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Title Pages
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online

Philippe Hamou and Martine Pécharman
Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780198815037
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: July 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198815037.001.0001
Title Pages
Philippe Hamou, Martine Pécharman
(p.i) Locke and Cartesian Philosophy (p.ii)
(p.iii) Locke and Cartesian Philosophy
(p.iv)
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Abbreviations


Print ISBN-13: 9780198815037
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198815037.001.0001
(p.vii) Abbreviations
A
German Academy of Sciences, ed. G. W. Leibniz:
Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. Darmstadt and
Berlin: Berlin Academy, 1923–.
AG
An Early Draft of Locke’s Essay: Together with
Excerpts from his Journals, ed. Richard I. Aaron
and Jocelyn Gibb, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936.
AT
C. Adam and P. Tannery, eds., Oeuvres de
Descartes, 12 vols. Paris: Vrin, 1897–1913; repr.
Paris, Vrin, 1964–76.
BL
British Library.
CSM
J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch, trans.,
The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Vol. I & II.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
CSMK
J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch, and A.
Kenny, trans., The Philosophical Writings of
Page 1 of 3
Abbreviations
Descartes. Vol III. The Correspondence. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1991.
DM
Nicolas Malebranche, Dialogues on Metaphysics
and on Religion.
Draft A, Draft B
John Locke, Drafts for the Essay Concerning Human
Understanding and Other Philosophical Writings,
vol. 1, Drafts A & B ed. Peter H. Nidditch and G. A.
J. Rogers. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
E
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, ed. P. H. Nidditch. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1975.
EEH
John Locke, Essai concernant l’entendement
humain, trans. Pierre Coste, ed. E. Naert. Paris:
Vrin, 1974.
JS
N. Jolley, ed., and D. Scott, trans., Nicolas
Malebranche: Dialogues on Metaphyics and on
Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997.
LO
T. M. Lennon and P. J. Olscamp, eds., Nicolas
Malebranche: The Search After Truth, rev. edn.
LC
E. S. De Beer, ed., The Correspondence of John
Locke, 8 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976–89.
LL
John Harrison and Peter Laslett, The Library of John
Locke. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.
(p.viii) LW
John Locke, The Works of John Locke, 10 vols.
London: Thomas Tegg, 1823, repr. Aalen, 1963.
NE
G. W. Leibniz, New Essays on Human
Understanding.
OCM
A. Robinet, ed., Œuvres complètes de Malebranche,
20 vols. Paris: Vrin, 1958–67.
P
Page 2 of 3
Abbreviations
René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy.

RB
P. Remnant and J. Bennett, trans., G.W. Leibniz:
New Essays on Human Understanding, rev. edn.
Reasonableness
John Locke, The reasonableness of Christianity as
delivered in the scriptures. Edited with an
introduction, notes, critical apparatus and
transcriptions of related manuscripts by John C.
Higgins-Biddle. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.
(The Clarendon edition of the works of John Locke.)
SAT
Nicolas Malebranche, The Search After Truth.
T
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature.
Page 3 of 3
Contributors


Print ISBN-13: 9780198815037
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198815037.001.0001
(p.ix) Contributors
Peter R. Anstey
is Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Sydney. He specializes in early modern philosophy
with a particular focus on the philosophy of John
Locke, experimental philosophy, and the philosophy
of principles. He is the author of John Locke and
Natural Philosophy (Oxford, 2011) and editor (with
Lawrence Principe) of the forthcoming Clarendon
edition of Locke’s writings on natural philosophy
and medicine.
Andreas Blank
is Visiting Associate Professor in philosophy at Bard
College Berlin. His publications include Der
logische Aufbau von Leibniz’ Metaphyik (De
Gruyter, 2001), Leibniz: Metaphilosophy and
Metaphysics, 1666–1686 (Philosophia, 2005),
Biomedical Ontology and the Metaphysics of
Composite Substances, 1540–1670 (Philosophia,
2010) and Ontological Dependence and the
Metaphysics of Composite Substances, 1540–1716
(Philosophia, 2015). He is currently completing a
Page 1 of 4
Contributors
book on presumptions and early modern practical

rationality.
Martha Brandt Bolton,
Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, has
written on many topics in the history of early
modern metaphysics and theory of cognition
including Descartes on thinking as a principle
attribute, Locke on the sorts of things which remain
the same in time, and the engagement of Locke’s
Essay by Leibniz’s New Essays.
Lisa Downing
is Professor of Philosophy at the Ohio State
University. She has published widely in early
modern philosophy (on Descartes, Malebranche,
Boyle, Locke, Berkeley, and Newtonianism),
especially on connections among physics,
metaphysics, and philosophy of science in the
period.
Philippe Hamou
is Professor of Philosophy at Université Paris-
Nanterre. He has published on early modern
philosophy and science, with special focus on
Galileo, Locke, Newton, vision, and visuality. He is
currently completing a book on Locke’s concept of
mind.
Matthieu Haumesser
teaches philosophy at a public high school in Cergy-
Pontoise and at the Paris Institute of Political
Studies. He works on modern philosophy, especially
on Locke and Kant. His publications include Kant:
De L’Amphibologie des Concepts de la Réflexion
(Paris: Vrin, 2010), in which he studies Locke’s
influence on Kant’s critical philosophy.
James Hill
is a privatdozent at Charles University in Prague
and a fellow of the Philosophy Institute in the Czech
Academy of Science. He has published widely on
(p.x) early modern philosophy, including Descartes
and the Doubting Mind (Bloomsbury, 2012). He is
currently working on a monograph on George
Berkeley.
Laurent Jaffro
Page 2 of 4
Contributors
is Professor of Moral Philosophy at Panthéon-

Sorbonne University, Paris. His work focuses on
moral theory and the history of early modern
British philosophy. He has published in particular
on the third Earl of Shaftesbury, John Toland,
George Berkeley, and Thomas Reid.
Nicholas Jolley
is Emeritus Professor and Research Professor of
Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine.
His publications include Locke: His Philosophical
Thought (OUP, 1999) and Locke’s Touchy Subjects:
Materialism and Immortality (OUP, 2015). His most
recent book is Toleration and Understanding in
Locke (OUP, 2016).
Denis Kambouchner
is Professor of the History of Early Modern
Philosophy at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-
Sorbonne. He has written numerous studies on
Descartes (recently published: Descartes n’a pas
dit, Paris, Les Belles-Lettres, 2015) and is now the
chief editor of the new edition of Descartes’s
Complete Works (Gallimard, in progress). He is
currently completing a comprehensive study of the
Metaphysical Meditations.
J. R. Milton
is Professor Emeritus of the History of Philosophy
at King’s College London, and General Editor of the
Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke. He
has published widely on Locke and other topics in
early modern philosophy, and is currently finishing
work on two volumes for the Clarendon Edition:
Literary and Historical Writings and Drafts of the
Essay concerning Human Understanding and other
Philosophical Writings, volume 2.
Martine Pécharman
is Director of Research at the Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, Paris). She has
written broadly on early modern logic (with a
special focus on Hobbes and on Port-Royal),
metaphysics, and ethics. She has also produced
critical editions of Hobbes, Bayle, Condillac.
Catherine Wilson
Page 3 of 4
Contributors
is Anniversary Professor of Philosophy at the

University of York. She has published widely in
early modern philosophy and is working on a book
on Kant and the life and human sciences.
Page 4 of 4
Introduction


Print ISBN-13: 9780198815037
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198815037.001.0001
Introduction
Philippe Hamou
Martine Pécharman
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198815037.003.0001
Abstract and Keywords

This introductory chapter pleads for a reassessment of Locke’s
complex attitude to Descartes. It argues that the anti-
Cartesian agenda of the Essay is better understood when
Locke’s intellectual debt to Descartes and Cartesian
philosophers is fully recognized. It shows that Locke’s
engagement with Cartesian philosophy cannot be reduced to
his defence of an ‘empiricist’ view of knowledge against a
rationalist, Cartesian, one. Such characterizations raise
perhaps as many problems as they supposedly solve. Besides,
epistemology was not Locke’s unique preoccupation in the
Essay. Natural philosophy, metaphysics of bodies and souls,
religion were no less crucial, even though, at the surface of
the text, Locke’s self-proclaimed agnosticism tended to
underplay their importance. On these issues, a pluriform
confrontation with Descartes was unavoidable, and clearly a
driving force in the conduct of Locke’s arguments.
Keywords: Locke, Descartes, Cartesian philosophy, An Essay concerning

Human Understanding, empiricism, metaphysics, confrontation of arguments
Page 1 of 23
Introduction
Locke’s relationship to Descartes and Cartesian philosophy

has long been an important theme in Lockean studies.1 Until
quite recently however, the historiography has suffered from
an almost exclusive focalization on epistemological issues. The
chapter on Descartes in James Gibson’s Locke’s Theory of
Knowledge is a good illustration of how Locke’s connection to
Descartes has been usually interpreted during the past
century. According to Gibson, who compares a striking
passage from the Regulae2 to Locke’s own general statements
of intent in the Essay, Locke’s and Descartes’s philosophical
aims were essentially similar: they both set out to enquire into
the sources of knowledge, in order to determine what can be
known with certainty. Their proposed methods, drawing on the
consciousness that we have of our own ideas, and on the
intuitive perception of the relation between them, also present
striking resemblances. Gibson considered, however, that
Locke went further, and on more secure grounds, than
Descartes himself, being more rigorous in his treatment of the
epistemological problem (which means, for Gibson, more
careful to avoid metaphysical conundrums), (p.2) and
pointing out where precisely Descartes had gone wrong. As
Gibson wrote in the conclusion of his chapter on Locke and
Descartes:
In the attempt to determine fundamental questions of

fact in an a priori manner, apart from any reference to
experience, and in the tendency to offer an exposition of
conceptions in place of a synthetic demonstration, there
was evidence that after all Descartes had not completely
emancipated himself from the toils of the scholastic
logic. And since these features were precisely those
which a theory of innateness was designed to support,
the defects of method and the presence of the offending
theory could hardly fail to be connected in Locke’s
mind.3
Gibson had earlier made an interesting statement about

