In Book 1 Locke sets out to dismiss and refute the Cartesian
notion that the mind contains innate knowledge. He does this by dividing knowledge
into two categories: speculative principles, by which he means the principles
we use to build metaphysical or philosophical systems; and practical
principles, by which he means the practical propositions which govern moral and
social behavior. The Cartesians believed that certain basic principles in both
categories were innate, that the mind comes with these basic principles already
installed, as it were. Let’s look at how Locke refutes this.
Speculative principles
Locke takes as his examples two principles commonly held to
be innate as the basic building blocks of all speculative thought:
1.
What is, is, what is not, is not.
2.
It is impossible for something to be and not to
be
The Cartesians argued that these principles were innate
because they were universal; because they could be immediately assented to upon
hearing without the use of reason; and because they lay dormant in the mind,
imprinted on it, until the mind came to the use of reason and could perceive
that they were there and readily assent to them.
Locke attacks these arguments by pointing out that these
kind of speculative principles are not present in the minds of children, idiots
or savages. Immediate assent is given to them because they are self-evident
propositions, not because they are innate, and if they were innate, we would
assent to them without the necessity for having them proposed. Because we give
them our ready assent implies only that we have the capacity to understand
them, not that the principles are innate in themselves. He shows the logical
inconsistency of the ‘imprinted but not perceived’ argument by pointing out
that to have an idea is to perceive it, that it is not possible to have an idea
and not to perceive the having of it.
Whatever was never
perceived by the mind was never in the mind. 1.3.21
His strongest argument, however is to show how the mind
builds up general, speculative propositions of this kind from accumulating
particulars, an idea that he develops later in Book 2 and Book 4.
The senses at first
let in PARTICULAR ideas, and furnish the yet empty cabinet, and the mind by
degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, and
names got to them. Afterwards, the mind proceeding further, abstracts them, and
by degrees learns the use of general names. In this manner, the mind comes to
be furnished with ideas and language, the MATERIALS about which to exercise its
discursive faculty. And the use of reason becomes daily more visible, as these
materials that give it employment increase. 1.1.15
Practical principles
The Cartesians argued that moral principles were universal:
justice, filial piety, virtue, keeping of compacts and so on, and that this
universality made them innate. In the gap between what people do and their
innate moral principles, which the Cartesians admitted was a weakness in their
argument, they pointed to the existence of conscience: when we act against our
innate moral principles, our conscience troubles us.
The universality argument is easy to demolish, and Locke
does so by pointing out other societies and times where these principles were
not recognized. Only a person who has never
looked abroad beyond the smoke of his own chimneys could believe that such
moral principles were universal much less argue therefrom for their innateness.
The conscience argument he easily destroys also by pointing out that whole
nations have committed enormities without any remorse, without any notion that
the enormities were ‘wrong’.
Locke also says that these kind of practical principles are
less self- evident than speculative principles, and therefore need proof to be
assented to. Most of the time, such principles are merely a matter of social
convenience, and not innate, and that they are inculcated in the young (and
therefore cannot be innate if they need to be learned) as part of a general
education. Because this inculcation of these moral precepts happens at such an
early stage of life, there remains no memory of the teaching of them, and
therefore they are supposed to be innate. He also shows that usually such practical
principles are no more than custom.
Custom, a greater
power than nature seldom failing to make them worship for divine what she hath
inured them to bow their minds and submit their understandings to, it is no
wonder that grown men, either perplexed in the necessary affairs of life, or
hot in the pursuit of pleasures, should not seriously sit down to examine their
own tenets, especially when one of their principles is, that principles ought
not to be questioned. 1.2. 25
He furthermore argues that speculative and practical principles
need to be expressed in propositions in order to be assented to; but the ideas
of which such propositions are composed need to be understood, which means that
the ideas come before the propositions, which means the principles cannot be
innate if they are not primary; and that the terms in which the propositions are
expressed need to be universal, which is clearly not the case, given the
existence of many conflicting terms and indeed languages.
