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The Social Language of John Locke: a Study in the History of Ideas*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

R. L. Colie
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Extract

Now that the great bulk of papers relating to John Locke in the Lovelace Collection has begun to yield up its treasure, the life and character of John Locke, as well as the life and character of his work, can be seen more fully than ever before. John Locke has firmly entered into political history, as Peter Laslett's researches have demonstrated; and Locke himself has become firmly embedded in the amorphous discipline called the history of ideas, since the history of his own ideas can now readily be examined. The wealth of material relevant to Locke's work has by no means provided his ideas with greater logical consistency, for the lack of which Locke has always had his critics. In some ways, the philosophical coherence of his work presents even greater problems than it used to, since the papers leave even more ravelled ends than the published books did. But the papers have provided something which may prove even more useful in understanding Locke's thought than a logical key to his thought: that is, the spectacle of a man thinking, and thinking hard, over four decades. Locke himself comes to appear a particular illustration of his own preoccupation with process and with the philosophical ideas arising from the concept of process: the long processes of his thinking, along so many major lines, may also be seen more clearly now in their complementary relation to one another.

This paper, the heart excised from a longer study, deals with one line of Locke's thought, a line which has recently attracted serious scholarly attention, his views on language.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , May 1965 , pp. 29 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1965

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Footnotes

*

I should like to thank, for various kinds of help on this paper, Lore Metzger, Anne Whiteman, Maurice Goldsmith, Ralph Freedman, and Philip Long; Herbert Deane, who listened to the genesis of the idea; Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Bluecher, who patiently listened and questioned at the end.

References

1. Long, P[hilip], A Summary Catalogue of the Lovelace Collection of the Papers of John Locke in the Bodleian Library, Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications, N.S., VIII (1956 [imprint 1959])Google Scholar.

2. See especially Cranston, Maurice, John Locke. A Biography (London, 1957)Google Scholar; Locke, John, Essays on the Law of Nature, ed. von Leyden, W. (Oxford, 1954)Google Scholar; Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (Cambridge, 1960)Google Scholar; Yolton, John, John Locke and the Way of Ideas (Oxford, 1956)Google Scholar. In addition to these valuable studies, publication of the Locke correspondence by E. S. de Beer is imminent.

3. See Laslett, Introduction, in Locke, , Two Treatises, p. 82Google Scholar, for keen comments on Locke's philosophical inconsistencies and the difficulties they raise for students of his thought. (All subsequent references to the Two Treatises are to Laslett's edition.)

4. For a remarkable comment on Locke's perception of process, see Whitehead, Alfred North, Process and Reality (New York, 1957), pp. 87, 94Google Scholar.

5. I am in the process of preparing a monograph which will deal at greater length with the ideas sketched out in this paper and their connection with Locke's notions of epistemology, government, medicine, and education.

6. Givner, David A., “Scientific Preconceptions in Locke's Philosophy of Language,” J.H.I., XXIII (1962), 340–54Google Scholar. See also the penetrating criticism of Locke's theory of language in Norman Kretzmann's unpublished dissertation, “Semiotic and Language Analysis in the Philosophies of the Enlightenment” (The Johns Hopkins University, 1955), Pt. 2, ch. ii.

7. Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Yolton, John W. (London, 1961)Google Scholar, Bk. II, xxxiii, 19; I, 341. (All references to the Essay are, as in the foregoing, specifically to Yolton's edition after the semicolon.)

8. Locke's own usage has come in for analysis by modern technical philosophers, as for instance by Gilbert Ryle, in his critique of Locke's use of the term idea, “Locke on the Human Understanding,” in John Locke: Tercentenary Addresses (Oxford, 1933)Google Scholar. See also Russell, L. J., “On the term Semiotike in Locke,” Mind, N. S., XLVIII (1939), 405–06CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

One of Locke's friends, the scholar and publisher Jean le Clerc, proved the first disciple of the ideas on language laid out in the Third Book of Locke's Essay. In July 1688, Locke wrote to Le Clerc: “I longue [sic] to see your next volume and shall not be a little confirmed in my opinion concerning the whole business of words as I have treated it my third book [shortly before, summarized in Le Clerc's, Bibliothèque Universelle, VIII, 1688Google Scholar], if I finde your thoughts concur with it and that it may be applyd with any advantage to the understanding of ancient writers which I have been apt to thinke the ordinary way of Critics leads not to.” Universiteitsbibliotheek, Amsterdam, Ms. Ba 258u. (I am, as often before, indebted for her manifold kindnesses to Dr. Elisabeth Kluyt of that library.)

