The Age of Enlightenment

THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Francisco Goya’s 1799 etching ‘The Sleep of Reason’

Note on the online edition
Isaiah Berlin’s anthology of the writings of selected
eighteenth-century philosophers was first published in
1956, and is now out of print. This second edition was
specially prepared by Henry Hardy for the Isaiah Berlin
Virtual Library. It was first posted on 14 August 2017 and
most recently revised on 4 March 2021.
Page numbers in [ ] mark the beginning of the relevant

page in the original publication, and are provided so that
citations from the original and from the online PDF can
use the same page numbering. See also p. xliv below.
THE AGE OF ENLIGHT ENMENT
‘The intellectual power, honesty, lucidity, courage and

disinterested love of the truth of the most gifted thinkers of
the eighteenth century remain to this day without parallel.
Their age is one of the best and most hopeful episodes in the
life of mankind.’
These are the closing words of Isaiah Berlin’s introduction to
his selection, with running commentary, from the major works
of Locke, Berkeley, Hume and other leading eighteenth-
century philosophers. These thinkers lived in a period when it
seemed that philosophy might almost be converted into a
natural science. Human omniscience was still thought to be an
attainable goal: a science of nature had been created, and a
parallel human science was believed to be possible.
Even if misconceived, this was not an ignoble programme.
To quote from the introduction once more: ‘A very great deal
of good, undoubtedly, was done […] by the conscientious
attempt to apply scientific methods to the regulation of human
affairs. […] But the central dream, the demonstration that
everything in the world moved by mechanical means, that all
evils could be cured by appropriate technological steps, […]
proved delusive.’ Both the dream and its effects, beneficent
and otherwise, have their evident modern descendants.
Isaiah Berlin, first President of Wolfson College, Oxford,
from 1966 to 1975, was President of the British Academy
from 1974 to 1978, and a Fellow of All Souls College. He was
Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at New College from 1938 to
1950 and Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford
from 1957 to 1967.
Henry Hardy, a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, is one of
Isaiah Berlin’s Literary Trustees. He has (co-)edited many
other books by Berlin – including a four-volume edition of his
letters – and by other authors. He is co-editor of The One and
the Many: Reading Isaiah Berlin (2007), editor of The Book of
Isaiah: Personal Impressions of Isaiah Berlin (2009), and author of
In Search of Isaiah Berlin: A Literary Adventure (2018).
Also by Isaiah Berlin
*
KARL MARX
THE HEDGEHOG AND THE FOX

THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMEN T
RUSSIAN THINKERS
CONCEPTS AND CATEGORIES
AGAINST THE CURRENT
PERSONAL IMPRESSIONS
THE CROOKED TIMBER OF HUMANITY
THE SENSE OF REALITY
THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND
THE ROOTS OF ROMANTICISM
THE POWER OF IDEAS
THREE CRITICS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT
FREEDOM AND I TS BETRAYAL
LIBERTY
THE SOVIET MIND
POLITICAL IDEAS IN THE ROMANTIC AGE
*
F L O U R I S H I N G : L E T T E R S 192 8 – 19 46
E N L I G H T E N I N G : L E T T E R S 19 46 – 196 0
B U I L D I N G : L E T T E R S 1 9 60 – 1 975
A F F I R M I N G : L E T T E R S 1 975 – 199 7
With Beata Polanowska-Sygulska

UNFINISHED DIALOGUE
For more information on Isaiah Berlin visit

https://isaiah-berlin.wolfson.ox.ac.uk
http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk
The Age of Enlightenment
The Eighteenth-Century Philosophers
Selected with introduction

and commentary by
ISAIAH BERLIN
with the assistance of Marcus Dick
Second edition
Edited by Henry Hardy
OXFORD
T HE I S A I A H B E RL I N LI T E RA RY T R U S T
2017
Introduction, commentary and selection of texts
© Isaiah Berlin 1956
Editorial matter and textual revision in second edition
© Henry Hardy 2017
First edition published in paperback by The New

American Library of World Literature Inc. 1956
First published in hardback by Houghton Mifflin Co.
1956
Reprinted by Oxford University Press 1979
simultaneously in paperback and hardback
Second edition first published (online only) by
The Trustees of theIsaiah Berlin Literary Trust 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust.
Contents
Editorial preface vi
Author’s note xlii
Acknowledgements xliii
Textual note xliv
Introduction 1
John Locke 21
Voltaire 105
George Berkeley 108
David Hume 153
Thomas Reid 247
Condillac 252
La Mettrie 255
Johann Georg Hamann 257
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg 263
Index of names 265
Publisher’s advertisements for the series 268
Editorial Preface
This anthology was first published in 1956 as the fourth volume in
a six-volume series – called ‘The Great Ages of Western
Philosophy’ in hardback and ‘The Mentor Philosophers’ in
paperback – and went out of print in 2003. It was well received on
first appearance, and sold extraordinarily well, as related below.
Here are extracts from two reviews:
Mr Berlin’s introduction to these readings and his commentaries upon

them are remarkable for their expository clarity and the suggestive
insights and acute observations they contain. Mr Berlin offers us concise
and penetrating reflections on the fundamental ideas, some of the
problems that generated them, and some of the difficulties engendered
by them in Locke, Berkeley and Hume. Not much is missed here.
H. S. Thayer, Journal of Philosophy
Mr Berlin, by the selections he has made and even more by his

introduction and running commentary, confers upon his reader a
comfortable sense of grasping the great issues that beset the philosophers
of the day. He is not content merely to choose and summarise, though
he does the one with fine judgement and the other with great lucidity; he
also criticises and compares. The result is excellent.
Arthur M. Wilson, William and Mary Quarterly
Berlin’s whole philosophical enterprise can be described as an

examination of the contest between the Enlightenment and its
critics. We have many of his essays on the critics (whom he found
more engaging as subjects of study than their opponents), but
vi
E D I T O RI A L P RE FA CE
nothing else of substance addressed directly to the movement they

were attacking. This makes the book Berlin’s fullest statement of
the position under fire from the Counter-Enlightenment figures he
is famous for bringing to life, and, accordingly, a not insignificant
ingredient in his oeuvre. It contains much that is not to be found in
his essays, as well as interesting intimations of his later work,
especially in the chapter on Hamann. In particular, in its close
analysis of specific passages from the philosophers whose work it
anthologises, it is quite unlike the rest of Berlin’s published writing,
and gives us a window into the period from 1932 to 1950
(interrupted by the war) when Berlin was teaching philosophy to
undergraduates, mainly at New College, Oxford.
It is a strange book in some ways, especially because it gives
pride of place to the three British empiricists Hume, Berkeley and
Locke (in diminishing order of the space Berlin allocates them) at
the expense of the philosophers from the Continent who feature
more prominently in his essays on the history of ideas. Condorcet,
d’Alembert, Diderot, Helvétius, Holbach, Kant, Lessing, Moses
Mendelssohn, Montesquieu and others are notably absent; and
Condillac, La Mettrie and Voltaire get very short shrift.
Why is this? The exclusion of Kant is explained by Berlin
himself,1 and he does appear in the successor volume, The Age of
Ideology. The prominence of British thinkers (though Adam Smith
is excluded) may in part be explained by their central role in
philosophy teaching at Oxford in the mid twentieth century and
beyond, and by the fact that Berlin contemplated writing books on
both Berkeley and Hume, and indeed received a contract for the
former from Penguin Books in 1949 (though this was cancelled in
1951). We have his full lecture notes on both thinkers, and it is
reasonable to suppose that some of what he writes about them here
would have appeared in the books that were never written. But he
1 pp. xxxviii and 24 below. (Cross-references to pages with arabic

numbering are to the pagination of the first edition, inserted in this
edition in square brackets. See textual note, p. xl below.)
vii
must also have believed that his choice of material could be

defended on intrinsic grounds, and some inklings of these grounds
can be gleaned from remarks within this volume,2 as well as from
his correspondence with Victor Weybright3 and his colleagues at
the New American Library (NAL), extensive extracts from which
appear below. The story of the genesis of the book is in any case
not undiverting for its own sake. I have omitted a good deal of
mundane discussion of nuts and bolts that would be of more
interest to historians of publishing, though it also contains various
obiter dicta of wider appeal.4
Weybright was known to Berlin from at the latest 1945, when
(on 6 October) Berlin’s colleague in the Ministry of Information in
London, the politics don Herbert Nicholas of Exeter College,
sends him this news: ‘Victor Weybright has abandoned his fortress
of the Survey Graphic to become distributor in the USA for Allen
Lane’s Penguins. A blood stock marriage if ever there was one.’5
Weybright’s original approach was made on 6 February 1953:
2 For example, on p. 18, where he writes that the work of the British
empiricist philosophers ‘gradually came to dominate European thought’;
and on p. 271, where he refers to ‘the triumph of the British empiricist
philosophy […]; in particular that of the systematic materialism which
the French philosophes had derived from it, and by means of which the
most eminent among them, and in particular the contributors to the great
encyclopedia edited by Diderot and d’Alembert, were successfully
undermining the theological, political and moral foundations of the
established order’.
3 Victor Weybright (1903–78), editor-in-chief of the New American
Library of World Literature 1945–66, co-author with Henry Sell of

Buffalo Bill and the Wild West (New York, 1955), of which IB requested a
copy.
4 E.g., ‘Miss Anscombe is a maniac and capable of anything if crossed’
(3 January 1955 to Victor Weybright, NAL [see note 6 below] 161).

5 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Berlin 272, fos 205–6 at 206r (p. 3).
Subsequent references to Berlin’s papers are given by shelfmark and

folio(s) in the form MSB 272/205–6.
viii
It has been a long time since I have been personally exposed to your
wisdom and your remarkable style of imparting it – but in the days since
the war I have, by good chance, frequently encountered your writings
and your good and gossipy friends. So I don’t feel wholly a stranger out
of the blue, writing you now in my role as publisher. As you, with your
omnipotent curiosity, probably know, Kurt Enoch (formerly director of
Albatross in Europe) and I purchased Allen Lane’s Penguin interests in
America soon after the war; and we have now built it into the major
enterprise of its sort in the world, under the lofty corporate name of The
New American Library of World Literature, Inc., with Signet books
reflecting the Penguins, and Mentor Books parallel to the Pelicans. […]
We are developing a series of Mentor Readers in Philosophy,
designed for the general public as well as students. We would like you to
write-and-compile the volume on The Age of Reason – the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. The pattern is shaping up as follows:
The Age of Faith – the Medieval philosophers: 800 A D to 1272 A D

(edited by Anne Fremantle)
The Age of Enlightenment – the Renaissance philosophers (the editor not
yet chosen)
The Age of Reason – we would like to nominate you
A Mentor Reader in Modern Philosophy – the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries (editor not yet selected)
It is contemplated that these four volumes will provide a unified

approach to Western philosophy and philosophers, designed to be of
interest to the general public and to American college students. About
one-third of the text should be biographical and background
interpretation, and two-thirds should be selective quotation from the
works of the principal philosophers, arranged in categories that seem |
most helpful to the reader, with interpolative comment.
We would like each book to be no less than 70,000 words nor more
than 80,000 words in length – and to give the essence, through quotation
ix
and interpretation, of the thoughts, writings, lives and personalities of

the philosophers who were eminent, influential, or who have become
acknowledged as classical in the earlier periods. […]
It was Anne Fremantle who nominated you as the perfect producer
of such a book on The Age of Reason. I quite agree. Can you undertake it?
[…] (MSB 368/90–1)
In his letters to Weybright Berlin from the very beginning displays

a striking knowledge of the history of philosophy, including some
surprising backwaters.6 He responds to Weybright’s invitation in a
letter of 13 February.
[…] I am much attracted. I think the job you contemplate could probably
be done in the summer vacation, sometime in July and August, and you
could have the results before I go myself to Harvard, that is to say in
September of this year (for the autumn semester). So it may be (if we
could reach some agreement on this matter) a convenience to you to
have me in the US from September to April 1954, provided, of course,
that I obtain a visa and the world still stands. Let me set out my thoughts
to you more or less in the order in which they occur.
1. The volume which you contemplate, which you call The Age of
Reason, covering the seventeenth and eighteenth centur[ies], contains in
fact the cream of modern philosophy, that is to say the most important
philosophers of any at all in the contemporary sense of the word, so that
if anyone were thoroughly acquainted with what was done in those two
6 Berlin’s letters to Weybright were supplied by the Fales Library at

New York University from the New American Library Archive, MSS
070, Series II, folders 157–9, 161, 163–5 (referred to below by folder
number, e.g. NAL 157). I am grateful to Nicholas Martin for invaluable
assistance in accessing the NYU holdings. Carbons of some of Berlin’s
letters are held in Berlin’s papers, but it has not been necessary to rely on
these, and they do not include the manuscript alterations made by IB to
the top copies. Similarly, the texts of letters from Weybright are taken
from the top copies in the Berlin papers where possible.
x
centuries, he would, in a sense, scarcely need to know what had been

done later (though this is an exaggeration) and certainly nor earlier. That
is why I feel a certain horror at compressing all the works of genius of
those two centuries – say, from Galileo and Bacon until, say, the death
of Kant – into one volume. Furthermore I also think (though this is an
unsolicited piece of advice) that what you call The Age of Enlightenment, i.e.
the Renaissance philosophers, will be necessarily somewhat thin if you
really do confine yourself to philosophers of that period. Machiavelli was
certainly somebody, but extracts from him, plus people like Campanella,
Marsilio, Pomponnazzi, Bodin, even eked out with Montaigne, Rabelais
and other writers not very obviously philosophers, will be very tedious.
The title of anything connected with the | Renaissance may of course
sell the book; but the contents, after all the persons mentioned by learned
historians of this age have been raked through and gleaned, will still
produce a haphazard and somewhat arid collection.
I do not think I exaggerate: the historians of the Renaissance tend to
treat these figures with respect, but hardly understand them. The
historians of ideas write tedious volumes about them; but from the point
of view of any but the most narrowly specialised academic demand, I
cannot feel that a volume of this sort will have much interest, unless you
add people like Bacon and Hobbes, and other seventeenth-century
figures who belong to what Whitehead called ‘The Age of Genius’. It
therefore seems to me a more natural division to produce either (a) a
volume dealing with the great figures of the seventeenth century,
beginning with Galileo and ending with, say, the death of Hobbes, and
including Leibniz, who, although he died in the eighteenth century,
belongs fundamentally to the seventeenth, and not including Locke, who,
although he wrote in the seventeenth century, belongs fundamentally to
the eighteenth. That would be a splendid volume, and should properly
be called ‘The Age of Reason’.
This could, I suggest, be followed by another volume called The Age
of Enlightenment (which is normally reserved for the eighteenth century
and not the Renaissance: has anyone ever dared describe the Renaissance
as enlightened? – perhaps they have), and this would include all the
xi
celebrated philosophers who begin with Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant

and the French Enlightenment, that is to say bits of Diderot, Helvétius,
Condorcet, Reid and even Voltaire and Adam Smith. You could add to
this, if you wish, a volume dealing with the late Middle Ages & early
Renaissance, beginning with, say, Ockham or even St Thomas, and
ending with Erasmus and Machiavelli and perhaps Valla. It seems to me
that the earlier Renaissance philosophers are much like the late
scholastics, and are remote from, and not particularly intelligible to,
modern readers in any shape or guise, and this holds even for the most
brilliant and brightest of them all, namely Machiavelli. This would give
you three volumes instead of two, but would consist of matter at once
more interesting, and displayed in what seems to me a more convenient
and palatable form, than the original schema. |
(b) If you wanted to stick to the two-volume conception then you
could perhaps divide this field into (i) a volume dealing with philosophers
from the lateish Renaissance, say Machiavelli to the end of the
seventeenth century, i.e. Hobbes, and then (ii) a volume dealing with the
eighteenth century (to whose inhabitants I ought to have added Bentham
and Montesquieu, but the list was not meant to be either exhaustive or
specially characteristic).
(c ) Finally, the arrangement could be left as you originally planned it,
i.e. Renaissance philosophers in one volume and all the real philosophers
in another. If I were to attempt to do something for the series I think I
should prefer (a), (b) and (c) in that order. Certainly I think scheme (a)
vastly superior to either (b) or (c). Renaissance philosophy is, I do assure
you, a jejeune, somewhat bogus, affair, except for the casual light it
throws upon history, the arts etc. If it must be treated separately at all,
[it] wd surely best be collected, not by someone who knows about
philosophy, but by someone interested in art during the Renaissance; and
ought to include a good deal of aesthetic theory, such as Michelangelo’s
theories about art, Alberti etc., which experts on philosophy tend not to
know about.
One more important point. I doubt whether I should be able to
complete the job in time with my genuinely appalling commitments in
xii
the way of publication (I still have my Bryn Mawr lectures to publish with
the Oxford University Press this year, and a collection of articles), unless
you allow me to associate myself in this work [with] my colleague Stuart
Hampshire, who is a Fellow of New College here, and a philosopher and
writer of singular brilliance and breadth, both as a technical specialist on
logic, ethics etc. and as an essayist and literary and historical critic. You
may judge of his ability by his Penguin on Spinoza, which has had a
certain sale in America, and a very exceptional one for a work of this type
– 50,000 or 60,000 copies, I think – in England. If you adopt scheme (c),
we could I suppose do the volume dealing with the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries under our joint | authorship and names; if, as I
hope, you would prefer schemes (a) or (b), we could either append only
one of our names to each volume, or both our names to both, as seems
better. So far as royalties are concerned, we would, I think, wish to divide
them equally.
[…] The more I think about all this, the more I feel convinced that
one volume is too little for 17th and 18th centuries; & too much for the
Renaissance (unless eked out with either late Middle Ages, or stretching
into the 17th century). Please let me know what you think. (NAL 164)
Weybright replies on 23 February:
How very inspiring and intellectually stimulating to have your letter. I am

converted to your scheme (a) […].
Indeed, I wonder seriously whether you, or you and Stuart
Hampshire, might not be a great improvement over myself as the overall
editor of this series of Mentor readers in philosophy. Such an overall
editor could be most valuable in seeing to it that the major developments
of philosophic thought are placed in perspective and that none is
neglected. I don’t believe this would be so much of a burden to your
philosophic mind, or minds, as to my own. However, I do rate myself as
a first-class publisher, with very good intentions, with a genuine desire to
make this series of books a durable and basic, almost classical, necessity
for general readers and students alike. It seems to me that each volume,
xiii
though part of a series of philosophy readers, should be complete in itself

– bringing out, even if sketchily, the influence of earlier philosophers,
and relationships to the whole stream of thought.
Would you be interested, individually, or jointly with Hampshire, […]
to outline and propose the first choice editors of the other volumes?
Tactically, I should like to have an American philosopher on the
nineteenth century. I think, too, that I would not like to neglect the
Renaissance altogether, or gloss it over by including the period in the
volume preceding or the volumes following. One of my colleagues favors
your suggestion that the Renaissance (where the most important figures
are not primarily philosophers – Machiavelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo,
Copernicus) might be packed into the introduction to the seventeenth-
century philosophers. I demur. I would like to see a separate volume, by
someone interested in art during the Renaissance, include a good deal of
esthetic theory, which, as you say, experts on philosophy tend not to
know about. There is great curiosity in America nowadays about all this,
and, if it can be done with integrity, without violating the intention of the
series, I should like to see us cater to it, authoritatively; and I do not mind
at all if the would-be philosophers of the Renaissance turn out, as you
assure me, to be jejeune and bogus, except for the casual light they throw
upon history, the arts and politics.
If you and Hampshire could outline the whole series, I am sure that
Anne Fremantle, who is compiling the medieval volume, would welcome
your suggestions for her | guidance. […]
Stuart Hampshire will be interested in knowing that at Columbia
University they are now recommending his Pelican on Spinoza as
supplementary reading. (MSB 368/92–3)
On 4 March 1953 Berlin refers to the NAL commission in a letter

to his friend the US philosopher Morton White, who was to edit
the last volume of the series, The Age of Analysis. Berlin has
evidently forgotten that White knows who Weybright is:
xiv
I too have been doing things not strictly worthy of that degree of
intellectual purity and integrity to which we are in theory all dedicated. I
have been suborned or almost suborned by a man called Victor
Weybright to do something about editing some sort of selections from
various philosophers for whatever the American equivalent of Penguins
is, and have agreed to do it provided I am allowed Hampshire as a
collaborator. It seems to me that it will do little harm and will bring in
much needed income. More details when the thing becomes a little
clearer.7
On 10 March Berlin replies to Weybright’s letter of 23 February,

observing: ‘I think all your proposals are wonderfully sound and
good and think that I can accept them all’ (NAL 164). On 16 March
he expands on this:
I feel I must write & say how, having read your last (Feb 23d) letter again,
very deeply impressed I am by your whole approach to the philosophical
Mentors: not merely because you agree with my suggestions (which
naturally sets me up) but because of the general splendour of your
perceptions & rapidity of understanding. But all this sincere but perhaps
embarrassing praise apart: I think Hampshire & I could edit such a series;
& cd produce a plan | for say five volumes – Renaissance, 17th cent, 18th
cent, 19th, 20th century + suggestions of a concrete kind for the volumes
we don’t ourselves do, i.e. Renaissance & 19th & 20th centuries. We both
leave Oxford to-day. But we may meet in Rome a little after Easter: for
the Renaissance I think Felix Gilbert of Bryn Mawr might be the best –
but for him, as for all editors, there is the problem of translation: in the
case of 17th & 18th cent. classics, such translations into English, as a rule,
exist; there may be some missing for odd German or French writers in
the 19th or 20th centuries (say Schelling or one of the French ideologues
7 Berlin’s letters to White are quoted from photocopies supplied by

White to the editor, and now in the possession of the Isaiah Berlin
Literary Trust at Wolfson College, Oxford. This quotation is from p. 2
of the letter in question.
xv
suppose that they are admitted to the club) but this is remediable without
acute difficulty – the question seems to be purely financial. But for the
Renaissance you need translations from Italian & Latin & German: | I
think they are findable, but the financial aspect of the matter – involving
direct negotiation between you & the editor & probably translators too,
will arise. The editor will probably be the best chooser of these. Gilbert,
Edgar Wind of Smith Coll., & Gombrich of the Warburg Institute here
would all do this well; Wind is the brilliantest – he is a v. interesting man
& a proper philosopher as well as historian of Art etc. – but also the most
“difficult” & a great friend of mine. So is Gilbert, gentler, less
philosophical: let it wait for a little: but I should be glad to know what
you think about copyright, translators etc.
About the 19th century – I shd suggest | Prof. Morton White of
Harvard & Prof. Aiken of the same university: I know them both: &
White is a high grade logician interested in American social & historical
thought, on which he has published a much praised book; Aiken is
published & published, & is a charming, literarily minded, civilized
dilettante (don’t pass this on I beg you: it is part of being a 1st class
publisher not to) who shd be v. good at just this kind of anthological
activity: he is quite professional enough & understands much he
disapproves of. And the two wd collaborate beautifully.
But would you wait: Hampshire & I will send you a draft of a scheme
from Rome in April. Meanwhile I am really delighted that we are to
collaborate. I think something good will really come of it. (ibid.)
It was in fact not until 19 May that he wrote again:
This is only a preliminary brief note about what I think can and cannot
be done. I assume you do not want to have general editors of your series
presiding over and in some hierarchical relationship to the editors of the
individual volumes. In any case I would rather not be placed in that
situation. You will doubtless choose your own editors as you please and
arrange with them about what material they use and how things should
be done and what translators should be employed etc. etc. All I should
xvi
like to be responsible for are the two volumes which Hampshire and I
will prepare for you, i.e. the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I am
particularly unanxious to advise about the medieval one, as I know very
little about medieval philosophy. All I can say is that it has to be treated
with extreme care, since the subject is one which modern writers,
however intelligent and well trained, will inevitably find it difficult to
understand, and what is philosophical and what is not philosophical in
these dark authors is something which needs the most scrupulous experts
and attention. I should say that what you need is probably something of
this kind:
One volume to deal with thinkers from 800 A D, roughly speaking, to
St Thomas, or, better, beyond him and to the end of scholasticism, that
is to say almost to the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth
century. And then a volume on the Renaissance. The overlapping is
inevitable, but where the Renaissance begins and the Middle Ages end is
not an answerable question. The scholastic volume should more or less
go up to Duns Scotus and Ockham and reach to such Renaissance figures
as Ramus. The Renaissance volume should begin somewhere before this
date and should reach roughly speaking to Galileo. The scholastics I have
nothing to recommend about – I really am not an expert in that field –
and anyhow Mrs Fremantle will doubtless deal with all that. So far as the
Renaissance is concerned, there are, as I think I told you in my last letter,
questions about getting competent translators from Italian and Latin, but
if you choose Felix Gilbert as editor, who I should think would do it well,
he will be able to advise you on such matters. He is certainly well
acquainted | with the entire field, not merely the philosophical classics,
but scientific, artistic and general cultural writers of the period, and
would know who the available translators were in the United States and
elsewhere. The best expert on the philosophy of the Renaissance
probably would be Professor Paul Kristeller of Columbia University,
who might also be a possible editor, although I should have thought that
Gilbert is probably wider in scope than Paul Kristeller (although
Kristeller is a first rate expert on Renaissance thought – nobody better).
xvii
In the case of the Renaissance volume I think that the general thought
of the period would have to be the area from which selections would be
made, and the editor, whoever he is, would have to be allowed to make
his own selections without many suggestions or much control, since this
is a subject which really does need a very special kind of expert – a field
in which philosophers in general, and historians in general, should not
be allowed to have too much to say, since as a rule they know little about
it, and their judgement is not good.
The seventeenth-century volume should contain excerpts from
Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Gassendi, Spinoza, Pascal, Hobbes,
Malebranche, Newton, Vico, Leibniz – more or less. These are the
kind[s] of [ex]amples which I simply name by way of indicating what the
volume would be likely to contain.
The eighteenth-century volume would begin with Locke (although he
died in the seventeenth century)8 and would contain Berkeley, Hume,
Reid, Adam Smith, Voltaire, d’Alembert, excerpts from the
Encyclopedia, Bayle, d’Holbach, and, I suppose, difficult as this will be,
the great Kant himself.
If you wanted a nineteenth-century volume, I suppose the
philosophers of that time are Bentham, Hegel, Fichte, Mill, Marx, Pierce,
Comte, Newman, Mach. This would about box the compass.
For the twentieth century you would have to select from Messrs
Bradley, G. E. Moore, Russell, Bergson, Croce, James, Dewey,
Wittgenstein, Poincaré, and, let us say, such modern writers as
existentialists and perhaps one NeoThomist, though I rather doubt that.
All this is, of course, very tentative indeed; and is intended [as] a series
of characteristic samples: not as a definitive judgment.
The assumption of all this is that political philosophy is not on the
whole included. And I think this really can be defended. Once you begin
to enquire into political philosophy, | you will need at least Machiavelli,
Hobbes, Harrington, Spinoza, Locke, Montesquieu, Herder, Hegel,
Condorcet, Paine, Burke and extracts from Bentham, Mill, Bonald,
Bagehot, Green, Marx, Sorel, Lenin etc., to name only the most famous,
8 Not quite: his dates are 1632–1704.

xviii
and this seems to me to overweight the volumes. There are plenty of

books with extracts of political philosophy all over the world, especially
in England and the United States, and I doubt, therefore, whether such
a volume is really wanted, and if there is a market for it, and simply to
dovetail political thought into volumes on other kinds of philosophy
seems to me either to exclude too much relevant matter from the others,
or to put in too little political philosophy to be sufficiently characteristic,
and will on one or other of these grounds invite just complaint and
criticism. I should therefore say that if you want political philosophy
included there should be a separate volume, and should think that
Hampshire and I could probably contrive one if you wanted us to, but
that on the whole I doubt whether there is a great need for it. But perhaps
about that you would know better than we. If you wanted a compiler,
either Louis Hartz of Harvard or Noel Annan of King’s College,
Cambridge (Eng.), wd do this excellently.
I have jotted all this down simply to show what this looks like to me
and what the editors should, generally speaking, look for. More detailed
suggestions could issue from us as and when the series builds up. But I
should not like to be editor of all of it (I don’t know about Hampshire),
but at most be a consultant of yours, if you wanted to use me in that
capacity, without letting my name appear save on the volumes for which
I am personally responsible, e.g. those of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.
As for the editors of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century books, I
think I wrote to you before, naming Messrs [Henry] Aiken and Morton
White (both are Professors at Harvard) as seeming to me particularly
suitable.
I shall be over in September, when the beginning of my Harvard
season starts, and stay till about April of next year. In the course of that
time we shall (perhaps) contrive to meet. It would be a great pleasure to
see you again, whatever may or may not accrue so far as ‘business’ is
concerned. All I could promise to get done by that time would be to
produce a series of extracts, which I think I | could do if I went off with
Hampshire into the country sometime in July with the relevant books,
xix
and we made a sufficient number of extracts. It would probably take us

a fortnight, but it might take longer: one never knows with things of this
sort, and I have never anthologised before.
If all this smiles to you do please let me know and I shall begin to
think about it in a concrete manner.
[…] What I should be grateful to hear from you is what actually, if
anything, you would like me to do. (NAL 164)
In his reply of 9 June Weybright clarifies what he is looking for in

Berlin as a general editor, and makes some interesting remarks on
how he sees Berlin’s intellectual personality:
The questions you raise in your letter on the function of a general editor
are easily answered. I would not expect you to burden yourself with
actual sorting out of materials, or even with detailed advice; rather, I
would like to see you unify to the greatest possible extent the approach
of the respective special editors of each volume. This is easy in the case
of yourself and Hampshire; which really leaves only Fremantle, White
and Aiken to cope with in an authoritative way – since the Renaissance
man will have to be left to move freely, as you suggest, in a field where
philosophers and historians would represent a confusing intrusion.
[…] From the point of view of an interesting book, equally appealing
to the general reader as well as the student, the introduction to each
volume is particularly important, but, perhaps even more so, the
connective tissue which introduces and relates the chosen philosophers
to their times, to the history of philosophical thought, and to the
concerns of the modern reader. A certain element of charm and style
should pervade these interpretive, biographical and explanatory
contributions, particularly when the philosophers’ writings are apt to be
hard going for the uninitiated reader.
You exemplify the graceful scholar who gives meaning to the sages
who have shaped man’s quest of the great riddles, and I would like to see
you, through your epistolary and conversational genius, instill something
of your own enthusiasm, and even of prejudice, if you like, into the
xx
approach of the special editors. You will well earn your fee as general
editor if you can maestro the symphony with all the art and wit and
feeling and cerebration at your command. That, really, is what will give
distinction to the project and each volume in it. For example, although
the hardcover publisher will undoubtedly want to unify the books with
definitive chronological titles, we want to make each volume stand alone,
despite its conceptual relationship to the whole group. Aiken and White’s
book on the twentieth century might well be called by the name given to
Aiken’s course at Harvard – Ideals in the Modern World. Fremantle’s book,
instead of being labelled simply Medieval, will have some relevance to
the Age of Faith, or whatever distinctive epithet seems to apply to the
philosophers between the not so sainted early fathers and the end of the
Middle Ages.
I am sure you get the idea. (ibid.)
Berlin answers on 15 June raising two difficulties about his

proposed general editorship, ‘which I find it difficult to overcome’:
1. The first objection is technical. I am supposed, with Hampshire and a

man named Richard Wollheim (whom I do not expect you know), to edit
a series of forgotten or semi-forgotten classics for the publishers
Weidenfeld and Nicolson – texts of works by authors like Condorcet,
Herzen, possibly Austin, Benjamin Constant etc. – the idea is that these
texts shall be edited in English with short introductions by the editors,
and the series therefore has nothing or nearly nothing in common with
the series you contemplate, and is obviously intended for a very different
readership. I felt it right to tell Weidenfeld that I was also in negotiation
with yourself about the Philosophy Readers, and he feels (I must say, not
without a certain amount of reason) that it is slightly absurd for both
Hampshire and myself to be simultaneously editors of two series,
however different they may be. As my obligation to him is prior in time
I should like to respect his objections. Since he obviously feels that my
acting simultaneously and formally as editor of two different series, each
of which may be on sale both in England and America, would to some
xxi
degree embarrass him, I should like to meet his wishes as far as I can.
That is one of the reasons, and to me a weighty one, for which I should
prefer to act as adviser or stimulator or reader or anything else you please
as regards this series, but not as editor, and why I should not like my
name formally to appear on the series except on the volumes for which
I am directly responsible.
2. My second objection is of a somewhat different kind. There are
certain regions of philosophy, e.g. the Middle Ages, and to some extent
the Renaissance, where I really do know very little indeed. I think if it
were only a question of the Renaissance I should not jib very much. But
about the Middle Ages I know nothing, and I cannot bring myself to
make myself responsible for any volume dealing with medieval
philosophy, even one done by our dear friend Mrs Fremantle, even out
of gratitude to her for having in the first place suggested my name to you,
since I have no idea what sort of volume it should be.
For these reasons I should be perfectly willing to act, if you wish me
to, as intermediary between yourself and/or her and some of the
medieval experts here (if you think that English experts are better than
American ones), or alternatively in the United States when I am there;
and to summarise their views to you and give you such light as you may
wish me to furnish; but I should not like to edit the volume on the Middle
Ages, i.e. make myself morally responsible for the contents and their
arrangement. I do not, I must [say?], feel the same objections with regard
to the volumes on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, where I think
I can find my way quite easily, and I should perfectly well be prepared to
advise you on them and to have any dealings you wish me to have with
Messrs White and Aiken, who are friends of mine.
These are my two reasons. I think there will be no disagreement
between us about proportions between text and introductory material,
and what you so well call connective tissue; and I think I can discuss the
contents of the volumes and the style in which the commentary and [sc.
on the?] texts are written with the separate editors – all, that is, save Anne
– although with certain reservations regarding the Renaissance editor (I
think I could see glimmerings of light there, but only glimmerings). For
xxii
all these reasons, would you not rather employ me, if employ me you still
want, as general adviser or whatever title you like to accord to me, rather
than as general editor, and do you really need a general editor at all? Could
not these volumes simply appear under your own imprimatur, managed
by the author himself very much as Penguin books are at any rate often
produced? In the case of the medieval volume I really do think that you
will have to consult somebody else either directly or through me and
generally leave me out of it.
I agree about separate titles for the book[s] and really about
everything else that you say. Even if Weidenfeld had not made his
objection to my acting as editor, I should still not be prepared to accept
responsibility for the medieval volume, and should have qualms about
the Renaissance one. So even if Curtis Brown or his representative
should persuade Weidenfeld that there was really no damage to his
interests in my acting as editor of both series (I am not prepared to do
that myself, since I really do wish to accede to his wishes, as he has
behaved well to me in the past, and I do not wish to behave ungratefully,
or indeed insistently in any way), I should still have to be ‘included out’
of the medieval volume. I hope you don’t think this too unreasonable of
me.
As for the Renaissance volume, if Gilbert is thought a too heavy
writer (and I am sure the same goes for the other French and German
experts), then the only suggestion I can make is Dr [Ernst] Gombrich. I
hardly know him; that is, I have only met him personally once; he is Slade
Professor of Fine Arts here (which is a kind of temporary post), and he
has written an immensely bestselling book on the history of painting,
which I am sure you know all about. He certainly writes gracefully and
easily, he is an authority on the Renaissance, though I don’t know
whether on […] Renaissance thought. But I feel that anybody who has
been connected with the Warburg Institute is sufficiently ‘impure’ in his
approach not to be a mere art historian or art expert, but includes all
other branches of the Renaissance in his purview. So if you would like
me to approach him I could do that. Alternatively, if you would like to
do that yourself, you could do it when you come to England. (ibid.)
xxiii
On 22 June Weybright accepted Berlin’s proposals, with the

following proviso:
We do […] want to retain you as general advisory editor – even on a

passionate anonym basis – on the two volumes which you and
Hampshire prepare, and on the two volumes to be prepared by White
and Aiken respectively. We shall not exploit or publicise this advisory
editorship – unless subsequently Weidenfeld should relent – and even
then we should avoid any direct connection with the first two volumes.
I regard this as an excellent investment on our part as publishers, since
your concept and enthusiasm will pervade the entire series, giving the
books unity as a whole, and unitary drama and integrity as individual
volumes. (ibid.)
These arrangements were confirmed in a formal letter dated 25

June, in return for a fee of one thousand dollars, and the prospect
of three times that amount from a royalty of two cents a copy on
the first printing of his own volume.
On 16 October Berlin offers a new suggestion for the compiler
of the Renaissance volume:
If you are thinking about the volume for [the] Renaissance, I think I really
have got the man for you. He is one Giorgio de Santillana – Professor at
MIT of the History of Science. He is, unlike the others we discussed, a
very bright – not to say slick, amusing, lively, acutely intelligent – Italian,
who writes English well; has written a book on Galileo; and knows
exactly what kind of book can be sold to the public on the Renaissance.
He is a man of generous culture and heavy [sc. lively?] imagination, with
[what] seems to be just the right dose of commercial instinct, and will do
this very well. (NAL 157)
Weybright invited Berlin to lunch in Boston on 22 November to

meet Ronald Bodley and his wife Ruth. Berlin had a prior
xxiv
engagement with William and Alice James, and was therefore

obliged to decline, which he did in a letter of 5 November. This
letter is worth quoting, even though it does not bear on the series:
I, too, am sorry about Bodley (he has now written to me himself) – he

must be a brother of the present Lady Waverley, married to Sir John
Anderson. She is a remarkable, handsome, fascinating, slightly sinister
hostess, and if her brother is not present, I should like to talk to you
about her; but perhaps better not to know him, for I had my fill of
Brahmins in ’49, and although I was impressed and even terrified, I found
them a little too formidable for me; interesting and formidable, but more
difficult than interesting; made of worthy, solid, proud, dull timber,
violent in places and uncosy to a degree. (ibid.)
Berlin’s attitude to Weybright when he is writing to his friends is

somewhat jaundiced. In a letter to Morton White dated 15 March
1954 he refers to ‘the old pirate Weybright’s disreputable schemes’
(p. 4), and in March 1961 he writes to the art connoisseur Rowland
Burdon-Muller of ‘the beautiful formula you once used of Victor
Weybright: “not a person one would expect to meet in a private
house”.’9 On 9 June 1954 he promises Weybright that his volume
‘should be ready about the end of July at the latest’ (NAL 158). On
the same day he writes to Arabel Porter of NAL enclosing ‘the
prospectus for the Philosophy Readers which I have composed
with Mr Hampshire’:
Prospectus for Mentor Readers in Philosophy

How did the universe begin? Has it a beginning? What do we know and
how do we know it? What exists and what merely seems to exist? Can
the existence of God be proved? What is mind and what is matter? What
is truth?
9 MSB 269/177–81 at 178v (p. 4).

xxv
Philosophers in every age have tried to answer such questions. Their

answers both reflect and transform the ways of thought and feeling in
their societies.
The history of human thought is largely the history of changing
attitudes to these central questions; and the questions themselves cannot
be separated from the ways in which they have been asked. For this
reason even the perennial problems which trouble every generation can
be understood only in the light of their history – in the forms in which
they express the changing needs of each society and culture.
There is no substitute for the works of great thinkers themselves. This
new series is a selection of the most important and representative
chapters in the story of philosophic speculation in the Western world.
The chosen texts are set in their historical order, and they are connected
by a commentary which explains in what way they have permanently
influenced human thought. Each volume is at once self-contained and a
stepping-stone to the next; it represents a single phase of the great
development, and opens with an introduction which describes the
unique characteristics of the thought and philosophic outlook of each
succeeding period. (ibid.)
On 3 January 1955 Berlin reports to Weybright that he is ‘in bed

with pericarditis’ (NAL 161), and has been ordered to rest. He
anticipates being out of action for a month at most. Eight days later
he writes again, having received as a Christmas gift a copy of Anne
Fremantle’s volume, which contained announcements of future
volumes in the series at the back, together with photographs of
their authors. Not for the first or last time, he made a fuss about a
photograph of himself, and about a biographical note:
The only pictures which seems to me to resemble the original are those
of Santillana and Aiken. Anne looks all right, quite respectable, even
inspiring, but not in the least like herself. Hampshire looked like a human
being but totally unlike his own appearance. White and I looked like
gangsters. But perhaps a cross between a gangster and a stooge of a local
xxvi
politician – very unlike his real appearance, which suggests a high degree
of refinement and intellectual distinction; as for me, I do not plead to be
transformed into an Adonis, but the picture, according to my press
agents and casual acquaintances – I have carefully refrained from asking
friends, whose opinions might be thought prejudiced – is like nothing so
much as a hasty police snapshot taken of an unshaven criminal shortly
before the electric chair; also a strong suggestion of one of Malenkov’s
stooges; I would rather have nothing than that – I do not know where
the original photograph comes from but I think there was something
which Time magazine once used, but then you solemnly promised me, or
at least the lady in your office did, to use the advertisement in the back
of The Hedgehog and the Fox from Simon & Schuster – it was not
particularly flattering to me, but it bore the semblance of a possible
human being – I asked no more than that.
I do beg you to institute the necessary change, otherwise I do not see
how I can go on. Now: one or two other minor things which I pointed
out in my telegram. I was not born in England, I am not a historian, but
I write on philosophy, politics, general essays etc., and the history of
ideas; I am not the only lecturer on philosophy in Oxford – conveyed by
“the” – I have not written ‘many’ articles on philosophical subjects –
Who’s Who does not say exactly that – I do not know whether my degrees
in 1932 are of any importance – I have never lectured at Princeton –
perhas if you said that I am a fairly well-known writer in England & am
not totally unknown in the U.S.A. it would carry more weight than the
First Class in ‘Literary Humanities’, which is not a very intelligible
expression […] | […]. Forgive me for these strictures – they are minor,
but if you could see your way to amending them you will restore the
equilibrium, good temper and productivity of your old and devoted
friend. […] Otherwise there is no telling. Think of my temperature and
[our] general future relationship. […] Also of the kind of reviewers & the
kind of knives they will have out. The greatest scruple has, I am afraid, to
be shown: do get your staff to check and double check. […] As for
photograph: wd the Simon Schuster paper cover do? If not, cable, & I’ll
send you an old passport one. (ibid.)
xxvii
Weybright replies on 17 January 1955:
I am so sorry to hear of your illness and only hope it was not precipitated
by the inaccurate and unrepresentative announcement at the back of the
Fremantle book. I’ve never been more embarrassed, nor felt more deeply
apologetic on a publishing matter, than I have been about this. We shall
make amends, submit all copy to you – but we should have a better
photograph from which to process a black and white rendition, since our
paper will not take half tones. (ibid.)
On 2 February 1955 Berlin sends a progress report:
The stuff from Marcus Dick has just come in – it is not quite complete
but there is enough for me to work on. As I remain in London four days
out of seven now I have time to get on with it and should complete my
end of it in about three weeks. By that time the rest of his stuff should
have come in and that may take me one week more, so that it should be
in your hands, provided the typists here do their job, sometime at the
beginning of March. I am sorry about this delay, but it is due to
something which I could not prevent – I am told by the doctors
overwork. I wonder: searching enquiries about what it is that can have
caused my collapse have failed to elicit any concrete reason; it must be
the excitement of my new life in the business world.10
With the problem of the MS more or less settled, let me turn to the
more delicate and embarrassing one of my own miserable person. So far
as the photographs are concerned, I gather the one on the back of the
jacket of Messrs Simon and Schuster will not do.11 What can I offer you?
I am half in bed at present and not very photogenic; but if you were to
write to Mr Douglas Glass, photographer of the Sunday Times, who must
10 IB was attending to his father’s business affairs (timber and bristle

trading) in the wake of the latter’s recent death.
11 A photograph of IB appeared on the back panel of the US jacket
of The Hedgehog and the Fox, published by Simon and Schuster in 1953.
xxviii
have taken at least fifty shots of me for the benefit of that eminent organ,
which proposes one day to publish a ‘profile’ of me, he would no doubt
be happy to supply you with something. A rather ghastlier selection is
probably in the hands of Time magazine in New York now, since they
sent me an urgent wire telling me they proposed to review my Hedgehog
and Fox that week, and could I allow their photographer to come along?
Weak and meek as usual, I did, and presumably they too have a collection
of negatives in their hands. I can do no better than that. I do not ask for
something resembling Rupert Brooke or even ‘a man of distinction’, but
perhaps a vague resemblance to one of the photographs | you could
procure by these means would be enough. At any rate, my personal
vanity is now exhausted and I do not much care what occurs.
As for the biographical details needed, it would perhaps be enough to
say that I was born in 1909; that I was educated at Oxford and taught
philosophy there from 1932 till the war and again after it; that I was a
Fellow of New College and, before and after that, of All Souls; that I take
an interest in the history of ideas and political thought and literature, as
well as formal philosophy; that I have visited Harvard three times since
1949 and have lectured elsewhere in other universities in America, both
on philosophy and intellectual history; and that I have a fairly respectable
reputation intellectually on both sides of the ocean – would that be too
much? I do not think much else is required. Anyhow, once again, after
my severe shock, which no doubt increased my heartbeats and caused
terrible things to happen on the cardiograph, I place myself trustfully in
your hands. If you want a real sketch of my life and times I can only say
what I said to the kind but unreliable lady who wrote to me about this
originally, and say that some contemporary of mine in Oxford – my ex-
pupil the philosopher Mr Warnock of Magdalen College, or Stuart
Hampshire himself – could do it better than I. (NAL 158)
The reference to Marcus Dick at the beginning of this extract

requires explanation. It seems that Berlin had, somewhat
shamelessly, asked his friend (father of policewoman Cressida),
fellow and tutor in philosophy at Balliol, to help with the selection
xxix
and with the drafting of the connective tissue, but an inspection of

the manuscript, which survives in Berlin’s papers, does indeed
show that he made numerous changes to the typed draft of the
commentary (whose authorship is not clear, and which may not all
be by the same hand, though it seems plausible to suppose that it
was drafted by Dick), and moreover wrote some of it himself in
manuscript.12 It would be unlike Berlin not to have offered Dick
named co-editorship, and in a letter of 1 October 1954 Weybright
reasonably refers to ‘a courtesy acknowledgement to Marcus Dick
on the title page’ (NAL 157). In the event this was not included,13
but I have added it in this edition, as seems right.
On 10 February 1955 Weybright welcomes the ‘cheerful news
[…] that, at long last, despite your difficulties, the manuscript
should be here in early March’ (NAL 158). On 28 March Berlin
writes to Weybright from the Hotel Ruhl in Nice:
I am at last in a position to be at once (semi-)penitent and concrete. I

really have been pretty ill; & neglected my duties perforce. I am now
recuperating nicely in this still sunless portion of the Riviera, which holds
few distractions. I am in the middle of the 18th cent volume – & coping
with Marcus Dick’s material – which Henry Laughlin14 too[k] me so
much to task for calling just “Dick’s stuff’. So far from saving me much
labour it looks to me as if I have to alter every 3d word. This I
12 The passages written entirely by Berlin appear below in blue (‘b’ is
for ‘blue’ and ‘Berlin’). Many other passages are so heavily rewritten that
scarcely a word of the original draft survives. The manuscript also
contains a number of extracts that were omitted from the published
volume.
13 In a letter to Weybright of 6 October 1954 IB writes: ‘As for Marcus
Dick, I shall try & make such acknowledgement, somewhere, as seems

right. Not necessarily on the title page’ (NAL 161). But he did split his
earnings from the book with Dick.
14 Henry Alexander Laughlin, Sr (1892–1977), president of Houghton
Mifflin 1939–63.
xxx
A typical page of corrected typescript (pp. 130–2)
am gaily & quite rapidly doing: I’ve finished Locke: am in middle of

Berkeley & to-morrow embark on Hume: the rest – French
Encyclopaedists & a German or so – will take 2–3 more days: the
Introduction a few more (very real task that – I can’t just correct Dick:
shall have to do it afresh). I find it easier to be prodded by | disagreement
with someone else than to write in the void: still the mere composition
will take say I more week at least: my writing, as you can see, is not [the]
easiest to transcribe: I’ll send the MS. to Oxford to be done – Easter
intervening – & wd like Hampshire to look at it as well as Dick: I’ll be
back in Oxford April 22 or 23: & send off MS., I really do hope & believe,
xxxi
May 1, a month late for Houghton Miff.15 – I am sorry about that: but I
am working busily on it all now and the end is well in sight at last.
Without my illness you’d have had it all last February. (ibid.)
Weybright replies on 1 April that ‘We are all waiting breathlessly

for the manuscript, not only because of the urgencies and
exigencies of our publishing project, but also for the personal
enrichment of our education’ (ibid.). On 2 May 1955 Berlin tells
White:
I am trying to finish off my volume for our slave-driver, and am doing

so in a great hurry – Marcus Dick has done a lot of the work, which has,
oddly enough, increased rather than decreased the amount I have to do
– I thought comfortably that I would let him do the donkey-work and
not have very much to do myself. Of course the opposite has turned out
and I have crossed out every one of the sentences. And even so it will
have a very odd appearance.
On the very same day, oddly enough, he dispatches the book to

Weybright, writing:
I send this off with all possible speed: it is complete, so far as I can make
it so, minus acknowledgements to Dick + to the publishers of copyright
texts from which extracts are taken. It is the only MS. I have – if lost
never restorable. More valuable than Carlyle’s French Revolution.16 I am
nervous of your office, in view of the thing about my “vignette”,17 etc.
15 Who were to publish hardback editions of the books a season in
advance of NAL.
16 The unique manuscript of which was used as a firelighter by J. S.
Mill’s maid, who took it for waste paper. Carlyle had to rewrite the book
from scratch.
17 NAL had proposed using for publicity purposes a paragraph about
IB from Noel Annan’s review of The Hedgehog and the Fox in the Listener
xxxii
so wld you swear solemnly to send proofs (galleys and pages) & abide by
corrections? otherwise, like a neurotic artist, I shall fuss & rebel. (NAL
158)
On 9 June 1955 Arabel Porter18 sends Berlin an anguished telegram

to the Hotel de la Ville in Rome:
PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT REPORTS TOO LONG CAN YOU

CUT AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT BY THIRTEEN THOUSAND
WORDS IF SO WHERE AND HOW SOON CAN WE SEND IT TO
YOU AND WHAT IS EARLIEST YOU CAN RETURN IT IF NOT
WOULD YOU ALLOW OUR LEARNED COPYEDITOR HERE TO
19
CUT SUBJECT YOUR APPROVAL = PORTER NALPUBLISH
Evidently this plea fell on deaf ears, since the published text runs
to some 105,000 words, 15,000 words more than the maximum
Berlin was asked for.20
On 21 September 1955 Berlin wrote to Giorgio de Santillana,
whom Weybright had, as Berlin advised, appointed editor of the
Renaissance volume:
(3 December 1953), but got the details wrong, making IB fear that they
meant a paragraph from the Radio Times which had distressed him by
saying that ‘Mr Berlin […] is renowned for his fluent and witty
expositions of abstract ideas. He has a reputation as a conversationalist
which extends far beyond Oxford.’ Radio Times, 24 October 1952, 1.
18 ‘Mrs Porter […] really has exemplary patience with me and ought
to be thanked for it in some way in the book’ (IB to Weybright, 7

December 1955, NAL 157). She is hereby thanked.
19 MSB 368/147.
20 His own text totals some 32,500 words, about 15,000 first drafted
by him, including the 6,800 words of the introduction.

xxxiii
Berlin’s draft of the beginning of the chapter on Hamann (pp. 271–2)
I must break the news to you, painful as it is, and a betrayal of all my own
principles, that I have completed my dreary eighteenth-century volume,
and it is in New York in the hands of those extraordinary people.
Damned dull it is too – and it is nothing but hack passages out of Locke,
Hume, Berkeley, with a very little garniture from Voltaire etc. to spice it;
the cover design shows a figure vaguely resembling Voltaire, and at the
back some pompous ass in a periwig, who may or may not be like and
might indeed be anybody. It is hideous. The whole thing is a nightmare.
(MSB 144/38r)
xxxiv
This should not be taken too seriously. Berlin standardly belittled

his achievements, partly no doubt to deflect criticism, and his later
attitude to the book belied this self-critical attitude.
An advance copy of the paperback edition, illustrated below,
was dispatched on 29 March 1956, and on 8 May Berlin writes to
Weybright: ‘I look with fascination and terror upon my own little
book in the Mentor series and wonder about its future. I have so
far only had one copy, which I have corrected for the next printing’
(NAL 159). He later returned the corrected copy to NAL.
The cover of Berlin’s copy of the first paperback edition, designed by Hans Erni
As well as the paperback edition illustrated here, two hardback
editions were published by Houghton Mifflin: one unjacketed, in
xxxv
brown boards, as part of a boxed set of all six volumes, and one in
a slightly larger format with a dustjacket.
The jacket of Berlin’s copy of the hardback edition, designed by Edward Sweet
The book sold astonishingly well by later standards. Weybright

wrote to Berlin on 14 May 1956:
We have printed 140,000 copies, it is selling well, the letters and notes in
a month of distribution are piling alongside the reorders, and thus far not
a sour note has been sounded.
The remarkable thing about the series of volumes, in hand and in
prospect (i.e., Aiken and Santillana), is that their reception amongst the
general public is matching their reception among the academics. For
example, your book is selling at the rate of fiction on the racks in the
Walgreen drugstore at the Port of New York Authority21 Bus Terminal,
21 The official name 1921–72; now the Port Authority of New York
and New Jersey.

xxxvi
largely to New Jersey commuters. This is eloquent testimony to the

conceptual approach which you inspired and personally demonstrated.
Now I hope that you and Hampshire will permit entry – or publication
– of the books in the United Kingdom.
But there were also hiccups. On 26 June Weybright writes:
The Age of Enlightenment – like the King James version of the Bible – is
now banned from circulation in Spain, which makes you, as well as
Hampshire, a Borrovian22 – but the book is moving very nicely in all
other directions. It will soon be on sale in the United Kingdom, about
which we are all quite pleased. (MSB 368/167)
Later the same year Berlin reacted to the reviews:
How is The Age of Enlightenment selling? Houghton Mifflin kindly sent me

some amiable but uninteresting reviews, all save one shrewd one by a
man called Frankel of Columbia whose criticisms were just, and one
idiotic one from Los Angeles who said the book was rough going for the
general public and superfluous form professionals, neither of which is
true. (NAL 157)
Weybright replied on 16 October, this time giving a figure for the

first printing of 125,000 copies, and reporting an imminent reprint,
fresh promotional plans, and widespread college adoptions ‘from
the Ivy League to the State institutions of the Middle West and the
small denominational colleges which dot the academic landscape
from coast to coast’. On 4 March 1957 he writes: ‘The entire
Philosophy Series is rolling, and every time I see a reorder I bless
your name and feel grateful for your splendid mentorship.’ On 12
July: ‘a great many college adoptions with substantial orders for the
22 George Borrow’s The Bible in Spain (1943) told of the resistance

from the Roman Catholic Church to his attempts to sell a Spanish
translation of the New Testament in Spain.
xxxvii
autumn terms’. On 5 February 1959: ‘I thought you would like to

know that the Philosophers Series is still a very viable project, with
textbook adoptions increasing all the time’ (all ibid.).
In 1978, when I was an editor at Oxford University Press, I
suggested to Berlin that the book might be reissued in the Oxford
Paperbacks series, and he readily agreed. Martin Hollis revised the
list of recommended further reading, and Berlin added a note
(reproduced after this preface) explaining why the volume did not
include Kant, even though this issue was already touched on in the
introduction: he must have forgotten this, and I evidently failed to
bring it to his attention.
The OUP edition appeared in 1979, remaining in print until
1990. The cover used Goya’s The Sleep of Reason, at the suggestion
of Martin Hollis. The Spanish sentence bottom left means ‘The
sleep of reason brings forth monsters.’
In 1981 the philosopher and intellectual historian Michael
Moran wrote an exceptionally perceptive review of Berlin’s Against
the Current,23 which he sent to Berlin. Berlin’s reply of 29 September
offers an interesting sidelight on his attitude to his twenty-five-
year-old anthology:
[…] you wonder whether my dogmatic summaries of the doctrines of

the Enlightenment are valid. I am sure you are right: so far as they are
valid, they apply to some (at most), not all, of the eighteenth-century
French thinkers among the philosophes – it does not allow for the
pessimism of many of them, or the scepticism of even so committed a
align
23 History of European Ideas 1 no. 2 ( January 1981), 185–90.

xxxviii
The front cover of the OUP edition
thinker as Voltaire – and certainly not to e.g. Diderot, who cannot

possibly be excluded from the Enlightenment. And in the nineteenth
century it perhaps applies only to Comte and his immediate allies and
followers. But there is more to the Enlightenment than that, especially
on its negative side: the war against irrationalism, prejudice, oppression,
cruelty, intolerance and stupidity, in both theory and practice, [and] its
often frightful consequences. I tried to say some of this in the brief and
not particularly illuminating introduction to the little anthology called The
Age of Enlightenment – I do not recommend you or anyone else to look at
xxxix
it now: it is harmless, but rather flat. The positive element, and the rich
variety and undogmatic humanism, of much of the Enlightenment is, for
obviously polemical reasons, not allowed enough by me; and perhaps the
picture of the Enlightenment is too much of an Aunt Sally, and I do not
deny that it is the rectilinear, emotionally blind, unimaginative, rationalist
dogmatism – what Hayek called ‘scientism’ (my views are sometimes
described as analogous to Hayek’s, to my extreme dissatisfaction) – that
I think has caused havoc. This is the dominant theology of the West
during the last two hundred years, despite all the attacks upon it, clerical
or Romantic or populist or sceptical; it is still what you and I and people
we respect and admire rightly believe ourselves to be on the side of; yet
the protest against it of my irrationalist ‘clients’ seems to me – even
though it does, of course, go too far and produce nonsense and ghastly
obscurantism and awful practice of its own – to bring out weaknesses
much more sharply than ‘constructive’ criticism by allies. But you are
perfectly right: I am obviously concerned with present discontents. The
fact that there is a line between the denial of human rights in totalitarian
Communist countries and the noble defence of reason in the eighteenth
century is not accidental. It is, of course, terribly wrong and unhistorical
and altogether disreputable to blame Bentham or Helvétius for Stalin, or
Hegel and Nietzsche for Nazism, etc. Nevertheless, the tracing of roots
does fascinate me, as I am sure it engages your interest. My basic
objection is, I suppose, the Dickens–Tolstoyan one: the lumières did not,
and do not, for the most part, know what it is that men live by.24
Again, one should not take Berlin’s evaluation of his book at face
value, especially two years after he willingly saw it reissued.
In 2016, more than a decade after the book had finally gone out
of print, an offer was made by I. B. Tauris to reissue it in a new
edition, with a foreword by an expert in the field. The Trustees of
the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust decided (not unanimously: I was a
dissenting voice) that the book had had its day in conventional
24 Isaiah Berlin, Affirming: Letters 1975–1997, ed. Henry Hardy and
Mark Pottle (London, 2015), 168–70.

xl
form, but agreed that it might be posted online for the convenience
of interested readers. Hence the present revised, online, edition of
a work that seems to me a good deal more interesting than it has
often been given credit for.
HE N RY HA RD Y
August–December 2017
xli
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Something ought to be said about the fact that texts by Kant have
not been included in a volume of eighteenth-century philosophy.
An attempt to represent such a towering figure would have been
in danger of excluding too much without providing enough to do
him justice. And in addition, though of course Kant belongs to the
Enlightenment, the central strands in some of his views – perhaps
in a distorted or at any rate greatly altered form – enter the
Counter-Enlightenment. For these reasons Kant is more
appropriately included in The Age of Ideology: The Nineteenth-Century
Philosophers, edited by Henry D. Aiken, the next volume in the series
to which the present volume is a contribution.
I S A I A H B E RL I N
December 1978
xlii
A CK N O W LE D G E M E N T S
My thanks are due in the first place to Mr Marcus Dick, Fellow of

Balliol College, Oxford, for his most valuable assistance to me in
preparing this volume. I should also like to thank Mr Stuart
Hampshire for his help in selecting texts.
In addition, I have to thank the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, for permission to quote from Unity and Language: A
Study in the Philosophy of Johann Georg Hamann, by J. C. O’Flaherty.
October 1955
I would like in addition to thank Mr Martin Hollis for revising the

bibliographical list of Recommended Further Reading, bringing it
up to date, and for his suggestion for the cover illustration.
I.B.
December 1978
For help in the preparation of the second edition I should like to

thank Nicholas Cronk, Angie Goodgame, Paul Luna, Martin Maw
and Natal′ya Sarana.
HE N RY HA RD Y
August 2017
xliii
T E XT U A L N O T E
Throughout this edition the extracts from the works of the

eighteenth-century philosophers are set in this sans-serif type to
distinguish them immediately from Berlin’s and the editor’s. Blue
type is used to distinguish the parts of the commentary first drafted
by Berlin alone: see further xxx below.
An online PDF text is permanently open to revision, so that its
pagination can alter, making references to it unstable. For this
reason the pagination of the first edition has been entered in square
brackets in the text, and cross-references use these page numbers,
not those at the foot of the page. The same is true of the page
references in the index. All cross-references appear as links in bold
red type, and can be followed by clicking on the links.
Berlin did not specify which editions he used for the extracts.
For the British empiricists I have used the following editions,
modernising spelling, capitalisation and some punctuation, and
making a few further minor changes or editorial interventions for
the sake of consistency and comprehension.
John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, 4th ed.

