it explicitly denied by Hume that there is any difference: "To form the idea of an object and to form an idea simply is the same thing; the reference of the idea to the object being an extraneous denomination, of which in itself it bears no mark or character."[1] Green, as I take it, does not mean that Locke was wrong in taking up this second position, and in beginning his theory of knowledge, not with a simple idea of sensation – a mere sensation – but with a judgment in which a causal reference and the distinction of self and not self are implicit. Green's point is that Locke on his own avowed principles is not entitled to the second and sounder position, a position which may be shown to involve many consequences which no sensationalistic philosophy can admit. Green seeks to pin Locke down to his sensationalistic formulae, interpreted with the utmost rigor of the law, in the light of Hume's deductions, whereas it is apparent on every page of the Essay that Locke never dreamt of their bearing such a meaning. Hence it is that Green is less than just to Locke and deals only with his inconsistencies. Professor Campbell Fraser's reconstruction is far truer to his spirit and intentions. In truth Green's interest is not with Locke's theory as a whole, but with English sensationalism as that first disclosed its features in certain definitions and statements of the Essay. Locke's first way of stating the case implies that false substantiation of the bare particulars of sense which issued in the agnostic sensational atomism of Hume. It leads directly to the ideal theory and the so-called doctrine of representative perception in the objectionable form in which it is attacked by Reid. "It is evident," says Locke, "the mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention of the ideas it has of them." So far he is on perfectly safe ground, except that the word "intervention" has already a subtle suggestio falsi. But the formula which Locke places at the very opening of Book IV (and which therefore naturally takes a prominent place in the mind of the student as determining the sense of what follows) is far from being equally unobjectionable;
- ↑ Treatise I. p. 327 (Green's edition).
