SECTION THREE

46. The difficulty I have outlined has occurred in various forms to tax the minds of all the great philosophers, who have devised ingenious hypotheses to solve it. I shall begin, therefore, by examining the main systems to see whether any of them is satisfactory. The first system we encounter is Locke's.

Chapter 1

47. It has to be admitted that Locke, although famous, was either less conscious of the difficulty I have mentioned than other thinkers or did not focus upon it. Nevertheless, we shall see that even he was to find it an obstacle to his progress.
Locke, unaware of any difficulty, directly derives all ideas from sensation and reflection, almost like spring water gushing from two great jets.

48. Having hit upon a system from the very start of his argument,(45) Locke proceeds to apply it; he reviews the different species of ideas and goes on to show how they are all derived from sensation and reflection, and easily formed.
This is most commendable because application alone can confirm the system adopted and show it to be satisfactory, if it really is so; and if not, discover where the faults lie.

49. In fact, the nub of the difficulty came to light immediately. Among the various species of ideas that occurred to Locke was the idea of substance, and he vainly tried everything he knew to explain how it could be produced purely by sensation and reflection.
However, when he became aware of this obstacle, he refused to admit that the principle of his system was unsatisfactory and that his two sources of sensation and reflection could not produce all our ideas. Rather, he found another way to overcome the problem; he merely denied the existence of the idea of substance.
I confess there is another idea(46) which would be of general use for mankind to have, as it is of general talk(47) as if they had it;(48) and that is the idea of substance; which we neither have nor can have by sensation or reflection.

50. Locke's argument in dialogue form comes down to this:

51. If Locke, instead of observing whether the idea of substance truly exists, had also been willing to ask whether it can exist, he would have seen immediately that it could not possibly not exist.
Without it, we can reason neither in thought nor speech. Locke himself admits that it provides the general structure of human reasoning. Without such a concept, it is impossible to conceive the existence of anything, corporal or spiritual. Yet we do conceive these things. The idea of substance is therefore grasped, is possessed by mankind.
A prominent Italian philosopher makes the same comment as myself.

52. But what is the source of the insuperable difficulty Locke himself encountered in attempting to explain how the idea of substance originates purely from external or internal sensations?
I regret that almost at the start of these investigations I am obliged to subject the idea of substance to analysis. I would much prefer to have dealt with this difficult issue towards the end of the work, and begun from easier matters. However, as I have to deal with substance here, I shall attempt to do so as clearly as I can.
The nub of the problem is as follows: any sensation we experience, whether within or without us, becomes an integral part of us. It is merely a modification of our natural feeling which itself is a passive experience. Our understanding has no part in receiving sensations. On the other hand, we cannot think of a substance without considering it as something that subsists in itself, which is itself subject to modifications without being a modification. It is, therefore, something which cannot be perceived by the external senses. The idea of substance is thus completely different from any sensation. It has other qualities that have no connection with sensations. It cannot therefore be confined within sensation nor encountered in it. Here are some essential differences between the idea of sensation and that of substance.

53. First difference: sensation is an accident that does not subsist in itself but in us; substance subsists in itself.
Second difference: sensation is something experienced by the subject; whereas substance can be the sentient subject itself.
Third difference: sensation is the effect of what stimulates our sensories; the substance of bodies remains in thought, even when all sensible qualities have been removed. This substance, therefore, is something which is not in the sensible element of bodies because everything which is external and transitory is assumed to have been removed by our mind.(51)

54. In short, when referring to bodies, we think of substance through the following reasoning: 'Sensible qualities could not be without some support. Yet there are sensible qualities; sensation is what informs us of them. It follows that there is also some support, the subject of these sensible qualities, which is called substance.'
Sensation does nothing more than inform us of the existence of sensible qualities. It goes no further.
Deducing the need for a substance from such qualities is the work of thought, which carries out the deduction from the following principle: 'Sensible qualities cannot exist without a support.'
But our thought does not derive such a principle from the experience of sensible qualities because experience has never demonstrated such a totally non-sensible support. But if this support has never fallen under the senses, and cannot do so, how can we argue that it exists? How can we say that it must exist?

