Locke

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EDITED BY

WILLIAM KNIGHT, LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS

LOCKE

CONTENTS OF THE SERIES.

1. DESCARTES,

2. BUTLER, .

3. BERKELEY,

4. FICHTE, .

5. KANT,

6. HAMILTON,

7. HEGEL, .

8. LEIBNIZ, .

9. VICO,

10. HOBBES, .

11. HUME,

12. SPINOZA, .

13. BACON. Part I.,

14. BACON. Part H.,

15. LOCKE, .

By Professor Mahaffy, Dublin.
By the Rev. W. Lucas Collins, M.A.
By Professor Campbell Fraser.
By Professor Adamson, Glasgow.
By Professor Wallace, Oxford.
By Professor Veitch.
. By the Master of Balliol.
By John Theodore Merz.
By Professor Flint, Edinburgh.
By Professor Croom Robertson.
By Professor Knight, St Andrews.
. By Principal Caird, Glasgow,
. . By Professor Nichol.
By Professor Nichol.
By Professor Campbell Fraser.

4s3£f2f

LOCKE

BY

ALEXANDER CAMPBELL FRASER

HON. D.C.L. OXFORD

PROFESSOR (EMERITUS) OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS,
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

CHEAP EDITION

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON

SAMMELS & TAYLOR

259 Oxford Street, London, W.

(And at 7 New Bkoad Street and 130 Fleet Street)

MCm'i

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BY PKOEESSOK CAMPBELL -EMBER.
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LOCKE'S ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN
UNDERSTANDING. Annotated ; with Prolegomena,
biographical, critical, and historical. Two vols. 8vo.
Clarendon Press. £1, 12s.

"We have at last an edition of Locke's famous Essay, of which
neither the philosophy nor the literature of England need be ashamed.
The Clarendon Press has here anew vindicated its right to be considered
among the most educative institutions of Oxford. The Prolegomena
are full of knowledge and insight, careful analysis and generous inter-
pretation, with consciousness of Locke's faults and appreciation of his
rare excellences." — Speaker.

"This will no doubt remain the standard edition of Locke's famous
Essay. " — Scotsman.

"An edition of the great philosophical classic of which the English-
speaking world may well be proud." — American Philosophical Review.

PHILOSOPHY OF THEISM. Gifford Lectures de-
livered before the University of Edinburgh in 1894-96.
A New Edition. One vol. Blackwood. 6s. 6d.

' i The University of Edinburgh was well advised in appointing to its
Gifford Lectureship the editor of ' Berkeley' and 'Locke.' These lec-
tures, as a continuous piece of reasoning, form a notable contribution
to philosophical and religious thought." — Quarterly Review.

" These lectures form unquestionably one of the finest products of
the Gifford Trust." — Athenceum.

"These lectures present a very striking exposition of the basis of
natural theology in the widest sense of the term." — Times.

"A wonderful feat on the part of one who just entered the Univer-
sity as a student sixty-two years ago." — Academy.

"A work which must take a high place in the apologetical literature
of the century. No more impressive apologia for religion has appeared
in our time. " — Guardian.

PREFACE.

Two hundred years have elapsed, in this March of 1890,
since the first publication of Locke's 'Essay concern-
ing Human Understanding.' The philosophy of the
intervening period has probably been more affected by
its direct or indirect influence than by any other similar
cause, and indeed the effect seems in excess of the
author's speculative depth and subtlety and comprehen-
sive insight. Perhaps no philosopher since Aristotle
has represented the spirit and opinions of an age so
completely as Locke represents philosophy and all that
depends upon philosophic thought, in the century which
followed his death — especially in Britain and France.
Reaction against his real or supposed opinions, and
therefore indirectly due to his influence, is not less
marked in the later intellectual history of Europe,
wherever the influence of Kant and of Hegel has
extended ; in Britain the reaction is marked in Cole-
ridge.

The bicentenary of this epoch-making book may be
taken as a convenient occasion for a condensed Study of

vi Preface.

Locke — biographical, expository, and critical — and of
his historical relations. In these two centuries the
1 Essay ' has been subjected to the most opposite inter-
pretations at the hands of its numerous critics, from
Stillingrleet, Lee, Leibniz, and others who were Locke's
contemporaries, to Cousin, Webb, and Green. Its intel-
lectual flexibility, in admitting opposite interpretations,
is due partly to imperfection in its intellectual scheme
and manner of expression ; but this nevertheless may
be one cause of its influence in the development of
philosophy.

What strikes one about Locke and his fortunes, be-
sides the large place which his 'Essay' fills in the history
of modern opinion — religious and political as well as
metaphysical — is the difficulty of interpreting his philo-
sophy without reading into it the history of the man and
his surroundings, and also the abundance of imperfectly
used materials for this purpose which exist.

There is no adequate edition of his Collected Works,1
in which the parts are compared with one another, with
the purpose which pervades the whole, and with his ex-
tensive published and unpublished correspondence and
other literary remains.

As regards his Life, the " Eloge Historique de feu
M. Locke " by Le Clerc, which appeared in the ' Biblio-
theque Choisie,' in 1705, about a year after Locke's
death, has been the foundation of subsequent memoirs.
Le Clerc found his materials in his own and Limborch's
personal intercourse writh Locke in Holland, and their
correspondence with him afterwards ; in a letter by the
third Lord Shaftesbury ; and in an interesting letter by

1 Bishop Law's edition, 4 vols. (1777), is the best.

Preface. vii

Lady Masham, lately recovered by Mr Fox-Bourne. A
letter published about the same time by M. Pierre Coste,
Locke's amanuensis, gave a few additional details. For
a century and a quarter after the death of Locke the
meagre biographical sketches which appeared were drawn
from these sources.

In 1830, Lord King, the lineal descendant of Locke's
cousin and executor, Lord Chancellor King, wrote a
1 Life ' which contains a portion of the abundant corres-
pondence, journals, commonplace-books, and other manu-
scripts that he inherited, — now at Horseley Park, in
possession of the present Earl of Lovelace. In 1876,
Mr Fox-Bourne produced two large volumes which add
many facts previously unknown, collected with much
care and industry. To his extensive and painstaking
researches all who are interested in Locke owe a debt of
gratitude.

Much correspondence and other matter in manuscript
remains still unused. The interesting collection which
belongs to Lord Lovelace, and which by his kindness I
was some years ago allowed to see, is a mine only par-
tially worked. There is also a large collection of letters
to and from Locke, from 1673 till his death, in posses-
sion of Mr Sanford of Nynehead, near Taunton, the
representative of Locke's friend, Edward Clarke of
Chipley in Somerset, which, through Mr Sanford's
kindness, I was allowed to examine. The Locke relics,
kept till lately at Holme Park, I have likewise seen.
In this volume I have availed myself of these fresh
resources, as far as narrow space has permitted.

Perhaps the attempt made in this volume to show
Locke's characteristic office in the succession of modern

viii f Preface.

philosophers, to keep steadily in view the main purpose
of his life as a key to the interpretation of his { Essay,'
and to place the 'Essay' in a new light, may not be
without use, as an introduction not only to Locke, but
through him to the intellectual philosophy of Europe
since 1690 — the memorable Era which the 'Essay'
inaugurated.

Gorton, Hawthornden,
March 1890.

Since this little book was issued in 1890, I have
published, through the Clarendon Press, an annotated
edition of Locke's ' Essay Concerning Human Under-
standing,' including Prolegomena, biographical, historical,
and critical, in two volumes, to which the reader is
referred for further analysis and criticism of Locke's
great work.

Gorton, Hawthornden,
August 1901.

#

N

\1

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CONTENTS.

PAGE

PREFACE, ....... V

FIRST PART.

EARLY AND MIDDLE LIFE: PREPARATION FOR
PHILOSOPHICAL AUTHORSHIP (1632-89).

CHAP.

I. YOUTH IN THE PURITAN REVOLUTION (1632-60), . . 1

II. MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS AND SOCIAL POLITY. A CAREER

(1660-70), 14

III. A NEW PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM PROPOSED (1670-71), . 31

IV. SHAFTESBURY AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS. RETIREMENT AND

STUDY IN FRANCE (1671-79), . . . .42

V. ENGLISH POLITICS AND POLITICAL EXILE IN HOLLAND

(1679-89), 57

SECOND PART.

THE PHILOSOPHY: EXPOSITION AND CRITICISM

(1689-91).

I. LONDON : AUTHORSHIP, . . . . .79

#

c Contents.

II. THE 'EPISTOLA DE TOLERANTIA ' AND THE 'TWO TREAT-
ISES ON GOVERNMENT ' : RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL LIBERTY, 88

III. THE PHILOSOPHY IN THE ' ESSAY ' : INNATE KNOWLEDGE,
EXPERIENCE, AND THE 'VIA MEDIA,' . . . 104

IV. LOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL : ANALYSIS OF OUR IDEAS,

ESPECIALLY OUR METAPHYSICAL IDEAS, . .122

V. METAPHYSICAL : THE THREE ONTOLOGICAL CERTAINTIES, . 160

VI. OF PROBABILITIES : PHILOSOPHY OF PHYSICAL INDUCTION, 192

THIRD PAET.

ADVANCED LIFE: CONTROVERSY AND
CHRISTIANITY (1691-1704).

I. A RURAL HOME IN ESSEX, .... 213

II. CRITICISM, CONTROVERSY, AND CORRESPONDENCE, . 227

III. 'REASONABLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY' AND ECCLESIASTICAL

COMPREHENSION, ..... 252

IV. THE CLOSE, ...... 264

V. PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES IN THE LAST TWO CENTURIES, . 276

appendix — locke's works in chronological order of

publication, ...... 297

<[

ERRATA.

Page 33, line 4 — " resumed " for " returned."
„ 112, „ 23 — delete the quotation marks.
„ 113, „ 10 — " epistemology " for " epistomology."
„ 117, „ 17— "argumentative "for "augmentative."
„ 123, „ 19— " without judgments " for "with judg-

njents."
„ 157, „ 8 — delete commas before and after a prioi-i.
„ 296, „ 16 — " overbear " for " overhear."

LOCKE

FIKST PAET.

EARLY AND MIDDLE LIFE: A PREPARATION FOR

PHILOSOPHICAL AUTHORSHIP

(1632-89).

CHAPTEE I.

YOUTH IN THE PURITAN REVOLUTION (1632-60).

Near the little market town of Pensford, six miles
south-east from Bristol, and ten west from Bath, on
the side of one of the orchard-clad hills of Somerset
which enclose the fertile vale of the Chew, the modest
mansion of Beluton may still be seen. Early in the
seventeenth century it was the home of the author of
the ' Essay on Human Understanding/ in his boyhood.
The Beluton Lockes had migrated into Somerset from
Dorsetshire. In Elizabeth's reign, a certain Nicholas
Locke, the descendant of a middle-class family of the

P. XV. A

2 Locke.

name, who owned Canon's Court in that county, came to
live in Somerset. He settled as a prosperous clothier,
first at Pensford, and afterwards at Sutton Wick in
the neighbouring parish of Chew Magna, where he
died in 1648.1 The house and the little property of
Beluton, purchased by his industry, was before 1630
occupied by his eldest son John; who in that year
married Anne Keene (or Ken), the daughter of a sub-
stantial tradesman in the neighbouring parish of Wring-
ton. John Locke, the philosopher, was the eldest son
of this marriage. It was at Wrington, not at Beluton,
that he was born, in the same beautiful county of Somer-
set, under the shadow of the Mendip Hills. In the
register of that parish the following entry appears among
the births: "1632, August 29 — John, the son of John
Lock." A few yards from the parish church, against the
churchyard wall, still stands the two-storeyed thatched
cottage in which he first saw light. It was then the
home of his uncle, Anne Keene's brother, and she, it
appears, was in that August on a visit at Wrington.

When the future philosopher of England awoke into
life in August 1632, in that humble Somerset cottage,
Charles I. had passed through seven years of his
troubled reign. The great antagonistic forces, whose
antagonism in due time caused the temporary over-
throw of the social order in England, followed by the
" faithless cynicism " of the Eestoration period, and end-
ing in the compromise of 1689, were then beginning to
show their strength. The birth at Wrington was the
beginning of a life that was to be passed amidst that

1 In the seventeenth century younger members of families of good
birth not seldom went into trade.

England in 1632. 3

long and memorable struggle, in the course of which
England exchanged monarchical or personal for the par-
liamentary government which has since developed into
a democracy. The normal functions of the constitution
were in a state of suspense at the time of Locke's birth ;
for the last of Charles's three short Parliaments had been
dissolved in 1.629, and the next was the Long Parliament,
summoned eleven years after. The Church, too, was be-
coming an influential factor in the incipient commotion.
Laud, in 1632 Bishop of London, and Archbishop of
Canterbury in the year after, in uncompromising temper,
was resisting the Puritans on behalf of that sacerdotal
ideal of the great Anglican communion, as a reformed
branch of the one visible and historical Church, which,
in the more tolerant and humane spirit of the nineteenth
century, is again a conspicuous influence in English life.
Faith in the divine right of the king, and faith in the
divine authority of the one Catholic Church, — each
in collision with faith in the supreme right (divine or
other) of the people, — were forces destined to convulse
the England through which the child born at Wrington
in August 1632 had to make his way as an actor and
thinker. The seventy-two years of his life were to cor-
respond with that crisis of dramatic interest in the affairs
of Church and State which occupied the interval between
the First Charles and Anne, between Strafford and Marl-
borough, between Laud and Burnet. In its course the
State was violently convulsed, insufficiently restored,
again disturbed, and finally settled ; while the Church,
alternately persecuted and dominant, was, towards the
end, the subject of ineffectual endeavours after a compre-
hension which should reconcile within its ample pale

4 Locke.

the whole English people on the basis of a reasonable
Christianity.

The year 1632 was, throughout "Western Europe as
well as in England, a stage in that memorable transition
from authoritative belief to free inquiry, which was
going on in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Bacon died six years, and Shakespeare sixteen years
before the August in which Locke was born, and
Richard Hooker had been a contemporary of Bacon and
Shakespeare. There was still in England the spiritual
freshness of the great Elizabethan age, with its re-
mainder, too, of medieval philosophy and theology,
and its metaphysical poetry. Lord Herbert's ' De
Veritate,' in which long afterwards Locke was to find a
representation of the dogmatism assailed by him under
the name of "innate" knowledge, had appeared in
1625. In 1632, Descartes was pondering in Holland
the thoughts which afterwards, during Locke's boyhood
and youth, he was giving to the world. Hobbes, then
approaching fifty, was unknown as an author till about
the time when Locke was going to school. Of those,
moreover, who were to influence thought in Locke's
own lifetime and after, two entered life in the same
year that he did, — Richard Cumberland, one of the
least recognised of the really significant English moral-
ists of the seventeenth century ; and Spinoza, whose
thoughts, overlooked or misunderstood by his contem-
poraries, more apt to be assimilated now, thus belongs
rather to the nineteenth than to either of the two pre-
ceding centuries.

JSTot much that explains his own individuality can
be traced back to Locke's Puritan ancestors, of whom

The Family at Edition. 5

personally almost nothing is known. Of his mother,
Anne Keene, we have only this dim glimpse in Lady
Masham's memoranda : " What I remember Mr Locke
to have said of his mother, expressed her to be a very
pious woman and affectionate mother." It seems that
she died when her son was still a boy. The father,
who was a country attorney, survived her, and died in
1661, — by precept and example a considerable influence
in the formation of his son's character. " From Mr
Locke," Lady Masham says, " I have often heard of
his father that he was a man of parts. Mr Locke
never mentioned him but with great respect and affec-
tion. His father used a conduct towards him when
young that he often spoke of afterwards with great ap-
probation. It was the being severe to him, by keeping
him in. much awe and at a distance when he was a boy,
but relaxing still by degrees of that severity as he grew
up to be a man, till, he being become capable of it, he
lived perfectly with him as a friend." Both parents
seem to have inherited the severe piety, prudent, self-
reliant industry, and love of liberty that were common
in English Puritan families of the middle class in the
seventeenth century. The family at Beluton was small.
Thomas, the only other child of the elder Locke and
Anne Keene, was born there in August 1637, bred
in his father's profession, married, and died of con-
sumption childless in early life. The father and the
two sons formed the family when Locke was a boy.

The first fourteen years of the elder son's life were
years of home training in this rural Puritan household,
where the boy, according to his own report to Le Clerc,
was carefully schooled by the father. In peaceful times

6 Locke.

he might have been sent in due season to the neighbour-
ing grammar-school at Bristol. Perhaps the disturbed
state of Bristol at that time — first violently seized and
ruled by Cavaliers, then violently wrested from them
by Parliamentarians — may have confined young Locke
so long within the family life at Beluton, and limited
his social experiences in his first fourteen years to his
Somerset relatives and neighbours, in the country parishes
of Pensford, Publow, Sutton Wick, and Wrington.

Even home training must have been in many ways
interrupted in these troubled years, especially in this
little household. In August 1642, when the boy was
just ten years old, the Civil War broke out. The
elder Locke, then clerk to a neighbour justice of peace,
Francis Baker of Chew Magna, joined the army of the
Parliament, and was advanced by his neighbour, Colonel
Alexander Popham of Houdstreet, near Pensford, to be
a captain in the service, after he had publicly announced
in the parish church of Publow his assent to the protest
of the Long Parliament. The Pophams were among
the few Somerset gentry who took sides against the king.
After the first crisis of the war Colonel Popham repre-
sented Bath, and was well known among the political
leaders of the West.

Thus, from his tenth till his fourteenth year, we may
picture the youth living in the midst of the exciting
drama in which his father was for a time an actor.
The Star-Chamber prosecutions, the Scottish war and
the Covenant of 1638, the opening of the Long Parlia-
ment in 1640, Edgehill, the surrender of Bristol to
Kupert, the trial and execution of Laud, Marston Moor,
and the final defeat at Naseby, were all within the

At Westminster Sehool. 7

troubled years ; while Bristol, six miles away, was one
of the headquarters of the war. We may conjecture, for
we have no recorded facts, how the boy's mind opened
at Beluton, in his father's frequent absences, amidst such
surroundings. The elder Locke suffered so considerably
in the Civil Wars that he left a smaller estate to his
family than he had inherited, and he seems somehow
to have returned to home life after less than two years
of service.

Other than home training at Beluton followed at the
end of four years of civil war. Through the influence
of Colonel Popham, young Locke was in 1646 admitted
to Westminster School, where he was kept during the
next six years. The School, then under Puritan con-
trol, was at the headquarters of the Bevolution. The
political movement does not seem to have relaxed its
traditional scholastic discipline, under the stern Dr Busby,
its master at the time and long after. Locke's condemna-
tion in later life of the verbal learning that was forced
upon him at school, reveals his matured judgment of
these Westminster experiences. But the influences at
work during the years spent there, cannot have been
wholly of the verbal pedagogic sort. There was some-
thing that he could not fail to derive from companion-
ships ; perhaps still more from awe - inspiring public
events. John Dryden and Eobert South were both then
at Westminster, but there is no sign of intimacy with
them. William Godolphin (brother of Sydney), Thomas
Blower (who became incumbent of a rural parish), Need-
ham and Mapletoft (afterwards physicians), were his inti-
mates, but none of them reached fame in later life. Then,
during these Westminster years, the Assembly of Puritan

8 Locke.

divines was debating knotty questions in Calvinistic
theology a few yards from the school in which Locke
was learning Latin. A part of the boy's Westminster
experience, too, may have been as an eyewitness of the
tragedy on the memorable morning, in January 1649,
when Charles and Bishop Juxon walked together from
the palace of St James's to the palace of Whitehall, and
when, an hour after, in front of the banquet-room win-
dow, the streets and roof thronged with spectators, the
king's head was held up by the executioner, amidst the
groan of horror from the assembled crowd.

Less than four years after this tragedy, we find Locke
in Oxford. At Whitsuntide 1652 he was elected to
a Junior Studentship in Christ Church, and he matric-
ulated in the following November. He is designated
" generosus " in the register of Christ Church. There-
after, for thirty years, Oxford was more or less his home.

When he entered Christ Church he found himself
under the well-known John Owen, the newly appointed
Puritan Dean, who was also Vice-Chancellor of the
University. Cromwell himself had the year before suc-
ceeded the Earl of Pembroke as Chancellor. Oxford
had ceased during the Civil War to be the august centre
of learning and spiritual influence in England. At first
it had been the headquarters of the Cavalier army ; and
when it surrendered to the Parliament in 1646, "there
was scarce the face of an university left," all things
being so out of order and disturbed. Throughout
Locke's undergraduate life the Independents were domi-
nant there. In the persons of Owen and Goodwin,
unlike the Presbyterians, they were advocates of tolera-
tion, and among the first in England to recognise the

At Oxford during the Commonwealth. 9

right of the individual to the free expression of his
religious beliefs.

Faint light falls here and there upon Locke's undergra-
duate life in the city of colleges on the Isis, in the years
when Cromwell was ruling England. There are no signs
in his temperament or otherwise that either its external
beauty or its historic glory touched his unimaginative
mind. According to Anthony Wood, he was consigned
to the care of " a fanatical tutor," a certain Thomas Cole,
a pervert to Independency, who rose to be Principal of
St Mary Hall. The Puritan revolution had not in
Oxford more than in Westminster displaced the " verbal
exercises," inherited from the past, which in the lapse
of time had degenerated, according to an adversary of the
scholastic discipline, into "childish sophistry." The re-
action against this sophistry, which his whole life after-
wards expressed, showed itself thus early in a strong dis-
position to rebel, in the interest of utilitarianism, against
tradition and empty verbal disputes. According to his
college friend James Tyrrell, he spent no more time
than he could help at " the disputations " ; for he never
loved them, but was always wont to declaim against
the practice, as one invented for "wrangling and osten-
tation rather than to discover truth." "I have often
heard him say .J' Lady Masham records, " that he had so
small satisfaction from his Oxford studies, — as finding
very little light brought thereby to his understanding, —
that he became discontented with his manner of life,
and wished that his father had rather designed him for
anything else than what he was there destined to." " I
myself," says Le Clerc, "heard him complain of his early
studies ; and when I told him that I had a tutor who

10 Locke.

was a disciple of Descartes, and was a man of very clear
intelligence, lie said that he had not that good fortune
(though it is well known he was not a Cartesian) ; and
that he lost a great deal of time at the commencement
of his studies, because the philosophy then known at
Oxford was the Peripatetic, perplexed with obscure terms
and useless questions." In Spence's 'Anecdotes,' it is
told that he " spent a good part of his first year at the
university in reading romances, from his aversion to the
disputations then in fashion." This "discouragement,"
Lady Masham adds, "kept him from being any very
hard student at the university, and put him upon
seeking the company of pleasant and witty men, with
whom he took great delight in corresponding by letters ;
— and in conversation and these correspondences, accord-
ing to his own account of himself, he spent for some
years much of his time."

It is perhaps not without meaning that the Oxford
tutor whom Locke singled out for special regard, and
with whom he afterwards lived in friendship, was
Edward Pococke, professor of Hebrew and Arabic, the
most prominent and outspoken Royalist in the univer-
sity. This suggests a mitigation already of his inherited
Puritanism, aided as such influence was by his often
expressed revulsion from the intolerance of Presby-
terians, and an unreasoning enthusiasm among the In-
dependents, in the stormy time through which he had
been living. The comprehensive spirit of the philo-
sophical divines of the Church of England of the
Cambridge school, probably conspired with these early
influences when he was ripening into manhood. His
Oxford friendships were at least as much amongst

John Owen and Toleration. 11

Eoyalists and Churchmen as among Bepublicans and
partisans of the sects. But, as at Westminster, none
of his Oxford intimates ever reached a foremost place
in learning or in public life. The friendship and corre-
spondence of at least three of them followed him in
after-years. One was Nathaniel Hodges, in due season
a prebend of Norwich ; another was David Thomas,
later on a physician, first at Oxford and then at Salis-
bury ; the third was James Tyrrell, son of Sir Thomas
Tyrrell of Shotover, near Oxford, who became a barrister
of some repute, as well as author of a '. History of Eng-
land/ and of a ' Treatise in Public Law,' and who in old
age expounded the ethics and political philosophy of
Richard Cumberland.

Another Oxford influence must not be forgotten. Dr
John Owen, the head of Christ Church, was at one with
Milton and Jeremy Taylor in proclaiming and defending
the then unrecognised religious duty of toleration. In
1649 Owen had abandoned his youthful Presbyterianism
for Independency ; and though freed from the danger of
persecution, with his sect now in the ascendant, he was
an exception to his own experience, of having failed to
find any one earnestly contending for a toleration of
Dissenters who was not himself at the time outside the
establishment. To Owen's sermon on the death of the
First Charles, to whom he certainly showed no tolera-
tion, there is appended a defence in which he argues
that the magistrate has no right to interfere with the
profession of any religion which does not expressly re-
quire its follower to disturb the social order. Of his
own tolerant practice as Yice-Chancellor there is abun-
dant evidence. The precept and example of Owen may

12 Locke.

have had its influence on Locke, in inspiring his steady
support through life, by argument and example, of the
principle of a free toleration of discordant religious be-
liefs within the same State, as an indispensable condition
of the happiness of its members, of its own prosperity,
and of the advance of truth in the world.

The " new philosophy " of free inquiry determined
by experience, was then finding its way into Oxford
through books, if not through college lectures. Descartes,
Locke's great philosophical predecessor, died just before
Locke left Westminster, — the 'Method,' ' Meditations,'
and 'Principia' having issued from Holland when he
was a boy at Beluton; and Leibniz, his great philoso-
phical contemporary and rival, was born in the year in
which he went to Westminster. Hobbes had produced
his 'Treatise on Human Nature' in 1642, and his
'Leviathan ; in 1651. These books were followed a few
years later by Gassendi's exposition and defence of the
system of Epicurus. Cartesianism never took root in
Oxford, which remained faithful to the Aristotelianism
of the schools, till this was partly supplanted long after
by Locke's own writings ; Cambridge alone encouraged
the new French philosophy. But the books of Descartes
and Hobbes, as well as Bacon's ' Advancement of Learn-
ing' and 'Novum Organum,' were directly or indirectly
affecting leading minds in England ; and Locke after-
wards acknowledged the influence of Descartes upon
himself. " The first books which gave him a relish for
philosophical things, as he has often told me," says Lady
Masham, " were those of Descartes. He was rejoiced in
reading these; for though he very often differed in opinion
from this writer, yet he found what he said was very

The Nav Philosophy. 13

intelligible, — from which he was encouraged to think
that his not having understood others had possibly not
proceeded from a defect in his own understanding."
This attraction of Locke to the lucidity of Descartes
is characteristic of his disposition to revolt against
empty verbalism and mystical enthusiasm. The English-
man found the mind of the Frenchman like a revelation
from heaven, and an inspiration of intellectual liberty ;
— though he afterwards used the freedom in which
Descartes had encouraged him by controverting many
principles of Cartesian philosophy.

On the whole, we find that at the Restoration in
1660 the inherited Puritanism of the young student of
Christ Church was in process of disintegration, under
these manifold influences ; his spirit was in revolt from
the intolerance or the enthusiasm of the sects, and boldly
in sympathy with the sober reasonableness which was
the genuine outcome of masculine common-sense, wher-
ever it could be found. This, we may infer, was partly
the effect on a mind like his of the strange Oxford of
the Commonwealth, and of Westminster during the
" Great Rebellion." But after all, our direct and in-
direct means of knowing what Locke was and did, as
well as his personal surroundings during these twenty-
eight years of opening life, present only a faint and
almost invisible picture.

14

CHAPTER II.

MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS, AND PROBLEMS IN SOCIAL
POLITY A CAREER (1660-70).

In one of Locke's commonplace-books, towards the end
of 1660, he thus characteristically welcomes the Restora-
tion, and treats with sarcasm the " liberalism " of the
sects : —

u I no sooner perceived myself in the world but I found
myself in a storm, which has lasted almost hitherto ; and
therefore cannot but entertain the approaches of a calm
with the greatest joy and satisfaction. This, methinks,
obliges me, both in duty and gratitude, to endeavour the
continuance of such a blessing by disposing men's minds
to obedience to that government which had brought with
it the quiet settlement which even our giddy folly had
put beyond the reach not only of our contrivance, but
hopes ; and I would men would be persuaded to be so
kind to their religion, their country, and themselves, as
not to hazard again the substantial blessings of peace and
settlement in an over -zealous contention about things
which they themselves confess to be little, and at most are
but indifferent.

" I find that a general freedom is but a general bondage ;
that the popular asserters of public liberty are the greatest

A JSenior Student at Christ Church. 15

engrossers of it too, and not unjustly called its keepers.
I have not the same idea of liberty that some have, but can
think the benefit of it to consist in a liberty for men at
pleasure to adopt themselves children of God, and from
thence proclaim themselves heirs of this world ; not a
liberty for ambitious men to pull down well-framed con-
stitutions, that out of the ruins they may build themselves
fortunes — not a liberty to be Christians so as not to be
subjects."

