But it is the _via media_ for which Locke stands, and not the lawless excesses of the eighteenth century. The human reason is not all-knowing――cannot solve all problems, is not endowed with divine ideas; on the other hand, the human reason is not merely a string of sensations. The human reason is just this: it is _human_. It stands midway between divine intuition and animal sensation. Man is free, but free under his own limitations. “If by this inquiry it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things beyond its comprehension――we should then not be so forward, out of affection for universal knowledge, to perplex ourselves and others with disputes about things, to which our understandings are not suited and of which we have not any notions at all.” Human freedom stands between the absolute freedom of God and the absolute necessity of the animal. Human freedom lies within the limits and bounds of human ideas――the _via media_; and analysis of those ideas will show what those limits and bounds are. There can be no knowledge without ideas. Some ideas may be erroneous and out of all relation to reality. On the other hand, there may be ideas to which no experiences fit. Intellectual freedom consists in having not isolated ideas, but ideas in their relations, that is, in the form of judgments. Locke was moved in making his analysis of ideas by a general moral purpose to correct the faults and fallacies in mankind and in himself. “Man’s faculties were given him to procure the happiness which this world is capable of,” says Locke, and it might have been Bacon who had said it. The search for the _via media_ is justified by its practical and utilitarian ends. The _via media_ is the way of freedom. =Two Sides of Locke’s Philosophy.= The search for the _via media_ is an attempt to find “the limits and extent of human knowledge.” This involved Locke in a discrimination as to what should be accepted and what rejected of the past. It gives his philosophy a positive and a negative aspect. In brief, on its negative side he makes a show of rejecting the entire past by rejecting all innate ideas, but really he inconsistently accepted from the past its conception of substance and of individuality. On its positive side he builds up from experience a theory of knowledge which he divides into intuitive, demonstrative, and probable. That is to say, while Locke affirms that all our knowledge must be derived from experience, it never occurs to him to doubt the traditional Cartesian theory of the existence of God, man, and matter.