Descartes’s ‘influence’ on Locke:4
Page 2 of 23
Introduction
Without the influence of the Cartesian view of knowledge

and the Cartesian conception of self-consciousness, it is
not too much to say that the Essay, as we know it, would
never have been written. At the same time, we shall find
that the way in which Locke develops the view of
knowledge which he found in Descartes, and the very
different use to which he puts the conception of self-
consciousness, suffice to negative at once the suggestion
of any want of originality in his fundamental positions.
So freely indeed, does he transform the Cartesian
principles that the existence of any positive relation of
dependence upon them has frequently been ignored by
the historian of philosophy, and the positions of
Descartes and Locke have been set in antithetical
opposition to each other.
Gibson is certainly right when he criticizes the ‘antithetical’

view of the relationship that prevailed among historians and
philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and
most contributors to this volume would concur with the view
that a number of Cartesian themes are, indeed, freely and
subtly appropriated by Locke. A more debatable point in
Gibson’s approach is the suggestion that Locke and Descartes
were basically pursuing the same end, seeking to provide safe
grounds for scientific knowledge, using the same method of
certainty through the ‘way of ideas’. Gibson seems to consider
as positive a view that was put forward with negative intent by
John Sergeant, Edward Stillingfleet, or Henry Lee as their
main argument against Locke’s ‘Cartesian’ doctrine of
knowledge. In so doing, he expresses what will become an
influential historiographical conception, namely that Descartes
and Locke form together the spearhead in the ‘epistemological
turn’ of early modern philosophy.5 Since then indeed, the
theory of knowledge has been the main locus for the
comparison of the two authors.6
(p.3) In bringing together the several contributions of this

volume, we would like to advocate for a shift of emphasis. As
chapters in this volume amply show, there is much to learn
from the comparison of Locke’s and Descartes’s positions on
physical, metaphysical, and religious matters. Their conflicting
claims on issues such as cosmic organization, the qualities and
nature of bodies, the nature of ideas, the substance of the soul
Page 3 of 23
Introduction
… are relevant, not only in their own right, to take the full
measure of Locke’s complex relation to Descartes, but also as
they allow a better understanding of the epistemological
debate.
Let us consider these various points somewhat more closely,

starting with the old antithetical view. There is of course,
something inescapable in it. In many respects Locke and
Descartes were very different men, besides being obviously
very different philosophers. Their religious breeding and
convictions (if not their ‘essential religiosity’7), their attitudes
towards political involvement, their prose and style were
altogether distinct, almost opposite. Both spent a long and
fruitful period of exile in Holland, but for Descartes it was by
personal choice, whereas Locke was fleeing a threat of prison
in the heated political climate that followed the discovery of
the Rye House plot. On many doctrinal philosophical points,
Locke held specifically anti-Cartesian theses. He did not think
that the soul always thinks, that we have innate ideas, that we
have a positive idea of infinity,8 nor that we could have an idea
of a chiliaëdron9 that is not an image; he denied that our idea
of body and our idea of extension are one and the same, and so
on. On even more numerous other points, Locke expressed
serious doubts about well-known Cartesian doctrines. He was
reluctant to give much weight to the ontological proof of God’s
existence.10 He had trouble with the certainty of the so-called
‘dualistic’ account of matter and spirit, even suggesting in IV.
iii. 6 that, because our limited knowledge is unable to master
the puzzles raised by our ideas of matter and thought, the soul
might therefore be material. He remained entirely
unconvinced by the doctrine of beast-machines,11 etc.
Voltaire’s Letter on Mr Locke was perhaps the earliest and
most influential expression of the antithesis between, on the
one hand, Moderns such as Descartes and Malebranche who
still belonged to the ‘multitude of reasoners’ writing ‘the
romance of the soul’ and, on the other hand, the wise and
modest Locke who, as an ‘excellent anatomist’, was the first to
write its ‘history’.12 Since then it has been common practice to
represent the two authors as personifications of some of the
major (p.4) antinomies of early modern philosophy, the
enduring battle of Gods and Giants,13 rationalism and
empiricism, nativism and empiricism,14 free will and
determinism. Locke himself seems to have been partly
responsible for the invention of the antagonistic view, and the
Page 4 of 23
Introduction
spreading in England of a rather common caricature of

Descartes. Of all the authors referred to directly or (more
often) indirectly in the Essay, Descartes is certainly the most
conspicuously present. But his name (or the word
Cartesian(s)), which recurs significantly often in a work where
very few proper names are mentioned, is almost never
mentioned in praise.15 As Pierre Coste sourly remarked in the
footnotes to his French translation of the Essay, whenever
Descartes comes to the fore, Locke’s judgement, usually sound
and measured, appears somewhat twisted, often verging on
caricature. In his footnotes to chapter II. i for instance, Coste
was dissatisfied with Locke’s way of presenting the Cartesian
thesis that the soul thinks always.16 Also, in his footnotes to II.
xiii, he stressed Locke’s rather unfair attribution to Cartesians
of the thesis that sensible qualities are all inseparable from
extension, in order to argue for the distinction of the ideas of
space and body.17 In some cases the Lockean arguments are
simply irrelevant, attacking doctrines that are not really
Cartesian, and in others, they tend to distort or harden the
Cartesian position, so that it can easily be identified with its
most extreme and abhorrent consequences—as for (p.5)
example, when Locke identifies the Cartesian dualistic account
of mind and body with a quasi-Platonistic account of soul–body
dissociation, drawing on strange thought-experiments of soul
transmigrations between animal–machine bodies, in order to
show the seemingly appalling consequences of Descartes’s
doctrine of pure thought.18 At a time when Descartes’s
persona and Descartes’s thought still had a very strong hold
on European minds, it can appear as if Locke (who was surely
not immune to a certain nationalistic prejudice against the
‘French Philosophers’19) was taking it upon himself to provide
the tools for dismantling the Cartesian statue, and French
philosophical pre-eminence.
However, even though Locke himself appears willing to plead

for it, the common antithetical reading of the relationship
between the two authors must be taken with some caution.
Nationalistic prejudices and caricatures aside, Locke’s
relationship to Cartesian philosophy seems to be far more
complex. As suggested earlier in Gibson’s quotation, Locke
freely incorporated into his philosophical insight, making them
almost organic constituents, a number of Cartesian themes,
concepts, and methodological commitments. For example,
Locke’s way of philosophizing certainly perpetuates a style
Page 5 of 23
Introduction
and an ideal that owe much to Descartes. Locke never made a

mystery of Descartes’s role in awakening his interest in
philosophy. As he once told Lady Masham, Descartes’s
writings were the first to give him ‘a relish of Philosophical
Studys’.20 Similarly, in his controversy with Stillingfleet, he
acknowledged a ‘great obligation’ to Descartes in that he
owed him his ‘first deliverance from the unintelligible way of
talking of the philosophy in use in the Schools’.21 Locke,
perhaps more than any other in the century, developed and
transmitted Descartes’s legacy of a philosophy written in plain
language, addressed to the common reader, and deliberately
avoiding the Scholastic jargon. More importantly, Locke
adopted Descartes’s decision to treat philosophical questions
in a ‘first-person’ perspective. Admittedly, the use of the first
person (singular or plural) is certainly less systematic in the
Essay than it is in the Meditations or the Discourse on Method.
But nevertheless, the same philosophical idea is here at the
very heart of both enterprises: truth is always firstly
encountered as subjective certainty. All philosophical
questions are to be treated, not through (p.6) dialectical
considerations of the best available opinions, nor through
deductions from general principles or maxims, but as they
appear to a singular subjective experience, to an unprejudiced
mind, dealing with how things look to itself, how they appear
to be—or what they are in its ideas. No doubt, the Essay
remains a very different book from the Meditations. Locke has
no patience for universal doubt, and does not think highly of
its epistemic virtues. Rather than a strict demonstration, in
which nothing is admitted if not analytically deduced from first
truths, Locke’s reader is invited to follow the sinuous and
somewhat rambling discourse of the Essay, interspersed with
digressions and tacit suggestions of more or less probable
opinions—a discourse that Locke presents as the very image of
his own wandering and curious mind, open to whatever comes
into view—and sometimes even surprised by his own
discoveries.22 This no doubt reveals crucial differences—but
once again, Locke and Descartes share the same ground, the
same conviction that philosophy starts in some sense with the
history of one’s own mind, and that we, as philosophers, have
the epistemic duty to build on a ground that is all ours, a duty
to be the sole authors and warrants of whatever we hold to be
true.23
Page 6 of 23
Introduction
It must be emphasized again that many theoretical options