Le Clerc responded, in October, with a wholehearted endorsement of the book: “Je suis obligé de supposer tout ce que vous avez dit dans vôtre [sic] troisieme livre comme démontré; parce que mon dessein n'est pas tant de donner les principes Métaphysiques de la Critique, que de réduire ces Principes en pratique.” Bodleian Library, Ms. Locke, c.13, f.25.

9. Aaron, R. I., John Locke (Oxford, 1955), p. 194Google Scholar.

10. For conversations, now themselves nearly lifelong, on this subject I am indebted to Mr. Laslett. A full study of the Essay, in its manuscript states and its various editions, through the first posthumous edition, is sorely needed. Mrs. C. S. Johnson's unpublished Oxford thesis, “A Bibliography of John Locke” (1956), is a brave attack on the problem, but much more needs to be done. The copy of the Essay owned and annotated by James Tyrrell, in the British Museum (c.122, f.14), is doubtless the “freak” Dr. de Beer has called it, but seems to me to be particularly rich in material.

11. For Locke as a mediator of philosophical traditions, see Tuveson, E. L., “Locke and the Dissolution of the Ego,” Modern Philology, LV (1955), 159–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Though this paper deals with a philosophical rather than an historical constellation, I have been greatly helped by Pocock, J. G. A.'s “The Origins of the Past: a Comparative Approach,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, IV (1962), 209–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. A thorough study of the philosophical background of the Essay would be exceedingly useful: Locke's location in relation to Greek and Roman thought has never been plotted. Yolton's book, and that of Gibson, James, Locke's Theory of Knowledge in its Historical Relations (Cambridge, 1959)Google Scholar, discuss aspects of the Essay's cultural environment, but there is far more work to be done.

13. See Yolton, John Locke and the Way of Ideas; and, inter alia, Hefelbower, Samuel G., The Relation of John Locke to English Deism (Chicago, 1918)Google Scholar; McLachlan, H., The Religious Opinions of Milton, Locke, and Newton (Manchester, 1941)Google Scholar; Ware [Johnson], C. S., “The Influence of Descartes on John Locke,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, IV (1950), 210–30Google Scholar.

14. Locke's practice and theory of medicine have come in for considerable attention since the opening of the Lovelace Collection. See Laslett, Introduction, in Locke, , Two Treatises, p. 85Google Scholar. Cf. Romanell, Patrick, “Locke and Sydenham: a Fragment on Smallpox (1670),” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, XXXII (1958), 283–321Google Scholar, where the claims for experimental medicine as the model for Locke's epistemology are explicitly advanced. For a critique of Romanell's method, see David L. Cowan, “Comments on Dr. Romanell's Article on Locke and Sydenham,” ibid., XXXIII (1959), 173-80. The many articles of K. E. Dewhurst, together with his John Locke, Physician and Philosopher: A Medical Biography (London, 1963)Google Scholar, provide data on the range of Locke's medical interests and the originality with which he tackled problems. Locke's chemical studies are outlined in Dewhurst's book, ch. i, and in Dewhurst, K. E., “Locke's Contributions to Boyle's Researches on the Air and on Human Blood,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society, XLVII (1962), 12–36Google Scholar. For an excellent discussion of Locke's notions of corpuscularianism, see Givner, , “Scientific Preconceptions,” J.H.I., XXIII (1962), 340–54Google Scholar; for Boyle's notions, Boas, Marie, Robert Boyle and Seventeenth-Century Chemistry (Cambridge, 1958)Google Scholar, chs. iii and iv.

15. Locke's, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (London, 1693)Google Scholar is the result of a long interest in the subject: see Kenyon, F. G. (ed.), Directions concerning Education (London, 1933)Google Scholar; Rand, Benjamin (ed.), The Correspondence of John Locke and Edward Clarke (London, 1927)Google Scholar; Forster, T. (ed.), Original Letters of John Locke, Algernon Sidney, and Lord Shajtesbury (London, 1847)Google Scholar; and Locke's correspondence with Jean Le Clerc, Benjamin Furly, and James Tyrrell in the Lovelace Collection.

