Locke’s Touchy Subjects

Locke’s Touchy
Subjects
Materialism and Immortality

Nicholas Jolley

1
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Acknowledgements

During the course of writing this book I have incurred a number of debts
to colleagues and fellow scholars. I am very grateful to two anonymous
referees for Oxford University Press for their careful criticisms of an
earlier draft and for their many helpful suggestions for its improvement.
I should also like to thank Sean Greenberg, Jan-Erik Jones, and Larry
Nolan for numerous stimulating conversations about Locke and Descartes.
I am indebted to Christopher Bobier for his comments on a version of the
Introduction.
I am very grateful to Peter Momtchiloff of Oxford University Press for
his interest in this project and for his advice and encouragement.
I should also like to thank Sally Evans-Darby for her excellent copy-
editing.
Some of the material in Chapters 2 and 3 was originally included in an
essay, ‘Dull Souls and Beasts: Two Anti-Cartesian Polemics in Locke’, in
P. Glombicek and J. Hill (eds.), Essays on the Concept of Mind in Early-
Modern Philosophy, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010, pp. 95–111.
This material is here published with the permission of Cambridge
Scholars Publishing.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/2/2015, SPi

Contents

Abbreviations ix

1. Introduction: Themes and Background 1

2. Dull Souls 16
3. Animals 33
4. Substance 50
5. Thinking Matter 67
6. An Eternal Thinking Being 84
7. Personal Identity and Resurrection 99
8. Mortalism and Immortality 116

Bibliography 133
Index 139
Abbreviations

AG R. I. Aaron and J. Gibb (eds.), An Early Draft of Locke’s Essay

together with Excerpts from his Journals (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1936)
AT C. Adam and P. Tannery (eds.), Oeuvres de Descartes, 12 vols.
(Paris: Vrin, 1897–1913; repr. Paris: Vrin, 1964–76)
CL E. S. De Beer (ed.), The Correspondence of John Locke, 8 vols.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976–89)
CSM J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch (trans.), The
Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 2 vols. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1985)
CSMK J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch, and A. Kenny (trans.),
The Philosophical Writings of Descartes: The Correspondence
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). The
Correspondence is volume III of the preceding edition.
E P. H. Nidditch (ed.), John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975)
ET R. Klibansky and J. W. Gough (eds.), John Locke: Epistola de
Tolerantia/A Letter Concerning Toleration (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1968)
Lev C. B. Macpherson (ed.), Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968)
LW The Works of John Locke, 10 vols. (London, 1823; repr. Aalen,
1963)
N V. Nuovo (ed.), John Locke: Writings on Religion (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2002)
NE G. W. Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding
RB P. Remnant and J. Bennett (trans.), G.W. Leibniz: New Essays
on Human Understanding, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996)
ROC The Reasonableness of Christianity (References are to Nuovo,
John Locke: Writings on Religion)
 1
Introduction: Themes
and Background

In the last year of Locke’s life the philosopher Anthony Collins wrote to
him saying that he was about to publish a book by Samuel Bold: ‘I am
going to put to the press a Book of his entituled Two Discourses 1 of the
Immateriality of Created thinking substance 2 of the Resurrection of the
same body’ (18 February 1704, CL VIII 202).1 In his reply Locke warned
his young friend against doing so:
I desire you to stop your hand a little and forbear puting to the press the two
discourses you mention they are very touchy subjects at this time and that good
man who is the author may for ought I know be cripled by those who will be sure
to be offended at him right or wrong. (21 February 1704, CL VIII 206)

Locke knew from experience what he was talking about. His own dis-
cussions of these ‘touchy subjects’ in An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding had given offence to prominent critics such as Edward
Stillingfleet; if they had not left him ‘cripled’, they had at least caused the
last years of his life to be overshadowed by bitter controversy.2

1
Anthony Collins (1676–1729), free thinker, deist, and materialist, was the author of
A Discourse of Free-Thinking (1713); he is perhaps best known today for his controversy
with Samuel Clarke over the immateriality and immortality of the soul. Samuel Bold
(1649–1737) was a clergyman who was a friend of Locke’s and a defender of his views.
His book, A Discourse Concerning the Resurrection of the Same Body: With Two Letters
Concerning the Necessary Immateriality of Created Thinking Substance, was published in
1705, a year after Locke’s death.
2
Edward Stillingfleet (1635–99) was Bishop of Worcester from 1689 until his death. In
his Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity (1697) he attacked Locke’s ‘new
way of ideas’ in the Essay for undermining the doctrine of the Trinity. This attack led to an
exchange of published letters between Locke and Stillingfleet.
 INTRODUCTION : THEMES AND BACKGROUND

I Orthodox Christian Views

To understand why these subjects were ‘touchy’, it is helpful to consider
the orthodox Christian conception of the afterlife in which God rewards
the just and punishes sinners. Such a doctrine was really a composite of
two distinct strands, one philosophical, the other scriptural. The philo-
sophical strand is the doctrine of the soul as an immaterial substance that
is naturally immortal; this doctrine of course derives from Plato and the
Greek tradition, and in the seventeenth century found leading advocates
in Descartes and perhaps even more clearly in Leibniz. The scriptural
strand in the teaching is the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead,
which was traditionally understood to involve the resurrection of the
same body; this doctrine derives above all from St Paul’s letters to the
Corinthians.3 These two strands were combined into a single body of
teaching according to which my soul, as an immaterial substance, sur-
vives my death until the Day of Judgment when it is united with my
resurrected body.
To deny either of these doctrines—the survival of an immaterial
substance and the resurrection of the same body—was widely considered
to pose a threat to any Christian conception of the afterlife that would
satisfy the demands of divine justice. Whether the presence of an imma-
terial substance was a sufficient condition for genuine personal immor-
tality was controversial, but it was generally thought to be a necessary
condition of the survival in an afterlife of a self that could be the subject
of rewards and punishments. A materialist conception of human beings
seemed to undermine the prospects of such survival.4 Similarly, the
resurrection of the same body was traditionally considered to be a
necessary condition of the resurrection of the same human being at the

3
The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) declared: ‘All men appear before the judgment seat
of Christ with their own bodies, to give an account of their deeds.’ The doctrine of the
resurrection of the same body was also accepted by Anglicans.
4
‘If the [materialist] Hypothesis which I am writing against, be true, no man can
naturally believe a Future State of Retribution. You have heard already how Individuation
and Personality are overthrown by it, and by consequence there can be no just Room for
Rewards and Punishments hereafter, because the person when he died had not the same
Soul that he had the month before.’ Timothy Manlove, The Immortality of the Soul Asserted,
and Practically Improved (1697), p. 55; quoted in Udo Thiel, The Early Modern Subject: Self-
Consciousness and Personal Identity from Descartes to Hume (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2011), pp. 84–5.
 INTRODUCTION : THEMES AND BACKGROUND 

Day of Judgment. Not only the same soul but the same body was
required for just divine retribution.5 If there were no strict numerical
identity of the pre-mortem and resurrected body, we would be con-
fronted by a case of the transmigration of one soul into another body
rather than by a genuine case of resurrection.
In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and other texts such
as his Letters to Stillingfleet, Locke takes up unorthodox positions on
both of these ‘touchy subjects’. As we shall see, just how radical and
unorthodox are Locke’s views is a matter for debate, but so much at
least is clear. In connection with the first of these touchy subjects, Locke
is engaged in what we might call a reconciling project. Even if a weak
materialist account of human beings is true, it poses no threat to the
doctrine of personal immortality; in a number of contexts Locke seeks
to show that personal immortality, in what we might call a morally
significant sense, and the immateriality of the soul do not necessarily
stand and fall together. According to Locke, the issue of the mind’s
status as an immaterial substance is irrelevant to the issue of personal
identity and any form of personal immortality that could be of interest
to us. Locke addresses the second of these touchy subjects most fully in
the letters to Stillingfleet.6 Here he makes a case on both philosophical
and scriptural grounds. Locke argues that Scripture speaks of the
resurrection of the dead, not the resurrection of the same body; accord-
ing to Locke, such resurrection is to be interpreted in terms of the
resurrection of persons; it is persons who will be punished or rewarded
at the Day of Judgment. In accordance with Scripture Locke holds that
such persons will indeed be embodied, but he insists that the resurrec-
tion of the same body is not required for their resurrection. Locke stops
just short of saying that the resurrection of the same body is incoherent,
but he is clear that it at least poses conceptual difficulties and that it has
no scriptural warrant.

5
‘That which shall receive the reward, and be liable to the punishment, is not onely the
soul but the body; it stands not therefore with the nature of a just retribution, that he which
sinned in one body should be punished in another, he which pleased God in his own flesh
should see God with other eyes.’ John Pearson, An Exposition of the Creed (1659), p. 758;
quoted in Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, p. 86.
6
See, in particular, Locke’s Second Reply to the Bishop of Worcester (LW IV 301–34). In
the Essay Locke had claimed that on his principles ‘we may be able without any difficulty to
conceive, the same Person at the Resurrection’ (E II.xxvii.15).
 INTRODUCTION : THEMES AND BACKGROUND

We can see, then, why Locke felt it necessary to warn his friends about
the dangers of publishing their views on the ‘touchy subjects’. But it is
not really surprising that Locke had not followed his own advice, for the
subjects (especially perhaps the former) raise philosophical issues of
great interest. To appreciate the philosophical significance of Locke’s
positions on these subjects we need to turn to the views of Descartes and
Hobbes, arguably the two most important philosophers in the back-
ground to Locke.

II Descartes and Hobbes

True to his reluctance to involve himself in discussing issues of revealed
theology, Descartes has little to say about the resurrection of the body.7
By contrast, of course, he has a great deal to say about the first of the
touchy subjects. Although he is very far from being the only one,
Descartes is the most influential spokesman in the period for the doctrine
that the mind is a purely immaterial substance: for Descartes, the mind is
a substance whose essence is constituted by the principal attribute of
thought. From this doctrine he deduces, as an immediate consequence,
that the mind always thinks. As we shall see, this latter thesis was to be
the target of a major polemic by Locke.
In places Descartes is prepared to make even more ambitious claims
for his teachings concerning the mind. In the Discourse on Method, for
instance, he argues that his proof that the mind is really distinct from the
body serves to establish that it is naturally immortal (AT VI 59–60: CSM
I 141). And in the Dedicatory Letter to the Sorbonne that prefaces the
Meditations, he proclaims himself a loyal son of the Catholic Church by
stating that he intends to obey its injunction to Christian philosophers to
refute the arguments of those who hold that the soul dies with the body
and to prove the contrary thesis (AT VII 3: CSM II 4).8 In other contexts,
however, Descartes is more circumspect. In the Synopsis of the Medita-
tions Descartes admits that he does not actually offer a complete

7
For Descartes’ reluctance to discuss issues in theology, see his letter to Mersenne,
15 April 1630, AT I 143–4: CSMK III 22. Descartes briefly discusses the resurrection in a
letter to Chanut, 6 June 1647, AT V 53: CSMK III 320.
8
Descartes refers here to the eighth session of the Fifth Lateran Council held under Leo
X in 1513. As Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch note, this Council condemned the
Averroist heresy that denied personal immortality (CSM II 4, n. 1).
 INTRODUCTION : THEMES AND BACKGROUND 

demonstration of the immortality of the soul in that work (AT VII

12–13: CSM II 9).9 Elsewhere he concedes that he cannot prove that
God in his absolute power could not annihilate the soul (to Mersenne,
24 December 1640, AT III 266: CSMK III 163; cf. AT VII 153–4: CSM II
109). Nevertheless, Descartes is still prepared to claim that we are entitled
to conclude that ‘the mind, insofar as it can be known by natural phil-
osophy, is immortal’ (AT VII 153–4: CSM II 109).10 Indeed, Descartes
and his disciples could hold that he had succeeded in providing a
foundation for the doctrine that was more secure than that offered by
the Scholastics. According to the Scholastic conception of the soul as the
substantial form of the body, it is problematic how it can survive in a
disembodied state until the resurrection at the Day of Judgment. For
Descartes, by contrast, the mind is a substance in its own right, capable
of existing independently of everything except the divine concurrence.11
In the seventeenth century no philosopher was more emphatic in his
rejection of Descartes’ immaterialist doctrine of the mind than Thomas
Hobbes, the author of the Third Set of Objections to the Meditations. For
Hobbes, the thesis that the mind is an immaterial substance is not a false
but coherent doctrine; it is simply nonsensical. In Leviathan the term
‘immaterial substances’ appears in a list of absurd or insignificant expres-
sions along with ‘free will’ and ‘free subject’ (Lev I.v 113). But if it is
tempting to describe Hobbes in modern terms as an eliminativist about
immaterial substances, it would be more accurate to describe him as a
reductionist about mental states. In general, a philosopher who adopts
a reductionist approach to a philosophical problem seeks to collapse a
commonly accepted dichotomy, such as that between mental and phys-
ical states; he or she aims to exhibit mental states, for example, as in

9
The subtitle of the first edition of the Meditations announced that it was a work ‘in
which are demonstrated the existence of God and the immortality of the soul’. In the second
edition (1642), this was changed to: ‘in which are demonstrated the existence of God and
the distinction of the soul from the body’.
10
I am indebted here to M. Hickson, ‘Soul, Immortality of ’, L. Nolan (ed.), Cambridge
Descartes Lexicon (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press).
11
On this issue, see S. Nadler, ‘Arnauld, Descartes and Transubstantiation: Reconciling
Cartesian Metaphysics and Real Presence’, Journal of the History of Ideas 49 (1988), 229–46;
and G. Rodis-Lewis, ‘Augustinisme et cartésianisme à Port-Royal’, E. J. Dijksterhuis (ed.),
Descartes et le cartésianisme hollandais (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950),
pp. 131–82.
 INTRODUCTION : THEMES AND BACKGROUND

reality a subdomain of the physical.12 Hobbes is a reductionist about

mental states in this sense; the motions of the mind are quite literally
motions, for they are motions of the brain.
Hobbes’ materialism with regard to the created world is uncomprom-
ising; as he says, ‘that which is not Body, is no part of the Universe’ (Lev
IV.xlvi 689).13 But does Hobbes extend his materialism to the case of
God? It is traditional to answer this question in the affirmative, but it is
not clear that this is the right answer. The main theme of Hobbes’
theology is that the nature of God is incomprehensible; all we know of
God is that he exists and that he is the cause of the universe. The
predicates that we ascribe to him—such as goodness and justice—are
simply expressions of our desire to honour him; we attempt to charac-
terize his nature in terms of expressions we use to honour human beings
(Lev I.iii 99; II.xxxi 401–4). Yet in this area Hobbes’ thought may have
developed over time; in a late work Hobbes is prepared to say that God is
a corporeal spirit.14
If human beings for Hobbes are wholly material, does that mean he
can find no room for the Christian doctrine of the afterlife? His contem-
porary critics may have thought so, for as we have seen, the existence of
the soul as an immaterial substance was widely thought to be necessary
for the post-mortem survival of the self. In Leviathan Hobbes concedes
that we can have no demonstration of an afterlife; as he puts it with his
usual terseness, ‘there is no natural knowledge of man’s estate after
death’ (Lev I.xv 206). However, officially at least, in Part III of Leviathan
Hobbes seeks to do justice to the scriptural teachings concerning the

12
On Hobbes’ reductive materialism, see J. W. N. Watkins, Hobbes’s System of Ideas
(London: Hutchinson, 1965), pp. 83–4.
13
Stewart Duncan has argued that Hobbes was not a committed materialist in the early
1640s; that is, at the time of his Third Objections to Descartes’ Meditations. However,
Duncan agrees that he is a committed materialist in Leviathan (1651). See Duncan,
‘Hobbes’s Materialism in the Early 1640s’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19
(2011), 241–64.
14
See An Answer to Bishop Bramhall’s Book, called ‘The Catching of Leviathan’,
W. Molesworth (ed.), The English Works of Thomas Hobbes (London: John Bohn,
1839–40), vol. IV, p. 306. I am indebted to Stewart Duncan for this reference. See also
Dialogue appended to the Latin edition of Leviathan, Appendix, ch. iii, E. M. Curley (ed.),
Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan with Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668 (Indian-
apolis: Hackett, 1994), p. 540. For a discussion of Hobbes on the corporeal nature of God,
see G. Gorham, ‘The Theological Foundation of Hobbesian Physics: A Defence of Corpor-
eal God’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (2013), 240–61.
 INTRODUCTION : THEMES AND BACKGROUND 

afterlife; human beings are not naturally immortal, but some of them are
so as a result of divine grace. At the general resurrection, the just will be
rewarded with eternal life, but sinners, taken individually, will suffer
torments of only finite duration. As we shall see in Chapter 8, such
doctrines will reappear in the teachings of Locke.

III Locke’s Aims

Few historians of philosophy today would challenge the claim that in one
of its chief aspects An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a
sustained critique of Descartes’ metaphysics. In the Essay Locke seeks
to undermine the central pillars of Descartes’ system by denying that the
natures of mind and body are constituted by the principal attributes of
thought and extension respectively; for Locke, extension is only a neces-
sary condition of body, and thought is a sufficient but not a necessary
condition of mind. With regard to the mind, Locke mounts a series of
polemics against what he regards as Descartes’ dogmatism; he denies that
the mind always thinks and he ridicules the notorious Cartesian doctrine
that animals are just machines that are wholly lacking in sentience or
consciousness. Most famously, perhaps, he rejects what he takes to be
Descartes’ thesis that we have a clear and distinct idea of the substance of
mind. There has been a tendency among Locke commentators to sup-
pose that such polemics are simply robust defences of observation and
experience against Descartes’ metaphysical dogmatism. But to view these
polemics solely in this light would be a mistake. In reality, by means of
these polemics Locke is seeking to contribute to his reconciling project,
as we have termed it, of showing that at least a weak form of materialism
is consistent or compatible with immortality. In Chapter 2 we shall see
how Locke offers ingenious arguments to show that the immateriality of
the soul would not be sufficient for personal immortality; the immateri-
ality of the soul-substance may guarantee that it continues to exist after
death, but it cannot guarantee the survival of the person. In Chapter 3 we
shall see how Locke seeks to block one argument for the Cartesian beast-
machine doctrine by showing that it depends on the questionable
assumption that immateriality entails immortality in any form worthy
of the name.
It is clear, then, that Locke’s polemics against Descartes’ philosophy of
mind have an important theological dimension that has been largely
 INTRODUCTION : THEMES AND BACKGROUND

ignored by commentators: immateriality and immortality do not neces-

sarily stand and fall together. But to say this is not of course to say that
Locke rejects outright Descartes’ thesis that the mind is an immaterial
substance. On a standard view Locke treats this issue in a strictly agnostic
spirit. In a chapter of Book IV significantly entitled ‘Of the Extent of
Human Knowledge’, Locke argues that it is possible, for all we know, that
matter thinks in human beings, but he does not endorse this hypothesis;
the mind-body problem, as we call it today, is one of those issues that are
put out of the reach of our knowledge (E IV.iii.6).15
No careful reader of the Essay can deny that in IV.iii.6 Locke presents
the thinking-matter hypothesis in the spirit of metaphysical agnosticism.
But I believe that the standard view of Locke’s overall position stands in
need of correction. In this study I shall argue that in places in the Essay
and related writings Locke goes beyond his official agnostic stance.
A major concern in Locke’s philosophy is to show that at least a weak
form of materialism is a reasonable position in the philosophy of mind.
In the Essay and in the subsequent controversy with Stillingfleet, Locke
sketches a number of arguments for materialism. As we shall see, Locke
advances such arguments in a non-dogmatic spirit. Sometimes, as in his
discussion of animals, Locke puts forward an argument that, though
clearly valid, includes a premise that while accepted by his opponents he
himself does not seem to endorse. In other cases, as in his polemics
against Descartes’ thesis that the mind always thinks, Locke does not
fully spell out the argument, but arguably leaves it to the reader to infer
that materialism is the most reasonable of the competing options. But
taken together, Locke’s arguments and discussions amount to a substan-
tial case for materialism.

IV Qualifications
Any study that seeks to argue that Locke leans in the direction of
materialism must introduce a number of qualifications. Certainly
Locke is not a materialist of the Hobbesian kind. Indeed, it will be helpful
to explain these qualifications by means of a comparison with Hobbes.

15
For a helpful account of Locke’s ‘epistemic modesty’, see L. Downing, ‘Locke’s
Ontology’, L. Newman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Locke’s ‘Essay Concerning
Human Understanding’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 352–80.
 INTRODUCTION : THEMES AND BACKGROUND 

Unfortunately, we cannot speak of a dialogue between Locke and Hobbes

in the same way we can speak of a dialogue between Locke and Descartes,
for Locke denied that he was well read in Hobbes’ writings; he famously
refers to Hobbes and Spinoza as ‘justly decried names’ (LW IV 477).
Nonetheless, in spite of Locke’s unwillingness to address Hobbes’ posi-
tions and arguments directly, the comparison with Hobbes can throw a
flood of light on Locke’s stance towards materialism.
Perhaps the most obvious qualification that needs to be made is that
the materialism that Locke entertains is limited in its scope. In IV.iii.6 of
the Essay Locke indicates that he is prepared to propose the thinking-
matter hypothesis with regard to the created world; however, here and
elsewhere (E IV.x) Locke is insistent that he is not prepared to extend the
hypothesis to the case of God. As we have seen, it is not clear that even
Hobbes consistently includes God in the scope of his materialism. But
Hobbes never concedes that it is even epistemically possible that God is
an immaterial substance. By contrast, Locke is not merely unwilling to
extend his materialist speculation to the case of God; in IV.x of the Essay
Locke argues vigorously for the thesis that God, the eternal thinking
being, must also be immaterial; his proof of this thesis depends on a
controversial premise that rules out the possibility that thought is an
emergent property of matter.16 As we shall see, this involves Locke in an
issue of consistency with the thinking-matter hypothesis that he pro-
poses in IV.iii.6 of the Essay.
The second qualification that needs to be made also involves a reveal-
ing contrast with Hobbes. As we have seen, the materialism that Hobbes
advances is of a strong reductionist kind according to which mental
states are identical to brain states. By contrast, the thinking-matter
hypothesis that Locke proposes is by no means as strong as that; even
with regard to the created world, Locke never envisages a reductionistic
version of materialism. The form of materialism towards which he leans
is of a weak kind that is consistent with property dualism. That is, for
Locke there may be only one kind of substance in the world, but this
substance may be the bearer of properties that are of a different nature
from physical ones.17 It is true that in one passage Locke says that ‘we

16
See Chapter 6.
17
In recent years commentators on Locke have become sensitive to the fact that he tends
to use the term ‘property’ in a narrow sense deriving from Porphyry: a property is that
 INTRODUCTION : THEMES AND BACKGROUND

know not wherein thinking consists’ (E IV.iii.6), and this seems to leave
the door open to a reductionistic version of materialism according to
which mental events are identical to physical events in the brain. But
Locke never develops this suggestion.
The final qualification may also be introduced by reference to Hobbes;
it concerns the epistemic status of the thinking-matter hypothesis.
Hobbes, like Descartes, is a dogmatist in the philosophy of mind; his
commitment to materialism is non-negotiable. By contrast, Locke may
provide arguments to show that materialism is a reasonable position in
the philosophy of mind, but the theory does not fall within the sphere of
demonstrative knowledge. In this respect, for Locke the thinking-matter
hypothesis is arguably on a par with the corpuscularian hypothesis in the
philosophy of matter; it is the best hypothesis we have.18 Indeed, in
places Locke seems to retreat from even this epistemically modest com-
mitment to materialism. Locke says on more than one occasion that
substance dualism, in modern terms, is a more probable opinion than the
weak form of materialism he discusses. In replying to Stillingfleet’s
aggressive questioning, Locke is even prepared to go so far as to say
that it is in the highest degree probable that the thinking substance in us
is immaterial (LW IV 33). According to Locke, his proof of God’s
existence as an immaterial thinking being is supposed to bear on this
issue; it is somehow supposed to show that the immaterialist position is
much more probable than the thinking-matter hypothesis. But in context
Locke offers nothing by way of explanation of how his proof of God’s
existence justifies his claim about the ontological status of the human
mind.19 In Chapter 6 I take up the issue posed by this puzzling passage
and argue that a popular principle that a philosopher might invoke to
justify such a claim is one to which Locke is not attracted. What is
perhaps most striking and important for our purposes is that, even

which follows from the essence or real definition of a substance without being contained in
the essence. Thus the powers of speech and laughter are properties of human beings. On
this issue see M. Ayers, Locke: Epistemology and Ontology (London: Routledge, 1991), vol. 2,
pp. 20–2. In this study, unless otherwise indicated, I will use the term ‘property’ in the broad
sense that is standard in philosophy today.
18
In IV.iii.16 of the Essay Locke describes the corpuscularian hypothesis ‘as that which
is thought to go farthest in an intelligible Explication of the Qualities of Bodies’.
19
As Margaret Wilson has noted, the argument on this score is wanting. M. Wilson,
‘Superadded Properties: The Limits of Mechanism in Locke’, Ideas and Mechanism: Essays
on Early Modern Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 198–9.
 INTRODUCTION : THEMES AND BACKGROUND 

under pressure from Stillingfleet, Locke consistently refrains from saying

that the immateriality of the thinking substance in us is an item of
knowledge; he continues to insist that this is not a thesis that can be
demonstratively proved. On this issue Locke gives no ground whatever.
Nowhere in the Essay or in controversy with Stillingfleet does Locke
commit himself to the truth of substance dualism with regard to the
created world.20

V Locke’s Theology
One thesis of this study is that Locke is a theologian as well as a
philosopher. Of course it is uncontroversial that in the Essay Concerning
Human Understanding Locke is in some sense a theologian, in places he
is engaged in making contributions to natural theology, that is, the part
of theology that is supposed to be accessible to unaided reason. Locke’s
attempted proof of the existence of God as an eternal, thinking, imma-
terial being is a contribution to theology of this kind. What is less well
known is that in some of his writings Locke is also concerned with
revealed theology; that is, he is interested in the proper interpretation
of controversial scriptural doctrines, such as the resurrection of the dead,
that cannot be found out by reason and must be accepted on the basis of
faith. What may also be surprising to some readers is that Locke’s
positions on issues of revealed theology are frequently unorthodox; his
denial of the doctrine of original sin in The Reasonableness of Christian-
ity is a case in point. Locke’s approach to such issues in revealed theology
is by no means piecemeal and unsystematic; it is informed by a convic-
tion he shares with Hobbes and Newton that the interpretation of the
Bible had been corrupted by ideas imported from Greek philosophy and
in particular Platonic metaphysics.21 Like Hobbes, Locke is prepared to

20
Contrast P. Alexander, Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles: Locke and Boyle on the
External World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 224–5. It should be
noted that Locke holds that if angels exist, they are probably immaterial; however, he thinks
that we cannot know that angels exist (E I.iv.9; IV.iii.27). See M. Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2013), p. 247.
21
On Newton’s approach to biblical exegesis, see N. Jolley, ‘The Relation Between
Theology and Philosophy’, D. Garber and M. Ayers (eds.), The Cambridge History of
Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), vol. 1,
pp. 370–1. See also F. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: Oxford University
 INTRODUCTION : THEMES AND BACKGROUND

quote St Paul’s denunciation of ‘vain philosophy’ in support of his

approach to scriptural exegesis (ROC, N 94).22
Locke’s theological commitments are strikingly harmonious with his
philosophy, and in places at least may help to motivate it. As a theolo-
gian, Locke, like Hobbes before him, is committed to the heresy of
mortalism, the doctrine that human beings die wholly at death.23 The
weak form of materialism to which Locke is attracted of course shows
how this is so. Even if Locke is committed only to the more modest thesis
that an immaterial substance is not sufficient for genuine personal
immortality, we can still see how such a thesis serves his mortalism,
and how human beings must owe any immortality they possess to the
gift of divine grace. As a theologian, Locke is also committed to the view
that Scripture teaches the resurrection of the dead, not the resurrection
of the same body. Locke’s famous theory of personal identity serves this
doctrine by showing how the resurrection of the dead can be coherently
interpreted in terms of the resurrection of persons; here personal identity
over time is to be analysed in terms of memory or consciousness of past
actions and experiences. Locke seeks to show how we can give sense to
the claim that I shall be present at the Day of Judgment and answerable
to God for my sins even if the resurrected body is not identical to my pre-
mortem body.
Some readers may be willing to concede that Locke’s philosophy is
harmonious with, and even partly motivated by, his theological commit-
ments. Nonetheless, they may be inclined to object that such commit-
ments are of antiquarian interest only; they are of no relevance for
understanding Locke’s philosophy. It may be said that if our concern
is, as it surely should be, with understanding his doctrines and argu-
ments, we can afford to ignore these commitments. But such a line of
objection is, I believe, mistaken. A knowledge of the theological positions

Press, 1974), p. 72 and R. Westfall, Never At Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 314.
22
For Hobbes’ attack on vain philosophy, see Lev IV.xlvi: ‘Of Darknesse from Vain
Philosophy, and Fabulous Traditions’. The term ‘vain philosophy’ is an allusion to St Paul,
Epistle to the Colossians 2:8.
23
Cf. G. Strawson: ‘When we die, we die entirely. If in the end we are to have
immortality, it will be something we acquired only at the resurrection.’ Locke on Personal
Identity: Consciousness and Concernment (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University
Press, 2011), p. 99.
 INTRODUCTION : THEMES AND BACKGROUND 

is necessary for understanding why some proposed friendly amendments

to his theories would not be acceptable to him. A striking case in point is
Locke’s theory of personal identity. John Mackie, for instance, has argued
that Locke could solve some of the puzzles raised by his theory by
recognizing that the concept of genuine memory is a causal one; such
an analysis would serve to distinguish cases of genuine memory from
pseudo-memory.24 But as we shall see in Chapter 7, a causal analysis of
memory—or consciousness of past actions and experiences—would
hardly suit Locke’s purpose of showing how someone at the Day of
Judgment could be the same person as someone in this life.

VI Reasons for the Scholarly Neglect

This study, then, will seek to show that Locke’s concern with the ‘touchy
subjects’, especially the first of them, is a prominent feature of his works.
If this is the case, then it is natural to ask why Locke’s concern with these
issues has received so little attention from scholars.25 Part of the explan-
ation for this neglect is straightforwardly textual. For one thing, the
relevant discussions of these issues are not concentrated in one place in
the Essay; they are scattered through sometimes widely separated chap-
ters of the work. Moreover, perhaps because of the sensitivity or ‘touchi-
ness’ of these subjects, Locke does not go out of his way to draw his
readers’ attention to the connections between these discussions. The fact
that his theory of personal identity addresses a challenge that arises out
of his treatment of the mind-body problem is not something on which
Locke himself insists. Even the connection between his thinking-matter
hypothesis in IV.iii.6 and his famous discussion of our idea of substance
(E II.xxiii) is not something that Locke openly acknowledges until
Stillingfleet forces it upon his and the reader’s attention.

24
J. L. Mackie, Problems from Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 184.
25
In recent years some scholars have begun to pay attention to these issues. See Ayers,
Locke, vol. II, pp. 271–7; D. Kaufman, ‘The Resurrection of the Same Body and the
Ontological Status of Organisms: What Locke Should Have (and Could Have) Told
Stillingfleet’; P. Hoffman, D. Owen, and G. Yaffe (eds.), Contemporary Perspectives on
Early Modern Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Vere Chappell (Peterborough, Ontario:
Broadview Press, 2008), pp. 191–215; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, pp. 132–43;
G. Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, pp. 97–102.
 INTRODUCTION : THEMES AND BACKGROUND

A second reason for the neglect is that to see the importance of these
‘touchy subjects’ for Locke, we need to extend our gaze beyond the Essay
Concerning Human Understanding. Indeed, some of the texts we need to
examine are quite arcane and little studied in courses in philosophy. The
most important of such texts are perhaps the three lengthy letters that
Locke wrote to Stillingfleet over five years after the original publication of
the Essay. These letters are a rich source of evidence for Locke’s views on
substance, the thinking-matter hypothesis, identity, and the resurrection
of the dead. We also need to look at such works as The Reasonableness of
Christianity and even writings Locke left unpublished at his death, such
as his Journals and some fascinating documents on religion. Partly
because of the somewhat artificial boundaries between academic discip-
lines and partly because of the relative inaccessibility of such texts, these
writings have been largely ignored by students of philosophy.
But there are, I believe, other factors at work that help to explain the
neglect of Locke’s concern with the ‘touchy subjects’. One such factor is
arguably the continuing influence of Berkeley on Locke scholarship; the
deeply rooted habit of reading the Essay through Berkeley’s eyes has
perhaps still not been completely eradicated. It is true that the last fifty
years or so of Locke scholarship have seen advances in this area. Berke-
ley’s interpretations of key doctrines in the Essay—for instance, of
Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities—are
today widely distrusted. Commentators now seek to illuminate Locke’s
actual teachings in this area by appealing to the corpuscularianism that
he shares with Boyle and other members of the Royal Society. But though
his readings of Locke are often set aside, Berkeley is still allowed, at least
to some extent, to set the agenda for the interpretation of Locke. Berkeley
still influences our sense of what are the ‘central themes’ in Locke’s
philosophy.26

26
I allude here to the title of a famous book by Jonathan Bennett, Locke, Berkeley, Hume:
Central Themes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). As Bennett would no doubt concede, the
study of Locke’s philosophy has developed in the years since the publication of this book; in
subsequent writings he himself has explored other issues in Locke’s Essay. But the topics in
Locke on which he focuses in that work—the distinction between primary and secondary
qualities, substance, and the so-called ‘veil-of-perception’ doctrine—are still very much at
the forefront of Locke scholarship; they are also the topics on which Berkeley focused in his
critique of Locke’s philosophy.
 INTRODUCTION : THEMES AND BACKGROUND 

There is one final factor that needs to be taken into account. Over the
centuries, Locke has acquired something of a reputation for being a bluff,
commonsensical philosopher; Gilbert Ryle even went so far as to say that
Locke invented common sense.27 No doubt Locke will always appear
commonsensical when contrasted with Berkeley, but it is only fair to note
that he himself did much to encourage his readers to view him in this
light.28 When criticizing Descartes in particular, Locke adopts the pose of
the ‘plain, blunt man’ (in Mark Antony’s phrase) who is simply con-
cerned to champion observation and experience in opposition to meta-
physical dogmatism. But we should not allow ourselves to be deceived by
this pose; it is indeed a rhetorical strategy, with a long and distinguished
pedigree, that is designed to win the reader over to the author’s side. In
the next two chapters we shall see that this pose serves to mask more
controversial ambitions than the mere defence of common sense against
the extravagances of Descartes’ metaphysics.

