Philosophy Essay 2 Pages

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book II: Ideas

John Locke

Copyright © 2010–2015 All rights reserved. Jonathan Bennett

[Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots· enclose material that has been added, but can be read as though it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations, are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis . . . . indicates the omission of a brief passage that seems to present more difficulty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reported on, between [brackets], in normal-sized type.

First launched: July 2004 Last amended: August 2007

Contents

Chapter i: Ideas in general, and their origin 18

Chapter ii: Simple ideas 23

Chapter iii: Ideas of one sense 24

Chapter iv: Solidity 24

Chapter v: Simple ideas of different senses 27

Chapter vi: Simple ideas of reflection 27

Chapter vii: Simple ideas of both sensation and reflection 27

Essay II John Locke

Chapter viii: Some further points about our simple ideas 29

Chapter ix: Perception 34

Chapter x: Retention 37

Chapter xi: Discerning, and other operations of the mind 39

Chapter xii: Complex ideas 43

Chapter xiii: Simple modes, starting with the simple modes of space 46

Chapter xiv: Duration and its simple modes 52

Chapter xv: Duration and expansion, considered together 57

Chapter xvi: Number 60

Chapter xvii: Infinity 62

Chapter xviii: Other simple modes 67

Chapter xix: The modes of thinking 68

Chapter xx: Modes of pleasure and pain 69

Chapter xxi: Power 72

Chapter xxii: Mixed modes 93

Chapter xxiii: Complex ideas of substances 97

Chapter xxiv: Collective ideas of substances 107

Chapter xxv: Relation 109

Chapter xxvi: Cause and effect, and other relations 111

Essay II John Locke viii: More about simple ideas

the idea of succession. If we look into ourselves and reflect on what we observe there, we’ll find our ideas following one another with no interruptions throughout our waking hours.

10. I think that these are all—or anyway the most important—of the mind’s simple ideas, out of which all its other knowledge is made. They are all received through sensation and reflection.

Don’t think that sensation and reflection are too narrow to supply all the materials of the capacious mind of man,

which takes its flight beyond the stars, roaming beyond the world of matter out into incomprehensible empty space. It won’t seem so strange to think that these few simple ideas suffice for the quickest thought, or largest mental capacity, if we consider how many words we can make by putting together various selections from twenty-four letters, or if we consider how the mathematicians can get an inexhaustible and truly infinite stock of material out of just one of the simple ideas I have mentioned, namely number. [In fact Locke hasn’t mentioned it yet. It will be the topic of xvi.]

Chapter viii: Some further points about our simple ideas

1. If something in nature can so affect the mind as to cause some perception in it, that perception will present itself to the mind as a positive idea, even if it is caused by a negative feature of the object.

2. Thus the ideas of heat and cold, light and darkness, white and black, motion and rest, are equally clear and positive ideas in the mind; though perhaps some of the causes pro- ducing them are mere privations [= ‘absences’, ‘negativenesses’] in the things from which our senses derive those ideas. Looking into those causes is an enquiry that belongs not •to the idea as it is in the understanding but •to the nature of the things existing outside us. These are two very different things, and we should be careful to distinguish them. It is one thing to perceive and know the idea of white or black, and quite another to examine what kind surface texture is needed to make an object appear white or black.

[In section 3 Locke develops this point a little further. In section 4 he offers a suggestion about why a negative cause sometimes ‘produces a positive idea’.]

5. I won’t try to settle here whether this suggestion is right. ·As for my point about the idea itself, as distinct from its cause·, I appeal to everyone’s own experience: the shadow of a man consists of nothing but the absence of light, but doesn’t it cause in an observer as clear and positive an idea as does the man whose shadow it is, even though he is bathed in sunshine? And the picture of a shadow is a positive thing. We do have negative names that stand directly not for positive ideas but for their absence. For example ‘insipid’, ‘silence’, ‘nothing’, and their like denote positive ideas (taste, sound, being) together with a signification of their absence.

