IV. I conclude by designating to you another proposition, or rather another pretension of Locke, which it is important to confine within just limits. Everywhere Locke attributes to words (Book III. Chap. II. § 4; Book IV. passim) the greatest part of our errors; and if you expound the master by the pupils, you will find in all the writers of the school of Locke that all disputes are disputes of words; that science is nothing but a language, and consequently that a well-constructed science is a well-constructed language. I declare my opposition to the exaggerations of these assertions.* No doubt words have a great influence; no doubt they have much to do with our errors, and we should strive to make the best language possible. Who questions it? But the question is to know whether every error is derived from language, and whether science is merely a well-constructed language. No; the causes of our errors are very different; they are both more extended and more profound. Levity, presumption, indolence, precipitation, pride, a multitude of moral causes influence our judgments. The vices of language may be added to natural causes and aggravate them, but they do not constitute them. If you look more closely, you will see that the greater part of disputes, which seem at first disputes of words, are at bottom disputes of things. Humanity is too serious to become excited and often shed its best blood, for the sake of words. Wars do not turn upon verbal disputes: I say as much of other quarrels, of theological quarrels, and of scientific quarrels, the profundity and importance of which are misconceived when they are resolved into pure logomachies. Assuredly every science

and conceptualism, First Series, Vol. 4, Lecture 21, p. 457-468, and the Introduction to the unpublished Works of Abelard.

* First Series, Vol. 3, Lecture 1, p. 63. "In order that this should be true, it would be necessary that our thought might take place without the aid of language, which is not the case. I will give but one example among a thousand. Is it by the aid of the word me or of the word existence that I feel that I exist? Have I here been from the word to the thing? The very supposition is absurd. Consciousness directly perceives its phenomena by the virtue which is in it, and not by that of words; words powerfully aid it, they do not constitute it."

should seek a well-constructed language; but to suppose that there are well-constructed sciences because there are well-constructed languages, is to take the effect for the cause. The contrary is true: sciences have well-constructed languages when they are themselves well constructed. The mathematics have a well-constructed language. Why? Because in mathematics the ideas are perfectly determined; the simplicity, the rigor, and the precision of ideas have produced rigor, precision, and simplicity of signs. Precise ideas cannot be expressed in confused language; and if in the infancy of a language it were so for a while, soon the precision, the rigor, and the fixedness of the ideas would dissipate the vagueness and the obscurity of the language. The excellence of physical and chemical sciences evidently comes from well-made experiments. Facts having been observed and described with fidelity, reason has been able to apply itself to these facts with certainty, and to deduce from them legitimate consequences and applications. Hence has sprung, and should have sprung, a good system of signs. Make the contrary supposition; suppose badly made experiments: the more strict the reasoning, founded upon these false data, shall be, the more errors will it draw from them, the greater reach and extent will it communicate to the errors. Suppose that the theories which result from these imperfect and vicious experiments were represented by the most simple, the most analogous, the best determined signs; of what importance will the goodness of the signs be, if that which is concealed under this excellent language is a chimera or an error? Take medicine. The complaint is made that this science has advanced so little. What do you think must be done to bring it up from the regions of hypothesis, and to elevate it to the rank of a science? Do you think that at first you could, by a well-constructed language, reform physiology and medicine? Or do you not think that the true method is experiment, and with experiment the severe employment of reasoning? A good system of signs would of itself follow; it would not come before, or it would uselessly come. It is the same in

philosophy. It has been unceasingly repeated that the structure of the human mind is entire in that of language, and that philosophy would be finished the day in which a philosophical language should be achieved; and starting thence an endeavor has been made to arrange a certain philosophical language more or less clear, easy, elegant, and it has been believed that philosophy was achieved. It was not; it was far from being achieved. This prejudice has even retarded it, by separating experiment from it. Philosophical science, like every science of observation and reasoning, lives by well-made observation and strict reasonings. There, and not elsewhere, is the whole future of philosophy.

LECTURE XXI.

ESSAY, FOURTH BOOK. THEORY OF REPRESENTATIVE IDEAS.*

Examination of the Fourth Book of the Essay, in regard to knowledge. That knowledge, according to Locke, depends, 1st, on ideas; 2d, on ideas conformed to their object.-That the conformity or nonconformity of ideas with their objects, as the foundation of the true or of the false in knowledge, is not a simple metaphor in Locke, but a veritable theory.-Examination of the theory of representative ideas, 1st, in relation to the exterior world, to secondary qualities, to primary qualities, to the substratum of these qualities, to space, to time, etc.; 2d, in relation to the spiritual world.-Appeal to revelation. Paralogism of Locke.

BEING in possession of all the ideas which are in the human understanding, their origin, their generation, their mechanism, and their characters; being in possession of the signs by which they are expressed, manifested, and developed, it concerns us to see what man does with these ideas, what knowledge he derives from them, what is the extent of this knowledge, and what are its limits. Such is the subject of the fourth book of the Essay on the Human Understanding: he treats of knowledge, that is, not simply of ideas taken in themselves, but in relation to their objects, in relation to other beings; for knowledge goes thus far; it attains to God, to bodies, and to ourselves. Now here, at the outset, is presented a prejudicial question. Knowledge reaches as far as beings, the fact is incontestable; but how does this fact take place? Having set out from ideas which are in it, how does the understanding attain to beings which are without it? What bridge is there between the faculty of knowing which is within us, and the objects of knowledge which are without us? When we shall have arrived on the other shore, we shall see what

* On the theory of representative ideas, see 1st Series, Vol. 1, Lecture 8, pp. 36-42; Lecture 10, p. 71, etc.; Vol. 3, Lecture 1, p. 63; especially Vol. 4, Lecture 20, pp. 356-870; Lecture 21, pp. 417-481.

route we should pursue, and how far we can go; but in the first place it is necessary to know how to make the passage. Before entering upon ontology, it is necessary to know how to pass from psychology to ontology, what is the foundation, and legitimate foundation, of knowledge. It is this preliminary question which we shall at first address to Locke.

The fourth book of the Essay on the Human Understanding begins by asserting that all knowledge depends on ideas.

Book IV. Of knowledge. Chap. I. Of knowledge in general. § 1: "Since the mind in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge is only conversant about them."

But, as you have seen, Locke recognizes, and with reason, that ideas in themselves are always true. It is always true that we have the idea which we have, which is actually under the eye of consciousness: let this idea be a chimera, a centaur, still we have it, and, under this relation, the idea cannot be false, it cannot but be true, or rather, strictly speaking, it is neither false nor true. Where can error then begin, and wherein does truth reside? Both evidently reside and can reside only in this supposition of the mind, that this idea is related or is not related to an object, to such or such an object really existing in nature. It is in this relation that truth or error lies for the human mind. If this relation may be seized, human knowledge is possible; if this relation cannot be seized, human knowledge is impossible. Now, in supposing that this relation is possible, what is it, and in what does it consist? It behooves us on this point to interrogate Locke with precision and severity, for here must be the foundation of the theory of the true and the false in human knowledge, that is, the foundation of the fourth book which we have to examine.

Throughout the whole of this fourth book, as at the close of the second, Locke declares expressly that the true or the false in ideas, on which all knowledge turns, consists in the supposition of