John Locke: Symposium Wolfenbüttel 1979 [Reprint ed.] 3110082667, 9783110082661

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John Locke · Symposium Wolfenbüttel 1979

John Locke Symposium Wolfenbüttel 1979 edited by

Reinhard Brandt

W DE

1981

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data J o h n Locke: symposium, Wolfenbüttel, 1979. Held at the Herzog August Bibliothek, July 10-12, 1979. Includes indexes. 1. Locke, John, 1632-1704 — Congresses. I. Brandt, Reinhard, 1937 — II. Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek. B1297. J58 1981 192 80-25874 ISBN 3-11-008266-7

CIP-Kurztitelaufnahme der Deutschen Bibliothek John Locke: Symposium Wolfenbüttel 1979 / ed. by Reinhard Brandt. — Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1981. ISBN 3-11-008266-7 NE: Brandt, Reinhard [Hrsg.]

© 1980 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., vormals G. J. Göschen'sche Verlagshandlung · J. Gutentag, Verlagsbuchhandlung Georg Reimer · Karl J. Trübner · Veit & C o m p . , Berlin 30 · Alle Rechte, insbesondere das der Übersetzung in fremde Sprachen, vorbehalten. Ohne ausdrückliche Genehmigung des Verlages ist es auch nicht gestattet, dieses Buch oder Teile daraus auf photomechanischem Wege (Photokopie, Mikrokopie) zu vervielfältigen. Printed in Germany Satz und Druck: Hildebrand, Berlin Einband: Wübben & Co., Berlin

Vorbemerkung Das Locke-Symposium fand vom 10. bis 12. Juli 1979 in der Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel statt; es wurde ermöglicht durch die großzügige finanzielle und organisatorische Unterstützung der Wolfenbütteler Bibliothek und ihres von der Stiftung Volkswagenwerk getragenen Forschungsprogramms, wofür hier nochmals gedankt sei. Das Gespräch war das erste in einer geplanten Reihe von Symposien zur Philosophie der Aufklärung; das zweite wird 1981 folgen und sich mit Problemen der Rechtsphilosophie im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert befassen. Teilnehmer des Locke-Symposiums: Michael R. Ayers (Oxford), Reinhard Brandt (Marburg), John M. Dunn (Cambridge), Lüder Gäbe (Marburg), Lorenz Krüger (Bielefeld), Peter Laslett (Cambridge), Edmund Leites (New York), Wolfgang von Leyden (London), Thomas Mautner (Canberra), Tillmann Pinder (Berlin), G.A.J. Rogers (Keele), H.A.S. Schankula (Lexington), Martyn Philip Thompson (Tübingen), Udo Thiel (Bonn), Hans Wagner (Bonn), Roger S. Woolhouse (York). Herr John W. Yolton war an der Teilnahme gehindert; er gestattete freundlicherweise die Publikation seines geplanten Beitrags in diesem Band. — Der Index wurde von Herrn Udo Thiel erstellt.

Marburg 1980

R. Brandt

Contents Vorbemerkung Einführung — Reinhard Brandt Michael R. Ayers, Locke's Doctrine of Abstraction: Some Aspects of its Historical and Philosophical Significance . . Reinhard Brandt, Observations on the First D r a f t of the Essay concerning human understanding John Dunn, Individuality and Clientage in the Formation of of Locke's Social Imagination Lorenz Krüger, The Concept of Experience in John L o c k e . . . Edmund Leites, Locke's Liberal Theory of Parenthood Wolfgang von Leyden, Locke's Strange Doctrine of Punishment John R. Milton, John Locke and the Nominalist Tradition . . G . A . J . Rogers, Locke, Law and the Laws of Nature H . A . S Schankula, Locke, Descartes and the Science of Nature U d o Thiel, Locke's Concept of Person Roger S. Woolhouse, Locke, Leibniz, and the Reality of Ideas John W. Yolton, Locke and Malebranche: Two Concepts of Ideas Index of Names Index of Subjects Index of References to, and Quotations from, Locke's Works

V 1 5 25 43 74 90 113 128 146 163 181 193 208 225 227 229

REINHARD BRANDT

Einführung Wie m a n mit dem Namen „ W e i m a r " sogleich die Namen Goethes und Schillers zu einer historisch-geographischen Einheit verbindet, so evoziert der Name „ W o l f e n b ü t t e l " unvermeidlich den von Lessing. Die association of ideas, pathologisch zwingend und zugleich heuristisch und hilfreich für die historische Erinnerung, führt zur paradoxen Gegenwart von Ereignissen und Entscheidungen vor zweihundert Jahren. Ich möchte mich von zwei Strängen der Ideenkette, die mit den Namen Wolfenbüttels und Lessings verknüpft ist, leiten lassen und h o f f e , daß diese Verknüpfungen nicht nur privat und zufällig sind, sondern etwas mit den Geschehnissen selbst zu tun haben. Gottfried Ephraim Lessing und Wolfenbüttel, das bedeutet in der Figurenschrift der Kultur zunächst den Gipfel einer humanaufgeklärten Epoche mit ihren Idealen der Freiheit von Despotie und Fanatismus, der Toleranz und der Versöhnung von Vernunft und Glauben. Die vernunftlose Gewalt des Religiösen, die zuvor, vereint mit den Machtinteressen der europäischen Despoten, ein friedliches Zusammenleben der Bürger und Staaten unmöglich machte, wurde jetzt eingehegt und gleichsam privatisiert. Der Glaube ist meine und nur meine innere Überzeugung; er wird durch die von ihm unterschiedene Zuversicht des Nachbarn nicht verletzt. Faßt man den Glauben als einen wesentlich inneren, so wird die Differenz des einen vom andern äußerlich zum Verschwinden gebracht. Die Symbolfigur der Vermenschlichung und Befriedigung der Religion ist Nathan der Weise, und die Versinnlichung des neuen Glaubens, der sich nur noch aus dem Verhältnis des sittlichen Subjekts zu Gott bestimmt und in dem Unterschied dieser Bestimmung nicht mehr in Erscheinung tritt, diese Versinnlichung des äußeren Indifferentwerdens der verschiedenen Glaubensbestimmungen ist die Ringparabel. Ein Ring, der die Kraft

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hatte, „vor Gott und Menschen angenehm zu machen, wer / In dieser Zuversicht ihn trug", wird durch Generationen vererbt bis zu jenem Vater, der von seinen drei Söhnen keinen bevorzugen will und zwei weitere, völlig gleiche Ringe herstellen läßt, um jeden mit einem Ring zu beerben. So bleibt den Söhnen, um Gott und den Menschen angenehm zu werden, statt der ererbten äußeren Kraft des Ringes nur die selbsttätige Zuversicht übrig; in ihr allein liegt die Sittlichkeit und Religion. Der Autor, der diese Parabel in ihrer Lessingschen Fassung ermöglicht hat, ist John Locke, le sage, wie ihn Voltaire vor seinem europäischen Publikum nannte. Lockes Toleranzidee ist fundiert in einer Begrenzung der menschlichen Erkenntniskräfte; wir können die Richtigkeit bestimmter Formen der Religionsausübung nicht beweisen und verbindlich machen, sondern nur für uns und vor Gott glauben. Es gibt keine irdische Instanz, die über diesen Glauben richten könnte, auch die religiöse Überzeugung der Regierenden hat keinen andern Charakter als den des bloß Privaten. Der König und Bischof haben kein Urteilsprivileg in Sachen der christlichen Religion, weil jeder Untertan in der näheren Gestaltung seines Glaubens souverän und sein eigner episcopus ist. Der Essay concerning human understanding hat die Absicht, ,,to enquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge: together, with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent". Das Ergebnis für jede spezielle Glaubensform lautet, daß sie nicht bewiesen, sondern nur subjektiv evident sein kann. Nach dem Second Treatise of Government ergibt sich aus der Untersuchung des „origin, extent, and e n d " der staatlichen Regierung, daß sie den Bürger in seiner privaten Habe und Überzeugung nicht zu bestimmen, sondern zu regeln und zu schützen hat. Die Ringparabel ist eine Parabel der Lockeschen theoretischen und praktischen Philosophie. No innate ideas - nicht eine geschenkte, sondern nur die selbsterworbene Wahrheit hat Wert; nur die eigene Arbeit soll ein Titel der ursprünglichen Erwerbung des allen Menschen von Gott gegebenen Bodens sein; nur die eigene, nicht die von Adam angeerbte Sünde macht die christliche Erlösung notwendig. Nur der je eigene Glaube kann einen Wert vor Gott haben. Der gleiche Grundgedanke kehrt in allen Themen der

Einführung

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Lockeschen Philosophie wieder: Ohne ihn wäre Lessing nicht denkbar. Es gibt jedoch eine andere chain of ideas, die sich mit den Namen Lessings und Wolfenbüttels verbindet; es ist ein Traditionskomplex, aus dem Locke mit Entschiedenheit ausgeschlossen wird. Im Juli 1780 reiste Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi nach Wolfenbüttel, um „nachdem ich die Parabel gelesen h a t t e " , Lessing zu besuchen. Jacobi wollte, wie er schreibt, in Lessing die Geister mehrerer Weisen beschwören, die er über gewisse Dinge nicht zur Sprache bringen konnte. Lessing tritt am Tag nach Jacobis A n k u n f t in dessen Zimmer; Jacobi, noch beim Briefeschreiben, gibt ihm das bis dahin nicht publizierte Prometheus-Gedicht Goethes zu lesen. Lessing: „ D e r Gesichtspunkt, aus welchem das Gedicht genommen ist, das ist mein eigener Gesichtspunkt... Die orthodoxen Begriffe von der Gottheit sind nicht mehr für mich; ich kann sie nicht genießen. Hen kai pan! Ich weiß nichts a n d e r e s . . . " . Jacobi: ,,Da wären Sie j a mit Spinoza ziemlich einverstanden". Lessing: „ W e n n ich mich nach jemand nennen soll, so weiß ich keinen andern". Spinoza, wie Locke 1632 geboren, ist der Weise, den Jacobi in Lessing beschwört und zum Reden bringt; seine Ideen, verbunden mit dem Ferment der Kantischen Transzendentalphilosophie, bestimmen die folgende Epoche des Idealismus. Hen kai pan, das ist der Wahlspruch der Tübinger Stiftstudenten, hen ego kai pan schreibt Lessing kurz nach dem Gespräch mit Jacobi in das Stammbuch eines Freundes. Einheit-Allheit und das beides zusammenfassende und entfaltende Ich: hiermit ist das Grundthema der Geistmetaphysik des deutschen Idealismus gegeben. In immer neuen Systemen wird der prometheische Versuch unternommen, das Absolute dem Begriff zu unterwerfen. Die Bescheidung der Philosophie Lockes und Kants, die vorsichtige Eingrenzung der Vernunft auf erfahrungsbezogenene Erkenntnis kann als Halboder Drei viertel Wahrheit, als bloße Verstandesphilosophie oder subjektive Reflektion für überwunden gelten. „Locke war es, von dem Schelling sagen durfte: Je méprise L o c k e " (Nietzsche). Signifikanter läßt sich aus dem Absoluten nicht urteilen. Wirkte die englische Philosophie noch dominierend bei Ha-

