EPISTEMOLOGY IN LOCKE AND KANT.[1]
LOCKE'S hypothetical Realism or problematical Dualism is, as such, a sounder theory than the vastly more acute and subtle theories of his critics. But in Locke's hands the theory is stated in such a way that Berkeley and Hume become logical necessities; if they had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent them. Locke's rudimentary psychology, his inextricable commingling of psychological, epistemological, and metaphysical questions, are mainly to blame for this. Above all must be signalized the atomic sensationalism which he places in the forefront of his theory, though he himself is the last man to abide consistently by it. Readers of Green's massive Introduction to Hume will remember the constantly reiterated criticism that Locke habitually uses idea or simple idea as equivalent to "idea of a thing." The simple idea, says Green, is thus represented as involving a theory of its own cause; it is not a mere sensation, but the idea of a quality of a thing; it is referred to a permanent real world of which it is representative or symbolic. Beyond doubt this is precisely what Locke does. One has only to open the Essay to find Locke continually passing from the one order of phrases to the other. "The senses," he says, "let in particular ideas" and furnish the yet empty cabinet; but Locke says with equal readiness they "convey into the mind, several distinct perceptions of things." The particular ideas bare of all reference, a drip, drip of discontinuous sensations, so many present existences in consciousness, each testifying to itself alone, are transformed without a qualm into "ideas of things without." Locke apparently does not see the difference between the two sets of statements. But if the difference is ignored in Locke, we find
- ↑ This paper connects itself with the articles on "Psychology, Epistemology, and Metaphysics" and "The Problem of Epistemology," which appeared in the second and fifth numbers of this Review.