(London, 1700), the last published in the author’s lifetime, with
section headings from the edition of Alexander Campbell
Fraser (Oxford, 1894), whose numbering of chapters and
sections sometimes differs: Locke’s Essay was published with
side-headings for many, but not all, its numbered paragraphs
(were these Locke’s own?); Fraser added headings (‘sectional
analyses’, as he dubbed them) where they were lacking in earlier
editions, and improved others; I have used his headings here in
order to provide a full signposting of Locke’s exposition.
xliv
T E XT U A L N O T E
The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, ed. A. A. Luce and

T. E. Jessop (London, 1948–57): the works extracted here are
in vol. 2.
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. T. H. Green and T.
H. Grose (London, 1874), vol. 1.
Omissions within a paragraph are indicated by ‘[…]’, omissions of

whole paragraphs within a headed chapter/section by
…
The passages from French authors were initially translated by Aline
Berlin.
The first edition included a list of recommended further
reading, updated in 1979 by Martin Hollis. Hollis’s list is itself now
out of date, and, in any case, in the online era such guides are less
necessary. This edition contains no such list.
xlv
[11]
Introduction
Philosophical problems arise when men ask questions of
themselves or of others which, though very diverse, have certain
characteristics in common. These questions tend to be very
general, to involve issues of principle, and to have little or no
concern with practical utility. But what is even more characteristic
of them is that there seem to be no obvious and generally accepted
procedures for answering them, nor any class of specialists to
whom we automatically turn for the solutions. Indeed there is
something peculiar about the questions themselves: those who ask
them do not seem any too certain about what kind of answers they
require, or indeed how to set about finding them.
To give an illustration: if we ask ‘Were any ravens seen in
Iceland in 1955?’ we know how to set about answering such a
question – the correct answer must obviously be based on
observation, and the naturalist is the expert to whom we can
appeal. But when men ask questions like ‘Are there any material
objects in the universe (or does it, perhaps, consist rather of minds
and their states)?’, what steps do we take to settle this? Yet
outwardly there is a similarity between the two sentences. Or again,
supposing I ask ‘Did the battle of Waterloo take place in the
seventeenth century?’, we know how to look for the relevant
evidence, but what are we to do when asked ‘Did the universe have
a beginning in time?’? We know how to answer ‘Are you quite
certain that he knows you?’ But if someone wonders ‘Can I ever
be quite certain about what goes on in the mind of another?’, how
do we satisfy him? It is easier to reply to ‘Why is Einstein’s theory
superior to Newton’s?’ than to ‘Why are the predictions of
scientists more reliable than those of witch-doctors?’ (or vice
versa), or to ‘How many positive roots are there of the equation x2
= 2?’ than to ‘Are there irrational [12] numbers?’, or to ‘What is the
exact meaning of the word “obscurantist”?’ than to ‘What is the
exact meaning of the word “if”?’ ‘How should I mend this broken
1
I N T RO D U CT I O N
typewriter?’ seems different in kind from ‘How should I (or men

in general) live?’
In each case the attempt to answer the second question of the
pair somehow seems to encounter an obstacle. There is not, as
there is for the first member of the pair, a well-attested, generally
accepted method of discovering the solution. And yet questions of
this kind seem definite enough, and have proved, to some men,
very puzzling and indeed tormenting. Why, then, is there such
difficulty in arriving at answers which settle the matter once and
for all, so that the problems do not crop up afresh in each
generation? This failure to provide definite solutions creates the
impression that there is no progress in philosophy, merely
subjective differences of opinion, with no objective criteria for the
discovery of the truth.
The history of such questions, and of the means employed to
provide the answers, is, in effect, the history of philosophy. The
frame of ideas within which, and the methods by which, various
thinkers at various times try to arrive at the truth about such issues
– the very ways in which the questions themselves are construed –
change under the influence of many forces, among them answers
given by philosophers of an earlier age, the prevailing moral,
religious and social beliefs of the period, the state of scientific
knowledge, and, not least important, the methods used by the
scientists of the time, especially if they have achieved spectacular
successes, and have, therefore, bound their spell upon the
imagination of their own and later generations.
One of the principal characteristics of such questions – and this
seems to have become clearer only in our own day – is that,
whatever else they may be, they are neither empirical nor formal.
That is to say, philosophical questions cannot be answered by
adducing the results of observation or experience, as empirical
questions, whether of science or of common sense, are answered.
Such questions as ‘What is the supreme good?’ or ‘How can I be
sure [13] that your sensations are similar to mine? Or that I ever
2
genuinely understand what you are saying, and do not merely seem
to myself to do so?’ cannot be, on the face of it, answered by either
of the two great instruments of human knowledge: empirical
investigation on the one hand, and, on the other, deductive
reasoning as it is used in the formal disciplines – the kind of
argument which occurs, for example, in mathematics or logic or
grammar.
Indeed it might almost be said that the history of philosophy in
its relation to the sciences consists, in part, in the disentangling of
those questions which are either empirical (and inductive) or
formal (and deductive) from the mass of problems which fill the
minds of men, and the sorting out of these under the heads of the
empirical or formal sciences concerned with them. It is in this way
that, for instance, astronomy, mathematics, psychology, biology
and the rest became divorced from the general corpus of
philosophy (of which they once formed a part), and embarked
upon fruitful careers of their own as independent disciplines. They
remained within the province of philosophy only so long as the
kinds of way in which their problems were to be settled remained
unclear, so that they were liable to be confused with other
problems with which they had relatively little in common, and their
differences from which had not been sufficiently discerned. The
advance both of the sciences and of philosophy seems bound up
with this progressive allocation of the empirical and formal
elements, each to its own proper sphere; always, however, leaving
behind a nucleus of unresolved (and largely unanalysed) questions,
whose generality, obscurity and, above all, apparent (or real)
insolubility by empirical or formal methods gives them a status of
their own which we tend to call philosophical.
Realisation of this truth (if it be one) was a long time in arriving.
The natural tendency was to regard philosophical questions as
being on a level with other questions, and answerable by similar
means; especially by means which had been successful in answering
these other questions, which in fact did turn out to be either
3
empirical or a priori, even though the distinction between the two

was not always con[14]sciously drawn. When some branch of
human enquiry, say physics or biology, won notable successes by
employing this or that new and fertile technique, an attempt was
invariably made to apply analogous techniques to philosophical
problems also, with results, fortunate and unfortunate, which are a
permanent element in the history of human thought.
Thus the unprecedented successes of the mathematical method
in the seventeenth century left a mark on philosophy, not merely
because mathematics had not clearly been discriminated from
philosophy at this time, but because mathematical techniques –
deduction from ‘self-evident’ axioms according to fixed rules, tests
of internal consistency, a priori methods, standards of clarity and
rigour proper to mathematics – were applied to philosophy also;
with the result that this particular model dominates the philosophy
as well as the natural science of the period. This led to notable
successes and equally notable failures, as the over-enthusiastic and
fanatical application of techniques rich in results in one field, when
mechanically applied to another, not necessarily similar to the first,
commonly does.
If the model that dominated the seventeenth century was
mathematical, it is the mechanical model, more particularly that of
the Newtonian system, that is everywhere imitated in the century
that followed. Philosophical questions are in fact sui generis, and
resemble questions of mechanics no more closely than those of
mathematics (or of biology or psychology or history); nevertheless
the effect upon philosophy of one model is very different from
that of another; and it is this that forms a common characteristic
of all the very different philosophers whose views are assembled
in this volume.
The eighteenth century is perhaps the last period in the history
of Western Europe when human omniscience was thought to be
an attainable goal. The unparalleled progress of physics and
mathematics in the previous century transformed the generally
4
held view of the nature of the material world, and, still more, of
the nature of true knowledge, to such a degree that this epoch still
stands like a barrier between us and the ages which preceded it, and
makes the philosophical ideas of the Middle Ages, and even the
[15] Renaissance, seem remote, fanciful and, at times, almost
unintelligible. The application of mathematical techniques – and
language – to the measurable properties of what the senses
revealed became the sole true method of discovery and of
exposition. Descartes and Spinoza, Leibniz and Hobbes all seek to
give their reasoning a structure of a mathematical kind. What can
be said must be statable in quasi-mathematical terms, for language
less precise may turn out to conceal the fallacies and obscurities,
the confused mass of superstitions and prejudices, which
characterised the discredited theological or other forms of
dogmatic doctrine about the universe which the new science had
come to sweep away and supersede.
This mood persists into the eighteenth century, Newton’s
influence being the strongest single factor. Newton had performed
the unprecedented task of explaining the material world, that is of
making it possible, by means of relatively few fundamental laws of
immense scope and power, to determine, at least in principle, the
properties and behaviour of every particle of every material body
in the universe, and that with a degree of precision and simplicity
undreamt of before. Order and clarity now reigned in the realm of
physical science:
Nature, and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:

God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.25
Yet the ancient disciplines of metaphysics, logic, ethics, and all

that related to the social life of men, still lay in chaos, governed by
the confusions of thought and language of an earlier and
unregenerate age. It was natural, and indeed almost inevitable, that
25 Alexander Pope, ‘Epitaph: Intended for Sir Isaac Newton’ (1730).

5
those who had been liberated by the new sciences should seek to
apply their methods and principles to a subject which was clearly
in even more desperate need of order than the facts of the external
world. Indeed this task was of crucial importance: for without a
true and clear picture of the principal ‘faculties’ and operations of
the human mind, one could not be certain how much credence to
give to various types of thought or reasoning, nor how to
determine the sources and limits of human knowledge, nor the
relationships between its varieties. But unless this was known the
claims of ignoramuses [16] and charlatans could not be properly
exposed; nor the new picture of the material world adequately
related to other matters of interest to men – moral conduct,
aesthetic principles, laws of history and of social and political life,
the ‘inner’ workings of the passions and the imagination, and all
the other issues of central interest to human beings. A science of
nature had been created; a science of mind had yet to be made.
The goal in both cases must remain the same: the formulation
of general laws on the basis of observation (‘inner’ and ‘outer’) and,
when necessary, experiment; and the deduction from such laws,
when established, of specific conclusions. To every genuine
question there were many false answers, and only one that was true;
once discovered, it was final, it remained for ever true; all that was
needed was a reliable method of discovery. A method which
answered to this description had been employed by ‘the
incomparable Mr Newton’;26 his emulators in the realm of the
human mind would reap a harvest no less rich if they followed
similar precepts. If the laws were correct, the observations upon
which they were based authentic, and the inferences sound, then
true and impregnable conclusions would provide knowledge of
hitherto unexplored realms, and transform the present welter of
ignorance and idle conjecture into a clear and coherent system of
logically interrelated elements – the theoretical copy or analogue of
26 John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ‘Epistle to the
Reader’.
6
the divine harmony of nature, concealed from the view by human

ignorance or idleness or perversity. To comprehend it is, for a
rational creature, tantamount to conforming to it in all one’s beliefs
and actions; for this alone can make men happy and rational and
free.
It was essential to guarantee the efficacy of the instruments of
investigation before its results could be trusted. This
epistemological bias characterised European philosophy from
Descartes’ formulation of his method of doubt until well into the
nineteenth century, and is still a strong tendency in it. The direct
application of the results of this investigation of the varieties and
scope of human knowledge to such traditional disciplines as
politics, ethics, metaphysics and theology, with a view to ending
their perplexities once and for all, is the programme which
philoso[17]phers of the eighteenth century attempted to carry
through. The principles which they attempted to apply were the
new scientific canons of the seventeenth century; there was to be
no a priori deduction from ‘natural’ principles, hallowed in the
Middle Ages, without experimental evidence – principles such as
that all bodies come to rest when no longer under the influence of
any force, or that the ‘natural’ path sought after by heavenly bodies,
in the quest for self-fulfilment, is necessarily circular. The laws of
Kepler or Galileo contradicted these ‘natural’ principles, on the
basis of observation (the vast mass of data, for instance,
accumulated by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe) and
experiment (of the kind conducted by Galileo himself ).
This use of observation and experiment entailed the application
of exact methods of measurement, and resulted in the linking
together of many diverse phenomena under laws of great precision,
generally formulated in mathematical terms. Consequently only the
measurable aspects of reality were to be treated as real – those
susceptible to equations connecting the variations in one aspect of
a phenomenon with measurable variations in other phenomena.
The whole notion of nature as compounded of irreducibly
7
different qualities and unbridgeable ‘natural’ kinds was to be finally

discarded. The Aristotelian category of final cause – the
explanation of phenomena in terms of the ‘natural’ tendency of
every object to fulfil its own inner end or purpose, which was also
to be the answer to the question of why it existed, and what
function it was attempting to fulfil (notions for which no
experimental or observational evidence can in principle be
discovered) – was abandoned as unscientific, and, indeed, in the
case of inanimate entities without wills or purposes, as literally
unintelligible. Laws formulating regular concomitances of
phenomena – the observed order and conjunctions of things and
events – were sufficient, without introducing impalpable entities
and forces, to describe all that is describable, and predict all that is
predictable, in the universe. Space, time, mass, force, momentum,
rest – the terms of mechanics – are to take the place of final causes,
substantial forms, divine purpose and other metaphysical [18]
notions. Indeed the apparatus of medieval ontology and theology
were to be altogether abandoned in favour of a symbolism
referring to those aspects of the universe which are given to the
senses, or can be measured or inferred in some other way.
This attitude is exceedingly clear in the works not only of Locke
and Hume, who had a profound respect for natural science, but
also in those of Berkeley, who was deeply concerned to deny its
metaphysical presuppositions. To all of them the model was that
of contemporary physics and mechanics. The world of matter, for
Newton, and indeed for those pre-Newtonian physicists with
whose works Locke was probably acquainted rather better, was to
be described in terms of uniform particles, and the laws of its
behaviour were the laws of the interaction of these particles. The
British empiricist philosophers, whose work gradually came to
dominate European thought, applied this conception to the mind.
The mind was treated as if it were a box containing mental
equivalents of the Newtonian particles. These were called ‘ideas’.
These ‘ideas’ are distinct and separate entities, ‘simple’, possessing
8
no parts into which they can be split, that is, literally atomic, having
their origin somewhere in the external world, dropping into the
mind like so many grains of sand inside an hour-glass; there, in
some way, they either continue in isolation, or are compounded to
form complexes, in the way in which material objects in the outer
world are compounded out of complexes of molecules or atoms.
Locke attempts something like the history of the genesis of ideas
in our minds and an account of their movement within it, their
association and dissociation from each other, like a contemporary
chemist analysing the ingredients and physical behaviour of a
compound substance.
Thought, at least reflective thought, is for Locke a kind of inner
eye corresponding to the outer physical eye which takes in the
external world. When Locke defines knowledge as ‘the perception
of the connection and agreement, or disagreement and
repugnancy, of any of our ideas’,27 this ‘perception’ is conceived by
him as something which inspects two ideas as if they were
discrimin-able particles; the inner [19] eye is then able to see
whether they agree or not, and so whether the proposition
asserting their connection is or is not true, much as the outer eye
can inspect two coloured objects and see whether the colours
match each other or not.
When Berkeley criticises Locke’s theory of abstract general
ideas, what he is principally attacking is the notion that there can
be an idea which is not an absolutely determinate image, since ideas
are entities; and ‘abstract ideas’, as invoked by Locke in order to
explain how general terms mean, seem to Berkeley a contradiction
in terms, because if they are ideas, they must be concrete entities,
and cannot also be abstract, that is, not determinate, not having
any particular properties given to the senses or the imagination.
Whether his attack upon Locke is fair or not, what is characteristic
is the assumption common to both (and to Hume and many other
contemporary empiricists, particularly in France) that the mind is a
27 An Essay concerning Human Understanding 4. 1. 2. Cf. p. 86.

9
container within which ideas circulate like counters and form

patterns as they would in a complicated slot-machine; three-
dimensional Newtonian space has its counterpart in the inner
‘space’ of the mind over which the inner eye – the faculty of
reflection – presides.
Philosophy, therefore, is to be converted into a natural science.
The facts with which it is to deal are to be discovered by
introspection. Like every other genuine human investigation it
must begin with empirical observation. Hume echoes this: ‘as the
science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences,
so, the only solid foundation we can give to this science itself must
be laid on experience and observation’.28 Philosophy is in reality a
kind of scientific psychology; among the extreme followers of this
doctrine, particularly in France, it becomes a kind of physiology –
an early version of behaviourism or ‘physicalism’. The French
disciples of Locke and Hume – Condillac, Helvétius, La Mettrie –
push this to extreme limits. Condillac undertakes to reconstruct
every human experience – the most complex and sophisticated
thoughts or ‘movements of the soul’, the most elaborate play of
the imagination, the most subtle scientific speculation – out of
‘simple’ ideas, that is, sensations classifiable as being giv[20]en to
one or the other of our normal senses, each of which can, as it
were, be pinpointed and assigned to its rightful place in the stream
of sensations. The great popularisers of the age, whose writings
reached educated readers in many lands beyond the borders of
their native France, headed by Voltaire, Diderot, Holbach,
Condorcet and their followers, whatever their other differences,
were agreed upon the crucial importance of this sensationalist
approach. There are ‘organic’ – anti-atomic – notions in the
writings of Diderot as well as in those of Maupertuis or Bordeu,
and some of these may have influenced Kant; but the dominant
trend is in favour of analysing everything into ultimate, irreducible
atomic constituents, whether physical or psychological.
28 A Treatise of Human Nature, Introduction (p. 138).

10
Hume, who believes that the sciences of ‘Mathematics, Natural

Philosophy [that is, natural science], and Natural Religion, are in
some measure dependent on the science of man’,29 believes this
because the task of philosophy is to deal with the ultimate
ingredients of all that there is. His theory of the mind is
mechanistic, and conceived by analogy with Newton’s theory of
gravitational attraction, the association of ideas being called upon
to perform the same function in the mind as gravitation does in
the material world. This association of ideas is described by him as
‘a kind of Attraction, which in the mental world will be found to
have as extraordinary effects as in the natural, and to show itself in
as many and as various forms’.30
La Mettrie conceives the true philosopher as a kind of engineer
who can take to pieces the apparatus that is the human mind;
Voltaire describes him as an excellent anatomist, who (he is
speaking in praise of Locke) can explain human reason as he can
explain the springs of the human body. Scientific images abound
in the philosophical treatises of the French philosophes and their
disciples in other countries; nature, which was conceived as an
organism by Butler at the beginning of the century, was compared
to a watch by Paley half a century later. ‘Natural morality’ and
‘natural religion’ (common to all men, but more evident in the least
corrupt – rural or primitive – societies) can be studied scientifically
[21] like the life of plants or animals. Diderot compares social life
to a great workshop factory.
Berkeley, so far from finding this empiricism unpalatable
because he is a Christian and a bishop, on the contrary finds it
alone compatible with the spiritualism which impregnates all his
beliefs. For him Locke is, if anything, not empiricist enough. And,
in a sense, Berkeley is right; the science of the seventeenth century,
which Locke admires and which he seeks to apply to mental
phenomena, was anything but strictly empiricist. On the contrary,
29 ibid.
30 ibid. 1. 1. 4.
11
the world of the senses is regarded by Galileo and Descartes as

vague, deceptive and blurred, full of phenomena describable only
in qualitative terms, that is, not admissible in a properly
quantitative, scientific world-picture. The ‘primary’ qualities with
which the sciences deal are not themselves directly given to the
senses.
There are two domains: the quantitative, precisely measurable
domain of objects in space, possessing such properties as motion
and rest, determinate shape, solidity, specific temperatures (which
are the motions of particles) and so forth, is contrasted with the
domain of colours, smells and tastes, degree of warmth and cold,
loud and soft sounds and the rest, which are subjective, and
therefore unreliable. Locke, who starts from the principle that we
have no knowledge except that which comes from the senses, finds
it difficult to explain why the ‘primary’ qualities, which for him
must, if he is to be consistent, depend as much on the evidence of
the senses as the ‘secondary’ ones, should nevertheless be accorded
the kind of primacy and authority which physical science seemed
to give them. So he alternates between inconsistency and half-
hearted attempts to represent the secondary qualities as in some
way generated by the primary ones, which are not so much
themselves sensible as somehow causally responsible for the data
of the senses. He finds himself in similar difficulties with regard to
material substance, which for the physicists was certainly
something not directly given to the senses, nor anything that could
be so given, and must therefore be unacceptable to strict
empiricism.
Berkeley quite consistently rejects attempts at the ‘appeasement’
of physics, and rejects all efforts [22] at compromise with its alleged
demands. Indeed he looks at such dualism as incompatible with
the out-and-out empiricism which he advocates. The contrast
between subjective sensations and objective properties of matter is
specious. The senses are the sole source of knowledge. The world
consists of thoughts, feelings, sensations – ‘ideas’ in the minds of
12
agents, of God and his creatures, men. Beyond that there is

nothing, at least so far as the material world is concerned. He
combines a consistent empiricism with regard to the material world
with belief in the reality of spiritual substances – eternal souls or
spirits – active beings, whose existence does not depend, as that of
passive entities must, on being sensed, or being otherwise the
content of someone’s experience: substances of which we possess
not ‘ideas’ but (as his predecessors in the seventeenth century had
called this non-sensible awareness) ‘notions’, which may also
embrace relations, since these are, apparently, not sensible either.
His position in this regard – a peculiar union of Platonism and
sensationalism – is not as inconsistent as it has too often been
taken to be by his critics from Hume onwards.
For Berkeley the notion of external substances so cut off from
possible sensible experience that no idea of them can in principle
be formed is unintelligible. He is at once a complete spiritualist and
a consistent sensationalist. His whole argument rests upon the view
that, if we do not allow ourselves to be befuddled by scientific
terminology which suggests the existence of imperceptible matter,
while at the same time basing all our knowledge upon the evidence
of what can be perceived and it alone, we shall arrive at the
orthodox Christian position that the universe is spiritual in
character. Whereas for Locke and Hume mathematics represents
the most perfect form of knowledge – indeed the ideal of lucidity
and impregnable certainty, in comparison with which all other
claims to knowledge are defective – for Berkeley mathematics
suggests that there are mythological entities which have no
existence in the world. Geometrical figures for Berkeley are not
ideal entities, free from the need that all real entities have to justify
themselves by empirical observation, [23] but are the contents of
sensation no less than anything else. A line consists of a certain, in
principle countable, number of minima sensibilia – and if it consists
of an odd number of these, cannot be precisely bisected, whatever
13
geometers may say. This eccentric view is interesting if only as

evidence of what extremes empiricism and nominalism can reach.
Both Locke and Hume hold a more plausible view of
mathematics, and although their accounts of mathematical
reasoning are not altogether convincing, they realise no less clearly
than Leibniz the difference between it and statements of empirical
fact. Hume, in particular, is clear about the difference between
statements of formal entailment, that is, those of logic and
arithmetic or algebra (he is confused and hesitant about geometry),
and those of a factual kind, that is, those asserting existence.
Indeed, his major achievement rests precisely on the recognition
that since such notions as necessity and identity, strictly
interpreted, belong to the world of formal disciplines – what the
rationalists had called ‘truths of reason’, known to be such because
their contradictories are self-contradictory (as opposed to ‘truths
of fact’, which cannot be tested by any purely formal process) –
they have no place in the realm of statements about the world, the
assumption that they have being largely responsible for the very
existence of the false science of metaphysics.
Necessity and identity are relations not to be discovered either
by observation of the external world, or by introspection, or by any
combinations of the data of these ‘faculties’. They are, therefore,
not real relations uniting real entities, or discoverable in the real
world. Knowledge must therefore be of two types: either it claims
to be ‘necessary’, in which case it rests on formal criteria and can
give no information about the world. Or it does claim to give
information about the world, in which case it can be no more than
probable, and is never infallible; it cannot have certainty, if what
we mean by this is the kind of certainty achieved only by logic or
by mathematics. This distinction between the two types of
assertion, closely related to the distinction between ‘synthetic’ and
‘analytic’, ‘a posteri[24]ori’ and ‘a priori’, is the beginning of the
great controversy which awakened Kant from his dogmatic
slumber and transformed the history of modern philosophy.
14
The heroic attempt to make philosophy a natural science was

brought to an end by the great break with the traditions both of
rationalism and of empiricism as they had developed hitherto,
inaugurated by Kant, whose philosophical views are the source of
much of the thought of the nineteenth century, and are not
included in the compass of this volume. It was he who first grasped
firmly the truth that the task of philosophy is – and has always been
– not to seek answers to empirical questions of fact, which are
answered by the special sciences, or at another level by ordinary
common sense. Nor can it be a purely deductive discipline as used
by the formal sciences such as logic or mathematics. He was the
first great philosopher to realise that the principal questions of
philosophy are neither those for which there is a clear method of
solution by empirical investigation (for example, the question of
the genesis of our ideas – the attempt to find out where they ‘come
from’, which is a question for psychologists, physiologists,
anthropologists and the like), nor those to be answered by
deduction from self-evident or a priori axioms, as had been held
by the schoolmen and rationalists; for what is self-evident – or a
matter of faith and direct revelation – to one person may not be so
to another. Kant rightly held that mere deduction cannot add to
our knowledge either of things or of persons; and does not answer
those questions, or solve those puzzles, which seem
characteristically philosophical. The questions which he asked, and
the methods which he employed (whether valid or not), were
concerned rather with analysing our most general and pervasive
concepts and categories. He distinguished the types of statements
we make in the light of the kinds of evidence they require, and the
relations to each other of the concepts which they presuppose.
Kant is particularly clear on an issue confusion about which lies
at the heart of the major fallacies of eighteenth-century philosophy,
namely that questions concerning types of judgements and kinds
of categories involved in normal [25] experience are far from
identical with questions about the ‘sources’ of our data or beliefs
15
or attitudes. It is obvious that there must be differences of logical

principle (and not merely of origin) between such propositions as
‘Every event has a cause’ or ‘This sheet of paper cannot be both
blue and brown in the same place at the same time’ on the one
hand, and such propositions as ‘There are no snakes in Ireland’ or
‘I had a headache yesterday’ on the other. If someone doubts
whether every event has a cause, or whether Pythagoras’ theorem
is true, or whether this piece of paper is both brown and blue at
the same time, it is useless to accumulate for his benefit more and
more instances of, say, events in this or that relation to one
another; or more and more right-angled triangles together with
instruments for measuring the areas of the squares on the sides; or
further sheets of paper, some entirely brown, others entirely blue,
but none simultaneously and wholly both. These methods of
confuting the doubter are useless, because the way to convince
someone of the truth of such propositions is clearly quite different
from the way in which we demonstrate the truth of factual
propositions about the world, that is, by the production of
empirical evidence of some kind. The question here is ‘What is the
correct sort of evidence or guarantee which one should produce
for the truth of such and such a proposition?’, and this is altogether
different from such a question as ‘How do I, or you (or men in
general) come to learn the truth of such and such a proposition?’
The answer to this last question is one of genetic psychology, and
depends on many empirical accidents and vicissitudes of a man’s
life.
It is characteristic of the great classical empiricists (even of
Hume, who was so keenly aware of differences of logical type, and
so triumphantly, and with such devastating results, proved that
precisely because inductive argument could never be rendered
deductive, therefore there was a sense in which certainty was
impossible about matters of fact) that they confused these two
questions, and supposed that a certain kind of answer to the latter
question – the question of the genesis of knowledge or of ways of
16
learning – automatically entailed a certain sort [26] of answer to the

first, namely the question of what was the correct procedure for
establishing the truth of, and what concepts were involved in, a
given proposition.
This confusion emerges in the way in which these philosophers
tend to conflate these two distinct questions into one unclear
enquiry, ‘How can we know proposition X?’, which is neither
‘What is the right evidence for, or proof of, propositions like X?’
nor yet ‘Whence do we acquire the knowledge (or impression) of
X?’ One of the best examples of this muddle is to be found in the
first book of Locke’s Essay, where he tells us that children, for
example, are not born with the knowledge of the law of non-
contradiction, and seems to think that this proves something about
the logical status of such propositions. The question of the sources
of knowledge is one of fact, and the empiricists who, following
Hobbes or Locke, argued that it was neither ‘innate’, that is,
‘imprinted’ on the mind before birth by God or nature, nor derived
by ‘intuition’, that is, some channel other than and superior to the
senses, were in effect saying that the answer to this question could
be provided only by psychology, correctly conceived as an
empirical science. It was the attempt to show that philosophy
consisted in this empirical procedure (for if it is not to be based on
observation, what value can it have?) that led to some of the most
illuminating insights of eighteenth-century thought, as well as the
major fallacy which vitiates it – the identification of philosophy
with science.
Kant himself is by no means free from this kind of error;
nevertheless, he did shift the centre of philosophical emphasis
from the two questions ‘What is deducible from what?’ and ‘What
entities are there in the world, whether outside, or in, the mind?’ to
an examination of the most general concepts and categories in
terms of which we think and reason – frames of reference or
systems of relations such as space, time, number, causality, material
thinghood, of which we seem unable to divest ourselves save very
17
partially, even in imagination, and which are not dealt with in the
textbooks devoted to special sciences, because they are too
universal and too pervasive, and, prima facie at any rate, do not fit
into any classification, either empirical [27] or formal. The history
of philosophy has largely consisted in dealing with such questions,
whose subject matter is difficult to classify; in seeking to solve, or
at least to elucidate, puzzles which haunt many men’s minds in a
way quite different from perplexities within the field of some
special science, where the method of finding the answer, however
difficult, is not itself a puzzle. These philosophical problems
change from one age to another, representing no straight line of
progress (or retrogression), as human thought and language change
under the impact of the factors which determine the forms and the
concepts in which men think, feel, communicate – factors which
seem to pursue no regular pattern of a discernible kind.
These considerations were relatively remote from the minds of
the great empirical philosophers of the eighteenth century,
selections from whose writings are to be found in this volume. To
them everything seemed far clearer than it can ever have done to
any but a very few of their successors. What science had achieved
in the sphere of the material world, it could surely achieve also in
the sphere of the mind; and further, in the realm of social and
political relations. The rational scheme on which Newton had so
conclusively demonstrated the physical world to be constructed,
and with which Locke and Hume and their French disciples
seemed well on the way to explaining the inner worlds of thought
and emotion, could be applied to the social sphere as well. Men
were objects in nature no less than trees and stones; their
interaction could be studied in the same way as that of atoms or
plants. Once the laws governing human behaviour were discovered
and incorporated in a science of rational sociology, analogous to
physics or zoology, men’s real wishes could be investigated and
brought to light, and satisfied by the most efficient means
compatible with the nature of the physical and mental facts. Nature
18
was a cosmos: in it there could be no disharmonies; and since such

questions as what to do, how to live, what would make men just or
rational or happy, were all factual questions, the true answers to
any one of them could not be incompatible with true answers to
any of the others. The [28] ideal of creating a wholly just, wholly
virtuous, wholly satisfied society was therefore no longer utopian.
Nor is this view confined to the natural scientists and their allies
and spokesmen. It was held no less confidently by the rationalist
followers of Leibniz and his disciple Wolff. They held that rational
thought was a means of obtaining truth about the universe vastly
superior to empirical methods. But they also believed, if anything
even more strongly than their empiricist adversaries, that the truth
was one single, harmonious body of knowledge; that all previous
systems – religions, cosmologies, mythologies – were but so many
different roads, some longer or wider, some more twisted and
darker, to the same rational goal; that all the sciences and all the
faiths, the most fanatical superstitions and the most savage
customs, when ‘cleansed’ of their irrational elements by the
advance of civilisation, can be harmonised in the final true
philosophy which could solve all theoretical and practical
problems, for all men, everywhere, for all time. This noble faith
animated Lessing, who believed in reason, and Turgot, who
believed in the sciences; Moses Mendelssohn, who believed in
God, and Condorcet, who did not. Despite great differences of
temperament and outlook and belief this was the common ground.
Theists and atheists, believers in automatic progress and sceptical
pessimists, hard-boiled French materialists and sentimental
German poets and thinkers seemed united in the conviction that
all problems were soluble by the discovery of objective answers
which, once found – and why should they not be? – would be clear
for all to see and valid eternally.
It is true that dissident voices, first in Germany, then in
England, were beginning to be raised in the middle of the century,
maintaining that neither men nor their societies were analogous to
19
inanimate objects or even to the zoological kingdom; and that the

attempt to deal with them as if they were would necessarily lead to
disaster. Johnson and Burke, Hamann and Herder (and to some
degree even Montesquieu and Hume) began the revolt which was
destined to grow in strength. But these remained isolated doubts.
A very great deal of good, undoubtedly, was done, suf[29]fering
mitigated, injustice avoided or prevented, ignorance exposed, by
the conscientious attempt to apply scientific methods to the
regulation of human affairs. Dogmas were refuted, prejudices and
superstitions were pilloried successfully. The growing conviction
that appeals to mystery and darkness and authority to justify
arbitrary behaviour were, all too often, so many unworthy alibis
concealing self-interest or intellectual indolence or stupidity was
often triumphantly vindicated. But the central dream, the
demonstration that everything in the world moved by mechanical
means, that all evils could be cured by appropriate technological
steps, that there could exist engineers both of human souls and of
human bodies, proved delusive. Nevertheless, it proved less
misleading in the end than the attacks upon it in the nineteenth
century by means of arguments equally fallacious, but with
implications that were, both intellectually and politically, more
sinister and oppressive. The intellectual power, honesty, lucidity,
courage and disinterested love of the truth of the most gifted
thinkers of the eighteenth century remain to this day without
parallel. Their age is one of the best and most hopeful episodes in
the life of mankind. [30]
20
John Locke
John Locke, whose philosophy exercised undisputed sway over the
ideas of the entire eighteenth century, was born in 1632, and at the
age of twenty-six took his Master’s degree at Oxford, where he
lived and taught on and off, until, in 1683, four years before the
Glorious Revolution which his ideas had done much to mould, he
was expelled on suspicion of complicity in the machinations of the
Whigs, and in particular of his patron, Lord Shaftesbury, whom he
served as political adviser and physician. He fled to Holland and
returned only after the accession of William of Orange. It was
during the last fifteen years of his life, spent peacefully in the
country, that he published the great treatises on philosophy and
politics which transformed human thought.
He was a man of gentle, shy and amiable disposition, widely
liked and esteemed, without enemies, and endowed with an
astonishing capacity for absorbing and interpreting in simple
language some of the original and revolutionary ideas in which his
time was singularly rich. He was in harmony with his age, and all
that he touched prospered. He is the father of the central
philosophical and political tradition of the Western world,
especially in America; nor were his practical gifts negligible, for he
left .the imprint of his good sense on the machinery of modern
British administration particularly in matters dealing with trade.
If Descartes broke the spell of scholasticism by attempting to
apply the methods, standards, and some of the concepts of the
mathematical and natural sciences (which he had himself done so
much to advance) Locke, whose scientific attainments were
exceedingly modest, [31] emancipated philosophy from even this
degree of specialization. And for the eighteenth century, at least,
he rendered it no longer an esoteric study, but a discipline based
on normal powers of empirical observation and common-sense
judgement. Descartes only recognises as worthy of attention
arguments which proceed by rigorous deduction from premisses
which are self-evident or known to be true a priori; Locke appeals
21
JO H N LO C K E
to observation of the natural world, seeks to examine present

beliefs and states of mind by tracing them to their psychological
origins and giving an account of their ‘natural’ growth therefrom.
Above all, like Hobbes, he looks on man as an object in nature, not
fundamentally different from other natural objects, and to be
described and explained by the genetic methods of the natural
science of psychology – although he did not call it that. His own
theories are often fanciful enough; he is guilty of many
inconsistencies and obscurities and lapses into modes of thought
which he is supposing himself to combat. Nevertheless, his ideas,
or at least the effects of his skill in presenting them (the literary
taste of the latter part of the seventeenth and the whole of the
eighteenth century is clearly different from our own) were
genuinely revolutionary. His view that many cardinal errors are due
to the mistaking of words for things; that minds – or their thoughts
– are capable of having their natural histories written no less than
plants or animals, with equally startling and fruitful results; that the
findings of philosophers must not depart too widely from the
beliefs of balanced common sense (Locke may almost be said to
have invented the notion of common sense); that philosophical
problems are as often as not due to confusion in the mind of the
philosopher rather than the difficulties inherent in the subject – all
this transformed the ideas of men. Voltaire’s unbounded
admiration alone is sufficient testimony to the impact of Locke’s
works. He supposed himself to be practicing the method of
Newton; but in fact he far more resembles the physician (that he
was) who seeks to cure the diseases (in this case delusions about
the external world and the mental faculties of men), and as part of
this process traces them to their origins and examines their
symp[32]toms, and so finds himself compiling something which is
partly a textbook of anatomy, partly a manual on methods of
healing. It is written in plain and lucid language which does a good
deal to conceal the vagueness and obscurity of much of the
thought itself. The opening Epistle is of a characteristic intellectual
22
JO H N LO C K E
modesty and charm, and predisposes the contemporary reader in

its favour by telling him that he need not, to obtain true knowledge,
soar in the clouds with theologians, descend dark wells with
metaphysicians, but only study his own nature, which, if done
conscientiously, will sweep away the ‘sanctuary of vanity and
ignorance’ – the clouds of meaningless words – and so clear a path
for a solid, empirical science of man.
All the selections from Locke that follow are from An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding.
THE EPISTLE TO THE READER
[…] Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of this essay, I should tell thee
that five or six friends meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject
very remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand by the difficulties
that rose on every side. After we had awhile puzzled ourselves, without coming
any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my
thoughts that we took a wrong course, and that before we set ourselves upon
enquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see
what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with. This I
proposed to the company, who all readily assented; and therefore it was
agreed that this should be our first enquiry. Some hasty and undigested
thoughts on a subject I had never before considered, which I set down against
our next meeting, gave the first entrance into this discourse; which having
been thus begun by chance, was continued by entreaty; written by incoherent
parcels; and after long intervals of neglect, resumed again, as my humour or
occasions permitted; and at last, in a retirement, where an attendance on my
health gave me leisure, it was brought into that order thou now seest it. [33]
…
The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without master-builders,

whose mighty designs in advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments
23
JO H N LO C K E
to the admiration of posterity; but every one must not hope to be a Boyle,31
or a Sydenham;32 and in an age that produces such masters as the great
Huygenius,33 and the incomparable Mr Newton, with some others of that
strain; it is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing
the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to
knowledge; which certainly had been very much more advanced in the world,
if the endeavours of ingenious and industrious men had not been much
cumbered with the learned but frivolous use of uncouth, affected, or
unintelligible terms, introduced into the sciences, and there made an art of, to
that degree that philosophy, which is nothing but the true knowledge of
things, was thought unfit, or uncapable to be brought into well-bred company,
and polite conversation. Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse
of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard and
misapplied words, with little or no meaning, have, by prescription, such a right
to be mistaken for deep learning, and height of speculation, that it will not be
easy to persuade, either those who speak, or those who hear them, that they
are but the covers of ignorance, and hindrance of true knowledge. To break in
upon the sanctuary of vanity and ignorance, will be, I suppose, some service
to human understanding: Though so few are apt to think they deceive or are
deceived in the use of words; or that the language of the sect they are of, has
any faults in it which ought to be examined or corrected, that I hope I shall be
pardoned, if I have in the third book dwelt long on this subject, and
endeavoured to make it so plain, that neither the inveterateness of the
mischief, nor the prevalency of the fashion, shall be any excuse for those, who
will not take care about the meaning of their [34] own words, and will not
suffer the significancy of their expressions to be enquired into.
Having specified his general approach, Locke gives a more detailed

account of what he proposes to do and how, and gives an outline
31 The Hon. Robert Boyle (1627–91), British physicist and chemist,

one of the founders of the Royal Society.
32 Thomas Sydenham (1624–89), English physician.
33 Christian Huyghens (1629–95), Dutch mathematician, physicist
and astronomer.
24
JO H N LO C K E
of the painful but necessary task of turning oneself into one’s own
object – of ‘thought trying to catch its own tail’ – which has ever
since formed the core of modern philosophy, superseding the clear
and naive vision, untroubled by neurotic self-consciousness, which
characterized the bulk of classical and medieval thought.
BOOK 1: OF INNATE NOTIONS
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1. An enquiry into the understanding pleasant and useful

Since it is the understanding that sets man above the rest of sensible beings,
and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has over them; it is
certainly a subject, even for its nobleness, worth our labour to enquire into.
The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other
things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a
distance and make it its own object. But, whatever be, the difficulties that lie
in the way of this enquiry; whatever it be that keeps us so much in the dark to
ourselves; sure I am, that all the light we can let in upon our minds, all the
acquaintance we can make with our own understandings, will not only be very
pleasant, but bring us great advantage, in directing our thoughts in the search
of other things.
2. Design
This, therefore, being my purpose, to enquire into the original, certainty, and
extent of human knowledge; together with the grounds and degrees of belief,
opinion, and assent; I shall not at present meddle with the physical
consideration of the mind; or trouble myself to examine, wherein its essence
consists, or by what motions of our spirits, or alterations of our bodies, we
come to have any sensation by our organs, or any ideas in our understandings;
and whether those ideas do in their for[35]mation, any, or all of them, depend
on matter or no: These are speculations, which, however curious and
entertaining, I shall decline, as lying out of my way in the design I am now
upon. […]
3. Method
25
JO H N LO C K E
It is therefore worth while to search out the bounds between opinion and
knowledge; and examine by what measures, in things, whereof we have no
certain knowledge, we ought to regulate our assent, and moderate our
persuasions. In order whereunto, I shall pursue this following method.
First, I shall enquire into the original of those ideas, notions, or whatever
else you please to call them, which a man observes, and is conscious to himself
he has in his mind; and the ways whereby the understanding comes to be
furnished with them.
Secondly, I shall endeavour to shew what knowledge the understanding
hath by those ideas; and the certainty, evidence, and extent of it.
Thirdly, I shall make some enquiry into the nature and grounds of faith, or
opinion; whereby I mean that assent, which we give to any proposition as true,
of whose truth yet we have no certain knowledge; and here we shall have
occasion to examine the reasons and degrees of assent.
…
7. Occasion of this 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 sure possession of truths that
most concerned us, whilst we let loose our thoughts into the vast ocean of
being; as if all that boundless extent were the natural and undoubted
possession of our understandings, wherein there was nothing exempt from its
decisions, or that escaped its comprehension. […]
…
This sums up Locke’s ‘epistemological’ approach to philosophy,

and his conception of the task of the philosopher as clarification
(‘to be employed as an under-labourer [36] in clearing the ground
a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to
knowledge’) whose work is to be ancillary to the work of the
scientist in discovering objective facts.
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JO H N LO C K E
He goes on to introduce the term which is central to his

exposition, and which was destined to play a crucial role in later
philosophy – the ‘idea.’
8. What ‘idea’ stands for

This much I thought necessary to say concerning the occasion of this enquiry
into human understanding. But, before I proceed on to what I have thought
on this subject, I must here in the entrance beg pardon of my reader for the
frequent use of the word ‘idea’, which he will find in the following treatise. It
being that term, which, I think, serves best to stand for whatsoever is the object
of the understanding when a man thinks; I have used it to express whatever is
meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be
employed about in thinking; and I could not avoid frequently using it.
I presume it will be easily granted me, that there are such ideas in men’s
minds; every one is conscious of them in himself, and men’s words and actions
will satisfy him that they are in others.
Our first enquiry then shall be, how they come into the mind.
This use of the word ‘idea’ – which is far wider than, but had
obvious affinities with, such later notions as ‘impressions’,
‘phenomena’, ‘appearances’, ‘percepts’, ‘sensibilia’, ‘sense data’,
‘the given’ and so on – is part and parcel of his semi-mechanical
conception of the mind, and the view that the philosopher is, as it
were, engaged upon the natural history (the description of the
origin, growth, behaviour) of certain entities called ‘ideas’ in the
mind.
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BOOK 1, CHAPTER 2: NO INNATE PRINCIPLES IN THE MIND
1. The way shown how we come by any knowledge, sufficient to prove it not
innate
It is an established opinion amongst some men, that there are in the
understanding [37] certain innate principles; some primary notions, κοιναὶ
ἔννοιαι, characters, as it were, stamped upon the mind of man, which the soul
receives in its very first being; and brings into the world with it. It would be
sufficient to convince unprejudiced readers of the falseness of this
supposition, if I should only shew (as I hope I shall in the following parts of
this discourse) how men, barely by the use of their natural faculties, may attain
to all the knowledge they have, without the help of any innate impressions;
and may arrive at certainty, without any such original notions or principles. […]
2. General assent the great argument

There is nothing more commonly taken for granted, than that there are certain
principles, both speculative and practical, (for they speak of both), universally
agreed upon by all mankind: Which therefore, they argue, must needs be the
constant impressions, which the souls of men receive in their first beings, and
which they bring into the world with them, as necessarily and really as they do
any of their inherent faculties.
3. Universal consent proves nothing innate

This argument, drawn from universal consent, has this misfortune in it, that if
it were true in matter of fact, that there were certain truths wherein all mankind
agreed, it would not prove them innate, if there can be any other way shewn
how men may come to that universal agreement, in the things they do consent
in, which I presume may be done.
4. ‘What is, is’ and ‘it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be’ not
universally assented to
But, which is worse, this argument of universal consent, which is made use of
to prove innate principles, seems to me a demonstration that there are none
such; because there are none to which all mankind give an universal assent. I
shall begin with the speculative, and instance in those magnified principles of
demonstration, ‘Whatsoever is, is’ and ‘It is impossible for the same thing to
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JO H N LO C K E
be and not to be’, which, of all others, I think have the most allowed title to
innate. These have so settled a reputation of maxims universally received, that
it will, no doubt, be thought strange, if any one should seem to question it.
But yet I take liberty to say, that these propositions are so far [38] from having
an universal assent, that there are a great part of mankind to whom they are
not so much as known.
5. Not on the mind naturally imprinted, because not known to children, idiots
etc.
For, first, it is evident, that all children and idiots have not the least
apprehension or thought of them; and the want of that is enough to destroy
that universal assent, which must needs be the necessary concomitant of all
innate truths: It seeming to me near a contradiction, to say, that there are
truths imprinted on the soul, which it perceives or understands not; imprinting,
if it signify any thing, being nothing else, but the making certain truths to be
perceived. For to imprint any thing on the mind, without the mind’s perceiving
it, seems to me hardly intelligible. If therefore children and idiots have souls,
have minds, with those impressions upon them, they must unavoidably
perceive them, and necessarily know and assent to these truths: Which since
they do not, it is evident that there are no such impressions. For if they are not
notions naturally imprinted, how can they be innate? and if they are notions
imprinted, how can they be unknown? To say a notion is imprinted on the
mind, and yet at the same time to say, that the mind is ignorant of it, and never
yet took notice of it, is to make this impression nothing. No proposition can
be said to be in the mind which it never yet knew, which it was never yet
conscious of. […]
…
Before advancing his own theory of knowledge in Book 1, Locke

seeks to demolish what he regards as a rival epistemological theory,
namely that at least some knowledge is innate.
The argument is a dilemma. Either in saying that a proposition
(for example ‘Whatever is, is’ or ‘It is impossible for the same thing
to be and not to be’, the so-called law of identity and law of non-
contradiction of classical logic) is innate, we mean literally that a
knowledge of its truth is already explicitly present in the
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consciousness of each man as soon as he is born, or we mean

something less radical, for example that all men are born with a
capacity or faculty for knowing its truth, a capacity which is
exercised only when we ‘come to the use of reason’ (1. 2. 6). But
the first [39] claim, which rests on the evidence of actual
experience, is false, as he demonstrates in the passage above; for it
is a necessary (though not, as Locke points out above, a sufficient)
condition of the truth of this claim that all men must agree to the
‘innate’ proposition. And this is obviously not so – Locke cites the
case of children and idiots. Whereas if we take the second horn of
the dilemma, then (1) the use of the term ‘innate’ is ‘a very
improper way of speaking’ (1. 2. 5), but, (2) worse still, the theory
now fails to distinguish between the small, privileged class of
supposedly innate propositions, and any other propositions (say
those of mathematics) whose truth men can come gradually to
know.
What has puzzled (and still puzzles) students of Locke is the
precise identity of his opponents. Few of his contemporaries can
have held a theory that knowledge was literally innate (though
some attributed such a theory to Plato); and many took pains
explicitly to deny it. The possible targets of the attack are three:
(1) Descartes and some of his followers, who did make a
confused use of the term ‘innate idea’.34
(2) Certain contemporary English philosophers, the Cambridge
Platonists, and especially Henry More, who also held a kind of
weakened theory of innate knowledge.
34 Leibniz, who attacked Locke in his New Essays, held a form of the
‘weaker’ theory about innate faculties, common to all men, for
recognising absolute ‘truths of reason’ – potentialities rather than actual
truths permanently present to the mind-like veins in the marble which
the sculptor must take into account, and which form its character
whether he does so or not.
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(3) Many surviving followers of scholasticism who maintained

that all knowledge was ex praecognitis et praeconcessis, that is, was
obtained by deduction from previously known self-evident truths.
Perhaps it is at the third group that Locke’s polemic was
principally directed. And in the attacks both here and in Book 4
Locke is not only fulfilling the narrower philosophical purpose of
destroying a rival theory of knowledge, but also, on a much wider
front, making a claim of central theological and political
importance, for the primacy of individual judgement against
authority and dogma: since
This [that is the theory of innate knowledge] being once [40] received, it eased
the lazy from the pains of search, and stopped the enquiry of the doubtful
concerning all that was once styled innate. And it was of no small advantage
to those who affected to be masters and teachers, to make this the principle
of principles, ‘that principles must not be questioned’. (1. 4. 24)
The attack on innate ideas is, historically, if not the first, the
greatest blow struck for empiricism and against the vast
metaphysical constructions which rested on axioms for which no
evidence could be discovered. All these rival systems claimed their
origins and their validity in the exercise of pure reason: and Locke
– like Hobbes before him – although with hesitations and
inconsistencies, questioned the existence of any such instrument
for discovering facts about the world. Upon its existence the very
possibility of metaphysics directly depends. In the passages which
follow Locke provides his own positive accounts of the matter.
BOOK 2: OF IDEAS
CHAPTER 1: OF IDEAS IN GENERAL, AND THEIR ORIGINAL
1. Idea is the object of thinking

Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks, and that which his mind
is applied about, whilst thinking, being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt
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JO H N LO C K E
that men have in their minds several ideas, such as are those expressed by the
words ‘whiteness’, ‘hardness’, ‘sweetness’, ‘thinking’, ‘motion’, ‘man’,
‘elephant’, ‘army’, ‘drunkenness’, and others. It is in the first place then to be
enquired, how he comes by them. I know it is a received doctrine, that men
have native ideas, and original characters, stamped upon their minds, in their
very first being. This opinion I have, at large, examined already; and, I suppose,
what I have said, in the foregoing book, will be much more easily admitted,
when I have shewn, whence the understanding may get all the ideas it has,
and by what ways and degrees they may come into the mind for which I shall
appeal to every one’s own observation and experience.
2. All ideas come from sensation or reflection

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, [41] void of all
characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes
it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted
on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason
and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience; in all that our
knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our
observation employed either about external sensible objects, or about the
internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is
that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking.
These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have,
or can naturally have, do spring.
3. The objects of sensation one source of ideas

First, Our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into
the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various
ways wherein those objects do affect them: And thus we come by those ideas
we have of Yellow, White, Heat, Cold, Soft, Hard, Bitter, Sweet, and all those
which we call sensible qualities; which when I say the senses convey into the
mind, I mean, they from external objects convey into the mind what produces
there those perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have,
depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the
understanding, I call ‘sensation’.
4. The operations of our minds, the other source of them
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Secondly, The other fountain from which experience furnisheth the

understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own mind
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 as
distinct ideas, as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas
every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing
to do with external objects, yet [42] it is very like it, and might properly enough
be called internal sense. But as I call the other sensation, so I call this
‘reflection’, the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting
on its own operations within itself. By reflection then, in the following part of
this discourse, I would be understood to mean that notice which the mind
takes of its own operations, and the manner of them; by reason whereof there
come to be ideas of these operations in the understanding. These two, I say,
viz. external material things, as the objects of sensation; and the operations of
our own minds within, as the objects of reflection; are to me the only originals
from whence all our ideas take their beginnings. The term operations here I
use in a large sense, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind
about its ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from them, such
as is the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought.
5. All our ideas are of the one or the other of these

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, which are all those different
perceptions they produce in us: And the mind furnishes the understanding
with ideas of its own operations.
These, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several modes,
combinations, and relations, we shall find to contain all our whole stock of
ideas; and that we have nothing in our minds which did not come in one of
these two ways. Let any one examine his own thoughts, and thoroughly search
into his understanding; and then let him tell me, whether all the original ideas
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JO H N LO C K E
he has there, are any other than of the objects of his senses, or of the
operations of his mind, considered as objects of his reflection; and how great
a mass of knowledge soever he imagines to be lodged there, he will, upon
taking a strict view, see that he has not any idea in his mind, but what one of
these two have imprinted; though perhaps, with infinite variety compounded
and enlarged by the understanding, as we shall see hereafter.
…
24. The original of all our knowledge

In time the [43] mind comes to reflect on its own operations about the ideas
got by sensation, and thereby stores itself with a new set of ideas, which I call
ideas of reflection. These are the impressions that are made on our senses by
outward objects that are extrinsical to the mind, and its own operations,
proceeding from powers intrinsical and proper to itself […].
25. In the reception of simple ideas, the understanding is for the most part
passive
In this part the understanding is merely passive; and whether or no it will have
these beginnings, and as it were materials of knowledge, is not in its own
power. For the objects of our senses do, many of them, obtrude their particular
ideas upon our minds whether we will or no; and the operations of our minds
will not let us be without, at least, some obscure notions of them. No man can
be wholly ignorant of what he does when he thinks. These simple ideas, when
offered to the mind, the understanding can no more refuse to have, nor alter,
when they are imprinted, nor blot them out, and make new ones itself, than a
mirror can refuse, alter, or obliterate the images or ideas which the objects set
before it do therein produce. As the bodies that surround us do diversely affect
our organs, the mind is forced to receive the impressions, and cannot avoid
the perception of those ideas that are annexed to them.
No other text gives a clearer picture of the central notions

underlying the new theory of knowledge developed in Britain in
the eighteenth century, especially the first two paragraphs: .
(1) Ideas as entities: In the mind of man, conceived as a sort of
hollow vessel or container, there are to be found, a number (‘a vast
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JO H N LO C K E
store’) of perfectly distinct and separable entities called ideas. This

is taken to be self-evident.
(2) The philosopher as a natural scientist: The .starting point of the
philosopher is to function as a descriptive psychologist-to draw up
an inventory of these entities, sorting them into kinds, describing
their activities, transformations, and so forth.
(3) The genetic approach: These entities must come [44] from
somewhere – they cannot originate in nothing; it is next the
business of the philosopher to answer the question ‘Where do
these ideas come from?’ ‘What is their source?’
(4) The empirical method: These tasks are to be carried out by a
sort of simple quasi-botanical inspection.
In this passage Locke advances the classical empiricist thesis of
eighteenth-century epistemology: ‘All our ideas come from
experience.’ It later transpires that only ‘simple’ ideas come directly
from experience; ‘complex’ ideas are built up from simple ideas by
‘the operations of the mind’; hence they too have their final source
in experience. ‘Experience’ itself Locke distinguishes into
sensation directed upon (and stimulated by) external objects, and
reflection (we should now call it ‘introspection’), directed within
upon the workings of the mind itself.
We can here discern already the origins of many of the
difficulties which Locke will encounter. How, one may ask, can he
distinguish ideas of sensation solely by the fact that they come from
external objects, if he has ex hypothesi only the ideas themselves, and
no external objects, to inspect? They cannot in these conditions be
distinguished unless there exists some criterion internal to the ideas
themselves. This is connected with Locke’s misconception of the
logical relations between epistemology on the one hand and
physics and the physiology of the sense organs on the other. In the
following paragraphs he offers a kind of taxonomy – a classified
catalogue of the ultimate constituents of experience: the ‘ideas’.
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BOOK 2, CHAPTER 2: OF SIMPLE IDEAS
1. Uncompounded appearances
The better to understand the nature, manner, and extent of our knowledge,
one thing is carefully to be observed concerning the ideas we have; and that
is, that some of them are simple, and some complex.
Though the qualities that affect our senses are, in the things themselves,
so united and blended, that there is no separation, no distance between them;
yet it is plain, the [45] ideas they produce in the mind enter by the senses
simple and unmixed. For though the sight and touch often take in from the
same object, at the same time, different ideas; as a man sees at once motion
and colour; the hand feels softness and warmth in the same piece of wax; yet
the simple ideas, thus united in the same subject, are as perfectly distinct as
those that come in by different senses: The coldness and hardness which a
man feels in a piece of ice being as distinct ideas in the mind, as the smell and
whiteness of a lily; or as the taste of sugar, and smell of a rose. And there is
nothing can be plainer to a man, than the clear and distinct perception he has
of those simple ideas; which, being each in itself uncompounded, contains in
it nothing but one uniform appearance, or conception in the mind, and is not
distinguishable into different ideas.
2. The mind can neither make nor destroy them

These simple ideas, the materials of all our knowledge, are suggested and
furnished to the mind only by those two ways above-mentioned, viz. sensation
and reflection. When the understanding is once stored with these simple ideas,
it has the power to repeat, compare, and unite them, even to an almost infinite
variety, and so can make at pleasure new complex ideas. But it is not in the
power of the most exalted wit, or enlarged understanding, by any quickness
or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind, not
taken in by the ways before mentioned: Nor can any force of the
understanding destroy those that are there. The dominion of man, in this little
world of his own understanding, being much-what the same as it is in the
great world of visible things; wherein his power, however managed by art and
skill, reaches no farther than to compound and divide the materials that are
made to his hand; but can do nothing towards the making the least particle of
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JO H N LO C K E
new matter, or destroying one atom of what is already in being. The same
inability will every one find in himself, who shall go about to fashion in his
understanding any simple idea, not received in by his senses from external
objects, or by reflection from the operations of his own mind about them. I
would have any one try to fancy any taste, which had never affected his palate;
or frame the idea of a scent he had never smelt: And when he can do this, I
will also conclude that a blind man hath ideas of colours, and a deaf man true
distinct notions of sounds.
3. Only the qualities that affect the senses are imaginable

This is the reason why, though we cannot believe it impossible to God to make
a creature with other organs, and more ways to convey into the understanding
the notice of corporeal things than those five, as they are usually counted,
which he has given to man: Yet I think, it is not possible for any one to imagine
any other qualities in bodies, howsoever constituted, whereby they can be
taken [46] notice of, besides sounds, tastes, smells, visible and tangible
qualities. And had mankind been made but with four senses, the qualities then,
which are the objects of the fifth sense, had been as far from our notice,
imagination, and conception, as now any belonging to a sixth, seventh, or
eighth sense, can possibly be […]. I have here followed the common opinion
of man’s having but five senses; though, perhaps, there may be justly counted
more: But either supposition serves equally to my present purpose.
Locke here draws the distinction, cardinal to his psychological

atomism (the conception of ideas as irreducible ultimate elements),
between simple and complex ideas. He maintains that when we see,
hear, smell etc. a material object, although this object itself has
many qualities, the mind receives the ‘ideas’ of each of these
qualities as a quite separate simple idea, which itself cannot be
further analysed.
Complex ideas are built up from simple ideas by various
‘operations of the mind’ which Locke will presently describe. But
the simple ideas themselves all come from experience. Since they
are the basic stuff of which all thoughts, feelings and so on consist,
the imagination cannot generate a simple idea not previously
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JO H N LO C K E
sensed directly, only reproduce and shuffle them in new

combinations. It is worth comparing this with Hume’s treatment
of the problem of imagining a colour one has never seen (see below
p. 171).
Having classified types of ideas, Locke considers their
relationship to material reality with which they are our sole link,
sometimes by mirroring it faithfully, sometimes less directly. The
whole discussion represents an effort to reconcile the data of
ordinary sense perception with the findings of physicists; Locke’s
failure to achieve this is among the earliest attempts to solve a
crucial problem which divides philosophers to this day. Among
modern thinkers whose theories of perception derive from his are
to be found such diverse personalities as Bertrand Russell,
Santayana and Lenin, although it is fair to add that Lenin’s [47]
philosophical views perhaps scarcely deserve to be taken seriously.
The doctrine of primary and secondary qualities originates with
the Greek atomists. Traces of it occur in the writings of such early
Renaissance thinkers as Campanella, but its modern version and
enormous influence is due in the first place to Galileo. Natural
science had made astonishing progress in the seventeenth century,
and this advance was due, more than to any other single factor, to
the abandonment of the medieval practice of describing objects in
terms of irreducible qualitative differences, in favour of
concentration upon their quantitatively measurable properties.
Precise laws of great predictive power could at last be formulated
in purely mathematical terms, connecting the variations in these
properties. In Galileo’s case, moreover, it is only certain among the
measurable properties that enter into his laws, namely mechanical
properties. As has so often happened since, the methodological
precept ‘only the mechanical measurable properties of matter are
of value in formulating scientific laws’ became converted into the
metaphysical statement ‘only the mechanical measurable
properties of matter are real ’.35 And Galileo argued for the reality
35 The wording of these precepts appears to be Berlin’s.

