Letter XIII: On Mr. Locke
Perhaps no man ever had a more judicious or more methodical genius, or was a more acute
logician than Mr. Locke, and yet he was not deeply skilled in the mathematics. This great
man could never subject himself to the tedious fatigue of calculations, nor to the dry
pursuit of mathematical truths, which do not at first present any sensible objects to the
mind; and no one has given better proofs than he, that it is possible for a man to have a
geometrical head without the assistance of geometry. Before his time, several great
philosophers had declared, in the most positive terms, what the soul of man is; but as
these absolutely knew nothing about it, they might very well be allowed to differ entirely
in opinion from one another.
In Greece, the infant seat of arts and of errors, and where the grandeaur as well as
folly of the human mind went such prodigious lenghts, the people used to reason about the
soul in the very same manner as we do.
The divine Anaxagoras, in whose honour an altar was erected for his having taught
mankind that the sun was greater than Peloponnesus, that snow was black, and that the
heavens were of stone, affirmed that the soul was an aerial spirit, but at the same time
immortal. Diogenes (not he who was a cynical philosopher after having coined base money)
declared that the soul was a portion of the substance of God: an idea which we must
confess was very sublime. Epicurus maintained that it was composed of parts in the same
manner as the body.
Aristotle, who has been explained a thousand ways, because he is unintelligible, was of
opinion, according to some of his disciples, that the understanding in all men is one and
the same substance.
The divine Plato, master of the divine Aristotle,-and the divine Socrates, master of
the divine Plato,-used to say that the soul was corporeal and eternal. No doubt but the
demon of Socrates had instructed him in the nature of it. Some people, indeed, pretend
that a man who boasted his being attended by a familiar genius must infallibly be either a
knave or a madman, but this kind of people are seldom satisfied with anything but reason.
With regard to the Fathers of the Church, several in the primitive ages believed that
the soul was human, and the angels and God corporeal. Men naturally improve upon every
system. St. Bernard, as Father Mabillon confesses, taught that the soul after death does
not see God in the celestial regions, but converses with Christ's human nature only.
However, he was not believed this time on his bare word; the adventure of the crusade
having a little sunk the credit of his oracles. Afterwards a thousand schoolmen arose,
such as the Irrefragable Doctor, the Subtile Doctor, the Angelic Doctor, the Seraphic
Doctor, and the Cherubic Doctor, who were all sure that they had a very clear and distinct
idea of the soul, and yet wrote in such a manner, that one would conclude they were
resolved no one should understand a word in their writings. Our Descartes, born to
discover the errors of antiquity, and at the same time to substitute his own; and hurried
away by that systematic spirit which throws a cloud over the minds of the greatest men,
thought he had demonstrated that the soul is the same thing as thought, in the same manner
as matter, in his opinion, is the same as extension. He asserted, that man thinks
eternally, and that the soul, at its coming into the body, is informed with the whole
series of metaphysical notions: knowing God, infinite space, possessing all abstract
ideas-in a word, completely endued with the most sublime lights, which it unhappily
forgets at its issuing from the womb.
Father Malebranche, in his sublime illusions, not only admitted innate ideas, but did
not doubt of our living wholly in God, and that God is, as it were, our soul.
Such a multitude of reasoners having written the romance of the soul, a sage at last
arose, who gave, with an air of the greatest modesty, the history of it. Mr. Locke has
displayed the human soul in the same manner as an excellent anatomist explains the springs
of the human body. He everywhere takes the light of physics for his guide. He sometimes
presumes to speak affirmatively, but then he presumes also to doubt. Instead of concluding
at once what we know not, he examines gradually what we would know. He takes an infant at
the instant of his birth; he traces, step by step, the progress of his understanding;
examines what things he has in common with beasts, and what he possesses above them. Above
all, he consults himself; the being conscious that he himself thinks.
"I shall leave," says he, "to those who know more of this matter than
myself, the examining whether the soul exists before or after the organisation of our
bodies. But I confess that it is my lot to be animated with one of those heavy souls which
do not think always; and I am even so unhappy as not to conceive that it is more necessary
the soul should think perpetually than that bodies should be for ever in motion."
With regard to myself, I shall boast that I have the honour to be as stupid in this
particular as Mr. Locke. No one shall ever make me believe that I think always: and I am
as little inclined as he could be to fancy that some weeks after I was conceived I was a
very learned soul; knowing at that time a thousand things which I forgot at my birth; and
possessing when in the womb (though to no manner of purpose) knowledge which I lost the
instant I had occasion for it; and which I have never since been able to recover
perfectly.
Mr. Locke, after having destroyed innate ideas; after having fully renounced the vanity
of believing that we think always; after having laid down, from the most solid principles,
that ideas enter the mind through the senses; having examined our simple and complex
ideas; having traced the human mind through its several operations; having shown that all
the languages in the world are imperfect, and the great abuse that is made of words every
moment, he at last comes to consider the extent or rather the narrow limits of human
knowledge. It was in this chapter he presumed to advance, but very modestly, the following
words: "We shall, perhaps, never be capable of knowing whether a being, purely
material, thinks or not." This sage assertion was, by more divines than one, looked
upon as a scandalous declaration that the soul is material and mortal. Some Englishmen,
devout after their way, sounded an alarm. The superstitious are the same in society as
cowards in an army; they themselves are seized with a panic fear, and communicate it to
others. It was loudly exclaimed that Mr. Locke intended to destroy religion; nevertheless,
religion had nothing to do in the affair, it being a question purely philosophical,
altogether independent of faith and revelation. Mr. Locke's opponents needed but to
examine, calmly and impartially, whether the declaring that matter can think, implies a
contradiction; and whether God is able to communicate thought to matter. But divines are
too apt to begin their declarations with saying that God is offended when people differ
from them in opinion; in which they too much resemble the bad poets, who used to declare
publicly that Boileau spake irreverently of Louis XIV., because he ridiculed their stupid
productions. Bishop Stillingfleet got the reputation of a calm and unprejudiced divine
because he did not expressly make use of injurious terms in his dispute with Mr. Locke.