16. von Leyden, , Essays on the Law of Nature, ed. von, LeydenGoogle Scholar, of which the introduction is an essay of extraordinary value.

17. Ibid., p. 59; also, von Leyden's caveat, ibid., p. 43: “Every doctrine of natural law not only is in some degree obscure, but also endeavours to establish logical relations between propositions which, as we shall see, are different in kind and themselves doubtful.”

18. Note also Laslett's comments on the relations of one aspect in Locke's philosophy to another, and of each aspect to the whole: Introduction in Locke, , Two Treatises, p. 88Google Scholar.

19. Newton, Isaac, Theological Manuscripts, ed McLachlan, H. (Liverpool, 1950)Google Scholar; Manuel, Frank E., Isaac Newton, Historian (Cambridge, Mass., 1963)Google Scholar.

20. For some of the reasons for the difficulties in seventeenth-century medicine and chemistry, see Hall, A. R., From Galileo to Newton, 1630-1720 (New York, 1963)Google Scholar, ch. vii, “Problems of Living Things.” Clearly the biological sciences had not reached the stage of organization in the late seventeenth century to support a “revolution” of the type analyzed by Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962)Google Scholar.

21. See especially Dewhurst, K. E., “Sydenham's Original Treatise on Smallpox with a Preface, and a Dedication to the Earl of Shaftesbury, by John Locke,” Medical History, III (1959), 278–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Locke and Sydenham on the Teaching of Anatomy,” Medical History, II (1958), 1–12Google Scholar; “An Essay on Coughs by Locke and Sydenham,” B.H.M., XXXIII (1959), 366–74Google Scholar.

22. See Romanell, , “Locke and Sydenham,” B.H.M., XXXII (1958), 283–321Google Scholar, and Laslett, Introduction, in Locke, , Two Treatises, p. 85Google Scholar.

23. For the development of this notion, see my forthcoming monograph.

24. The story is told, without a shred of evidence, that when Locke was faced with the demanding mathematics of Newton's Principia, he asked Christiaan Huygens whether the mathematics was all right. Locke recognized at once the importance of Newton as a world-maker (Colie, R. L., “John Locke in the Republic of Letters,” Britain and the Netherlands (London, 1960), pp. 124–25Google Scholar); and Newton was sufficiently respectful of Locke to correct his remarkably faulty arithmetic, or the remarkably faulty printing of his arithmetic, in the copy of his Opticks given to Locke just before the latter's death in 1704. The copy itself is in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is perhaps worth noting that Newton did not correct the arithmetic in the copy he officially put into his college library; and that yet another copy, bought by a Trinity man and clearly uncorrected by Newton, demonstrates the manful efforts of the owner to make the arithmetic, somehow or other, come out right. I owe to Laslett the opportunity of examining these copies.

25. For Newton's interest in universal language, see Elliott, Ralph W. V., “Isaac Newton's ‘Of an Uniyersall Language,’” M.L.R., LII (1957), 1–18Google Scholar. For other commentaries on the universal language in seventeenth-century England, see De Mott, Benjamin, “Comenius and the Real Character in England,” P.M.L.A., LXX (1955), 1068–81Google Scholar; and De Mott, Benjamin, “Sources and Development of John Wilkins' Philosophical Language,” J.E.G.P., LVII (1958), 1–13Google Scholar; Borst, Arno, Der Turmbau von Babel (Stuttgart, 1960), IIIGoogle Scholar, Pt. 1, 1330-32; Funcke, Otto, Zum Weltsprachen-problem in England in 17: Jahrhundert (Heidelberg, 1929)Google Scholar; Jones, R. F., “Science and Language in England of the Mid-Century,” The Seventeenth Century (Stanford, 1951), pp. 149–50Google Scholar; De Mott, Benjamin, “Science versus Mnemonics: Notes on John Ray, and on John Wilkins' ‘Essay toward a Real Character and a Philosophical Language,’” Isis, XLVIII (1957), 3–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26. For details of some activities of this group, see Gunther, R. W. T., Early Science at Oxford (Oxford, 1925), IVGoogle Scholar, and Colie, R. L., “Dean Wren's Marginalia and Early Science at Oxford,” Bodleian Library Record, VI (1960), 550Google Scholar.