27
The remark was made in the course of a conversation with Bertrand Russell. Accord-
ing to Ryle, Russell agreed with him. See G. Ryle, Collected Papers, vol. 1 (London:
Hutchison, 1971), p. 147.
28
It should of course be pointed out that Berkeley saw himself as a defender of common
sense against scepticism and atheism.
 2
Dull Souls

In the opening chapter of Book II of the Essay Locke writes:

I confess my self, to have one of those dull Souls, that doth not perceive it self
always to contemplate Ideas, nor can conceive it any more necessary for the Soul
always to think, than for the Body always to move. (E II.i.10)

Locke’s subsequent polemic against the Cartesian thesis that the mind or
soul always thinks occupies a prominent position in the structure of the
Essay; it immediately follows his basic exposition of his positive theory of
ideas. But the polemic has received relatively little attention from Locke
scholars. Deceived perhaps by Locke’s pose of the ‘plain, blunt man’ of
which I spoke in Chapter 1, readers have tended to regard this discussion
as a bluff defence of common sense against Cartesian metaphysical
dogmatism. The polemic has even been dismissed on the ground that
it embodies an example of ignoratio elenchi; according to Anscombe and
Geach, for example, the trouble with Locke’s critique is that it fails to
recognize the broad, Cartesian sense of the term ‘thought’ to mean
‘consciousness’.1
Such a dismissive attitude towards Locke’s prominent anti-Cartesian
polemic is grossly unfair. In fact, the arguments of the polemic serve not
only to undermine Descartes’ commitment to substance dualism with
regard to the created world, but also to prepare the ground for accept-
ance of the thinking-matter hypothesis as a reasonable position in the
philosophy of mind. Moreover, as the evidence of Locke’s Journals
conclusively shows, Locke’s polemic bears on the issue of personal
immortality. Locke seeks to show, in different ways, that even if the

1
E. Anscombe and P. Geach, Descartes: Philosophical Writings (London: Nelson, 1954),
Introduction, xlvii.
 DULL SOULS 

mind is an immaterial substance, such immateriality is not sufficient to

establish personal immortality in a morally significant sense.
One of the striking features of Locke’s polemic against the thesis that
the mind always thinks is that it seeks to turn Descartes’ own weapons
against him: Locke relies on the Cartesian principle that there is nothing
in the mind of which we are not conscious (AT III 273). In Locke’s own
words, ‘’tis altogether as intelligible to say that, that a body is extended
without parts, as that any thing thinks without being conscious of it, or
perceiving that it does so’ (E II.i.19). Let us call this the Mental Trans-
parency Principle. Locke’s use of the principle against Descartes is
effective, but as we shall see in the next chapter, it gives rise to certain
tensions with his otherwise parallel polemic against Descartes’ doctrine
of the beast-machine, for that polemic requires Locke to play down the
Mental Transparency Principle.

I Descartes’ Thesis that the Mind

Always Thinks
Like many of Descartes’ famous doctrines, the thesis that the mind or
soul always thinks nowhere appears in the Meditations, but there is no
question of its authenticity. In the famous letter to Hyperaspistes
(August 1641), Descartes defends the doctrine on the ground that it
follows straightforwardly from his thesis that the mind is a substance
whose whole essence is constituted by thought:
I had reason to assert that the human soul, wherever it may be, even in the
mother’s womb, is always thinking. What more certain or evident reason could
be wished for than the one I gave? I proved that the nature or essence of the soul
consists in the fact that it is thinking, just as the essence of the body consists in the
fact that it is extended. Now nothing can ever be deprived of its own essence; so it
seems to me that someone who denies that his soul was thinking during those
periods when he does not remember having noticed that it was thinking deserves
no more attention than if he were to deny that his body was extended during
those periods that he did not notice that it had extension. This does not mean,
however, that I believe the mind of an infant meditates on metaphysics in its
mother’s womb; not at all. We know by experience that our minds are so closely
joined to our bodies as to be almost always acted upon by them. . . . So if one may
conjecture on such an unexplored topic, it seems most reasonable to think that a
mind newly united to an infant’s body is wholly occupied in perceiving in a
confused way or feeling the ideas of pain, pleasure, heat, cold and other similar
 DULL SOULS

ideas which arise from its union and, as it were, intermingling with the body.
(August 1641, AT III 423–4: CSMK III 189–90)2

Such a passage is striking not just for the deduction of the doctrine from
the metaphysical premise, but for its refusal to countenance the possi-
bility that there might be a time early in the mind’s history (following its
union with the body) when it is engaged in perceiving purely intellectual
ideas. As we shall see, the issue of the nature of the mind’s earliest
thoughts emerges in one of Locke’s arguments against the doctrine.
Descartes’ commitment to the thesis that the mind always thinks is so
strong that it leads him into a metaphysically curious speculation. In a
little-known letter to Gibieuf, Descartes is even prepared to entertain the
idea that the soul might be a temporally gappy substance. On this
hypothesis, during its existence the soul would think continuously, and
think continuously by virtue of its essence, but it would go in and out of
existence. Descartes not only considers this option but indicates that he
prefers it to the denial that the soul always thinks:
I believe that the soul is always thinking for the same reason that I believe that
light is always shining, even though there are not always eyes looking at it, and
that heat is always warm though no one is being warmed by it, and that body or
extended substance, always has extension, and in general that whatever consti-
tutes the nature of a thing always belongs to it as long as it exists. So it would be
easier for me to believe that the soul ceased to exist at the times when it is
supposed to cease to think than to conceive that it existed without thought. (To
Gibieuf, 19 January 1642, AT III 478: CSMK III 203)

In some ways Descartes’ readiness to entertain the hypothesis of a

temporally gappy substance is a surprising one, for it shows that he is
prepared to give up one of the central strands in the Aristotelian trad-
ition of thought about substance. For Aristotle, a substance is not only an
ultimate subject of predication; it is also a substratum of change: it is that
which persists uninterruptedly through time and flux. In the ‘Arguments
Set Out in Geometrical Fashion’ at the end of the Second Replies,
Descartes shows that he is prepared to accommodate definitionally the

2
Cf. Descartes’ response to Gassendi in the Fifth Replies: ‘You say you want to stop and
ask whether I think the soul always thinks. But why should it not always think, since it is a
thinking substance?’ (AT VII 356: CSM II 246–7). Cf. also Descartes’ response to Burman:
‘But the mind cannot ever be without thought; it can of course be without this or that
thought, but it cannot be without some thought. In the same way, the body cannot, even for
a moment, be without extension’ (AT V 150: CSMK III 336).
 DULL SOULS 

first strand in Aristotle’s definition of ‘substance’, even if he does justice

to this strand in rather convoluted language:
Substance. This term applies to every thing in which whatever we perceive
immediately resides, as in a subject, or to everything by means of which whatever
we perceive exists. By ‘whatever we perceive’ is meant any property, quality, or
attribute of which we have a real idea. The only idea we have of a substance itself,
in the strict sense, is that it is the thing in which whatever we perceive (or
whatever has objective being in one of our ideas) exists, either formally or
eminently. For we know by the natural light that a real attribute cannot belong
to nothing. (AT VII 161: CSM II 114)

But if we take seriously his reply to Gibieuf, we see that Descartes is

willing to give up the second strand in Aristotle’s teaching rather than
admit that a substance could ever be deprived of its essence or what
follows from its essence. As we might expect, the abandonment of this
second strand in Aristotle’s teaching about substance comes at a philo-
sophical price, for it would leave Descartes with the problem, which he
never addresses, of explaining by virtue of what the substance after the
gap and the substance before the gap are numerically identical.
The idea of a temporally gappy thinking substance may present
difficulties, but of course Descartes need not worry about such problems,
for he does not endorse this speculation. On the contrary, Descartes
believes that it is at least morally certain that the mind or soul is an
immaterial, naturally immortal substance that thinks continuously. On
the face of it, Descartes is well positioned to defend the doctrine of
personal immortality, as Catholic philosophers had been encouraged to
do by the Church at the Fifth Lateran Council. But on reflection it seems
that Descartes’ position may be vulnerable to criticism. For one thing, as
Margaret Wilson has emphasized, for Descartes identity conditions on
thinking substances are consistent with the total alteration of mental
accidents; the persistence of a Cartesian thinking substance over time
does not entail any kind of psychological continuity.3 Thus even if the
thinking substance with which I am identical were to undergo a complete
change in beliefs, desires, and memories, I should still survive as the
same person. Secondly, as Leibniz pointed out, Descartes’ conception of

3
M. Wilson, ‘Leibniz: Self-Consciousness and Immortality in the Paris Notes and After’,
Ideas and Mechanism: Essays on Early Modern Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1999), p. 375.
 DULL SOULS

immortality is of an immortality without memory.4 For Descartes, the

only kind of memory that is possible in a disembodied state is intellectual
memory, and such memory is restricted to universals (AT V 150: CSMK
III 336–7); corporeal memory, which is involved in the memory of
particulars, depends on the existence of traces in the brain. Thus, Descartes
is wide open to the objection that the identity of a thinking substance over
time cannot be the identity of a person. This objection finds a prominent
place in Locke’s polemic against the doctrine.

II Locke’s Arguments Against Descartes

In the opening chapter of Book II of the Essay, Locke adopts three
distinct strategies for attacking the Cartesian thesis. The first is a modest
epistemological one: the thesis is simply unproven dogma. Since the
thesis that the mind always thinks is not self-evident, it must be proved,
but to argue, as Descartes does, that it must always think because its
essence is thought is to beg the question (E II.i.10). Moreover, the thesis
is not established by empirical evidence: experience suggests that there
are gaps in consciousness, as in dreamless sleep. Locke’s strategy of
argument here in some ways anticipates ‘Hume’s fork’: either Descartes’
thesis concerns the relation of ideas, in which case it is question-begging,
or it concerns matters of fact, in which case it is not verified by experi-
ence. Locke is aware, however, of the difficulty of arguing that the thesis
is actually falsified by the empirical evidence; to the objection that I slept
dreamlessly all last night, Descartes will reply that my memory is deceiv-
ing me.
It is uncontroversial that Locke seeks to show that Descartes’ argu-
mentative strategy is question-begging and that empirical evidence does
not establish the thesis. What is less clear is whether Locke seeks to show
in this chapter that the thesis is actually false. At first sight it may seem
that the answer is obviously ‘yes’; it may seem that Locke seeks to expose
the falsity of the thesis by means of a reductio ad absurdum argument.
Consider, for instance, the well-known thought experiment of Castor
and Pollux: these individuals share one continuously thinking soul that
systematically alternates every twelve hours between the two bodies who

4
C. I. Gerhardt (ed.), Die Philosophischen Schriften von G.W. Leibniz (Berlin: Weidmann,
1875–90), vol. 4, pp. 299–301.
 DULL SOULS 

sleep and wake by turns; while Castor is asleep, the soul thinks continu-
ously in Pollux’s body, and vice versa. The moral of the thought experi-
ment is that of such a scenario we are forced to say that there are two
persons occupying one soul. Now Locke later writes of the ‘absurdity of
two distinct Persons’ which follows from this supposition (E II.i.15).
Thus it seems that Locke is arguing that the thesis leads to absurdity, if
not in the strict sense of a contradiction, at least in the informal sense of a
thesis that is wildly counterintuitive.
But this interpretation encounters difficulties as soon as we reflect on
Locke’s discussion of personal identity with which his anti-Cartesian
polemic otherwise seems so continuous. For that chapter abounds in
suppositions like that of the Castor and Pollux thought experiment, but
there the moral seems to be not that such suppositions are absurd, but
rather that they force us to recognize the truth of the doctrine of the
relativity of identity; items such as persons, souls, substances, and human
beings all have different identity conditions. Locke actually addresses the
issue of absurdity towards the end of the chapter:
I am apt enough to think I have in treating of this Subject made some Supposi-
tions that will look strange to some Readers, and possibly they are so in
themselves. But yet I think, they are such, as are pardonable in this ignorance
we are in of the Nature of that thinking thing, that is in us, and which we look on
as our selves. Did we know what it was . . . we might see the Absurdity of some of
those Suppositions I have made. But taking, as we ordinarily now do (in the dark
concerning these Matters), the Soul of a Man, for an immaterial Substance,
independent from Matter, and indifferent alike to it all, there can from the
Nature of things, be no Absurdity at all, to suppose, that the same Soul may, at
different times be united to different Bodies, and with them make up, for that
time, one Man . . . (E II.xxvii.27)

Although Locke does not explicitly address the Castor and Pollux kind of
scenario, he seems to be pointing to a moral of general application;
although we might see that suppositions like that of Castor and Pollux
were absurd if we knew materialism to be true, they involve no absurdity on
the current state of our knowledge. One wonders, then, how Locke is
entitled to speak of the absurdity of two distinct persons occupying a
soul, as he does in his anti-Cartesian polemic. It may seem that Locke
has simply changed his mind on this issue between the first and second
editions of the Essay (in which the chapter on personal identity was added)
without making the necessary editorial alterations to the earlier discussion.
 DULL SOULS

It is possible to defend Locke’s actual claims about absurdity by saying

that he is indeed mounting a reductio argument, but one that is ad
hominem against the Cartesians. The key point is that the argument
includes the suppressed, distinctively Cartesian premise that a person is
necessarily identical to a certain soul or immaterial thinking substance.
But reflection on scenarios like that of Castor and Pollux forces even the
Cartesians to recognize that, according to intuitions we all share, two
persons could occupy the same soul. The Cartesian doctrine thus leads to
a contradiction: the argument is a strict reductio, but one that embodies a
distinctively Cartesian premise about the nature of persons.5 As we shall
see in a later section (Section IV), Locke’s argument is capable of an
alternative interpretation according to which his concern is to make a
point about immortality.
One argument against the Cartesian dogma that the soul always thinks
has received almost no attention: it turns on Descartes’ supposed com-
mitment to the existence of ‘pure, native Thoughts’ (E II.i.17). Locke
presents the argument with his usual informality:
If [the soul] always thinks, and so had Ideas before it was united, or before it
received any from the Body, ’tis not to be supposed, but that during sleep, it
recollects its native Ideas, and during that retirement from communicating with
the Body, whilst it thinks by it self, the Ideas, it is busied about, should be,
sometimes at least, those more natural and congenial ones which it had in it self,
underived from the Body, or its own Operations about them . . . (E II.i.17)

The details are controversial, but in its simplest form Locke’s argument
could be reconstructed as follows.
(1) If the mind (soul) always thinks, it has pure native thoughts (i.e.
pure innate intellectual ideas) either before its union with the body
or immediately following its union before the action of body on
mind.
(2) If the mind has such pure native thoughts, then it will remember
such thoughts.
(3) But the mind does not remember pure native thoughts.
(4) Therefore the mind does not always think.

5
See D. Soles and K. Bradfield, ‘Some Remarks on Locke’s Use of Thought Experiments’,
Locke Studies 1 (2001), 31–62.
 DULL SOULS 

In the first premise here Locke is drawing our attention to the fact that
Descartes is confronted with a choice between two hypotheses regarding
the union of the mind and the body. Either, for Descartes, the mind pre-
exists the union with its body or it does not. If the mind pre-exists the
union, then Descartes is committed to saying that it has pure native
thoughts in this state; if it does not pre-exist the union, then he is
committed to claiming that there is a time, however short, before it
receives ideas from sense through the action of the body. Either way,
according to Locke, Descartes is committed to the mind’s having pure
native thoughts.6
In fact, however, Descartes could surely challenge the first premise in its
present form. Consider the first of the two hypotheses to which Locke
draws our attention: the mind pre-exists its union with the body. Descartes
could hardly deny that the mind would have purely intellectual ideas
in this state, at least in a dispositional form. Moreover, on Descartes’
principles there is no theoretical obstacle to such thoughts being recalled
at a later stage following the union; if, as seems probable, such thoughts are
of universals (for example, thoughts of a triangle in general), they are
objects of purely intellectual memory, which does not depend on the
existence of brain traces; brain traces are ex hypothesi impossible in a
disembodied state (AT V 150: CSMK III 336–7). But Descartes would
surely say that he does not admit that the mind pre-exists its union with
the body. Such a doctrine would seem too extravagantly Platonic for a
Christian philosopher to adopt.7
Descartes, then, would insist that he favours the second of the two
hypotheses regarding the union: the mind is immediately united to the
body following its special creation by God (AT VI 59: CSM I 141). But he
would surely challenge the claim that this hypothesis commits him to
recognizing that there is a time, however short, before the mind receives
ideas from sense through the action of the body and that during this time
it contemplates pure native thoughts. Again, it is true that if the mind of a
foetus or a newborn infant were released from the prison of the body,

6
Of course it could be the case both that the mind pre-exists its union with the body and
that it has pure native thoughts immediately following the union.
7
Although Descartes tells Voetius that he approves of Plato’s argument for innate
knowledge of mathematics in the Meno, it is clear that he does not endorse Plato’s attempt
to establish his doctrine of reminiscence on this basis (to Voetius, May 1643, AT VIII B 167:
CSMK III 222–3).
 DULL SOULS

it would be engaged in contemplating such ideas, but in its actual

embodied state this is not the case. Although, as we have seen, Descartes
is less than dogmatic when writing about this unexplored topic, he tells
Hyperaspistes that the mind of the foetus is occupied with sensory ideas
such as sensations of pleasure and pain (August 1641, AT III 423–4:
CSMK III 189–90). Thus Descartes has no reason to accept the first
premise of Locke’s argument.
The final passage in II.i.17 of the Essay seems designed to address a
possible Cartesian objection to premise (3) of Locke’s argument. Suppose
that Descartes admits that he is committed to the existence of pure native
thoughts, but denies that the mind does not remember them. In reply to
such an objection Locke insists that even if the mind remembers them,
the human being does not: ‘we must on this Hypothesis conclude, either
that the Soul remembers something that the Man does not; or else that
Memory belongs to such Ideas as are derived from the Body, or the
Minds Operations about them’ (E II.i.17). Locke’s argument would
perhaps be more effective, and more consistent with his teachings else-
where, if he wrote of the person here rather than the human being.
Locke’s point would then be that Descartes can only do justice to the
phenomenological facts by drawing a distinction between persons and
souls or minds which he is debarred from drawing on his principles. As
we have seen, for Descartes, a person is necessarily identical to a certain
immaterial thinking substance.

III The Mind: Nominal and Real Essence

Whether Locke’s arguments are conclusive against Descartes may be
disputed, but his official position is clear: ‘the perception of Ideas [is]
(as I conceive) to the soul, what motion is to the Body, not its Essence,
but one of its Operations. And therefore though thinking be supposed
never so much the proper Action of the Soul, yet it is not necessary to
suppose that it should be always thinking, always in Action’ (E II.i.10; cf.
E II.xix.4). Thus we see once again how Locke opposes two of the
fundamental Cartesian metaphysical doctrines: extension is the essence
of body and thought is the essence of mind. Remember that, for
Locke, extension is not sufficient for body, and thought is not necessary
for mind.
 DULL SOULS 

Locke’s position may seem straightforward enough, but as all Locke

scholars know, where essences are concerned there is a complicating
factor introduced by his famous distinction between nominal and real
essences. According to Locke’s well-known distinction, the nominal
essence of a substance is the general, abstract idea in terms of which
we classify things into sorts; it is based on the observation of macro-
scopic, co-occurring properties. The real essence, by contrast, is the ‘real
internal, but generally in Substances, unknown Constitution of Things,
whereon their discoverable Qualities depend’ (E III.iii.15).
For Locke, then, any philosophically worthwhile discussion of
essences must recognize the distinction between real and nominal
essences of substances. If we assume that Locke had the distinction in
mind at the time of writing this anti-Cartesian polemic, it is natural to
ask which of these essences Locke’s negative thesis addresses. Suppose
that it is the nominal essence that is at issue. In that case Locke’s
suggestion that thought is an operation, not the essence of mind, in II.i
is at least consistent with what he says in passages where he seems to be
explicating the nominal essences of mind and body; in II.xxiii.3 he says
that a spirit is ‘a thing capable of thinking’. By contrast, the nominal
essence of body is captured by saying that it is an extended solid
substance.8 Thus it is no part of our abstract idea or nominal essence
of mind in terms of which we classify things that a mind be actually
exercising its power of thinking.
So far, then, so good, but there is a further complicating factor. For
Locke, the nominal essences of substances may vary from person to
person depending on their particular observation of co-occurrent prop-
erties and their decisions about what properties to include in the abstract
idea or nominal essence. Thus in the case of gold, one person’s nominal
essence may be constituted by the properties of being a metal of a shining
yellow colour, malleability, and fusibility; another person may choose to
include the property of solubility in aqua regia. Thus, according to
Locke, there is no objectively right answer to the question: what is the
nominal essence of F ?9 Provided the properties do in fact regularly

8
Contrast, however, E II.xxiii.3 where Locke says that body is ‘a thing that is extended,
figured, and capable of motion’.
9
However, there are objectively wrong answers to the question because there are
objective constraints on what can be included in the nominal essence of Fs. These
 DULL SOULS

co-occur, we cannot fault a person for including a property in the

nominal essence that another leaves out. But when Locke discusses the
essence of mind, it seems he is addressing an issue where there is a fact of
the matter that can at least in principle be discovered.
If Locke is not addressing the issue of the nominal essence of mind,
then it seems he must be concerned with the issue of its real essence. And
if thought is not the real essence of mind, then what does constitute it?
Here we encounter Locke’s famous insistence, noted above, that the real
essences of substances, as opposed to modes, are unknown to us: the real
essence of gold is that internal constitution or structure, probably cor-
puscularian in nature, on which the observable properties depend. Con-
sistently with this account, the nominally essential property—power of
thinking—might depend on the real essence or internal constitution of
an immaterial substance. Or again, consistently with this account, the
power of thinking might depend on a real essence or internal constitu-
tion that is physical in nature; that is, it might depend on the unknown
microphysical structure of the brain.10
The second possibility might appear surprising, but there are philo-
sophical considerations that tell in its favour. Locke may write in places
in his polemic as if he shares Descartes’ view that the mind is an
immaterial substance and simply parts company with him over whether
thought is its essence. But consider how philosophically unattractive it is
to combine the doctrine that the mind is an immaterial substance with
the denial that it always thinks—that is, with the thesis that it has
stretches of unconscious life between occurrent thoughts, for example
in dreamless sleep. In these periods of unconsciousness the mind would
have a power or capacity of thinking, but in what would this power be
grounded? Leibniz of course could, and does, appeal to a mental micro-
structure to solve this problem; in the Preface to the New Essays on
Human Understanding, his systematic reply to Locke, he invokes the
minute or unconscious perceptions that play an analogous role to

constraints are set by the world. Thus a person who includes the predicate ‘is four-legged’ in
the nominal essence of gold would be mistaken. I am grateful to an unnamed referee for this
point and for the example.
10
For an alternative, highly original approach to Locke on the mind-body problem, see
H.-K. Kim, ‘Locke and the Mind-Body Problem: An Interpretation of his Agnosticism’,
Philosophy 83 (2008), 439–58; and ‘What Kind of Philosopher was Locke on Mind and
Body?’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 91 (2010), 180–207.
 DULL SOULS 

corpuscles in physics (NE, Preface, RB 56). Locke, by contrast, denies

implicitly the existence of unconscious perceptions in this chapter, which
contains major statements of the Mental Transparency Principle. So it
seems that there is really no candidate for a real essence of mind on the
dualist or immaterialist account. And even if we are sceptical about
whether Locke intends to apply his theory of real essences to the case
of the mind, we can surely agree that he would be reluctant to counten-
ance the possibility of mental powers that are ungrounded in any
categorical properties. To recognize free-floating bare powers might
seem to smack of the barren Scholasticism that Locke is committed to
rejecting.
In the face of these difficulties Jonathan Bennett has argued that at
least a weak form of materialism would be harmonious with Locke’s
actual claims, and indeed with the overall tone of his philosophy of mind.
According to Bennett, Locke’s real position may be the following:
‘While the man is sleeping, and not dreaming, there isn’t any such object as the
mind or soul. The fundamental reality at that time consists in a sleeping animal
which can, and when it receives certain stimuli will, start thinking again.’ This is a
long way short of the kind of materialism that finds favor with most Anglophone
philosophers today but it is a step along the way.11

Thus there is the brain with its microstructure on which the power of
thinking depends; as Bennett says, this power will be activated and
become full-blown consciousness in response to certain stimuli (e.g. an
alarm clock). We can think of this physical microstructure as serving as a
kind of real essence of the mental, but Locke would not really be working
with a substance-mode ontology of mind here; there would not be a
strong analogy with his account of such physical substances as gold.12
I do not claim that this is a position in the philosophy of mind to which
Locke is dogmatically committed. But it must be noted, following Bennett,
that not only is it entirely harmonious with the thinking-matter hypoth-
esis that Locke entertains in IV.iii.6, it is also philosophically more
attractive than recognizing the existence of immaterial substances that

11
J. Bennett, ‘Locke’s Philosophy of Mind’, V. Chappell (ed.), Cambridge Companion to
Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 114.
12
It should be noted that such a position is consistent with the property dualism I have
attributed to Locke; the faculty of thinking and occurrent thoughts would be irreducibly
mental properties of the brain.
 DULL SOULS

intermittently think and in the intervals between occurrent thoughts

possess unexercised powers ungrounded in any categorical properties.
One way of thinking of Locke’s polemic is as a development of, and
improvement on, Gassendi’s criticisms of Descartes in the Fifth Set of
Objections to the Meditations. According to Gassendi’s well-known
critique, the problem with Descartes’ doctrine of the res cogitans is that
he has not succeeded in identifying the internal structure or constitution
of the mind (AT VII 276–7: CSM II 192–3). By saying that the mind is a
thinking thing or substance, Descartes has given us, in Lockean termin-
ology, a characterization of the mind merely in terms of its nominal
essence. The problem with Gassendi’s demand for a ‘chemical investiga-
tion’ of the mind is that it lays itself open to the charge of begging the
question against Descartes; what needs to be proved is that the mind has
an internal structure or constitution as wine and other physical sub-
stances do. Locke may be exploiting his negative claim—that the mind
does not always think—to avoid this objection; he may be trying to show
that it is reasonable to suppose that mentality does indeed depend on an
internal constitution.

IV The Issue of Immortality

Locke’s polemic against the thesis that the soul always thinks at least
suggests that the thinking-matter hypothesis is a reasonable position in
the philosophy of mind. But Locke also exploits the issue to make a series
of points about personal immortality. According to Locke, even if the
mind or soul is an immaterial substance, it does not follow that it is
immortal in a morally significant sense.
One intriguing discussion of this issue is to be found in his Journals. In
a remarkable entry dated 20 February 1682, Locke criticizes what he
terms ‘the usuall physicall proofe of the immortality of the soul’. As
Locke explains it, the argument runs: ‘Matter cannot thinke ergo the
soule is immateriall, noe thing can naturally destroy an immateriall thing
ergo the soul is naturally immortal’ (AG 121). In other words, the target
of Locke’s criticism is an argument, going back to Plato’s Phaedo, which
seeks to derive the soul’s natural immortality from its status as an
immaterial substance. According to Locke, the basic trouble with this
argument is that it misconceives the issue of immortality; indeed, this
mistake is made both by proponents and conventional critics of the
 DULL SOULS 

argument alike. For when personal immortality is in question, what is at

issue is not a state of bare substantial existence and duration but ‘a state
of sensibility’. But the argument from immateriality is powerless to
establish immortality in this strong sense; it can establish at most only
a form of indestructibility common to all substances, material and
immaterial. According to Locke, it is ‘manifestly false’ to say that the
soul is necessarily always thinking; ‘there is scarce a man that has not
experience to the contrary every 24 howers’ (AG 122). In a passage that
anticipates the polemic of the Essay, Locke draws out the implications of
denying that the soul always thinks for the issue of proving its
immortality:
For I aske what sense or thought the soule (which is certainly then in a man) has
during 2 or 3 howers of sound sleepe without dreameing whereby it is plaine that
the soule may exist, or have duration for some time without sense or perception
and if it may have for this hower it may also have the same duration without
perception of pain or pleasure or any thing else for the next hower and soe to
eternity. Soe that to prove that immortality of the soule simply because it being
not naturally to be destroid by anything it will have an eternall duration which
duration may be without any perception is to prove noe other immortality of the
soule than what belongs to one of Epicurus’s atoms, viz. that it perpetually exists
but has noe sense either of happynesse or misery. (AG 122)

Here, then, the ‘manifest falsity’ of the Cartesian doctrine that the mind
always thinks serves as a key premise in an argument to show that
immateriality does not entail immortality in a morally significant sense.
Since, as experience shows, the mind does not always think, it trivially
follows that it can sometimes be without perception of pleasure or pain.
And, according to Locke, if it can sometimes be without perception of
pleasure or pain, it can endure forever without such perception.13
One problem posed by this argument is that this last premise seems
stronger than is warranted. It does not seem correct to say that if the
mind can sometimes be without perception of pleasure or pain in this
life, it can endure forever without such perception. Such a premise seems
on a par with saying that if I can survive without food for a few hours,
I can always survive without food. Why should not the nature of the

13
Cf. L. Dempsey, ‘ “A Compound Wholly Mortal”: Locke and Newton on the Meta-
physics of (Personal) Immortality’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (2011),
241–64.
 DULL SOULS

mind be such that it can go for a while without perception of pleasure or

pain, but cannot persist very long in such a state? It is conceivable that
the mind is an indestructible substance that must restore itself, as it were,
with bouts of perception of pleasure or pain. If this were indeed the case,
then the prospect of the afterlife could still be morally significant.
Imagine, for instance, that I survive for all eternity but am only occa-
sionally roused from unconsciousness to experience bouts of appalling
torment for my sins. Such a conception of personal immortality could
still make a big difference to human concerns.
It is perhaps a little unfair to subject a sketchy argument from the
Journals to detailed criticism. In any case, Locke can still reply that the
burden of proof lies on the proponents of the ‘usual physicall proofe’ of
immortality; they need to show that the indestructibility of the soul has
morally significant implications, and this they have failed to achieve.
But whatever the merits of Locke’s argument, it is at least clear what he
is trying to do; he seeks to deploy the anti-Cartesian thesis that the
mind does not always think as a premise in an argument designed to
sever the connection between immateriality and immortality in a strong
sense.
Locke’s explicit concern with the issue of personal immortality in the
Journals may throw light on one of the arguments in the Essay that we
have already examined. Remember our earlier discussion of Locke’s
conclusion that the Cartesian dogma leads to the ‘absurdity of two
distinct Persons’ in one soul-substance. The problem posed by such an
argument is to determine why the hypothesis is an absurdity in view of
Locke’s thought-experiments in II.xxvii. It was suggested that Locke
seeks to establish a genuine reductio when this hypothesis is combined
with the Cartesian thesis that persons are necessarily identical with
certain immaterial substances. This interpretive suggestion, deriving
from David Soles, certainly solves the problem but it receives little direct
support from the text.
It is now possible to mount an alternative interpretation of this
argument that does not require us to suppose that there is a suppressed
Cartesian premise. Taking our cue from Locke’s focus on the issue of
pleasure and pain, we may reasonably suppose that, as in the Journals, he
seeks to establish a thesis about the conditions for immortality. Locke’s
point may well be that even if the Cartesians are right in their dogma that
the soul always thinks, they fail to see that their doctrine has no tendency
 DULL SOULS 

to guarantee immortality in a strong, morally significant sense. The

Cartesian doctrine cannot rule out the possibility that our soul might
survive death but in such a way that stretches of its consciousness might
have nothing to do with us. Indeed, Locke may think that the Castor and
Pollux thought-experiments show that it is possible that that my post-
mortem soul might always be occupied by another person than me. The
consciousness of my post-mortem soul might be as alien to me as
Castor’s consciousness is to Pollux. When personal immortality is in
question, what I want to know is whether I shall experience pleasure or
pain, happiness or misery; the fact that my soul after death may be
occupied by another person who experiences happiness or misery is
irrelevant to the issue.
Locke’s argumentative strategy in this discussion may thus be viewed
as a constructive dilemma. Either the mind always thinks or it does not.
If the mind does always think, then this doctrine has no tendency to
guarantee personal immortality. If the mind does not always think, then
an argument for personal immortality is blocked. So either way there is
no rational assurance of immortality. The attribution of such an argu-
mentative strategy to Locke is certainly plausible; as we shall see in the
next chapter, Locke adopts the same kind of strategy with regard to the
status of animals, another issue on which the Cartesians take a dogmatic
and controversial stand. But it is only fair to note that such a strategy for
Locke would be one on which he could fall back. As we have seen, Locke
does not regard it as an open question whether the soul always thinks;
even if he does not demonstrate it in the Essay, he regards the dogma as
‘manifestly false’.
In this chapter we have seen that Locke’s polemic against the Cartesian
doctrine that the soul always thinks is far from being just the bluff
defence of common sense that it has often been taken to be. On the
contrary, Locke sees how he can exploit the issue in a complex way in
the interests of defending metaphysical and even theological claims: the
‘manifest falsity’ of the doctrine can be used to sever the connection
between immateriality and personal immortality. But before we conclude
this chapter, we should take note of one further way in which Locke’s
polemic is relevant to his theological concerns: it provides support for the
doctrine of mortalism to which, as we have seen, he is committed.
According to one weak version of mortalism, the soul continues to
exist after death but ‘sleeps’ between death and resurrection at the Day
 DULL SOULS

of Judgment.14 By arguing that souls are ‘dull’ in the sense that they can
and do exist without mental activity (during periods of dreamless sleep,
for example), Locke seeks to establish at least the logical possibility of
such ‘soul-sleeping’ after death: no contradiction is involved in the idea
of the mind existing without any operation. But as we have seen,
unofficially at least, Locke prepares the ground for the more radical,
materialist thesis according to which during dreamless sleep there is
strictly speaking no soul-substance at all; it is rather the case that thought
is intermittently annexed to the brain. Such a thesis provides even more
direct support for the doctrine of mortalism; on the materialist hypoth-
esis it is uncontroversial that the human being dies wholly at death. In
the final chapter we shall see that Locke has scriptural as well as philo-
sophical grounds for his adoption of the mortalist heresy.

14
For a discussion of ‘soul-sleeping’ or psychopannychism in early modern thought, see
A. Thomson, Bodies of Thought: Science, Religion, and the Soul in the Early Enlightenment
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), esp. ch. IV.
 3
Animals

In a passage full of his characteristic irony, Locke associates two of the

main targets of his anti-Cartesian polemics:
They must needs have a penetrating sight, who can certainly see, that I think,
when I cannot perceive it my self, and when I declare, that I do not; and yet can
see, that Dogs or Elephants do not think, when they give all the demonstration of
it imaginable, except only telling us, that they do so. (E II.i.19)

It is not surprising that Locke associates the two Cartesian doctrines in

this way, for they are really mirror images of one another. By teaching
that the mind always thinks, Descartes ascribes too much thought to
human beings; by teaching that animals are bare machines, Descartes
ascribes too little thought to animals—that is, he ascribes them none at
all. In opposition to Cartesian dogmatism that postulates a sharp onto-
logical divide between human beings and animals, Locke seeks to defend
a more nuanced account according to which human beings share some
mental faculties with animals but not others. We shall see that in
developing this account Locke is led to make statements about the nature
of the mental that are dubiously consistent with the Mental Transpar-
ency Principle we examined in Chapter 2.
Locke may encourage the reader to view his treatment of animals as a
defence of common sense, observation, and experience against Cartesian
dogmatism; in a late letter to Anthony Collins, for instance, he complains
that Descartes’ disciples ‘against all evidence of sense and reason decree
Brutes to be machines only because their hypothesis requires it’ (24
March 1704, CL VIII 254).1 But to view his project simply in these

1
In the letter to Collins, Locke’s specific target is John Norris (1657–1711). Norris, a
clergyman and former friend of Locke’s, was a disciple of the unorthodox Cartesian Nicolas
Malebranche (1638–1715). Locke says that ‘Men of Mr Ns way seem to me to decree rather
than to argue.’ He also complains that they ‘suppose . . . what they should prove viz that
 ANIMALS

terms is in a way misleading or at least one-sided. In the Stillingfleet

controversy and some of his Journal entries, Locke shows that he has
bigger fish to fry; he shows how he can exploit his analysis of animal
consciousness for the purpose of arguing for a weak form of materialism
that is consistent with property dualism. Locke’s arguments are charac-
teristically undogmatic, and there are even some premises to which his
commitment is unclear. But there is no doubt that in his discussions of
animal consciousness Locke has metaphysical and even theological
ambitions that transcend the modest purpose of defending our com-
monsensical intuitions about animals against Cartesian dogmatism.
Locke’s primary aim is to exploit the evident fact of animal conscious-
ness in the interests of promoting the claims of the thinking-matter
hypothesis as a reasonable position in the philosophy of mind; it is not
to offer non-question-begging arguments against the Cartesian dogma of
the beast-machine. But, as we shall see, in places Locke not only shows
how the Cartesian arguments can be blocked, he also offers arguments
against the Cartesian doctrine. Whatever we may think of the merits of
such arguments, it is clear that Locke’s discussions of the whole issue of
animal mentality are informed by a knowledge of Descartes’ arguments
and of the assumptions about mentality or consciousness on which they
rely. It will be helpful, then, to review the principal Cartesian arguments
for the beast-machine doctrine.

