77. ‘The very being of things,’ let it be noticed, according to what Locke reckoned their ‘real,’ as distinct from their ‘nominal,’ essence. The consideration of this distinction has been hitherto postponed; but the discussion of the relation of identity, as subsisting between the parts of a ‘continued body,’ brings us upon the doctrine of matter and its ‘primary qualities,’ which cannot be properly treated except in connection with the other doctrine (which Locke unhappily kept apart) of the two sorts of ‘essence.’ So far, it will be remembered, the ‘facts’ or _given_ ideas, which we have found him unawares converting into theories or ‘invented’ ideas, have been those of the ‘secondary qualities of body.’ [1] It is these which are united into things or substances, having been already ‘found in them:’ it is from these that we ‘infer’ the relation of cause and effect, because as ‘vicissitudes of things’ or ‘affections of sense’ they presuppose it: it is these again which, as ‘received from without,’ testify the present existence of something, because in being so received they are already interpreted as ‘appearances of something.’ That the ‘thing,’ by reference to which these ideas are judged to be ‘real,’ ‘adequate,’ and ‘true’--or, in other words, become elements of a knowledge--is yet itself according to Locke’s doctrine of substance and relation a ‘fiction of thought,’ has been sufficiently shown. That it is so no less according to his doctrine of essence will also appear. The question will then be, whether by the same showing the ideas of body, of the self, and of God, can be other than fictions, and the way will be cleared for Hume’s philosophic adventure of accounting for them as such. [1] See above, paragraph 20. This repeats the inconsistency found in his doctrine of substance. 78. In Locke’s doctrine of ‘ideas of substances,’ the ‘thing’ appeared in two inconsistent positions: on the one hand, as that in which they ‘are found;’ on the other, as that which results from their concretion, or which, such concretion having been made, we accustom ourselves to suppose as its basis. This inconsistency, latent to Locke himself in the theory of substance, comes to the surface in the theory of essence, where it is (as he thought) overcome, but in truth only made more definite, by a distinction of terms. Plan to be followed.