EMPIRICISM.

STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY.

By the REV. JOHN BLACKET.

No. IV. EMPIRICISM.

 John Locke.

  Locke's name is better known to the readers of the Commonwealth, than any yet quoted. His "Essay on the Human Understanding" is still with us, and will be read and studied by future generations.
 John Locke was a native of Somerset, and was born in 1632. He studied at Oxford, and served some time there as tutor. After the death of his father he came in for some property, and then turned his attention to medicine. He was brought into contact with Lord Ashley, the first Earl of Shaftesbury, and became his confidential secretary. At a meeting of friends in London, social and theological problems were discussed. Locke suggested that before they entered upon the consideration of such subjects certain questions ought to be asked and answered; they should enquire as to what questions the human mind was fitted to deal with; what could man know, and how was knowledge possible ? To these problems Locke gave his time and attention, the result being a large volume, entitled: "An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding, by John Locke, Gent."
 Locke was a very fine character. His book is well written, most suggestive, and a mental tonic.
 At the head of this study is the word "Empiricism"; this denotes an opinion held by some philosophers that all knowledge is given in experience. Virtually this is the theory that Locke held.
 The problem with which he grappled was "The origin of ideas"; in other words How is knowledge possible? We are said to know—how and what do we know? Locke dealt not only with the powers, but also with the limits of the understanding, as Kant did many years after. Said he, "If by this inquiry into the nature and limits of the understanding, I can discover the powers thereof, how far they reach, to what things they are in any degree proportionate, and where they fail us, I suppose it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with the things exceeding its comprehension, to stop the utmost extent of its tether, and sit down in quiet ignorance which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities."
 Hobbes and Locke had much in common. The difference between them is this : Hobbes derived all ideas from sensation; Locke said they come from two sources, sensation and reflection.
 Descartes had assumed the existence of innate ideas—that is of knowledge not given in experience—of concepts that were (so to speak) congenital. It was this position that Locke most resolutely attacked. Said he: "It is an established opinion among some men there are in the understanding certain innate principles; some primary notions. . . . as it were stamped upon the mind of man, which the soul receives in its very first being, and brings it into the world with it." This position he, in a series of propositions assailed. His Contention was that children and idiots had no knowledge of such ideas, that savages and illiterate people were destitute of them. If there were innate ideas, Locke said, all men would be conscious of them ; as all men were not so conscious innate ideas could not be.
 Locke quite misunderstood Descartes. The latter did not affirm that the race came into the world with ideas imprinted upon their minds, as sentences are written at the head of copy-books. What Descartes did teach was this: "That the mind infused by the Deity into every human body has certain natural predispositions which compel it to adopt certain beliefs as soon as it begins to reflect, and to exercise its faculties." In all this there is profound truth.
 Locke's position, taken up with great confidence, was this: that the mind, at birth, was a tabula rasa (a tablet scraped and clean), or to change the figure, as Locke sometimes did, the mind, at birth, was "an empty cabinet," that is, it was destitute of all knowledge.
 How the "empty cabinet" was furnished with knowledge he then proceeded to show. "The senses at first let in particular ideas." Then the mind exercised itself in relation to the "ideas let in by the senses" Ideas of sensation gave rise to ideas of reflection, and in this way knowledge was attained and accumulated.
 In the words printed in italics we lay lay our finger upon one of the weak spots in Locke's philosophy. He really attributes to the senses the functions of the mind. He refers to ideas as though they were something external to the soul. He speaks of them "being taken into the mind," "coming into the mind." The mind, according to Locke, is destitute of conceptions till the senses "let ideas in." Said he : "If it shall be demanded when a man begins to have any ideas I think the true answer is: when he first has any sensation. For since there appear not to be any ideas in the mind before the senses have conveyed any in, I conceive that ideas in the understanding are coeval with sensation."
 Now the senses cannot "let ideas into the mind." The function of the senses is to furnish objects. It is the mind or soul that creates the ideas. Locke says: "Our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things." Now the senses cannot convey perceptions. It is the soul that perceives through the medium of the senses.
 This error vitiates the whole of Locke's philosophy, and laid the foundation, as we shall see, for Idealism and Scepticism. In his vigorous polemic against innate ideas, Locke lost sight of the innate powers of the soul. In the last analysis his theory was "there is nothing in the intellect which did not previously exist in the senses."
 As an example of the way in which Locke overlooked the innate powers of the soul, take the following: "I see no reason to believe that the soul thinks before the senses have furnished it with ideas to think on." As I have pointed out, the senses cannot furnish ideas. They can furnish objects, but it is the soul which forms the ideas.
 As already intimated, Locke's theory of knowledge opened wide the door to two different phases of philosophy that we have yet to consider, viz., Idealism and Scepticism. If the mind only knew ideas as Locke most strenuously affirmed, then how could it know that these ideas corresponded with the unknown things of which they were predicated? This was the question that David Hume asked, and on which he founded his sceptical philosophy. George Berkeley said the ideas are the only real things; they are not copies of external things; they are the only realities, and are brought before the mind by God. It is Berkeley's Idealism or Immaterialism that we shall have to consider in our next study, one of the most remarkable, one of the most acute theories ever suggested to the mind of man. It is the Idealistic Philosophy that is in the ascendancy to-day.

Australian Christian Commonwealth (SA : 1901 - 1940), Friday 4 January 1907, page 3