Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/87

 over-run with it, as to need a cure: it is where I speak of certainty, in these following words, taken notice of by your lordship, in another place: 'I think I have shown wherein it is that certainty, real certainty, consists; which, whatever it was to others, was, I confess, to me, heretofore, one of those desiderata which I found great want of.'

Here, my lord, however new this seemed to me, (and the more so because possibly I had in vain hunted for it in the books of others) yet I spoke of it as new, only to myself; leaving others in the undisturbed possession of what either by invention, or reading, was theirs before, without assuming to myself any other honour, but that of my own ignorance, till that time, if others before had shown wherein certainty lay. And yet, my lord, if I had, upon this occasion, been forward to assume to myself the honour of an original, I think I had been pretty safe in it; since I should have had your lordship for my guarantee and vindicator in that point, who are pleased to call it new, and, as such, to write against it.

And truly, my lord, in this respect, my book has had very unlucky stars, since it hath had the misfortune to displease your lordship, with many things in it, for their novelty; as new way of reasoning, new hypothesis about reason, new sort of certainty, new terms, new way of ideas, new method of certainty, &c. And yet, in other places, your lordship seems to think it worthy in me of your lordship's reflection, for saying but what others have said before: as where I say, 'In the different make of men's tempers, and application of their thoughts, some arguments prevail more on one, and some on another, for the confirmation of the same truth.' Your lordship asks. What is this different from what all men of understanding have said? Again, I take it, your lordship meant not these words for a commendation of my book, where you say, But if no more be meant by 'The simple ideas that come in by sensation, or reflection, and their being the foundation of our knowledge,' but that our notions of things come in, either from our senses or the exercise of our minds; as there is nothing extraordinary in the discovery, so your lordship is far enough from opposing that, wherein you think all mankind are agreed.

And again, But what need all this great noise about ideas and certainty, true and real certainty by ideas, if after all, it comes only to this, that our ideas only represent to us such things, from whence we bring arguments to prove the truth of things?

But the world hath been strangely amused with ideas of late; and we have been told, that strange things might be done by the help of ideas; and yet these ideas, at last, come to be, only common notions of things, which we must make use of in our reasoning. And to the like purpose in other places.

Whether, therefore, at last, your lordship will resolve that it is new or no, or more faulty by its being new, must be left to your lordship. This I find by it, that my book cannot avoid being condemned on the one side or the other, nor do I see a possibility to help it. If there be readers that like only new thoughts; or, on the other side, others that can bear nothing but what can be justified by received authorities in print—I must desire them to make themselves amends in that part which they like, for the displeasure they receive in the other; but if any should be so exact, as to find fault with both, truly I know not well what to say to them. The case is a plain case, the book is all over naught, and there is not a sentence in it, that is not, either for its antiquity or novelty, to be condemned; and so there is a short end of it. From your lordship, indeed, in particular, I can hope for something better; for your lordship thinks the general design of if so good, that that, I flatter myself, would prevail on your lordship to preserve it from the fire.