I Descartes’ Beast-Machine Doctrine

Perhaps the most famous of Descartes’ arguments for the beast-machine
doctrine turns on the nature of language; this is the argument that has
impressed modern linguists such as Chomsky by virtue of its emphasis
on the creative aspect of genuine language use.2 According to Descartes,
unlike even the most stupid human beings, no animals exhibit anything
other than a limited repertoire of signals that can be explained mechan-
ically; they never give evidence of language use that is a spontaneous
expression of thoughts. In the Discourse on Method Descartes writes:

whatsoever thinks is immaterial’ (24 March 1704, CL VIII 254). On Norris’ philosophy, see
W. J. Mander, The Philosophy of John Norris (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
2
N. Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought
(New York: Harper and Row, 1966).
 ANIMALS 

. . . we can also know the difference between man and beast. For it is quite
remarkable that there is no man so dull-witted or stupid – and this includes
even madmen – that they are incapable of arranging various words together and
forming an utterance from them in order to make their thoughts understood;
whereas there is no other animal, however perfect and well-endowed it may be,
that can do the like. This does not happen because they lack the necessary organs,
for we see that magpies and parrots can utter words as we do, and yet they cannot
speak as we do; that is, they cannot show that they are thinking what they are
saying. On the other hand, men born deaf and dumb, and thus deprived of
speech-organs as much as the beasts or even more so, normally invent their own
signs to make themselves understood by those who, being regularly in their
company, have no time to learn their language. This shows not merely that the
beasts have less reason than men, but that they have no reason at all. (AT VI
57–8: CSM I 140)

At first pass it seems that Descartes’ argument can thus be reconstructed

as follows:
(1) If animals have reason or intelligence, then if they had the neces-
sary organs, they would use language.
(2) Animals have the necessary organs.
(3) Animals do not use language.
(4) Therefore, animals have no reason or intelligence.
This argument of course stops short of showing that animals are bare
machines; it is consistent with the conclusion of the argument that
animals have sensations and sense perception, just as common sense
maintains they do. But within Descartes’ system such a scenario is not
really possible, for he is committed to a view of the nature of sensation
and sense perception that rules it out. According to Descartes’ well-
known view, sensations and sense perception are confused modes of
thinking that arise from the mind’s union and intermingling with the
body (Meditations VI, AT VII 81: CSM II 56); the possession of a faculty
of pure intellect is a necessary condition of having any such mental
states, and indeed any mental states at all. As Bernard Williams has
written, Descartes is committed to an ‘all or nothing’ view of mental
faculties: either a creature has the full range of mental faculties, including
the capacity for abstract thought and reasoning, or it has no such
faculties at all.3 For Descartes, then, the thesis that animals have no

3
B. Williams, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry (Hassocks: Harvester, 1978), p. 284.
 ANIMALS

reason or intelligence is really a sub-conclusion; given the extra premise

about the necessity of having a faculty of pure intellect for any mental
states, he can validly infer that animals are bare machines.
One problem with the argument, as reconstructed, is that (2) does not
seem to be true with regard to all animals; surely all Descartes is justified
in claiming is that some animals, such as magpies and parrots, have the
necessary organs for the use of language. But in that case, from the fact
that no animals use language by Descartes’ criteria, it will not follow that
no animals have reason or intelligence; it is epistemically possible that
there are animals—for instance, dolphins—that have thoughts they are
unable to express through either sounds or the sign-language of which
Descartes writes. Thus Descartes cannot claim that his argument estab-
lishes that all animals lack reason or intelligence.
A second problem with the argument was identified by his correspond-
ent Henry More (to Descartes, 5 March 1649, AT VII 311). More objects
in effect that the argument proves too much: by parity of reasoning one
could argue that newborn infants are lacking in minds. Yet Descartes
certainly does not wish to deny the presence of a mind or thinking
substance in their case. Descartes’ reply to More is brief and unsatisfactory:
Infants are in a different case (ratio) from animals: I should not judge that infants
were endowed with minds unless I saw that they were of the same nature as
adults; but animals never develop to the point where any certain sign of thought
can be detected in them. (To More, 15 April 1649, AT V 345: CSMK III 374)

One problem with Descartes’ reply to More is that it is question-begging.

All that Descartes is entitled to claim on the basis of observation is that
the bodies of newborn infants are of the same nature as those of adults.
Whether infants are of the same nature as adults in respect of possessing
a rational mind is just the point at issue. It is consistent with the
observable facts that God might join a rational mind or thinking sub-
stance to a child’s body at, or just before, the time that it starts to exhibit
genuine linguistic competence. Descartes may well have theological
scruples about entertaining such a hypothesis, for it would seem to
imply that abortion and even infanticide are morally permissible, but
he does not have purely philosophical grounds for ruling it out.4

4
M. Wilson agrees that Descartes’ reply is unsatisfactory, though on different grounds:
‘More should not have been satisfied with this answer. The claim that More meant to
 ANIMALS 

Intriguing and influential as it is, Descartes’ argument from language

seems unsatisfactory. Fortunately for his project, Descartes has other
strings to his bow. A second argument, which is perhaps never explicitly
spelt out, turns on the Principle of Parsimony or Ockham’s razor.
According to Descartes’ new mechanistic programme, there is no aspect
of animal behaviour that cannot in principle be explained in mechanistic
terms. Consider the case, discussed by Aquinas, of a sheep fleeing from a
wolf. According to Aquinas the behaviour of the sheep in fleeing is to be
explained in terms of its fear of the wolf and its desire to preserve its life;
in other words, the explanation crucially invokes mental concepts.5 For
Descartes, by contrast, the behaviour of the sheep can in principle at least
be fully explained in terms of the reflection of light rays from the surface
of the wolf ’s body and the subsequent stimulation of the sheep’s eyes
and messages transmitted to the brain; it is unnecessary to postulate
any mental states of fear and desire. It follows, then, by the Principle
of Parsimony that the sheep is nothing more than a machine of a
certain kind.
A final argument Descartes employs comes from an entirely different
quarter; it has nothing directly to do with his ambitious new programme
of mechanistic explanation. In places Descartes helps himself to a theo-
logical argument that turns on the traditional Platonic assumption that
an immaterial soul or mind would be naturally immortal. As Descartes
tells Henry More, who expressed a sense of shock at the beast-machine
doctrine: ‘It is more probable that worms, flies, gnats, caterpillars and
other animals move like machines than that they all have immortal souls’
(to More, 5 February 1649, AT V 277: CSMK III 366).
Thus, in the present context Descartes seems to accept the following
argument:

support by the example of infants is just that there is no strict correlation between evident
linguistic competence, and ascriptions of mentality that Descartes himself would endorse.
Descartes’ answer does not address this issue.’ ‘Animal Ideas’, Ideas and Mechanism, p. 498.
5
In the Fourth Set of Objections Arnauld confronted Descartes with this example and
objected that it seemed ‘incredible that it can come about, without the assistance of any soul,
that the light reflected from the body of a wolf onto the eyes of a sheep should move the
minute fibres of the optic nerve, and that on reaching the brain this motion should spread
the animal spirits throughout the nerves in the manner necessary to precipitate the sheep’s
flight’ (AT VII 205: CSM II 144). In his reply Descartes appeals to phenomena like
conditioned reflexes to show what the body is capable of doing without the intervention
of the mind (AT VII 229–30: CSM II 161–2).
 ANIMALS

(1) If animals have immaterial souls, they have immortal souls.

(2) But animals do not have immortal souls.
(3) Therefore, animals do not have immaterial souls.
On Descartes’ further dualist assumption that matter cannot think, it
follows that animals are bare machines.

II The Cognitive Faculties of Animals

According to Descartes, then, mentality is all or nothing: either a creature
has a full range of mental faculties or it has no such faculties at all. In
central chapters of Book II of the Essay, Locke sketches a very different
picture of mentality. Locke’s announced, ostensible aim in these chapters
is to analyse the cognitive faculties of human beings, but in the course of
doing so he takes the opportunity to engage in a number of comparisons
with animals. As we shall see, Locke offers a nuanced account of the
cognitive faculties of animals; in his view they possess some such faculties,
but are lacking in others that are distinctive of at least adult human beings.
One cognitive faculty that is common to human beings and animals is
that of perception. According to Locke, perception ‘is in some degree, in
all sorts of animals’ (E II.ix.12); indeed, Locke is even prepared to ascribe
some ‘some small dull perception’ to oysters and cockles (E II.ix.14).
Locke suggests that what kind of perceptions crustaceans have may be
limited by their biological needs:
What good would Sight and Hearing do to a Creature, that cannot move itself to,
or from the Objects, wherein at a distance it perceives Good or Evil? And would
not quickness of Sensation, be an Inconvenience to an Animal, that must lie still,
where Chance has once placed it; and there receive the afflux of colder or warmer,
clean or foul Water, as it happens to come to it? (E II.ix.13)

Locke is more explicit about what such perception is not than about its
positive features; in view of Locke’s biological emphasis, we may conjec-
ture that in his view oysters and cockles have some rudimentary percep-
tual capacity that would allow them to register the presence or proximity
of predators that would pose dangers to their survival.
One issue raised by Locke’s discussion of animal perception is whether
it is consistent with the Mental Transparency Principle to which he, like
Descartes, seems to subscribe. As Locke says, ‘’tis altogether as intelligible
to say that a body is extended without parts, as that any thing thinks
 ANIMALS 

without being conscious of it, or perceiving, that it does so’ (E II.i.19).

Indeed, Locke’s formulation of the principle is such that it might be taken
to imply that, for any occurrent mental state, one is not only conscious in
having it, but also conscious that one has it. But it is difficult to see how
the dull perceptions of cockles and oysters satisfy the demands of even a
weak version of this principle. Thus it seems that Locke may be com-
mitted to an inconsistent triad of propositions in this area:
(1) The lower animals have perceptions.
(2) All mental states (including perceptions) fall within the scope of
the Mental Transparency Principle.
(3) The perceptions of the lower animals do not fall within the scope
of the Mental Transparency Principle.
One might try to solve this problem by denying Locke’s commitment
to (2). There is some evidence that can be marshalled in support of such
an interpretation. Thus it is striking, for instance, that Locke’s canonical
statements of the Mental Transparency Principle are formulated in terms
of thought, not perception (see, e.g., E II.i.19 quoted earlier in this
chapter). One may then notice that in places Locke seems to contrast
thought and perception. Thus having admitted that ‘PERCEPTION . . . is
by some called Thinking in general’, he goes on to insist that ‘Thinking in
the Propriety of the English Tongue, signifies that sort of operation of the
Mind about its Ideas, wherein the Mind is active; where it with some
degree of voluntary attention, considers any thing. For in bare naked
Perception, the Mind is, for the most part, only passive, and what it
perceives, it cannot avoid perceiving’ (E II.ix.1). In this passage Locke is
suggesting not only that perception does not entail thought, but also that
it is contrasted with thought as that which is active to that which is
passive. Thus Locke might be saying that the lower animals, such as
crustaceans, have passive mental states but not the active ones to which
the Mental Transparency Principle alone applies.
This line of interpretation has certain attractions. Critics of the Essay
have sometimes noticed that there are places where Locke’s acute psy-
chological insight apparently leads him into inconsistency with his
commitment to the Mental Transparency Principle. Consider, for
instance, the passage that from the second edition onwards serves to
introduce the famous discussion of the Molyneux problem: ‘We are
farther to consider concerning Perception, that the Ideas we receive by
 ANIMALS

Sensation, are often in grown People alter’d by the Judgment, without our
taking notice of it’ (E II.ix.8). In Locke’s example of perceiving the globe
that follows, there is apparently a double abandonment of the Mental
Transparency Principle: the operations of the judgment are mental
events that are not taken notice of, and the original idea—its state before
the intervention of the judgment—is also apparently unnoticed.6 If the
Mental Transparency Principle is restricted in its scope to the mind’s
actions, then the way is open for at least a partial defence of Locke here:
he can consistently claim that the mind is not aware of the original
idea. Locke may still be vulnerable to the objection that the operation of
the judgment is a mental act, and thus does fall within the scope of the
principle, but at least the problem is less serious than it may seem.
Locke, then, has the resources to solve the problem of the inconsistent
triad in a way that is consistent with his claim that the perceptions of
oysters are ‘dull’ and preserves our intuition that such creatures are
neither conscious nor self-conscious. Whether Locke adheres consist-
ently to the solution proposed here may be disputed; in places he does
seem to suggest that perceptions fall within the scope of the Mental
Transparency Principle. But in any case, whatever Locke’s stand on that
issue, one thing is clear: Locke goes out of his way to emphasize that the
perceptions of human beings can be as dull and low in intensity as those
of the lower animals. Consider Locke’s rather startling discussion of a
human being in ‘decrepid old age’:
How far such an one (notwithstanding all that is boasted of innate principles) is
in his Knowledge and intellectual Faculties, above the Condition of a Cockle or
an Oyster I leave to be considered. And if a man had passed Sixty Years in such a
State, as ’tis possible he might, as well as three Days, I wonder what difference
there would have been, in any intellectual perceptions between him, and the
lowest degree of Animals. (E II.ix.14)

6
‘When we set before our Eyes a round Globe, of any uniform colour, v.g. Gold,
Alabaster, or Jet, ’tis certain, that the Idea thereby imprinted in our Mind, is of a flat Circle
variously shadow’d, with several degrees of Light and Brightness coming to our Eyes. But
we having by use been accustomed to perceive, what kind of appearance convex Bodies are
wont to make in us, what alterations are made in the reflections of Light, by the difference of
the sensible Figures of Bodies, the Judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters the
Appearances into their Causes: So that from that, which truly is variety of shadow or colour,
collecting the Figure, it makes it pass for a mark of Figure, and frames to it self the
perception of a convex Figure, and an uniform Colour; when the Idea that we receive
from thence, is only a Plain variously colour’d, as is evident in Painting’ (E II.ix.8).
 ANIMALS 

With his ironic reference to the doctrine of innate principles, Locke is

flaunting his opposition to the Cartesian picture of a sharp ontological
divide between human beings and the animal kingdom.
In his discussion of animal perception, then, Locke seems to place
restrictions on his commitment to the Mental Transparency Principle. In
his discussion of retention Locke goes further: he seeks to refute the
Cartesian thesis that all the behaviour of animals can be explained
mechanically. In a neglected passage of the Essay Locke is prepared to
concede that it is possible to offer a mechanical explanation of why birds
should fly away at the sound of a tune; he denies, however, that it is
possible to offer any such explanation of a bird’s capacity to imitate a
tune, especially one that is no longer being played:
For though I should grant Sound may mechanically cause a certain motion of the
animal Spirits in the Brains of those Birds, whilst the Tune is actually playing, and
that motion may be continued to the Muscles of the Wings, and so the Bird
mechanically be driven away by certain noises, because they may tend to the
Bird’s Preservation: yet that can never be supposed a Reason, why it should cause
mechanically, either whilst the Tune was playing, much less after it has ceased, such
a Motion in the Organs of the Bird’s Voice, as should conform it to the Noise of a
foreign Sound, which imitation can be of no use to the Bird’s Preservation. (E II.x.10)

Locke’s argument seems open to two criticisms of unequal merit. In the

first place, one might seek to take issue with Locke’s claim that it is
impossible that birds ‘should endeavour to conform their Voices to
Notes’ unless they have some ‘ideas’ (E II.xi.10). Such an objection will
seem question-begging if of course the word ‘endeavour’ is understood in
mental or psychological terms; the Cartesian will simply deny that there
is any such datum to be explained. However, it is by no means clear that
the term ‘endeavour’ needs to be understood in this way; the word (or its
Latin equivalent, conatus) was often used by philosophers in the period
with regard to purely physical actions. Secondly, and more promisingly,
the Cartesian might well seek to challenge Locke’s claim that the bird’s
capacity to imitate tunes that it is currently hearing or that it has heard in
the past in no way serves its preservation. It is surely not impossible to
think of ways in which such a capacity might serve this purpose. Sup-
pose, for instance, that a small songbird such as a robin or thrush could
imitate the notes of a powerful bird of prey. Such an ability might serve to
divert the potential predator that was familiar with the songbird only by
hearing and not by sight. Of course Locke might question whether such a
 ANIMALS

defence of the Cartesian position could be generalized to all cases of

birds’ mimetic capacities. Whether Locke’s arguments work against the
Cartesians may be disputed, but one thing is clear: the passage is remark-
able as perhaps the only place in the Essay where Locke seeks to block
one of Descartes’ arguments for the beast-machine doctrine, and even to
refute it.7
According to Locke, then, all animals perceive, and some at least retain
their ideas. But in what is probably the most important of his discussions
of animal faculties in the Essay, Locke is positive almost to the point of
dogmatism in denying that any of them has the power of abstraction.
Here Locke offers an argument that is almost teasingly modelled on
Descartes’ argument from language in the Discourse on Method. Locke
agrees with Descartes that considerations about language and vocal
organs show something about animals, but they show less than Descartes
thinks: what they show is simply that animals lack one mental faculty
that is possessed by adult human beings:
This, I think, I may be positive in, That the power of Abstracting is not at all in
them; and that the having of general Ideas, is that which puts a perfect distinction
betwixt Man and Brutes, and is an Excellency which the Faculties of Brutes do by
no mean attain to. For it is evident, we observe no foot-steps in them, of making
use of general signs for universal Ideas, from which we have reason to imagine,
that they have not the faculty of abstracting, or making general Ideas, since they
have no use of words, or any other general Signs.
Nor can it be imputed to their want of fit Organs, to frame articulate Sounds,
that they have no use, or knowledge of general Words, since many of them, we
find, can fashion such Sounds, and pronounce Words distinctly enough, but
never with any such application. And on the other side, Men, who through some
defect in the Organs, want words, yet fail not to express their universal Ideas by
signs, which serve them instead of general words, a faculty which we see Beasts
come short in. And therefore I think we may suppose, That ’tis in this, that the
species of Brutes are discriminated from Man; and ’tis that proper difference
wherein they are wholly separated and which at last widens to so vast a distance.
(E II.xi.10–11)

Locke’s argument can thus be reconstructed in the following form:

(1) If animals have the power of abstraction, then if they have fit vocal
organs, they use general terms.

7
Locke also argues that animals lack the capacity of compounding ideas (E II.xi.7).
 ANIMALS 

(2) Animals have fit organs.

(3) Animals do not use general terms.
(4) Therefore, animals lack the power of abstraction.
In this respect animals resemble small children. According to Locke,
the power of forming abstract ideas requires a degree of pains and skill
that is beyond their capacities (E IV.vii.9).
Locke’s singling out of abstract ideas as what clearly distinguishes
human beings from brutes or the lower animals is well conceived in
terms of his overall project of analysing the nature and limits of know-
ledge. For it is a central tenet of Locke’s epistemology that ‘all general
Knowledge lies only in our own Thoughts and consists barely in the
contemplation of our own abstract Ideas’ (E IV.vi.13). It is in terms of
abstract ideas that Locke seeks to offer a reinterpretation of the trad-
itional Aristotelian-Scholastic concept of scientia or knowledge of uni-
versal, necessary truths; in this way, as I have argued elsewhere, Locke
appeals in a rather systematic fashion to abstract ideas to do duty for
innate ideas in Descartes’ philosophy.8 Thus by denying that animals
have the capacity to form abstract ideas he shows that, in spite of his
willingness to concede that they have some mental faculties, he is in no
danger of conceding that any of them have the capacity for scientia or
knowledge of universal, necessary truths. Scientia thus remains the
prerogative of human beings.
Locke can thus agree with Descartes and indeed with the Aristotel-
ian tradition that animals are incapable of scientia, but he refuses to
infer from this that they lack mental faculties in general. It is tempting
to say that Locke departs from Descartes here simply by failing to
endorse the ‘all or nothing’ conception of mentality to which Descartes
subscribes; as we have seen for Descartes, sensations and sensory
perceptions result from the mind’s union and, as it were, intermingling
with the body. But to view the disagreement simply in these terms
would be a mistake. To see this, consider the following two Cartesian
claims:

8
‘Lockean Abstractionism versus Cartesian Nativism’, P. Hoffman, D. Owen, and
G. Yaffe (eds.), Contemporary Perspectives on Early Modern Philosophy: Essays in Honor
of Vere Chappell (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2008), pp. 157–72.
 ANIMALS

(1) All minds have a faculty of pure intellect.

(2) The possession of a faculty of pure intellect is a necessary condition
of having any mental states such as sense perception, sensation, and
imagination.
It is possible of course for a philosopher to accept (1) while denying
(2); this seems to be the position of Malebranche, at least in The Search
After Truth. But Locke is more radical than this; he denies both (1) and
(2). Indeed, arguably Locke holds not merely that not all minds possess a
faculty of pure intellect but that no mind has such a faculty.
We are now in a position to see that there is a certain tension between
the two anti-Cartesian polemics in Locke that we have examined in this
chapter and the preceding one. For the purpose of attacking Descartes’
thesis that the mind always thinks, Locke needs to endorse a version of
the Mental Transparency Principle; indeed, as we have seen, Locke even
seems to endorse a strong version of the principle according to which all
occurrent mental states are not just conscious but even self-conscious. By
contrast, for the purpose of attacking Descartes’ beast-machine doctrine,
Locke seems to play down this principle, or at least restrict its scope; in
his desire to establish that even crustaceans have mental lives he seems to
allow that mental events can fail to cross the threshold of consciousness.
But if this is the case then Locke seems vulnerable to the objection that
what we take to be cases of dreamless sleep are in fact characterized by
perceptions of this nature. It was this point that Leibniz was to exploit for
the purpose of defending a weak version of the ‘soul always thinks’ thesis
and ultimately in the service of an immaterialist theory of mind (NE II.1,
RB 111–19).

III Animals and the Thinking-Matter

Hypothesis
In the Essay Locke analyses the mental faculties of animals in various
places, but he does not bring this analysis to bear on the issue of
materialism. It is only in the Journals and in the controversy with
Stillingfleet that Locke makes a connection between the mental lives of
animals and the ontological status of minds. As reported by Locke,
Stillingfleet challenges him directly about the relationship between his
thinking-matter hypothesis and his account of the mental faculties of
 ANIMALS 

animals: ‘if it may be in the power of matter to think, how comes it to be

so impossible for such organized bodies as the brutes have to enlarge
their ideas by abstraction?’ (LW IV 468). As we would expect, Stilling-
fleet’s challenge gives Locke little trouble. Locke’s response comes in two
stages. In the first place, Locke denies that he ever placed thought within
the natural powers of matter; his hypothesis is of course that, for all we
know, God may have superadded the power of thinking to certain systems
of matter fitly disposed. Having corrected this error, Locke responds
(again) in the way that might be expected:
But if you mean that certain parcels of matter, ordered by the divine Power as
seems fit to him, may be made capable of receiving from his omnipotency the
faculty of thinking; that indeed I say, and that being granted, the answer to your
question is easy, since if Omnipotency can give thought to any solid substance, it
is not hard to conceive, that God may give that faculty in a higher or lower
degree, as it pleases him, who knows what disposition of the subject is suited to
such a particular way or degree of thinking. (LW IV 468)

Locke’s response to Stillingfleet may still leave unanswered difficulties

about how far, and in what way, God’s omnipotence is constrained by
the organization of matter or ‘disposition of the subject’. But it does show
that Locke thought, with some reason, that it is a virtue of the thinking-
matter hypothesis that it can easily accommodate what he takes to be the
facts about human and animal mentality.
The second stage in Locke’s response to Stillingfleet draws attention to
what is arguably the chief significance for Locke of the issue of the mental
faculties of animals. Not merely can the thinking-matter hypothesis
easily accommodate the differences between human and animal mental-
ity; the hypothesis may be the best explanation of these differences. Here
it is instructive to return to the parallel with Locke’s denial of the
Cartesian thesis that the mind always thinks. As Jonathan Bennett has
argued, Locke’s position may well be that there is no immaterial sub-
stance at all in human beings, but rather a brain to which thought or
consciousness is intermittently annexed.9 In the same way, in his reply to
Stillingfleet Locke may well be suggesting that the best explanation of the
differential mental capacities of humans and animals may be not that
God gives an immaterial substance to one and not the other, but rather

9
Bennett, ‘Locke’s Philosophy of Mind’, Chappell (ed.), Cambridge Companion to
Locke, p. 114.
 ANIMALS

that God gives different degrees of mental faculties to matter in human

beings and animals.
To appreciate the point, consider the various options for Locke
regarding human and animal mentality:10
(1) Human beings have immaterial substances; animals are bare
machines.
(2) Human beings have immaterial substances; matter thinks in
animals.
(3) Human beings have immaterial substances; animals have imma-
terial substances.
(4) Matter thinks in human beings; matter thinks in animals.
As we have seen, the Cartesian position—(1)—is not a serious con-
tender for Locke; it is in conflict with common sense, observation, and
experience, and it is supposed to be refuted by arguments such as the
one from the mimetic capacities of birds that we have already examined.
By contrast, (2) is not only logically possible but also consistent with the
facts of observation and experience. However, it suffers from the weak-
ness that it seems to give too much importance to the distinctive faculty
of abstraction in human beings; it is difficult to see why a sharp onto-
logical divide between human beings and animals should turn on the fact
that human beings possess at least one mental faculty that animals lack.
Further, as we have seen, Locke holds that human perception may sink to
so low a level of intensity that it is on a par with that found in the lowest
animals such as cockles and oysters. It would be strange indeed if
perceptions of the same level of intensity should be modifications of
immaterial substances in the one case and of material systems in the
other. Such a metaphysical situation would lay God open to the charge of
arbitrariness, and while Locke is certainly prepared to appeal to God’s
good pleasure on occasion, it is in response to problems that cannot
otherwise be solved.
The main competitor to (4), for Locke, is (3). What is wrong with (3)?
One possible argument against (3) is not explicitly advanced by Locke.
As we have seen, Locke disputes the Cartesian assumption that mentality
is all or nothing; that is, either a creature has the full range of mental

10
I do not of course mean to imply that this list exhausts all the logically possible
positions.
 ANIMALS 

faculties or it has none at all. But though Locke may dispute this view of
mentality, he may hold it about immaterial substances. In other words,
he may subscribe to the following principle: If x is an immaterial
substance, then x has the full range of mental faculties. If so, then we
would get the following argument:
(1) Animals have sensations.
(2) If animals have sensations, then either matter thinks in them (by
divine superaddition) or they have immaterial substances.
(3) Therefore, either matter thinks in animals (by divine superadd-
ition) or they have immaterial substances.
(4) If animals have immaterial substances, then they have the full
range of mental faculties.
(5) But animals do not have the full range of mental faculties.
(6) Therefore, animals do not have immaterial substances.
(7) Therefore, matter thinks in animals (by divine superaddition).
On this argument, then, Descartes is wrong in denying (1), but right
with regard to (4) and (5). (That is, the ‘all or nothing’ view is correct for
immaterial substances, but not for mentality in general.) Such an argu-
ment would offer an elegant rejoinder to Descartes by denying only one
of his assumptions. But there is no textual evidence that Locke subscribes
to such an argument. (As we have seen in Chapter 2, Locke is officially
prepared to reject one of Descartes’ assumptions about immaterial sub-
stances; that is, that they always think.)

IV Animals and the Issue of Immortality

One argument for the thinking-matter hypothesis has more textual
support in the Stillingfleet controversy; Locke argues from consider-
ations about immortality:
Though to me sensation be comprehended under thinking in general, yet in the
foregoing discourse, I have spoken of sense in brutes as distinct from thinking:
because your lordship, as I remember, speaks of sense in brutes. But here I take
liberty to observe, that if your lordship allows brutes to have sensation, it will
follow either that God can and doth give to some parcels of matter a power of
perception and thinking; or that all animals have immaterial souls and conse-
quently, according to your Lordship, immortal souls, as well as men: and to say
 ANIMALS

that fleas and mites, &c. have immortal souls as well as men will possibly be
looked on, as going a great way to serve a hypothesis. (LW IV 466)

Locke’s argument, then, can be reconstructed in the following form:

(1) Animals have sensations.
(2) If animals have sensations, then either matter thinks in animals
(by divine superaddition) or they have immaterial souls.
(3) Therefore, either matter thinks in animals (by divine superadd-
ition) or they have immaterial souls.
(4) If animals have immaterial souls, then they have immortal souls.
(5) But animals do not have immortal souls.
(6) Therefore, animals do not have immaterial souls.
(7) Therefore, matter thinks in animals (by divine superaddition).
There is no doubt that this is a simple and elegant argument which
shows how the common-sense assumption of animal sensation can be
made to serve the thinking-matter hypothesis, at least in a modest form.
But though Locke shows how the argument would go, does he himself
endorse it? Even in the Stillingfleet controversy, Locke indicates that the
argument is an ad hominem one; he says merely that ‘according to your
Lordship’ premise (4) is true. But we know from an entry in his Journals,
of 1682, that Locke does not accept premise (4), at least when immor-
tality is understood in a strong sense as involving sensibility. Let us
return to Locke’s critique of the ‘usuall physicall proofe’ of the soul’s
immortality in the Journal entry we examined in Chapter 2:
Those who oppose these men [i.e. the proponents of the proof] presse them very
hard with the soules of beasts for say they beasts feele i.e. think and therefore their
souls are immateriall and consequently immortall. This has by some men been
judged soe urgent that they have rather thought fit to conclude all beasts perfect
machines rather then allow their soules immortality or annihilation both which
seeme harsh doctrines, the one being out of the reach of nature and so cannot
be recond as the naturall state of beasts after this life and the other equaling them in
great measure to the state of man if they shall be immortall as well as he. (AG 121)

Here Locke shows his awareness of how the Cartesians have exploited
the thesis that immateriality entails immortality to argue for the beast-
machine doctrine. But, as Locke goes on to remark, parties to the debate
have bought into a false conception of immortality; for Locke, as we
have seen, immortality is a state of sensibility, not a state of bare
 ANIMALS 

subsistence. And immortality in this strong sense is not entailed by

immateriality.
It seems, then, that in this case the Stillingfleet controversy does not
give us an argument for a version of the thinking-matter hypothesis that
Locke is prepared to endorse; unless Locke has changed his mind since
the time of the Journal entry, he not only questions but actually rejects
premise (4). It might even be thought that Locke provides the resources
for a defence of the attribution of immaterial souls to animals, for he
shows that such an attribution does not raise the theological difficulties it
has been supposed to raise. Locke, as it were, can draw the sting out of
such an attribution. But to view Locke’s intentions in this light would
surely be a mistake. To see this, let us return to the Cartesian argument, a
version of which we have already considered:
(1) If animals think (have sensations), they have immaterial souls.
(2) If animals have immaterial souls, they have immortal souls.
(3) But animals do not have immortal souls.
(4) Therefore, animals do not have immaterial souls.
(5) Therefore, animals do not think (do not have sensations).
Locke’s aim is surely to show that the Cartesian argument is vulner-
able at two points: not merely are there grounds for questioning (1),11
there are also reasons for saying that (2) is actually false, when immor-
tality is properly understood. And with regard to the project of answer-
ing Stillingfleet, we can say that Locke seeks to confront him with a
dilemma concerning the premise that if animals have immaterial souls,
they have immortal souls. If the premise is true, there is a simple
argument from animal sensation (accepted by Stillingfleet) for at least a
modest version of the thinking-matter hypothesis. If the premise is false,
then a standard argument for the immortality of human beings is
blocked. Either way, Stillingfleet is forced to accept an unpalatable
conclusion.

11
In the letter to Collins (24 March 1704, CL VIII 254) Locke complains that men of
Mr N[orris]’s way ‘suppose . . . what they should prove viz that whatsoever thinks is
immaterial.’
 4
Substance

Locke’s treatment of dull souls and animals has been a relatively neg-
lected topic in the literature. The same cannot be said of Locke’s discus-
sion of substance in Book II, Chapter xxiii of the Essay. Ever since
Berkeley, Locke’s account of our idea of a substratum as the idea of
‘something, I know not what’ has been one of the most controversial and
widely discussed issues in commentary on Locke; indeed, even today
perhaps no other issue in the Essay is the subject of such heated debate.
Some commentators have emphasized that large issues in the overall
interpretation of Locke are at stake in this controversy; our account of
Locke’s theory of substance will depend on the kind of philosopher that
we take him to be.1 In view of the attention the topic has received, it may
be tempting to suppose that at this stage there can be little new to say
about Locke’s discussion of substance.
But this would be a mistake. The discussion of Locke on substance has
been curiously one-sided, for here as elsewhere Berkeley has been
allowed to set the agenda for the interpretation of Locke. The analysis
of Locke’s account of substance is still influenced by Berkeley’s attack on
Locke’s supposed doctrine of material substance. By contrast, few com-
mentators have taken up the question of how Locke’s theory of substance
contributes to the debate over the mind-body problem and to the

1
‘There are quite different opinions current as to the kind of philosopher Locke is: not
merely as to whether he is good or bad, highly confused or reasonably coherent, but as to his
motivation—as to whether he is driven by an interest in ‘logical’ questions as well as in
philosophy of science; and as to whether his pervasive agnosticism is to be ascribed to a
transcendentalist tendency to postulate unknowables rather than as a sane and realistic
estimate of the limited achievement and possibilities of contemporary science and scientific
methodology.’ M. R. Ayers, ‘The Ideas of Power and Substance in Locke’s Philosophy’,
I. C. Tipton (ed.), Locke on Human Understanding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977),
p. 78. Ayers’ principal target perhaps is the account that Jonathan Bennett offers in his
Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes, ch. 3.
 SUBSTANCE 

critique of Descartes’ substance dualism. In one way such a neglect is at

least partly understandable, for in II.xxiii of the Essay Locke shifts without
warning between discussion of the Aristotelian candidates for substances
and discussion of the Cartesian candidates; indeed, this abrupt shift of
focus is one of the chief sources of difficulty in the chapter. But though
Locke does not focus exclusively on mind and matter, his concern with the
mind-body problem in the chapter is beyond dispute. Indeed, it is hardly
too much to say that it is this issue, more than any other, that drives or
motivates Locke’s whole discussion of substance. In this chapter I shall
explore how Locke’s analysis of the idea of substance in general contrib-
utes to his critique of Descartes’ substance dualism. In the course of doing
so, I shall address some familiar issues of interpretation, but I shall
approach them from a largely unfamiliar angle. My aim in this chapter
is not so much to resolve definitively this long-standing controversy but
rather to show how, on each of the leading interpretations, materialism
emerges as a reasonable position in the philosophy of mind.