It is characteristic of Locke that he should prefer
liberty of individual thought to collective liberty of a
multitude or of a sect. For the collective power was
made then, as often before and since, an instrument to
crush the intellectual freedom of the individual.

He continued to live at Oxford, now restored to its
Eoyalist traditions, and with the Church once more
dominant. His academical and social position there
soon after the Restoration stands out pretty clearly.
He had taken his master's degree two years before
the return of the king. His tenure of the Junior
Studentship, which carried him from Westminster to
Christ Church, had ended in 1659; but his election
that year to a Senior Studentship, tenable for life,
fixed his connection with Oxford. Soon after he was
appointed lecturer in Greek and in rhetoric, and he
also held the censorship of moral philosophy for three
years after 1661 — offices usually assigned to those in
holy orders. About this time, too, the little Somerset
property became his by inheritance ; for his father
died in February 1661, leaving to him the house at
Beluton, with the small domain around it (still called
" Locke's mead "), while the rest of his property went
to the other son Thomas. The death of Thomas soon

1 6 Locke.

after may have increased the share of the elder brother,
so that a few years after his father's death Locke appears
to have owned houses and land in and near Pensford, at
an annual rent of nearly £80 ; corresponding to about
£200 a-year now. Although I find no express record of
visits to Beluton from the time he went to Westminster
in 1646 till his father's death in 1661, his allusions to
intercourse with his father, and other circumstances,
imply that he was sometimes there, with less frequent
visits perhaps after Beluton became his own. But he
never forgot his native Somerset ; some of its friendships,
as we shall see, lasted through life.

The modest income afforded by the Senior Student-
ship, with other emoluments at Christ Church, supple-
mented by the rents from Somerset, hardly formed a
sufficient provision for the future, and Locke began about
this time to look to some professional career. There is
a surmise that he contemplated ecclesiastical life in the
Anglican Church. His religious as well as his meta-
physical disposition always attracted him to theology.
His revulsion from Presbyterian dogmatism and Con-
gregationalist fanaticism favoured friendly connection
with latitudinarian Churchmen. Soon after the Be-
storation, Whichcote, the Cambridge divine, was his
favourite preacher, and in later life his closest intimacy
was with the Cudworth family. But though Locke has
a place among the lay theologians of England, his natu-
ral dislike to ecclesiastical impediments to free inquiry,
as well as a growing taste for experimental research
among natural phenomena, directed him into another
course. Some of his objections to accept ecclesiastical
preferment are expressed in the following characteristic

Disposition to Theology. 17

answer to an offer of advancement in the Irish Church,
which seems to have reached him in 1666, after he had
engaged in a different enterprise : —

" The proposals in question are very considerable ; but
consider, a man's affairs and whole course of life are not
to be changed in a moment, and one is not made fit for
a calling in a day. I believe you think me too proud to
undertake anything wherein I should acquit myself but
unworthily. I am sure I cannot content myself with being
undermost, possibly the middlemost of my profession ; and
you will allow on consideration that care is to be taken
not to engage in a calling wherein, if one chance to be a
bungler, there is no retreat. ... I cannot think that pre-
ferment of that nature should be thrown upon a man who
has never given any proof of himself, nor ever tried the
pulpit. . . . Should I put myself into orders, and by the
meanness of my abilities grow unworthy such expectations
(for you do not think that divines are now made, as formerly,
by inspiration and on sudden, nor learning caused by laying
on of hands), I unavoidably lose all my former study, and
put myself into a calling that will not leave me. Were it
a profession from which there were any return, you would
find me with as great forwardness to embrace your proposals
as I now acknowledge them with gratitude. The same con-
siderations made me a long time reject very advantageous
offers of several very considerable friends in England."

Locke was thirty-four when this letter was written.
He had already felt the influence which, after the
Restoration, was drawing England and many in Oxford
to observation of the qualities and laws of matter, much
animated by the utilitarian desire to enable men so to
accommodate themselves to these qualities and laws as to
increase their own physical comfort. "The year 1660,"
says Lord Macaulay, " is the era from which dates the

p. — xv. B

18 Locke.

ascendancy of the New Philosophy. In that year the
Eoyal Society, destined to be the chief agent in a long
series of glorious and salutary reforms, began to exist.
In a few months experimental research became all the
mode. Tho transfusion of blood, the ponderation of the
air, the fixation of mercury, succeeded to that place
which had been lately occupied by the controversies
of the Eota. All classes were hurried along in the pre-
vailing sentiments. Cavalier and Eoundhead, Church-
man and Puritan, were for once allied. All swelled the
triumph of the Baconian philosophy." Scientific inquiry
was indeed, both in England and on the Continent, tak-
ing the place which, for a century after the Eeformation,
theological controversies had held in the minds of men
and in the main movement of history. It was at Oxford
itself that the Eoyal Society was founded in the year of
the Eestoration. There "Wallis and Wilkins, and after-
wards Boyle and Wren, with Barrow and Newton at Cam-
bridge, helped to substitute experiment in chemistry and
meteorology and mechanics for the " vermiculate " ques-
tions of the schoolmen. In 1663 we find Locke an
inquisitive student of chemistry. Anthony Wood, who
could not fail to be an unsympathetic reporter, tells that
he was himself a fellow-student with "John Locke of
Christ Church, now a noted writer. This same John
Locke," he adds, "was a man of a turbulent spirit,
clamorous and discontented ; while the rest of our club
took notes deferentially from the mouth of the master,
the said Locke scorned to do so, but was ever prating
and troublesome." The ages of faith were passing
away, and he was becoming the spokesman of the new
questioning spirit.

"Doctor Locke" 19

In the course of the six years which followed the
Eestoration, Locke was gradually drawn to physical in-
quiry, and especially to medical experiments. His cor-
respondence and commonplace -books in these years are
filled with the results of chemical and meteorological
observations. Meteorology attracted him all his life,
and some of his observations were afterwards published
in the ' Philosophical Transactions.' Boyle's ' History of
the Air' contains Locke's "register of changes measured
by the barometer, thermometer, and hygrometer, at Ox-
ford, from June 1660 till March 1667." Observations
of diseases, too, in their relations to the materia medica,
abound in these manuscript memoranda of his Oxford life.
And so it came about that before 1666 he was more or
less engaged in a sort of amateur medical practice in
Oxford, in partnership with his old friend Dr Thomas.
Though he never graduated as a doctor, nor even as a
bachelor in medicine till 1674, he was now and after-
wards known among his friends as "Doctor Locke."
But his professional connection with the faculty was
always rather loose and uncertain. It may have been
that the philosophic temperament made professional
trammels and routine irksome, and that he instinctive-
ly preferred the hazards of freedom to submission to
rules which might compromise the development of
his individual genius. His health even now was
constitutionally indifferent. He inherited a delicacy
which ended in chronic consumption, with periodi-
cal attacks of asthma, against all which he contended
through life with characteristic forethought and con-
trivance. To the end he was an amateur medical in-
quirer, and was ready upon occasion to advise his friends

20 Locke.

about their health, long after he had abandoned the
idea of living by the practice of medicine. The habits
thus formed must be taken into account in interpreting
his later intellectual career. "No science," Dugald
Stewart remarks, " could have been chosen more happily-
calculated than medicine to prepare such a mind as that
of Locke for those speculations which have immortalised
his name ; the complicated, fugitive, and often equivocal
phenomena of disease requiring in the observer a far
greater amount of discriminative sagacity than those of
physics strictly so called, and resembling in this respect
more nearly the phenomena about which metaphysics,
ethics, and politics are conversant." Appreciation of
such phenomena was at any rate in harmony with the
method of investigation in philosophy which Locke
afterwards adopted; so that he was perhaps too much
disposed to deal with the ultimate questions of human
knowledge as if they also could be treated adequately by
methods of matter-of-fact science, and in subordination
to mechanical categories.

But the phenomena and laws of the material world,
in their relation to the human organism, did not absorb
all Locke's attention in these years. He early gave
signs of strong human interest in the practical problems
of politics and of the government and organisation of
society. His commonplace-books between his twenty-
eighth and thirty-fourth year throw welcome light on
this bent of his thoughts and tastes. These records
of his inner history during this part of his life contain
characteristic revelations. Among them is a fragment
on the " Roman Commonwealth," which shows how

Studies in Social Polity. 21

soon ideas about civil and religious liberty, and the rela-
tion of the State to religion, were forming in his mind.
For example, the formation of the Roman State is at-
tributed to a virtual if not an express compact among its
individual members; according to which, for the sake
of their common happiness, they surrendered their in-
dividual liberty to rulers who arranged a constitution
which, if it had been maintained according to its ideal,
would have been " the noblest as well as the most last-
ing limited monarchy that ever was seen in the world.
The generous principle of tolerating all religions in the
commonwealth," he continues, " was what above all else
fitted Numa's system to the chief design of government ;
for the rise and progress of Roman greatness was wholly
owing to the mighty confluence of people from all parts
of the world, with customs and ceremonies very different
from the Romans, who would never have settled without
an allowance of the free exercise of their religions. The
government of religion being in the hands of the State,
was a necessary cause of this liberty of conscience. For
there is scarce an instance in history of a persecution
raised by a free Government. A State that has the
command of the national conscience will never indulge
in persecution at the expense of the public good. The
religious institutions of Numa did not introduce into
the Roman religion any opinions inconsistent with the
divine nature ; nor did he require the belief of many
articles of faith, which create heresies and schisms in
the Church, and end in the ruin of religion. For if
schisms and heresies were traced to their original causes,
it would be found that they have sprung chiefly from
multiplying articles of faith, and narrowing the bottom

22 Locke.

of religion, by clogging it with creeds and catechisms,
and endless niceties above the essences, properties, and
attributes of God. The common principles of religion
all mankind agree in, and the belief of these doctrines
a lawgiver may venture to enjoin ; but he must go no
further if he means to preserve an uniformity of religion."
The ideas partly of Hobbes and partly of the latitudi-
narian Churchman appear in sentences like these, rather
than the dominant conceptions or language either of the
Puritan or of the disciple of Laud. They are an inter-
esting anticipation of some of Locke's teaching through-
out his later life.

His early dislike to sac otalism comes out plainly
in another fragment, headed "Sacerdos," in which the
idea of a priesthood, whether in Rome or in Geneva,
is described as the one widespread perversion of the
original simplicity of Christianity. " There were," he
says, " two sets of teachers among the ancients, — those
who professed the arts of propitiation and atonement, who
were their priests, and those called philosophers, who pro-
fessed to instruct in the knowledge of things and the rules
of virtue, — founded severally upon the supposition of
two distinct originals of knowledge, namely, authoritative
revelation and reason. The priests never for any of their
ceremonies or forms of worship pleaded reason. The
philosophers pretended to nothing but reason. Jesus
Christ, bringing by revelation from heaven the true
religion, reunited those two, religion and morality, as
inseparable parts of the worship of God. Those minis-
ters of Christianity, who call themselves priests, have
assumed the parts both of the heathen priests and the
heathen philosophers, which hath been the cause of more

Religious Toleration. 23

disorder, tumult, and bloodshed than all other causes put
together ; the cause of which hath been everywhere, that
the clergy, as Christianity spread, laid claim to a priest-
hood derived by succession from Christ, and so inde-
pendent from the civil power." To reunite religion and
morality through an exposition of the reasonableness of
Christianity as a guide of conduct, in contrast to the
magical power of a priesthood, was the chief enterprise
of Locke in the closing years of his life.

The most remarkable of the commonplace-book revela-
tions of those early Oxford years is entitled an ' Essay
concerning Toleration.' It seems to have taken shape
in his hands in 1666, and was first published by Mr Fox
Bourne, who found it among the Shaftesbury papers. It
anticipates positions for which Locke argued in his books
nearly thirty years later, in defence of a social ideal
which it was the chief aim of his life to see realised.
This juvenile essay is partly a plea for wide ecclesias-
tical comprehension in a national Church, by restoring
Christianity to its original simplicity, and thus remov-
ing reasonable grounds for nonconformity ; and partly a
vindication of this civil and ecclesiastical toleration, on
account of the folly of persecution.

"What efficacy force and severity hath to alter the opinions
of mankind, I desire no one to go further than his own
bosom for an experiment to show whether ever violence
gained anything upon his own opinion ; whether even argu-
ments managed with heat do not lose something of their
efficacy, and have not made an opponent more obstinate — so
chary is human nature to preserve the liberty of that part
wherein lies the dignity of a man. . . . The introducing
of opinions by force keeps people from closing with them,
by giving men unavoidable jealousies that it is not truth

24 Locke.

that is cared for, but interest and dominion. But though
force cannot master the opinions men have, nor plant new
ones in their breasts, yet courtesy, friendship, and soft usage
may. For men whose business or laziness keep them from
examining take many of their opinions upon trust, but never
take them from any man of whose knowledge, friendship, and
sincerity they are not well assured — which it's impossible
they should be of one that persecutes them. And inquisitive
men, though they are not of another man's mind only because
of his kindness, yet they are the more apt to search after
reasons that may persuade them to be of his opinion whom
they are obliged to love. He that differs with you in opinion
is only so far at a distance from you ; but if you use him ill
on account of that which he believes to be true, he is then
at perfect enmity. Force and ill-usage will not only increase
the animosity but the number of enemies ; for the fanatics,
taken all together, being numerous, are yet crumbled into
different parties amongst themselves, and are at as much dis-
tance from one another as from you ; their bare opinions are
as inconsistent with one another as with the Church of Eng-
land. People, therefore, that are so shattered into different
sections are best secured by toleration ; since, being in as good
condition under you as they can hope for under any, 'tis not
like they should join to set up another whom they cannot be
certain will use them so well. But if you persecute them,
you make them all of one party and interest against you."

In these passages the policy is apparent which Locke
would have recommended at a time when Acts of Uni-
formity were passed by those who had just worked out
their own deliverance from the persecutions of fanatical
sects. These thoughts regarding the folly of persecution
and excommunication, as means for the advancement
of truth in the minds of men, matured as his life ad-
vanced. Mainly through his influence they have now
become part of the common-sense of mankind, although

Utilitarian Ethics and Politics. 25

the strength of the lower tendencies in human nature
makes reiteration of them expedient.

A prudential utilitarianism, ultimately resting on a
theological basis, which characterised Locke's ethical
philosophy, appears already in passages of the common-
place-book. His fundamental rule for testing human
conduct is there founded on the principle that " it is a
man's proper business in life to seek happiness and avoid
misery; happiness consisting in what delights the mind,
and misery in what disturbs and discontents it. " But this
pursuit of happiness is not a pursuit of "whatever pleasure
offers itself." It is the preference of lasting pleasures to
short ones. Health, reputation, knowledge, the luxury
of doing good to others, and above all, the expectation
of eternal and incomprehensible happiness in another
life, are. mentioned as "the five great and constant
pleasures" which we must steadily pursue. (This is a
scanty list of permanent pleasures. It takes no account,
for instance, of the pleasures of imagination in poetry,
music, and external nature.) The chief part of the art
of conducting life is "so to watch and examine that one
may not be deceived by the flattery of a present pleasure
to lose a greater." But the idea that there may be some-
thing higher than happiness, even as happiness is higher
than a transitory pleasure, is not even conceived by
Locke ; nor the faith that there is something which
may be ours in all circumstances, and which puts a new
meaning upon the most extreme physical suffering.

Locke's tutorial lectures, medical experiments, and
meditations on social polity, were unexpectedly varied
during the winter of 1665-66 by a temporary engage-

26 Locke.

ment which took him away from Oxford for some
months. For we find him suddenly employed in the
diplomatic service, as secretary to Sir Walter Vane, who
was an embassy to the Elector of Brandenberg at Cleve
that winter. It was Locke's first introduction to life
out of England, and to affairs other than local and
academic. How the appointment came in his way, or
why he accepted it, is not clear. He scarcely appears
to have looked to it as a first step in a diplomatic
career ; at least, after his return from Cleve, in February
1666, he declined an offered appointment as secretary of
the Spanish embassy — " pulled both ways by divers con-
siderations," however, before he finally resolved. Then,
after spending part of that spring among his relatives in
Somerset, and with his friend Strachey at Sutton Court,
we have him as before at Oxford. His letters to Strachey
and to Boyle, from Cleve, contain shrewd and humorous
observations on the Elector's Court, German manners,
Lutheran, Calvinistic, and Catholic religious life.

It was in the summer after his return from Germany
that an incident occurred which finally determined
Locke's career, during middle life, in the direction of
public affairs, admitting him into " the society of great
wits and ambitious politicians," so that henceforward
" he was often a man of business, and always a man of
the world, without much undisturbed leisure." This
change from amateur work at Oxford in the medical
profession was due, as it happened, to one of his occa-
sional engagements in the practice of medicine. Lady
Masham thus repeats his own account of the most re-
markable external event in his life : —

Lord Ashley. 27

" My Lord Ashley (who became, a few years after, the
first Lord Shaftesbury) designing to spend some days with
his son at Oxford, had resoived at the same time to drink
Astrofs medicinal waters there, and had, accordingly, writ
to Dr Thomas to provide them against his coming. The
doctor, being obliged to go out of town, could not do this
himself, and requested his friend Mr Locke to take the care
of getting the waters against my lord's coming. Mr Locke
was in no way wanting in this case ; but it so fell out,
through some fault or misfortune of the messenger employed
by him for this purpose, that my lord came to town, and the
waters were not ready for his drinking them the next day,
as he had designed to do. Mr Locke, much vexed at such
a disappointment, and to excuse from the blame of it Dr
Thomas, found himself obliged to wait upon my Lord
Ashley, whom he had never before seen, to acquaint him
how this had happened. My lord, in his wonted manner,
received him very civilly, accepting his excuse with great
easiness ; and when Mr Locke would have taken his leave
of him, would needs have him to stay supper with him,
being much pleased, as it soon appeared, with his conversa-
tion. But if my lord was pleased with the company of Mr
Locke, Mr Locke was yet more pleased with that of Lord
Ashley. My lord, when Mr Locke took leave of him after
supper, engaged him to dine with him the next day, wdiich
he willingly promised ; and the waters having been provided
against the day following, and Mr Locke having before had
thoughts of drinking them himself, my lord would have him
drink them with him, so that he might have the more of his
company. When my lord went from Oxford, he went to
Sunninghill, where he drank the waters some time ; and
having, before he left Oxford, made Mr Locke promise that
he would come to him thither, Mr Locke within a few days
followed him to Sunninghill. Soon after, my lord returning
to London, desired Mr Locke that from that time he would
look upon his house as his home, and that he would let him
see him there in London as soon as he could."

28 Locke.

This accidental meeting with Lord Ashley was the
beginning of a lasting friendship, sustained by their
common sympathy with civil, religious, and intellectual
liberty. In the following year Locke exchanged his
home at Christ Church for one at Exeter House, in the
Strand, as medical adviser and confidential agent of
this mysterious politician, and tutor to his son. Al-
though he retained his Studentship at Christ Church,
and sometimes visited Oxford and his little estate in
Somerset, he shared fortune and home, during the fifteen
following dark years, with the most remarkable man of
affairs in Charles the Second's reign.

The change probably secured Locke against sundry
"idols of the den," to which professional or even exclu-
sively academic life is exposed. It trained him in habits
of business, and brought him into personal intercourse
with those who were at the springs of political action.
His place as the confidential friend of the most saga-
cious and powerful statesman in England, could not fail
to affect the growth of his own character. The demands
of his new office do not seem at first to have interrupted
his experiments in natural science, while the social ex-
perience, of which he fully availed himself, was all in
the line of his previous inquiries. " Mr Locke grew so
much in esteem with my grandfather," the third Lord
Shaftesbury (author of the ' Characteristics ') writes,
" that, as great man as he experienced him in physic,
he looked upon this as but his least part. He en-
couraged him to turn his thoughts another way ; nor
would he suffer him to practise physic except in his
own family, and as a kindness to some particular friend.
He put him upon the study of the religious and civil

Loclcc in London. 29

affairs of the nation, with whatsoever related to the
business of a minister of state; in which he was so
successful, that my grandfather soon began to use him
as a friend, and consult with him on all occasions of
that kind."

Among Locke's offices soon after he entered Exeter
House, was that of secretary to the founders of the
North American colony of Carolina, of whom Lord
Ashley was the most active. The curious scheme for
the government of that colony, of which a draft in
Locke's handwriting exists, dated June 1669, in the
preparation of which his advice must have had weight,
contains characteristic provisions when read in the light
of his earlier and later writings. " Eeligion," it is pro-
posed to enact, " ought to alter nothing in any man's
civil estate or right. No person shall disturb, molest,
or persecute another for his speculative opinions in
religion, or his way of worship." At the same time,
" no man shall be permitted to be a freeman of Carolina,
or to have any estate or habitation within it, that doth
not acknowledge a God, and that God is publicly to be
worshipped;" but "any seven or more pastors agreeing
in any religion shall constitute a Church, to which they
shall give some name to distinguish it from others."
Words which record a conception of religious liberty to
which England was then unaccustomed.

Locke did not lose his interest in medicine, or his
love of natural science, when he came to live in London.
It happened that the year in which he was introduced
to Lord Ashley was the year after the Great Plague
in London. This supplied a motive to medical experi-
ment. His new home introduced him to Sydenham,

30 Locke.

with whom he continued in intimacy during the re-
maining twenty years of the life of the great London
physician. In these years at Exeter House he was in
the way of going to see remarkable cases in Sydenham's
practice, which provided the sagacious physician with
opportunities for penetrating the uncommon character
which Locke's modesty had hitherto concealed from
general view. " You know," Sydenham writes in the
dedication of his book on ' Fevers ' to their common
friend Mapletoft, — " you know how thoroughly my
method is approved of by an intimate and common
friend of ours, and one who has closely and exhaustively
examined the subject — I mean Mr John Lock — a man
whom, in the acuteness of his judgment, and in the
simplicity, that is, in the excellence of his manners, I
confidently declare to have amongst the men of our
own time few equals and no superior."

The friend of Ashley and Sydenham, hitherto un-
known except among a few intimates, was now about
to undertake the work which has made his name illus-
trious in Europe, in the history of philosophy and of
human progress.

31

CHAPTEK III.

A NEW PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM PROPOSED (1670-71).

We now approach the turning-point in Locke's intellec-
tual career. Like his meeting with Lord Ashley, it was
due to an accident. One accident had already carried
him into the centre of public life and affairs ; the other
was to carry him into philosophy, and into a philoso-
phy largely determined by the interests of political life
and the struggle for liberty in the England of his own
generation.

In November 1668 Locke became a Fellow of the
Royal Society. In thus connecting himself with the
leaders of experimental research, he showed his sym-
pathy with the spirit and methods of the mechanical
sciences. Soon after he was admitted, his name ap-
pears in a committee of eleven "for considering and
directing experiments ; " but he took little part then
or afterwards in the proceedings of the Eoyal Society.
Eor he found more satisfaction in occasional reunions
of a few intimate friends which he helped to form
at different periods of his life. It was at one of
these informal meetings, probably at Exeter House, or
perhaps at Oxford, which he often visited, that Locke

32 Locke.

was led to devote himself to that enterprise which
directed the main current of his thoughts during the
remainder of his life. To the results of that enterprise
his reputation in the world is chiefly due ; for it in-
augurated the philosophy that was to remain dominant
in Britain for more than a century after his death, and
which, through further developments and by reactions
against it, has so affected the thought of the world ever
since, that the last two centuries might be termed the
Lockian epoch in the intellectual history of Europe.

This memorable meeting took place on some un-
known day, probably in the winter of 1670-71. Its
outcome was the famous 'Essay concerning Human
Understanding,' which was published nearly twenty
years later. Here is Locke's own account of the cir-
cumstances, given in the " Epistle to the Eeader " that
is prefixed to the ' Essay ' : —

" Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of this Essay,
I should tell thee that five or six friends, meeting at my
chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from
this, found themselves quickly at a stand by the difficulties
that arose on every side. After we had a while puzzled
ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those
doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that
we took a wrong course, and that, before we set ourselves
upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine
our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings
were or were not fitted to deal with. This I proposed to
the company, who all readily assented ; and thereupon it
was agreed that this should be our first inquiry. Some
hasty undigested thoughts, on a subject I had never before
considered,1 which I set down against our next meeting, gave

Mr Fox Bourne quotes a fragment " in Locke's handwriting,"

Limits of a Human Understanding. 33

the first entrance into this Discourse ; which, having been
begun by chance, was continued by entreaty, written by
incoherent parcels, and, alter long intervals of neglect,
Sfiwifiw^again as my humour or occasions permitted ; and
at last, in a retirement where an attendance on my health
gave me leisure, it was brought into that order thou now
seest it."

Locke himself does not tell what the " subject " was
— " very remote " from an investigation into the re-
sources and limits of a human understanding of the
universe — which at this epoch-making meeting puzzled
the assembled friends, and thus led Locke to make an
essay in intellectual philosophy the chief work of his
life. But we are not left quite in the dark. It so
happens that James Tyrrell, one of the assembled
" friends," has recorded it in a manuscript note on the
margin of his own copy of the ' Essay,' now preserved
in the British Museum. The "difficulties" which per-
plexed them arose, according to this record, in discus-
sions regarding "the principles of morality and revealed
religion." This was a subject not, after all, "very
remote" from an inquiry irito the extent of our human
power of dealing intellectually with the universe ;
rather one which, whether for intellectual satisfaction,
or for relief from mysteries which may embarrass con-
duct, inevitably mixes itself with all profound ethical
and theological inquiry. The logical or epistemological
problems to which Locke now addressed himself, press
for settlement, when we inquire into the ultimate

found in his father's memorandum-book, on "Philosophy," which
seems to have been written before 1660. The contents show that
philosophical inquiries of a very general kind were not quite new
to him in 1670.

P. — XV. c

34 Locke.

rationale of action, and the possibility of supernatural
revelation, more than perhaps in any other inquiry in
which man can engage. It may be that the result is
not the removal of mystery. Reflection upon the con-
stitution and limits of human knowledge may discover
that the ultimate questions of ethical and religious
thought cannot be solved by the merely generalising
understanding, judging according to the data of sense.
To "solve," as Coleridge somewhere says, "has a sci-
entific, and again a religious sense ; and in the latter
a difficulty is satisfactorily solved, as soon as its in-
solubility for the human mind is proved and account-
ed for." Thought on these, as on all subjects, must
not, of course, be self -contradictory; and must also
be in harmony with those universal judgments of rea-
son which our physical and our moral experience can
be shown to presuppose. Reason itself, moreover, for-
bids us to reject practical beliefs, hitherto permanent,
though often dormant in individual men, which are
found to meet wants in human nature, so long as
they are not proved to be inconsistent with the con-
stitution of reason.

Locke tells his "reader," that when he "first put
pen to paper," in fulfilment of his promise, he thought
that " all he should have to say on the matter would
be contained within one sheet of paper," but that " the
further he went the larger prospect he had — new dis-
coveries leading him on," — till, in the course of years,
the work gradually " grew to the bulk it now appears
in.' The germ of the ' Essay ' was in certain " hasty
and undigested thoughts set down against the next
meeting." The * Commonplace-Book ' contains a few

Our Simplest and our Earliest Ideas. 35

sentences, with the date 1671, which perhaps correspond
to this original draft. At any rate they are worthy of
being transcribed : —

"Sic cogitavit de Intellects, humano Johannes Locke,
anno 1671.

" Intellectus humanus cum cognitionis certitucline et
assensus firmitate.

" First, I imagine that all knowledge is founded on, and
ultimately derives itself from Sense, or something analogous
to it, and may be called Sensation ; which is done by our
senses (organs of sense) conversant about particular objects,
which gives us the simple ideas or images of things ; and
thus we come to have ideas of heat and light, hard and soft,
which are nothing but the reviving again in our mind the
imaginations which these objects, when they affected our
senses, caused in us — wThether by motion or otherwise it
matters not here to consider — and thus we do observe, con-
ceive [i.e, have ideas of], heat or light, yellow or blue, sweet
or bitter ; and therefore I think that those things which
we call sensible qualities are the simplest ideas we have, and
the first object of our understanding."

