they know that it is impossible that a thing should be and at the same time not be. It is only correct to say that no one becomes conscious of these propositions without reasoning, but to say that they are all known with the first reasoning is false. Moreover, that which is first known is not universal propositions, but relates to individual impressions. The child knows that sweet is not bitter long before he understands the logical proposition of contradiction. He who carefully bethinks himself, will hesitate before he affirms that particular dicta as "sweet is not bitter," are derived from universal ones. If the universal propositions were innate, then must they be the first in the consciousness of the child; for that which nature has stamped upon the human soul must come into consciousness antecedently to any thing which she has not written there. Consequently, if there are no innate ideas, either theoretical or practical, there can be just as truly no innate art nor science. The understanding (or the soul) is essentially a tabula rasa,—a blank and void space, a white paper on which nothing is written.

How now does the understanding become possessed of ideas? Only through experience, upon which all knowledge rests, and on which as its principle all knowledge depends. Experience itself is twofold; either it arises through the perception of external objects by means of the sense, in which case we call it sensation; or it is a perception of the activities of our own understanding, in which case it is named the inner sense, or, better, reflection. Sensation and reflection give to the understanding all its ideas; they are the windows through which alone the light of ideas falls upon the naturally dark space of the mind; external objects furnish us with the ideas of sensible qualities, and the inner object, which is the understanding itself, offers us the ideas of its own activities. To show the derivation and to give an explanation of all the ideas derived from both is the problem of the Lockian philosophy. For this end Locke divides ideas (representations or notions) into simple and compound. Simple ideas, he names those which are impressed from without upon the understanding while it remains wholly passive, just as the images of certain objects are

represented in a mirror. These simple ideas are partly such as come to the understanding through an individual sense, e. g. the ideas of color, which are furnished to the mind through the eye, or those of sound, which come to it through the ear, or those of solidity or impenetrability, which we receive through the touch, partly such as a number of senses have combined to give us, as those of space and of motion, of which we become conscious by means of the sense both of touch and of sight; partly such as we receive through reflection, as the idea of thought and of will; and partly, in fine, such as arise from both sensation and reflection combined, e. g. power, unity, &c. These simple ideas form the material, as it were the letters of all our knowledge. But now as language arises from a manifold combination of letters, syllables and words, so the understanding forms complex ideas by the manifold combination of simple ideas with each other. The complex ideas may be referred to three classes, viz.: the ideas of mode, of substance, and of relation. Under the ideas of mode, Locke con siders the modifications of space (as distance, measurement, im mensity, surface, figure, &c.), of time (as succession, duration, eternity), of thought (perception, memory, abstraction, &c.), of number, power, &c. Special attention is given by Locke to the conception of substance. He explains the origin of this conception in this way, viz.: we find both in sensation and reflection, that a certain number of simple ideas seem often to be connected together. But as we cannot divest ourselves of the impression that these simple ideas have not been produced through themselves, we are accustomed to furnish them with a ground in some existing substratum, which we indicate with the word substance. Substance is something unknown, and is conceived of as possessing those qualities which are necessary to furnish us with simple ideas. But from the fact that substance is a product of our subjective thinking, it does not follow that it has no existence outside of ourselves. On the contrary, this is distinguished from all other complex ideas in the fact that this is an idea which has its archetype distinct from ourselves, and possesses objective reality, while other complex ideas are formed by the mind at pleasure, and have no

reality corresponding to them external to the mind. We do not know what is the archetype of substance, and of the substance itself we are acquainted only with its attributes. From considering the conception of substance, Locke next passes over to the idea of relation. A relation arises when the understanding has connected two things with each other, in such a way, that in considering them it passes over from the one to the other. Every thing is capable of being brought by the understanding into relation, or what is the same thing, to be transformed into something relative. It is consequently impossible to enumerate the sum of every possible relation. Hence Locke treats only of some of the more weighty conceptions of relation, among others, that of identity and difference, but especially that of cause and effect. The idea of cause and effect arises when our understanding perceives that any thing whatsoever, be it substance or quality, begins to exist through the activity of another., So much concerning ideas. The combination of ideas among themselves gives the conception of knowing. Hence knowledge stands in the same relation to the simple and complex ideas as a proposition does to the letters, syllables and words which compose it. From this it follows that our knowledge does not pass beyond the compass of our ideas, and hence that it is bounded by experience.

