when 25. To conclude, a man having no notion of anything with- BOOK II. out him, but by the idea he has of it in his mind, (which idea СНАР. he has a power to call by what name he pleases,) he may XXXII. indeed make an idea neither answering the reason of things, Ideas, nor agreeing to the idea commonly signified by other people's called words; but cannot make a wrong or false idea of a thing false. which is no otherwise known to him but by the idea he has of it: v. g. when I frame an idea of the legs, arms, and body of a man, and join to this a horse's head and neck, I do not make a false idea of anything; because it represents nothing without me. But when I call it a man or Tartar, and imagine it to represent some real being without me, or to be the same idea that others call by the same name; in either of these cases I may err. And upon this account it is that it comes to be termed a false idea; though indeed the falsehood lies not in the idea, but in that tacit mental proposition, wherein a conformity and resemblance is attributed to it which it has not. But yet, if, having framed such an idea in my mind, without thinking either that existence, or the name man or Tartar, belongs to it, I will call it man or Tartar, I may be justly thought fantastical in the naming; but not erroneous in my judgment; nor the idea any way false. to be 26. Upon the whole matter, I think that our ideas, as they More properly are considered by the mind,—either in reference to the proper Prop signification of their names; or in reference to the reality called right or of things, may very fitly be called right or wrong ideas, wrong. according as they agree or disagree to those patterns to which they are referred. But if any one had rather call them true or false, it is fit he use a liberty, which every one has, to call things by those names he thinks best; though, in propriety of speech, truth or falsehood will, I think, scarce agree to them, but as they, some way or other, virtually contain in them some mental proposition. The ideas that are in a man's mind, simply considered, cannot be wrong; unless complex ones, wherein inconsistent parts are jumbled together. All other ideas are in themselves right, and the knowledge about them right and true knowledge; but when we come to refer them to anything, as to their patterns and archetypes, then BOOK II. they are capable of being wrong, as far as they disagree with CHAP. XXXII. such archetypes 1. The ultimate ground of our faith in the absolute reality, yet inadequacy, of human knowledge, is foreign to this and the two preceding chapters. The fourth Book is concerned with it, especially chh. iv, ix, x, xi, and xiv-xx; but in the second Book complex ideas, and their simple elements, are considered apart from the reality of the substances of which simple ideas are assumed to be the presented appear ances. The distinction between human ideas and their reality implies, that individual men may, and often do, form complex ideas of substances that are inconsistent with the real substances of which the universe consists, the absolute reality being different from what is apprehended as real by them -implies, in short, the possibility of human error. [CHAPTER XXXIII.] [OF THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 1.] [1. THERE is scarce any one that does not observe some- BOOK II. thing that seems odd to him, and is in itself really extravagant, CHAP. in the opinions, reasonings, and actions of other men. This chapter was inserted in the fourth edition, but was probably written some years before. In a letter to Molyneux (April 26, 1695), Locke mentions his intention to make some additions to be put into your Latin translation, particularly concerning the connection of ideas, which has not that I know been hitherto considered, and has, I guess, a greater influence upon our minds than is usually taken notice of.' The chapter appears in the Latin version, in 1701, entitled, De idearum consociatione, as well as in the French and English versions the year before. Locke's statement in it, that the 'connection of ideas has not been hitherto considered,' implies ignorance of its repeated recognition by Hobbes, not to speak of a succession of earlier writers, beginning with Aristotle. In Hobbes's Human Nature (1650) we have a statement and illustration of the principle, 'That the cause of the coherence or consequence of one conception to another is their first coherence or consequence at that time when they are produced by sense.' (Ch. iv. 2.) So also in the Leviathan, ch.iii: Of the Consequence or Train of Imaginations.' A hundred years after Hobbes this principle was syste The XXXIII. Something able in most Men. matically applied by Hartley to explain unreasonhuman knowledge; and under the name of 'custom' it is the constructive element in Hume's Inquiry. In its later developments, through the phenomena of heredity and law of evolution, it has been offered as the supreme law of organised life and intelligence, which brings man with