27. Comenius, Jan Amos, Janua Reserata, The Gale of Languages Unlocked, tr. Horn, T. (London, 1643)Google Scholar; The Great Didactic, tr. Keatinge, M. W. (London, 1896)Google Scholar.

28. Milton, John, Of Education (London, 1650)Google Scholar.

29. Borst, , Der Turmbau, pp. 1277 ff.Google Scholar

30. [Baker, Thomas], Reflections upon Learning, Wherein is shewn the Insufficiency thereof, in its several Particulars (London, 1700), p. 17Google Scholar.

31. Baker, , Reflections upon Learning, pp. 17–18Google Scholar.

32. de Spinoza, Benedictus, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, in Chief Works, ed. Elwes, R. H. M. (London, 1887), I, 1–278Google Scholar.

33. See Boyle, Robert, Works, ed. Birch, Thomas (London, 1772), VI, 99Google Scholar; and also the Marquis of Lansdowne (ed.), The Petty Papers (London, 1927), I, 150Google Scholar; and the Marquis of Lansdowne (ed.), The Petty-Southwell Correspondence (London, 1928), p. 325Google Scholar; Petty, William, Advice to Hartlib (London, 1658)Google Scholar; Boyle to Hartlib, cited in Birch, Thomas, The Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle (London, 1764), pp. 73, 77Google Scholar.

34. Wilkins, John, An Essay Towards a Real Character, And a Philosophical Language (London, 1668)Google Scholar; see also Dalgarno, George, Works [Maitland Society Reprints] (Edinburgh, 1834)Google Scholar.

35. Bacon, Francis, The Advancement of Learning (Oxford, 1938), pp. 143, 147–48Google Scholar.

36. Though Wilkins would hardly have sanctioned so frivolous a use of his work, his language bears a resemblance to Swift's artificial languages in Lilliput and Brobdingnag. Swift certainly knew a great deal about the language-theory of the Royal Society, as he demonstrates in his satire in Gulliver's Third Voyage: one might consult in this connection also Dalgarno, George's Ars Signorum (London, 1661)Google Scholar and Didascalocophus (Oxford, 1680)Google Scholar, and reconsider the “little language” of the Journal to Stella.

37. The Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians were among the few groups permitted to license their own publications, or some of their own publications. An examination of this procedure, with the reasons for the grant, would be illuminating.

38. See Colie, , “Dean Wren's Marginalia,” Bodleian Library Record, VI (1960)Google Scholar.

39. De Mott, , “Sources and Development of John Wilkins' Philosophical Language,” J.E.G.P., LVII (1958), 1–13Google Scholar.

40. De Mott, , “Science versus Mnemonics,” Isis, XLVIII (1957), 3–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41. Sprat, Thomas, The History of the Royal-Society of London (London, 1667), pp. 251–52Google Scholar.

42. Locke, , Essay, III, xi, 25Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 117-18.

43. Locke, , Essay, III, xi, 2Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 106. In view of the substance of Locke's argument in Book III, it is surprising to read in Charles Coulton Gillispie's excellent book, The Edge of Objectivity (Princeton, 1960), p. 113Google Scholar: “Most interesting of all, [Wilkins] perceived that one consequence of science is the possibility of definitive communication by means of symbols which represent things and not opinions. He devised, therefore, a ‘philosophical language,’ which anticipates John Locke's psychology in important ways and seeks to exorcise in practice Bacon's idols of the market place.”

44. Baker, , Reflections upon Learning, p. 17Google Scholar.

45. Ibid., pp. 17-18.

46. Givner, , “Scientific Preconceptions,” J.H.I., XXIII (1962), 340–54Google Scholar.

47. See Simon, Walter M., “John Locke, Philosophy and Political Theory,” American Political Science Review, LXV (1951), 390–93Google Scholar. Simon is led into misunderstanding, I think, by his assumption that “atomism” carries with it only mechanistic, and not organic, implications. See Laslett's criticism in Introduction, in Locke, , Two Treatises, p. 88Google Scholar; and also Viano, Carlo Augusto, John Locke, Dal razionalismo all' illuminismo (Milan, 1960), pp. 446–57Google Scholar.