Our understanding cannot judge categorically that it exists and must exist unless 1. it has the idea of this support; 2. it has within itself some rule whereby it can discern what cannot exist without the support of something from that which can so exist; 3. it applies this rule to sensible qualities and realises that they belong to a class of things that cannot exist without a support, a subject to which they belong.
The whole problem encountered in explaining the origin of the idea of substance (a problem that Locke felt unable to solve) consists in the failure to grasp how our understanding makes a judgment, that is, the following judgment: 'Sensible qualities need a support.'
If we examine the three things which, I said, are required by the mind to enable it to make such a judgment, we shall see that they can be reduced to one alone, that which is not provided by the senses.
In fact, the third thing to which I pointed was the act whereby the mind applies the rule to sensible qualities and judges that they require a support. Now the mind makes this judgment as soon as it has accepted
1. the above mentioned rule;
2. the idea of a support.

However, the notion of a support, a general and indeterminate notion, is already included in the rule.
Let us assume that our mind has within it some principle whereby it understands that sensible qualities cannot subsist on their own. From this principle, it has no difficulty in deriving immediately the idea of a support, that is, of some other thing, whatever it may be, which is united to the sensible qualities and gives them the possibility of subsistence.
The entire operation, therefore, hinges on discovering how our understanding can have or form for itself a rule or principle by means of which it is empowered to judge that sensible qualities cannot exist on their own.

Such a rule constitutes the major premiss of a syllogism which may be expressed as follows: 'Accidents cannot exist on their own'. This rule is equivalent to discovering fundamental repugnance between the idea of a certain species of perceived things called accidents, considered on their own, and the idea of existence.
Analysis of such a rule, therefore, yields two things: 1. accidents; 2. the idea of existence.
Sensations provide only accidents, that is, sensible qualities. What we certainly do not receive from sensations is the universal, pure idea of existence which, in fact, is involved in all our acts of reasoning - the idea of existence to which accidents, considered in themselves as isolated, are repugnant.

Let me sum up:
The idea of the substance of external bodies can be obtained only by means of a judgment proper to the understanding. This judgment is formed by means of a rule.
When analysed, this rule is found to consist and be the result of two elements 1. accidents, and 2. the idea of existence.
Accidents are obtained from sensations.
The idea of existence, however, is a universal idea that cannot come to us in any way through the senses. The idea of substance remains inexplicable, therefore, if we assert that all our ideas come to us from sensations alone.

55. The difficulty posed by the attempt to deduce the idea of substance arises from the need of a judgment by which to deduce it. To do so, we must possess a universal idea, the idea of existence, that cannot be derived from the senses.
Now, the difficulty which I noted in explaining the origin of ideas, if one thinks carefully about it, comes down to this: how is our first judgment possible if we assume that we do not previously have an innate, universal idea?
We cannot begin to make judgments without possessing a universal idea because every judgment is an activity of the understanding that requires the use of a universal idea. We must, therefore, assume such an idea, granted the impossibility of using something we do not have.
Before we have universal ideas we cannot therefore form any judgment about sensations or about any cause of sensations.
But if our spirit is completely lacking in universal ideas and cannot make any judgment either about its sensations or their causes, it cannot, in such a state, take any step forward and move even a fraction beyond sensations themselves. If you deprive the spirit of its act of judgment, you deprive it of its entire activity and oblige it to remain completely inert. Thus, the human spirit, unable to make any judgment about its sensations or the entia which correspond to them, cannot form any universal idea. Such an idea, when formed by the spirit for itself, is only produced by a judgment.

For example, let us assume that some sensible agent - a tree, a rock, an animal - strikes my senses. First, I have all the sensations of colour, size, shape, movement, etc. which that sensible agent produces on my senses. But as long as I experience all these sensations in a passive way as alterations to my sensitivity, without any involvement on the part of my understanding, my intellect will still not have perceived any ens. To perceive something intellectually, my spirit must pronounce a judgment, that is, say to itself, 'Something exists which is endowed with such and such sensible qualities' (that is, qualities perceived by my senses). In forming such a judgment, I am simply attributing existence to something real whose sensible qualities alone have been grasped by my senses. Thus, I perceive the ens itself intellectually. The universal idea which I make use of in this judgment is the idea of existence which, if I did not possess it previously, I would be quite unable to apply to my sensations. Consequently, I would be unable to pronounce the inner judgment: 'The ens endowed with the sensible qualities which I perceive exists.' My understanding could perceive nothing, because perceiving something intellectually is the same as judging that something exists.

This universal idea of existence or being, however, cannot come to me from sensations alone because they do not contain such an idea. They are merely modifications of being, without having being within themselves. Consequently, they cannot be perceived in isolation by the intellect. They have to be perceived in something else, that is, in an ens (substance) completely different from them. Here lies the whole problem which Locke, on his own admission, encountered when he sought to deduce the idea of substance from sensations.