The philosophical enterprise in which Locke was thus
led to engage, and in which the writing of this interest-
ing fragment was probably the first step, was undertaken
in a spirit, and by methods like those to which he had
already become accustomed in natural science. He was
thus led to look at a human understanding as a fact
among other facts in the universe, — a fact supreme
above others, it is true, the fact of facts indeed, which
illuminated all others, — but still to be approached by
solid calculating observation, and not in an a priori
way. A human understanding of the universe, and
the extent to which it could go, was for him something
concrete, that had to be determined by what he might

36 Locke.

find. It was the kind and amount of contingent know-
ledge that is adapted to our actual human capacities for
knowing things, not any abstract theory of knowledge or
existence, or of the relation of the universe to a know-
ledge other than human, that Locke now set to work to
report upon. It was a plain matter-of-fact inquiry about
man ; not an a priori criticism of the rational constitu-
tion of knowledge as such, and of the metaphysical
essence of things. Moreover, as his commonplace-books,
and the whole tenor of the enterprise show, it was en-
gaged in with the moral purpose of correcting certain
prevailing intellectual faults and fallacies of mankind ;
not in order to satisfy purely speculative curiosity, nor
in any way to minister to the intellectual conceit that
looks too high to be able to see the human facts of the
case. Some of the prevailing evils, the removal of
which was the end in his view, may be gathered from
his commonplace-books about this time, and in the
general tenor of his correspondence in the years when
the 'Essay' was in progress, which all afford indis-
pensable help in the interpretation of the great philo-
sophical work of his life. Thus a fragment, ' De Arte
Medica,' dated 1668, while it illustrates Locke's con-
tinued interest in the phenomena of disease and the
functions of the human body, is even more import-
ant as evidence of the spirit in which he was at this
time searching for truth, and of the tests which he was
accustomed to employ : —

" He that in physics shall lay down fundamental questions,
and from thence, drawing consequences and raising disputes,
shall reduce medicine into the regular form of a science
(totum teres, atque rotundum), has indeed done something to

Empty Terms and Dogmatic Assumptions. 37

enlarge the art of talking, and perhaps laid a foundation
for endless disputes ; but if he hopes to bring men by such
a system to the knowledge of the infirmities of their own
bodies, or the constitution, changes, and history of diseases,
with the safe and discreet way of their cure, he takes much
what a like course with him that should walk up and down
in a thick wood, outgrown with briers and thorns, with a
design to take a view and draw a map of the country. . . .
The beginning and improvement of useful arts, and the
assistances of human life, have all sprung from industry and
observation. True knowledge grew first in the world by
experience and rational observations ; but proud man, not
content with that knowledge he was capable of, and which
was useful to him, would needs penetrate into the hidden
causes of things, lay down principles, and establish maxims
to himself about the operations of nature, and then vainly
expect that nature — or in truth God — should proceed accord-
ing to those laws which his maxims had prescribed to him ;
whereas his narrow weak faculties could reach no further
than the observation and memory of some few facts produced
by visible external causes, but in a way utterly beyond the
reach of his apprehension ; — it being perhaps no absurdity to
think that this great and curious fabric of the world, the
workmanship of the Almighty, cannot be perfectly compre-
hended by any understanding but His that made it. Man,
still affecting something of Deity, laboured by his imagination
to supply what his observation and experience failed him
in ; and when he could not discover [by experience] the
principles, causes, and methods of nature's workmanship, he
would needs fashion all those out of his own thought, and
make a world to himself, framed and governed by his own
[narrow] intelligence. This vanity spread itself into many
useful parts of natural philosophy ; and by how much the
more it seemed subtle, sublime, and learned, by so much the
more it proved pernicious and hurtful — by hindering the
growth of practical knowledge. Thus the most acute and
ingenious part of man being, by custom and education, en-
gaged in empty speculations, the improvement of useful arts

38 Locke.

was left to the meaner sort of people. . . . Hence it came to
pass that the world was filled with books and disputes ;
books multiplied without the increase of knowledge ; the
ages successively grew more learned, without becoming
wiser and happier. . . . They that are studiously busy in
the cultivating and adorning such dry, barren notions are
vigorously employed to little purpose, and might with as
much reason have retrimmed, now they are men, the babies
they made when they were children, as exchanged them for
those empty impracticable notions that are but the puppets
of men's fancies and imaginations, which, however dressed
up, are, after forty years' dandling, but puppets still, void of
strength, use, or activity."

These words show the state of mind in which, two
years after they were written, Locke proposed, by a
matter-of-fact examination of human understanding, to
guard men against errors, especially in morality and
religion. He set to war against a priori abstract
assumptions, and against the abuse of words void of
meaning, yet protected under the assumption of their
meaning being " innate," — all in order to liberate the
minds of men from this bondage ; to get them out of
the " thick wood " of prejudice into the open day of actual
facts and experience ; even although, at our human point
for understanding the universe, the only possible scheme
one could make of the whole might turn out to be, as
Bacon says, " abrupt," and not a system. But we must
not forget the. crude empiricism of medicine in the
seventeenth century in estimating the influence of his
medical studies upon this undertaking.

Locke engaged in his intellectual enterprise at the
point of extreme opposition to the medieval ideal of
obedience to authority, and of system verbally con-

Manly Individualism of Locke. 39

sistent with itself, expressed in strictly defined terms.
A hunger for facts, — for agreement between the ideas
or laws that are in things and his own individual
ideas, — which as nearly amounted to a passion for truth
as was possible for his cool and considerate tempera-
ment,— was joined to a deep and modest conviction
that he needed to bring about this agreement for
himself in the exercise of his own reasoning insight,
not in deference either to tradition or to contemporary
opinion. This is the manly individualism that belongs
to a representative Englishman, encouraged by institu-
tions in Church and State favourable to personal free-
dom. In England, as Hume remarks, " the great liberty
and independence which every man enjoys, allows him
to display the manners peculiar to himself. Hence," he
adds, " the English of any people in the universe have
the least of a national character ; — unless this very
singularity may pass for such."

The sources of Locke's philosophy are therefore to
be looked for in himself, and in the unconscious influence
of the age and country into which he was born; not
in an adoption of the philosophical opinions either
of preceding or of contemporary thinkers. Of these,
indeed, his constantly avowed indifference to such
"learning" left him comparatively ignorant. Proper
names seldom occur in his writings. They have this
feature in common with the English philosophical
literature of the epoch which he inaugurated — in re-
markable contrast to the abundant references to author-
ities which one finds in books of the seventeenth and
preceding centuries, as well as of the present generation.
Hobbes, in a like spirit, is reported to have said, " that

40 Locke.

if he had read as many books as other men, he would
have been as ignorant as they." But in other respects
Locke and he had little in common. Although Hobbes,
and Eacon too, are often represented as Locke's prede-
cessors in the succession of " English empirical philoso-
phers," they differed widely from one another, and from
him, in their strongly marked individualities and in
their conceptions of life. The sentiment of Hobbes,
now referred to, would have been adopted by Locke,
while it receives no countenance from the copious
bibliographical allusions and quotations in which Bacon
delights.

The sources of the ' Essay ' and of Locke's philosophy
are not to be sought in the books of his own or pre-
ceding generations, so much as in the reaction of his
sagacious intelligence against the bondage of books, and
his cool and independent observation of the facts of
human nature. Among books, those of Descartes no
doubt gave impulse, and encouraged his passion for
thinking for himself ; while the ' Port Eoyal Logic,'
its plan, and its constant sympathy with life, is not
to be forgotten in accounting for the plan and contents
of the 'Essay.'

The " reality " for which Locke always hungers is that
to which his early habits had accustomed him, and
which he found in all the data of experience. He was
like Bacon and Bacon's English successors at least in
this ; for he turned away with aversion from scholastic
Aristotelianism, just because he saw in it security only
for verbal consistency, and not for truth of fact. It
seemed to him to encourage the two chief hindrances to
the intellectual liberty of the individual, against which

Sources of his Philosophy. 41

his whole life was a steady protest — empty verbalism
and unverified assumption. It was with this aim that
for seventeen years he maintained a cautious and con-
siderate observation of his own understanding of things
and that of other men ; testing the significance of their
words, which he often found to be void of ideas, and
the grounds of their judgments, for many of which only
blind submission to authority could be pleaded. The
1 Essay concerning Human Understanding ' was the issue
of seventeen years lived in this state of mind, — often
disturbed, indeed, by troubled politics and by ill health,
so that the ' Essay ' was " written in incoherent parcels,
and after long intervals of neglect resumed again, as
humour or occasions permitted." And average common-
sense was always kept in his view. What he wrote
was expressed for the most part in the language of the
market-place. The terminology formed to express the
subtle concepts of the schools was on principle avoided,
although he indulged in some degree in a terminology
of his own.

The ultimate problems of chief human interest with y
which philosophy is concerned, have to do severally
with Matter, Man, and God. Each of these is so con-
nected with the other, that while an individual philoso-
pher puts one of the three in his foreground, it is found
to be inseparable from the other two. The second, or
rather one branch of it, was in Locke's foreground. The
enterprise in which he now engaged was an attempt,
for purposes of human life, to delineate the intellectual
resources and capacity of Man.

42

CHAPTEE IV.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS— RETIREMENT AND STUDY IN FRANCE

(1671-79).

Some of those " intervals of neglect " which interrupted
from time to time the progress of that inquiry into the
nature and limits of a human understanding of the
universe, in which Locke now engaged, must have
occurred in the four years that followed the memorable
meeting of the "five or six friends at his chamber."
Early in 1672, Lord Ashley, risen in Court favour, after
filling for a short time the office of Chancellor of the
Exchequer, was created Earl of Shaftesbury, made
President of the Board of Trade, and in November,
Lord Chancellor of England. This accumulation of
official responsibilities brought Locke into still closer
relation with public affairs. The new Lord Chancellor
in that same year made him his secretary for the
presentation of benefices, with an annual salary of
.£300 ; and in the following year he was advanced to
the Secretaryship of the Board of Trade, with an income
of £500. The records of the Board illustrate Locke's
diligence in the details of business, and his habit of
methodical administration. This official work was not

Secretary of the Board of Trade. 43

sustained without difficulty. The asthma from which
he suffered so much in middle and more in later life,
after previous premonitory symptoms, began to show
itself decisively about this time; in consequence, a re-
treat to the south of Europe was contemplated even in
1671. In October of that year he wrote from Sutton
Court in Somerset, expressing gratitude to his friend
Dr Mapletoft for " concernment for my health, and the
kindness wherewith you press my journey into France.
I am making haste back again to London," he adds, "to
return you my thanks for this and several other favours ;
and then, having made you judge of my state of health,
desire your advice what you think best to be done ; —
since nothing will make me leave those friends I have
in England, but the positive direction of some of those
friends for my going. But however I may dispose of
myself, I shall enjoy the air either of Hampstead Heath
or Montpellier, as that wherein your care and friendship
hath placed me."

The journey abroad " for his health " was not impera-
tive in 1671. He was able for some years to do the
work of secretary with exemplary exactness, until a turn
occurred in political affairs which set him free to betake
himself to some retirement, where attendance on health
should give also leisure for study. In March 1675
Shaftesbury ceased to be Chancellor ; after he had
quarrelled with the Court, and put himself at the head
of the Country party in Parliament. Locke had to quit
office, but his patron and friend was not forgetful of his
services. He endowed him with £100 a-year as a
pension for life — " a relief," as he says, " to one now
broken with business," and suffering more than ever

44 Locke.

from his chronic malady. The project of a visit to
the south of Europe could now be carried out. . So
after seeing his friends in Somerset, he made his way
into France in November 1675. The three following
years were spent partly at Montpellier and partly in
Paris, in a meditative quiet to which he had been a
stranger for many years.

We have now for the first time in his life means for
tracing his history almost from day to day, in the cir-
cumstantial record of them in his Journal. The chrono-
logical arrangement of his movements in France by this
means comes out distinctly. About a month after he
left London we find him at Montpellier, on Christmas
Day in 1675. Montpellier — a resort in cases of con-
sumption and the seat of a famous medical school — was
Locke's home till April 1677, when he returned to Paris,
where he lived till July 1678. In autumn of that year
he returned to Montpellier, after an abortive attempt to
visit Italy and Eome, which was barred against him by
those snows of Mont Cenis, where " old winter kept
guard," that were encountered by Berkeley on his way
to Italy more than thirty years later. The following
winter Locke spent in Paris. In April 1679 we find
him in London, brought back on the eddy tide in public
affairs which had carried Shaftesbury again into power.

The daily journal of Locke's life in Prance, which
sometimes takes the form of a commonplace-book, con-
tains sagacious observations regarding Frenchmen and
their works, with vigilant and inquisitive investigation
of natural phenomena. Medical experiments, too, com-
bined with prudent study of his own health, often re-
call the Oxford professional pursuits of former days. But

In Retirement at Montpellier. 45

the chief intellectual interest is its exhibition of the
inquiry into human understanding now in progress, for
one here sees the ' Essay ' in process of formation.
During the first sixteen months in which Montpellier
was his home, Locke was busy revising and expand-
ing notes for the ' Essay,' which had accumulated even
in the three or four previous busy years of official life
in England. At Montpellier Thomas Herbert, after-
wards Earl of Pembroke, to whom the ' Essay ' is dedi-
cated, happened to be his neighbour ; and with him,
then and ever after, he was much in friendly intimacy.
Locke afterwards reminded him in the Dedication,
that the book, "grown up under your lordship's eye,
has ventured into the world by your order, and does
now, by a natural kind of right, come to your lord-
ship for that protection which you several years since
promised it ; " and then, according to the fashion of
dedications, he speaks of the results of his own seven-
teen years of search as having " some little correspond-
ence with that nobler and vast system of the sciences
which your lordship has made so new, exact, and in-
structive a draft of." This philosophic Lord Pembroke,
to whose friendship and encouragement Locke, thus and
otherwise, acknowledged his obligations, was afterwards
the patron and friend of Berkeley. The ' Principles of
Human Knowledge,' as well as the 'Essay concerning
Human Understanding,' entered the world under his
protection.

Locke's least interrupted leisure and most exclusive
devotion to the preparation of the ' Essay ' was probably
during these years in France. His manuscripts at this
time show how much his mind was then engaged with

46 Locke.

the multiplying problems which an answer to his own
question, propounded at the memorable meeting years
before, required him to deal with, and also discover
more fully the moral purpose that kept him so steadily
in quest of them. This revelation is full of instruction.
It helps to a more just interpretation of the 'Essay'
itself and of Locke's philosophy. Here is part of a
paper, begun in March and finished in May 1677, in
which Locke represents empty words and deference to
authority, as the two tempters that are apt to bewilder
men and lead them out of the way in the exercises of
the understanding : —

"First to be guarded against is all that maze of words
and phrases which have been invented and employed only
to instruct and amuse people in the art of disputing, which
will be found perhaps when looked into to have little or no
meaning ; — and with this kind of stuff the logics, physics,
ethics, metaphysics, and divinity of the schools are thought
by some to be too much filled. This, I am sure, that where
we leave distinctions without finding a difference in things ;
where we make variety of phrases, or think we furnish our-
selves with arguments without a progress in the real know-
ledge of things, we only fill our heads with empty sounds.
Words are of no value or use but as they are the signs of
things ; when they stand for nothing they are less than
ciphers, for, instead of augmenting the value of those they
are joined with, they lessen and make it nothing ; and where
they have not a clear, distinct signification, they are like un-
usual or ill-made figures that confound our meaning. Words
are the great and almost only way of conveyance of one
man's thoughts to another man's understanding ; but when
a man thinks within himself it is better to lay them aside,
and have an immediate converse with the ideas of the things.
He that would call to mind his absent friend does it best by
reviving in his mind the idea of him, and contemplating

The 'Essay ' in process of formation. 47

that ; and it is but a very faint, imperfect way of thinking
of one's friend barely to remember his name, and think upon
the sound he is usually called by."

Blind deference to other men's opinions, and conse-
quent desire to know what these have been, with dog-
matic assumption that this sort of knowledge is the most
important part of learning, is the other vice in the exercise
of a human understanding which, according to this revela-
tion of his mind at work, loomed largely in his view : —

"Truth needs no recommendation," he continues, "and error
is not mended by it. In our inquiry after knowledge, it as
little concerns us what other men have thought, as it does one
who has to go from Oxford to London to know what scholars
walk quietly on foot inquiring the way and surveying the
country as they went — who rode forth after their guide
without minding the way he went — who were carried along
muffled up in a load with their company, or where one
doctor lost or walked out of his way, or where another stuck
in the mire. If a traveller gets a knowledge of the right
way, it is no matter whether he knows the infinite windings,
byways, and turnings, where others have been misled ; the
knowledge of the right secures him from the wrong, and
that is his great business. And so methinks it is in our
intellectual pilgrimage through this world. It is an idle
and useless thing to make it our business to study what
have been other men's sentiments in things where reason
only is the judge. I can no more know by another man's
understanding than I can see by another man's eyes.
Yet who is there that has not opinions planted in him by
education time out of mind, which must not be questioned,
but are looked on with reverence, as the standards of right
and wrong, truth and falsehood ; where perhaps those so sacred
opinions were but the oracles of the nursery, or the tradi-
tion and grave talk of those who pretend to inform our
childhood, who receive them from hand to hand without

48 Locke.

ever examining them 1 ... By these and perhaps other
means, opinions came to be settled and fixed in men's minds,
which, whether true or false, there they remain in reputation
as truths, and so are seldom questioned or examined by
those who entertain them ; and if they happen to be false,
as in most men the greatest part must necessarily be, they
put a man quite out of the way in the whole course of his
studies, which tend to nothing but the confounding of his
already received opinions. . . . These ancient preoccupations
of our minds are to be examined if we will make way for
truth, and put our minds in that freedom which belongs and
is necessary to them."

Locke finds that most men can hardly be said to think
or to have ideas at all, at least ideas of their own, on
any important subject. They profess the phrases which
they have been taught, without putting meaning into
them, either from laziness, or from fear to examine
critically wprcls invested with sacred associations. The
desire to bring their individual thoughts into harmony
with things, — with the divine ideas, shall we say, of
which things are the manifestation, — in a word, the love
of truth, as distinguished from superstitious regard for
idealess phrases, is foreign to their habit.

Empty words, and dogmatic assumptions blindly
sustained by authority, are always present to Locke's
mind as the two chief obstructions to a human under-
standing of things. Both evils were encouraged, as it
seemed to him, by an oversight of the necessary limits
of. human understanding, and of the immense dispro-
portion between the universe and man's power of inter-
preting its phenomena. So men try to cross the gulf
by help of words that are really empty of meaning;
aided by assumptions which, if not. meaningless, are

The ''Disproportion " of a Human Understanding. 49

at any rate without warrant in facts. This weakness
or " disproportion " of human understanding is the one
fact which Locke returns to again and again at this
time. In a paper dated at Montpellier in February
1677, he writes : —

" Our minds are not made as large as truth, nor suited to
the whole extent of things. Amongst the things that come
within its reach, it meets with not a few that it is fain to
give up as incomprehensible. It finds itself lost in the vast
extent of space ; the least particle of matter puzzles it with
an inconceivable divisibility ; and those who deny or question
an eternal omniscient Spirit run themselves into a greater
difficulty by making an eternal and unintelligent Matter. If
all things must stand or fall by the measure of our under-
standing, and that be denied to be wherein we find inex-
tricable difficulties, there will very little remain in the world,
and we shall scarce leave ourselves so much as understand-
ing, souls, or bodies. It will become us better to consider
well our own weakness and exigencies, what we are made
for, and what we are capable of ; and to apply the powers of
our bodies and faculties of our souls, which are well suited
to our condition, in the search of that natural and moral
knowledge which, as it is not beyond our strength, so is not
beside our purpose, but may be attained by moderate in-
dustry, and improved to our infinite advantage."

That the true end of any knowledge that is within the
reach of man is wise action, and communication to others
of what is found; and that if we study only for the
pleasure of knowing, this is rather amusement than
serious business, and so to be reckoned among our idle
recreations, — are favourite ideas of Locke, seldom long
out of view, according to these memoranda of his studies
at Montpellier and Paris : —

u The extent of things knowable is so vast, our duration

P. — XV. D

50 Locke.

here is so short, and the entrance by which the knowledge
of things gets into our understanding is so narrow, that
the whole time of our life is not enough to acquaint us even
with what we are capable of knowing, and which it would
be not only convenient but very advantageous for us to
know. . . . The essence of things, their first original, their
secret way of working, and the whole extent of corporeal
being, is as far beyond our capacity as it is beside our use.
And we have no reason to complain that we do not know
the nature of the sun or stars, and a thousand other specula-
tions in nature ; since, if we knew them, they would be of
no solid advantage to us, nor help to make our lives the
happier, they being but the useless employment of idle or
over-curious brains. . . . All our business lies at home. Why
should we think ourselves hardly dealt with that we are not
furnished with compass and plummet to sail and fathom
that restless, unnavigable ocean of the universal matter,
motion, and space ? There are no commodities to be brought
from thence serviceable to our use, nor that will better our
condition. We need not be displeased that we have not
knowledge enough to discover whether we have any neigh-
bours or no in those large bulbs of matter that we see floating
in the abyss, or of what kind they are, since we can never
have any communication with them that might turn to our
advantage. Man's mind and faculties were given him to
procure him the happiness which this world is capable of ;
so that had men no concernment but in this world, no ap-
prehensions of any being after this life, they need trouble
their heads with nothing but the history of nature, and an
inquiry into the qualities of things, or the particular mansion
of the universe which hath fallen to their lot. They need
not perplex themselves about the original constitution of
the universe."

Locke rises, however, out of this secularist conception
of life :—

" It seems probable that there should be some better state

Theological Utilitarianism and a Future Life. 51

somewhere else to which men might arise ; since, when one
hath all that this world can afford, he is still unsatisfied.
It is certain that there is a possibility of another state when
this scene is over ; and that the happiness and misery of that
depend on the ordering of ourselves in our actions in this
time of our probation here. The acknowledgment of a God
will easily lead any one to this conclusion. ... It being
then at least probable that there is another life, wherein we
shall give an account of our past actions in this, here comes
in another, and that the main concernment of mankind —
to know what those actions are that he is to do, and what
those are he is to avoid. And in this part he is not so left
in the dark, but that he is furnished with principles of
knowledge, and faculties able to discover light enough to
guide him ; — his understanding seldom fails him in this part,
unless where his will would have it so. . . . We need no
other knowledge for the attainment of those two ends but
(1) of the effect and operation of natural bodies within our
power, and (2) of our duty in the management of our own
actions, as far as they depend on our will, and so are in our
power. Whilst, then, we have ability to improve our know-
ledge in experimental natural philosophy; and whilst we
want not principles wherein to establish moral rules, nor
light to distinguish good from bad actions (if we please to
make use of it), — we have no reason to complain if we meet
with difficulties in other things which confound our under-
standing ; for those, relating not to our happiness in any
way, are no part of our business, nor conformable to our
state or end as we find it."

The germ of the theological utilitarianism into which
Locke's ethical and political philosophy resolved itself
in the end, appears in expressions like these. He makes
the motives to right conduct depend at last upon the
fact of the Supreme Power connecting pleasures and
pains with human actions according to their kinds. We
are moved to action by an ideal of pleasure of body

52 Locke.

or mind : the action is good or bad in proportion as
the pleasure which it brings is lasting or evanescent.
" That this is so, I appeal not only to the experience
of all mankind, but to the best rule of this — the Scrip-
ture— which tells us that at the right hand of God are
pleasures for evermore ; and that which men are con-
demned for is, not for seeking pleasure, but for prefer-
ring the momentary pleasures of this life to those joys
which shall have no end." 1

In these private records of his thoughts in his French
retirement, while the ' Essay ' was in process of forma-
tion, Locke ever and anon expresses his profound sense
of the fact that our state in this world is a state of
intellectual mediocrity, dependent on probabilities ; that,
in consequence, "if we were never in life to do but
what is absolutely best, all our lives would go away in
deliberation and distraction, and we should never come
to action." "We are finite creatures, furnished with
powers and faculties very well fitted to some purposes,
but very disproportionate to the vast and unlimited
extent of things." It is as if he had said, — "This, for
us momentous fact, is as it is, and we cannot make it
otherwise : things are what they are, and are not other
things than they are ; — why, therefore, should one desire
to be deceived ? "

"It would," he writes at Montpellier in March 1677, "be
of great service to us to know how far in point of fact our
faculties can reach, that some might not go about to fathom
where our line is too short ; to know what things are the
proper objects of our inquiries and understanding, and

1 See also Lord King's c Life,' vol. ii. pp. 161-185.

French Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century. 53

where it is we ought to stop and launch out no further, for
fear of losing ourselves or our labour. This" — to which
attempts to solve his new philosophical problem at last
led him — " this, perhaps," he continues, " is an inquiry of
as much difficulty as any we shall find in our way of know-
ledge, and fit to be resolved by a man when he is come to
the end of his study, and not to be proposed to one at his
setting out ; it being properly the result to be expected after
a long and diligent research to discover what is actually
knowable, and where knowledge must stop ; not a question
to be resolved by the guesses of one who has scarce yet
acquainted himself with obvious truths. I shall therefore
at present suspend the thoughts I have had upon this sub-
ject, which ought maturely to be considered of — always re-
membering that things infinite are too large for our capacity ;
that the essences of substantial beings also are beyond our
ken ; and the manner too how Nature, in this great machine
of the world, produces the several phenomena, is what I
think lies also out of the reach of our understanding. That
which seems to me to be suited to the end of man, and lie
level to his understanding, is (1) the improvement of natural
experiments for the conveniences of this life, and (2) the way
of ordering himself and his actions so as to attain happiness
in the other — that is, moral philosophy, which in my sense
comprehends religion too, or a man's whole duty."

Locke was pondering these things in France at a time
when the intellectual revival, set agoing by Descartes,
was in its strength. This was the golden age of French
metaphysical philosophy. The highest spiritual expe-
rience of men, rather than the transitory data of the
senses, regulated the dominant philosophical conceptions.
Pascal and Geulinx both died in the preceding decade ;
Descartes died a few years earlier. The ' Recherche de
la Verite' of Malebranche made its appearance a few
months before Locke went to Montpellier. The famous

54 Locke.

controversy was beginning between Malebranche and
Arnauld. The ' Port Royal Logic ' was in vogue, and
Nicole was issuing his 'Essais de Morale.' Three
years earlier Arnauld had been visited by Leibniz in
the course of that tour through Western Europe, in
which, after passing through London, the founder of
German philosophy went to see Spinoza at the Hague.
Spinoza himself died, and his ' Ethics ' were published,
when Locke was at Montpellier.

"We are not told that Locke met any of these re-
markable men when he was in France, though their
names and some of their books were probably familiar
to him. Soon after his return to England he translated
the ' Essais ' of Nicole, and later on he criticised Male-
branche. The ' Port Eoyal Logic ' was not without its
influence on the 'Essay' of Locke, if we may judge
from points of resemblance in structure and in doctrine.
But it was among representatives of natural science and
of medicine, not among the metaphysical philosophers,
that Locke was usually found in Paris. Bernier, the
pupil and expositor of Gassendi's mechanical philosophy,
is mentioned among his associates. His journal, and
his correspondence afterwards, imply frequent meetings
and friendly intercourse at Paris with Guenellon, the
Amsterdam physician ; Nicolas Thoynard, the naturalist
and biblical critic; Justel, jurist and man of letters,
whose weekly reunions were then the fashion; Olaus
Romer, the young Danish astronomer; and Thuvenot,
the traveller, whose narratives of his wanderings grati-
fied a taste that was characteristic of Locke.

It is difficult to determine what progress had been
made with the ' Essay concerning Human Understand-

The 'Essay' in April 1679. 55

ing,' when its author returned to England in April 1679,
after these years of studious retirement in France.
Although he wrote to his friend Thoynard, a few weeks
after he got to London, that his " book was completed,"
he added, that he thought " too well of it to let it then
go out of his hands." It was held back in order that
more consideration might be given to the subject, and
the changes and additions afterwards made were the
occasion of frequent correspondence with his friends.
The extracts from his manuscripts in Trance already
given, express the general drift 'and main purpose of his
work at Montpellier and Paris. We see the intellectual ■
habits of the scientific physician more than the specula-
tive philosopher in those revelations. The mind of man
is the subject of disease. Men are therefore ready to
accept empty sounds instead of ideas ; to suppose that
they have ideas when they have none, or distinct ideas
when they are necessarily obscure. They are satisfied,
too, with accepting on authority what is said, without
inquiring and seeing for themselves ; the human mind
is thus clouded by presuppositions which obscure the
light of facts. Attention and independent judgment
are avoided as fatiguing ; and to say anything that de-
mands reflection is putting people quite out of their way.
Empty abstractions and dogmatic assumptions afflict the
human understanding. Both seemed to Locke to be due
to oversight of the fact that " we are here in a state of
mediocrity," and that our understanding is " dispropor-
tionate " to the infinite extent of things. Men were
vainly trying to reduce the disproportion, and to ease
themselves of the pains and patience which conformity
to fact imposes, by keeping in circulation idealess words,

56 Locke.

and by building on presuppositions that have no warrant
in experience. It is only in having ideas or meanings
in our words that we come to be in a capacity for
having any knowledge ; so that the first step to know-
ledge is to get the mind furnished with such meanings
as it really has a capacity for. Of what sort are they ?
how reached] To what extent are ideas that we can
have perfect, and in what cases must they remain ob-
scure— so that they are in the one case avenues to
certainty, and in the other incapable of carrying us be-
yond faith and probability 1 To cure diseases of the
human understanding, — especially the two now men-
tioned,— with a view to its healthy exercise in life, not
to solve abstract problems of knowing and being, was
evidently the aim of Locke when his ' Essay ' was in
process of formation in France.