that Locke followed in the Essay would not have been possible
without Descartes. This of course is quite obvious on issues
related to mind and knowledge, where Locke uses such
unmistakable Cartesian concepts as ‘clear and distinct
ideas’,24 ‘consciousness’, ‘thinking things’, ‘intuitive’ and
‘demonstrative’ knowledge, and sometimes characterizes them
in terms that are literally taken from Descartes. But even on
topics where Locke is overtly attacking Descartes, for example
on substance and mode, on space and extension, on the
freedom of the will, it can be shown (see e.g. the chapters by
Bolton, Hill, and Kambouchner) that Locke’s positions depend
at a constitutive level on Cartesian premises, and could not
have been produced without them. For example, his criticism
of innate ideas is grounded in a strict Cartesian definition of
thought as conscious thinking. His anti-Cartesian definition of
bodies reposes on a broadly Cartesian view of material
substance as a fully actualized and undifferentiated stuff, of
which all bodies are constituted. On some occasions, it seems
that Locke is exploring theoretical possibilities that Descartes
himself had opened up but had not really wanted to
investigate. For example, a case could be made that Locke’s
view of ideas is a direct descendant of the theory of sensation
that can be found in the Treatise on Man, where it is said that
ideas are kinds of images or pictures that are projected into
the brain and there become (p.7) the object of sensory
awareness. Of course, to Descartes, ideas in this sense are not
what ideas in the intellectual sense are. In later texts, to avoid
equivocation, Descartes tended to drop the language of ideas
when talking about sensory images. But for anyone who
strongly doubts (as Locke did) that something like ‘pure
intellectual thoughts’ can exist, Cartesian sensations are
indeed the only immediate content of the mind that we are left
with. The challenge for a Lockean epistemology would
therefore be to make sense of true knowledge, even
mathematical knowledge, with these Cartesian sensory images
and with them alone.
So on these issues and on a number of other topics, Locke

drew on Descartes’s concepts and doctrines with a kind of
casual selectiveness, borrowing from them, as from a tool box,
what he needed, with little or no consideration of their original
purposes, and sometimes of course in direct opposition to
them. This kind of selective or idiosyncratic appropriation is
Page 7 of 23
Introduction
perhaps typical of how philosophers work and capitalize on

others. But in the case of Locke and Descartes, the ties are so
strong that there is a sense in which it can be said that the
Essay belongs to the history of ‘Cartesianism’. Naturally, the
term should not be understood as describing a ‘school’,
identified by a set of fixed and intangible theses—such a
school never actually existed. The term should be taken,
rather, as a general label for the various ways Descartes’s
philosophy was used, selectively interpreted and transformed
in the course of the long seventeenth century.
This in turns explains the need to consider Locke’s complex

appropriation of Descartes in a larger context, involving other
subject matters, and other actors and perpetuators of
Cartesianism, such as the Port-Royal authors, Malebranche,
Clauberg, etc. Not only did these authors contribute to the
diffusion of Cartesian ideas in Europe, and notably in England,
they also put these ideas into use, applying them to questions
and fields that were not directly addressed by Descartes—
specifically, in the case of Port-Royal and Clauberg, to
linguistics and logic. As his journal of travels in France shows,
Locke read many of these authors, perhaps as extensively as
he read Descartes. Locke’s journal in Paris on 7 March 1678
reproduced a short anonymous writing entitled Methode pour
bien etudier la doctrine de Mr de Cartes, which recommended
reading Cartesians, not only Descartes: ‘apres avoir bien
conceu la maniere de philosopher dans sa methode on peut
lire sur le sujet de la Logique celle que nous ont donnee Mrs de
Port Royal qui est un ouvrage le plus accompli qui ait encore
paru en ce genre et faire l’application des 4 regles de Des
Cartes sur les quatre parties qu’elle contienne’. The unknown
author of the Methode added: ‘On peut encore lire la dessus la
Logique de Clauberge qui a servi comme de fondement a celle-
la et un autre traité sur le méme sujet que Mr Du Hamel a
intitulé de Mente Humana.’25 On several topics—especially (p.
8) on words, on propositional attitudes (such as assent or
negation), on the status of maxims and principles—the
Cartesians were more direct interlocutors for Locke than
Descartes was. Moreover, of the French philosophers, it was
probably Malebranche rather than Descartes who came to the
forefront of Locke’s philosophical and polemical interests at
the end of his life.26 The inclusion in this book of three studies
dealing with these so-called ‘Cartesians’ will certainly help
Page 8 of 23
Introduction
broaden our understanding of Locke’s uses and criticisms of

Cartesian ideas.
We suggested earlier that epistemology (the theory of

knowledge) has for a long time been the main focus of studies
dealing with Locke’s relationship to Descartes. Contemporary
concerns probably buttressed the interest of interpreters from
the last century in these sorts of questions. At a time when
Locke was held as one of the respectable ancestors of the
modern ‘logical-positivist’ theory of knowledge, it might have
seemed especially interesting, and perhaps somewhat
perplexing, to consider how he could have managed to
combine a Cartesian-like ‘foundational’ intent with a strong
commitment to ‘empiricism’. It seems that we know better
now: Locke’s commitment to the idea that all knowledge is
founded on experience is not foundationalist, if by this we
mean that it may serve to unify the sciences or to make
apparent their abstract logical structure. In the last chapter of
the Essay, Locke clearly distinguishes between the intellectual
provinces, showing that it is one thing to study the
instruments (or signs) we use to know things (ideas and
words), and another, altogether different, to study the things
themselves ‘as they are in their proper beings’.27 If the
‘Under-Labourer’ (the Lockean philosopher) is useful to the
‘Master-Builders’ (the natural philosophers),28 it is in
clarifying what they are up to, and not in offering to them
whatever principles or hard, incontrovertible data they are
supposed to need to construct their edifice. In this, Locke also
appears quite far removed from the Descartes of the
Meditations and Principles, if not from the Descartes of the
Regulae.
Besides, the very idea that Locke’s philosophy is promoting an

‘empiricist’ view of knowledge against the ‘rationalist’ view of
the Cartesians raises perhaps as many problems as it
supposedly solves. ‘Empiricism’/‘rationalism’ are not
categories of (p.9) Locke’s time; their application to
seventeenth-century thinkers was the result of retrospective
and often polemical readings, through Kantian and post-
Kantian glasses. Although Locke certainly says that sensory
experience provides the material of all knowledge—yet not
alone, since the mind’s reflection on its operations constitutes
a second mode of ‘Experience’29—his own definition of
knowledge as the act through which the mind perceives the
agreement of ideas appears to be a rather intellectualist one
Page 9 of 23
Introduction
(if the term is any improvement); and Locke’s commitment to

reason (that is, to demonstration and proofs) was certainly no
weaker than Descartes’s.
Another reason why commentary on Locke has long focused

almost exclusively on epistemological questions is Locke’s own
restraint regarding physical and metaphysical issues. Locke
made quite clear from the very start of the Essay that,
concerning the mind, he did not want to ‘meddle’ with any
‘physical consideration’.30 Correlatively, in the last chapter of
the Essay, he explained that in his division of sciences, the
term physics or ‘natural philosophy’ is to be understood in an
‘enlarged Sense’,31 including whatever concerns the proper
beings of things, either corporeal or spiritual. Among such
physical and/or metaphysical questions are the true
constitution of matter, the explanation of its various powers
and activities, its cosmic arrangement and motions, the
existence of void space, the relation between mind and bodies,
the essence and mechanisms of the mind, the nature of ideas
and how much they depend on matter, etc. All these questions
were obviously central to Descartes, and Descartes’s stance on
them, his particular brand of mechanism, his identification of
body and extension, his vortex theory, his concept of the mind
as an immaterial substance, etc. were of course hotly debated
in the seventeenth century. As Locke claimed to remain
agnostic on physical matters, he might appear not to have
wanted to side either with or against Descartes on these
issues. But this is certainly false: on all these questions and on
many others of the same sort, Locke’s positive contributions to
the ongoing debates are obvious, as is his engagement with
Cartesian ideas. We therefore need to consider carefully what
Locke really meant when he said that he was abstaining from
physical considerations. He certainly wanted to make it clear
that most physical issues cannot be dealt (p.10) with
properly until we come to terms with the measure of our own
capacity for knowing. And as it turns out, most of them cannot
be dealt with at all at the level of knowledge, that is, with any
hope of achieving certainty about them. Nevertheless, this
‘abstentionist’ stance on ‘physical’ issues did not mean that
Locke had no opinions, reasoned opinions, on whatever
concerns the very being of things. And it did not mean either
that Locke’s opinions on these matters were not expressed in
the Essay. Quite the contrary, they are to be found in many
places, sometimes in the most explicit way (as in II. viii, where
Page 10 of 23
Introduction
Locke summons up the corpuscular and mechanistic theory of

matter to explain the differences between primary and
secondary qualities), and sometimes in more cryptic and
indirect ways, through suggestions, conjectures, analogies,
euphemisms, and so on. In fact, as recent Locke scholarship
has shown, and as many contributions here will confirm, the
Essay as a whole, and Locke’s philosophy in general, is
offering strong insights into physical and metaphysical issues.
And on this ground, the confrontation with Descartes was
inevitable. Even though, at the surface of the text, Locke’s self-
proclaimed agnosticism tended to underplay the importance of
these issues, their consideration was still clearly a driving
force in the conduct of Locke’s arguments.
Page 11 of 23
Introduction
Summary of the Chapters