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JO H N LO C K E
of these properties and the unreality of all others (colours, tastes,

smells and so on) by saying that he could not conceive of a body
which had not got a shape, a size and a position, and was not either
at rest or moving in some determinate manner, while he could
readily conceive of one which was lacking in taste, smell or colour.
These latter properties he concluded, were subjective illusions;
only the former were objective, real, ‘in the body’ itself.
This doctrine gained wide currency in the seventeenth century,
and by Locke’s time had become closely connected with two
further theories:
(1) That local motion and impact are the only causal agencies in
the material world, so that all explanations must, in the end, be in
terms of these.
(2) The Cartesian notion of man, according to which the mind
was something totally different in kind from the [48] body which
contained it like a box, in the part of itself called the brain.
These two theories combined to produce the following picture:
particles emanating from material objects strike the human sense
organs, setting up a chain of effects in the nervous system which
somehow finally produce an entity wholly different in kind from
themselves – an idea in the mind. This dualism – between ‘real’
entities colliding in the external world, endowed with
mathematically transcribable ‘primary’ qualities, and ‘ideas’ in
minds, a mere subjective counterpart or by-product – leads directly
to the representative theory of perception, of which Locke’s
version is as follows:
BOOK 2, CHAPTER 8: SOME FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERN-ING

OUR SIMPLE IDEAS
7. Ideas in the mind, qualities in bodies

To discover the nature of our ideas the better, and to discourse of them
intelligibly, it will be convenient to distinguish them as they are ideas or
perceptions in our minds, and as they are modifications of matter in the bodies
that cause such perceptions in us: That so we may not think (as perhaps usually
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JO H N LO C K E
is done) that they are exactly the images and resemblances of some thing
inherent in the subject; most of those of sensation being in the mind no more
the likeness of some thing existing without us, than the names that stand for
them are the likeness of our ideas, which yet upon hearing they are apt to
excite in us.
8. Our ideas and the qualities of bodies

Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of
perception, thought, or understanding, that I call idea; and the power to
produce any idea in our mind I call a quality of the subject wherein that power
is. Thus a snow-ball having the power to produce in us the ideas of white, cold,
and round, the power 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; which ideas, if I speak of sometimes, as in
the things themselves, I would [49] be understood to mean those qualities in
the objects which produce them in us.
9. Primary qualities of bodies

Qualities thus considered in bodies are, first, such as are utterly inseparable
from the body, in what state soever it be; such as in all the alterations and
changes it suffers, all the force can be used upon it, it constantly keeps; and
such as sense constantly finds in every particle of matter which has bulk
enough to be perceived, and the mind finds inseparable from every particle of
matter, though less than to make itself singly be perceived by our senses, v.g.36
Take a grain of wheat, divide it into two parts, each part has still solidity,
extension, figure, and mobility; divide it again, and it retains still the same
qualities; and so divide it on till the parts become insensible, they must retain
still each of them all those qualities. For division (which is all that a mill, or
pestle, or any other body does upon another, in reducing it to insensible parts)
can never take away either solidity, extension, figure, or mobility from any
body, but only makes two or more distinct separate masses of matter, of that
which was but one before: All which distinct masses, reckoned as so many
distinct bodies, after division make a certain number. These I call original or
36 [‘Namely’.]
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JO H N LO C K E
primary qualities of body, which I think we may observe to produce simple

ideas in us, viz. solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number.
10. Secondary qualities of bodies

Secondly, such qualities which in truth are nothing in the objects themselves,
but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities, i.e.
by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of their insensible parts, as colours,
sounds, tastes, etc. these I call secondary qualities. To these might be added a
third sort, which are allowed to be barely powers, though they are as much
real qualities in the subject, as those which I, to comply with the common way
of speaking, call qualities, but for distinction, secondary qualities. For the
power in fire to produce a new colour, or consistency, in wax or clay, by its
primary qualities, is as much a quality in fire, as the power it has to produce in
me a new idea or sensation of warmth or burning, which I felt not [50] before
by the same primary qualities, viz. the bulk, texture, and motion of its
insensible parts.
11. How primary qualities produce their ideas

The next thing to be considered is, how bodies produce ideas in us; and that
is manifestly by impulse, the only way which we can conceive bodies to
operate in.
12. By motions external, and in our organism

If then external objects be not united to our minds, when they produce ideas
therein, and yet we perceive these original qualities in such of them as singly
fall under our senses, it is evident that some motion must be thence continued
by our nerves, or animal spirits, by some parts of our bodies, to the brains or
the seat of sensation, there to produce in our minds the particular ideas we
have of them. And since the extension, figure, number, and motion of bodies,
of an observable bigness, may be perceived at a distance by the sight, it is
evident some singly imperceptible bodies must come from them to the eyes,
and thereby convey to the brain some motion, which produces these ideas
which we have of them in us.
13. How secondary qualities produce their ideas

After the same manner that the ideas of these original qualities are produced
in us, we may conceive that the ideas of secondary qualities are also produced,
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viz. by the operation of insensible particles on our senses. For it being manifest
that there are bodies and good store of bodies, each whereof are so small,
that we cannot, by any of our senses, discover either their bulk, figure, or
motion as is evident in the particles of the air and water, and others extremely
smaller than those, perhaps as much smaller than the particles of air and water,
as the particles of air and water are smaller than peas or hail-stones: Let us
suppose at present, that the different motions and figures, bulk and number
of such particles, affecting the several organs of our senses, produce in us
those different sensations, which we have from the colours and smells of
bodies; v.g. that a violet, by the impulse of such insensible particles of matter
of peculiar figures and bulks, and in different degrees and modifications of
their motions, causes the ideas of the blue colour and sweet scent of that
flower, to be produced in our minds; it being no more impossible to conceive
that God should annex such [51] ideas to such motions, with which they have
no similitude, than that he should annex the idea of pain to the motion of a
piece of steel dividing our flesh, with which that idea hath no resemblance.
14. They depend on the primary qualities

What I have said concerning colours and smells may be understood also of
tastes and sounds, and other the like sensible qualities; which, whatever reality
we by mistake attribute’ to them, are in truth nothing in the objects themselves
but powers to produce various sensations in us, and depend on those primary
qualities, viz., bulk, figure, texture, and motion of parts, as I have said.
15. Ideas of primary qualities are resemblances; of secondary, not

From whence I think it easy to draw this observation, that the ideas of primary
qualities of bodies are resemblances of them, and their patterns do really exist
in the bodies themselves; but the ideas, produced in us by these secondary
qualities, have no resemblance of them at all. There is nothing like our ideas
existing in the bodies themselves. They are in the bodies, we denominate from
them, only a power to produce those sensations in us: And what is sweet, blue,
or warm in idea, is but the certain bulk, figure, and motion of the insensible
parts in the bodies themselves, which we call so.
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16. Examples
Flame is denominated hot and light; snow, white and cold; and manna, white
and sweet, from the ideas they produce in us: Which qualities are commonly
thought to be the same in those bodies that those ideas are in us, the one the
perfect resemblance of the other, as they are in a mirror; and it would by most
men be judged very extravagant, if one should say otherwise. And yet he that
will consider that the same fire, that at one distance produces in us the
sensation of warmth, does at a nearer approach produce in us the far different
sensation of pain, ought to bethink himself what reason he has to say, that his
idea of warmth, which was produced in him by the fire, is actually in the fire;
and his idea of pain, which the same fire produced in him the same way, is not
in the fire. Why are whiteness and coldness in snow, and pain not, when it
produces the one and the other idea in us; [52] and can do neither, but by the
bulk, figure, number, and motion of its solid parts?
17. The ideas of the primary alone really exist

The particular bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts of fire or snow are
really in them, whether any one’s senses perceive them or no: And therefore
they may be called real 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 not the eyes see light,
or colours, nor the ears hear sounds; let the palate not taste, nor the nose
smell; and all colours, tastes, odours, and sounds, as they are such particular
ideas, vanish and cease, and are reduced to their causes, i.e. bulk, figure, and
motion of parts.
18. The secondary exist in things only as modes of the primary

A piece of manna of a sensible bulk is able to produce in us the idea of a round
or square figure, and, by being removed from one place to another, the idea
of motion. This idea of motion represents it as it really is in the manna moving:
A circle or square are the same, whether in idea or existence, in the mind, or
in the manna; and this both motion and figure are really in the manna, whether
we take notice of them or no: This every body is ready to agree to. Besides,
manna, by the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of its parts, has a power to
produce the sensations of sickness, and sometimes of acute pains or gripings
in us. That these ideas of sickness and pain are not in the manna, but effects
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of its operations on us, and are nowhere when we feel them not; this also every
one readily agrees to. And yet men are hardly to be brought to think, that
sweetness and whiteness are not really in manna; which are but the effects of
the operations of manna by the motion, size, and figure of its particles on the
eyes and palate; as the pain and sickness caused by manna are confessedly
nothing but the effects of its operations on the stomach and guts, by the size,
motion, and figure of its insensible parts (for by nothing else can a body
operate, as has been proved) […].
As can easily be seen, Locke’s exposition of the doctrine is

seriously confused:
(1) There is the false identification of epistemology as [53] a
form of natural science. The above account (omitting the
questionable ‘ideas in the mind’) may not be absurd as physiology,
but physiology is not relevant in discussing the prior question
(taken as already settled in their favour by physiologists) as to what
we know of the external world.
(2) How can Locke know that our ideas of the primary qualities
do resemble those qualities as they exist ‘in the body’, since he can
know only the ideas and cannot compare them with what they
supposedly resemble?
(3) What is meant by saying that a quality is or is not ‘really in
the body’? True, there is a distinction between sentences
describing the measurable properties of bodies, and sentences
describing our own sensations, namely that in the former case there
are much clearer publicly accepted tests of ‘objective’ truth, made
as independent as possible of ‘subjective’ experience. But this
carries no metaphysical implications about difference of
‘ontological status’.
(4) Does Locke mean only that each material body must possess
some determinate size, shape, and motion (or rest) as is suggested
in Paragraph 9? This would seem to be a truism. For without
fulfilment of these conditions we should not use the expression
‘material body’. Or does he mean (as he seems to suggest in the
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passage quoted) that our perceptions of the sizes, shapes and so on

are never mistaken in the way in which our perceptions of colours,
tastes and the rest admittedly are? But in this case he is mistaken,
as, indeed, Berkeley pointed out (see p. 135, p. 147 ff.). And if we
are sometimes just as mistaken with regard to size, shape or motion
as with colour, smell etc., what reason have we for supposing that
there exist any primary qualities at all? Because scientists assure us
about them? But what means of discovering have they which
ordinary mortals have not? Are they really in touch with a firm
world with stable proportions, while the rest of mankind are sunk
in a welter of blurred sensations, too indeterminate to be capable
of exact description – and if so, how have they achieved this? With
what special organs of perception or intuition are they endowed?
Descartes or Leibniz may have supposed that the real properties
of material bodies are discoverable not by the senses but by [54]
‘reason’ – a parallel and superior source of information. But Locke
denied this; hence his attempt at once to take over the distinction
between primary (objective) qualities and secondary (subjective)
ones – because Galileo and Newton built their phenomenally
successful explanations on this principle – and yet preserve his own
‘sensationalist’ premisses, which seem incompatible with this
dualism, is not successful. But its very failure revealed the nature
of this problem, which runs through his discussion of ‘complex’
ideas, and grows still more acute when he begins to analyse the
notion of substance – that which has the primary qualities – the
material object whose reality physicists and biologists took for
granted. His account of how single ideas are combined into
complicated wholes solves nothing.
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BOOK 2, CHAPTER 11: OF DISCERNING, AND OTHER OPERATIONS OF

THE MIND
…
6. Compounding
The next operation we may observe in the mind about its ideas is composition,
whereby it puts together several of those simple ones it has received from
sensation and reflection, and combines them into complex ones. Under this
[operation] of composition may be reckoned also that of enlarging; wherein
though the composition does not so much appear as in more complex ones,
yet it is nevertheless a putting several ideas together, though of the same kind.
Thus, by adding several units together we make the idea of a dozen; and
putting together the repeated ideas of several perches we frame that of a
furlong.
8. Naming
When children have, by repeated sensations, got ideas fixed in their memories,
they begin by degrees to learn the use of signs. And when they have got the
skill to apply the organs of speech to the framing of articulate sounds, they
begin to make use of words, to signify their ideas to others. These verbal signs
they sometimes borrow from others, and sometimes make themselves, as one
may observe among the new and unusual names children often give to things
in the first use of language.
9. Abstraction
The use of words then being to stand [55] as outward marks of our internal
ideas, and those ideas being taken from particular things, if every particular
idea that we take in should have a distinct name, names must be endless. To
prevent this, 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, and the
circumstances of real existence, as time, place, or any other concomitant ideas.
This is called abstraction, whereby ideas, taken from particular beings, become
general representatives of all of the same kind, and their names general
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names, applicable to whatever exists conformable to such abstract ideas. Such

precise naked appearances in the mind, without considering how, whence, or
with what others they came there, the understanding lays up (with names
commonly annexed to them) as the standards to rank real existences into
sorts, as they agree with these patterns, and to denominate them accordingly.
Thus the same colour being observed to-day in chalk or snow, which the mind
yesterday received from milk, it considers that appearance alone, makes it a
representative of all of that kind; and having given it the name whiteness, it by
that sound signifies the same quality, wheresoever to be imagined or met with:
And thus universals, whether ideas or terms, are made.
BOOK 2, CHAPTER 12: OF COMPLEX IDEAS
1. Made by the mind out of simple ones

We have hitherto considered those ideas, in the reception whereof the mind
is only passive, which are those simple ones received from sensation and
reflection before mentioned, whereof the mind cannot make one to itself, nor
have any idea which does not wholly consist of them. But as the mind is wholly
passive in the reception of all its simple ideas so it exerts several acts of its
own, whereby out of its simple ideas, as the materials and foundations of the
rest, the others are framed. […] As simple ideas are observed to exist in several
combinations united together, so the mind has a power to consider several of
them united [56] together as one idea; and that not only as they are united in
external objects, but as itself has joined them. Ideas thus made up of several
simple ones put together, I call complex; such as are beauty, gratitude, a man,
an army, the universe; which though complicated [that is compounded] of
various simple ideas, or complex ideas made up of simple ones, yet are, when
the mind pleases, considered each by itself, as one entire thing, and signified
by one name.
2. Made voluntarily
In this faculty of repeating and joining together its ideas, the mind has great
power in varying and multiplying the objects of its thoughts, infinitely beyond
what sensation or reflection furnishes it with; but all this still confined to those
simple ideas which it received from those two sources, and which are the
ultimate materials of all its compositions: For simple ideas are all from things
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themselves, and of these the mind can have no more, nor other than what are
suggested to it. It can have no other ideas of sensible qualities than what come
from without by the senses; nor any ideas of other kind of operations of a
thinking substance than what it finds in itself; but when it has once got these
simple ideas, it is not confined barely to observation, and what offers itself
from without: It can, by its own power, put together those ideas it has, and
make new complex ones, which it never received so united.
…
8. The abstrusest Ideas from the two sources

If we will trace the progress of our minds, and with attention observe how it
repeats, adds together, and unites its simple ideas received from sensation or
reflection, it will lead us farther than at first, perhaps, we should have imagined.
And, I believe, we shall find, if we warily observe the originals of our notions,
that even the most abstruse ideas, how remote soever they may seem from
sense, or from any operations of our own minds, are yet only such as the
understanding frames to itself, by repeating and joining together ideas, that it
had either from objects of sense, or from its own operations about them: So
that those even large and abstract ideas are derived from sensation or
reflection, being no other than what the mind, by the ordinary use of its own
faculties, employed about ideas received from objects [57] of sense, or from
the operations it observes in itself about them, may and does attain unto. […]
No better illustration is wanted of the quasi-mechanical model of

the mind with which Locke operates. Ideas exist as objects in the
mind. Simple ideas of sensation and reflection pour in upon the
mind, which is a passive receptacle. But the mind has, of itself,
certain ‘active powers’, by means of which it can combine several
ideas to form a single new compound idea.
Compounding is the most obviously mechanical of these
activities. By this ideas are put together to make a new idea, much
as bricks might be put together to make a house; and can be taken
apart again. The empiricist thesis is stressed again and again.
However complex and remote from direct experience some of our
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ideas may be, yet the original materials (simple ideas) from which
they are built up all come from sensation or reflection.
The philosophical doctrine of substance is ancient, complex
and not readily intelligible. The most important feature of a
‘substance’ was said to be that it is (as opposed to its ‘modes’ or
qualities) self-subsistent. The doctrine as held by Locke’s scholastic
contemporaries amounted (very roughly) to this: The world
consists of a plurality of independent substances, each of which is
either God or a physical object or a mind, together with the
modifications or qualities of these substances. Nothing else exists.
Substances are distinguished from modes in that the former are
self-subsistent, that is, capable of existing by themselves, while the
latter require a substance in which to ‘inhere’. Substances, as self-
subsistent, possess a higher degree of reality than the cluster of
‘modes’ which each substance as it were owns.
From this (by now) scarcely intelligible ontology Locke never
shook himself free. He confuses it with Galileo’s or Newton’s
notions of material objects, and is in consequence involved in
many embarrassments, including his perplexity in the passage
which follows about the ‘idea’ of ‘substance in general’, and his
difficulty in accounting for our ideas of relations, since relations
which seem to [58] connect two or more substances, and do not
uniquely belong to any given one, cannot be allowed to be real in
this ontological scheme.
Locke talks principally of two sorts of ideas of substance:
(1) Our idea of substance in general. This he confesses to be
very obscure, since it is ex hypothesi quite featureless. It is arrived at
by stripping off from our idea of any particular object (whether a
physical object or a mind) all its qualities; what is left – the self-
subsistent owner of the qualities – is then an unknown substratum,
an ‘I-know-not-what’, for all that can be said of it is that ‘it’,
whatever it may be, ‘supports’ the qualities. As a description, this
seems – like Augustinian negative theology, which regards God as
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transcendent and unknowable – incapable of explaining the

physical world.
(2) Our idea of a given particular entity, for example the sun, or
a particular lump of gold, is called our idea of a substance. The idea
of a particular substance is a complex idea consisting of the ideas
of a number of qualities which have been constantly found
together with ‘the confused idea of something to which they
belong and in which they subsist’.
Both these notions, and a good many others, of what substance
is jostle each other in the following passages.
BOOK 2, CHAPTER 23: OF OUR COMPLEX IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES
1. Ideas of substances, how made

The mind being, as I have declared, furnished with a great number of the
simple ideas, conveyed in by the senses, as they are found in exterior things,
or by reflection on its own operations, takes notice also, that a certain number
of these simple ideas go constantly together; which being presumed to belong
to one thing, and words being suited to common apprehensions, and made
use of for quick dispatch, are called, so united in one subject, by one name:
Which, by inadvertency, we are apt afterward to talk of, and consider as one
simple idea, which indeed is a complication of many ideas together; because,
as I have said, not imagin[59]ing how these simple ideas can subsist by
themselves, we accustom ourselves to suppose some substratum wherein they
do subsist, and from which they do result, which therefore we call ‘substance’.
2. Our idea of substance in general

So that if any one will examine himself concerning his notion of pure substance
in general, he will find he has no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition
of he knows not what support of such qualities, which are capable of
producing simple ideas in us; which qualities are commonly called accidents.
If any one should be asked, what is the subject wherein colour or weight
inheres, he would have nothing to say, but the solid extended parts: And if he
were demanded, what is it that solidity and extension adhere in, he would not
be in a much better case than the Indian before mentioned [2. 13. 19], who,
saying that the world was supported by a great elephant, was asked what the
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elephant rested on; to which his answer was, a great tortoise. But being again
pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied,
something he knew not what. And thus here, as in all other cases where we
use words without having clear and distinct ideas, we talk like children; who
being questioned what such a thing is, which they know not, readily give this
satisfactory answer, that it is some thing: Which in truth signifies no more,
when so used either by children or men, but that they know not what; and that
the thing they pretend to know and talk of, is what they have no distinct idea
of at all, and so are perfectly ignorant of it, and in the dark. The idea then we
have, to which we give the general name substance, being nothing but the
supposed, but unknown support of those qualities we find existing, which we
imagine cannot subsist, ‘sine re substante’, without some thing to support
them, we call that support substantia; which, according to the true import of
the word, is in plain English standing under or upholding.
3. Of the sorts of substances

An obscure and relative idea of substance in general being thus made we
come to have the ideas of particular sorts of substances, by collecting such
combinations of simple ideas, as are by experi[60]ence and observation of
men’s senses taken notice of to exist together, and are therefore supposed to
flow from the particular internal constitution, or unknown essence of that
substance. Thus we come to have the ideas of a man, horse, gold, water, etc.
of which substances, whether any one has any other clear idea, farther than of
certain simple ideas co-existent together, I appeal to every one’s own
experience. It is the ordinary qualities observable in iron, or a diamond, put
together, that make the true complex idea of those substances, which a smith
or a jeweller commonly knows better than a philosopher; who, whatever
substantial forms he may talk of, has no other idea of those substances, than
what is framed by a collection of those simple ideas which are to be found in
them; only we must take notice, that our complex ideas of substances, besides
all those simple ideas they are made up of, have always the confused idea of
some thing to which they belong, and in which they subsist. And therefore,
when we speak of any sort of substance, we say it is a thing having such or
such qualities: As body is a thing that is extended, figured, and capable of
motion; spirit, a thing capable of thinking; and so hardness, friability, and
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power to draw iron, we say, are qualities to be found in a loadstone. These,

and the like fashions of speaking, intimate, that the substance is supposed
always some thing besides the extension, figure, solidity, motion, thinking, or
other observable ideas, though we know not what it is.
4. No clear idea of substance in general

Hence, when we talk or think of any particular sort of corporeal substances, as
horse, stone, etc. though the idea we have of either of them be but the
complication or collection of those several simple ideas of sensible qualities,
which we used to find united in the thing called horse or stone; yet because
we cannot conceive how they should subsist alone, nor one in another, we
suppose them existing in and supported by some common subject; which
support we denote by the name substance, though it be certain we have no
clear or distinct idea of that thing we suppose a support.
5. As clear an idea of spirit as body

The same thing [61] happens concerning the operations of the mind, viz.
thinking, reasoning, fearing, etc. which we concluding not to subsist of
themselves, nor apprehending how they can belong to body, or be produced
by it, we are apt to think these the actions of some other substance, which we
call spirit; whereby yet it is evident, that having no other idea or notion of
matter, but some thing wherein those many sensible qualities which affect our
senses do subsist; by supposing a substance, wherein thinking, knowing,
doubting, and a power of moving, etc. do subsist, we have as clear a notion of
the substance of spirit, as we have of body: The one being supposed to be
(without knowing what it is) the substratum to those simple ideas we have
from without; and the other supposed (with a like ignorance of what it is) to
be the substratum to those operations we experiment in ourselves within. It is
plain then, that the idea of corporeal substance in matter is as remote from
our conceptions and apprehensions, as that of spiritual substance or spirit; and
therefore from our not having any notion of the substance of spirit, we can no
more conclude its non-existence, than we can for the same reason deny the
existence of body; it being as rational to affirm there is no body, because we
have no clear and distinct idea of the substance of matter, as to say there is
no spirit, because we have no clear and distinct idea of the substance of a
spirit.
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6. Of the sorts of substances

Whatever therefore be the secret, abstract nature of substance in general, all
the ideas we have of particular distinct sorts of substances, are nothing but
several combinations of simple ideas, co-existing in such, though unknown,
cause of their union, as makes the whole subsist of itself. It is by such
combinations of simple ideas, and nothing else, that we represent particular
sorts of substances to ourselves: Such are the ideas we have of their several
species in our minds; and such only do we, by their specific names, signify to
others, v.g. man, horse, sun, water, iron: Upon hearing which words, every one
who understands the language, frames in his mind a combination of those
several simple ideas, which he has usually observed, or fancied to exist
together under that [62] denomination; all which he supposes to rest in, and
be as it were adherent to that unknown common subject, which inheres not in
any thing else. Though in the mean time it be manifest, and every one upon
enquiry into his own thoughts will find, that he has no other idea of any
substance, v.g. let it be gold, horse, iron, man, vitriol, bread, but what he has
barely of those sensible qualities, which he supposes to inhere, with a
supposition of such a substratum, as gives, as it were, a support to those
qualities or simple ideas, which he has observed to exist united together. Thus
the idea of the sun, what is it but an aggregate of those several simple ideas,
bright, hot, roundish, having a constant regular motion, at a certain distance
from us, and perhaps some other? As he who thinks and discourses of the sun,
has been more or less accurate in observing those sensible qualities, ideas, or
properties, which are in that thing which he calls the sun.
7. Their active and passive powers a great part of our complex ideas of
substances
For he has the perfectest idea of any of the particular sorts of substances, who
has gathered and put together most of those simple ideas which do exist in it,
among which are to be reckoned its active powers, and passive capacities;
which though not simple ideas, yet in this respect, for brevity’s sake, may
conveniently enough be reckoned amongst them. Thus the power of drawing
iron, is one of the ideas of the complex one of that substance we call a load-
stone; and a power to be so drawn is a part of the complex one we call iron:
Which powers pass for inherent qualities in those subjects. Because every
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substance, being as apt, by the powers we observe in it, to change some

sensible qualities in other subjects, as it is to produce in us those simple ideas
which we receive immediately from it, does, by those new sensible qualities
introduced into other subjects, discover to us those powers, which do thereby
mediately affect our senses, as regularly as its sensible qualities do it
immediately: V.g. we immediately by our senses perceive in fire its heat and
colour; which are, if rightly considered, nothing but powers in it to produce
those ideas in us: We also by our senses perceive the colour and brittleness of
charcoal, whereby [63] we come by the knowledge of another power in fire,
which it has to change the colour and consistency of wood. By the former, fire
immediately, by the latter, it mediately discovers to us these several powers;
which therefore we look upon to be a part of the qualities of fire, and so make
them a part of the complex idea of it. For all those powers that we take
cognizance of, terminating only in the alteration of some sensible qualities in
those subjects on which they operate, and so making them exhibit to us new
sensible ideas; therefore it is that I have reckoned these powers amongst the
simple ideas, which make the complex ones of the sorts of substances; though
these powers, considered in themselves, are truly complex ideas. And in this
looser sense I crave leave to be understood, when I name any of these
potentialities among the simple ideas, which we recollect in our minds when
we think of particular substances. For the powers that are severally in them are
necessary to be considered, if we will have true distinct notions of the several
sorts of substances.
8. And why
Nor are we to wonder, that powers make a great part of our complex ideas of
substances; since their secondary qualities are those, which in most of them
serve principally to distinguish substances one from another, and commonly
make a considerable part of the complex idea of the several sorts of them. For
our senses failing us in the discovery of the bulk, texture, and figure of the
minute parts of bodies, on which their real constitutions and differences
depend, we are fain to make use of their secondary qualities, as the
characteristical notes and marks, whereby to frame ideas of them in our minds,
and distinguish them one from another. All which secondary qualities, as has
been shewn, are nothing but bare powers. For the colour and taste of opium
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are, as well as its soporific or anodyne virtues, mere powers depending on its
primary qualities, whereby it is fitted to produce different operations on
different parts of our bodies.
9. Three sorts of ideas make our complex ones of substances

The ideas that make our complex ones of corporeal substances, are of these
three sorts. First, the ideas of the primary qualities of things, which are
discovered by our senses, and are in them even when we perceive them not;
such are the bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion of the parts of bodies,
which are really in them, whether we take notice of them or no. Secondly, the
sensible secondary qualities, which depending on these, are nothing but the
powers those substances have to produce several ideas in us by our senses;
which ideas are not in the things themselves, otherwise than as any thing is in
its cause. Thirdly, the aptness we consider in any substance to give or receive
such alterations of primary qualities, as that the substance [64] so altered
should produce in us different ideas from what it did before; these are called
active and passive powers: All which powers, as far as we have any notice or
notion of them, terminate only in sensible simple ideas. For whatever
alteration a loadstone has the power to make in the minute particles of iron,
we should have no notion of any power it had at all to operate on iron, did
not its sensible motion discover it: And I doubt not, but there are a thousand
changes, that bodies we daily handle have a power to cause in one another,
which we never suspect, because they never appear in sensible effects.
10. Powers thus make a great part of our complex ideas of substances
Powers therefore justly make a great part of our complex ideas of substances.
He that will examine his complex idea of gold, will find several of its ideas that
make it up to be only powers: As the power of being melted, but of not
spending itself in the fire; of being dissolved in aqua regia; are ideas as
necessary to make up our complex idea of gold; as its colour and weight:
Which, if duly considered, are also nothing but different powers. For to speak
truly, yellowness is not actually in gold, but is a power in gold to produce that
idea in us by our eyes, when placed in a due light: And the heat, which we
cannot leave out of our ideas of the sun, is no more really in the sun, than the
white colour it introduces into wax. These are both equally powers in the sun,
operating, by the motion and figure of its sensible parts, so on a man, as to
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make him have the idea of heat; and so on wax, as to make it capable to
produce in a man the idea of white.
11. The now secondary qualities of bodies would disappear, if we could discover
the primary ones of their minute parts
Had we senses acute enough to discern the minute particles of bodies, and
the real constitution on which their sensible qualities depend, I doubt not but
they would produce quite different ideas in us; and that which is now the
yellow colour of gold, would then disappear, and instead of it we should see
an admirable texture of parts of a certain size and figure. This microscopes
plainly discover to us; for what to our naked eyes produces a certain colour, is,
by thus augmenting the acuteness of our senses, discovered to [65] be quite
a different thing; and the thus altering, as it were, the proportion of the bulk
of the minute parts of a coloured object to our usual sight, produces different
ideas from what it did before. Thus sand or pounded glass, which is opaque,
and white to the naked eye, is pellucid in a microscope; and a hair seen this
way, loses its former colour, and is in a great measure pellucid, with a mixture
of some bright sparkling colours, such as appear from the refraction of
diamonds, and other pellucid bodies. Blood to the naked eye appears all red;
but by a good microscope, wherein its lesser parts appear, shews only some
few globules of red, swimming in a pellucid liquor: And how these red globules
would appear, if glasses could be found that could yet magnify them a
thousand or ten thousand times more, is uncertain.
…
14. Our specific ideas of substances
[…] I say, our specific ideas of substances are nothing else but a collection of
a certain number of simple ideas, considered as united in one thing. These
ideas of substances, though they are commonly simple apprehensions, and
the names of them simple terms, yet, in effect, are complex and compounded.
Thus the idea which an Englishman signifies by the name ‘swan’, is white
colour, long neck, red beak, black legs, and whole feet, and all these of a
certain size, with a power of swimming in the water, and making a certain kind
of noise; and perhaps to a man who has long observed this kind of birds, some
other properties, which all terminate in sensible simple ideas, all united in [66]
one common subject.
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…
37. Recapitulation
And thus we have seen, what kind of ideas we have of substances of all kinds,
wherein they consist, and how we came by them. From whence, I think, it is
very evident:
First, That all our ideas of the several sorts of substances are nothing but
collections of simple ideas: With a supposition of some thing to which they
belong, and in which they subsist: Though of this supposed some thing we
have no clear distinct idea at all.
Secondly, That all the simple ideas, that thus united in one common
substratum make up our complex ideas of several sorts of substances, are no
other but such as we have received from sensation or reflection. So that even
in those which we think we are most intimately acquainted with, and that come
nearest the comprehension of our most enlarged conceptions, we cannot go
beyond those simple ideas. And even in those which seem most remote from
all we have to do with, and do infinitely surpass any thing we can perceive in
ourselves by reflection, or discover by sensation in other things, we can attain
to nothing but those simple ideas, which we originally received from sensation
or reflection; as is evident in the complex ideas we have of angels, and
particularly of God himself.
Thirdly, That most of the simple ideas, that make up our complex ideas of
substances, when truly considered, are only powers, however we are apt to
take them for positive qualities; v.g. the greatest part of the ideas that make
our complex idea of gold are yellowness, great weight, ductility, fusibility and
solubility in aqua regia, etc. all united together in an unknown substratum: All
which ideas are nothing else but so many relations to other substances, and
are not really in the gold, considered barely in itself, though they depend on
those real and primary qualities of its internal constitution, whereby it has a
fitness differently to operate, and be operated on by several other substances.
In addition to the two main senses distinguished above, the word

‘substance’ is sometimes also used by Locke, somewhat as chemists
use it, to denote a natural kind, or sort, that is a whole class of
substances in the second sense given above. In this sense, for
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example, our idea of gold (and not of a lump of gold) would itself
be an idea of a substance. Substances in this third sense seem to be
whole classes of entities, and ideas of substances are abstract and
general, since they apply to types and not to individuals.
The doctrine of primary and secondary qualities reappears once
again: ‘Powers make a great part of our com[67]plex ideas of
substances’, namely both those powers which cause in us ideas of
secondary qualities and also the powers to interact in characteristic
ways with other substances. And the theory (which will bulk so
large in Book 4) that the ‘powers’ which cause ideas of ‘secondary
qualities’ themselves depend upon the primary qualities of the
minute particles of the body is now stated more boldly.
Locke’s notion of the substratum of a mind is no clearer than
that of the substratum of a physical object. It is upon the substrata
of material objects that Berkeley’s attacks are directed; he never
questions the assumption that each mind is a simple substance (in
which ideas inhere), whatever additional properties it may possess
– for example, that of creation and action, and awareness of
relations of other minds (and of God) by means other than ideas.
This completes Locke’s investigation of the furniture of our
minds. His next task is to make good his promise to clear the
ground a little by examining the use of language and the ways in
which it has misled philosophers and retarded the advance of
knowledge. In Book 3 of the Essay he begins to do so, although
with little of the genius and devastating insight of Berkeley. The
most valuable portion of his long and meandering discussion
(though there is much else) is that dealing with abstract ideas and
his distinction between ‘real essences’ and ‘nominal essences’. The
passages which follow give the heart of his doctrine. They can be
understood only if one bears in mind that37 it was commonly held
by the ‘schoolmen’ of Locke’s time – and by the rationalists who
had not broken completely with them – that all substances
37 [Some or all of the rest of this paragraph may also have been drafted
by Berlin, but the relevant page of the MS is missing.]

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belonged to one or other of a fixed number of natural kinds (or

species) whose boundaries were precisely delimited by God or
nature; and further that to belong to a given natural kind was to
‘possess’ the so-called ‘real essence’ of that species. If we could
attain to a knowledge of the real essence, then from this knowledge
we could deduce with absolute certainty all the properties of every
member of that species. Locke argued against this (1) that the
occurrence of ‘monsters and changelings’ is incompatible with the
doctrine of a fixed number of ‘natu[68]ral’ and unalterable species
or moulds, and (2) that since the ‘real essences’ of these supposed
species are admitted to be impenetrable to human minds, the
doctrine is of no value from the point of view of the advancement
of human knowledge.
Locke does, however, find a use for the expression ‘real
essence’, giving it a scientific rather than a metaphysical
interpretation. He uses it to stand for the ‘real and internal
constitution’ of a thing, that is (cf. above p. 63), the structure of
the primary qualities of its minute particles, on which all its other
properties depend. The existence of such real essences bulks large
in Locke’s treatment of scientific knowledge in Book 4. Locke
admits that we do not at present know even these real essences,
and volunteers nothing about our prospects of ever discovering
their character. How then do our general terms, which denote
classes of things, function? For they are certainly indispensable to
all human communication; without them we could not describe at
all, or classify, or speak of the same object in different places at
different times, or of differences and similarities between any two
entities. Since they evidently do not denote unknowable real
essences, they must be defined in terms of groups of qualities
which have been consistently found together, whether this
coexistence has its basis in a common atomic structure or not. The
complex ideas of these groups of qualities he calls the ‘nominal
essences’ of species, and they are ‘abstract general ideas’.
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In the course of his discussion Locke makes a characteristically

valuable point about words and definitions. G. E. Moore38
maintained that words standing for certain ideas are not definable,
on the grounds that these ideas are simple and unanalysable, and
have no parts, for, he held, all definition consists in an analysis of
a whole into its parts. This is not the point that Locke is making.
Locke is emphasising, correctly, that there are certain words whose
meaning cannot be adequately taught by means of verbal
definitions, for they depend for their use on that [69] direct
inspection without a minimum of which no symbolism or language
can describe the world at all. The use of such words can only be
learnt ‘ostensively’ – in the presence of the objects which they
describe, with which their connection is conveyed by pointing, or
some other effective method. An example of this is the
impossibility of adequately teaching the meanings of colour words
to a blind man. It is obvious that verbal definitions – the
substitution of one set of words for another – will not convey the
meaning of ‘red’ to those who cannot see.
BOOK 3: OF WORDS
…
CHAPTER 3: OF GENERAL TERMS
1. The greatest part of words are general terms

All things that exist being particulars, it may perhaps be thought reasonable
that words, which ought to be conformed to things, should be so too; I mean
in their signification: But yet we find the quite contrary. The far greatest part
of words, that make all languages, are general terms; which has not been the
effect of neglect or chance, but of reason and necessity.
2. That every particular thing should have a name for itself is impossible
First, It is impossible that every particular thing should have a distinct peculiar
name. For the signification and use of words, depending on that connection
38 In Principia Ethica (London, 1903).

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which the mind makes between its ideas and the sounds it uses as signs of
them, it is necessary, in the application of names to things that the mind
should have distinct ideas of the things, and retain also the particular name
that belongs to every one, with its peculiar appropriation to that idea. But it is
beyond the power of human capacity to frame and retain distinct ideas of all
the particular things we meet with: Every bird and beast men saw, every tree
and plant that affected the senses, could not find a place in the most capacious
understanding. […]
3. And would be useless, if it were possible

Secondly, If it were possible, it would yet be useless; because it would not serve
to the chief end of language. Men would in vain heap up names of particular
things, that would not serve them to communicate [70] their thoughts. Men
learn names, and use them in talk with others, only that they may be
understood: Which is then only done, when by use or consent the sound I
make by the organs of speech, excites in another man’s mind, who hears it,
the idea I apply it to in mine, when I speak it. This cannot be done by names
applied to particular things, whereof I alone having the ideas in my mind, the
names of them could not be significant or intelligible to another, who was not
acquainted with all those very particular things which had fallen under my
notice.
4. A distinct name for every particular thing not fitted for enlargement of
knowledge
Thirdly, But yet granting this also feasible (which I think is not) yet a distinct
name for every particular thing would not be of any great use for the
improvement of knowledge: Which, though founded in particular things,
enlarges itself by general views: To which things reduced into sorts, under
general names, are properly subservient. […]
…
6. How general words are made

The next thing to be considered, is, how general words come to be made. For
since all things that exist are only particulars, how come we by general terms,
or where find we those general natures they are supposed to stand for? Words
become general, by being made the signs of general ideas; and ideas become
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general, by separating from them the circumstances of time, and place, and
any other ideas, that may determine them to this or that particular existence.
By this way of abstraction they are made capable of representing more
individuals than one; each of which having in it a conformity to that abstract
idea, is (as we call it) of that sort.
7. Shown by the way we enlarge our complex ideas from infancy

But to deduce this a little more distinctly, it will not perhaps be amiss to trace
our notions and names from their beginning, and observe by what degrees
we proceed, and by what steps we enlarge our ideas from our first infancy.
There is nothing more evident than that the ideas of the persons children
converse with (to instance in them alone) are like the persons themselves, only
particular. The ideas of the nurse, and the mother, are well framed in their
minds; and, like pictures of them there, represent only those individuals. The
names they first gave to them are confined to these individuals; and the names
of nurse [71] and mamma the child uses, determine themselves to those
persons. Afterwards, when time and a larger acquaintance have made them
observe, that there are a great many other things in the world that in some
common agreements of shape, and several other qualities, resemble their
father and mother, and those persons they have been used to, they frame an
idea, which they find those many particulars do partake in; and to that they
give, with others, the name man for example. And thus they come to have a
general name, and a general idea. Wherein they make nothing new, but only
leave out of the complex idea they had of Peter and James, Mary and Jane,
that which is peculiar to each, and retain only what is common to them all.
…
9. General natures are nothing but abstract and partial ideas of more complex
ones
That this is the way whereby men first formed general ideas, and general
names to them, I think, is […] evident […]: And he that thinks general natures
or notions are any thing [72] else but such abstract and partial ideas of more
complex ones, taken at first from particular existences, will, I fear, be at a loss
where to find them. For let any one reflect, and then tell me, wherein does his
idea of man differ from that of Peter and Paul, or his idea of horse from that
of Bucephalus, but in the leaving out something that is peculiar to each
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individual, and retaining so much of those particular complex ideas of several

particular existences, as they are found to agree in? Of the complex ideas
signified by the names man and horse, leaving out but those particulars
wherein they differ, and retaining only those wherein they agree, and of those
making a new distinct complex idea, and giving the name animal to it; one has
a more general term, that comprehends with man several other creatures.
Leave out of the idea of animal, sense and spontaneous motion; and the
remaining complex idea, made up of the remaining simple ones of body, life,
and nourishment, becomes a more general one, under the more
comprehensive term vivens. […] To conclude, this whole mystery of genera and
species, which make such a noise in the schools, […] is nothing else but abstract
ideas, more or less comprehensive, with names annexed to them […].
…
11. General and universal are creatures of the understanding, and belong not to
the real existence of things
[…] it is plain by what has been said, that general and universal belong not to
the real existence of things; but are the inventions and creatures of the
understanding, made by it for its own use, and concern only signs, whether
words or ideas. Words are general, as has been said, 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. When therefore we quit particulars, the generals
that rest are only creatures of our own making; their general nature being
nothing but the capacity they are put into by the understanding, of signifying
or representing many particulars. For the signification they have is nothing but
a relation, that by the mind of man is added to them.
12. Abstract ideas are the essences of genera and species

The next thing therefore to be considered, is, what kind of signification it is,
that general words have. For as it is evident, that they do not signify barely
one particular thing; for then they would not be general terms, but proper
names; so on the other side it is as evident, they do not signify a plurality; for
man and men would then signify the same, and the distinction of numbers (as
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the grammarians call them) would be superfluous and useless. That then which
general words signify is a sort of things; and each of them does that, by being
a sign of an abstract idea in the mind, to which idea, as things existing are
found to agree, so they come to be ranked under that name; or, which is all
one, be of that sort. Whereby it is evident, that the essences of the sorts, or (if
the Latin word pleases better) species of things, are nothing else but these
abstract ideas. For the having the essence of any species, being that which
makes any thing to be of that species, and the conformity to the idea to which
[73] the name is annexed, being that which gives a right to that name; the
having the essence, and the having that conformity, must needs be the same
thing: Since to be of any species, and to have a right to the name of that
species, is all one. As for example, to be a man, or of the species man, and to
have right to the name man, is the same thing. Again, to be a man, or of the
species man, and have the essence of a man, is the same thing. Now since
nothing can be a man, or have a right to the name man, but what has a
conformity to the abstract idea the name man stands for; nor any thing be a
man, or have a right to the species man, but what has the essence of that
species; it follows, that the abstract idea for which the name stands, and the
essence of the species, is one and the same. From whence it is easy to observe,
that the essences of the sorts of things, and consequently the sorting of things,
is the workmanship of the understanding, that abstracts and makes those
general ideas.
13. They are the workmanship of the understanding, but have their foundation
in the similitude of things
I would not here be thought to forget, much less to deny, that nature in the
production of things makes several of them alike: There is nothing more
obvious, especially in the races of animals, and all things propagated by seed.
But yet, I think, we may say the sorting of them under names is the
workmanship of the understanding, taking occasion from the similitude it
observes amongst them to make abstract general ideas, and set them up in
the mind, with names annexed to them as patterns or forms (for in that sense
the word form has a very proper signification) to which as particular things
existing are found to agree, so they come to be of that species, have that
denomination, or are put into that classis. For when we say, this is a man, that
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a horse; this justice, that cruelty; this a watch, that a jack; what do we else but
rank things under different specific names, as agreeing to those abstract ideas,
of which we have made those names the signs? And what are the essences of
those species set out and marked by names, but those abstract ideas in the
mind; which are as it were the bonds between particular things that exist and
the names they are to be ranked under? And when general names have any
connection with particular beings, these abstract ideas are the medium that
unites them: So that the essences of species, as distinguished and
denominated by us, neither are nor can be any thing but these precise abstract
ideas we have in our minds. And therefore the supposed real essences of
substances, if different from our abstract ideas, cannot be the essences of the
species [74] we rank things into. For two species may be one as rationally, as
two different essences be the essence of one species; and I demand what are
the alterations which may or may not be made in a horse or lead, without
making either of them to be of another species? In determining the species of
things by our abstract ideas, this is easy to resolve: But if any one will regulate
himself herein by supposed real essences, he will, I suppose, be at a loss; and
he will never be able to know when any thing precisely ceases to be of the
species of a horse or lead.
14. Each distinct abstract Idea is a distinct essence

Nor will any one wonder, that I say these essences, or abstract ideas, (which
are the measures of name, and the boundaries of species) are the
workmanship of the understanding, who considers, that at least the complex
ones are often, in several men, different collections of simple ideas: And
therefore that is covetousness to one man, which is not so to another. Nay,
even in substances, where their abstract ideas seem to be taken from the
things themselves, they are not constantly the same; no not in that species
which is most familiar to us, and with which we have the most intimate
acquaintance: It having been more than once doubted, whether the foetus
born of a woman were a man; even so far, as that it hath been debated,
whether it were or were not to be nourished and baptized: Which could not
be, if the abstract idea or essence, to which the name man belonged, were of
nature’s making; and were not the uncertain and various collection of simple
ideas, which the understanding put together, and then abstracting it, affixed a
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name to it. So that, in truth, every distinct abstract idea is a distinct essence:
And the names that stand for such distinct ideas are the names of things
essentially different. Thus a circle is as essentially different from an oval as a
sheep from a goat: And rain is as essentially different from snow, as water from
earth; that abstract idea which is the essence of one being impossible to be
communicated to the other. And thus any two abstract ideas, that in any part
vary one from another, with two distinct names annexed to them, constitute
two distinct sorts, or, [75] if you please, species, as essentially different as any
two of the most remote, or opposite in the world.
15. Several significations of the word ‘essence’

But since the essences of things are thought, by some, (and not without
reason) to be wholly unknown: It may not be amiss to consider the several
significations of the word ‘essence’.
Real essences
First, essence may be taken for the very being of any thing, whereby it is what
it is. And thus the real internal, but generally, in substances, unknown
constitution of things, whereon their discoverable qualities depend, may be
called their essence. This is the proper original signification of the word, as is
evident from the formation of it; essentia, in its primary notation, signifying
properly being. […]
Nominal essences
Secondly, the learning and disputes of the schools having been much busied
about genus and species, the word ‘essence’ has almost lost its primary
signification: And instead of the real constitution of things, has been almost
wholly applied to the artificial constitution of genus and species. It is true,
there is ordinarily supposed a real constitution of the sorts of things; and it is
past doubt, there must be some real constitution, on which any collection of
simple ideas co-existing must depend. But it being evident, that things are
ranked under names into sorts or species, only as they agree to certain abstract
ideas, to which we have annexed those names: The essence of each genus, or
sort, comes to be nothing but that abstract idea, which the general, or sortal
(if I may have leave so to call it from sort, as I do general from genus) name
stands for. And this we shall find to be that which the word ‘essence’ imports
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in its most familiar use. These two sorts of essences, I suppose, may not unfitly
be termed, the one the real, the other nominal essence.
17. Supposition that species are distinguished by their real essences useless
Concerning the real essences of corporeal substances, (to mention these only)
there are, if I mistake not, two opinions. The one is of those, who using the
word ‘essence’ for they know not what, suppose a certain number of those
essences, according to which all natural things are made, and wherein they do
exactly [76] every one of them partake, and so become of this or that species.
The other, and more rational opinion, is of those who look on all natural things
to have a real, but unknown constitution of their insensible parts; from which
flow those sensible qualities which serve us to distinguish them one from
another, according as we have occasion to rank them into sorts under
common denominations. The former of these opinions, which supposes these
essences, as a certain number of forms or moulds, wherein all natural things,
that exist, are cast, and do equally partake, has, I imagine, very much perplexed
the knowledge of natural things. The frequent productions of monsters, in all
the species of animals, and of changelings, and other strange issues of human
birth, carry with them difficulties, not possible to consist with this hypothesis:
Since it is as impossible, that two things, partaking exactly of the same real
essence, should have different properties, as that two figures partaking of the
same real essence of a circle should have different properties. But were there
no other reason against it, yet the supposition of essences that cannot be
known, and the making of them nevertheless to be that which distinguishes
the species of things, is so wholly useless, and unserviceable to any part of our
knowledge, that that alone were sufficient to make us lay it by, and content
ourselves with such essences of the sorts or species of things as come within
the reach of our knowledge: Which, when seriously considered, will be found,
as I have said, to be nothing else but those abstract complex ideas, to which
we have annexed distinct general names.
18. Real and nominal essence the same in simple ideas and modes, different in
substances
Essences being thus distinguished into nominal and real, we may farther
observe, that in the species of simple ideas and modes, they are always the
same; but in substances always quite different. Thus a figure including a space
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between three lines, is the real as well as nominal essence of a triangle; it being
not only the abstract idea to which the general name is annexed, but the very
essentia or being of the thing itself, that foundation from which all its
properties flow, and to which they are all inseparably annexed. But it is [77] far
otherwise concerning that parcel of matter, which makes the ring on my finger,
wherein these two essences are apparently different. For it is the real
constitution of its insensible parts, on which depend all those properties of
colour, weight, fusibility, fixedness, etc. which are to be found in it, which
constitution we know not, and so having no particular idea of, have no name
that is the sign of it. But yet it is its colour, weight, fusibility, fixedness, etc.
which makes it to be gold, or gives it a right to that name, which is therefore
its nominal essence: Since nothing can be called gold but what has a
conformity of qualities to that abstract complex idea, to which that name is
annexed. But this distinction of essences belonging particularly to substances,
we shall, when we come to consider their names, have an occasion to treat of
more fully.
…
BOOK 3, CHAPTER 4: OF THE NAMES OF SIMPLE IDEAS

…
11. Simple Ideas, why undefinable, further explained

Simple ideas, as has been shown, are only to be got by those impressions
objects themselves make on our minds, by the proper inlets appointed to each
sort. If they are not received this way, all the words in the world, made use of
to explain or define any of their names, will never be able to produce in us the
idea it stands for. For words being sounds can produce in us no other simple
ideas, than of those very sounds; nor excite any in us, but by that voluntary
connection which is known to be between them and those simple ideas, which
common use has made them signs of. He that thinks otherwise, let him try if
any words can give him the taste of a pine-apple, and make him have the true
idea of the relish of that celebrated delicious fruit. So far as he is told it has a
resemblance with any tastes, whereof he has the ideas already in his memory,
imprinted there by sensible objects not strangers to his palate, so far may he
approach that resemblance in his mind. But this is not giving us that idea by a
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definition, but exciting in us other simple ideas by their known names; which
will be still very different from the true taste of that fruit itself. In light and
colours, and all other simple ideas, it is the same [78] thing; for the signification
of sounds is not natural, but only imposed and arbitrary. […]
12. The contrary shown in complex ideas, by instances of a statue and rainbow
The case is quite otherwise in complex ideas; which consisting of several
simple ones, it is in the power of words, standing for the several ideas that
make that composition, to imprint complex ideas in the mind, which were
never there before, and so make their names be understood. In such
collections of ideas, passing under one name, definition, or the teaching the
signification of one word by several others, has place, and may make us
understand the names of things, which never came within the reach of our
senses; and frame ideas suitable to those in other men’s minds, when they use
those names: Provided that none of the terms of the definition stand for any
such simple ideas, which he to whom the explication is made has never yet
had in his thought. Thus the word ‘statue’ may be explained to a blind man by
other words, when picture cannot; his senses having given him the idea of
figure, but not of colours, which therefore words cannot excite in him. […]
…
14. Complex ideas definable only when the simple ideas of which they consist
have been got from experience
Simple ideas, as has been showed, can only be got by experience, from those
objects, which are proper to produce in us those perceptions. When by this
means we have our minds stored with them, and know the names for them,
then we are in a condition to define, and by definition to understand the
names of complex ideas, that are made up of them. […]
…
BOOK 3, CHAPTER 6: OF THE NAMES OF SUBSTANCES

…
6. Even the real essences of individual substances imply potential sorts

[…] I have often mentioned a real essence, distinct in substances from those
abstract ideas of them, which I call their nominal essence. By this real essence
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I mean the real constitution of any thing, which is the foundation of all those
properties that are combined in, and are constantly found to co-exist with the
nominal essence; that particular constitution which every thing has within
itself, without any relation to any thing without it. But essence, [79] even in this
sense, relates to a sort, and supposes a species; for being that real constitution,
on which the properties depend, it necessarily supposes a sort of things,
properties belonging only to species, and not to individuals; v.g. supposing
the nominal essence of gold to be a body of such a peculiar colour and weight,
with malleability and fusibility, the real essence is that constitution of the parts
of matter, on which these qualities and their union depend: And is also the
foundation of its solubility in aqua regia and other properties accompanying
that complex idea. Here are essences and properties, but all upon supposition
of a sort, or general abstract idea, which is considered as immutable; but there
is no individual parcel of matter, to which any of these qualities are so annexed,
as to be essential to it, or inseparable from it. That which is essential belongs
to it as a condition, whereby it is of this or that sort; but take away the
consideration of its being ranked under the name of some abstract idea, and
then there is nothing necessary to it, nothing inseparable from it. Indeed, as
to the real essences of substances, we only suppose their being, without
precisely knowing what they are: But that which annexes them still to the
species, is the nominal essence, of which they are the supposed foundation
and cause.
7. The nominal essence bounds the species for us

The next thing to be considered, is, by which of those essences it is that
substances are determined into sorts, or species; and that, it is evident, is by
the nominal essence. For it is that alone that the name, which is the mark of
the sort, signifies. It is impossible therefore that any thing should determine
the sorts of things, which we rank under general names, but that idea which
that name is designed as a mark for; which is that, as has been shown, which
we call nominal essence. Why do we say, this is a horse, that a mule; this is an
animal, that an herb? How comes any particular thing to be of this or that sort,
but because it has that nominal essence, or, which is all one, agrees to that
abstract idea that name is annexed to? […]
…
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9. Not the real essence, or texture of parts, which we know not

Nor indeed can we rank and sort things, and consequently [80] (which is the
end of sorting) denominate them by their real essences, because we know
them not. Our faculties carry us no farther towards the knowledge and
distinction of substances, than a collection of those sensible ideas which we
observe in them; which, however made with the greatest diligence and
exactness we are capable of, yet is more remote from the true internal
constitution, from which those qualities flow, than, as I said, a countryman’s
idea is from the inward contrivance of that famous clock at Strasburgh,
whereof he only sees the outward figure and motions. […]
…
14. Difficulties in the supposition of certain number of real essences

To distinguish substantial beings into species, according to the usual
supposition, that there are certain precise essences or forms of things,
whereby all the individuals existing are by nature distinguished into species,
these things are necessary.
15. A crude supposition

First, To be assured that nature, in the production of things, always designs
them to partake of certain regulated established essences, which are to be the
models of all things to be produced. This, in that crude sense it is usually
proposed, would need some better explication before it can fully be assented
to.
16. Monstrous births

Secondly, It would be necessary to know whether nature always attains that
essence it designs in the production of things. The irregular and monstrous
births, that in divers sorts of animals have been observed, will always give us
reason to doubt of one or both of these.
17. Are monsters really a distinct species?

Thirdly, It ought to be determined whether those we call monsters be really a
distinct species, according to the scholastic notion of the word ‘species’; since
it is certain, that every thing that exists has its particular constitution: And yet
we find that some of these monstrous productions have few or none of those
qualities, which are supposed to result from, and accompany the essence of
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that species, from whence they derive their originals, and to which, by their
descent, they seem to belong.
…
20. Hence names independent of real essences

By all which it is clear, that our distinguishing substances into species by
names, is not at all founded on their real essences; nor can we pretend to
range and deter[81]mine them exactly into species, according to internal
essential differences.
21. But stand for such a collection of simple ideas as we have made the name
stand for
But since, as has been remarked, we have need of general words, though we
know not the real essences of things; all we can do is to collect such a number
of simple ideas, as by examination we find to be united together in things
existing, and therefore to make one complex idea. Which though it be not the
real essence of any substance that exists, is yet the specific essence, to which
our name belongs, and is convertible with it; by which we may at least try the
truth of these nominal essences. […]
…
28. But not so arbitrary as mixed modes

But though these nominal essences of substances are made by the mind, they
are not yet made so arbitrarily as those of mixed modes. To the making of any
nominal essence, it is necessary, First, that the ideas whereof it consists have
such a union as to make but one idea, how compounded soever. Secondly,
that the particular idea so united be exactly the same, neither more nor less.
For if two abstract complex ideas differ either in number or sorts of their
component parts, they make two different, and not one and the same essence.
In the first of these, the mind, in making its complex ideas of substances, only
follows nature; and puts none together, which are not supposed to have a
union in nature. Nobody joins the voice of a sheep with the shape of a horse;
nor the colour of lead, with the weight and fixedness of gold; to be the
complex ideas of any real substances: Unless he has a mind to fill his head with
chimeras, and his discourse with unintelligible words. Men observing certain
qualities always joined and existing together, therein copied nature; and of
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ideas so united, made their complex ones of substances. For though men may
make what complex ideas they please, and give what names to them they will:
Yet if they will be understood, when they speak of things really existing, they
must in some degree conform their ideas to the things they would speak of:
Or else men’s language will be like that of Babel; and every man’s words being
intelligible only to himself, [82] would no longer serve to conversation, and the
ordinary affairs of life, if the ideas they stand for be not some way answering
the common appearances and agreement of substances, as they really exist.
…
35. Men determine the sorts of substances, which may be sorted variously
From what has been said, it is evident, that men make sorts of things. For it
being different essences alone that make different species, it is plain that they
who make those abstract ideas, which are the nominal essences, do thereby
make the species, or sort. […]
36. Nature makes the similitudes of substances

This then, in short, is the case; nature makes many particular things which do
agree one with another, in many sensible qualities, and probably too in their
internal frame and constitution: But it is not this real essence that distinguishes
them into species; it is men, who, taking occasion from the qualities they find
united in them, and wherein they observe often several individuals to agree,
range them into sorts, in order to their naming, for the convenience of
comprehensive signs; under which individuals, according to their conformity
to this or that abstract idea, come to be ranked as under ensigns; so that this
is of the blue, that the red regiment; this is a man, that a drill: And in this, I
think, consists the whole business of genus and species.
…
BOOK 4: OF KNOWLEDGE AND OPINION

…
CHAPTER 7: OF MAXIMS
…
9. […] Thus particular ideas are first received and distinguished, and so
knowledge got about them; and next to them, the less general or specific,
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which are next to particular: For abstract ideas are not so obvious or easy to
children, or the yet unexercised mind, as particular ones. If they seem so to
grown men, it is only because by constant and familiar use they are made so.
For when we nicely reflect upon them, we shall find, that general ideas are
fictions and contrivances of the mind, that carry difficulty with them, and do
not so easily offer themselves, as we are apt to imagine. For example, does it
not require some pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle (which
is yet none of the most abstract, comprehensive, and difficult), for it must be
neither oblique, nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon; but
all and [83] none of these at once. In effect, it is something imperfect, that
cannot exist; an idea wherein some parts of several different and inconsistent
ideas are put together. […]
…
Locke’s theory of abstract general ideas forms a chapter in the long

history of the philosophical problem of universals. The problem
arises in this sort of way. We describe many different things as, say,
blue or as men. Why? Because they all possess the common
characteristic of blueness or humanity. But then what are blueness
and humanity? What is the thing to which such a general word as
‘blueness’ or ‘humanity’ stands in the kind of direct label-like
relation in which a proper name – ‘John’ or ‘Fido’ – stands to a
particular man or dog? All words, one might suppose, stand for
something; what do general words stand for? The blanket answer
‘universals’ is given. And so the catalogue of the entities in the
universe comes to include not only all the particular objects there
are, but also innumerable entities brought in to correspond to
general words, to the names of species or kinds – and these are
then called ‘universals’ and are offered as objects of investigation
to the natural philosopher as much as the ‘particulars’ into which
they ‘enter’ or which they ‘qualify’ or by which they are
‘instantiated’. The answers given to the problem are various, and
to some extent the variation is related to the precise question asked.
Locke, for example, eschewing metaphysics but deeply involved in
his own theory of knowledge, is asking not so much the ontological
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question ‘What is blueness?’ or ‘What is humanity?’, but rather the

epistemological one, ‘How do we recognise an object as blue?’ or
‘as a man?’
Some of the traditional answers to this most famous of
problems may be summarised as follows:
(1) Platonic realism. ‘Universals’ do not exist in the temporal
world. They subsist ‘outside’ it. They can be apprehended by the
intellect but not by sense experience. Particular objects in the world
of sense experience have universal characteristics by virtue of
‘partaking in’, or ‘imitating’, these timeless patterns, set apart. [84]
(2) Aristotelian realism. Universals in a sense do exist, but only ‘in’
the particular objects that exemplify them. They have no
independent reality.
These two answers are obviously related to the ontological
question of what there is in the world. The remaining three are
more obviously concerned with the epistemological question (of
how we know what we do know), and have in common their denial
of independent existence to universals outside the minds of men.
(3) Conceptualism. Men are able to recognise an entity as blue or
as a man by seeing that it ‘conforms’ with, or ‘fits’, a concept or
abstract general idea which they have framed in their minds of
blueness or humanity.
(4) Imagism. Recognition of something as a man or as blue
occurs by comparison with a standard or representative image in
our minds (or in a book of standard images) of blue or of a man.
(5) Nominalism. There is only the general word itself, and the
class of particular objects failing under it. These objects are
grouped together in the class in virtue of their perceived
resemblance to each other, or – the extreme version of this view –
in virtue of nothing at all, that is arbitrarily.
It seems clear that Locke’s views are closest to conceptualism.
Observing many particular objects with a certain characteristic or
of a certain class, we form an ‘abstract general idea’ of that
characteristic or class: this is the idea for which the general word
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stands. Locke seems, however, to have held several divergent views

as to how we form these abstract general ideas:
(1) The abstract general idea is simply the idea of one particular
member of the class, the idea being used as ‘representative of’ the
whole class.
(2) The abstract general idea is formed by leaving out of the
ideas of particular members of the class all those characteristics in
which they differ.
(3) The abstract general idea is formed by conflating ideas of all
the properties possessed by any member of the class.
Each of these views contradicts the others.
The first is roughly that held by Berkeley, the remaining [85]
two he derides; his treatment of this topic is a vital stage in its
history.
Book 4 of the Essay, ‘Of Knowledge and Opinion’,39 is the climax

of Locke’s enterprise. Here at last, after the lengthy investigation
of ‘ideas’ and words in Books 2 and 3, we are to fulfil his primary
aim of determining ‘the original, certainty and extent of human
knowledge’. Perhaps no passage in Book IV is more important
than its first two sentences: ‘Since the mind in all its thoughts and
reasonings, hath no other [86] immediate object but its own ideas,
[…] it is evident that our knowledge is only conversant about them’
and ‘Knowledge [is] the perception of the connection and
agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy, of any of our ideas.’40
We shall see how woefully restricted is the ‘extent’ of human
knowledge by Locke’s ‘new way of ideas’, his representationalism,
which ends by creating two worlds – the subjective one, which we
are free to investigate and describe, but which contains within itself
no guarantees of its objective truth; and the external world from
which we are divided for ever by the screen of our own ‘ideas’.
39 [From which an extract appears above at pp. 82–3.]

