the purpose of this paper to examine into the nature of some of these presuppositions and to make some inquiry into the relation they bear to knowledge generally.

Two of the so-called Innate Principles attacked by Locke are the famous "Whatever is, is ;" and, "It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be;" or what are known to logicians as the Principles of Identity and Contradiction; now, as definitely worded propositions, or as consciously held maxims, there is not a doubt that these are not innate, and yet, as Locke himself acknowledges, that the child at the breast knows that a sweet thing is sweet, and that bitter is not sweet, as well as ever he will be able to know. If so, does not the fact point to a definite quality of mind itself, and condition its activity, of which the principles themselves are merely an abstract statement? The modern followers of Locke, of whom Mr. Herbert Spencer may be taken as the chief, endeavour to reduce all Knowledge whatever in its last analysis to intuitions of Likeness and Unlikeness, and to show that its very possibility depends on the possibility of these intuitions. This points to a definite quality of mind, and must have important effects in the relation of the Self and the Not-self.

Again, as regards Practical Principles, Locke's arguments against the innateness of moral rules, though very telling in relation to specific opinions and propositions having Right and Wrong as predicates, do not seem to touch the question whether in the mind, qua human mind, there is a definite quality enabling it to affirm good and evil of moral actions.

Locke gives (chap. 28, bk. 2) as the body of Moral Rules Divine Law, Civil Law, and Public opinion— the first given by God because of His Infinite Power and consequent Right to do as He likes; the second and third because of similar qualities existent in society in relation to the individual. Now, however adequate an account this may be of most people's reasons for doing what is right, or, at least, of avoiding what is wrong, it is questionable whether it is anything like a perfect explanation of the phenomenon of Right and Wrong as a notion in the mind. The knowledge that certain actions produce Pleasure and that others produce Pain-that one set conduce to existence, and the other set militate against it—is possible enough by merely individual experience ; but that whole series of actions should be denounced as Evil, and others eulogised as Good, independently of any pleasures or pains attached to them, is not so easily explained. The consequence is, that the later experiential moralists have had to postulate the emotions of Sympathy, and Antipathy as well as hereditary transmission of experiences of Utility, as organised in nerve structure. How far this is an adequate explanation, is another question. Suffice it to say that it seems to give back in general what Locke had argued away in particular, viz., that the Mind has implicit in its nature a Feeling or Notion of Right and Wrong, independent of individual experience or any development it may take in certain given circumstances.

Locke's method of dealing with our Perception of Solidity-Body-occupied-Space-is a striking instance of his subsumption of at least connate modes of

mental activity. For, in the chapter on Solidity (chap. 4, bk. 2) the conceptions, notions, or whatever else we may call them, of Time, Space, Substance, and Causality are quietly presupposed in the exposition.

Locke tells us that we receive the Idea of Solidity by our Touch, and that "it arises from the Resistance which we find in Body to the entrance of any other Body into the place it possesses till it has left it.' The whole of the chapter is simply this affirmation amplified. The question then comes, Does it adequately explain our Idea of Solidity? Now our

Idea of Solidity is made up of the ideas of a something extended in space, and exerting force against any force we apply to it. We have clearly something in this relation besides mere feelings of Resistance. We have the conception of a thing resisting. Analysing the feeling of Resistance down to its last elements, we get to nothing more than a series of Muscular and Tactile feelings. If, then, our Idea of Solidity is nothing besides this series of Feelings, how come they to be blended into the mental whole we term a body? We may be told that this is because the Feelings occur regularly in a certain order of succession, contiguously, and so tending to suggest one another; and, as the Feelings constituting the elements of our perception of Body or Solidity are experienced in varying yet similar orders of succession, we come to have the idea of simultaneity in the action of their cause. But here we get into the thick of another set of pre-suppositions, namely, those constituting the Conceptions or Notions of Time and Cause. For, if the conception of what is

termed Time-or shall we call it more precisely "after-one-another-ness "-were not implicit in our minds, how could we have any idea of things as successive or synchronous ? It may be said, by Memory. But that answer may easily be refuted. For all that is implied in Memory is of something which has been experienced, not of the "when" of its being so, whether before or after, or simultaneous with another experience. It is quite conceivable that a Memory could exist which had no Time or after-one-another-ness in its composition. In such a case the Subject could not say that any experience it had were either past, present or future.

Next, we ascribe our Feelings of Resistance to something outside ourselves, and outside other things which give us similar feelings; that is, as being caused by something existing in Space, or, as it ought to be called, "out-of-one-another-ness." The reason is, we are told, that the feelings themselves of a resisting body are independent of our volition, and so we are led to ascribe them to a cause independent of us. But the obvious objection crops up, that we experience hosts of Feelings which are totally independent of any volition on our part-and "pity 'tis, 'tis so"-and yet do not ascribe them to any cause independent of, and outside ourselves; for instance, the whole tribe of aches and pains and what not.

A physiological explanation as to how it happens that successive Feelings become thought of as simultaneous, as in our Perception of Space, is suggested by the fact that the organism is capable of registering its experiences, and that the stimulation of any nervetract tends to set up a stimulus in adjacent and similar

nerve-tracts.

For instance, any point in the retina being stimulated by light, awakens the activity of all its other points, and so the organ gets the impression of visual extension. Now this may be good physiology but it is not good philosophy, as it assumes points which have to be proved, viz., the spatial extension of the organism, and the existence of phenomenal space, as things-in-themselves. But, supposing we take this explanation as valid philosophically, it still follows that the Space Perception is not obtained from experience, though beginning with it, but is really a quality of Mind as the psychical side of what the visible and tactual organism is the physical. But this is not the doctrine of Locke, for he affirms that we obtain the Idea of Space from our Touch.

We ascribe Solidity to Substance. Locke explains that the idea of substance is "an obscure and confused Idea of Sensation and Reflection," as a subject of qualities, or as something in which qualities stick. The difficulty of reducing this "obscure and confused idea" to an abstract of sensations and reflections, as we ought, on Locke's principles, to be able to do, is manifest when we go over the conditions of perceiving the simplest object, say, an orange. Here we have sensations swarming into us, by every sense-muscle, touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell; sensations of the most heterogeneous character, yet, nevertheless, we set them down as being caused by one thing or substance. Why don't we set down these different classes of sensations as caused by as many different things? It is replied that experience gives us all these sensations simultaneously, or practically so, therefore the appearance of any one