‘Vision in God and Thinking Matter. Locke’s epistemological agnosticism used against Malebranche...

© Paul Schuurman, draft 04/11/2022 20:35:21

VISION IN GOD AND THINKING MATTERLOCKE’S EPISTEMOLOGICAL AGNOSTICISM USED AGAINST

MALEBRANCHE AND STILLINGFLEET

1. Introduction

Every philosopher that assumes a rigorous Cartesian

separation between thought and matter, or mind and body,

will be faced with the question of how these entities can

interact. This problem of interaction can be divided into

various subquestions. One important subquestion is how ours

mind can perceive bodies. This is the question that Nicolas

Malebranche sets out to answer in Part II of Book III of his

Recherche de la Vérité (1674-1675).1 His well-known solution is

the Vision in God: we perceive bodies through their ideas

and these ideas are in God. I shall discuss the reply to

this hypothesis by John Locke, who produced four

manuscripts, three of which were written in 1692-1693 and

the fourth not later then 1693. I shall then move on to a

polemics in which Locke saw himself embroiled in 1696-1698,

with Edward Stillingfleet, about the possibility of thinking

matter. I shall point to the connection between these two 1 Nicolas Malebranche, Recherche de la vérité où l’on traite de la nature de l’esprit de l’homme et de l’usage qu’il en doit faire pour éviter l’erreur dans les sciences, 3 vols, ed. Geneviève Rodis-Lewis (Paris: J. Vrin, 1962-1964) (=Recherche), Bk 3, Pt 2, Ch. 1, Sect. 1, vol. I, p. 417: ‘je parle principalement ici des choses matérielles qui certainement ne peuvent s’unir à notre ame, de lafaçon qui est nécessaire afin qu’elle les apperçoive: parce qu’étant étenduës, & l’ame ne l’étant pas, il n’y point de rapport entr’elles’.

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debates and the remarkable similarities between Locke’s

argumentative strategies. I shall argue that although

neither of these polemics has received much scholarly

attention taken separately, and even less when taken

together, they are highly indicative of a vital aspect of

Locke’s epistemology: his agnosticism about God, mind and

matter. In modern secondary literature attention has been

devoted to Locke’s agnosticism in general,2 and John Yolton

has rightly remarked that when Locke wrote about thinking

matter, he wrote ‘about the limitation of human

knowledge’3.Yet no single article has been devoted to a

comparison of Locke’s agnostic arguments against the Vision

in God with those in favour of the possibility of thinking

matter.4

2. Vision in God: texts

Malebranche defends his hypothesis concerning the Vision in

God in the First Edition of the Recherche and all subsequent 2 Michael Ayers, Locke. Epistemology and Ontology. Vol. II: Ontology (London: Routledge, 1993) p. 148: ‘The theme of the argument of IV. iii. 6, as ofthe whole chapter, is our ignorance of “the Nature and inward Constitution of things”, and that every substance “has something in it, which manifestly baffles our understandings”.’3 John Yolton, Thinking Matter. Materialism in Eighteenth Century Britain (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1984) p. 14.4 See however Charlotte Johnston, ‘Locke’s Examination of Malebranche and John Norris’, Journal of the History of Ideas 19 (1958) p. 553, on Locke’s MS c.28, fols 107-112 (=MS discussed below under (1) in §2): ‘The remarks were perhaps not written to be published, but it is interesting to see that many of the features of these observations, the asperity, irony andrepetition of the theories elaborated in the Essay, are marks which reappeared later in the Letters to Stillingfleet.’

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editions. He provided additional arguments in chapter X of

the ‘Eclaircissements’, which were published in a separate

third volume to the main work in the Third Edition by André

Pralard (Paris, 1678).5 A third and last form of the

argument appeared in Malebranche’s 1693 reply to criticism

by Pierre Sylvain Régis in the latter’s Cartesian textbook

Cours entier de philosophie (1691).6 According to an entry in his

notebooks, Locke bought the Recherche in March 1676,7 but it

is not until 1 March 1685 that some brief notes in his

Journal on the teaching of mathematics give clear proof of

his actual reading of the work.8 There are no clear

indications that during his years in France he ever met

Malebranche.9

5 More precisely, this is the ‘Troisième état’, on which were based several ‘Éditions’, including the Third and the Fourth; see Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, ‘Introduction’, to Recherche, vol. I, p. viii.6 Régis, Cours entier de philosophie ou système général selon les principes de M. Descartes (Amsterdam: Huguetan, 1691 [DATE CORRECT?]); Malebranche, ‘Réponse à Régis’, Oeuvres complètes de Malebranche, ed. André Robinet, vol. XVII, pp. [??? CHECK!!!]7 MS Locke f. 15, p. 15. Later he bought other editions; see John Harrison and Peter Laslett, The Library of John Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965) nos. 1875-1880, 1882-1883. 8 MS Locke f. 8, p. 264.9 J. Lough, Locke’s Travels in France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953) p. xxxix; see also Gabriel Bonno, Les relations intellectuelles de Locke avec la France. University of California Publications in Modern Philosophy, vol. 38, nr. 2 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1955) p. 58. See however a letter from Nicolas Toinard to Locke, 18/28 March 1688, The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E. S. de Beer (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1976-) (= Corr.) letter 1031, vol. III, p. 417: ‘Je n’oublieray pas à vous dire que l’un des exemplaires sera aussi donné auP. M.’

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Malebranche’s best known British follower was John

Norris (1657-1711), who defended the Vision in God in his

book Reason and Religion (1689).10 In 1690 he published some

Cursory Reflections, which were appended to his Christian

Blessedness.11 The Cursory Reflections were the first attack on John

Locke’s Essay after its appearance in December 1689. A

critical review of Norris’s attack was published by Locke’s

friend Jean le Clerc in the Bibliothèque Universelle (1691), and

an English translation of this review appeared in the third

volume of the of the Athenian Gazette, also in 1691. Norris

replied to this English version in 1692 with A Brief

Consideration.12 Locke’s relations with Norris were initially

friendly, but a private misunderstanding about a letter in

1692 incurred Locke’s irretrievable wrath, and it seems that

only after this misfortunate accident Locke was motivated in

drafting three reactions against both Norris and Malebranche

himself. The manuscripts containing these reactions are

currently deposited in the Bodleian Library and none was

published during Locke’s lifetime.13

10 John Norris, Reason and Religion: or, the grounds and measures of devotion, consider’d from the nature of God, and the nature of man, in several contemplations, with exercises of devotion (London: (publisher?), 1689.11 John Norris, Cursory Reflections upon a Book call’d An Essay concerning Human Understanding (London: S. Manship, 1690), appended to Christian Blessedness: or, Discourses upon the Beatitudes of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (London: S. Manship,1690).12 A Brief Consideration of the Remarques made upon the foregoing Reflections by the Gentlemen of the Athenian Society follows the Cursorary Reflections appended to the second edition of the Christian Blessedness (London: S. Manship, 1692).