I Descartes on Substance
The relevance of Locke’s discussion of substance/substratum in II.xxiii to
the mind-body problem and to the critique of Descartes’ substance dual-
ism can hardly be denied, but of course the chapter is not written as a
direct contribution to metaphysics. In II.xxiii of the Essay Locke is not
engaged in taking an inventory of the furniture of the world; rather, he is
executing one part of the overall project in Book II of the Essay, namely
that of analysing the nature of our ideas and explaining how we acquire
them. It is clear that Locke’s project here is implicitly polemical; he sees
himself as challenging what he takes to be Descartes’ key claims about the
idea of substance. Consider two of the positive theses that Locke wishes to
defend in this chapter. First, whenever we predicate properties of a thing,
we have the idea of a substance or substratum that is obscure and
confused; second, as Locke explains to Stillingfleet in a passage that has
received little attention, this idea is not innate but abstract:
I beg leave to remind your Lordship, that I say in more places than one, and
particularly those above quoted, where ex professo I treat of abstraction and
general ideas, that they are all made by abstracting; and therefore could not be
understood to mean, that that of substance was made any other way. (LW IV 16)
 SUBSTANCE

It seems fair to suppose that Locke is here opposing what he takes to be

Descartes’ view: the idea of substance is not only clear and distinct but
also innate.2
But is the opposition between the two philosophers really as clear-cut
as this? It is true that in the Third Meditation Descartes says that he has
the idea of substance by virtue of the fact that he is a substance; he seems
to be saying that the idea of substance is innate in his mind in the rather
minimal sense that it is the product of non-sensory reflection on the
mind’s own nature (AT VII 45: CSM II 31).3 And it is plausible to suppose
that, for Descartes, all and only innate ideas are clear and distinct. But
the issue is complicated by Descartes’ discussion of the nature of a rational
or conceptual distinction in The Principles of Philosophy:
Finally, a distinction of reason is a distinction between a substance and some
attribute of that substance without which the substance is unintelligible . . . such a
distinction is recognized by our inability to form a clear and distinct idea of the
substance if we exclude from it the attribute in question . . .
Indeed, it is much easier for us to have an understanding of extended substance
or thinking substance than it is for us to understand substance on its own, leaving
out the fact that it thinks or is extended. For we have some difficulty in
abstracting the notion of substance from the notions of thought and extension,
since the distinction between these notions and the notion of substance is merely
a distinction of reason. (Principles of Philosophy I.62, 63, AT VIII A 30–1: CSM
I 214–15; translation modified)

Here Descartes seems to say that the idea of substance is less clear and
distinct than the ideas of thinking and extended substance, and he
explains this by appealing to the fact that the idea of substance is in
some sense abstracted from the notions of thought and extension. So it
might seem that Locke and Descartes are really in agreement: the idea of
substance is not clear and distinct and it is not innate but abstracted. But
to leave the matter there would be misleading; in spite of some verbal
similarities, there is still a big difference between the two philosophers’
accounts: for Descartes, the idea of substance is abstracted not from the
raw data of sensation and reflection, but from the innate intellectual
ideas of thought and extension.

2
See N. Jolley, ‘Lockean Abstractionism versus Cartesian Nativism’, Hoffman, Owen,
and Yaffe (eds.), Contemporary Perspectives on Early Modern Philosophy, pp. 164–7, for a
discussion of Locke’s claim that the idea of substance is abstract.
3
Cf. Leibniz, NE, Preface, RB 51–2; and NE II.1, RB 110–11.
 SUBSTANCE 

II The Obscure Idea of Substance

Although the opposition is not as sharp as might be expected, Descartes
thus seems to be the target of Locke’s claims about the status of the idea
of substance. But it may still be wondered how far, in II.xxiii, Locke seeks
to attack Descartes’ commitment to substance dualism with regard to the
created world. Indeed, some scholars, such as Peter Alexander, have
argued that in this chapter Locke himself exhibits a commitment to
substance dualism: ‘Locke, as a dualist, wishes to assert the existence of
material and spiritual substances as substrata for material things and
mental activities, respectively’.4 It is true that Locke’s official aim in the
chapter might be characterized by saying that he seeks to exploit the
obscurity of our idea of a substratum in defence of substance dualism;
this is the burden of Locke’s arguments in two parallel passages at II.
xxiii.5 and II.xxiii.15. The key premise in Locke’s arguments might be
called the Parity Thesis; that is, the idea of substance or substratum is
equally obscure in the cases or mind, or spirit, and matter (E II.xxxii.15).
Thus if the obscurity of the idea of substance or substratum were a reason
for denying the existence of spirit, it would also be a reason for denying
the existence of body. But the obscurity of the idea of substance in the
case of body is no reason for denying the existence of body. Thus, by the
Parity Thesis, it affords no reason for denying the existence of spirit:
’Tis plain then, that the Idea of corporeal Substance in Matter is as remote from
our Conceptions, and Apprehensions, as that of Spiritual Substance, or Spirit; and
therefore from our not having any notion of the Substance of Spirit, we can no
more conclude its non-Existence, than we can, for the same reason, deny the
Existence of Body: It being as rational to affirm, there is no Body, because we have
no clear and distinct Idea of the Substance of Matter; as to say, there is no Spirit,
because we have no clear and distinct Idea of the Substance of a Spirit. (E II.xxiii.5)

Here, as elsewhere, Locke seems to hesitate between the weak thesis that
we have an idea of substratum that is obscure and the strong thesis that
we have no idea at all of such a substratum.5

4
P. Alexander, Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles, p. 255. Cf. M. Rozemond and G. Yaffe,
‘Peach Trees, Gravity and God: Mechanism in Locke’, British Journal for the History of
Philosophy 12 (2004), 387–412. Rozemond and Yaffe write that ‘Locke’s main aim [in II.
xxiii] is to argue that body is no better understood than mind against materialism’ (p. 408).
5
Cf. E I.iv.18: ‘I confess, there is another Idea, which would be of general use for
Mankind to have, as it is of general talk as if they had it; and that is the Idea of Substance,
 SUBSTANCE

Why does Locke think that the idea of the substratum or substance of
body is obscure? Here Locke appeals to a number of conceptual difficul-
ties surrounding the nature of matter in the corpuscularian physics of his
time.6 In the first place, Locke is troubled by the problem of cohesion: it
is difficult to understand how the solid parts of body are united or cohere
together to make extension (E II.xxiii.23–27).7 Second, there is the
problem of the communication of motion by impulse:

in the communication of Motion by impulse, wherein as much Motion is lost to

one Body as is got to the other, which is the ordinariest case, we can have no other
conception, but of the passing of Motion out of one Body into another; which,
I think, is as obscure and unconceivable, as how our Minds move or stop our
Bodies by Thought . . . (E II.xxiii.28)

Finally, there is the problem of infinite divisibility: unlike Descartes,

Locke does not take a stand on this vexed issue, but he indicates that
either option involves serious difficulties (E II.xxiii.31). Thus Locke’s
position seems clear. People are tempted to suppose that the idea of mind
as an immaterial substance is particularly problematic, but they thereby
overlook the equally weighty problems that attend the concept of body,
even on the modern, post-Aristotelian natural philosophy. They are
struck, for instance, by the conspicuous problem of how mind can act
on body, but they overlook the point that the case of the action of body
on body is equally problematic. In Chapter 5 we shall see how the
interaction of bodies became a major topic of controversy in the wake
of the Newtonian theory of universal gravitation; it was widely felt that
this theory abandoned the central principle of mechanistic physics that
bodies act on one another only through impulse. Here it is sufficient to
note that in II.xxiii of the Essay Locke invokes well-known difficulties

which we neither have, nor can have, by Sensation or Reflection . . . We have no such clear
Idea at all, and therefore signify nothing by the word Substance, but only an uncertain
supposition of we know not what; (i.e. of something whereof we have no particular distinct
positive) Idea, which we take to be the substratum, or support, of those Ideas we do know.’
Cf. M. Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, pp. 204–5.
6
For a helpful discussion of these issues, see E. McCann, ‘Locke’s Philosophy of Body’,
V. Chappell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994), pp. 56–88, esp. pp. 67–76.
7
On this issue, see M. Jacovides, ‘The Epistemology under Locke’s Corpuscularianism’,
Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 84 (2002), 161–89.
 SUBSTANCE 

surrounding the physics of his time to show that the idea of substance/
substratum is as obscure in the case of body as it is in the case of mind.
If this were all there was to Locke’s teaching about substance, it would
be hard to understand why his earliest readers, such as Stillingfleet and
Leibniz, should have felt so queasy about it: why should they have
thought, as they did, that it in any way undermines Locke’s commitment
to substance dualism with regard to the created world?8 But in fact, of
course, as experienced readers of Locke are well aware, there is much
more to Locke’s discussion than this; moreover, the issues of interpret-
ation remain highly controversial and unresolved to this day. One central
issue of interpretation is what Locke means by saying that the idea of
substance/substratum is obscure and that substance has an unknown
nature. The most natural way of taking such claims is as implying that
there is something more to be known. Thus if I have an obscure idea of
an enzyme or haemoglobin, I am in a state of ignorance that could be
removed by, say, a study of medical dictionaries and encyclopedias or a
course in biology; I may know that an enzyme is a substance that the liver
secretes, but I may be unaware of its function and chemical structure.
Locke encourages us to take this view of his teaching about substance or
substratum by speaking of the ‘secret and abstract Nature of Substance in
general’ (E II.xxiii.6). On this account substance/substratum has a nature
that could in principle be discovered, even if it is in some unexplained
sense abstract. Indeed, the view that there is something more to be
known is implicit in Locke’s often-quoted claim that our idea of sub-
stance is the idea of something we know not what.
The problem for Locke scholars is that it is not at all clear that he is
entitled to hold such a position in view of his account of how we come to

8
One intriguing issue is whether Locke’s thesis that spirits are capable of motion tends
in a materialist direction (E II.xxiii.19–21). Obviously such a claim is consistent with a
materialist account of minds or spirits, but it is far from clear that it entails it. Leibniz, who
defends an immaterialist theory of mind against Locke, seems to think that it does not: ‘one
can always attribute a sort of motion to the soul, if only by reference to the body with which
it is united or by reference to the sort of perceptions it has’ (NE II.xxiii.21, RB 222).
However, Leibniz’s attempt to defend the Scholastic distinction between being ubi and
being in loco against Locke may have been motivated by a suspicion that, in rejecting this
distinction, Locke was seeking to prepare the ground for materialism. For Leibniz’s defence
of an immaterialist theory of the human mind against Locke, see N. Jolley, Leibniz and
Locke: A Study of the New Essays on Human Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1984).
 SUBSTANCE

believe that there is a substratum underlying all properties and in which

they inhere. According to Locke, we come to believe in a substratum in
the case of kinds of physical objects because we cannot ‘imagine’ how
properties (in the broad, modern sense of the term) could subsist by
themselves (E II.xxiii.1).9 We also suppose not just that properties inhere
in something, but that there must be something that plays a unifying
role; there must be something that explains why not all collections of
properties constitute a single thing. In Locke’s arguably somewhat mis-
leading phrase, we appeal to a substratum as a ‘Cause of their Union’ (i.e.
the union of properties) (E II.xxiii.6). In such discussions it seems that
the substratum is opposed to all properties whatever, not just to the
observable macroscopic properties; the microstructural properties pos-
tulated by the new science would also stand in need of a substratum, no
less than the observable ones. Such a reading of Locke’s intentions is
arguably encouraged by what has been called the ‘logico-linguistic argu-
ment’ for substratum in a passage that interestingly brings out the two
contexts in which Locke discusses the issue; that is, Locke discusses the
issue in connection not just with Aristotelian secondary substances but
also the Cartesian substances, mind and body:
. . . only we must take notice, that our complex Ideas of Substances, besides all
those simple Ideas they are made up of, have always the confused Idea of
something to which they belong, and in which they subsist: and therefore when
we speak of any sort of Substance, we say it is a thing having such or such
Qualities, as Body is a thing that is extended, figured, and capable of Motion, a
Spirit a thing capable of thinking; and so Hardness, Friability, and Power to draw
Iron, we say, are Qualities to be found in a Loadstone. These, and the like fashions
of speaking intimate, that the Substance is supposed always something besides the
Extension, Figure, Solidity, Motion, Thinking, or other observable Ideas, though
we know not what it is. (E II.xxiii.3)10

The problem is that if the substratum is opposed to all properties

whatever, it seems that there is nothing more that could be known,
even in principle. For to have knowledge of the substratum would
involve the specification of properties, as in the case of enzymes or

9
See Chapter 1, n. 16.
10
Michael Ayers emphasizes Locke’s use of the word ‘observable’ here to support his
interpretation that the substratum is not opposed to all properties whatever but only to the
observable ones. See his ‘The Ideas of Power and Substance in Locke’s Philosophy’, Tipton
(ed.), Locke on Human Understanding, p. 89n.
 SUBSTANCE 

haemoglobin; but such a specification of properties is ex hypothesi

impossible, for substance has been opposed to all properties whatever.
The problem was acutely stated by Leibniz:
If you distinguish two things in a substance—the attributes or predicates, and
their common subject—it is no wonder that you cannot conceive anything
[specific] in this subject. That is inevitable, because you have already set aside
all the attributes through which details could be conceived. (NE II.xxiii, RB 218)

The problem of whether, for Locke, there is something more about

substance/substratum that could in principle be known is arguably the
most difficult and controversial issue raised by his theory, but it is not the
only one. One might also ask whether for Locke it is rational for us to
postulate a substance/substratum; this is an issue raised by Stillingfleet,
for whom it is a necessary truth or truth of reason that properties need a
substratum in which to inhere; it is not simply a matter of human
psychology, as it seems to be for Locke. One might also wonder whether
Locke’s account of substratum is consistent with his empiricist pro-
gramme of deriving all ideas from experience; for it seems that if, as
Locke says, we suppose a substratum, we must already possess the idea or
concept of a substratum, but no account has been given of how we
acquire this idea.11 Finally, there is the problem of irony: as Berkeley
noted, with his facetious anecdote about the poor Indian philosopher,
Locke seems to ‘banter’ the idea of a substratum, yet, especially in reply
to Stillingfleet, Locke insists that the idea of substance plays an indis-
pensable role in our thought about the world. For our purposes, however,
the central problem of interpretation is whether there is something more
to be known, at least in principle, about substratum. My aim in what
follows is not so much to provide a definitive resolution of the debate, but
rather to show that, on each interpretation, there are reasons for calling
into question Locke’s commitment to substance dualism with regard to
the created world.
Consider, first, the possibility that there is something more to be known.
The most influential version of this interpretation is the one advanced by

11
It may be objected that Locke gives such an account at E III.iii.9 where he describes a
process of abstraction. However, as Matthew Stuart observes, the idea produced by this
process is the general idea of the category substance rather than the idea of a substratum
(Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, p. 210). In the controversy with Stillingfleet, Locke offers an
account of how we acquire the idea of a substratum (LW IV 21–2).
 SUBSTANCE

Michael Ayers. On this view the terms ‘substance’ or ‘substratum’ and

‘real essence’ are extensionally equivalent; they pick out the underlying
internal constitutions of substances but under different descriptions;
that is, ‘substance in general’ means ‘whatever it is that unites qualities’,
whereas ‘real essence’ means ‘that internal constitution, whatever it
may be, on which the observable qualities depend’.12 On this interpret-
ation it is easy to see how Locke’s teachings about substance might be
thought to undermine substance dualism with regard to the created
world. Locke would be saying that it is epistemically possible—that is,
possible as far as we know—that the substratum of mental properties
or consciousness is a physical real essence, or internal constitution.
Such a view is clearly harmonious with the position to which, as we
have seen, Locke seems attracted in his polemic against the thesis that
the soul always thinks. As Bennett has suggested, on this view there is
in metaphysical rigour no separate entity, the soul; there is rather just a
physical substance—the brain—which is endowed with a power of
thinking the activation of which by certain stimuli produces occurrent
thought or consciousness.13
Michael Ayers’ version of the thesis that there is something more to be
known about substance is the most influential one in the literature, but it
is important to see that it is not the only possible one; there is logical or
conceptual space for other versions of this interpretation. Consider, for
instance, a fascinating but largely neglected passage in the chapter on
adequate and inadequate ideas:
And, after all, if we could have, and actually had, in our complex Idea an exact
Collection of all the secondary Qualities, or Powers of any Substance, we should
not yet thereby have an Idea of the [real] Essence of that Thing. For since the
Powers, or Qualities, that are observable by us, are not the real Essence of that
Substance, but depend on it, and flow from it, any Collection whatsoever of these
Qualities, cannot be the real Essence of that Thing. Whereby it is plain, that our
Ideas of substances are not adequate; are not what the Mind intends them to be.
Besides, a Man has no Idea of Substance in general, nor knows what Substance is
in itself. (E II.xxxi.13)

12
See E. McCann, ‘Locke’s Philosophy of Body’, Chappell (ed.), Cambridge Companion
to Locke, p. 81.
13
Bennett, ‘Locke’s Philosophy of Mind’, Chappell (ed.), Cambridge Companion to
Locke, p. 114.
 SUBSTANCE 

Although Ayers has attempted to reconcile this passage with his own
interpretation, intuitively it poses a problem for his reading, for Locke
seems clearly to be suggesting that our ignorance of the substratum is
something distinct from, and over and above, our ignorance of the real
essence;14 indeed, although he does not say so explicitly, he seems to be
suggesting that the real essence and the substratum are on different
ontological levels. Just how the idea of two levels of ignorance would
be unpacked is of course obscure. In the case of physical substances, such
as gold and lead, perhaps Locke wishes to leave open the possibility that
while their real essences are as the corpuscularians say they are, the
substratum itself, while material, cannot be captured in terms of the
concepts of corpuscularian science. In the case of the mind, Locke may
think that it is epistemically possible that the substratum is neither
mental nor material. Nonetheless, it is also possible, as far as we know,
that the substratum is in some sense material.15
Let us now consider the possibility that there is nothing more to be
known. Suppose that the substratum of mental properties is indeed the
‘bare particular’ that is opposed to, and indeed underlies, all properties
whatever. Then on this reading it is epistemically possible that there is
just one substratum, or bare particular, to which mental and physical
properties are annexed; that is, one and the same substratum underlies
such properties as solidity and extension, doubting, fearing, and willing.
Since the substratum in itself is devoid of all intrinsic, non-relational
properties, there is nothing about it that makes it resistant to properties
of different natures. Here it is important to remember that whatever
form of materialism we suppose Locke to have entertained must be
consistent with the property dualism that seems to be one of the non-
negotiable elements of his thought. Curiously perhaps, the thesis that
God arbitrarily annexes mental and physical properties to the same
underlying bare substratum seems to be the view that Leibniz ascribed
to Locke.16

14
Ayers discusses this passage in ‘The Ideas of Power and Substance in Locke’s Phil-
osophy’, Tipton (ed.), Locke on Human Understanding, pp. 93–4.
15
For a non-materialist reading of these passages in terms of neutral monism, see
H.-K. Kim, ‘Locke and the Mind-Body Problem: An Interpretation of his Agnosticism’,
Philosophy 83 (2008) and ‘What Kind of Philosopher was Locke on Mind and Body?’,
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 91 (2010), 180–207.
16
See NE, Preface, RB 62–4. On this issue, see Jolley, Leibniz and Locke, ch. 5.
 SUBSTANCE

It is of course eminently possible to challenge the coherence of

the notion of a bare particular. But unless we mount such a challenge,
this position on the mind-body problem seems reasonable in itself
and is also supported by the text. Such a reading of Locke’s position
is strongly suggested by Locke’s ‘logico-linguistic argument’ for
substance-substratum. But is it really a form of materialism? Taking
our cue from Jonathan Bennett, we can certainly agree that it is far
removed from the kind of materialism that finds favour today among
Anglo-American philosophers.17 Of course any form of materialism
that Locke would consider a reasonable position in the philosophy of
mind will seem a weak version of the doctrine by modern standards.
For one thing, as we have seen, Locke seems committed to the truth of
property dualism; it is true that in places he says that ‘we know not
wherein Thinking consists’ (E IV.iii.6), but he never seriously considers
the possibility that pain, for example, might turn out to be identical to a
state of the brain. But the present option seems decidedly less materi-
alistic than, say, the version that depends on Ayers’ reading of the
relationship between substance and real essence. For on that reading
the substratum of mental properties, like the substratum of physical
powers such as malleability, is robustly material; the substratum of
mental properties would have a straightforwardly physical nature. By
contrast, on the ‘bare particular’ reading the substratum has no nature;
thus it is not clear why we should call this any version of materialism.
Indeed, mental and physical properties would be ontologically on a
par like the attributes of thought and extension on Spinoza’s monism. 18
But at least the position that Locke would be entertaining would be
strongly opposed to Cartesian substance dualism. For on that ontology
there really are substantial entities that are only conceptually or ration-
ally distinct from the principal attribute of thought.
The interpretations of Locke’s teaching about substance/substratum
we have examined so far are clearly very different, but they have at least
one important thing in common, apart from their opposition to Carte-
sian substance dualism; they all assume that there is a metaphysical fact
of the matter where the mind-body problem is concerned. (This is true

17
See Bennett, ‘Locke’s Philosophy of Mind’, Chappell (ed.), Cambridge Companion to
Locke, p. 114.
18
Spinoza, Ethics, Part II, Props. 1 and 2.
 SUBSTANCE 

even if substrata are bare particulars.) But notice that where the mind-
body problem is at issue, the ‘bare particular’ interpretation can be given
a deflationary, conventionalist spin, according to which there is no
metaphysical fact of the matter, at least at the level of our ideas. There
are certain hints that Locke entertains such a position. Consider the fact
that Locke claims that ‘we are apt to think’ in dualist terms:
. . . [not] apprehending how [the Operations of the mind, viz. Thinking, Reason-
ing, Fearing etc.] can belong to Body, or be produced by it, we are apt to think
these the Actions of some other Substance, which we call Spirit. (E II.xxiii.5)

Of itself, this claim of Locke’s shows little; it is consistent with supposing

that the dualist conceptual framework we habitually employ is a con-
vention we could perhaps discard in favour of materialism, but it does
not entail it. Even if we have unreflectively acquired the custom or habit
of thinking and speaking in dualist terms, it is still logically possible that
our habit reflects an objective metaphysical truth. To support the defla-
tionary approach, we thus require evidence of a different kind.19
The deflationary, conventionalist interpretation gains such support
from parallels with Locke’s approach to other philosophical issues, for
example concerning classification. In connection with the nature of
classification Locke regularly insists that it is a mistake to suppose that
there is a fact of the matter about whether a given individual is a human
being or a given lump of metal is really gold. Questions of the form: ‘But
is it really gold?’ are dismissed as based on conceptual confusion. The
only question we can sensibly ask in this area is whether a given
individual or a given lump of metal instantiates a certain nominal
essence. Of course relative to a given nominal essence there is a deter-
minate answer to the question: ‘Is this individual a human being?’, but
there is no further fact of the matter to be discovered. As we have already
seen in Chapter 2, provided that the properties a person includes in his or
her nominal essence genuinely co-occur, there are no grounds, other
than pragmatic ones, for preferring one person’s nominal essence to
another’s. It is up to us to decide what nominal essence to adopt. The

19
Cf. D. Z. Korman, ‘Locke on Substratum: A Deflationary Interpretation’, Locke Studies
10 (2010), 61–84. Korman does not discuss Locke’s approach to the mind-body problem in
this context.
 SUBSTANCE

deflationary, conventionalist way of thinking is thus a characteristic part

of Locke’s approach to philosophical issues.
Even if Locke is tempted by a deflationary, conventionalist approach
of this kind to the mind-body problem, however, the philosophical
situation may be more complicated than I have suggested; convention-
alism may be the truth at the level of the ideas of beings like ourselves
who find ourselves constrained, or at least accustomed, to suppose a
substratum. By contrast, at the level of divine ideas or the ideas of an
omniscient being, there may be a metaphysical fact of the matter; it is
epistemically possible that God sees whether mental and physical prop-
erties can be instantiated by the same thing. To say this of course is not to
suggest that God works with the notion of a substratum; the idea of a
substratum may be, as Locke suggests, a poor expedient for the finite,
imperfect minds of creatures like us who are in this respect on a par with
the Indian philosopher (E II.xiii.19; E II.xxiii.2). For God, a being with
perfect cognitive vision, there may be a metaphysical fact of the matter
that cannot be captured by invoking the notion of a substratum.

III Locke’s Revisions

Locke’s concern with the implications of his analysis of the idea of
substance/substratum for the mind-body problem runs through all
editions of the Essay. But the text of this chapter in its final form differs
from that of the early editions; it embodies some interesting revisions
made in the wake of Locke’s controversy with Stillingfleet. Stillingfleet,
like Leibniz, read this chapter in the light of Locke’s discussion of the
thinking-matter hypothesis in IV.iii.6, and came to the conclusion that
Locke was unsound on the immateriality of the soul. In this section we
shall address the issue of whether Locke’s amendments to the text
following this controversy represent a significant change in his thinking.
The issue that most troubles Stillingfleet in this area is that Locke
leaves open the epistemic possibility that there is no immaterial thinking
substance in human beings. Locke’s response to Stillingfleet is instruct-
ive; he grants that on his principles it cannot be demonstratively proved
that what thinks in us is an immaterial substance, but he resists the
suggestion that this entails that we cannot know that there is a spiritual
substance in us. For Locke, being a thinking substance (having the
property of thought) is a sufficient condition for being a spiritual
 SUBSTANCE 

substance, no matter what other properties it possesses. Immateriality is

not a necessary condition of being a spiritual substance.
. . . Your lordship will argue, that by what I have said of the possibility that God
may, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, it can never be proved
that there is a spiritual substance in us, because upon that supposition it is
possible it may be a material substance that thinks in us. I grant it; but add,
that the general idea of substance being the same everywhere, the modification of
thinking, or the power of thinking joined to it, makes it a spirit, without
considering what other modifications it has, as, whether it has the modification
of solidity or no. And therefore, if your lordship means by a spiritual substance
an immaterial substance, I grant I have not proved, nor upon my principles can it
be proved, (your lordship meaning as I think you do demonstratively proved)
that there is an immaterial substance in us that thinks. (LW IV 33)

So far, so good; Locke’s response to Stillingfleet seems precisely the one

to which he is entitled. But problems arise when we turn to Locke’s
amendments of the text of the Essay. In the fourth edition (the last one
whose publication Locke oversaw) he revises II.xxiii by repeatedly insert-
ing the word ‘immaterial’ before ‘spirit’. Here are some examples:
. . . by the simple Ideas we have taken from those Operations of our own Minds,
which we experiment daily in our selves, as Thinking, Understanding, Willing,
Knowing, and Power of beginning Motion, etc. co-existing in some Substance, we
are able to frame the complex Idea of an Immaterial Spirit. (E II.xxiii.15)
For putting together the Ideas of Thinking and Willing, or the Power of moving
or quieting corporeal Motion, joined to Substance, of which likewise we have no
distinct Idea, we have the Idea of an immaterial Spirit. (E II.xxiii.15)

But Locke does not merely pepper the text with tokens of the word-type
‘immaterial’; he also adds a substantive passage reminiscent of Descartes’
Second Meditation, in which he appears to commit himself to an imma-
terialist theory of the human mind:
It is for want of reflection, that we are apt to think, that our Senses shew us
nothing but material things. Every act of sensation, when duly considered, gives
us an equal view of both parts of Nature, the Corporeal and Spiritual. For whilst
I know, by seeing or hearing, etc. that there is some Corporeal Being without me,
the Object of that Sensation, I do more certainly know, that there is some
Spiritual Being within me, that sees and hears. This I must be convinced cannot
be the action of bare insensible matter; nor ever could be without an immaterial
thinking Being. (E II.xxiii.15)
 SUBSTANCE

On the face of it, Locke goes back on his scrupulous admission to

Stillingfleet that on his principles it cannot be proved that what thinks
in us is an immaterial substance. To the unwary reader at least it may
seem that Locke is suggesting that we can know by reflection or intro-
spection that what thinks in us is an immaterial spirit. And in the
substantive addition he may seem to be suggesting that it is an a priori
truth, or truth of reason, that a material substance cannot think. How can
such revisions be squared with his response to Stillingfleet? Can we read
the passage in such a way as to defend Locke against the charge of
placating Stillingfleet and other orthodox critics by making revisions to
the text to which he is not entitled?
In fact, on reflection it is not difficult to see how Locke can be
defended against such charges; there are a number of considerations
that can be marshalled in Locke’s defence. In the first place, it is import-
ant to recall the nature of Locke’s project in II.xxiii of the Essay. As we
have seen, Locke is not in any straightforward sense doing metaphysics
here; he is not engaged in taking an inventory of the furniture of the
universe. Rather, he is engaged in explaining how we come to acquire
ideas that play a central role—indeed, that have a categorical status—in
our thought about the world. Locke may be seeking to explain how we
acquire or ‘frame’ the idea of an immaterial spirit, but to offer such an
explanation in terms of reflection on the properties of our own mind
does not entail that there is anything in the created world that satisfies
such a description. Similarly, to say that we possess the idea of a centaur
or a unicorn and to offer an explanation of how we acquire such an idea
does not entail that there are any centaurs or unicorns in the world. To
claim, as Locke does, that on the basis of introspection we are able to
frame the idea of an immaterial spirit is consistent with supposing that
we are abstracting from physical properties that, without our noticing it,
are instantiated by the substance that thinks in us.
Here it is instructive to remember that ‘Of our Complex Ideas of
Substances’ ends with an account of how we acquire the idea of God
(E II.xxiii.33–36). Such a discussion reminds us that Locke’s project not
only allows but requires him to explain how we acquire the idea of an
immaterial spirit: according to Locke, our idea of God is the idea of an
eternal, thinking being who is wholly immaterial. And as a concept-
empiricist Locke will seek to explain how we frame such an idea by
processing and augmenting the data of reflection or introspection; that is,
 SUBSTANCE 

we think away the limitations that characterize the mental operations

and properties with which introspection acquaints us. Of course the
discussion of how we acquire the idea of God is not Locke’s business in
II.xxiii.5 and II.xxiii.15; it is appropriately deferred to the end of the
chapter. But the fact that Locke does discuss the idea of God serves to
underline the legitimacy of his project in the earlier passages. The key
point is that there is nothing wrong in Locke’s offering us an explanation
of how we come to form the idea of an immaterial spirit provided he
refrains from saying that introspection or reflection acquaints us with the
existence of such a being.
Such a defence of Locke’s revisions is in my view decisive, but there is
more that could be said on his behalf. Suppose that in places Locke does
seem to say that introspection acquaints us with the existence of an
immaterial spirit. Even here it is possible to defend Locke by invoking
the property dualism to which he seems to be consistently committed.
For Locke might mean simply that our mind is an immaterial spirit
insofar as it is considered in terms of its mental properties; that is, it is
immaterial qua thinking thing. But to say that it is in this sense an
immaterial spirit is not to say that the substratum in which mental
properties inhere is immaterial; as Locke repeatedly emphasizes, this
substratum is unknown to us. If we allow that the substratum has a
nature, this substratum may well be material.20
Locke, then, can be defended against the charge of revising the text of
the Essay in such a way as to imply that on the basis of introspection we
can know that the mind is an immaterial substance. But what of the
substantive addition in which Locke appears to suggest that it is an a
priori truth, or truth of reason, that the mind is an immaterial substance?
Here the defence is straightforward; it depends on a close reading of the
passage in question. If Locke’s words are read carefully, it is clear that
they do not commit him to substance dualism with regard to the created
world.21 For what Locke is saying here is that we must be convinced that
bare insensible matter cannot produce thought; thought is not an emer-
gent property of matter. But to say this is consistent with claiming that
matter may be the bearer of mental properties when it is endowed with a

20
It should be noticed that Locke tends to talk of ‘immaterial spirit’ rather than
‘immaterial substance’.
21
I am grateful to Michael Ayers for first pointing this out to me.
 SUBSTANCE

power or faculty of thinking by an immaterial being, God. Locke is

committed to saying that if there is thought in human beings, there
must be at least one being that is both thinking and immaterial.
The passage thus needs to be read in the light of the arguments in IV.x.22
Locke, then, can be cleared of the charge of revising the text of the
Essay in a way that is inconsistent with his admissions to Stillingfleet.
Nonetheless, it might be said that Locke is a little sly or disingenuous
in his meaning; he has left it to his commentators to vindicate his
consistency and even his philosophical integrity. As readers of the
Essay, we may find ourselves wishing that Locke had been more open
about the purport of the revisions he made to the text in the wake of the
Stillingfleet controversy.

22
See Chapter 6.
 5
Thinking Matter

In a well-known article published in 1979, Margaret Wilson could

accurately describe Locke’s thinking-matter hypothesis as ‘a neglected
subject in the literature’.1 In part this neglect was a function of the fact
that the hypothesis is tucked away in a relatively obscure corner of the
Essay; in IV.iii.6 Locke introduces the hypothesis as one illustration
among others of the limits of human knowledge. The neglect can also
be explained in terms of the tendency of commentators to read the Essay
through Berkeleian spectacles. Although of course Berkeley targeted
what he called Locke’s materialism, he was less interested in Locke’s
thinking-matter hypothesis than his more general commitment to a
doctrine of material substance. Yet though until recently the thinking-
matter hypothesis was neglected by many modern commentators, it did
not escape the attention of some of Locke’s prominent early readers such
as Stillingfleet and Leibniz; indeed, it was a major focus for their critiques
of the Essay.
Locke’s thinking-matter hypothesis is deceptively simple; in essence
Locke throws out the suggestion that, for all we know, matter might
think to illustrate the perhaps inevitable restrictions on our knowledge as
a result of the limitations of our cognitive faculties. But in fact, on closer
inspection, the hypothesis raises a number of difficult issues of interpret-
ation concerning the nature of divine superaddition and the kind of
possibility that is in question. In this chapter I shall approach this issue
by way of an implicit debate between Locke and Descartes concerning
the properties of substances and in particular the relationship between
principal attributes and their modes or modifications. We shall see that
once again Locke is seeking to show that a weak form of materialism,

1
M. D. Wilson, ‘Superadded Properties’, Ideas and Mechanism, p. 198.
 THINKING MATTER

consistent with property dualism, is a reasonable position in the phil-

osophy of mind. We shall also see how, here as elsewhere, Locke seeks to
defuse theological opposition to the thinking-matter hypothesis.