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mann, Herder, Kant, Lessing, auch Jacobi selbst, so bricht die Verbindung bei den Idealisten ab, und dieser Bruch zieht sich bei aller historischen Bemühung in Detailfragen bis in die Gegenwart. Daß die eigentliche subjektivistische Wende der neuzeitlichen Philosophie nicht von Descartes, sondern erst von Locke vollzogen wurde, daß seine Urteils- und Identitätstheorie die Grundlage des Kantischen Unternehmens bildete, daß in der Auseinandersetzung mit seiner Theorie die erste Monographie zum Begriff der consciousness entstand und das Bewußtsein als Identität von Subjekt und Objekt bestimmt wurde - die Barrieren der Idealisten haben hier bis heute den Blick versperrt. Der Totalitätsentwurf von Marx ermöglicht die Bestimmung und Erledigung der Lockeschen Erkenntnistheorie als der des bürgerlichen Bewußtseins. Das philosophische Denken, ein Attribut der gesellschaftlichen Einheitssubstanz, läßt sich aus der Kenntnis der letzteren exakt in seinem jeweiligen Wesen erkennen: auch nach dem Umkippen des Idealismus in sein Gegenteil bleibt der Anspruch auf totale Erkenntnis erhalten. Wir werden nicht versuchen, den Geist Lockes zu beschwören und zum Reden zu bringen, sondern bescheidener und Locke angemessener die von ihm verfaßten philosophischen Schriften in ihrer ursprünglichen Intention zu klären suchen, ,,the sense and intention of the speaker", wie Locke sagt, darauf hinweisend, „what attention, study, sagacity, and reasoning are required to find out the true meaning of (philosophical) authors".

M I C H A E L R . AYERS

Locke's Doctrine of Abstraction: Some Aspect of its Historical and Philosophical Significance The doctrine of abstraction is the positive element in that rejection of real universale, whether transcendental or immanent, Platonic or Aristotelian, which is expressed in Locke's principle that "General and Universal, belong not to the real Existence of things".' The doctrine also supplies his account of what is, in the modern sense, "abstract" thought: i.e. thought involving those very general concepts such as existence, number and identity, which Cartesians and others took to be constituents of our innate rationality. The notion of abstraction was, indeed, a part of Cartesian theory, and it is possible to find passages in Descartes and other writers which Locke seems merely to echo. What Locke does, following Gassendi, is to adopt the notion as a weapon in the imagist arsenal, turning it against Cartesian principles themselves. In the Cartesian argument, the doctrine serves simply to underline the mind-dependence of universals and to explain how distinctions can be drawn in thought between things which are not really distinct in themselves.2 But Locke also employs it as an alternative to the theory of innate ideas and the distinction between sensory and purely intellectual intuition; and in order to argue against the Cartesian doctrine of eternal truths in God's mind. At the same time there are many signs of a deliberate intention to differ from another theory, the celebrated nominalism of Hobbes: for whom "this word universal is never the name of any thing existent in nature, nor of any idea or phantasm formed in the mind, but always the name of some word or name." 3 I shall suggest that in removing the burden of universality from language, Locke lost more than he gained. But he evidently did so with his eyes open, and not without his reasons. The general model by which Locke explains abstraction is not

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obscure, but it is not always easy to interpret the characteristically concrete language in which it is expressed. He first states it with reference to the idea of whiteness, a simple idea. We make "the particular Ideas received from particular Objects" general "by considering them as they are in the Mind such Appearances, separate from all other Existences, and the circumstances of real Existence, as Time, Place, or any other concomitant Ideas." These "precise, naked Appearances" became "general Representatives of all of the same kind," membership of the kind belonging to "whatever exists conformable to such abstract Ideas." 4 It is manifest that the "representative" function of an abstract idea is linked intrinsically to its function as a " s t a n d a r d " or "pattern" to "rank real Existences into sorts." A "real existence" " c o n f o r m s " to an abstract idea if it produces in the mind ideas precisely resembling the abstract idea (and, as we shall see, "precisely" is important). Universal knowledge is explained as follows. Suppose that I perceive a relation between two particular "abstract" ideas, A and B. Since nothing will be counted as a member of either of the classes of objects represented by A and Β unless it is capable of producing an idea precisely resembling A or Β respectively, then whatever relation holds between A and Β will hold between any member of the class represented by A and any member of the class represented by B. For example, if the representative ideas before the mind are the abstract ideas of whiteness and blackness and are perceived to be incompatible, we perceive the universal necessary truth that nothing white is black. Thus although the senses give nothing but particulars, and although nothing is ever before the mind except particulars, we can perceive relationships between classes, of things or of ideas. 5 It should be remarked that the expressions " i d e a " and "abstract idea", like the ordinary words "sensation" and " t h o u g h t " but unlike the word "concept", enjoys an innocuous " t y p e / t o k e n " ambiguity, one which makes possible "occurrent" and "dispositional" senses of the expression " t o have an idea". In the occurrent sense it means actually to conceive, in the dispositional sense, to have a concept. Not surprisingly, since dispositions and capacities are defined by occurrences, the "occurrent"

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sense is, for Locke, prior. And it is, I think, unexceptionable (despite such modern dispositionalist theories as Ryle's) that we must explain what it is to have a concept through explaining what it is actually to conceive or think. Locke naturally attributes the dispositional possession of ideas to the storage of images in the memory, although "indeed they are actually no where, but only there is an ability in the Mind ... as it were to paint them anew on itself." 6 Thus the abstract ideas "laid u p " or "set u p " in the mind as "standards" or "patterns" and used as "the Representatives of many particular Things" must clearly be type-ideas, whose existence in the mind has only a dispositional continuity, since token-ideas can occur no more than once. But we should also take note that, in the elaboration of the theory, Locke stresses that the abstract idea before the mind in actual universal thought is the fully particular token-idea: the immediate Object of all our Reasoning and Knowledge, is nothing but Particulars. Every M a n ' s Reason and Knowledge, is only about the ideas existing in his own Mind, which are truly, every one of them, particular Existences: and our Knowledge and Reasoning about other Things, is only as they correspond with those our particular Ideas. So that the Perception of the Agreement, or Disagreement of our particular Ideas, is the whole and utmost of all our Knowledge. Universality is but accidental to it, and consists only in this, That the particular Ideas, about which it is, are such, as more than one particular Thing can correspond with, and be represented by. 7

Thus what is in the primary sense immediately before the mind at different times is not the same permanent representative, for there is no such thing on Locke's theory, but distinct tokens of the same precise type. The doctrine is that we may pick on any token of the type to be the "immediate object of our reasoning" and to represent other members of the sort. For example, we may use the particular idea of whiteness currently received from this chalk or this snow, conceiving of it abstractly, to represent the class of things exactly conforming to it. It should be noted that Locke talks of finding (type) abstract ideas actually in things: " F o r what

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is known of such general Ideas, will be true of every particular thing, in whom that Essence, i.e. that abstract Idea is to be found." 8 The form of words which actually locates the abstract idea in perceived things raises indirectly the vexed question whether Berkeley's famous attack on the doctrine does not simply miss the point. Berkeley takes Locke to hold the impossible view that we can have a wholly abstract, distinct image of every sensible quality or sort of object: e.g. an image of red which is not of any shape or even extended, an image of a line which is of no colour, or an image of a triangle which has angles of no determinate size. On this interpretation Locke would also have to believe in shape-images which are neither visual nor tactual.9 Attempts to defend Locke generally take the view that abstract ideas, on a properly sympathetic understanding, while fully abstract are not sensory images but modes of thought of a more refined type. The implication of the argument is that Locke's theory of thought is not clearly or consistently imagist. Yet for several reasons it is an infinitely more probable defence to agree that abstract ideas consist in images, but to doubt that they are abstract in quite the way Berkeley supposed. The latter proposal may at first seem hopeless in the face of Locke's concrete language of "retaining" or "separating" the abstract idea, of "leaving out" its concomitants and so forth. Yet in a neglected passage he also tells us of a kind of separation which is impossible: "Many Ideas require others as necessary to their Existence or Conception, which are yet very distinct Ideas. Motion can neither be, nor be conceived without Space; and yet Motion is not Space, nor Space Motion." Distinguishing is thus not real mental separation. Indeed he goes on to state explicitly that " a partial consideration is not separating. A Man may consider ... Mobility in Body without its Extension, without thinking of their separation." 10 An understanding of abstraction as "partial consideration" is not easy to avoid in the case of certain abstract ideas. The ideas of unity and existence (which Berkeley calls "the most abstract and incomprehensible of all other") are said to be suggested by, or

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brought along with every idea which comes before the mind. Yet that is to say they cannot be separated from any at all, since, whatever was removed, they would still remain. If abstracting were separating, we could continue abstracting unity from existence and existence from unity indefinitely, as if we were dealing with an inexhaustible set of alternately coloured boxes within boxes. In fact Locke carefully avoids talk of separation in these cases: the idea of existence is "suggested" to the mind by ideas and objects which we " c o n s i d e r " (no doubt, partially) " a s actually being there": "which is, that they exist." Similarly "whatever we can consider as one thing, whether a real Being, or Idea, suggests" the idea of unity." Locke's treatment of number is a good example of thought which is more subtle than might be suggested by the figurative language in which it is expressed; and, therefore, than it is generally believed. T o have the idea of unity before the mind is to consider something - anything - as one thing. He seems to mean too that to consider the number five is to consider five things of any kind ( " M e n , Angels, Actions, Thoughts, every thing that doth either exist, or can be imagined") 1 2 but to consider them partially with respect to the point of resemblance between their set or "collect i o n " and other sets of five: i.e. their number. It is not, that is to say, to consider an independent abstract object or universal. When the number is large, " n a m e s " are necessary, for we have to grasp the number of the " c o l l e c t i o n " step by step, counting its members. Thus, as he states explicitly, given the ordered series of numerals all we need to " p e r c e i v e " is the difference between next sets, i.e. the difference involved in having one more: " t o reckon right, it is required, 1. That the Mind distinguishes carefully two Ideas, which are different one from another only by the addition or subtraction of one Unite. 13 2. That it retain in Memory the Names" in their order.Because the difference between next sets is a precise step o f which we can have a perfectly clear and distinct idea, and because the series of steps is matched precisely by the series o f numerals, enabling us by counting to grasp the number of a "great multitude" of individuals which would otherwise be " a heap in C o n f u s i o n " , number is the subject of a precise demon-