That divine entered the lists against him, but was defeated; for he argued as a schoolman,
and Locke as a philosopher, who was perfectly acquainted with the strong as well as the
weak side of the human mind, and who fought with weapons whose temper he knew. If I might
presume to give my opinion on so delicate a subject after Mr. Locke, I would say, that men
have long disputed on the nature and the immortality of the soul. With regard to its
immortality, it is impossible to give a demonstration of it, since its nature is still the
subject of controversy; which, however, must be thoroughly understood before a person can
be able to determine whether it be immortal or not. Human reason is so little able, merely
by its own strength, to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, that it was absolutely
necessary religion should reveal it to us. It is of advantage to society in general, that
mankind should believe the soul to be immortal; faith commands us to do this; nothing more
is required, and the matter is cleared up at once. But it is otherwise with respect to its
nature; it is of little importance to religion, which only requires the soul to be
virtuous, whatever substance it may be made of. It is a clock which is given us to
regulate, but the artist has not told us of what materials the spring of this clock is
composed.
I am a body, and, I think, that's all I know of the matter. Shall I ascribe to an
unknown cause, what I can so easily impute to the only second cause I am acquainted with?
Here all the school philosophers interrupt me with their arguments, and declare that there
is only extension and solidity in bodies, and that there they can have nothing but motion
and figure. Now motion, figure, extension and solidity cannot form a thought, and
consequently the soul cannot be matter. All this so often repeated mighty series of
reasoning, amounts to no more than this: I am absolutely ignorant what matter is; I guess,
but imperfectly, some properties of it; now I absolutely cannot tell whether these
properties may be joined to thought. As I therefore know nothing, I maintain positively
that matter cannot think. In this manner do the schools reason.
Mr. Locke addressed these gentlemen in the candid, sincere manner following: At least
confess yourselves to be as ignorant as I. Neither your imaginations nor mine are able to
comprehend in what manner a body is susceptible of ideas; and do you conceive better in
what manner a substance, of what kind soever, is susceptible of them? As you cannot
comprehend either matter or spirit, why will you presume to assert anything?
The superstitious man comes afterwards and declares, that all those must be burnt for
the good of their souls, who so much as suspect that it is possible for the body to think
without any foreign assistance. But what would these people say should they themselves be
proved irreligious? And indeed, what man can presume to assert, without being guilty at
the same time of the greatest impiety, that it is impossible for the Creator to form
matter with thought and sensation? Consider only, I beg you, what a dilemma you bring
yourselves into, you who confine in this manner the power of the Creator. Beasts have the
same organs, the same sensations, the same perceptions as we; they have memory, and
combine certain ideas. In case it was not in the power of God to animate matter, and
inform it with sensation, the consequence would be, either that beasts are mere machines,
or that they have a spiritual soul.
Methinks it is clearly evident that beasts cannot be mere machines, which I prove thus.
God has given to them the very same organs of sensation as to us: if therefore they have
no sensation, God has created a useless thing; now according to your own confession God
does nothing in vain; He therefore did not create so many organs of sensation, merely for
them to be uninformed with this faculty; consequently beasts are not mere machines.
Beasts, according to your assertion, cannot be animated with a spiritual soul; you will,
therefore, in spite of yourself, be reduced to this only assertion, viz., that God has
endued the organs of beasts, who are mere matter, with the faculties of sensation and
perception, which you call instinct in them. But why may not God, if He pleases,
communicate to our more delicate organs, that faculty of feeling, perceiving, and
thinking, which we call human reason? To whatever side you turn, you are forced to
acknowledge your own ignorance, and the boundless power of the Creator. Exclaim therefore
no more against the sage, the modest philosophy of Mr. Locke, which so far from
interfering with religion, would of be use to demonstrate the truth of it, in case
religion wanted any such support. For what philosophy can be of a more religious nature
than that, which affirming nothing but what it conceives clearly, and conscious of its own
weakness, declares that we must always have recourse to God in our examining of the first
principles?
Besides, we must not be apprehensive that any philosophical opinion will ever prejudice
the religion of a country. Though our demonstrations clash directly with our mysteries,
that is nothing to the purpose, for the latter are not less revered upon that account by
our Christian philosophers, who know very well that the objects of reason and those of
faith are of a very different nature. Philosophers will never form a religious sect, the
reason of which is, their writings are not calculated for the vulgar, and they themselves
are free from enthusiasm. If we divide mankind into twenty parts, it will be found that
nineteen of these consist of persons employed in manual labour, who will never know that
such a man as Mr. Locke existed. In the remaining twentieth part how few are readers? And
among such as are so, twenty amuse themselves with romances to one who studies philosophy.
The thinking part of mankind is confined to a very small number, and these will never
disturb the peace and tranquillity of the world.
Neither Montaigne, Locke, Bayle, Spinoza, Hobbes, the Lord Shaftesbury, Collins, nor
Toland lighted up the firebrand of discord in their countries; this has generally been the
work of divines, who being at first puffed up with the ambition of becoming chiefs of a
sect, soon grew very desirous of being at the head of a party. But what do I say? All the
works of the modern philosophers put together will never make so much noise as even the
dispute which arose among the Franciscans, merely about the fashion of their sleeves and
of their cowls.