J. R. Milton’s contribution (‘Locke and Descartes: the Initial
Exposure, 1660–1670’) is a biographical account of Locke’s
first encounter with Descartes’s works. It looks at Locke’s
manuscript commonplace books with the aim of determining in
as much detail as is now possible what books by Descartes
Locke read in the period before he started work on the drafts
of the Essay, what he found of interest in them, and what
conclusions might be drawn from this data about his
philosophical development. It shows that there is evidence of a
considerable and sustained interest in Descartes’s mechanical
physics but hardly any visible interest in his metaphysics or
epistemology—and considers the possible reasons for this
state of affairs.
Peter Anstey (‘Locke and Cartesian Cosmology’) offers more

evidence of Locke’s interest in Descartes’s natural philosophy,
and in the Cartesian-inspired scientific literature of the
seventeenth century in general. He examines Locke’s
changing views on the cosmology of Descartes and his
followers. In particular, he explains the context in which Locke
frames the phrase ‘our solar system’ and substitutes it for ‘our
vortex’—a strikingly Cartesian expression which he himself
often used, and which was still commonly employed in
England at the end of the century.
Chapters 3–5 examine the Cartesian and anti-Cartesian

subtext of the Lockean theory of bodies. James Hill’s (‘The
Cartesian Element in Locke’s Anti-Cartesian Conception of
Body’) concentrates on the concept of impenetrability or
solidity. It shows that Locke’s distinction between hardness
and impenetrability parallels the Cartesian one, and it argues
that this makes it impossible to ascribe to Locke a strict
adherence to the atomistic view, which considers that the
indivisibility of the ultimate (p.11) particles results from their
perfect hardness. He makes the case that Locke’s agnosticism
on the essence of matter is paradoxically derived from the
most Cartesian elements in his theory of bodies.
Lisa Downing’s ‘Are Body and Extension the Same Thing?

Locke versus Descartes (versus More)’ is also dealing with
impenetrability, and shows that Locke’s engagement with
Descartes goes surprisingly deep on this issue. It illustrates
how many of Locke’s points on space, extension, and solidity
Page 12 of 23
Introduction
are clarified by seeing them as responding to Descartes’s

correspondence with More, in which Descartes specifically
says that impenetrability results from extension.
Third in this tryptic on the nature of bodies, Martha Bolton’s

chapter (‘Modes and Composite Material Things According to
Descartes and Locke’) stresses the ontological side of the
question. In Descartes’s ontology, a created substance, or its
principal attribute, unifies the many modes that belong to that
substance; by contrast, Locke’s ontology includes not only
substances and their qualities, but also composite entities
which contain substances but are unified by modes. Locke, she
argues, seeks to adapt the apparent unity of living things, such
as oaks, horses, and human beings, to the (Cartesian)
mechanistic doctrine that matter is a substance.
Matthieu Haumesser’s chapter (‘Virtual Existence of Ideas and

Real Existence: Locke’s Anti-Cartesian Ontology’) considers
the concept of ‘existence’ as it is variously applied in Locke to
the objects of sensation (the ‘real existence’ of things) and to
the objects of reflection (the ‘fleeting existence’ of ideas). It
shows that Locke, in order to construct his own ontology and
typology of simple ideas and modes, is both using and
subverting the Cartesian ontology of substance and modes.
Ideas, as ‘immediate objects of perception’, exist in the mind,
but not substantially. This in turn sheds light on the
differences between Locke’s and Descartes’s doctrines of
ideas, especially on the question of ‘objective reality’, which
played a strategic part in the Third Meditation, as well as in
the debate between Arnauld and Malebranche.
Locke’s construal of selves, persons, and thinking substances

is notoriously difficult and the subject of wide controversy. In
Philippe Hamou’s chapter (‘Locke and Descartes on Selves and
Thinking Substances’), it is suggested that we could go some
way towards clarifying it by seeing it in the context of
Descartes’s construal of the same or similar issues. It argues
that there are both strong threads of continuity (which may
appear even stronger in the light of the recent reappraisal of
Descartes’s so-called dualism) and a quite obvious (but often
neglected) anti-Cartesian strand in Locke’s doctrine of the self.
The chapter seeks to assess precisely where and why Locke
departs from Descartes and shows, contrary to a common but
misconceived view of Locke’s aim in chapter II. xvii, that it is
Page 13 of 23
Introduction
not so much the Cartesian ‘substantiation’ of the self that

Locke is arguing against, but rather its disembodiment.
Denis Kambouchner (‘Locke and Descartes on Free Will’)

considers interesting parallels in the evolution of Descartes’s
and Locke’s thoughts and formulations with regard to the
problem of free will, which, from almost opposite starting
points, bring them closer together. The ‘family resemblance’
between them (also seen in (p.12) Malebranche, an
important mediator here) is due to the recognition of the
irreducibility and complexity of the problem of the
determination of the will—a problem that cannot be solved
with simplistic formulations such as ‘the will is necessitated’,
or ‘the will is absolutely free’. Both Descartes and Locke
carefully distinguish between various aspects of the question:
whether the will can or cannot be compelled, whether it can
resist the attractiveness of certain perceptions, whether the
determination of the will obeys rules. When we examine their
most carefully considered positions, what appears prima facie
as an antinomy between the two doctrines must be
significantly nuanced, to the point that the affinities prevail.
Catherine Wilson’s chapter (‘Essential Religiosity in Descartes

and Locke’) is a fine example of how broadening our
perspective on Locke’s relationship to Descartes enables us to
better assess the meaning of their epistemological enterprises,
and their historical significance. She offers an overview and
comparison of Descartes’s and Locke’s stances toward
religious and moral issues (their ‘essential religiosity’), such as
their views on divine agency in the creation of the world and
direction of human affairs; the relevance of divine retribution
and reward to morality; their sense of supernatural power and
artistry as revealed in things of the world. She also contrasts
the different kinds of epistemic and moral humility that these
engender in each author.
Laurent Jaffro’s chapter (‘Locke and Port Royal on Affirmation,

Negation, and Other “Postures of the Mind” ’) claims that in
order to properly understand Locke’s doctrine of assent, his
philosophy of mind needs to be seen in conjunction with his
philosophy of language, which in turn gains from being
compared with Port-Royal’s logic and grammar. He points out
two conflicting facts in Locke’s account of affirmation and
negation in the Essay. First, Locke entrusts affirmation and
negation with the task of signifying both the assertion by
Page 14 of 23
Introduction
which we manifest our assent to a proposition and the junction

or separation of the ideas constituting the proposition. The
other fact is that Locke accepts a great variety of ways of
considering a proposition. This diversity of ‘postures’ is poorly
expressed by the limited number of syncategorematic terms,
‘particles’, which he tends to put on an equal footing with the
marks of affirmation and negation. The first fact fosters a one-
act view of the assent we give to propositions. The second
opens the way to a multiple-act view.
Andreas Blank (‘Cartesian Logic and Locke’s Critique of

Maxims’) contextualizes Locke’s critique of logical and
metaphysical maxims within the framework of the Cartesian
critique of the topical tradition. It makes clear that Locke,
targeting the Scholastic, proof-theoretic conception of maxims,
replicates argumentative patterns found in the work of the
Cartesian logicians Johannes Clauberg and Antoine Arnauld,
who argued against the topical (Ramist) conception of maxims.
Locke also inherits certain weaknesses of this Cartesian
critique, which, it is argued, does not adequately capture the
view of Petrus Ramus and others in the topical tradition that
maxims only make explicit the rules that implicitly govern
various areas of discourse.
Finally Nicholas Jolley’s chapter (‘Locke and Malebranche:

Intelligibility and Empiricism’) addresses the issue of whether
Locke’s own empiricist theory of ideas offers, (p.13) as Locke
often suggested, a more intelligible way of explaining human
understanding than Malebranche’s doctrine of Vision in God.
Drawing on Locke’s statements about the corpuscularian
hypothesis, he argues that although the empiricist theory may
satisfy some criteria of intelligibility, it is forced to recognize
the existence of processes that are ‘incomprehensible’; to that
extent, Locke’s theory of ideas runs parallel with his mature
philosophy of matter. The epistemic status of the empiricist
theory of ideas is thus more problematic than it is often taken
to be.
References
Bibliography references:
Manuscripts: MS Locke c. 28 fos. 119–20, Oxford, Bodleian

Library. The Locke Digital Project <http://
www.digitallockeproject.nl>.
Page 15 of 23
Introduction
Bonno, Gabriel. Les Relations intellectuelles de Locke avec la

France. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1955.
Condillac, Étienne Bonnot, abbé de. Essay on the Origin of

Human Knowledge (1746). Trans. H. Aarsleff. Cambridge:
De la Motte, Charles. ‘La Vie de Coste et anecdotes sur ses

ouvrages’, in John Locke, Que la Religion Chrétienne est très-
raisonnable, ed. Hélène Bouchilloux and Maria Cristina
Pitassi. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1999: 231–60.
Downing, Lisa. ‘Locke and Descartes’, A Companion to Locke,

ed. M. Stuart. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2015: pp. 100–20.
Gibson, James. Locke’s Theory of Knowledge and its Historical

Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917,
reprinted 2010.
Hatfield, Gary. ‘Epistemology and Science in the Image of

Modern Philosophy: Rorty on Descartes and Locke’, in Juliet
Floyd and Sanford Shieh, eds., Future Pasts: The Analytic
Tradition in Twentieth-Century Philosophy. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001: 393–413.
Jolley, Nicholas. Locke: His Philosophical Thought. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1999.
Jolley, Nicholas. ‘Lockean Abstractionism versus Cartesian

