by a name,’ form the essence of each particular existence, to which the same name is applied (Book III. chap. iii. secs. 12 and the following.) Such essence, however, according to Locke, is ‘nominal,’ not ‘real.’ It is a complex--fuller or emptier--of ideas in us, which, though it is a ‘uniting medium between a general name and particular beings,’ [2] in no way represents the qualities of the latter. These, consisting in an ‘internal constitution of insensible parts,’ form the ‘real essence’ of the particular beings; an essence, however, of which we can know nothing. (Book III. chap. vi. sec. 21, and ix. sec. 12.) [1] Book III. chap, iii, sec. 7, at the end. [2] Book III chap. iii. sec. 13. Only to nominal essences that general propositions relate, _i.e._ only to abstract ideas having no real existence. 81. It is the formation of ‘nominal essences’ that renders general propositions possible. ‘General certainty,’ says Locke, ‘is never to be found but in our ideas. Whenever we go to seek it elsewhere in experiment or observation without us, our knowledge goes not beyond particulars. It is the contemplation of our own abstract ideas, that alone is able to afford us general knowledge.’ (Book IV. chap. vi. sec. 16.) ‘General knowledge,’ he says again, ‘lies only in our own thoughts.’ [1] This use of ‘our ideas’ and ‘our own thoughts’ as equivalent phrases, each antithetical to ‘real existence,’ tells the old tale of a deviation from ‘the new way of ideas’ into easier paths. According to this new way in its strictness, as we have sufficiently seen, there is nowhere for anything to be found but ‘in our ideas.’ It therefore in no way distinguishes general knowledge or certainty that it cannot be found elsewhere. Locke, however, having allowed himself in the supposition that simple ideas report a real existence, other than themselves, but to which they are related as ectype to archetype, tacitly proceeds to convert them into real existences, to which ideas in general, as mere thoughts of our own, may be opposed. Along with this conversion, there supervenes upon the original distinction between simple and complex ideas, which alone does duty in the Second Book of the Essay, another distinction, essential to Locke’s doctrine of the ‘reality’ of knowledge--that between the idea, whether simple or complex, as originally given in sensation, and the same as retained or reproduced in the mind. It is only in the former form that the idea, however simple, reports, and thus (with Locke) itself is, a real existence. Such real existence is a ‘particular’ existence, and our knowledge of it a ‘particular’ knowledge. In other words, according to the only consistent doctrine that we have been able to elicit from Locke, [2] ‘it is a knowledge which consists in a consciousness, upon occasion of a present sensation--say, a sensation of redness--that some object is present here and now causing the sensation; an object which, accordingly,