40 IB’s italics.
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Starting from premisses which seem to be those of ordinary

common sense, he arrives at a paradoxical dualism, less tenable
than that of Descartes, who did at least suppose that he had an a
priori means of breaking through the delusive data of our senses
to a vision of reality. Locke seems to get the worst of both worlds.
All the facts we know we derive through the senses: yet they
provide truth only if they ‘correspond’ to an outside reality. We
think they often do: but we have no evidence for this and cannot
justify our optimism, or even explain it.
BOOK 4, CHAPTER 1: OF KNOWLEDGE IN GENERAL
1. Our Knowledge conversant about our ideas only

Since the mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other immediate
object but its own ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate; it is evident,
that our knowledge is only conversant about them.
2. Knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas

Knowledge then seems to me to be nothing but the perception of the
connection and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy, of any of our
ideas. In this alone it consists. Where this perception is, there is knowledge;
and where it is not, there, though we may fancy, guess, or believe, yet we
always come short of knowledge. For when we know that white is not black,
what do we else but perceive that these two ideas do not agree? When we
possess ourselves with the utmost security of the demonstration, that the
three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones, what do we more but
perceive, that equality to two right ones does necessarily agree to, and is
inseparable from the three angles of a triangle?
3. This agreement or disagreement may be any of four sorts

But to understand a little more distinctly wherein this agreement or
disagreement consists, I think we may reduce it all to these four sorts:
1. Identity, or diversity.
2. Relation.
3. Co-existence, or necessary connection.
4. Real existence.
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4. First, of identity or diversity in ideas

First, as to the first sort of agreement or disagreement, viz. identity or diversity.
It is the first act of the mind, when it has any sentiments or ideas at all, to
perceive its ideas; and so far as it perceives them, to know each what it is, and
thereby also to perceive their difference, and that one is not another. This is
so absolutely necessary, that without it there could be no knowledge, no
reasoning, no imagination, no distinct thoughts, at all. By this the mind clearly
and infallibly perceives each idea to agree with itself, and to be what it is; and
all distinct ideas to disagree, i.e. the one not to be the other: And this it does
without pains, labour, or deduction; but at first view, by its natural power of
perception and distinction. […] And if there ever happen any doubt about it, it
will always be found to be about the names, and not the ideas themselves […].
5. Secondly, of abstract relations between ideas

Secondly, the next sort of agreement or disagreement, the mind perceives in
any of its [86] ideas, may, I think, be called relative, and is nothing but the
perception of the relation between any two ideas, of what kind soever, whether
substances, modes, or any other. For since all distinct ideas must eternally be
known not to be the same, and so be universally and constantly denied one
of another, there could be no room for any positive knowledge at all, if we
could not perceive any relation between our ideas, and find out the agreement
or disagreement they have one with another, in several ways the mind takes
of comparing them.
6. Thirdly, of their necessary coexistence in substances

Thirdly, the third sort of agreement, or disagreement, to be found in our ideas,
which the perception of the mind is employed about, is co-existence, or non-
co-existence in the same subject; and this belongs particularly to substances.
Thus when we pronounce concerning gold that it is fixed, our knowledge of
this truth amounts to no more but this, that fixedness, or a power to remain in
the fire unconsumed, is an idea that always accompanies, and is joined with
that particular sort of yellowness, weight, fusibility, malleableness, and
solubility in aq. regia, which make our complex idea, signified by the word
‘gold’.
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7. Fourthly, of real existence agreeing to any idea

Fourthly, the fourth and last sort is that of actual real existence agreeing to
any idea. Within these four sorts of agreement or disagreement, is, I suppose,
contained all the knowledge we have, or are capable of: For all the enquiries
we can make concerning any of our ideas, all that we know or can affirm
concerning any of them, is, that it is, or is not, the same with some other; that
it does or does not, always co-exist with some other idea in the same subject;
that it has this or that relation with some other idea; or that it has a real
existence without the mind. Thus ‘blue is not yellow’; is of identity: ‘two
triangles upon equal bases between two parallels are equal’; is of relation: ‘iron
is susceptible of magnetical impressions’; is of co-existence: ‘God is’; is of real
existence. Though identity and co-existence are truly nothing but relations, yet
they are such peculiar ways of agreement or disagreement of our ideas, that
they deserve well to be considered as distinct heads, and not under relation in
general; [88] since they are so different grounds of affirmation and negation,
as will easily appear to any one, who will but reflect on what is said in several
places of this essay. I should now proceed to examine the several degrees of
our knowledge, but that it is necessary first to consider the different
acceptations of the word ‘knowledge’.
…
BOOK 4, CHAPTER 2: OF THE DEGREES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE
Of the degrees, or differences in clearness, of our knowledge
1. Intuitive
All our knowledge consisting, as I have said, in the view the mind has of its
own ideas, which is the utmost light and greatest certainty we, with our
faculties, and in our way of knowledge, are capable of; it may not be amiss to
consider a little the degrees of its evidence. The different clearness of our
knowledge seems to me to lie in the different way of perception the mind has
of the agreement or disagreement of any of its ideas. For if we will reflect on
our own ways of thinking, we shall find, that sometimes the mind perceives
the agreement or disagreement of two ideas immediately by themselves,
without the intervention of any other: And this, I think, we may call intuitive
knowledge. For in this the mind is at no pains of proving or examining, but
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perceives the truth, as the eye doth light, only by being directed towards it.
Thus the mind perceives, that white is not black, that a circle is not a triangle,
that three are more than two, and equal to one and two. Such kinds of truths
the mind perceives at the first sight of the ideas together, by bare intuition,
without the intervention of any other idea; and this kind of knowledge is the
clearest and most certain, that human frailty is capable of. This part of
knowledge is irresistible, and like bright sunshine forces itself immediately to
be perceived, as soon as ever the mind turns its view that way; and leaves no
room for hesitation, doubt, or examination, but the mind is presently filled
with the clear light of it. It is on this intuition that depends all the certainty and
evidence of all our knowledge; which certainty every one finds to be so great,
that he cannot imagine, and therefore not require a greater: For a man cannot
conceive himself capable of a greater certainty, than to know that any idea in
his mind is such as he perceives it to be; and that two ideas wherein he
perceives a difference, are different and not precisely the same. He that
demands a greater certainty [89] than this, demands he knows not what, and
shows only that he has a mind to be a sceptic, without being able to be so.
Certainty depends so wholly on this intuition, that in the next degree of
knowledge, which I call demonstrative, this intuition is necessary in all the
connections of the intermediate ideas, without which we cannot attain
knowledge and certainty.
2. Demonstrative
The next degree of knowledge is, where the mind perceives the agreement or
disagreement of any ideas, but not immediately. […] In this case then, when
the mind cannot so bring its ideas together, as by their immediate comparison,
and as it were juxta-position or application one to another, to perceive their
agreement or disagreement, it is fain, by the intervention of other ideas (one
or more, as it happens) to discover the agreement or disagreement which it
searches; and this is that which we call reasoning. Thus the mind being willing
to know the agreement or disagreement in bigness, between the three angles
of a triangle and two right ones, cannot by an immediate view and comparing
them do it: Because the three angles of a triangle cannot be brought at once,
and be compared with any other one or two angles; and so of this the mind
has no immediate, no intuitive knowledge. In this case the mind is fain to find
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out some other angles, to which the three angles of a triangle have an equality;
and, finding those equal to two right ones, comes to know their equality to
two right ones.
3. Demonstration depends on clearly perceived proofs

Those intervening ideas which serve to show the agreement of any two others,
are called proofs; and where the agreement and disagreement is by this means
plainly and clearly perceived, it is called demonstration […].
…
7. Each step in demonstrated knowledge must have intuitive evidence

Now, in every step reason makes in demonstrative knowledge, there is an
intuitive knowledge of that agreement or disagreement it seeks with the next
intermediate idea, which it uses as a proof; for if it were not so, that yet would
need a proof; since without the perception of such agreement or
disagreement, there is no knowledge produced. If it be perceived by itself, it
is intuitive knowledge: If it can[90]not be perceived by itself, there is need of
some intervening idea, as a common measure to show their agreement or
disagreement. By which it is plain, that every step in reasoning that produces
knowledge, has intuitive certainty; which when the mind perceives, there is no
more required, but to remember it to make the agreement or disagreement
of the ideas, concerning which we enquire, visible and certain. So that to make
any thing a demonstration, it is necessary to perceive the immediate
agreement of the intervening ideas, whereby the agreement or disagreement
of the two ideas under examination (whereof the one is always the first, and
the other the last in the account) is found. This intuitive perception of the
agreement or disagreement of the intermediate ideas, in each step and
progression of the demonstration, must also be carried exactly in the mind,
and a man must be sure that no part is left out: Which because in long
deductions, and the use of many proofs, the memory does not always so
readily and exactly retain; therefore it comes to pass, that this is more
imperfect than intuitive knowledge, and men embrace often falsehood for
demonstrations.
…
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14. Sensitive knowledge of the particular existence of finite beings without us

These two, viz. intuition and demonstration, are the degrees of our knowledge;
whatever comes short of one of these, with what assurance soever embraced,
is but faith, or opinion, but not knowledge, at least in all general truths. There
is, indeed, another perception of the mind, employed about the particular
existence of finite beings without us; which going beyond bare probability,
and yet not reaching perfectly to either of the foregoing degrees of certainty,
passes under the name of knowledge. There can be nothing more certain, than
that the idea we receive from an external object is in our minds; this is intuitive
knowledge. But whether there be any thing more than barely that idea in our
minds; whether we can thence certainly infer the existence of any thing
without us, which corresponds to that idea, is that, whereof some men think
there may be a question made; because men may have such ideas in their
minds, when no such thing exists, no such object affects their senses. But yet
here, I think, we are provided with [91] an evidence, that puts us past doubting:
For I ask any one, whether he be not invincibly conscious to himself of a
different perception, when he looks on the sun by day, and thinks on it by
night; when he actually tastes wormwood, or smells a rose, or only thinks on
that savour or odour? We as plainly find the difference there is between any
idea revived in our minds by our own memory, and actually coming into our
minds by our senses, as we do between any two distinct ideas. If any one say,
a dream may do the same thing, and all these ideas may be produced in us
without any external objects; he may please to dream that I make him this
answer:
1. That it is no great matter, whether I remove his scruple or no: Where all
is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge
nothing.
2. That I believe he will allow a very manifest difference between dreaming
of being in the fire, and being actually in it.
But yet if he be resolved to appear so sceptical, as to maintain, that what I
call being actually in the fire is nothing but a dream; and that we cannot
thereby certainly know, that any such thing as fire actually exists without us: I
answer, that we certainly finding that pleasure or pain follows upon the
application of certain objects to us, whose existence we perceive, or dream
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that we perceive by our senses; this certainty is as great as our happiness or

misery, beyond which we have no concernment to know or to be. So that, I
think, we may add to the two former sorts of knowledge this also of the
existence of particular external objects, by that perception and consciousness
we have of the actual entrance of ideas from them, and allow these three
degrees of knowledge, viz. intuitive, demonstrative, and sensitive: In each of
which there are different degrees and ways of evidence and certainty.
BOOK 4, CHAPTER 3: OF THE EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

…
9. Our knowledge of the coexistence of ideas extends only a very little way
Secondly, as to the second sort, which is the agreement or disagreement of
our ideas in co-existence; in this our knowledge is very short, though in this
consists the greatest and most material [92] part of our knowledge concerning
substances. For our ideas of the species of substances being, as I have showed,
nothing but certain collections of simple ideas united in one subject, and so
co-existing together; v.g. our idea of flame is a body hot, luminous, and
moving upward; of gold, a body heavy to a certain degree, yellow, malleable,
and fusible: These, or some such complex ideas as these in men’s minds, do
these two names of the different substances, flame and gold, stand for. When
we would know any thing farther concerning these, or any other sort of
substances, what do we enquire, but what other qualities or power these
substances have or have not? Which is nothing else but to know what other
simple ideas do or do not co-exist with those that make up that complex idea.
10. Because the connection between simple ideas in substances is for the most
part unknown
This, how weighty and considerable a part soever of human science, is yet very
narrow, and scarce any at all. The reason whereof is, that the simple ideas,
whereof our complex ideas of substances are made up, are, for the most part,
such as carry with them, in their own nature, no visible necessary connection
or inconsistency with any other simple ideas, whose co-existence with them
we would inform ourselves about.
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11. Especially of the secondary qualities of bodies

The ideas that our complex ones of substances are made up of, and about
which our knowledge concerning substances is most employed, are those of
their secondary qualities: Which depending all (as has been shown) upon the
primary qualities of their minute and insensible parts; or if not upon them,
upon something yet more remote from our comprehension; it is impossible
we should know which have a necessary union or inconsistency one with
another: For not knowing the root they spring from, not knowing what size,
figure, and texture of parts they are, on which depend, and from which result,
those qualities which make our complex idea of gold, it is impossible we
should know what other qualities result from, or are incompatible with, the
same constitution of the insensible parts of gold; and so consequently must
always co-exist with that complex idea we have of it, or else are inconsistent
with it. [93]
12. Because necessary connection between any secondary and the primary
qualities is undiscoverable by us
The ideas that our complex ones of substances are made up of, and about
which our knowledge concerning substances is most employed, are those of
their secondary qualities: Which depending all (as has been shown) upon the
primary qualities of their minute and insensible parts; or if not upon them,
upon something yet more remote from our comprehension; it is impossible
we should know which have a necessary union or inconsistency one with
another: For not knowing the root they spring from, not knowing what size,
figure, and texture of parts they are, on which depend, and from which result,
those qualities which make our complex idea of gold, it is impossible we
should know what other qualities result from, or are incompatible with, the
same constitution of the insensible parts of gold; and so consequently must
always co-exist with that complex idea we have of it, or else are inconsistent
with it.
…
14. We seek in vain for certain and universal knowledge of unperceived qualities
in substances
[…] For of all the qualities that are co-existent in any subject, without this
dependence and evident connection of their ideas one with another, we
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cannot know certainly any two to co-exist any farther than experience, by our
senses, informs us. Thus though we see the yellow colour, and upon trial find
the weight, malleableness, fusibility, and fixedness, that are united in a piece
of gold; yet because no one of these ideas has any evident dependence, or
necessary connection with the other, we cannot certainly know, that where any
four of these are, the fifth will be there also, how highly probable soever it may
be; because the highest probability amounts not to certainty, without which
there can be no true knowledge. For this co-existence can be no farther known
than it is perceived; and it cannot be perceived but either in particular subjects,
by the observation of our senses, or in general, by the necessary connection
of the ideas themselves.
…
21. Fourthly, of the three real existences of which we have certain knowledge
As to the fourth sort of our knowledge, viz. of the real actual existence of
things, we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence; and a
demonstrative knowledge of the existence of a God; of the existence of any
thing else, we have no other but a sensitive knowledge, which extends not
beyond the objects present to our senses.
…
25. Want of simple ideas that men are capable of having, but have not, because
of their minuteness
If a great, nay, far the greatest part of the several ranks of bodies in the
universe, escape our notice by their remoteness, there are others that are no
less concealed from us by their minute[94]ness. These insensible corpuscles
being the active parts of matter, and the great instruments of nature, on which
depend not only all their secondary qualities, but also most of their natural
operations; our want of precise distinct ideas of their primary qualities keeps
us in an incurable ignorance of what we desire to know about them. I doubt
not but if we could discover the figure, size, texture, and motion of the minute
constituent parts of any two bodies, we should know without trial several of
their operations one upon another, as we do now the properties of a square
or a triangle. Did we know the mechanical affections of the particles of
rhubarb, hemlock, opium, and a man; as a watch-maker does those of a watch,
whereby it performs its operations, and of a file which by rubbing on them will
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alter the figure of any of the wheels; we should be able to tell before-hand,
that rhubarb will purge, hemlock kill, and opium make a man sleep; as well as
a watch-maker can, that a little piece of paper laid on the balance will keep
the watch from going, till it be removed; or that, some small part of it being
rubbed by a file, the machine would quite lose its motion, and the watch go
no more. The dissolving of silver in aqua fortis, and gold in aqua regia, and not
vice versa, would be then perhaps no more difficult to know, than it is to a
smith to understand why the turning of one key will open a lock, and not the
turning of another. But whilst we are destitute of senses acute enough to
discover the minute particles of bodies, and to give us ideas of their
mechanical affections, we must be content to be ignorant of their properties
and ways of operation; nor can we be assured about them any farther, than
some few trials we make are able to reach. But whether they will succeed again
another time, we cannot be certain. This hinders our certain knowledge of
universal truths concerning natural bodies; and our reason carries us herein
very little beyond particular matter of fact.
26. Hence no science of bodies within our reach

And therefore I am apt to doubt, that how far soever human industry may
advance useful and experimental philosophy in physical things, scientifical will
still be out of our reach; because we want perfect and adequate ideas of those
very bodies [95] which are nearest to us, and most under our command. […]
Distinct ideas of the several sorts of bodies that fall under the examination of
our senses perhaps we may have: But adequate ideas, I suspect, we have not
of any one amongst them. And though the former of these will serve us for
common use and discourse, yet whilst we want the latter, we are not capable
of scientifical knowledge; nor shall ever be able to discover general, instructive,
unquestionable truths concerning them. Certainty and demonstration are
things we must not, in these matters, pretend to. By the colour, figure, taste,
and smell, and other sensible qualities, we have as clear and distinct ideas of
sage and hemlock, as we have of a circle and a triangle: But having no ideas
of the particular primary qualities of the minute parts of either of these plants,
nor of other bodies which we would apply them to, we cannot tell what effects
they will produce; nor when we see those effects, can we so much as guess,
much less know, their manner of production. […]
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BOOK 4, CHAPTER 4: OF THE REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE

…
3. What shall be the criterion of ideas agreeing with things?

It is evident the mind knows not things immediately, but only by the
intervention of the ideas it has of them. Our knowledge therefore is real, only
so far as there is a conformity between our ideas and the reality of things. But
what shall be here the criterion? How shall the mind, when it perceives nothing
but its own ideas, know that they agree with things themselves? This, though
it seems not to want difficulty, yet, I think, there be two sorts of ideas, that, we
may be assured, agree with things.
…
6. As, first, all simple ideas are really conformed to things, and, secondly, all
complex ideas, except ideas of substances, are their own archetypes, hence the
reality of mathematical knowledge
I doubt not but it will be easily granted, that the knowledge we have of
mathematical truths, is not only certain, but real knowledge; and not the bare
empty vision of vain insignificant chimeras of the brain: And yet, if we will
consider, we shall find that it is only of our own ideas. The mathematician
considers the truth and properties be[96]longing to a rectangle, or circle, only
as they are in idea in his own mind. For it is possible he never found either of
them existing mathematically, i.e. precisely true, in his life. But yet the
knowledge he has of any truths or properties belonging to a circle, or any
other mathematical figure, are nevertheless true and certain, even of real
things existing; because real things are no farther concerned, nor intended to
be meant by any such propositions, than as things really agree to those
archetypes in his mind. Is it true of the idea of a triangle, that its three angles
are equal to two right ones? It is true also of a triangle, wherever it really exists.
[…]
7. And of moral
And hence it follows that moral knowledge is as capable of real certainty, as
mathematics. For certainty being but the perception of the agreement or
disagreement of our ideas; and demonstration nothing but the perception of
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such agreement, by the intervention of other ideas, or mediums; our moral

ideas, as well as mathematical, being archetypes themselves, and so adequate
and complete ideas; all the agreement or disagreement, which we shall find in
them, will produce real knowledge, as well as in mathematical figures.
…
18. Recapitulation
Wherever we perceive the agreement or disagreement of any of our ideas,
there is certain knowledge: And wherever we are sure those ideas agree with
the reality of things, there is certain real knowledge. Of which agreement of
our ideas, with the reality of things, having here given the marks, I think I have
shown wherein it is, that certainty, real certainty, consists: Which, whatever it
was to others, was, I confess, to me heretofore, one of those desiderata which
I found great want of.
BOOK 4, CHAPTER 6: OF UNIVERSAL PROPOSITIONS, THEIR TRUTH

AND CERTAINTY
…
7. The truth of few universal propositions concerning substances is to be known

because necessary coexistence of simple ideas in substances can in few cases is
to be known
The complex ideas, that our names of the species of substances properly stand
for, are collections of such [97] qualities as have been observed to co-exist in
an unknown substratum, which we call substance: But what other qualities
necessarily co-exist with such combinations, we cannot certainly know, unless
we can discover their natural dependence; which in their primary qualities, we
can go but a very little way in; and in all their secondary qualities, we can
discover no connection at all, for the reasons mentioned, chap. 3. viz. 1.
Because we know not the real constitutions of substances, on which each
secondary quality particularly depends. 2. Did we know that, it would serve us
only for experimental (not universal) knowledge; and reach with certainty no
farther, than that bare instance; because our understandings can discover no
conceivable connection between any secondary quality and any modification
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whatsoever of any of the primary ones. And therefore there are very few
general propositions to be made concerning substances, which can carry with
them undoubted certainty.
…
9. No discoverable necessary connection between nominal essence of gold and

other simple ideas
[…] I would gladly meet with one general affirmation concerning any quality
of gold, that any one can certainly know is true. It will, no doubt, be presently
objected, is not this an universal proposition, ‘All gold is malleable?’ To which
I answer, it is a very certain proposition, if malleableness be a part of the
complex idea the word ‘gold’ stands for. But then here is nothing affirmed of
gold, but that that sound stands for an idea in which malleableness is
contained: And such a sort of truth and certainty as this, it is to say a centaur
is four-footed. But if malleableness makes not a part of the specific essence
the name of gold stands for, it is plain, ‘all gold is malleable,’ is not a certain
proposition. Because let the complex idea of gold be made up of which soever
of its other qualities you please, malleableness will not appear to depend on
that complex idea, nor follow from any simple one contained in it: The
connection that malleableness has (if it has any) with those other qualities,
being only by the intervention of the real constitution of its insensible parts;
which, since we know not, it is impossible we should perceive that connection,
unless we could discover that which ties them together.
…
11. The qualities which make our complex ideas of substances depend mostly
on external, remote and unperceived causes
Had we such ideas of substances, as to [98] know what real constitutions
produce those sensible qualities we find in them, and how those qualities
flowed from thence, we could, by the specific ideas of their real essences in
our own minds, more certainly find out their properties, and discover what
qualities they had or had not, than we can now by our senses: And to know
the properties of gold, it would be no more necessary that gold should exist,
and that we should make experiments upon it, than it is necessary for the
knowing the properties of a triangle, that a triangle should exist in any matter;
the idea in our minds would serve for the one as well as the other. […]
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13. Judgement of probability concerning substances may reach further, but that
is not knowledge
We are not therefore to wonder, if certainty be to be found in very few general
propositions made concerning substances: Our knowledge of their qualities
and properties goes very seldom farther than our senses reach and inform us.
Possibly inquisitive and observing men may, by strength of judgement,
penetrate farther, and on probabilities taken from wary observation, and hints
well laid together, often guess right at what experience has not yet discovered
to them. But this is but guessing still; it amounts only to opinion, and has not
that certainty which is requisite to knowledge. For all general knowledge lies
only in our own thoughts, and consists barely in the contemplation of our own
abstract ideas. Wherever we perceive any agreement or disagreement
amongst them, there we have general knowledge; and by putting the names
of those ideas together accordingly in propositions, can with certainty
pronounce general truths. But because the abstract ideas of substances […]
have a discoverable connection or inconsistency with but a very few other
ideas: The certainty of universal propositions concerning substances is very
narrow and scanty […].
…
15. Whilst our complex ideas of substances contain not ideas of their real
constitutions, we can make but few general certain propositions concerning
them
[…] we cannot with certainty affirm, that all men sleep by intervals; that no man
can be nourished by wood or stones; that all men will be poisoned by hemlock:
Because these ideas have no connection nor repugnancy with this our nominal
essence of man, with this abstract idea that name stands for. We must, in these
and the like, appeal to trial in particular subjects, which can reach but a little
[99] way. We must content ourselves with probability in the rest; but can have
no general certainty, whilst our specific idea of man contains not that real
constitution, which is the root, wherein all his inseparable qualities are united,
and from whence they flow. […] as long as we want ideas of those real
constitutions of different sorts of animals, […] we must not hope to reach
certainty in universal propositions concerning them. Those few ideas only,
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which have a discernible connection with our nominal essence, or any part of
it, can afford us such propositions. But these are so few, and of so little
moment, that we may justly look on our certain general knowledge of
substances, as almost none at all.
16. Wherein lies the general certainty of propositions

To conclude, general propositions, of what kind soever, are then only capable
of certainty, when the terms used in them stand for such ideas, whose
agreement or disagreement, as there expressed, is capable to be discovered
by us. And we are then certain of their truth or falsehood, when we perceive
the ideas the terms stand for to agree or not agree, according as they are
affirmed or denied one of another. Whence we may take notice, that general
certainty is never to be found but in our ideas. Whenever we go to seek it
elsewhere in experiment, or observations without us, our knowledge goes not
beyond particulars. It is the contemplation of our own abstract ideas that alone
is able to afford us general knowledge.
…
BOOK 4, CHAPTER 8: OF TRIFLING PROPOSITIONS

…
7. Some propositions bring no increase to our knowledge, as propositions in

which a part of any complex idea is predicated of the whole as part of the
definition of the term defined, for this teaches but the signification of words
Before a man makes any proposition, he is supposed to understand the terms
he uses in it, or else he talks like a parrot, only making a noise by imitation,
and framing certain sounds, which he has learnt of others: But not as a rational
creature, using them for signs of ideas which he has in his mind. The hearer
also is supposed to understand the terms as the speaker uses them […]. And
therefore he trifles with words, who makes such a proposition, which, when it
is made, contains no more than one [100] of the terms does […]; v.g. a triangle
hath three sides, or saffron is yellow. And this is no farther tolerable, than
where a man goes to explain his terms, to one who is supposed or declares
himself not to understand him
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8. But adds no real knowledge

We can know then the truth of two sorts of propositions with perfect certainty;
the one is, of those trifling propositions which have a certainty in them, but it
is only a verbal certainty, but not instructive. And, secondly, we can know the
truth, and so may be certain in propositions, which affirm something of
another, which is a necessary consequence of its precise complex idea, but not
contained in it: As that the external angle of all triangles is bigger than either
of the opposite internal angles; Which relation of the outward angle to either
of the opposite internal angles, making no part of the complex idea signified
by the name triangle, this is a real truth, and conveys with it instructive real
knowledge.
BOOK 4, CHAPTER 9: OF OUR THREEFOLD KNOWLEDGE OF EXIST-ENCE
1. General propositions that are certain concern not existence

Hitherto we have only considered the essences of things, which being only
abstract ideas, and thereby removed in our thoughts from particular existence
(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) gives us
no knowledge of real existence at all. Where by the way we may take notice,
that universal propositions, of whose truth or falsehood we can have certain
knowledge, concern not existence; and farther, that all particular affirmations
or negations, that would not be certain if they were made general, are only
concerning existence; they declaring only the accidental union or separation
of ideas in things existing, which, in their abstract natures, have no known
necessary union or repugnancy.
2. A threefold knowledge of existence

But leaving the nature of propositions and different ways of predication to be
considered more at large in another place, let us proceed now to enquire
concerning our knowledge of the existence of things, and how we come by it.
I say then, [101] that we have the knowledge of our own existence by intuition;
of the existence of God by demonstration; and of other things by sensation.
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3. Our knowledge of our own existence is intuitive

As for our own existence, we perceive it so plainly and so certainly, that it
neither needs nor is capable of any proof. For nothing can be more evident to
us than our own existence; I think, I reason, I feel pleasure and pain: Can any
of these be more evident to me, than my own existence? if I doubt of all other
things, that very doubt makes me perceive my own existence, and will not
suffer me to doubt of that. For if I know I feel pain, it is evident I have as certain
perception of my own existence, as of the existence of the pain I feel: Or if I
know I doubt, I have as certain perception of the existence of the thing
doubting, as of that thought which I call doubt. Experience then convinces us,
that we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence, and an internal
infallible perception that we are. In every act of sensation, reasoning, or
thinking, we are conscious to ourselves of our own being; and, in this matter,
come not short of the highest degree of certainty.
…
BOOK 4, CHAPTER 11: OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXISTENCE OF

OTHER THINGS
…
13. Only particular propositions concerning concrete existences are knowable

By which it appears, that there are two sorts of propositions. 1. There is one
sort of propositions concerning the existence of any thing answerable to such
an idea: As having the idea of an elephant, phoenix, motion, or an angel, in my
mind, the first and natural enquiry is, Whether such a thing does anywhere
exist? And this knowledge is only of particulars. No existence of any thing
without us, but only of God, can certainly be known farther than our senses
inform us. 2. There is another sort of propositions, wherein is expressed the
agreement or disagreement of our abstract ideas, and their dependence on
one another. Such propositions may be universal and certain. So having the
idea of God and myself, of fear and obedience, I cannot but be sure that God
is to be feared [102] and obeyed by me; and this proposition will be certain,
concerning man in general, if I have made an abstract idea of such a species,
whereof I am one particular. But yet this proposition, how certain soever, that
men ought to fear and obey God proves not to me the existence of men in
the world, but will be true of all such creatures, whenever they do exist: Which
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certainty of such general propositions, depends on the agreement or

disagreement to be discovered in those abstract ideas.
BOOK 4, CHAPTER 15: OF PROBABILIT Y
1. Probability is the appearance of agreement upon fallible proofs

As demonstration is the showing the agreement or disagreement of two ideas,
by the intervention of one or more proofs, which have a constant, immutable,
and visible connection one with another; so probability is nothing but the
appearance of such an agreement or disagreement, by the intervention of
proofs, whose connection is not constant and immutable, or at least is not
perceived to be so, but is, or appears for the most part to be so, and is enough
to induce the mind to judge the proposition to be true or false, rather than
the contrary. For example: In the demonstration of it a man perceives the
certain immutable connection there is of equality between the three angles of
a triangle, and those intermediate ones which are made use of to show their
equality to two right ones […]. But another man, who never took the pains to
observe the demonstration, hearing a mathematician, a man of credit, affirm
the three angles of a triangle to be equal to two right ones, assents to it, i.e.
receives it for true. In which case the foundation of his assent is the probability
of the thing […]: The man, on whose testimony he receives it, not being wont
to affirm any thing contrary to, or besides his knowledge, especially in matters
of this kind. […]
2. It is to supply our want of knowledge

Our knowledge, as has been shown, being very narrow, […] most of the
propositions we think, reason, discourse, nay act upon, are such, as we cannot
have undoubted knowledge [103] of their truth; yet some of them border so
near upon certainty, that we make no doubt at all about them; but assent to
them as firmly, and act, according to that assent, as resolutely, as if they were
infallibly demonstrated, and that our knowledge of them was perfect and
certain. But there being degrees herein from the very neighbourhood of
certainty and demonstration, quite down to improbability and unlikeness,
even to the confines of impossibility; and also degrees of assent from full
assurance and confidence, quite down to conjecture, doubt, and distrust: I
shall come now, (having, as I think, found out the bounds of human knowledge
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and certainty) in the next place, to consider the several degrees and grounds
of probability, and assent or faith.
3. Being that which makes us presume things to be true, before we know them
to be so
Probability is likeliness to be true, the very notation of the word signifying such
a proposition, for which there be arguments or proofs, to make it pass or be
received for true. The entertainment the mind gives this sort of propositions,
is called belief, assent, or opinion, which is the admitting or receiving any
proposition for true, upon arguments or proofs that are found to persuade us
to receive it as true, without certain knowledge that it is so. And herein lies the
difference between probability and certainty, faith and knowledge, that in all
the parts of knowledge there is intuition; each immediate idea, each step has
its visible and certain connection; in belief, not so. That which makes me
believe is something extraneous to the thing I believe; something not evidently
joined on both sides to, and so not manifestly showing the agreement or
disagreement of those ideas that are under consideration.
In the preceding exposition Locke divides our knowledge into

groups according to four quite independent canons of division:
(1) Knowledge according to the respect in which the ideas
‘agree’ or ‘disagree’.
(a) Identity or diversity (that is incompatibility). This appears to
give us knowledge of obvious logical truths, for example ‘White is
white’ and ‘Black is not white.’ [104]
(b) Relation. This seems to refer to the logical relations involved
in any deductive process whereby the logical connection of
different ideas can be established.
(c) Coexistence. This kind of agreement or disagreement is that
de facto togetherness or apartness which is to be found in the
propositions of natural science. To take Locke’s example: ‘All gold
is fixed’ (that is, roughly is solid, non-volatile, stable) asserts the
coexistence (‘agreement’) of the defining properties of gold with
the further property of ‘fixedness’.
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(d) Real existence. This is the basic relation of ideas to realities:

‘Actual real existence agreeing to any idea’ as Locke expresses it.
As to this, Locke himself admits that both identity (or diversity)
and coexistence are in fact themselves relations. Nevertheless he
seems to regard them as so peculiar and important as to be singled
out for special treatment. Hence we may regard the category of
‘relations’ as comprising relations other than identity or diversity
and coexistence; more especially logical relations, since Locke
regards it as particularly applicable where a deduction is involved.
As for the fourth of his categories, it falls wholly outside Locke’s
scheme of knowledge. He seems to be saying that we can show
that some entity ‘A’ exists, by showing that the idea of A and the
idea of existence ‘agree’.
This is one of the profoundest of all logical fallacies, of crucial
importance for philosophy as a form of human thought. Its
classical exposure was performed by Kant and again by Russell,
who proved that it rests on treatment of such words as ‘exists’, ‘is
real’, ‘is in time and space’ and the like as if they were predicates
on a par with ‘is red’ or ‘is jealous’. That this is a fallacy is shown
by the fact that otherwise we could cause entities to exist by the
arbitrary fiat of our thoughts, by so arranging our ideas that, since
the entire process remained mental, we could make any one of
them – say the idea of a unicorn or of a man with a head bigger
than the sun – ‘agree’ with our ‘idea’ of existence; for ideas at least
are in our power. Composers of fairy tales do just this, and, having
made them ‘agree’ with ‘existence’, thereby by this means alone
make them [105] literally exist. This is the fallacy on which rests
the famous ontological argument for the existence of God,
invented in the Middle Ages and restated by Descartes; and it is
significant that Locke gives as his illustration of knowledge of the
fourth category, ‘God is.’ On the other hand, and perhaps equally
significantly, Locke himself seeks to establish the existence of God
not by the ontological argument, but by a causal argument.
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We obviously cannot prove that some entity exists by showing

that the idea of that entity and the idea of existence ‘agree’; rather
we need to use some procedure appropriate to the type of entity in
question (for example, observation, or argument based on
observation, in the case of material objects). Locke, having defined
knowledge as the agreement or disagreement of ideas, has thereby
debarred himself from allowing that we know the truth of any
existential statements – that is, those asserting existence – outside
the realm of our free thoughts and free imagination.
(2) The second canon of classification of knowledge is
according to what Locke calls ‘degree’, that is, degree of certainty.
(a) Intuitive knowledge, where the mind perceives the truth of
the statement immediately.
(b) Demonstrative knowledge, where steps of reasoning are
required.
(c) Sensitive knowledge, that is, knowledge of the existence of
particular objects outside us.
With regard to (a) and (b), Locke’s criterion of certainty is
evidently (like that of Descartes) psychological.
‘Demonstration’ (that is, deduction) consists of a series of steps,
each of which must, however, be perceived intuitively. It is
therefore inferior to ‘intuition’ only in so far as we are obliged to
rely upon memory in holding together the steps. Intuition itself is
utterly incontrovertible. The metaphor of the infallible inner eye
(cf. Introduction, p. 18), as opposed to the poor sense faculties,
comes out particularly clearly in the discussion of intuition; and this
despite the fact that Locke’s fame rests, rightly, on his victories
over the great seventeenth-century champions of infallible rational
knowledge. [106]
Sensitive knowledge is, within Locke’s terms of reference,
simply not knowledge. In the first place he himself admits that it
does not reach perfectly to either of the foregoing degrees of
certainty; yet he claims that it goes beyond bare probability. It
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oscillates, as it were, on the borderline between knowledge and

opinion. But for Locke this borderline is a line (of no thickness)
and not an area: ‘what I know, that I am certain of; and what I am
certain of, that I know’.41 The distinction between knowledge
(certainty) and opinion (probability) is an absolute distinction of
kind and not a distinction of degree. There is no halfway house.
Moreover, this kind of knowledge does not conform to his earlier
definition: there is here no question of the ‘agreement’ or
‘disagreement’ of ideas. Locke informs us that ‘this certainty is as
great as our happiness or misery, beyond which we have no
concernment to be’ (4. 2. 14: p. 91 above), and while this may
entitle him to be considered as one of the great exponents of
English common sense it will not do in one who claims to
inaugurate a new way of thinking. Locke is supposedly concerned
with crucial questions of what we can or cannot know, and not
with pragmatic questions about what we need to think that we
know in order to be happy.
(3) The distinction between ‘actual’ knowledge and ‘habitual’
knowledge.
This valuable dichotomy is almost self-explanatory. I am
properly said to know throughout my life many propositions, for
example, of history or mathematics, that I learned at school, even
though I may subsequently think of such a proposition only very
seldom or never at all. I know these propositions in the sense that
if occasion arises for me to consider them, then I am quite certain
of their truth, but of course I do not hold them constantly before
my conscious mind. This sort of knowledge Locke calls ‘habitual’,
and it is obvious that at any given moment by far the greatest part
of our knowledge is in this sense ‘habitual’. With this Locke
contrasts ‘actual’ knowledge, ‘the present view the mind has of the
agreement or disagreement of any of its ideas, or of the relation
they have to [107] one another’ (4. 1. 8. 1), that is, the knowledge
41 Letter of 29 June 1697 to Edward Stillingfleet.

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that we have at a given moment of a proposition which we know

to be true, and are at that moment consciously considering.
(4) Two types of knowledge, distinguished according to
whether the proposition known is ‘real’ or ‘trifling’.
Here Locke is, to some degree, anticipating Kant’s distinction
between synthetic and analytic truths; like Kant he fails to
recognize the extent or the importance of the domain covered by
analytic truths.
Locke himself does not see any philosophical problems in
‘habitual’ knowledge, regarding it as a kind of extension (by means
of memory) of ‘actual’ knowledge, in which he is primarily
interested; and he (mistakenly) regards ‘trifling’ propositions as
quite insignificant for the theory of knowledge. Knowledge for him
is, in the main, in his sense of these words, both ‘actual’ and ‘real’.
The gravest objection to Locke’s account of knowledge is that,
by his own definition, all knowledge is only of the relations of ideas
in our minds. How then can we be sure that any of our knowledge
is knowledge of the real world? Does it even make sense to ask
how we could find out whether our knowledge is applied to
anything beyond our ideas? Or what it means to say that there is
such a ‘beyond’? Locke, by his representationalism, has finally
trapped human knowledge within the circle of the human mind.
Locke himself is, at times, not unaware of this problem, which
is more than can be said of his uncritical French disciples. He tries
to answer it by declaring that our knowledge is genuine ‘only so far
as there is a conformity between our ideas and the reality of things’.
And there is this ‘conformity’ or ‘agreement’ in, for example:
(1) Our simple ideas. For how could they err? Being without
parts, simple, they cannot fail to be authentic copies of whatever
has emitted them, and therefore true. It is not easy to know what
is meant by saying that all ‘simple’ thoughts, images, and so on, are
true – cannot mislead. All ‘ideas’ known to ordinary man can lead
astray; and the chemical metaphor of simple elements is not
happily [108] applied to psychology. In any case the knowledge
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here referred to is sensitive knowledge, which we have already seen

not to be knowledge within Locke’s definition of knowledge.
(2) Complex ideas, other than those of substance. Under this
head Locke concludes that our mathematical and moral knowledge
is in this sense genuine.
About mathematical knowledge Locke shows great acumen. He
sees that, for example, geometrical propositions are true of certain
ideal constructions of the human mind and not of, for example,
chalk marks or surveyor’s chains in the real world. All that pure
geometry can tell us is that if objects in the world did conform
precisely to Euclid’s definition of points, lines and planes (as they
could not), and did obey his axioms, then Euclid’s theorems would
be true of such objects; ‘real things are no farther concerned, nor
intended to be meant, by any such propositions, than as things
really agree to those archetypes in his mind’ (4. 4. 6: p. 96 above).
But his acumen does not extend to seeing that in this case the
propositions of pure mathematics are not knowledge about the
world in the sense in which ‘real’ propositions differ from ‘trifling’
ones. Indeed, the facts about mathematical propositions to which
he draws attention, that is, that they are not verified or falsified,
confirmed or disconfirmed, by events in the ‘real’, empirical world,
are the very facts which later induced some philosophers to call
mathematical propositions ‘analytic’.
Locke’s views on moral philosophy are very strange. In Book 4
he claims that the truths of ethics can be rigorously deduced from
the ideas of God and of ourselves as rational beings. Though
frequently urged, in view of the supreme importance of the issue,
to expound such demonstrative ethics, he never did so. What he
does produce is two palpably verbal truths, or in his own phrase
‘trifling’ propositions, as examples of the results of such rigorous
deduction. ‘Where there is no property, there is no injustice’ (4. 3.
18), he tells us, is a proposition as certain as any demonstration in
Euclid: for the idea of property being a right to anything, and the
idea to which the name ‘injustice’ is given being the [109] invasion
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JO H N LO C K E
or violation of that right, it is evident that these ideas being thus

established, and these names annexed to them, I can as certainly
know this proposition to be true as that a triangle has three angles
equal to two right ones. On Locke’s definitions of ‘property’ and
‘injustice’, I can indeed certainly know this proposition, for it
follows from the definitions, and illuminates us not at all.
Locke’s account of scientific knowledge, or rather of what
scientific knowledge would be like if we had any, is one of the most
interesting things in the Essay. The difficulty is this. According to
Locke our general words for kinds of things, for example, ‘gold’,
stand only for ‘nominal essences’ or ‘abstract general ideas’; that is,
for some set of characteristics which we have always found to be
coexistent, although we can provide no rational (that is, for Locke,
demonstrable, as are the truths of mathematics) explanation for this
constant conjunction. Hence for him a proposition like ‘All gold is
malleable’ belongs to one of two types. Either malleableness has
been specifically included as part of the definition of gold (‘part of
the complex idea the word “gold” stands for’, as Locke puts it), or
it has not. In the first case, the proposition follows ex vi terminorum 42
and is obviously analytic (‘trifling’); in the second case, since, alas,
we have no deductively certain knowledge of the interdependence
of characteristics, we cannot know for certain that the proposition
is always true, ‘nor can we be assured about them any farther, than
some few trials we make are able to reach’ (4. 3. 25: p. 94 above).
Consequently, however far ‘useful and experimental philosophy’
may be advanced in ‘physical things’, yet ‘scientifical will still be out
of our reach’ (4. 3. 26: ibid.). Locke has here stumbled, as it were
by accident, on the notorious problem of induction’.43 Stumbled
by accident, for he does not seem to have realised that the problem
is a logical one; on the contrary, he thinks that there would be no
‘By the force of the terms’, i.e. because of the meaning of the terms.
42
For a statement and discussion of this problem in connection with

43
Hume, who first explicitly formulated it, see pp. 185 ff. below.
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JO H N LO C K E
such problem if the world were in certain respects empirically

different.
When Locke took over from scholasticism the idea of a [110]
‘real essence’, that which makes a thing what it is, he used the
expression very differently from the schoolmen. For them it was a
metaphysical notion independent of material properties. But he
identified the real essence of substances with the ‘real internal, but
generally, in substances, unknown, constitution of things, whereon
their discoverable qualities depend’ (3. 3. 15: p. 75 above), that is,
the primary (physical) qualities of the minute particles. In some
passages of Book 4 he seems to hold that if the world were
empirically different in one respect – namely that we should have
‘senses acute enough’ (2. 23. 11; 4. 3. 25: pp. 64, 94 above) to detect
the primary qualities of the minute particles of substances – we
should be able to deduce all the properties of those substances; as
if primary qualities and these other properties were connected by a
species of quasi-logical necessary connections, needing not
observation but deductive power to trace their subtle paths.
Whatever inklings in the matter Hobbes or others may have had,
it was not until Hume’s revolutionary theses had been put forward
that it was realised that the relation between logically distinct
natural entities could not, in principle, be deductive, or knowable
a priori; and that the relations between Locke’s minute atomic
structure, however fine, detected by senses however acute, and
other, grosser, ‘macroscopic’, properties of a material object, could
be only objects of observation, or inductive reasoning, or inspired
conjecture, but not of deductive – quasi-mathematical – inference.
At times Locke admits that, even if our senses were acute enough
to detect the primary qualities of the minute particles, we should
still be baffled by our ignorance of the connection between these
and the macroscopic properties; but here again he seems to think
that this ignorance is an empirical fact, and that, if it were removed,
then again we should have a deductive science of nature. In short,
the problem of induction is for him not a logical one – about the
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JO H N LO C K E
nature of the reasoning which allows us to move from the known

to the less known or unknown – but is due to the complexity of
the world, which defeats our feeble senses and reasoning powers.
Thus Locke reduces human knowledge to a very meagre [111]
sum. All general propositions are only about our ideas, and tell us
nothing about the existence of objects in the real world. The most
that they can tell us about the world is something hypothetical, for
example that if an object has certain properties (answers to a
certain idea), then it must also (the nature of this ‘must’ being left
unclear) have certain other properties; but whether there exist
objects with certain properties we cannot know.
To this Locke adds three sorts of propositions which he claims
that we can know, which do assert the existence of particular
objects in the world:
(1) Each of us has an intuitive knowledge of the existence of
his own mind.
(2) We have knowledge by deduction of the existence of God.
(3) We have sensitive knowledge of the existence of particular
objects outside us.
We have already seen that Locke should not, by his own
definition, have called sensitive knowledge knowledge at all. His
deductive proof of the existence of God rests upon obsolete
metaphysical premisses which afford no light to a post-medieval
reader. Our supposed intuitive knowledge of the existence of our
own minds (Locke takes over unchanged the famous Cogito
argument) belongs to the history of Cartesian fallacies. Apart from
this last, Locke is left with an assembly of propositions, which,
depending as they do on ‘the agreement or disagreement of our
ideas’ (4. 3. 9; 4. 4. 7: pp. 91, 96 above) are not about the real world,
and which we should today be inclined to call ‘analytic’. To the
confinement of human knowledge within this melancholy compass
Locke has been brought by a combination of various doctrines,
unplausible in themselves and impossible to combine: insistence
on a mathematico-deductive standard of certainty in knowledge; a
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JO H N LO C K E
representative theory of knowledge which excluded the real world

from the very start; a mechanical model of the mind; and finally a
non-empiricist belief in the existence of a capacity for intuitive
knowledge which, in certain fortunate cases, affords short cuts
across territory more slowly and painfully traversed by [112]
observation, experiment, memory and inductive reasoning, and
which could, if only the world were different, do away with these
inefficient methods altogether.
These are Locke’s faults and errors. His merits are very great:
he asked questions the answers to which by philosophers of greater
genius created modern empiricism; established the connection
between philosophical criticism and action, and scientific
processes and thought; and he used intelligible language,
destroying the magic of scholastic and rationalist terminology,
which was the greatest of all obstacles to intellectual progress. [113]
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Voltaire
Jean François Marie Arouet (to which he himself added the name
of Voltaire) was born in 1694 and became the most famous
individual in the eighteenth century. Poet, dramatist, essayist,
historian, novelist, philosopher, scientific amateur, his claim to
immortality rests on his polemical genius and his power of ridicule,
in which, to this day, he knows no equal. The friend of kings and
the implacable enemy of the Roman Church and, indeed, of all
institutional Christianity, he was the most admired and dreaded
writer of the century, and by his unforgettable and deadly mockery
did more to undermine the foundations of the established order
than any of its other opponents. He died in 1778, the intellectual
and aesthetic dictator of the civilized world of his day.
Voltaire was not an original philosopher, but he did more to
increase the prestige and the understanding of the new empiricism
than any other human being. Locke seemed to him, as to so many
of his most enlightened contemporaries, the genius who, in his
tentative and modest fashion, had done for the human mind what
Newton had done for nature. He, and the generation which he had
done so much to educate and liberate, believed that by the
scrupulous use of genetic psychology – although they did not call
it that – the functioning of everything in man and in nature could
be explained, and an end put to all those dark mysteries and
grotesque fairy tales (the fruit of indolence, blindness and
deliberate chicanery) which went by the names of theology,
metaphysics and other brands of concealed dogma or superstition,
with which unscrupulous knaves had for so long befuddled the
stupid and benighted multitudes whom they murdered, enslaved,
[114] oppressed and exploited.
The passage which follows is a characteristic testimonial to
Locke as the great spreader of light, and expresses the simple faith
in the new genetic science common to the entire European
Enlightenment. The growth of science would not only provide
knowledge of all there was in the world and in the mind, and of
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V O LT A I RE
how it worked. It would also tell men what their natures – part of
the vast harmonious whole called ‘nature’ – needed; how to obtain
it by the most painless and efficient means; and therefore how to
be wise, rational, happy and good. Some of the virtues and
shortcomings of this noble, in part true, in part utopian, vision
have been examined in the commentaries on specific texts by
Locke.
…
Such a multitude of reasoners having written the romance of the soul, a sage
at last arose, who gave, with an air of the greatest modesty, the history of it.
Mr Locke has displayed the human soul in the same manner as an excellent
anatomist explains the springs of the human body. He everywhere takes the
light of physics for his guide. He sometimes presumes to speak affirmatively,
but then he presumes also to doubt. Instead of concluding at once what we
know not, he examines gradually what we would know. He takes an infant at
the instant of his birth; he traces, step by step, the progress of his
understanding; examines what things he has in common with beasts, and what
he possesses above them. Above all, he consults himself; the being conscious
that he himself thinks [sc. Above all, he consults his own testimony, the
awareness of his own thought: il consulte surtout son propre témoignage, la
conscience de sa pensée].
From ‘On Mr Locke’, Letters concerning the English Nation [trans. John
Lockman and checked by Voltaire] (London, 1733), letter 13, 98–9044
44 [The French passage quoted in clarification at the end of the above
passage is from Voltaire’s French text, first published in ‘Basle’ (sc.

London) in 1734, and usually entitled Lettres philosophiques. In the first
edition of AE the following translation by Aline Berlin was used: ‘Many
a philosopher has written the tale of the soul’s adventures, but now a
sage has appeared who has, more modestly, written its history. Locke has
developed human reason before men, as an excellent anatomist unfolds
the mechanism of the human body. Aided everywhere by the torch of
physics, he dares at times to affirm, but he also dares to doubt. Instead
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V O LT A I RE
[115]
of collecting in one sweeping definition what we do not know, he

explores by degrees what we desire to know. He takes a child at the
moment of its birth, step by step he follows the progress of its
understanding; he sees what it has in common with the beasts, and
wherein it is set above them; he is guided throughout by the testimony
that is in himself, consciousness of his own thought.’]
107
George Berkeley
George Berkeley (1685–1753) was born and educated in Ireland,
where he spent the greater part of his life. He displayed his brilliant
gifts in his early twenties; the works which secured his immortality
were all published before he reached the age of thirty. He taught at
Trinity College, Dublin, until, in 1725, he conceived the project of
founding a college in Bermuda for the training of missionaries.
Such were his extraordinary natural goodness and charm, to the
fascination of which almost all who met him bore testimony, that
he very nearly succeeded in extracting funds for his various
benevolent schemes from Walpole’s unsentimental government.
In pursuit of his educational and missionary purposes, he settled
for three years in Newport, Rhode Island, and was one of the
benefactors of Yale University. He returned to England in 1731,
and in 1734 was appointed Bishop of Cloyne, in Ireland, where he
remained, writing and administering his diocese, until 1752, when
he settled in Oxford. He died in that city a year later, widely loved
and universally mourned.
Berkeley is usually regarded as being at the same time the acutest
critic and the legitimate successor of Locke, and his views are
represented as a unique contribution to, and an essential link in,
the development of British Empiricism – the ‘natural’ bridge
between the ‘common sense’ doctrines of Locke and the
‘scepticism’ of Hume. But this is at most a half truth. Berkeley was
certainly in one sense an empiricist: he tried to give an intelligible
and coherent account of the ‘outer’ and the ‘inner’ worlds whose
truth could be established by direct verification [116] in normal
everyday experience without recourse to special metaphysical
devices or reference to occult entities beyond the bounds of the
senses. And he went further in this direction, and attacked the
ontologies both of the seventeenth-century rationalists and of their
scholastic predecessors in a more radical fashion than Locke, or
indeed anyone before him. In this sense he is an even more
fanatical empiricist than Hobbes.
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G E O RG E B E RK E L E Y
But his outlook was wholly different from that of either Hobbes
or Locke – indeed, in one sense, directly opposed to theirs. Both
Hobbes and Locke were wholly under the spell of the scientific
revolution of their day. Hobbes set himself to extend its methods
directly to the fields of ethics and politics, and more cursorily to
logic and psychology. Locke, more cautiously and tentatively, also
attempted this task, as well as an interpretation of the doctrines of
the new physical sciences which made them both intelligible to,
and compatible with the findings of, ordinary common sense. He
is, among other things, the father of all those interpreters and
popularisers of the sciences who try to represent them as saying, in
their own technical terminologies, something which not only does
not contradict common sense, but can, less precisely but still not
inaccurately, be conveyed in ordinary prose; and, in the course of
such expositions, in fact themselves cast alternate light and
darkness on the subject, invent their own special vocabularies, and
propagate their own mythologies, which in their turn demand –
and breed – interpreters and specialists, until the needs of ordinary
men and of their allegedly simple minds are all but forgotten.
Berkeley’s approach is totally opposed to this. His position is
that of a Christian believer with an inclination to mysticism. The
world is for him a spectacle of continuous spiritual life, in the first
place in the mind of God, and secondarily in the minds of his
creatures, men. This is not, for him, a philosophical theory or
hypothesis, but a direct vision. He is principally concerned to deny
what is to him, oddly enough, at once atheistical and unintelligible
– the assertion that there exists something called matter,
perceptible neither to the [117] senses nor to the imagination,
independent of minds either divine or human, whose properties
cause the world to behave as it does and are the proper study of
rational men. This is to Berkeley a genuine chimera, and the source
of all our confusions, intellectual and spiritual. His philosophy is
directed to the demonstration that nothing exists save spiritual
activity, that is, the creative process of spirits – God’s infinite spirit
109
and men’s finite souls – and, dependent upon them, as their

content or modification, human experience: imagination, memory,
thoughts, expectations, dreams, feelings, and above all the
sensations, the combinations and procession of which are the
external world.
This vision of the universe is at once more ruthlessly empirical
than Locke’s, with no room in it for material objects independent
of experience – ultimate lumps of stuff, mysterious substrata in
which the data of the senses ‘inhere’, which Locke cannot either
explain or eliminate – and one that is rooted in a pre-Renaissance,
medieval spiritualism which conceives of all there is as consisting
of spirits and what they create or enjoy. This is the positive content
of Berkeley’s metaphysics. As for the paradoxes which caused so
much stir and incredulity, they are his polemical weapon, designed
to eliminate the figments with which philosophers have, in his
view, peopled the world: first and foremost among them inanimate
matter, uncreated and existing by itself, dependent on nothing; and
secondly attributes – universals or properties of objects, whether
mathematical magnitudes or sense qualities and relations, which
have been accorded similarly independent status not only by
Platonists or Aristotelians of all periods, but by Cartesians,
Leibnizians, and, however uncertainly and half-heartedly, by Locke
himself. The celebrated and cogent pages in which Berkeley tries
to explode these, for him, central myths and confusions of
rationalism and materialism, and to explain how words and
symbols relate to things, possess a classical lucidity and beauty of
expression never again attained in Western philosophy.
The following selections are from A Treatise Concerning the
Principles of Human Knowledge. [118]
INTRODUCTION
…
6. In order to prepare the mind of the reader for the easier conceiving what
follows, it is proper to premise somewhat, by way of introduction, concerning
110
the nature and abuse of language. But the unravelling this matter leads me in
some measure to anticipate my design, by taking notice of what seems to have
had a chief part in rendering speculation intricate and perplexed, and to have
occasioned innumerable errors and difficulties in almost all parts of
knowledge. And that is the opinion that the mind hath a power of framing
abstract ideas or notions of things. He who is not a perfect stranger to the
writings and disputes of philosophers, must needs acknowledge that no small
part of them are spent about abstract ideas. These are in a more especial
manner, thought to be the object of those sciences which go by the name of
Logic and Metaphysics, and of all that which passes under the notion of the
most abstracted and sublime learning, in all which one shall scarce find any
question handled in such a manner, as does not suppose their existence in the
mind, and that it is well acquainted with them.
7. It is agreed on all hands, that the qualities or modes of things do never really
exist each of them apart by itself, and separated from all others, but are mixed,
as it were, and blended together, several in the same object. But we are told,
the mind being able to consider each quality singly, or abstracted from those
other qualities with which it is united, does by that means frame to itself
abstract ideas. For example, there is perceived by sight an object extended,
coloured, and moved: this mixed or compound idea the mind resolving into
its simple, constituent parts, and viewing each by itself, exclusive of the rest,
does frame the abstract ideas of extension, colour, and motion. Not that it is
possible for colour or motion to exist without extension: but only that the mind
can frame to itself by abstraction the idea of colour exclusive of extension, and
of motion exclusive of both colour and extension. [119]
8. Again, the mind having observed that in the particular extensions perceived
by sense, there is something common and alike in all, and some other things
peculiar, as this or that figure or magnitude, which distinguish them one from
another; it considers apart or singles out by itself that which is common,
making thereof a most abstract idea of extension, which is neither line, surface,
nor solid, nor has any figure or magnitude but is an idea entirely prescinded
from all these. So likewise the mind by leaving out of the particular colours
perceived by sense, that which distinguishes them one from another, and
retaining that only which is common to all, makes an idea of colour in abstract
111
which is neither red, nor blue, nor white, nor any other determinate colour.
And in like manner by considering motion abstractedly not only from the body
moved, but likewise from the figure it describes, and all particular directions
and velocities, the abstract idea of motion is framed; which equally
corresponds to all particular motions whatsoever that may be perceived by
sense.
9. And as the mind frames to itself abstract ideas of qualities or modes, so

does it, by the same precision or mental separation, attain abstract ideas of
the more compounded beings, which include several coexistent qualities. For
example, the mind having observed that Peter, James, and John, resemble
each other, in certain common agreements of shape and other qualities, leaves
out of the complex or compounded idea it has of Peter, James, and any other
particular man, that which is peculiar to each, retaining only what is common
to all; and so makes an abstract idea wherein all the particulars equally partake,
abstracting entirely from and cutting off all those circumstances and
differences, which might determine it to any particular existence. And after this
manner it is said we come by the abstract idea of man or, if you please,
humanity or human nature; wherein it is true there is included colour, because
there is no man but has some colour, but then it can be neither white, nor
black, nor any particular colour; because there is no one particular colour
wherein all men partake. So likewise there is included stature, but then it [120]
is neither tall stature nor low stature, nor yet middle stature, but something
abstracted from all these. And so of the rest. Moreover, there being a great
variety of other creatures that partake in some parts, but not all, of the
complex idea of man, the mind leaving out those parts which are peculiar to
men, and retaining those only which are common to all the living creatures,
frameth the idea of animal, which abstracts not only from all particular men,
but also all birds, beasts, fishes, and insects. The constituent parts of the
abstract idea of animal are body, life, sense, and spontaneous motion. By body
is meant, body without any particular shape or figure, there being no one
shape or figure common to all animals, without covering, either of hair or
feathers, or scales, etc. nor yet naked: hair, feathers, scales, and nakedness
being the distinguishing properties of particular animals, and for that reason
left out of the abstract idea. Upon the same account the spontaneous motion
112
must be neither walking, nor flying, nor creeping, it is nevertheless a motion,

but what that motion is, it is not easy to conceive.
10. Whether others have this wonderful faculty of abstracting their ideas, they
best can tell: for myself I find indeed I have a faculty of imagining, or
representing to myself the ideas of those particular things I have perceived
and of variously compounding and dividing them. I can imagine a man with
two heads or the upper parts of a man joined to the body of a horse. I can
consider the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated
from the rest of the body. But then whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must
have some particular shape and colour. Likewise the idea of man that I frame
to myself, must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a
crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of
thought conceive the abstract idea above described. And it is equally
impossible for me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body
moving, and which is neither swift nor slow, curvilinear nor rectilinear; and the
like may be said of all other abstract general ideas whatsoever. To be plain, I
own myself [121] able to abstract in one sense, as when I consider some
particular parts or qualities separated from others, with which though they are
united in some object, yet, it is possible they may really exist without them.
But I deny that I can abstract one from another, or conceive separately, those
qualities which it is impossible should exist so separated; or that I can frame a
general notion by abstracting from particulars in the manner aforesaid. Which
two last are the proper acceptations of abstraction. And there are grounds to
think most men will acknowledge themselves to be in my case. The generality
of men which are simple and illiterate never pretend to abstract notions. It is
said they are difficult and not to be attained without pains and study. We may
therefore reasonably conclude that, if such there be, they are confined only to
the learned.
11. I proceed to examine what can be alleged in defence of the doctrine of

abstraction, and try if I can discover what it is that inclines the men of
speculation to embrace an opinion, so remote from common sense as that
seems to be. There has been a late deservedly esteemed philosopher, who, no
doubt, has given it very much countenance by seeming to think the having
113
abstract general ideas is what puts the widest difference in point of

understanding betwixt man and beast.
[…] the having of general ideas [saith he], is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt
man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain
to. For it is evident we observe no footsteps in them of making use of general signs for
universal ideas; from which we have reason to imagine, that they have not the faculty of
abstracting, or making general ideas, since they have no use of words, or any other
general signs. [Locke, Essay, 2. 11. 10]
And a little after.
And therefore, I think we may suppose, that it is in this that the species of brutes are
discriminated from man; and it is that proper difference wherein they are wholly
separated, and which at last widens to so vast a distance: For if they have any ideas at
all, and are not bare machines (as some would have them) we cannot deny them to have
some reason. It seems as evident to me, that they do some of them in [122] certain
instances reason, as that they have sense; but it is only in particular ideas, just as they
received them from their senses. They are the best of them tied up within those narrow
bounds, and have not (as I think) the faculty to enlarge them by any kind of abstraction.
[ibid. 2. 11. 11]
I readily agree with this learned author, that the faculties of brutes can by no
means attain to abstraction. But then if this be made the distinguishing
property of that sort of animals, I fear a great many of those that pass for men
must be reckoned into their number. The reason that is here assigned why we
have no grounds to think brutes have abstract general ideas, is that we observe
in them no use of words or any other general signs; which is built on this
supposition, to wit, that the making use of words, implies the having general
ideas. From which it follows, that men who use language are able to abstract
or generalize their ideas. That this is the sense and arguing of the author will
further appear by his answering the question he in another place puts. ‘Since
all things that exist are only particulars, how come we by general terms?’ His
answer is, ‘Words become general, by being made the signs of general ideas’
114
[ibid. 3. 3. 6: p. 70 above]. But it seems that a word becomes general by being

made the sign, not of an abstract general idea but, of several particular ideas,
any one of which it indifferently suggests to the mind. For example, when it is
said the change of motion is proportional to the impressed force, or that
whatever has extension is divisible; these propositions are to be understood of
motion and extension in general, and nevertheless it will not follow that they
suggest to my thoughts an idea of motion without a body moved, or any
determinate direction and velocity, or that I must conceive an abstract general
idea of extension, which is neither line, surface nor solid, neither great nor
small, black, white, nor red, nor of any other determinate colour. It is only
implied that whatever motion I consider, whether it be swift or slow,
perpendicular, horizontal or oblique, or in whatever object, the axiom
concerning it holds equally true. [123] As does the other of every particular
extension, it matters not whether line, surface or solid, whether of this or that
magnitude or figure.
12. By observing how ideas become general, we may the better judge how
words are made so. And here it is to be noted that I do not deny absolutely
there are general ideas, but only that there are any abstract general ideas; for
in the passages above quoted, wherein there is mention of general ideas, it is
always supposed that they are formed by abstraction, after the manner set
forth in Sect. viii. and ix.. Now if we will annex a meaning to our words, and
speak only of what we can conceive, I believe we shall acknowledge, that an
idea, which considered in itself is particular, becomes general, by being made
to represent or stand for all other particular ideas of the same sort. To make
this plain by an example, suppose a geometrician is demonstrating the
method, of cutting a line in two equal parts. He draws, for instance, a black
line of an inch in length, this which in itself is a particular line is nevertheless
with regard to its signification general, since as it is there used, it represents
all particular lines whatsoever; so that what is demonstrated of it, is
demonstrated of all lines, or, in other words, of a line in general. And as that
particular line becomes general, by being made a sign, so the name line which
taken absolutely is particular, by being a sign is made general. And as the
former owes its generality, not to its being the sign of an abstract or general
line, but of all particular right lines that may possibly exist, so the latter must
115
be thought to derive its generality from the same cause, namely, the various
particular lines which it indifferently denotes.
13. To give the reader a yet clearer view of the nature of abstract ideas, and
the uses they are thought necessary to, I shall add one more passage out of
the Essay on Human Understanding, which is as follows.
[…] abstract ideas are not so obvious or easy to children, or the yet unexercised mind,
as particular ones. If they seem so to grown men, it is only because by constant and
familiar use they are made so. For when we nicely reflect upon them, we [124] shall find,
that general ideas are fictions and contrivances of the mind, that carry difficulty with
them, and do not so easily offer themselves, as we are apt to imagine. For example, does
it not require some pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle (which is yet
none of the most abstract, comprehensive, and difficult), for it must be neither oblique,
nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon; but all and none of these at
once. In effect, it is something imperfect, that cannot exist; an idea wherein some parts
of several different and inconsistent ideas are put together. It is true, the mind, in this
imperfect state, has need of such ideas, and makes all the haste to them it can, for the
conveniency of communication and enlargement of knowledge; to both which it is
naturally very much inclined. But yet one has reason to suspect such ideas are marks of
our imperfection; at least this is enough to show, that the most abstract and general
ideas are not those that the mind is first and most easily acquainted with, nor such as
its earliest knowledge is conversant about. [4. 7. 9]
If any man has the faculty of framing in his mind such an idea of a triangle as
is here described, it is in vain to pretend to dispute him out of it, nor would I
go about it. All I desire is, that the reader would fully and certainly inform
himself whether he has such an idea or no. And this, methinks, can be no hard
task for any one to perform. What more easy than for any one to look a little
into his own thoughts, and there try whether he has, or can attain to have, an
idea that shall correspond with the description that is here given of the general
idea of a triangle, which is, neither oblique, nor rectangle, equilateral,
equicrural, nor scalenon; but all and none of these at once?
…
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16. But here it will be demanded, how we can know any proposition to be true
of all particular triangles, except we have first seen it demonstrated of the
abstract idea of a triangle which equally agrees to all? For because a property
may be demonstrated to agree to some one particular triangle, it will not
thence follow that it equally belongs to any other triangle, which in all
re[125]spects is not the same with it. For example, having demonstrated that
the three angles of an isosceles rectangular triangle are equal to two right
ones, I cannot therefore conclude this affection agrees to all other triangles,
which have neither a right angle, nor two equal sides. It seems therefore that,
to be certain this proposition is universally true, we must either make a
particular demonstration for every particular triangle, which is impossible, or
once for all demonstrate it of the abstract idea of a triangle, in which all the
particulars do indifferently partake, and by which they are all equally
represented. To which I answer, that though the idea I have in view whilst I
make the demonstration, be, for instance, that of an isosceles rectangular
triangle, whose sides are of a determinate length, I may nevertheless be certain
it extends to all other rectilinear triangles, of what sort or bigness soever. And
that, because neither the right angle, nor the equality, nor determinate length
of the sides, are at all concerned in the demonstration. It is true, the diagram
I have in view includes all these particulars, but then there is not the least
mention made of them in the proof of the proposition. It is not said, the three
angles are equal to two right ones, because one of them is a right angle, or
because the sides comprehending it are of the same length. Which sufficiently
shews that the right angle might have been oblique, and the sides unequal,
and for all that the demonstration have held good. And for this reason it is,
that I conclude that to be true of any obliquangular or scalenon, which I had
demonstrated of a particular right-angled, equicrural triangle; and not
because I demonstrated the proposition of the abstract idea of a triangle. And
here it must be acknowledged that a man may consider a figure merely as
triangular, without attending to the particular qualities of the angles, or
relations of the sides. So far he may abstract: but this will never prove, that he
can frame an abstract general inconsistent idea of a triangle. In like manner
we may consider Peter so far forth as man, or so far forth as animal, without
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framing the forementioned abstract idea, either of man or of animal, in as

much as all that is perceived is not considered.
…
[126]
18. I come now to consider the source of this prevailing notion, and that seems
to me to be language. And surely nothing of less extent than reason itself
could have been the source of an opinion so universally received. The truth of
this appears as from other reasons, so also from the plain confession of the
ablest patrons of abstract ideas, who acknowledge that they are made in order
to naming; from which it is a clear consequence, that if there had been no such
thing as speech or universal signs, there never had been any thought of
abstraction. See [3. 6. 39] and elsewhere of the Essay on Human Understanding.
Let us therefore examine the manner wherein words have contributed to the
origin of that mistake. First then, ‘tis thought that every name hath, or ought
to have, one only precise and settled signification, which inclines men to think
there are certain abstract, determinate ideas, which constitute the true and only
immediate signification of each general name. And that it is by the mediation
of these abstract ideas, that a general name comes to signify any particular
thing. Whereas, in truth, there is no such thing as one precise and definite
signification annexed to any general name, they all signifying indifferently a
great number of particular ideas. All which doth evidently follow from what
has been already said, and will clearly appear to any one by a little reflection.
To this it will be objected, that every name that has a definition, is thereby
restrained to one certain signification. For example, a triangle is defined to be
a plain surface comprehended by three right lines; by which that name is limited
to denote one certain idea and no other. To which I answer, that in the
definition it is not said whether the surface be great or small, black or white,
nor whether the sides are long or short, equal or unequal, nor with what angles
they are inclined to each other; in all which there may be great variety, and
consequently there is no one settled idea which limits the signification of the
word triangle. ’ Tis one thing for to keep a name constantly to the same
definition, and another to make it stand everywhere for the same idea: the one
is necessary, the other useless and impracticable. [127]
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19. But to give a farther account how words came to produce the doctrine of
abstract ideas, it must be observed that it is a received opinion, that language
has no other end but the communicating our ideas, and that every significant
name stands for an idea. This being so, and it being withal certain, that names,
which yet are not thought altogether insignificant, do not always mark out
particular conceivable ideas, it is straightway concluded that they stand for
abstract notions. That there are many names in use amongst speculative men,
which do not always suggest to others determinate particular ideas, is what
no body will deny. And a little attention will discover, that it is not necessary
(even in the strictest reasonings) significant names which stand for ideas
should, every time they are used, excite in the understanding the ideas they
are made to stand for: in reading and discoursing, names being for the most
part used as letters are in algebra, in which though a particular quantity be
marked by each letter, yet to proceed right it is not requisite that in every step
each letter suggest to your thoughts, that particular quantity it was appointed
to stand for.
20. Besides, the communicating of ideas marked by words is not the chief and
only end of language, as is commonly supposed. There are other ends, as the
raising of some passion, the exciting to, or deterring from an action, the
putting the mind in some particular disposition; to which the former is in many
cases barely subservient, and sometimes entirely omitted, when these can be
obtained without it, as I think doth not infrequently happen in the familiar use
of language. I entreat the reader to reflect with himself, and see if it doth not
often happen either in hearing or reading a discourse, that the passions of
fear, love, hatred, admiration, disdain, and the like, arise immediately in his
mind upon the perception of certain words, without any ideas coming
between. At first, indeed, the words might have occasioned ideas that were fit
to produce those emotions; but, if I mistake not, it will be found that when
language is once grown familiar, the hearing of the sounds or sight of the
characters is oft [128] immediately attended with those passions, which at first
were wont to be produced by the intervention of ideas, that are now quite
omitted. May we not, for example, be affected with the promise of a good
thing, though we have not an idea of what it is? Or is not the being threatened
with danger sufficient to excite a dread, though we think not of any particular
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evil likely to befall us, nor yet frame to ourselves an idea of danger in abstract?
If any one shall join ever so little reflection of his own to what has been said, I
believe it will evidently appear to him, that general names are often used in
the propriety of language without the speaker’s designing them for marks of
ideas in his own, which he would have them raise in the mind of the hearer.
Even proper names themselves do not seem always spoken, with a design to
bring into our view the ideas of those individuals that are supposed to be
marked by them. For example, when a Schoolman tells me Aristotle hath said
it, all I conceive he means by it, is to dispose me to embrace his opinion with
the deference and submission which custom has annexed to that name. And
this effect may be so instantly produced in the minds of those who are
accustomed to resign their judgement to the authority of that philosopher, as
it is impossible any idea either of his person, writings, or reputation should go
before. Innumerable examples of this kind may be given, but why should I
insist on those things, which every one’s experience will, I doubt not, plentifully
suggest unto him?
Berkeley’s attack on Locke’s doctrine of abstract general ideas is

