lates to the ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS; the second to THE POWER OF MORAL PERCEPTION, AND THE IMMUTABILITY

OF MORAL DISTINCTIONS. On both questions, the real opinion of Locke has, if I am not widely mistaken, been very grossly misapprehended or misrepresented, by a large portion of his professed followers, as well as of his avowed antagonists.

1. The objections to which Locke's doctrine concerning the origin of our ideas, or, in other words, concerning the sources of our knowledge, are, in my judgment, liable, I have stated so fully in a former work,* that I shall not touch on them here. It is quite sufficient, on the present occasion, to remark, how very unjustly this doctrine, (imperfect, on the most favorable construction, as it undoubtedly is) has been confounded with those of Gassendi, of Condillac, of Diderot, and of Horne Tooke. The substance of all that is common in the conclusions of these last writers, cannot be better expressed than in the words. of their master, Gassendi. "All our knowledge," he observes in a letter to Descartes, "appears plainly to derive its origin from the senses; and although you deny the maxim, Quicquid est in intellectu præesse debere in sensu,' yet this maxim appears, nevertheless, to be true; since our knowledge is all ultimately obtained by an influx or incursion from things external; which knowledge afterwards undergoes various modifications by means of analogy, composition, division, amplification, extenuation, and other similar processes, which it is unnecessary to enumerate." +

* Philosophical Essays.

"Deinde omnis nostra notitia videtur plane ducere originem à sensibus; et quamvis tu neges quicquid est in intellectu præesse debere in sensu, videtur id essse nihilominus verum, cum nisi solâ incursione xxrà sin, ut loquuntur, fiat; perficiatur tamen analogiâ, compositione, divisione, ampliatione, extenuatione, aliisque similibus modis, quos commemmorare nihil est necesse." (Objectiones in Meditationem Secundam.)

This doctrine of Gassendi's is thus very clearly stated and illustrated, by the judicious authors of the Port Royal Logic. "Un philosophe qui est estimé dans le monde, commence sa logique par cette proposition: Omnis idea orsum ducit a sensibus. Toute idée tire son origine des sens. Il avoue néanmoins que toutes nos idées n'ont pas été dans nos sens telles qu'elles sont dans notre esprit: mais il prétend qu'elles ont au moins été formées de celles qui ont passé par nos sens, ou par composition, comme lorsque des images separées de l'or et d'une montagne, on s'en fait une montagne d'or; ou par ampliation et diminution, comme lorsque de l'image d'un homme d'une grandeur ordinaire on s'en forme un géant ou un pigmée; ou par accommodation et proportion, comme lorsque de l'idée d'une maison qu'on

This doctrine of Gassendi's coincides exactly with that ascribed to Locke by Diderot and by Horne Tooke; and it differs only verbally from the more concise statement

ET AINSI, dit il, NOUS a vue, on s'en forme l'image d'une maison qu'on n'a pas vue. CONCEVONS DIEU QUI NE PEUT TOMBER SOUS LES SENS, SOUS L'IMAGE D'UN "Selon cette pensée, quoique toutes nos idées ne fusVENERABLE VIEILLARD." sent semblables à quelque corps particulier que nous ayons vu, ou qui ait frappé nos sens, elles seroient néanmoins toutes corporelles, et ne nous représenteroient rien qui ne fût entré dans nos sens, au moins par parties. Et ainsi nous ne concevons rien que par des images, semblables à celles qui se forment dans le cerveau quand nous voyons, ou nous nous imaginons des corps." (L'Art de Penser, 1 Partie. c. 1.) The reference made, in the foregoing quotation, to Gassendi's illustration drawn from the idea of God, affords me an opportunity, of which I gladly avail myself, to "How many amongst us contrast it with Locke's opinion on the same subject. will be found, upon inquiry, to fancy God, in the shape of a man, sitting in heaven, and to have many other absurd and unfit conceptions of him? Christians, as well as Turks, have had whole sects owning, or contending earnestly for it, that the Deity was corporeal and of human shape: And although we find few amongst us, who profess themselves Anthropomorphites (though some I have met with that own it,) yet, I believe, he that will make it his business, may find amongst the ignorant and (Vol. I. p. 67.) uninstructed Christians, many of that opinion."