6. So a person can be truly said to see darkness. . . . The causes I have here assigned for certain positive ideas are

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Essay II John Locke viii: More about simple ideas

privative [= ‘negative’] according to the common opinion, and so I have called them; but really it is hard to be sure whether there really are any ideas from a privative cause, until we have settled whether rest is any more a privation than motion is.

7. To reveal the nature of our ideas better, and to talk about them intelligibly, it will be convenient to distinguish them •as they are ideas or perceptions in our minds, and •as they are states of matter in the bodies that cause such perceptions in us. That may save us from the belief (which is perhaps the common opinion) that the ideas are exactly the images and resemblances of something inherent in the object. ·That belief is quite wrong·. Most ideas of sensation are (in the mind) no more like a thing existing outside us than the names that stand for them are like the ideas themselves.

8. Whatever the mind perceives in itself—whatever is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding—I call an idea; and the power to produce an idea in our mind I call a quality of the thing that has that power. Thus a snow-ball having the power to produce in us the ideas of white, cold, and round, the powers to produce those ideas in us, as they are in the snow-ball, I call qualities; and as they are sensations or perceptions in our understandings, I call them ideas. If I sometimes speak of ‘ideas’ as in the things themselves, please understand me to mean to be talking about the qualities in the objects that produce them in us.

9. Qualities thus considered in bodies are of two kinds. First, there are those that are utterly inseparable from the body, whatever state it is in. Qualities of this kind are the ones that a body doesn’t lose, however much it alters, whatever force is used on it, however finely it is divided. Take a grain of wheat, divide it into two parts, each part has still solidity, extension, shape, and mobility; divide it again, and

it still retains those qualities; go on dividing it until the parts become imperceptible, each part must still retain all those qualities. . . . I call them original or primary qualities of body, which I think we may observe to produce simple ideas in us, viz. solidity, extension, shape, motion or rest, and number.

10. Secondly, there are qualities that are, in the objects themselves, really nothing but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities, i.e. by the size, shape, texture, and motion of their imperceptible parts. Examples of these are colours, sounds, tastes, and so on. I call these secondary qualities. To these we can add a third sort, an example of which is the power of fire to change the colour or consistency of wax and clay. This would ordinarily be said to be only a power in ·rather than a quality of · the object; but it is just as much a real quality as the powers that I have called ‘secondary qualities’. (I call them ‘qualities’ so as to comply with the common way of speaking, and add ‘secondary’ to mark them off from the rest.) The primary qualities of fire—that is, the size, texture, and motion of its minute parts—give it a power to affect wax and clay etc.; and those same primary qualities give it a power to produce in me a sensation of warmth or burning; if the latter is a quality in the fire, why not the former also?

11. The next question is: How do bodies produce ideas in us? Obviously they do it by impact; we can’t conceive bodies to operate in any way but that.

12. External objects are not united [= ‘directly connected’] to our mind when they produce ideas in it, and yet we do somehow perceive qualities in the objects. Clearly there has to be some motion that ·goes from the object to our sense-organs, and· from there is continued by our nerves or our animal spirits to the brains or the seat of sensa- tion, there to produce in our mind the particular ideas

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Essay II John Locke viii: More about simple ideas

we have of them. [Locke held the then-common view that human physiology involves ‘animal spirits’. These constitute the body’s hydraulic

system (Bernard Williams’s phrase)—an extremely finely divided fluid

that transmits pressures through tiny cracks and tunnels.] Since the extension, shape, number, and motion of visible bodies can be seen from a distance, it is evident that some bodies that are too small to be seen individually must travel from those bodies across to the eyes, and thereby convey to the brain some motion that produces in us these ideas that we have of them.

13. We may conceive that the ideas of secondary qualities are also produced by the operation of insensible particles on our senses. Plainly there are plenty of bodies that are so small that we can’t, by any of our senses, discover the size, shape, or motion of any one of them taken singly. The particles of the air and water are examples of this, and there are others still smaller—perhaps as much smaller than particles of air and water as the latter are smaller than peas or hail-stones. Let us suppose in the meantime that the different motions and shapes, sizes and number of such particles, affecting our various sense-organs, produce in us the different sensations that we have of the colours and smells of bodies. . . . It is no more impossible to conceive that God should attach such ideas to motions that in no way resemble them than it is that he should attach the idea [= ‘feeling’] of pain to the motion of a piece of steel dividing our flesh, which in no way resembles the pain.