Some examples of
Innate Principles shown to be erroneous
At one point in Book 1 Locke’s frustration with the ‘innate knowledge’
argument bursts forth, and he exclaims that although some philosophers believe
that some knowledge is innate, they are always vague as to exactly what that knowledge is. He then posits some principles which
might be supposed to be innate, and shows how they are not. The examples that
he gives are:
Speculative
Principles:
Impossibility
Identity
Sameness
Whole and Part
Substance
Practical Principles:
Worship
The most important of these is the knowledge of God (which I
suppose, according to Locke’s own categories, must be a speculative principle
at best.)
He argues that God is not an innate principle thus. The
names of God in the world are various. It would hardly be reasonable to expect
that God would imprint on our minds an innate knowledge of Himself in ideas and
in terms for those ideas that were not universal and immediately and clearly
understood. Moreover the idea of God found from place to place is contrary and inconsistent, and men have
many low and pitiful ideas of what
God is. If the idea of God – a more fundamental principle than which it would
be impossible to find- is not innate, then it is reasonable to assume that no
other principle can be innate either.
The Attack on
Authority
Now, it would be reasonable to assume from this argument
that the idea of God is also just a custom, a custom linked to authority. A modern
mind, arguing from Locke’s own empiricism, arrives at the understanding that knowledge
of God is illusory, an old wife’s saw. But Locke does not make this step. According
to him, knowledge of God is arrived at through thought and meditation, and a right
use of men’s facilities. In fact, throughout the Essay, Locke posits arguments which lead irrefutably towards
atheism. But he himself always shies away from expressing such a conclusion,
and always clearly asserts the existence of God. This tension between the
freedom of a modern, scientific atheism and the imprisonment in an atavistic
belief in God is one of the most interesting aspects of the Essay, not least because it is also a
tension between two modes of expression: the deductive and the assertive. This
tension is most developed in Book 4, but it can already be seen in Book 1.
What might be the origins of such tension? Is Locke’s mind
so occluded by the darkness of religion that he cannot make the jump to the
conclusion his empiricism necessarily leads to? Or is he exercising extreme
caution in an age where the power of the Church is not only spiritual but also
temporal, and where religious tensions between Catholics and Protestants are
linked to the political struggles
between the dynastic claims of the Stuarts and the House of Orange for the
throne of England. Locke allied himself to the latter, and on King William’s
ascension to the throne, Locke at last enjoyed the success and release from
persecution that had seen him exiled to Holland for five years, where most of
the Essay was written.
Locke hints at his awareness of the need for caution in this
paragraph buried in Book 1 chapter 3: The
complaints of atheism made from the pulpit are not without reasons, and though
only some profligate wretches own it too barefacedly now, yet perhaps we should
hear more than we do of it from others, did not the fear of the magistrate’s
sword, or their neighbour’s censure, tie up people’s tongues; which, were
apprehensions of punishment or shame taken away, would as openly proclaim their
atheism as their lives do. 1.3.8
Locke’s relationship to authority, however, is clearly
stressed in the whole thrust of Book 1, which repeatedly asserts the need for
self-reflection and the observation of reality and experience; and which at the
same time, repeatedly attacks with devastating sarcasm received opinions
slavishly held: it is not worthwhile to
be concerned what he says or thinks who says or thinks only as he is directed
by another. (Epistle to the Reader). Moreover, given that the aim of Descartes was
to unite the new developments in Newtonian science with Christianity, and given
that the whole purpose of Book 1 is to show how Descartes’s doctrine of innate
knowledge is wrong, can we not also assume a fundamental disagreement with
Descartes’s whole project; can we not also assume a disagreement with the idea that
the new sciences are compatible with a religious outlook on the world? Although
it’s tempting to read the Essay in
terms of our own context as an argument between Religion and Atheism, it’s
probably more correct to read it in terms of Locke’s own context, as an
argument between the narrow-minded authority of Catholicism and the more open
tolerance of Protestantism.
This I am certain, I
have not made it my business either to quit or follow any authority in the
ensuing Discourse. Truth has been my only aim, and wherever that has appeared
to lead, my thoughts have impartially followed, without minding whether the
footsteps or any other lay that way or not. 1.3.24
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