The Status of Mechanism in Locke's Essay

Abstract

The prominent place of corpuscularian mechanism in Locke's Essay is nowadays universally acknowledged.' Certainly, Locke's discussions of the primary/secondary quality distinction and of real essences cannot be understood without reference to the corpuscuLarian science of his day, which held that all macroscopic bodily phenomena should be explained in terms of the motions and impacts of submicroscopic particles, or corpuscles, each of which can be fully characterized in terms of a strictly limited range of (primary) properties: size, shape, motion (or mobility), and, perhaps, solidity or impenetrability. Indeed, Locke's lists of primary quali-

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