ABSTRACT
The discussion of general ideas or universals (for Locke the terms are synonymous) is, perhaps, the most living part of the Essay. On studying the Draft one is surprised to find how much of the Essay had already been thought out in 1671, nineteen years before publication. Nevertheless it is defective and crude in its treatment of many points worked out more elaborately in the Essay. Everything which Locke says about universals might be taken as an attempted interpretation of a phrase of Descartes’, which may indeed have influenced Locke directly. Husserl criticizes Locke chiefly for failing to distinguish between the universal in this third sense and the universal in the first two as a particular idea in the mind. And superficially this criticism is justified. When Locke comes to write Book IV of the Essay his mind is full of the new kind of knowing exemplified in mathematics.