56. However the difficulty, in the way I formulated it, does not end here. The argument needs further development.
Observation certainly assures us that the understanding perceives nothing except by an inner judgment whereby it says to itself: 'Such a thing exists.' It is indisputable that to pronounce such a judgment, the understanding must already be endowed with the idea of existence which it adds to the sensible qualities perceived by the senses.
This only is already an insoluble difficulty for those who wish to deduce all ideas from the senses. It arises with the formation of any idea, be it the idea of a tree, a rock, an animal - in a word, however determinate the idea may be. In the formation of these ideas, and consequently of intellective perceptions, a judgment is needed which always involves the use of the universal idea of existence because these ideas are used to posit something existent. But the idea of existence cannot be derived from sensible qualities. These cannot be considered as existent without thinking of existence, which cannot be predicated of sensible qualities, unless they are conceived in some other thing which does not fall under the senses.
Thus, even the formation of particular ideas, or more accurately, of perceptions, is inexplicable unless we assume the pre-existence in us of the universal idea of existence, with which alone we can form them.

57. We are justified, therefore, in saying that Locke's school of philosophers did not carry out a sufficiently detailed analysis of ideas to enable them to know the truth which I have indicated, that is, there is no idea, even relative to something particular, that does not contain within itself some universal idea or at least the idea of existence. Having the idea of a tree, and referring it to a particular tree is the same as intellectually perceiving a tree, and intellectually perceiving a tree is the same as judging that a tree exists, or as classifying a tree among existent things. It follows that perception on the part of the senses is not an idea until the felt element is classified, so to speak, among existing or possible things. To do this, we need the idea of existence, that is, of the class in which it rests. This truth, however, completely eluded the philosophers of whom I am speaking. They supposed that there actually were particular ideas without any universal, common notion.

58. In arguing, therefore, with such philosophers, I maintain that, by starting from their assumption that particular ideas do not contain any universal and common element, it is impossible to deduce universal ideas from particular ideas by abstraction.
It is impossible to draw universal ideas from strictly particular ideas which are assumed not to contain any universal element. It is a glaring contradiction to say that we can find something where it is not.
But our philosophers have little difficulty in teaching us how to do this. They say that universal ideas are derived from particular ideas by abstraction. When you have the idea of a tree, a rock, an animal or any other individual thing, you observe what is common to them all and what is proper to each. By fixing your attention on the common element and totally disregarding anything proper, you form the idea of the common quality alone; this is the universal idea. If you want to form the idea of existence for yourself, ignore all the other qualities, and concentrate solely on that quality which you have found is commonest of all in the objects you know. Thus, you form for yourself the perfect idea of existence.
I do not wish to spend precious time enumerating the multiple mistakes contained in this statement. I shall deal solely with the points required to highlight the difficulty of which I spoke.

My answer, therefore, is as follows: you want me to reflect upon my particular ideas of a tree, a stone, and so on, by concentrating on their common qualities and isolating them from the qualities proper to them. You are assuming, therefore, that the idea of a tree, etc. which I have in my mind, is a composite of 1. ideas of common qualities and of 2. ideas of proper qualities. In fact, if the idea did not contain these two elements, I could neither divide the idea as you want me to, nor find the elements there, nor concentrate on one element rather than another. In other words, you are contradicting yourself. You began from the assumption that particular ideas did not contain universal ideas, and that my mind, although totally bereft of universal ideas, could form them for itself with the assistance of particular ideas.

These philosophers, therefore, make the following mistake. They say that it is very easy to form particular ideas, which are furnished through sensations. They conclude that it is easy precisely because they assume that particular ideas do not contain any universal, common element. Having done this, they next go on to deduce common, universal ideas from particular ideas in the way I have described. However, it is equally easy to answer them. When you deduce common, universal ideas from particular ideas, you assume that the former are a part, an element, of the latter. On the other hand, when you deduced particular ideas from sensations, you assumed the contrary. If, in fact, you had assumed that particular ideas contained some common, universal notion, you would have had to assign to them an origin different from sensation, which contains only entirely particular elements.

59. Seeking at a deeper level the cause of the illusion entertained by Locke's disciples, I think it is to be found in their not having perceived clearly enough how sensations and sensible elements, in themselves, independently of our mind, are so particular that in reality they contain particular qualities only. A common, universal quality has no existence except in our mind. But Locke's disciples, who did not realise this - I shall take the opportunity to explain in greater detail later - attributed to things something which was merely in their mind, that is, common qualities. After this first mistake, which affected the whole system, other errors occurred automatically.