Nativism’, in Paul Hoffman, David Owen, and Gideon Yaffe,
eds., Contemporary Perspectives on Early-Modern Philosophy:
Essays in Honor of Vere Chappell. Peterborough, Ont.:
Broadview Press, 2008: 157–71.
Jolley, Nicholas. ‘Dull Souls and Beasts: Two Anti-Cartesian

Polemics in Locke’, in Petr Glombíček and James Hill, eds.,
Essays on the Concept of Mind in Early-Modern Philosophy.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010: 97–114.
Lennon, Thomas. The Battle of the Gods and Giants: The

Legacies of Descartes and Gassendi 1655–1715. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1993.
Page 16 of 23
Introduction
Lough, John. Locke’s Travels in France, 1675–1679, as Related

in his Journals, Correspondence and Other Papers. Cambridge:
Pécharman, Martine. ‘Le Problème de la distinction des idées’,

in P. Hamou and M. de Gaudemar, eds., Locke et Leibniz: Deux
styles de rationalité. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2011:
13–45.
Rogers, G. A. John. ‘Descartes and the Mind of Locke: The

Cartesian Impact on Locke’s Philosophical Development’, in G.
A. J. Rogers, Locke’s Enlightenment. Hildesheim: Georg Olms
Verlag, 1998: 23–31.
(p.14) Rorty, Richard, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.
Schmaltz, Tad M., ed. Receptions of Descartes: Cartesianism

and Anti-cartesianism in Early Modern Europe. London and
New York: Routledge, 2005.
Schouls, Peter A. ‘The Cartesian Method of Locke’s Essay

concerning Human Understanding’, Canadian Journal of
Philosophy, 4 (1974/5), 579–601.
Schouls, Peter A. The Imposition of Method: A Study of

Descartes and Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Schuurman, Paul. Ideas, Mental Faculties, and Method: The

Logic of Ideas of Descartes and Locke and its Reception in the
Dutch Republic, 1630–1750. Leiden: Brill, 2004.
Schuurman, Paul. ‘Descartes, René (1596–1650)’, in S.-J.

Savonius-Wroth, Paul Schuurman, Jonathan Walmsley, eds.,
The Continuum Companion to Locke. London: Continuum
Press, 2010: 53–7.
Thilly, Frank. ‘Locke’s Relation to Descartes’, The

Philosophical Review, vol. 9, no. 6 (1900), 597–612.
Yolton, John. Locke and the Way of Ideas. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1956.
Notes:
Page 17 of 23
Introduction
(1) General contributions on Locke’s relation to Descartes

include Frank Thilly, ‘Locke’s Relation to Descartes’ (1900);
James Gibson, Locke’s Theory of Knowledge and its Historical
Relations (1917); Peter A. Schouls, ‘The Cartesian Method of
Locke’s Essay’ (1975); Thomas M. Lennon, The Battle of the
Gods and Giants (1994); G. A. John Rogers, ‘Descartes and the
Mind of Locke’ (1998); Paul A. Schuurman, Ideas, Mental
Faculties and Method (2004) and ‘Descartes, René’ (2010),
Schmaltz (ed.), Receptions of Descartes (2005); Nicholas Jolley,
‘Lockean Abstractionism versus Cartesian Nativism’ (2008),
and ‘Dull Souls and Beasts’ (2010); Lisa Downing, ‘Locke and
Descartes’ (2015).
(2) In the Regulae—published only in 1701—the passage

which, according to Gibson, ‘seems almost verbally to
anticipate’ Locke’s critical questioning of the bounds of
knowledge reads: ‘Now there does not arise here any problem
the solution of which is of greater importance than that of
determining the nature of human knowledge and how far it
extends; two points which we combine into one and the same
enquiry, which it is necessary first of all to consider in
accordance with the rules given above. This is a question
which one must face once in one’s life, if one has ever so slight
a love of truth, since it embraces the whole of method, and as
it were the true instruments of knowledge. Nothing seems to
me to be more absurd than to discuss with boldness the
mysteries of nature, the influence of the stars, and the secrets
of the future, without having once asked whether the human
mind is competent to such enquiries’ (Regulae ad directionem
ingenii, VIII, quoted in Gibson, Locke’s Theory of Knowledge,
pp. 207–8).
(3) Gibson, Locke’s Theory of Knowledge, p. 232.
(4) Ibid. p. 207.
(5) On the so-called ‘epistemological turn’ see Rorty,

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature; and for a critical account
of Rorty’s historiography, Hatfield, ‘Epistemology and Science
in the Image of Modern Philosophy: Rorty on Descartes and
Locke’.
(6) See in particular Schuurman, Ideas, Mental Faculties, and

Method. The idea that Locke basically appropriated the whole
of Descartes’s ‘method’ and, separating it from metaphysics,
Page 18 of 23
Introduction
made it palatable for empirical minded eighteenth-century

philosophers, is developed at length in P. A. Schouls’s
publications. See, inter alii, his 1975 paper ‘The Cartesian
Method of Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding’,
and the book that followed: The Imposition of Method: A Study
of Descartes and Locke.
(7) See in this volume Catherine Wilson’s contribution.
(8) See E II. xvii.
(9) See Descartes, Meditatio Sexta: AT 7, pp. 72–3 and Locke,

E II. xxix.14.
(10) See E IV. x. 7. This point was developed in Locke’s

manuscript ‘Deus Des Cartes’s proof of a god from the Idea of
necessary existence examined 1696’ (MS Locke c. 28, fos. 119r
–120v).
(11) See E II. xi. 11 (‘if [Brutes] have any Ideas at all, and are
not bare Machins (as some would have them) we cannot deny
them to have some Reason’) and II. i. 19 (‘they must needs
have a penetrating sight, who can certainly see, that I think,
when I cannot perceive it my self, and when I declare, that I do
not; and yet can see, that Dogs or Elephants do not think,
when they give all the demonstration of it imaginable, except
only telling us, that they do so’).
(12) Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation, Letter