I Descartes and Thinking Matter

Descartes has traditionally been regarded as a substance dualist, and his
arguments for such dualism have been extensively examined.2 But why,
according to Descartes, cannot matter think? Descartes’ arguments from
doubt in the Discourse on Method and from clear and distinct perception
in the Meditations seek to show that he (his mind) is not identical to his
body and could exist without it, but these arguments, even if successful,
do not show that matter cannot think. Thought certainly cannot be an
essential property of his body, but why should it not be a contingent or
accidental modification of it?3 Descartes’ system seems to rely on key
metaphysical principles to rule out such a possibility: for Descartes, any
(non-miraculous) property of a substance must be either the principal
attribute of that substance, which constitutes its essence, or a mode of
that principal attribute. Now it is intuitive to say that thought is not a
mode of extension—i.e. a way of being extended—on a par with being
spherical or cuboid. So thought cannot be an accidental or contingent
property of body; in other words, matter cannot think. As Bernard
Williams observes, Descartes can support the premise that thought
cannot be a mode of the principal attribute or essence of body by saying
that any property that belongs essentially to one substance cannot belong
non-essentially to another.4 Now thought does belong essentially to one

2
In recent years the traditional dualist interpretation has been challenged by some
commentators who propose instead a ‘trialist’ interpretation of his metaphysics, according
to which the whole human being, or mind-body union, constitutes a substance. See
P. Hoffman, ‘The Unity of Descartes’s Man’, Philosophical Review 95 (1986), 339–70; cf.
J. Cottingham, ‘Cartesian Trialism’, Mind 95 (1984), 218–30. The new ‘trialist’ interpret-
ation has no tendency to question Descartes’ commitment to the real distinctness of mind
and body or his opposition to all forms of materialism.
3
Cf. B. Williams, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry (Hassocks: Harvester, 1978),
p. 123.
4
Williams, Descartes, p. 124. For further discussion of these issues, see J. Carriero,
Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes’s Meditations (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2009), pp. 378–86; and M. Rozemond, Descartes’ Dualism (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 1–37, esp. 12–22.
 THINKING MATTER 

substance, namely mind, and so by this principle cannot be a modifica-

tion of body or matter.
Descartes’ commitment to the key metaphysical principle is arguably in
tension with other commitments in his system that would have been
known to Locke.5 In his letters to Mersenne and to Mesland, Descartes
upholds an extreme voluntaristic position with regard to divine omnipo-
tence: even the so-called eternal truths of logic and mathematics depend
on the divine will (to Mersenne, 15 April 1630, AT I 145: CSMK III 23; cf.
Descartes to Mesland, 2 May 1644, AT IV 118–19: CSMK III 235).
Descartes insists that from the fact that p is inconceivable to us we cannot
infer that God could not bring it about that p. Thus, for example, it may be
inconceivable to us that two plus three should not equal five, but we should
not infer from such inconceivability that it is beyond God’s power to bring
it about that two plus three equals six. Even if, then, it is inconceivable to
us that the key metaphysical principle should be false, we cannot infer that
God cannot make it false. Thus by virtue of his extreme conception of
divine omnipotence Descartes is not, it seems, in a strong position to
defend the thesis that matter cannot think. To put the issue in the bluntest
terms: even if the concept of thinking matter involves a contradiction for
Descartes, we cannot infer from this that God cannot make matter think.
Descartes’ commitment to the attribute-mode principle is also in
tension with another voluntaristic strand in his system. When discussing
the relationship between the motions of matter and our ideas or sensa-
tions of secondary qualities, such as colour sensations, Descartes insists
that there is no intelligible or necessary connection between them (Prin-
ciples of Philosophy IV.198, AT VIII 1 322: CSM I 285); thus it seems that,
for Descartes, the fact that a certain motion or set of motions in the brain
is attended with a sensation of scarlet or Prussian blue must be referred
to God’s good pleasure.6 Thus there is room in the Cartesian system for
connections that are neither intelligible nor necessary.7 As we shall see,

5
Locke could have known of the selection of Descartes’ correspondence edited by
Claude Clerselier.
6
‘The connection between a particular type of mind state and a particular kind of brain
state is said to be arbitrary, or depend on divine institution.’ M. Wilson, Descartes (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 209. Wilson cites no textual evidence here in support
of her claim that for Descartes the connection depends on divine institution.
7
It may be supposed that this side of Descartes is in conflict with his rationalistic
insistence that the universe lies open to rational understanding. However, this claim may be
misguided, since ‘materially false’ ideas such as sensations of colour do not correspond to
 THINKING MATTER

Locke arguably exploits these tensions in Descartes’ system to prepare

the ground for showing that the thinking-matter hypothesis is a reason-
able position in the philosophy of mind.

II The Thinking-Matter Hypothesis: Issues

of Interpretation
As we have seen, Locke’s thinking-matter hypothesis may seem straight-
forward enough, but in fact it raises difficult and controversial issues of
interpretation. In IV.iii.6 Locke follows up the suggestion that we may
never be able to solve the problem of squaring the circle by writing:
We have the Ideas of Matter and Thinking, but possibly shall never be able to
know, whether any mere material Being thinks, or no; it being impossible for us,
by the contemplation of our own Ideas, without revelation, to discover, whether
Omnipotency has not given to some Systems of Matter fitly disposed, a power to
perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to Matter so disposed, a thinking
immaterial Substance: It being, in respect of our Notions, not much more remote
from our Comprehension to conceive, that GOD can, if he pleases, superadd to
matter a Faculty of Thinking, than that he should superadd to it another
Substance, with a Faculty of Thinking; since we know not wherein Thinking
consists, nor to what sort of Substances the Almighty has been pleased to give
that Power, which cannot be in any created Being, but merely by the good
pleasure and Bounty of the Creator. (E IV.iii.6)

Locke argues here that it is in some sense possible that matter thinks, but
there is room for debate about what kind of possibility is at issue.
Further, Locke defends this suggestion by saying that God may have
superadded to matter a power or faculty of thinking. But what is meant
by a ‘superadded power’ or faculty is obscure, especially in the light of
explanatory remarks that he offers in the controversy with Stillingfleet.
Let us take up each of these issues in turn.
Some readers who have felt that Locke’s thesis in this passage is a
modest one have supposed that he is not making any claim to the effect
that thinking matter is logically possible, even as a result of God’s power.

anything real in the physical universe; such sensations serve the purpose of preserving the
mind-body union. Nonetheless, Descartes’ view contrasts with that of his fellow ‘rational-
ist’, Leibniz, who insists that there is an intelligible connection between colour sensations
and motions in the brain. See NE II.vii.13, RB 131–2. I am indebted to an anonymous
referee for help with these issues.
 THINKING MATTER 

On this view Locke’s concern is not with logical but with what is called
epistemic possibility; that is, according to Locke, it is possible, as far as we
know, that God has endowed matter with a faculty of thinking.8 It may
then be added that there can be no valid inference from epistemic
possibility to logical possibility. Consider, for example, Goldbach’s fam-
ous conjecture that every even number is the sum of two primes. There is
as yet no mathematical proof or disproof of this conjecture, though no
counterexamples have been found. Thus it is epistemically possible—
i.e. for all we know—that the conjecture is true. But on a standard view of
mathematics, if it is true, then it is necessarily true, and its negation is
logically impossible, and if it is false, then it is necessarily false, and its
truth is likewise logically impossible. Thus from that fact that Goldbach’s
conjecture is epistemically possible, it does not follow that it is logically
possible.
The reasoning here is valid, but the reading of Locke to which it
appeals seems mistaken. It is true that claims about what it is possible
for us to know are very much in evidence in this passage, but it is wrong
to suppose that he makes no claims about the logical possibility of
thinking matter. We can interpret him in this way only by ignoring the
direction of his argument; as is not infrequently the case with Locke, the
fact that there is an argument here may be masked not just by his
standard informality but also by his habit of stating the conclusion before
the premises. Read carefully, however, Locke can be seen to be relying on
a premise to the effect that a certain state of affairs is in his judgment
logically possible; he sees no contradiction in the proposition that God
has endowed matter with a faculty of thinking. From this premise Locke
argues for the conclusion that we cannot know a priori whether God has
in fact endowed matter with such a faculty. Here Locke is trading on the
rather plausible assumption that we can know a priori that p is false only
if we can see that p involves a contradiction. God of course might choose
to inform us by a special revelation whether he has in fact endowed
matter with a faculty of thinking, but a revelation of this sort would not
be a priori knowledge; indeed, for Locke we could never, strictly speak-
ing, have knowledge by this means since there would always be room to
doubt whether God has in fact revealed a truth to us. To say this of course

8
For this reading of Locke, see Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, p. 265.
 THINKING MATTER

is not to impugn God’s veracity; it is rather to say that we cannot be sure

whether what we take to be a divine revelation really is so.

III Superaddition
Locke holds, then, that it is logically possible for matter to think; it is not
just epistemically possible that it does. But how should we interpret his
language of superaddition? Perhaps the best way of approaching this
issue is by means of his implicit, ongoing debate with Descartes: Locke’s
position on superaddition seems clearly anti-Cartesian, and it is import-
ant to see how. Consider two of Descartes’ metaphysical commitments
concerning body or matter:
(1) Extension is the principal attribute of body or matter, which
constitutes its essence.
(2) Any (non-miraculous) property of body or matter is either this
principal attribute (extension) or a mode of this principal attribute.
As is well known, Locke of course rejects both (1) and (2), but to
understand his stance on (2), it is helpful to consider one possible
response to Descartes by way of contrast. One could respond to these
two Cartesian commitments by denying (1) and accepting a revised,
more general version of (2):
(2’) Any (non-miraculous) property of body or matter is either an
essential property of it or a mode of an essential property.
Thus one could agree with Descartes that thought is indeed not a mode or
modification of extension, while also insisting that it might be a mode or
modification of an essential attribute on a revised account of what the
essence of matter is. But this is not the position that Locke in fact wants to
defend in opposition to Descartes. Locke of course agrees with Descartes
that thought is not a mode or modification of extension, but he shows no
interest in defending the claim that it might be a modification of an
essential property of matter when the (nominal) essence of matter is
revised, as Locke thinks it must be to capture our intuitions, to include
the property of solidity. Thus Locke rejects the more general version of
(2)—(2’)—that is not tied to the Cartesian account of the essence of
matter. It seems that for Locke it is logically possible for matter to have
properties that are not modes of essential properties, whatever the essence
of matter is.
 THINKING MATTER 

Locke, then, rejects the principle that any (non-miraculous) property

of matter must either be an essential property of it or a mode of an
essential property. Sometimes, however, as in the controversy with
Stillingfleet, Locke seems to have a different principle in his sights:
(3) Every property of body is either an essential property of body or
follows from its essence.
This principle would be stronger than any that Descartes himself
endorses. Consider, for instance, the physical property of being spherical.
For Descartes, this property is a perfectly legitimate property of body; it
is a way of being extended, or in technical terms, a mode of the principal
attribute of extension. But the property of being spherical does not follow
from the essence of body or matter. If it did, all bodies would be spherical
everywhere and always, which is clearly false. Rather, what follows from
the essence of body in this area is the capacity to be spherical: being
spherical is a mode that body can take on, just as doubting is a mode that
thought can assume. In other words, being spherical is an intelligible
modification of extension.9 If Locke were simply bent on rejecting (3), he
would be attacking not Descartes himself but a straw man. But perhaps
Locke can be cleared of this charge, for in one place he adds the phrase:
‘nor explicable by the essence of matter in general’ (LW IV 462). This
seems more like the Cartesian principle in its more general formulation
(2’): any property of matter is either an essential property of matter or an
intelligible modification of an essential property.
It is natural to suppose that Locke is mounting an entirely external
critique of Cartesian metaphysical principles, but this view of his project
may be mistaken; rather, he may be mounting an argument against
Descartes from principles accepted by Descartes himself. Such an inter-
pretation is suggested by Margaret Wilson when writing about the
following passage:
What certainty of Knowledge can any one have that some perceptions, such as
v.g., pleasure and pain, should not be in some bodies themselves, after a certain
manner modified and moved, as well as that they should be in an immaterial
Substance, upon the Motion of the parts of Body: Body as far as we can conceive

9
Cf. Leibniz, NE, Preface, RB 66: ‘we know that size, shape and motion are obviously
limitations and variations of corporeal nature (for it is plain how a limited extension yields
shapes, and that changes occurring in it are nothing but motion).’
 THINKING MATTER

being able only to strike and affect body; and Motion, according to the utmost
reach of our Ideas, being able to produce nothing but Motion, so that when we
allow it to produce pleasure or pain, or the Idea of a Colour, or Sound, we are fain
to quit our Reason, or go beyond our Ideas, and attribute it wholly to the good
Pleasure of our Maker. For since we must allow he has annexed Effects to Motion,
which we can no way conceive Motion able to produce, what reason have we to
conclude, that he could not order them as well to be produced in a Subject we
cannot conceive capable of them, as well as in a Subject we cannot conceive the
motion of Matter can any way operate upon? (E IV.iii.6)

As Wilson remarks, it seems to follow that the ideas in our minds may be
doubly superadded: ‘they occur because God has (perhaps) superadded
to our bodies the property of thought, and has also annexed to certain
motions of matter the power to “produce” particular ideas in us.’10 We
can see that two levels of superaddition are at issue here in the following
way. Even if what thinks in us is an immaterial substance, it is still the
case that ideas of secondary qualities occur in us as a result of God’s good
pleasure: God has arbitrarily annexed the production of such ideas to
certain motions in the brain.
Wilson seems right, then, to suggest that there is at least one case of
divine superaddition in this area, and that, for Locke, there may well be
another. Wilson further notices that there is an anti-Cartesian dimension
to the argument in this passage: as she says, ‘Locke perhaps is self-
consciously putting an anti-Cartesian twist on the familiar Cartesian
notion’ (that is, that ideas of secondary qualities occur in us as a result
of arbitrary acts of divine institution).11 We can develop the point by
saying that Locke in his argument seems bent on turning Descartes’ own
weapons against him: since Descartes himself admits that God arbitrarily
annexes ideas to secondary qualities at his good pleasure, how does he
know that God, in his good pleasure, has not also superadded a power of
thinking to matter instead of creating an immaterial substance and
uniting it to a body? Locke seems to be challenging Descartes and his
disciples to explain how they can stop the slide down a slippery slope
towards at least a weak form of materialism that is consistent with
property dualism.

10
Wilson, ‘Superadded Properties’, Ideas and Mechanism, p. 200.
11
Wilson, ‘Superadded Properties’, Ideas and Mechanism, p. 201.
 THINKING MATTER 

It is not difficult to imagine how Descartes would seek to reply to this

challenge. Descartes and his disciples cannot of course say that since the
thinking-matter hypothesis implies a contradiction, even God could not
make matter think; as we have seen, Descartes subscribes to an unprece-
dentedly strong conception of divine omnipotence such that it is not
bound by the laws of logic.12 But Descartes will presumably appeal to
clear and distinct ideas; he will cite the fact that he has a clear and distinct
idea of his mind as a purely thinking substance that is really distinct from
his body and indeed all bodies. It is, as it were, the light of clear and distinct
ideas that prevents us from stumbling around in the epistemological dark
created by the recognition of unlimited divine omnipotence. How Locke in
turn would respond to the Cartesian response is suggested by the relevant
passage in IV.iii.6: Locke would invoke the problem of mind-body inter-
action to challenge the claim that Descartes and his disciples really do have
the clear and distinct idea of the mind as a purely thinking substance that
they claim to have. The price that Descartes pays for his dogmatic doctrine
of the mind as an immaterial thinking substance is his commitment to the
unintelligible action of body on mind; when understood in this Cartesian
fashion the mind is, as Locke says, ‘a Subject we cannot conceive the
Motion of Matter can in any way operate upon’ (E IV.iii.6). As he himself
sometimes acknowledges, Descartes has no clear and distinct intellectual
idea of the action of mind on body or of body on mind (to Elisabeth,
28 June 1643, AT III 691–2: CSMK III 227).13

IV The ‘Fit Disposition’ Constraint

It is thus epistemically and logically possible, for Locke, that God has
endowed matter with a power or faculty of thinking. But this hypothesis

12
Cf. D. Kaufman, ‘Descartes’s Creation Doctrine and Modality’, Australasian Journal
of Philosophy 60 (2002), 24–41.
13
It is common ground between Descartes and Locke that mind and body do interact. It
is true that there is one passage in Comments on a Certain Broadsheet where Descartes
seems to question the action of body on mind in sensation and sense perception (AT VIII
B 359: CSM I 304), but there are many passages where he affirms such action (e.g. the Sixth
Meditation, AT VII 79–80: CSM II 55). Also, Descartes never questions the action of mind
on body in voluntary physical movement; as he tells Arnauld: ‘that the mind, which is
incorporeal, can set the body in motion is something which is shown to us not by any
reasoning or comparison with other matters, but by the surest and plainest everyday
experience’ (AT V 222: CSMK III 358: cf. Appendix to Fifth Replies, AT VII 213: CSM II 275).
 THINKING MATTER

raises an obvious question: could God endow any old hunk of matter
with a power of thinking? One may wonder, for example, whether God
could bring it about that a shoe or turnip has the power to think.14 It
seems that the answer to this question is ‘no’, for the hypothesis Locke
envisages in IV.iii.6 speaks of ‘some Systems of Matter fitly disposed’.
Presumably a human brain qualifies as such a system, but a turnip or
shoe does not. But exactly what difference does the fit disposition of
matter make to its capacity for receiving a power of thinking? How far
and in what ways is God’s good pleasure constrained by the organization
of matter?
One conceptual possibility at least is that the fit disposition of matter
makes all the difference in the world. One might hold that the fit
disposition of some system of matter, such as the structure of corpuscles
in the human brain, in conjunction with the laws of physics, jointly entail
that it would have to have the power of thinking. Consider a familiar
analogy. The power of telling the time is deducible from the structure or
organization of the parts of a clock in conjunction with the laws of
mechanics. No individual part of the clock—no cog, wheel, or spring—
has the power to tell the time, but the whole system does have this power
when it is organized in a certain way.15 So too no individual corpuscle in
the brain is endowed with the power of thinking, but the organized
system that we call the brain does have this power; it is in Locke’s
words a system of matter fitly disposed. And indeed, the system, as we
have seen, will have occurrent thoughts or consciousness once certain
stimuli activate the power in question.16 Such an interpretation would be
in line with the deducibility model of explanation that is often ascribed to
Locke. The properties of bodies at the macroscopic level are supposed
to be deducible from the properties of the corpuscles organized in a
certain way.
But this interpretation of the thinking-matter hypothesis gives rise to
obvious difficulties. One natural question posed by Rozemond and Yaffe
is what room is now left for divine superaddition. It seems that there is

14
I first heard this question asked by Elizabeth Anscombe.
15
See Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1984), p. 135.
16
See Bennett, ‘Locke’s Philosophy of Mind’, Chappell (ed.), Cambridge Companion to
Locke, p. 114.
 THINKING MATTER 

nothing left for God to do once he has arranged the corpuscles in a

certain fashion and set them in motion.17 The problem is a striking one,
but it is not perhaps as serious as it seems. For writing in defence of the
thinking-matter hypothesis in the controversy with Stillingfleet, Locke
invokes the concept of divine superaddition not just in connection with
thought but also with such properties as motion, life, and vegetation.
The idea of matter is an extended solid substance; wherever there is such a
substance there is matter; and the essence of matter, whatever other qualities,
not contained in that essence, it shall please God to superadd to it. For example,
God creates an extended solid substance, without the superadding anything else
to it, and so we may consider it at rest: to some parts of it he superadds motion,
but it has still the essence of matter: other parts of it he frames into plants, with all
the excellencies of vegetation, life, and beauty, which are to be found in a rose or a
peach-tree &c., above the essence of matter in general, but it is still but matter: to
other parts he adds sense and spontaneous motion, and those other properties
that are to be found in an elephant. Hitherto it is not doubted but the power of
God may go, and that the properties of a rose, a peach, or an elephant, super-
added to matter, change not the properties of matter; but matter is in these things
matter still. (LW IV 460)

Consider the interesting case of life. It seems coherent, if philosophically

controversial, to say that the organization of particles in a human being,
together with the laws of physics and chemistry, entail that a certain
physical system would have to have life; indeed, perhaps Descartes
himself thought this. In such contexts as these, Locke seems to be
working with a very weak concept of superaddition according to which
a property is superadded to a substance just in case it is neither contained
in nor deducible from the nominal essence of the substance, nor a
determinate of a nominally essential property—i.e. one contained in or
deducible from the nominal essence. We need this last disjunct for
reasons that have already been discussed. Being three feet long or being
spherical does not follow from extension, which even for Locke is a
nominally essential property of matter, but being three feet long is clearly
not a superadded property of matter even on the apparently weak
concept of superaddition with which Locke seems to work in the

17
M. Rozemond and G. Yaffe: ‘if bodily phenomena are deducible from the qualities of
corpuscles, once God creates the relevant corpuscularian structures, what would be left for
him to do?’ ‘Peach Trees, Gravity and God: Mechanism in Locke’, British Journal for the
History of Philosophy 12 (2004), 388.
 THINKING MATTER

Stillingfleet controversy. Thus motion, life, beauty, and of course thought

would all be superadded properties in this weak sense. On this interpret-
ation there would be nothing mysterious about God’s superaddition of
thought to matter.
By weakening the concept of superaddition, then, we can see how it
would be compatible with the thesis that the power of thinking is
deducible from the properties of the corpuscles organized in a certain
way, in conjunction with the laws of physics. Such a strategy of inter-
pretation seems authorized by the manner in which Locke deploys the
concept of superaddition in the Stillingfleet controversy.18
The proposed solution to the problem of finding a role for divine
superaddition that accommodates the ‘fit disposition’ constraint may be
open to objection; it may be argued that Locke works with a weaker
concept of superaddition in the controversy with Stillingfleet than in the
text of the Essay. This is a suspicion that I myself share, though it is hard
to justify; if the suspicion is correct, then the proposed solution would
not work. But there is a more pressing problem for the interpretation
proposed above. The strong interpretation of the ‘fit disposition’ con-
straint seems inconsistent with Locke’s apparent commitment to prop-
erty dualism. The properties deducible from the organization of the
corpuscles in conjunction with the laws of physics must surely be
physical. It is true of course that there can be physical properties, even
determinable properties, at the macroscopic level which are not pos-
sessed by individual corpuscles. Thus texture is a physical property—
indeed a primary quality—but it is found only at the macroscopic level; it
is not the property of any single corpuscle. 19 But thought is not simply
not a property of individual corpuscles; for Locke, by virtue of his
property dualism, it is not a physical property at all.
A more promising possible solution to the problem is emergentism in
the sense explained by Jonathan Bennett. To say that thought is an

18
An alternative solution to the problem has been proposed by Rozemond and Yaffe:
they argue by denying that Locke’s commitment to mechanism involves a further commit-
ment to deducibility; rather, the intelligibility of mechanism is to be understood in terms of
such things as that it appeals only to physical properties with which we are familiar at the
macroscopic level in everyday life. See ‘Peach Trees, Gravity, and God’, 387–412.
19
Cf. E. McCann, ‘Locke’s Distinction between Primary Primary Qualities and Second-
ary Primary Qualities’, L. Nolan (ed.), Primary and Secondary Qualities: The Historical and
Ongoing Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 158–89.
 THINKING MATTER 

emergent property of bodies in this sense is to say that it is caused by a fit

disposition of matter, but not analysably so in such a way that we could
‘see it coming’; thus thought is not deducible from the organization of
corpuscles in the brain and the laws of physics.20 Such an interpretation
makes good sense of the ‘fit disposition’ constraint; this is not just
meaningless verbiage on Locke’s part. But the proposed solution seems
to raise problems of its own. In the first place, as with the previous
interpretation, it seems to leave no clear role for God to play: everything
seems to be done by the organization of the particles in the brain. We
could again seek to solve this problem by saying that Locke is invoking a
very weak concept of superaddition as in the Stillingfleet controversy, but
it would be more satisfactory if we could find an interpretation that
accommodates a more robust concept of superaddition and God’s role.
Second, the proposed solution seems inconsistent with Locke’s discus-
sion in IV.x; as we shall see, in arguing there that God must be an
immaterial being, Locke seems to rule out the possibility that thought
is an emergent property of matter in this sense.
In fact, however, these problems can be solved. With regard to the first
problem, we may say that it is precisely because of God’s good pleasure
that certain systems of matter produce the faculty of thinking; it is God
who endows them with the relevant causal powers. 21 In the absence of
such a divine act of annexation, there would be no emergent properties
in this sense; no system of matter would produce the power of thinking.22
I shall defer a discussion of the second problem until the next chapter
where we consider Locke’s case for saying that God at least must be an
immaterial being; here we may note that the problem of consistency can
be solved by adopting the same kind of strategy.

20
Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics, p. 136. Bennett is discussing the issue of whether
life might be an emergent property of material systems in this sense.
21
It may be objected that it is incoherent to talk of God endowing systems of matter with
a causal power to produce another power—a power or faculty of thinking. But this
objection is mistaken. Consider the cases of malleability and solubility in aqua regia (two
of Locke’s favourite examples): it is clearly coherent to ask how a hunk of gold, for instance,
comes to have these powers—i.e. what causes a certain body to be malleable or soluble in
aqua regia. With regard to the thinking-matter hypothesis, the power of thinking with
which the material system is endowed will be activated by a certain stimulus (e.g. an alarm
clock).
22
Cf. L. Downing, ‘Locke’s Ontology’, L. Newman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to
Locke’s ‘Essay Concerning Human Understanding’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), p. 373.
 THINKING MATTER

Although, I believe, these problems can be solved, it must be admitted

that the interpretation of Locke in this area remains controversial. But
one thing is surely beyond dispute. Superaddition may involve God’s
good pleasure and acts of divine annexation that are in some sense
arbitrary, but by virtue of what Locke says about the ‘fit disposition’
constraint, we can be sure that God will act in a regular, law-like manner.
We can be sure that God will not on a whim add a power of thinking to a
shoe or a turnip at one point in time only to withdraw it later. And we
can be sure that if two brains are in qualitatively identical states, it will
not be the case that one but not the other will have the power of thinking:
either both of them will have the power of thinking or neither will. God
may in some sense act in arbitrary ways, but as Charles Kingsley said, he
is not a practical joker. Here of course there is an obvious and illumin-
ating parallel with the situation with regard to ideas of secondary qual-
ities. There may indeed be no intelligible connection between certain
corpuscular structures and motions on the one hand and ideas of red on
the other. In that sense the connection is an arbitrary one instituted by
God’s good pleasure. But God will annex ideas of scarlet and Prussian
blue to certain motions of the corpuscles in ways that are entirely regular.

V The Theory of Gravitation

We have seen, then, that for Locke the Cartesian principle regarding
attributes and modes is open to challenge. The Cartesians are also
mistaken in holding that matter has a principal attribute, extension,
that constitutes its essence. And it seems that the Cartesians are further
mistaken in believing that all interaction between bodies takes place by
way of impulse or contact action; in this respect of course the Cartesians
are in the same company as Boyle and his disciples. This appears to be
the moral of Newton’s theory of gravitation that Locke openly endorses
in the controversy with Stillingfleet:
It is true, I say, ‘that bodies operate by impulse, and nothing else.’ And so
I thought when I writ it, and can yet conceive no other way of their operation.
But I am since convinced by the judicious Mr. Newton’s incomparable book, that
it is too bold a presumption to limit God’s power, in this point, by my narrow
conceptions. The gravitation of matter towards matter, by ways inconceivable to
me, is not only a demonstration that God can, if he pleases, put into bodies
powers and ways of operation above what can be derived from our idea of body,
 THINKING MATTER 

or can be explained by what we know of matter, but also an unquestionable and

every where visible instance that he has done so. (LW IV 467–8)

Locke then indicates that he will revise the text of the Essay to take
account of his change of mind.
Leibniz remarked that Locke’s main motive in endorsing the Newton-
ian theory was to lend support to his thinking-matter hypothesis.23
Whatever the truth about Locke’s motives for backing Newton here,
we should note that there are key disanalogies between the thinking-
matter hypothesis and the Newtonian theory of gravitation. In the first
place, on the Newtonian theory gravitation is supposed to be a universal
property of matter: all matter is endowed with the power of gravitation.
By contrast, Locke’s thinking-matter hypothesis holds only that some
systems of matter fitly disposed may be endowed with a faculty of
thinking; such a power, we have suggested, is a property that certain
physical systems possess as a result of God’s action. The true analogy in
the philosophy of mind with the Newtonian theory of course would be
panpsychism; such a theory may have been embraced by Spinoza, but it
is certainly not entertained by Locke.24 Second, gravitation is a relational
property of matter: all matter gravitates to other matter. By contrast, the
power of thinking is not a relational property. But despite these disana-
logies, on the face of it the phenomenon of gravitation lends support
to Locke’s case: it seems to constitute key evidence that matter can
have powers and ways of operation beyond those recognized by
Descartes and Boyle.25
But does it really do so? We know that Newton himself strongly
disclaimed any intention of advancing a theory of action at a distance.
According to Newton, there is nothing in the theory that is inconsistent
with the standard view of the moderns that all interaction between
bodies takes place by way of impulse or contact action. In a famous letter
to Richard Bentley, Newton writes:
It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of
something else, which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter
without mutual contact . . . That gravity should be innate, inherent and essential
to matter so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum

23
See Jolley, Leibniz and Locke, pp. 64–5.
24
See, for instance, E IV.x.14 for Locke’s rejection of panpsychism; see also Chapter 6.
25
Cf. Wilson, ‘Superadded Properties’, Ideas and Mechanism, pp. 196–208.
 THINKING MATTER

without the mediation of any thing else by and through which their action or
force may be conveyed is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who
has in philosophical matters any competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into
it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws,
but whether this agent be material or immaterial I have left to the consideration
of my readers.26

Whether Locke knew of Newton’s stand on this issue is unclear. But it is

worth asking whether there is anything in Locke’s statement to Stilling-
fleet that altogether rules out a reductive account of gravitation in terms
of impulse. Here again perhaps we may suspect that Locke is working
with a weak concept of divine superaddition, as seems to be the case
elsewhere in the controversy with Stillingfleet: a property is superadded
to a substance just in case it is not contained in or derivable from the
nominal essence. Now universal gravitation is certainly a superadded
property in this sense. But it does not follow from its being a superadded
property in this weak sense that gravitation cannot in principle be
explained in terms of impulse, as Newton himself dogmatically believed.
It is true that Locke tells Stillingfleet not just that matter may have
properties not derivable from our idea of matter but also that it may
have properties that cannot be explained by what we know of matter. But
by this he may mean simply that gravitation cannot be explained on the
current state of scientific knowledge in terms of impulse or contact
action. In any case, if Locke allows, as Newton does, that there is nothing
in the theory of universal gravitation that is inconsistent with the mod-
erns’ commitment to the thesis that all interaction between bodies is by
way of impulse, then the theory does not establish that bodies may have
powers beyond those countenanced by Boylean mechanism. And if this
is the case, it is not clear that the Newtonian theory lends support to the
thinking-matter hypothesis.

VI The Thinking-Matter Hypothesis

and Immortality
One of the most striking aspects of Locke’s thinking-matter hypothesis is
the way in which he seeks to distance it from the materialism of Hobbes.

26
Newton to Bentley, 25 February 1692/3, A. Janiak (ed.), Newton: Philosophical
Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 102–3.
 THINKING MATTER 

For one thing, as we have seen, Locke does not propose it in the
dogmatic, almost insolent spirit that is characteristic of Hobbes’ theory;
it is a hypothesis only. Second, the hypothesis is consistent with the
property dualism to which Locke subscribes; unlike Hobbes, Locke is not
proposing reductive materialism as the correct position in the philoso-
phy of mind. And of course the hypothesis is advanced within a theo-
logical framework that seems designed to give as little offence as possible
to conservative critics. Not surprisingly, in view of his manifest caution,
Locke also seeks to defuse predictable theological objections to the
doctrine; the hypothesis poses no kind of threat to the doctrine of
personal immortality and divine retribution in an afterlife.
Locke’s discussion of this issue in the Essay strikingly complements his
treatment of this issue in the Journals (see Chapter 2). In the entry in the
Journals, Locke argues that the immateriality of the soul is not sufficient
for personal immortality; personal immortality, or immortality in a
morally significant sense, is, as we have seen, a state of sensibility, not
bare subsistence, and such a state of sensibility is not guaranteed by the
immateriality of the soul. In IV.iii.6 of the Essay Locke argues that the
immateriality of the soul is not necessary for personal immortality:
All the great Ends of Morality and Religion, are well enough secured, without
Philosophical proofs of the Soul’s Immateriality; since it is evident, that he who
made us at first begin to subsist here, sensible intelligent Beings, and for several
years continued us in such a state, can and will restore us to the like state of
Sensibility in another World, and make us capable there to receive the Retribu-
tion he has designed to Men, according to their doings in this Life. (E IV.iii.6)

Now the question about what exactly it is that will be restored, if it is not
an immaterial substance, is addressed in II.xxvii of the Essay and in the
later controversy with Stillingfleet (see Chapter 7). And of course Locke
is entitled to say that God, by virtue of his omnipotence, can restore us to
a like state of sensibility in another world. But it is less clear that Locke is
entitled to say that it is evident that God will restore us. It seems that if
this is evident in a philosophical context, it must be a truth knowable by
our reason. But Locke, like Hobbes, is committed to denying that there is
any natural or rational knowledge of our estate after death; personal
immortality seems to be a truth of faith, not of reason. We shall return to
this issue in Chapter 8.
 6
An Eternal Thinking Being

Locke may entertain the hypothesis of weak materialism with regard to

the human mind, and even believe that there are reasonable arguments
for the doctrine, but there are restrictions on the scope of the materialism
he is prepared to entertain. In IV.x of the Essay Locke is at pains to rule
out a materialist account of God. Ever since Locke’s earliest critics,
readers have questioned the consistency of his thinking-matter hypoth-
esis and his doctrine of God as an eternal, purely thinking, immaterial
being.1 Indeed, Locke himself was sufficiently sensitive to the issue that
he felt the need to address it in the second edition of the Essay (E IV.iii.6).
The structure of this chapter is as follows. In the first two sections,
I place the issue of God’s immateriality in the context of the overall
project of proving the existence of God. In the third section I shall
address the problem of consistency and show that it arises in both a
crude and a sophisticated form. I shall argue that even in its sophisticated
form the problem can be solved; nonetheless, Locke’s treatment of the
issue does raise puzzles about his commitment to dogmatic rationalism
in this area. The puzzle is especially acute since Locke seems to have the
resources for a less dogmatic account than the one he provides—one that
would raise no problems of consistency with his thinking-matter
hypothesis. In the final section of the chapter I shall take up the issue
posed by Locke’s repeated assertions that it is probable—even highly
probable—that the thinking substance in us is immaterial. The reason for
discussing the issue in the present chapter is that the only justification

1
The issue is still debated today. See L. Downing, ‘Locke’s Ontology’, L. Newman (ed.),
Cambridge Companion to Locke’s ‘Essay Concerning Human Understanding’, p. 359: ‘The
gravest challenge to attributing a consistent position to Locke comes from his proof of
God’s existence, which seems to entail that thought cannot be carried out by mere matter. It
appears, then, that Locke commits himself to contradictory claims: that we know that
matter cannot think, and that we do not know whether some matter does think.’
 AN ETERNAL THINKING BEING 

Locke seems to offer for this claim trades on an appeal to his demon-
stration in IV.x that God is immaterial. We shall try to understand how
the immateriality of God, an eternal thinking being, should have any
bearing on the ontological status of the human mind.

