"Oui peut-etre au dela de la sphere des nues, Au sein de cet azur immobile et dormant, Peut-etre faites-vous des choses inconnues Ou la douleur de l'homme entre comme element." CHAPTER III THE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Locke: His Ideas on Human Liberty, Morality, General Politics, and Religious Politics. LOCKE.--Locke, very learned in various sciences--physics, chemistry, medicine, often associated with politics, receiving enlightenment from life, from frequent travels, from friendships with interesting and illustrious men, always studying and reflecting until an advanced old age, wrote only carefully premeditated works: his _Treatise of Government_ and _Essay on the Human Understanding_. Locke appears to have written on the understanding only in order to refute the "innate ideas" of Descartes. For Locke innate ideas have no existence. The mind before it comes into contact with the external world is a blank sheet, and there is nothing in the mind which has not first come through the senses. What, then, are ideas? They are sensations registered by the brain, and they are also sensations elaborated and modified by reflection. These ideas then commingle in such a manner as to form an enormous mass of combinations. They are commingled either in a natural or an artificial manner. In a natural manner, that is in a way conforming to the great primary ideas given us by reflection, the idea of cause, the idea of end, the idea of means to an end, the idea of order, etc., and it is the harmony of these ideas which is commonly termed reason; they become associated by accident, by the effects of emotion, by the effect of custom, etc., and then they give birth to prejudices, errors, and superstitions. The passions of the soul are aspects of pleasure and pain. The idea of a possible pleasure gives birth in us to a desire which is called ambition, love, covetousness, gluttony; the idea of a possible pain gives birth in us to fear and horror, and this fear and horror is called hatred, jealousy, rage, aversion, disgust, scorn. At bottom we have only two passions, the desire of enjoyment, and the fear of suffering.