other animals wholly under physical causation. It is curious that Locke, midway chronologically between Hobbes and Hartley, introduces 'association' not, as they did, to explain human know. ledge, but with the opposite intent of accounting for human errors. In his Conduct of the Understanding (f. 41) he inquires further into the remedies that ought to be applied,' having, he says, 'in the second book of my Essay treated of the association of ideas historically, as giving a view of the understanding in this as well as its several other ways of operating ;association being as frequent a cause of error in us as perhaps anything else that can be named, and a disease of the mind as hard to be cured as any; it being a very hard thing to convince anyone that things are not so, and naturally so, as they constantly appear to him.' СНАР. XXXIII. BOOK II. least flaw of this kind, if at all different from his own, every one is quick-sighted enough to espy in another, and will by the authority of reason forwardly condemn; though he be guilty of much greater unreasonableness in his own tenets and conduct, which he never perceives, and will very hardly. if at all, be convinced of. Not wholly from Selflove. Not from in most Men. 2. This proceeds not wholly from self-love, though that has often a great hand in it. Men of fair minds, and not given up to the overweening of self-flattery, are frequently guilty of it; and in many cases one with amazement hears the arguings, and is astonished at the obstinacy of a worthy man, who yields not to the evidence of reason, though laid before him as clear as daylight. 3. This sort of unreasonableness is usually imputed to education and prejudice, and for the most part truly enough, though that reaches not the bottom of the disease, nor shows distinctly enough whence it rises, or wherein it lies. Education is often rightly assigned for the cause, and prejudice is a good general name for the thing itself: but yet, I think, he ought to look a little further, who would trace this sort of madness to the root it springs from, and so explain it, as to show whence this flaw has its original in very sober and rational minds, and wherein it consists. A Degree 4. I shall be pardoned for calling it by so harsh a name as of Madness found madness, when it is considered that opposition to reason deserves that name, and is really madness; and there is scarce a man so free from it, but that if he should always, on all occasions, argue or do as in some cases he constantly does, would not be thought fitter for Bedlam than civil conversation. I do not here mean when he is under the power of an unruly passion, but in the steady calm course of his life. That which will yet more apologize for this harsh name, and ungrateful imputation on the greatest part of mankind, is, that, inquiring a little by the bye into the nature of madness, (b. ii. ch. xi. § 13,) I found it to spring from the very same root, and to depend on the very same cause we are here speaking of. This consideration of the thing itself, at a time when I thought not the least on the subject which I am now treating of, suggested it to me. And if this be a weakness to which all men are so liable, if this be a taint which so universally infects mankind, BOOK II. the greater care should be taken to lay it open under its due СНАР. name, thereby to excite the greater care in its prevention XXXIII. and cure. Connexion 5. Some of our ideas have a natural correspondence and From a connexion one with another: it is the office and excellency of wrong our reason to trace these, and hold them together in that of Ideas. union and correspondence which is founded in their peculiar beings. Besides this, there is another connexion of ideas wholly owing to chance or custom. Ideas that in themselves are not all of kin, come to be so united in some men's minds, that it is very hard to separate them; they always keep in company, and the one no sooner at any time comes into the understanding, but its associate appears with it; and if they are more than two which are thus united, the whole gang, always inseparable, show themselves together 1. nexion 6. This strong combination of ideas, not allied by nature 2, This Conthe mind makes in itself either voluntarily or by chance; and made by hence it comes in different men to be very different, according custom. to their different inclinations, education, interests, &c. Custom settles habits of thinking in the understanding, as well as of determining in the will, and of motions in the body: all which seems to be but trains of motions in the animal spirits, which, once set a going, continue in the same steps they have been used to; which, by often treading, are worn into a smooth path, and the motion in it becomes easy, and as it were natural. As far as we can comprehend thinking, thus ideas seem to be produced in our minds; or, if they are not, this may serve to explain their following one another in an habitual train, when once they are put into their track, as well as it |