another famous chapter in the history of the problem of universals.
As we have seen, Locke seems to have held three different and
inconsistent views as to how abstract general ideas are formed. In
this passage Berkeley attacks the latter two of these, namely:
(1) The view that abstract general ideas of, for example, colour
or humanity, are formed by leaving out of the ‘ideas’ of various
colours or of various human beings all those qualities which are
not common to all colours or to all human beings.
(2) The view that an abstract general idea, for example, of a
triangle. is [129] formed by conflating all the properties possessed by
any triangle whatsoever.
Berkeley does not distinguish these two radically different
theories; nor is he required to, since he regards them both as false
on exactly the same grounds, namely that it is totally impossible to
form any such ideas. He destroys the first doctrine by pointing out
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that any idea that we form of colour must be of some particular

colour; to take a particular shade of blue and one of red, and then
to think away their hues altogether, leaves us with nothing at all
before the mind’s eye. So, too, any idea of man must be of some
particular man, that is, must be of a determinate height,
determinate colour, and so on. As to the other doctrine, the
conflated idea, for example, of a triangle proposed by Locke is self-
contradictory, for it contains within itself inconsistent properties,
for example, of being at once equilateral and rectangular, scalene
etc.
This refutation is echoed even more convincingly in the
relevant passage in the Principles. Berkeley is relying on the doctrine
of the ‘inner eye’. The only ‘ideas’ (other than those of
introspection) that can be in the mind, are ideas of sense, or else
images which are compounded out of ideas of sense. The ‘inner
eye’ can perceive only such entities as can be perceived by the
normal outer eye, namely, objects with absolutely determinate
properties – a specific shade of blue, a specific oval shape, a
particular fluty sound, and so on. So far, so good. But those who
hold that the problem of universals is a problem as to the mental
machinery by which we recognise an object as belonging to a
certain kind or type (or think in general terms about all the
members of a particular class) tend to find Berkeley’s own positive
answer to the problem no better than Locke’s. According to
Berkeley we do form an image of a particular triangle, or of a man,
say, Peter, but consider that image not for what it is in itself, but as
representing all triangles, or all men. But how can we do this unless
we already know which characteristics are possessed by all triangles
or men as such, and which are merely peculiar to this sample, that
is to say, unless we [130] already possess a general idea of triangle
or man? How can we do what Berkeley commands us – to
‘consider Peter so far forth as man’ – without already having a
general idea of man distinguishable from Peter?
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Berkeley’s positive doctrine about the function of general words

and universals is open to objections, and his refutation looks more
convincing than it is. For it seems to be the case that most people’s
images are not always fully determinate, but often thin, vague and
schematic; and that we can in fact form blurred composite images
in which many inconsistent properties coexist in a confused
fashion. And it might further be added that the role of images –
for this is what ‘ideas’ in Berkeley seem to denote – is much
exaggerated. In order to recognise an object as being of a certain
type, we do not have to carry about a mental sample, a piece of
mental furniture, either a concept or a representative image, with
which real objects have to be matched. Comparison with some
standard sample ‘in the mind’ is not necessary, and indeed such
processes are seldom carried out. If it were necessary each time we
identified an object to match it against the standard object we carry
about with us, then in order to recognise the standard itself as the
relevant one, while we rummaged in our minds to extract it, we
should have to match it, in its turn, with another standard, and so
on ad infinitum. The problem of recognition and classification is
not to be resolved in this way. The problem of universals is a logical
problem. How do general words mean? Do they mean in a fashion
different from proper names, or from other kinds of words? Such
a logical problem is not to be solved by appeal to introspection, to
determine whether we do or do not form schematic or composite
images.
But in the course of discussing the problem in apparently
psychological terms, Berkeley does expose one of the great sources
of the philosophical puzzle about universals, namely the so-called
unum nomen, unum nominatum 45 fallacy. And this is a major
achievement in the history of philosophy, one for which alone he
would deserve eternal fame. It is a naive, but very natural,
assumption [131] that in order to have a meaning a word must
‘stand for’ or designate an object in the real world. This is true of
45 One name, one thing named; i.e. one name for each thing named.
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some words, for instance of proper names: ‘George Berkeley’ is

significant only because it designates a particular being. But do
general terms designate in this ‘one-to-one’ way? The word
‘bishop’ obviously does not designate one unique being; what then
does it stand for? It is clear that general terms do not designate
particular objects; hence entities called ‘universals’ are invented to
be the objective counterparts of general words. But this will not
work. Proper names may be like caps designed to fit particular
heads, but they are not typical of words in general. General words
do not name at all. Their function in language is different. Certainly
they have meanings; but to have a meaning is not to stand in a one-
to-one relation to any entity – whether a real object or a more
shadowy one called a ‘meaning’.
And Berkeley’s genius is further shown in this: philosophers
have been constantly misled by the assumption that the descriptive
(and its most exact species, the scientific) use of language is its
primary, if not only, use. They are constantly tempted to construe
mathematical, ethical or aesthetic judgements as descriptions.
Descriptions of what? While they may ultimately turn out to be
descriptive, in some sense, they obviously do not resemble typical
scientific descriptions of the everyday world; so they are taken to
be descriptions of some other world, populated by ‘pure
mathematical concepts’, or ‘values’, or the like. And this leads to
the assumption of many strange worlds. Berkeley is one of the first
philosophers to point out that language is used for many purposes
besides that of describing; and that to look for objective
counterparts, in the same sense, to all varieties of sentences leads
to many fertile inventions of fictional entities, and conceals plain
facts under a rich mythology. This too is an intellectual service of
the first order. [132]
O F T H E P R I N C I P L E S O F H U M A N K N O W L E D GE , P A R T I
1 . It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human

knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses, or else
123
such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind,
or lastly ideas formed by help of memory and imagination, either
compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in
the aforesaid ways. By sight I have the ideas of light and colours with their
several degrees and variations. By touch I perceive, for example, hard and soft,
heat and cold, motion and resistance, and of all these more and less either as
to quantity or degree. Smelling furnishes me with odours; the palate with
tastes, and hearing conveys sounds to the mind in all their variety of tone and
composition. And as several of these are observed to accompany each other,
they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing.
Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having
been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by
the name apple. Other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book,
and the like sensible things; which, as they are pleasing or disagreeable, excite
the passions of love, hatred, joy, grief, and so forth.
2. But besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there
is likewise something which knows or perceives them, and exercises divers
operations, as willing, imagining, remembering about them. This perceiving,
active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul or myself. By which words I do not
denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein
they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived; for the
existence of an idea consists in being perceived.
3. That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the
imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow. And it seems
no less evident that the various sensations or ideas imprinted on the sense,
however blended or combined together (that is, whatever objects they
compose) cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving them. I think an
intuitive knowledge may be obtained of this, by any one that shall attend to
what is [133] meant by the term exist when applied to sensible things. The
table I write on, I say, exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my
study I should say it existed, meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might
perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it. There was an
odour, that is, it was smelled; there was a sound, that is to say, it was heard; a
colour or figure, and it was perceived by sight or touch. This is all that I can
124
understand by these and the like expressions. For as to what is said of the
absolute existence of unthinking things without any relation to their being
perceived, that seems perfectly unintelligible. Their esse is percipi, nor is it
possible they should have any existence, out of the minds or thinking things
which perceive them.
4. It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses,

mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects have an existence natural
or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But with how
great an assurance and acquiescence soever this principle may be entertained
in the world; yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question, may, if I
mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For what are the
forementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense, and what do we
perceive besides our own ideas or sensations; and is it not plainly repugnant
that any one of these or any combination of them should exist unperceived?
5. If we thoroughly examine this tenet, it will, perhaps, be found at bottom to

depend on the doctrine of abstract ideas. For can there be a nicer strain of
abstraction than to distinguish the existence of sensible objects from their
being perceived, so as to conceive them existing unperceived? Light and
colours, heat and cold, extension and figures, in a word the things we see and
feel, what are they but so many sensations, notions, ideas or impressions on
the sense; and is it possible to separate, even in thought, any of these from
perception? For my part I might as easily divide a thing from itself. I may
indeed divide in my thoughts or conceive apart from each other those things
which, perhaps, I never perceived by sense so divided. [134] Thus I imagine the
trunk of a human body without the limbs, or conceive the smell of a rose
without thinking on the rose itself. So far I will not deny I can abstract, if that
may properly be called abstraction, which extends only to the conceiving
separately such objects, as it is possible may really exist or be actually
perceived asunder. But my conceiving or imagining power does not extend
beyond the possibility of real existence or perception. Hence as it is impossible
for me to see or feel anything without an actual sensation of that thing, so is
it impossible for me to conceive in my thoughts any sensible thing or object
distinct from the sensation or perception of it.
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6. Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind, that a man need
only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, to wit,
that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies
which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence
without a mind, that their being is to be perceived or known; that consequently
so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind
or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or
else subsist in the mind of some eternal spirit: it being perfectly unintelligible
and involving all the absurdity of abstraction, to attribute to any single part of
them an existence independent of a spirit. To be convinced of which, the
reader need only reflect and try to separate in his own thoughts the being of
a sensible thing from its being perceived.
7. From what has been said, it follows, there is not any other substance than
spirit, or that which perceives. But for the fuller proof of this point, let it be
considered, the sensible qualities are colour, figure, motion, smell, taste, and
such like, that is, the ideas perceived by sense. Now for an idea to exist in an
unperceiving thing, is a manifest contradiction; for to have an idea is all one
as to perceive: that therefore wherein colour, figure, and the like qualities exist,
must perceive them; hence it is clear there can be no unthinking substance or
substratum of those ideas. [135]
8. But say you, though the ideas themselves do not exist without the mind, yet
there may be things like them whereof they are copies or resemblances, which
things exist without the mind, in an unthinking substance. I answer, an idea
can be like nothing but an idea; a colour or figure can be like nothing but
another colour or figure. If we look but ever so little into our thoughts, we shall
find it impossible for us to conceive a likeness except only between our ideas.
Again, I ask whether those supposed originals or external things, of which our
ideas are the pictures or representations, be themselves perceivable or no? If
they are, then they are ideas, and we have gained our point; but if you say they
are not, I appeal to any one whether it be sense, to assert a colour is like
something which is invisible; hard or soft, like something which is intangible;
and so of the rest.
126
9. Some there are who make a distinction betwixt primary and secondary
qualities: by the former, they mean extension, figure, motion, rest, solidity or
impenetrability and number: by the latter they denote all other sensible
qualities, as colours, sounds, tastes, and so forth. The ideas we have of these
they acknowledge not to be the resemblances of any thing existing without
the mind or unperceived; but they will have our ideas of the primary qualities
to be patterns or images of things which exist without the mind, in an
unthinking substance which they call matter. By matter therefore we are to
understand an inert, senseless substance, in which extension, figure, and
motion, do actually subsist. But it is evident from what we have already shewn,
that extension, figure and motion are only ideas existing in the mind, and that
an idea can be like nothing but another idea, and that consequently neither
they nor their archetypes can exist in an unperceiving substance. Hence it is
plain, that the very notion of what is called matter or corporeal substance,
involves a contradiction in it.
10. They who assert that figure, motion, and the rest of the primary or original
qualities do exist without the mind, in unthinking substances, do at the same
time ac[136]knowledge that colours, sounds, heat, cold, and such like
secondary qualities, do not, which they tell us are sensations existing in the
mind alone, that depend on and are occasioned by the different size, texture
and motion of the minute particles of matter. This they take for an undoubted
truth, which they can demonstrate beyond all exception. Now if it be certain,
that those original qualities are inseparably united with the other sensible
qualities, and not, even in thought, capable of being abstracted from them, it
plainly follows that they exist only in the mind. But I desire any one to reflect
and try, whether he can by any abstraction of thought, conceive the extension
and motion of a body, without all other sensible qualities. For my own part, I
see evidently that it is not in my power to frame an idea of a body extended
and moved, but I must withal give it some colour or other sensible quality
which is acknowledged to exist only in the mind. In short, extension, figure,
and motion, abstracted from all other qualities, are inconceivable. Where
therefore the other sensible qualities are, there must these be also, to wit, in
the mind and nowhere else.
…
127
14. I shall farther add, that after the same manner, as modern philosophers
prove certain sensible qualities to have no existence in matter, or without the
mind, the same thing may be likewise proved of all other sensible qualities
whatsoever. Thus, for instance, it is said that heat and cold are affections only
of the mind, and not at all patterns of real beings, existing in the corporeal
substances which excite them, for that the same body which appears cold to
one hand, seems warm to another. Now why may we not as well argue that
figure and extension are not patterns or resemblances of qualities existing in
matter, because to the same eye at different stations, or eyes of a different
texture at the same station, they appear various, and cannot therefore be the
images of any thing settled and determinate without the mind? Again, it is
proved that sweetness is not really in the sapid thing, because the thing
remaining unaltered the sweetness is changed into [137] bitter, as in case of a
fever or otherwise vitiated palate. Is it not as reasonable to say, that motion is
not without the mind, since if the succession of ideas in the mind become
swifter, the motion, it is acknowledged, shall appear slower without any
alteration in any external object.
…
18. But though it were possible that solid, figured, moveable substances may
exist without the mind, corresponding to the ideas we have of bodies, yet how
is it possible for us to know this? Either we must know it by sense, or by reason.
As for our senses, by them we have the knowledge only of our sensations,
ideas, or those things that are immediately perceived by sense, call them what
you will: but they do not inform us that things exist without the mind, or
unperceived, like to those which are perceived. This the materialists
themselves acknowledge. It remains therefore that if we have any knowledge
at all of external things, it must be by reason, inferring their existence from
what is immediately perceived by sense. But what reason can induce us to
believe the existence of bodies without the mind, from what we perceive, since
the very patrons of matter themselves do not pretend, there is any necessary
connection betwixt them and our ideas? I say it is granted on all hands (and
what happens in dreams, frenzies, and the like, puts it beyond dispute) that it
is possible we might be affected with all the ideas we have now, though no
bodies existed without, resembling them. Hence it is evident the supposition
128
of external bodies is not necessary for the producing our ideas: since it is
granted they are produced sometimes, and might possibly be produced
always in the same order we see them in at present, without their concurrence.
19. But though we might possibly have all our sensations without them, yet
perhaps it may be thought easier to conceive and explain the manner of their
production, by supposing external bodies in their likeness rather than
otherwise; and so it might be at least probable there are such things as bodies
that excite their ideas in our minds. But neither can this be said; for though we
give the ma[138]terialists their external bodies, they by their own confession
are never the nearer knowing how our ideas are produced: since they own
themselves unable to comprehend in what manner body can act upon spirit,
or how it is possible it should imprint any idea in the mind. Hence it is evident
the production of ideas or sensations in our minds, can be no reason why we
should suppose matter or corporeal substances, since that is acknowledged
to remain equally inexplicable with, or without this supposition. If therefore it
were possible for bodies to exist without the mind, yet to hold they do so,
must needs be a very precarious opinion; since it is to suppose, without any
reason at all, that God has created innumerable beings that are entirely
useless, and serve to no manner of purpose.
20. In short, if there were external bodies, it is impossible we should ever come
to know it; and if there were not, we might have the very same reasons to think
there were that we have now. Suppose, what no one can deny possible, an
intelligence, without the help of external bodies, to be affected with the same
train of sensations or ideas that you are, imprinted in the same order and with
like vividness in his mind. I ask whether that intelligence hath not all the reason
to believe the existence of corporeal substances, represented by his ideas, and
exciting them in his mind, that you can possibly have for believing the same
thing? Of this there can be no question; which one consideration is enough to
make any reasonable person suspect the strength of whatever arguments he
may think himself to have, for the existence of bodies without the mind.
…
24. It is very obvious, upon the least enquiry into our own thoughts, to know
whether it be possible for us to understand what is meant, by the absolute
129
existence of sensible objects in themselves, or without the mind. To me it is

evident those words mark out either a direct contradiction, or else nothing at
all. And to convince others of this, I know no readier or fairer way, than to
entreat they [139] would calmly attend to their own thoughts: and if by this
attention, the emptiness or repugnancy of those expressions does appear,
surely nothing more is requisite for their conviction. It is on this therefore that
I insist, to wit, that the absolute existence of unthinking things are words
without a meaning, or which include a contradiction. This is what I repeat and
inculcate, and earnestly recommend to the attentive thoughts of the reader.
25. All our ideas, sensations, or the things which we perceive, by whatsoever
names they may be distinguished, are visibly inactive, there is nothing of
power or agency included in them. So that one idea or object of thought
cannot produce, or make any alteration in another. To be satisfied of the truth
of this, there is nothing else requisite but a bare observation of our ideas. For
since they and every part of them exist only in the mind, it follows that there
is nothing in them but what is perceived. But whoever shall attend to his ideas,
whether of sense or reflection, will not perceive in them any power or activity;
there is therefore no such thing contained in them. A little attention will
discover to us that the very being of an idea implies passiveness and inertness
in it, insomuch that it is impossible for an idea to do any thing, or, strictly
speaking, to be the cause of any thing: neither can it be the resemblance or
pattern of any active being, as is evident from Sect. 8. Whence it plainly follows
that extension, figure and motion, cannot be the cause of our sensations. To
say therefore, that these are the effects of powers resulting from the
configuration, number, motion, and size of corpuscles, must certainly be false.
26. We perceive a continual succession of ideas, some are anew excited, others
are changed or totally disappear. There is therefore some cause of these ideas
whereon they depend, and which produces and changes them. That this cause
cannot be any quality or idea or combination of ideas, is clear from the
preceding section. It must therefore be a substance; but it has been shown
that there is no corporeal or material substance: it remains therefore that the
cause of ideas is an incorporeal active substance or spirit.
…
130
[140]
29. But whatever power I may have over my own thoughts, I find the ideas
actually perceived by sense have not a like dependence on my will. When in
broad day-light I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I shall
see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall present themselves to
my view; and so likewise as to the hearing and other senses, the ideas
imprinted on them are not creatures of my will. There is therefore some other
will or spirit that produces them.
30. The ideas of sense are more strong, lively, and distinct than those of the
imagination; they have likewise a steadiness, order, and coherence, and are
not excited at random, as those which are the effects of human wills often are,
but in a regular train or series, the admirable connection whereof sufficiently
testifies the wisdom and benevolence of its Author. Now the set rules or
established methods, wherein the mind we depend on excites in us the ideas
of sense, are called the Laws of Nature: and these we learn by experience,
which teaches us that such and such ideas are attended with such and such
other ideas, in the ordinary course of things.
…
33. The ideas imprinted on the senses by the Author of Nature are called real
things: and those excited in the imagination being less regular, vivid and
constant, are more properly termed ideas, or images of things, which they copy
and represent. But then our sensations, be they never so vivid and distinct, are
nevertheless ideas, that is, they exist in the mind, or are perceived by it, as truly
as the ideas of its own framing. The ideas of sense are allowed to have more
reality in them, that is, to be more strong, orderly, and coherent than the
creatures of the mind; but this is no argument that they exist without the mind.
They are also less dependent on the spirit, or thinking substance which
perceives them, in that they are excited by the will of another and more
powerful spirit: yet still they are ideas, and certainly no idea, whether faint or
strong, can exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving it.
…
[141]
131
35. I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can
apprehend, either by sense or reflection. That the things I see with mine eyes
and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question.
The only thing whose existence we deny, is that which philosophers call matter
or corporeal substance. And in doing of this, there is no damage done to the
rest of mankind, who, I dare say, will never miss it. The atheist indeed will want
the colour of an empty name to support his impiety; and the philosophers may
possibly find, they have lost a great handle for trifling and disputation.
36. If any man thinks this detracts from the existence or reality of things, he is
very far from understanding what hath been premised in the plainest terms I
could think of. Take here an abstract of what has been said. There are spiritual
substances, minds, or human souls, which will or excite ideas in themselves at
pleasure: but these are faint, weak, and unsteady in respect of others they
perceive by sense, which being impressed upon them according to certain
rules or laws of Nature, speak themselves the effects of a mind more powerful
and wise than human spirits. These latter are said to have more reality in them
than the former: by which is meant that they are more affecting, orderly, and
distinct, and that they are not fictions of the mind perceiving them. And in this
sense, the sun that I see by day is the real sun, and that which I imagine by
night is the idea of the former. In the sense here given of reality, it is evident
that every vegetable, star, mineral, and in general each part of the mundane
system, is as much a real being by our principles as by any other. Whether
others mean any thing by the term reality different from what I do, I entreat
them to look into their own thoughts and see.
37. It will be urged that thus much at least is true, to wit, that we take away all
corporeal substances. To this my answer is, that if the word substance be taken
in the vulgar sense, for a combination of sensible qualities, such as extension,
solidity, weight, and the like; this we cannot be accused of taking away. But if
it be taken in a philosophic [142] sense, for the support of accidents or
qualities without the mind: then indeed I acknowledge that we take it away, if
one may be said to take away that which never had any existence, not even in
the imagination.
132
38. But, say you, it sounds very harsh to say we eat and drink ideas, and are
clothed with ideas. I acknowledge it does so, the word idea not being used in
common discourse to signify the several combinations of sensible qualities,
which are called things: and it is certain that any expression which varies from
the familiar use of language, will seem harsh and ridiculous. But this doth not
concern the truth of the proposition, which in other words is no more than to
say, we are fed and clothed with those things which we perceive immediately
by our senses. The hardness or softness, the colour, taste, warmth, figure, and
such like qualities, which combined together constitute the several sorts of
victuals and apparel, have been shown to exist only in the mind that perceives
them; and this is all that is meant by calling them ideas; which word, if it was
as ordinarily used as thing, would sound no harsher nor more ridiculous than
it. I am not for disputing about the propriety, but the truth of the expression.
If therefore you agree with me that we eat and drink, and are clad with the
immediate objects of sense which cannot exist unperceived or without the
mind: I shall readily grant it is more proper or conformable to custom, that
they should be called things rather than ideas.
39. If it be demanded why I make use of the word idea, and do not rather in
compliance with custom call them things. I answer, I do it for two reasons: first,
because the term thing, in contradistinction to idea, is generally supposed to
denote somewhat existing without the mind: secondly, because thing hath a
more comprehensive signification than idea, including spirits or thinking
things as well as ideas. Since therefore the objects of sense exist only in the
mind, and are withal thoughtless and inactive, I chose to mark them by the
word idea, which implies those properties.
40. But say what we can, some one perhaps may be [143] apt to reply, he will
still believe his senses, and never suffer any arguments, how plausible soever,
to prevail over the certainty of them. Be it so, assert the evidence of sense as
high as you please, we are willing to do the same. That what I see, hear and
feel doth exist, that is to say, is perceived by me, I no more doubt than I do of
my own being. But I do not see how the testimony of sense can be alleged, as
a proof for the existence of any thing, which is not perceived by sense. We are
not for having any man turn sceptic, and disbelieve his senses; on the contrary
we give them all the stress and assurance imaginable; nor are there any
133
principles more opposite to scepticism, than those we have laid down, as shall
be hereafter clearly shewn.
…
52. In the ordinary affairs of life, any phrases may be retained, so long as they
excite in us proper sentiments, or dispositions to act in such a manner as is
necessary for our well-being, how false soever they may be, if taken in a strict
and speculative sense. Nay this is unavoidable, since propriety being regulated
by custom, language is suited to the received opinions, which are not always
the truest. Hence it is impossible, even in the most rigid philosophic
reasonings, so far to alter the bent and genius of the tongue we speak, as
never to give a handle for cavillers to pretend difficulties and inconsistencies.
But a fair and ingenuous reader will collect the sense, from the scope and tenor
and connection of a discourse, making allowances for those inaccurate modes
of speech, which use has made inevitable.
…
140. In a large sense indeed, we may be said to have an idea, or rather a notion
of spirit, that is, we understand the meaning of the word, otherwise we could
not affirm or deny any thing of it. Moreover, as we conceive the ideas that are
in the minds of other spirits by means of our own, which we suppose to be
resemblances of them: so we know other spirits by means of our own soul,
which in that sense is the image or idea of them, it having a like respect to
other spirits, that blueness or heat by me perceived hath to those ideas
perceived by another.
…
[144] Berkeley’s refutation of Locke’s views of perception, of

material objects, of universals, and of the general function of
language, have become a permanent element in the development
of European philosophy. Yet taken literally, at its face value, what
Berkeley here says about ‘our knowledge of the external world’
seemed to his readers quite absurd; it seemed (despite his constant
protestations to the contrary) to lead to an ontology about as far
removed as it is possible to be from the ontology of common
sense. For Berkeley appears to deny the existence in the universe
134
of anything except minds and ‘ideas’ in those minds. What we

ordinarily call apples and trees and desks are not objects existing in
their own right, external to and independent of minds; rather they
are certain sorts of collections of ideas in minds.
Berkeley’s ‘idealist’ theory of perception is the logical terminus
to which a combination of the subjectivist and ‘egocentric’ starting
point of Descartes’s theory of knowledge with the empiricism of
Locke must lead. Locke had arrived at an impasse with regard to
our knowledge of the external world, a combination of two
mutually inconsistent and individually untenable theories of
perception, the ‘causal’ and the ‘representative’. According to
Locke we are acquainted only with our own ideas, which are ‘in’
our minds. Some of these are ideas of secondary qualities, some of
primary qualities. The former have only a causal relation to
anything ‘in’ external bodies; they are caused by the primary
qualities of the minute particles of these bodies. The latter are also
caused by qualities in those bodies; but, more than this, they
resemble qualities in those bodies. But if all that we can ever come
to be acquainted with are ideas, how can we know anything at all
about qualities in bodies, which are not ideas? How can we know
either that they cause our ideas, or that in some cases they resemble
them? Once Berkeley pointed out that this was impossible, it
became plain to everyone: the existence of external bodies and
their qualities was seen to be a hypothesis, for or against which we
could not – logically [145] could not, on Locke’s empiricist
premisses – have any means of collecting evidence.
Locke, in fact, like every ‘representationalist’, is for ever penned
within the circle of his own ideas – a fact which comes out clearly
in his account of knowledge in Book 4. But there is yet another
facet of his theory of the external world which excites Berkeley to
violent attack, namely the supposed existence of material
substance, the substratum, the ‘something-I-know-not-what’,
totally devoid of qualities, underlying each material object; this also,
135
Berkeley rightly claims, is a hypothesis in principle unverifiable

(and unjustifiable).
Berkeley’s arguments are of very unequal merit.46 For example,
the arguments in the beginning of the Principles, which appear to
lead directly to the paradoxical ontology discussed above, rest
upon a misleading use of the phrases ‘to perceive’, ‘to have an idea’,
‘to be in the mind’, and some others. Berkeley talks of ‘in the mind’
and ‘without the mind’ as if these were two distinct but co-ordinate
regions in which entities could be located (only it so happens that
none are located in the latter), much as a point on the surface of
the earth can be located in the northern or the southern
hemisphere. At the same time, the argument is further bedevilled
by the old metaphysical dogma, which had been taken for granted
by Locke, that a quality must exist ‘in’ a substance, like a pin in a
pincushion. The preposition ‘in’ has proved exceedingly
treacherous in the history of philosophy: in this case the
combination of an unperceived false analogy with the spatial use
of ‘in’, plus an uncriticised metaphysical use of the same word,
leads to a perpetuation of the confusions which Berkeley’s
arguments are meant to eliminate. Nevertheless the crucial point
[146] – that some of the most frustrating perplexities of philosophy
can be traced to ambiguities and false analogies in the use of
apparently innocent words – owes much to Berkeley’s new
approach; the word ‘in’ is among the worst offenders; and the
unconscious assumption that ‘in the mind’ is somehow similar to
‘in the box’ or ‘in the country’ (and not to ‘in my view’ or ‘in
46 The very number and variety of his arguments (of which only some
are quoted in the text above), all used to prove, if not exactly the same
point, very closely related points, is, in itself, suspicious. If a
philosophical question of the sort with which Berkeley is dealing is clearly
formulated, then to demonstrate conclusively the truth of one answer to
it we should not require a string of different arguments, any more than
we need a string of different proofs for one theorem in mathematics.
136
general’) has brought about some of the darkest hours of

philosophy.
On the other hand, the arguments, both in the Principles and in
the First Dialogue, against Locke’s representationalism are certainly
valid. Berkeley disposes without difficulty of what seems to be
Locke’s position, in his doctrine of primary and secondary
qualities, namely that the observed sizes, shapes and so on of
bodies do not vary with the condition and place of the observer,
the intervening medium and so on (which is untrue), whereas the
sensed colours, smells, sounds and tastes alone do so; and that
therefore the ‘ideas of the primary qualities’ are copies of those
qualities as they exist in bodies, while the ‘ideas of the secondary
qualities’ are not. Berkeley further points out that Locke’s
hypothesis of the existence of material substance is such that it is
logically impossible that any evidence could be found for or against
it, and that, consequently, the hypothesis itself is ‘words without a
meaning’. This has a very modem ring.
Having reduced objects to collections of ideas which exist only
‘in’ (that is, when perceived by) minds, Berkeley is now committed
to saying either that objects go in and out of existence, according
to whether a mind is perceiving the appropriate ideas or not, or
else that all ideas are perceived at all times by some mind or minds.
He chooses the latter alternative. The continued existence of
objects is ensured by the continuous perceptions of God. If
Berkeley’s God were brought in solely to save his theory of the
material world, he would constitute a hypothesis no better than
Locke’s material substratum. Berkeley claims that we can have no
‘idea’ of such a chimera as Locke’s ‘substance’; but neither,
according to him, have we any ‘idea’ of a spirit; only ‘notions’. What
these are he does not [147] clearly explain. But it is evident that
God is the centre of Berkeley’s metaphysical vision: the universe
depends on him as Shakespeare’s characters and their lives depend
on Shakespeare. But this is not compatible with Berkeley’s
professed empiricism, and the introduction of God to rescue an
137
otherwise untenable view of what material objects are is

illegitimate. Berkeley’s empiricism is in any case not consistent.
God not merely perceives all ideas: he is the cause of them. They
are kept in being by God’s volitions; and the regularity of events in
nature is the regularity of the patterns of his volitions. Berkeley
leaves the notion of cause and effect unanalysed; it obtains its first
empirical examination at the hands of Hume. For Berkeley, cause,
as for many medieval philosophers, and indeed the ancients too, is
construed by analogy with an act of the will.
The remaining extracts from Berkeley are from Three Dialogues
Between Hylas and Philonous.
FIRST DIALOGUE
…
H Y L A S I frankly own, Philonous, that it is in vain to stand out any longer.

Colours, sounds, tastes, in a word, all those termed secondary qualities,
have certainly no existence without the mind. But by this
acknowledgement I must not be supposed to derogate any thing from the
reality of matter or external objects, seeing it is no more than several
philosophers maintain, who nevertheless are the farthest imaginable from
denying matter. For the clearer understanding of this, you must know
sensible qualities are by philosophers divided into primary and secondary.
The former are extension, figure, solidity, gravity, motion, and rest. And
these they hold exist really in bodies. The latter are those above
enumerated; or briefly, all sensible qualities beside the primary, which they
assert are only so many sensations or ideas existing nowhere but in the
mind. But all this, I doubt not, you are already apprised of. For my part, I
have been a long time sensible there was such an opinion current among
philosophers, but was never thoroughly convinced of its truth till now.
[148]
P H I L O N O U S You are still then of opinion, that extension and figures are
inherent in external unthinking substances.
H Y L A S I am.
138
P H I L O N O U S But what if the same arguments which are brought against

secondary qualities, will hold good against these also?
H Y L A S Why then I shall be obliged to think, they too exist only in the mind.
P H I L O N O U S Is it your opinion, the very figure and extension which you
perceive by sense, exist in the outward object or material substance?
H Y L A S It is.
P H I L O N O U S Have all other animals as good grounds to think the same of the
figure and extension which they see and feel?
H Y L A S Without doubt, if they have any thought at all.
P H I L O N O U S Answer me, Hylas. Think you the senses were bestowed upon all
animals for their preservation and well-being in life? or were they given to
men alone for this end?
H Y L A S I make no question but they have the same use in all other animals.
P H I L O N O U S If so, is it not necessary they should be enabled by them to
perceive their own limbs, and those bodies which are capable of harming
them?
H Y L A S Certainly.
P H I L O N O U S A mite therefore must be supposed to see his own foot, and
things equal or even less than it, as bodies of some considerable
dimension; though at the same time they appear to you scarce discernible,
or at best as so many visible points.
H Y L A S I cannot deny it.
P H I L O N O U S And to creatures less than the mite they will seem yet larger.
H Y L A S They will.
P H I L O N O U S Insomuch that what you can hardly discern, will to another
extremely minute animal appear as some huge mountain.
H Y L A S All this I grant.
P H I L O N O U S Can one and the same thing be at the same time in itself of
different dimensions? [149]
H Y L A S That were absurd to imagine.
P H I L O N O U S But from what you have laid down it follows, that both the
extension by you perceived, and that perceived by the mite itself, as
likewise all those perceived by lesser animals, are each of them the true
139
extension of the mite’s foot, that is to say, by your own principles you are
led into an absurdity.
H Y L A S There seems to be some difficulty in the point.
P H I L O N O U S Again, have you not acknowledged that no real inherent
property of any object can be changed, without some change in the thing
itself?
H Y L A S I have.
P H I L O N O U S But as we approach to or recede from an object, the visible
extension varies, being at one distance ten or an hundred times greater
than at another. Doth it not therefore follow from hence likewise, that it is
not really inherent in the object?
H Y L A S I own I am at a loss what to think.
P H I L O N O U S Your judgement will soon be determined, if you will venture to
think as freely concerning this quality, as you have done concerning the
rest. Was it not admitted as a good argument, that neither heat nor cold
was in the water, because it seemed warm to one hand, and cold to the
other?
H Y L A S It was.
P H I L O N O U S Is it not the very same reasoning to conclude, there is no
extension or figure in an object, because to one eye it shall seem little,
smooth, and round, when at the same time it appears to the other, great,
uneven, and angular?
H Y L A S The very same. But doth this latter fact ever happen?
P H I L O N O U S You may at any time make the experiment, by looking with one
eye bare, and with the other through a microscope.
H Y L A S I know not how to maintain it, and yet I am loth to give up extension,
I see so many odd consequences following upon such a concession.
P H I L O N O U S Odd, say you? After the concessions already made, [150] I hope
you will stick at nothing for its oddness. But on the other hand should it
not seem very odd, if the general reasoning which includes all other
sensible qualities did not also include extension? If it be allowed that no
idea nor any thing like an idea can exist in an unperceiving substance, then
surely it follows, that no figure or mode of extension, which we can either
perceive or imagine, or have any idea of, can be really inherent in matter;
140
not to mention the peculiar difficulty there must be, in conceiving a

material substance, prior to and distinct from extension, to be the
substratum of extension. Be the sensible quality what it will, figure, or
sound, or colour; it seems alike impossible it should subsist in that which
doth not perceive it.
H Y L A S I give up the point for the present, reserving still a right to retract my
opinion, in case I shall hereafter discover any false step in my progress to
it.
P H I L O N O U S That is a right you cannot be denied. Figures and extension
being dispatched, we proceed next to motion. Can a real motion in any
external body be at the same time both very swift and very slow?
H Y L A S It cannot.
P H I L O N O U S Is not the motion of a body swift in a reciprocal proportion to
the time it takes up in describing any given space? Thus a body that
describes a mile in an hour, moves three times faster than it would in case
it described only a mile in three hours.
H Y L A S I agree with you.
P H I L O N O U S And is not time measured by the succession of ideas in our
minds?
H Y L A S It is.
P H I L O N O U S And is it not possible ideas should succeed one another twice
as fast in your mind, as they do in mine, or in that of some spirit of another
kind.
H Y L A S I own it.
P H I L O N O U S Consequently the same body may to another seem to perform
its motion over any space in half the time that it doth to you. And the same
reasoning will hold as to any other proportion: that is to say, according to
your principles (since the motions perceived are both really in the [151]
object) it is possible one and the same body shall be really moved the same
way at once, both very swift and very slow. How is this consistent either
with common sense, or with what you just now granted?
H Y L A S I have nothing to say to it.
P H I L O N O U S Then as for solidity; either you do not mean any sensible quality
by that word, and so it is beside our enquiry: or if you do, it must be either
141
hardness or resistance. But both the one and the other are plainly relative
to our senses: it being evident, that what seems hard to one animal, may
appear soft to another, who hath greater force and firmness of limbs. Nor
is it less plain, that the resistance I feel is not in the body.
H Y L A S I own the very sensation of resistance, which is all you immediately
perceive, is not in the body, but the cause of that sensation is.
P H I L O N O U S But the causes of our sensations are not things immediately
perceived, and therefore not sensible. This point I thought had been
already determined.
H Y L A S I own it was; but you will pardon me if I seem a little embarrassed: I
know not how to quit my old notions.
P H I L O N O U S To help you out, do but consider, that if extension be once
acknowledged to have no existence without the mind, the same must
necessarily be granted of motion, solidity, and gravity, since they all
evidently suppose extension. It is therefore superfluous to enquire
particularly concerning each of them. In denying extension, you have
denied them all to have any real existence.
…
P H I L O N O U S […] if I understand you rightly, you say our ideas do not exist
without the mind; but that they are copies, images, or representations of
certain originals that do.
H Y L A S You take me right.
P H I L O N O U S They are then like external things.
H Y L A S They are.
P H I L O N O U S Have those things a stable and permanent nature independent
of our senses; or are they in a perpetual change, upon our producing any
motions in our bodies, suspending, exerting, or altering our faculties or
organs of sense. [152]
H Y L A S Real things, it is plain, have a fixed and real nature, which remains the
same, notwithstanding any change in our senses, or in the posture and
motion of our bodies; which indeed may affect the ideas in our minds, but
it were absurd to think they had the same effect on things existing without
the mind.
142
P H I L O N O U S How then is it possible, that things perpetually fleeting and

variable as our ideas, should be copies or images of any thing fixed and
constant? Or in other words, since all sensible qualities, as size, figure,
colour, etc. that is, our ideas are continually changing upon every alteration
in the distance, medium, or instruments of sensation; how can any
determinate material objects be properly represented or painted forth by
several distinct things, each of which is so different from and unlike the
rest? Or if you say it resembles some one only of our ideas, how shall we
be able to distinguish the true copy from all the false ones?
H Y L A S I profess, Philonous, I am at a loss. I know not what to say to this.
P H I L O N O U S But neither is this all. Which are material objects in themselves,
perceptible or imperceptible?
H Y L A S Properly and immediately nothing can be perceived but ideas. All
material things therefore are in themselves insensible, and to be perceived
only by their ideas.
P H I L O N O U S Ideas then are sensible, and their archetypes or originals
insensible.
H Y L A S Right.
P H I L O N O U S But how can that which is sensible be like that which is
insensible? Can a real thing in itself invisible be like a colour; or a real thing
which is not audible, be like a sound? In a word, can any thing be like a
sensation or idea, but another sensation or idea?
H Y L A S I must own, I think not.
P H I L O N O U S Is it possible there should be any doubt in the point? Do you
not perfectly know your own ideas?
H Y L A S I know them perfectly; since what I do not perceive or know, can be
no part of my idea.
P H I L O N O U S Consider therefore, and examine them, and then tell me if there
be any thing in them which can exist [153] without the mind: or if you can
conceive any thing like them existing without the mind.
H Y L A S Upon enquiry, I find it is impossible for me to conceive or understand
how any thing but an idea can be like an idea. And it is most evident, that
no idea can exist without the mind.
143
P H I L O N O U S You are therefore by your principles forced to deny the reality

of sensible things, since you made it to consist in an absolute existence
exterior to the mind. That is to say, you are a downright sceptic. So I have
gained my point, which was to shew your principles led to scepticism.
H Y L A S For the present I am, if not entirely convinced, at least silenced.
…
THE THIRD DIALOGUE
P H I L O N O U S I assure you, Hylas, I do not pretend to frame any hypothesis at

all. I am of a vulgar cast, simple enough to believe my senses, and leave
things as I find them. To be plain, it is my opinion, that the real things are
those very things I see and feel, and perceive by my senses. These I know,
and finding they answer all the necessities and purposes of life, have no
reason to be solicitous about any other unknown beings. A piece of
sensible bread, for instance, would stay my stomach better than ten
thousand times as much of that insensible, unintelligible, real bread you
speak of. It is likewise my opinion, that colours and other sensible qualities
are on the objects. I cannot for my life help thinking that snow is white,
and fire hot. You indeed, who by snow and fire mean certain external,
unperceived, unperceiving substances, are in the right to deny whiteness
or heat to be affections inherent in them. But I, who understand by those
words the things I see and feel, am obliged to think like other folks. And
as I am no sceptic with regard to the nature of things, so neither am I as to
their existence. That a thing should be really perceived by my senses, and
at the same time not really exist, is to me a plain contradiction; since I
cannot prescind or abstract, even in thought, the existence of a sensible
thing from its being perceived. Wood, stones, fire, [154] water, flesh, iron,
and the like things, which I name and discourse of, are things that I know.
And I should not have known them, but that I perceived them by my
senses; and things perceived by the senses are immediately perceived; and
things immediately perceived are ideas; and ideas cannot exist without the
mind; their existence therefore consists in being perceived; when therefore
they are actually perceived, there can be no doubt of their existence. Away
then with all that scepticism, all those ridiculous philosophical doubts.
What a jest is it for a philosopher to question the existence of sensible
144
things, till he hath it proved to him from the veracity of God: or to pretend
our knowledge in this point falls short of intuition or demonstration? I
might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those things I
actually see and feel.
H Y L A S Not so fast, Philonous: you say you cannot conceive how sensible
things should exist without the mind. Do you not?
P H I L O N O U S I do.
H Y L A S Supposing you were annihilated, cannot you conceive it possible, that
things perceivable by sense may still exist?
P H I L O N O U S I can; but then it must be in another mind. When I deny sensible
things an existence out of the mind, I do not mean my mind in particular,
but all minds. Now it is plain they have an existence exterior to my mind,
since I find them by experience to be independent of it. There is therefore
some other mind wherein they exist, during the intervals between the
times of my perceiving them: as likewise they did before my birth, and
would do after my supposed annihilation. And as the same is true, with
regard to all other finite created spirits; it necessarily follows, there is an
omnipresent eternal Mind, which knows and comprehends all things, and
exhibits them to our view in such a manner, and according to such rules as
he himself hath ordained, and are by us termed the Laws of Nature.
…
P H I L O N O U S I say in the first place, that I do not deny the existence of material
substance, merely because I have no notion [155] of it, but because the
notion of it is inconsistent, or in other words, because it is repugnant that
there should be a notion of it. Many things, for ought I know, may exist,
whereof neither I nor any other man hath or can have any idea or notion
whatsoever. But then those things must be possible, that is, nothing
inconsistent must be included in their definition. I say secondly, that
although we believe things to exist which we do not perceive; yet we may
not believe that any particular thing exists, without some reason for such
belief: but I have no reason for believing the existence of matter. I have no
immediate intuition thereof: neither can I mediately from my sensations,
ideas, notions, actions or passions, infer an unthinking, unperceiving,
inactive substance, either by probable deduction, or necessary
145
consequence. Whereas the being of myself, that is, my own soul, mind or
thinking principle, I evidently know by reflection. You will forgive me if I
repeat the same things in answer to the same objections. In the very notion
or definition of material substance, there is included a manifest
repugnance and inconsistency. But this cannot be said of the notion of
spirit. That ideas should exist in what doth not perceive, or be produced
by what doth not act, is repugnant. But it is no repugnancy to say, that a
perceiving thing should be the subject of ideas, or an active thing the cause
of them. It is granted we have neither an immediate evidence nor a
demonstrative knowledge of the existence of other finite spirits; but it will
not thence follow that such spirits are on a foot with material substances:
if to suppose the one be inconsistent, and it be not inconsistent to suppose
the other; if the one can be inferred by no argument, and there is a
probability for the other; if we see signs and effects indicating distinct finite
agents like ourselves, and see no sign or symptom whatever that leads to
a rational belief of matter. I say lastly, that I have a notion of spirit, though
I have not, strictly speaking, an idea of it. I do not perceive it as an idea or
by means of an idea, but know it by reflection. [156]
…
P H I L O N O U S The ideas formed by the imagination are faint and indistinct;

they have besides an entire dependence on the will. But the ideas
perceived by sense, that is, real things, are more vivid and clear, and being
imprinted on the mind by a spirit distinct from us, have not a like
dependence on our will. There is therefore no danger of confounding these
with the foregoing: and there is as little of confounding them with the
visions of a dream, which are dim, irregular, and confused. And though
they should happen to be never so lively and natural, yet by their not being
connected, and of a piece with the preceding and subsequent transactions
of our lives, they might easily be distinguished from realities. In short, by
whatever method you distinguish things from chimeras on your own
scheme, the same, it is evident, will hold also upon mine. For it must be, I
presume, by some perceived difference, and I am not for depriving you of
any one thing that you perceive.
146
H Y L A S But still, Philonous, you hold, there is nothing in the world but spirits
and ideas. And this, you must needs acknowledge, sounds very oddly.
P H I L O N O U S I own the word idea, not being commonly used for thing, sounds
something out of the way. My reason for using it was, because a necessary
relation to the mind is understood to be implied by that term; and it is now
commonly used by philosophers, to denote the immediate objects of the
understanding. But however oddly the proposition may sound in words,
yet it includes nothing so very strange or shocking in its sense, which in
effect amounts to no more than this, to wit, that there are only things
perceiving, and things perceived; or that every unthinking being is
necessarily, and from the very nature of its existence, perceived by some
mind; if not by any finite created mind, yet certainly by the infinite mind of
God, in whom we live, and move, and have our being. Is this as strange as
to say, the sensible qualities are not on the objects: or, that we cannot be
sure of the existence of things, or know any thing of their real natures,
though we both see and feel them, and perceive them by all our senses?
[157]
…
H Y L A S What say you to this? Since, according to you, men judge of the reality
of things by their senses, how can a man be mistaken in thinking the moon
a plain lucid surface, about a foot in diameter; or a square tower, seen at a
distance, round; or an oar, with one end in the water, crooked?
P H I L O N O U S He is not mistaken with regard to the ideas he actually perceives;
but in the inferences he makes from his present perceptions. Thus in the
case of the oar, what he immediately perceives by sight is certainly
crooked; and so far he is in the right. But if he thence conclude, that upon
taking the oar out of the water he shall perceive the same crookedness; or
that it would affect his touch, as crooked things are wont to do: in that he
is mistaken. In like manner, if he shall conclude from what he perceives in
one station, that in case he advances toward the moon or tower, he should
still be affected with the like ideas, he is mistaken. But his mistake lies not
in what he perceives immediately and at present (it being a manifest
contradiction to suppose he should err in respect of that) but in the wrong
judgement he makes concerning the ideas he apprehends to be connected
147
with those immediately perceived: or concerning the ideas that, from what
he perceives at present, he imagines would be perceived in other
circumstances. The case is the same with regard to the Copernican system.
We do not here perceive any motion of the earth: but it were erroneous
thence to conclude, that in case we were placed at as great a distance from
that, as we are now from the other planets, we should not then perceive
its motion.
…
P H I L O N O U S With all my heart: retain the word matter, and apply it to the
objects of sense, if you please, provided you do not attribute to them any
subsistence distinct from their being perceived. I shall never quarrel with
you for an expression. Matter, or material substance, are terms introduced
by philosophers; and as used by them, imply a sort of independency, or a
subsistence distinct from being per[158]ceived by a mind: but are never
used by common people; or if ever, it is to signify the immediate objects
of sense. One would think therefore, so long as the names of all particular
things, with the terms sensible, substance, body, stuff, and the like, are
retained, the word matter should be never missed in common talk. And in
philosophical discourses it seems the best way to leave it quite out; since
there is not perhaps any one thing that hath more favoured and
strengthened the depraved bent of the mind toward atheism, than the use
of that general confused term.
There are several doctrines of importance, in addition to those

discussed earlier, put forward in the crucial passages cited above –
some fully developed, some merely adumbrated. There is the
effective refutation of Locke’s attempt to find a basis in empiricism
for the distinction between primary and secondary qualities – the
quantitative versus the qualitative aspect of objects. The distinction
is evidently embedded in the thought of the great physicists:
therefore it must be kept, and even made central. But the empirical
evidence for all qualities is the same, namely sense perception: and
the difference of status – the dualism – is not compatible with the
identical nature and ‘source’ of the experience. Locke makes a
148
brave attempt to reconcile this contradiction; Berkeley, who

wished not to interpret but to confute materialistic physics or non-
empirical mathematics, easily knocks over Locke’s rickety
structure. Furthermore he offers a new basis for differentiating
between on the one hand subjective impressions, created by
imagination or memory working consciously or unconsciously,
and, on the other, objective reality – namely vividness, compulsive
force, unalterable order and regularity, as determining what we call
‘objective’, as opposed to ideas and images which we generate and
manipulate more or less at will.
This doctrine is open to objections, for example that delusions,
false memories and other obsessive but not necessarily misleading
experiences are at times just as strong, vivid, persistent and
internally orderly as that which we call veridical perception – yet
we classify them as sub[159]jective. But Berkeley’s suggestion has
always strongly tempted empiricists: Hume, Mill, Mach, Russell,
have all made some use of it; and it has respectable adherents
today. Still more interesting is Berkeley’s adumbration of what
Russell, borrowing a term from mathematical philosophy, called
‘logical constructions’. Berkeley is replying to those who complain
that, since, according to him, nothing exists save ideas, we must be
eating ideas, drinking ideas, clothing ourselves in ideas, and so on,
which is surely absurd. Berkeley points out that this is a verbal, not
a philosophical, absurdity, committed because we substitute ‘ideas’
for ‘material objects’ without making corresponding substitutions
for the other factors involved. To say that bread is only an idea in
my head, and that therefore when I eat bread I am eating an idea,
is to forget that my body and my eating are similarly ideas: ‘I am
eating bread’ becomes equivalent to ‘An experience (ideas) is (are)
occurring which is described as “I am eating bread”; and if this
experience (these ideas) were not occurring, “I am eating bread”
would not be true.’ The absurdity is due to ‘reducing’ bread to
149
‘ideas’ while leaving my body and my eating ‘unreduced’ and ‘real’,

in contrast to the now illusory bread.47
From this sprang the modern doctrine of ‘logical fictions’, or
‘logical constructions’, which maintained that all statements about
apparently experience-independent entities – from political
‘entities’ like France, or the British Constitution, or the Stock
Exchange, or American democracy, or the Russian Revolution, to
things and events like tables or rainbows or earthquakes or heart
disease or pistol shots – `could be translated completely into
statements not involving any entities save the experience, actual
[160] or possible, of empirical observers. Thus all philosophies
which assumed that material objects, or political ‘patterns’, or
‘organic wholes’ and the like, were ultimate constituents of the
world, and could not be eliminated, and that this was a fatal
obstacle to out-and-out empiricism, were themselves exploded by
this uniquely powerful deflationary weapon. This doctrine, while
47 The eminent Russian Marxist Georgy Plekhanov in his

introduction to a textbook on dialectical materialism once argued that
the ‘old idealist Berkeley said that everything was a child of our brains:
ergo our parents were children of our brains: ergo our parents were our
children; but anyone who produced absurdities of this order was not
worth bothering about’. To this silly and entertaining attempt at a mate
in four moves, Berkeley’s (and later Mach’s and Russell’s) answers are
sufficient refutation. Lenin later repeats the argument in an even cruder
form. [This appears to be a reference to G. V. Plekhanov, foreword to
A. Deborin, Vvdenie v filosfiyu dialektiche materializma (Petrograd, 1916),
p. 24, but what Berlin quotes is more of a paraphrase than a translation.
In Georgi Plekhanov, Selected Philosophical Works (Moscow, 1976), the
relevant passage, in section 7 of the foreword, asserts that the principle
esse est percipi ‘means that you are not the offspring of your parents, but
they are your offspring, since their being reduces itself to being in your
perception. If the idealists are capable of waving materialism aside only
by conjuring up such stupidities, which can be taken seriously only, say,
by the inmates of Chekhov’s “Ward No. 6”, then in theory the cause of
idealism is hopelessly lost.’]
150
itself no longer as formidable as it used to seem, has played a crucial

role in modern empiricism.
Finally, Berkeley’s point that our knowledge of other selves is
not based on ‘ideas’ (which would be compatible with solipsism),
but rests on analogy – the notion that observers other than
ourselves, and similar to us, could exist, which is not an ‘idea’ as
defined by him – is an insight of cardinal importance and
originality, by which Hume and Russell, who regard it (rightly) as
an inconsistency in Berkeley, failed to profit, to their own cost.
Berkeley’s contribution to logic, and to what is today called
‘linguistic analysis’, is very great. But his abiding importance in the
history of philosophy still lies in his unequivocal insistence that any
statement purporting to be about physical objects in the external
world must, if it is to be meaningful, be somehow ‘reducible to’, or
‘analysable into’, statements about the contents of immediate sense
experience. This has been the main thesis of empiricist theories of
perception until the present day. Among the difficulties of the
thesis – and they have led to much obscure empiricist metaphysics
– are failures to agree about what is meant by analysis (or
reduction) or by speaking of the contents of immediate sense
experience. The word ‘analysis’ has a precise meaning in, say,
chemistry or mathematics; its use by philosophers has, as often as
not, rested on some ill-defined analogy.
More particularly, one widely held modern philosophical theory
of sense perception, phenomenalism, owes much to a sentence in
the Principles: ‘The table I write on, I say, exists, that is, I see and
feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say it existed, meaning
thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it,48 or that some other
[161] spirit actually does perceive it’ [1. 3: p. 133 above]. In other
words, to say that something not now perceived exists is to say
that, if an observer were suitably situated, he would perceive it.
Berkeley himself does not pursue this line of thought. For him, as
we have seen, the continued existence of unperceived objects is
48 IB’s italics.
151
secured by recourse to God. But the suggestion was taken up by J.

S. Mill, who described physical objects as ‘permanent possibilities
of sensation’, and it is of this analysis that phenomenalism is a
development. According to phenomenalism, all meaningful
statements about physical objects can be translated into sets of
hypothetical statements about the ‘sense data’ that observers would
have if they were suitably situated (whether any observers are in
fact so situated or not). In this way phenomenalists hope to render
secure Berkeley’s empiricist thesis of the complete ‘reducibility’ of
statements about physical objects to statements about immediate
sense experience. This hope has not yet been fulfilled: efforts of
varying degrees of plausibility to ‘reduce’ either still continue to be
made, or else have led to the formulation of elaborate explanations
of why, although in practice such reduction is not feasible, this is
nevertheless (in theory at least) not fatal to the doctrine. The issue
is still in hot dispute. [162]
152
David Hume
David Hume was born in 1711 into a good Scottish family in
Edinburgh. He was not rich, but possessed sufficient means to
abandon the pursuit of the law, for which his father had intended
him, and apply himself, in a somewhat desultory fashion, to the
study of philosophy and general learning. In 1734, after
unsuccessfully trying to be a merchant in Bristol, he went through
an intellectual crisis, and in a moment of illumination found his
true vocation. He went to France, and there composed his
philosophical masterpiece, A Treatise of Human Nature. It was
published in the next year, and in his own words, ‘fell dead-born from
the press’.49
Not discouraged by the chilliness of the learned world and the
public alike, he published his first essays in 1742. He became tutor
to Lord Allandale, accompanied General St Clair on a military
expedition against France, visited the courts of Vienna and Turin,
and after that returned to Scotland and lived in the country. In 1752
he moved to Edinburgh, published several political essays and
began the publication of his celebrated History of England. The
celebrity which had eluded him as a philosopher came to him as a
historian, and by the time he had finished his history – in 1761 –
he had become world famous. Two years later he accepted a post
in the British Embassy in Paris, and was there warmly welcomed
by the brilliant and enlightened intellectual society which made that
city the centre of the civilised world. He returned to Edinburgh in
1766, became an Under-Secretary of State in the following year,
retired two years later, and lived in his native city for the rest of his
life, by this time widely recognised as one of the foremost men of
genius of his time. An Enquiry [163] concerning the Principles of Morals,
published fourteen years after the Treatise, had finally secured.
‘My Own Life’ (1776), in The Letters of David Hume, ed. J. Y. T. Greig
49
(Oxford, 1932), vol. 1, p. 2.