14. What I have said about colours and smells applies equally to tastes and sounds, and other such sensible qualities. Whatever reality we mistakenly attribute to them, they are really nothing in the objects themselves but powers to produce various sensations in us. These powers depend, as I have said, on those primary qualities, namely size, shape,

texture, and motion of parts.

15. From this we can easily infer that the ideas of the primary qualities of bodies resemble them, and their patterns really do exist in the bodies themselves; but the ideas produced in us by secondary qualities don’t resemble them at all. There is nothing like our ideas ·of secondary qualities· existing in the bodies themselves. All they are in the bodies is a power to produce those sensations in us. What is sweet, blue, or warm in idea is nothing but the particular size, shape, and motion of the imperceptible parts in the bodies that we call ‘sweet’, ‘blue’, or ‘warm’.

16. Flame is called ‘hot’ and ‘light’; snow ‘white’ and ‘cold’; and manna ‘white’ and ‘sweet’—all from the ideas they produce in us. [We know that Locke sometimes calls qualities ‘ideas’, but that seems not to be enough to explain the oddity of the next sentence

down to its first comma. The passage as given here is almost verbatim

Locke; all of the oddity is there in what he wrote.] Those qualities are commonly thought to be the same in those bodies as those ideas are in us, the one perfectly resembling the other; and most people would think it weird to deny this. But think about this: a fire at one distance produces in us the sensation of •warmth, and when we come closer it produces in us the very different sensation of •pain; what reason can you give for saying that the idea of warmth that was produced in you by the fire is actually in the fire, without also saying that the idea of pain that the same fire produced in you in the same way is in the fire? Why are whiteness and coldness in snow, and pain not, when it produces each idea in us, and can do so only through the size, shape, number, and motion of its solid parts?

17. The particular size, number, shape, and motion of the parts of fire or snow are really in them, whether or not anyone’s senses perceive them. So they may be called real

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Essay II John Locke viii: More about simple ideas

qualities, because they really exist in those bodies; but light, heat, whiteness or coldness are no more really in them than sickness or pain is in manna. Take away the sensation of them—

let the eyes not see light or colours, or the ears hear sounds; let the palate not taste, or the nose smell—

and all colours, tastes, odours, and sounds vanish and cease, and are reduced to their causes, i.e. size, shape, and motion of parts.

18. A big enough piece of manna can produce in us the idea of a round or square shape, and, by being moved, the idea of motion. This idea of motion represents motion as it really is in the moving manna; a circle or square is the same •in idea as •in existence—the same •in the mind as •in the manna—and this motion and shape really are in the manna, whether or not we notice them. Everybody agrees with this. On the other hand, manna by virtue of the size, shape, and motion of its parts has a power to produce in us the sensations of sickness and sometimes of acute pains. And everyone agrees also that •these ideas of sickness and pain are not in the manna, are only effects of its operations on us, and are nowhere when we don’t feel them. Yet it is hard to get people to agree that •sweetness and whiteness aren’t really in manna either, and are also merely the effects of the operations of manna by the motion, size, and shape of its particles on the eyes and palate. . . . It would be hard for them to explain why the •ideas produced by the eyes and palate should be thought to be really in the manna, while •those produced by the stomach and guts are not; or why •the pain and sickness caused by the manna should be thought to be nowhere when they aren’t felt, while •the sweetness and whiteness of it should be thought to exist in the manna even when they aren’t seen or tasted.

19. Consider the red and white colours in porphyry. Prevent light from reaching the stone, and its colours vanish, it no longer produces any such ideas in us; when light returns, it produces these appearances in us again. Can anyone think that any real alterations are made in the porphyry by the presence or absence of light; and that those ideas of whiteness and redness are really in porphyry in the light, when it obviously has no colour in the dark? The porphyry has at every time a configuration of particles that is apt to produce in us the idea of redness when rays of light rebound from some parts of that hard stone, and to produce the idea of whiteness when the rays rebound from some other parts; but at no time are whiteness or redness in the stone.