I The Proof of God’s Existence: The

First Two Stages
It is natural to claim that in his discussion of our knowledge of God’s
existence Locke sounds more like a rationalist metaphysician than he
does elsewhere in the Essay. Elements of rationalism are visible not just
in Locke’s confidence that it is possible to offer a deductive proof of the
existence of a supersensible being; they are visible also in the principles to
which he appeals in support of the project. In contrast to Hume and
Kant, for example, Locke does not feel the need to question the epis-
temological credentials of the causal principle that nothing cannot prod-
uce any real being (E IV.x.3); he does not question, as Kant did, whether
such a principle can be coherently applied beyond the limits of possible
experience. For Locke, the causal principle is intuitively certain as it was
for Descartes. But though this chapter in some degree stands apart in
spirit from the rest of the Essay, there are nonetheless important links
with the issues we have already examined.
Although its structure is not always clearly marked, Locke’s proof of
the existence of God comes in three stages. First, Locke argues for the
existence of an eternal being; second, he argues that this being is a
thinking or ‘cogitative’ entity that is also all-powerful; indeed, it is the
source of power in all other things. Finally, he argues that this eternal
and all-powerful being must be wholly non-material. It is above all in
connection with this last stage of the proof that Locke touches on issues
that have already surfaced in the discussion of the thinking-matter
hypothesis.
We have seen that, like many other traditional proofs of the existence
of God, Locke’s proof relies on the supposedly a priori principle that
something cannot come from nothing. Locke deploys the principle as
early as the first stage of the argument to prove the existence of an eternal
being. To this principle he adds a premise that has a better claim to
intuitive certainty; with a clear echo of Descartes’ cogito ergo sum, Locke
 AN ETERNAL THINKING BEING

remarks that he certainly knows the existence of at least one being,

namely himself (E IV.x.2). From these premises Locke seeks to infer
the conclusion that an eternal being exists. For if something such as
himself exists, then either it is eternal or it has a beginning in time; if it
has a beginning in time, then by the causal principle it owes its existence
to something external. The same argument can be run with respect to
this further being, and so on, until we are led to the conclusion that an
eternal being exists (E IV.x.3).
Since Leibniz, critics have been quick to complain that this argument
involves an egregious instance of the fallacy of equivocation, and unfor-
tunately this criticism appears to be justified.2 Locke states the conclusion
of his argument in the form: ‘From eternity there has been something’, but
he appears not to see that this sentence is ambiguous between: (1) There
has never been a time when nothing existed; and (2) Some one thing has
always existed. Obviously (2) does not follow from (1), but though Locke
clearly intends to assert the stronger (2), he is entitled only to the weaker
(1). His argument shows at most that there must be a series of finite beings
that extend backwards to infinity in time.
Whatever its defects, Locke’s ‘proof ’ of the existence of an eternal being
depends on the traditional premise that something cannot come from
nothing. His proof that this eternal being is cogitative similarly depends
on a traditional principle that is supposedly a priori, but in this case it is the
nature rather than the universal fact of causality that is in question. In this
second stage of the overall argument, Locke is committed to what we might
call an ‘heirloom’ model of causality which goes back to the Scholastics;
according to this model, properties are literally transmitted from the cause
to the effect. Thus, for Locke, if x is the causal source of the properties of
y, then x contains these properties in itself (or perhaps grander versions
thereof). It is this thesis that seems to ground the claim that mere matter
could not produce thinking beings external to itself; for since thought is
a non-physical ‘perfection’, if matter produced thinking beings, it would
be the causal source of perfections that it did not itself possess.

2
In the New Essays on Human Understanding Leibniz’s spokesman, Theophilus, says:
‘I assure you perfectly sincerely, sir, that I am most distressed to have to find fault with this
demonstration; but I do so only in order to prompt you to fill the gap in it. It is mainly at the
place . . . where you infer that something has existed from all eternity. I find an ambiguity
there’ (NE IV.x.6, RB 435–6).
 AN ETERNAL THINKING BEING 

II The Proof of God’s Existence: The

Third Stage
Claims about the relationship between thought and matter thus surface
in the second stage of the argument, where Locke seeks to prove that the
eternal being cannot be merely material but must also be ‘cogitative’. But
it is the third stage of the overall argument that bears most directly on the
issues raised by the thinking-matter hypothesis. There Locke seeks to
establish that the eternal, cogitative being must be immaterial; he is thus
forced to confront the objection that mere matter might be able to
produce thought in itself.
Locke considers three versions of this hypothesis. The first version,
which is in effect a form of panpsychism, is that every particle of matter
thinks. According to Locke, this version of the thesis leads to absurdity:
‘there would be as many eternal thinking Beings, as there are Particles of
Matter, and so an infinity of Gods’ (E IV.x.14). But this argument seems
open to objection. Even if we grant that panpsychism in this form entails
an infinity of eternal thinking beings, it is not clear why this further
entails an infinity of Gods. Surely it is logically possible that while each
material particle thinks, the properties of divine thought—for example,
unlimited wisdom and intelligence—depend on the organization of the
material particles. Consider a familiar analogy. Suppose that an illumin-
ated electric sign spells out a certain message; here the sign is made up of
hundreds of electric light bulbs, each of which is lit up. Nonetheless, the
message that is communicated depends on the structural arrangement of
the individual bulbs. None of them, by itself, spells out a message.3 Locke
would, I think, reply to this objection by saying that he has already
argued that an eternal thinking being must also be most powerful and
most knowing (E IV.x.4–6).4
The second version of the hypothesis is one that Locke finds no less
absurd: this is the thesis that only one atom thinks. In one form this

3
Perhaps Locke has an ulterior motive for seeking to refute panpsychism. Locke may wish
to distance himself not just from Hobbes but also from Spinoza, the other of those ‘justly
decried names’ (LW IV 477). Spinoza certainly holds a version of panpsychism, though for
him the relationship between thought and matter is not one of causal dependence.
4
Cf. Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, p. 256: ‘Perhaps, at IV.x.14, he is speaking loosely, and
calling the particles “Gods” just because they, like God as traditionally conceived, are eternal
thinking things.’
 AN ETERNAL THINKING BEING

hypothesis holds that while all material particles are eternal, there is one
small particle that is pre-eminent above the others: ‘to suppose all matter
eternal, and yet one small particle in Knowledge and Power infinitely
above all the rest, is without the least appearance of Reason to frame any
Hypothesis’ (E IV.x.15). Locke may be suggesting here that such a
hypothesis would violate the Principle of Sufficient Reason: there
would be a phenomenon for which no reason could possibly be given.
It may be objected that Locke in effect admits that God is not bound by
this principle, for he concedes that there are phenomena in the world for
which no explanation can be found other than God’s good pleasure; as
we have seen, God, in his pleasure, has arbitrarily annexed sensations to
certain motions of material particles (E IV.iii.6). But this objection is
misplaced, for even if it is true that Locke appeals to God in this way, no
such appeal is possible in the present case, for it is precisely the origin of
divine thought that is in question; thus we cannot appeal to such thought
in order to explain it.
For our purposes the most important and relevant of the three options
is the last one: according to this hypothesis, ‘it is some certain System of
Matter duly put together, that is this thinking eternal Being’ (E IV.x.16).
In other words, why should not some system of matter be organized
in such a way that it gives rise to consciousness? Now Locke, as we have
seen, never seriously entertains any alternatives to property dualism;
it seems, then, that he is not considering the reductionist thesis that
mental states such as pain might be type-identical to certain physical
states. Rather, what he is attacking is something more like the modern
hypothesis that thought or consciousness is an emergent property of
some material systems. On this view consciousness is a property that is
caused by structural features of such systems but is not identical to any
physical state. Indeed, for some emergentists, as we have seen, no
knowledge of the structure of the system and the laws that govern it
enables us even in principle to conclude that it would have to have
consciousness.5 In at least one place Locke dismisses this hypothesis
out of hand: ‘unthinking Particles of Matter, however put together, can
have nothing thereby added to them, but a new relation of Position,
which ’tis impossible should give thought and knowledge to them’

5
This is the form of emergentism that Bennett has in mind. See Chapter 5.
 AN ETERNAL THINKING BEING 

(E IV.x.16). Thus, for Locke, we can know a priori that no organization

of matter can be the causal source of consciousness.
Locke also offers a second, fall-back argument that does not rely on the
strong anti-emergentist premise:
If it be the motion of its parts, on which its [i.e. the material system’s] Thinking
depends, all the Thoughts there must be unavoidably accidental, and limited;
since all the Particles that by Motion cause Thought, being each of them in it self
without any Thought, cannot regulate its own Motions, much less be regulated by
the Thought of the whole; since that Thought is not the cause of Motion, (for
then it must be antecedent to it, and so without it,) but the consequence of it,
whereby Freedom, Power, Choice, and all rational and wise thinking or acting
will be quite taken away: So that such a thinking Being will be no better nor wiser,
than pure blind Matter; since to resolve all into the accidental unguided motions
of blind Matter, or into Thought depending on unguided motions of blind
Matter, is the same thing; not to mention the narrowness of such Thoughts
and Knowledge, that must depend on the motion of such parts. (E IV.x.17)

This argument seems designed to show not that no thought at all could be
produced by any system of matter, but rather that ‘rational and wise
thinking’ could not be produced in this way. For if a system of matter
were to produce what Bennett calls ‘thought worthy of the name’, the
motions of the material particles would have to be regulated or guided to
this end, and any such regulation could only be performed by a thinking,
intelligent being. But this is ex hypothesi impossible in the present case,
since, as Locke says, ‘thought is not the cause of Motion . . . but the conse-
quence of it’. Even if such a system produced some low-quality thought, it
could not produce wise and rational thought that exhibits ‘Freedom, Power,
Choice’. A fortiori, then, it could not produce thought that has godlike
properties—for instance, the property of being not ‘narrow’ or ‘limited’.
This argument is intriguing, but it is perhaps a little sketchy. For one
thing, when the limited nature of thought and knowledge is in question,
it seems relevant to invoke the familiar Cartesian distinction between the
formal and objective reality of ideas. Although Locke never draws such a
distinction explicitly, it seems to be one he recognizes at least implicitly.
Consider the case of limitation. Unguided thought might be limited in
terms of its formal or intrinsic reality; that is, it might be of limited
duration and thus inconsistent with the nature of God. Also, thought
might be limited in terms of its objective or representational reality; it
might, for example, fail to represent the properties of a divine being, and
 AN ETERNAL THINKING BEING

thus again be inconsistent with the nature of God. These two forms of
limited thought seem to be logically independent. Thus a being might be
omniscient for a short duration; in other words, its thought might have
limited formal reality and unlimited objective reality. Conversely, a being
might have limited thought and knowledge through infinite time; in
other words, its thought might have unlimited formal reality and limited
objective reality. Presumably, Locke’s concern in this argument is at least
more with limitation at the level of objective reality; the thought that is
supposed to be emergent from matter would fall far short of divine
omniscience. But Locke does not spell this out.
Jonathan Bennett offers what seems to be a totally different recon-
struction of this argument from the need for guidance. According to
Bennett, two key premises of the argument are that there is some kind of
regularity that thought worthy of the name must have, and that this kind
of regularity is teleological; as he says, for Locke, ‘mentality essentially
involves teleology; it is because the mind reaches out to possible futures
that it leads people to do things so as to bring about various upshots, thus
endowing them with Freedom, Power, Choice’.6 But this reconstruction
seems mistaken. In the first place, Bennett seems to be confused about
the role played by regularity in the argument. It is true that Locke uses
the term ‘regulate’ and its cognates more than once in the argument, but
what is at issue is not the regularity of thought itself but the regulation of
the motions of matter by thought. These seem to be quite different
things. To say, for instance, that a policeman regulates the behaviour of
the traffic does not imply that he himself is in some sense regular.
Second, to claim that, for Locke, mentality essentially involves teleology
seems to be an overinterpretation based on Locke’s unexplained refer-
ences to ‘Freedom, Power, Choice’.

III The Problem of Consistency

We have seen that, ever since the publication of Locke’s Essay, critics
have been concerned about the issue of consistency between Locke’s
thinking-matter hypothesis and his proof that God is an immaterial
being. The problem may be said to arise in both a crude and a

6
Bennett, ‘Locke’s Philosophy of Mind’, Chappell (ed.), Cambridge Companion to
Locke, p. 103.
 AN ETERNAL THINKING BEING 

sophisticated form. In its crude form the problem is simply this: in IV.
iii.6 of the Essay Locke argues that it is possible for matter to think; as
I have claimed above, the thinking-matter hypothesis is both epistemic-
ally and logically possible. In IV.x of the Essay Locke argues that God
must be an immaterial being since it is impossible for matter to think.
Locke himself addresses this simple problem in IV.iii.6 of the Essay:
I see no contradiction in it, that the first eternal thinking Being should, if he
pleased, give to certain Systems of created sensless matter, put together as he
thinks fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought: Though, as I think.
I have proved, Lib. 4, c. 10th, it is no less than a contradiction to suppose matter
(which is evidently in its own nature void of sense and thought) should be that
Eternal first thinking Being. (E IV.iii.6)

Locke’s friend Molyneux also came to his defence with regard to the issue
of consistency:
I have heard it objected, by some, that our Author, in the Sections Concerning
Gods Immateriality, seems to Contradict Himself in what he asserts pag. 270 Sec.
6 Concerning the possibility of Matters Thinking. But I conceive our Author
herein is very Consistent with Himself. For in this Place he only Asserts (for the
Reasons here alledged) that tis Impossible that an Infinite Omnipotent Cogitative
Being should Be Material. But granting (for the Reasons here alledged) an
Omnipotent Cogitative Immaterial being; Then (for the Reasons in pag. 270,
Sec. 6) it is Impossible for us, without Revelation, to Discover whether this
Omnipotent Cogitative Immaterial being has not given to Matter (fitly Disposed)
a Power to perceive and Think. For granting, that he has so done, it will not
thence follow, that tis possible, that the Infinite Cogitative Being may Himself be
Material.7

The statements by Molyneux and Locke himself may seem effectively to

dispose of the charge of inconsistency once and for all: bare matter in
itself cannot think, but it may be made to think by an act of divine
superaddition. The statements certainly dispose of the charge of incon-
sistency in its crude form, but as I have indicated, the problem also arises
in a more sophisticated form. What is at issue here is the consistency of
Locke’s attitude towards emergentism.
The problem in its sophisticated form arises in the following way. In
IV.iii.6, as we have seen, the thinking-matter hypothesis is not that God

7
Quoted in J. W. Yolton, John Locke and the Way of Ideas (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1956), p. 153.
 AN ETERNAL THINKING BEING

can endow any old piece of matter with a power of thinking; it is rather
that God can endow matter fitly disposed with a power or faculty of
thinking. Thus the organization of the material particles makes a differ-
ence to the system’s capacity for receiving this faculty. Consider now, by
way of contrast, Locke’s key premise in his argument to prove that God is
an immaterial being: ‘For unthinking Particles of Matter, however put
together, can have nothing thereby added to them, but a new relation of
Position, which ’tis impossible should give thought and knowledge to
them’ (E IV.x.16, emphasis added; cf. IV.x10). It seems, then, that Locke
inconsistently claims that the organization of matter both does and does
not make a difference to its capacity for receiving a faculty of thinking.
IV.x.16 dogmatically rules out thought being an emergent property of
matter: however the particles are organized, they cannot produce thought.
IV.iii.6, by contrast, seems more favourable to emergentism, for some
organizations of material particles are more suitable than others for having
the capacity to think.
The problem of consistency, in its more sophisticated form, can be
solved by supposing that God’s action is necessary to give causal powers
to matter for thinking, even when the particles are fitly disposed. Even
God, as it were, cannot make bricks without straw; even according to IV.
iii.6 God cannot endow a shoe or a turnip with a faculty of thinking. The
matter of the brain has to be disposed in a certain way, but this organ-
ization by itself is not sufficient for it to have the power of thinking: God
needs to play a role in superadding this faculty. There is no conceptual
puzzle involved here: on this interpretation what Locke is proposing is
no more puzzling than understanding the difference between throwing
a lighted match into tinder-dry undergrowth and throwing a lighted
match into a tank full of water. Thus Locke is not inconsistently saying
that the organization of material particles both does and does not make a
difference to its capacity for thinking; even in IV.x Locke implicitly holds
that this organization is relevant.
Even in its more sophisticated form, the problem of consistency can be
solved. But the solution of this problem gives rise to a new puzzle: one
may wonder how Locke is entitled to the apparent dogmatic rationalism
of his anti-emergentist position in IV.x; it seems that, like any rationalist,
Locke is claiming to know by the light of nature or reason what matter
can and cannot do. The rationalism of this passage is not an isolated
occurrence in this chapter; it also informs his ‘proof ’ of the existence of
 AN ETERNAL THINKING BEING 

an eternal being earlier in the chapter. Such a rationalistic spirit is in

marked contrast with the agnosticism that famously characterizes most
of Locke’s philosophy and that is his official position; indeed, this
agnostic spirit reappears even in IV.x towards the end of the chapter
when Locke writes about the mystery of the action of mind on body
(cf. E II.xxiii.29). As for Descartes, such action is a fact of everyday
experience, but it is quite unintelligible.
The puzzle posed by Locke’s dogmatic rejection of emergentism in IV.
x is greater because, as we have seen, he does not need this position to
argue for the immateriality of God; Locke has a second argument that
appeals to the need for guidance or regulation to explain the properties of
divine thought. And Locke’s insistence on the need for intelligent guid-
ance or direction raises a further issue concerning the strategy of his
argument. It seems that without committing himself to dogmatic anti-
emergentism, Locke could have given other reasons for questioning
whether matter could produce any thought. Locke could concede that
the emergence of thought from matter does not indeed imply a contra-
diction; for all we know, it may be the case that among all the possible
combinations of material particles there is at least one that gives rise to
thought. Nonetheless, Locke could add that while not impossible, it is
highly improbable that material particles, undirected or unguided by a
divine intelligence, should combine in the requisite way.
To take a familiar, hackneyed example, it is logically possible that a
monkey with a typewriter should produce the works of Shakespeare, but
the odds against this happening are astronomical. It is important to see
that the position I suggest Locke could have adopted in IV.x is different
from the one he does adopt on my interpretation of IV.iii.6. Both
arguments assign a role to God, but the roles are significantly different.
According to IV.iii.6, no organization of material particles is causally
sufficient by itself to produce thought: God has to endow the structure of
particles with the requisite causal powers. According to the position
Locke could have adopted in IV.x, for all we know there may be a
logically possible organization of material particles such that by itself it
produces thought, but God’s action is needed to direct the material
particles to combine in the requisite way. God’s role here is an essentially
regulatory one.
If Locke wanted to rule out thought as an emergent property, why did
he not avail himself of this argument? The argument has the merit that it
 AN ETERNAL THINKING BEING

is clearly consistent with the thinking-matter hypothesis in IV.iii.6. The

answer at least in part seems to be that the argument is probabilistic only.
But it is characteristic of IV.x that Locke wants arguments that are
demonstratively certain.

IV The Issue of Probability

Locke’s proof of the existence of God as an eternal, thinking, and
immaterial being is of most interest to us here, and perhaps to readers
in general, for the light it throws on the thinking-matter hypothesis and
the issue of the nature of the human mind. One issue the proof helps to
illuminate in this connection is the question of what justification Locke
has for saying, as he does on several occasions, that it is probable that the
human mind is a purely immaterial substance. Thus in II.xxvii, having
argued that personal identity is constituted by consciousness, not con-
tinuity of substance, Locke says: ‘I agree the more probable Opinion is
that this consciousness is annexed to, and the Affection of one individual
immaterial Substance’ (E II.xxvii.25). As we shall see, in the First Letter
to Stillingfleet Locke makes an even stronger statement (LW IV 33).
Commentators have tended to focus their attention on Locke’s repeated
claims to the effect that we cannot have demonstrative certainty regard-
ing the immateriality of the human soul; they have paid little attention to
the issue of his statements affirming its probability. No doubt there
would be general agreement with Margaret Wilson’s remark that Locke
offers no good reason for even the qualified leaning towards mind-body
dualism implied by his claims concerning its probability.8 It is certainly
striking that, in the sentence following the passage from the chapter on
identity, Locke simply changes the subject.
The only statement that Locke apparently does make to justify his
claim concerning the immateriality of the human mind occurs in the
First Letter to Stillingfleet. Having conceded that he cannot prove this
doctrine demonstratively on his principles, Locke explains:
. . . I grant I have not proved nor upon my principles can it be proved that there is
an immaterial substance in us that thinks. Though I presume, from what I have
said about the supposition of a system of matter . . . thinking (which there

8
Wilson, ‘Superadded Properties’, Ideas and Mechanism, pp. 198–9.
 AN ETERNAL THINKING BEING 

demonstrates that God is immaterial) will prove it in the highest degree probable
that the thinking substance in us is immaterial. (LW IV 33)

Locke’s phrasing here is a little unclear. He surely cannot mean that the
anti-emergentist position he defends in IV.x has any bearing on the issue
of probability, for as he well knows, the issue in IV.iii.6 is not what bare,
unaided, and unguided matter can do but what matter can do with the
aid of an omnipotent God. So Locke presumably means that his dem-
onstration that God is an immaterial substance somehow renders it
probable—indeed highly probable—that the human mind is an imma-
terial substance. But how does it do this?
Although it does not settle the issue of probability, there seems to be
one point that is implicit in this passage from the First Letter to Stilling-
fleet. Locke may well think that the chief stumbling block to an imma-
terialist or dualist theory of the human mind is the suspicion that an
immaterial substance is not even logically possible. When emphasizing
the difficulty of the mind-body problem Locke observes that it is difficult
for us to conceive an unextended substance (E IV.iii.6). And on the
imagist conception of thought that is sometimes attributed to Locke,
such a substance would be not just difficult but impossible to conceive.9
But reflection on the demonstration of the existence of God as an eternal,
thinking being forces us to recognize that such a being is not only
possible but also existent, perhaps necessarily so. Here of course there
is an obvious contrast with Hobbes, for whom the term ‘immaterial
substance’ is to be included on a list of absurd, i.e. nonsensical expres-
sions (Lev I.v 113).
The demonstration of the existence of God as an immaterial, eternal
substance thus removes a major stumbling block in the way of establish-
ing an immaterialist theory of the human mind. But why does the
removal of this difficulty make it probable that the thinking substance
in us is immaterial? The problem is particularly pressing since in one way
the proof of God’s existence lends some support to the thinking-matter
hypothesis; it establishes the existence of a being who by virtue of his
omnipotence—the power to do whatever is logically possible—has the
power to endow certain systems of matter with a faculty of thinking.

9
For the attribution of an imagist theory of thought to Locke, see Ayers, Locke, vol. 1,
p. 44: ‘Despite the relative unpopularity of an affirmative answer, the grounds for holding
him an imagist are conclusive.’
 AN ETERNAL THINKING BEING

Thus in one way the proof of God’s existence would seem to be (at least)
neutral between the two great opposing hypotheses. Moreover, as Locke
reminds us, reflection on the mind-body problem assures us that sub-
stance dualism is clogged with as many difficulties as the thinking-matter
hypothesis; as Locke says, each hypothesis is fraught with difficulties: ‘he
who will give himself leave to consider freely, and look into the dark and
intricate part of each Hypothesis, will scarce find his Reason able to
determine him fixedly for, or against the Soul’s Materiality’ (E IV.iii.6).
There is one line of thinking found in other major philosophers of the
period that is at least relevant to understanding Locke’s claims concern-
ing probability. This turns on the idea that the human mind is a mirror
or image of God; the doctrine may be regarded as a philosophical
attempt, inspired by or originating in Neoplatonism, to do justice to
the Genesis text that God created man in his own image. The doctrine
occupies a prominent position in Leibniz’s metaphysics; human minds
are said to be mirrors of God and even ‘little gods’ by virtue of such
properties as their causal independence and their ability to perceive the
whole universe according to their point of view.10 The doctrine also
makes its presence felt in Berkeley; in the Three Dialogues Between
Hylas and Philonous, for instance, Berkeley’s spokesman says: ‘I have . . .
though not an inactive idea, yet in my self some sort of an active thinking
image of the Deity.’11 Moreover, even in Berkeley, the doctrine is no
mere embellishment or expression of piety; it does important philosoph-
ical work in helping to explain and justify doctrines that are otherwise
problematic. For example, in the case of Berkeley, the ‘image of God’
doctrine helps to explain the break that Berkeley makes with unqualified
occasionalism by recognizing that finite spirits are causally active in
willing (that is, in imagination and voluntary physical movement); if
finite spirits lacked this causal power, they would fail to mirror the divine
perfections in an important respect. For Leibniz and Berkeley, the mind’s
being an image of God is exemplified not just in the properties of causal
power, knowledge, wisdom, and goodness, but also in being an imma-
terial substance.

10
See, for instance, Monadology 83.
11
Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous III, A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop (eds.),
The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, 9 vols. (London: Nelson, 1948–57), vol. 2,
pp. 321–2.
 AN ETERNAL THINKING BEING 

There is no doubt that the ‘image of God’ doctrine is a major theme in

seventeenth-century philosophy; it is often no mere nod in the direction
of piety. The presence of such a doctrine would explain Locke’s curious
claims about the probability of the thesis that the mind is an immaterial
substance: it is highly probable that since God is an immaterial being and
he created human beings in his own image, he has chosen to make the
thinking substance in us immaterial. Nonetheless, since reflection on
God’s omnipotence assures us that he has the power to endow certain
systems of matter with a faculty of thinking, we cannot claim that the
doctrine is demonstratively certain. But the problem for such an inter-
pretation, tempting as it might otherwise be, is that Locke shows no
inclination to subscribe to the ‘image of God’ doctrine in philosophical
contexts.12 The emphasis in his philosophy in the Essay Concerning
Human Understanding falls rather on the disanalogy between divine
omniscience and the narrow, limited capacities of the human under-
standing: indeed, the contrast between the level of God’s perfect ideas
and the level of our inadequate ideas is an important one for Locke in a
number of contexts (for instance, in connection with the topic of sub-
stance and the mind-body problem). Consider, as a case study, Locke’s
famous account of abstract ideas that play a role in his theory of
knowledge as central as that played by innate ideas in Descartes’ epis-
temology.13 Locke writes that the human mind needs abstract ideas ‘in this
imperfect state’ and that they are ‘marks of our Imperfection’ (E IV.vii.9);
God, it seems, can bypass or dispense with abstract ideas altogether.
Indeed, the implicit opposition to the ‘image of God’ doctrine here is
arguably one motive for Berkeley’s famous hostility to Locke’s doctrine of
abstract ideas.

12
In The Reasonableness of Christianity Locke argues that prelapsarian Adam was made
in God’s image, at least in part, by virtue of the immortality he enjoyed; after the Fall Adam
ceased to be immortal, and this loss of immortality was inherited by his successors. ‘And
that Immortality is a part of the Image, wherein these (who were the immediate Sons of
God, so as to have no other Father) were made like their Father, appears probable, not only
from the places in Genesis concerning Adam, but seems to me also to be intimated in some
expressions concerning Jesus, the Son of God’ (ROC, N 170). But there is no suggestion
that, after the Fall, human beings resemble God. For Locke’s views on the consequences of
Adam’s sin, see Chapter 8.
13
For further discussion of this issue, see Jolley, ‘Lockean Abstractionism versus Carte-
sian Nativism’, Hoffman, Owen, and Yaffe (eds.), Contemporary Perspectives on Early
Modern Philosophy, pp. 157–72.
 AN ETERNAL THINKING BEING

There is no evidence that Locke subscribes to the ‘image of God’

doctrine that made such a powerful appeal to his contemporaries such
as Leibniz and his immediate successors such as Berkeley. To say this is
not of course to say that Locke ignores or is indifferent to the book of
Genesis.14 The point, here as elsewhere, is that Locke would be suspi-
cious of the project of placing a philosophical interpretation on biblical
texts; as we shall see in Chapter 8, like Hobbes and Newton, Locke is
wary of importing ideas from Greek and especially Platonic metaphysics
into scriptural exegesis. In the absence of such a commitment to the
‘image of God’ doctrine, it is a mystery what grounds Locke can have for
asserting that the immateriality of the human mind is more probable
than the thinking-matter hypothesis—let alone in the highest degree
probable. To say this is not to question Locke’s sincerity, which is a
sterile enterprise. But it must be admitted that on this issue the argument
is wanting. All the emphasis in Locke’s account falls on the negative
thesis that the immateriality of the human mind is a doctrine that falls
short of demonstrative certainty.

14
See n. 12.
 7
Personal Identity and
Resurrection

In one of its chief aspects Locke’s famous theory of personal identity is a

response to an obvious problem. According to Locke, as we have seen, we
cannot be certain that there is an immaterial substance in us; for all we
know, consciousness may inhere in a material system such as the brain.
But if even such a limited version of materialism is true, how can we
know that personal immortality is possible on Locke’s principles? It
seems that on the thinking-matter hypothesis Locke entertains, a person
must cease to exist when his or her body dies. In II.xxvii of the Essay
Locke does not of course seek to prove the fact of personal immortality;
according to his official position, that doctrine is an article of faith that
cannot be proved. But Locke does seek to establish that we can know that
personal immortality is possible by offering a theory of personal identity
that shows how we can survive death even if materialism is true.1
To appreciate the originality of Locke’s discussion, it is helpful to recall
the standard account of the Christian doctrine of the afterlife. As we saw
in Chapter 1, the standard account is really a composite of two disparate
strands, philosophical and scriptural. The philosophical strand is the
doctrine of the soul as an immaterial, naturally immortal substance.
The scriptural strand is the Pauline doctrine of the resurrection of the
dead, which, as Stillingfleet notes, had been traditionally understood to
involve the resurrection of the same body. It might be thought that Locke
would concern himself exclusively with attacking the first, philosophical

1
Cf. Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, p. 144: ‘one important and influential aspect that
is implied by Locke’s consciousness-based account of personal identity is that it remains
neutral with respect to the debate between materialist and immaterialist philosophers of
mind.’ Cf. G. Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, pp. 97–102.
 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND RESURRECTION

strand in this composite doctrine, but, surprisingly perhaps, he does not:

Locke is also concerned to attack the second strand on both philosoph-
ical and exegetical grounds. The essential novelty of Locke’s discussion is
that it offers an account of the resurrection of persons according to
which such resurrection entails neither numerical sameness of (imma-
terial) substance nor sameness of body. According to Locke, the standard
doctrine is not only bad philosophy, it is also bad theology inasmuch as it
misrepresents biblical teachings.
To focus on the theological dimension of Locke’s theory of personal
identity is not of course to deny that there are valid perspectives on the
theory that have nothing to do with theology; Locke’s theory continues to
be an inspiration to philosophers concerned with the nature of personal
identity over time. But there is one approach to the theory that needs to
be viewed with some suspicion if our aim is to understand Locke’s own
purposes and motivations. Philosophers have sometimes proposed
amendments to the theory in the interests of addressing some of the
notorious problems it raises. However, in some cases these friendly
amendments are not ones that Locke himself could accept because they
run counter to his theological motivations.2 As we shall see, there is
reason to think that Locke himself may have been happy to leave some
loose ends dangling.