153
DAVID HUME
Hume’s claim to be one of the greatest and most iconoclastic

philosophers of his own or any age.
In 1776 he died, as he had lived, an atheist, loved by his friends,
being (so he describes himself):
a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social,

and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of
enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of
literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper,
notwithstanding my frequent disappointments. My company was not
unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and
literary.50
Adam Smith said of him:
that gaiety of temper, so agreeable in society, but which is so often

accompanied with frivolous and superficial qualities, was in him certainly
attended with the most severe application, the most extensive learning,
the greatest depth of thought, and a capacity in every respect the most
comprehensive. Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in
his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a
perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty
will permit.51
Rousseau alone contrived to pick a quarrel with this most

delightful and generous of men. His philosophical writings have
remained controversial to this day, not least the Dialogues upon
Natural Religion, perhaps the most remarkable treatise upon this
topic ever composed. No man has influenced the history of
philosophical thought to a deeper and more disturbing degree.
50ibid., p. 7.
51Letter to William Strahan, 9 November 1776: The Glasgow Edition
of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, vol. 6, The
Correspondence of Adam Smith, no. 178, pp. 217–21 at p. 221.
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DAVID HUME
Hume’s philosophical writings need little interpretation. He is,

with the possible exception of Berkeley, the clearest philosophical
writer in an age of exceptional clarity, and he may claim to be the
greatest and most revolutionary (in the history of ideas these are
almost synonymous terms) of British philosophers. His particular
conception of philosophy as an empirical ‘science of man’ is the
true beginning of modern philosophy, which, in essence, is the
history of the development of, and opposition to, his thought. The
‘science of man’ is to be conducted by the methods of the natural
sciences: observation and generalisation. Philoso[164]phy, to
become properly scientific, must dispense with methods of its
own; these are to be exposed as shams and illusions.
The ‘observations’ required for Hume’s theory of knowledge
are, apparently, to be conducted mainly in the field of introspective
psychology, from which indeed his philosophising is often scarcely
distinguishable. ‘Men’s behaviour in company, in affairs and in
their pleasures’ is more relevant to the account of ‘The Passions’
and to moral philosophy, as discussed in Books 2 and 3 of the
Treatise, than to Hume’s theory of knowledge and criticism of
metaphysics.
The following extracts are from A Treatise of Human Nature.
INTRODUCTION
[…] as the science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences,
so, the only solid foundation we can give to this science itself must be laid on
experience and observation. It is no astonishing reflection to consider, that the
application of experimental philosophy to moral subjects should come after
that to natural, at the distance of above a whole century; since we find in fact,
that there was about the same interval betwixt the origins of these sciences;
and that, reckoning from Thales to Socrates, the space of time is nearly equal
to that betwixt my Lord Bacon and some late philosophers in England, who
have begun to put the science of man on a new footing, and have engaged
the attention, and excited the curiosity of the public. So true it is, that however
other nations may rival us in poetry, and excel us in some other agreeable arts,
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DAVID HUME
the improvements in reason and philosophy can only be owing to a land of

toleration and of liberty.
Nor ought we to think, that this latter improvement in the science of man
will do less honour to our native country than the former in natural philosophy,
but ought rather to esteem it a greater glory, upon account of the greater
importance of that science, as well as the necessity it lay under of such a
reformation. For to me it seems evident, [165] that the essence of the mind
being equally unknown to us with that of external bodies, it must be equally
impossible to form any notion of its powers and qualities otherwise than from
careful and exact experiments, and the observation of those particular effects,
which result from its different circumstances and situations. And though we
must endeavour to render all our principles as universal as possible, by tracing
up our experiments to the utmost, and explaining all effects from the simplest
and fewest causes, it is still certain we cannot go beyond experience; and any
hypothesis, that pretends to discover the ultimate original qualities of human
nature, ought at first to be rejected as presumptuous and chimerical.
…
[…] Moral philosophy has, indeed, this peculiar disadvantage, which is not
found in natural, that in collecting its experiments, it cannot make them
purposely, with premeditation, and after such a manner as to satisfy itself
concerning every particular difficulty which may arise. When I am at a loss to
know the effects of one body upon another in any situation, I need only put
them in that situation, and observe what results from it. But should I endeavour
to clear up after the same manner any doubt in moral philosophy, by placing
myself in the same case with that which I consider, it is evident this reflection
and premeditation would so disturb the operation of my natural principles, as
must render it impossible to form any just conclusion from the phenomenon.
We must, therefore, glean up our experiments in this science from a cautious
observation of human life, and take them as they appear in the common
course of the world, by men’s behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their
pleasures. Where experiments of this kind are judiciously collected and
compared, we may hope to establish on them a science which will not be
inferior in certainty, and will be much superior in utility, to any other of human
comprehension.
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DAVID HUME
Hume divides ‘the contents of the mind’, all labelled

indiscriminately ‘ideas’ by Locke and Berkeley, into two classes,
‘impressions’ and ‘ideas’. The impressions are intended to be the
immediately given data of [166] sense and of introspection, while
the ideas are the images of memory and imagination. Hume avoids
the trap into which Locke falls of distinguishing impressions (of
sense) from ideas by their respective sources, the impressions
‘coming from bodies without us’. Rather he distinguishes them –
and indeed, having once adopted a strictly epistemological
approach (that is, that of giving an inventory of mental data, not
of some unknown external reality), he must do so if he is to avoid
a vicious circle – by an intrinsic quality of impressions that is not
shared by ideas, namely force and liveliness. The distinction is, as
Hume himself notes, unsatisfactory; images seen in a hallucination
or in the dreams of delirium may be far more ‘forceful’ and ‘lively’
than any sense experience.
Next he establishes that every simple idea that we have is a copy
of a simple impression, and that, while we may form complex ideas
which do not copy any impression, these are built up from simple
ideas which are copies of impressions. Finally he proves that the
impressions are temporally prior to the ideas which resemble them:
first, by the simple fact of observation that they come earlier in
time; and, secondly, by the argument that, while we may have
impressions without subsequently having any resembling idea, we
never have a (simple) idea without having previously had a
resembling impression. This is Hume’s statement of the empiricist
thesis. It is a piece of descriptive psychology: all complex ideas are
built up of simple ideas; all simple ideas are copies of previously
experienced simple impressions; thus all our ideas are ultimately
derived from impressions. It is characteristic of the genetic
approach of the time that Hume should prove not (what would
seem to be required) that sense experience and introspection are
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DAVID HUME
logically necessary for the existence of our ideas, but rather that
they are temporally prior.
The famous case of the intermediate shade of blue – where,
contrary to this doctrine, I can imagine a new shade (that is, one
not previously given in sense experience) if the two shades adjacent
to it in a continuous scale of colours have been seen by me – is a
symptom of the weakness both of Hume’s atomistic
sensationalism and more generally [167] of the whole psychological
and genetic approach to philosophy.
Hume’s treatment of philosophy as if it were a none too precise
natural science, the results of which are established by observation
and induction, is very noticeable in the passage that follows. This
is, no doubt, why he is so unconcerned at the exception to his
general law, and also about the unsatisfactoriness of distinguishing
impressions from ideas by the criterion of ‘liveliness’. He does not
expect to be able to prove his generalisations to be irrefutably true
as one proves a theorem in mathematics. The world is a rich
amalgam, not a Cartesian system; it has no precise frontiers; the
lines we draw over it must be our own invention: propositions
about it cannot be expected to be more than correct-on-the-whole.
BOOK 1: OF THE UNDERSTANDING
PART 1: OF IDEAS, THEIR ORIGIN, COMPOSITION, CONNECTION AND

ABSTRACTION
Section I. Of the origin of our ideas

All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct
kinds, which I shall call impressions and ideas. The difference betwixt these
consists in the degrees of force and liveliness, with which they strike upon the
mind, and make their way into our thought or consciousness. Those
perceptions which enter with most force and violence, we may name
impressions; and, under this name, I comprehend all our sensations, passions,
and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas, I mean
the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning; such as, for instance, are
all the perceptions excited by the present discourse, excepting only those
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DAVID HUME
which arise from the sight and touch, and excepting the immediate pleasure
or uneasiness it may occasion. I believe it will not be very necessary to employ
many words in explaining this distinction. Every one of himself will readily
perceive the difference betwixt feeling and thinking. The common degrees of
these are easily distinguished; though it is not impossible but, in particular
instances, [168] they may very nearly approach to each other. Thus, in sleep,
in a fever, in madness, or in any very violent emotions of soul, our ideas may
approach to our impressions: as, on the other hand, it sometimes happens,
that our impressions are so faint and low, that we cannot distinguish them
from our ideas. But, notwithstanding this near resemblance in a few instances,
they are in general so very different, that no one can make a scruple to rank
them under distinct heads, and assign to each a peculiar name to mark the
difference.
There is another division of our perceptions, which it will be convenient to
observe, and which extends itself both to our impressions and ideas. This
division is into simple and complex. Simple perceptions, or impressions and
ideas, are such as admit of no distinction nor separation. The complex are the
contrary to these, and may be distinguished into parts. Though a particular
colour, taste, and smell, are qualities all united together in this apple, it is easy
to perceive they are not the same, but are at least distinguishable from each
other.
Having, by these divisions, given an order and arrangement to our objects,
we may now apply ourselves to consider, with the more accuracy, their
qualities and relations. The first circumstance that strikes my eye, is the great
resemblance betwixt our impressions and ideas in every other particular,
except their degree of force and vivacity. The one seems to be, in a manner,
the reflection of the other; so that all the perceptions of the mind are double,
and appear both as impressions and ideas. When I shut my eyes, and think of
my chamber, the ideas I form are exact representations of the impressions I
felt; nor is there any circumstance of the one, which is not to be found in the
other. In running over my other perceptions, I find still the same resemblance
and representation. Ideas and impressions appear always to correspond to
each other. This circumstance seems to me remarkable, and engages my
attention for a moment.
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DAVID HUME
Upon a more accurate survey I find I have been carried away too far by the
first appearance, and that I must make use of the distinction of perceptions
into simple and com[169]plex, to limit this general decision, that all our ideas
and impressions are resembling. I observe that many of our complex ideas
never had impressions that corresponded to them, and that many of our
complex impressions never are exactly copied in ideas. I can imagine to myself
such a city as the New Jerusalem, whose pavement is gold, and walls are
rubies, though I never saw any such. I have seen Paris; but shall I affirm I can
form such an idea of that city, as will perfectly represent all its streets and
houses in their real and just proportions?
I perceive, therefore, that though there is, in general, a great resemblance
betwixt our complex impressions and ideas, yet the rule is not universally true,
that they are exact copies of each other. We may next consider, how the case
stands with our simple perceptions. After the most accurate examination of
which I am capable, I venture to affirm, that the rule here holds without any
exception, and that every simple idea has a simple impression, which
resembles it, and every simple impression a correspondent idea. That idea of
red, which we form in the dark, and that impression which strikes our eyes in
sunshine, differ only in degree, not in nature. That the case is the same with all
our simple impressions and ideas, it is impossible to prove by a particular
enumeration of them. Every one may satisfy himself in this point by running
over as many as he pleases. But if any one should deny this universal
resemblance, I know no way of convincing him, but by desiring him to shew a
simple impression that has not a correspondent idea, or a simple idea that has
not a correspondent impression. If he does not answer this challenge, as it is
certain he cannot, we may, from his silence and our own observation, establish
our conclusion.
Thus we find, that all simple ideas and impressions resemble each other;
and, as the complex are formed from them, we may affirm in general, that
these two species of perception are exactly correspondent. Having discovered
this relation, which requires no further examination, I am curious to find some
other of their qualities. Let us consider, how they stand with regard to their
existence, and [170] which of the impressions and ideas are causes, and which
effects.
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The full examination of this question is the subject of the present treatise;
and, therefore, we shall here content ourselves with establishing one general
proposition, That all our simple ideas in their first appearance, are derived from
simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly
represent.
In seeking for phenomena to prove this proposition, I find only those of
two kinds; but, in each kind the phenomena are obvious, numerous, and
conclusive. I first make myself certain, by a new review, of what I have already
asserted, that every simple impression is attended with a correspondent idea,
and every simple idea with a correspondent impression. From this constant
conjunction of resembling perceptions I immediately conclude, that there is a
great connection betwixt our correspondent impressions and ideas, and that
the existence of the one has a considerable influence upon that of the other.
Such a constant conjunction, in such an infinite number of instances, can never
arise from chance; but clearly proves a dependence of the impressions on the
ideas, or of the ideas on the impressions. That I may know on which side this
dependence lies, I consider the order of their first appearance; and find, by
constant experience, that the simple impressions always take the precedence
of their correspondent ideas, but never appear in the contrary order. To give
a child an idea of scarlet or orange, of sweet or bitter, I present the objects, or,
in other words, convey to him these impressions; but proceed not so absurdly,
as to endeavour to produce the impressions by exciting the ideas. Our ideas,
upon their appearance, produce not their correspondent impressions, nor do
we perceive any colour, or feel any sensation merely upon thinking of them.
On the other hand we find, that any impression, either of the mind or body, is
constantly followed by an idea, which resembles it, and is only different in the
degrees of force and liveliness. The constant conjunction of our resembling
perceptions, is a convincing proof, that the one are the causes of the other;
and this priority of the impressions is [171] an equal proof, that our
impressions are the causes of our ideas, not our ideas of our impressions.
To confirm this, I consider another plain and convincing phenomenon;
which is, that wherever, by any accident, the faculties which give rise to any
impressions are obstructed in their operations, as when one is born blind or
deaf, not only the impressions are lost, but also their correspondent ideas; so
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that there never appear in the mind the least traces of either of them. Nor is
this only true, where the organs of sensation are entirely destroyed, but
likewise where they have never been put in action to produce a particular
impression. We cannot form to ourselves a just idea of the taste of a pineapple,
without having actually tasted it.
There is, however, one contradictory phenomenon, which may prove, that
it is not absolutely impossible for ideas to go before their correspondent
impressions. I believe it will readily be allowed, that the several distinct ideas
of colours, which enter by the eyes, or those of sounds, which are conveyed
by the hearing, are really different from each other, though, at the same time,
resembling. Now, if this be true of different colours, it must be no less so of
the different shades of the same colour, that each of them produces a distinct
idea, independent of the rest. For if this should be denied, it is possible, by the
continual gradation of shades, to run a colour insensibly into what is most
remote from it; and, if you will not allow any of the means to be different, you
cannot, without absurdity, deny the extremes to be the same. Suppose,
therefore, a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years, and to have
become perfectly well acquainted with colours of all kinds, excepting one
particular shade of blue, for instance, which it never has been his fortune to
meet with. Let all the different shades of that colour, except that single one,
be placed before him, descending gradually from the deepest to the lightest;
it is plain, that he will perceive a blank, where that shade is wanting, and will
be sensible that there is a greater distance in that place, betwixt the
contiguous colours, than in any other. Now I ask, whether it is possible for him,
from his own [172] imagination, to supply this deficiency, and raise up to
himself the idea of that particular shade, though it had never been conveyed
to him by his senses? I believe there are few but will be of opinion that he can;
and this may serve as a proof, that the simple ideas are not always derived
from the correspondent impressions; though the instance is so particular and
singular, that it is scarce worth our observing, and does not merit that, for it
alone, we should alter our general maxim.
But, besides this exception, it may not be amiss to remark, on this head,
that the principle of the priority of impressions to ideas, must be understood
with another limitation, viz. that as our ideas are images of our impressions,
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so we can form secondary ideas, which are images of the primary, as appears
from this very reasoning concerning them. This is not, properly speaking, an
exception to the rule so much as an explanation of it. Ideas produce the
images of themselves in new ideas; but as the first ideas are supposed to be
derived from impressions, it still remains true, that all our simple ideas
proceed, either mediately or immediately, from their correspondent
impressions.
This, then, is the first principle I establish in the science of human nature;
nor ought we to despise it because of the simplicity of its appearance. For it is
remarkable, that the present question concerning the precedency of our
impressions or ideas, is the same with what has made so much noise in other
terms, when it has been disputed whether there be any innate ideas, or
whether all ideas be derived from sensation and reflection. We may observe,
that in order to prove the ideas of extension and colour not to be innate,
philosophers do nothing but shew that they are conveyed by our senses. To
prove the ideas of passion and desire not to be innate, they observe, that we
have a preceding experience of these emotions in ourselves. Now, if we
carefully examine these arguments, we shall find that they prove nothing but
that ideas are preceded by other more lively perceptions, from which they are
derived, and which they represent. I hope this clear stating of the question will
remove all disputes concerning [173] it, and will render this principle of more
use in our reasonings, than it seems hitherto to have been.
Hume’s doctrine of the association of ideas, derived from Hartley,

and the basis of the new psychological science of the eighteenth
century, with its mechanical and chemical models, especially in the
dominant schools of the French philosophes, is discussed in the
Introduction (p. 11).
Hume subscribed to the current idiom of ‘faculties of the mind’.
It is noticeable in the passage which follows how much of what we
should call ordinary thinking he ascribes to the ‘faculty’ of
imagination, ‘in’ which the chemistry of association of ideas takes
place.
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The penultimate paragraph is a good example of Hume’s

consciously scientific approach. With the tentativeness, and dislike
of metaphysics, of the natural scientist, he proposes to describe how
things happen, not to look for hidden causes of their happening as
they do.
Book 1, Part 1, Section 4: Of the connection or association of ideas

As all simple ideas may be separated by the imagination, and may be united
again in what form it pleases, nothing would be more unaccountable than the
operations of that faculty, were it not guided by some universal principles,
which render it, in some measure, uniform with itself in all times and places.
Were ideas entirely loose and unconnected, chance alone would join them;
and it is impossible the same simple ideas should fall regularly into complex
ones (as they commonly do), without some bond of union among them, some
associating quality, by which one idea naturally introduces another. This
uniting principle among ideas is not to be considered as an inseparable
connection; for that has been already excluded from the imagination: nor yet
are we to conclude, that without it the mind cannot join two ideas; for nothing
is more free than that faculty: but we are only to regard it as a gentle force,
which commonly prevails, and is the cause why, among other things,
languages so nearly correspond to each other; Nature, in a manner, pointing
out to every [174] one those simple ideas, which are most proper to be united
into a complex one. The qualities, from which this association arises, and by
which the mind is, after this manner, conveyed from one idea to another, are
three, viz. resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause and effect.
I believe it will not be very necessary to prove, that these qualities produce
an association among ideas, and, upon the appearance of one idea, naturally
introduce another. It is plain, that, in the course of our thinking, and in the
constant revolution of our ideas, our imagination runs easily from one idea to
any other that resembles it, and that this quality alone is to the fancy a
sufficient bond and association. It is likewise evident, that as the senses, in
changing their objects, are necessitated to change them regularly, and take
them as they lie contiguous to each other, the imagination must, by long
custom, acquire the same method of thinking, and run along the parts of space
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and time in conceiving its objects. As to the connection that is made by the
relation of cause and effect, we shall have occasion afterwards to examine it to
the bottom, and therefore shall not at present insist upon it. It is sufficient to
observe, that there is no relation, which produces a stronger connection in the
fancy, and makes one idea more readily recall another, than the relation of
cause and effect betwixt their objects.
That we may understand the full extent of these relations, we must
consider, that two objects are connected together in the imagination, not only
when the one is immediately resembling, contiguous to, or the cause of the
other, but also when there is interposed betwixt them a third object, which
bears to both of them any of these relations. This may be carried on to a great
length; though, at the same time we may observe, that each remove
considerably weakens the relation. Cousins in the fourth degree are connected
by causation, if I may be allowed to use that term; but not so closely as
brothers, much less as child and parent. In general, we may observe, that all
the relations of blood depend upon cause and effect, and are esteemed near
or remote, according to the number of connecting causes interposed betwixt
the persons. [175]
Of the three relations above mentioned, this of causation is the most
extensive. Two objects may be considered as placed in this relation, as well
when one is the cause of any of the actions or motions of the other, as when
the former is the cause of the existence of the latter. For as that action or
motion is nothing but the object itself, considered in a certain light, and as the
object continues the same in all its different situations, it is easy to imagine
how such an influence of objects upon one another may connect them in the
imagination.
We may carry this further, and remark, not only that two objects are
connected by the relation of cause and effect, when the one produces a
motion or any action in the other, but also when it has a power of producing
it. And this we may observe to be the source of all the relations of interest and
duty, by which men influence each other in society, and are placed in the ties
of government and subordination. A master is such a one as, by his situation,
arising either from force or agreement, has a power of directing in certain
particulars the actions of another, whom we call servant. A judge is one, who,
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in all disputed cases, can fix by his opinion the possession or property of any
thing betwixt any members of the society. When a person is possessed of any
power, there is no more required to convert it into action, but the exertion of
the will; and that in every case is considered as possible, and in many as
probable; especially in the case of authority, where the obedience of the
subject is a pleasure and advantage to the superior.
These are, therefore, the principles of union or cohesion among our simple
ideas, and in the imagination supply the place of that inseparable connection,
by which they are united in our memory. Here is a kind of attraction, which in
the mental world will be found to have as extraordinary effects as in the
natural, and to shew itself in as many and as various forms. Its effects are
everywhere conspicuous; but, as to its causes, they are mostly unknown, and
must be resolved into original qualities of human nature, which I pretend not
to explain. Nothing is more requisite for a true philosopher, than to restrain
the [176] intemperate desire of searching into causes; and, having established
any doctrine upon a sufficient number of experiments, rest contented with
that, when he sees a further examination would lead him into obscure and
uncertain speculations. In that case his enquiry would be much better
employed in examining the effects than the causes of his principle.
Amongst the effects of this union or association of ideas, there are none
more remarkable than those complex ideas, which are the common subjects
of our thoughts and reasoning, and generally arise from some principle of
union among our simple ideas. These complex ideas may be divided into
relations, modes, and substances. We shall briefly examine each of these in
order, and shall subjoin some considerations concerning our general and
particular ideas, before we leave the present subject, which may be considered
as the elements of this philosophy.
Hume accepts completely Berkeley’s view that what we ordinarily

call a physical object – in Hume’s words ‘what any common man
means by a hat, or shoe, or stone’ – is no more than a collection
and succession in time of sensible qualities. He does not, of course,
believe in the need for, or the existence of, the ‘unknown
something’ (Locke’s ‘substratum’); or, rather, he would have said
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that discussion of the question of its existence – there being no

human experience capable of throwing light upon it – was without
any sense. Indeed, in the passage below he calls our practice of
referring the qualities to an unknown something a ‘fiction’. In Part
4 we shall find him investigating a closely related ‘fiction’, namely
our belief in the continuous existence of bodies, independent of
and external to ourselves.
Book 1, Part 1, Section 6: Of modes and substances

…
The idea of a substance as well as that of a mode, is nothing but a collection

of simple ideas, that are united by the imagination, and have a particular name
assigned them, by which we are able to recall, either to ourselves or [177]
others, that collection. But the difference betwixt these ideas consists in this,
that the particular qualities which form a substance, are commonly referred to
an unknown something, in which they are supposed to inhere; or granting this
fiction should not take place, are at least supposed to be closely and
inseparably connected by the relations of contiguity and causation. The effect
of this is, that whatever new simple quality we discover to have the same
connection with the rest, we immediately comprehend it among them, even
though it did not enter into the first conception of the substance. Thus our
idea of gold may at first be a yellow colour, weight, malleableness, fusibility;
but upon the discovery of its dissolubility in aqua regia, we join that to the
other qualities, and suppose it to belong to the substance as much as if its
idea had from the beginning made a part of the compound one. The principle
of union being regarded as the chief part of the complex idea, gives entrance
to whatever quality afterwards occurs, and is equally comprehended by it, as
are the others, which first presented themselves.
…
The passage which follows embodies a most important principle

for Hume, and one which often acts as a psychological substitute
for the notion of logical entailment, or rather non-entailment. Thus
where we should say that what he really wants to prove is, for
example, that the occurrence of an event A does not logically entail
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the occurrence of an event B, he will in fact assert that the idea of

A is different from that of B, and hence, by this principle, the two
ideas are distinguishable, and therefore separable.
Book 1, Part 1, Section 7: Of abstract ideas

…
[…] First, we have observed, that whatever objects are different are
distinguishable, and that whatever objects are distinguishable are separable
by the thought and imagination. And we may here add, that these
propositions are equally true in the inverse, and that whatever objects are
separable are also distinguishable, and that whatever objects are
distinguishable are also different. For how is it [178] possible we can separate
what is not distinguishable, or distinguish what is not different? […]
…
Moreover, the obverse of this rule seems to him to settle the

problem of universals along lines not dissimilar from those of
Berkeley. He believed that the fallacy of ascribing independent
being to characteristics springs from the fact that they can be
distinguished from that which they characterise, and whatever is
distinguishable can exist separately, He argues against this that this
distinguishing is one of ‘reason’ only – that if we distinguish its
characteristics from an object, nothing is left. In this sense we
cannot, therefore, even distinguish. But we can compare objects –
‘view them in different aspects, according to the resemblances of
which they are susceptible’ – without distinguishing, that is,
splitting them into separate ‘ideas’. These inseparable ‘aspects’ and
‘resemblances’ without which an object is nothing – which in a
sense are the object – are symbolised by general terms, and are
mistakenly conceived as having existence – or some sort of being
– in their own right. This doctrine, with various modifications and
refinements, is held by many modern empiricists. Russell and
others regard it as unsatisfactory and complain that universals
cannot be exorcised by being called ‘aspects’ or ‘resemblances’, a
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mere change of nomenclature which leaves us where we were. The

question is by no means dead today.
[ibid.] Before I leave this subject, I shall employ the same principles to explain
that distinction of reason, which is so much talked of, and is so little understood
in the schools. Of this kind is the distinction betwixt figure and the body
figured; motion and the body moved. The difficulty of explaining this
distinction arises from the principle above explained, that all ideas which are
different are separable. For it follows from thence, that if the figure be different
from the body, their ideas must be separable as well as distinguishable; if they
be not different, their ideas can neither be separable nor distinguishable. What
then is [179] meant by a distinction of reason, since it implies neither a
difference nor separation?
To remove this difficulty, we must have recourse to the foregoing
explication of abstract ideas. It is certain that the mind would never have
dreamed of distinguishing a figure from the body figured, as being in reality
neither distinguishable, nor different, nor separable, did it not observe, that
even in this simplicity there might be contained many different resemblances
and relations. Thus, when a globe of white marble is presented, we receive
only the impression of a white colour disposed in a certain form, nor are we
able to separate and distinguish the colour from the form. But observing
afterwards a globe of black marble and a cube of white, and comparing them
with our former object, we find two separate resemblances, in what formerly
seemed, and really is, perfectly inseparable. After a little more practice of this
kind, we begin to distinguish the figure from the colour by a distinction of
reason; that is, we consider the figure and colour together, since they are, in
effect, the same and undistinguishable; but still view them in different aspects,
according to the resemblances of which they are susceptible. When we would
consider only the figure of the globe of white marble we form in reality an idea
both of the figure and colour, but tacitly carry our eye to its resemblance with
the globe of black marble: and in the same manner, when we would consider
its colour only, we turn our view to its resemblance with the cube of white
marble. By this means we accompany our ideas with a kind of reflection, of
which custom renders us, in a great measure, insensible. A person who desires
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us to consider the figure of a globe of white marble without thinking on its

colour, desires an impossibility; but his meaning is, that we should consider
the colour and figure together, but still keep in our eye the resemblance to
the globe of black marble, or that to any other globe of whatever colour or
substance.
Having for the moment disposed of the problems of substance and

universals, Hume turns to knowledge. He takes over the
fundamental rationalist distinction be[180]tween indubitable
truths: those of reason, the a priori verités de raison of Leibniz; and
truths of fact, verités de fait, which are at best only probable. But true
to his ‘scientific’ empirical method, he distinguishes them by their
sources or origins, not their logical character or content; and
introduces the view that was destined to awaken Kant from his
‘dogmatic slumber’ and transform philosophy in the West – that
the indubitably knowable a priori truths are based on our own,
ultimately arbitrary, rules or habits of using words and symbols,
and give no information about the world. Propositions are either
certain and uninformative, or informative and not certain.
Metaphysical knowledge which claims to be both certain and
informative is therefore in principle not possible.
BOOK 1, PART 3: OF KNOWLEDGE AND PROBABILITY
Section 1: Of knowledge
There are seven different kinds of philosophical relation, viz. resemblance,
identity, relations of time and place, proportion in quantity or number, degrees
in any quality, contrariety, and causation. These relations may be divided into
two classes; into such as depend entirely on the ideas, which we compare
together, and such as may be changed without any change in the ideas. It is
from the idea of a triangle, that we discover the relation of equality, which its
three angles bear to two right ones; and this relation is invariable, as long as
our idea remains the same. On the contrary, the relations of contiguity and
distance betwixt two objects may be changed merely by an alteration of their
place, without any change on the objects themselves or on their ideas; and the
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place depends on a hundred different accidents, which cannot be foreseen by

the mind. It is the same case with identity and causation. Two objects, though
perfectly resembling each other, and even appearing in the same place at
different times, may be numerically different: and as the power, by which one
object produces another, is never discoverable merely from their idea, it is
evident cause and effect are relations, of [181] which we receive information
from experience, and not from any abstract reasoning or reflection. There is
no single phenomenon, even the most simple, which can be accounted for
from the qualities of the objects, as they appear to us; or which we could
foresee without the help of our memory and experience.
It appears therefore that of these seven philosophical relations, there
remain only four, which depending solely upon ideas, can be the objects of
knowledge and certainty. These four are resemblance, contrariety, degrees in
quality, and proportions in quantity or number. Three of these relations are
discoverable at first sight, and fall more properly under the province of
intuition than demonstration. When any objects resemble each other, the
resemblance will at first strike the eye, or rather the mind; and seldom requires
a second examination. The case is the same with contrariety, and with the
degrees of any quality. No one can once doubt but existence and non-
existence destroy each other, and are perfectly incompatible and contrary. And
though it be impossible to judge exactly of the degrees of any quality, such as
colour, taste, heat, cold, when the difference betwixt them is very small; yet it
is easy to decide, that any of them is superior or inferior to another, when their
difference is considerable. And this decision we always pronounce at first sight,
without any enquiry or reasoning.
We might proceed, after the same manner, in fixing the proportions of
quantity or number, and might at one view observe a superiority, or inferiority
betwixt any numbers, or figures; especially where the difference is very great
and remarkable. As to equality or any exact proportion, we can only guess at
it from a single consideration; except in very short numbers, or very limited
portions of extension; which are comprehended in an instant, and where we
perceive an impossibility of falling into any considerable error. In all other
cases we must settle the proportions with some liberty, or proceed in a more
artificial manner.
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I have already observed, that geometry, or the art by which we fix the
proportions of figures; though it much excels both in universality and
exactness, the loose judge[182]ments of the senses and imagination; yet never
attains a perfect precision and exactness. Its first principles are still drawn from
the general appearance of the objects; and that appearance can never afford
us any security, when we examine the prodigious minuteness of which nature
is susceptible. Our ideas seem to give a perfect assurance, that no two right
lines can have a common segment; but if we consider these ideas, we shall
find, that they always suppose a sensible inclination of the two lines, and that
where the angle they form is extremely small, we have no standard of a right
line so precise as to assure us of the truth of this proposition. It is the same
case with most of the primary decisions of the mathematics.
There remain therefore algebra and arithmetic as the only sciences, in
which we can carry on a chain of reasoning to any degree of intricacy, and yet
preserve a perfect exactness and certainty. We are possessed of a precise
standard, by which we can judge of the equality and proportion of numbers;
and according as they correspond or not to that standard, we determine their
relations, without any possibility of error. When two numbers are so combined,
as that the one has always an unit answering to every unit of the other, we
pronounce them equal; and it is for want of such a standard of equality in
extension, that geometry can scarce be esteemed a perfect and infallible
science.
But here it may not be amiss to obviate a difficulty, which may arise from
my asserting, that though geometry falls short of that perfect precision and
certainty, which are peculiar to arithmetic and algebra, yet it excels the
imperfect judgements of our senses and imagination. The reason why I impute
any defect to geometry, is, because its original and fundamental principles are
derived merely from appearances; and it may perhaps be imagined, that this
defect must always attend it, and keep it from ever reaching a greater
exactness in the comparison of objects or ideas, than what our eye or
imagination alone is able to attain. I own that this defect so far attends it, as
to keep it from ever aspiring to a full certainty: but since these fundamental
principles depend on the easiest and least deceitful [183] appearances, they
bestow on their consequences a degree of exactness, of which these
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consequences are singly incapable. It is impossible for the eye to determine

the angles of a chiliagon to be equal to 1996 right angles, or make any
conjecture, that approaches this proportion; but when it determines, that right
lines cannot concur; that we cannot draw more than one right line between
two given points; its mistakes can never be of any consequence. And this is
the nature and use of geometry, to run us up to such appearances, as, by
reason of their simplicity, cannot lead us into any considerable error.
I shall here take occasion to propose a second observation concerning our
demonstrative reasonings, which is suggested by the same object of the
mathematics. It is usual with mathematicians to pretend, that those ideas,
which are their objects, are of so refined and spiritual a nature, that they fall
not under the conception of the fancy, but must be comprehended by a pure
and intellectual view, of which the superior faculties of the soul are alone
capable. The same notion runs through most parts of philosophy, and is
principally made use of to explain our abstract ideas, and to shew how we can
form an idea of a triangle, for instance, which shall neither be an isosceles nor
scalenum, nor be confined to any particular length and proportion of sides. It
is easy to see why philosophers are so fond of this notion of some spiritual
and refined perceptions; since by that means they cover many of their
absurdities, and may refuse to submit to the decisions of clear ideas, by
appealing to such as are obscure and uncertain. But to destroy this artifice, we
need but reflect on that principle so oft insisted on, that all our ideas are copied
from our impressions. For from thence we may immediately conclude, that
since all impressions are clear and precise, the ideas, which are copied from
them, must be of the same nature, and can never, but from our fault, contain
any thing so dark and intricate. An idea is by its very nature weaker and fainter
than an impression; but being in every other respect the same, cannot imply
any very great mystery. If its weakness render it obscure, it is our business to
remedy that defect, as much as possible, by keeping the [184] idea steady and
precise; and till we have done so, it is in vain to pretend to reasoning and
philosophy.
The four relations enumerated above which ‘depend entirely on

the ideas’ [p. 151] – sometimes called ‘relations of reason’ – are, for
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Hume, the relations which give rise to a priori truths. The

perception of these relations, by intuition and demonstration, is
the sole power possessed by the faculty of reason; and it is only of
propositions reporting these relations between ideas that we can
have knowledge as opposed to probable opinion. All other
propositions are arrived at by the imagination proceeding by habit
in accordance with the principle of association.
As was remarked above, Hume, in common with all other pre-
Kantian empiricists, confounds logic with genetic psychology, and
distinguishes a priori from other truths by a supposed
psychological fact about the way in which we come to know them.
He correctly places the propositions of arithmetic and algebra
amongst a priori truths, giving as his reason that these are strictly
deduced from intuitively known truths. What intuition is, is left
obscure.
In the Treatise, Hume does not regard geometry as a priori. The
matter is discussed at length in Part 2, where he comes to the
conclusions summarised in the extract above: the steps of
deductive reasoning by which we prove a theorem from the axioms
of geometry are indeed infallible; but the axioms, themselves being
‘drawn from the appearances of things’, are not, particularly
because we have not (as we have in arithmetic and algebra for
numbers) a precise standard of equality for extension in space.
Nevertheless, geometry is much superior to the rest of our
empirical knowledge because these axioms, though not fully
certain, ‘depend on the easiest and least deceitful appearances’.
Hume is absolutely correct so far as applied geometry, that is,
geometry regarded as describing the properties of actual objects in
space, is concerned. We have no absolutely precise criterion of
equality, say, of length in two real lines; indeed it is doubtful
whether it makes sense to talk of [185] absolute equality without
reference to measuring instruments and their degrees of error. Pure
geometry, however, is not a description of empirical properties of
space; it has nothing to do with the behaviour of foot rules,
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surveyor’s chains or theodolites. It is a system of purely abstract

relations – a logical pattern applicable to a range of utterly
heterogeneous subject matter, as is shown by the fact that
‘interpretations’ (that is, uses or applications) other than the spatial
can be found for it. In an obscure passage in Hume’s later work
An Enquiry into Human Understanding 52 there is a hint that he realised
this distinction, and was prepared to assign pure geometry where
it belongs, namely to the region of the a priori.
Hume’s analysis of causation, and his consequent posing of the
problem of induction,53 is his most important, as it is his most
celebrated, contribution to the theory of knowledge. It occupies
almost the whole of the long Part 3 of the Treatise. Kant’s
stupendous effort to deal with its consequences inaugurated
modern philosophy. The failure to provide an answer to Hume’s
problem (attempts to do so have filled many volumes) has been
called ‘the scandal of Philosophy’.54 Hume begins by stressing the
importance of the relation of cause and effect. It is the only relation
that enables us to reason to the existence of any object, or the
occurrence of any event, beyond our present immediate
impressions; but for it, we should have no ground for believing in
anything beyond our own present immediate experience.55
52 [Possibly a reference to Enquiry 4. 1 or 7. 1.]

53 Locke had vaguely appreciated the existence of this problem, but
mentions it only in passing; its importance in modern philosophy dates
from Hume.
54 [C. D. Broad, ‘The Philosophy of Francis Bacon’ (1926), Ethics and
the History of Philosophy: Selected Essays (London, 1952), p. 143. A. N.

Whitehead calls it ‘the despair of philosophy’: Science and the Modern World
(New York, 1925), p. 23.]
55 This may go a little too far. Some few inferences to the past may be
based upon memory; but even with this we should still be confined to a
minute collection of beliefs, compared with the beliefs and assumptions
that we actually do hold. And in any case reliance on the causal relations
may well be involved in establishing the trustworthiness of memory.
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He then proceeds to examine a single instance of cause and

effect. The example which he uses, and which we may as well keep
in mind, is that of one billiard ball striking another, and thereby
causing the second ball to move. In such a case, where we say that
an event A has caused an [186] event B, what do we mean? In the
first place, says Hume, we mean that A and B were spatially
contiguous; secondly, that A occurred immediately before B. But
these, though necessary, are not sufficient, conditions of causation;
obviously we do not say of every pair of spatially contiguous events
of which one occurs immediately before the other that the one is
the cause of the other. If you touch a table with your finger and
immediately after feel a pain in it, you do not assume that the first
event is necessarily the cause of the second, which might well have
occurred without it. A third condition must be fulfilled: there must
be a necessary connection.
Having analysed the idea of causation into its component ideas,
those of contiguity, priority in time and necessary connection,
Hume devotes the rest of Part 3 to an investigation of the most
obscure and by far the most important of the three, the idea of
necessary connection.
As always, when an obscure idea is being clarified, Hume’s
investigation is dominated by the genetic question ‘From what
impression is the idea derived?’ The argument is complex and
pursues a sinuous course, as Hume ‘beat[s] about all the
neighbouring fields’ (1. 3. 2). Accordingly it seems to me best to
give a summary of it in modern language.56
56 The reader will find it easier to follow the relation between this
account and the text if he bears in mind Hume’s technique for proving
that a given proposition is not ‘analytic’, that is, logically true –
‘established by reason’. He employs not the logical criterion that the
contradictory of such a proposition is not self-contradictory but, as we
should expect, the more psychological criterion that we can conceive the
contradictory.
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Let us consider a particular instance of ‘A causes B’. First, says

Hume, the connection is not one of logical entailment; for ‘There
is no object which implies the existence of any other’ (p. 189).
Hume tends to substitute a psychological criterion for logical
entailment, and asks whether we can conceive of an A not followed
by a B; but this is not the point he means to make: whether or not
A and B are psychologically distinct (this may differ from one
individual to another), they either are or are not so used that the
proposition ‘An A has occurred not immediately followed [187] by
a B’ is self-contradictory. If it is not, then what makes us think that
it states a necessary relation? Now, no doubt, we do sometimes utter
propositions of the form ‘A causes B’ where the contradictory of
‘A causes B’ is self-contradictory, that is, where the proposition ‘A
causes B’ is analytic; but this is neither the most frequent nor the
historically basic use of the word ‘cause’. And, of course, if all our
causal propositions were analytic in this way, and followed from
definitions and the like, then, taken as a whole, tracing connections
between them would become a sort of lexicographical game like
exchanging counters for each other according to fixed rules; and
such games give us no information about the world. Hence
Hume’s point remains: there are many, and those the most
important, causal propositions where the connection between A
and B is not logical.
But if the connection is not logical, then it must be empirical.
But, as Hume emphasises, there is nothing observable in any one
instance except the mere sequence of events. The one billiard ball
rolls up to the other, the two are in contact, the second moves on;
there is nothing observable here that can be called a necessary
connection. And to talk of one event being ‘produced’ by the other
is merely to coin a synonym for being ‘caused’ – the very matter
under discussion; nor do such other words as ‘power’, ‘efficacy’,
‘creation’, ‘agency’ and so on advance the enquiry. (It may be
observed that words like ‘force’, as used in mechanics, do not
denote unobservable links between objects; they are shorthand ways
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of referring to the observed or observable regularities of observed

phenomena. The anthropomorphic overtones of such terms may
indeed be misleading, and have led to various forms of the ‘pathetic
fallacy’, but they are not relevant to mechanics.) In a word, the idea
of a non-logical necessary connection – a link between two events
at once observable and necessary – is unintelligible.
Hume goes on to note a third characteristic which distinguishes
the cases of spatial contiguity and temporal succession where we
call the sequence causal from those where we do not: in the former
the sequence is regular, [188] that is, has often been observed to
occur and never observed to fail. This Hume calls ‘constant
conjunction’. According to Hume this is not, of course, a ‘real’,
external, necessary connection between events – an item in the
world – but it provides the key to the psychological explanation of
why we think of some events as necessarily connected, although
this thought turns out to embody an illusion. (Today we should, if
we accepted Hume’s analysis of causation,57 be more inclined to
say that constant conjunction, together with contiguity and
temporal succession, constituted the criterion for the correct use
of the word ‘cause’.)
Hume’s explanation is this: When events of type A have been
constantly observed without fail to be conjoined with events of
type B, a habitual association is set up in the imagination so that
whenever we observe a new A, the idea of a B arises in the mind
with an overwhelming force, this force being itself an
introspectively observable feeling. This feeling of force we now
illegitimately project into the external world, and imagine a ‘force’
or ‘power’ as pushing and pulling events or objects in the world.
As for the psychological machinery – irresistible association,
liability to externalise inner compulsions which themselves seem,
prima facie, forms of causation, psychological rather than physical
– Hume does not analyse these concepts. If we are to escape a
vicious circle whereby external causation is explained away by
57 Which is in fact defective: see the paragraphs following.

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internal causation, we must assume that Hume regards such

processes as themselves merely regularities, themselves observable,
‘brute facts’ – the ultimate terminus at which enquiry must, of
necessity, stop.
Hume’s analysis of our use of the word ‘cause’ is inadequate
also in other ways. We do not use the word ‘cause’ in the
description of every regularity to be found in the world; for
example, in statements of the laws of astronomy or modern
physics, the word ‘cause’ may never appear. It is only in cases
which fulfil certain specifiable conditions that we feel inclined to
talk of one event as causing another. Moreover, observed constant
conjunction is not always the main ground for detecting ‘causal
[189] influence’ – it is often reinforced and overshadowed by our
deductions from accepted scientific theories; and these theories are
often accepted not on the basis of regularities alone. Finally,
Hume’s psychological explanation of the illusion of ‘real’ binding
connections in the world is certainly not the whole truth. Such an
idea seems traceable no less to animistic projections on to the
inanimate world, for example, the sensation of effort of will, and,
perhaps most of all, of muscular effort.
But this criticism does not detract from the crucial importance
of Hume’s discovery, which consists in the uncovering of the
problem of induction. If all our general statements about the world
were causal (and they are not), and if the word ‘cause’ stood for
some metaphysically binding cement between events, such that the
one not merely never did, but could not, happen without the other
in any circumstances, there would be no problem of induction.
Our general statements would be ‘metaphysically’ guaranteed to
the hilt for unobserved as for observed cases. But Hume shows
that the word ‘cause’ does not stand for any such impalpable entity,
and thus reveals to the view a hitherto largely unnoticed problem,
namely that we seem to claim to know, yet never in principle do
know for certain, that any generalisation based upon observed
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instances of phenomena remains true when extrapolated to cover

unobserved instances, whether in the past or the future.
If we are to know facts which we do not observe with a certainty
resembling that of our deductive – say mathematical – knowledge;
if the statements of physics are to be impregnable like those of, say,
geometry; what we need is an absolute guarantee for the principle
of induction ‘that unobserved instances resemble observed
instances’. Hume rightly concludes that we cannot obtain this
guarantee anywhere – that we neither know, nor can know, any
principle which makes induction as certain as deduction. Nor – and
here he shows more perspicacity than many of his successors in
this field – can we without circularity show such a principle to be
even probable: ‘probability is founded on the presumption of a
resemblance betwixt those objects of which we have had
experience, and [190] those of which we have had none; and,
therefore, it is impossible this presumption can arise from
probability’ (p. 192). Probability rests on the unbolsterable
principle of induction, and cannot itself be used to bolster it up.
This is the basis of the notorious ‘scepticism’ of Hume and later
philosophers. This attitude has either been accepted with
pessimistic resignation or else attacked as craven or fallacious. Yet
it is difficult to see good reason for either attitude: for the
scepticism in question is sceptical only of the possibility of turning
induction into a species of precisely what it is not – deduction –
and this is not a rational ambition. Hume himself is largely to
blame: in common with his contemporaries, he regarded deduction
as the only authentic form of true reasoning; and therefore
attributed our inferences from cause to effect to the ‘imagination’,
the source of irrational processes. If we are to be wholly rational
we must have a ‘justification’ of induction. But what could ‘justify’
it? The search for a guarantee is a demand for a world in which
events or objects are linked by ‘objective’ necessary connections; if
Hume has shown anything, he has shown that this notion is not
intelligible, and rests on a confusion of logical machinery with the
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facts of experience, a wish that the symbols of logic or mathematics

or grammar should possess objective counterparts. This craving
for a metaphysical system is one of the most obsessive of all the
fantasies which has dominated human minds.58
BOOK 1, PART 3: OF KNOWLEDGE AND PROBABILITY
Section 2: Of probability; and of the idea of cause and effect

This is all I think necessary to observe concerning those four relations, which
are the foundation of science; but as to the other three, which depend not
upon the idea, and may be absent or present even while that remains the
same, it will be proper to explain them more particularly. [191] These three
relations are identity, the situations in time and place, and causation.
All kinds of reasoning consist in nothing but a comparison, and a discovery
of those relations, either constant or inconstant, which two or more objects
bear to each other. This comparison we may make, either when both the
objects are present to the senses, or when neither of them is present, or when
only one. When both the objects are present to the senses along with the
relation, we call this perception rather than reasoning; nor is there in this case
any exercise of the thought, or any action, properly speaking, but a mere
passive admission of the impressions through the organs of sensation.
According to this way of thinking, we ought not to receive as reasoning any of
the observations we may make concerning identity and the relations of time
and place; since in none of them the mind can go beyond what is immediately
present to the senses, either to discover the real existence or the relations of
objects. It is only causation, which produces such a connection, as to give us
assurance from the existence or action of one object, that it was followed or
preceded by any other existence or action; nor can the other two relations be
ever made use of in reasoning, except so far as they either affect or are
58 This applies strictly only to attempts to justify induction with

certainty. Many philosophers, recognising this to be hopeless, have tried
to establish what is apparently a weaker thesis, namely that induction can
be justified with probability. This is a mistake of the same sort, but the
argument is too complex to be entered into here.
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affected by it. There is nothing in any objects to persuade us, that they are
either always remote or always contiguous; and when from experience and
observation we discover, that their relation in this particular is invariable, we
always conclude there is some secret cause which separates or unites them.
The same reasoning extends to identity. We readily suppose an object may
continue individually the same, though several times absent from and present
to the senses; and ascribe to it an identity, notwithstanding the interruption of
the perception, whenever we conclude, that if we had kept our eye or hand
constantly upon it, it would have conveyed an invariable and uninterrupted
perception. But this conclusion beyond the impressions of our senses can be
founded only on the connection of cause and effect; nor can we otherwise have
any security that the object is not changed upon us, however much the new
object may resemble that which was formerly pres[192]ent to the senses.
Whenever we discover such a perfect resemblance, we consider whether it be
common in that species of objects; whether possibly or probably any cause
could operate in producing the change and resemblance; and according as we
determine concerning these causes and effects, we form our judgement
concerning the identity of the object.
Here then it appears, that of those three relations, which depend not upon
the mere ideas, the only one that can be traced beyond our senses, and
informs us of existences and objects, which we do not see or feel, is causation.
This relation therefore we shall endeavour to explain fully before we leave the
subject of the understanding.
To begin regularly, we must consider the idea of causation, and see from
what origin it is derived. It is impossible to reason justly, without
understanding perfectly the idea concerning which we reason; and it is
impossible perfectly to understand any idea, without tracing it up to its origin,
and examining that primary impression, from which it arises. The examination
of the impression bestows a clearness on the idea; and the examination of the
idea bestows a like clearness on all our reasoning.
Let us therefore cast our eye on any two objects, which we call cause and
effect, and turn them on all sides, in order to find that impression, which
produces an idea of such prodigious consequence. At first sight I perceive, that
I must not search for it in any of the particular qualities of the objects; since,
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whichever of these qualities I pitch on, I find some object that is not possessed
of it, and yet falls under the denomination of cause or effect. And indeed there
is nothing existent, either externally or internally, which is not to be considered
either as a cause or an effect; though it is plain there is no one quality which
universally belongs to all beings, and gives them a title to that denomination.
The idea then of causation must be derived from some relation among
objects; and that relation we must now endeavour to discover. I find in the first
place, that whatever objects are considered as causes or effects, are
contiguous; and that nothing can operate in a time or place, [193] which is ever
so little removed from those of its existence. Though distant objects may
sometimes seem productive of each other, they are commonly found upon
examination to be linked by a chain of causes, which are contiguous among
themselves, and to the distant objects; and when in any particular instance we
cannot discover this connection, we still presume it to exist. We may therefore
consider the relation of contiguity as essential to that of causation; at least may
suppose it such, according to the general opinion, till we can find a more
proper occasion (Book 1, Part 4, Section 5) to clear up this matter, by
examining what objects are or are not susceptible of juxtaposition and
conjunction.
The second relation I shall observe as essential to causes and effects, is not
so universally acknowledged, but is liable to some controversy. It is that of
priority of time in the cause before the effect. Some pretend that it is not
absolutely necessary a cause should precede its effect; but that any object or
action, in the very first moment of its existence, may exert its productive
quality, and give rise to another object or action, perfectly contemporary with
itself. But beside that experience in most instances seems to contradict this
opinion, we may establish the relation of priority by a kind of inference or
reasoning. It is an established maxim, both in natural and moral philosophy,
that an object, which exists for any time in its full perfection without producing
another, is not its sole cause; but is assisted by some other principle which
pushes it from its state of inactivity, and makes it exert that energy, of which
it was secretly possessed. Now if any cause may be perfectly contemporary
with its effect, it is certain, according to this maxim, that they must all of them
be so; since any one of them, which retards its operation for a single moment,
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exerts not itself at that very individual time, in which it might have operated;
and therefore is no proper cause. The consequence of this would be no less
than the destruction of that succession of causes, which we observe in the
world; and indeed the utter annihilation of time. For if one cause were
contemporary with its effect, and this effect with its effect, and so on, it is plain
there would [194] be no such thing as succession, and all objects must be
coexistent.
If this argument appear satisfactory, it is well. If not, I beg the reader to
allow me the same liberty, which I have used in the preceding case, of
supposing it such. For he shall find, that the affair is of no great importance.
Having thus discovered or supposed the two relations of contiguity and
succession to be essential to causes and effects, I find I am stopped short, and
can proceed no further in considering any single instance of cause and effect.
Motion in one body is regarded upon impulse as the cause of motion in
another. When we consider these objects with the utmost attention, we find
only that the one body approaches the other; and that the motion of it
precedes that of the other, but without any sensible interval. It is in vain to
rack ourselves with further thought and reflection upon this subject. We can
go no further in considering this particular instance.
Should any one leave this instance, and pretend to define a cause, by
saying it is something productive of another, it is evident he would say
nothing. For what does he mean by production? Can he give any definition of
it, that will not be the same with that of causation? If he can, I desire it may be
produced. If he cannot, he here runs in a circle, and gives a synonymous term
instead of a definition.
Shall we then rest contented with these two relations of contiguity and
succession, as affording a complete idea of causation? By no means. An object
may be contiguous and prior to another, without being considered as its
cause. There is a necessary connection to be taken into consideration; and that
relation is of much greater importance, than any of the other two above
mentioned.
Here again I turn the object on all sides, in order to discover the nature of
this necessary connection, and find the impression, or impressions, from which
its idea may be derived. When I cast my eye on the known qualities of objects,
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I immediately discover that the relation of cause and effect depends not in the
least on them. When I consider their relations, I can find none but those of
contiguity and succession; which I have already regarded as imperfect [195]
and unsatisfactory. Shall the despair of success make me assert, that I am here
possessed of an idea, which is not preceded by any similar impression? This
would be too strong a proof of levity and inconstancy; since the contrary
principle has been already so firmly established, as to admit of no further
doubt; at least, till we have more fully examined the present difficulty.
We must therefore proceed like those who, being in search of any thing
that lies concealed from them, and not finding it in the place they expected,
beat about all the neighbouring fields, without any certain view or design, in
hopes their good fortune will at last guide them to what they search for. It is
necessary for us to leave the direct survey of this question concerning the
nature of that necessary connection, which enters into our idea of cause and
effect; and endeavour to find some other questions, the examination of which
will perhaps afford a hint, that may serve to clear up the present difficulty. Of
these questions there occur two, which I shall proceed to examine, viz.
First, for what reason we pronounce it necessary, that every thing whose
existence has a beginning, should also have a cause?
Secondly, why we conclude, that such particular causes must necessarily
have such particular effects; and what is the nature of that inference we draw
from the one to the other, and of the belief we repose in it?
I shall only observe before I proceed any further, that though the ideas of
cause and effect be derived from the impressions of reflection as well as from
those of sensation, yet for brevity’s sake, I commonly mention only the latter
as the origin of these ideas; though I desire that, whatever I say of them, may
also extend to the former. Passions are connected with their objects and with
one another; no less than external bodies are connected together. The same
relation then of cause and effect, which belongs to one, must be common to
all of them.
Book 1, Part 3, Section 3: Why a cause is always necessary

To begin with the first question concerning the necessity [196] of a cause: It is
a general maxim in philosophy, that whatever begins to exist, must have a cause
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of existence. This is commonly taken for granted in all reasonings, without any
proof given or demanded. It is supposed to be founded on intuition, and to
be one of those maxims which, though they may be denied with the lips, it is
impossible for men in their hearts really to doubt of. But if we examine this
maxim by the idea of knowledge above explained, we shall discover in it no
mark of any such intuitive certainty; but on the contrary shall find, that it is of
a nature quite foreign to that species of conviction.
All certainty arises from the comparison of ideas, and from the discovery
of such relations as are unalterable, so long as the ideas continue the same.
These relations are resemblance, proportions in quantity and number, degrees
of any quality, and contrariety; none of which are implied in this proposition,
Whatever has a beginning has also a cause of existence. That proposition
therefore is not intuitively certain. At least any one, who would assert it to be
intuitively certain, must deny these to be the only infallible relations, and must
find some other relation of that kind to be implied in it; which it will then be
time enough to examine.
But here is an argument, which proves at once, that the foregoing
proposition is neither intuitively nor demonstrably certain. We can never
demonstrate the necessity of a cause to every new existence, or new
modification of existence, without shewing at the same time the impossibility
there is, that any thing can ever begin to exist without some productive
principle; and where the latter proposition cannot be proved, we must despair
of ever being able to prove the former. Now that the latter proposition is
utterly incapable of a demonstrative proof, we may satisfy ourselves by
considering, that as all distinct ideas are separable from each other, and as the
ideas of cause and effect are evidently distinct, it will be easy for us to conceive
any object to be non-existent this moment, and existent the next, without
conjoining to it the distinct idea of a cause or productive principle. The
separation therefore of the idea of a cause from that of a beginning of
existence, is [197] plainly possible for the imagination; and consequently the
actual separation of these objects is so far possible, that it implies no
contradiction nor absurdity; and is therefore incapable of being refuted by any
reasoning from mere ideas, without which it is impossible to demonstrate the
necessity of a cause.
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Accordingly, we shall find upon examination, that every demonstration,

which has been produced for the necessity of a cause, is fallacious and
sophistical. All the points of time and place, say some philosophers,59 in which
we can suppose any object to begin to exist, are in themselves equal; and
unless there be some cause, which is peculiar to one time and to one place,
and which by that means determines and fixes the existence, it must remain in
eternal suspense; and the object can never begin to be, for want of something
to fix its beginning. But I ask, is there any more difficulty in supposing the time
and place to be fixed without a cause, than to suppose the existence to be
determined in that manner? The first question that occurs on this subject is
always, whether the object shall exist or not: the next, when and where it shall
begin to exist. If the removal of a cause be intuitively absurd in the one case,
it must be so in the other; and if that absurdity be not clear without a proof in
the one case, it will equally require one in the other. The absurdity then of the
one supposition can never be a proof of that of the other; since they are both
upon the same footing, and must stand or fall by the same reasoning.
The second argument,60 which I find used on this head, labours under an
equal difficulty. Every thing, it is said, must have a cause; for if any thing wanted
a cause, it would produce itself, that is, exist before it existed, which is
impossible. But this reasoning is plainly unconclusive; because it supposes
that, in our denial of a cause, we still grant what we expressly deny, viz. that
there must be a cause; which therefore is taken to be the object itself; and that,
no doubt, is an evident contradiction. But to say that any thing is produced,
or, to express myself more properly, comes into existence, without a cause, is
not to affirm that it is itself its own cause; but, on the contrary, in
exclud[198]ing all external causes, excludes a fortiori the thing itself which is
created. An object that exists absolutely without any cause, certainly is not its
own cause; and when you assert, that the one follows from the other, you
suppose the very point in question, and take it for granted, that it is utterly
impossible any thing can ever begin to exist without a cause, but that, upon
the exclusion of one productive principle, we must still have recourse to
another.
59
Mr Hobbes.
60
Dr [Samuel] Clarke and others.
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It is exactly the same case with the third argument,61 which has been
employed to demonstrate the necessity of a cause. Whatever is produced
without any cause, is produced by nothing; or, in other words, has nothing for
its cause. But nothing can never be a cause, no more than it can be something,
or equal to two right angles. By the same intuition, that we perceive nothing
not to be equal to two right angles, or not to be something, we perceive, that
it can never be a cause; and consequently must perceive, that every object has
a real cause of its existence.
I believe it will not be necessary to employ many words in shewing the
weakness of this argument, after what I have said of the foregoing. They are
all of them founded on the same fallacy, and are derived from the same turn
of thought. It is sufficient only to observe, that when we exclude all causes we
really do exclude them, and neither suppose nothing nor the object itself to
be the causes of the existence; and consequently can draw no argument from
the absurdity of these suppositions to prove the absurdity of that exclusion. If
every thing must have a cause, it follows, that, upon the exclusion of other
causes, we must accept of the object itself or of nothing as causes. But it is the
very point in question, whether every thing must have a cause or not; and
therefore, according to all just reasoning, it ought never to be taken for
granted.
They are still more frivolous who say, that every effect must have a cause,
because it is implied in the very idea of effect. Every effect necessarily
presupposes a cause; effect being a relative term, of which cause is the
correlative. But this does not prove that every being must be preceded by a
cause; no more than it follows, because every husband must have a wife, that
therefore every man must be mar[199]ried. The true state of the question is,
whether every object which begins to exist, must owe its existence to a cause;
and this I assert neither to be intuitively nor demonstratively certain, and hope
to have proved it sufficiently by the foregoing arguments.
Since it is not from knowledge or any scientific reasoning, that we derive
the opinion of the necessity of a cause to every new production, that opinion
must necessarily arise from observation and experience. The next question,
then, should naturally be, how experience gives rise to such a principle? But as
61
Mr Locke.
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I find it will be more convenient to sink this question in the following, Why we
conclude, that such particular causes must necessarily have such particular
effects, and why we form an inference from one to another? we shall make that
the subject of our future enquiry. It will, perhaps, be found in the end, that the
same answer will serve for both questions.
…
Book 1, Part 3, Section 6: Of the inference from the impression to the idea
It is easy to observe, that in tracing this relation, the inference we draw from
cause to effect, is not derived merely from a survey of these particular objects,
and from such a penetration into their essences as may discover the
dependence of the one upon the other. There is no object which implies the
existence of any other, if we consider these objects in themselves, and never
look beyond the ideas which we form of them. Such an inference would
amount to knowledge, and would imply the absolute contradiction and
impossibility of conceiving any thing different. But as all distinct ideas are
separable, it is evident there can be no impossibility of that kind. When we
pass from a present impression to the idea of any object, we might possibly
have separated the idea from the impression, and have substituted any other
idea in its room.
It is therefore by experience only that we can infer the existence of one
object from that of another. The nature of experience is this. We remember to
have had frequent instances of the existence of one species of objects; and
also [200] remember, that the individuals of another species of objects have
always attended them, and have existed in a regular order of contiguity and
succession with regard to them. Thus we remember to have seen that species
of object we call flame, and to have felt that species of sensation we call heat.
We likewise call to mind their constant conjunction in all past instances.
Without any further ceremony, we call the one cause, and the other effect, and
infer the existence of the one from that of the other. In all those instances from
which we learn the conjunction of particular causes and effects, both the
causes and effects have been perceived by the senses, and are remembered:
but in all cases, wherein we reason concerning them, there is only one
perceived or remembered, and the other is supplied in conformity to our past
experience.
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Thus, in advancing, we have insensibly discovered a new relation betwixt

cause and effect, when we least expected it, and were entirely employed upon
another subject. This relation is their constant conjunction. Contiguity and
succession are not sufficient to make us pronounce any two objects to be
cause and effect, unless we perceive that these two relations are preserved in
several instances. We may now see the advantage of quitting the direct survey
of this relation, in order to discover the nature of that necessary connection
which makes so essential a part of it. There are hopes, that by this means we
may at last arrive at our proposed end; though, to tell the truth, this new-
discovered relation of a constant conjunction seems to advance us but very
little in our way. For it implies no more than this, that like objects have always
been placed in like relations of contiguity and succession; and it seems evident,
at least at first sight, that by this means we can never discover any new idea,
and can only multiply, but not enlarge, the objects of our mind. It may be
thought, that what we learn not from one object, we can never learn from a
hundred, which are all of the same kind, and are perfectly resembling in every
circumstance. As our senses shew us in one instance two bodies, or motions,
or qualities, in certain relations of succession and contiguity, so our memory
presents us only with a multitude of instances wherein we always [201] find
like bodies, motions, or qualities, in like relations. From the mere repetition of
any past impression, even to infinity, there never will arise any new original
idea, such as that of a necessary connection; and the number of impressions
has in this case no more effect than if we confined ourselves to one only. But
though this reasoning seems just and obvious, yet, as it would be folly to
despair too soon, we shall continue the thread of our discourse; and having
found, that after the discovery of the constant conjunction of any objects, we
always draw an inference from one object to another, we shall now examine
the nature of that inference, and of the transition from the impression to the
idea. Perhaps it will appear in the end, that the necessary connection depends
on the inference, instead of the inference’s depending on the necessary
connection.
Since it appears, that the transition from an impression present to the
memory or senses to the idea of an object, which we call cause or effect, is
founded on past experience, and on our remembrance of their constant
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conjunction, the next question is, whether experience produces the idea by
means of the understanding or imagination; whether we are determined by
reason to make the transition, or by a certain association and relation of
perceptions. If reason determined us, it would proceed upon that principle,
that instances, of which we have had no experience, must resemble those of
which we have had experience, and that the course of nature continues always
uniformly the same. In order, therefore, to clear up this matter, let us consider
all the arguments upon which such a proposition may be supposed to be
founded; and as these must be derived either from knowledge or probability,
let us cast our eye on each of these degrees of evidence, and see whether they
afford any just conclusion of this nature.
Our foregoing method of reasoning will easily convince us, that there can
be no demonstrative arguments to prove, that those instances of which we have
had no experience resemble those of which we have had experience. We can at
least conceive a change in the course of nature; which sufficiently proves that
such a change is not absolutely im[202]possible. To form a clear idea of any
thing is an undeniable argument for its possibility, and is alone a refutation of
any pretended demonstration against it.
Probability, as it discovers not the relations of ideas, considered as such,
but only those of objects, must, in some respects, be founded on the
impressions of our memory and senses, and in some respects on our ideas.
Were there no mixture of any impression in our probable reasonings, the
conclusion would be entirely chimerical: and were there no mixture of ideas,
the action of the mind, in observing the relation, would, properly speaking, be
sensation, not reasoning. It is, therefore, necessary, that in all probable
reasonings there be something present to the mind, either seen or
remembered; and that from this we infer something connected with it, which
is not seen nor remembered.
The only connection or relation of objects, which can lead us beyond the
immediate impressions of our memory and senses, is that of cause and effect;
and that because it is the only one, on which we can found a just inference
from one object to another. The idea of cause and effect is derived from
experience, which informs us, that such particular objects, in all past instances,
have been constantly conjoined with each other: and as an object similar to
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one of these is supposed to be immediately present in its impression, we

thence presume on the existence of one similar to its usual attendant.
According to this account of things, which is, I think, in every point
unquestionable, probability is founded on the presumption of a resemblance
betwixt those objects of which we have had experience, and those of which
we have had none; and, therefore, it is impossible this presumption can arise
from probability. The same principle cannot be both the cause and effect of
another; and this is, perhaps, the only proposition concerning that relation,
which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain.
Should any one think to elude this argument; and without determining
whether our reasoning on this subject be derived from demonstration or
probability, pretend that all conclusions from causes and effects are built on
solid rea[203]soning: I can only desire that this reasoning may be produced,
in order to be exposed to our examination. It may perhaps be said, that after
experience of the constant conjunction of certain objects, we reason in the
following manner. Such an object is always found to produce another. It is
impossible it could have this effect, if it was not endowed with a power of
production. The power necessarily implies the effect; and therefore there is a
just foundation for drawing a conclusion from the existence of one object to
that of its usual attendant. The past production implies a power: the power
implies a new production: and the new production is what we infer from the
power and the past production.
It were easy for me to shew the weakness of this reasoning, were I willing
to make use of those observations I have already made, that the idea of
production is the same with that of causation, and that no existence certainly
and demonstratively implies a power in any other object; or were it proper to
anticipate what I shall have occasion to remark afterwards concerning the idea
we form of power and efficacy. But as such a method of proceeding may seem
either to weaken my system, by resting one part of it on another, or to breed
a confusion in my reasoning, I shall endeavour to maintain my present
assertion without any such assistance.
It shall therefore be allowed for a moment, that the production of one
object by another in any one instance implies a power; and that this power is
connected with its effect. But it having been already proved, that the power
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lies not in the sensible qualities of the cause; and there being nothing but the
sensible qualities present to us; I ask, why in other instances you presume that
the same power still exists, merely upon the appearance of these qualities?
Your appeal to past experience decides nothing in the present case; and at the
utmost can only prove, that that very object, which produced any other, was
at that very instant endowed with such a power; but can never prove, that the
same power must continue in the same object or collection of sensible
qualities; much less, that a like power is always conjoined with like sensible
qualities. [204] Should it be said, that we have experience, that the same power
continues united with the same object, and that like objects are endowed with
like powers, I would renew my question, why from this experience we form any
conclusion beyond those past instances, of which we have had experience. If you
answer this question in the same manner as the preceding, your answer gives
still occasion to a new question of the same kind, even in infinitum; which
clearly proves, that the foregoing reasoning had no just foundation.
Thus, not only our reason fails us in the discovery of the ultimate
connection of causes and effects, but even after experience has informed us of
their constant conjunction, it is impossible for us to satisfy ourselves by our
reason, why we should extend that experience beyond those particular
instances which have fallen under our observation. We suppose, but are never
able to prove, that there must be a resemblance betwixt those objects, of
which we have had experience, and those which lie beyond the reach of our
discovery.
We have already taken notice of certain relations, which make us pass from
one object to another, even though there be no reason to determine us to
that transition; and this we may establish for a general rule, that wherever the
mind constantly and uniformly makes a transition without any reason, it is
influenced by these relations. Now, this is exactly the present case. Reason can
never shew us the connection of one object with another, though aided by
experience, and the observation of their constant conjunction in all past
instances. When the mind therefore passes from the idea or impression of one
object to the idea or belief of another, it is not determined by reason, but by
certain principles, which associate together the ideas of these objects, and
unite them in the imagination. Had ideas no more union in the fancy, than
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objects seem to have to the understanding, we could never draw any inference
from causes to effects, nor repose belief in any matter of fact. The inference
therefore depends solely on the union of ideas.
The principles of union among ideas, I have reduced to three general ones,
and have asserted, that the idea or impression of any object naturally
introduces the idea of any other object, that is resembling, contiguous to, or
connected with it. These principles I allow to be neither the infallible nor the
sole causes of a union among ideas. They are not the infallible causes. For one
may fix his attention during some time on any one object without looking
further. They are not the sole causes. For the thought has evidently a very
irregular motion in running along its objects, and may leap from the heavens
to the earth, from one end of the creation to the other, without any certain
method or order. But though I allow this weakness in these three relations,
and this irregularity in the imagination; yet I assert, that the only general
principles which associate ideas, are resemblance, contiguity, and causation.
There is indeed a principle of union among ideas, which at first sight may
be esteemed different from any of these, but will be found at the bottom to
depend on the same origin. When every individual of any species of objects is
found by experience to be constantly united with an individual of another
species, the appearance of any new individual of either species naturally
conveys the thought to its usual attendant. Thus, because such a particular
idea is commonly annexed to such a particular word, nothing is required but
the hearing of that word to produce the correspondent idea; and it will scarce
be possible for the mind, by its utmost efforts, to prevent that transition. In
this case it is not absolutely necessary, that upon hearing such a particular
sound, we should reflect on any past experience, and consider what idea has
been usually connected with the sound. The imagination of itself supplies the
place of this reflection, and is so accustomed to pass from the word to the
idea, that it interposes not a moment’s delay betwixt the hearing of the one,
and the conception of the other.
But though I acknowledge this to be a true principle of [205] association
among ideas, I assert it to be the very same with that betwixt the ideas of cause
and effect, and to be an essential part in all our reasonings from that relation.
We have no other notion of cause and effect, but that of certain objects, which
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have been always conjoined together, and which in all past instances have
been found inseparable. We cannot penetrate into the reason of the
conjunction. We only observe the thing itself, and always find that, from the
constant conjunction, the objects acquire a union in the imagination. When
the impression of one becomes present to us, we immediately form an idea of
its usual attendant; and consequently we may establish this as one part of the
definition of an opinion or belief, that it is an idea related to or associated with
a present impression.
…
Book 1, Part 3, Section 7: Of the nature of the idea or belief

The idea of an object is an essential part of the belief of it, but not the whole.
We conceive many things which we do not believe. In order, then, to discover
more fully the nature of belief, or the qualities of those ideas we assent to, let
us weigh the following considerations.
It is evident, that all reasonings from causes or effects terminate in
conclusions concerning matter of fact; that is, concerning the existence of
objects or of their qualities. It is also evident, that the idea of existence is
nothing different from the idea of any object, and that when after the simple
conception of any thing we would conceive it as existent, we in reality make
no addition to or alteration on our first idea. Thus, when we affirm that God is
existent, we simply form the idea of such a Being as he is represented to us:
nor is the existence, which we attribute to him, conceived by a particular idea,
which we join to the idea of his other qualities, and can again separate and
distinguish from them. But I go further; and, not content with asserting, that
the conception of the existence of any object is no addition to the simple
conception of it, I likewise maintain, that the belief of the existence joins no
new ideas to those, which compose the idea of the object. When I think of
[206] God, when I think of him as existent, and when I believe him to be
existent, my idea of him neither increases nor diminishes. But as it is certain
there is a great difference betwixt the simple conception of the existence of
an object, and the belief of it, and as this difference lies not in the parts or
composition of the idea which we conceive; it follows, that it must lie in the
manner in which we conceive it.
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Suppose a person present with me, who advances propositions, to which I

do not assent, that Caesar died in his bed, that silver is more fusible than lead,
or mercury heavier than gold; it is evident, that, notwithstanding my incredulity,
I clearly understand his meaning, and form all the same ideas which he forms.
My imagination is endowed with the same powers as his; nor is it possible for
him to conceive any idea, which I cannot conceive; or conjoin any, which I
cannot conjoin. I therefore ask, wherein consists the difference betwixt
believing and disbelieving any proposition? The answer is easy with regard to
propositions, that are proved by intuition or demonstration. In that case, the
person who assents not only conceives the ideas according to the proposition,
but is necessarily determined to conceive them in that particular manner,
either immediately, or by the interposition of other ideas. Whatever is absurd
is unintelligible; nor is it possible for the imagination to conceive any thing
contrary to a demonstration. But as, in reasonings from causation, and
concerning matters of fact, this absolute necessity cannot take place, and the
imagination is free to conceive both sides of the question, I still ask, wherein
consists the difference betwixt incredulity and belief? since, in both cases the
conception of the idea is equally possible and requisite.
It will not be a satisfactory answer to say, that a person, who does not
assent to a proposition you advance; after having conceived the object in the
same manner with you, immediately conceives it in a different manner, and
has different ideas of it. This answer is unsatisfactory; not because it contains
any falsehood, but because it discovers not all the truth. It is confessed that,
in all cases wherein we dissent from any person, we conceive both sides of the
[207] question; but as we can believe only one, it evidently follows, that the
belief must make some difference betwixt that conception to which we assent,
and that from which we dissent. We may mingle, and unite, and separate, and
confound, and vary our ideas in a hundred different ways; but until there
appears some principle, which fixes one of these different situations, we have
in reality no opinion: and this principle, as it plainly makes no addition to our
precedent ideas, can only change the manner of our conceiving them.
All the perceptions of the mind are of two kinds, viz. impressions and ideas,
which differ from each other only in their different degrees of force and
vivacity. Our ideas are copied from our impressions, and represent them in all
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their parts. When you would any way vary the idea of a particular object, you
can only increase or diminish its force and vivacity. If you make any other
change on [sc. in] it, it represents a different object or impression. The case is
the same as in colours. A particular shade of any colour may acquire a new
degree of liveliness or brightness without any other variation. But when you
produce any other variation, it is no longer the same shade or colour; so that
as belief does nothing but vary the manner in which we conceive any object,
it can only bestow on our ideas an additional force and vivacity. An opinion,
therefore, or belief, may be most accurately defined, a lively idea related to or
associated with a present impression. […]
Here are the heads of those arguments, which lead us to this conclusion.
When we infer the existence of an object from that of others, some object
must always be present either to the memory or senses, in order to be the
foundation of our reasoning; since the mind cannot run up with its inferences
in infinitum. Reason can never satisfy us that the existence of any one object
does ever imply that of another; so that when we pass from the impression of
one to the idea or belief of another, we are not determined by reason, but by
custom, or a principle of association. But belief is somewhat more than a
simple idea. It is a particular manner of forming an idea; and as the same idea
can only be varied by a variation of its degrees of force [208] and vivacity; it
follows upon the whole, that belief is a lively idea produced by a relation to a
present impression, according to the foregoing definition.
This operation of the mind, which forms the belief of any matter of fact,
seems hitherto to have been one of the greatest mysteries of philosophy;
though no one has so much as suspected, that there was any difficulty in
explaining it. For my part, I must own, that I find a considerable difficulty in the
case; and that even when I think I understand the subject perfectly, I am at a
loss for terms to express my meaning. I conclude, by an induction which seems
to me very evident, that an opinion or belief is nothing but an idea, that is
different from a fiction, not in the nature, or the order of its parts, but in the
manner of its being conceived. But when I would explain this manner, I scarce
find any word that fully answers the case, but am obliged to have recourse to
everyone’s feeling, in order to give him a perfect notion of this operation of
the mind. An idea assented to feels different from a fictitious idea, that the
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fancy alone presents to us: and this different feeling I endeavour to explain by
calling it a superior force, or vivacity, or solidity, or firmness, or steadiness. This
variety of terms, which may seem so unphilosophical, is intended only to
express that act of the mind, which renders realities more present to us than
fictions, causes them to weigh more in the thought, and gives them a superior
influence on the passions and imagination. Provided we agree about the thing,
it is needless to dispute about the terms. The imagination has the command
over all its ideas, and can join, and mix, and vary them in all the ways possible.
It may conceive objects with all the circumstances of place and time. It may
set them, in a manner, before our eyes in their true colours, just as they might
have existed. But as it is impossible that that faculty can ever of itself reach
belief, it is evident, that belief consists not in the nature and order of our ideas,
but in the manner of their conception, and in their feeling to the mind. I
confess, that it is impossible to explain perfectly this feeling or manner of
conception. We may make use of words that express something near it. But its
true and proper name is belief, [209] which is a term that every one sufficiently
understands in common life. And in philosophy, we can go no further than
assert, that it is something felt by the mind, which distinguishes the ideas of
the judgement from the fictions of the imagination. It gives them more force
and influence; makes them appear of greater importance; infixes them in the
mind; and renders them the governing principles of all our actions.
This definition will also be found to be entirely conformable to every one’s
feeling and experience. Nothing is more evident, than that those ideas, to
which we assent, are more strong, firm, and vivid, than the loose reveries of a
castle-builder. If one person sits down to read a book as a romance, and
another as a true history, they plainly receive the same ideas, and in the same
order; nor does the incredulity of the one, and the belief of the other, hinder
them from putting the very same sense upon their author. His words produce
the same ideas in both; though his testimony has not the same influence on
them. The latter has a more lively conception of all the incidents. He enters
deeper into the concerns of the persons: represents to himself their actions,
and characters, and friendships, and enmities: he even goes so far as to form
a notion of their features, and air, and person. While the former, who gives no
credit to the testimony of the author, has a more faint and languid conception
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of all these particulars, and, except on account of the style and ingenuity of
the composition, can receive little entertainment from it.
…
Book 1, Part 3, Section 14: Of the idea of necessary connection

Having thus explained the manner in which we reason beyond our immediate
impressions, and conclude that such particular causes must have such particular
effects; we must now return upon our footsteps to examine that question
(Book 1, Part 3, Section 2)62 which first occurred to us, and which we dropped
in our way, viz. What is our idea of necessity, when we say that two objects are
necessarily connected together? Upon this head I repeat, what I have often had
occasion to observe, that as we have no idea that is not derived from [210] an
impression, we must find some impression that gives rise to this idea of
necessity, if we assert we have really such an idea. In order to this, I consider
in what objects necessity is commonly supposed to lie; and, finding that it is
always ascribed to causes and effects, I turn my eye to two objects supposed
to be placed in that relation, and examine them in all the situations of which
they are susceptible. I immediately perceive that they are contiguous in time
and place, and that the object we call cause precedes the other we call effect.
In no one instance can I go any further, nor is it possible for me to discover
any third relation betwixt these objects. I therefore enlarge my view to
comprehend several instances, where I find like objects always existing in like
relations of contiguity and succession. At first sight this seems to serve but
little to my purpose. The reflection on several instances only repeats the same
objects; and therefore can never give rise to a new idea. But upon further
enquiry I find that the repetition is not in every particular the same, but
produces a new impression, and by that means the idea which I at present
examine. For, after a frequent repetition, I find that upon the appearance of
one of the objects the mind is determined by custom to consider its usual
attendant, and to consider it in a stronger light upon account of its relation to
the first object. It is this impression, then, or determination, which affords me
the idea of necessity.
62 pp. 190 ff.