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strative science.14 Although Locke sometimes expresses himself in such a concrete way as to seem to confuse numbers with multitudes, there is really nothing in what he says to excite our scorn. Arithmetic is the science of all "collections" considered merely as such, but it is not his view that numbers are themselves collections of peculiar abstract individuals in the mind called "units". In the passage in which Locke does present abstraction as "separation", the abstract idea is said to be separated chiefly from "all other Existences, and the circumstances of real Existence" such as time and place; although "other concomitant ideas" are also mentioned. 15 Berkeley's criticisms, which concentrate on such examples as the move from a determinate idea of an equilateral triangle to the idea of a triangle in general, thus ignore the most significant factor common to all Lockean abstraction. That is the move from having an idea of something as a particular existent, to having an idea of a corresponding universal attribute. When the universal attribute is perfectly determinate, there could presumably be abstraction in which nothing more is involved than this move, from particular to universal. It is the explanation of this move which is supposed also to explain the nature of the eternal truths. To recapitulate. If I see and pick out some red or redness, it is in Locke's view something particular which catches my eye - this particular redness. In principle, although in practice there is little point in doing so, I could give this particular a proper name, and mourn its passing when it fades. 16 Alternatively I could consider it as "removed in our thoughts from particular Existence" 17 , bearing in mind, not the present circumstances or its evident external cause, but only the class of things conforming to it. That is precisely what it is, on Locke's theory, to consider a general attribute. If the favoured particular passes away I can shift my attention to some other representative member of the same class or token of the same type exactly resembling the original idea, and perceive, in perceiving its relations to other abstract ideas, the same universal truths as before. Any other men, at any other times, can do the same. It is for that reason that the eternal truths of Platonists and Cartesians are eternal, "not because they are Eternal Propositions

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actually formed, and antecedent to the Understanding, that at any time makes them; nor because they are imprinted on the Mind from any patterns, that are any where of them (sic) out of the Mind, and existed before: But because being once made, about abstract Ideas, so as to be true, they will, whenever they can be supposed to be made again at any time past or to come, by a Mind having those Ideas, always actually be true." 1 8 The doctrine is clear, even if a firmer grip on the type/token distinction might have improved its expression. What is mistaken, then, is not the ascription of an image-like or sensory character to Locke's abstract ideas, but the interpretation which takes them to exist in real separation from other ideas. Indeed the more we view them as non-sensory and fully abstract, the greater will be the temptation to introduce into our account of Locke's epistemology the Cartesian distinction most alien to it, between the images we have in sensation or imagination, and purely mental conceptions apprehended by the intellect. It may not be very helpful to dub Locke an "empiricist", but his theory that experience supplies the materials of thought does involve a thoroughgoing, consistent, experiential, imagist theory of thought. For Locke, therefore, the child can "perceive" a relation between ideas virtually with its senses, knowing before speech "the difference between the Ideas of Sweet and Bitter (i.e. that Sweet is not Bitter)". Explicitly, the child comes to know the truth that three and four makes seven "upon the same Grounds, and by the same means, that he knew before, That a Rod and Cherry are not the same thing," i.e. by perception of a relation between ideas of sensation." The object of geometrical reasoning may thus literally be a "partially considered" object of sight. It is true that mathematicians' "Demonstrations, which depend on their ideas, are the Same, whether there be any Square or Circle existing in the World, or n o , " since they "concern not the Existence of any of those Figures" and so "depend not upon sense," that is, upon sensitive knowledge of existence.20 Yet where diagrams are used, they are the particulars "perceived" in reasoning, to its benefit: " a s soon as the Figure is drawn, the Consequences and Demon-

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stration are plain and clear." 21 The doctrine of the Essay was thus not much different from the apparently extreme imagist position which Locke had advanced in 1671: "the foundation (of geometry) being all laid in sense viz. sight, the certainty thereof however looked on as the greatest we can or expect to have can be noe greater than that of discerning by our eyes, which the very name Demonstration how highly soever magnified for its certainty doth signifye." 22 We can see why it is important for Locke that sensitive knowledge is distinguished from intuitive or demonstrative knowledge by its content, as the perception of particular existence, rather than by the role played by the senses, as sense perception. For while it is only in the perception of existence that the senses are absolutely necessary (elsewhere imagination can fulfil their role), yet Locke evidently believed that the senses can be, and often are employed in the perception of other relations between ideas. Thus the theory of abstraction in the Essay is above all an attempt to explain the universality, necessity, a priori cognizability and timelessness of the eternal truths without impugning the sensory character of what is before the mind or departing from the general principles of intuitionism. Whatever the function of the doctrine for the Cartesians, it was certainly not that. To have Locke in such agreement with his critic Berkeley may seem surprising, but makes historical sense.23 The difference I find between Locke and Descartes corresponds to a continuing major dispute of the seventeenth century, with Locke on the same side as Gassendi and Hobbes; the last of whom must have had a considerable influence on Berkeley's theory of general thought. Nevertheless Locke differs from both Berkeley and Hobbes in an important, and perhaps for modern philosophers a more interesting way. That difference has to do with the role of the general word, and with the ancient question still debated, whether language is necessary for general thought. Hobbes, like Locke, believed that in all thought sensory images or "phantasms" must be before the mind. Names, i.e. words or expressions which can stand as subjects or predicates, are both "marks" and "signs". As "marks" they serve to record what we

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experience because of their capacity to revive or stimulate thoughts like our past thoughts. As "signs" they serve to make our thoughts public, by stimulating like thoughts in others. General or universal names are names applicable to many things on the basis of resemblance or equality. General thought consists of particular images accompanied by general names combined in propositions. A proposition is true when the predicate comprehends the subject, i.e. when whatever is named by the subject is named by the predicate, as in " m a n is a living creature." Truth is "evident" in virtue of a relation between the images and the concomitant names. Since Hobbes' account of this relation depends on his theory that the course of our thinking is determined by associations set up between images (a type of theory later adopted by Hume) we shall be able to see why Locke might well have thought his own doctrine the more plausible, clearheaded and economical. According to Hobbes, the minor premise of the syllogism, " m a n is a living creature, a living creature is a body, therefore man is a body," stimulates us, by association between words and images, to form an image of a thing discoursing (i.e. reasoning, doing what makes a thing deserve the name " m a n " ) and an image of the same thing moving (i.e. "living"). The major premise stimulates an image of the same thing (i.e. as was imagined moving) filling space. We remember that the same thing was imagined throughout, and conclude that the conclusion is true. Both language and imagery are necessary for syllogistic thought because "it is necessary to think not only of the thing, but also by turns to remember the divers names, which for divers considerations thereof are applied to the same." 24 In another discussion, Hobbes tells us that without language someone might discover the angles of a particular triangle to be equal to two particular right angles, but that the universal rule will occur only to a man who "hath the use of words, when he observes, that such quality was consequent, not to the length of the sides, nor to any other particular thing in his triangle; but only to this, that the sides were straight, and the angles three; and that was all, for which he names it a triangle." 25 This theory, as a theory of universals, falls between the two

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stools of an abstractionism like Locke's and a genuine nominalism. Under pressure its tendency is to collapse into the former. The function attributed to names in the syllogism is in effect no more than the orderly stimulation of images. It is true that the notion of a general attribute incorporated in each image and correspondent to the general name which stimulates the image is one which Hobbes would have explained further: for common attributes are reduced to the likeness or equality in virtue of which many things bear a common name. It is also true that, in the geometrical example, he ascribes to the general name "triangle" the function of picking out that feature of the particular triangle, its point of resemblance to other triangles, which is relevant to the universal conclusion. Yet there is nothing in his argument, beyond a purely psychological theory as to why we have the images we do and pay attention to them as we do, which would explain why the general name is necessary for this function. Indeed for Hobbes the chief contribution of words to thought is one which they fulfil in virtue of being themselves remembered sounds or auditory "phantasms" which introduce order into the natural train of human thought. Verbal images arbitrarily associated with nonverbal images free man from the tyranny of present experience and the relatively disorderly natural association of non-verbal images. Language makes scientific method possible, and Hobbes thought that he could explain how it does so within the terms of an associationist psychology and without having to introduce intellectual, non-sensory conceptions. The same principles of association which explain animal "prudence" will, given the introduction of language, explain a priori rationality. Thus Hobbes' theory is embodied in the principle that "for the understanding of the extent of a universal name, we need no other faculty but that of our imagination, by which we remember that such names bring sometimes one thing, sometimes another, into our mind." 25 What he does not attain to is the fully or truly "nominalist" thought that the point of resemblance between the particulars falling under a general name or predicate owes its very definition or distinct identity as a unitary "point of resemblance" to the use of the name. For it can be argued of at least some

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predicates that the boundary of what is to count as relevant resemblance is, and can only be, determined by the principle of the correct use of the word, and not vice versa. The satisfactioncondition of the predicate " r e d " is indeed, and unsurprisingly, possession of the attribute redness, but we can only think in terms of a distinct attribute because there is a predicate which may be properly or improperly applied over a range of cases. What goes for the attribute also goes for the resemblance holding between all red things. Such an argument, which will shortly be considered, ascribes to the general name a logically, and not merely a psychologically necessary role. Locke's discussion is full of echoes of Hobbes', and whatever his debt to the Cartesians it is inconceivable that he should not at least have measured his doctrine against that of his famous English predecessor. It is not difficult to see where he would have found Hobbes wanting. Hobbes' particular image before the mind in general thought is in effect the Lockean representative of a class. Locke takes it that, since consideration of this particular is capable of rendering a universal truth evident, the particular must have within it the principle of definition of the class. Hobbes does not take a different view: his triangle, like every particular triangle, has straight sides and three angles. He holds, however, that we cannot pick out this common feature of triangles except by remembering that the general name "triangle" applies to the particular. But Locke, while willing to characterise words as marks or signs which excite ideas, rejects any more general associationism. For him the phenomenon of association is explicitly a hindrance to rational thought rather than what constitutes it.27 There is therefore nothing to prevent him from supposing that we could take a particular, with a certain feature or point of resemblance singled out, as representative of a determinate class of things for which no general name exists. He naturally concludes that the particular idea or image before the mind can as reasonably as the universal word be called, in virtue of its function, "universal". Moreover, he not implausibly holds that our ability to pick out a feature of a particular must be prior to our ability to associate a general word with it. Thus the universality of ideas is prior to the