60. The error which occurred in the initial notion was communicated from one notion to the next by a series of links, as follows.

The first erroneous notion involved things perceived by the senses. The unnoticed error stated: 'Corporeal beings actually contain something in common independently of the way they are perceived.' Now if what is common does exist in real things themselves and not in the intellect, we waste time searching the human intellect for the origin of what is common; it is a real quality of things.

Stage two: the elements of which things are composed, that is, 1. what is common and 2. what is particular, pass into the sensations as soon as things are perceived by the senses. If we accept as a fact 1. that our senses perceive the sensible qualities of bodies and 2. that what is common exists in the sensible qualities because some sensible qualities are common and others individual, it follows that sensation also perceives what is common and what is proper.

Stage three: if sense receives within itself and perceives what is common in things, it is easy to explain the origin of particular ideas since, although these ideas are made up of 1. common notions and 2. proper notions, they are nevertheless furnished by sensations. Consequently, there is no need to resort to any other principle to explain the origin of particular ideas because all the elements of which these are made up are furnished by the senses.(52)

Finally: (and this represents the fourth stage of Locke's argument) it is extremely easy to abstract universal ideas from particular ideas containing 1. what is common and 2. what is proper. All we have to do is to analyse these ideas closely and concentrate solely upon what is common while disregarding proper qualities.
All the conclusions of this argument are without doubt correctly deducted provided the principle is true. If the first notion we have of external things is composed of 1. a common element and 2. a proper element, all the other deductions are correct. There is no doubt that universal ideas can be derived from particular ideas by analysis if it is true that the former are contained in the latter.

Particular ideas derived from 1. what is common and 2. what is proper can undoubtedly be obtained from sensations alone if it is true that sensations themselves are derived from both common and proper elements.

Finally, there is no doubt that sense perceives what is common and what is proper if it is true that these are two real elements that go to make up external things and their sensible qualities.
The error in this entire argument is to be found in the first proposition.
What is common has no existence outside the intellect; it is an element of our ideas, not a real element of external things. External things have, in fact, only an individual, proper existence; they have only particular qualities; the word common implies a relationship between a number of objects observed by the mind. A relationship, however, is not a quality of any species in such a way that it can exist in a real entity; it lies completely outside existing real things and exists only in thought.

61. If, therefore, the notion of what is common is present only in ideas, and everything has a merely particular and proper existence in external things, we have to ask about the origin of this notion of common quality. Sense, when perceiving external things, cannot perceive anything that is not present. Not having what is common in its perceptions, sense cannot transmit what is common to ideas. Yet the concept of a common quality is found in ideas. It follows that it must be something found in the intellect itself, independently of sensations. This argument admits of no reply.

The difficulty I set forth amounted to this: how can the intellect have the idea of what is common?
It is a fact, as I said, that an intellectually developed person makes judgments.
Therefore this person has begun to judge.
There is no middle way here. The attempt to discover a middle way is a pipe-dream. There can be no conceivable intermediate stage between my stating, when something strikes my sensories, 'This is an ens', and my not stating it.

Let us go back to our first judgment. In this judgment, we already have to possess some common notion. This common or universal idea, which is necessary in forming a judgment, can be derived by reflection only from 1. sensations or 2. from particular ideas. We cannot derive it from sensations because they contain no concept of what is common; it must be derived, therefore, from particular ideas. It is to be assumed, then, that we begin to make judgments after the acquisition of some particular ideas. However, these particular ideas either contain or do not contain a common notion. If the concept is contained in such ideas, it still remains to be explained how we have formed these particular ideas which cannot subsist without a common notion. If it is not contained in them, the difficulty arises once again. There is, therefore, no means of avoiding this difficulty unless we assume that the intellect itself furnishes the common notion and has in itself something that has not been received from the senses.

62. The first part of the inquiry which I introduced in this work, 'Whether the human mind has within it an innate element?' is now complete. That leaves us with the second part: 'If there is an innate element, what exactly is it?' which has already been clarified, although dimly, when I showed that the idea of being is the universal notion from which every universal concept originates. However, before developing this statement, I feel I must keep the promise I made about examining the main philosophical systems relative to the first part of my investigation.

63. A brief summary of what has been said so far.

1. Particular ideas always contain at least one common or universal idea, the idea of existence. There is no idea of anything until the mind has pronounced the inner judgment: 'Such a thing is.'