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I doubt not but these consequences will at first sight be received without
difficulty, as being evident deductions from principles which we have already
established, and which we have often employed in our reasonings. This
evidence, both in the first principles and in the deductions, may seduce us
unwarily into the conclusion, and make us imagine it contains nothing
extraordinary, nor worthy of our curiosity. But though such an inadvertence
may facilitate the reception of this reasoning, it will make it be the more easily
forgot; for which reason I think it proper to give warning, that I have just now
examined one of the most sublime questions in philosophy, viz. that
concerning the power and efficacy of causes where all the sciences seem so
much interested. Such a warning will naturally [211] rouse up the attention of
the reader, and make him desire a more full account of my doctrine, as well as
of the arguments on which it is founded. This request is so reasonable that I
cannot refuse complying with it; especially as I am hopeful that these
principles, the more they are examined, will acquire the more force and
evidence.
There is no question which, on account of its importance, as well as
difficulty, has caused more disputes both among ancient and modern
philosophers, than this concerning the efficacy of causes, or that quality which
makes them be followed by their effects. But before they entered upon these
disputes, methinks it would not have been improper to have examined what
idea we have of that efficacy, which is the subject of the controversy. This is
what I find principally wanting in their reasonings, and what I shall here
endeavour to supply.
I begin with observing that the terms of efficacy, agency, power, force,
energy, necessity, connection, and productive quality, are all nearly
synonymous; and therefore it is an absurdity to employ any of them in defining
the rest. By this observation we reject at once all the vulgar definitions which
philosophers have given of power and efficacy; and instead of searching for
the idea in these definitions, must look for it in the impressions from which it
is originally derived. If it be a compound idea, it must arise from compound
impressions. If simple, from simple impressions.
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I believe the most general and most popular explication of this matter, is
to say,63 that finding from experience that there are several new productions
in matter, such as the motions and variations of body, and concluding that
there must somewhere be a power capable of producing them, we arrive at
last by this reasoning at the idea of power and efficacy. But to be convinced
that this explication is more popular than philosophical, we need but reflect
on two very obvious principles. First, that reason alone can never give rise to
any original idea; and, secondly, that reason, as distinguished from experience,
can never make us conclude that a cause or productive quality is absolutely
requisite to every beginning of existence. Both these consid[212]erations have
been sufficiently explained; and therefore shall not at present be any further
insisted on.
I shall only infer from them, that since reason can never give rise to the
idea of efficacy, that idea must be derived from experience, and from some
particular instances of this efficacy, which make their passage into the mind
by the common channels of sensation or reflection. Ideas always represent
their objects or impressions; and vice versa, there are some objects necessary
to give rise to every idea. If we pretend, therefore, to have any just idea of this
efficacy, we must produce some instance wherein the efficacy is plainly
discoverable to the mind, and its operations obvious to our consciousness or
sensation. By the refusal of this, we acknowledge that the idea is impossible
and imaginary; since the principle of innate ideas, which alone can save us
from this dilemma, has been already refuted, and is now almost universally
rejected in the learned world. Our present business, then, must be to find some
natural production, where the operation and efficacy of a cause can be clearly
conceived and comprehended by the mind, without any danger of obscurity
or mistake.
In this research we meet with very little encouragement from that
prodigious diversity which is found in the opinions of those philosophers who
have pretended to explain the secret force and energy of causes.64 There are
some who maintain that bodies operate by their substantial form; others, by
63
See Mr Locke; chapter of Power [1. 21].
64
See Father Malebranche, [De la recherché de la vérité,] Book 6, Part 2, Chapter 3,
and the illustrations upon it.
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their accidents or qualities; several, by their matter and form; some, by their
form and accidents; others, by certain virtues and faculties distinct from all
this. All these sentiments, again, are mixed and varied in a thousand different
ways, and form a strong presumption that none of them have any solidity or
evidence, and that the supposition of an efficacy in any of the known qualities
of matter is entirely without foundation. This presumption must increase upon
us when we consider that these principles of substantial forms, and accidents,
and faculties, are not in reality any of the known properties of bodies, but are
perfectly unintelligible and inexplicable. For it is evident philosophers would
never have had recourse to such obscure and uncertain principles, had they
met with any [213] satisfaction in such as are clear and intelligible; especially
in such an affair as this, which must be an object of the simplest understanding,
if not of the senses. Upon the whole, we may conclude that it is impossible, in
any one instance, to shew the principle in which the force and agency of a
cause is placed; and that the most refined and most vulgar understandings are
equally at a loss in this particular. If any one think proper to refute this
assertion, he need not put himself to the trouble of inventing any long
reasonings, but may at once shew us an instance of a cause where we discover
the power or operating principle. This defiance we are obliged frequently to
make use of, as being almost the only means of proving a negative in
philosophy.
…
Some have asserted that we feel an energy or power in our own mind; and
that, having in this manner acquired the idea of power, we transfer that quality
to matter, where we are not able immediately to discover it. The motions of
our body, and the thoughts and sentiments of our mind (say they) obey the
will; nor do we seek any further to acquire a just notion of force or power. But
to convince us how fallacious this reasoning is, we need only consider, that the
will being here considered as a cause has no more a discoverable connection
with its effects than any material cause has with its proper effect. So far from
perceiving the connection betwixt an act of volition and a motion of the body,
it is allowed that no effect is more inexplicable from the powers and essence
of thought and matter. Nor is the empire of the will over our mind more
intelligible. The effect is there distinguishable and separable from the cause,
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and could not be foreseen without the experience of their constant

conjunction. We have command over our mind to a certain degree, but
beyond that lose all empire over it: and it is evidently impossible to fix any
precise bounds to our authority, where we consult not experience. In short,
the actions of the mind are, in this respect, the same with those of matter. We
perceive only their constant conjunction; nor can we ever reason beyond it.
No internal impression has an apparent energy, more than external [214]
objects have. Since, therefore, matter is confessed by philosophers to operate
by an unknown force, we should in vain hope to attain an idea of force by
consulting our own minds. […]
…
The idea of necessity arises from some impression. There is no impression

conveyed by our senses which can give rise to that idea. It must, therefore, be
derived from some internal impression, or impression of reflection. There is no
internal impression which has any relation to the present business, but that
propensity, which custom produces, to pass from an object to the idea of its
usual attendant. This, therefore, is the essence of necessity. Upon the whole,
necessity is something that exists in the mind, not in objects; nor is it possible
for us ever to form the most distant idea of it, considered as a quality in bodies.
Either we have no idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but that
determination of the thought to pass from causes to effects, and from effects
to causes, according to their experienced union.
Thus, as the necessity, which makes two times two equal to four, or three
angles of a triangle equal to two right ones, lies only in the act of the
understanding, by which we consider and compare these ideas; in like manner
the necessity or power, which unites causes and effects, lies in the
determination of the mind to pass from the one to the other. The efficacy or
energy of causes is neither placed in the causes themselves, nor in the Deity,
nor in the concurrence of these two principles; but belongs entirely to the soul,
which considers the union of two or more objects in all past instances. It is
here that the real power of causes is placed, along with their connection and
necessity.
I am sensible that of all the paradoxes which I have had, or shall hereafter
have occasion to advance in the course of this Treatise, the present one is the
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most violent, and that it is merely by dint of solid proof and reasoning I can
ever hope it will have admission, and overcome the inveterate prejudices of
mankind. […]
…
There may two definitions be given of this relation, which are only different by
their presenting a different [215] view of the same object, and making us
consider it either as a philosophical or as a natural relation; either as a
comparison of two ideas, or as an association betwixt them. We may define a
cause to be "An object precedent and contiguous to another, and where all
the objects resembling the former are placed in like relations of precedency
and contiguity to those objects that resemble the latter." If this definition be
esteemed defective, because drawn from objects foreign to the cause, we may
substitute this other definition in its place, viz. "A cause is an object precedent
and contiguous to another, and so united with it that the idea of the one
determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the
one to form a more lively idea of the other." Should this definition also be
rejected for the same reason, I know no other remedy, than that the persons
who express this delicacy should substitute a juster definition in its place. But,
for my part, I must own my incapacity for such an undertaking. When I
examine, with the utmost accuracy, those objects which are commonly
denominated causes and effects, I find, in considering a single instance, that
the one object is precedent and contiguous to the other; and in enlarging my
view to consider several instances, I find only that like objects are constantly
placed in like relations of succession and contiguity. Again, when I consider
the influence of this constant conjunction, I perceive that such a relation can
never be an object of reasoning, and can never operate upon the mind but by
means of custom, which determines the imagination to make a transition from
the idea of one object to that of its usual attendant, and from the impression
of one to a more lively idea of the other. However extraordinary these
sentiments may appear, I think it fruitless to trouble myself with any further
enquiry or reasoning upon the subject, but shall repose myself on them as on
established maxims.
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So much for the insoluble problem – a logical squaring of the circle

– of how to ‘justify’ induction, without introducing illegitimate a
priori laws of nature, by means of some principle or truth
compatible with empiri[216]cism, itself neither merely probable
nor yet accepted uncritically – ‘on instinct’. The passages which
follow contain Hume’s treatment of a closely related and equally
central topic: what we mean by material objects, and in particular
by their continuous identity in time and space. And once the
identity of things is considered, the identity of persons turns out to
be a notion equally obscure. The nature of selves as opposed to
things is something left undiscussed, save in very glancing terms,
by Locke and Berkeley, though the latter throws out some obscure
suggestions about the connection of spirits with action or volition
rather than perception65 which were later echoed by German and
French anti-sensationalist metaphysicians. But the honour of
exploding the dogmatic assumptions about substantive selves,
timeless and unchanging, which were common to the theories of
knowledge of rationalists and theists belongs to Hume alone. His
analysis of the self is perhaps the most characteristically devastating
application of his empirical method, and has, in its own way,
caused as much scandal during the two hundred years that
followed as his undermining of the a priori basis of induction.
Material objects are to Hume a harmless illusion, but an illusion
nevertheless. Once again we find Hume claiming to give a
psychological explanation – the imagination is as usual the culprit
of why we hold a certain false belief (‘a very little reflection and
philosophy is sufficient to make us perceive the fallacy of that
opinion’ [1. 4. 2]) where we should today be inclined to say that
what he was doing was to elucidate the nature of certain of our
criteria, in this case, the criteria for physical objects. If we hold, as
Hume held, somewhat inconsistently with his empirical premisses,
a metaphysical theory about the external world according to which
all that exists are collections of swiftly flowing, exceedingly short-
65 In ‘Three Dialogues’, Dialogue 3.

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lived, ‘impressions’, then how are material objects – or what goes

under that notion – compounded out of them? What are the
characteristics of a particular set of sense data in virtue of which
they are thought of as uniquely belonging to, or being ‘of’, one
object?
This question as it stands comprises two distinct, though [217]
overlapping, problems: that of belonging to the same object; and
that of continuity in time. An example of the first question is this.
As I sit writing, what are the characteristics of the sensations that
I am now experiencing, in virtue of which the shape, colour, smell
etc. of the paper present themselves to me as properties of the same
object – the piece of paper – as distinct from the shape of the hand,
the smell of the paper and the colour of my pen, which are not,
though equally coexistent, properties of the same single object?
This question is answered by empiricists mainly in terms of the
‘spatial cohesion’ of the properties of the paper: when one of the
properties of the paper moves, the others (and only they) always
move with it, and so on. And if we ask, in a different sense, the
Humean question, why we collect properties together in bundles
in this, rather than any other, way, the reasons are pragmatic (and
partly biological): they have to do with our basic needs, as well as
ease and convenience in our transactions with the outside world.
This, however, is not the question which Hume discusses. He
is concerned rather with continuity. Given Berkeley’s (and usually
Locke’s) position that all that we are acquainted with are ‘ideas’, or,
in Hume’s terminology, ‘impressions’ (what English philosophers
in our own time have called ‘sense data’), on what principles do we
‘collect’ together certain (interrupted) temporal sequences of these
sense data, and take them to be part of the unbroken history of
one object, and regard this object as having a distinct and continued
existence, external to and causally independent of our minds?66
66The four words in italics denote the properties of objects discussed

by Hume, although Hume of course regards them as fictitiously ascribed
to mythical substrata.
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Hume answers this question in terms of what he calls

‘constancy’ and ‘coherence’. Provided that the data remain
relatively stable – or change in such a way that the assumption that
the change is continuous, even if unperceived, is not inconsistent
with our other data – we speak of an object as identical through
change. His answer may be criticised in detail and it is certainly
carelessly formu[218]lated at some points. Nevertheless, his
contribution is of the highest importance. Any philosopher who
accepts a sense-datum theory of the external world must sooner or
later come to terms with the problem Hume is considering.
However much subsequent solutions may differ in detail or in the
accuracy of their formulation, they inevitably resemble Hume’s in
major points of principle. In asking the question, and providing the
definite ground-plan for an answer, Hume made an important
advance in the theory of perception which stems from Berkeley.
Hume, of course, does not think that he is simply giving a
theory of perception, or even of the criteria for the application of
the concept of material identity or of a material object. He thinks
that he is giving a psychological explanation of our false beliefs in
certain ‘fictions’. Among these is our fictitious ascription of identity
to objects. Hume himself is very much perplexed by the notion of
identity (as was F. H. Bradley a century and a half later). He cannot
see how we could truly utter a proposition of the form ‘A is
identical with B’, or, in more ordinary language, ‘A is the same
[person, tree, ship etc.] as B.’ For if ‘A’ and ‘B’ really do denote the
same entity, then the form of words does not, so Hume thinks, state
a significant proposition at all (‘nor would the proposition contain
a predicate and a subject, which, however, are implied in this
affirmation’ [1. 4. 2]). It is in effect saying ‘A is A’, which seems a
tedious tautology. But if they do not denote literally the same
entity, then the proposition – by identifying entities which are ex
hypothesi not identical – is clearly false.
Hume, in fact, adopts a concept of identity which has no
application, except perhaps in mathematics and logic: that of literal
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identity, identity in all respects whatever. Such a concept can have

no application to the real world. When we affirm truly that this is
the same tree as the one we saw ten years ago in the same garden,
we do not mean that it (or the garden) is the same in absolutely all
respects: we do not, for example, wish to deny that the tree has
acquired new cells and lost old ones. Even with such a stable object
as a stone, we should still call it the same even if a bit had been
chipped off; and we certainly do [219] not wish to deny that there
have been changes in the distribution of electrons. And in the case
of, let us say, houses or towns or flowers, we allow a very great deal
of change before we become dubious about whether they are the
same. Now one consequence of Hume’s ‘ideal limit’ concept of
identity is this. Wherever we should say that he was describing the
criteria (different in each case) for the truth of such propositions
as ‘He is the same person I met a year ago in London’, ‘That is the
same ship that I saw in the Mediterranean in 1946’, he regards
himself as giving a psychological explanation of our invariably false
ascriptions of identity. These ascriptions are false, but we cannot,
apparently, avoid making them: they are a kind of necessary
illusion. This paradoxical theory dominates Hume even more
obsessively in his celebrated discussion of personal identity which
follows upon that of material objects.
BOOK 1, PART 4: OF THE SCEPTICAL AND OTH ER SYSTEMS OF

PHILOSOPHY
…
Section 2: Of scepticism with regard to the senses

Thus the sceptic still continues to reason and believe, even though he asserts
that he cannot defend his reason by reason; and by the same rule he must
assent to the principle concerning the existence of body, though he cannot
pretend, by any arguments of philosophy, to maintain its veracity. Nature has
not left this to his choice, and has doubtless esteemed it an affair of too great
importance, to be trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations. We
may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but it
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is in vain to ask, Whether there be body or not? That is a point which we must
take for granted in all our reasonings.
The subject, then, of our present enquiry, is concerning the causes which
induce us to believe in the existence of body: and my reasonings on this head
I shall begin with a distinction, which at first sight may seem superfluous, but
which will contribute very much to the perfect understanding of what follows.
We ought to examine apart [220] those two questions, which are commonly
confounded together, viz. Why we attribute a continued existence to objects,
even when they are not present to the senses; and why we suppose them to
have an existence distinct from the mind and perception. Under this last head
I comprehend their situation as well as relations, their external position as well
as the independence of their existence and operation. These two questions
concerning the continued and distinct existence of body are intimately
connected together. For if the objects of our senses continue to exist, even
when they are not perceived, their existence is of course independent of and
distinct from the perception; and vice versa, if their existence be independent
of the perception, and distinct from it, they must continue to exist, even
though they be not perceived. But though the decision of the one question
decides the other; yet that we may the more easily discover the principles of
human nature, from whence the decision arises, we shall carry along with us
this distinction, and shall consider, whether it be the senses, reason, or the
imagination, that produces the opinion of a continued or of a distinct existence.
These are the only questions that are intelligible on the present subject. For as
to the notion of external existence, when taken for something specifically
different from our perceptions, we have already shewn its absurdity (Book 1,
Part 2, Section 6).
To begin with the senses, it is evident these faculties are incapable of giving
rise to the notion of the continued existence of their objects, after they no
longer appear to the senses. For that is a contradiction in terms, and supposes
that the senses continue to operate, even after they have ceased all manner
of operation. These faculties, therefore, if they have any influence in the
present case, must produce the opinion of a distinct, not of a continued
existence; and in order to that, must present their impressions either as images
and representations, or as these very distinct and external existences.
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That our senses offer not their impressions as the images of something
distinct, or independent, and external, is evident; because they convey to us
nothing but a single perception, and never give us the least intimation of any
[221] thing beyond. A single perception can never produce the idea of a
double existence, but by some inference either of the reason or imagination.
When the mind looks further than what immediately appears to it, its
conclusions can never be put to the account of the senses; and it certainly
looks further, when from a single perception it infers a double existence, and
supposes the relations of resemblance and causation betwixt them.
…
To begin with the question concerning external existence, it may perhaps be

said, that setting aside the metaphysical question of the identity of a thinking
substance, our own body evidently belongs to us; and as several impressions
appear exterior to the body, we suppose them also exterior to ourselves. The
paper on which I write at present is beyond my hand. The table is beyond the
paper. The walls of the chamber beyond the table. And in casting my eye
towards the window, I perceive a great extent of fields and buildings beyond
my chamber. From all this it may be inferred, that no other faculty is required,
beside the senses, to convince us of the external existence of body. But to
prevent this inference, we need only weigh the three following considerations.
First, that, properly speaking, it is not our body we perceive, when we regard
our limbs and members, but certain impressions, which enter by the senses;
so that the ascribing a real and corporeal existence to these impressions, or to
their objects, is an act of the mind as difficult to explain as that which we
examine at present. Secondly, sounds, and tastes, and smells, though
commonly regarded by the mind as continued independent qualities, appear
not to have any existence in extension, and consequently cannot appear to
the senses as situated externally to the body. The reason why we ascribe a
place to them shall be considered afterwards [1. 2. 6: p. 229]. Thirdly, even our
sight informs us not of distance or outness (so to speak) immediately and
without a certain reasoning and experience, as is acknowledged by the most
rational philosophers.
As to the independence of our perceptions on ourselves, this can never be
an object of the senses; but any [222] opinion we form concerning it must be
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derived from experience and observation: and we shall see afterwards, that
our conclusions from experience are far from being favourable to the doctrine
of the independency of our perceptions. Mean while we may observe, that
when we talk of real distinct existences, we have commonly more in our eye
their independency than external situation in place, and think an object has a
sufficient reality, when its being is uninterrupted, and independent of the
incessant revolutions, which we are conscious of in ourselves.
Thus to resume what I have said concerning the senses; they give us no
notion of continued existence, because they cannot operate beyond the
extent, in which they really operate. They as little produce the opinion of a
distinct existence, because they neither can offer it to the mind as represented,
nor as original. To offer it as represented, they must present both an object
and an image. To make it appear as original, they must convey a falsehood;
and this falsehood must lie in the relations and situation: in order to which,
they must be able to compare the object with ourselves; and even in that case
they do not, nor is it possible they should deceive us. We may therefore
conclude with certainty, that the opinion of a continued and of a distinct
existence never arises from the senses.
To confirm this, we may observe that there are three different kinds of
impressions conveyed by the senses. The first are those of the figure, bulk,
motion, and solidity of bodies. The second, those of colours, tastes, smells,
sounds, heat, and cold. The third are the pains and pleasures that arise from
the application of objects to our bodies, as by the cutting of our flesh with
steel, and such like. Both philosophers and the vulgar suppose the first of these
to have a distinct continued existence. The vulgar only regard the second as
on the same footing. Both philosophers and the vulgar, again, esteem the third
to be merely perceptions; and, consequently, interrupted and dependent
beings.
Now, it is evident, that whatever may be our philosophical opinion, colours,
sounds, heat, and cold, as far as appears to the senses, exist after the same
manner with [223] motion and solidity; and that the difference we make
betwixt them, in this respect, arises not from the mere perception. So strong
is the prejudice for the distinct continued existence of the former qualities,
that when the contrary opinion is advanced by modern philosophers, people
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imagine they can almost refute it from their feeling and experience, and that
their very senses contradict this philosophy. It is also evident, that colours,
sounds, etc., are originally on the same footing with the pain that arises from
steel, and pleasure that proceeds from a fire; and that the difference betwixt
them is founded neither on perception nor reason, but on the imagination.
For as they are confessed to be, both of them, nothing but perceptions arising
from the particular configurations and motions of the parts of body, wherein
possibly can their difference consist? Upon the whole, then, we may conclude
that, as far as the senses are judges, all perceptions are the same in the manner
of their existence.
We may also observe, in this instance of sounds and colours, that we can
attribute a distinct continued existence to objects without ever consulting
reason, or weighing our opinions by any philosophical principles. And, indeed,
whatever convincing arguments philosophers may fancy they can produce to
establish the belief of objects independent of the mind, it is obvious these
arguments are known but to very few; and that it is not by them that children,
peasants, and the greatest part of mankind, are induced to attribute objects
to some impressions, and deny them to others. Accordingly, we find that all
the conclusions which the vulgar form on this head, are directly contrary to
those which are confirmed by philosophy. For philosophy informs us that every
thing which appears to the mind is nothing but a perception, and is
interrupted and dependent on the mind; whereas the vulgar confound
perceptions and objects, and attribute a distinct continued existence to the
very things they feel or see. This sentiment, then, as it is entirely unreasonable,
must proceed from some other faculty than the understanding. To which we
may add, that, as long as we take our perceptions and objects to be the same,
we can never infer the existence of [224] the one from that of the other, nor
form any argument from the relation of cause and effect; which is the only one
that can assure us of matter of fact. Even after we distinguish our perceptions
from our objects, it will appear presently that we are still incapable of
reasoning from the existence of one to that of the other: so that, upon the
whole, our reason neither does, nor is it possible it ever should, upon any
supposition, give us an assurance of the continued and distinct existence of
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body. That opinion must be entirely owing to the imagination: which must now
be the subject of our enquiry.
Since all impressions are internal and perishing existences, and appear as
such, the notion of their distinct and continued existence must arise from a
concurrence of some of their qualities with the qualities of the imagination;
and since this notion does not extend to all of them, it must arise from certain
qualities peculiar to some impressions. It will, therefore, be easy for us to
discover these qualities by a comparison of the impressions, to which we
attribute a distinct and continued existence, with those which we regard as
internal and perishing.
We may observe, then, that it is neither upon account of the
involuntariness of certain impressions, as is commonly supposed, nor of their
superior force and violence, that we attribute to them a reality and continued
existence, which we refuse to others that are voluntary or feeble. For it is
evident our pains and pleasures, our passions and affections, which we never
suppose to have any existence beyond our perception, operate with greater
violence, and are equally involuntary, as the impressions of figure and
extension, colour and sound, which we suppose to be permanent beings. The
heat of a fire, when moderate, is supposed to exist in the fire; but the pain
which it causes upon a near approach is not taken to have any being except
in the perception.
These vulgar opinions, then, being rejected, we must search for some other
hypothesis, by which we may discover those peculiar qualities in our
impressions, which makes us attribute to them a distinct and continued
existence. [225]
After a little examination, we shall find that all those objects, to which we
attribute a continued existence, have a peculiar constancy, which distinguishes
them from the impressions whose existence depends upon our perception.
Those mountains, and houses, and trees, which lie at present under my eye,
have always appeared to me in the same order; and when I lose sight of them
by shutting my eyes or turning my head, I soon after find them return upon
me without the least alteration. My bed and table, my books and papers,
present themselves in the same uniform manner, and change not upon
account of any interruption in my seeing or perceiving them. This is the case
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with all the impressions whose objects are supposed to have an external
existence; and is the case with no other impressions, whether gentle or violent,
voluntary or involuntary.
This constancy, however, is not so perfect as not to admit of very
considerable exceptions. Bodies often change their position and qualities, and,
after a little absence or interruption, may become hardly knowable. But here
it is observable, that even in these changes they preserve a coherence, and
have a regular dependence on each other; which is the foundation of a kind
of reasoning from causation and produces the opinion of their continued
existence. When I return to my chamber after an hour’s absence, I find not my
fire in the same situation in which I left it; but then I am accustomed, in other
instances, to see a like alteration produced in a like time, whether I am present
or absent, near or remote. This coherence, therefore, in their changes, is one
of the characteristics of external objects, as well as their constancy.
Having found that the opinion of the continued existence of body depends
on the coherence and constancy of certain impressions, I now proceed to
examine after what manner these qualities give rise to so extraordinary an
opinion. To begin with the coherence; we may observe, that though those
internal impressions, which we regard as fleeting and perishing, have also a
certain coherence or regularity in their appearances, yet it is of somewhat a
different nature from that which we discover in bodies. [226] Our passions are
found by experience to have a mutual connection with and dependence on
each other; but on no occasion is it necessary to suppose that they have
existed and operated, when they were not perceived, in order to preserve the
same dependence and connection, of which we have had experience. The case
is not the same with relation to external objects. Those require a continued
existence, or otherwise lose, in a great measure, the regularity of their
operation. I am here seated in my chamber, with my face to the fire; and all
the objects that strike my senses are contained in a few yards around me. My
memory, indeed, informs me of the existence of many objects; but, then, this
information extends not beyond their past existence, nor do either my senses
or memory give any testimony to the continuance of their being. When,
therefore, I am thus seated, and revolve over these thoughts, I hear on a
sudden a noise as of a door turning upon its hinges; and a little after see a
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porter who advances towards me. This gives occasion to many new reflections
and reasonings. First, I never have observed that this noise could proceed from
any thing but the motion of a door; and therefore conclude that the present
phenomenon is a contradiction to all past experience, unless the door, which
I remember on the other side the chamber, be still in being. Again, I have
always found, that a human body was possessed of a quality which I call
gravity, and which hinders it from mounting in the air, as this porter must have
done to arrive at my chamber, unless the stairs I remember be not annihilated
by my absence. But this is not all. I receive a letter, which, upon opening it, I
perceive by the handwriting and subscription to have come from a friend, who
says he is two hundred leagues distant. It is evident I can never account for
this phenomenon, conformable to my experience in other instances, without
spreading out in my mind the whole sea and continent between us, and
supposing the effects and continued existence of posts and ferries, according
to my memory and observation. To consider these phenomena of the porter
and letter in a certain light, they are contradictions to common experience,
and may be regarded as objections [227] to those maxims which we form
concerning the connections of causes and effects. I am accustomed to hear
such a sound, and see such an object in motion at the same time. I have not
received, in this particular instance, both these perceptions. These
observations are contrary, unless I suppose that the door still remains, and that
it was opened without my perceiving it: and this supposition, which was at first
entirely arbitrary and hypothetical, acquires a force and evidence by its being
the only one upon which I can reconcile these contradictions. There is scarce
a moment of my life wherein there is not a similar instance presented to me,
and I have not occasion to suppose the continued existence of objects, in
order to connect their past and present appearances, and give them such a
union with each other, as I have found, by experience, to be suitable to their
particular natures and circumstances. Here, then, I am naturally led to regard
the world as something real and durable, and as preserving its existence, even
when it is no longer present to my perception.
…
When we have been accustomed to observe a constancy in certain

impressions, and have found that the perception of the sun or ocean, for
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instance, returns upon us, after an absence or annihilation, with like parts and
in a like order as at its first appearance, we are not apt to regard these
interrupted perceptions as different (which they really are), but on the contrary
consider them as individually the same, upon account of their resemblance.
But as this interruption of their existence is contrary to their perfect identity,
and makes us regard the first impression as annihilated, and the second as
newly created, we find ourselves somewhat at a loss, and are involved in a kind
of contradiction. In order to free ourselves from this difficulty, we disguise, as
much as possible, the interruption, or rather remove it entirely, by supposing
that these interrupted perceptions are connected by a real existence, of which
we are insensible. This supposition, or idea of continued existence, acquires a
force and vivacity from the memory of these broken impressions, and from
that propensity which they give us to suppose them the same; and [228]
according to the precedent reasoning, the very essence of belief consists in
the force and vivacity of the conception.
…
We shall afterwards see many instances of this tendency of relation to make

us ascribe an identity to different objects; but shall here confine ourselves to
the present subject. We find by experience that there is such a constancy in
almost all the impressions of the senses, that their interruption produces no
alteration on them, and hinders them not from returning the same in
appearance and in situation as at their first existence. I survey the furniture of
my chamber; I shut my eyes, and afterwards open them; and find the new
perceptions to resemble perfectly those which formerly struck my senses. This
resemblance is observed in a thousand instances, and naturally connects
together our ideas of these interrupted perceptions by the strongest relation,
and conveys the mind with an easy transition from one to another. An easy
transition or passage of the imagination, along the ideas of these different and
interrupted perceptions, is almost the same disposition of mind with that in
which we consider one constant and uninterrupted perception. It is therefore
very natural for us to mistake the one for the other. […]
The persons who entertain this opinion concerning the identity of our
resembling perceptions, are in general all the unthinking and unphilosophical
part of mankind, (that is, all of us at one time or other,) and, consequently,
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such as suppose their perceptions to be their only objects, and never think of
a double existence internal and external, representing and represented. The
very image which is present to the senses is with us the real body; and it is to
these interrupted images we ascribe a perfect identity. But as the interruption
of the appearance seems contrary to the identity, and naturally leads us to
regard these resembling perceptions as different from each other, we here
find ourselves at a loss how to reconcile such opposite opinions. The smooth
passage of the imagination along the ideas of the resembling perceptions
makes us ascribe to them a perfect identity. The interrupted manner of their
appearance makes us consider them as so [229] many resembling, but still
distinct beings, which appear after certain intervals. The perplexity arising from
this contradiction produces a propension to unite these broken appearances
by the fiction of a continued existence, which is the third part of that
hypothesis I proposed to explain.
…
This sceptical doubt, both with respect to reason and the senses, is a malady
which can never be radically cured, but must return upon us every moment,
however we may chase it away, and sometimes may seem entirely free from
it. It is impossible, upon any system, to defend either our understanding or
senses; and we but expose them further when we endeavour to justify them in
that manner. As the sceptical doubt arises naturally from a profound and
intense reflection on those subjects, it always increases the further we carry
our reflections, whether in opposition or conformity to it. Carelessness and
inattention alone can afford us any remedy. For this reason I rely entirely upon
them; and take it for granted, whatever may be the reader’s opinion at this
present moment, that an hour hence he will be persuaded there is both an
external and internal world; and, going upon that supposition, I intend to
examine some general systems, both ancient and modern, which have been
proposed of both, before I proceed to a more particular enquiry concerning
our impressions. This will not, perhaps, in the end, be found foreign to our
present purpose.
…
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Book 1, Part 4, Section 5: On the immateriality of the soul

Having found such contradictions and difficulties in every system concerning
external objects, and in the idea of matter, which we fancy so clear and
determinate, we shall naturally expect still greater difficulties and
contradictions in every hypothesis concerning our internal perceptions, and
the nature of the mind, which we are apt to imagine so much more obscure
and uncertain. But in this we should deceive ourselves. The intellectual world,
though involved in infinite obscurities, is not perplexed [230] with any such
contradictions as those we have discovered in the natural. What is known
concerning it, agrees with itself; and what is unknown, we must be contented
to leave so.
It is true, would we hearken to certain philosophers, they promise to
diminish our ignorance; but I am afraid it is at the hazard of running us into
contradictions, from which the subject is of itself exempted. These
philosophers are the curious reasoners concerning the material or immaterial
substances, in which they suppose our perceptions to inhere. In order to put
a stop to these endless cavils on both sides, I know no better method than to
ask these philosophers in a few words, What they mean by substance and
inhesion? And after they have answered this question, it will then be
reasonable, and not till then, to enter seriously into the dispute.
This question we have found impossible to be answered with regard to
matter and body; but besides that in the case of the mind it labours under all
the same difficulties, it is burdened with some additional ones, which are
peculiar to that subject. As every idea is derived from a precedent impression,
had we any idea of the substance of our minds, we must also have an
impression of it, which is very difficult, if not impossible, to be conceived. For
how can an impression represent a substance, otherwise than by resembling
it? And how can an impression resemble a substance, since, according to this
philosophy, it is not a substance, and has none of the peculiar qualities or
characteristics of a substance?
But leaving the question of what may or may not be, for that other what
actually is, I desire those philosophers, who pretend that we have an idea of
the substance of our minds, to point out the impression that produces it, and
tell distinctly after what manner that impression operates, and from what
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object it is derived. Is it an impression of sensation or of reflection? Is it

pleasant, or painful, or indifferent? Does it attend us at all times, or does it
only return at intervals? If at intervals, at what times principally does it return,
and by what causes is it produced?
If, instead of answering these questions, any one should [231] evade the
difficulty by saying that the definition of a substance is something which may
exist by itself, and that this definition ought to satisfy us: should this be said, I
should observe that this definition agrees to every thing that can possibly be
conceived; and never will serve to distinguish substance from accident, or the
soul from its perceptions. For thus I reason. Whatever is clearly conceived may
exist; and whatever is clearly conceived, after any manner, may exist after the
same manner. This is one principle which has been already acknowledged.
Again, every thing which is different is distinguishable, and every thing which
is distinguishable is separable by the imagination. This is another principle. My
conclusion from both is, that since all our perceptions are different from each
other, and from every thing else in the universe, they are also distinct and
separable, and may be considered as separately existent, and may exist
separately, and have no need of any thing else to support their existence. They
are therefore substances, as far as this definition explains a substance.
Thus, neither by considering the first origin of ideas, nor by means of a
definition, are we able to arrive at any satisfactory notion of substance, which
seems to me a sufficient reason for abandoning utterly that dispute
concerning the materiality and immateriality of the soul, and makes me
absolutely condemn even the question itself. We have no perfect idea of any
thing but of a perception. A substance is entirely different from a perception.
We have therefore no idea of a substance. Inhesion in something is supposed
to be requisite to support the existence of our perceptions. Nothing appears
requisite to support the existence of a perception. We have therefore no idea
of inhesion. What possibility then of answering that question, Whether
perceptions inhere in a material or immaterial substance, when we do not so
much as understand the meaning of the question?
…
This argument affects not the question concerning the substance of the soul,
but only that concerning its local conjunction with matter; and therefore it may
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not be improper to consider in general what objects are, or are not [232]
susceptible of a local conjunction. This is a curious question, and may lead us
to some discoveries of considerable moment.
…
It will not be surprising after this, if I deliver a maxim, which is condemned by

several metaphysicians, and is esteemed contrary to the most certain
principles of human reason. This maxim is, that an object may exist, and yet be
nowhere; and I assert that this is not only possible, but that the greatest part
of beings do and must exist after this manner. An object may be said to be
nowhere, when its parts are not so situated with respect to each other, as to
form any figure or quantity; nor the whole with respect to other bodies so as
to answer to our notions of contiguity or distance. Now this is evidently the
case with all our perceptions and objects, except those of the sight and feeling.
A moral reflection cannot be placed on the right or on the left hand of a
passion; nor can a smell or sound be either of a circular or a square figure.
These objects and perceptions, so far from requiring any particular place, are
absolutely incompatible with it, and even the imagination cannot attribute it
to them. And as to the absurdity of supposing them to be nowhere, we may
consider that if the passions and sentiments appear to the perception to have
any particular place, the idea of extension might be derived from them as well
as from the sight and touch; contrary to what we have already established. If
they appear not to have any particular place, they may possibly exist in the
same manner; since whatever we conceive is possible.
It will not now be necessary to prove, that those perceptions, which are
simple, and exist nowhere, are incapable of any conjunction in place with
matter or body, which is extended and divisible; since it is impossible to found
a relation but on some common quality (1. 1. 5). It may be better worth our
while to remark, that this question of the local conjunction of objects does not
only occur in metaphysical disputes concerning the nature of the soul, but that
even in common life we have every moment occasion to examine it. Thus,
supposing we consider a fig at one end of the [233] table, and an olive at the
other, it is evident that, in forming the complex ideas of these substances, one
of the most obvious is that of their different relishes; and it is as evident, that
we incorporate and conjoin these qualities with such as are coloured and
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tangible. The bitter taste of the one, and sweet of the other, are supposed to
lie in the very visible body, and to be separated from each other by the whole
length of the table. This is so notable and so natural an illusion, that it may be
proper to consider the principles from which it is derived.
Though an extended object be incapable of a conjunction in place with
another that exists without any place or extension, yet are they susceptible of
many other relations. Thus the taste and smell of any fruit are inseparable from
its other qualities of colour and tangibility; and whichever of them be the cause
or effect, it is certain they are always coexistent. Nor are they only coexistent
in general, but also contemporary in their appearance in the mind; and it is
upon the application of the extended body to our senses we perceive its
particular taste and smell. These relations, then, of causation, and contiguity in
the time of their appearance, betwixt the extended object and the quality,
which exists without any particular place, must have such an effect on the mind
that, upon the appearance of one, it will immediately turn its thought to the
conception of the other. Nor is this all. We not only turn our thought from one
to the other upon account of their relation, but likewise endeavour to give
them a new relation, viz. that of a conjunction in place, that we may render the
transition more easy and natural. For it is a quality which I shall often have
occasion to remark in human nature, and shall explain more fully in its proper
place, that, when objects are united by any relation, we have a strong
propensity to add some new relation to them, in order to complete the union.
In our arrangement of bodies, we never fail to place such as are resembling in
contiguity to each other, or, at least, in correspondent points of view: why? but
because we feel a satisfaction in joining the relation of contiguity to that of
resemblance, or the resemblance of situation to that of qualities. The effects
of this [234] propensity have been already observed (1. 4. 2, towards the end)
in that resemblance which we so readily suppose betwixt particular
impressions and their external causes. But we shall not find a more evident
effect of it than in the present instance, where, from the relations of causation
and contiguity in time betwixt two objects, we feign likewise that of a
conjunction in place, in order to strengthen the connection.
But whatever confused notions we may form of a union in place betwixt
an extended body, as a fig, and its particular taste, it is certain that, upon
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reflection, we must observe in this union something altogether unintelligible

and contradictory. For, should we ask ourselves one obvious question, viz. if
the taste, which we conceive to be contained in the circumference of the body,
is in every part of it, or in one only, we must quickly find ourselves at a loss,
and perceive the impossibility of ever giving a satisfactory answer. We cannot
reply that it is only in one part: for experience convinces us that every part has
the same relish. We can as little reply that it exists in every part: for then we
must suppose it figured and extended; which is absurd and incomprehensible.
Here, then, we are influenced by two principles, directly contrary to each other,
viz. that inclination of our fancy by which we are determined to incorporate
the taste with the extended object, and our reason, which shews us the
impossibility of such a union. Being divided betwixt these opposite principles,
we renounce neither one nor the other, but involve the subject in such
confusion and obscurity, that we no longer perceive the opposition. We
suppose that the taste exists within the circumference of the body, but in such
a manner that it fills the whole without extension, and exists entire in every
part without separation. In short, we use, in our most familiar way of thinking,
that scholastic principle which, when crudely proposed, appears so shocking,
of totum in toto, et totum in qualibet parte:67 which is much the same as if we
should say, that a thing is in a certain place, and yet is not there.
All this absurdity proceeds from our endeavouring to bestow a place on
what is utterly incapable of it; and that endeavour again arises from our
inclination to complete [235] a union which is founded on causation and a
contiguity of time, by attributing to the objects a conjunction in place. But if
ever reason be of sufficient force to overcome prejudice, it is certain that, in
the present case, it must prevail. For we have only this choice left, either to
suppose that some beings exist without any place, or that they are figured and
extended; or that when they are incorporated with extended objects, the
whole is in the whole, and the whole in every part. The absurdity of the two
last suppositions proves sufficiently the veracity of the first. Nor is there any
fourth opinion: For as to the supposition of their existence in the manner of
mathematical points, it resolves itself into the second opinion, and supposes
that several passions may be placed in a circular figure, and that a certain
67 ‘The whole in the whole, and the whole in each part.’

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number of smells, conjoined with a certain number of sounds, may make a

body of twelve cubic inches; which appears ridiculous upon the bare
mentioning of it.
…
From these hypotheses concerning the substance and local conjunction of our
perceptions, we may pass to another, which is more intelligible than the
former, and more important than the latter, viz. concerning the cause of our
perceptions. Matter and motion, it is commonly said in the schools, however
varied, are still matter and motion, and produce only a difference in the
position and situation of objects. Divide a body as often as you please, it is still
body. Place it in any figure, nothing ever results but figure, or the relation of
parts. Move it in any manner, you still find motion or a change of relation. It is
absurd to imagine that motion in a circle, for instance, should be nothing but
merely motion in a circle; while motion in another direction, as in an ellipse,
should also be a passion or moral reflection: that the shocking of two globular
particles should become a sensation of pain, and that the meeting of two
triangular ones should afford a pleasure. Now as these different shocks and
variations and mixtures are the only changes of which matter is susceptible,
and as these never afford us any idea of thought or perception, [236] it is
concluded to be impossible that thought can ever be caused by matter.
Few have been able to withstand the seeming evidence of this argument;
and yet nothing in the world is more easy than to refute it. We need only
reflect on what has been proved at large, that we are never sensible of any
connection betwixt causes and effects, and that it is only by our experience of
their constant conjunction we can arrive at any knowledge of this relation.
Now as all objects, which are not contrary, are susceptible of a constant
conjunction, and as no real objects are contrary; I have inferred from these
principles (1. 3. 15), that to consider the matter a priori, any thing may produce
any thing, and that we shall never discover a reason why any object may or
may not be the cause of any other, however great, or however little the
resemblance may be betwixt them. This evidently destroys the precedent
reasoning concerning the cause of thought or perception. For though there
appear no manner of connection betwixt motion or thought, the case is the
same with all other causes and effects. Place one body of a pound weight on
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one end of a lever, and another body of the same weight on another end; you
will never find in these bodies any principle of motion dependent on their
distances from the centre, more than of thought and perception. If you
pretend, therefore, to prove, a priori, that such a position of bodies can never
cause thought; because, turn it which way you will, it is nothing but a position
of bodies; you must, by the same course of reasoning, conclude that it can
never produce motion; since there is no more apparent connection in the one
case than in the other. But as this latter conclusion is contrary to evident
experience, and as it is possible we may have a like experience in the
operations of the mind, and may perceive a constant conjunction of thought
and motion; you reason too hastily when, from the mere consideration of the
ideas, you conclude that it is impossible motion can ever produce thought, or
a different position of parts give rise to a different passion or reflection. Nay,
it is not only possible we may have such an experience, but it is certain we
have it; since every one may perceive that the different disposi[237]tions of his
body change his thoughts and sentiments. And should it be said that this
depends on the union of soul and body, I would answer, that we must separate
the question concerning the substance of the mind from that concerning the
cause of its thought; and that, confining ourselves to the latter question, we
find, by the comparing their ideas, that thought and motion are different from
each other, and by experience, that they are constantly united; which being all
the circumstances that enter into the idea of cause and effect, when applied
to the operations of matter, we may certainly conclude that motion may be,
and actually is, the cause of thought and perception.
…
To pronounce, then, the final decision upon the whole: the question
concerning the substance of the soul is absolutely unintelligible: all our
perceptions are not susceptible of a local union, either with what is extended
or unextended; there being some of them of the one kind, and some of the
other: and as the constant conjunction of objects constitutes the very essence
of cause and effect, matter and motion may often be regarded as the causes
of thought, as far as we have any notion of that relation.
…
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There is no foundation for any conclusion a priori, either concerning the

operations or duration of any object, of which it is possible for the human
mind to form a conception. Any object may be imagined to become entirely
inactive, or to be annihilated in a moment; and it is an evident principle, that
whatever we can imagine is possible. Now this is no more true of matter than
of spirit; of an extended compounded substance, than of a simple and
unextended. In both cases the metaphysical arguments for the immortality of
the soul are equally inconclusive; and in both cases the moral arguments and
those derived from the analogy of nature are equally strong and convincing.
If my philosophy therefore makes no addition to the arguments for religion, I
have at least the satisfaction to think [238] it takes nothing from them, but that
every thing remains precisely as before.
Hume begins his contribution to the philosophical question of the

self with an attack on the notion of self as substance, the doctrine,
held for example by Descartes and Leibniz and their followers, that
there exists a single unitary soul-substance persisting always the
same through time, underlying all our ‘impressions and ideas’, and
in which these latter ‘inhere’ – bearing, in fact, the same sort of
relation to our impressions and ideas as does Locke’s material
substratum to the qualities of bodies. Against this time-honoured
view Hume argues as follows:
(1) What is meant by the expressions ‘substance’ and ‘inhesion’?
These expressions have never been satisfactorily explained.
(2) How can we find out anything about this substance? We
cannot have an impression of it. For an impression could only be
an impression of the substance by resembling it. But the very
starting point of those who believe that the soul is a substance is
that impressions are utterly unlike substances, and it is for this
reason that impressions require a substance in which to ‘inhere’. (It
will be remembered that Berkeley, who believed in a substantive
soul, declared that we have no ‘idea’ of it, but only a ‘relative
notion’.)
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(3) Argument (2) is logical, being designed to show the logical

impossibility of our having an impression of a substance called
soul. Hume reinforces this with an empirical argument, an appeal
to experience. In Section 5 he taunts the substance theorists: ‘Is it
[the impression of the soul-substance] pleasant, or painful, or
indifferent? Does it attend us at all times, or does it only return at
intervals?’ and so on [p. 230]. In Section 6 he makes a more
formidable point: he says that when we look within we never in
fact come upon any such idea as that of a single unitary self,
continuing the same throughout our lives. On the contrary, we
only meet, as always, with some particular perception or other or a
cluster of them; and these numerous particular per[239]ceptions
‘succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity’ [p. 246].
(4) It was argued by the old metaphysicians that only substances
are (logically) capable of existing by themselves, and therefore
there must be a soul-substance in which impressions inhere. To
this Hume replies that, since he can conceive of impressions
existing by themselves, it must be logically possible that they
should so exist; so that on this definition of substance, impressions
themselves turn out to be substances, and certainly have no need
of a further substance to prop them up.
He concludes that ‘the question concerning the substance of the
soul is absolutely unintelligible’ [p. 237]. He can find no such
entity: only collections of data, a stream – or several parallel
streams – of thoughts, images, feelings, perceptions, loosely
connected. The mind is nothing but ‘a bundle or collection of
different perceptions’ [p. 246]. And so he is left with the problem
of explaining what it is that makes us collect together certain
perceptions and not others as the history of anyone single mind.
Following his treatment of the notion of material things, he
similarly disperses minds or selves. And where we should today be
inclined to say that Hume was trying to establish the criterion for
correctly describing certain ideas as belonging to the mental history
of a particular person, he regards himself as providing a
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psychological explanation for our tendency fictitiously to ascribe

identity to a set of wholly discrete impressions and ideas, since we
have a ‘natural propension […] to imagine that simplicity and
identity’ which in reality does not exist [p. 246].
We have seen that absolute identity, in the logical or
mathematical sense, has no relevance to the identification of things
or persons. It cannot have, for the good empirical reason that we
do often utter such statements as: ‘The Mr Jones I saw yesterday is
the same (person) as the Mr Jones I knew in London five years
ago’, or ‘The table on which I am now writing is the same (table)
as the one that has been in my study for fifteen years’, or ‘The
chestnut tree in the square is the same (tree) as has been there for
two hundred years.’ And we call some of these state[240]ments true
and others false. It follows that we have criteria for the correct use
of such statements. In no empirical case will these criteria amount
to the absolute identity of Hume; and in different empirical cases
(in the case of different sorts of objects) the criteria are, as a matter
of fact, of different kinds and of different degrees of elasticity and
vagueness. Thus, where Hume supposes that he is overthrowing
the metaphysics of substance in favour of the (equally
indemonstrable) metaphysics of sense data, and is, in addition,
giving a psychological explanation of our fictitious ascription of
(metaphysical) identity to non-identical (empirical) objects of
various sorts, he is in fact performing the more useful, in
appearance less exciting, task of giving the criteria for the correct
use of the expression ‘the same as’, applied to different classes of
objects.
Hume explains the ‘fictitious ascription of identity’ as being due
to the imagination, which passes so smoothly over the ideas of the
separate perceptions that it comes to think of them as not a rain of
discrete data, but rather a single ‘uninterrupted and invariable’
object [p. 247]. Finally, to justify itself, as it were, it ‘feigns’ some
soul or self or substance, which really would, if it existed, be a single
unchanging object. As usual, the principles of association by which
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the imagination is led to this deceptively smooth transition are

resemblance, contiguity and causation, though, in this case, Hume
says, contiguity plays little part.
Hume’s own constructive ‘theory of the self’ is not satisfactory,
as he himself realises (see the memorable passage in the Appendix:
pp. 257 ff.). In particular, he is in some confusion as to whether
memory produces or discovers personal identity, that is, whether or
not some memory-relation between the discrete impressions and
ideas constitutes the meaning or part of the meaning of the
expression ‘the same as’ as applied to persons, or whether, rather,
it is by means of memory that we find out that several discrete
impressions and ideas ‘belong’ to the history of the ‘same’ person.
It is not clear that these two questions are as distinct as Hume
thought them. Be that as it may, he has failed to give us a
satisfactory account of what it is in a set of impressions and ideas
that makes it the sort of [241] ‘bundle’ that we call the history of a
single person and not of several persons at once, or of none. What
is the unifying tie of such a bundle?
One of the difficulties here is that we do not feel quite sure what
we want a ‘theory of the self’ to do. If all that is being asked for is
an account of the criteria by which in fact we judge of the truth or
falsehood of statements of the form ‘A [at time t2] is the same
person as B [at time t1]’, the answer is comparatively clear. As usual
in questions of this sort, there are several criteria which normally –
but not always – accompany each other:
(1) We go by a certain continuity (allowing, of course, for
changes due to age and physical state, etc.) of bodily appearance.
This is the first criterion we apply on meeting someone we know.
(2) We pay attention to a certain continuity of behaviour
pattern, both physical and ‘psychical’. It is worth noticing in this
context the semi-metaphysical idioms ‘He is not himself today’ and
‘He is beside himself with rage’ as denoting discontinuous data, not
persistent or violent enough to destroy identity.
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(3) We rely mainly on memory. Of course, we can appeal

directly only to our own memory; but we do also appeal to the
memories of others. For example, if a man whom I meet today
claims to be the Mr Smith that I met in Paris in 1947, and if, despite
a resemblance of appearance, he gives an entirely false account of
what I remember myself and Smith to have been doing in Paris in
1947, this, in the absence of information, for example, that he has
lost his memory, constitutes prima facie evidence for the
hypothesis that he is an impostor, that is, not the Mr Smith he
claims to be.
These are only examples of the kind of criteria we use. That
there are yet further criteria is proved by the fact that we are very
inclined to say that Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde were the same person,
although the composite Jekyll–Hyde fails to satisfy any of the
above three criteria. I think our inclination arises from the fact that
anyone who had been in the room when Jekyll drank the potion
and turned into Hyde would have seen a physical human [242]
body occupying a volume of space continuously. We are less
inclined to assert identity if sudden violent physical change occurs,
even though mental continuity persists: for example, if, as in
Kafka’s story, a man turns into a cockroach while preserving his
human memories. In such cases we feel rather more nervous about
saying that the cockroach is the commercial traveller who occupied
the bed a moment before. From which it seems to follow that we
attend more to physical than to mental characteristics. This
criterion (4) consists in continuous occupation of a space–time
track, and seems more fundamental than other criteria, just as it
alone is fundamental in the case of physical objects.
Puzzles arise when these criteria, which in the vast majority of
cases go together and are useful precisely for this reason, fail to
occur. For example, schizophrenics (the most notorious case is
Sally Beauchamp, who, as reported by Dr Morton Prince,68 had no
68 See Morton Prince, The Dissociation of a Personality: A Biographical
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fewer than five personalities) fulfil (1) and (4), fail in (2) and fulfil
(3) with varying degrees of imperfection. Amnesiacs fulfil (1) and
(4), fail in (3), and may fail in varying degrees in (2), and so on. The
puzzle here is less about what is the case than of what to say. The
relevant facts are before us; what we feel uncertain about is
whether we should or should not use the expression ‘the same
person’ with all that this implies. And we are puzzled as to what to
say, precisely because criteria which normally agree here conflict;
there is no philosophical crux here, for the criteria are, of course,
logically independent of each other. We are not confronted with
conflicting evidence as to the presence of a unitary substance called
‘the self’, but rather with having to decide what to say if we are not
to mislead ourselves or others. Sometimes we escape this by
explaining that from some points of view the entity before us is the
same person; from other points of view, two (or more) different
people. For example, an official issuing a railroad ticket to a
schizophrene regards him as one person; a psychiatrist may be
inclined to think of him as two; a judge called on to determine the
validity of his will is [243] involved in a borderline case of the
identity of his legal personality.
Yet this account, plausible so far as it goes, leaves us dissatisfied.
For it seems to leave out of account the central fact of self-
consciousness, the ‘ “I think’ [which] accompan[ies] all my
representations’, as Kant expresses it69 – that which makes my
experience mine, especially in action and volition. We are not
content to dismiss this as merely an extra introspectible feeling or
‘feeling tone’ on a level with other elements of some ‘neutral stuff’
waiting to be sorted out into separate bundles called ‘persons’ in
terms of practical criteria, none of them very definite. This may do
Study in Abnormal Psychology (New York, 1905; reprinted as The Dissociation

of a Personality: The Hunt for the Real Miss Beauchamp, with an introduction
by Charles Rycroft, Oxford, 1978).
69 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd ed. (1787), first division,
book 1, chapter 2, section 12, 131–2.