57

CHAPTEE V.

ENGLISH POLITICS AND POLITICAL EXILE IN HOLLAND

(1679-89).

When Locke returned to London in the spring of 1679,
he found that Lord Shaftesbury had exchanged Exeter
House in the Strand for Thanet House in Aldersgate.
"In spite of the attraction which had, during a long course
of years anterior to 1685, gradually drawn the aristocracy
westward in London, a few men of high rank," according
to Lord Macaulay, " continued to dwell in the vicinity
of the Exchange and of the Guildhall. Shaftesbury and
Buckingham, while engaged in bitter and unscrupulous
opposition to the Government, had thought that they
could no longer carry on their intrigues so conveniently
or so securely as under the protection of the city magis-
trates and the city militia. Shaftesbury therefore lived
in Aldersgate, in a house which may still be easily known
by pilasters and wreaths, the graceful work of Inigo
Jones."1 It was life in serene retirement in sunny
France that Locke now exchanged for the clouded
political atmosphere of London in the last years of
Charles's reign. His life was now to be more than ever
1 Macaulay, vol. i. p. 278.

58 Locke.

mixed up with, the history of the England that was
hastening to revolution on a troubled sea of polities.
The prospect did not attract him. "From Paris to
this place," he wrote to his friend Thoynard from
Calais on his way back, " I have been as miserable as
possible at the loss I endured in leaving you ; discon-
tented with my journey, with Calais, with myself, and
with everything, deriving no pleasure from the prospects
of returning to my native land."

He had left England when the "pensioned Parlia-
ment," chosen in 1661, was still sitting. During his
absence Shaftesbury had been imprisoned in the Tower.
From the spring of 1675 till the spring of 1678 Lord
Danby's policy was in the ascendant. A brief crisis fol-
lowed, a sort of prelude to the Eevolution which was ac-
complished ten years later. The new Parliament, which
met in March 1679, showed a want of confidence in
the king. England was awaking to its danger on the
side of France and of Rome. The king, accordingly,
turned for a time to the popular party ; and Shaftes-
bury as its leader became President of the Council, a
few days before Locke returned to England. He held
office only till the following October. The succession
to the throne was becoming the great question of prac-
tical politics. The House of Commons resolved, on the
motion of Hampden, that " the Duke of York's being a
Papist, and the hopes of his coming such to the crown,
has given the greatest countenance and encouragement
to the present conspiracies and designs of the Papists
against the Protestant religion." An Exclusion Bill,
"to disable the Duke of York to inherit the crown of
England," was read a second time and supported by

Political Troubles in England. 59

Shaftesbury, who advocated the claims of Monmouth in
opposition to those of the Prince of Orange, already-
put forward by leading politicians. The royal support
was in these circumstances withdrawn from the popular
leaders, who had been called to office but not really to
Court favour, for a few months in 1679. Throughout
this crisis Locke was at the right hand of Shaftesbury.
He was overwhelmed with work at Thanet House. It
was a time of plots and counter-plots, when England
seemed about to plunge into another civil war. Another
Parliament was called in 1680, and dissolved early in
the following year, followed by one which met at Ox-
ford in March, and was dissolved in the same month
— the last of Charles's reign. In the summer of 1681
Shaftesbury was again in the Tower, charged with
treason, tried in November, and acquitted. He was
welcomed back with popular enthusiasm. He employed
his restored liberty in support of the Duke of Monmouth
for the succession, but without his former prudence.
"All through the summer of 1682 he was plotting for
an insurrection " with the zeal of a partisan, in spite of
the advice and example of Locke and other considerate
politicians. The arrest of Monmouth, in September
1682, paralysed his policy. In November, after hiding
for some days at Wapping, he made his way to Harwich,
disguised as a Presbyterian minister, and thence escaped
to Holland. He died at Amsterdam on the 31st Jan-
uary 1683..

Locke's movements during this disturbed time may
be thus outlined : — During the six months of Shaftes-
bury's administration in 1679, his hands were full at
Thanet House, but not so as to forbid intercourse with

GO Locke.

old friends and a visit to Essex. In the following winter,
the political change making his stay at Thanet House
less important, with a return of indifferent health, the
result of life in London, he made his way to his old home
at Christ Church, and then to Somerset. The spring
and summer of 1680 saw him much at Thanet House,
or with Lord Shaftesbury at his country seat of St
Giles in Dorset, indulging in hopes, which were dis-
appointed, of a visit to Paris. In the winter of 1680-
81 we can follow him to Shotover, the home of his old
college friend James Tyrrell, and thence to Oxford to
the meeting of the short Oxford Parliament, where he
stayed till June, throughout "the dryest spring that
hath been known." Of that summer he spent some
weeks in London, and may have been at Thanet
House in July, when Shaftesbury was arrested. Soon
after he returned to Oxford, which was his headquarters
for months, — though it seems he was in London in
November, at the time of the trial and acquittal of
his patron, and again in the following January, see-
ing his pupil " Mr Anthony " (the Lord Shaftesbury
of the ' Characteristics '). It was then and there that
the news of the first lord's death in Holland reached
him; he was soon after one of the mourners at the
funeral at St Giles's. His movements in 1683 are more
obscure. He was now suspected and watched as the
friend and adviser of the exiled lord ; but there is
evidence that Shaftesbury's rash policy in his last years
got no encouragement from Locke's prudence and philo-
sophic moderation, and that he had nothing to do with
the later intrigues. In March 1682, Prideaux had re-
ported from Oxford that " John Locke was living a

The Clarkes and Cudworths. 61

very cunning, unintelligible life, being two days in
town and three out," and that "no one knows where
he goes, or when he goes, or when he returns." A
year after this, the Dean of Christ Church, as visitor,
in a letter to Lord Sunderland, " confidently affirms
that there is not any one in the college, however
familiar with him, who has heard him speak a word
against, or so much as concerning the Government;
and although very frequently, both in public and in
private, discourses have been purposely introduced to
the disparagement of his master the Earl of Shaftesbury,
his party and designs, he could never be provoked to
take any notice, or discover in word or look the least
concern ; so that I believe there is not in the world such
a master of taciturnity and passion. He has here a
physician's place, which frees hini from the exercise of
the college."

Some light now comes from the Nynehead Collection
of Locke's unpublished correspondence, upon details
of his history in these darkest years of Charles II.'s
reign. The earliest letters in this interesting collection
were written in 1681. It consists largely of friendly
domestic communications between Locke and the family
of his friend Edward Clarke of Chipley in Somerset,
thenceforward till the close of his life. There are let-
ters from Locke to Clarke, when Locke was visiting
in Somerset, and the Clarkes were staying in London —
addressed to " Edward Clarke," or " Mrs Clarke, at the
Lady King's, Salisbury Court, near Eleet Street ; " or,
when Locke was in town, from him, at " Salisbury
Court," to " Edward Clarke, Esq. of Chipley, to be left
at the post-house of Taunton," when Clarke was on some

62 Locke.

home visit about county affairs. This interchange be-
tween London and Oxford and Chipley is frequent in
1682 and the early part of 1683. The correspondence
shows a growing intimacy of Locke with the family of
Dr Kalph Cudworth, the great Cambridge Platonist and
philosophising divine of the Anglican Church in the
seventeenth century. Like Locke himself, Cudworth
was a native of Somerset, and thus intimate with the
Clarkes, with whom Mrs Cudworth was often living at
their town house in " Salisbury Court, near Fleet Street."
The letters from the Clarkes to Locke contain almost
always allusions to the Cudworths, and kindly greet-
ings ; and Locke's letters end with his " humble service
to Mrs Cudworth and the rest of your good company."
The Anglican divine and philosopher himself does not
figure in the scene, and Locke's relations to him can
only be inferred. Cudworth was then in his recluse,
studious life at Cambridge. His great work, ' The In-
tellectual System of the Universe, or Confutation of the
Reason and Philosophy of Atheism,' had been published
in 1678, when Locke was in France. It would be inter-
esting, and not without historical meaning, if Locke
had communication with this most learned of English
philosophers, who represented Plato and Plotinus instead
of either Bacon or Hobbes. We find instead only a
letter from Locke to Thomas Cudworth the son, then
in India, written in April 1683 (the last trace, by the
way, of Locke in London for nearly six years after it
was written). He introduced himself to the son on the
score of intimacy with the family, in a characteristic
letter, full of inquisitiveness about men and manners
in the East : — ■

Pathology of the Under 'standing. 63

"And now," lie concludes, "having been thus free with
you, 'tis vain to make apologies for it. If you allow your
sister to dispose of your friendship, you will not take it
amiss that I have looked upon myself as in possession of
what she has bestowed upon me, or that I begin my con-
versation with you with a freedom and familiarity suitable to
an established amity and acquaintance. If at this distance
we should set out according to the forms of ceremony, our
correspondence would proceed with a more grave and serene
pace than the treaties of princes, and we must spend years
in the preliminaries. He that in his first address should
only put off his hat and make a leg, and cry, 'Your ser-
vant' to a man at the other end of the world, may, if the
winds set right, and the ships come home safe, and bring
back the return of his compliment — may, in two or three
years perhaps, attain to something that looks like the begin-
ning of an acquaintance, and by the next jubilee there may
be hopes of some conversation between them. Sir, you see
what a blunt fellow your sister has recommended to you, as
far removed from the ceremonies of the Eastern people you
are^amongst as from their country."

Members of the Cudworth family, and in particular
this " sister," reappear later on in Locke's life, and are
associated with him to the end. This was the begin-
ning of the friendship.

The story of Locke's thoughts and studies in the
four years which followed his return to France is to
be traced partly in his correspondence, chiefly in the
journal and commonplace-books. His pursuits recall
the medical years at Oxford before he met Shaftesbury,
as much as that pathological investigation of human
understanding which so much occupied his time in
France. The Bishop of Oxford, in the letter to Lord
Sunderland, referred to Locke's having "a physician's
place " at Christ Church. Broken health, as well as the

64 Locke.

sudden diversion of his life to public affairs in 1667,
had withdrawn him in a measure from medicine, but
not entirely. Mr Fox Bourne has illustrated the con-
tinued activity of this factor in his experience after his
return from France. Before he had been a month in
England, and amidst the engrossments of the political
crisis of that eventful summer, the journal describes
medical cases in town and country; and the personal
intercourse with Sydenham, interrupted by his stay
abroad, was resumed.

While the intellectual habits of the physician of the
body were thus sustained, they were still transferred to
the diseases of the body politic and of the human un-
derstanding. Questions of social polity and the conflict
of parties in England kept his attention directed to the
relations of Church and State. Here is something, in a
paper on "the difference between civil and ecclesiastical
power," — written, perhaps, before he went to France, —
which bears traces of his Puritan education : —

"From the twofold concernment men have to attain a
twofold happiness — that of this world and that of the other ;
there arises these two following Societies — Civil Society or
the State, and Religious Society or the Church. The end
of Civil Society is the preservation of the Society and every
member thereof in a free and peaceable enjoyment of all
the good things of this life that belong to each of them ;
but beyond the concernments of this life this Society hath
nothing to do at all. The end of Religious Society is the
attaining happiness after this life in another world. The
terms of communion with either Society is promise of
obedience to the laws of it [contract]. . . . The means to
preserve' obedience to the laws of Civil Society, and thereby
preserve it, is force or punishment — that is, abridgment of
one's share of the good things of the world, and sometimes

Church and State. 65

total deprivation, as in capital punishments. The means to
preserve obedience to the laws of the Religious Society or
Church are the hopes and fears of happiness and misery in
another world. Though the penalties annexed are of another
world, yet the Society being in this world, there are means
necessary for its preservation here — the expulsion of such
members as obey not the laws of it. . . . The laws of a
commonwealth are mutable, being made within the Society
itself : the laws of the Religious Society (bating those which
are only subservient to the order necessary to their execution)
are immutable, not subject to the authority of the Society, but
made by a lawgiver without it, and paramount to it. The
proper means to procure obedience to the law of the Civil
Society, and thereby attain civil happiness, is [physical]
force or punishment. The proper enforcement of obedience
to the laws of the Religious Society is the rewards and
punishments of another world ; but not by civil punishment,
which is ineffectual for that purpose, — and it is, besides,
unjust that I should be despoiled of my good things of this
world, where I disturb not the enjoyment of others ; for my
faith or religious worship hurts not any concernment of his.
... In all Civil Society one man's good is involved with
another's ; in Religious Society every man's concerns are
separate, and if he err he errs at his own private cost, only
for the propagation of the truth, which every religious
society believes to be its own religion ; it is equity that it
should remove those evils which will hinder its propagation
— disturbance within and infamy without — and the proper
way to do this is to exclude and disown such members.
Church membership is voluntary, and may end wherever any
one pleases without any prejudice to himself; but in Civil
Society it is not so."

Locke then describes various possible and actual rela-
tions between these two great organisations of mankind,
— the one, as he conceived it, immediately concerned
with this world, and the other with a coming world. As

p. — xv. e

66 Locke.

"almost all mankind are combined into civil societies
in various forms," and as there are " very few also that
have not some religion," it comes to pass that almost
all are members at once of some commonwealth and of
some Church; but with mutual relations that are different
in different countries. Thus " in Muscovy the civil and
religious societies are coextended, every member of the
same commonwealth being also a member of the same
Church. In Spain and Italy, the commonwealth, though
all of one religion, is but a part of the one Catholic
religious society. In England, on the contrary, the
public established religion, not being received by all the
members of the commonwealth, and the religion of the
rest of the people being different from that of " the gov-
erning part of the civil society, each religious society
is only a part of the commonwealth. As to penal laws,
if any differ from the Church in faith or worship, the
magistrate must punish him for it where he is fully
persuaded that it will disturb the civil peace ; otherwise
not. But the religious society may excommunicate him ;
and this power of being judges who are fit to be of their
society, the magistrate cannot deny to any religious
society which is permitted within his dominions." This
acute separation of the civil from the ecclesiastical
society appears less in Locke's later ideas on the sub-
ject.

In 1680, Stillingfleet, then Dean of St Paul's, pub-
lished a discourse on " the Mischief of Separation," in
which he argued the disastrous consequences to Chris-
tianity of the separation of sects from the main body
of the visible Church in any nation ; and pressed the
exclusive claim of the Church of England, in virtue of

Ecclesiastical Comprehension. 67

its episcopally transmitted ministerial mission, by which
visible ecclesiastical unity is sustained. Eeplies from
leading Nonconformists were met by Stillingfleet with
an elaborate rejoinder on ■ The Unreasonableness of
Separation.' The controversy touched principles that
were settled in Locke's mind by long reflection ; but
apparently for his own satisfaction he prepared a tract,
entitled ' A Defence of Non-Conformity,' which he never
published. It is a plea for compromise and toleration,
as opposed to the exclusive claim of the Church of
England, or any other religious society, to the sub-
mission of Englishmen, and above all, for the indepen-
dence of individual judgment in such matters. He
writes as himself a member of the National Church,
"but from a heart truly charitable to all pious and
sincere Christians." He claims a rightful liberty for all
to choose what Church or religious society, or whether
any, each will be of, as each may find most conducive
to his personal salvation, "of which he is sole judge,
and over which the magistrate has no power." The
history of the first planting of Christianity in the
world gives no countenance, he maintains, to the ex-
clusive claim of any National Church to determine
doctrine, ritual, and worship for all. To preserve its
comprehensive nationality, endangered in the altered
sentiment of the age by an elaborate ceremonial which
offended the Nonconformists, the Church, he argued,
should accommodate its services to the varieties of taste
and feeling.

" The taking away of as many as possible of our present
ceremonies may be as proper a way now to bring the Dis-
senters into the communion of our Church, as the retaining

68 Locke,

as many of them as could be was of making converts at the
Eeformation. So that what was then for the enlargement,
now tends to the narrowing of our Church. Since Dissenters
may be gained and the Church enlarged by parting with a few
things which, when the law which enjoins them is taken away,
are acknowledged to be indifferent, and therefore may still
be used by those that like them, I ask whether it be not a
duty incumbent on those who have a care for men's souls to
bring members into the union of the Church, and so to put
an end to the guilt they are charged and lie under of error
and schism and division, when they can do it at so cheap a
rate?"

Locke's plea for an elastic and comprehensive ritual
and creed would probably have met with little sym-
pathy from the extremes either of Church or Dissent ;
and his principle led him in these circumstances to stand
out for the right of men to form themselves into inde-
pendent religious societies, organised in any way which
did not interfere with the liberties of others. In fact,
visible Churches seem to have been in his view accidents
of religion, and not part of its essence, which lay in
personal faith and conduct, and might flourish under
any ecclesiastical organisation, or even apart from all
organised religious society. The revelations of his
mind about this time show an indifference to questions
on which theological disputants lay stress that is hardly
consistent with exclusive connection with any organised
body of Christians, notwithstanding a gravitation to-
wards the Church of England, as the communion in
which the freedom that he supremely loved could most
easily be found.

It was thus that Locke regarded the controversies
which he found raging around him in England after

Dependence of Knowledge on Ideas. 69

his return from France. But he had not forgotten his
great philosophical enterprise. Thus the following sig-
nificant sentences occur in his journal, in June 1681,
regarding knowledge and probability, and the relation
between our knowledge of things and our ideas : —

" All general knowledge is founded only upon true ideas,
and so far as we have these we are capable of demonstration
on certain knowledge ; for he that has the true idea of a
circle or triangle, is capable of knowing any demonstration
concerning these figures ; but if he have not the true idea of
a scalenus, he cannot know anything concerning it, though
he may have some confused or imperfect opinion, upon a
confused or imperfect idea of it ; but this is belief, and not
knowledge. . . . The first great step, therefore, to know-
ledge, is to get the mind furnished with true ideas ; and the
mind being capable of thus knowing moral things as well
as figures, I cannot but think morality as well as mathe-
matics capable of demonstration, if men would employ their
understanding to think more about it, and not give them-
selves up to the lazy traditional way of talking one after
another. The knowledge of natural bodies and their opera-
tion, on the other hand, reaching little further than bare
matter of fact, without our having perfect ideas of the ways
and manners they are produced, nor the concurrent causes
they depend on ; and also the well management of public
or private affairs, depending upon the various and unknown
humours, interests, and capacity of man, and not upon any
settled ideas of things, — it follows that Physics, Polity, and
Prudence are not capable of demonstration, but a man is
principally helped in them by the history of matter of fact,
and a sagacity of inquiring into probable causes and finding
out an analogy in their operations and effects. Knowledge,
then, depends upon right and true ideas ; opinion upon his-
tory and matter of fact. Hence it comes to pass that our
knowledges of general things are ceternce veritates, and depend
not upon the existence or accidents of thing ; for the truths

70 Locke.

of mathematics and morality are certain, whether men make
true mathematical figures, or suit their actions to the rules
of morality or no. For that the three angles of a triangle are
equal to two right ones is infallibly true, whether there be any
such figure as a triangle actually existing in the world or no.
And it is true that it is every one's duty to be just, whether
there be any such thing as a just man in the world or no.
But whether this particular course in public or in private
affairs will succeed well, whether rhubarb will purge or
quinquina cure an ague, is only known by experience ; and
therefore is but probably grounded upon experience or ana-
logical reasoning, but is no certain knowledge or demon-
stration." l

The ' Essay on Human Understanding ' must have
been well thought out by its author when these sen-
tences, which express its main drift, were written by
him. It was becoming in Locke's mind an investigation
into our ideas of things ; on the ground that if we
have no ideas or thoughts about a thing, that thing
is for us non-existent — our knowledge consisting in our
having those ideas which conform (may we say T) to the
ideas that are in nature ; while those things of which we
have imperfect ideas are only matters of belief or opin-
ion; subsiding into doubt or even ignorance as the
ideas are more obscure, or at last disappear in uncon-
sciousness, which means absence of all ideas.

That the 'Essay ' had, some time before 1683, taken,
so far, the form in which it was at last published, may
be inferred from what is told of Lord Shaftesbury :
"One of his attendants, in his last hours in Holland,
recommended to him the confession of his faith and the
examination of his conscience. The Earl answered him,

1 King, ii. p. 24.

Summer of 1683. 71

and talked all over Arianism and Socinianism ; which
notions he confessed he had imbibed from Mr Locke
and his tenth chapter of Human Understanding."
The reference is probably to the tenth chapter of the
Fourth Book of the * Essay,' regarding the foundation
of theism, which Lord Shaftesbury must therefore have
seen in manuscript before he fled to Holland.

The ' Essay ' was not the only work in which Locke
was employed amidst the troubles of these years. The
tendency of the political current, and a defence by Sir
Robert Filmer of the divine right of kings, directed his
thoughts to the first principles of government ; and the
defence of the utilitarian theory of government, some
years afterwards published in the ' Treatises on Govern-
ment,' was probably written in part in the interval
between his return from France and his return to the
Continent.

We trace Locke in Somerset in the summer of 1683,
but the movements are obscure. According to Lady
Masham's report, "the times now growing trouble-
some to those of my Lord Shaftesbury's principles,
and more especially dangerous for such as had been
intimate with him, Mr Locke with reason apprehended
himself not to be very safe in England ; for though
he knew there was no just matter of accusation against
him, yet it was not unlikely, as things then were,
but that he might have come to be questioned ; and
should he under any pretence have been put under
confinement, though for not very long time, yet such
was the state of his health that his life must have been
thereby much endangered." With his customary pru-
dence, accordingly, he prepared for voluntary exile.

72 Locke.

Among the Nynehead manuscripts there is a document
entitled an " Arrangement of the affairs of John Locke
of Beluton, in the parish of Stanton Drewe, Somerset ;
also an inventory of other property in the parishes of
Stanton Drewe, St Thomas in Pensford, and Publow."
This was no doubt in prospect of his leaving England,
for it is dated 14th August 1683. After that he goes
out of sight for a time, but in the end of that same year
he suddenly reappears in Holland. Then there are let-
ters from Holland in large numbers, the earliest dated
in November, full of affection, giving the idea of a man
of tender feelings, yearning for the society of his friends,
on whom exile sat heavily. In these letters the little
Somerset property, and the domestic affairs of his friend
Clarke, are often referred to, as well as Clarke's infant
child Betty, who found her way to his heart as she grew
older, and of whom he thus early writes, " I love her
mightily." There is also well-considered advice about
the training of Clarke's son, the substance of which
was afterwards given to the world in the " Thoughts
concerning Education."

Holland was then the asylum in Europe for those
who failed elsewhere to find religious and civil liberty.
Descartes and Spinoza had meditated there some years
before, and at a still earlier period it was the home of
Erasmus and Grotius. In 1683 it was the refuge of
Bayle, who lived at Rotterdam ; and many of the Eng-
lish political exiles were in other parts of the Nether-
lands. It was Locke's sanctuary for more than five
years after that gloomy autumn of 1683. He at first
betook himself to Amsterdam, where he found a homo
and family life in the house of Dr Peter Guenellon, the

An Exile in Holland. 73

friend of his old Paris days. There, too, he formed a
lasting friendship with Philip von Limborch, the leader
of liberal theology in Holland, successor of Episcopius
as Remonstrant professor of theology, lucid and learned,
the friend of Cudworth, Whichcote, and More, about
his own age, with whom he corresponded largely dur-
ing the remainder of his life. Their mutual influence
deepened and enlarged Locke's ideas of religious liberty
and liberal theology, and their names must always be
associated. Limborch's society did much to soothe the
pain of exile, so that Locke found in Holland that " re-
tirement" which he had lost since he quitted France,
and in which "attendance on his health" was no ob-
stacle to the completion of the intellectual enterprise
undertaken fourteen years before.

Locke was not long stationary at Amsterdam. His
own curiosity, and the political suspicion which drove
him from England, kept him in motion in Holland. In
1684 he made a prolonged tour of observation, and then
spent some time at Leyden, so long the home of Des-
cartes. The holiday did him good ; and in November
he wrote to Thoynard at Paris that he " had not for
many years past felt better." Lady Masham says that
in Holland, " enjoying better health than he had for a
long time done in England or even in the fine air of
Montpellier, he had full leisure to prosecute his thoughts
on the subject of ' Human Understanding,' a work which
in all probability he would never have finished had he
continued in England." He betook himself to Utrecht
during the winter of 1684-85, to have more leisure and
better opportunities for thought and a milder climate.
There he settled himself in December, "with all the

74 Locke.

books and other luggage that I brought from England."
But he was not undisturbed even in this retirement.
The Earl of Sunderland, the Secretary of State, on the
6th of November 1684, wrote to Eell, Bishop of Oxford,
then Dean of Christ Church, that Charles II. "being
given to understand that one Mr Locke, who belonged to
the Earl of Shaftesbury, and has upon several occasions
behaved himself very factiously and uudutifully to the
Government, is a Student of Christ Church, his Majesty
commands me to signify to your lordship that he would
have him removed from being a Student." In a few
days the Bishop replied, that " His Majesty's command
for the expulsion of Mr Locke from the college was fully
executed." He was thus suddenly and without a trial
deprived of what had been an Oxford home for thirty-
two years, and of the emoluments which belonged to it.
It cannot, indeed, be said that he was expelled from the
university, but only that Bishop Eell, in obedience to the
king's command, withdrew from him his Studentship at
Christ Church. Lady Masham mentions that she had
herself heard a friend of the Bishop say that " nothing
had ever happened which had troubled him more than
what he had been obliged to do against Mr Locke, for
whom he ever had a sincere respect, and whom he be-
lieved to be of as irreproachable manners and inoffensive
conversation as was in the world." Mr Locke, she adds,
had not been gone abroad " above a year, when he was
accused of having writ some libellous pamphlets which
were supposed to have come over from Holland, but have
since been known to have been writ by others. This
was the only reason that I have ever heard assigned of
his Majesty sending to Dr Fell, the Bishop of Oxford

Loss of Studentship at Christ Church. 75

and Dean of Christ Church, to expel Mr Locke that
house immediately." Not even to this extent had he
as yet given his thoughts on any subject to the world.
"It is a very odd thing," he writes to Lord Pembroke
in December 1684, "that I did get the reputation of
no small writer without having done anything for it ;
for I think two or three copies of verses of mine, pub-
lished without my name to them, have not gained me
that reputation. Bating these, I do solemnly protest in
the presence of God that I am not the author, not only
of any libel, but not any pamphlet or treatise whatever,
good, bad, or indifferent." 1

His loss of the Studentship, which left him with only
the little Somerset property and his annuity from
Shaftesbury, was not the only inconvenience which
Locke suffered from the political troubles of the time.
The death of Charles II. led to the Duke of Monmouth's
insurrection, and that to his execution, after his defeat
at Sedgemoor, in July 1685. The suspicion that Locke
was somehow concerned in this insurrection brought
him at once into danger of arrest. His name was put
in a list of eighty-four dangerous Englishmen in Hol-
land, alleged to be plotting against the life of King
James, whose persons were demanded to be given up
to the English Government. Eor weeks he was in
hiding at Amsterdam, in that summer, in the house
of Veen, Guenellon's father-in-law, and his correspon-

i This reference is to two copies of verses contributed by Locke to
a volume of poems in praise of Cromwell, brought out by Dr Owen so
early as 1654, in which many members of the university shared. It
is curious that Locke's first appearance in print should have been as
a writer of verses, and the verses, as might be expected, contain little
poetry.

76 Locke.

dence with his friends in England was for a time
maintained in cipher. In September he went for more
secure concealment to his Continental home of twenty
years before, at Cleve, to return soon to his former
retreat at Amsterdam, where, for concealment, he took
for a time the name of "Dr Van der Linden." With
the year 1685 the danger passed away.

At Cleve we find him working at the 'Essay.' "I
wish," he wrote to Limborch in October, "that the
book I am preparing were in such a language that
you might correct its faults ; you would find plenty
of matter in it to criticise." About this time he was
also writing the Latin letter to Limborch on " the
mutual toleration of Christians in their different pro-
fessions of religion," which made its appearance in
print four years later.