XIII, pp. 98–9.
(13) For instance, in his book The Battle of the Gods and
Giants, Thomas M. Lennon contends that Locke supports the
cause of Gassendi versus Descartes, renewing the perennial
philosophical battle characterized in Plato’s Sophist as the
struggle of materialism (Giants) against idealism (Gods). In
Lennon’s opinion, the whole of Locke’s Essay constitutes an
‘anti-Cartesian polemic’, notably, in the light of the two-
persons argument in II. i. 12 against the Cartesian thesis that
the soul always thinks, the ‘long treatment of personal
identity’ added to the second edition of the Essay in II. xxvii
cannot be viewed ‘just as a topic of independent philosophical
importance’ (p. 168).
Page 19 of 23
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sometimes. For the most part we lay ourselves out to answer
Tommy’s questions so far as we are able, and are sadly ashamed
that we are so soon floored by his insatiable curiosity about natural
objects and phenomena. Tommy has his reward. The most
surprising educational feat accomplished amongst us is the amount
of knowledge, about everything within his range, which Tommy has
acquired by the end of his sixth year. “Why, he knows as much as I
do, about”—this, and that, and the other, says his astonished and
admiring father. Take him to the seaside, and in a week he will tell
you all about trawling and mackerel fishing; the ways of the fisher-
folk, and all that his inquisitive mind can find out unaided. He would
tell all about sand, and shells, and tides, and waves, only, poor little
boy, he must have help towards this manner of knowledge, and there
is no one to give it to him. However, he finds out all that he can about
all that he sees and hears, and does amass a surprising amount of
exact knowledge about things and their properties.
When Tommy goes to school, his parents find themselves
relieved of the inconvenience of his incessant Why? They are
probably so well pleased to be let off that it does not occur to them to
ask themselves Why Tommy no longer wonders Why? Up to this
period nature has been active. She has been allowed to stimulate
that one of his desires most proper to minister to his mental growth,
just as, if let alone, she would give him that hearty appetite which
should promote his physical growth. She has it all her own way. The
desire of knowledge is that spring of action most operative in
Tommy’s childhood. But he goes to school. Knowledge is a pure
delight to Tommy. Let his lessons approach him on the lines of his
nature—not on the lines proper for certain subjects of instruction—
and the little boy has no choice. He cannot help learning and loving
to learn, “‘cos ’tis his nature to.”
This, of presenting knowledge to Tommy on the lines of his
nature, is, however, a difficult and delicate task. Not every
schoolmaster, any more than every parent, is keen to give Tommy
what he wants in this matter of needful knowledge. So, once upon a
time, let us suppose, there arose a pedagogue to whom was
discovered a new and easier way. The morning had seen the poor
man badly baffled by the queries of boys who wanted to know. How
was a man, who had pretty well done with fresh studies for his own
part, to keep up with these eager intelligences. In a vision of the
night it is disclosed to Cognitus that there is another and an easier
way. The desire of knowledge is not the only desire active in the
young bosom. Just as much as he wants to know, he wants to excel,
to do better than the rest. “Every soul of them wants to be first in one
way or another—first in games, if not in class.” Now, Cognitus was a
philosopher; he knew that, as a rule, but one desire is supremely
active at one time in the breast of boy or man. Kindle their emulation,
and all must needs do the same thing in the same way to see who
can do it best. The boys will no longer want to know; they will get
their due share of learning in regular ways, and really get on better
than if they were moved by the restless spirit of inquiry. Eureka! A
discovery; honour and renown for master and boys,—no need for
cane or imposition, for emulation is the best of all disciplinarians,—
and steady-going, quiet work, without any of the fatiguing excursions
into new fields to which the craving for knowledge leads. “How
pleased the parents will be, too,” says Cognitus, for he knows that
paternal love, now and then, looks for a little sustenance from
paternal vanity, that the child who does well is dear. Nay, who knows
but the far-seeing Cognitus beheld, as in a vision, the scholarships
and money awards which should help to fill the pocket of Paternus,
or should, any way, lessen the drain thereupon. Here, indeed, is a
better way, upon which Paternus and Cognitus may well consent to
walk together. Every one is happy, every one content, nobody
worried, a great deal of learning got in. What would you have more?
Just one thing, honoured Cognitus, that keen desire for knowledge,
that same incessant Why? with which Tommy went to school, and
which should have kept him inquisitive about all things good and
great and wise throughout the years given to him wherein to lay the
groundwork of character, the years of his youth.
We cannot put our finger upon Cognitus, and are pretty sure that
he arrived by a consensus of opinion, and through considerable
urgency on the part of parents. No one is to blame for a condition of
things which is an enormous advance upon much of what went
before. Only, knowledge is advancing, and it is full time that we
reconsider our educational principles and recast our methods. We
absolutely must get rid of the competitive examination system if we
would not be reduced to the appalling mediocrity which we see in
China, for example, to have befallen an examination-ridden empire.
Probably the world has never seen a finer body of educationalists
than those who at the present moment man our schools, both Boys’
and Girls’. But the originality, the fine initiative, of these most able
men and women is practically lost. The schools are examination-
ridden, and the heads can strike out no important new lines. Let us
begin our efforts by believing in one another, parents in teachers and
teachers in parents. Both parents and teachers have the one desire,
the advance of the child along the lines of character. Both groan
equally under the limitations of the present system. Let us have
courage, and united and concerted action will overthrow this
Juggernaut that we have made.
CHAPTER XXI
HERBARTIAN PEDAGOGICS
We in England require, every now and then, to pull ourselves
together, and to ask what they are doing on the continent in the way
of education. We still hark back to the older German educational
reformers. We may not know much of Comenius, Basedow, Ratich;
we do know something of the reformers next in descent, Pestalozzi
and Froebel; but how much do we know of the thought of Johann
Friedrich Herbart, the lineal successor of these, who has largely
displaced his predecessors in the field of Pedagogics.
How entirely German educators work upon Herbart, and Herbart
only, is proved by the existence of a Herbartian educational literature
greatly more extensive than the whole of our English educational
literature put together.
A little volume on the “Outlines of Pedagogics,”[16] by Professor
W. Rein, of the University of Jena, is offered to us by the translators,
C. C. and Ida J. Van Liew, as a brief introduction to the study of
Herbart and his school, the author making due allowance for the
advances that have been made in the fifty years that have elapsed
since Herbart’s death.
As Herbart and his interpreters represent the most advanced
school of educational thought on the continent, it will, perhaps, be
interesting to our readers to make a slight comparison between what
we call P.N.E.U. Philosophy and the school of thought which
exercises such immense influence in Germany.
One of the most characteristic features of Herbart’s thinking, and
that feature of it which constitutes a new school of educational
thought, is, that he rejects the notion of separate mental faculties.
The earlier reformers, notably Pestalozzi and Froebel, divide the
faculties up with something of the precision of a phrenologist, and a
chief business of education is, according to them, “to develop the
faculties.” There is a certain pleasing neatness in this idea which is
very attractive. We want to know, definitely, what we have to do. Why
develop the perceptive faculties here, the conceptive there, the
judgment in this lesson, the affections in the other, until you have
covered the whole ground, giving each so-called faculty its due
share of developmental exercise! But, says Herbart, we have
changed all that. The mind, like Wordsworth’s cloud, moves
altogether when it moves at all.
Now this appears to be but a slight fundamental difference, but it
is one upon the recognition of which education changes front. The
whole system of beautifully organised lessons, whose object is to
develop this or that, is called into question. For the raison d’être of
specialised intellectual gymnastics is gone when we no longer
recognise particular “muscles” of the mind to be developed. The aim
of education must be something quite other, and, if the aim is other,
the methods must be altered, for what is method but a way to an
end. So far we are entirely with Herbart; we do not believe in the
“faculties;” therefore we do not believe in the “development of the
faculties;” therefore we do not regard lessons as instruments for this
“development”: in fact, our whole method of procedure is altered.
Again, we are with the philosopher in his recognition of the force
of an idea, and especially of those ideas which are, as we phrase it,
in the air at any given moment. “Both the circle of the family and that
of social intercourse are subjected to forces that are active in the
entire social body, and that penetrate the entire atmosphere of
human life in invisible channels. No one knows whence these
currents, these ideas arise; but they are there. They influence the
moods, the aspirations, and the inclinations of humanity, and no one
however powerful can withdraw himself from their effects; no
sovereign’s command makes its way into their depths. They are
often born of a genius to be seized upon by the multitude that soon
forgets their author; then the power of the thought that has thus
become active in the masses again impels the individual to energetic
resolutions: in this manner it is constantly describing a remarkable
circle. Originating with those that are highly gifted, these thoughts
permeate all society, reaching, in fact, not only its adult members,
but also through these its youth, and appearing again in other highly
gifted individuals in whom they will perhaps have been elevated to a
definite form.
“Whether the power of these dominant ideas is greater in the
individual, or in the body of individuals as a whole, is a matter of
indifference here. Be that as it may, it cannot be denied that their
effect upon the one is manifested in a reciprocal action upon the
other, and that their influence upon the younger generation is
indisputable.”
We entirely agree that no one can escape the influence of this
Zeitgeist, and that the Zeitgeist is, in fact, one of the most powerful of
the occult educational influences, and one which parents and all who
have the training of children will do well to reckon with in the
adjustment of their work.
Nature, family, social intercourse, this Zeitgeist, the Church and
the State, thus Professor Rein, as interpreting Herbart, sums up the
schoolmasters under whose influences every child grows up; a
suggestive enumeration we should do well to consider. “Erziehung
ist Sache der Familien; von da geht sie aus und dahin kehrt sie
grössenteils zurück,” says Herbart. He considers, as do we, that by
far the most valuable part of education is carried on in the family,
because of the union of all the members under a common
parentage, of the feeling of dependence upon a head, of the very
intimate knowledge to be gained of the younger members.
“The members of the family look confidently to the head; and this
sense of dependence favours, at the same time, the proper
reception of that which is dearest to mankind, namely, the religious
feeling. If the life of the family is permeated by a noble piety, a
sincere religious faith will take root in the hearts of the children.
Faithful devotion to the guide of the youth also calls forth faithful
devotion to Him who controls human destinies—a thought which
Herbart expresses so beautifully in the words—‘To the child, the
family should be the symbol of the order in the world; from the
parents one should derive by idealisation the characteristics of the
deity.’”
This idea of all education springing from and resting upon our
relation to Almighty God is one which we of the P.N.E.U. have ever
laboured to enforce. We take a very distinct stand upon this point.
We do not merely give a religious education, because that would
seem to imply the possibility of some other education, a secular
education, for example. But we hold that all education is divine, that
every good gift of knowledge and insight comes from above, that the
Lord the Holy Spirit is the supreme educator of mankind, and that the
culmination of all education (which may, at the same time, be
reached by a little child) is that personal knowledge of and intimacy
with the Supreme, in which our being finds its fullest perfection. We
hold, in fact, that noble conception of education held by the
mediæval church, as pictured upon the walls of the Spanish chapel
in Florence. Here we have represented the descent of the Holy
Ghost upon the Twelve, and directly under them, fully under the
illuminating rays, are the noble figures of the seven liberal arts,
Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Music, Astronomy, Geometry, Arithmetic,
and under these again the men who received and expressed, so far
as we know, the initial idea in each of these subjects; such men as
Pythagoras, Zoroaster, Euclid, whom we might call pagans, but
whom the earlier Church recognised as divinely taught and
illuminated.
Here follows a passage which we do more than endorse, for it
contains the very raison d’être of our society. “The education of the
children will always remain the holiest and highest of all family
duties. The welfare, civilisation, and culture of a people depend
essentially upon the degree of success that attends the education in
the homes. The family principle is the point at which both the
religious and educational life of a people centres, and about which it
revolves. It is a force in comparison with which every sovereign’s
command appears powerless.”
By the way, we are inclined to think that Dr. Rein’s mention of
Rousseau is a little misleading. It is true that in “Emil” the parents are
supplanted, but, notwithstanding that fact, perhaps no other
educationalist has done so much to awaken parents to their great
work as educators. After investigating the conditions of home
training, Dr. Rein proceeds to a discussion of schools (a) as they
exist in Germany—(b) as they exist in his own ideal, a discussion
which should be most interesting to parents.
Teleology, i.e., the theory of the purpose of education, falls next
under discussion in an extremely instructive chapter. It is well we
should know the vast uncertainty which exists on this fundamental
point. As a matter of fact, few of us know definitely what we propose
to ourselves in the education of our children. We do not know what it
is possible to effect, and, as a man does not usually compass more
than he aims at, the results of our education are very inadequate and
unsatisfactory.
“Shall the educator follow Rousseau and educate a man of nature
in the midst of civilised men? In so doing, as Herbart has shown, we
should simply repeat from the beginning the entire series of evils that
have already been surmounted. Or shall we turn to Locke and
prepare the pupil for the world which is customarily in league with
worldlings? We should then arrive at the standpoint of Basedow, and
aim to educate the pupil so that he would become a truly useful
member of human society. Of course we should always be harassed
with the secret doubt as to whether this is the ideal purpose after all,
and whether we are not at times directly enjoined to place the pupil
at variance with the usage and customary dealings of the world. If
we reflect that an endless career is open to man for his
improvement, we realise that only that education, whose aims are
always the highest, can hope to reach the lofty goals that mark this
career.
“Therefore an ideal aim must be present in the mind of the
educator. Possibly he can obtain information and help from
Pestalozzi, whose nature evinced such ideal tendencies. Pestalozzi
wished the welfare of mankind to be sought in the harmonious
cultivation of all powers. If one only knew what is to be understood
by a multiplicity of mental powers, and what is meant by the harmony
of various powers. These phrases sound very attractive, but give
little satisfaction. The purely formal aims of education will appeal just
as little to the educator: ‘Educate the pupil to independence;’ or,
‘educate the pupil to be his own educator;’ or, ‘educate the pupil so
that it will become better than its educator.’ (Hermann and Dorothea,
Hector and Astyanax in the Iliad). Such and similar attempts to fix
the purpose of education are abundant in the history of pedagogy;
but they do not bring us nearer the goal. In their formal character
they do not say, for example, of what kind the independence shall
be, what content it shall have, what aims it shall have in view, or in
what directions its course shall lie. For the pupil that has become
independent can use his freedom rightly for good just as well as
misuse it for evil.”
Herbart’s own theory of education, so far as we may venture to
formulate it, is strictly ethical as opposed to intellectual, that is, the
development and sustenance of the intellect is of secondary
importance to the educator for two reasons: character building is the
matter of first importance to human beings; and this because, (a)
train character and intellectual “development” largely takes care of
itself, and (b) the lessons designed for intellectual culture have high
ethical value, whether stimulating or disciplinary. This is familiar
ground to us: we too have taught, in season and out of season, that
the formation of character is the aim of the educator. So far, we are
at one with the philosopher; but, may we venture to say it, we have
arrived, through the study of Physiology, at the definiteness of aim
which he desires but does not reach. We must appeal, he says, to
Psychology, but then, he adds, “of course we cannot expect a
concordant answer from all psychologists; and in view of the
obscurity which still prevails in this sphere, the different views as to
the nature of the human soul and the extraordinary difficulty with
which the empirical method of investigation meets, an absolutely
indubitable explanation can hardly be expected.”
This is doubtless true of Psychology alone, but of Psychology
illuminated by Physiology we have another tale to tell. It is the study
of that border-land betwixt mind and matter, the brain, which yields
the richest results to the educator. For the brain is the seat of habit:
the culture of habit is, to a certain extent, physical culture: the
discipline of habit is at least a third part of the great whole which we
call education, and here we feel that the physical science of to-day
has placed us far in advance of the great philosopher of fifty years
ago. We hold with him entirely as to the importance of great
formative ideas in the education of children, but, we add to our ideas,
habits, and we labour to form habits upon a physical basis.
Character is the result not merely of the great ideas which are given
to us, but of the habits which we labour to form upon those ideas.
We recognise both principles and the result is a wide range of
possibilities in education, practical methods, and a definite aim. We
labour to produce a human being at his best physically, mentally,
morally, and spiritually, with the enthusiasms of religion, the good life,
of nature, of knowledge, of art and of manual work; and we do not
labour in the dark.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Sonnenschein & Co., 3s.
CHAPTER XXII
THE TEACHING OF THE “PARENTS’ NATIONAL

