not hold to 'innate ideas' in the sense which Locke supposed. If one insists on reading Descartes' meaning from his constant employment of the term in his philosophical treatises, there can be little doubt, I think, that Locke's criticism was well founded. For Descartes' whole method presupposes the possibility of getting back ultimately to some absolutely certain knowledge upon which he could rest the whole structure of the sciences; and this he found in the innate ideas which furnished the standard by which all other ideas were to be tested, but were themselves practically outside of and beyond criticism.[1]
Many readers will perhaps find those portions of this work most interesting in which Professor Fraser gives some indication of his own philosophical position on fundamental metaphysical and theological questions. The limits of this review will only allow me to quote one or two such passages. In criticising Locke's account of substance he writes: "His 'general idea of substance' is an impossible one—a something that makes no manifestation of itself, that is concealed not revealed 'in part' in the simple ideas that might properly be regarded as manifestations (so far) of what it is. The substance is partially revealed in our complex idea of it; the complete complex idea involving omniscience is unattainable in a human understanding. In perceiving its phenomena we necessarily so far perceive the substance, inadequate as the complex conception so found must be, in an understanding that at the most is able to receive only a few of the simple ideas or phenomena that existing substances can present" (p. lxix). As against the "inverse agnosticism" of Locke—which consists in holding to the certainty of our own existence, of that of God and of external things, while maintaining that 'no science of bodies is possible'—Professor Fraser shows in many passages that we necessarily postulate the immanence of reason in nature—the rational interconnection of all reality. It may perhaps be remarked in passing that if 'nature is rational to the core' it is difficult to understand why our reason "is only able to receive a few of the phenomena that existing substances can present." Some of the most interesting passages of the work are in criticism of Locke's rather confused treatment of freedom. "Freedom from the chain of cosmic causality—i.e., of an unbeginning and unending, and
- ↑ Professor Thilly (Leibnizens Streit gegen Locke in Ansehung der angeborenen Ideen, Heidelberg, 1891) has shown conclusively, it seems to me, that Locke had Descartes in mind in this polemic, and also that from the point of view of the latter's system the attack was quite justified.