That winter introduced a new friend to Locke,
whose influence was memorable, as through him he
first appeared as an author. This was Le Clerc, then
the youthful representative of letters and philosophy
in Limborch's College, who had, a year or two before,
escaped from his birthplace at Geneva, and from Cal-
vinism, into the milder ecclesiastical atmosphere of
Holland. The t Bibliotheque Universelle/ commenced
under Le Clerc's management in 1686, soon became
the chief literary organ in Europe. Locke was early
associated with him in the work, and contributed several
articles in that and the following year. Though he was
now fifty-four years of age, and afterwards author of so
many bulky volumes, these three or four anonymous
articles were his first prose performances in print. This
tardiness means much. It agrees with the prudent and

First appearance as an Author. 77

cautious temper, massive common-sense, and repressed
enthusiasm which belong to his character — in contrast
to the eager impetuosity which hurried Spinoza or
Berkeley or Hume to produce their bolder and more
subtle speculations in the morning of life. Locke was
almost sixty before the world received the thoughts
which long observation of men and affairs, and much
patient consideration, had been gradually forming in his
mind. The occasional articles in Le Clerc's journal pre-
pared the way. The last of these was an epitome in
French of the forthcoming 'Essay concerning Human
Understanding,' contained in the ' Bibliotheque ' of Jan-
uary 1688.

Locke had meantime removed to Botterdam, where
he lived for more than a year in the family of a Quaker
friend, the wealthy Dutch merchant and book-collector,
Benjamin Eurley, whose friendship he owed to Edward
Clarke of Chipley. The course of English politics was
now opening a way for his return to his native country.
At Botterdam he was the cautious confidant of other
English political exiles, especially Burnet, afterwards
Bishop of Salisbury, and Mordaunt, in the end the
renowned Earl of Peterborough, and even William of
Orange himself. The scene suddenly changes. William
landed in England in November 1688 ; Locke followed
in February 1689, in the fleet which carried the Prin-
cess to Greenwich. In that month the Prince and
Princess were proclaimed joint sovereigns, and the po-
litical struggle which had been going on for half a
century was consummated in the Revolution, of which
Locke was to be the philosophical defender, and, though
as yet unknown to popular fame, the intellectual repre-

78 Locke.

sentative. The England in which he found himself
in the spring of 1689 was politically a very different
England from the one he left under Charles II., in the
gloomy autumn of 1683. He returned to play his part
in philosophical authorship, with London for a time as
the stage of operations.

79

SECOND PAET.

THE PHILOSOPHY: EXPOSITION AND CRITICISM
(1689-91).

CHAPTEE I.

LONDON : PUBLICATION.

" Mr Locke," says Lady Masham, " continued for more
than two years after the Eevolution much in London,
enjoying no doubt all the pleasure there that any one
can find, who, after being long in a manner banished
from his country, unexpectedly returning to it, was
himself more generally esteemed and respected than
ever he was before. If he had any dissatisfaction in
this time, it could only be, I suppose, from the ill
success now and then of our public affairs; for his
private circumstances were as happy, I believe, as he
wished them, and all people of worth had that value
for him that I think I may say he might have what
friends he pleased. But of all the contentments that
he then received, there was none greater than that of
spending one day every week with my Lord Pembroke,

80 Locke,

in a conversation undisturbed by such as could not bear
a part in the best entertainments of rational minds —
free discourse concerning useful truths. His old enemy,
the town air, did indeed sometimes make war upon his
lungs ; but the kindness of the now Earl of Peterborough
and his lady, who both of them always expressed much
esteem and friendship for Mr Locke, afforded him so
pleasing an accommodation on those occasions at a house
of theirs near the town (at Parson's Green), advantaged
with a delightful garden, which was what Mr Locke
always took pleasure in, that he had scarce cause to
regret the necessity he was there under of a short
absence from London."

It was during these two years that Locke, late in life,
suddenly emerged through authorship into European
fame. On his return from Holland in February 1689,
he went to live in hired apartments in the house of Mrs
Smithsby, Dorset Court, Channel Eow, Westminster.
This was his headquarters till the beginning of 1691.
"Dorset Court," from which the 'Essay concerning
Human Understanding ' is dated, has long since dis-
appeared ; but " Channel Eow " probably corresponds to
what is now called Cannon Eow. It was near the
centre of affairs, and within easy reach of his political
friends. It was a stirring time in English politics.
During the last year of his stay in Holland, he had
been an unobtrusive but influential agent in the prepa-
rations for the Eevolution. Accordingly, within a few
days after his return to London, the high office of
ambassador to Frederick, the new Elector of Branden-
burg, and founder of the future kingdom of Prussia,
was offered to him by King William. The obligation to

An offered Embassy. 81

decline this offer, he says in a letter to Lord Mordaunt,
was " the most touching displeasure I have ever received
from that weak and broken constitution of my health
which has so long threatened my life, and which now
affords me not a body suitable to my mind in so desir-
able an occasion of serving his Majesty in — the post one
of the busiest and most important in Europe — at a
season when there is not a moment of time lost without
endangering the Protestant and English interest through-
out Europe, all which makes me dread the thought that
my weak constitution should in so considerable a post
clog his Majesty's affairs. If I have reason to appre-
hend the cold air of the country, there is yet another
thing that is as inconsistent with my constitution, and
that is their warm drinking. Obstinate refusal in that
would be but to take more care of my own health than
of the king's business. The knowing what others are
doing would be at least one half of my business ; and I
know no such rack in the world to draw out men's
thoughts as a well-managed bottle. If there be anything
wherein I may natter myself I have attained any degree
of capacity to serve his Majesty, it is in some little
knowledge I may have in the constitution of my country,
the temper of my countrymen, and the divisions among
them, whereby I persuade myself I may be more useful
to him at home." At home, accordingly, he remained.
In May, three months after his return from Holland,
he accepted instead of the Embassy a Commissionership
of Appeals, "a place," as Lady Masham explains, "hon-
ourable enough for any gentleman, though of no greater
value than £200 per annum, and suitable to Mr Locke
on account that it required but little attendance." So

P. — XV. F

82 Locke.

we have liim settled at Mrs Smithsby's, immersed in the
work of the press and in politics, with this modest
addition to the little patrimony in Somerset and the
Shaftesbury pension.

The "divisions" among his countrymen which then
perplexed home politics occupied much of Locke's time
for at least a year after his return. " I have hardly had
a moment of leisure since I arrived," he wrote to Lim-
borch in March, " in the worry I have had in hunting
up and collecting my scattered goods for immediate use,
and in the many claims that have been made upon me
by the urgent pressure of public business." The matters
in practical politics which chiefly interested him then
and afterwards are thus mentioned : " In Parliament
the question of Toleration has begun to be discussed
under two designations — Comprehension and Indulgence.
By the first is meant a wide expansion of the Church, so
as, by abolishing a number of obnoxious ceremonies, to
induce a great many Dissenters to conform. By the
other is meant the allowance of civil rights to all who,
in spite of the broadening of the National Church, are
still unwilling or unable to become members of it."

These two objects had already engaged Locke much in
early and middle life. They continued to determine his
course of thought and his public action as long as he
lived. But the press, rather than direct influence over
legislation, was now to be his chief instrument in bringing
public opinion to favour social toleration of the exercise
and expression of individual judgment.

The Toleration Act of 1690 fell short of his ideal
of the liberty due by the State to those who dissent
from the National Church. The Comprehension Bill, in-

'Epistola de Tolcrantia! 83

tended to enable the Establishment to absorb dissent,
was withdrawn ; partly on account of the exclusive
claims of the Church, and the inability of ecclesiastics
to see the unique position which the Church of England
might come to occupy in Christendom by a generous
and comprehensive statesmanship.

It was in the course of these two transition years in
Dorset Court that Locke offered to the world in books
the results of his study of human understanding, and
of those principles of religious liberty and social polity
which successful search for truth by the finite mind of
man presupposes. His philosophy — political and intel-
lectual, the political rooted in the intellectual — is con-
tained in three books which had been prepared chiefly
in France and Holland, but also amidst the interruptions
to study in England in the years immediately before his
exile. They were all given to the world in 1689 and
1690, when he was living in London.

The first to appear was the 'Epistola de Tolerantia,'
written in Latin in 1685, and addressed to his Dutch
friend Limborch. It had been published anonymously
at Gouda in Holland, a few weeks after its author re-
turned to London, as a philosophical argument for the
religious liberty of the individual. The substance of
the argument had been in his mind, and found its way
into his manuscripts, in the long-past days in Oxford,
even before he had become associated with Shaftesbury
in their common warfare with the foes of freedom. The
characteristic title-page ingeniously conceals and yet re-
veals the author. It runs thus : — ' Epistola de Toler-
antia ; ad Clarissimum Virum T. A. E. P. T. 0. L. A.

84 Locke.

scripta a P. A. P. 0. I. L. A." The first series of
these mystical letters stands for — " Theologise apud
Eemonstrantes Professorem, Tyrannidis Osorem, Lim-
burgium, Amstelodamensem," to whom the 'Epistola'
was addressed ; while the second series represents its
author — " Pacis Amico, Persecutionis Osore, Joanne
Lockio, Anglo." Locke's prudential caution, sometimes,
perhaps, approaching to timidity, made him anxious to
preserve the secret of authorship, which was known to
Limborch alone when the little volume was published
early in 1689. The secret intrusted by Locke to his
friend was the occasion of a characteristic incident.
Limborch, in a moment of weakness, was induced to
discover the secret to Guenellon, and also to Dr Veen,
Guenellon's father-in-law, in whose house at Amsterdam
the ' Epistola ' was written. He confessed his weakness
in one of his letters to Locke, who was less easily propi-
tiated than his friend had expected, for this revelation
produced a strong remonstrance and a transitory coolness.
It was only in his last Will that Locke himself acknow-
ledged the authorship.

The c Epistola de Tolerantia ' soon attracted attention.
It was translated into English by William Popple — a
Unitarian merchant, author of the ' National Catechism '
— in the year in which it was published at Gouda ;
and the translation appeared in London in 1689, and
again "corrected" in 1690. Excepting his contribu-
tions to Le Clerc's ' Bibliotheque ' when he was in Hol-
land, it was the earliest published of Locke's prose writ-
ings. The argument could not at that time escape hostile
criticism, although its own influence has now made its
paradoxical teaching commonplace. A few weeks after

'Two Treatises on Government.' 85

Popple's translation was published in London, a tract
issued from Oxford, entitled, ' The Argument of the
Letter concerning Toleration briefly Considered and
Answered.' According to Anthony Wood, its author
was Jonas Proast, of Queen's College, elsewhere men-
tioned as an archdeacon. This attack at once involved
Locke in controversy. He published a second anony-
mous ' Letter on Toleration ' as a rejoinder, towards the
end of 1689. Another critique of the 'Epistola,' by a
certain Thomas Long, soon followed, entitled, ' The Letter
for Toleration decyphered, and the Absurdity and Im-
piety of an Absolute Toleration demonstrated, by the
judgment of Presbyterians, Independents, and by Mr
Calvin, Mr Baxter, and the Parliament of 1662.'

Within a year after his return to London, Locke
presented to the world a philosophical defence of the
English Revolution, under the title of 'Two Treatises
on Government.' In one of them the "false principles
and foundations " of Sir Robert Filmer's arguments for
the divine right of kings are analysed and redargued ;
the other is an examination of the true nature, origin,
and end of civil government. Like the 'Letter on
Toleration,' this too was anonymous, and also, like the
'Letter,' it was a vindication, in another relation, of the
freedom and rights of the individual. The 'Letter'
vindicates individualism in religious opinion as against
legislative obstructions ; and the ' Treatises ' vindicate
individualism in civil affairs, and the rights of majorities
to govern the State. The author seems to have carried
the manuscript of the ' First Treatise ' to and from
Holland ; it was probably prepared in England, during
the troubles which followed the downfall of Shaftes-

86 Locke.

bury's last Administration. In the preface he describes
the 'Two Treatises' as only "the beginning and the
end" of a "projected Discourse" concerning govern-
ment, "fate having otherwise disposed of the papers
that should have filled in the middle, and which were
more than all the rest." But the fragments which he
offered at last were, he hoped, "sufficient to establish
the throne of our great Eestorer, King William, to make
good his title in the consent of the people, the only one
of all lawful governments."

The 'Essay concerning Human Understanding' was
delivered to the world almost simultaneously with the
' Two Treatises on Government.' It expressed the
philosophy that was latent in the ' Treatises ' and in
the 'Epistola.' It was Locke's long-considered answer
to the pregnant question which he had proposed to his
friends at their memorable meeting nearly twenty years
before. Part of it must have been sent to the printers
soon after he arrived in London. The " Epistle dedica-
tory" to the Earl of Pembroke is dated from Dorset
Court in May 1689. All that year his letters and journals
show that his time was much given to superintending
the press. In August he tells Limborch that all are so
busy about politics that there is a " dearth of books,"
but that he is submitting his " treatise ' De Intellectu '
to the criticism of those friends who are weak enough
to read it : " adding that already he had sent the first of
the four books into which it was divided, in proof to
Le Clerc. On the 3d of December he hoped that the
last sheet of the ' Essay ' would that day be in type.
"If it comes to be translated into Latin, I fear you will
find many faults in it. I sent Mr Le Clerc the second

'.Essay concerning Human Understanding.' 87

and third books as well as I can recollect in September.
I shall send him the rest very soon. As soon as I
receive the proof of the table of contents, I shall write
to him."

A few months after this, in March 1690, the long-
looked-for ' Essay ' was in circulation, with the author's
name appended to the dedication. It was his first
public acknowledgment of authorship. He received
£30 for the copyright, about the same sum as Kant
received, ninety-one years after, for his ' Kritik of Pure
Eeason,' — the philosophical complement to the ' Essay.'
These two great works are the fountains of the philo-
sophy of our epoch, the one dominating philosophical
thought in the eighteenth, and the other, partly by re-
action, in the nineteenth century.

88

CHAPTER II.

THE PHILOSOPHY IN THE ' EPISTOLA ' AND IN THE 'TWO
TREATISES' — RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL LIBERTY.

The three books in which Locke's philosophy was
published, within a year after his return from Holland
to London, were in intention practical more than specu-
lative. They were meant to help men to right conduct,
especially intellectual conduct, — not to satisfy abstract
metaphysical curiosity. Like all that he published, they
were books for the times, weapons constructed for de-
fending the free action of reason in men, in an age in
which their persons were in danger of persecution through
pressure of ecclesiastical or civil government. Moreover,
to those then becoming intellectually awake, man's power
of understanding the world in which he lived seemed
to have been too long wasted in empty verbal reason-
ings, and his liberty of thinking to be still crushed by
inherited traditions. Locke's three books, produced in
these two London years, after much consideration and
varied experience of life, agreed in encouraging resist-
ance to " masters or teachers who take men off the use
of their own judgment, and put them upon believing
and taking upon trust without further examination."

A Philosophy embodied in the three Boohs. 89

That each man should be himself intellectually, and be
able to see things as things are, with the eyes of his
own mind, and not merely through the eyes of others,
is the principle on which he invariably falls back in
all of them. The sense of human individuality, de-
veloped in Locke in even extreme reaction against the
pressure of the past, and along with this his ruling idea
of the rightful supremacy of reasonableness in everything,
made it the chief duty of his life to show what con-
stitutes reasonableness. This is the key to his defence
of free toleration for the expression of individual belief,
and to his whole conception of civil government. His
lessons of religious and civil liberty are sustained
philosophically by what he found in the course of a
prolonged analysis of the ideas of a human understand-
ing, and the limits of our knowledge. The 'Epistola
de Tolerantia ' is an argumentative defence of the reli-
gious liberty of the individual The book on ' Govern-
ment ' is a vindication of the rights of individuals, as
members of the body politic, to govern the State of
which they are members in the way most fitted to
secure individual happiness. And the 'Essay concern-
ing the Human Understanding ' may be interpreted as
the intellectual philosophy that is presupposed in human
liberty, — in the form of a logical analysis of the complex
and abstract ideas which man is capable of having ; the
source and extent of the knowledge or certainties that
he can reach within the sphere of his ideas; and the
nature and grounds of those presumptions of probability
by which, in lack of absolute certainty, our conduct has
to be regulated. The arguments and views of life which
run through these treatises were urgent in a generation

90 Locke.

which was above all engaged in the great modern
struggle against verbalism and the dead weight of dog-
matic authority. The ' Essay ' expressed the intellectual
groundwork of the whole. All the three illustrate, each
in its own way, the strong English common - sense of
a considerate politician, who sought, by their means, to
resist encroachments upon private judgment, out of love
for truth, which is " the seed-plot of all the virtues," ac-
cording to their author.

The ' Epistola de Tolerantia ' has been called the most
original of all Locke's works. This opinion may appear
doubtful now, when its own success has made its argu-
ments and conclusions commonplace. What when Locke
wrote was a paradox, which had to work its way into
the minds of men through innumerable obstructions, is
the very intellectual air we breathe, so that the super-
abundant argument and irony of this famous plea for
liberty is apt to weary those who now try to follow its
ramifications.

Yet the " toleration " for which Locke argued, — the
idea which was the mainspring of his life from youth
onwards, — then implied a complete revolution in the
previously received view of human knowledge and
belief. It carried in it elements of revulsion from the
dogmatic or absolute point of view that was character-
istic of medievalism, while it was in harmony with the
critical and relative point of view that, even when
Locke lived, was becoming the distinctive mark of
the modern spirit, — represented by Luther and the
Protestants in religious life, and by Montaigne and
Descartes, Campanella and Bacon, in speculative philo-
sophy. Eree toleration implied a protest against those

Toleration in the Seventeenth Century. 91

who, in theological and other inquiries, demand absolute
certainty in questions where balanced probability alone
is within reach of a human intelligence. The practice-
of universal toleration amidst increasing religious dif-
ferences, in the room which it gives for the exercise
of understanding by each person, free from everything
except the reasonable restraints of experience, was per-
haps at the time the most important practical appli-
cation of that answer to his own memorable question,
about the extent of man's knowledge of the universe,
which had been forming in Locke's mind amidst the
busy political life of the twenty years before he returned
from Holland.

The freedom of religious opinion from political re-
straints, which Locke argued for, was not entirely a
novelty. It had been already defended, upon various
grounds, in the seventeenth century. The idea was
then entering into the air. Chillingworth, Jeremy
Taylor, Glanville, and other philosophical divines of the
Church of England, argued for a large toleration by
the State, as well as for a generous comprehension on
the part of the National Church ; on the ground of the
natural limits and inevitable weakness of the profound-
est merely human understanding of the universe, espe-
cially when men's attempts to interpret things carry
them into the region of religious thought. Puritans
like Owen and Goodwin, on the other hand, whose
idea of ecclesiastical comprehension was narrow and
dogmatic, defended liberty of different religions within
the same nation ; while they objected, on grounds of
orthodoxy, and as members of separatist communities,
to a wide comprehension within their respective sects.

92 Locke.

The ideal of liberal Anglican Churchmen was that of
one Church, coextensive at least with the nation, if
not even with Christendom. Locke himself, exclusively
attached on principle to no one religious organisation,
while desirous to be in charitable sympathy with all
who loved truth and lived for righteousness in each, —
who had for his ideal the simple or practical Christianity
of the synoptic gospels, and the ecclesiastical liberty of
the apostolic age, as he interpreted it, — brought the test
of a sagacious and experienced intelligence to a question
which had been largely one either of academic discussion
or of sectarian controversy. The intellectual freedom
of each person, under whatever civil or ecclesiastical
institutions, was his ideal, rather than the collective
liberty of societies ; for he saw that societies, whether
Churches or States, often use their collective liberty to
crush persons and their independent judgment. The
idea of the State, however, which Locke favoured in
some of his earlier unpublished writings, was not the
Aristotelian, or that which has for its end the education
of the entire man by one social organism. It was rather
that of the Puritans, which divides the entire man and
a. full human life, between the State on the one hand
and the Church on the other. In Locke's sober utili-
tarian imagination and severely argumentative mind, it
must be confessed, too, that the idea of toleration lost
some of the poetic beauty or philosophic grandeur which
it received from Jeremy Taylor and Milton. But it was
Locke who first adapted it to the wants of practical
statesmen, and by his luminous reasonings carried it
into the convictions of the modern world.

A deep and abiding conviction of the narrow limits

Philosophical Basis of Toleration. 93

of man's understanding in the sphere of religion was at
the bottom of Locke's argument. While some of his
abstract reasonings lead towards a mutual exclusion of
the spheres of Church and State, and thus towards the
dissolution of that connection between them which has
been maintained in one form or another since Europe
was conquered by Christianity, he was ready to accept the
fact of their union in European civilisation. He only
pleaded that it should rest upon a basis comprehensive
enough to embrace all whose conduct was in conformity
with the spirit of Christ ; so that the National Church
should be really the Christian nation organised to pro-
mote goodness, not to protect the verbal subtleties by
which professional theologians have spoiled the sim-
plicity of Christianity in its transmission through the
ages. The recall of the national Christianity of Eng-
land to early simplicity, and so from elaborate dogmas to
virtuous life, would, he hoped, render nonconformity or
sectarian separation unnecessary, as few would then seek
to remain outside the National Church, and thus need
toleration. In this respect he receded from the Puritan
conception, and approached the Aristotelian and that of
Hooker. In this more comprehensive conception of the
Church, its functions and that of the State are insepar-
ably blended.

Locke had found all parties and sects, as well as the
Church, disposed to persecution. Government had been
partial in matters of religion ; and yet those who suf-
fered from its partiality had vindicated their rights upon
narrow principles, confined in their regard to the imme-
diate interests of their own sects. He felt the need for
more generous remedies than had yet been applied.

94 Locke.

" Absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and im-
partial liberty, is the thing that we stand in need of."
A mutual toleration of Christians by Christians, Locke
regards as " the chief characteristical mark of the true
Church." Sacerdotal succession and external ritual,
with that orthodoxy in which each assumes his own
orthodoxy, are marks of men striving for power and
empire over one another. Let one have ever so true a
claim to all these things, yet, if he be destitute of charity,
meekness, and goodwill towards all mankind, even to
those who are not called Christians, he is still short
of being a true Christian himself. He who denies not
anything that the Holy Scripture teaches, cannot, he
thought, be either a heretic or a schismatic. Religion
is not a matter of inheritance. No person is born a
member of any Church, which is a free and voluntary
society. In each of the many forms of organisation
which it adopts, it is only a mean to an end, and a
useful mean so far as it expresses and sustains individ-
ual religion. But this may be sustained under any of
its organical forms ; or, in the case of some, indepen-
dently of all ecclesiastical organisation. Eeligion lies
in the individual, not in any outward organs. This
was the spirit of Locke.

The harmlessness to society of most persecuted beliefs
*^is another point insisted on in his argument for tol-
eration by the State, as distinct from comprehension
by the Church. " No man," he maintains, " is hurt
because his neighbour is of a different religion from his
own ; and no civil society is hurt because its members
are of different religions from one another." On the
contrary, when we take into account the necessarily

Arguments for Toleration. 95

narrow extent of attainable certainties, and still more of
those actually attained by each man, we see that even
an encouragement of variety in individual opinion, and
of the relative freedom of inquiry, may be advantageous
to society, because it tends to develop the intellectual
resources of mankind, and thus adds to the security for
the discovery of truth. The independent activity of
each mind makes it probable that a truer and deeper
insight of what the lover of truth is in quest of may thus
be gradually gained, and added to the previous heritage
of the race. Anyhow, physical punishment, and eccle-
siastical ostracism or excommunication, are, in Locke's
view, unjust and even immoral means for presenting the
light of truth to individual minds. Persecution merely
transforms the man whom it overawes into a hypocrite.
Genuine belief and insight of truth can be attained
only according to those methods which are founded
on the ways in which knowledge grows in a human
mind ; consistently with its necessary limits ; and on
grounds of reasonable probability. As long as a man
is out of sight of good and sufficient evidence, he
cannot determine his beliefs reasonably ; for one cannot,
without subsiding into unreasonableness, settle arbitrar-
ily, as a matter of taste or desire, not on evidence, what
opinions he should hold. Thus all Locke's pleas for
universal toleration at last resolved themselves into his i
philosophical conclusions as to the origin and limits of
the insight into realities that is within the reach of a
human being of limited ideas.

But even Locke does not teach the duty of an un-
limited toleration by the State. He argues for the
forcible suppression of opinions that operate to the

96 Locke.

dissolution of society, or which subvert those moral rules
that are necessary to the preservation of order. He ev.en
applies this principle so as to exclude from toleration all
who are themselves intolerant, and who will not own and
teach the duty of tolerating all other men in matters
of religion — " who themselves only ask to be tolerated
by the magistrate until they find that they are strong
enough to seize the government, and possess themselves,
of the estates and fortunes of their fellow -subjects."
The tyranny of the sects, which had so much scandalised
Locke in his youth, was probably here in his view.
The political part which, since the Eestoration, Cathol-
icism had played in Europe, and especially in England,
with the recent Exclusion Bill debates, moved him also
to refuse toleration to " a Church constituted upon such
a bottom that all who enter into it do thereby deliver
themselves up to the protection and service of another
prince." He saw in the position of the Roman Church
at that time, a political force, which, on grounds of public
policy, it was necessary to restrain as dangerous to the
newly reconstituted State. Locke also refused toleration
to "all who deny the being of God." Atheism, as un-
derstood by him, means practically rejection of the prin-
ciple of order or reason in the universe. " The taking
aAvay of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all."
If atheism means a practical denial that reason is at
the root of things, or thus immanent in the universe in
which we, through our experience, participate; and that,
while we seem to be living in a cosmos, we are really
living in chaos, — then indeed the atheist " dissolves all ";
for this atheism is universal scepticism, bound in con-
sistency to surrender the physical and natural sciences,

Philosophy of Civil Government. 97

and even common experience, along with the ordinary
rules of prudential conduct and expectation, thus mak-
ing citizenship and society impossible. Thus understood,
it would indeed be irreconcilable with the sanity of those
who yielded to it.

Locke's ' Treatises on Government ' unfold his po-
litical philosophy, while they too presuppose his philo- tr
sophical conception of human understanding. Hobbes
had taught that the State originates in the virtual con-
sent of those formed into its society. For the sake of
their individual happiness they have agreed, unconscious-
ly in fact if not consciously in form, to a partial surrender
of their otherwise complete personal freedom. The ab-
solute power of their king is in this way rested ulti-
mately upon the selfish regard of the people for their
own interests, not on abstract divine right. Locke's
1 First Treatise ' is a laboured argument against a
divine right of kings to rule independently of popular
consent, which was asserted by Sir Robert Filmer in his
1 Patriarchal It was probably written by Locke before
he went to Holland. The main position maintained in
the ' Patriarcha ' was, that men are not naturally free ;
and on this his theory of absolute monarchy rests. It
was already an anachronism, and so, too, was Locke's
rejoinder. Locke's ' Second Treatise ' is an expansion
of the conception of Hobbes ; for it goes beyond
Hobbes, in maintaining the right of each civil so-
ciety to resist the ruler to whom they had, for a self-
regarding reason, surrendered part of their natural liberty
as individuals. Kings, in virtue of this origin of their S
power, are therefore always responsible to the society

P. XV. G

98 Locke.

which they rule, when it deliberately expresses its will
through its representative assemblies. So that civil
liberty implies the right and duty of the individual to
resist and expel a ruler whose acts are not sanctioned
by a majority of the assembly which represents the
implied consent of the community to be governed at all.
The State, according to Locke's idea, is the artificial
result of a potential contract on the part of the persons
who compose it — not a natural organism evolved, uncon-
sciously to the individual, under a universal law of social
development. The terms of the implied original contract,
he further argued, — in this going beyond Hobbes, —
might and should be modified from time to time by the
sovereign society into a reasonable accordance with their
ever-changing circumstances. He saw clearly that if we
are living in a potential cosmos, it is one in which, never-
theless, things and society are in an actual flux ; so that
a return to chaos, not a realisation of cosmos, must be
the issue of attempts to remain always under the power
of the past, and to follow custom when "reason," in
the changed circumstances, " has left the custom." The
essentially democratic idea which determines Locke's
reasonings does not, of course, imply that only a republi-
can form of government can receive the consent of a self-
governed society. It only means that each society has
the right to make itself happy by organising itself under
that form of government which a majority of those who
compose it consider most expedient for their common
weal. This in one society may be a pure monarchy,
in another a pure republic, in a third a mixture, with a
balance of forces, as in the British constitution, at least
as it was in Locke's time. It also means that the self-

Two Extremes. 99

governing society, whether it has surrendered its execu-
tive in one of these ways, or in any other way, is
bound to permit the overt expression by individuals
of any opinion, religious or other, that is not incon-
sistent with the permanence and safety of the social
organism itself ; and further, that the State so constituted
is bound to protect individuals in the property, in land
and otherwise, which each has conquered for himself, out
of what originally belonged to mankind in common, but
which they thus appropriate in order that the common
stock may be of use to each individual. Locke's theory
involves the surrender by its members to the democratic
State of their liberty, property, and life, to be disposed
of in the way that seems to the State most expedient
for the general happiness. No form of government is
absolutely good or bad; each is to be judged according
to the circumstances of society at the time. Such is the_Ni
essence of Locke's political philosophy.