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universality of words: words are general "when used, for Signs of general Ideas; and so are applicable indifferently to many particular Things; And Ideas are general, when they are set up, as the Representatives of many particular Things: but universality belongs not to things themselves, which are all of them particular in their Existence, even those Words, and Ideas, which in their signification are general." 28 There is nothing in Hobbes' psychological nominalism to throw this position into serious doubt. It is indeed interesting and significant how far Locke leans over to concede the psychological importance of language and symbolism to universal thought, once the logical priority of the general idea is established: general truths are "very seldom apprehended, but as conceived and expressed in Words." 29 The chief accounts of abstraction in the Essay mention "names" prominently, and it sometimes seems that the metaphor of a "standard" appeals just because the abstract idea is a standard for the use of a general word.30 Locke suggests too that the purpose of abstraction is to make language more useful by making general names possible, and he finds reason to conclude that "beasts abstract not" from their lack of general words or signs.31 The discussion of number should probably also be read as a deliberate, limited concession to a specific nominalist argument advanced by Hobbes.32 Nevertheless he states categorically that "when we make any Propositions within our own Thoughts, about White or Black, Sweet or Bitter, a Triangle or a Circle, we can and often do frame in our Minds the Ideas themselves, without reflecting on the Names." 33 Thus his view seems to be that abstraction and general thought can occur without language, but would probably never have arisen without the need for general words. If we are to embarrass his theory from a nominalist point of view, we need, as I have suggested, an argument to make general words appear more than psychologically necessary for the possession of general concepts. Colour-words themselves serve the purpose of such an argument very well. First, it must be admitted that creatures without language may be trained to make colourdistinctions, or may do so naturally; and there is no reason in principle why such distinctions should not be as refined as any

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drawn in language. What the nominalist must argue is that such a creature does not possess colour-concepts: i.e. that the distinctions it makes are different in kind from the distinctions we draw when we say that this is scarlet, that is not. Let us suppose that an ape without language has learnt to press scarlet buttons in certain circumstances for reward. He learns too to ignore certain other colours. Suppose that we now introduce a button of a different shade of red, but much closer to scarlet than any of the other buttons which he has learnt are unrewarding. Finally, suppose that he immediately operates the new button. No intelligible question can be raised as to whether he took the button to be scarlet or whether, on the other hand, he took the button to be, not scarlet, but sufficiently like scarlet for it to be worth treating it in the same way as a scarlet button (perhaps on the hypothesis that all red buttons are rewarding). Such a question can only arise for a language-user, for whom a distinction exists between the question whether it is right to call an object "scarlet", (i.e. the question whether it is scarlet), and the question whether it is right to treat the object as scarlet things should be treated even if it is not scarlet. In view of the confusion of issues involved in Hobbes' psychological nominalism, it is interesting that modern discussions in this area very frequently confuse this issue with the question whether a behaviourist or stimulus-response account of prelinguistic discrimination can be given. Yet it does not take a behaviourist to accept that, however intelligent and discerning we make our ape in other respects, however conscious and consciously in control of his surroundings, only his possession of language would allow us to apply to him a distinction between his thinking that two things possess the same attribute or satisfy the same concept, and his being sufficiently struck by their resemblance as to lump them together for some non-linguistic purpose. If our ape had hesitated over pressing the new button, we could at best have taken him to be pondering whether, given its appearance, to press it: we cannot distinguish for the ape, as we could for a man, the question whether to press the button from the question whether the button is scarlet. Although animals do not have bounded concepts we can our-

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selves make use of an appropriate concept in talking on an animal's cognitive state. We can say, for example, that scarlet attracts the animal, that it reacts to the taste of aniseed, likes sweet things, can pick out red things. We can even say, not improperly, that it notices triangles, recognises resting moths by their triangular shape, and so forth. To say such things is to employ our own bounded concepts in order to state the limits within which the animal is impressed by similarities: it is not, or should not be, to ascribe these concepts to the animal itself. For similarity, when unspecified, is indefinite or unbounded. The predicative or propositional judgement that A and Β are both red cannot be reduced to a judgement of similarity: for some red things resemble in their colour some other red things less than they resemble some non-red things. Because it draws no line, an assertion no more specific, explicitly or implicitly, than " A is like B " has no determinate truthvalue: it could perhaps be taken as the expression of a subjective response, an indication of how the speaker is struck which an auditor might "understand" but could not regard as true or false. An animal too can be struck by a resemblance or difference, but the line which it may then go on to draw by its "sorting behaviou r " — by eating this and rejecting that, pressing this button and ignoring that one, putting this and this in the blue box but that in the red one — is not a conceptual line. The purpose of the behaviour is not the peculiarly linguistic one of doing what is true. There is no intention to place the object on the right side of such a boundary as is the conventional boundary round the class of red things, a boundary set by the public meaning of the word " r e d " . Hence whatever the animal does cannot count as the expression or even the manifestation of a truly predicative or propositional thought. It is interesting, and of the greatest importance to the understanding of his philosophy, that Locke was intensely aware, no other philosopher more so, that universal thought concerns bounded classes. Yet he argues explicitly that public language is the last thing which can be supposed to determine these boundaries. That is because he believed that, if a universal proposition is to have a determinate truth-value, the classes involved must have precise

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and clear boundaries, whereas public language is imprecise and ambiguous. 34 He embraces, unreluctantly enough, what might seem the only alternative: the class represented by the particular abstract idea is determined by precise resemblance to the idea. Only in that way can he sùppose that particulars have within them what is required for the intuition of universal truth. The paradigm is mathematical: particular triangles resemble one another precisely, not of course in all respects but "partially considered", in the particular respect which determines that they are all triangles. Each one of them qua triangle has just what every other one has, and a problem over the boundaries of the class does not arise for the theory as it does over the boundaries of the class of red things. If we say that all red things have redness in common, "redness" is not a feature which is precisely the same in each example: it is not a point of precise resemblance. Locke's response to such examples is, of course, to uphold the mathematical paradigm which is in any case incorporated in his programme for the reform of scientific language. The ideal of precision is thus, like intuitionism, one of the fundamental features of his thought with which the doctrine of abstraction achieves a neat and fully conscious fit: N o w because we cannot be certain of the Truth of any general Proposition, unless we know the precise bounds and exent of the Species its Terms stand for, it is necessary we should know the Essence o f each Species, which is that which constitutes and bounds it. This, in all simple Ideas and Modes, is not hard to do. For ... the abstract Idea, which the general Terms stands for, being the sole Essence and Boundary, that is or can be supposed, of the Species, there can be no doubt, how far the Species extends, or what Things are comprehended under each Term: which, 'tis evident, are all, that have an exact conformity with the Idea it stands for, and no other. 3 5

Nevertheless, Locke does not elsewhere escape altogether from a position of unresolved ambivalence in respect of ideas of colours, which are, after all, his paradigm simple ideas. He sometimes says what doctrine requires: e.g. that words like " r e d " do not, strictly speaking, name simple ideas but bundle up, by a loose convention, a large number of precise, distinct shades, the true

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simple ideas.36 That would seem to concede a kind of nominalist explanation of ordinary, sloppy usage, while upholding the more precise abstractionist ideal. Yet he also invokes the notion of a "simple mode", allowing that shades of red "are considered but as different degrees of the same simple Idea." 3 7 The point would seem important, since ideas of simple modes, unlike simple ideas, can be constructed. Locke gives two explanations of such construction, which he seems to regard as compatible alternatives: ideas of simple modes can be constructed by the repetition of the same simple idea, as the idea of a distance or a number can be constructed out of ideas of a smaller distance or number; or by the formation of a determinate of an experienced determinable, as the idea of a determinate shape may be formed from the acquired idea of shape in general. Only the latter could be supposed to apply to colour shades and the like, but Locke seems to take that possibility seriously. Certainly he takes seriously the notion of degrees of a simple idea, for from any simple idea, such as white, we are supposed able to form a relative idea, such as whiter Another problem which Locke seems to recognise is that shades of colour are not open to precise discrimination each from the next. A similar difficulty is supposed to arise in respect of "distinct Ideas of every the least excess in Extension," but that is thought to be resolved by the possibility of geometrical proof of perfect equality. 39 The problem of finding a range of distinct, precisely identifiable shades remains unresolved: yet in another connection he does not deny, but stresses, the "distinctness" of simple ideas.40 Generally he simply ignores the admitted failure of psychological reality to come up to the logical ideal. Yet the truth seems to be that this failure is not merely psychological, but that the ideal itself is inappropriate. For the difference between "precise" mathematical concepts and "imprecise" concepts does not stem from any variation in our powers of discrimination. The application of number to reality comes, logically speaking, after the discrimination or individuation of things to be counted. Any difficulty in deciding how many things there are will therefore be attributable to the difficulty in discriminating things. It is for that reason that number concepts themselves seem serenely prec-

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ise and unsubject to boundary-problems. The application of geometrical concepts to the world is not in this way second order, but it is peculiarly tentative or approximate or " f o r all intents and purposes". Any observation or measurement which shows that two angles are not precisely equal, or that a figure is not precisely square, shows that the angles are not equal, the figure not square. But then we do not expect any actual pair of angles to be more than approximately equal, or a figure to be better than approximately square. For the purposes of geometrical calculation we simply postulate perfect equality or perfect squareness, and are unsurprised when reality only approximates to our conclusion too. Otherwise we are prepared to call something square when for the purpose in question the imperfection can be ignored. It does not follow that squareness is relative or a matter of degree; still less that, as it is often supposed, there are two concepts of squareness, a precise mathematical one and an imprecise empirical one equivalent to "roughly square". Squareness is, on the contrary, always a precise ideal to which things may approximate. It is noteworthy that Locke avoids the Platonic and Cartesian theory that geometrical calculation and intuition is always concerned with perfect figures before the intellect which are merely suggested by the imperfect diagrams before our eyes. His "empiricist" or experiential notion of intuition leaves no room for that dichotomy, and the imprecision of our sensory discrimination of space is an obstacle to be otherwise surmounted. It might also be noted in passing that the ascription of "precise" concepts to animals and infants is even less plausible than the ascription of "imprecise" ones, although for quite different reasons. It is interesting that Berkeley recognised the role of the ideal of precision in the doctrine which in other respects he misunderstood. In the Draft of the Introduction, he argues that a general name is made the sign of many particulars "between which there is some likeness," but denies that the class need have "any precise bounds or limits at all": " f o r if they had I do not see, how there could be those doubts and scruples, about the sorting of particular things." Precise boundaries are unnecessary, "language being made by and for the common use of men, who do not ordinarily