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(1) MS Locke c. 28, fols 107-112, ‘JL to Mr Norris’/‘JL

Answer to Mr Norris Reflections 92’, manuscript in Locke’s

hand, published by Richard Acworth in The Locke Newsletter 2

(1971) 8-11 (referred to here as ‘Answer to Norris’).

(2) MS Locke d. 3, pp. 1-86, ‘JL Of seeing all thing<s> in

God 1693’, manuscript in the hand of an amanuensis,

published by Peter King as ‘An Examination of P.

Malebranche’s Opinion of Seeing All Things In God’, in

Posthumous Works of Mr. John Locke (London: J. Churchill, 1706.)

pp. 137-213 (= ‘Examination’).

(3) MS Locke d. 3, pp. 89-109, ‘Some other loose thoughts

which I set down as they came in my way in a hasty perusal

of some of Mr Norris’s writeings, to be better digested when

I shall have leisure to make an End of this Argument’,

published in 1720 by Pierre Desmaizeaux as ‘Remarks upon

Some of Mr. Norris’s Books’ 1720 (= ‘Remarks’).14 The hand

of Locke is visible in corrections and additions to both (2)

and (3), but much more prominently in (2) than in(3).

(4) Finally, there is a fourth text, ‘Recherche’, not

mentioned by Johnston at all: MS Locke c. 28, fol. 159r-

159v, is a quarter sheet (155 x 219 mm) divided by two

vertical folds in three columns (this text will be referred

13 The most complete discussion of these three manuscripts is still Johnston, ‘Locke’s Examination’.14 A Collection of Several Pieces of Mr Locke, Never before printed, or not extant in his Works (London: R. Francklin, 1720) pp. 153-175.

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to by its two first words: ‘Things material’).15 The

critical queries in this text all pertain to the Vision in

God or to related problems discussed in Part II, Book III,

chapters 1, 2, and 5 of the Recherche.

The dates of the first two texts were entered by Locke

himself (1692 and 1693). The third text, ‘Remarks’, is dated

1693 by Johnston. It’s relative order vis-à-vis the two

previous text is relatively straightforward: the ‘Remarks’

are entered on the pages following the ‘Examination’ in the

same manuscript.16 Moreover, the phrase ‘Some other loose

thoughts’ suggests that it is a continuation of a previous

text, and the ‘Examination’, which end with ‘Thus far 1693’,

seems the most likely candidate. In addition, since Locke

replies to Norris’s Brief Consideration of 1692, we can be sure

that the ‘Remarks’ were written after this tract. Hence the

date suggested by Johnston for the ‘Remarks’, 1693, seems

plausible. ‘Things material’ was originally enclosed in a

letter by Locke to an unknown person, dated 3 December 1693

by De Beer, who remarks that the connection between the two

pieces ‘appears to be fortuitous’.17 The letter provides us

with a terminus ad quem, but an earlier cannot be ruled out.

15 The inner column (c. 24 mm) is used for references to Malebranche; the middle column (c. 62 mm) is used for problems raised by Locke about the relevant passage in Malebranche; and the outer colum (c. 65 mm) is used for his own answer to the problem; all entries are in Locke’s hand.16 It should be noted, though, that the quires of this manuscript were never bound together.17 De Beer in: Locke, Corr. 1678, IV, p. 756.

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Quotations from all of these manuscripts are based on my own

transcriptions.18

Johnston has correctly remarked that Norris’s role as

catalyst for Locke’s reactions has been underestimated, not

in the least because Peter King in his edition of the

‘Examination’ had suppressed paragraphs 1, 3-5, and also of

a sarcastic allusion to ‘A certain Gent’ in paragraph 2919,

which all show that Norris was very much at the centre of

Locke’s attention. Hence Johnston writes that ‘it is plain

that in attacking the fountain head of his theories, Locke

was more concerned to strike a blow a Malebranche’s

disciple’20 and also that the ‘Examination’ was not directed

primarily against Malebranche, ‘but against Norris through

his acknowledged master’21. When Locke writes to William

Molyneux on 28 March 1693 about the possibility of adding a

chapter on the Vision in God, he possibly makes an allusion

to Norris.22 In addition, the very title of the Remarks 18 I have not signalled scribal additions and deletions, which in the case of the quotations used for the present article were all minor. Ocasionally I have supplied letters failing in the original manuscripts;these editorial insertions are marked between < >. The Malebranche papers by Locke will be included in the Drafts for the Essays, Vol. III of the Clarendon Locke Edition, eds Paul Schuurman and G. A. J. Rogers.19 ‘A certain Gent: I know, would have found fault with this want of method in another, and to tell where Ideas were to be seen, before he had told us, what they were would have been an unpardonable fault to him.’20 Johnston, ‘Locke’s Examination’, p. 554.21 Johnston, ‘Locke’s Examination’, p. 557.22 Corr. 1620, IV, p. 665: ‘Malebranche’s hypothesis of seeing all things in God being that from whence I find some men [i. e. Norris] would derive our ideas, I have some thoughts of adding a new chapter, wherein

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indicates that we are dealing with ‘Some other loose

thoughts which I set down as they came in my way in ‘a hasty

perusal of some of Mr Norris’s writeings’. Yet for all the

importance of Norris in occasioning Locke’s replies, and in

spite of Norris being a philosopher in his own right who was

not a slavish follower of Malebranche,23 the fact remains

that Norris added little to the hypothesis the Vision in God

that had not already been supplied by Malebranche himself. 24

Consequently it is not surprising that the substance of

Locke’s arguments against the Vision in God is directed

against Malebranche, not against Norris. Indeed this is what

Locke had announced himself in par. 5 of the ‘Examination’:

‘He [Norris] will pardon me if I have recourse for my

information to him that is looked on as the author of it

[Malebranche]’. Moreover, Locke’s MS ‘Things material’

proves that he was quite able to discuss Malebranche without

any reference to Norris at all. Finally, when Locke, in his

correspondence with William Molyneux in March-April 1695,

I examine it, having, as I think, something for to say against it, that will shew the weakness of it very clearly. But I have so little love to controversy, that I am not fully resolv’d.’ Molyneux welcomed the suggestion in his letter of 18 April 1693, Corr. 1622, IV, p. 668.23 For instance, contrary to Malebranche, Norris held that not even faith can provide us with certain knowledge of an external material world. See Richard Acworth, The Philosophy of John Norris of Bemerton (1657-1712) (Hildesheim: Olms, 1979) p. 299.24 This is not to say that Norris did not make any conceptual contribution at all in the polemics with Locke. The former’s insistance that Locke give a precise definition of the ontological status of ideas forced him to elucidate his agnostic views on this topic; for a recent discussion of this topic see Marc A. Hight, ‘Locke’s Implicit Ontology of Ideas’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 9 (2001) 17-42.