I The Theory of Personal Identity

Locke’s interest in crafting a theory of personal identity that is consistent
with the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection is perhaps nowhere more
apparent than in the passage that immediately follows his statement of
his theory in the Essay:
And thus we may be able without any difficulty to conceive, the same Person at
the Resurrection, though in a Body not exactly in make or parts the same which
he had here, the same consciousness going along with the Soul that inhabits it.
(E II.xxvii.15)

According to the theory he has just stated, A is the same person as B if

and only if A can be conscious of the actions and experiences of B (where
A is a person picked out at t and B is a person picked out at an earlier

2
Cf. Ayers, Locke, vol. 2, p. 273.
 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND RESURRECTION 

time t-1). The application of Locke’s theory of personal identity to the

Day of Judgment is clear. Suppose that A is a person in the presence of
God on the Great Day (the Day of Judgment) and that B is a person
living in California in 2013; then A is the same person as B if the specified
consciousness condition is satisfied.
Locke’s dominant concern with the Day of Judgment allows us to
appreciate the significance of two striking features of his theory. First,
persons, for Locke, unlike substances as they are traditionally conceived,
can be temporally gappy entities.3 In this respect persons are rather like
institutions; for instance, the English monarchy went out of existence in
1649 and came back into existence in 1660. To say that A is the same
person as B does not entail that there is a continuous person-history that
links A and B. A may be the same person as B even though A has gone
out of existence and B has just come into existence. Such an analysis of
personal identity clearly serves Locke’s purpose of showing how I can be
present at the Day of Judgment even though my body has been cremated
and (for all we know) there is no persisting immaterial substance that
persists after my death to the Resurrection. Second, Locke’s focus on the
Day of Judgment helps us to appreciate a major motive for his insistence
that the word ‘person’ ‘is a Forensick Term appropriating Actions and
their Merit; and so belongs only to intelligent Agents capable of a Law,
and Happiness and Misery’ (E II.xxvii.26). As Locke also says, punish-
ment is annexed to personality, and personality to consciousness; thus if
A in the presence of God at the Day of Judgment can be conscious of sins
committed by B in this life, then A can be accountable for B’s sins and
justly punished for them (E II.xxvii.22).
Some commentators who share the conviction that Locke’s theory of
personal identity is an attractive and promising one have tried to come to
his assistance by proposing solutions to the well-known problems posed
by his theory.4 But as I have indicated, such commentators have not

3
Cf. Kaufman, ‘The Resurrection of the Same Body and the Ontological Status of
Organisms’, pp. 208–9.
4
Ever since the eighteenth century, two problems in particular have been the focus of
much debate. One objection is that Locke’s theory of personal identity violates the principle
of the transitivity of personal identity: following a hint in Berkeley, Thomas Reid employed
the example of the ‘brave officer’ to make this point (‘Of Mr Locke’s Account of our
Personal Identity’, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, repr. in J. Perry (ed.), Personal
Identity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 113–18). The
second objection, deriving from Bishop Butler, is that Locke’s theory of personal identity is
 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND RESURRECTION

always seen that Locke’s dominant concern with the issue of resurrection
rules out some proposed friendly amendments. As Ayers has written of
one such proposal, ‘such a defence fails to meet Locke’s primary require-
ment for a satisfactory account of personal identity. It cuts the theory of
personal identity away from its roots in his thought, the conception of
the proper, even essential conditions of punishment and reward which
he shared with many of his opponents’.5 Consider, for instance, Mackie’s
well-known treatment of the issue of false memories. Ever since Flew at
least, commentators have considered how Locke’s theory of personal
identity would handle cases like that of George IV’s ‘memory’ on his
deathbed of having led his troops to victory at the battle of Waterloo.6 It
seems that Locke would surely not want to bite the bullet here and say
that George IV was indeed the person who did this and deserves the
credit or the blame for the military success. Mackie’s response to this
puzzle is to say that Locke need not worry about such cases, for his
theory is concerned with genuine memory, not pseudo-memory, and
genuine memory should be analysed in causal terms; that is, in cases of
genuine memory, not pseudo-memory, there is a direct causal link
between the occurrent memory experience and the original action or
experience.7 But Mackie fails to see that this friendly amendment will not
serve Locke’s purposes with regard to the issue of the resurrection of
persons at the Day of Judgment. On the face of it, on any ordinary
understanding of causality, there can be no causal links between a
memory experience at the Day of Judgment and an action or experience

circular: ‘one should really think it self-evident that consciousness of personal identity
presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity’ (J. Butler, Dissertation 1,
‘Of Personal Identity’, Analogy of Religion, 1736; repr. in Perry (ed.), Personal Identity,
pp. 99–107). For valuable discussions of the force of these objections, see Mackie, Problems
from Locke, ch. 5; K. Winkler, ‘Locke on Personal Identity’, V. Chappell (ed.), Locke
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 149–74; G. Yaffe, ‘Locke on Ideas of Identity
and Diversity’, L. Newman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Locke’s ‘Essay Concerning
Human Understanding’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 192–230.
5
Ayers, Locke, vol. 2, p. 273.
6
A. Flew, ‘Locke and the Problem of Personal Identity’, Philosophy 26 (1951), 53–68;
repr. in C. B. Martin and D. M. Armstrong (eds.), Locke and Berkeley: A Collection of
Critical Essays (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1968), pp. 155–78.
7
Mackie, Problems from Locke, p. 184. Cf. A. LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man (Oxford:
Oxford University Press), p. 74: ‘By requiring a causal connection between memories and
the sense experiences they present to us again, Locke has a principled way to put limits to
what can and cannot be appropriated.’
 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND RESURRECTION 

in this life; at least, any philosopher who maintains that there can be such
causal links has a lot of explaining to do. As an analytic historian of
philosophy uninterested in contextual matters, Mackie does not notice
Locke’s preoccupation with the issue of the Resurrection, and thus has
nothing to offer with regard to this issue.
Mackie’s belief that Locke is in a position to offer a causal analysis of
genuine experiential memory arguably infects his account of Locke’s
discussion of transfers of consciousness. In a well-known passage
Locke writes:
That which we call the same consciousness, not being the same individual Act,
why one intellectual Substance may not have represented to it, as done by it self,
what it never did, and was perhaps done by some other Agent, why I say such a
representation may not possibly be without reality of Matter of Fact, as well as
several representations in Dreams are, which yet, whilst dreaming, we take for
true, will be difficult to conclude from the Nature of things. And that it never is
so, will by us, till we have clearer views of the Nature of thinking Substances, be
best resolv’d into the Goodness of God, who as far as the Happiness or Misery of
any of his sensible Creatures is concerned in it, will not by a fatal Error of theirs
transfer from one to another, that consciousness, which draws Reward or Pun-
ishment with it. (E II.xxvii.13)

Mackie assumes that Locke is, or at least should be, concerned here with
a case where it is genuine experiential memory that is transferred from one
substance to another. Mackie concedes that, on the correct causal con-
strual of such memory, transfers of this kind are indeed conceptually
possible: genuine experiential memory—or consciousness from the
inside—might be ‘passed from what we should at present call one mind
to another, perhaps by non-physical thought transference, perhaps by
some science-fictional electronic offprinting’.8 But as we have seen,
Locke cannot accept the analysis of genuine memory, and how it differs
from pseudo-memory, that Mackie proposes.
At least one modern solution to a problem posed by Locke’s theory,
then, will not work. But although some such contemporary solutions to
problems posed by his theory are anachronistic or insensitive to con-
textual issues, the problems themselves are not. Indeed, as Ayers has

8
Mackie, Problems from Locke, p. 184. Mackie holds that Locke is not entitled to appeal
to the goodness of God to protect the person from a ‘fatal error’, since on Locke’s own
principles personal identity, and thus moral accountability, would be preserved.
 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND RESURRECTION

noted, there are problems that seem to arise with special force in
connection with the Resurrection: Locke seems to need to give an
account of how the resurrection of the same person at the Day of
Judgment differs from the new creation of a mere replica.9 Further, the
problem of forgetting arises in an acute form in connection with the
Resurrection. Suppose, for instance, that at the age of forty I commit a
heinous crime, but on my deathbed have forgotten it beyond the possi-
bility of recalling it. We must not suppose that the person on the
deathbed has lost all consciousness of past actions, for then on Locke’s
theory there is no person there at all; let us just say, then, that the person
on the deathbed has some memories, but not a memory of this particular
action. If the person that is resurrected at the Day of Judgment is the
person on the deathbed, then a heinous crime will go unpunished, and
this seems contrary to our, and presumably Locke’s, intuitions about
divine justice. Perhaps both persons will be resurrected, or perhaps, as
Ayers suggests, Locke would have envisaged as a possibility that ‘the
fragmented and imperfect “persons” which, from our human point of
view, we see successively realized in a forgetful . . . man will somehow be
continued at the resurrection in an eschatologically more satisfactory
individual, embracing them all’.10
The notion of an eschatologically more satisfactory individual that
embraces fragmented persons would certainly accommodate our intu-
ition that it is inconsistent with divine justice to leave any major sin
unpunished. But it invites at least two comments of very different kinds.
First, like modern attempts to construct a Lockean theory of personal
identity in terms of the ancestral relation, it seems to depart from the
letter, if not the spirit, of Locke’s theory. If the procedure for constructing
an eschatologically more satisfactory person out of the fragmented
persons makes appeal to the ancestral relation, or something like it,
then we have departed from Locke’s actual theory. Modern neo-Lockean
theories of course make no bones about this fact, but historically sensitive
commentators like Ayers should feel more qualms about such moves.
Second, it is striking that Locke is more explicit about the principle that
no one shall be punished for actions they know nothing of than about the
principle that at the Resurrection no major sin will go unpunished. It is

9 10
Ayers, Locke, vol. 2, p. 271. Ayers, Locke, vol. 2, p. 272.
 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND RESURRECTION 

hard to believe that Locke would not subscribe to the latter principle, but
his apparent silence about it should be noticed.
Locke was certainly capable of appreciating the kind of problem we
have raised, for as we shall see, he himself raises analogous ones with
regard to the resurrection of the same body. Locke’s anti-dogmatism may
have encouraged him to think that he could live with such problems; if
pressed, he might have said that his theory supplies a framework but not
detailed solutions to every problem we can imagine. With regard to some
of the puzzle cases, we must simply take comfort from the fact that we are
dealing with a just and good God. And if Locke is serious in wanting to
leave open the possibility of the resurrection of the same body, then this
may provide support for such an interpretation. For with regard to this
issue, then, Locke would be saying that the resurrected body may indeed
be the same body, in spite of all the difficulties we shall identify. God
knows the solutions to these difficulties, but we cannot.
Locke’s treatment of the resurrection of persons may leave some loose
ends dangling, but there is no doubt that his theory of personal identity is
tailored to divine justice and the Day of Judgment. By contrast, as readers
have noticed at least since Molyneux, the theory seems to handle issues
of human justice with difficulty and to conflict with our intuitions. The
source of the problem lies in the contrasting epistemic positions of God
and human law courts with regard to the persons on trial; unlike God,
human judges and juries have no direct access to the consciousness
which, for Locke, is the true subject and locus of responsibility.11
The problem is brought into sharp focus in the case of the drunkard,
first raised by Locke in the Essay and later discussed in the correspond-
ence with Molyneux.12 Suppose that the drunkard has committed a
crime while drunk which he is never afterwards conscious of; to do
justice to Locke’s own modal formulations we could say that, even with
cues, he cannot be conscious of it. Locke claims that in such circum-
stances the drunkard is justly punished by the courts. But Locke

11
Cf. Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, p. 131: ‘[human courts] can judge only with
regard to the identity of the self as human being, not as person. But if this is so, does Locke’s
claim that personal identity is the foundation of “all the Right and Justice of Reward and
Punishment” still make sense?’ Thiel goes on to say that to answer this question we must
take into account the theological aspects of Locke’s theory.
12
See, for instance, Molyneux to Locke, 23 December 1693, CL IV 767; and Locke to
Molyneux, 26 May 1694, CL V 58.
 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND RESURRECTION

considers the objection that if, as he says, punishment is annexed to

personality, and personality to consciousness, it cannot be just to punish
the drunkard in this case (E II.xxvii.22). It seems that the law courts are
punishing the drunkard for an action which, as a person, he did not
perform.
There are two strands in Locke’s reply to this objection. First, Locke
reminds us of the epistemic limitations of the law courts and insists that
they punish the drunkard ‘with a Justice suitable to their way of Know-
ledge’ (E II.xxvii.22). Unlike an omniscient agent such as God, who
knows the secrets of men’s hearts, the courts cannot know whether the
drunkard’s plea of loss of consciousness is genuine or false; in these
circumstances it is reasonable for them not to presume loss of conscious-
ness. The implication is that the justice that human law courts dispense is
provisional; it can be overturned by God at the Day of Judgment by
virtue of his superior epistemic position: omniscience can distinguish
genuine pleas from counterfeit pleas. The other strand in Locke’s reply to
the objection is apparently more problematic: in justifying the sentence
of the law courts against the drunkard, Locke says that ‘the Fact is proved
against him’ (E II.xxvii.22). Now on the face of it this means that the fact
is proved against the person; the drunkard is the same person as the one
who committed the crime. But the problem here of course is that all that
Locke is entitled to say is that the fact (i.e. the criminal action) is proved
against the human being who crashed his car, for instance, and is now
facing a charge of vehicular manslaughter. But Locke’s whole theory
depends on carefully distinguishing the concepts of person and human
being and their identity conditions.
But it would be a mistake to suppose that Locke is simply muddled
here. Remember that Locke has earlier said that we should always take
note of what the word ‘I’ is applied to, and that in some contexts it is
applied to the man only (E II.xxvii.20). This, then, is clearly one of those
cases; Locke is indeed saying only that the fact is proved against the
human being. Now Locke recognizes that there are cases where human
law courts can apply the distinction between the concepts of human
being and person; there are cases where they can determine that although
the sober (i.e. sane) man and the madman are the same human being,
they are not the same person, and that consequently it would not be just
to punish the sober (sane) man for the actions of the madman. But,
according to Locke, the case of the drunkard is not on a par with such
 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND RESURRECTION 

cases. Here, because the drunkard’s plea may well be self-serving, the
courts may reasonably presume the identity of the person on the basis of
the undeniable identity of the human being.

II The Issue of Substantial Identity

Despite the problems it poses, Locke’s theory of personal identity is
clearly designed to show how a person at the Day of Judgment can be
identical to a person here on Earth; such identity is constituted by
consciousness alone. On this theory the person can perceive the justice
of the divine ‘sentence’ that is handed down:
The Sentence shall be justified by the consciousness all Persons shall have, that
they themselves, in what Bodies soever they appear, or what Substances so ever
that consciousness adheres to, are the same, that committed those Actions, and
deserve that Punishment for them. (E II.xxvii.26)

As this passage reminds us, neither numerical identity of substance nor

numerical identity of body is necessary for the doctrine of the Resurrec-
tion. In the Essay and the subsequent controversy with Stillingfleet Locke
does not confine himself to defending his positive theory; he also seeks to
argue for and defend these two negative theses. Let us begin with the
issue of substantial identity and then turn to the issue of bodily identity.
I shall focus more on the second issue in part because it has received less
attention than the first in the literature.
What I have called the traditional or standard account of the Christian
doctrine of immortality assigns a central role to the idea of a persisting,
immaterial substance; one has only to turn to Leibniz’s philosophy for a
strong statement of its importance for any adequate account of immor-
tality. Immaterial substances really have two roles to play in the com-
posite account of the Resurrection that involves both philosophical and
scriptural ingredients. In the first place, it is one and the same immaterial
substance that survives my death and keeps me in existence until the Day
of Judgment when it is united with my resurrected body. Thus there is no
time between my death and the Resurrection at which I go out of
existence; traditionally, immaterial substances, unlike Lockean persons,
are not temporally gappy entities. Second, it is by virtue of its union with
this persisting immaterial substance that a body at the Resurrection is my
body. Although there is room for somewhat different options here, it is
 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND RESURRECTION

standard teaching that its union with this immaterial substance is at least
a necessary condition of a body at the Resurrection being my body. On
some accounts, such a union may even be a sufficient condition too.
Thus even if there is no physical continuity of any kind, a body at the Day
of Judgment can be my body simply by virtue of its union with my soul;
that is, a certain immaterial substance.
In Book II Chapter xxvii of the Essay, Locke seeks to establish in some
detail that the sameness of substance is neither necessary nor sufficient
for personal identity over time. That sameness of substance is not
sufficient for diachronic personal identity is established by the kind of
thought experiments that Locke had already deployed in his polemic
against the Cartesian thesis that the soul always thinks: if Socrates
waking and Socrates sleeping ‘do not partake of the same consciousness’,
then they are not the same person, even if there is one persisting
immaterial substance (E II.xxvii.19). Locke’s treatment of the issue of
whether sameness of substance is a necessary condition of personal
identity over time is rather more complex and elaborate, for here
Locke seems to distinguish issues of metaphysical and conceptual possi-
bility. With regard to the former issue, Locke sees no grounds for
supposing that it is metaphysically impossible for consciousness to be
transferred from one immaterial substance to another, for what is at issue
is not the same individual action but a representation of a past action
(E II.xxvii.13). Thus what is envisaged does not involve the indeed
apparently absurd notion of individual accidents migrating from one
substance to another. And if the transference of consciousness in Locke’s
sense—that is, of representation of a past action—is metaphysically
possible, then it is conceptually possible that two substances may make
but one person. Here Locke seems to treat the conceptual possibility of
one person in two substances as dependent on its metaphysical possibil-
ity instead of independent of it. One might have thought that Locke
could have treated the issue of conceptual possibility as capable of being
settled wholly independently of the issue of metaphysical possibility.
It is important to notice what Locke is not ruling out at this point. (The
issue is important partly because there is a parallel in his treatment of the
issue of sameness of body.) Locke’s discussion of personal identity is most
famous as a contribution to descriptive metaphysics, but it also includes a
pervasively agnostic element: Locke insists again and again that we are
ignorant of ‘the Nature of that thinking thing, that is in us, and which we
 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND RESURRECTION 

look on as our selves’ (E II.xxvii.27). Locke does not wish to exclude the
epistemic possibility that, for every person, there is one and only one
immaterial substance in which it is realized: as he puts it, though without
argument: ‘I agree the more probable Opinion is, that this consciousness
is annexed to, and the Affection of, one individual immaterial Substance’
(E II.xxvii.25). Thus Locke is clear that the resurrection of persons at the
Great Day does not entail sameness of substance, but he is not in a position
to exclude the possibility that one and the same immaterial substance will
in fact be resurrected. As we shall see, Locke adopts a parallel position with
regard to the issue of the resurrection of the same body.
Although Locke does not allude to the doctrine in his chapter on
personal identity, it seems that his thought could be expressed in terms of
the distinction between real and nominal essences. The nominal essence
of a person is captured by saying that it is ‘a thinking, intelligent Being,
that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as it self: the same
thinking thing in different times and places’ (E II.xxvii.9); it is to this
nominal essence that we appeal to solve conceptual issues about the
nature of the resurrection of persons. By contrast, the real essence of
persons, like the real essence of natural kinds such as gold, is unknown to
us. It may be objected that in the case of persons the distinction between
the nominal and the real essence has no purchase; persons, for Locke, are
modes, and thus according to a central strand in his teachings, their
nominal essence is identical to their real essence.13 But such an objection
overlooks the fact that in at least one place Locke does commit himself to
the thesis that persons have unknown real essences that are distinct from
their nominal essence; in II.xxiii.35 he writes that we are in the position
of ‘not knowing the real essence of a Peble, or a Fly, or of our own selves’.

III Resurrection and the Issue

of Bodily Identity
It is tempting to suppose that Locke did not discuss the physical aspect of
the resurrection of persons until he was forced to do so by an Anglican

13
Antonia LoLordo has argued that ‘we can only make sense of the role persons play in
the demonstrative science of morality if persons are modes’ (Locke’s Moral Man, p. 66).
However, she admits that the ‘mode interpretation’ of persons does not fit everything that
Locke says.
 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND RESURRECTION

bishop, namely Stillingfleet, but this would be a mistake: the issue had
already been broached in the Essay itself. In at least two passages, Locke
adumbrates the thesis that the resurrection of persons does not entail the
resurrection of numerically the same body, although he concedes of course
that we shall have some body or other at the Great Day (E II.xxvii.15, E II.
xxvii.26). The thesis that the resurrection of persons does not entail
sameness of body is fully defended in the controversy with Stillingfleet.
Although Locke himself suggests a parallel between the issues of same
substance and body, as he himself would acknowledge, his treatments of
the two issues differ in a way that allows us to see why it is only in
response to Stillingfleet that Locke engages in an extensive discussion of
the issue of sameness of body. Locke’s discussion of the issue of identity
of substance in the Essay is purely philosophical; he is addressing ideas
that had been imported into Christian theology from the Greek philo-
sophical tradition and revived in his own time. By contrast, Locke’s
extended discussion of the issue of sameness of body at the Resurrection
has an exegetical dimension: the doctrine of the resurrection of the body
is first and foremost a scriptural doctrine, the work of someone who was
not a philosopher: St Paul. As an interpreter of Scripture, Locke appears
in the same guise as in The Reasonableness of Christianity; like Hobbes
before him, he shows himself to be very much interested in uncovering
the actual meaning of the biblical text, an enterprise that involves paying
attention to the context, the author’s intentions, and the expectations of
his readers. By contrast, as a good radical Protestant, Locke professes
little interest in questions about doctrinal tradition. Faced with Stilling-
fleet’s contention that the Christian church has always taken the resur-
rection of the same body to be an article of faith, Locke writes:
What the Christian church has always understood, is beyond my knowledge. But
for those who, coming short of your lordship’s great learning, cannot gather their
articles of faith from the understanding of all the whole Christian church, ever
since the preaching of the Gospel, (who make far the greater part of Christians,
I think I may say, nine hundred ninety and nine of a thousand), but are forced to
have recourse to the Scripture to find them there; I do not see, that they will easily
find there this proposed as an article of faith, that there shall be a resurrection of
the same body; but that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, without
explicitly determining, that they shall be raised with bodies made up wholly of
the same particles which were once vitally united to their souls, in their former
life; without the mixture of any one other particle of matter, which is that which
your lordship means by the same body. (LW IV 328–9)
 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND RESURRECTION 

Moreover, as in The Reasonableness of Christianity, Locke writes in the

Latitudinarian spirit of credal minimalism: the articles that are necessary
to be believed by Christians are few, and on the evidence of Scripture, the
list does not include the resurrection of the same body: ‘The apostle
[Paul] directly proposes nothing for or against the same body, as neces-
sary to be believed’ (LW IV 324).
In some ways, then, Locke’s discussion of the resurrection of the dead
in controversy with Stillingfleet is continuous with The Reasonableness of
Christianity, but of course the exchange is by no means exclusively
concerned with exegetical issues. Although a scriptural doctrine, the
resurrection of the dead, especially after it has been debated by theolo-
gians, raises clearly philosophical issues: what constitutes the identity of a
body over time? How do the conditions for the identity of persons differ
from the conditions for the identity of bodies and organisms? Here Locke
seeks to show that, on a certain understanding of the identity of the body,
the doctrine of the resurrection of the same body leads if not to absurd-
ities, then at least to difficulties we cannot resolve.
If Locke’s extended discussion of the resurrection of the dead was a
response to Stillingfleet, what prompted Stillingfleet to criticize Locke’s
teaching on this issue? Stillingfleet’s basic objection seems to be that
Locke’s account of the resurrection of persons in the Essay is inconsistent
with the teachings of Scripture. Now if this charge could be established,
Locke would have reason to be seriously concerned, for, as we have seen,
consistency with Scripture is one of the constraints on his theory that he
acknowledges. But, as we would expect, Locke replies that Stillingfleet’s
charge is unjustified: indeed, he accuses Stillingfleet of being muddled.
According to Locke, Stillingfleet confuses Locke’s actual thesis that
sameness of body is not necessary for the Resurrection with the thesis
that sameness of body is inconsistent with the Resurrection—a thesis
that Locke disclaims. With his characteristic irony, Locke writes: ‘this
is the first time I ever learnt that “not necessary” was the same with
“inconsistent” ’ (LW IV 331). But though Locke may score a clever
debating point, he is clearly being unfair to Stillingfleet. On a charitable
interpretation, Stillingfleet is not guilty of this muddle. Stillingfleet’s
point is that, as he understands the Bible, Locke’s teaching is inconsistent
with the scriptural doctrine: according to Locke, sameness of body is not
necessary for the Resurrection, whereas according to the Bible, it is
necessary for such resurrection. Stillingfleet may be mistaken in his
 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND RESURRECTION

reading of the Scriptures, but on this point he is guilty neither of

misrepresenting Locke nor of falling into the gross confusion with
which Locke charges him.
Locke does not merely defend himself by responding to Stillingfleet’s
objection of inconsistency; he goes on the offensive by charging that
Stillingfleet’s own notion of personal identity is inconsistent with the
article of the Resurrection. According to Locke, Stillingfleet is committed
to the following three propositions:
(1) Sameness of body is required for the resurrection of persons.
(2) The same body is constituted by the same collection of material
particles.
(3) Persons can be continued and preserved in bodies not consisting
of the same collection of material particles.
Now (2) and (3) imply that the resurrection of the same body is not
required for the resurrection of the person at the Day of Judgment, and
this is contrary to (1), which represents Stillingfleet’s understanding of
the scriptural article. But Locke’s charge of being committed to an
inconsistent triad of propositions is in a way unfair to Stillingfleet; for
although Locke may accept (2), as Dan Kaufman has pointed out,
Stillingfleet himself does not. Rather, Stillingfleet understands sameness
of body in terms of sameness of organism, where this is to be analysed
along Lockean lines.14 So Locke is not justified in accusing Stillingfleet of
an internal inconsistency; all he is entitled to say is rather that sameness
of body, understood in terms of the collection of material particles, forms
an inconsistent triad together with (1) and (3).
An interesting puzzle concerning Locke’s response to Stillingfleet has
been raised by Kaufman. Kaufman observes that Locke could have given
a better, and certainly more sympathetic, response to Stillingfleet by
taking sameness of body to be not the sameness of a collection of
material particles, but rather the sameness of the human being or
organism.15 In terms of this account, Locke could have explained why

14
Dan Kaufman, ‘The Resurrection of the Same Body and the Ontological Status of
Organisms’, Hoffman, Owen, and Yaffe (eds.), Contemporary Perspectives on Early Modern
Philosophy, p. 203.
15
Kaufman, ‘The Resurrection of the Same Body and the Ontological Status of Organ-
isms’, p. 207.
 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND RESURRECTION 

the resurrection of the dead of which St Paul speaks cannot require

sameness of body. The key point here is that human beings and organ-
isms in general, unlike persons, are not temporally gappy entities for
Locke; for Locke, there is a continuity condition required for sameness of
human beings. But this condition cannot be satisfied in the case of the
Resurrection, for there is no continuous history as an organism linking
the pre-mortem and resurrected body.16 It is, then, something of a
mystery why Locke does not take advantage of Stillingfleet’s Lockean
analysis of sameness of human beings or organisms to persuade him that
the resurrection of the same body could not be required for the resur-
rection of the dead.
Any careful reader of the Stillingfleet controversy must recognize that
Locke’s intention is not so much to clarify issues in a genuinely helpful
spirit as to score debating points against Stillingfleet; indeed, Locke
seems to revel in places in his ability to tie Stillingfleet up in knots. Yet
without seeking to deny Locke’s polemical intentions, it is possible,
I think, to go some way in defending what he actually says. Although,
as Kaufman observes, Locke never invokes the issue of continuity, he
does not attempt to conceal his analysis of the identity conditions for
human beings on which Stillingfleet himself draws. Locke is not unaware
that one can sensibly ask whether it is the same human being that will be
present at the Day of Judgment, and he does not suppress his view that,
for him, the identity conditions for human beings and bodies are differ-
ent: ‘your lordship knows, that I do not take these two sounds, man and
body, to stand for the same thing; nor the identity of the man to be the
same with the identity of the body’ (LW IV 323). Thus Locke is not
disingenuously concealing or suppressing a side of his thought, the
recognition of which would have allowed him to enter sympathetically
into Stillingfleet’s viewpoint. Rather, Locke straightforwardly thinks that
Stillingfleet has mistaken the issue: the question is not about the same
human being but about the same body, and human beings and bodies
have different identity conditions:
My lord, I think the question is not about the same man, but the same body: for
though I do say . . . ‘that which has such an organization, as is fit to receive and

16
Contrast Leibniz who holds that the organism is not truly destroyed at death. See, for
instance, Monadology 73.
 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND RESURRECTION

distribute nourishment, so as to continue and frame the wood, bark, and leaves,
&c. of a plant, in which consists the vegetable life; continues to be the same plant,
as long as it partakes of the same life, though that life be communicated to new
particles of matter vitally united to the living plant:’ yet I do not remember that
I any where say, that a plant, which was once no bigger than an oaten straw, and
afterwards grows to be above a fathom about, is the same body, although it be still
the same plant. (LW IV 320)

Locke here switches from the example of the human being (‘man’) to that
of the plant, but mutatis mutandis the same point holds.
A second consideration that helps to make sense of Locke’s actual
response is that he may think he would be in danger of proving too much
if he bought into Stillingfleet’s analysis of sameness of body and then
invoked the continuity condition. That is, Locke would be at risk of
excluding the resurrection of the same body; given the destruction of the
living organism at death, it would be at least hypothetically impossible
for the same body, on Stillingfleet’s analysis, to be resurrected at the Day
of Judgment. But as we have seen, Locke does not want to deny, flat out,
the resurrection of the same body; he only wants to say that it is not
part of, or entailed by, the scriptural doctrine of the resurrection of
the dead. It may be that Locke spends a lot of time and energy in the
Stillingfleet controversy making difficulties for the resurrection of the
body understood, as Locke thinks it should be understood, in terms of
the same collection of material particles. The point must be conceded,
but when the text is read carefully, perhaps nothing of what Locke says
implies that the resurrection of the same body is actually absurd; the
point is rather the characteristically Lockean one that it involves
difficulties that we are not in a position to resolve. It is worth insisting
here on Locke’s desire to preserve the parallel with the issue of same-
ness of substance, examined earlier. Locke does not wish to deny either
the resurrection of the same substance or the resurrection of the same
body. His point is rather that we are not committed to either by the
resurrection of persons of which Scripture speaks. Certainly, neither is
an article of faith that Christians are required to believe. In this way
Locke remains true to his agnosticism in philosophy and his Latitu-
dinarianism in theology.
To a striking extent, then, Locke’s discussions of substantial and bodily
identity run parallel with one another; the Christian doctrine of the
Resurrection does not entail either sameness of body or sameness of
 PERSONAL IDENTITY AND RESURRECTION 

substance, but is consistent with them. But as I have already indicated,

there are disanalogies between the two discussions. For one thing, as we
have seen, Locke’s discussion of the identity of body in controversy with
Stillingfleet has an exegetical dimension that is missing in the discussion
of identity of substance; the doctrine, defended by Stillingfleet, that the
same body will be resurrected at the Day of Judgment is not only
philosophically problematic but also lacking in scriptural warrant: the
Bible speaks of the resurrection of the dead, not the resurrection of the
same body. But there is another disanalogy between the two issues. On
scriptural grounds at least, Locke is prepared to concede that there will be
some body or other at the Resurrection; according to Locke’s interpret-
ation of Scripture it is persons who are resurrected at the Day of
Judgment, but he is prepared to concede that such persons will be
realized in bodies, or at least united to them. By contrast, in his inter-
pretation of Scripture Locke sees himself as being under no pressure,
philosophical or exegetical, to concede that persons will be realized in
immaterial substances. Indeed, not merely is it epistemically possible that
there is no one immaterial substance that persists between this life and
the Day of Judgment; there may be no immaterial substance at all. It is
true that Locke asserts in II.xxvii that the more probable opinion is that
persons are affections of numerically identical immaterial substances,
but as we have seen, he offers no real argument for this opinion.
 8
Mortalism and Immortality

In his discussions of personal identity, Locke establishes the conceptual

possibility of immortality on his principles. In controversy with Stilling-
fleet, on both philosophical and exegetical grounds he defends the thesis
that the numerical identity of the body is not a necessary condition of the
resurrection of the same persons. But despite the excursus into scriptural
exegesis in the letters to Stillingfleet, Locke is mainly concerned in these
writings with conceptual issues and analysis; questions of scriptural
exegesis take second place behind philosophical problems. In this chap-
ter I shall focus on the more purely theological views that emerge from a
late work such as The Reasonableness of Christianity and an unpublished
paper on the Resurrection. We shall see that Locke holds rather radical
views concerning death, original sin, and the nature of the divine pun-
ishment reserved for the wicked; Locke, like Hobbes before him, belongs
to a mortalist tradition in theology that holds that immortality is the free
gift of divine grace and that rejects the doctrine of eternal damnation.1 In
the final section of this chapter I shall take up the issue of whether Locke
has a consistent position on the question of whether and how we can
know that we are immortal.
By the standards of his age and even our own, Locke’s accounts of
Christian teachings were unorthodox ones; he was scurrilously attacked
by a contemporary, John Edwards (1637–1726), for writing a book that
was alleged to be ‘all over Socinianized’.2 Whether Locke was indeed a
committed Socinian is a controversial issue that will continue to be

1
For Hobbes’ views, see Lev IV.xliv, esp. 644–9.
2
In his A Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity, Locke writes: ‘[Edwards]
says . . . I am all over Socinianized: and therefore my book fit to be placed among the Causes
of Atheism’ (N 211). Both The Reasonableness of Christianity and the Vindications of that
work which Locke wrote in response to Edwards were published anonymously.
 MORTALISM AND IMMORTALITY 

debated, but there is no doubt that his approach to Christian theology is

characteristically Socinian in spirit.3 Thus the Socinians rejected the
traditional doctrine of the Trinity on the grounds that it was both
unscriptural and contrary to reason. In The Reasonableness of Christian-
ity and other texts, Locke does not directly confront the doctrine of the
Trinity, but he does critically examine the doctrines of original sin and
eternal damnation, and he does so from the same angle as the Socinians;
he argues that these doctrines are lacking in scriptural foundation and
that they are contrary to rational principles of justice and moral
responsibility.

I Mortalism: Hobbes and Locke

Locke may have told Stillingfleet that he was not well read in Hobbes and
Spinoza, ‘those justly decried names’ (LW IV 477), but there is no doubt
that, whether Locke was aware of it or not, Hobbes is a key predecessor in
the field of Christian eschatology. There are parallels between the two
philosophers not just in the content of their views concerning death and
immortality, but also in their whole approach to Christian exegesis. For
one thing, Hobbes and Locke are equally opposed to the practice of
interpreting the Scriptures in the light of ‘vain philosophy’;4 they seek to
purge scriptural exegesis of what they regard as the corrupting influences
of Greek and especially Platonic metaphysics. Indeed, a major aim of
Hobbes and Locke is to look at the biblical texts with fresh eyes and
uncover their original meaning.5 In this respect they are heirs to the

3
On the issue of Locke’s relationship to Socinianism, see N li–liii. See also
H. J. MacLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1951); J. Marshall, ‘Locke, Socinianism, “Socinianism”, and Unitarianism’,
M. A. Stewart (ed.), English Philosophy in the Age of Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
2000), pp. 111–82; J. Higgins-Biddle (ed.), John Locke: The Reasonableness of Christianity as
Delivered in the Scriptures (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), Introduction, xlii–lx.
4
See Hobbes, Lev IV.xlvii, ‘Of Darknesse from Vain Philosophy, and Fabulous Tradi-
tions’; Locke, ROC, N 94. The phrase is an allusion to Paul, Letter to the Colossians 2:8.
5
In The Reasonableness of Christianity Locke explicitly states his principles of biblical
exegesis: we should take the New Testament to be ‘a Collection of Writings designed by God
for the Instruction of the illiterate bulk of Mankind in the way to Salvation; and therefore
generally and in necessary points to be understood in the plain direct meaning of the words
and phrases, such as they may be supposed to have had in the mouths of the Speakers, who
used them according to the Language of that Time and Country wherein they lived, without
such learned, artificial and forced senses of them, as are sought out, and put upon them in
 MORTALISM AND IMMORTALITY

tradition of the early Reformers such as Erasmus who were imbued with
the spirit and techniques of Renaissance humanism.
Hobbes, like Locke, resists the attempt to import metaphysical doc-
trines into Scripture where in his view they do not belong, but it is a
striking fact that his interpretations of Scripture are consonant with his
philosophical commitments. Hobbes, like Locke, is a mortalist: the
human being dies wholly at death; there is no immaterial substance
that is naturally immortal. Hobbes is prepared to defend such a doctrine
on grounds of fidelity to Scripture; there is no evidence that the Bible
understands ‘spirit’ to mean ‘immaterial substance’ (Lev III.xxxiv). But
though in Parts III and IV of Leviathan Hobbes largely restricts himself
to textual arguments, the reader can hardly fail to notice that his mort-
alism is consistent with, and indeed implied by, his materialism, together
at least with other uncontroversial assumptions.
Human beings, then, for Hobbes are naturally mortal. Thus, if they
enjoy immortality they must do so through the free gift of divine grace.
Hobbes does indeed hold such a view on scriptural grounds; since,
according to Hobbes, ‘there is no naturall knowledge of mans estate
after death’ (Lev I.xv 206), there can be no other source of information
than the Bible about the afterlife. And Scripture, when examined without
the distorting lenses of tradition, does not teach eternal damnation for
the wicked in the way this is traditionally understood. According to
Hobbes, the teaching of Scripture is that the torments of the reprobate
are eternal only when they are considered collectively; there will never be
a time when no individual suffers torments in hell. But to say this is not
to say that any individual human being will suffer eternal torments;
indeed, the pains of hell are of finite duration for any given individual.
Hobbes argues for the view that the torments of hell are collectively
eternal in an ingenious and rather unpleasant way: the wicked will breed
sinners in hell who in turn will breed further sinners, and so on ad
infinitum. But each sinner will suffer a final death after a period of
torment.6

most of the Systems of Divinity, according to the Notions, that each one has been bred up
in’ (ROC, N 91). Cf. Locke’s important statement on how to understand Paul’s epistles:
ROC, N 205.
6
‘The Elect are the onely Children of the Resurrection; that is to say, the sole Heirs of
Eternall Life: they only can die no more: it is they that are equall to the Angels, and that are
the children of God; and not the Reprobate. To the Reprobate there remaineth after the
 MORTALISM AND IMMORTALITY 

Hobbes’ account of the collective eternity of damnation seems to be

peculiar to himself, but many of his overall themes will reappear in
Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity and related writings, as we shall
see. In fairness to Locke, however, and his disclaimers of Hobbesian
influence, it is worth insisting on the differences between the two philo-
sophers. The most obvious difference of course is, as we have seen, that
Hobbes is committed to a strong reductionistic form of materialism
according to which ‘immaterial substance’ is a nonsense term (Lev. I.v
113); Locke, by contrast, entertains a thinking-matter hypothesis that is
consistent with property dualism. But a second, less obvious difference is
perhaps no less important: there is a political dimension to Hobbes’
account of hell that is quite missing from Locke.7 Hobbes may have
claimed that his account of hell is based solely on an unprejudiced
reading of Scripture informed by a scholarly knowledge of the relevant
ancient languages (Greek and Hebrew). However that may be, his inter-
pretation clearly reflects a political agenda rooted in his defence of
absolutism. For among Hobbes’ opponents are those who hold that the
will of the sovereign and the will of God may come into conflict, and that
in the event of such a conflict we must obey God rather than men.
Indeed, Hobbes’ opponents may claim that such a decision is rational
on grounds of the self-interested considerations that he himself invokes,
for whereas the penalty for disobeying the sovereign is finite, the penalty
for disobeying God is infinite; thus there is no proportion between the
penalties at their command.
Now Hobbes’ dominant strategy in response to such criticism is to
insist that, if we are clear-sighted, we shall see that the conflict between
the divine will and the sovereign will cannot arise, for the sovereign is the
authoritative interpreter of the word of God, whether delivered in natural
law or through the Scriptures (Lev II.xxvi and III.xxxix). But Hobbes’
reinterpretation of Scripture supplies him with a second string to his
bow, for it allows him to say that the sanctions for disobedience to God
are less than his opponents suppose; they are finite, not eternal or

Resurrection, a Second, and Eternall Death; between which Resurrection, and their Second,
and Eternall Death, is but a Time of Punishment and Torment; and to last by Succession of
sinners thereunto, as long as the kind of man by propagation shall endure, which is
Eternally’ (Lev IV.xliv 648–9).
7
To say this is not to deny that there are other ways in which Locke’s political views are
relevant to his theology.
 MORTALISM AND IMMORTALITY

infinite. Of course it is open to Hobbes’ opponents to say that even if this

is so, divine punishments are still greater than those that the sovereign
can inflict; thus it is still rational to obey God rather than men. But if
Hobbes is right that it is at least uncertain that God’s will can conflict
with the will of the sovereign, then it may not be rational to disobey the
sovereign; that is, we may be confronted by a situation where we have to
choose between the low risk of a great evil and the near-certainty of a
lesser evil. In any case, Hobbes’ message is clear: the doctrine of hell—
that is, the doctrine that wicked individuals will suffer eternal torments
after death—is a bogey that the Church has created to frighten souls into
obedience to its teachings.