48. Boyle, Robert, The Origine of Formes and Qudites, according to the Corpuscular Philosophy (Oxford, 1666)Google Scholar.

49. Locke, , Essay, III, iii, 9–11Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 18-20.

50. Gibson, , Locke's Theory of Knowledge, pp. 111-15, 117–18Google Scholar; Tuveson, , “Locke and the Dissolution of the Ego,” Modern Philology, LV (1955), 159–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51. Aaron, , John Locke, pp. 148-53, 231–32Google Scholar.

52. Locke's account of identity, as I understand it, relies more upon an organizing principle than upon Boyle's analytical chemical concept.

53. Locke, , Essay, II, xxvii, 3Google Scholar; Yolton ed., I, 276.

54. Locke, , Essay, II, xxvii, 6Google Scholar; Yolton ed., I, 277.

55. Locke, , Essay, II, xxvii, 11Google Scholar; Yolton ed., I, 282.

56. For these reasons, the conscious man is held accountable for his actions — or, in the case of drunkenness, a man is held responsible for having decided to get drunk and thereby to relinquish consciousness: Locke, , Essay, II, xxvii, 22–26Google Scholar; Yolton ed., I, 288-92.

57. Locke, , Essay, II, xxvii, 10Google Scholar; Yolton ed., I, 281.

58. This subject, so cryptically referred to here, is of great importance for Locke's theory of personal identity, and is more fully discussed in my longer study.

59. Locke, , Essay, III, i, 1Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 9.

60. Locke, , Essay, II, xxviii, 12Google Scholar; Yolton ed., I, 301.

61. Locke, , Essay, II, xxviii, 19Google Scholar; Yolton ed., I, 294; cf. Essay, II, xxxvi, 5–6Google Scholar; Yolton ed., I, 168-70. The importance of Locke's insight into the interrelations of language with ideas and with society cannot be stressed too much; see the radical modern developments of the idea in Whorf, Benjamin Lee, Language and Culture (New York, 1959)Google Scholar, and Lee, Dorothy D., Freedom and Culture (New York, 1958)Google Scholar, especially her pieces, “Symbolization and Culture,” “Being and Value in a Primitive Culture,” and “Linguistic Reflection of Wintu Thought.”

62. Locke, , Essay, III, iv, 8Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 27-28.

63. Locke, , Essay, III, v, 8Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 37.

64. Locke, , Essay, III, v, 8Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 37.

65. Locke, , Essay, III, v. 8Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 37.

66. Locke, , Essay, III, vi, 35Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 63.

67. Locke, , Essay, II, xviii, 7Google Scholar; Yolton ed., I, 186.

68. On this point, see Hanson, Norwood Russell, Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge, 1958), p. 31Google Scholar.

69. Locke, , Essay, III, vi, 44–46Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 67-70, in which Adam and Eve discuss the predicament of Lamech and Adah, and in which Adam's children bring him a glittering substance from the mountains.

70. Locke, , Essay, III, vi, 15Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 71.

71. Locke, , Essay, II, xxxiii, 6Google Scholar; Yolton ed., I, 336.

72. Locke, , Essay, III, ii, 8Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 14.

73. See Locke, , Essay, II, xxiiiGoogle Scholar, “Of the Association of Ideas” for the development of faulty or irrelevant association; Yolton ed., I, 335-41.

74. Locke, , Essay, III, ii, 8Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 14-15.

75. Locke, , Essay, III, xi, 11Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 111.

76. The connection of this idea with Locke's ideas of government will be developed in my longer study.

77. Locke, , Essay, III, ix, 8Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 79.

78. Locke, , Essay, III, ix, 9Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 80-81.

79. Locke, , Essay, III, xi, 5Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 107.

80. Locke, , Essay, III, ix, 23Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 89.

81. Nonetheless, Locke did his best to clarify, according to his own principles, the obscurities in Paul's Epistles: A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul in Works (London, 1794), IXGoogle Scholar. See especially iii-xxiii.

82. See note 35.

83. Locke, , Essay, III, ix, 23Google Scholar; Yolton ed. II, 89.

84. Locke, , Essay, III, ix, 21Google Scholar; Yolton ed., II, 87-88.