EDUCATIONAL UNION”
Part I
One of Mr. Matthew Arnold’s discriminating utterances may help us

in the effort to define anew the scope and the methods of education.
In “A French Eton” (page 61) he says:—“The education of each class
in society has, or ought to have, its ideal, determined by the wants of
that class, and by its destination. Society may be imagined so
uniform that one education shall be suitable for all its members; we
have not a society of that kind, nor has any European country....
Looking at English society at this moment, one may say that the
ideal for the education of each of its classes to follow, the aim which
the education of each should particularly endeavour to reach, is
different.”
This remark helps us to define our position. We lay no claim to
original ideas or methods. We cannot choose but profit by the work
of the great educators. Such men as Locke and Rousseau,
Pestalozzi, and Froebel, have left us an inheritance of educational
thought which we must needs enter upon.
Our work is selective, but not merely so. We are progressive. We
take what former thinkers have left us, and go on from there.
For example, in this matter of class differentiation, we believe we
have scientific grounds for a line of our own. The Fathers (why
should we not have Fathers in education as well as in theology?)
worked out, for the most part, their educational thought with an
immediate view to the children of the poor. Because the children that
he had to deal with had a limited vocabulary, and untrained
observing powers, Pestalozzi taught them to see and then to say: “I
see a hole in the carpet. I see a small hole in the carpet. I see a
small round hole in the carpet. I see a small round hole with a black
edge in the carpet,” and so on; and it is very easy to see how good
such training would be for such children. But what is the case with
the children we have to deal with? We believe to-day on scientific
grounds in the doctrine of heredity, and certainly in this matter
experience supports our faith.
Punch has hit off the state of the case: “Come and see the puff-
puff, dear.” “Do you mean the locomotive, grandmamma?” As a
matter of fact, the child of four and five has a wider, more exact
vocabulary in everyday use, than that employed by his elders and
betters, and is constantly adding to this vocabulary with surprising
quickness; ergo, to give a child of this class a vocabulary is no part
of direct education. Again, we know that nothing escapes the keen
scrutiny of the little people. It is not their perceptive powers we have
to train, but the habit of methodical observation and accurate record.
Generations of physical toil do not tend to foster imagination. How
good, then, for the children of the working classes to have games
initiated for them, to be carried through little dramatic plays until,
perhaps, in the end they will be able to invent such little dramas for
themselves!
But the children of the cultured classes—why, surely their danger
is rather to live too much in realms of fancy. A single sentence in
lesson or talk, the slightest sketch of an historical character, and they
will play at it for a week, inventing endless incidents. Like Tennyson,
when he was a child, they will carry on the story of the siege and
defence of a castle (represented by a mound, with sticks for its
garrison) for weeks together, and a child engrossed with these larger
interests feels a sensible loss of dignity when he flaps his wings as a
pigeon or skips about as a lamb, though, no doubt, he will do these
things with pleasure for the teacher he loves. Imagination is
ravenous for food, not pining for culture, in the children of educated
parents, and education need not concern herself directly, for them,
with the development of the conceptive powers. Then with regard to
the cultivated child’s reasoning powers, most parents have had
experiences of this kind—Tommy is five. His mother had occasion to
talk to him about the Atlantic Cable, and said she did not know how it
was insulated; Tommy remarked next morning that he had been
thinking about it, and perhaps the water itself was an insulator. So far
from needing to develop their children’s reasoning powers, most
parents say—“Oh, wad the gods the giftie gie us”—to answer the
everlasting ‘why’ of the intelligent child.
In a word, to develop the child’s so-called faculties is the main
work of education when ignorant or otherwise deficient children are
concerned; but the children of educated people are never ignorant in
this sense. They awake to the world all agog for knowledge, and with
keen-edged faculties; therefore the principle of heredity causes us to
recast our idea of the office of education, and to recognise that the
child of intelligent parents is born with an inheritance of self-
developing faculties.
Thus education naturally divides itself into education for the
children of lettered, and education for the children of unlettered
parents. In fact, this class question, which we are all anxious to
evade in common life, comes practically into force in education. It is
absolutely necessary to individualise and say, this part of education
is the most important for this child, or this class, but may be
relegated into a lower place for another child or another class.
If science limits our range of work as regards the development of
so-called faculties, it extends it in equal measure with regard to
habit. Here we have no new doctrine to proclaim. “One custom
overcometh another,” said Thomas à Kempis, and that is all we have
to say; only physiologists have made clear to us the rationale of this
law of habit. We know that to form in his child right habits of thinking
and behaving is a parent’s chief duty, and that this can be done for
every child definitely and within given limits of time. But this question
has been already dealt with, and we need do no more than remind
parents of what they already know.
To nourish a child daily with loving, right, and noble ideas we
believe to be the parent’s next duty. The child having once received
the Idea will assimilate it in his own way, and work it into the fabric of
his life; and a single sentence from his mother’s lips may give him a
bent that will make him, or may tend to make him, painter or poet,
statesman or philanthropist. The object of lessons should be in the
main twofold: to train a child in certain mental habits, as attention,
accuracy, promptness, &c., and to nourish him with ideas which may
bear fruit in his life.
There are other educational principles which we bear in mind and
work out, but for the moment it is worth while for us to concentrate
our thought upon the fact that one of our objects is to accentuate the
importance of education under the two heads of the formation of
habits and the presentation of ideas, and as a corollary to recognise
that the development of faculties is not a supreme object with the
cultivated classes, because this is work which has been done for
their children in a former generation.
But how does all this work? Is it practical? Is it the question of to-
day? It must needs be practical because it gives the fullest
recognition to the two principles of human nature, the material, and
the spiritual. We are ready to concede all that the most advanced
biologist would ask of us. Does he say, “Thought is only a mode of
motion?” if so, we are not dismayed. We know that ninety-nine out of
a hundred thoughts that pass through our minds are involuntary, the
inevitable result of those modifications of the brain tissue which habit
has set up. The mean man thinks mean thoughts, the magnanimous
man great thoughts, because we all think as we are accustomed to
think, and Physiology shows us why. On the other hand, we
recognise that greater is the spirit within us than the matter which it
governs. Every habit has its beginning. The beginning is the idea
which comes with a stir and takes possession of us. The idea is the
motive power of life, and it is because we recognise the spiritual
potency of the idea that we are able to bow reverently before the fact
that God the Holy Spirit is Himself the Supreme Educator, dealing
with each of us severally in the things we call sacred and those we
call secular. We lay ourselves open to the spiritual impact of ideas
whether these be conveyed by the printed page, the human voice, or
whether they reach us without visible sign.
But ideas may be evil or may be good; and to choose between
the ideas that present themselves is, as we have been taught, the
one responsible work of a human being. It is the power of choice that
we would give our children. We ask ourselves “Is there any fruitful
idea underlying this or that study that the children are engaged in?”
We divest ourselves of the notion that to develop the faculties is the
chief thing, and a “subject” which does not rise out of some great
thought of life we usually reject as not nourishing, not fruitful; while
we usually, but not invariably, retain those studies which give
exercise in habits of clear and orderly thinking. We have some
gymnastics of the mind whose object is to exercise what we call
faculties as well as to train in the habit of clear and ordered thinking.
Mathematics, grammar, logic, &c., are not purely disciplinary; they do
develop, if a bull may be allowed us, intellectual muscle. We by no
means reject the familiar staples of education, in the school sense,
but we prize them even more for the record of intellectual habits they
leave in the brain tissue than for their distinct value in developing
certain “faculties.” Thus our first thought with regard to Nature-
knowledge is that the child should have a living personal
acquaintance with the things he sees. It concerns us more that he
should know bistort from persicaria, hawkweed from dandelion, and
where to find this and that, and how it looks, living and growing, than
that he should talk learnedly about epigynous and hypogynous. All
this is well in its place, but should come quite late, after the child has
seen and studied the living growing thing in situ, and has copied
colour and gesture as best he can.
So of object lessons, we are not anxious to develop his observing
powers on little bits of everything which he shall describe as opaque,
brittle, malleable, and so on. We would prefer not to take the edge
off his curiosity in this way; we should rather leave him receptive and
respectful for one of those opportunities for asking questions and
engaging in talk with his parents about the lock in the river, the
mowing machine, the ploughed field, which offer real seed to the
mind of a child, and never make him a priggish little person able to
tell all about it.
Once more, we know that there is a storehouse of thought
wherein we may find all the great ideas that have moved the world.
We are above all things anxious to give the child the key to this
storehouse.
The education of the day, it is said, does not produce reading
people. We are determined that the children shall love books,
therefore we do not interpose ourselves between the book and the
child. We read him his Tanglewood Tales, and when he is a little
older his Plutarch, not trying too much to break up or water down,
but leaving the child’s mind to deal with the matter as it can. We
endeavour that all our teaching and treatment of children shall be on
the lines of nature, their nature and ours, for we do not recognise
what is called “Child-nature.” We believe that children are human
beings at their best and sweetest but also at their weakest and least
wise. We are careful not to water down life for them but to present
such portions to them in such quantities as they can readily receive.
In a word we are very tenacious of the dignity and individuality of our
children. We recognise steady, regular growth with no transition
stage. This teaching is up to date, but it is as old as common sense.
Our claim is that our common sense rests on a basis of Physiology,
that we show a reason for all that we do, and that we recognise “the
science of the proportion of things,” put the first thing foremost, do
not take too much upon ourselves, but leave time and scope for the
workings of nature and of a higher Power than nature herself.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE TEACHING OF THE PARENTS’ NATIONAL