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take notice of the minuter and less considerable differences of things." Elsewhere, even more suggestively, he implies that there need be no single defining feature present in each and every member of the class, so that the question arises for the doctrine of abstraction whether there is " i n this your abstract idea of man, the idea of eyes, or ears, or nose, or legs, or arms": "there being particular men that want, some arms, some legs, some noses etc." Evidently Locke must accept " a n odd and frightful figure, the idea of a man without all these." 41 Yet Berkeley was unable to make use of the intuitions behind these arguments. In the published work they are omitted, and attention is focussed on the example of geometrical proof supplied by Hobbes, whose penchant for precision is hardly exceeded by Locke's. Moreover Berkeley never states that mathematical precision is inappropriate or impossible even as an ideal for many concepts: philosophy had perhaps to wait for Wittgenstein before that task was clearly done. After Wittgenstein, however, the fact that the boundaries embodied in language are often imprecise, indefinite and open to dispute need not be taken as an argument that they ought to be replaced, or even that they could be replaced, by something better which is not dependent on the common tongue. That is not, however, to say that all class boundaries marked by language are dependent on language. The class of men, Berkeley's example, has, as a natural species, a boundary supplied by nature rather than by language. Still less can we conclude that any realist theory of universale is false. The problem of universale is not one to be approached with sweeping theories in hand, whether logical, epistemological or ontological. For we need to arrive at a satisfactory theory of categories before we can arrive at a satisfactory explanation of the logical, epistemological and ontological status of this or that category of universale.

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Notes 1. An Essay concerning Human Understanding 3.3.11. 2. Descartes, Principia Philosophiae I. 58-62; Arnauld, La Logique I. 5. (Cf. Locke, op. cit. 2.13.13 and 15.) A relevant passage from Gassendi is his first objection to Descartes' Fith Meditation. Like Descartes and Hobbes, Locke uses the notion in his attack on the predicables. 3. Elements of Philosophy, l.ii.9f. Cf. I.iv.8. 4. Op. cit. 2.11.9. 5. Cf. 4.3.15, 4.6.10. Cf., e.g. Leibniz, Nouveaux Essais, preface: "the senses never give anything but examples, i.e. particular or individual truths." Leibniz concludes that universal knowledge has a non-sensory origin. 6. 2.10.2. 7. 4.17.8. 8. 4.3.31. 9. Cf. Berkeley, Essay towards a New Theory of Vision §§ 122f. 10. 2.13.11 (my emphasis) and 2.13.13. Locke is no doubt here recalling Cartesian discussions of abstraction and of distinctions drawn in thought where there are no real distinctions (cf. ft. 2 above). Contrast Berkeley's account of Locke, in Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction § 7: " . . . the mind can frame to itself by abstraction the idea of colour exclusive of extension, and of motion exclusive of both colour and extension." 11. 2.7.7. Cf. 3.3.9, with its reference to "Being, Thing, and such universal terms, which stand for any of our Ideas whatsoever." Also Draft A § 8 f 87 which, in its more nominalistic vein, firmly denies that there is a separate idea of being or entity. Presumably he would also at that time have denied that there is a distinct idea. In the Essay the idea of being is distinct, but not really separate: i.e. it is separate only in the sense of being logically distinct. 12. 2.16.1. 13. 2.16.7. 14. 2.16.3-5. Cf. 4.3.19, 4.2.10 f. 15. 2.11.9. 16. Cf. 3.6.42. 17. 4.9.1. 18. 4.11.14 (added to Second Edition). Cf. 3.3.19, 4.3.31. 19. 1.2.15 f. 20. 4.4.8, 4.11.6. In the latter passage Locke argues against the sceptic of the senses that it is odd to trust sight for the purpose of geometrical demonstration, and yet not to trust it on the matter of the existence of the diagrams used. 21. 4.4.9. Cf. 4.3.19: "Diagrams drawn on Paper are Copies of the Ideas in the Mind ... An Angle, Circle, or Square, drawn in Lines, lies open to the view ... It remains unchangeable, and may at leisure be considered, and examined, and the Demonstration be revised, and all the parts of it may be gone over more than once, without any danger of the least change in the Ideas" (i.e. of fallacies of equivocation such as occur in ethics, where the senses and their enduring objects cannot be thus employed.) 22. Draft A § 11 f 64. Cf. § 27 f84: " . . . demonstrations ... are as the word denotes a beare shewing of the things or proposing them to our senses or understandings" (i.e. to sense or imagination); and "certain knowledge or demonstration makes it

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self clearly appeare and be perceived by the things themselves put togeather before our senses or their clear distinct Ideas put togeather and as it were lyeing before us in view in our understandings." Cf. even such a late passage as the first Letter to the Bishop of Worcester, Works (1823) vol. 4, p. 59: "this showing or demonstration." 23. Locke's notions of "partial consideration" and of the role of diagrams in demonstration indicate that he would be in firm agreement with the sense of Berkeley's Principles, Introduction § 16. Cf. Locke's Remarks upon Mr. Norris's Books, Works vol. 10, p. 250: " A n idea of a circle, of an inch diameter will represent ... all circles of any bigness . . . " . 24. Elements I.iv.8. 25. Leviathan I.iv. 26. Elements I.ii.9. 27. 2.33. passim. 28. 3.3.11. Cf. Hobbes, Elements I.ii.9: " . . . this word universal is never the name of any thing existent in nature, nor of any idea or phantasm formed in the mind, but always the name of some word or name." 29. 4.6.2. But Cf. 4.6.1. 30. See 2.11.9, 3.1.3. Cf. Berkeley, Principles Intr. § 18. 31. 2.11.10. 32. Leviathan I.iv: " . . . without words there is no possibility of reckoning of numbers." Cf. Elements II. xii. 5. 33. 4.5.4. 34. This view of the common tongue is explicit throughout the Essay, but see especially the distinction between the civil and the philosophical use of words, 3.9.2 ff. Cf. 3.2.4. 35. 4.6.4. Problems arise over substances because another boundary than exact conformity with the representative idea "can be supposed", although, Locke believes, mistakenly. Cf. too 3.6.50. 36. 2.3.2. 37. 2.18.3-6. 38. On repetition, see 2.13.4, 2.15.9, 2.16.2 etc. For the alternative model see 2.13.5, 2.17.6, 2.25.1 and 2.28.1. 39. 2.16.3, 4.2.10. Cf. 4.2.11, where he seems concerned rather that there are fine differences at the micro-level not reflected in the range of our simple ideas. 40. 2.29.7, 3.9.9, 3.9.18 f. 41. Works vol. I, ed. T. E. Jessop, p. 128 and pp. 123 f.

R E I N H A R D BRANDT

Observations on the First Draft of the Essay concerning human understanding The First Draft or Draft A' is not, as has been maintained up to now, the provisional sketch of a work complete in itself, but it is the first part or epistemologica! introduction of a work on "things themselves": "But of this I shall have fitter oportunity to speake here after when I come to treat of things them selves and not of the ways and limits of our understanding about them" (§ 38). One of these "things them selves" is miracles:"But this being the proper case of miracles may in their due place be hereafter more fully considerd" (§ 37). The same concept can be found in Draft B; Locke will afterwards speak of "the invisible God" (§ 94). "... I must only at present suppose this rule till a fit place to speak of these, viz. God and the Law of Nature" (§ 160). In the following years Locke changed his plan and conceived his Essay concerning human understanding as a complete work without giving any indications about things to be later investigated "in their due place", "...'tis Ambition enough to be employed as an Under-Labourer in clearing Ground a little, and removing some of the Rubbish, that lies in the way to knowledge", he writes now in the Epistle to the Reader. In the beginning, he had another ambition. The structure of Locke's plan reminds us of Descartes, the only philosophical author he mentions in Draft A (§ 10, § 27): Descartes' Principia Philosophiae, which may well have been the model of Locke's work, begins with an epistemological Part I and then treats of various scientifical problems.2 Locke's treatment of the human intellect as the instrument of all knowledge and opinion, of the "certitudo cognitionis et assensus firmitas" decides beforehand, that mathematics, morals and natural theology can be known with certainty, whereas we can give our assent to the statements about natural knowledge and revelation only on the basis

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of probability. The exposition of the ways and limits of our understanding has in a modified way the function of a prima philosophia or so to speak of a transcendental philosophy, which takes the place of a general ontology. We know for certain from the indications mentioned above which specific -not at all Cartesian- theme was to be treated, either amongst other themes or exclusively: Morals based on natural and revealed religion. These are the objects of the understanding "that most concern'd us", as Locke writes in the Essay. "This was that which gave the first Rise to this Essay concerning the Understanding. For I thought that the first Step towards satisfying several Enquiries, the Mind of Man was very apt to run into, was, to take a Survey of our own Understandings, examine our own Powers, and see to what Things they were adapted. Till that was done I suspected we began at the wrong end, and in vain sought for Satisfaction in a quiet and secure Possession of Truths, that most concern'd us, whilst we let loose our Thoughts into the vast Ocean of Being ..." (I, 1,7). The truths that most concern us are about morality and divinity:"Those Subjects (sc. Liberty and the Will) having in all Ages exercised the learned part of the World, with Questions and Difficulties, that have not a little perplex'd Morality and Divinity, those parts Of Knowledge, that Men are most concern'd to be clear in" (p. 11) . To let loose the thoughts into the vast ocean of being and get lost in that barren element was the fate of the human enquiries which were based on ontology like scholasticism and Descartes himself, as we shall see. The connection of a general epistemology with the special area of moral theology is not surprising if one realises that Locke's reflections are prepared in detail, especially the distinction between certainty and assensus, through the epistemology of the ethicotheological works of Grotius, Chillingworth, Tillotson or Wilkins4. And Locke himself had made inquiries on the theory of knowledge in his so - called Essays on the Law of Nature"·. After the dogmatical assertion in the first treatise, that there is a moral law based on theology, Locke discusses how this law can be known on the basis of the analysis of sense and reason in four further treatises. The law of nature, as we see, is not investigated

