have, depending wholly upon our senses, and de"rived by them to the understanding, I call SENSA66 TION. * Secondly, the other fountain from which experi"ence furnisheth the understanding with ideas, is "the perception of the operations of our own “minds within us, as it is employed about the ideas "it has got; which operations, when the soul comes "to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could "not be had from things without; and such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds; which we, being conscious of, and "observing in ourselves, do from these receive into 66 66 66 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 exter"nal objects, yet 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 it"self.These two, I say, viz. external material things, as the objects of sensation, and the opera"tions of our own minds within, as the objects of "reflection, are to me the only originals from "whence all our ideas take their beginnings." + "When the understanding is once stored with 66 66 For perception read consciousness. + Locke's Essay, Book ii. Chap. i. § 2, 3, &c. "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 thoughts, to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind, not taken in by the 186 66 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 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 or divide the mate"rials that are made to his hand, but can do nothing towards the making the least particle of new "matter, or destroying one atom of what is already "in being.' * Thus far there seems to be little reprehensible in Locke's statement, as it might be fairly interpreted (notwithstanding some unguarded expressions) as implying nothing more than this, that the first occasions on which the mind is led to exercise its various faculties, and to acquire the simple notions which form the elements of all its knowledge, are furnished either by impressions made on our external senses, or by the phenomena of sensation and thought of which we are conscious. In this sense of the words, I have, in a former work, not only expressed my assent, to Mr Locke's doctrine, but have Locke's Essay, Book ii. Chap. ii. § 2. admitted as correct the generalization of it adopted by most of his present followers ;-" that the first " occasions on which our various faculties are exercised, and the elements of all our knowledge ac quired, may be traced ultimately to our inter"course with sensible objects." This generalization, indeed, is an obvious and necessary consequence of the proposition as stated by Locke; the mind being unquestionably, in the first instance, awakened to the exercise of consciousness and reflection by impressions from without. * The comments, however, which Locke has introduced on this cardinal principle of his system, in different parts of his Essay, prove, beyond a doubt, that he intended it to convey a great deal more than is implied in the interpretation of it which has just been given; and that, according to the meaning he annexed to his words, Sensation and Reflection are not merely affirmed to furnish the occasions which suggest to the understanding the various simple or elementary modifications of thought, to which he gives the name of Simple Ideas; but to furnish the mind directly and immediately with these ideas, in the obvious and literal sense of the expression ;-insomuch, that there is not a simple idea in the mind which is not either the appropriate subject of consciousness (such as the ideas which the mind forms of its own operations), or a copy of some quality perceived by our external senses. It appears farther, that Locke conceived these copies, or images, See Philosophy of the Human Mind, Chap. i. § 4. to be the immediate objects of thought, all our information about the material world being obtained by their intervention. And it was for this reason, I before asserted, that his fundamental principle resolves into the supposition, that consciousness is exclusively the source of all our knowledge. That I may not be suspected of doing Locke any injustice on this occasion, I shall quote a few passages in his own words. "The next thing to be considered is, how bodies "produce ideas in us; and that is manifestly by impulse, the only way we can conceive bodies to operate in." 66 "If, then, external objects be not united to our "minds, when they produce ideas in it; and yet "we perceive these original qualities in such of "them as singly fall under our senses, 'tis evident, "that some motion must be thence continued by "our nerves or animal spirits, or by some parts of "our bodies to the brain, or the seat of sensation, "there to produce in our minds the particular ideas "we have of them. And since the extension, fi"gure, number, and motion of bodies of an observ A remark, the same in substance with this, is made by Dr Reid in the conclusion of his Inquiry. "When it is asserted, "that all our notions are either ideas of sensation, or ideas of "reflection, the plain English of this is, that mankind neither "do, nor can think of anything, but of the operations of their "own minds."-Inquiry, &c. p. 376, (3d Edition.) In some places, Locke speaks of the ideas of material things as being in the brain; but his general mode of expression sup. poses them to be in the mind; and, consequently, the immediate objects of consciousness. "able bigness, may be perceived at a distance by the 66 sight, 'tis 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.” * A few sentences after, Mr Locke, having previously stated the distinction between the primary and the secondary qualities of matter, proceeds thus : "From whence I think it easy to draw this obser"vation, that the ideas of primary qualities of bo"dies 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." t 66 What notion Mr Locke annexed to the word resemblance, when applied to our ideas of primary qualities, may be best learned by the account he gives of the difference between them and our ideas of secondary qualities, in the paragraph immediately following. "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." 66 "I pretend not," says the same author in a subsequent chapter, "to teach, but to inquire; and * Locke's Essay, Book ii. Chap. viii. § 11 and 12. § 15. The instances mentioned by Locke of primary qualities are, solidity, extension, figure, motion, or rest, and number. For light read luminous. |