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again suggests and then finally rejects the possibility of

including his comments on the Vision in God in the next

edition of the Essay, his main concern seems the substance

of Malebranche’s philosophy, not his old quarrel with

Norris, who receives no mention at all.25

Strictures can also be put on Locke’s sources within the

Malebranchean corpus. The Frenchman’s 1693 arguments for the

Vision in God came too late to influence Locke’s polemics

with Norris. Similarly, Malebranche’s elucidations in the

tenth ‘Eclaircissement’ of the Recherche had no influence on

the three texts by Locke mentioned above under (1)-(3)-(4),

although they are addressed from par. 58 onwards in (2),

i.e. in the ‘Examination’. However, it is safe to say that

most of Locke’s arguments against the Vision in God pertain

to the guise in which they appeared in the first editions of

Malebranche’s Recherche, and it is to this formulation that I

shall now turn.

3. Vision in God: Malebranche

25 See Locke to W. Molyneux (8 March 1695), Corr. 1857, V, p. 287; W. Molyneux to Locke (26 March 1695), Corr. 1867, V, p. 317; Locke to W. Molyneux (26 April 1695), Corr. 1887, V, p. 353; see also Locke to Peter King (4 and 25 October 1704), Corr. 3647, VIII, pp. 412-413. Cf François Duchesneau, L’Empirisme de Locke (The Hague: M Nijhoff, 1973) p.207: ‘Mais la polémique avec Norris ne nous apparaît que comme une circonstance déterminante entraînant une confrontation de Locke avec la pensée de Malebranche, principal représentant du cartésianisme, en cette fin du XVIIe siècle.’

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At the start of the second part of Book III of the Recherche,

Malebranche makes the following elegant, if perhaps

overconfident observation:

I think everyone agrees that we do not perceive objects

external to us by themselves. We see the sun, the

stars, and an infinity of objects external to us; and

it is not likely that the soul should leave the body to

stroll about the heavens, as it were, in order to

behold all these objects.26

The objects of our minds are not material objects

themselves, but ideas: ‘Thus, by the word idea, I mean here

nothing other than the immediate object, or the object

closest to the mind, when it perceives something’27. For

Malebranche the question of how we can perceive material

objects should be couched in terms of the relation between

26 Recherche, 3. 2. 1. , vol. I, p. 413: ‘Je croi que tout le monde tombe d’accord, que nous n’appercevons point les objets qui sont hors de nous par eux-mêmes. Nous voyons le Soleil, les Etoiles, & une infinité d’objets hors de nous; & il n’est pas vraisemblable que l’ame sorte du corps, & qu’elle aille, pour ainsi dire, se promener dans les cieux, pour y contempler tous ces objets.’ The translation of this quotation (and subsequent quotations) from the Recherche is by Thomas M. Lennon andPaul J. Olscamp: Nicolas Malebranche, The Search after Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) (=LO) p.217.27 Recherche 3. 2. 6, vol. I, p. 414: ‘Ainsi par ce mot idée, je n’entendsici autre chose, que ce qui est l’object immédiat, ou plus proche de l’esprit, quand il apperçoit quelque objet’ (LO p. 217).

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objects and ideas. 28 He thinks that he can narrow down these

relations to five distinct possibilities:

We assert the absolute necessity, then, of the

following: either (a) the ideas we have of bodies and

of all other objects we do not perceive by themselves

come from these bodies or objects; or (b) our soul has

the power of producing these ideas; or (c) God has

produced them in us while creating the soul or produces

them every time we think about a given object; or (d)

the soul has in itself all the perfections it sees in

bodies; or else (e) the soul is joined to a completely

perfect being that contains all intelligible

perfections, or all the ideas of created beings.29

He rejects (a)-(d) in favour of (e), the famous Vision in

God.30 God has the ideas of all the creatures that He

created in Himself, since otherwise He could not have

28 Although the preferred, i. e. distinct, way of seeing bodies is through their ideas in God, there is also a confused way of seeing bodies and that is by the sentimens of our senses. It is precisely because these sentiments of bodies are confused that we need ideas, ‘pour corriger les sentimens que nous en avons’ (Recherche, 3. 2. 7. 4, vol. I, p. 453).29 Recherche, 3. 2. 1. 2, vol. I, p. 417: ‘Nous assurons donc qu’il est absolument nécessaire, que les idées que nous avons des corps, & de tousles autres objets que nous n’appercevons point par eux-mêmes, viennent de ces mêmes corps, ou de ces objets: ou bien que nôtre ame ait la puissance de produire ces idées: ou que Dieu les ait produites avec elleen la créant, ou qu’il les produise toutes les fois qu’on pense à quelque objet: ou que l’ame ait en elle-même toutes les perfections qu’elle voit dans ces corps: ou enfin qu’elle soit unie avec un être tout parfait, & qui renferme généralement toutes les perfections intelligibles, ou toutes les idées des êtres créez.’ (LO p. 219).30 See also Steven Nadler, Malebranche and Ideas (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1992) pp. 137-140.

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created them. We know furthermore ‘that through His presence

God is in close union with out minds, such that He might be

said to be the place of minds as space is, in a sense, the

place of bodies’31. Given these two assumptions, ‘the mind

surely can see what in God represents created beings, since

what in God represents created beings is very spiritual,

intelligible, and present to the mind’32. Our minds can see

what in God represents created beings, provided that God

wishes to reveal these objects to our minds. There are three

reasons for assuming that this is indeed God’s wish. The

most important reason, according to Malebranche, is that

when we want to think about something in particular we first

cast a glance over all beings in general and only then

‘apply ourselves to the consideration of the object we wish

to think about’33. This confirms his thesis that all our

particular ideas of created beings ‘are but limitations of

the general idea of the Creator’34. Moreover, there is the

31 Recherche, 3. 2. 6, vol. I, p. 437: ‘que Dieu est tres-étroitement unià nos ames par sa présence, de sorte qu’on peut dire qu’il est le lieu des esprits, de même que les espaces sont en un sens le lieu des corps’ (LO p. 230).32 Ibid.’Ces deux choses étant supposées, il est certain que l’esprit peut voir ce qu’il y a dans Dieu qui represente les êtres créez, puisquecela est tres-spirituel, tres-intelligible, & tres-present à l’esprit.’ (LO p. 231)33 Recherche, 3. 2. 6, vol. I, p. 440: ‘que lors que nous voulons penser àquelque chose en particulier, nous jettons d’abord la vûë sur tous les êtres, & nous nous appliquons ensuit à la consideration de l’objet auquel nous souhaitons de penser’ (LO p. 232).34 Recherche, 3. 2. 6, vol. I, p. 443: ‘Ainsi comme nous n’aimons aucune chose que par l’amour nécessaire que nous avons pour Dieu, nous ne voyons aucune chose que par la connoissance naturelle que nous avons de

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economy in nature. God does great things by small and simple

means. He could have chosen to produce ‘as many infinities

of infinite numbers of ideas as there are created minds’35,

but he has chosen for the more simple option of having the

idea of each material object only once, in himself, and

allowing each of us to see the object in question through

its idea in Himself. Finally, the Vision in God admirably

expresses the fact that we can know nothing without God, 36

or, as is attested by 2 Cor. 3: 5: ‘Not that we are

sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves;

but our sufficiency is of God.’

