CHAP. III.

ON THE SYSTEM OF LOCKE.

BEFORE I enter further into this subject, it may be proper to take a very general view of the fundamental principles in the system of Locke, as they are laid down in his Essay on Human Understanding. A work so celebrated, the first appearance of which might be said to form an era in the philosophy of the human mind, ought of necessity to claim our serious attention. But, independently of his work, and the great original genius of its author, the virtues of the man, and the piety of the Christian, are entitled to unqualified respect. That he accomplished much, is acknowledged by those who impugned his arguments; and that his system has many defects is admitted even by his friends. It is not, however, my object, neither is it my place, even if I were so qualified, to set forth his merits, or to expose his faults. But, as it will be necessary to make frequent reference to his principles, and as the consideration of them is intimately con

nected with the present argument, a short previous notice seemed indispensable. In the course of my speculations I shall pass no farther comments upon them than a desire to discover truth, wherever it can be found, and sincere conviction, may seem both to justify and to require. Yet I shall always endeavour to strengthen my own views by concurring opinions, rather than to exhibit them alone unsupported by authority; more especially when opposed to so grave an authority as that of Locke.

I must here, however, forewarn my reader, that, in entering upon some of the following speculations, with no other guide than human reason to direct, he will have to launch with me into a sea of unfathomable depth, clouded with more or less metaphysical obscurity, in which few real discoveries have yet been made by the unassisted light of nature. Yet, although we may have to steer our course by this feeble light, and may frequently be involved in perplexities and doubts in consequence, I am not without hope, that by keeping a constant eye to a better guide, we shall be enabled to make our way through conflicting tides of opinion, to escape from the darkness and uncertainty of outward speculation, and to discover a polar star, that will give us clear and steady light, and lead us at last to the haven of Truth.

Locke endeavours to show, that the human mind in its natural or ordinary state, has received no impressions originally from its Maker, and is therefore destitute of every kind of innate principle. Hence be

compares it to "a white sheet of paper,"-"an empty cabinet," and "a dark room." He considers that the only objects it contemplates are what he calls its Ideas: and that these are either received from without by the senses; or the mind, by exercising its faculties in reflecting on these materials, forms new conceptions, and thus acquires by experience all its know. ledge. He argues, that as it has no innate ideas,no instinctive rule to distinguish truth from falsehood; so it can have "no innate practical principles," but is moral or immoral by education, depraved or virtuous entirely by custom, having no greater tendency, naturally, to good than to evil; to approve what is honest, benevolent, or disinterested, than the contrary, farther than what is virtuous is found to be profitable to society; consequently, that the ideas of a Supreme Being, of moral and religious obligation, and of virtue and vice, are all acquired. Hence he infers, that man, either by process of argumentation, has discovered these Truths: or, where they have been above human research, that they have been made known by Revelation in the written letter of Scripture; nothing, in fact, having been inscribed on the table of the heart by the Creator. For, as Reason or outward research affords the only natural light, and as there are many things which it cannot know, by all its labour, some revelation from above was necessary to man: therefore, that the volume of Holy Scripture supplies that necessity, and now constitutes the common measure and extent of that reve

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lation: consequently, that our duties can only be known by the laboured deductions of Reason on the one hand, or the Inspired Writings on the other; and, mediately, by outward instruction.

The following passages, in the writer's own words, will explain the matter more fully. "I doubt not but to shew that a man, by the right use of his natural abilities, may, without any innate principles, attain the knowledge of a God, and other things that concern him and may arrive at certainty without any such original notions or principles."*

"Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this, I answer, in one word, from Experience: in that, all our knowledge is founded: and from that it ultimately derives itself." Book 2. Ch. i.

"Methinks, the understanding is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light with only some little opening left to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without," Book 2. Ch. xii." The great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call Sensation. The other fountain from which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own minds within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got-I call this Reflection." "These two

* See Essay, Book 1. Ch. iv.

are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings."-"The understanding seems to me not to have the least glimmering of any ideas, which it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities-i. e. The senses at first let in par ticular ideas and furnish the yet empty cabinet.""And the mind furnishes the understanding with the ideas of its own operations." Book 2. Ch. i." For white paper receives any characters." Book 1. Ch. iii.

And again, with regard to moral duties, he says, "I doubt not, but, without being written on their hearts, many men may, by the same way that they come to the knowledge of other things, come to assent to several moral rules, and be convinced of their obligations; others also may come to be of the same mind, from their education, company, and customs of their country; which persuasion, however got, will serve to set Conscience on work."

"If conscience be a proof of innate principles, contraries may be innate principles; since some men, with the same bent of conscience, prosecute what others avoid." Book 1. Ch. iii.

From this system it follows, according to the same writer, that "Conscience is nothing else but our own opinion or judgment, of the moral rectitude or pravity of our actions;"-that "Virtue is approved, not because it is innate, but because it is profitable;"-that "Good and Evil are nothing but pleasure or pain, or that which occasions or procures pleasure or pain to