"Let the ideas of being and matter be strongly joined either by education or much thought, whilst these are still combined in the mind, what notions, what reasonings will there be about separate spirits? Let custom, from the very childhood, have joined figure and shape to the idea of God, and what absurdities will that mind (Vol. II. p. 144.) be liable to about the Deity?

The authors of the Port Royal Logic have expressed themselves on this point to the very same purpose with Locke: and have enlarged upon it still more fully and forcibly. (See the sequel of the passage above quoted.) Some of their remarks on the subject, which are more particularly directed against Gassendi, have led Brucker to rank them among the advocates for innate ideas (Brucker, Historia de Ideis, p. 271,) although these remarks coincide exactly in substance with the foregoing quotation from Locke. Like many other modern metaphysicians, this learned and laborious, but not very acute historian, could imagine no intermediate opinion between the theory of innate ideas as taught by the Cartesians, and the Epicurean account of our knowledge, as revived by Gassendi and Hobbes; and accordingly thought himself entitled to conclude, that whoever rejected the one must necessarily have adopted the other. The doctrines of Locke and of his predecessor Arnauld will be found, on examination, essentially different from both.

Persons little acquainted with the metaphysical speculations of the two last centuries are apt to imagine, that when "all knowledge is said to have its origin in the senses," nothing more is to be understood than this, that it is by the impressions of external objects on our organs of perception, that the dormant powers of the understanding are at first awakened. The foregoing quotation from Gassendi, together with those which I am about to produce from Diderot and Condorcet, may, I trust, be useful in correcting this very common mistake; all of these quotations explicitly

In the judgment of a very learned and pious divine, the bias towards Anthropomorphism, which Mr. Locke has here so severely reprehended, is not confined to "If Anthropomorphism," says Dr. Mac"ignorant and uninstructed Christians." laine, "was banished from theology, orthodoxy would be deprived of some of its most precious phrases, and our confessions of faith and systems of doctrine would be reduced within much narrower bounds."-Note on Mosheim's Church History, Vol. IV. p. 550.)

In Bernier's Abridgment of Gassendi's Philosophy (Tom. III. p. 13 et seq.), an attempt is made to reconcile with the Epicurcan account of the origin of our knowledge, that more pure and exalted idea of GOD to which the mind is gradually led by the exercise of its reasoning powers: But I am very doubtful, if Gassendi would have subscribed, in this instance, to the comments of his ingenious disciple. (See the first part of this Dissertation.)

VOL. VI.

27

of Condillac, that "our ideas are nothing more than ́ transformed sensations." "Every idea," says the first of these writers, "must necessarily, when brought to its state of ultimate decomposition, resolve itself into a sensible representation or picture; and since every thing in our understanding has been introduced there by the channel of sensation, whatever proceeds out of the understanding is either chimerical, or must be able, in returning by the same road, to reattach itself to its sensible archetype. Hence an important rule in philosophy, that every expression which cannot find an external and a sensible object, to which it can thus establish its affinity, is destitute of signification." (Euvres de Diderot, Tom. VI.)

Such is the exposition given by Diderot, of what is regarded in France, as Locke's great and capital discovery; and precisely to the same purpose we are told by Condorcet, that "Locke was the first who proved that all our ideas are compounded of sensations." (Esquisse Historique, &c.)

