Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

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Note IV.
NOTE IV. p. 21.
LOCKE S theory that facts, of sense or reflexion, are the
sole source of our ideas, places him in a difficulty with
respect to this indistinct class of ideas. He is committed
to the necessity of deriving them from this source, and
tries in a roundabout way to extract them from it. They
are ultimately grounded on and derived from ideas which
come in by sensation or reflexion, and so may be said to
come in by sensation or reflexion. First Letter to Bishop
of Worcester. But though he is in a difficulty as to their
origin, and cannot combine them with his theory, he
as a fact this class of indistinct ideas. Thus
acknowledges
the idea of substance is the obscure and indistinct vague
idea of something which has the relation of support or
substratum to modes or accidents. Ibid. The idea
of substance is but a supposed I know not what to sup
port those ideas we call accidents. We talk like chil
dren who, being questioned what such a thing is which
they know not, readily give this satisfactory answer, that
it is something. Essay, b. ii. c. 23. The being of
substance would not be at all shaken by my saying we had
but an obscure imperfect idea of it ; or indeed if I should
say we had no idea of substance at all. For a things may be, and are granted to have
in nature, of which we have no ideas.
great many
being, and to be
For example, it
cannot be doubted but there are distinct species of
separate spirits of which yet we have no distinct ideas at
all. And as he acknowledges an idea of substance which
is yet no true or adequate idea, so he does of infinity.
The addition of finite things suggests the idea of infinite
the same. But in
by a power we find of still increasing
endeavouring to make it infinite, it being always enlarging,
always advancing, the idea is still imperfect and incom
plete.
b. ii. c. 17.
Essay)
Though Stillingfleet then presses him hard upon the
origin of such ideas, it is evident that with respect to the
nature of the ideas themselves Locke has greatly the