Locke, it has been said, was the political philosopher
of England in the latter part of the seventeenth, as
Hegel was the political philosopher of Germany in the
early part of the nineteenth century. In their political
ideas each was the converse of the other. Locke, in
resting the organisation of society in the State, — if not
also by implication in the family, — upon the advantage
of an implied contract among individuals unsupported by
history as a fact, disavows the organic rational necessity
of civil government in this empirical idea of social de-
velopment. His teaching, regarded as an abstract theory,
found its logical outcome in French revolutionary convul-
sions. Hegel's conception, on the contrary, when taken
exclusively, tends to the absorption of the individual in

100 Locke.

the unity of the State, and thus, with its defective idea
of human personality, is a reaction from the individual-
ism characteristic of political science in the eighteenth
century. But neither the individual nor the universal is
sufficient, in abstraction from the other : the individual
needs the social organism, and this again is vital only
through the vitality of the individuals comprehended in
it. The complete truth as regards society, civil or eccle-
siastical, may be sought in the conciliation of the two.

The English Eevolution, of which Locke was the
philosophical advocate and expositor, was in principle a
struggle between those, on the one side, who invested
inherited monarchy with the sacredness of divinity — thus
securing its independence of utilitarian criticism; and
those, on the other, who regarded monarchy and every
other form of government only as a means to the hap-
piness of the governed, to be judged in each case by
its experimentally proved efficacy in securing this end.
Those who opposed the Eevolution guarded the succes-
sion to the monarchy on a priori grounds of right which
put expediency out of court. Now the drift of Locke's
political reasoning was to substitute considerations of
expediency, and to determine questions in politics by
constant reference to contingencies. Like his doctrine
of toleration, with its relative or individual theory of v
knowledge, it was a transfer of political philosophy from
the absolute to a relative foundation. It tended to ex-
clude all a priori presuppositions in the struggle of pol-
itics, and to press the proved expediency of leaving the
individual to dispose of himself, and leaving each civil
society to govern itself, according to its own ideas and

Wealth and Labour. 101

desires, delivered through its majorities. " Innate prin-
ciples " in politics found no favour with Locke, in his
sense of innateness.

The Revolution of which Locke was the intellectual
exponent was the speculatively incoherent issue of com-
promise, in the truly English spirit of " give and take "
carried further than Locke approved ; — notwithstanding
his strong common-sense conviction of the need for com-
promise in political conduct, and his regard for the via
media in human action and speculation. It was brought
about by the prudent moderation of men of all parties
and opinions, with a conservative regard for the his-
torical constitution. The peaceful and lasting settle-
ment of the great conflict of the seventeenth century
was found in the mixed government of 1689, which
reconciled 1640 and 1660.

Locke's work on Civil Government contains incidental
arguments, subordinate to its philosophical principles,
some of which are of great merit. It contains the
earliest recognition of the true sources of wealth and
value. Locke was among the first to see distinctly that
gold and silver are not real wealth ; that a State unpro-
vided with either, if well supplied with food and other
useful articles, would be wealthy ; while it must perish,
however abundant its supply of the precious metals, so
long as it could not exchange them for the means of sub-
sistence. He enlarges upon the dependence of wealth
on labour, and of human labour on individual freedom,
and touches principles which are at the root of modern
socialism. "If," he says, "we will rightly consider

102 Locke.

things as they come to our use, and cast up what in
them is purely owing to nature and what to labour,
we shall find that in most of them ninety -nine hun-
dredths are wholly to be put on the account of labour.
'lis labour that puts the greatest part of the value on
land, without which it would scarcely be worth any-
thing. 'Tis to that we owe the greatest part of all
useful products ; for all that the straw, bran, bread of
an acre of wheat is more worth than the product of
an acre of good land that lies waste is all the effect of
labour." A man's right of property in his own person,
and thus in his own expenditure of labour, is "the
great foundation of individual property, and able to
overbalance the community of land." Locke, accord-
ing to an eminent economist, "has all but completely
established the fundamental principle which lies at the
bottom of the science of wealth. He has given a far
more distinct and comprehensive statement of the fun-
damental principle, that labour is the grand source of
value, and consequently of wealth, than is to be found
even in the 'Wealth of Nations.' It was but little
attended to by his contemporaries or by subsequent in-
quirers. He was not himself aware of the vast import-
ance of the principle he had developed ; and three-
quarters of a century elapsed before it began to be gener-
ally perceived that an inquiry into the means by which
labour might be rendered most efficient was the object of
that portion of political economy which treats of the
production of wealth." l

Locke's appeals to ethical principles in the ' Treatise
1 See M'Culloch's 'Literature of Political Economy.'

'Treatise on Government! 103

on Government' usually presuppose that they are founded
in the reason or nature of things, independently of utili-
tarian considerations, although he is always ready to
reinforce moral rules by considerations of pleasure and
pain as the motive to action. In treating of natural
law he is some points in advance of Grotius and
Puff end orf.

104

CHAPTEE III.

THE PHILOSOPHY IN THE ' ESSAY,' OR INTELLECTUAL

LIBERTY INNATE KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCED KNOW

LEDGE, AND THE ' VIA MEDIA.' 1

In the ' Essay concerning Human Understanding ' one
finds a philosophical defence of that modest estimate of
man's intellect which is presupposed throughout Locke's
reasoning on behalf of national toleration of different
religious beliefs, and for a largely utilitarian theory of
civil government. The 'Essay,' like the 'Epistola de
Tolerantia' and the 'Treatises on Government,' is a plea \J
for the free exercise of reason under the conditions which
reason itself imposes — but here in its most comprehensive
form. In pleading for toleration, he had argued for the
right of each man to form and express his own opinions
without let or hindrance on the part of society; and
his theory of government is founded on the right of
individuals, when associated in civil society, to adopt at
first, and then to change, their form of government and
their governors, according to their own views of what is
most expedient for their happiness. The ' Essay ' goes

1 See ' Essay concerning Human Understanding/ Book I., in con-
nection with this chapter.

Design of the 'Essay.' 105

deeper. It is a plea for the intellectual freedom of the
individual mind from whatever is found by experience
to obstruct the light of truth ; and it constantly recog-
nises the fact that one chief obstruction is, man's
habitual oversight that, as finite or individual, he is in
a state of intellectual mediocrity, — endowed with intel-
lectual powers that may be adapted to all truly human
ends, but which are very disproportionate to the infinite *-*L
reality. This oversight often leads men to proceed upon
assumptions for which there is no reasonable warrant,
and then to draw conclusions from them ; and it leads
them, too, to suppose that they have got ideas of things
when they are only employing idealess or empty words.
Intellectual freedom consists in practical reasonable-
ness ; bondage to dogmas, and to empty or ambiguous
phrases, contradicts reasonableness, and deadens individ-
ual insight of truth.

The main design and motive of the ' Essay ' is ac-
cordingly practical; not indulgence of speculative curi-
osity. It is directed against those forces which Locke
had found by experience to be most at variance with
a life of reasonableness in all things, and adverse to
the attainment by each man of the knowledge that
is consistent with an inevitable state of intellectual
mediocrity. The foregoing history of Locke's early life,
and of the working of his mind, has brought into
prominence the two adverse forces which were chiefly
in his view when he was preparing, the 'Essay.' The
bondage of unproved assumptions, accepted indolently *
on authority, under pressure from the past, incapable of — *
verification by "experience," but defended as "innate,"
or independent _of experience — this was one of them.

106 Locke.

The other was the bondage of empty words — phrases
necessarily meaningless, because they pretend to ex-
press what really transcends human understanding and
experience, or at least the individual understanding and
experience of those who at the time employ them. The
idealess words were vindicated, on the ground that they
represented a knowledge got independently of individual
activity, and which therefore did not require, nor even
admit, of experimental verification. These two antago-
nistic forces Locke thought he found in an aggravated
form in the medieval scholasticism against the remains
of which it was his mission to struggle.

In accordance with this motive, the ' Essay ' attempts,
for the first time and on a comprehensive scale, to show,
in " historical, plain " 1 matter-of-fact fashion,^what the
questions are as to which man is in a condition^o reach
certainty — the things which he finds cannot be doubted ;
what those are in which he can attain only some degree
of probability ; and in what other questions he is con-
signed, by the " disproportionateness " of his understand-
ing to the infinite reality, to irremediable doubt, or
even absolute ignoranceT\ This intellectual enterprise
seenied to promise the best practical settlement of ques-
tions, often unanswerable by a human mind, which some
men are fond of raising j and to give the best prospect
of relief from bondage to unreasoned traditions, and to
empty words and phrases, which had come to supersede
genuine knowledge, or reasonable submission to prob-
ability when certainty was out of reach.

This key-note is found in the Introduction to the
'Essay.'2 The ill-fortune of men in their endeavours

1 ' Essay,' Book I., chap. i. s. 2. 2 Ibid., Book I., chap. i.

Design of the 'Essay! 107

to comprehend themselves and their surroundings, and
their slavery to prejudices and idealess phraseology, are
there attributed mainly to an unrestrained disposition
to extend their inquiries into matters beyond any man's
intellectual reach ; whereas, " were the capacities of our
understandings well considered, the extent of our know-
ledge once discovered, and the horizon found which sets
the bounds between the enlightened and the dark parts
of things, between what is and what is not compre-
hensible by us, men would perhaps with less scruple
acquiesce in the avowed ignorance of the one, and em-
ploy their thoughts and discourse with more advantage
and satisfaction on the other." Accordingly, the design
of the 'Essay' takes the form of an inquiry into the
" origin, certainty, and extent of human knowledge ; to-
gether with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion,
and assent." Locke wanted to make a faithful report,
based upon what he found when following what he calls
the " historical plain method " of accepting facts as they
are presented in mental experience. These show how far
human beings can attain certainty, and in what matters
they can only judge and guess on grounds of greater or
less probability. Although he might have to report that
the sphere of human certainties is narrow, and far short
of " a universal and perfect comprehension of whatsoever
is," he might also, he hoped, be able to show that our
intellectual sphere is for us " sufficient," because " suited
to our individual state." At any rate, we must take
whatever we find to be real in this inquiry. Things are
what they are, and are not other things ; why, therefore,
should we desire to be deceived ? If, on the other hand,
we will disbelieve everything, and so go to the opposite

108 . Locke.

extreme of scepticism, because we find that we cannot
certainly know all things, " we shall do much as wisely
as he who would not use his legs but sit still and perish,
because he had no wings to fly." — The "physical con-
sideration of the mind " is expressly shut out from the
scope of the inquiry, which is confined to what intro-
spection can discover, — to the exclusion of the pheno-
mena of the human organism, in itself and in its causal
relation to the extra-organic world.1 — A theory of know-
ledge in its most abstract form, and of the abstract con-
ditions of the intelligibility of experience, would have
been still more foreign to Locke's purpose, and perhaps
even to his power of philosophical apprehension. To go
in quest of it even, would have seemed to him " a letting
loose of his thoughts into the vast ocean of being." He
was contented to take for granted that, in dealing with
the sense -given data of the universe, human under-
standing is dealing with what is fit to be reasoned
about. So he made his investigation only an investi-
gation as to the extent to which a conscious being, work-
ing under human conditions and in the circumstances
of man, can attain to a reasonable insight of the practical
meaning of his surroundings.

The 'Essay' opens in a tone of moderation and
homely cheerfulness. It suggests a hope that, if it
should turn out — after due investigation, conducted in
this "historical plain method" of appeal to the facts of
the case — that the understanding of man cannot fully
solve the mysteries of the universe, men may never-
theless attain some sort of reasonable satisfaction, that
at no stage of their individual existence are they the
1 Book I., chap. i. s. 2; Book II., chap. xxi. s. 73.

" Ideas" 109

sport of chance or unreason ; that there are ways
enough in which to secure their final wellbeing, if
they will only make use of the certainties and prob-
abilities that lie within their reach, and not peremp-
torily or intemperately demand certainty where proba-
bility only is to be had, " which is sufficient to govern
all our requirements."

Although discovery of the nature and extent of the
few certainties that are within the scope of human
understanding, and of the ground and office of prob-
ability, is announced as the aim of the 'Essay,' it is
curious that only the last of the four books into which
it is divided is directly concerned with this subject.
Dugald Stewart suggests that this book may have been
prepared earlier than the other three, especially as it
contains few references to them, and as it could have
been published separately without being less intelligible
than it is. The fourth book treats of human certainties
and probabilities. The second and third books investi-
gate our " ideas " of things, apart from their truth and
falsehood, and thus embrace more abstract inquiries.
They urge the lesson that knowledge or certainties, and
our probable presumptions too, necessarily presuppose
ideas or conceptions ; that in an entire absence of ideas
things must be unintelligible, and (to us) as though
they did not exist ; while, on the other hand, our ideas
may be out of conformity to what is real, or (to use
other language than Locke would have employed) in-
consistent with the divine ideas that are latent in
experience and that constitute reality.

That without " ideas " there can be no absolute cer-
tainties, beliefs, opinions, doubts, or even errors, no use

110 Locke.

for words even ; while there may be erroneous ideas
that are out of relation to reality ; and also that there
may be realities of which man can have no ideas — are
implied postulates of the 'Essay.' Another is that all
men have ideas; for without ideas there could be no
consciousness. " Every one is actually conscious of
having ideas in himself, and man's words and actions
will satisfy him that they are in others." To "have
ideas" is virtually, in Locke's language, to be intelli-
gent; ideas and conscious intelligence are inseparable.
Now one cannot doubt that he is conscious, though he
may doubt whether the stream of his individual con-
sciousnesses or perceptions is in harmony with the real-
ity that is independent of him.

Accordingly, the human and practical questions, about
certainties, more or less probable opinions, and errors,
which Locke wanted to settle, all seemed to him to
lead back to previous abstract questions " about ideas."
Mere "ideas" are not certain knowledge, nor probable
opinions, nor even errors — when they are looked at, as by
Locke, in abstraction from what they profess to be ideas"
of, and from the criteria of certainty. " In themselves,"
Locke warns us, " ideas are neither true nor false, being
nothing but bare appearances" — " simple apprehensions;"
in the language of the old logicians, — abstracted from the
judgments into which they may enter as subjects or as
predicates. Actual truth and falsehood belong only to
judgments, not to mere ideas, simple or complex, nor
until the mere ideas are affirmed or denied of our ideas

/of things. Till we assert or deny, there is nothing of
which truth or falsehood can bs predicated. " The mere
idea of a centaur has no more falsehood in it when it

"Ideas" 111

appears in our minds (i.e., when it has been logically
abstracted from all judgments of reality), than the name
centaur has falsehood in it when it is pronounced by
our mouths or written on paper."

"Idea" thus comes to be the word of all others
of commonest occurrence in the ■ Essay ' ; with Locke's
idea of what an idea is, this could not be otherwise.
But he offers no theory of what ideas are that I can find,
any more than a nineteenth-century psychologist offers a
theory of what " consciousnesses " are. Ideas are ideas,
or consciousnesses are consciousnesses; both alike unique,
incapable of being defined. We may call them "ob-
jects" of which we are conscious or percipient, or con-
sciousnesses, or perceptions, or conceptions, or states of
mind, or modifications of mind. In doing so we are
only putting one term in place of another ; not explain-
ing what any of the terms mean. It is enough to say,
that without ideas or conceptions of things — that is to
say, in the absence of all conscious intelligence — there
cannot be knowledge, opinion, or even doubt; realities
would be, for those who were idealess, as if they were not.
It is darkness : the light of intelligence comes through
ideas, is in ideas. Locke insists that although he uses
the word idea so often, his so-called " new way of know-
ledge through ideas " is just another way of saying that
a man should use no words but such as can be made
signs of meanings. " The new way of ideas and the old
way of speaking intelligibly was always and ever will be
the same." *

1 Compare the valuable observations of the Duke of Argyll on the
need for analysis of the meaning of words, in ' What is Truth ? '
(1889), in connection with Locke's design to analyse our "ideas" in
his 'Essav.'

112 Locke.

The four chapters in the first book, and not merely
its first chapter, may all be regarded as introductory.
That even self-evident truths (which Locke recognises
as facts of mind) are not "innate," is the position
argued for. In the epitome of the ' Essay,' which was
translated into French by Le Clerc, and first published
in the ' Eibliotheque Universelle ' a year before Locke
left Holland, this book is omitted. " In the thoughts I
have had concerning the understanding," so the epitome
opens, "I have endeavoured to prove that the mind is at
first rasa tabula. But that being done only to remove
prejudice that lies in some men's minds, I think it best
in this short view I design here of my principles, to pass
by all that preliminary debate which makes the first book;
since I pretend to show in what follows, the true original
from whence, and the ways whereby, we receive all the
ideas our understandings are employed about in know-
ledge." If in the sequel it should appear that even
the most complex and abstract ideas a man can have,
when they are logically analysed, do not afford ground
for supposing that any of them are innate, or inde-
pendent of some contingent data of experience, — that of
itself,15* Locke thought,"i^would be a refutation of the
hypothesis that any of our knoAvledge is innate — I sup-
pose on the principle ' entia non sunt multiplicanda
preeter necessitatem.'1*

This refutation was the watchword of the 'Essay,'
which became in Locke's hands a defence of intellectual
freedom, as opposed to bondage to the two despots his
philosophy was directed against — idealess words and
unreasoned assumptions. Locke saw them both lurk-
ing in what lie intended by innateness of knowledge,

The " Self-evident " and the "Innate" 113

and therefore of ideas. The really moral purpose
of his persistent war against innateness must be kept
constantly in view in our interpretation of the whole
'Essay.' The drift of this famous argument has been
overlooked by critics. It has been read as if it were
an abstract discussion as to universality and necessity
in knowledge, like that now at issue between empiri-
cism and intellectualism. It has indeed, in the course
of historical evolution, led on to this discussion; but
abstract epistsmology and ontology was not in Locke's
design, which was more directly practical, and concerned
with the conduct of a human understanding. The
argument against innate principles and ideas is expressly
put by him as a protest of reason against the tyranny
of traditional assumptions and empty words shielded
by their assumed innateness from the need for verifica^
tion by our mental experience. Locke's war against the
" innate " is in its spirit human understanding in re-
volt against the despotism of dogmas which disdain to
be verified by facts ; and against words and phrases for
which there are no corresponding ideas or meanings.
Locke believed that by insisting upon a recognition of
"experienced" ideas and prii^|)les only, he was help-
ing to put self-evidence and demonstration and well-
calculated probabilities in the room of blind repose upon
authority; and that he was thus (to use his own words)
" not pulling up the foundations of knowledge, but lay-
ing those foundations surer." Truth, or correspondence
of our ideas of things with the universal system of
things, — with the objective reason that is in nature, if
we like so to express it, — truth presupposes conscious-
ness of this correspondence, as well as some criterion of
p. — xv. h

114 Locke.

its having been attained. But when men were required
to accept some general propositions, without this criterion
being applied to them, " it was a short and easy way of
defending them to assume that they were 'innate,' " and
to act as if perception of their truth, or even of their
meaning, was therefore unnecessary ; whereas "every one
ought very carefully to beware what he admits for a
principle, to examine it strictly, and see whether he
certainly knows it to be true of itself by its own self-
evidence or otherwise." The supposed opinion that
part of human knowledge, and this the most important
part, exists from the first, ready-made consciously in
our minds, independently of experience and prior to
experience, " eased the lazy from the pains of search,
and stopped the inquiry of the doubtful concerning
all that was once styled innate." Dogma was in this
way sheltered from criticism of its reasonableness. A
blind prejudice that their assumptions were "innate"
was enough " to take men off the use of their own
reason and judgment, and to put them upon believing
and taking upon trust without further examination.
Nor is it a small power it gives a man over another to
have the authority to make a man swallow that for an
innate principle which may serve his purpose who
teacheth him." 1 Those who have in this way imbibed
wrong principles are not to be moved by the most con-
vincing probabilities, till they do so much justice to
their own understanding as to examine the meaning
and reasonableness of what they blindly accept only
because called "innate." Thus the negative conclusion
-> defended in the first book2 meant to clear the way for
1 Book I., chap. iv.

Locke recognises Intuition. . 115

the analytic and constructive part of the 'Essay/ is
simply a philosophical defence of that plea for personal ^
insight, as against blind dependence on authority, which
was contained in the ' Epistola de Tolerantia.'

In arguing against innateness of principles and ideas,
Locke explains that he does not mean to deny that some
truths come to be seen by human understanding as
demonstrably necessary, and that others as self-evidently
true. On the contrary, he reports, as a fact found by
reflection, that in some cases the intellect becomes able
to perceive a truth " as the eye doth light, only by being /"
directed to it by bare intuition, which kind of know-
ledge is the clearest and most certain that human frailty
is capable of. This part of knowledge is irresistible,
and, like bright sunshine, forces itself immediately to
be perceived as soon as ever the mind turns its view
that way, and leaves no room for hesitation, doubt, or
examination, but the mind is presently filled with the
clear light of it. It is on this intuition depends all
the certainty and evidence of all our knowledge ; which
certainty every one in such cases finds to be so great
that he cannot imagine and therefore cannot require a
greater. Thus we see in this light of reason that three
are more than two, and equal to one and two."1 He
further reports the fact that reason leads us on from
those self-evident intuitions into " demonstrative " reason-
ings, in which each step has intuition or self-evident
certainty. He argues in the first book against the
"innateness" of our ideas and knowledge of God and
of morality, while in the fourth book he reports, in
his own " historical, plain," matter-of-fact way, that the
1 'Essay,' Book IV., cliap. ii.

116 ( Locke.

existence of God is a " demonstrable " conclusion, in
which each step is intuitively certain • and that, if we
exert our minds, we can see a like demonstrable neces-
sity in the truths of pure mathematics, and even of
abstract ethics. The " innate principles " against which
the ' Essay ' wages war are not the assumptions which
are thus (by degrees) seen by growing reason to be either
self-evident or demonstrable. His aim was to get men in
all cases to try whether their assumptions are either.
Then, if found to be self-evident, or demonstrable, let
them be accepted ; not as " innate," but as rationally
intuited, and thus with an experienced perception that
they cannot be doubted. But if the so-called " innate
principles" are not able on trial to stand this or any
other experimental test, we are under an intellectual
obligation to reject them as bondage to the understand-
ing, as meaningless phrases, or at any rate as not proved.
Locke wants us all, by submitting to the fatigue of this
sort of mental experiment, to find for ourselves whether
what had been blindly taken for granted, under the
character of "innate," really is perceived truth, "which
like bright sunshine forces itself to be perceived" as
soon as the eye of intelligence is open to perceive it.
Thus, even amidst the negative arguments of the first
book, he appeals to intuitive reason, — under the name
of "common-sense," — on behalf of the self-evidence of
one of the very " principles " against the " innateness "
of which he was arguing. "He would be thought
void of common - sense who asked, on the one side,
or who, on the other, went to give a reason, why
it is ' impossible ' for the same thing to be and not
to be. It carries its own light of evidence with it,

"Innate Ideas" and Consciousness. 117

and needs no other proof ; he that understands the
terms, at once assents to it for its own sake, or else
nothing else will ever be able to prevail with him to
do it."1

The truth is, that neither Locke nor those who ad-
vocated innate elements in human knowledge expressed
their meaning definitely enough. When the contro-
versy is a speculative one about the philosophical con-
stitution of knowledge, and not, as with Locke, the
occasion of a polemic against blind prejudices and empty
idealess_phrases, the argument of the firstboolt is seen
to be inadequate, in the light of a deeper conception of
what should be meant by an innate idea and principle
than Locke intended. It is difficult to find any phil-
osopher, then or since, who would deny what Locke
maintains ; nor is it easy to determine whom he had in
view in this celebrated augmentative v assault. Lord
Herbert alone is named as the advocate of innateness.1
Locke was perhaps too little read in the literature of
philosophy to do full justice to those who, from Plato
onwards, have recognised, with increasing distinctness,
the presuppositions of reason, and the activity of the
often latent faculties of intellect and moral judgment,
to be involved in the very constitution of a develop-
ing physical and spiritual experience. "Innate," as
his pupil the third Lord Shaftesbury afterwards re-
marked— " innate is a word Mr Locke poorly plays on "
— that is, if his argument is to be taken as directed
against those who allege the presence, latent if not
patent, of elements in experience deeper than the con-

1 ' Essay/ Book I., chap. iii. s. 4.

2 Ibid., Book L, chap. iii. ss. 15-19.

- . rr.

118 Locke.

tingent and ever - changing phenomena which enter
into experience. "The right word, though less used,"
Shaftesbury adds, " is connatural. For what has birth
or the progress of the foetus to do in this easel"
The question of ultimate philosophical interest is not
as to the time when individual men first become
conscious or intellectually percipient of self-evident or
of demonstrable truths. The true question about in-
nateness is, as Shaftesbury himself puts it, "whether
the constitution of man be such that, being adult and
grown up, the ideas of order and administration of a
God will not infallibly and necessarily spring up in con-
sciousness." Now Locke himself does not deny this.
" That there are certain propositions," we find him say-
ing, " which, though the soul from the beginning, when
a man is born, does not (consciously) know, yet, by
assistance from the outward senses and the help of
some previous cultivation, it may afterwards come self-
evidently, or with a demonstrable necessity, to know
the truth of, is no more than what I have affirmed in
my first book." He had no intention to deny the fact
that we can rise to self-evident truths which neither
need nor admit of proof ; for innateness with him
means a man's original possession of such truths con-
sciously.

By " innate " Locke means consciously realised in the
mind, or, as he metaphorically expresses this, " stamped "
upon the consciousness which the individual soul has
in its first being, and brought into the world with it ;
truths possessed independently of all experience and
individual activity, — in the way that all truth may be

The Via Media. 119

supposed to be always present to the divine mind, with-
out any need of experience either for its acquisition or
for its evolution into consciousness. A consciousness of
the ideas is inseparable from all Locke's "ideas." This
appears in his argument, at the beginning of the second
book, against the soul " always thinking " or being con-
scious— e.g., during sleep.1 "Whatever idea is in the
mind, the mind must be conscious of." To- say that an
jdea or principle is in the mind and yet not actually per-
ceived by the mind in which it is, is, according to Locke,
the same as to say that at once it is and is not in the
mind, which is self-contradictory. Whatever is thus
innate must be therefore in the consciousness of all men,
savages, infants, even idiots. Of course it was not diffi-
cult for Locke to show that men have no principles, or
ideas either, which answer this description. Even the
self-evident principles, that "whatever is, is," and that
" it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to
be," do not answer it; for they are not consciously
realised by idiots, infants, or savages ; and indeed only
in educated minds do they ever rise into full conscious-
ness. Therefore, even they are not, in Locke's sense,
innate ; and if they are not, a fortiori, none others can
be so. To reply that they are nevertheless present
" potentially " in the mind of the unconscious individual,
either means nothing at all, Locke would say, or it
means, what he does not deny, that th& mind has latent
faculty for knowing them to be intuitively true. But
what this "faculty" implies, what is presupposed in
mind having power to know intuitively, or, still more,
1 ' Essay ' Book II., chap. i. ss. 9-19.

i

12.0 Locke.

in the possibility of its having real intelligible experi-
ence— was a question which Locke did not entertain, and
which, if it had been put before him, he would perhaps
have thought too speculative to lie within the scope of
his inquiries. It was reserved for Kant and his suc-
cessors. The cetemce veritates, — the abstract presup-
positions regarding the universe in space and time, which
intellect implies independently of the universe being
actually known — with the theory of knowing and being
therein involved, — were all foreign to Locke ; and, if he
could have entertained them, would all have been treated
as subordinate to his main design, — -of determining the
limits of the variable data of experience ; of keeping our
words in contact with concrete meanings ; and of testing
our assumed principles by obviously verifiable evidence.
He announced, as the fundamental thesis of the ' Essay,'
that the human mind " has all the materials of its know-
ledge from Experience, that in that all our knowledge
is founded, and from that it all ultimately derives itself."
He failed to see that innate knowledge and experi-
enced knowledge are not contradictory, but are really
two different ways of regarding all knowledge. Yet
this is surely the true via media. But he was biassed
by his unwarranted assumption that " nothing can be in
the mind of which the mind is not conscious," — that
mental activity is identical with consciousness of it, —
and so he overlooked the now acknowledged fact that a
man's individual consciousness may include only a small
part of what he potentially knows. Locke's habit of
physical experiment led him to look at knowledge, and
also at the universe, on the natural rather than on the

Innate and experienced n

metaphysical or supernatural side, — i*..
caused causes, rather than in their consta.
cause, — from the point of view of natural so
short, rather than from that of the philosophei.
failed to show that the supernatural or nn^y
is continuously immanent in nature and in l
law.

122

CHAPTER IV.

JICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF OUR IDEAS,

ESPECIALLY OUR METAPHYSICAL IDEAS.1

)CKE takes for granted that without ideas there can
i no knowledge, belief, or even doubt about anything ;
nd also that we may have ideas without having know-
.edge. Knowledge presupposes " ideas," but ideas do
not presuppose knowledge, since our ideas may be erron-
eous. And error as well as truth presupposes ideas.
Things and persons are virtually non-existent for those
who have no ideas — in other words, for those who are
unconscious. To think or judge without ideas would be
to think without thought, which is a contradiction in
terms. Judgments presuppose ideas : innate knowledge
would presuppose innate ideas. Accordingly, nearly half
of the 'Essay' is a logical analysis of the complex,
especially the metaphysical, ideas that men are conscious
of, into their simple concrete elements. The question
of the truth or falsehood of ideas, and the criteria of
their truth and falsehood, are reserved for examination
in the fourth book. The second and third books treat

1 See ' Essay,' Books II. III., which may he compared with the
' Port Royal Logic,' part i.

Without " ideas" propositions are empty. 123

of ideas in abstractj^ILJ^Qm.r.QaMfia, and in their relations^
to their verbal .signs, thus kept apart altogether from the
judgments which express their real or supposed relations,
and from their relations as true or false. As logicians
might say, these two books are concerned with the " ap-
prehensions " of the mind, simple and complex ; the
fourth book, besides more about ideas, treats especially
of judgments and reasonings, for it is in these alone,
and not in mere ideas, that knowledge, probability, and
error are to be found. By ideas, — simple and com-
plex,— Locke means whatever can be signified by the
subject or the predicate of a proposition — not what is
signified by the proposition itself — not knowledge, or
probability, or error, but an element in each, which by
abstraction may be separately considered. It is that in
a proposition without which the proposition would be
unintelligible, as of course all propositions when deprived
of their subjects and predicates would necessarily become.
"Without " ideas " our judgments are empty ; wittfjudg-
ments our mere ideas are blind.

It is for this reason that the " new way of ideas,"
which Locke was charged .by his critics with " invent-
ing," is, and ever will be, he says, " the same with the
old way of speaking intelligibly." For it means that
the only words which can be employed in propositions
must be significant and not idealess. Meaningless words
are empty sounds, which have no relation to any under-
standing, human or other. It is only by keeping the
words which one uses charged with meanings that one
can preserve himself from jargon — whether he pleases
to call meanings by the name of ideas or by any other
name. To have ideas is to realise consciously what we

124 Locke.

say; whether our conscious meaning corresponds or does
not correspond to objective reality. Moreover, ideas can
be, in Locke's view, ideas only when there is conscious-
ness of them. As he says, " ideas " are " nothing but
actual perceptions in the mind, which cease to be any-
thing when there is no perception of them;" and he
adds that, when we speak of " keeping them in our
memories " while we are not conscious of them, this is
just a metaphorical way of saying that " the mind has a
power to revive perceptions or ideas which it had once
had."1 "Whatever idea was never perceived by the
mind was never in the mind." Whatever idea is "in
the mind " is either an actual perception, or else, having
formerly been an actual perception, is " so in the mind
that by the memory it can be made an actual perception
again." Wherever there is the actual perception of an
idea without memory, the idea then appears perfectly
new and unknown before to the understanding." 2 " The
scene of ideas that makes up one man's thoughts cannot
be laid open to the immediate view of another man," 3
and is in this respect private or individual ; but we
may reasonably assume that the microcosm of meanings
which makes up one man's collection of ideas of the
universe so far corresponds to that of another man, as
that a logical analysis of human ideas which shall refer
them all to their elementary sources is possible. And
if possible, it would, if it were made, be a safeguard
against the employment of the meaningless words and
phrases which discredited the schools ; and it would also
help in determining the limits within which human

1 Book II., chap. x. 2 Book I., chap. iv. s. 20.

3 Book IV., chap. 21.

Log 'cat analysis of ideas. 125

judgments, certain fnd probable, are possible. When
a proposition, as to which we are in doubt whether
it has any meaning, is put before us for our assent,
we should, by this analysis, have a criterion for
determining the doubt, and for making sure that,
whether true or not, it is at least in some degree in-
telligible. It was in this spirit that Hume afterwards
dealt with his ideas. He asked for their correspond-
ing " impression^," which are his equivalent to Locke's
"simple" ideas, assuming that if a corresponding im-
pression does not exist, the words which pretend to
express meaning are only empty sounds. Hume's " im-
pressions " may be an inadequate criterion of the possible
meanings of our words, but the principle of a verification
of our mere ideas is illustrated by this example. When
we run over libraries, demanding " impressions " as ante-
types of the ideas or meanings which the books pro-
fess to contain, what havoc, Hume suggests, would be
made among them ! " If we take in hand any volume
of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us
ask, 'Does it contain any abstract reasoning concern-
ing quantity or number 1 ' No. ' Does it contain any
experimental reasoning concerning matter or fact or
existence 1 ' 'No. ' Commit it then to the flames ;
for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.' " 1
Hume of course presupposes that, in his philosophy,
all human ideas must be either those involved in ab-
stract judgments about quantity, or those involved in
empirical judgments about impressions of sense.

It was Locke who first employed logical analysis of
our ideas on a comprehensive scale, as a step to the
1 See Hume's ' Inquiry concerning Human Understanding,' sec. 12.

126' Locke.

settlement of the limits of the knowledge or absolute
certainty that is within man's reach ; and also to the
settlement of the grounds and gradations of our reason-
able probabilities. In arguing against "innate" ideas
at the outset, he had argued against what I suppose no
philosopher ever articulately maintained — that each man
always had, like God, knowledge ready made or con-
scious, independently of the slow growth of experience,
and therefore prior to any experience. But thus, he
thought, he was clearing his way "to those foundations "
in experience which are "the only true ones whereon to
establish the notions we can have," so as "to erect a
philosophical edifice uniform and consistent with itself."

Let us now see how he finds by analysis the actual
constituents of our most complex and abstract ideas of
the universe, after he had by argument banished the
" prejudice " that some of them were " innate," or con-
sciously present in the original constitution of each
mind.

For one thing, he finds that the "scene of ideas,"
which " makes up each one's thoughts about things," is
complex or analysable ; and that it can be analysed into
ideas which are called simple because found to be in-
capable of analysis. The main point, therefore, must be
to ascertain what those unanalysable data are of which
all ideas or meanings, even the most elaborate and
sublime, are composed ; for when this is found, we have
a test for determining whether any alleged example of
an idea is genuine meaning or not. This investigation
might be otherwise described as an attempt to fix the
source and limits of the connotations of the words that
can be used intelligently by human beings. Further,

Three sorts of analyscible ideas. 127

complex ideas of things — so Locke finds — are often
" made for us " and presented to us by nature, as well
as "made by us" in our own subjective and arbitrary
constructions. In fact, the complex ideas which we
make, correspond, he might have said, to the complex
ideas which are made for us, in the universal order and
constitution of things, in all those cases in which our
complex ideas are really true. For when the mind has
once got a store of simple ideas, it is not confined barely
to those complex ideas which have been "made for it"
in external nature. " It can by its own power put to-
gether those ideas it has, and make new complex ones,
which it never received so united, and which never are
so united." 1

Man's " complex ideas " of things, according to Locke,
are of three sorts, "though their number in each sort
be infinite, and their variety endless, wherewith they fill
and entertain the thoughts of men." They are either
(1) ideas of modes or qualities, which "contain not in
them the idea of their subsisting by themselves, but only
the idea that they are dependent on, or affections of, in-
dividual substances ; " or they are (2) ideas of substances
— that is to say, of " distinct particular things subsisting
independently or by themselves ; " or they are (3) ideas
of "relations between substances." In short, "the scene
of ideas," which gives intelligibility to the words that
human beings use, consists of complex ideas of possible
modes of things, abstracted from individual things or
substances ; of individual substances ; and of relations
among substances.2 What the simple or unanalysable
ideas are, out of which all this complexity and abstractness
1 Book II. , chap. xii. 2 Ibid.

1 28 Locke.

in the meanings of words arises, is the inquiry pursued
throughout the second and third books, and in parts of
the fourth book. 1

It is surely a defect in the c Essay ' that it offers no
reason for this threefold, and presumably exhaustive,
arrangement of the complex thoughts about things that
men have. It is stated dogmatically, not defended in a
reasoned criticism, — presumably as the issue of what
Locke had found, in his "historical, plain," matter-
of-fact investigation of the contents of a human under-
standing.

Modes, substances, and relations of individual sub-
stances, are Locke's in short three uncriticised cate-
gories, subject to which our thoughts of things have to
be elaborated by us, and according to which (so he
appears to intend) things themselves are already elabo-
rated for us in nature, as in the case of the individual
substances we perceive, which are complex ideas ready
made.

Some of Locke's critics have accused him of meaning
that at the beginning of life each human being is con-
scious only of simple ideas in their simplicity — that is
to say, of isolated sensations only — out of which he
gradually elaborates, by association and generalisation,
the complex and abstract ideas of the adult ; and they

1 "Simple ideas," "complex ideas," "simple modes," "mixed
modes," &c., are part of Locke's small stock of technical terms,
which through him gained currency in last century in England.
" Simple ideas " are the unanalysable phenomena contained, in
manifold modes, in the complexity of individual substances, mate-
rial and spiritual, and in substances as related. A rose is a complex
idea ; its colour, fragrance, odour, softness, &c, are each simple
ideas.

-T-

Men begin life with Complex Ideas. 129

have also complained that he offers no adequate ex-
planation of why and how they become complex and
abstract.

" It is not true," says Cousin,1 " that each of us starts in
life with a consciousness only of ideas that are simple and
isolated, as Locke alleges, and that we afterwards become
conscious of those that are complex. Rather we begin with
very complex ideas ; afterwards, by abstraction from these,
we advance to those which are simple : so that the history
of the individual mind, in its acquisition of its ideas or
thoughts about things, is the very reverse of that described
by Locke. Our earliest ideas are, without exception, com-
plex ; for the plain reason that our faculties to a great
extent act simultaneously. The simultaneous activity of
the senses affords us at once several simple ideas in the
unity of an individual substance. All our primitive ideas
are complex, particular, and concrete."

Now I do not find that Locke is open to this charge.
The second book of the ' Essay ' admits, I think, of
being interpreted, in fact if not in form, as a logical
analysis of the complex ideas of things which are
either "made for us" or "made by us," and of which
our intellectual life consists. " Simple ideas," he says,
"are found to exist in several combinations united to-
gether, but the mind has power to consider them separ-
ately." " The qualities that affect our senses," he says
again, "are, in the things themselves, so united and
blended that .there is no separation between them ; yet
it is plain the ideas they produce in the mind enter by
the senses simple and unmixed. For though the sight
and touch often take in from the same object, and at

1 ' Cours cle l'Histoire de la Philosophie Moderne. System de
Locke. '

P. — XV. I

130 Locke.

the same lime, different ideas — as a man sees at once
motion and colour, or the hands feel softness and
warmth at once in the same piece of wax; yet the
simple ideas (motion and colour, softness and heat),
thus perceived as united in the same object, are as per-
fectly distinct as those that come in by different senses ;
and each, in itself uncompounded, contains in it nothing
but the uniform appearance or conception in the mind,
and is not distinguishable into different ideas." In
short, Locke recognises, with psychologists of all schools,
what has been called " abstraction by the senses " ; by
which, in the presence of things, intellect operative in
each sense "abstracts" colours (i.e.} "simple ideas" of
colour) by the eye, sounds by the ear, &c. But this
need not mean that we are at first percipient of simple
ideas only in their simplicity ; or that we do not, im-
plicitly at least, always refer them as qualities to things
or individual substances, of the existence of which Locke
finds in the fourth book that we have an intuitive know-
ledge, and our ideas of which are of course necessarily
complex.

Locke has also been charged by Mr Green and others
with mixing together throughout the 'Essay,' in chaotic
contradiction, two irreconcilable theories about ideas, and
about the origin of knowledge. It is alleged that in some
parts of the ' Essay ' he describes our knowledge as be-
ginning with simple and unrelated ideas — isolated sensa-
tions— and as somehow advancing from those to the
complex and related. But in other parts, especially when
treating of general terms, they say that he makes our
knowledge begin with individual substances manifested
in their qualities — that is to say, with complex ideas,

Locke's 'Thesis in the Second Book. 131

from which it advances by an arbitrary and unreal ab-
straction towards the simple.

Is not this charge of confusion between two contra-
dictory theories due in the critics to oversight of what
Locke is doing in those parts of the ' Essay ' in which
he seems to say that knowledge begins in unrelated sen-
sations, and in those other parts of the 'Essay' in which
he makes complex ideas of individual things the start-
ing-point1? For in fact, any "knowledge" of the un-
related is impossible, consistently with Locke's own
definition of knowledge, and with his often reiterated
principle, that it necessarily involves perception of re-
lation among ideas.1 In one of those two sets of pas-
sages which are supposed by the critics to be contradic-
tory, he is, is he not, offering a true logical analysis of
the matter, or phenomenal constituents, of already formed
complex and abstract ideas signified in words ; in the
other set, is he not describing as a psychologist that
ascent from the complex individual presentations of
sense phenomena, or "sense ideas," to the generalisa-
tions of the understanding which marks the growth of
our knowledge %

The central position of the second book, on which all
its facts and discussions converge, is, that all concepts
of which a human mind can be conscious, however com-
plex, and whatever their logical comprehension and ex-
tension may happen to be, must be resolvable into either
"qualities of external things," or "operations of our
own minds." "What words pretend to mean neither of
these, cannot contain positive meaning for a human
mind, and must be empty sounds. And neither of
1 Book IV., chap. i.

132 Locke.

these kinds of ideas can be innate, but must appear in
the course of our experience ; neither, too, can be due to
our voluntary acting, for we cannot help having the ex-
perience. So that, in this sense, we are "passive" in
our consciousness of them. "The objects of our senses
obtrude their particular ideas whether we will or no ; and
the operations of our minds will not let us be without, at
least, some obscure notions of them. ... As the bodies
that surround us do diversely affect our organs, the mind
is forced to receive the impressions, and cannot (by any
act of will) avoid the perceptions or ideas that are
annexed to them." 1 Thus the sensible qualities of ex-
ternal things, and the mind's own operations, are two
sources in experience to one or other of which, Locke
proposes to show, all the meanings of all the terms men
can make use of with any significance must be referred.

" These, when we have taken a full survey of them and of
their several modes, combinations, and relations, we shall
find to contain all our whole stock of ideas. Let any one
examine his own thoughts, and thoroughly search into his
understanding ; and then let him tell me whether all the
original ideas he has there are any other than of objects of
his senses or of operations of his mind ; and how great a
mass of knowledge soever he imagines to be lodged there,
he will, upon taking a strict view, see that he has not
any idea in his mind but what one of these two have
imprinted (i.e., presented) — though perhaps with infinite
variety compounded and enlarged by the understanding.
. . . Even the most abstruse ideas, how remote soever they
may seem from (simple ideas of) the external senses, or from
(simple ideas of) the operations of our own minds, are yet
... no other than what the mind, by the ordinary use of its

1 Book II., chap. i. s. 25.

All God's ideas "innate." 133

own faculties, employed about ideas received from objects of
sense, or from the operations it obtains in itself about them,
may and does attain to."

One lesson taught in all this is, — that man is not wise
and knowing originally, or by his nature, like God. He
becomes wise and knowing, gradually and imperfectly,
under conditions of experience. The omniscience of
God, on the contrary, is supposed to be eternally pres-
ent in the constitution of Deity, all and always therein
contained. This fact about man, Locke would say, is
the fact of facts in human understanding; and we
must take it as it is, for we cannot alter it. Man's
knowledge and wisdom is of a sort that begins with
qualities of individual substances, and thus with ideas
already complex, although by abstraction they may be
analysed into their simple constituents. It is at first
narrow and for the present hour : we find it expanding
in space and time and under other complex relations,
in proportion as the individual elaborates what is pre-
sented, till at last he rises to comprehensive thoughts
in theology and philosophy.

That some of our ideas are not innate, — in Locke's
sense of having no dependence on a gradual -experience,
— might be illustrated by their evident dependence on
data which are presented to the senses. Thus it would
be absurd to suppose ideas of colours innate or inexperi-
enced when we find that God has given us a power to
perceive those qualities by the eye. No less unreason-
able would it be to attribute any of the meanings which
our minds can put into words, to mysterious conscious-
ness that is independent of and prior to mental experi-
ence ; especially if we can show that, without " external

134 Locke.

senses" and without "reflection upon its own opera-
tions," the mind would be a blank, all language mean-
ingless, and the supposed innate knowledge as if it
were not. We find that it is by degrees that all mean-
ings rise into our consciousness and take possession of our
words ; and, although the conditions under which we
live are such that we cannot help having some conscious-
ness or ideas, yet their dependence on contingencies of
experience may be proved by the possibility of shutting
off many of them from an individual mind. This is
especially the case with the ideas of the qualities of
external things.

" All that are born into the world being surrounded with
bodies that perpetually and diversely affect their organs of
sense, some variety of ideas, whatever care we might take to
prevent it, must arise in the minds of all. Yet if a child
were kept in a place where he never saw any other but black
and white objects till he were a man, he would have no more
ideas of scarlet and green than he that from his childhood
never tasted an oyster or a pine-apple has of these, particular
relishes. I would have any one try to fancy any taste
which had never affected his palate ; or frame the idea
of a scent he had never smelt ; and when he can do this,
I will also conclude that a (born) blind man hath ideas of
colours, and a (born) deaf man notions of sounds. It is not
possible for man to imagine (i.e., have ideas of) any other
qualities in bodies besides sounds, tastes, smells, visible and
tangible qualities. And had mankind been made with
' four senses/ the qualities then which are the object of the
fifth sense had been as far from our imagination or con-*
ception (i.e., from our limited world of possible meanings) as
now any belonging to a sixth, seventh, or eighth sense can
possibly be ; which, whether some other creatures in some
other parts of this vast and stupendous universe may not
have, will be a great presumption to deny."

Sense-perception unexplained. 135

It is thus that Locke, argues, that the microcosm
of ideas, or conscious thoughts, true or false, about
things, of which each human mind is the theatre, has
been the gradual formation of an experience, entire
arrest of which from the first would have left the mind
from which it was withdrawn a blank unconsciousness
— actually if not potentially a tabula rasa. But although
the awakening of each individual mind into conscious-
ness, perception, or idea is in this way dependent on
contingencies of individual experience, Locke " hardly
recognised the other truth, that such dependence is
not inconsistent with the latent presence of reason,
immanent or innate in all the knowledge or experience
into which we awake.

Much has been said about Locke's "theory of per-
ception." After all, I do not find in the ' Essay ' any
theory proposed to explain either man's perception of
the qualities of matter, or his consciousness of the op-
erations of mind. Our original knowledge of both (or
neither) is " representative," according to Locke's way of
putting it, in the passages in which he lays stress upon
the dependence of our knowledge upon our ideas, which
may mean that each one's own mind is the only mind
he has for knowing either about things or about spir-
itual acts. The subtleties of sense-perception " theories "
were foreign to his practical design. It was sufficient
for Locke that in point of fact men do have complex
and abstract ideas of things in " the storehouse of the
mind ;" and that what those are depends on contingen-
cies in the individual organism and its surroundings, —
without determining either how qualities of matter are
also ideas of mind, or hoio the mind is able to be con-

136 Locke.

scious, in the ways it is conscious, of its own operations.
The main truth for Locke's purpose was, — that without
ideas or meanings referable to "things of sense," the
things themselves are to us non-existent ; and that with-
out ideas or meanings referable to " operations of mind,"
they too would be as if they were not. All language
would then be meaningless, in lack of material about
which to think. In his way of it, our knowledge of mat-
ter and of mind is equally dependent on our having ideas
of their phenomena. Perception of external things and
self-consciousness are equally and alike presentative or
representative. We perceive external things in having
ideas of them ; we are conscious of our mental operations
in also having ideas of them. Deeper than this Locke
does not care to go — in this direction ; unless it be that,
as regards external things, he recognises that the fact of
our now having ideas of their qualities in our memories
and imaginations is somehow made by God to depend
upon our having had certain "organic impressions or
motions " made, by extra-organic things or otherwise, in
"some parts of our bodies;" — which motions are the
constant antecedents of the ideas, but in no manner of
way to be identified with the ideas in consciousness,
nor to be regarded as their ultimate cause. This is just
to say that without duly affected organs we cannot be
sense conscious, in the way of seeing, or touching, or
hearing, or tasting, or smelling.

The ' Essay ' argues throughout that the ideas which
men are able to have are by no means confined to the
qualities of external things, together with the various
modes, substances, and relations of substances into which
they are " made for us " in nature, or " made by us " in our

What Locke means by ideas of reflection. 137

own arbitrary elaborations. If our store of possible mean-
ings were limited to those which relate to matter and
its qualities, then those words or phrases which pretend
to express spiritual meanings would necessarily be empty.
JNow men do find meanings in such words as percep-
tion, thinking, willing, remembering, knowing, believing,
God, immortality, &c. Those words must be meaning-
less, unless we get ideas of spirit, in addition to those
which arise under the organic conditions of the five
senses. As Locke expresses it, " reflection " as well as
"sensation" contributes to that stock of unanalysable
ideas out of which all the matters we can think about
are composed. The " operations " of each man's spirit
enable him, if he chooses to attend to them, to throw
meaning or connotation into a class of words which
without "reflection" would be empty.

One of the questions that has been most disputed
in the exegesis of the ' Essay ' is, what Locke intended
by "reflection." Sometimes he describes it as if he
had in view only data accidentally contributed by an
inner experience, in the manner of an internal sense.
" This source of ideas," he says, " each man has in him-
self ; and though it be not sense, as having nothing
to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and
might properly enough be called internal sense." Does
this mean that, alike through sense commonly so called,
and through reflection, we become aware only of fluctu-
ating phenomena, which appear and disappear, so that
the only element in conscious life is this " contingent "
one 1 Does it exclude from experience anything deeper
than this? Or, on the contrary, does Locke recognise
in reflected "operations" ideas which explain experi-

138 Locke.

ence ; forming one side of it in all its varieties, external
and internal ; so that, in virtue of having them, the ideas
of sense themselves become connected in intelligible
relations'? In short, is the intellectual philosophy of
the ' Essay ' empiricism, or is it not % Does its analysis
of our complex and abstract ideas in the second and
third books reveal a constitution of knowledge other
than mere observation could supply?

By some critics Locke has been understood to mean
that all complex and abstract ideas that can rise in
human consciousness must, when brought to their state
of ultimate decomposition, resolve into mental pictures
of qualities of sense; and that, since all that rises in
consciousness consists only of pictures of accidentally
presented data of sense, all significant language must
have its meaning analysable into those empirical data ;
so that it shall be a fundamental rule in the conduct of
the understanding that every verbal expression which
cannot find a sensible object to which it can claim
affinity, must be a meaningless expression 1 This is the
interpretation put upon the 'Essay' by Condillac and
other French empiricists of last century, who believed
that they were teaching what Locke taught when they
asserted that all human ideas are compounded of sensa-
tions which happen to occur in external or internal
sense, so that ideas in their most elaborate state may
be described as only naturally "transformed" sensations.
Even Sir W. Hamilton, in opposition to Dugald Stewart,
sometimes accepts this interpretation of Locke.

" The French philosophers," he says, " are, in my opinion,
fully justified in their interpretation of Locke's philosophy ;
and Condillac must, I think, be viewed as having simplified

The Critics of Locke. 139

the doctrine of his master without doing the smallest violence
to its spirit. I cannot concur with Mr Stewart in allowing
any weight to. Locke's distinction of reflection or self-con-
sciousness as a source of knowledge. Such a source of ex-
perience no sensualist ever denied, because no sensualist ever
denied that sense was cognisant of itself. [Can mere sense
be cognisant of itself, or of anything ?] It is a matter of
no importance, that we do not call self-consciousness by the
name of sense, if we allow that it is only conversant about
the contingent. Now no interpretation of Locke can ever
pretend to find in his reflection a revelation of aught native
or necessary to the mind." 1

Yet elsewhere we find him saying that " had Descartes
and Locke expressed themselves on the subject of innate
ideas and principles with due precision, both would have
been found in harmony with each other and with truth." 2
Locke's meaning is not to be got from the ambiguous
language in which it is expressed in such statements as
that all our ideas must be ideas of what has been ex-
perienced in external or in internal sense. The term
"sense" has many meanings. Thus Keid's "common
sense " expresses the analogy of reason, in its direct in-
sight of the intelligible, to sense in its relation to the
phenomenal. " Experience," as used by Locke, may or
may not be meant to connote its own rational implicates,
as well as its contingent or variable data. Probably this
distinction was outside Locke's calculations. We can
best reach his implied opinion by looking at his actual
analysis of our metaphysical ideas, in the second
book, and at the ' Essay ' as a whole. In fact he does
not attempt criticism of pure reason. He would prob-
ably have said with Cardinal Newman, that he was
1 ' Lectures on Metaphysics/ vol. ii. p. 199. 2 Eeid, p. 785.

140 Locke.

"unequal to antecedent reasoning in the instance of a
matter of fact," and not disposed to follow " those who
feel obliged, in order to vindicate the certainty of our
knowledge, to have recourse to the hypothesis of intel-
lectual forms, and the like, which are supposed to belong
to us by nature, and are considered to elevate our ex-
periences into something more than they are in them-
selves." l He thinks it enough to appeal to the common
voice of mankind in proof of the reality of knowledge.
For him the matter of fact that certitude is " discerned "
is sufficient.

But questions about " knowledge " or " certainty "
belong to the fourth book ; they are not immediately in-
volved in that logical analysis of our ideas, irrespective
of the certainty of judgments in which the ideas may
be contained, which occupies the* preceding part of the
1 Essay.' The problem, especially of the second book, is
the verification, by analysis of crucial instances, of the
position which at the outset Locke proposed to prove —
that no concrete meanings can enter into the subjects
or predicates of judgments which are not in their ele-
ments dependent either on external sense or on reflec-
tion ; and yet that within these bounds there is room
even for " the capacious mind of man to expatiate in ;
which takes its flight further than the stars and cannot
be confined by the limits of this world ; that extends
its thoughts often even beyond the utmost expansion of
matter, and makes excursions into that incomprehensible
inane." 2 He challenges any one to assign a single com-
plex idea we can be conscious of, which may not be
analysed into the result of perception of the qualities of
1 ' Grammar of Assent.' 2 Book II., chap. vii.

The analysis tested by crucial instances. 141

sensible things, or consciousness of our own spiritual
operations. " Nor will it be so strange to think these
few simple ideas sufficient to furnish the materials of
all that various knowledge and more variable fancies
and opinions of all mankind, if we consider how many-
words may be made out of the various composition of
twenty-four letters ; or if we will but reflect on the
variety of combinations that may be made with barely
one of the above-mentioned ideas, — number, whose stock
is inexhaustible and truly infinite, and what an immense
field extension alone doth afford the mathematicians." x

Locke sees each man starting with perceptions of
qualities of external things of which he becomes aware
in his five senses, and then gradually awakening to
a consciousness of his own spiritual operations — his
memory charged with ideas thus mysteriously received
— reason occupied with the innumerable combinations
which these its materials assume in nature, or in our
minds through man's own (often mistaken) operations
of synthesis and analysis. He sees in all this, concrete
examples of what the second book professes to analyse
logically. He asks for proof that this collective pro-
duct, in any part or instance, includes more material
than can be resolved into qualities of things, and
"operations" of spirit.

Locke's matter-of-fact way of proceeding to a settle-
ment of this question is, — to show that even those com-
plex ideas we have that seem to be composed of phe-
nomena the most unlike those apprehended through our
senses or by reflection — our sublimest ideas, in short
* — may all be analysed into modes, or substances, or
1 Book II., chap. vii.

142 Locke.

relations of substances, made up of sensible quali-
ties or of spiritual operations. Take some crucial in-
stances, he seems to be saying, from the thirteenth
chapter of the second book onwards. Take our ideas of
the Infinite in extension, or in time, or in number, or
abstract infinitude; or take the idea of Substance —
either in matter or in spirit — to which we refer " quali-
ties " and " operations," and cognate the idea of personal
Identity ; or take our ideas of causal connection and
Power ; or our ideas of Morality. Some of these look
very unlike either qualities of things, or operations of
mind. But if even those metaphysical ideas admit of
being analysed into data of sense or reflection, we may
pretty safely conclude, a fortiori, that we have no other
ideas which would resist this analysis, or which might
claim, on this ground, to be ours by nature, and not to
have become ours consciously only in and after experi-
ence. The ideas above named supply what Bacon would
call " crucial " instances for testing the truth of Locke's
proposed logical analysis even of our most sublime and
mysterious ideas, proving that they are all syntheses of
qualities of matter or of operations of spirit. And this
testing process is virtually what is going on in the
thirteenth and most of the remaining chapters of the
second book, which thus bring us face to face with the
metaphysical mysteries of thought.