4. Vision in God: Locke

Locke’s agrees with Malebranche that we perceive objects

through their ideas. Actually, distinct echoes of

Malebranche’s definition can be heard in Locke’s Essay,

where he describes the word ‘idea’ as ‘that Term, which, I

think, serves best to stand for whatsoever is the Object of

the Understanding when a Man thinks’37. Locke disagrees

strongly with the Frenchman, however, over the question of

how we have access to these ideas and hence to the material

Dieu: & toutes les idées particuliéres que nous avons des créatures, ne sont que des limitations de l’idée du Créateur’ (LO p. 233).35 Recherche, 3. 2. 6, vol. I, p. 438: ‘autant d’infinitez de nombres infinis d’idées, qu’il y a d’esprits créez’ (LO p. 231).36 Recherche, 3. 2. 6, vol. I, p. 439. 37 John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979) (=Essay) I. i. 8, p. 47.

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objects represented by these ideas. Locke rejects

Malebranche’s Vision in God in favour of a mechanicist

account of perception, in which bodies directly cause our

ideas and in which a vital role is played by the physical

concept of impulse. In the First Edition of the Essay

(repeated with minor variations in the Second Edition of

1694 and the Third Edition of 1695) Locke states that bodies

operate one upon another ‘by impulse, and nothing else’38.

Although in the first three editions of the Essay he is

confident that he can rule out actio in distans in favor of

operation by impulse, his actual explanation of how external

bodies cause ideas is highly tentative:

If then Bodies cannot operate at a distance; if

external Objects be not united to our Minds, when they

produce Ideas in it; and yet we perceive these original

Qualities in such of them, as singly fall under our

Senses, ’tis evident that some motion must be thence

continued by our Nerves, or animal Spirits, by some

parts of our Bodies, to the Brains, the seat of

Sensation, there to produce in our Minds the particular Ideas we

have of them.39

Indeed, in the ‘Examination’ he grants Malebranche the

general point that our ideas may be caused by God, but he

replies that we cannot know the nature of this causal

38 Locke, An Essay concerning Humane Understanding (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2003; repr. of London: Th. Basset, 1690), II. v. 11, p. 56.39 Ibid.

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process. This ignorance is neglected by the Vision in God

whereas it is a cornerstone of Locke’s own account:

Impressions made on the retina by rays of light I

thinke I understand and motions from thence continued

to the brain may be conceivd, and that these produce

Ideas in our mindes I am perswaded but in a manner to

me incomprehensible. This I can resolve only in to the

good pleasure of God whose ways are past findeing out,

and I thinke I know it as well when I am told these are

Ideas that the motion of the animal Spirits by a Law

established by God produces in me as when I am told

they are Ideas I see in God. The ideas tis certain I

have and God both ways is the original cause of my

haveing them; but the manner how I come by them, how it

is that I perceive I confesse I understand not.40

This quotation suggest again that perceptions move along

complicated trajectories of which the first stages should

probably be understood mechanically. This is in accordance

with the previous account of perception in the Essay,

although it should be noted that Locke seems less sanguine

about the privileged states of ‘impulse’ in these first

stages. He does not mention ‘impulse’ once in the entire

tract. He is adamant, however, about the last stages. We

don’t understand how at the final stage of the physical

process (whether in the form of impulses or any other form)

40 ‘Examination’, par. 14.

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there is a transformation into psychological ideas: ‘how the

alteration is made in our soules I know not’41; and

Malebranche’s Vision in God is a failed attempt at going

beyond this ‘I know not’.

We have seen in section § 3 that according to

Malebranche we can see all things in God, provided that this

is His wish, and also that this is indeed His wish. In the

‘Examination’ Locke is prepared to concede coherency (if not

truth) to Malebranche’s observation that our soul cannot

perceive material bodies and that we have the ideas of these

bodies only in God, in whom they are present to our minds42;

but he balks at the additional criterion of God’s will,

which according to him reduces the Frenchman’s account to

complete vacuity: ‘But when, after this, I am told that

their presence [of ideas to our minds] is not enough to make

them be seen, but God must do some thing farther to discover

them to me I am as much in the darke as I was at first, and

all this talke of their presence in my minde explains

nothing of the way wherein I perceive them’. He attacks all

three reasons given by Malebranche for the assumptiom that

God indeed wishes us to perceive bodies through His ideas,

and in all cases he makes skillful use of an agnostic line

of argument.

41 ‘Examination’, par. 35.42 Ibid.

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Firstly, Malebranche’s contention that the Vision in

God conforms with the order in which our mind grasps things

(beings in general first, particular things later),

typically and unsurprisingly meets with the full brunt of

Locke’s empiricist epistemology: we receive particular ideas

first and general ideas only at a later stage. A more

specific problem in this context is God’s simplicity.

According to Malebranche, ‘particular ideas are in fact but

participations in the general idea of the infinite’43 in

God, and ‘In order for us to conceive of a finite being,

something must necessarily be eliminated from this general

notion of being’44. In this way, Malebranche tries to

maintain both the priority of general notions over

particular notions and the perception of a plurality of

particular objects through the Vision in God, whilst at the

same tame maintaining that God’s nature itself is simple;

God has only one Idea, ‘the general idea of the infinite’45.

Locke is not impressed by this argument. He remarks that

once Malebranche grants the existence of distinct ideas of

objects, he must, according to his own thesis of the Vision

in God, admit that these distinct ideas are in God; and

43 Recherche, 3. 2. 6, vol. I, p. 441: ‘toutes ces idées particuliéres nesont que des participations de l’idée générale de l’infini’ (LO p. 232).44 Ibid. : ‘Mais enfin que nous concevions un être fini, il faut necessairement retrancher quelque chose de cette notion générale de l’être’ (LO p. 232); see also Recherche, vol. II, p. 446 note *.45 Recherche, 3. 2. 6, vol. I, p. 441: ‘l’idée générale de l’infini’ (LO p. 232).