2. Particular ideas are initially formed by the human spirit's combining what is sensible with the common notion of existence, as though placing it in the class of existent things. The particular idea is thus the perception by the intellect of something sensible which the intellect considers as belonging to the class of existent things. In other words: 'It is something sensible to which is attributed the universal quality of existence which then becomes proper.'(53)

3. Hence, the particular idea cannot be formed unless the intellect introduce the notion of existence. If we call this operation 'synthesis', the particular notion cannot occur without a synthesis on the part of the intellect.

4. The intellect cannot derive a common notion from sensations because it is not contained in them. It must therefore derive this notion from within itself.

5. A universal idea can be derived by abstraction from a particular idea when the universal, common idea is already contained in the particular idea. This operation is called analysis.

6. Locke, who did not suspect the existence of any problem in explaining the formation of particular ideas, supposed that they came directly from sensations in the way I have described. Consequently, he thought that universal, general ideas could be derived by analysing the particular ideas. In fact, common ideas are contained in particular ideas.

64. The flaw in Locke's system consists in his supposition that a common element actually exists in sensible things. He did not appreciate the difficulty that arises in seeking the origin of such a notion.
This flaw resulted in his failure to see the need for a synthesis prior to analysis, that is, for an intellectual operation in which what is felt is united with the common idea of existence preexisting in the intellect. This is how judgments are made from which particular ideas are formed.
Locke assumed the formation of the synthesis in the nature of external things, and thus posited from the beginning the theory of the analysis of ideas. From this, merely by separating them out, he deduced universal ideas in the guise of abstractions. He did not explain how these ideas were formed. He took the process for granted.
I shall finish the present section by quoting a passage from an Italian philosopher who pointed out most clearly and accurately the flaw in Locke's philosophy:

Further on, the same philosopher adds:

(45) This is Locke's method: there are no grounds for thinking that he begins with facts and proceeds to establish principles. Indeed, he starts from assumed principles and derives from them the explanation of the facts. This method is followed more or less by all of Locke's school including Cabanis, Destutt-Tracy, Gioia, etc. Their merit, relative to philosophical method, consists however in constantly proclaiming that we should do the opposite, that is, start from facts and move step by step upwards to principles. Simply teaching what is correct deserves no small credit; on our part, we take whatever is good from any source and forget about the rest.

(46) An odd contradiction! An idea exists that does not exist!

(47) How can something that is not an idea be a subject of general talk? I see that some non-existent thing can be a subject of general talk, but not that some non-thought thought - something that is not even an idea - can be a subject of general talk. This is wholly unintelligible to me! It is a metaphysical mystery worthy of Locke.

(48) Again, people use an idea, which they introduce into all their conversations, but do this without having the idea! I leave the explanation to this class of philosophers, who pride themselves on their clarity and logical rigour.

(49) Such systematic exclusion is certainly not a fact; it is a principle. That is why I said earlier that Locke begins with principles and from them explains facts. To state, 'Only these two facts, sensation and reflection, exist', is not a fact; it is a principle that includes certain facts and arbitrarily excludes others.

(50) Pasquale Galluppi, Lettere filosofiche ecc. from Tropea. Messina, 1827.

(51) We can also say that the merely sensible element (whatever it may be) is not a substance, without the addition of intellectual perception. As yet, it is not an ens, as we shall see shortly; the word 'substance' comprises the idea of 'ens'.

(52) Yet the contradiction already mentioned would never be entirely absent amongst Locke's followers, even if the whole argument which they erect upon such an unreliable basis were sound.

(53) I shall point out elsewhere, however, that I make a distinction between perception and particular idea; the latter is the intuited object embedded in the affirmation which the spirit makes about the subsistence of the object. Perception is the affirmation itself.

(54) Talking of simple notions does not bring out the difficulty as clearly as talking of common or universal notions because initially it would be necessary to prove that what is simple cannot be found by resolution of what is composite. Only then could we grasp the difficulty of deriving simple notions from the phenomena of sensation. On the other hand, it is clear, when we speak of common notions, that they cannot be found in what is particular because this intrinsically excludes common notions. What is particular essentially excludes as its contrary what is common.

(55) Subjective, that is, introduced by the intelligent subject and therefore innate in the intelligent subject, at least virtually. However, the expression subjective, is not accurate. As we shall see, this inaccuracy led to error in Kant's philosophy. The fact is that the spirit may have within itself innate common notions without its having derived them from within itself, but by receiving them from outside itself. This remark is highly important for a clear understanding of the theory I shall be expounding in its proper place.

(56) Galluppi, Lettere filosofiche, etc., Letter 7. Actually, it is not sufficient to know that the primary activity of thought is synthesis; we also need to know what kind of synthesis is involved. This is the crucial question.