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immediately with respect to its content and its force of obligation, but Locke explores the human access to this law after confirming its existence. — The relation between the Essays and Draft A is confirmed, as we can aspect from the circumstances described, by frequent points of contact — " . . . t o a certain extent Locke's drafts of the Essay of 1671 were quarried out of his early essays on the law of nature" 6 . We need very few philological means to demonstrate that Locke's theory of knowledge has its roots in a problem of practical philosophy, not theoretical, and that the special context is a hermeneutic one. The question to be answered is directed at the understanding, not the explanation of the two forms, in which the divine will reveals itself. And at the same time we come to know that Locke's theory of knowledge is founded on a decidedly voluntaristic moral philosophy. According to Locke's early theory the laws of nature stem from the divine will, not from His reason. Hence human reason initially is no place for the discovery of the law, it has no innate ideas or principles, and it does not participate in a cosmic reason, but it is the instrument by which something has to be known that is completely alien to it; the will of another being. Just reason can only penetrate to the existence of God as a law-giver, the content of the law of nature, and its force of obligation starting from the only given material that of experience of the senses. In the voluntaristic point of departure of moral philosophy there is a compulsion to take reason as separate from its object and to start by asking whether and to what extent this reason is appropriate for the investigation. — The First Draft of 1671 can be distinguished from the Essays on the Law of Nature in that the investigation into the instruments of knowledge are separated from the central theme and are located at the beginning. When Locke writes in the "Epistle to the Reader" of the final work about the "History of this Essay" and the first "hasty and undigested Thoughts, on a Subject I had never before consider'd" he corrects his own story and styles it after the image of the gentleman, who does not learn and live in the school, but converses in the manner of Cicero with friends getting his problems, not by the study of books, but by conversation and life itself, writing only in

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the hours of otium, when "Humour or Occasions" permit, or when attendance on the health gives time for leisure.7 In one point Locke is right: He had never examined the human understanding before setting out upon an enquiry of certain subjects. In the Essays on the Law of Nature he starts with some affirmations about the laws of nature, and only afterwards talks about the manner in which we get knowledge of that law. For Locke, the essential turning point must be after the Essays. The accent of his "History" must lie in the word "before": "before we set our selves upon Enquiries of that Nature, it was necessary to examine our own Abilities ....". Is there any possibility of getting behind Locke's affirmation that this decisive turning from the investigation of objects to an enquiry into the powers of the subject "came into my Thoughts", when talking with some Friends? What are the circumstances of Locke's "copernican revolution"? The structure of this revolution makes it impossible to find a determinate problem in the, let us say, pre-critical research that leads from the objects to the mind itself; it can only be an aporetic situation in general in the former "paradigma" that promotes this step. The step itself must remain, as Kant says, "ein glücklicher EinfalP' 8 . Therefore it is quite right for Locke to say "it came into my Thoughts" — like an invention, an Einfall, into the philosophical imagination. But inventions don't come from the sky and are prepared for by earthly events and thoughts. This preparation of Locke's glücklichem Einfall can be sketched in the following way. The two early Tracts on Government9 and the Essays on the Law of Nature maintain a theory according to which there exists or must exist a political order willed by God. The logic of order determines the rights and duties of the citizens.10 With this conservative position Locke stands politically on the side of the Anglicans; he writes the first of the two complementary" tracts against the Puritan Edward Bagshaw. We find the same tendency to defend the political order against the danger of internal powers of rebellion in the Essay on Infallibility of the year 1661, the same year as he wrote the Two Tracts. Locke submits people to an authoritative church regimen in indifferent matters, i. e. in practically all questions of cult. In these things "I agree that an infallible

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interpreter is given, possible, and needed. Such interpreters are the fathers and leaders of every church, who in these matters can be called infallible, but as I see it, their infallibility is directive not definitive. To be sure, the shepherds of the church can perhaps err while they are leading, but the sheep certainly cannot err while they are following. The path of obedience is safe and secure ,.." 1 2 . In 1667, we can observe a profound change in Locke's attitude: In the Essay concerning Toleration13 Locke takes up the position he previously attacked by defending Nonconformism."In 1660-61 Locke was actively advocating a conservative, authoritarian policy of coercion in regard to indifferent matters of religion. Yet in 1667 he wrote "An Essay concerning Toleration" that laid the foundation for the liberal views later propounded in the Epistola de Tolerantia . . . " 14. Locke no longer starts from the assumption that there is an order willed by God, which constrains subjects to obey for the sake of order, but in a certain way inverts the relation of dependence. The starting point now is everyone's personal relation to God and his private right in society. The origin, extent and end of government is the protection of the subjects that gave rise to the political order by a contract. From these assumptions it follows that each single person decides for himself about the indifferent actions in religion, and not the government as Locke had attempted to show before. Abrams speaks of a "new theory of knowledge" of 166715. This expression is justified in so far, as the theory of knowledge of 1671 has its foundation in the same subjective modification which can be seen in the previous treatment of the problem of tolerance. The exploration of the origin, the certainty and the extent of human knowledge is the basis of all further investigation, it must not follow up its first "uncritical" affirmations, as it does still in the Essays. Whether and in which form we can know something about the "things themselves" cannot be decided by trying to explore their being or essence, but by returning to the fountain of all human knowledge, our own understanding. Locke's subjectivistic revolution in epistemology is based on the same fundamental thought as Locke's new concept in the philosophy of civil society and church: The structure of political order and the affirmations

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about things themselves become a function of the necessities and capacities of each individual. The traditional state and the old ontology have no right and truth in themselves, but underlie the conditions of the subjects that form the commonwealth and acquire knowledge by their own understanding. Before discussing a special problem of the First Draft, here is a further hint as to theological morals. Whereas Locke succeeded in revising the Two Tracts of Government on the new subjectivistic basis, the plan to revise the Essays on the Law of Nature was never realised. Draft A and Β promise a further investigation into God and the moral laws, but they don't fulfill this promise; Draft Β that brings only a part of the treatment "De intellectu" does not stop at a casual place, but during the discussion of a problem of moral philosophy. The chapter Of Ethicks in General (Bodleian Mss., Ms. Locke c. 28, fols. 146-152), planned for the-Essay concerning human understanding as chapter 21 of Book IV was not published by Locke. And in The Reasonableness of Christianity he seems to resign — " . . . it is plain, in fact, that human reason unassisted failed men in its great and proper business of morality. It never from unquestionable principles, by clear deductions, made out an entire body of the law of nature" 16 . One of Locke's difficulties must have been the connection of heterogeneous elements: natural morality that can be known with certainty and revelation that can be reached only on the basis of belief. With the first Locke, as it seems, followed the platonizing Culverwell17. With the second he followed the Anglican authors cited above, who invoked Aristotle as an authority of their antiplatonic (in the real polemic: anti-catholic) pluralism of knowledge. The most vulnerable point of his moral philosophy seems to be — besides naming concrete laws — life after death. Without immortality the legal ethics on a hedonistic fundament could not be conceived: only with the perspective of a final judgment on the whole life and a distribution of infinite pleasure and pain moral laws could be effective in this life. " . . . all the great ends of religion and morality are secured barely by the immortality of the soul" 18 . But immortality was not to be proved by natural reason. Locke had the conviction that substance cannot be known, but is

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only the necessarily assumed " I know not what" underlying the constant connections of appearances (e. g. Essay IV, 3, 6). When reason cannot prove immortality, there remains only revelation as the fountain of our assurance. And the certainty of morality is based on a not certain belief — a construction that hurts the laws of epistemology. The First Draft assumes the absolute certainty of moral laws as divine commands, without giving nearer indications of the ways of knowing these laws (§ 26). The further development within the epistemological predisposition of planned theological morals is characterized by the fact that Locke gives moral knowledge as well as mathematics, the status of certain knowledge of a nontautological type within human understanding, i. e. without taking into consideration an external factual realization. We shall return to this point at the end of our observations. The First Draft is a work in progress; while writing Locke enlarges and corrects his thoughts. 19 In § 10 he treats of the first class of propositions, that of existence. As in the part about ideas (§l-§8) he begins in his historical — anti-Cartesian — method with the genetically and empirically first form; there it is the substances without us, here " T h e first and most natural predication or affirmation is of the existence not of the Idea but something without my mind answering that Idea . . . " (§ 10). The certainty we have of the real existence of a being without me that causes the ideas in my mind is the greatest possible for a human being. The testimony of the senses, especially the eye, "I rely on as so certaine, that I can noe more doubt whilst I write this that I see white and black and that they really exist then that I write, which is a certainty as great as human nature is capable of concerning the existence of anything but a mans self alone, this being according to Des Cartes to every one past doubt that whilst he writes or thinkes that he writes, he that thinks, doth exist". Locke treats only of the existential proposition of things without me, the "first and most natural predication". But in § 27, when resuming "what hath been said", he enumerates three classes of existential predication under a systematic point of view, by which the first predication becomes the last in this first group of propositions. He be-

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gins with the certain knowledge that understanding has of its own being "which according to Cartes and I think in truth is the most certain und and undoubted proposition that can be in the mind of man"; then the understanding certainly knows that its own ideas exist within itself, and thirdly the understanding infallibly knows "that those Ideas exist without it, or that those things which affecting the senses always produce those appearances doe exist' ' (§ 27, 3°-5°)20. With this systematic (no longer genetic, historical) structure Locke has arrived at the position of the Essay of 1690; there the middle part is substituted by the demonstration of the existence of God, on the basis of the knowledge I have of myself, and the three traditional themes of metaphysics Locke gets by this modification: I, God, World, which have got their special way of knowledge in the form of intuition, demonstration and sensation (IV, 9-11). Besides this form of an internal development of the thought within the Draft we can mark three phases of the composition by external indications of Locke himself. The first temporal and logical incision is to be found at § 31. Locke here develops his "second thoughts" about a logical-ontological problem. The second incision and with it the third phase within the text (dated: 10th of july 1671) is given with the insertion of the pages 81-83. Locke himself says that in this part of his reflection he gives a certain revision of the preceding § 27, second part (the first ends on page 40) up to § 31 (cf. the memorandum p. 47). What was the motivation for Locke to stop with § 30 and after a pause, give his second thoughts in a new paragraph? To conclude from the external indications of the text, it must be a problem in the sphere of mathematics; § 30 ends with a reflection on the concept of number, and, before, the sentence: "viz. Mathematical universali propositions are both true and instructive because as those ideas are in our mindes soe are the things without us" is inserted in a sentence which precisely excludes the possibility of universal certain instructive propositions in a general rule. Let us recapitulate the thoughts of Locke in so far as they are important for the problem of universal propositions. Locke begins with a temporal version so to say of the concept