These are the prominent thoughts in the Lockian philosophy. Its empiricism is clear as day. The mind, according to it, is in itself bare, and only a mirror of the outer world,-a dark space which passively receives the images of external objects; its whole content is made by the impressions furnished it by material things. Nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu—is the watch. word of this standpoint. While Locke, by, this proposition, expresses the undoubted preponderance of the material over the intellectual, he does so still more decisively when he declares that it is possible and even probable that the mind is a material essence. He does not admit the reverse possibility, that. material things may be classed under the intellectual as a special kind. Hence with him mind is the secondary to matter, and hence he is seen to take the characteristic standpoint of realism (cf. § XXVII)

It is true that Locke was not always logically consistent, and in many points did not thoroughly carry out his empiricism: but we can clearly see that the road which will be taken in the farther development of this direction, will result in a thorough denial of the ideal factor.

The empiricism of Locke, wholly national as it is, soon be came the ruling philosophy in England. Standing on its basis we find Isaac Newton, the great mathematician (1642–1727), Samuel Clarke, a disciple of Newton, whose chief attention was given to moral philosophy (1675-1729), the English moralists of this period, William Wollaston (1659–1724), the Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), and even some opponents of Locke, as Peter Brown, who died 1735.

SECTION XXIX.

HUME.

As already remarked, Locke had not been wholly consistent with the standpoint of empiricism. Though conceding to material objects a decided superiority above the thinking subject, there was yet one point, viz., the recognition of substance, where he claimed for the thinking a power above the objective world. Among all the complex ideas which are formed by the subjective thinking, the idea of substance is, according to Locke, the only one which has objective reality; all the rest being purely subjective, with nothing actually corresponding to them in the objective world. But in the very fact that the subjective thinking places the conception of substance, which it has formed, in the objective world, it affirms an objective relation of things, an ob jective connection of them among each other, and an existing rationality. The reason of the subject in this respect stands in a certain degree above the objective world, for the relation of substance is not derived immediately from the world of sense, and is

ao product of sensation nor of perception through the sense. On a pure empirical standpoint-and such was Locke's-it was therefore illogical to allow the conception of substance to remain possessed of objective being. If the understanding is essentially a bare and empty space, a white unwritten paper, if its whole content of objective knowledge consists in the impressions made upon it by material things, then must the conception of substance also be explained as a mere subjective notion, a union of ideas joined together at the mind's pleasure, and the subject itself, thus fully deprived of every thing to which it could lay claim, nust become wholly subordinated to the material world. This stride to a logical empiricism Hume has made in his criticism on the conception of causality.

David Hume was born at Edinburgh 1711. Devoted in youth to the study of law, then for some time a merchant, he afterwards gave his attention exclusively to philosophy and history. His first literary attempt was hardly noticed. A more favorable reception was, however, given to his "Essays,"—of which he published different collections from 1742 to 1757, making in all five volumes. In these Hume has treated philosophical themes as a thoughtful and cultivated man of the world, but without any strict systematic connection. In 1752 he was elected to the care of a public library in Edinburgh, and began in this same year his famous history of England. Afterwards he became secretary of legation at Paris, where he became acquainted with Rousseau. In 1767 he became under secretary of state, an office, however, which he filled for only a brief period. His last years were spent in Edinburgh, in a quiet and contented seclusion. He died 1776.

The centre of Hume's philosophizing is his criticism of the conception of cause. Locke had already expressed the thought that we attain the conception of substance only by the habit of always seeing certain modes together. Hume takes up this thought with earnestness. Whence do we know, he asks, that two things stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect? We do not know it apriori, for since the effect is something other