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their very distinctness means that they cannot be conflated

into one general notion of being.46 So, Malebranche’s

apparent fusion of his ontological claim about God (His

simplicity) and epistemological claims about us (our ability

to partake in a multitude of distinct ideas that are in God)

leads him to contradictions: ‘This seemes to me to expresse

a Simplicity made up of variety, a thing I cannot

understand’47. Locke’s answer is a rigorous separation of

these claims. As long as our ability to have a multitude of

distinct ideas is not based on any claim about the nature of

God, no contradictory conclusion can arise about His

simplicity. Locke fully subscribes to both God’s simplicity

and His omniscience—and hence the possible presence of a

myriad of distinct ideas in His mind. Yet he stresses his

ignorance about the compatibility of these attributes: ‘God

I believe to be a simple being that by his wisdome knows all

thing<s>, and by his power can do all things. but how he

does it I thinke my self lesse able to comprehend than to

contain the Ocean in my hand or grasp the Universe with my

46 Malebranche’s terminology of the participation of particular ideas in the general idea of the infinite was, perhaps not very successfully, meant to counter precisely this charge; see Recherche, 3. 2. 6, vol. I, pp. 441-442: ‘Ainsi l’esprit n’apperçoit aucune chose que dans l’idée qu’il a de l’infini: & tant s’en faut que cette idée soit formée de l’assemblage confus de toutes les idées des êtres particuliers, comme lepensent les Philosophes; qu’au contraire toutes ces idées particuliéres ne sont que des participations de l’idée générale de l’infini: de même que Dieu ne tient pas son être des créatures, mais toutes les créatures ne sont que des participations imparfaites de l’être divin.’47 ‘Examination’, par. 36.

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span.’48 So, ‘though it cannot be denyd that God sees and

knows all things yet when we say we see all things in him it

is but a metaphorical expression to cover our ignorance in a

way that pretends to explain our knowledge, seeing things in

God signifieing no more than that we perceive them we know

not how’49.

Secondly, Malebranche had argued that God does great

things by small means, and on this principle of divine

economy He had chosen for the simple option of having the

idea of each material object only once, in himself, allowing

each of us to see the object through this idea in Himself.

In the ‘Remarks’, Locke replies that God indeed does never

any thing in vain, but he uses the argument from economy in

a completely different way, not for the Vision in God, but

for ideas caused by sensory perception. God has given us

wonderfully contrived senses and we may assume that these

contribute in some way to producing ideas in our minds by

the presence of objects. If not, then His creation of senses

would have been ‘lost labour’50. Moreover, if we would not

need our senses to form the ideas of material objects, then

a blind men could have these ideas as well as a man endowed

with sight and this is obviously not the case. Here again,

Locke admits that he does not know himself how ideas are

produced in our minds, but human ignorance should not be 48 Ibid.49 Ibid.50 ‘Remarks’, par. 3.

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used as a criterion for putting strictures on God’s

omnipotence, ‘As if it were impossible for the Almighty to

produce any thing but by ways we must conceive, and are able

to comprehend’51.

Thirdly, in the ‘Examination’ Locke’s makes a similar

point against Malebranche’s argument that the Vision in God

is in accordance with God’s will because it makes us

completely dependant on this will. According to Locke, this

means that Malebranche gives a very laborious explanation

for something that he had been prepared to accept all along:

‘that the Ideas we have are in our mindes by the will and

power of God, though in a way that we conceive not, nor are

able to comprehend’52. Locke admits that vision by sensory

impressions leaves us as ignorant about God’s will as

Malebranche’s Vision in God: ‘Here is the will of God

giveing union and perception in both cases, but how that

perception is made in both ways seemes to me equalle

incomprehensible’53. The Vision of God is a ‘learned

circuit’, which ‘in good earnest seemes to me to be nothing

but goeing a great way about to come to the same place’54.

Vision by sensory impressions, on the other hand, is more

plausible because it is more simple, and it is more simple

because it does not try to make explanative use of God.

51 Ibid.52 ‘Examination’, par. 35.53 ‘Examination’, par. 47.54 ‘Examination’, par 45.

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In addition, the Vision in God is not only implausible,

but it is only theologically unsound. In the Recherche,

Malebranche asserts that ‘It cannot be doubted that only God

existed before the world was created and that He could not

have produced it without knowledge or ideas; consequently,

the ideas He had of the world are not different from

Himself, so that all creatures, even the most material and

terrestrial, are in God, thought in a completely spiritual

way that is incomprehensible to us.’55 Locke thinks that it

is dangerous to talk about material things that are

immaterially in God. This assertion seems ‘to come very near

saying (...) that material things are God or a part of

him’56. So, Locke is here pointing to the supposedly

Spinozist implications of Malebranche’s thesis. Locke adds

that this will not have been ‘what our A<uthor> designs’,

‘yet thus, I fear, he must be forced to talke, who thinkes

he knows Gods understanding so much better than his owne.

that he will make use of the divine Intellect to explain the

humane’57. Locke would make the same point in the ‘Remarks’,

where he observes that this thesis is not better ‘than what

55 Malebranche, Recherche, 3. 2. 4, vol. I, pp. 434-435: ‘Il est indubitable qu’il n’y avoit que Dieu seul avant que le monde fût créé & qu’il n’a pû le produire sans connoissance & sans idée: que par conséquent ces idées que Dieu en a euës ne sont point différentes de lui-même & qu’ainsi toutes les créatures, même les plus materielles & les plus terrestres, sont en Dieu, quoi que d’une maniére toute spirituelle & que nous ne pouvons comprendre.’ (LO p. 229).56 ‘Examination’, par. 27.57 Ibid.

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those say who make God to be nothing but the universe’58. So

here again we have an example of the nefarious consequences

of making unfounded knowledge claims about God.