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of substance of Gassendi: "Concipimus quidem praeter colorem, figuram, liquabilitatem etc. esse aliquid, quod sit subjectum accidentium, mutationumque observatarum; sed quidnam aut quale illud sit, nescimus" 2 1 . Sense and sensation 22 furnish us ideas, of colour, figure etc., which we complete under the constriction of logical necessity and psychological necessitation by an unknown substratum 2 3 . An explanation of this action of the mind is such that the ideas return in a constant connection during our experience. This regularity has no foundation in themselves; they could group themselves in an anarchical way in ever new formations, as can be seen in our dreams. The order must be based on something else. This something, that necessitates the union and which must be assumed by us by a psychological and logical necessitation, is a bordering thing in our knowledge: We know about its existence, but we can't perceive it by sense or sensation. Our knowledge ends in the appearance of aggregates of ideas, and so we can pronounce with certainty only about particular facts either present or past, and them only with respect to our own experience. By this it is excluded that there can be universal certain propositions in the sphere of natural science and of revelation, that is based on the experience of matters of fact experienced by other persons. It is another matter when we are concerned not with external matter of fact, but with our own ideas, and form propositions about them now necessarily in the medium of language. If we predicate an idea wholly or partly of itself in the sphere of verbal propositions (the signs of signs), the proposition is universal and certain: Man is man, and: Man is rational. For Locke the universality of these propositions seems to be based on the fact, that " m a n " is understood as an idea of some arbitrary species, which may be empty and have no elements at all: the proposition as such only gives a property of the membership of the species, it does not, however, say anything about a recognized property of all real members of a species. There is a gap between reality and thought with respect to universal necessary judgments: "Indeed all universali propositions are either Certain and then they are only verbali but are not instructive. Or else are Instructive and then are not C e r t a i n " (§ 29, p. 50).

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The proposition we cited from § 30 which was inserted into the text asserts that mathematics bridges the gap. In the original part of the Draft, in the §§ 11 and 12, Locke says the following about mathematical knowledge: Mathematic is the art of measuring. A quantum fixed as measure informs us about the greater, less or equal quantity of another quantum. The most universal type to fulfil this operation of comparing is number. We get its two elementary unities one and two by the internal and external sense, and we can adhibit the operation with numbers as ideas in our minds afterwards to the phenomena of the two senses. All arithmetic lies in the faculty of adding and subtracting the numbers one and two. The understanding must be helped by external signs, which can be words or other symbols. Perhaps, Locke says, geometry can be reduced to arithmetic; if we measure spatial extensions by fixed measures, our certainty is perhaps derived from the fact, that the number of points is greater or less or equal. The alternative to this interpretation of geometry as a certain science is the demonstratio ad oculos: we see immediately before the eyes the extensions which have to be compared. So the propositions of arithmetic and geometry are certain because their contents are given by symbols or by a demonstratio ad oculos. They are right, because reality corresponds totally to our ideas of numbers and extension (" ... quantity and number existing have the same propertys and relations that their Ideas have one to another" § 12). In § 27 Locke resumes his point of view: "That two of these simple Ideas compard togeather have more lesse or equall proportion of that particular Idea in them one then other, which is mathematical demonstration" (p. 40). Mathematical demonstration is based on particular simple ideas — and is not, as some believe, a deduction from highest principles as those of identity and contradiction. At the end of the part which treats about the certitudo cognitionis (§9-§31) Locke attacks this conception of mathematics as an axiomatical deductive science. He tries to show that the highest principles can be criteria of truth only with respect to the selfpredication of our ideas — "all that it teaches us amounting to noe more then this that the same word may with great certainty be affirmd of its self without any doubt

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of the truth of any such propositions and let me adde without any knowledge of any t h i n g " (§ 28). But how? — is mathematical knowledge not the knowledge of ideas and reality conformable to them, so that we cannot say that the two logical principles are only verbal! Here Locke seems to see that he must conceive his thoughts in a "better and clearer" way (§ 31, at the beginning). In § 30, Locke begins an enumeration of principles with a, and in the revision of § 31 he follows that order by the marks of b, c and d. But in the same time he gives an inversion of it by the numbers of I o , 2° and 3°, 3° being a new version of a. b and c respectively l ° a n d 2°take up the observations of the second part of § 30 about the two possibilities of universal propositions that are true: the affirmative and negative proposition about simple ideas. Locke rea f f i r m s the same thing under b and c (1° and 2°) with a small but important modification: he assigns clear knowledge to affirmative propositions and distinct knowledge to negative. By this he takes up " t h o s e two universal propositions" (§ 31: " . . . before mentiond in the beginning of this § " ) into the knowledge of the ideas, especially the simple idea. With the Essay we can say: their identity and diversity is intuitively 24 certain (IV, 1, 3-7). The two universal propositions "viz. That what is is, or Impossibile est Idem esse et non esse" (§ 28) remain in a certain way the highest principles of certain knowledge and demonstration, not in their abstract form, but in the way of a clear and distinct knowledge of our ideas, especially the simple ideas. Now one has to distinguish between two different cases: the one is that of mathematical science, where clear and distinct knowledge of simple ideas " a n d of all propositions depending there u p o n " ( § 3 1 ) finds its correspondence in the real world. The second case is that of all complex ideas, where the clear and distinct knowledge of an idea is limited to the idea itself and gives no guarantee of an ontological correspondence. That' s precisely the error of Descartes who by arranging ideas in his mind thinks to cross the ocean of being 25 In the third phase of Draft A this critique of Descartes is spun out at a great length (f. 80 - f. 84). " . . . when these principles viz. what is is, and it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be, are made use of in the probation of propositions where in are words stan-

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ding for complex Ideas v. g. Man, horse, Gold, Virtue. There they are of infinite danger, and most commonly make men receive and reteine falshood for manifest truth and uncertainty for demonstration . . . " ( § 27, p. 44). So Descartes believes that he can make propositions about reality with his definition of body as pure extension, but he remains always in the camp of ideas. Descartes believes himself to have found a criterium veritatis: "Atque hinc sequitur, lumen naturae, sive cognoscendi facultatem a Deo nobis datam, nullum umquam objectum posse attingere, quod non sit verum, quatenus ab ipsa attingitur, hoc est, quatenus clare et distincte percipitur", he writes in the Pars Prima of Principia Philosophiae16. The criticism of Gassendi did not satisfy Locke — "Putat unusquisque se clare distincteque earn (sc. opinionem) percipere, quam defendit" 2 7 . Locke wants to save Descartes' intuitionism on the empirical basis of the clear and distinct knowledge everyone has especially of his simple ideas. So the third phase (ff. 80-84) brings an important progress on the basis of the second thoughts of § 31. Externally, this can be seen by new terms, we did not meet before and that will become important later on, for example the concept of consciousness p. 42, that appears at the beginning of the Essay and will be the foundation of the theory of identity, which in 1671 was totally inconceivable. Further Locke speaks of the body as extended and impenetrable (p. 43, impenetrability, resistibility); the concept of resistibility can be read already in the § 15 (p. 29), but there it is mentioned along with other qualities of the body and seems to be a variable (Locke takes it as "alterable by the same effect"). The "resistibilit y " of the third phase is a fundamental property of bodies in the area of experience - Locke makes his first step to accepting the difference between primary and secondary qualities, a difference not to be found in the other parts of the Draft A. Further, the fact that Descartes is criticised is important in itself; in the first phase Locke, when speaking of the certainty of his own existence twice names Descartes in a positive way (p. 20, 40). Now he has found a method of confronting Descartes in the same way as the scholastic authors; he characterizes the step from mental ideas to reality as an illusion that is produced with respect to complex ideas by lan-

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guage and by the hypostasizing the principles of identity and contradiction. We can't arrive at conclusions about reality by spinning out something in our thoughts and then deducing propositions without contradiction, but we must begin with experience: experience is the criterium veritatis, and in experience bodies are given as impenetrable! Later on, Locke will criticize the definition of the soul as a res cogitans in an analogous way: my experience is the final judge in deciding about my being, and when I note that I do not think always, the definition of the philosopher has no value (Essay II, 1, 9-19). In Draft A Locke maintains that mathematics can only be real and true because there are isomorphic structures in external reality (§ 12, § 45a). Locke has revised this conception during and after his second stay in France: " . . . the truth of mathématiques and morality are certain whether men make true mathematical figures, or suit their actions to the rules of morality or noe" (Journal of 26. 8. 1681)28. I think Locke could not have said the same thing in 1671, and on the other hand, after 1681 Locke does not repeat phrases like: "...though we know it to be universally true that the three angles of a triangle are equall to two right ones, yet it supposes a triangle to exist which can be known no other way but by our senses . . . " (Draft A, § 45). A first step in the direction of the new concept can be found in Draft B. Locke says, that the truth of a mathematical proposition is founded in the ideas themselves, "yet comes hence to be universal, that when or wheresoever that line, angle, or figure etc. does really exist it must needs have all the properties it has in the mind when it is only there in idea" ( D r a f t B, § 44). With the new ideas about mathematics Locke seems to develop an epistemological scheme that bridges the gap between tautological knowledge of ideas and mere probability or opinion of matter of fact in a systematic and more convincing way than by his speculations about mathematics in 1671. Between identity and diversity, which we observe intuitively in our ideas, and the sensitive experience of external reality there enters a new area of demonstration, in which the relation of certain ideas can be investigated. Here Locke places mathematics and morals; they are in the mind, but are instructive, whether there are triangles and virtuous

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actions or not. Reality and truth lies in the operation of our thought itself, it is its own measure and archetype. We have no sufficient knowledge about Locke's development between 1671 and 1689 to see exactly how the change of ideas was going on. Did the new conception come from mathematics or morals? In which relation does it stand to the newly developed notion of "modes"? In the Essay we read: "...Thus Blue is not Yellow is of Identity. Two Triangles upon equal Basis, between two Parallels are equal, is of Relation. Iron is susceptible of magnetical Impressions, is of Coexistence ...' (IV, 1, 7), and fourthly, to use the term of Kant, we have the "moment" of modality in its three cases: I, God, World, known by intuition, demonstration and sensation, as we saw above. Is it contingent that Locke's table of propositions follows in the first three points the scheme of intuition, demonstration and sensation? Why does Locke change the place of existential propositions and put it from the first place (Draft A, § 10 and § 27, 3° - 9°) to the last (Essay IV, 1, 3)? Does he, after having given an account of the acquisition of ideas by an historical method in Book II, want to set out with the ideas in our mind and then return to existence (via relation and substance), when treating of propositions in Book IV? For the development of Locke in a whole it seems to be important, that the new foundation of morals and mathematics reinforces the competence of the subject; the human mind becomes the place of a non-tautological knowledge and is no longer bound to be affirmed by an extra-mental reality. There are some indications that this is a general tendency of Locke's development: in Draft Β the origin of our idea of duration is no longer the movement of external bodies, but the change of my own perceptions. The idea of power as an active force is not discovered by seeing external appearances, as Locke maintains up to Draft C, but by reflecting on my own mental activity. In the second thoughts of the Essay, Locke places the motive force of moral action from an objectively conceived bonum into a subjectively felt desire. Only I myself can decide about the identity of myself — I am as far as I am for myself and an external decision is not possible. (Given a certain analogy with the concept of belief, that was the basis of to-

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lerance: under human conditions my belief is right to the extent that I am personally convinced of it). The demonstration of God has its basis not in external reality, but in the intuition of my own existence. 29 When these observations are correct, we have the indication of a not yet resolved task in the investigation of Locke: We have to make out the the reason for the change of position in the details, in order to understand the Essay as the product of this development.

