Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 3 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
apparent other-being and the knowledge of the necessity of the thing
through itself. It is now quite a matter of indifference whether anything
is accepted as something experienced, as a succession of empirical
ideas, if one may so say, or conceptions; or whether the succession is a
succession of thoughts, _i.e._ implicitly existent.
Locke treats of the various kinds of these ideas imperfectly and
empirically merely.
α. According to Locke simple ideas arise partly from outward, and partly
from inward experience. For experiences, he says, are in the first place
sensations; the other side is reflection, the inward determinations
of consciousness.[218] From sensation, from the organs of sight for
instance, the conceptions of colour, light, etc., arise; there further
arises from outward experience the idea of impenetrability, of figure,
rest, motion and such like. From reflections come the ideas of faith,
doubt, judgment, reasoning, thinking, willing, etc.; from both combined,
pleasure, pain, etc. This is a very commonplace account of the matter.
β. After Locke has presupposed experience, he goes on to say that it
is the understanding which now discovers and desires the universal—the
complex ideas. The Bishop of Worcester made the objection that “If
the idea of substance be grounded upon plain and evident reason, then
we must allow an idea of substance which comes not in by sensation or
reflection.” Locke replies: “General ideas come not into the mind
by sensation or reflection, but are the creatures or inventions of
the understanding. The mind makes them from ideas which it has got by
sensation and reflection.” The work of the mind now consists in bringing
forth from several simple so-called ideas a number of new ones, by means
of its working upon this material through comparing, distinguishing and
contrasting it, and finally through separation or abstraction, whereby
the universal conceptions, such as space, time, existence, unity and
diversity, capacity, cause and effect, freedom, necessity, take their
rise. “The mind in respect of its simple ideas is wholly passive, and
receives them all from the existence and operation of things, such as
sensation or reflection offers them, without being able to make any one
idea.” But “the mind often exercises an active power in making these
several combinations. For it being once furnished with simple ideas
it can put them together in several combinations.” According to Locke
therefore thought itself is not the essence of the soul, but one of
its powers and manifestations. He maintains thought to be existent in
consciousness as conscious thought, and thus brings it forward as a fact
in his experience, that we do not always think. Experience demonstrates
dreamless sleep when the sleep is profound. Locke quotes the example of a
man who remembered no dream until he had reached his twenty-fifth year.
It is as in the Xenien,—[219]
Oft schon war ich, und hab’ wirklich an gar nichts gedacht.