Finally, Locke uses his epistemological agnosticism not

only against Malebranche’s internal argumentation for the

Vision in God, but also against the Frenchman’s prior

enumeration and rejection of all other alternative relations

between ideas and bodies. Locke remarks that even if we

would not be able to find a better possibility than the last

item in Malebranche’s enumeration, i.e. the Vision in God,

than this would still amount to no more than an argumentum

ad ignorantiam. In the Essay he explains that those who use

this debatable argument require ‘the Adversary to admit what

they alledge as a Proof, or to assign a better’59. In the

particular case of his discussion of the Vision in God in

the ‘Examination’, he adds that given ‘the weakenesse of our

mindes and the narrowness of our capacitys’60, Malebranche

58 ‘Remarks’, par. 11. The spectre of Spinozism seems to have prompted the following barely legible, but intriguing observation, written in pencil on the right hand side of page 53 of the manuscript of the ‘Remarks’ (MS Locke d. 3), in a hand that I hesitate to identify as Locke’s: ‘et haec doctrina huc tendit procul dubio. Jupiter est quodcumque vides, quodcumque moveris etc’. The second sentence is a quotation from Lucan, Pharsalia, ix, 580: ‘All that we see is God; every motion we make is God also’, Lucan, The Civil War, transl. J. D. Duff (London: W. Heinemann, 1969) p. 549. I thank Prof. M. A. Stewart for giving his desicive help in deciphering this passage.59 Essay, IV. xvii. 20, p. 686. On Locke’s account of the argumentum ad ignorantiam see also Douglas Walton, Arguments from Ignorance (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996) pp. 36-38.60 ‘Examination’, par 6.

22


cannot be sure that his enumeration is complete. Hence our

inability to ‘assign a better’ alternative does not oblige

us to consider Malebranche’s reasons ‘as a Proof’. We are

ignorant about God, who may have authored connections

between material bodies and our perceptions that totally

surpass our understanding. This means that Malebranche was

wrong to take his own ignorance as the measure for his

enumeration of five possibilities, which ‘must be built on

this good opinion of our capacitys, that God cannot make the

creatures operate but in ways conceivable by us. (...) To

say there can be no other, because we conceive no other does

not I confesse much instruct’61.

5. Vision in God and thinking matter

There is an intriguing connection between Malebranche’s

Vision in God and Locke’s suggestion about thinking matter.

The Vision in God is an answer to the problem of how our

immaterial minds can perceive material bodies. We have already

noted (see §1) that the reason for considering this as a

problem at all, was Malebranche’s subscription to the

Cartesian tenet that the essence of mind is thinking, while

the essence of matter is extension. He was aware that his

formulation of the mind-body problem (let alone his answer

to this problem) is in danger of collapse once we start to

doubt the nature of these essences:

61 ‘Examination’, par. 12.

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Now if we suppose that the essence of matter is not

extension in height, breadth, and depth, but some other

thing we are not familiar with, how shall we refute the

error of the freethinker, who maintains and even shows

with plausible arguments that it is the matter

composing the brain that thinks, reasons, wills, and so

forth? How can we prove that a thing we do not know

does not have such and such a property (...)?62

Once we start supposing that the essence of matter is not

extension, admit that we do not know the essence of matter,

and consider it ‘a thing we do not know’, we are liable to

the error of freethinkers who maintains that matter thinks.

And this, of course, amounts to Locke’s famous suggestion

about thinking matter in the Essay, which indeed takes its

point of departure in this kind of agnosticism about the

essence of matter (and thinking and God). It is agnosticism

that drives Locke’s precise formulation; he does not

suggest, like Malebranche’s ‘freethinker’, that matter can

think, but rather observes that he does not know enough to

deny this possibility.

62 Recherche, 3. 2. 8. 2, vol. I, p. 466: ‘Or si l’on suppose que l’essence de la matiére n’est point l’étenduë en longueur, largeur & profondeur, mais quelque autre chose qu’on ne connoit point, comment refutera-t-on l’erreur d’un libertin, qui soûtient, & qui prouve même par des raisons sensibles & apparentes, que c’est la matiére dont le cerveau est composé, qui pense, raisonne, veut, & le reste. Peut-on prouver qu’une chose qu’on ne connoît point, n’a point telle ou telle propriété, & convaincre d’erreur celui qui sçait que le cerveau blessé, on ne pense plus, ou qu’on pense mal.’ (LO p. 247).

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We have the Ideas of Matter and Thinking, but possibly

shall never be able to know, whether any mere material

Being thinks, or no; it being impossible for us, by the

contemplation of our own Ideas, without revelation, to

discover, whether Omnipotency has not given to some

Systems of Matter fitly disposed, a power to perceive

and think, or else joined and fixed to Matter so

disposed, a thinking immaterial Substance: It being, in

respect of our Notions, not much more remote from our

Comprehension to conceive, that GOD can, if he pleases,

superadd to Matter a Faculty of Thinking, than that he

should superadd to it another Substance, with a Faculty

of Thinking; since we know not wherein Thinking

consists, nor to what sort of Substances the Almighty

has been pleased to give that Power, which cannot be in

any created Being, but merely by the good pleasure and

Bounty of the Creator.63

There is no proof that Locke had Malebranche in mind when he

made his suggestion, but he did read Malebranche while he

wrote the Essay, and the possibility of thinking matter is

the very consequence of an agnosticism that Malebranche had

tried to pre-empt with his Vision in God.

6. Thinking matter: Stillingfleet and Locke

63 Essay, IV. iii. 6, pp. 540-541.

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When Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worchester, attacked

Locke’s Essay and its ways of ideas in three publications,

he was especially scathing about the possibility of thinking

matter. Locke reacted to each of Stillingfleet’s texts,

resulting in the following sequence that was brought to an

end by the death of the Bishop in 1699. The topic of

thinking matter is discussed in each of these texts, with

the exception of text (4), Locke’s First Reply:

(1) Stillingfleet, ‘The Objections against the Trinity in

Point of Reason answer’d’, chapter 10 of A Discourse in

Vindication of the Trinity (London: H. Mortlock, 1697) (=

Vindication);64

(2) Locke, A Letter to Edward Bishop of Worcester (London: A. and J.

Churchill, 1697) (= Letter);65

(3) Stillingfleet, The Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to Mr. Locke’s Letter

(London: H. Mortlock, 1697) (= First Answer);66

(4) Locke, Mr. Locke’s Reply To the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of

Worcester’s Answer to his Letter (London: A. and J. Churchill, 1697)

(= First Reply);67

(5) Stillingfleet, The Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to Mr. Locke’s Second

Letter (London: H. Mortlock, 1698) (= Second Answer);68

64 For ‘thinking matter’ see p. 241 ff.65 Included in The Works of John Locke (London: Th. Tegg, 1823; repr. Aalen: Scientia, 1963) (= Works), vol. IV, 1-96; ‘thinking matter’: p. 31 ff (see also pp. 95-96).66 ‘Thinking matter’: p. 47 ff.67 Works, vol. IV, pp. 97-184.68 ‘Thinking matter’: pp. 29-30 and p. 35 ff.