II Mortalism and the Denial of Original Sin

Locke’s main theological treatment of mortalism is to be found in the
opening sections of The Reasonableness of Christianity. There Locke’s
task is to explain the sense in which ‘Death came on all men by Adam’s
sin’ (ROC, N 92). According to Genesis, God warns Adam: ‘on the day
thou eatest of the Tree of Life, thou shalt surely die’ (ROC, N 92). But of
course, as Locke points out, Adam did not actually die immediately after
eating the fruit of the Tree of Life; thus some interpretation of the divine
warning is required. Locke explains that what Adam lost through his sin
was a state of immortality.
This shews that the state of Paradise was a state of Immortality, of Life without
end, which he lost that very day that he eat: His Life began from thence to
shorten, and wast, and to have an end; and from thence to his actual Death, was
but like the time of a Prisoner between the Sentence past and the Execution,
which was in view and certain. (ROC, N 92)

As a result of the Fall, then, Adam and his heirs became mortal; it is in
this sense that death entered the world through Adam’s sin.
Locke’s interpretation of the sin of Adam and its consequences
involves an important attack on the traditional doctrine of original sin.
For, as Locke is well aware, traditional commentators had interpreted the
biblical claim that death entered the world through Adam’s sin in a
wholly different way; they had understood the passage as implying the
corruption of human nature in Adam’s posterity; this corruption was
such that, without the aid of divine grace, human beings would be
 MORTALISM AND IMMORTALITY 

deserving of eternal punishment. Thus the doctrine of original sin based

on the scriptural text involved a further commitment to the doctrine of
eternal damnation (‘endless torment in Hell-fire’). As a radical Protest-
ant theologian committed to the most plausible reading of Scripture,
Locke scornfully rejects the doctrine of original sin as based on a highly
strained interpretation of the language of Scripture:
. . . no body can deny, but that the Doctrine of the Gospel is, that Death came on
all Men by Adam’s sin; only they differ about the signification of the word Death.
For some will have it to be a state of Guilt, wherein not only he but all his
Posterity was so involved, that every one descended of him deserved endless
torment in Hell-fire. I shall say nothing more here how far, in the Apprehensions
of Men, this consists with the Justice and Goodness of God . . . : But it seems a
strange way of understanding a Law, which requires the plainest and directest
Words, that by Death should be meant Eternal Life in Misery. Could any one be
supposed by a Law, that says, For Felony you shall die, not that he should lose his
Life, but be kept alive in perpetual exquisite Torments? And would anyone think
himself fairly dealt with, that was so used? (ROC, N 92)

Locke’s grounds for rejecting the doctrine of original sin are thoroughly
characteristic of his approach to the Bible and deserve to be fully
understood. Udo Thiel has written that Locke’s theory of moral respon-
sibility implies the rejection of original sin; as evidence he cites Locke’s
teaching in the Essay (E II.xxvii) that on the Day of Judgment no one
shall be made to answer for what he knows nothing of.8 Perhaps Thiel
goes a little too fast here. In fact, Locke does not base his case on a theory
of moral responsibility alone; rather, he bases it on a characteristic
combination of textual and philosophical considerations. As the passage
from the Reasonableness shows, Locke questions whether the traditional
doctrine of original sin is consistent with ‘the Justice and Goodness of
God’. But Locke also emphasizes that the doctrine of original sin involves
a highly strained and implausible interpretation of the text: the doctrine
is not only inconsistent with our intuitions about justice, it is also bad
scriptural exegesis. Moreover, even then the claim that it would be unjust
of God to punish Adam’s posterity for his sin is buttressed by an appeal
to Scripture: ‘as I remember every ones sin is charged upon himself only’
(ROC, N 93).

8
Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, p. 131.
 MORTALISM AND IMMORTALITY

It is of course open to Thiel to reply that though Locke does indeed

appeal to textual considerations, his theory of moral responsibility by
itself is sufficient grounds for rejecting the doctrine of original sin. But
where a doctrine is supposedly based on a reading of Scripture, this
seems a dubious claim. Suppose, for instance, that Genesis affirmed in
the clearest, most unambiguous language that as a result of Adam’s sin
human nature would become corrupt in his posterity. It is difficult to
believe that Locke, as a Protestant who recognizes the supremacy of
Scripture as a rule of faith, would simply reject the doctrine on the
grounds that it conflicted with his theory of moral responsibility or
with intuitive conceptions of justice. But fortunately for Locke’s enter-
prise, this situation does not arise: textual and ethical considerations all
point in the same direction.
According to Locke, then, the death with which God threatens Adam
is not the corruption of human nature in his posterity; it is rather the loss
of immortality for Adam and his descendants. But in that case it may
seem that Locke has a new problem on his hands; it may seem that he is
in danger of being hoist with his own petard. For, as we have seen, on
both scriptural and ethical grounds Locke defends the principle that
‘everyones sin is charged upon himself ’. But if Adam’s descendants are
deprived of immortality through his sin, it appears that this principle is
violated; it seems that this is a case in which the innocent are being
punished for someone else’s sin. Locke himself foresees the objection and
responds to it:
But here will occur the common Objection, that so many stumble at: How doth it
consist with the Justice and Goodness of God, that the Posterity of Adam should
suffer for his sin, the Innocent be punished for the Guilty? Very well, if keeping
one from what one has no right to, be called a Punishment. The state of
immortality in Paradise is not due to the Posterity of Adam more than to any
other Creature. Nay, if God afford them a Temporary Mortal Life, ’tis his Gift,
they owe it to his Bounty, they could not claim it as their Right; nor does he injure
them when he takes it from them. (ROC, N 93–4)

In this case no injustice is involved, since no claim-right or entitlement is

violated. Here for the first time in the Reasonableness we encounter
Locke’s characteristic doctrine that personal immortality (that is, the
restoration of what Adam lost) is the free gift of God’s grace.
Locke, then, is a mortalist who believes that human beings become
wholly mortal as a result of Adam’s sin; like Hobbes, he believes that
 MORTALISM AND IMMORTALITY 

personal immortality is the free gift of God’s grace. As we have seen,

Locke presents arguments in support of the thinking-matter hypothesis,
but unlike Hobbes he never dogmatically dismisses the possibility that
persons are realized in immaterial substances. His key point, made in the
Journals, is that even if the mind is an immaterial substance, this would
not be sufficient for personal immortality; for immortality is a state of
sensibility, not a state of subsistence only. So even if the thinking
substance is immaterial—or more accurately, even if persons are realized
in immaterial substances—we are in a sense immortal, if indeed we are,
only through the free gift of God’s grace. Locke’s mortalism is thus
neutral between the two great ‘dark and intricate’ hypotheses on the
mind-body problem (E IV.iii.6).

III Immortality and Resurrection

The Reasonableness of Christianity is a rich source for Locke’s ideas about
the fall of Adam, death, and original sin. By contrast, the Reasonableness
has rather little of a positive kind to say about immortality and the
Resurrection, perhaps in part because it focuses on the Gospels rather
than Paul’s Epistles. As we shall see in the final section of this chapter,
Locke’s main concern with immortality in this work is an epistemo-
logical one; he explains that before Christ’s coming the doctrine of a
future state was not clearly known; it was rather the subject of classical
myths such as the Styx, Acheron, and the Elysian Fields. It is thus one of
the great benefits we receive from Christ’s mission that he ‘brings life and
immortality to light’ (ROC, N 203), and instructs us with regard to the
resurrection of the just.
Perhaps the key text for the content of Locke’s positive beliefs about
the Resurrection is a paper titled ‘Resurrectio et quae sequuntur’,9 which
is devoted to the analysis of key scriptural texts such as I Corinthians. In
one way this text marks a departure from what Locke had said in II.xxvii
of the Essay and the subsequent controversy with Stillingfleet. In the
Essay Locke had tended to write as if there were simply one Day of
Judgment and one Resurrection, at least for mere mortals. In ‘Resurrectio
et quae sequuntur’ Locke indicates on the basis of his careful study of

9
This paper, which Locke left unpublished, has recently been printed by Victor Nuovo
(N 232–7). Nuovo, following Arthur Wainwright, dates this paper to c. 1699; see N liv.
 MORTALISM AND IMMORTALITY

Scripture that there are strictly speaking three resurrections in temporal

succession: there is the resurrection of Jesus Christ which is followed by
the resurrection of the just, which is in turn followed by the resurrection
of the wicked.
As in The Reasonableness of Christianity, in the paper titled ‘Resur-
rectio et quae sequuntur’ Locke displays his characteristic interest in
discovering the sense of a scriptural text without preconceptions and
prejudices. Thus Locke observes that in I Corinthians 15 Paul is con-
cerned with something less than the fate of mankind in general; his
exclusive focus is on the resurrection of the just or blessed (N 232). As
Locke points out, only in this way can we make sense of some of Paul’s
most famous pronouncements. It would be very odd to say of the wicked
that their corruption shall put on incorruption or that in their case death
is swallowed up in victory (N 233). As applied to the class of the saints,
however, such statements make perfect sense.
Apart from its emphasis on the narrow or limited focus of
I Corinthians 15, Locke’s account of the immortality of the blessed is
relatively uncontroversial. It is in connection with the resurrection of
the wicked that Locke makes his most radical statements; as we should
expect, these statements are in line with the teachings concerning death
and the loss of immortality he had set forth in The Reasonableness of
Christianity, written just a few years before. Consistently with those
teachings, Locke insists that the core thesis of the New Testament with
regard to the wicked is that ‘the wages of sin is death’ (Romans 6:23).
And ‘death’ of course must be given a natural interpretation. Once
again, Locke insists that to take ‘death’ to mean ‘eternal life in torment’
is strained and perverse; it would be ‘a very odd signification of the
word death’ (N 234). Any biblical pronouncements concerning the
judgment of the wicked must be interpreted in the light of Paul’s
basic message.
At this point Locke realizes that there is an objection that must be
faced: what of the everlasting fire with which Jesus threatens the wicked
in Matthew (18:8, 25: 41, 46)? Locke is aware that advocates of the
traditional doctrine of eternal damnation will appeal to these texts in
support of their teaching. Locke’s answer to this objection is that it
depends on a failure to understand the scriptural sense of the term
‘everlasting’. Locke adduces evidence to show that in Scripture the
term means ‘that which endures as long as the subject it affects endures’
 MORTALISM AND IMMORTALITY 

(N 236); it does not imply that the subject itself will endure forever.10
Locke does not deny that the wicked will suffer torments after death as a
punishment for their sins; indeed, he concedes that these torments will
be ‘inexpressible’ (N 236). But he is emphatic that there is no doctrine of
eternal torments in the New Testament. The torments of the wicked will
be followed by a second, and final, death.
In ‘Resurrectio et quae sequuntur’ Locke emphasizes the asymmetry of
the fates of the just and the wicked: a life of eternal bliss is reserved for
the just; a finite period of torments is reserved for the wicked. By
contrast, on those occasions on which Locke treats immortality in the
Essay, he tends to suggest that there is a symmetry between heaven and
hell; at least he says nothing to indicate that the traditional picture of
heaven and hell is mistaken on this score. Perhaps Locke does not
officially or explicitly commit himself to the symmetrical account in
the Essay. Perhaps at the time of composing the Essay, his views on
this issue were not fully formed; they may have remained in some degree
vague and indefinite. It seems possible indeed that Locke was not com-
mitted to the asymmetrical account of the fates of the just and the wicked
until he undertook an intense course of study of the New Testament in
the 1690s, following the publication of the first edition of the Essay.
On the issue of immortality, then, Locke joins hands with Hobbes, if
not on the fine details, then at least on the major issues of scriptural
exegesis in this area: human beings die wholly at death; immortality is
the free gift of divine grace for the just; and the fate of the wicked is a
second and final death after a period of torment.

IV Immortality: Problems of Consistency

One philosophical theme that is common to The Reasonableness of
Christianity and to the controversy with Stillingfleet is also a Hobbesian
one: in Hobbes’ words, ‘there is no naturall knowledge of mans estate
after death’ (Lev I.xv 206). In a similar vein Locke holds that the doctrine
of personal immortality is an article of faith, not knowledge in the strict
sense. Thus Locke tells Stillingfleet:

10
Locke cites John Tillotson in support of his interpretation (N 236). Tillotson
(1630–94), a liberal Anglican theologian, was a friend of Locke’s who was Archbishop of
Canterbury from 1691–4.
 MORTALISM AND IMMORTALITY

So unmoveable is the truth delivered by the Spirit of truth, that though the light
of nature gave some obscure glimmering, some uncertain hopes of a future state;
yet human reason could attain to no clearness, no certainty about it, but that it
was ‘Jesus Christ alone who had brought life and immortality to light through the
Gospel’. (LW IV 489)11

In The Reasonableness of Christianity Locke again quotes the passage

from Timothy, and echoes and develops this theme when he explains the
reasons for Christ’s mission:
Before our Saviour’s time the Doctrine of a future State, though it was not wholly
hid, yet it was not clearly known in the world. ’Twas an imperfect view of Reason:
Or, perhaps the decay’d remains of an ancient Tradition, which rather seemed to
float on Mens Phansie, than sink deep into their Hearts. It was something, they
knew not what, between being and not being. Something in Man they imagined
might scape the Grave: But a perfect compleat life of an Eternal duration, after
this; was what entred little into their thoughts, and less into their perswasions.
And they were so far from being clear herein, that we see no Nation of the World
publickly professed it, and built upon it. No Religion taught it: And ’twas no
where made an Article of Faith, and Principle of Religion till Jesus Christ came;
Of whom it is truly said, that he at his appearing brought life and immortality to
light. (ROC, N 203)

In The Reasonableness of Christianity Locke adds that Christ’s own

resurrection and other instances such as the raising of Lazarus serve as
a pledge for the final resurrection of the dead.
Locke’s position on the epistemological status of immortality seems
clear, but it is not without its own problems. For one thing, it generates two
problems of consistency. Consider, for instance, how Locke follows up his
insistence that it is Jesus Christ alone who brought life and immortality to
light. Locke seeks to ridicule Stillingfleet for allegedly suggesting that his
admission that the immortality of the soul cannot be demonstratively
proved on his principles thereby lessens its credit. According to Locke,
Stillingfleet seems to be thereby impugning the veracity of divine revela-
tion. By contrast, Locke insists that personal immortality is ‘established
and made certain only by revelation’ (LW IV 489). But if, as Locke admits,
the doctrine of personal immortality is an article of faith that reason
cannot demonstrate, then according to the principles of his theory of
knowledge, it cannot be made certain. According to Locke, articles of

11
The biblical quotation is from 2 Timothy 1:10.
 MORTALISM AND IMMORTALITY 

faith are propositions that we believe on the authority of the Bible, and in
his view our assurance that the contents of the Bible are divinely revealed
can never rise as high as certainty or knowledge in the strict sense, which
consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas (E IV.
xviii.4). This is not just Locke’s teaching in the Essay; it is also his explicit
position in a letter to Stillingfleet where he explains that, for him, the
phrase ‘certainty of faith’ is strictly speaking a contradiction in terms:
That which your lordship is afraid it [Locke’s definition of knowledge] may be
dangerous to, is an article of faith; that which your lordship labours and is
concerned for, is the certainty of faith. Now, my Lord, I humbly conceive the
certainty of faith . . . has nothing to do with the certainty of knowledge. And to
talk of the certainty of faith, seems all one to me, as to talk of the knowledge of
believing, a way of speaking not easy for me to understand. . . .
Faith stands by itself, and upon grounds of its own; nor can be removed from
them, and placed on those of knowledge. Their grounds are so far from being the
same, or having anything in common, that when it is brought to certainty, faith is
destroyed; it is knowledge then, and faith no longer. (LW IV 146)

Locke of course is not impugning the veracity of divine revelation; he is

clear that necessarily, if God reveals that p, then p, for God cannot lie. But
there is always room for doubt whether p is in fact divinely revealed.
Locke’s position on immortality in the Stillingfleet controversy and
The Reasonableness of Christianity also gives rise to a problem of con-
sistency with the Essay. Locke tells Stillingfleet, and repeats in The
Reasonableness of Christianity, that reason is powerless to demonstrate
the doctrine of personal immortality. Yet, as we have already seen in
Chapter 5, he seeks to defend the thinking-matter hypothesis against the
charge that it is dangerous for religion by insisting that it has no
tendency to undermine the doctrine of personal immortality since:
It is evident, that he who made us at first begin to subsist here, sensible intelligent
Beings, and for several years continued us in such a state, can and will restore us to
the like state of Sensibility in another World, and make us capable there to receive the
Retribution he has designed to Men, according to their doings in this Life. (E IV.iii.6)

Thus Locke claims not just that it is evident that God can restore us to
sensibility in another world, but that he will do so.12 And it is natural to

12
At IV.iii.29 in the Essay Locke includes the ‘Resurrection of the Dead’ among the
doctrines of which we are incapable of having knowledge. But of course this is consistent
with saying that we can have knowledge of personal immortality. As Locke indicates, it was
 MORTALISM AND IMMORTALITY

suppose that by ‘evident’ in this context Locke means ‘evident by reason’.

But this is something that in response to Stillingfleet and in The Reason-
ableness of Christianity Locke is at pains to deny.
It is natural, I think, to adopt rather different strategies for dealing
with these two problems of consistency. With regard to the first problem,
we should admit that Locke is not, strictly speaking, entitled to say that
the doctrine of immortality is made certain by Christ’s revelation. But
here it is helpful to note that Locke is sometimes prepared to use the
terms ‘certainty’ and its equivalent ‘knowledge’ in a looser sense. Thus in
Book IV.ii and xi of the Essay Locke famously or notoriously recognizes a
category of ‘sensitive knowledge’ in connection with the assurance we
have of the existence of bodies.13 We do not, it seems, know the existence
of bodies by perceiving agreements or disagreements among ideas; and
thus it seems that by Locke’s definition we cannot have knowledge of
their existence. Nonetheless:
The notice we have by our Senses, of the existing of Things without us, though it be
not altogether so certain, as our intuitive Knowledge, or the Deductions of our
Reason, employ’d about the clear abstract Ideas of our own Minds; yet is an
assurance that deserves the name of Knowledge. (IV.xi.3; cf. IV.ii.4)

Locke writes here of ‘knowledge’, not ‘certainty’, but it is important to

remember that, as he tells Stillingfleet, for him these terms are equivalent.
The second problem of consistency seems to require a different
approach. It is possible of course to solve the problem of consistency
by suggesting that in IV.iii.6 of the Essay Locke does not mean that it is
evident to reason that God will restore us in another world; he may mean
that it is evident on the basis of revelation. But this is the kind of strained
interpretation that Locke himself warns against in the exegesis of Scrip-
ture; nowhere in the passage or chapter does Locke suggest that he has
the Bible in mind. It is more natural, I think, to suggest that this is again
an issue on which Locke’s view may have developed, or at least hardened,
between the composition of the Essay and the Second Reply to

uncontroversial that the specifically Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is an
article of faith alone.
13
On the problems posed by Locke’s theory of sensitive knowledge, see L. Newman,
‘Locke on Sensitive Knowledge and the Veil of Perception—Four Misconceptions’, Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly 85 (2004), 273–300, and Keith Allen, ‘Locke and Sensitive Know-
ledge’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 51 (2013), 249–66.
 MORTALISM AND IMMORTALITY 

Stillingfleet; as we have seen, there is some reason to suppose that he had

not arrived at an asymmetrical account of heaven and hell at the time of
writing the Essay. Here too, as in the case of the first problem, it is
helpful, I think, to point to an analogy with another, related issue in
Locke’s philosophy. Commentators have often noticed that Locke seems
much more optimistic about the prospects for a demonstrative science of
morality in the Essay than in The Reasonableness of Christianity; in the
latter work Locke argues that one of the benefits we have from Christ’s
mission is that it compensates for our inability, or at least our failure, to
demonstrate our duties under natural law. It is true that what Locke
emphasizes is that philosophers have failed in the past to demonstrate
the teachings of natural law, but there is no suggestion that they may
finally succeed in doing so, say, in the near future.14 In a similar way,
Locke may have become more convinced that we cannot know by reason
that we are immortal.
The possibility of some development in Locke’s views over time is also
relevant to a final, more external problem concerning the issue of
personal immortality. In several places in his works Locke discusses the
nature of law in general; on each occasion he insists that it is essential to
law to have sanctions attached to its commands. Thus in II.xxviii of the
Essay, Locke is very clear that sanctions are of the essence of law:
Since it would be utterly in vain, to suppose a Rule set to the free Actions of Man,
without annexing to it some Enforcement of Good and Evil, to determine his
Will, we must, where-ever we suppose a Law, suppose also some Reward or
Punishment annexed to that Law. It would be in vain for one intelligent Being, to
set a Rule to the Actions of another, if he had it not in his Power, to reward the
compliance with, and punish deviation from his Rule, by some Good and Evil,
that is not the natural product and consequence of the Action it self. For that
being a natural Convenience, or Inconvenience, would operate of it self without
a Law. This, if I mistake not, is the true nature of all Law, properly so called.
(E II.xxviii.6)

And in the Letter on Toleration Locke observes that ‘if no penalties are
attached to them, the force of law vanishes’ (ET 68–9). Thus if natural
law is to be a genuine law, it must have sanctions. Now Locke is clear in

14
‘’Tis plain in fact, that humane reason unassisted, failed Men in its great and Proper
business of Morality. It never from unquestionable Principles, by clear deductions, made
out an entire Body of the Law of Nature’ (ROC, N 196).
 MORTALISM AND IMMORTALITY

the Essay that the sanctions in question must be in an afterlife (E I.iii.12):

hangovers, for instance, are not candidates for the sanctions in question
in the case of the natural law forbidding drunkenness, since they are
merely natural inconveniences and consequences of getting drunk; they
are not sanctions since they would operate without a law.15 But then if we
cannot know a priori that there is an afterlife, then a fortiori we cannot
know that there are sanctions in an afterlife. Thus it seems that we
cannot know natural law as law.16 But this is in effect the position
adopted by Hobbes, for whom natural law only becomes law when it is
commanded either by God or by the sovereign. Once again, then, Locke
adopts a position that is close to Hobbes, but in this case the reason may
be different. It seems that at the time of his three great works he may
indeed have held that the sanctions of natural law could be known a
priori; thus at this stage he could put a distance between himself and
Hobbes. Nonetheless, as his position on immortality changed or hard-
ened, he was in spite of himself committed to a position on law whose
Hobbesian affinities he perhaps did not appreciate.
To suggest that Locke’s views in this area may have undergone some
change should not mislead us; it should not blind us to the real constants
in his thought about these issues. Locke may have become convinced
after the composition of the Essay that the doctrine of personal immor-
tality is an article of faith that cannot be demonstrated; but on one other
key issue his thought remained unchanged. Throughout his philosoph-
ical career Locke is emphatic that the issue of substantial identity—the

15
In a letter to James Tyrrell, who questioned him about his teachings on natural law,
Locke seeks to leave open the possibility that there may be sanctions of the law of nature
that operate in this life. But he does not explain what these sanctions might be if they are not
the ‘natural inconveniences’ of which he writes in E II.xxviii.6. See Locke to Tyrrell, 4 August
1690, CL IV 111.
16
Cf. L. Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953),
ch. 5. In The Reasonableness of Christianity Locke recognizes that in the past the law of
nature has not been strictly recognized as law: ‘Those just measures of Right and Wrong,
which necessity had any where introduced, the Civil Laws prescribed, or Philosophy
recommended, stood not on their true Foundations. They were looked on as bonds of
Society, and Conveniences of common Life, and laudable Practises. But where was it that
their Obligation was thoroughly known and allowed, and they received as Precepts of a Law:
Of the highest Law, the Law of Nature? That could not be, without a clear knowledge and
acknowledgment of the Law-Maker, and the great Rewards and Punishments, for those that
would or would not obey him’ (ROC, N 198–9).
 MORTALISM AND IMMORTALITY 

identity of an immaterial substance—is irrelevant to personal immortal-

ity; indeed, the presence of an immaterial substance is neither necessary
nor sufficient for personal immortality. In his desire to sever the trad-
itional connection between immateriality and immortality, Locke never
wavers.
Today it is natural perhaps to regard Locke as an early forerunner of
the position in the philosophy of mind that has come to be known as
‘mysterianism’. Modern defenders of this position argue that the mind-
body problem will be forever insoluble; we simply do not possess the
concepts necessary to understand how consciousness could arise from
matter.17 There is much in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
that seems to justify enlisting Locke in this camp. As we have seen, he
constantly contrasts our inadequate ideas with the perfect cognitive
vision of God. Moreover, Locke himself says that the truth in this area
is ‘a Point, which seems to me, to be put out of the reach of our
Knowledge’ (E IV.iii.6). But to view Locke’s contribution to the debate
on the mind-body problem in these terms is in one way misleading: it
overlooks the fact that Locke occupies an important position in the
history of materialist thought. In the century that followed his death,
Locke was to be regarded as a philosopher who rescued the materialist
hypothesis from the disrepute into which Hobbes had plunged it. It is
true that in his own lifetime Locke’s thinking-matter hypothesis aroused
intense opposition from conservative critics such as Stillingfleet and even
Leibniz; Locke was right to warn Collins about ‘touchy subjects’. But in
the eighteenth century Locke’s version of materialism found many
defenders; it established itself as a position in the philosophy of mind
that no serious philosopher could afford to ignore.18

17
See C. McGinn, ‘Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?’, Mind 98 (1989), 349–66.
18
See J. W. Yolton, Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983); Locke and French Materialism (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1991); Thomson, Bodies of Thought.
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Index
Adam 97n, 120, 121, 122
Alexander, P. 53
animals 7, 8, 31
faculties of 33, 39–44, 46–7
and immortality 47–9
and sensations 48, 49
and thinking-matter
hypothesis 44–7
see also beast-machine doctrine
Anscombe, G. E. M. 16
Aquinas, St Thomas 37
Aristotle 18–19
Arnauld, A. 37n
attributes 7, 19, 52, 60, 67, 68, 69,
72, 80
Ayers, M. R. 58–9, 102, 104
beast-machine doctrine 7, 17, 44
and argument from language 34–7
and argument from Principle of
Parsimony 37
and natural immortality 37–8
Bennett, J. 14n, 27, 45, 58, 60, 78–9,
89–90
Bentley, R. 81
Berkeley, G. 14, 15, 50, 57, 67
and abstract ideas 97
and ‘image of God’ doctrine 96, 98
and occasionalism 96
Bold, S. 1
Boyle, R. 14, 80, 81
Butler, J. 101–2n
Cartesians 22, 30, 31, 41–2, 80
Castor 20–1, 31
choice 89, 90
Chomsky, N. 34
Clarke, S. 1n
cohesion 54
Collins, A. 1, 33, 131
conatus, see endeavour
concept-empiricism 64
corpuscularian hypothesis 10
credal minimalism 111
Day of Judgment 2, 3, 12, 31–2, 101,
102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 112, 113,
114, 115, 121, 123; see also
Resurrection
Descartes, R. 5, 15, 63, 67, 75
beast-machine doctrine of 7, 17,
34–8, 44
on clear and distinct ideas 52, 75
and cogito, ergo sum 85
on corporeal memory 20
on divine omnipotence 69, 75
on immortality 4, 19–20
on intellectual memory 20
on mind-body union 18, 23, 35, 43
on mind as immaterial substance 4, 8,
19, 22, 24
on substance 52
substance dualism of 16, 51, 53, 60, 68
on thesis that mind always thinks 4,
17–20
dualism
property 9, 34, 59, 60, 65, 68, 74, 78,
83, 88
substance 10, 11, 16, 51, 53, 57, 58, 60,
65, 68, 96
Duncan, S. 6n
Edwards, J. 116
emergentism 78–9, 88, 91, 92, 93
emergent properties 9, 65, 79, 88, 92
endeavour 41
Erasmus, D. 118
essences 4, 17, 18, 19, 20, 24, 68, 73
nominal 25–6, 28, 61, 77, 109
real 25, 26, 27, 58, 59, 60, 109
eternal damnation 116, 117, 118, 124
extension 7, 17, 18, 52, 59, 60, 68, 72, 73,
77, 80
Flew, A. 102
freedom 89, 90
Gassendi, P. 28
Geach, P. 16
 INDEX

George IV 102 ‘image of God’ doctrine 96–8

Gibieuf, G. 18, 19
God 62, 66, 80
as cause of the universe 6
as eternal thinking being 9, 11, 64, 84,
85, 87, 88, 95
existence of 6, 85–90
goodness of 6, 105, 121, 122
idea of 64–5
immateriality of 10, 64, 79, 84, 85, 87,
94, 95
incomprehensibility of 6
justice of 6, 104, 105, 121, 122
omnipotence of 45, 69, 75, 82, 83, 85,
95, 97
omniscience of 97, 106
will of 119, 120
Goldbach’s conjecture 71
gravitation 54, 80–1, 82
immortality 47–9, 124
as article of faith 99, 125, 126, 130
as free gift of God’s grace 116, 118,
122, 123
in morally significant sense 17, 28, 29,
31, 83
natural 7, 28, 37, 99
personal 3, 7, 12, 19, 28–31, 83,
99, 109, 122–3, 125, 126, 127,
129, 131
as state of sensibility 29, 48, 83, 123
see also Day of Judgment;
Resurrection
impulse 54, 80–2
infinite divisibility 54
Jesus Christ 123, 124, 126, 128
judgment 40

Hobbes, T. 11, 82, 98, 110, 117 Kant, I. 85

absolutism of 119 Kaufman, D. 112
on afterlife 6–7, 8–9, 10, 83, 118, 125 Kingsley, C. 80
on God 6 knowledge
on hell 5–6, 118, 119 definition of 127
on immaterial substances 5, 95, 119 demonstrative 10
mortalism of 116, 118 distinguished from faith 126–7
on natural law 130 intuitive 128
reductionist materialism of 5–6, 9, limits of 43, 67
83, 119 sensitive 128
on sovereign 119–20, 130
Hume, D. 85 Lateran Councils
Hume’s fork 20 Fifth 4n, 19
Hyperaspistes 17, 24 Fourth 1n
Latitudinarians 111
ideas Leibniz, G. W. 19–20, 44, 59, 62, 67, 107,
abstract 25, 42–3, 45, 51, 97 113n, 131
adequate 58 and ‘image of God’ doctrine 96, 98
clear and distinct 52, 75 on mind as immaterial substance 2
formal reality of 89–90 on proof of God’s existence 86
general 25, 42 on substance 55, 57
inadequate 58, 97, 131 and theory of gravitation 81
innate 22, 43, 51–2, 97 on unconscious perceptions 26–7
objective reality of 89–90
obscure 53, 55 Mackie, J. L. 13, 102–3
identity Malebranche, N. 33n, 44
of body 107, 115 materialism 2, 21, 32, 44, 51, 55n, 59, 60,
of human being 112–14 61, 84, 99, 128, 131
personal 12, 13, 21, 94, 99–109, 112 reductionist 5–6, 9–10, 83, 119
relativity of 21 weak form of 7, 8, 9, 27, 34, 67, 74, 84
of substance 107–9, 130 see also thinking-matter hypothesis
 INDEX 

memory 12, 24, 104 Reid, T. 101n

causal analysis of 13, 102–3 Renaissance humanism 118
corporeal 20 Resurrection 100, 103, 104, 107–8, 110,
experiential 103 111, 114, 115, 116, 123; see also Day
false 102 of Judgment
intellectual 20, 23 retention 41
Mental Transparency Principle 17, 27, Royal Society 14
33, 38–41, 44 Rozemond, M. 76–7
Mersenne, M. 5, 69 Ryle, G. 15
Mesland, P. 69
modes 26, 68, 69, 72, 73, 80, 109 sameness, see identity
Molyneux, W. 91, 105 Scholastics 5, 27, 86
Molyneux problem 39 scientia 43
More, H. 36, 37 sensation 35, 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 63, 69
mortalism 12, 31–2, 116, 118, 120, 122 sense-perception 35, 43, 44
and psychopannychism 32n Socinians 117
motion 41, 54, 56, 63, 74, 77, 78, Socrates 108
89, 90 Soles, D. 30
mysterianism 131 Spinoza, B. 9, 81
monism of 60
natural law panpsychism of 87n
and demonstrative science of Stillingfleet, E. 1, 3, 8, 13, 47, 48, 49, 51,
morality 129 55, 63, 64, 70, 80, 82, 94, 95, 110,
and nature of law 129–30 123, 128, 129, 131
Neoplatonism 96 and resurrection of same body 99,
Newton, Sir I. 11, 54, 80–2 111–15
Norris, J. 33n on substratum 57
and thinking-matter hypothesis 44–5,
occasionalism 96 62, 67, 77
Ockham’s razor, see Parsimony, substance
Principle of definition of 19
original sin 11, 117, 120–2, 123 extended 18, 52
idea of 7, 13, 53, 55
pain 17, 29, 30, 31, 73–4 immaterial 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 26, 62, 63,
panpsychism 81, 87 65, 118
Parsimony, Principle of 37 spiritual 62–3
Paul, St 2, 12, 110, 113, 123, 124 as substratum 18, 51, 53, 56, 57,
perception 25, 29–30, 38–40 59, 60
unconscious 26–7 thinking 19, 28, 52, 62, 75
Plato 2, 23n, 28 as ultimate subject of predication 18
pleasure 17, 29, 30, 31, 73–4 substantial form 5
Pollux 20–1, 31 substratum, see substance
power 89, 90 Sufficient Reason, Principle of 88
pure intellect 35, 36, 44 superaddition 47, 48, 67, 72, 82, 92
and ‘fit disposition’ constraint 75–80
qualities 25, 58 two levels of 74
primary 78
secondary 69, 74, 80 Thiel, U. 121–2
thinking-matter hypothesis 9, 10, 13, 16,
rationalism 84, 85, 92–3 34, 37, 62, 67, 68, 70, 75–80, 81, 82,
reflection 64, 65 84, 87, 95, 98, 127
 INDEX

thinking-matter hypothesis (cont.) Trinity 117

and animals 44–7 Tyrrell, J. 130n
and God as immaterial being 90–1
and immortality 47, 48 Williams, B. 35, 68
and proof of God’s existence 94, 96 Wilson, M. D. 19, 67, 73–4, 94
see also materialism
Tillotson, J. 125n. Yaffe, G. 76–7