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for identifying ‘one’ cloud or ‘one’ wave, which may melt into each
other (as my headache cannot, in some sense of ‘cannot’, melt into
yours), but seems to omit the seemingly impenetrable barrier which
divides one person from another, and makes their individual
experiences their vantage points – unique to them, and opaque,
impenetrable, to one another, as clouds and waves are not. Quasi-
mechanical models, such as Hume attempts to construct, of the
relations between perceptions, which make them the perceptions
of one person, seem not only unplausible but irrelevant to the
question of what we mean by personal identity. Much remains to
be done in clarifying what questions we are asking, and why we
reject some answers as shallow or paradoxical when we demand a
philosophical analysis of the self.
Two other important and neglected doctrines of Hume’s should
be noticed in the passage above.
(1) That an object may exist, and yet be nowhere. Hume himself
makes but a poor use of this dictum. He tries to show by means of
it that our idea that, for example, the taste of an olive is spatially
conjoined with the actual extended body, the olive, must be an
illusion, since the taste, being a perception, cannot properly be said
to be anywhere in space. But he is forgetting that, on his view, the
extension, bulk etc. of the olive are no more and no less our
perceptions than is the taste, and that he has not explained what
he means by ‘somewhere in space’ [not Hume’s term]. However,
despite the fact that Hume makes use of the dictum only to [244]
land himself in inconsistency, it is, as so often with his aperçus, of
first-rate importance. It is logically absurd to talk of a mind (and a
fortiori an idea ‘in’ a mind) being somewhere. Spatial predicates do
not apply to minds or ideas. And with this discovery Hume
liberates us from the Cartesian picture, shared to some extent by
Locke, of the mind literally situated within the brain, a picture
according to which, just as light rays in a mechanical way produce
physical changes in the eyes, the optic nerves and finally the brain,
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so – the last link in the causal chain – the brain in a quasi-

mechanical way produces ideas in the mind.
(2) It had been held by, for example, certain Cartesians, that
matter and motion on the one hand and ideas on the other are so
different in kind that it is impossible that either should leap over
the gulf to ‘cause’ the other. Hume points out that once we realise
that cause is nothing but regularity, ‘constant conjunction’, there
can be no a priori reason why anything should not cause anything
else. The importance of his principle that there are no impassable
‘natural’ barriers between kinds of things or events, and that no
causal connections between any sorts of events can ever be ruled
out a priori, remains worthy of notice even in the twentieth
century.
Book 1, Part 4, Section 6: Of personal identity

There are some philosophers who imagine we are every moment
intimately conscious of what we call our self; that we feel its existence and its
continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a
demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. The strongest
sensation, the most violent passion, say they, instead of distracting us from
this view, only fix it the more intensely, and make us consider their influence
on self either by their pain or pleasure. To attempt a further proof of this were
to weaken its evidence; since no proof can be derived from any fact of which
we are so intimately conscious; nor is there any thing of which we can be
certain if we doubt of this. [245]
Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very experience
which is pleaded for them; nor have we any idea of self, after the manner it is
here explained. For, from what impression could this idea be derived? This
question it is impossible to answer without a manifest contradiction and
absurdity; and yet it is a question which must necessarily be answered, if we
would have the idea of self pass for clear and intelligible. It must be some one
impression that gives rise to every real idea. But self or person is not any one
impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed
to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that
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impression must continue invariably the same, through the whole course of
our lives; since self is supposed to exist after that manner. But there is no
impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions
and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. It
cannot therefore be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the
idea of self is derived; and consequently there is no such idea.
But further, what must become of all our particular perceptions upon this
hypothesis? All these are different, and distinguishable, and separable from
each other, and may be separately considered, and may exist separately, and
have no need of any thing to support their existence. After what manner
therefore do they belong to self, and how are they connected with it? For my
part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on
some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or
hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a
perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my
perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I
insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my
perceptions removed by death, and could I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor
love, nor hate, after the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely
annihilated, nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me a perfect
nonentity. If any one, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has
a different notion of [246] himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with
him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we
are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something
simple and continued, which he calls himself; though I am certain there is no
such principle in me.
But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm
of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of
different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable
rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in
their sockets without varying our perceptions. Our thought is still more
variable than our sight; and all our other senses and faculties contribute to this
change: nor is there any single power of the soul, which remains unalterably
the same, perhaps for one moment. The mind is a kind of theatre, where
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several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide

away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is
properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different, whatever
natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. The
comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive
perceptions only, that constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant
notion of the place where these scenes are represented, or of the materials of
which it is composed.
What then gives us so great a propension to ascribe an identity to these
successive perceptions, and to suppose ourselves possessed of an invariable
and uninterrupted existence through the whole course of our lives? In order
to answer this question we must distinguish betwixt personal identity, as it
regards our thought or imagination, and as it regards our passions or the
concern we take in ourselves. The first is our present subject; and to explain it
perfectly we must take the matter pretty deep, and account for that identity,
which we attribute to plants and animals; there being a great analogy betwixt
it and the identity of a self or person.
We have a distinct idea of an object that remains invariable and
uninterrupted through a supposed variation [247] of time; and this idea we
call that of identity or sameness. We have also a distinct idea of several
different objects existing in succession, and connected together by a close
relation; and this to an accurate view affords as perfect a notion of diversity as
if there was no manner of relation among the objects. But though these two
ideas of identity, and a succession of related objects, be in themselves
perfectly distinct, and even contrary, yet it is certain that, in our common way
of thinking, they are generally confounded with each other. That action of the
imagination, by which we consider the uninterrupted and invariable object,
and that by which we reflect on the succession of related objects, are almost
the same to the feeling; nor is there much more effort of thought required in
the latter case than in the former. The relation facilitates the transition of the
mind from one object to another, and renders its passage as smooth as if it
contemplated one continued object. This resemblance is the cause of the
confusion and mistake, and makes us substitute the notion of identity, instead
of that of related objects. However at one instant we may consider the related
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succession as variable or interrupted, we are sure the next to ascribe to it a

perfect identity, and regard it as invariable and uninterrupted. Our propensity
to this mistake is so great from the resemblance above mentioned, that we fall
into it before we are aware; and though we incessantly correct ourselves by
reflection, and return to a more accurate method of thinking, yet we cannot
long sustain our philosophy, or take off this bias from the imagination. Our
last resource is to yield to it, and boldly assert that these different related
objects are in effect the same, however interrupted and variable. In order to
justify to ourselves this absurdity, we often feign some new and unintelligible
principle, that connects the objects together, and prevents their interruption
or variation. Thus we feign the continued existence of the perceptions of our
senses, to remove the interruption; and run into the notion of a soul, and self,
and substance, to disguise the variation. But, we may further observe, that
where we do not give rise to such a fiction, our propension to confound
identity with relation is so great, that we are apt [248] to imagine something
unknown and mysterious, […] connecting the parts, beside their relation; and
this I take to be the case with regard to the identity we ascribe to plants and
vegetables. And even when this does not take place, we still feel a propensity
to confound these ideas, though we are not able fully to satisfy ourselves in
that particular, nor find any thing invariable and uninterrupted to justify our
notion of identity.
Thus the controversy concerning identity is not merely a dispute of words.
For when we attribute identity, in an improper sense, to variable or interrupted
objects, our mistake is not confined to the expression, but is commonly
attended with a fiction, either of something invariable and uninterrupted, or
of something mysterious and inexplicable, or at least with a propensity to such
fictions. What will suffice to prove this hypothesis to the satisfaction of every
fair enquirer, is to shew, from daily experience and observation, that the
objects which are variable or interrupted, and yet are supposed to continue
the same, are such only as consist of a succession of parts, connected together
by resemblance, contiguity, or causation. For as such a succession answers
evidently to our notion of diversity, it can only be by mistake we ascribe to it
an identity; and as the relation of parts, which leads us into this mistake, is
really nothing but a quality, which produces an association of ideas, and an
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easy transition of the imagination from one to another, it can only be from the
resemblance, which this act of the mind bears to that by which we contemplate
one continued object, that the error arises. Our chief business, then, must be
to prove, that all objects, to which we ascribe identity, without observing their
invariableness and uninterruptedness, are such as consist of a succession of
related objects.
In order to this, suppose any mass of matter, of which the parts are
contiguous and connected, to be placed before us; it is plain we must attribute
a perfect identity to this mass, provided all the parts continue uninterruptedly
and invariably the same, whatever motion or change of place we may observe
either in the whole or in any of the parts. But supposing some very small or
inconsiderable part [249] to be added to the mass, or subtracted from it;
though this absolutely destroys the identity of the whole, strictly speaking, yet
as we seldom think so accurately, we scruple not to pronounce a mass of
matter the same, where we find so trivial an alteration. The passage of the
thought from the object before the change to the object after it, is so smooth
and easy, that we scarce perceive the transition, and are apt to imagine, that
it is nothing but a continued survey of the same object.
There is a very remarkable circumstance that attends this experiment;
which is, that though the change of any considerable part in a mass of matter
destroys the identity of the whole, yet we must measure the greatness of the
part, not absolutely, but by its proportion to the whole. The addition or
diminution of a mountain would not be sufficient to produce a diversity in a
planet; though the change of a very few inches would be able to destroy the
identity of some bodies. It will be impossible to account for this, but by
reflecting that objects operate upon the mind, and break or interrupt the
continuity of its actions, not according to their real greatness, but according
to their proportion to each other; and therefore, since this interruption makes
an object cease to appear the same, it must be the uninterrupted progress of
the thought which constitutes the imperfect identity.
This may be confirmed by another phenomenon. A change in any
considerable part of a body destroys its identity; but it is remarkable, that
where the change is produced gradually and insensibly, we are less apt to
ascribe to it the same effect. The reason can plainly be no other, than that the
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mind, in following the successive changes of the body, feels an easy passage
from the surveying its condition in one moment, to the viewing of it in another,
and at no particular time perceives any interruption in its actions. From which
continued perception, it ascribes a continued existence and identity to the
object.
But whatever precaution we may use in introducing the changes gradually,
and making them proportionable to the whole, it is certain, that where the
changes are at last observed to become considerable, we make a scruple of
[250] ascribing identity to such different objects. There is, however, another
artifice, by which we may induce the imagination to advance a step further;
and that is, by producing a reference of the parts to each other, and a
combination to some common end or purpose. A ship, of which a considerable
part has been changed by frequent reparations, is still considered as the same;
nor does the difference of the materials hinder us from ascribing an identity
to it. The common end, in which the parts conspire, is the same under all their
variations, and affords an easy transition of the imagination from one situation
of the body to another.
…
We now proceed to explain the nature of personal identity, which has become
so great a question in philosophy, especially of late years, in England, where
all the abstruser sciences are studied with a peculiar ardour and application.
And here it is evident the same method of reasoning must be continued which
has so successfully explained the identity of plants and animals, and ships, and
houses, and of all the compounded and changeable productions either of art
or nature. The identity which we ascribe to the mind of man is only a fictitious
one, and of a like kind with that which we ascribe to vegetables and animal
bodies. It cannot therefore have a different origin, but must proceed from a
like operation of the imagination upon like objects.
But lest this argument should not convince the reader, though in my
opinion perfectly decisive, let him weigh the following reasoning, which is still
closer and more immediate. It is evident that the identity which we attribute
to the human mind, however perfect we may imagine it to be, is not able to
run the several different perceptions into one, and make them lose their
characters of distinction and difference which are essential to them. It is still
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true that every distinct perception which enters into the composition of the
mind, is a distinct existence, and is different, and distinguishable, and
separable from every other perception, either contemporary or successive. But
as, notwithstanding this distinction and separability, we suppose the whole
train of perceptions to be united by identity, a question naturally arises
concerning this relation of iden[251]tity, whether it be something that really
binds our several perceptions together, or only associates their ideas in the
imagination; that is, in other words, whether, in pronouncing concerning the
identity of a person, we observe some real bond among his perceptions, or
only feel one among the ideas we form of them. This question we might easily
decide, if we would recollect what has been already proved at large, that the
understanding never observes any real connection among objects, and that
even the union of cause and effect, when strictly examined resolves itself into
a customary association of ideas. For from thence it evidently follows, that
identity is nothing really belonging to these different perceptions, and uniting
them together, but is merely a quality which we attribute to them, because of
the union of their ideas in the imagination when we reflect upon them. Now,
the only qualities which can give ideas a union in the imagination, are these
three relations above mentioned. These are the uniting principles in the ideal
world, and without them every distinct object is separable by the mind, and
may be separately considered, and appears not to have any more connection
with any other object than if disjoined by the greatest difference and
remoteness. It is therefore on some of these three relations of resemblance,
contiguity, and causation, that identity depends; and as the very essence of
these relations consists in their producing an easy transition of ideas, it follows
that our notions of personal identity proceed entirely from the smooth and
uninterrupted progress of the thought along a train of connected ideas,
according to the principles above explained.
The only question, therefore, which remains is, by what relations this
uninterrupted progress of our thought is produced, when we consider the
successive existence of a mind or thinking person. And here it is evident we
must confine ourselves to resemblance and causation, and must drop
contiguity, which has little or no influence in the present case.
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To begin with resemblance; suppose we could see clearly into the breast
of another, and observe that succession of perceptions which constitutes his
mind or think[252]ing principle, and suppose that he always preserves the
memory of a considerable part of past perceptions, it is evident that nothing
could more contribute to the bestowing a relation on this succession amidst
all its variations. For what is the memory but a faculty, by which we raise up
the images of past perceptions? And as an image necessarily resembles its
object, must not the frequent placing of these resembling perceptions in the
chain of thought, convey the imagination more easily from one link to another,
and make the whole seem like the continuance of one object? In this particular,
then, the memory not only discovers the identity, but also contributes to its
production, by producing the relation of resemblance among the perceptions.
The case is the same, whether we consider ourselves or others.
As to causation we may observe that the true idea of the human mind, is
to consider it as a system of different perceptions or different existences, which
are linked together by the relation of cause and effect, and mutually produce,
destroy, influence, and modify each other. Our impressions give rise to their
correspondent ideas; and these ideas, in their turn, produce other impressions.
One thought chases another, and draws after it a third, by which it is expelled
in its turn. In this respect, I cannot compare the soul more properly to any
thing than to a republic or commonwealth, in which the several members are
united by the reciprocal ties of government and subordination, and give rise
to other persons who propagate the same republic in the incessant changes
of its parts. And as the same individual republic may not only change its
members, but also its laws and constitutions; in like manner the same person
may vary his character and disposition, as well as his impressions and ideas,
without losing his identity. Whatever changes he endures, his several parts are
still connected by the relation of causation. And in this view our identity with
regard to the passions serves to corroborate that with regard to the
imagination, by the making our distant perceptions influence each other, and
by giving us a present concern for our past or future pains or pleasures. [253]
As memory alone acquaints us with the continuance and extent of this
succession of perceptions, it is to be considered, upon that account chiefly, as
the source of personal identity. Had we no memory, we never should have any
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notion of causation, nor consequently of that chain of causes and effects,

which constitute our self or person. But having once acquired this notion of
causation from the memory, we can extend the same chain of causes, and
consequently the identity of our persons beyond our memory, and can
comprehend times, and circumstances, and actions, which we have entirely
forgot, but suppose in general to have existed. For how few of our past actions
are there, of which we have any memory? Who can tell me, for instance, what
were his thoughts and actions on the 1st of January 1715, the 11th of March
1719 and the 3rd of August 1733? Or will he affirm, because he has entirely
forgot the incidents of these days, that the present self is not the same person
with the self of that time; and by that means overturn all the most established
notions of personal identity? In this view, therefore, memory does not so much
produce as discover personal identity, by shewing us the relation of cause and
effect among our different perceptions. It will be incumbent on those who
affirm that memory produces entirely our personal identity, to give a reason
why we can thus extend our identity beyond our memory.
The whole of this doctrine leads us to a conclusion, which is of great
importance in the present affair, viz. that all the nice and subtle questions
concerning personal identity can never possibly be decided, and are to be
regarded rather as grammatical than as philosophical difficulties. Identity
depends on the relations of ideas; and these relations produce identity, by
means of that easy transition they occasion. But as the relations, and the
easiness of the transition may diminish by insensible degrees, we have no just
standard by which we can decide any dispute concerning the time when they
acquire or lose a title to the name of identity. All the disputes concerning the
identity of connected objects are merely verbal, except so far as the relation
of parts gives rise to some fiction or imaginary principle of union, as we have
already observed. [254]
What I have said concerning the first origin and uncertainty of our notion
of identity, as applied to the human mind, may be extended with little or no
variation to that of simplicity. An object, whose different coexistent parts are
bound together by a close relation, operates upon the imagination after much
the same manner as one perfectly simple and indivisible, and requires not a
much greater stretch of thought in order to its conception. From this similarity
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of operation we attribute a simplicity to it, and feign a principle of union as

the support of this simplicity, and the centre of all the different parts and
qualities of the object.
Thus we have finished our examination of the several systems of
philosophy, both of the intellectual and moral world; and, in our miscellaneous
way of reasoning, have been led into several topics, which will either illustrate
and confirm some preceding part of this discourse, or prepare the way for our
following opinions. It is now time to return to a more close examination of our
subject, and to proceed in the accurate anatomy of human nature, having fully
explained the nature of our judgement and understanding.
…
So much for Hume’s epoch-making analyses of the notion of

natural necessity, cause, substance, identity, personality and the
relation of words, concepts and things. At the end of it he felt acute
intellectual discomfort, which, with characteristic candour and
charm, he sets forth, in the famous statement that follows, of the
scepticism to which his philosophy has led him. So long as he
reasons, as opposed to ‘play[ing] a game of backgammon’ [p. 256],
he is ‘environed with the deepest darkness’ and can give no good
reason for believing anything. From this ‘philosophical melancholy
and delirium’ only nature – upon whom he looks with trust and
affection – can cure him. Philosophy pulls him one way: but ‘the
current of nature’ [p. 247] draws him toward ‘indolent belief in the
general maxims’ accepted by ordinary men, even though they are
demonstrably fallacious. But at least his ‘follies’, if they cannot be
avoided, shall be ‘natural and agreeable’. Yet we have seen that
[255] Hume’s results are not really as paradoxical or wildly at odds
with common sense as he himself thinks. What he has done is to
expose the arguments of those who demanded ‘real’ necessary
connections in nature, or an unbreakable guarantee that her
unobserved parts resemble the observed, or looked for an ex
hypothesi unobservable material substratum underlying each
physical identity, or a simple, continuous, timeless, unobservable
self ‘beneath’ or ‘within’ each person’s mind. Hume showed that
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to ask for this was either not to understand what one was asking,
or to ask for the logically impossible. In the course of this he threw
original light on the way in which the notion of cause in fact
functions, and on the related concepts of material and personal
identity, and the relations of empirical and a priori propositions,
and so inaugurated a great debate on these topics of which the end
is not in sight.
Book 1, Part 4, Section 7: Conclusion of this book

For I have already shewn [Section 1], that the understanding, when it acts
alone, and according to its most general principles, entirely subverts itself, and
leaves not the lowest degree of evidence in any proposition, either in
philosophy or common life. We save ourselves from this total scepticism only
by means of that singular and seemingly trivial property of the fancy, by which
we enter with difficulty into remote views of things, and are not able to
accompany them with so sensible an impression, as we do those which are
more easy and natural. Shall we, then, establish it for a general maxim, that no
refined or elaborate reasoning is ever to be received? Consider well the
consequences of such a principle. By this means you cut off entirely all science
and philosophy: you proceed upon one singular quality of the imagination,
and by a parity of reason must embrace all of them; and you expressly
contradict yourself; since this maxim must be built on the preceding reasoning,
which will be allowed to be sufficiently refined and metaphysical. What party,
then, shall we choose among these difficulties? If we embrace this principle,
and condemn all refined reasoning, we run into the most manifest absurdities.
If we reject it in favour of these reasonings, [256] we subvert entirely the
human understanding. We have therefore no choice left, but betwixt a false
reason and none at all. For my part, I know not what ought to be done in the
present case. I can only observe what is commonly done; which is, that this
difficulty is seldom or never thought of; and even where it has once been
present to the mind, is quickly forgot, and leaves but a small impression
behind it. Very refined reflections have little or no influence upon us; and yet
we do not, and cannot establish it for a rule, that they ought not to have any
influence; which implies a manifest contradiction.
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But what have I here said, that reflections very refined and metaphysical
have little or no influence upon us? This opinion I can scarce forbear retracting,
and condemning from my present feeling and experience. The intense view of
these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so
wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and
reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than
another. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and
to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger
must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have I any influence,
or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions,
and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable,
environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every
member and faculty.
Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling
these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this
philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or
by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all
these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry
with my friends; and when, after three or four hours’ amusement, I would
return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous,
that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any further.
Here, then, I find myself absolutely and necessarily de[257]termined to live,
and talk, and act like other people in the common affairs of life. But
notwithstanding that my natural propensity, and the course of my animal
spirits and passions reduce me to this indolent belief in the general maxims of
the world, I still feel such remains of my former disposition, that I am ready to
throw all my books and papers into the fire, and resolve never more to
renounce the pleasures of life for the sake of reasoning and philosophy. For
those are my sentiments in that splenetic humour which governs me at
present. I may, nay I must yield to the current of nature, in submitting to my
senses and understanding; and in this blind submission I shew most perfectly
my sceptical disposition and principles. But does it follow that I must strive
against the current of nature, which leads me to indolence and pleasure; that
I must seclude myself, in some measure, from the commerce and society of
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men, which is so agreeable; and that I must torture my brain with subtleties
and sophistries, at the very time that I cannot satisfy myself concerning the
reasonableness of so painful an application, nor have any tolerable prospect
of arriving by its means at truth and certainty. Under what obligation do I lie
of making such an abuse of time? And to what end can it serve, either for the
service of mankind, or for my own private interest? No: if I must be a fool, as
all those who reason or believe any thing certainly are, my follies shall at least
be natural and agreeable. Where I strive against my inclination, I shall have a
good reason for my resistance; and will no more be led a wandering into such
dreary solitudes, and rough passages, as I have hitherto met with.
…
An Appendix on the Treatise

…
I had entertained some hopes, that however deficient our theory of the
intellectual world might be, it would be free from those contradictions and
absurdities which seem to attend every explication that human reason can give
of the material world. But upon a more strict review of the section concerning
personal identity, I find myself involved in such a labyrinth that, I must confess,
I neither know how [258] to correct my former opinions, nor how to render
them consistent. If this be not a good general reason for scepticism, it is at
least a sufficient one (if I were not already abundantly supplied) for me to
entertain a diffidence and modesty in all my decisions. I shall propose the
arguments on both sides, beginning with those that induced me to deny the
strict and proper identity and simplicity of a self or thinking being.
When we talk of self or subsistence, we must have an idea annexed to these
terms, otherwise they are altogether unintelligible. Every idea is derived from
preceding impressions; and we have no impression of self or substance, as
something simple and individual. We have, therefore, no idea of them in that
sense.
Whatever is distinct is distinguishable, and whatever is distinguishable is
separable by the thought or imagination. All perceptions are distinct. They are,
therefore, distinguishable, and separable, and may be conceived as separately
existent, and may exist separately, without any contradiction or absurdity.
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When I view this table and that chimney, nothing is present to me but
particular perceptions, which are of a like nature with all the other perceptions.
This is the doctrine of philosophers. But this table, which is present to me, and
that chimney, may, and do exist separately. This is the doctrine of the vulgar,
and implies no contradiction. There is no contradiction, therefore, in extending
the same doctrine to all the perceptions.
In general, the following reasoning seems satisfactory. All ideas are
borrowed from preceding perceptions. Our ideas of objects, therefore, are
derived from that source. Consequently no proposition can be intelligible or
consistent with regard to objects, which is not so with regard to perceptions.
But it is intelligible and consistent to say, that objects exist distinct and
independent, without any common simple substance or subject of inhesion.
This proposition, therefore, can never be absurd with regard to perceptions.
When I turn my reflection on myself, I never can perceive this self without
some one or more perceptions; nor [259] can I ever perceive any thing but the
perceptions. It is the composition of these, therefore, which forms the self.
We can conceive a thinking being to have either many or few perceptions.
Suppose the mind to be reduced even below the life of an oyster. Suppose it
to have only one perception, as of thirst or hunger. Consider it in that situation.
Do you conceive any thing but merely that perception? Have you any notion
of self or substance? If not, the addition of other perceptions can never give
you that notion.
The annihilation which some people suppose to follow upon death, and
which entirely destroys this self, is nothing but an extinction of all particular
perceptions; love and hatred, pain and pleasure, thought and sensation. These,
therefore, must be the same with self, since the one cannot survive the other.
Is self the same with substance? If it be, how can that question have place,
concerning the substance of self, under a change of substance? If they be
distinct, what is the difference betwixt them? For my part, I have a notion of
neither, when conceived distinct from particular perceptions.
Philosophers begin to be reconciled to the principle, that we have no idea
of external substance, distinct from the ideas of particular qualities. This must
pave the way for a like principle with regard to the mind, that we have no
notion of it, distinct from the particular perception.
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So far I seem to be attended with sufficient evidence. But having thus

loosened all our particular perceptions, when I proceed to explain the principle
of connection, which binds them together, and makes us attribute to them a
real simplicity and identity, I am sensible that my account is very defective, and
that nothing but the seeming evidence of the precedent reasonings could
have induced me to receive it. If perceptions are distinct existences, they form
a whole only by being connected together. But no connections among distinct
existences are ever discoverable by human understanding. We only feel a
connection or determination of the thought to pass from one object to
another. It follows, therefore, that the thought alone feels [260] personal
identity, when reflecting on the train of past perceptions that compose a mind,
the ideas of them are felt to be connected together, and naturally introduce
each other. However extraordinary this conclusion may seem, it need not
surprize us. Most philosophers seem inclined to think, that personal identity
arises from consciousness, and consciousness is nothing but a reflected
thought or perception. The present philosophy, therefore, has so far a
promising aspect. But all my hopes vanish when I come to explain the
principles that unite our successive perceptions in our thought or
consciousness. I cannot discover any theory which gives me satisfaction on
this head.
In short, there are two principles which I cannot render consistent, nor is it
in my power to renounce either of them, viz. that all our distinct perceptions
are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connection
among distinct existences. Did our perceptions either inhere in something
simple and individual, or did the mind perceive some real connection among
them, there would be no difficulty in the case. For my part, I must plead the
privilege of a sceptic, and confess that this difficulty is too hard for my
understanding. I pretend not, however, to pronounce it absolutely
insuperable. Others, perhaps, or myself, upon more mature reflections, may
discover some hypothesis that will reconcile those contradictions.
…
[261]
246
Thomas Reid
The life of Thomas Reid was wholly uneventful. His career is
characteristic of his time and country and milieu: he was born in
1710, became a minister of the Scottish Church at the age of
twenty-seven, taught philosophy at Aberdeen, and succeeded
Adam Smith as Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow in 1764.
His most famous work, the Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man,
was published in 1785, when he was seventy-five years of age. He
died in 1796.
The principal importance of Reid’s philosophical views lies in
his bold attempt to rehabilitate the ‘common-sense’ view of the
external world against the disturbing paradoxes of Berkeley and
Hume. Despite all Locke’s efforts to break out of the charmed
circle of his own ‘ideas’, within which each individual observer is
confined; despite Berkeley’s reiterated plea that his views are
identical with those of ordinary men, that his ‘ideas’ are what are
normally called ‘things’, that it is not he who is responsible for
inventing a strange and unintelligible universe, remote from the
familiar human world, but the physicists with their invisible
particles and mysterious activities of non-sensible properties;
despite Hume’s half-hearted assertion that to look for a solid reality
‘behind’ or ‘beyond’ sense-‘impressions’, and the ‘ideas’ that are
but decayed ‘impressions’, is meaningless; despite all this, there is,
of course, an undeniable tendency towards a solipsist metaphysics
in this out-and-out phenomenalism. It does suggest that there is
no existence but in the observer’s awareness, and the solid
‘objective’ world is made to melt into the ‘subjective’ experience of
particular streams of conscious[262]ness, which between them
comprise all there is.
Reid attempts to cut this knot by arguing that Berkeley was right
in maintaining that sensations, indeed, were purely subjective, that
sounds, scents, tastes, colour sensations existed only in being heard
or smelled or seen, as pains only existed in sensations of pain; that
physical things, which could not smell or look, did not, of course,
247
T H O M A S RE I D
possess such sensations any more than they were able to feel aches.
But from this it does not follow at all that there are no material
objects, possessing, for the most part, just such qualities as we take
them to have, when we are not suffering from hallucinations. We
do not, indeed, sense these qualities (sensations are private and
subjective) but perceive them, the sensing being the occasion of the
perceiving, which occurs concomitantly with it, and which we do not,
in ordinary speech, trouble to distinguish from the sensing: for the
distinction is of interest solely to ‘philosophers’.
With this theory Reid may claim to be the father of British (and
indeed Anglo-American) ‘realism’. The ‘Scottish’ or ‘Common
Sense’ school descended from him adumbrated the approach
which, principally in the works of G. E. Moore and his followers,
took the form of insisting that words like ‘knowledge’ and
‘acquaintance’ meant nothing if they could not be properly applied
to the most familiar objective facts of our lives: that we lived in a
space containing three-dimensional chairs which we knew that we
occasionally sat in, that we knew that our bodies had never risen
many thousands of miles above the surface of the earth, and so on.
For to deny this in favour of some theoretical consideration is to
deny the premisses on which all our thought about the external
world must rest, the common foundations of scientific or
common-sense beliefs – the notion that there exists an external
world of public objects which can be discussed, to which our
symbols, whether words or images, are intended to refer, and
which alone make communication possible. To deny or doubt this
is, it is maintained, to pretend to disbelieve the axioms from which
we must inevitably all begin, and with which we must, if we are not
to stultify our arguments, all end. [263] For critical thought can
elucidate ideas, rearrange and systematise them. classify their types
and uses, and remove confusions and fallacies, but it cannot by
itself provide information about the universe which cancels or
alters the basic data of direct human experience. For this central
doctrine in modern philosophy Reid struck the first effective blow.
248
T H O M A S RE I D
The following extracts are from Essays on the Intellectual Powers of

Man.
ESSAY 2: OF THE POWERS WE HAVE BY MEANS OF OUR EXTERNAL

SENSES
…
C hapter 14: Reflections on the Common Theory of Ideas

…
[…] When we see the sun or moon, we have no doubt that the very objects
which we immediately see are very far distant from us, and from one another.
We have not the least doubt that this is the sun and moon which God created
some thousands of years ago, and which have continued to perform their
revolutions in the heavens ever since. But how are we astonished when the
philosopher informs us that we are mistaken in all this; that the sun and moon
which we see are not, as we imagine, many miles distant from us, and from
each other, but that they are in our own mind; that they had no existence
before we saw them, and will have none when we cease to perceive and to
think of them; because the objects we perceive are only ideas in our own
minds, which can have no existence a moment longer than we think of them!
If a plain man, un instructed in philosophy, has faith to receive these
mysteries, how great must be his astonishment! He is brought into a new
world, where everything he sees, tastes, or touches, is an idea – a fleeting kind
of being which he can conjure into existence, or can annihilate in the twinkling
of an eye.
After his mind is somewhat composed, it will be natural for him to ask his
philosophical instructor: Pray, Sir, are there then no substantial and permanent
beings called the sun and moon, which continue to exist whether we think of
them or not?
…
[264]
249
T H O M A S RE I D
Chapter 16: Of Sensation

…
Almost all our perceptions have corresponding sensations which constantly

accompany them, and, on that account, are very apt to be confounded with
them. Neither ought we to expect that the sensation, and its corresponding
perception, should be distinguished in common language, because the
purposes of common life do not require it. Language is made to serve the
purposes of ordinary conversation, and we have no reason to expect that it
should make distinctions that are not of common use. Hence it happens that
a quality perceived, and the sensation corresponding to that perception, often
go under the same name.
This makes the names of most of our sensations ambiguous, and this
ambiguity hath very much perplexed philosophers. It will be necessary to give
some instances to illustrate the distinction between our sensations and the
objects of perception.
When I smell a rose, there is in this operation both sensation and
perception. The agreeable odour I feel, considered by itself without relation to
any external object, is merely a sensation. It affects the mind in a certain way;
and this affection of the mind may be conceived without a thought of the rose,
or any other object. This sensation can be nothing else than it is felt to be. Its
very essence consists in being felt, and, when it is not felt, it is not. There is no
difference between the sensation and the feeling of it – they are one and the
same thing. It is for this reason that we before observed that, in sensation,
there is no object distinct from that act of the mind by which it is felt – and
this holds true with regard to all sensations.
Let us next attend to the perception which we have in smelling a rose.
Perception has always an external object; and the object of my perception, in
this case, is that quality in the rose which I discern by the sense of smell.
Observing that the agreeable sensation is raised when the rose is near, and
ceases when it is removed, I am led, by my nature, to conclude some quality
to be in the rose which [265] is the cause of this sensation. This quality in the
rose is the object perceived; and that act of my mind by which I have the
conviction and belief of this quality is what in this case I call perception.
250
T H O M A S RE I D
But it is here to be observed that the sensation I feel, and the quality in the
rose which I perceive, are both called by the same name. The smell of a rose
is the name given to both: so that this name hath two meanings; and the
distinguishing its different meanings removes all perplexity and enables us to
give clear and distinct answers to questions about which philosophers have
held much dispute.
Thus, if it is asked whether the smell be in the rose, or in the mind that
feels it, the answer is obvious: That there are two different things signified by
the smell of a rose; one of which is in the mind, and can be in nothing but in
a sentient being; the other is truly and properly in the rose. The sensation
which I feel is in my mind. The mind is the sentient being; and, as the rose is
insentient, there can be no sensation, nor anything resembling sensation, in it.
But this sensation in my mind is occasioned by a certain quality in the rose,
which is called by the same name with the sensation, not on account of any
similitude, but because of their constant concomitancy.
All the names we have for smells, tastes, sounds, and for the various
degrees of heat and cold, have a like ambiguity; and what has been said of the
smell of a rose may be applied to them. They signify both a sensation and a
quality perceived by means of that sensation. The first is the sign, the last the
thing signified. As both are conjoined by nature, and as the purposes of
common life do not require them to be disjoined in our thoughts, they are
both expressed by the same name: and this ambiguity is to be found in all
languages, because the reason of it extends to all. [266]
251
Condillac
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac was a typical atheistical abbé of the
eighteenth century. Born in 1715, he entered the priesthood with
no apparent discomfort to his materialistic beliefs. He lived the life
of a French savant of the Enlightenment, and died in 1780. His
works had a far greater, often indirect, influence on French – and
European – naturalism in the nineteenth century, more particularly
in literature and popular science, than is commonly supposed.
Condillac is perhaps the most representative of the French
‘sensationalist’ philosophes. A devoted follower of Locke, he was
convinced that all mental processes could be analysed into atomic
constituents consisting of basic, irreducible units of sensation. To
demonstrate this he used the famous image of a statue which was
endowed with new ‘senses’ – smell, taste and so on – gradually, one
by one; and in this way attempted to ‘construct’ the world of
normal human beings, bit by bit, and to show that everything in it
is wholly analysable into the results of the physical functioning of
the senses in their normal interplay with each other.
One of the difficulties of Locke’s original theory was to account
for judgement – that is, the capacity to affirm and deny, believe
and disbelieve, and in general reflect about data, rather than merely
register them as they showered in upon the passive tabula rasa
which the mind is conceived as being. Such experiences as
reflection and judgement, which seem to require activities such as
comparing, distinguishing, classifying and so on, do not prima facie
seem compatible with the purely passive photographic film that the
tabula rasa resembles. Condillac attempts to im[267]prove on
Locke’s inadequate account of ‘ideas of reflection’ by explaining
them as the results of ‘attention’, which is, for him, merely another
sensation. His theory cannot be regarded as successful, as anyone
who troubles to read relevant discussions in the works of Kant or
of Maine de Biran can see for himself. Attention, comparison,
belief, knowledge cannot be identified with ‘pure sensation’, which
is, presumably, pure receptivity, incapable of rounding on itself and
252
CO N D I LL A C
choosing, weighing, rejecting and building theories out of the

undifferentiated ‘raw material’ which, ex hypothesi, is all that it itself
is.
A succession of sensations cannot be turned into a sensation of
succession. Similar difficulties have been encountered by all those
who identify knowledge with sensation, or belief with the
succession of atomic data, from Condillac to Carnap. But
Condillac’s careful analysis of actual sensations, which constitute
more of our experience than had hitherto been allowed, and his
emphasis on the central importance of attention, are still
interesting.
The following passage is from the Treatise on Sensations (1754),
Summary of Part 1.
…
As soon as there is twofold attention, there is comparison, because to attend

to two ideas or to compare them is the same. However, one cannot compare
them without seeing some difference or some resemblance between them; to
see such relations is to judge. The acts of comparing and of judging are, thus,
nothing but attention itself: it is in this way that sensation becomes
successively attention, comparison, judgement.
The objects which we compare possess numerous relations, whether
because the impressions they make upon us are themselves wholly different,
or because these impressions differ solely in degree, or because the
impressions, though similar themselves, yet combine differently in each object.
In such cases, the attention that we give the objects starts by enveloping all
the sensations which they occasion. But this attention being so much divided,
our comparisons are vague, the relations that alone we grasp are confused,
our judgements are imperfect or unsure. Hence we are compelled to shift our
attention from one object to another, [268] regarding their qualities
separately. After, for example, judging their colour, we judge their shape, and
after that their size; and by running through in this way all the sensations that
the objects make upon us, we discover, by means of a succession of
comparisons and judgements, the relations that obtain between the objects,
and the result of these judgements is the idea which we form of each object.
253
CO N D I LL A C
The attention thus directed is like a beam of light which is reflected from one
body to another to illuminate them both, and this I call reflection. Thus
sensation, after becoming attention, comparison, judgement, ends by
becoming reflection too.
…
[269]
254
La Mettrie
Julien Offray de la Mettrie was born in 1709, by profession a
physician, he enjoyed the patronage of Frederick the Great of
Prussia and achieved a succès de scandale with his books L’Homme
machine and L’Homme plante.70 He died at the relatively early age of
forty-one. His books are the first full-blown essays in
behaviourism, according to which every human characteristic and
activity can be completely accounted for by a purely mechanistic
explanation; ‘secondary’ causes are those which are patent for us
all to study; ‘primary’ causes are the occult ultimate causes whereby
God or nature operates – figments to La Mettrie, like those
metaphysical ‘wings’ with which man has vainly tried to soar above
the painfully slow road of patient empirical research. When his
disciple the physician Cabanis later declared that the brain secretes
thought as the liver secretes bile, and, like Dr Watson in our own
day, believed that one could provide an exhaustive explanation of
mental and moral life in physiochemical terms, his approach
represented the culmination of La Mettrie’s method.
These extracts are from The Man-Machine.
Man is a machine so compounded that it is at first impossible to form a clear

idea of it, and consequently to define it. That is why all the investigations which
the greatest philosophers have conducted a priori, that is to say by trying to
lift themselves somehow on the wings of their intellect, have proved vain. Thus
it is only a posteriori or by seeking to unravel the soul, as it were, via the organs
of the body, that one can, I do not say lay bare [270] human nature itself in a
demonstrative fashion, but attain to the highest degree of probability possible
on this topic.
Let us then lean on the staff of experience, and eschew the history of all
the unprofitable opinions of the philosophers. To be blind and to believe that
70 Both published in 1748. See pp. 151–2 and 180 in the edition by
Aram Vartanian in his La Mettrie’s ‘L’Homme machine’: A Study in the Origins
of an Idea (Princeton, 1960).
255
LA M E T T R I E
one can dispense with the aid of this staff is the very height of blindness. How
right is modern man to say that it is but vanity alone which fails to draw from
secondary causes those very consequences that it draws from the primary
ones! One can, and indeed one should, admire all those fine geniuses even in
their most useless labours, those such as Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz,
Wolff and the rest; but where is the fruit, I ask you, of all their profound
meditations and all their works? Let us therefore begin, and let us look, not at
what men have thought, but at what one needs to think, if one is to attain a
life of peace.
…
The soul is, then, an empty symbol of which one has no conception, and which
a sound mind could employ only in order to denote that which thinks in us.
Given the least principle of movement, animate bodies will possess all they
need in order to move, sense, think, repeat, and behave in a word, all they
want of the physical; and of the mental, too, which depends thereon.
…
[271]
256
Johann Georg Hamann
By the mid eighteenth century the triumph of the British empiricist
philosophy seemed assured; in particular that of the systematic
materialism which the French philosophes had derived from it, and
by means of which the most eminent among them, and in
particular the contributors to the great encyclopedia edited by
Diderot and d’Alembert, were successfully undermining the
theological, political and moral foundations of the established
order. It is interesting to observe that it is about this time that the
reaction against this mood begins in Germany. The main current
of philosophical thought in that country – derived from Leibniz
and fed by French positivism – was no less enlightened, humane,
rational and optimistic than elsewhere in the West. But, little by
little, discordant voices began to be heard: humiliated German
feeling began to assert itself against the cosmopolitan, egalitarian,
scientific, materialistic deism or atheism of the French, and
advanced against it the notion of the importance of imponderable,
unanalysable, qualitative differences, of the uniqueness of
individuals and traditions and custom – and later of race, language,
Churches, nations. They proclaimed the supreme value of
intuition, imagination, historical sense, of the vision of the prophet
or of the inspired historian or poet or artist, of the sudden
illumination of genius, of the immemorial wisdom of tradition or
of the common people – beings untouched by sophistication or
too much logic – simple rustic sages or the inspired bards of a
nation. These ideas, some of which found moral and political
expression in the writings of Rousseau and Burke, found their
metaphysical formulation in the works of the German
ro[272]mantic thinkers – Herder, Fichte, the Schlegels, Schelling
and, to some degree, Hegel.
257
JO H A N N G E O RG H A M A N N
Among their predecessors the most arresting is J. G. Hamann,

the ‘Magician of the North’,71 a solitary, isolated thinker inclined to
mysticism, the friend and one of the sharpest opponents of Kant,
whose writings were deeply admired by Herder and Goethe, but
who is today a half forgotten figure. He was born in 1730 and died
in 1788, having lived all his life in poverty and neglect. Yet this
neglect is undeserved, for he was a man of original opinions, the
importance of which has become apparent only in our own time.
His views are a queer mixture of visionary pietism and sceptical
empiricism: deeply influenced by Hume’s attacks on rationalism,
Hamann believed that there was no bridge between the a priori
propositions of logic and mathematics and factual statements
asserting truths about the world. All the efforts to prove truths of
fact – whether about the existence of God, or the immortality of
the soul, or the origins and structure of the universe, whether
undertaken by Thomists or Cartesians or the followers of Leibniz
and Wolff – he regarded as idle fantasy. But whereas Hume at this
point rests content with the probabilities towards which ‘nature’
conducts all sound and balanced intelligences, Hamann invokes
faith:72
Our own existence and the existence of all things outside us must be believed
[…] and cannot be determined in any other way.
(‘Sokratischen Denkwürdigkeiten’, W ii 73.21–2)
71 [‘Der Magus in Norden’, a sobriquet bestowed on Hamann by F. K.

von Moser, and translated by Berlin in his 1993 book on Hamann as ‘The
Magus of the North’.]
72 References to Hamann’s writings are to the following editions: W
= Johann Georg Hamann, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Joseph Nadler (Vienna,

1949–57); B = Johann Georg Hamann, Briefwechsel, ed. Walther Ziesemer
and Arthur Henkel (Wiesbaden and Frankfurt, 1955–79). Passages are
cited by volume, page and line, thus: W iii 145.28. Translations are from
J. C. O’Flaherty, Unity and Language: A Study in the Philosophy of Johann Georg
Hamann (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1952), with minor alterations.
258
In Hamann’s case, belief took the form of absolute faith in Holy

Writ, mystical interpretation of revealed truth, and an acute distrust
of the rationalising intellect, which drew artificial distinctions in the
seamless whole of nature and [273] experience as given to the
intuitive imagination; and in particular an antipathy to the great
metaphysical and scientific systems which created neat but
fictitious frameworks which they passed off as reality and thereby
bred spurious problems, insoluble because founded on fallacies.
He is a solitary figure in his century, hostile to its spirit,
contemptuous of its triumphs, and forms a link between German
mystical visionaries like Eckhart and Boehme on the one hand, and
anti-rationalist Romantic thinkers like Herder, Schelling,
Kierkegaard and Bergson and their existentialist followers in the
two hundred years that followed. As with Giambattista Vico half a
century before, whom (as Goethe noted) he much resembles,
Hamann’s darkly oracular writings are often penetrated by flashes
of insight of a very arresting order. His greatest discovery is that
language and thought are not two processes but one: that language
(or other forms of expressive symbolism: religious worship, social
habits and so on) conveys directly the innermost soul of individuals
and societies; that we do not first form (or receive) ‘ideas’ and then
clothe them in words, but that to think is to use symbols – images
or language – and therefore that philosophers who think that they
are studying concepts or ideas or categories of reality are in fact
studying means of human expression – language – which is at once
the vehicle of men’s views of the universe and of themselves, and
part and parcel of that world itself, which is not something
separable from the ways in which it is experienced or thought
about. Our troubles come from the fact that
The philosophers have always given truth a bill of divorcement, in that they
have separated what nature has joined together, and vice versa.
(‘Philologische Einfälle und Zweifel’, W iii 40.3–5).
259
And again:
Metaphysics misuses the word-signs and figures of speech of our empirical

knowledge as pure hieroglyphs and types of ideal relations, and works over
by means of this learned mischief the straightforwardness of language into
such a hot, unstable, indefinite something = x, that nothing remains but the
soughing of the wind, a magic phantasmagoria at the most, as the wise
Helvétius says, the talisman [274] and rosary of a transcendental, superstitious
belief in entia rationis, its empty bags, and slogans.
(‘Metakritik über den Purismum der Vernunft’, 1784, W iii 285.28–36)
Ideas and things can and must be studied only in their concrete
contexts, that is, as they occur in the thought, that is, language,
used by human beings, otherwise they will be misunderstood and
perverted:
O for a muse like the fire of a goldsmith and like the soap of the fullers! –She
will dare to cleanse the natural use of the senses from the unnatural use of
abstractions, by which our concepts of things are just as mutilated as the name
of the creator is suppressed and blasphemed.
(‘Aesthetica in nuce’, 1762, W ii 207.10–14)
There is no instrument of discovery called reason, whatever

Aristotle or Leibniz may say:
All idle talk about reason is mere wind; language is its organon and criterion!
(Letter to J. G. Herder, 8 December 1783, B v 108.6-7)
With me the question is not so much: What is reason? but rather: What is
language? and here I presume to be the basis of all paralogisms and
antinomies which one blames on the former. Therefore it happens that one
takes words for concepts and concepts for the things themselves.
(Letter to F. H. Jacobi, 14 November 1784, B v 264.34–7)
260
My reason is invisible without language ...

(Letter to F. H. Jacobi, 27 April 1787, B vii 168.30)
Togetherness [Geselligkeit] is the true principle of reason and language, by

means of which our sensations and representations [Vorstellungen] are
modified.
(Letter to F. H. Jacobi, 30 April 1787, B vii 174.13–15)
The critique of systems of concepts is a critique, above all, of

language. To understand the ideas of others, or our own, about
anything whatever, is to understand how language enters into the
non-linguistic elements of our total experience, and how it
modifies our language. This is the task of philosophy. [275]
If I were as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would do no more than repeat one

sentence three times: Reason is language, Logos; on this marrow-bone I gnaw,
and I shall gnaw myself to death on it. There still remains darkness upon the
face of this deep for me: I still wait for an apocalyptic angel with a key to this
abyss.
(Letter to Herder, 10 August 1784, B v 177.18–21)
If it therefore still remains a principal question: How is the capacity to think

possible? – the capacity to think, to the right of and to the left of, before and
without, with and beyond experience? No deduction is necessary to establish
the genealogical priority of language and its heraldry over the seven sacred
functions of logical propositions and conclusions. Not only the entire capacity
to think rests on language […]: but language is also the centre of the
misunderstanding of reason with itself […].
(‘Metakritik’ [see p. 274], W iii 286.1–10)
One need not accept Hamann’s theological beliefs or his anti-

scientific bias to realise the depth and originality of his ideas about
the relations of thought, reason, semi-inarticulate emotional (and
261
spiritual) life, the cultural institutions in which this last is embodied,

and the languages and symbolisms of mankind. There is something
of this view in the French ultramontane Catholic writers Bonald
and Maistre; but it is not till our own day, and especially as a result
of the ideas of Wittgenstein and his disciples, that the cardinal
importance of such an approach to the problems of philosophy
was realised. A uniquely independent thinker who resisted
(sometimes blindly and perversely) the very powerful stream of
eighteenth-century scientific enlightenment (and was duly
punished by neglect or relegation to learned footnotes, usually in
company with the even more gifted Vico, as an author of darkly
mystical writings who dared to criticise the greatest thinkers of his
age), Hamann deserves an act of belated homage in the twentieth
century whose most revolutionary philosophical innovations he
did so much to anticipate. [276]
262
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Born in Darmstadt in 1742, Lichtenberg studied at the University
of Gottingen, where he remained to become professor of physics.
Astronomer, art critic, geometer, satirist, a man of wide and varied
attainments, Lichtenberg spent his life in academic pursuits,
outwardly peaceful enough. He died in 1799. He composed
aphorisms, some of which possess a degree of startling originality
and set up trains of thought very unlike the normal sensible
sentiments of the eighteenth century, whether they originate
among the French lumières or in the German Aufklärung
(Enlightenment). Even the few obiter dicta here quoted suffice to
show the quality of mind possessed by this remarkable and
unclassifiable man.
This is his description of ‘my body’, and its connection with ‘my
mind’ and it alone. It cuts a great deal deeper than the account of
the ‘psychosomatic’ relationship in the average textbook of
psychology or physiology. The quotations are from Aphorismen
(first published posthumously in 1902–8), Notebook J, 1789–93.73
My body is that part of the world which can be altered by my thoughts. Even
imaginary illnesses can become real. In the rest of the world my hypotheses
cannot disturb the order of things. (1208)
And this is his definition of man:
Man is a cause-seeking creature; in the spiritual order he could be called the

cause-seeker. Other minds perhaps think things in other – to us inconceivable
– categories. (1551)
73[The translations are Berlin’s. The numbering is that established in

G. C. Lichtenberg, Schriften und Briefe, ed. Wolfgang Promies (Munich,
1968–74).]
263
G E O RG CH R I S T O PH L I CH T E N B E RG
[277] These words have a Kantian flavour, especially the implica-

tion that the category of causality is so deeply rooted in us as to act
as a defining characteristic of mankind; but that nevertheless it is
only a ‘brute’ fact (and not an a priori ‘necessity’) that we think of
things in exclusively causal terms; for other beings might think and
sense within other frames of reference, but what these experiences
could be is beyond our ken, because we are as we are, and cannot
see beyond our own – evidently unalterable – horizon.
Finally the definition of philosophy itself:
Philosophy is ever the art of drawing distinctions, look at the matter how you
will. The peasant uses all the propositions of the most abstract philosophy, but
wrapped up, embedded, tangled, latent, as physicists and chemists say; the
philosopher gives us the propositions in their pure state. (2148)
In this aphorism Lichtenberg expresses very succinctly the notion

that philosophy is what in our own time came to be called ‘analysis’
– not an instrument of discovery of new truths about the world so
much as of eliciting, with the greatest possible exactness and
rigour, that which is already contained in common speech, in order
to discriminate, isolate, study, classify, examine the interrelations
and the functions of types of expression and ways of speech (or
thought) whose peculiarities cannot be observed so well (or at all)
in the rich amalgam – vague, blurred, ambiguous and ‘impure’ – in
which ordinary language must of necessity always remain if it is to
be useful in the practical conduct of life. The task of the
philosopher is to ‘unpack’ sentences which give rise to
philosophical problems into their ingredients, and so disentangle
the thick rope of daily talk into its constituent strands, without
which the problems cannot be solved or ‘dissolved’. This is
certainly one of the most original remarks ever made about
philosophy.
264
Index of Names
Alembert, Jean le Rond d’, 271 Descartes, René, 15, 16, 21, 30,
Allandale, 162 31, 39, 47, 53, 85, 105, 111,
Aristotle, 17, 84, 117, 128, 274 117, 144, 167, 238, 244, 270,
Atomists, the Greek, 47 272
Augustine, 58 Diderot, Denis, 20, 21, 271
Bacon, Francis, 164 Eckhart, Meister, 273

Beauchamp, Sally, 242 Euclid, 108
Bergson, Henri, 273 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 272
Berkeley, George, 18, 19, 21–3, Frederick the Great of Prussia,
53, 67, 115–61, 163, 165, 269
176, 178, 216–18, 238, 261,
262 Galileo Galilei, 17, 21, 47, 54,
Boehme, Jakob, 273
57
Bonald, Louis Jacques Maurice
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von,
de, 275
272, 273
Bordeu, Théophile de, 20
Boyle, Robert, 33
Bradley, F. H., 218 Hamann, Johann Georg, 28,
Brahe, Tycho, 17 271–5
Burke, Edmund, 28, 271 Hartley, David, 173
Butler, Joseph, 20 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich, 272
Cabanis, 269 Helvétius, Claude Adrien, 19,
Campanella, Tommaso, 47 273
Carnap, Rudolf, 267 Herder, Johann Gottfried von,
Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de, 28, 272, 275
19, 266–8 Hobbes, Thomas, 15, 26, 31,
Condorcet, Antoine Nicolas, 40, 110, 116
20, 28 Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry d’,
Copernicus, Nicolaus, 157 20
265
INDEX OF NAMES
Hume, David, 18–20, 22–3, 25, Maupertuis, Pierre Louis

27, 28, 46, 110, 115, 147, Moreau de, 20
159, 160, 162–260, 261, 272 Mendelssohn, Moses, 28
Huyghens, Christian, 33 Mill, John Stuart, 159, 161
Montesquieu, Charles de
Johnson, Samuel, 28 Secondat, baron de, 28
Moore, G. E., 68, 262
Kafka, Franz, 242 More, Henry, 39
Kant, Immanuel, 20, 24–6, 104,
107, 180, 185, 243, 267, 272, Newton, Isaac, 14–16, 18, 20,
277, 281 27, 31, 33, 54, 57
Kepler, Johann, 17
Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye, 273 Paley, William, 20
Plato, 39, 83, 117
La Mettrie, Julien Offray de, Platonists, the Cambridge, 39
19–20, 269–70 Plekhanov, Georgy
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm Valentinovich, 159
von, 15, 23, 28, 39, 53, 117, Prince, Morton, 242
180, 238, 270, 271, 272, 274 Reid, Thomas, 261–5
Lenin, Vladimir Il′ich, 46, 159 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 163,
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 28 271
Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph, Russell, Bertrand, 46, 104, 159,
276–7 178
Locke, John, 18–23, 26, 27, 30–
112, 113–14, 115–17, 121– St Clair, James, 162
4, 128–9, 144–6, 158, 165– Santayana, George, 46
6, 176, 185, 216, 217, 238, Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm
244, 261, 266 Joseph von, 272, 273
Schlegel, August Wilhelm von,
Mach, Ernst, 159 272
Maine de Biran, Francois Pierre Schlegel, Friedrich von, 272
Gonthier, 267 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley
Maistre, Joseph Marie de, 275 Cooper, Third Earl of, 30
Malebranche, Nicolas, 270 Smith, Adam, 163, 261
266
INDEX OF NAMES
Socrates, 164 Voltaire (François Marie

Spinoza, Benedict (Baruch), 15 Arouet), 20, 31, 113–14
Sydenham, Thomas, 33
Walpole, Robert, 115
Thales, 164 Watson, John Broadus, 269
Thomists, the, 272 Whigs, the, 30
Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques, William of Orange, 30
28 Wittgenstein, Ludwig Adolf
Peter, 275
Vico, Giambattista, 273, 275 Wolff, Christian, 28, 270, 272
267
The following is a draft of an advertisement for the end of Morton White’s
The Age of Analysis

The Eighteenth-Century Philosophers
Scheduled for publication in 1956
The philosophy of the eighteenth century begins with a systematic

effort to apply to the study of man those methods which Newton
had so triumphantly applied to nature. The editor of this volume,
Isaiah Berlin, traces the development of the great popularisers
whose work remains the foundation of liberal humanism and
rationalism in the West. Berlin’s selection, and his penetrating
introduction and interpretive commentary, shed light upon the
philosophy of Locke, Berkeley, Hume Voltaire, Condillac, Thomas
Reid, La Mettrie and others.
Isaiah Berlin, a Fellow of All Souls College, has lectured on philosophy and
intellectual history at Harvard and other American universities.
268
PU B LI S HE R ’ S A D V E RT I S E M E N T S FO R T H E S E RI E S
The following advertisements appeared at the end of the original hardback

editions of the book.
The Great Ages of Western Philosophy

A distinguished series of six volumes presenting, in historical
order, the basic writings of the outstanding philosophers of the
Western world from the Middle Ages to the present time. Each
volume is self-contained and presents a single phase of the great
development. Each is edited by a noted scholar who contributes
an introduction and interpretive commentary explaining in what
way the significant thought of each period has influenced Western
philosophy. The New American Library of World Literature, Inc.,
are publishing the entire series in paperback form as The Mentor
Philosophers.
269
THE AGE OF BELIEF

The Medieval Philosophers
A N N E F RE M A N T L E
Here, in one volume, is the wisdom of the most spiritually

harmonious age that Western man has known. In this age of belief,
the period from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, when religion
and social institutions were closely related, philosophers discussed
the nature of God, of Being, and of Man, with an intensity not
known before or since.
In this remarkable book, Anne Fremantle, religious scholar and
author, presents selections from the basic writings of such
dominant philosophers of the medieval period as St Augustine, St
Thomas Aquinas, Boethius, Erigena, Anselm, Abelard,
Bonaventura and Averroes, with an interpretation of their work
woven throughout the texts.
Anne Fremantle, an associate editor of Commonweal, an editor of the

Catholic Book Club, an associate professor at Fordham University, an editor-
on-loan to the United Nations during the General Assembly, is also the author
of numerous books, reviews and articles. Born in France of English parentage,
Mrs Fremantle is now an American citizen and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
270
THE AGE OF ADVENTURE

The Renaissance Philosophers
G I O RG I O D E S A N T I L L A N A
The Renaissance was a time when men turned from abstractions,

from thoughts of other-worldly perfection, to explore new seas,
new continents, new notions, new images of man. They studied the
giants of the past in the belief that they had already discovered
man’s true nature, and then brought forth such bold creations in
art, psychology, politics and manners as were never known in the
ancient world.
Giorgio de Santillana presents in this volume the basic writings
of the great innovators of the Renaissance – Bruno, Alberti,
Machiavelli, Montaigne, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, More
and Kepler – and contributes an introduction and connecting
commentary which illustrates the love of life that characterised this
age of adventure.
Giorgio de Santillana was born in Rome in 1902. He studied and worked in

Rome and Paris until 1935, when he came to the United States. Dr de
Santillana has taught at Harvard and is currently professor of History and
Philosophy of Science at MIT. He edited Galileo’s Dialogue on the Great
World Systems and is the author of The Crime of Galileo.
271
THE AGE OF REASON

The Seventeenth-Century Philosophers
S T U A RT H A M P S H I R E
The Age of Reason, edited by the outstanding teacher and author

Stuart Hampshire, presents selections from the basic writings of
such great seventeenth-century philosophers as Descartes, Leibniz
and Spinoza, with a penetrating introduction and interpretive
commentary illuminating their works.
The seventeenth century was the great formative era of modern
philosophy, marked by the decline of medieval conceptions of
knowledge, by the rise of the physical sciences, and by the gradual
transition from Latin to French and English as instruments of
philosophical thought. In this age of reason, philosophers began
to explain natural processes in mathematical terms. They also
developed vital concepts of knowledge and certainty, appearance
and reality, freedom and necessity, mind and matter, deduction and
experiment.
Stuart Hampshire is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Author of many

articles on logical theory and on ethics, he has published a book on Spinoza.
A lecturer in philosophy at Oxford since 1936, he has been a visiting professor
at Columbia University.
272
THE AGE OF IDEOL OGY

The Nineteenth-Century Philosophers
H E N RY D . A I K E N
One great new development of philosophy in the nineteenth

century was the attempt to construct consistent attitudes toward
the human situation. In this time of great religious, political and
economic change, philosophy became a technique for adjustment
to a changing environment. An effort was made to synthesise the
traditions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Idealism
and romanticism, empiricism and positivism, the philosophy of
history and existentialism were developed.
The major thought of the period is elucidated here through
Henry D. Aiken’s commentary and his selections from the great
thinkers of the age – Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Comte,
Mill, Spencer, Marx, Mach, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
Henry D. Aiken, now professor of philosophy at Harvard, was born in

Portland, Oregon, in 1912. He studied at Reed College, Stanford, and later
received his doctorate from Harvard. Mr Aiken has been on the teaching staffs
of Columbia University and the University of Washington. His writing has
appeared in many publications. He has edited two volumes of Hume and is
completing a work on ethics.
273
THE AGE OF ANALYSIS

Twentieth-Century Philosophers
M O RT O N W H I T E
This volume emphasises those ideas of the philosophers of the

twentieth century which are most important to philosophy and
least familiar to the general reader – ideas in the field of logic, and
of philosophical and linguistic analysis. Yet the better-known
studies of time and instinct, existentialism, phenomenology and
organism are also represented.
Philosophy in the twentieth century is by no means remote
from the concerns of the ordinary man and the problems of
culture. In his introduction and commentary, Morton White
illustrates this, and illuminates the background of the selections
themselves. The twentieth-century philosophers included are:
Peirce, Whitehead, James, Dewey, Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore,
Wittgenstein, Croce, Bergson and Santayana.
Morton White, now chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Harvard

University, has taught at Columbia University and at the University of
Pennsylvania. He has also held a Guggenheim Fellowship and was visiting
professor at Tokyo University. The author of numerous articles and reviews,
he has written two books, The Origin of Dewey’s Instrumentalism and
Social Thought in America, and edited a third, Academic Freedom,
Logic and Religion.
274
The following appeared on the jacket of The Age of Enlightenment
is one of the six volumes which make up The Great Ages of Western
Philosophy. In this series you will find the essence of fifteen
centuries of Western man’s creative thought about who he is, for
what purpose he lives, and the nature
of the spirit which sustains him.
Locke, Hume, Berkeley and others illustrate the revolutionary

shift of philosophy from cosmic problems to the investigation of
man and man’s faculties.
In this stimulating volume, Isaiah Berlin, a Fellow of All Souls

College, Oxford, lucidly and succinctly presents commentaries on
and selections from the basic writings of the brilliant philosophers
of the eighteenth century – men who believed that science’s
achievements in the sphere of the material world could be
translated into philosophical terms.
Beginning with a systematic effort to apply to the study of man
those methods which Newton had so triumphantly applied to
nature, the philosophers tried to prove that everything, or almost
everything, in the world moved according to unchangeable and
predictable physical laws. Mr Berlin’s extensive selections from the
major works of Locke, Berkeley and Hume, as well as Reid,
Condillac, La Mettrie and their German critics, shed light upon this
275
period when it seemed that philosophy might almost have been

converted into a natural science. His penetrating introduction and
interpretation of the key ideas of these influential philosophers
explain their significance in the eighteenth century and today.
Isaiah Berlin was educated at Corpus Christi College and has
lived in Oxford during the last quarter of a century, except for the
time of his service in Washington, DC, during the Second World
War. He has taught at Harvard University and Bryn Mawr College
and has written widely on philosophical, historical and political
subjects. His publications include Karl Marx, The Hedgehog and the
Fox and numerous essays and articles in philosophical, historical
and other periodicals.
THE GREAT AGES OF WEST ERN PHILOSOPHY
‘A very important and interesting series of philosophical writings’

is what Gilbert Highet of the Department of Greek and Latin of
Columbia University said about The Great Ages of Western Philosophy,
which traces in six brilliant volumes the development of thought
from medieval times to the present.
Each book contains selections from the basic writings of the
influential philosophers of the Western world, linked by
commentaries and interpretations by the noted editors.
The Age of Belief: The Medieval Philosophers

by Anne Fremantle (already published)
The Age of Adventure: The Renaissance Philosophers
by Giorgio de Santillana
The Age of Reason: The Seventeenth-Century Philosophers
by Stuart Hampshire
276
The Age of Enlightenment: The Eighteenth-Century Philosophers

by Isaiah Berlin (already published)
The Age of Ideology: The Nineteenth-Century Philosophers
by Henry D. Aiken
The Age of Analysis: Twentieth-Century Philosophers
by Morton White (already published)
Jacket by E D W A RD SWEET
277

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THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Francisco Goya’s 1799 etching ‘The Sleep of Reason’

Page numbers in [ ] mark the beginning of the relevant

‘The intellectual power, honesty, lucidity, courage and

THE HEDGEHOG AND THE FOX

With Beata Polanowska-Sygulska

For more information on Isaiah Berlin visit

Selected with introduction

with the assistance of Marcus Dick

First edition published in paperback by The New

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Mr Berlin’s introduction to these readings and his commentaries upon

Mr Berlin, by the selections he has made and even more by his

Berlin’s whole philosophical enterprise can be described as an

nothing else of substance addressed directly to the movement they

1 pp. xxxviii and 24 below. (Cross-references to pages with arabic

must also have believed that his choice of material could be

Library of World Literature 1945–66, co-author with Henry Sell of

(3 January 1955 to Victor Weybright, NAL [see note 6 below] 161).

Subsequent references to Berlin’s papers are given by shelfmark and

The Age of Faith – the Medieval philosophers: 800 A D to 1272 A D

It is contemplated that these four volumes will provide a unified

and interpretation, of the thoughts, writings, lives and personalities of

In his letters to Weybright Berlin from the very beginning displays

6 Berlin’s letters to Weybright were supplied by the Fales Library at

centuries, he would, in a sense, scarcely need to know what had been

celebrated philosophers who begin with Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant

Weybright replies on 23 February:

How very inspiring and intellectually stimulating to have your letter. I am

though part of a series of philosophy readers, should be complete in itself

On 4 March 1953 Berlin refers to the NAL commission in a letter

On 10 March Berlin replies to Weybright’s letter of 23 February,

7 Berlin’s letters to White are quoted from photocopies supplied by

It was in fact not until 19 May that he wrote again:

8 Not quite: his dates are 1632–1704.

and this seems to me to overweight the volumes. There are plenty of

and we made a sufficient number of extracts. It would probably take us

In his reply of 9 June Weybright clarifies what he is looking for in

Berlin answers on 15 June raising two difficulties about his

1. The first objection is technical. I am supposed, with Hampshire and a

On 22 June Weybright accepted Berlin’s proposals, with the

We do […] want to retain you as general advisory editor – even on a

These arrangements were confirmed in a formal letter dated 25

Weybright invited Berlin to lunch in Boston on 22 November to

engagement with William and Alice James, and was therefore

I, too, am sorry about Bodley (he has now written to me himself) – he

Berlin’s attitude to Weybright when he is writing to his friends is

Prospectus for Mentor Readers in Philosophy

9 MSB 269/177–81 at 178v (p. 4).

Philosophers in every age have tried to answer such questions. Their

On 3 January 1955 Berlin reports to Weybright that he is ‘in bed

Weybright replies on 17 January 1955:

On 2 February 1955 Berlin sends a progress report:

10 IB was attending to his father’s business affairs (timber and bristle

The reference to Marcus Dick at the beginning of this extract

and with the drafting of the connective tissue, but an inspection of

I am at last in a position to be at once (semi-)penitent and concrete. I

12 The passages written entirely by Berlin appear below in blue (‘b’ is