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(6) Locke, Mr. Locke’s Reply To the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of

Worcester Answer to his Second Letter (London: A. and J. Churchill,

1699) (= Second Reply);69 the ‘Second Letter was probably

published in c. November 1698. 70

Stillingfleet belonged to a liberal Anglican tradition

that tried to use reason and reasonableness against the

dangers of skepticism and religious heterodoxy.71 Using the

well-known Cartesian distinction between demonstrative and

moral certainty, he stated that even where it is not

possible to reach demonstrative certainty about religious

propositions, we can still obtain moral certainty ‘as long

as the evidence for them is much more considerable than the

Objections against them’.72 Hence, as he had put it in A

Rational Account of the Protestant Religion (1664), faith is a ‘rational

and discursive Act of the Mind’, i.e. ‘an assent upon Evidence, or

Reason inducing the mind to assent’73. The doctrines of the

Anglican Church are not mysterious and can be believed on

the basis of rational evidence. In the Vindication 69 Works, vol. IV, pp. 191-498; ‘thinking matter’: p. 293 ff. and p. 459 ff.70 See Corr. , vol. VI, p. vii.71 See Richard H. Popkin, ‘The philosophy of Stillingfleet’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 9 (1971) 307.72 Edward Stillingfleet, A Letter to a Deist. In Answer to several Objections against the Truth and Authority of the Scriptures (London, 1677) pp. 6-7, quoted in Popkin, ‘Stillingfleet’, p. 307.73 Stillingfleet, A Rational Account of the grounds of Protestant religion (1664), in: Works (London: H. and P. Mortlock, 1720), vol. IV, p. 196, quoted in M. A. Stewart, ‘Stillingfleet and the Way of Ideas’, in: M. A. Stewart, ed., English Philosophy in the Age of Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000) pp. 271-272.

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Stillingfleet tried to show that the doctrine of the Trinity

is not above but in accordance with reason. He gave an

analysis of the two most important concepts related to the

Trinity, i.e. substance and person, and also of reason

itself. It is this analysis in the tenth chapter that brings

him into conflict with Locke’s Essay.

Stillingfleet agreed with Locke that reason can be

combined with religion, but they differed about the precise

nature of this relationship. Whereas for Locke The

Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) was an attribute of faith As

delivered in the Scriptures, Stillingfleet sought reasonableness in

Anglican theological doctrine.74 Moreover, according to

Stillingfleet reason is an independent source of knowledge.

This latter point explains much of his animosity against

Locke’s ‘way of ideas’. In the Vindication he denies that all

ideas must be either from sensation or reflection; ‘that we

must have clear and distinct Ideas of whatever we pretend to any

certainty of in our minds’; and ‘that the only Way to attain

this certainty, is by comparing these Ideas toegether’75.

Against this, Stillingfleet holds that certainty ‘is not

placed upon any clear and distinct Ideas, but upon the force of

Reason distinct from it’76. Whereas for Locke ideas and

reasoning are complementary, the former forming the

indispensable basic material for the latter, for 74 Cf. Stewart, ‘Stillingfleet’, pp. 278-279.75 Vindication, p. 232.76 Vindication, p. 250.

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Stillingfleet ‘it is not the Idea that makes us certain, but

the Argument from that which we perceive in, and about our

Selves’77. This quotation illustrates Stillingfleet’s

inability to grasp an elementary aspect of Locke’s

epistemology: certainty is cannot be sought in individual

ideas, but in the comparison between two or more ideas.78

The same quotation is telling in another respect as well.

The phrase ‘that which we perceive in, and about our Selves’

points to the source of Stillingfleet concept of ‘reason’ as

a way of obtaining certainty, over and above our clear and

distinct ideas received from sensation or reflection. This

source is Cartesian. According to Stillingfleet, Descartes’s

cogito shows that it is possible to have certainty without

clear and distinct ideas: ‘here it is not the Clearness of the

Idea, but an immediate Act of Perception, which is the true

ground of Certainty’79. In general, we have ‘Principles of

true Reason’ and these are not taken from our ideas;

examples of these principles are ‘That no man can doubt his

own Perception; that every thing must have a Cause; that

this Cause must either have Knowledge or not’80.

77 Vindication, p. 252.78 See Locke, Letter, Works, vol. IV, p. 29: ‘For I do not remember that Ihave any where placed certainty only in clear and distinct ideas, but inthe clear and visible connexion of any of our ideas, be those ideas whatthey will’.79 Vindication, p. 248.80 Vindication, p. 251.

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It is important for Stillingfleet to posit reason as an

independent source of certainty, over and above our ideas

received from sensation or reflection, because reason can

teach him something that these ideas cannot: the existence

and the attributes of substances, which he needs to show the

reasonableness of the Trinity. He agrees with Locke that we

cannot have a clear and distinct idea of substance by

comparing the ideas we have from sensation and reflection.

Reason, however, forms ‘some ‘general Notions, or rational

Ideas’81, and of these ‘Substance is one of the first (...).

Since it is a Repugnancy to our first Conceptions of things,

that Modes or Accidents should subsist by themselves, and

therefore the Rational Idea of Substance is one of the first,

and most natural Ideas in our minds.’82 Thanks to reason as

he understands it, Stillingfleet feels that he can attribute

an ontological status to substance that is so robust that

its denial would amount to a logical contradiction, whereas

Locke degrades substance to ‘a bare Grammatical Etymology’83:

‘And is this all indeed, that is to be said for the being of

Substance, that we accustom our selves to suppose a Substratum?’84

81 Vindication, p. 235.82 Vindication, pp. 235-236.83 Vindication, p. 237.84 Vindication, p. 236. See also Stillingfleet, Answer, pp. 13-14: ‘whereas I assert it [substance] to be one of the most natural and certain Ideas in our Minds, because it is a Repugnance to our first conception of Things that Modes or Accidents should subsist by themselves; and therefore I said the Rational Idea of Substance is one of the first Ideas in our Minds’; cf. Locke, Essay, II. 23. 1, p. 295: ‘Because, as I have said, not imagining how these simple Ideas can subsist by themselves, we

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According to Stillingfleet, Locke’s reliance on ideas,

his agnosticism about of substances, and his neglect of

reason as an independent source of certainty, all seem to

combine in bringing him to the grave error of entertaining

the possibility of thinking matter, and leave him incapable

of proving ‘a Spiritual Substance in us, from a Faculty of Thinking;

because he cannot know from the Idea of Matter and Thinking, that

Matter so disposed cannot think. And he cannot be certain

that God hath not framed the Matter of our Bodies, so as to

be capable of it.’85 In the First Answer Stillingfleet adds

that the possibility of God giving immortality to a material

substance ‘takes off very much from the evidence of

Immortality’, since matter ‘of its own Nature’86 is not

capable of thinking. He adds that Hobbes had tried to use

the supposed materiality of the soul to deny its

immortality. He does not outrightly accuse Locke of having

the same aims: ‘But what is all this to you? I hope nothing

at all. But it shews, that those who have gone about to

overthrow the Immortality of the Soul by nature, have not been thought

to secure the great ends of Religion and Morality’87, yet suggests that

nevertheless Locke’s suggestion comes dangerously close to

Hobbist materialism.

accustom our selves, to suppose some Substratum, wherein they do subsist,and from which they do result, which therefore we call Substance.’85 Vindication, p. 242.86 First Answer, p. 55.87 First Answer, pp. 56-57.

