Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays by George Santayana
page 23 of 78 (29%)
page 23 of 78 (29%)
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either for Locke or for Descartes to clear their fresh conceptions
altogether from those ancient dreams. What views precisely did Locke oppose to these radical tendencies of Descartes? In respect to the nature of matter, I have indicated above the position of Locke: pictorially he accepted an ordinary atomism; scientifically, the physics of Newton. On the other two points Locke's convictions were implicit rather than speculative: he resisted the Cartesian theories without much developing his own, as after all was natural in a critic engaged in proving that our natural faculties were not intended for speculation. All knowledge came from experience, and no man could know the savour of a pineapple without having tasted it. Yet this savour, according to Locke, did not reside at first in the pineapple, to be conveyed on contact to the palate and to the mind; but it was generated in the process of gustation; or perhaps we should rather say that it was generated in the mind on occasion of that process. At least, then, in respect to secondary qualities, and to all moral values, the terms of human knowledge were not drawn from the objects encountered in the world, but from an innate sensibility proper to the human body or mind. Experience--if this word meant the lifelong train of ideas which made a man's moral being--was not a source of knowledge but was knowledge (or illusion) itself, produced by organs endowed with a special native sensibility in contact with varying external stimuli. This conclusion would then not have contradicted, but exactly expressed, the doctrine of innate categories. As to the soul, which might exist without thinking, Locke still called it |
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