Notes 1) I use the edition of R. J. Aaron and J. Gibb, Oxford 1936. Draft Β has been edited by Benjamin Rand: An Essay concerning the Understanding, Knowledge, Opinion, and Assent by John Locke, Cambridge (Mass.) 1931. The Essay concerning human understanding will be cited in the edition of Peter H. Nidditch, Oxford 1975. 2) Locke had the book in his library, cf. John Harrison and Peter Laslett, The Library of John Locke, Oxford 19712, 101 (no. 601a and 606). Maurice Cranston writes that Locke began to read Descartes about 1667 (John Locke, A Biography, London-New York-Toronto 1957, 100), but especially the Principles of Philosophy were known to Locke at the end of the 50's. Dr. G. A. J. Rogers will publish some new informations about Locke's first reading of Descartes. 3) Like the First and Second Draft already the Regulae ad directionem ingenii were conceived as the introductory part of a greater work: " . . . moneo tarnen in hac arte addiscenda diutius versari debere et exerceri illos, qui posteriorem huius method! partem, in qua de aliis omnibus tractamus, perfecte cupiant possidere" (Regula XII). I follow a hint of Lüder Gäbe, Marburg. 4) Cf. Henry G. van Leeuwen, The Problem of Certainty in English Thought 1630-1690, The Hague 1963. For the non-Cartesian form of distinction between proposition and judgment see Michael R. Ayers in his forthcoming book on Locke. 5) The title "Essays" (ed. by Wolfgang von Leyden) does not want to indicate the historical genus of the work; the discourses are academical treatises, written in Latin, whereas an "essay" is written in the vernacular language for the public. In his letter of the 29.8.1687 James Tyrrell writes: " I am sorry you will not promise me to finish your Essay of the Law of nature" (The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. by E. S. de Beer, vol. 3, Oxford 1978, 256), but Tyrrell is not informed about the specific genus of the discourses; in a later letter — 27.7.1690 — he speaks of Locke's "Treatise or Lectures upon the Law of nature" (The Correspondence... vol. 4, 109). The literary model of Locke's writing seems to be the seven respectively ten lectures of Robert Sanderson, De Juramenti Promissorii Obligatione (ed. 1647) and De Obligatione Conscientiae (ed. 1660). 6) W. von Leyden in the introduction of his edition p. 65.

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7) Some material about Locke's attitude as a writer can be found in Rosalie L. Colie, John Locke and the Publication of the Private, in: Philosophical Quarterly 45, 1966, 24-45. 8) Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1787 2 , Vorrede (Β XI). 9) Two Tracts on Government, ed. by Ph. Abrams, Cambridge 1967. 10) In this point, I think, Abrams is right in his introduction of the edition of the Two Tracts. For certain modifications of his general sketch see the review of John W. Yolton in: Journal of the History of Philosophy 6, 1968, 292-294. 11) The English tract, written first, is the pars destruens; Locke refutes Edward Bagshaw by an internal analysis of his thought and interpretation of the Bible. The Latin tract brings as the only possible alternative Locke's own positive theory. The Two Treatises of Government follow the same scheme, and the Essay concerning human understanding, too, has been built in this way: Book 1 refutes the concept of innate ideas or principles (as the First Treatise the foundation of political right on a donation of God), and in Books 2-4 Locke develops as the only alternative a concept of knowledge as our own acquisition and work. 12) Translation by John C. Biddle, John Locke's Essay on Infallibility: Introduction, Text, and Translation, in: Journal of Church and State 19, 1977, 301-327 (325). 13) John Locke, Scritti editi e inediti sulla tolleranza, ed. C. A. Viano, Torino 1961, 81-103. 14) John C. Biddle, loc. cit. 310. 15) Ph. Abrams, loc. cit. 100. See also Carlo Augusto Viano, / rapporti tra Locke e Shaftesbury e le teorie economiche di Locke, in: Rivista di Filosofia 59, 1958, 6984. Locke "rispetta l'ordine di dipendenza tra le condizioni che regolano i fenomeni economici e pretende di modificare la situazione del commercio agendo sulle radici stesse del commercio, e non su di un aspetto dipendente di esso" (as Child, Locke's adversary) (80). "L'Essay Concerning Toleration... era stato il primo passo su questa strada..." (82). 16) The Reasonableness of Christianity, as delivered in the Scriptures, in: The Works of John Locke, London 1823, 7, 1-158 (140). 17) See W. von Leyden, loc. cit. 39-43. 18) A Letter to the Right Reverend Edward, Lord Bishop of Worcester, in: The Works of John Locke 4, 1-96 (34). cf.Essay II, 21, 54-55. 19) Locke had the general scheme in his mind when setting out to write. There are no indications of a development in the form, Richard I. Aaron suggests: "Scepticism is thus inevitable on this first view of knowledge (sc. especially of § 7: we have no perfect knowledge of substances). But even in Draft A a new view gradually emerges and in it Locke finds relief. Knowledge ... is no longer of real objects but of relations between ideas" (John Locke, Oxford 19733 , 228). — "There is in the Public Record Office an unprepossessing and imperfect manuscript which may well be a version of Locke's first thoughts on the Understanding slightly earlier than anything previously noted" (Peter Laslett, Locke and the First Earl of Shaftesbury: Another early writing on the understanding, in: Mind 61, 1952, 89-92 (89)". The draft is not written in Locke's hand and contains "page references which can only intend the pagination of A " (91). So it will be hardly possible to use this draft for the comprehension of Locke's development in 1671. See also C. S. Johnston, A Note on an Early Draft of Locke's Essay in the Public Record Office, in: Mind 63, 1954, 234-38.

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20) With a slight modification the same scheme is used in Draft B, § 54 - § 56. 21) Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Adam-Tannéry, Paris 1964, 7, 271 (Objectiones Quintae in Meditationes de Prima Philosophia). 22) Only in § 45 al. Locke speaks of "sense and reflection" (prepared by "reflect" in § 4). 23) Locke writes, that the simple ideas that go constantly together are called by one name, "which by inadvertency we are apt afterwards to talk of and consider as one simple Idea, which is indeed a complication of many simple Ideas togeather... " (§ 1,2°). "consider' ' seems to be a terminus technicus, it is repeated in § 8 and § 20, in the last case in combination with abstract ideas. In the Essay II, 11, 9 Locke writes: "...the Mind makes the particular Ideas, received from particular Objects, to become general; which is done by considering them as they are in the Mind such Appearances, separate from all other Existences...", cf. Essay IV, 9, 1: "...(that being the proper Operation of the Mind, in Abstraction, to consider an Idea under no other Existence, but what it has in the Understanding)". See further Rainer Specht, Über empiristische Ansätze Lockes, in: Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie 4, 1977, 1-35 (26-27; 32-33). 24) Locke does not yet use the concept of intuition in Draft A; but in Draft Β the word appears in the context we are discussing: "But in number the mind, by the clear and distinct notions it has of them without any such either definitions or axioms, has a perfect, undoubted, and, as it were, an intuitive knowledge of their equality and inequality, at least in a great part of arithmetic" (§ 51). Cf. § 15 (p. 57); § 44 (p. 103). 25) Henry Schankula cites at the end of his paper Locke's analysis of the mad men: " . . . they err as Men do, that argue right from wrong Principles ... having taken their fancies for Realities, they make right deductions from them" (Essay II, 11, 13) and suggests, that Locke is thinking of Descartes — se non è vero, è ben trovato. 26) Oeuvres de Descartes 8, I, 16 (§ XXX) 27) Oeuvres de Descartes 7, 278 28) Aaron and Gibb loc. cit. 117. " . . . between 1671 and 1690, inspired no doubt by his frequent contacts with Cartesians, Locke re-examined mathematics..." (R. I. Aaron, loc. cit. 229). Lorenz Krüger, Der Begriff des Empirismus. Erkenntnistheoretische Studien am Beispiel John Lockes, Berlin-New York 1973, 179-205 gives a detailed analysis of Locke's development in the interpretations of mathematics. "Seine (sc. Locke's) Überlegungen zeigen dabei eine Entwicklung, ... die in ihrer Gesamttendenz ... den Weg von einer empirischen Verankerung der Mathematik bis zur Ablösung mathematischer Aussagen von allen wirklich existierenden Verhältnissen markiert" (179). 29) So in the main demonstration of the existence of God in Essay IV, 10, not in II, 17, 5; 17; 20. — Cf. James Gibson, Locke's Theory of Knowledge and its Historical Relations, Cambridge 1917: "It was by a transformation of the Cartesian conception of self-consciousness that Locke reached what is most peculiar and distinctive in his own method. In the Cogito ergo sum a priority had been assigned to our knowledge of the conscious subject as compared with that of the objective universe. To Descartes, however, this priority had been little more than an incidental device of method ... in the Essay the attempt was made for the first time to work out a theory of knowledge from the standpoint of conscious experience. Instead of adopting the point of view of the conscious subject as a temporary expedient, de-

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stined to be superseded as soon as the foundations o f his system had been laid, Locke sought to make it the permanent centre from which his survey o f the whole contents o f knowledge should be t a k e n " (223).

JOHN DUNN

Individuality and Clientage in the Formation of Locke's Social Imagination " A book is the product of a different self from the one we manifest in our habits, in society, in our vices. If we mean to try to understand this self it is only in our inmost depths, by endeavouring to reconstruct it there, that the quest can be achieVe