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In Locke’s defense of the possibility of thinking

matter against Stillingfleet, agnosticism about God, mind

and matter figure as prominently as they had in his assault

on the Vision in God. In the Second Reply to Stillingfleet,

Locke compares the possibility of God having superadded

thought to matter with another case of superaddition: that

of the ‘attraction of matter by matter’. Both are instances

of something being added by God to the essence of matter

‘which we cannot conceive’. If the latter is possible, than

the former cannot be ruled out. When Locke makes this

analogy between thinking matter and gravity he does not

forget to pay tribute to ‘Mr. Newton’s incomparable book’88.

His reference to the elusive concept of Newtonian gravity is

not only relevant for his agnosticism about thinking matter,

but also for his agnosticism about the perception of bodies,

and hence for his attack on the Vision in God. We have seen

(in §4) that in the first three editions of the Essay he

confidently described the first stages of our perception of

bodies to ‘impulse’, although he confessed ignorance about

the subsequent stages of a process that eventually results

in us having ideas of external bodies; and we have also seen

that he stopped stressing the privileged status of impulse

in the ‘Examination’. In the Second Reply this development is

brought to its conclusion, with Locke squarely admitting

that Newton’s work has taught him that impulse is not the

88 Second Reply, Works, vol. IV,p. 467.

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only way that bodies can operate on each other, gravitation

being another possibility. Locke announces that, in the

light of this new concept of gravitation, he will change his

earlier statements about the impossibility of bodily

operations at a distance and about impulse being the only

possible operation of bodies one upon another in future

editions of the Essay.89 So, Locke makes a similarly agnostic

use of Newtonian gravitation in both controversies; it is

used to defend the possibility of thinking matter against

Stillingfleet, while at the same time retrospectively

strengthening his case against Malebranchean pretensions

about how we perceive material bodies.90

In Locke’s other agnostic arguments in defense of the

possibility of thinking matter, a major part is played by

Stillingfleet’s supposed ‘reasonablenesse’. Locke remarks

that the Bishop’s difficulty in acknowledging the

possibility of God creating thinking matter seems to rest on

89 In the Fourth Edition of the Essay (1700) he drops the earlier statement that ‘Bodies cannot operate at a distance’, but impulse remains ‘the only way which we can conceive Bodies operate in’, Essay, II. viii. 11, p. 136.90 The puzzle remains, however, why it Locke took so long to digest the fatal implications of Newtonian gravitation for the exclusivity of the impulse; after all, he probably had read the Principia early enough and well enough to be considered the most likely author of a review of this work published in the Bibliothèque Universelle in 1688, i. e. one year before the publication of the First Edition of the Essay. See James Axtell, ‘Locke’s Review of the Principia’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London(1965) 152-161 and G. A. J. Rogers, ‘Locke’s Essay and Newton’s Principia’,Journal of the History of Ideas 39 (1978) 217-232. See also Matthew Stuart, ‘Locke on Superaddition and Mechanism’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy6 (1998) p. 359.

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his difficulty in squaring this possibility with reason.

According to Locke, this seems to imply that the Bishop

allows only those divine actions that are in accordance with

his own reason. This criterion is incorrect: ‘The omnipotent

Creator advised not with us in the making of the world, and

his ways are not the less excellent, because they are past

our finding out.’ 91 Just as he had done in his discussion of

the Vision of God, Locke then proceeds to show that his

adversary’s point is not only incorrect from a philosophical

point of view, but also that it is suspect in a theological

sense. Stillingfleet’s use of the criterion of reason seems

to undermine the credibility of divine revelation ‘in all

supernatural truths, wherein the evidence of reason fails.

And how much such a principle as this tends to the support

of the doctrine of the Trinity, or the promoting of the

Christian religion, I shall leave it to your lordship to

consider.’92 Here Locke turns the tables on the Bishop, who

had started his controversy with Locke in vindication of the

Doctrine of the Trinity and who had invoked the spectre of

materialist Hobbism against Locke, but who is now presented

as ‘a patron of the oracles of reason’ rather than a

supporter ‘of the oracles of divine revelation’, giving rise91 Second Reply, Works, vol. IV, p. 461; see also ibid.’But it is further urged, that we cannot conceive how matter can think. I grant it; but to argue from thence, that God therefore cannot give to matter a faculty ofthinking, is to say God’s omnipotency is limited to a narrow compass, because man’s understanding is so; and brings down God’s infinite power to the size of our capacities.’92 Second Reply, Works, vol. IV, p. 477.

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to the charge that his writings may be of more use to the

followers of Hobbes and Spinoza then ‘those justly decried’

authors themselves.93 Here again, as we have seen already in

the controversy about the Vision in God, Locke uses his

agnosticism about God, mind and matter to show that if any

one is in danger of capitulating to the pit-falls of Hobbism

or Spinozism it is not he but his adversary.

7. Conclusion

In this article I have not distinguished between Locke’s

agnosticism about either God or minds or bodies. This is

because, according to Locke, God, minds and bodies all

belong to the same category. They all fall under the

discipline of natural philosophy, ‘whether it be God

himself, Angels, Spirits, Bodies, or any of their

Affections’94. Our ideas (and subsequent knowledge) of these

entities, whether spiritual of corporeal, all share the same

imperfect character. This general agnosticism about both

God, our minds and bodies drives both Locke’s argumentation

against Malebranche’s Vision in God and his defense of the

possibility of thinking matter against Stillingfleet. We do

not know how God causes our ideas of external bodies and

consequently there is no way of proving the Vision in God.

Nor can our ideas of thinking and of matter teach us

93 Second Reply, Works, vol. IV, p. 477.94 Essay, IV. xxi. 2, p. 720.

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anything certain about the possibility or impossibility of

God giving the power of thinking to matter. For Malebranche

there was a clear connection between these two issues:

denial of the Vision in God opens the door to agnosticism

about the essence of matter, which on its turn feeds the

error about thinking matter. Locke denied the Vision in God

and he was agnostic about the essence of matter and he

refused to deny the possibility of thinking matter. Locke

was Malebranche’s worst nightmare come true.

Paul Schuurman,

Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

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‘Vision in God and Thinking Matter. Locke’s epistemological agnosticism used against Malebranche...

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