20. Pound an almond, and the clear white colour will be altered into a dirty one, and the sweet taste into an oily one. What real alteration can the beating of the pestle make in any body other than an alteration of the texture of it?

21. We are now in a position to explain how it can happen that the same water, at the same time, produces the idea of cold by one hand and of heat by the other; whereas the same water couldn’t possibly be at once hot and cold if those ideas were really in it. If we imagine warmth in our hands to be nothing but a certain sort and degree of motion in the minute particles of our nerves or animal spirits, we can understand how it is possible for the same water at the same time to produce the sensations of heat in one hand and of cold in the other (which shape never does; something never feels square to one hand and spherical to the other). If the sensation of heat and cold is nothing but the increase or lessening of the motion of the minute parts of our bodies, caused by the corpuscles of some other body, we can easily understand that if motion is greater in one hand than in the other, and the two hands come into contact with a body that

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Essay II John Locke viii: More about simple ideas

is intermediate between them in temperature, the particles in one hand will be slowed down while those of the other will speed up, thus causing different sensations.

22. In what I have been saying I have gone a little further than I intended into physical enquiries. [That is, into questions about the biology/psychology of ideas, questions about what actually

happens in the world when ideas of a certain kind occur.] But I had to throw a little light on the nature of sensation, and to provide a firm grasp of how qualities in bodies differ from the ideas they produce in the mind; for without this I couldn’t write intelligibly about ideas. I hope I shall be pardoned this little detour into natural science. . . .

23. So the qualities that are in bodies are of three sorts. First, the size, shape, number, position, and motion or rest of their solid parts; those are in them, whether or not we perceive them; and when they are big enough for us to perceive them they give us our idea of what kind of thing it is—as clearly happens with artifacts. ·For example, we recognize a clock or a coach from how its visible parts are assembled, without need for guesswork about its submicroscopic features·. I call these primary qualities.

Secondly, the power that a body has, by reason of its imperceptible primary qualities, to operate in a special way on any of our senses, thereby producing in us the different ideas of various colours, sounds, smells, tastes, etc. These are usually called sensible qualities. ·I call them secondary qualities·.

Thirdly, the power that a body has, by virtue of the particular set-up of its primary qualities, to change the size, shape, texture or motion of another body so as to make the latter operate on our senses differently from how it did before. Thus the sun has a power to make wax white, and fire to

make lead fluid. These are usually called powers. The first of these, I repeat, may be properly called real,

original, or primary qualities, because they are in the things themselves, whether or not they are perceived. It is upon different modifications of them that the secondary qualities depend. [A ‘modification’ of a quality is a special case of it, a quality that involves it and more. Squareness is a modification of shapedness,

which is a modification of extendedness.] The other two are only powers to act differently on other

things, which powers result from the different modifications of those primary qualities.

24. But though the two latter sorts of qualities are merely powers, nothing else, one of the two sorts are generally thought of as something else. The second sort, namely the powers to produce ideas in us by our senses, are looked on as real qualities in the things thus affecting us. The third sort are regarded as mere powers: when we consider the sun in relation to wax that it melts or blanches, we look on the wax’s whiteness and softness not as qualities in the sun but as effects produced by powers in the sun. ·This correct understanding of the third sort of qualities is also right for the second sort·. If rightly considered, the qualities of light and warmth that are perceptions in me when I am warmed or lit up by the sun are no more in the sun than are the changes made in the wax when it is blanched or melted. . . .

[Section 25 is a fairly long and somewhat complex expla- nation of why people are apt to think correctly about pow- ers and incorrectly about secondary qualities. Section 26 winds up the chapter without adding anything except the suggestion that the second sort of qualities ‘may be called secondary qualities, immediately perceivable’, and the third sort ‘secondary qualities, mediately perceivable’.]

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