substance, which in its definite articulation is the end of all our knowledge, is yet in another form, that may be called indifferently either abstract or confused, [2] its beginning. This way of escape, however, was not open to Locke, because with him it was the condition of reality in the idea of the body and its qualities that they should be ‘actually present sensations.’ The priority then of body to the relations of extension, distance, &c., as of that in which these relations are found, must, if body and extension are to be more than nominal essences, be a priority of sensations in time. But, on the other hand, the priority of the idea of space to the ideas of its several modes, and of these again to the idea of body, as of the simpler to the more complex, must no less than the other, if the ideas in question are to be real, be one in time. Locke’s contradiction, then, is that of supposing that of two sensations each is actually present, of two impacts on the sensitive tablet each is actually made, before the other. [1] See above, paragraph 39. [2] ‘Indifferently either abstract or confused,’ because of the conception that is most confused the least can be said; and it is thus most abstract. Mathematical ideas, though ideas of ‘primary qualities of body,’ have ‘barely an ideal existence’. 112. From such a contradiction, even though he was not distinctly aware of it, he could not but seek a way of escape, From his point of view two ways might at first sight seem to be open--the priority in sensitive experience, and with it reality, might be assigned exclusively either to the idea of body or to that of space. To whichever of the two it is assigned, the other must become a nominal essence. If it is the idea of body that is conveyed to the mind directly from without through sensation, then it must be by a process in the mind that the spatial relations are abstracted from it; and conversely, if it is the latter that are given in sensation, it must be by a mental operation of compounding that the idea of body is obtained from them. Now, according to Locke’s fundamental notion, that the reality of an idea depends upon its being in consciousness a copy _through impact_ of that which is not in consciousness, any attempt to retain it in the idea of space while sacrificing it in that of body would be obviously self-destructive. Nor, however we might re-write his account of the relations of space as ‘found in bodies,’ could we avoid speaking of them as relations of some sort; and if relations, then derived from the ‘mind’s carrying its view from one thing to another,’ and not ‘actually present sensations.’ We shall not, then, be surprised to find Locke tending to the other alternative, and gradually forgetting his assertion that ‘a circle or a square are the same whether in idea or in existence,’ and his elaborate maintenance of the ‘real existence’ of a vacuum, _i.e._, extension without body. (Book II. chap. xiii. secs. 21 and the