EDUCATIONAL UNION
Part II
As the philosophy which underlies any educational or social scheme
is really the vital part of that scheme, it may be well to set forth,
however meagrely, some fragments of P.N.E.U. Philosophy.
We believe—
That disposition, intellect, genius, come pretty much by nature.
That character is an achievement, the one practical achievement
possible to us for ourselves and for our children.
That all real advance, in family or individual, or nation, is along the
lines of character.
That, therefore, to direct and assist the evolution of character is
the chief office of education.
But perhaps we shall clear the ground better by throwing a little of
the teaching of the Union into categorical form:—
What is character?
The resultant or residuum of conduct.
That is to say, a man is what he has made himself by the thoughts
in which he has allowed himself, the words he has spoken, the
deeds he has done.
How does conduct itself originate?
Commonly, in our habitual modes of thought. We think as we are
accustomed to think, and, therefore, act as we are accustomed to
act.
What, again, is the origin of these habits of thought and act?
Commonly, inherited disposition. The man who is generous,
obstinate, hot-tempered, devout, is so, on the whole, because that
strain of character runs in his family.
Are there any means of modifying inherited dispositions?
Yes; marriage, for the race; education, for the individual.
How may a bad habit which has its rise in an inherited disposition
be corrected?
By the contrary good habit: as Thomas à Kempis has said, “One
custom overcometh another.”
Trace the genesis of a habit.
Every act proceeds from a thought. Every thought modifies
somewhat the material structure of the brain. That is, the nerve
substance of the brain forms itself to the manner of thoughts we
think. The habit of act arises from the habit of thought. The person
who thinks, “Oh, it will do;” “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” forms a habit of
negligent and imperfect work.
How may such habit be corrected?
By introducing the contrary line of thought, which will lead to
contrary action. “This must be done well, because——”
Is it enough to think such thought once?
No; the stimulus of the new idea must be applied until it is, so to
speak, at home in the brain, and arises involuntarily.
What do you mean by involuntary thought?
The brain is at work unceasingly, is always thinking, or rather is
always being acted upon by thought, as the keys of an instrument by
the fingers of a player.
Is the person aware of all the thoughts that the brain elaborates?
No; only of those which are new and “striking.” The old familiar
“way of thinking” beats in the brain without the consciousness of the
thinker.
What name is given to this unconscious thought?
Unconscious (or involuntary) cerebration.
Why is it important to the educator?
Because most of our actions spring from thoughts of which we are
not conscious, or, anyway, which are involuntary.
Is there any means of altering the trend of unconscious
cerebration?
Yes; by diverting it into a new channel.
The “unconscious cerebration” of the greedy child runs upon
cakes and sweetmeats: how may this be corrected?
By introducing a new idea—the pleasure of giving pleasure with
these good things, for example.
Is the greedy child capable of receiving such new idea?
Most certainly; because benevolence, the desire of benefiting
others, is one of those springs of action in every human being that
need only to be touched to make them act.
Give an example of this fact.
Mungo Park, dying of thirst, hunger, and weariness in an African
desert, found himself in the vicinity of a cannibal tribe. He gave
himself up for lost, but a woman of the tribe found him, took
compassion on him, brought him milk, hid him, and nourished him
until he was restored and could take care of himself.
Are there any other springs of action which may be touched with
effect in every human being?
Yes, such as the desire of knowledge, of society, of distinction, of
wealth; friendship, gratitude, and many more. Indeed, it is not
possible to incite a human being to any sort of good and noble
conduct but you touch a responsive spring.
How, then, can human beings do amiss?
Because the good feelings have their opposite bad feelings,
springs which also await a touch. Malevolence is opposed to
benevolence. It is easy to imagine that the unstable savage woman
might have been amongst the first to devour the man she cherished,
had one of her tribe given an impulse to the springs of hatred within
her.
In view of these internal impulses, what is the duty of the
educator?
To make himself acquainted with the springs of action in a human
being, and to touch them with such wisdom, tenderness and
moderation that the child is insensibly led into the habits of the good
life.
Name some of these habits.
Diligence, reverence, gentleness, truthfulness, promptness,
neatness, courtesy; in fact, the virtues and graces which belong to
persons who have been “well brought up.”
Is it enough to stimulate a spring of action—say, curiosity, or the
desire of knowledge, once in order to secure a habit?
No; the stimulus must be repeated, and action upon it secured
over and over many times before a habit is formed.
What common error do people make about the formation of
habits?
They allow lapses; they train a child to “shut the door after him”
twenty times, and allow him to leave it open the twenty-first.
With what result?
That the work has to be done over again, because the growth of
brain tissue to the new habit (the forming of cell-connections) has
been disturbed. The result would appear to be much the same as
when the flesh-forming process which knits up a wound is disturbed.

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Locke and Cartesian Philosophy

Print publication date: 2018

Descartes. Vol III. The Correspondence. Cambridge:

René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy.

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Locke and Cartesian Philosophy

Print publication date: 2018

book on presumptions and early modern practical

is Professor of Moral Philosophy at Panthéon-

is Anniversary Professor of Philosophy at the

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Locke and Cartesian Philosophy

Print publication date: 2018

Abstract and Keywords

Keywords: Locke, Descartes, Cartesian philosophy, An Essay concerning

Locke’s relationship to Descartes and Cartesian philosophy

In the attempt to determine fundamental questions of

Gibson had earlier made an interesting statement about

Without the influence of the Cartesian view of knowledge

Gibson is certainly right when he criticizes the ‘antithetical’

(p.3) In bringing together the several contributions of this

Let us consider these various points somewhat more closely,

spreading in England of a rather common caricature of

However, even though Locke himself appears willing to plead

and an ideal that owe much to Descartes. Locke never made a

It must be emphasized again that many theoretical options

So on these issues and on a number of other topics, Locke

perhaps typical of how philosophers work and capitalize on

This in turns explains the need to consider Locke’s complex