘matter,’ or ‘body,’ or ‘nature’ bears upon it, he regards it undoubtingly as the pure ‘privation’ of whatever belongs to the mind. But so soon as cognisable qualities, forming an essence, come to be ascribed to body, the reflection arises that these qualities are on our side ideas, and that so far as they are permanent or continuous they are not ideas of the sort which can alone represent body as the ‘real’ opposite of mind; they are not the result of momentary impact; they are not ‘actually present sensations.’ Suppose them, however, to have no permanence--suppose their reality to be confined to the fleeting ‘now’--and they are no qualities, no essence, at all. There is then for us no _real_ essence of body or nature; what we call so is a creation of the mind. These, as knowable, must be our ideas, and therefore not a ‘real essence’.
108. This implies the degradation of the ‘primary qualities of body’ from the position which they hold in the Second Book of the Essay, as the real, _par excellence_, to that of a nominal essence. In the Second Book, just as the complex of ideas, received and to be received from a substance, is taken for the real thing without disturbance from the antithesis between reality and ‘ideas in the mind,’ so the primary qualities of body are taken not only as real, but as the sources of all other reality. Body, the real thing, copying itself upon the mind in an idea of sensation (that of solidity), carries with it from reality into the mind those qualities which ‘the mind finds inseparable from it,’ with all their modes. ‘A piece of manna of a sensible bulk is able to produce in us the idea of a round or square figure, and, by being removed from one place to another, the idea of motion. This idea of motion represents it, as it really is in the manna, moving; a circle or square are the same, whether in idea or existence, in the mind or in the manna; and this both motion and figure are really in the manna, whether we take notice of them or no.’ (Book II. chap. viii. sec. 18.) To the unsophisticated man, taking for granted that the ‘sensible bulk’ of the manna is a ‘real essence,’ this statement will raise no difficulties. But when he has learnt from Locke himself that the ‘sensible bulk,’ so far as we can think and speak of it, must consist in the ideas which it is said to produce, the question as to the real existence of these must arise. It turns out that they ‘really exist,’ so far as they represent the impact of a body copying itself in actually present sensation, and that from their reality, accordingly, must be excluded all qualities that accrue to the present sensation from its relation to the past. Can the ‘primary qualities’ escape this exclusion?
Are the ‘primary qualities’ then, a ‘nominal essence’? 109. To obtain a direct and compendious answer to this question from Locke’s own mouth is not easy, owing to the want of adjustment between the several passages where he treats of the primary qualities. They are originally enumerated as the ‘bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion or rest of the solid parts of bodies’ (Book II. chap. viii. sec. 23), and, as we have seen, are treated as all involved in that idea of solidity which is given in the sensation of touch. We have no further account of them till we come to the chapters on ‘simple modes of space and duration’ (Book II. chaps. xiii. &c.), which are introduced by the remark, that in the previous part of the book simple ideas have been treated ‘rather in the way that they come into the mind than as distinguished from others more compounded.’ As the simple idea, according to Locke, is that which comes first into the mind, the two ways of treatment ought to coincide; but there follows an explanation of the simple modes in question, of which to a critical reader the plain result is that the idea of body, which, according to the imaginary theory of ‘the way that it came into the mind’ is simple and equivalent to the sensation of touch, turns out to be a complex of relations of which the simplest is called space.
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