If this were to be admitted as a fair account of Locke's opinion, it would follow, that he has not advanced a single step beyond Gassendi and Hobbes; both of whom have repeatedly expressed themselves in nearly the same words with Diderot and Condorcet. But although it must be

asserting, that the external senses furnish not only the occasions by which our intellectual powers are excited and developed, but all the materials about which our thoughts are conversant; or, in other words, that it is impossible for us to think of anything, which is not either a sensible image, or the result of sensible images combined together, and transmuted into new forms by a sort of logical chemistry. That the powers of the understanding would for ever continue dormant, were it not for the action of things external on the bodily frame, is a proposition now universally admitted by philosophers. Even Mr. Harris and Lord Monboddo, the two most zealous, as well as most learned, of Mr. Locke's adversaries in England, have, in the most explicit manner, expressed their assent to the common doctrine. "The first class of ideas," says Monboddo, "is produced from ideas furnished by the senses; the second arises from the operations of the mind upon these materials: for I do not deny, that in this our present state of existence, all our ideas, and all our knowledge, are ultimately to be derived from sense and matter." (Vol. I. p. 44. 2d Ed.) Mr. Harris, while he holds the same language, points out, with greater precision, the essential difference between his philosophy and that of the Hobbists. "Though sensible objects may be the destined medium to awaken the dormant energies of man's understanding, yet are those energies themselves no more contained in sense, than the explosion of a cannon in the spark which gave it fire." (Hermes.) (On this subject see Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. I. chap. i. sect. 4.)

To this doctrine I have little doubt that Descartes himself would have assented, although the contrary opinion has been generally supposed by his adversaries to be virtually involved in this Theory of Innate Ideas. My reasons for thinking so, the reader will find stated in Note (U.)

granted, in favor of their interpretation of his language, that various detached passages may be quoted from his work, which seem, on a superficial view, to justify their comments, yet of what weight, it may be asked, are these passages, when compared with the stress laid by the author on Reflection, as an original source of our ideas, altogether different from Sensation? "The other fountain," says Locke, "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; which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without; and such are Perception, Thinking, Doubting, Believing, Reasoning, Knowing, Willing, and all the different actings of our own minds, which, we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings ideas as distinct as we do from bodies affecting our senses. every man has wholly in himself: sense, as having nothing to do with is very like it, and might properly ternal sense. But as I called the call this REFLECTION; the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself." (Locke's Works, Vol. I. * p. 78.)

This source of ideas And though it be not external objects, yet it enough be called inother SENSATION, SO I

"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; and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations." (Ibid. p. 79.)

In another part of the same chapter, Locke expresses himself thus: "Men come to be furnished with fewer or more simple ideas from without, according as the objects they converse with afford greater or less variety; and from the operations of their minds within, according as they more or less REFLECT on them. For, though he that contemplates the operations of his mind, cannot but have

*Note (V.)

plain and clear ideas of them; yet, unless he turn his thoughts that way, and consider them attentively, he will no more have clear and distinct ideas of all the operations of his mind, and all that may be observed therein, than he will have all the particular ideas of any landscape, or of the parts and motions of a clock, who will not turn his eyes to it, and with attention heed all the parts of it. The picture, or clock, may be so placed, that they may come in his way every day; but yet he will have but a confused idea of all the parts they are made up of, till he applies himself with attention, to consider them in each particular.

"And hence we see the reason why it is pretty late before most children get ideas of the operations of their own minds; and some have not any very clear or perfect ideas of the greatest part of them all their lives. ..... Children, when they first come into it, are surrounded with a world of new things, which, by a constant solicitation of their senses, draw the mind constantly to them,-forward to take notice of new, and apt to be delighted with the variety of changing objects. Thus, the first years are usually employed and directed in looking abroad. Men's business in them is to acquaint themselves with what is to be found without; and so growing up in a constant attention to outward sensations, seldom make any considerable reflection on what passes within them, till they come to be of riper years; and some scarce ever at all." (Ibid. pp. 80, 81.)

I beg leave to request more particularly the attention of my readers to the following paragraphs :

"If it be demanded, when a man begins to have any ideas? I think the true answer is when he first has any sensation. .... I conceive that ideas in the understanding are coeval with sensation; which is such an impression or motion, made in some part of the body, as produces some perception in the understanding. It is about these impressions made on our senses by outward objects, that the mind seems first to employ itself in such operations as we call Perception, Remembering, Consideration, Reasoning, &c.

"In time, the mind comes to reflect on its own opera