For one thing, it might seem, — if men's ideas can
really all be resolved into what they perceive under the
conditions of sense, and the operations of which they
are conscious in themselves, — that we can think only of
what is finite ; and that " infinite and eternal realities "
must be meaningless words. Whatever we see, touch,

Our Metaphysical Ideas. 143

hear, taste, or smell, is narrow, rounded, transitory, finite.
The " operations " of which we are conscious are also
fluctuating, and therefore finite. Yet we do have, and
indeed are obliged by something in our minds to have,
an idea of a surrounding Immensity that is without
bounds, infinite, eternal ; we do have, and are obliged
by something in our minds to form, the idea of Time
unbeginning and unending ; we do have, and are obliged
by something in our minds to have, the idea of in-
numerable Number. Then, too, the unanalysable pheno-
mena of sense rise into consciousness in perception as
complex ideas or qualities contained in individual Sub-
stances, and in this their substantiation there must be
some meaning, unless the term "substance" is "jargon."
Again, every change makes us think of its causes, its
causes when found make us think of another cause, and
so on in an infinite regress; of all which we must be
supposed to have idea, unless the term Cause is a
meaningless word. Do all tlwse terms, the critic may
ask, contain nothing that is not significant either of
qualities of visible things, or of operations of invisible
mind or spirit1?

Locke's answer to this question consists in analysis of
metaphysical ideas, which helps to explain "ideas of
reflection."

Take the actual Immensity within which our bodies
are conceived continually to exist, and the unbeginning
and unending Duration within which our little lives,
between birth and death, are conceived to be con-
tained. The terms Immensity and Eternity are not
idealess. We are on the way to what Immensity
means, when we see or touch any object, and then

144 Locke.

mentally realise its finite extension ; each transitory
change giving rise to a consciousness of its finite dura-
tion. The one idea begins to form when we begin to
use our senses of sight and touch ; the other is " sug-
gested " by every change in qualities of which we are
percipient in sense, and by every " operation " which
" passes " through our minds. Now the " modes " of
which these initial ideas are susceptible are, Locke re-
ports, " inexhaustible and truly infinite." In his own
patient judicial way, he finds curious analogies between
what we mean by extension and immensity, and what
we mean by succession or change and eternity. Neither
is limited to concrete things or concrete persons, for by
abstraction we can suppose a space empty of bodies, and
a time empty both of bodies and spirits. Particular
places and periods are of course relative to what is indi-
vidual and finite ; but Immensity and Eternity mean
what is irrelative and independent of the concrete indi-
vidual. Space is trinal, while succession has only one
dimension. No two individual things can exist in idea
in the same space ; all things can be conceived to exist
at the same time. The parts of extension cannot be
imagined as successive; the parts of succession cannot
be imagined to coexist. All these are somehow intel-
lectual necessities ; they include what we can never see ;
for infinite space or immensity is invisible, and infinite
duration cannot be found in any consciousness we have
of a transitory mental " operation." Yet we are able to
throw meaning into the words "immensity" and "eter-
nity." Whether what we mean by unoccupied space
and unoccupied time is substance or quality, Locke says
that he is not obliged to explain ; at least till those that

Ideas of Immensity and Eternity analysed. 145

ask the question put some clear and distinct meaning
into the term substance and into the term quality. But
the metaphysical mystery which he reports in the ideas
that we find (actually or potentially) constituting the
meaning of the words " space " and " time " is, — that
something in our minds hinders us from thinking any
limit to either. We find, when we try, that we are
obliged somehow to lose our positive idea or mental
picture of a finite space — however extensive — in the
negative idea of Immensity ; and our positive idea of the
longest succession in the negative idea of Eternity. Now
we have never seen or touched Immensity ; nor is any
succession of which we can have experience an unbegin-
ning and unending succession. Immensity and Eternity
are outside and beyond all merely finite presentations
or representations. Yet Locke suggests that if we re-
flect we are sure to have the ideas through an operation
of mind which forces us to think of space as being
boundless, and of time as unbeginning and unending.
" I would fain meet with any thinking man that can
in his thoughts set any bounds to space more than he
can to duration." Thus, by implication at least, he
acknowledges, in the meaning of the terms Immensity
and Eternity, something which cannot be exemplified
in finite mental images, something in which all finite
spaces and times are lost or transformed. This is virtu-
ally to acknowledge that we are intellectually obliged to
add to the concrete extensions and times of external and
internal sense. The addition, and the mental obligation
to add, are neither of them fully accounted for by our
perceptions of the finite phenomena of things and of per-
sons. Locke virtually makes it come under the head of
p. — XV. K

146 Locke.

" mental operations " of which, when our intelligence is
sufficiently educated, we are obliged to be conscious, —
thus recognising in " reflection " more than an empirical
internal sense. His own reports about the meaning of
Immensity and the meaning of Eternity imply (whether
he saw this or not) that those terms connote something
that is put upon us by intrinsic necessity of reason, not
accidentally presented to us in the finite data of sense.
The terms Immensity and Eternity, he insists, are not
empty idealess sounds. They express ideas in which (if
I may so put it) finite spaces and times are lost, and
make way for unimaginable ideas, which last neverthe-
less are not meaningless but carry a negative significa-
tion— individual finitude in contrast with the Infinity
which transcends it — so that

" Our weakness somehow shapes
The shadow time."

Locke, with characteristic honesty, reports this mental
fact, and does not appear to find in it disproof of his
main proposition — that all human ideas may be analysed
into meanings we acquire in the use of our senses, and
meanings we acquire through reflection. He does not
ask, indeed, why the mind is obliged to add without
limit, and to divide without limit, when it is dealing
with spaces and times. He simply reports, as a fact of
human understanding, that Immensity and Eternity are
inevitable negative ideas ; and that the infinite divisi-
bility of spaces and times is also an inevitable negative
idea. Every mental endeavour to exemplify the mean-
ings expressed by these terms, in positive or imaginable
examples, ends, he would have to allow, in the contra-

Idea of Infinity analysed. 147

dictory attempt to represent as a quantity, and there-
fore as finite, what is outside the category of quantity.
The idea of the unquantifiable is " suggested " by the
positive ideas of spaces and times which we have
had in our sense experience^ ^_£or when we try to
"ideate" the infinite in space, or in duration, we at
first usually form some large idea (imaginable as a quan-
tity by beings whose imagination is powerful enough),
as of millions of miles, or of years multiplied millions of
times. But this sort of mental exercise does not explain
the mental obligation always to go further; nor the
conviction we have that, after going ever so far, we are
as remote from the unquantifiable Infinite on which we
are being precipitated, as we were at the beginning of
the process. It only describes the initial steps which
lead to the unique issue of what Locke calls " an idea
which lies in obscurity, and has all the indeterminate
confusion of a negative idea." The finite ideas of par-
ticular spaces or times, however vast, only lead us on to
this ; but they are not themselves this, nor can they, as
finite, account for what they thus lead us into. Locke,
with all his dislike to " obscure ideas," and consequent
desire to reduce all ideas to finite distinctness in im-
agination, was too faithful to facts to pass by these in-
evitable mysterious ideas. This appears in his way of
making the thoughts of Immensity and Eternity crucial
tests of the sufficiency of his logical analysis of human
ideas.1

Another crucial test is found in the intractable idea
of Substance, contained in complex ideas of concrete or
1 See Book II., chaps, xiii.-xvii.

J

148 . Locke.

individual things, and in the complex idea of our own
individuality that is presupposed in all ideas " given to
us" in experience. He tries, indeed, to phenomenal-
ise Substance into sense or imagination, as he had
tried to phenomenalise Immensity and Eternity ; but he
finds that it, as little as they, can be positively phenomen-
alised, and yet that none of them can be got rid of, or,
bereft of their unimaginable meanings, be dismissed as
empty sounds. For the complex idea of an unsubstan-
tiated aggregate of sensible qualities, or of a like aggre-
gate of self-conscious operations, without a centre of
unity to which they may be " attributed," is, he finds,
unthinkable. An adjective without a corresponding sub-
stantive is meaningless till a substantive is assumed
J to be understood. To say that all adjectives neces-
sarily presuppose substantives in their meaning, is to
express in another way this obligation to substantiate
our simple ideas. Locke feels this ; but he complains
that the meaning of substantiation is "obscure," and
that we neither have it, nor can have it, directly from
external or internal sense ; although the data of the senses
lead up to it, or give occasion for it, — just as finite
spaces and times lead up to, or give occasion for, obscure
negative ideas of Immensity and Eternity. He con-
cludes that the idea of Substance must be a complex
and abstract idea, made up of the general idea of
" something " (not a meaningless word, although he
does not analyse its meaning), along with the idea of a
support (also a significant term) to qualities of which
we become aware in sense or in reflection. Abstract
" substance " is an unreal " creature of the under-
standing," which our minds form. " Substance " is

Idea of Substance analysed. 149

not a meaningless word, therefore • although the only
meaning Locke can put into it at last is the negative
one of " an uncertain supposition of we know not what." 1
Any attempt to phenomenalise, and form an idea-image or
example of, substance, material or mental, apart from the
sense phenomena or spiritual phenomena in which actual
substances are manifested, would thus be as impossible
as it would be to form an idea-image of Immensity or
of Eternity. It is another sort of idea than a mental
image that we have when we put meaning into the
term. When we try to embody the meaning in a finite
image, we are baffled by an endless incomprehensible
regress. If one asks what the " substance " is to which
this colour or that odour belongs, and is told that it is
the solid and extended particles of which the coloured
and odorous mass consists, this indeed gives a substance
that is picturable, as such particles are ; but then it is
inadequate to the genuine idea of substance — for one
finds that one is mentally obliged to ask in turn what
their substance is, and having got in reply only some-
thing else that is picturable, he has to repeat the ques-
tion for ever, as long as he gets nothing which tran-
scends imagination. " He is," says Locke, " in a difficulty
like that of the Indian, who, after explaining that the
world rested on an elephant, which in its turn was
supported by a broad-backed tortoise, could at last only
suppose the tortoise to rest on ' something ' — I know
not what." We can neither (in one sense) think, nor
(in another sense) refrain from thinking, the meaning
that is connoted by the term substance. The only
positive part of this complex idea is the aggregate of
1 Book I., chap. iv. s. 18.

150 Loclce.

simple ideas or qualities in which abstract substance is
exemplified. Apart from these, we cannot have any
idea-image of that which manifests them, per se; whether
what we are trying to think about is a sensible thing, or
a finite spirit, or the Divine Being. The only way in
which we can have any positive idea of God, for ex-
ample, is through our power of supposing ideas or qua-
lities given in reflection enlarged without limit — i.e.,
without regard to the category of quantity. Why we
are in this strange mental predicament, of neither being
able to image substance, nor to refrain from thinking
this its negative unphenomenalisable meaning, Locke
does not ask. Curiously, it does not seem to have
occurred to him that this mental inability to refrain
from thinking more than we can mentally picture,
needs itself to be explained ; and that it cannot be
explained by the contingent advent of a miscellaneous
crowd of idea-images in external and internal sense.

Locke's perplexity about Substance partly arises from
the tendency of his philosophic thought to isolate it
from all its phenomena or qualities, and then try to find
meaning in a term which pretends to express what is
thus meaningless because isolated. "Taking notice,"
he says, " that a certain number of simple ideas go
together, and not imagining how they can subsist of
themselves, we accustom ourselves to suppose some sub-
stratum wherein they do subsist, and from whence they
do result." Of this "substratum" our only idea would
be the impossible one of something without qualities.
This, accordingly, would be Locke's general idea of
"reality," which, curiously, he did not otherwise in-
clude among what I have called his crucial instances.

Idea of Personality analysed. 151

In knowing the phenomenal data, he seems to imply-
that Ave know nothing of the substantial reality, which
is thus concealed instead of being revealed by its own
phenomena. The substantial reality with Locke seems
to be something that exists without making any revela-
tion of what it is ; not a something that is continually
revealing itself in its qualities, which are its various
ways of acting, in which it is concreted while they in
turn are concreted in it. He complains that we have
an obscure notion, or indeed cannot know at all, a sub-
stance thus stripped of all qualities, and existing in its
empty "reality." If this is pure or absolute Being, it
is indeed shut out of all relation to knowledge, for it
needs its phenomena to make it known or manifest.1

Locke's reluctance to admit as meaning in a term
anything which cannot be analysed into what is imagin-
able, is further illustrated in his somewhat incoherent
treatment of the meaning of the personal pronoun " I,"
in the chapter on "Personal Identity." He is at a loss
to find continued personality in the absence of continued
conscious manifestation and memory of the same ; al-
though, in another part of the 'Essay,' — when leaning
to the conclusion that we are all at intervals unconscious
— e.g., in dreamless sleep, — he argues that such breaks or
intervals in conscious life are not inconsistent with the
permanence of the spiritual substance. He distinguishes,
too, between sameness of spiritual substance and same-
ness of person, using the latter in its forensic meaning.2

1 Book II., chap, xxiii.; also Book I., chap. iv. s. 18.

2 Book II., chap, xxvii.

152 Locke.

And he does not analyse the meaning of the ambiguous
term " same."

The report which Locke gives of our ideas of Caus-
ality and Power presented in their concrete or individual
examples, as we have it in the twenty-sixth and twenty-
first chapters of the second book, deserves special atten-
tion, inasmuch as these are (above all) metaphysical
ideas or meanings. Moreover, his account of our know-
ledge of two of the three ontological realities, in the
fourth book,1 is an application of the idea of causality.
The intellectual demand for a " cause " of an event, is
what we find a matured mind cannot help making,
whenever a change is observed. Yet it is a demand
for something which, when we try to analyse our mean-
ing, we find it difficult to explain. So that " cause " and
" power " have become endowed with various connota-
tions, and are eminently ambiguous terms. The idea
of " power " perplexed Locke more than any other
idea. This appears in the transformations which the
twenty-first chapter, in which it is analysed, under-
went in the successive editions of the 'Essay.' His
perplexity is not so obvious in the twenty-sixth chapter,
in which he may be said merely to describe the occasions
on which the relational idea of " cause and effect" arises,
and in which it is exemplified. "We think a cause, he
tells us, whenever we see or hear or otherwise become
aware of a change ; because we constantly " observe "
that " qualities " and " finite substances begin to exist ; "
and also that they " receive their existence " from other
beings which " produce " them. Seeing, for example,
1 Book IV., chaps, x., xi.

The Idea of " Cause " analysed. 153

that in the substance which we call wax the change
which we call fluidity is constantly produced by the
application of a certain degree of heat, we in conse-
quence, somehow (he does not explain how), come to
think of heat as its cause (whatever cause may mean)
and fluidity as the effect. This is merely to report (a
part of) what happens in our minds when we observe
a particular instance of customary sequence, and are
thus led by habit to connect the change with some-
thing else. It leaves what is peculiar in this sort
of mental experience unexplained and even unstated,
under cover of question - begging terms, such as " re-
ceive existence from," "produced by," &c, which mean
more than merely causal succession, however frequent
or "customary." How do we come to throw their
peculiar meaning into such terms, and what is the
peculiar meaning that we throw into them 1 What is
meant by a "cause" of heat? "We can image mentally
what we mean by heat; but can we, in like manner,
image mentally all that we mean by its "cause"; or can
all that meaning be resolved into " observation " of
phenomena followed by other phenomena ; — including
even the inherited observations of our ancestors, of
which Locke, by the way, takes no account 1 Is there
not — in the genuine meaning of the term "cause," when
it is fully analysed, and made to include the intellectual
obligation we are somehow under to think it, — is there
not something which no "observations," however con-
stant — individual or inherited — of such sequences as
fluidity " issuing " from the application of fire to wax,
can explain 1 What is the need, in the reason, order, or
nature of things, for the causal expectation; or ivliat

154 Locke.

do we look for when we " expect " and try to find a
cause 1 Do we not find that the obligation at last re-
solves into one that is imposed by the Eeason that
is immanent in the nature of things (yet in which men
share), to think the universe as an orderly system, — as
a system in which this reason is immanent, — a system
essentially and ultimately teleological ; or, in theologi-
cal language, constantly created, or constantly sustained,
by the reason and purpose that are supreme in it 1
For does not all merely physical or natural causality,
at last, presuppose power — power to produce and sus-
tain laws in nature — evolutionary or any other laws —
of mere succession 1 Is not the idea of " power," ac-
according to even Locke's account of it, a meaning
really got " through consciousness of our own volun-
tary agency, and therefore through reflection."1 As
far as mere " observation " can give rise to the causal
idea or meaning, anything might a priori be supposed
the cause of anything. No observable or finite number
of examples of sequence can guarantee the universal
constancy of such sequences ; nor can it even introduce
into the meaning of the ambiguous term " cause " what
is meant by "production," or by "giving existence to."
Locke himself seems to allow that no " succession " —
however constant — of sensible phenomena can present
ultimate originative agency, — this being an idea which
cannot be phenomenalised, especially in external sense.
In changes among bodies and their atoms, neither an
individual, nor successive generations of men could
" observe " origination — i.e., creation. Only partial and
temporary phenomenal order — order, the existence of
1 Book II., chap. xxi.

Free or First Causes. 155

which itself needs originating cause — can be observed ;
only phenomena, which may be significant and there-
fore interpretable, but which must receive their signifi-
cance from Supreme Eeason immanent in them.

Our ideas of the " production " of changes, or of the
outcome of changes from sufficient " causes " into which
they may be refunded, is obscurely referred by Locke
to reflection upon what we are morally conscious of
when we exert will ; because (he might have added)
this consciousness involves obligation to acknowledge
personal responsibility for the voluntary exertion, thus
revealing voluntary agents as creative causes of their
own responsible acts. But his account of this personal
power or agency is obscure and vacillating. Although
the chapter in which it occurs was almost rewritten in
the course of the four editions of the 'Essay' which
appeared before his death, he remained at the end dis-
satisfied with his own report in it about the meaning
of the term " power." He made no attempt to explain
the transformation of the idea of ourselves as free or
creative authors of our own actions — for which, in con-
sequence of the " freedom " from natural causality, we
recognise responsibility — into the universal rational
principle of causality which he afterwards proceeds upon
in the fourth book, when he is explaining our meta-
physical knowledge of the real existence of God, and
of the real existence of sensible things.1 His language
sometimes seems to imply that this transformation, —
which connects the principle of a Divine cause of all
merely natural causation with a metaphysical neces-
sity involved in the constitution of intelligence, — is the
1 Book IV., chap, x., xi.

156 Locke.

issue of an inexplicable instinct; while, in other passages,
he seems to refer it to custom, or to inductive generalisa-
tion. Now instinct is only a verbal cover for our igno-
rance of why causality is imposed on things and on our
minds ; and custom, as well as inductive generalisation,
presuppose, and are themselves explained by, causal con-
nection and dependence, instead of being the explanation
of causality. The postulate of the rationality of nature
is surely at the root of all possible reasoning about
what is given in experience. The mere fact that I
and other persons find ourselves "free" causes of our
own actions, does not of itself justify the universal pro-
position, that all changes in the universe must be re-
ferred to a Power like this creative power of which
we are conscious in ourselves when we recognise our
moral responsibility ; with the implicate that ive have
created the acts for which we are responsible, and that
they are thus in us supernatural acts. That we are
somehow induced to conceive caused or " phenomenal "
causes in nature, and at last free uncaused or super-
natural power in God and in man, is a fact vaguely pro-
ceeded upon in the ' Essay ' ; but without an explana-
tion of its origin, as involved in the rationality, first of
physical experience, and then of the moral experience
to which the physical is subordinate, so as to leave those
who reject it the prey of universal scepticism. Locke
only describes the circumstances in which the idea arises
in an individual mind — the idea, too, embodied in par-
ticular examples. But one still puts the previous ques-
tion,— Why the human mind is obliged, or induced, to
refund all perceived changes into sufficient causes of
which they are the issues ; and why each set of ante-

Analysis of our Moral Ideas. 157

cedent phenomena into which we refund in thought
new phenomena, themselves give rise to a fresh demand
for yet preceding phenomena, on which they in turn
depend — while at the end of the longest causal regress
the mind is still conscious of dissatisfaction, until it finds
rest in a truly originative cause, that is to say, in un-
caused or final Reason, which stops the regress.

It was too^a yrioriffr speculation for Locke to show
that without natural causality in the succession of phe-
nomena there could be no rationality in nature, and
therefore no reasoning on the part of man, either demon-
strative or probable, about natural sequences and co-
existences ; and that if free, or phenomenally uncaused,
power — " final cause " — was not a constituent of our
experience, those words in language which express moral
government and responsibility could have no meaning
or idea in them. This reduction to the absurd of every
virtually empirical analysis of the meaning of the terms
" cause " and " power," we find no trace of in the
1 Essay on Human Understanding.' Its author's aver-
sion to whatever had an appearance of mysticism,
made him pass slightly over the metaphysical mysteries
that are wrapped up in an experience like ours ; — which
is conditioned by ideas of place that are at last lost
in the unimaginable idea of Immensity ; of time, at last
lost in the unimaginable idea of Endlessness ; and of
changes among phenomena at last lost in the unimag-
inable ideas of Substance, continuous . Personality, and
physical backed and explained by originative Causation.

Locke next analyses our complex ideas of Morality.1
1 Book II., chap, xxviii.

158 Locke.

In ethics he had to face questions which he hardly helps
us to appreciate. What is the meaning of " ought " ;
and can that meaning be resolved into "is," — consist-
ently with the implicates of our moral experience?
Are not "ought" and "is" different in idea? Is Duty
only prudential ? Does it not presuppose something dis-
tinctive that is latent in all our judgments of ourselves
and others, as persons responsible for our acts ? The
metaphysic of our ethical ideas is more meagre in the
'Essay' than its metaphysic of our ideas of nature.
But enough has been said to illustrate Locke's crucial
instances in verification of his thesis, — that our ideas
are dependent on the activities of experience.

The ideas of good and evil, according to Locke, are
in the last analysis ideas of pleasure and pain. " Moral
good and evil is only the conformity or disagreement
of our voluntary actions to some law whereby good or
evil is drawn on us from the will and power of the
Lawmaker, which good or evil, pleasure or pain, is that
we call reward or punishment." The foreseen pleasures
and pains which follow actions are our motives to the
performance of them, and in this Locke is at one with
utilitarian moralists. On the other hand, he finds that
our knowledge of the principles of right conduct is due
to a perception or intuition of their obligation, which is
thus self-evident. But it is not innate ; for in individ-
ual minds it may lie undeveloped into idea or conscious-
ness. Locke's rejection, in the first book of the ' Essay,'
of the innateness of moral ideas led to the misunder-
standing which imputed to him also rejection of self-
evidence in moral judgments.

Keeps within the concrete. 159

Throughout Locke's logical analysis of our metaphys-
ical and moral ideas, we find a constant aversion to
regard them independently of the concrete experience in
which they are embodied, — independently, that is, of
their actual realisation in consciousness and in individual
examples. Exemplified space, time, number, substance,
causality, and morality, depend upon experience, which
supplies the examples. The underlying necessities of
reason which pervade the concrete experience in those
cases, with its implied ideas and judgments that are
independent of examples, together with the explana-
tion of those abstract "necessities," — all involved con-
siderations too remote for Locke, and foreign to the
investigation of facts that alone fell within the design
of the 'Essay,' which sought to settle what is exempli-
fied in experience, not what must he in a priori inde-
pendence of the actual.

160

CHAPTER V.

METAPHYSICAL : HUMAN KNOWLEDGE AND ITS LIMITS

THE THREE ONTOLOGICAL CERTAINTIES.1

Locke's logical and psychological analysis of our ideas,
contained chiefly in the second and third books of the
1 Essay,' does not comprehend his main design. At the
end of this long and patient analysis, he saw that his
reader might be apt to complain that he had been all
the while only amused by " a castle in the air," and
ready to ask " what the purpose is of all this stir about
mere ideas." Mere ideas, he might say, even the most
complex and abstract, do not carry us beyond ourselves
into real certainties about God and the external Uni-
verse. Our ideas themselves are neither God nor the
Universe. They may be true and conformable to
reality — whatever reality means, — but they may also
be false, for aught that they themselves show. We
may take for granted, if we please, that we have a
real knowledge of whatever we have an idea of ; or
we may take for granted that we know nothing at all,
whatever our ideas may be. If our consciousness may
only reach to " simple apprehensions," the visions of
1 See 'Essay,' Book IV., chap, i.-xiii.

Ideas, Certainties, and Probabilities. 161

an enthusiast and the reasonings of a sober man will
be equally certain, or equally uncertain. The supreme
question remains : Are all or any of our ideas true —
that is to say, conformable to the reason that must be
presupposed in nature ; and if so, on what ground in
reason may one feel certain of this 1 Can my claim to
be certain, or even to presume probability, be vindi-
cated ; ' and if so, how, and what is the extent of the
absolute certainty, or even reasonable probability, which
man can vindicate for himself )

Answers to these questions are given in the fourth
book. To find them was the design of the 'Essay.'
And its fourth book, in treating of certainty and proba-
bility, treats by implication of the ideas signified by
those and like terms, which were omitted in the fore-
going logical analysis of ideas. In introducing simple
ideas of reflection in the second book, Locke had pro-
posed in the sequel to analyse some of their modes, such
as "reasoning, judging, knowledge, belief, opinion, and
faith." x He does this in treating of knowledge or cer-
tainty and of probability, when he has to make what is
virtually an analysis of these complex ideas of reflection.

Locke assumes that neither certainties nor probabili-
ties can carry men beyond their own ideas — in other
words, make them independent of intelligence. What-
ever they know, if they know anything, must be related
to their conscious life ; for things out of all relation
to consciousness or idea they can neither know nor be-
lieve in. And the only consciousness into which each
man can immediately enter must be his own. Men
cannot think other ideas, or think with other faculties,
1 Book II., chap. v.

P. — XV. L

162 Locke.

than their own. Their certainties and their presump-
tions of probability must be their discernments of the
relations of their own ideas or meanings. The proposi-
tions in which these find expression must all contain
significant, not idealess, terms — singular or common.
The realist element was, by abstraction, left out of ac-
count, in the book about ideas, which were there of set
purpose treated irrespectively of their truth or falsehood.
Till assertion or denial enters in, our mere ideas are
not looked at in the light of being either true or false :
they are so looked at only when account is taken of
the element of reality with which they may be charged.
Knowledge involves more than ideas. It involves " per-
ception," or rational intuition, Locke goes on to explain
— " discernment of agreements, or disagreements " — in a
word, of the relations — of our simple or complex ideas.1
This needs a proposition to express what it involves.
To say that certainty and probability are concerned
with relations among our ideas, and that ideas are
involved in all our judgments, is only another way of
saying, that the subjects and predicates of propositions
must each contain meaning ; that meaningless terms in
any proposition cannot become certainties or even prob-
abilities, for their propositions do not affirm or deny
anything. No idea, no meaning : nothing for us to
know, or as to which we can even be in error. If we
are certain, for instance, that " matter exists," or that
" God exists," there must be some idea or meaning in
the terms " matter," " God," and " existence " in order
to our having this knowledge. Otherwise the words are
empty sound — jargon — abracadabra.

1 Book IV., chap i. s. 2.

Knowledge implies relations. 163

By Knowledge Locke means absolute certainty, or
rational perception of necessary relations between ideas
or meanings ; and by Probability, assent induced on
more or less probable presumption, that the ideas are
related according to what we presume. To such pre-
sumptions Locke, by a peculiar usage of his own, con-
fines the term "judgment."1 Now, all the "percep-
tions," or rational intuitions, which constitute knowledge,
and the "presumptions" which constitute probability,
are concerned with relations. Each is articulately ex-
pressed by a proposition, in which the ideas or meanings
compared are signified by the subject and predicate ;— an
" idea " being whatever can be signified by the subject
or predicate of a proposition. Further, both intellectual
certainty and probability, he would say, may be either
(1) in regard to relations between any ideas ; or (2) be-
tween an idea and the idea of reality — i.e., between any
idea and what we mean by the word "real." The
second, which Locke calls real certainty or knowledge,
contains a faith or assurance which is wanting in the
former. "Where we perceive the agreement or disagree-
ment of any of our ideas, there is certain knoioledge ;
and wherever ice are sure that these ideas agree with
[what we mean by] the reality of things, there is real
knowledge."2 But when Ave presume agreement (or dis-
agreement) between an idea and what we mean by real-
ity, "before this relation certainly appears" — i.e., when
it is not perceived by intuitive reason — then there is
only probability, with correlative " assent " or " opinion,"
— "judgment," in Locke's peculiar meaning of that
word. And he reiterates, as the fact of chief human
1 Book IV., chap. xiv. s. 4. 2 Book IV., chap. iv. s. 18.

164 Locke.

interest, that a great deal of what is commonly sup-
posed to be knowledge, or absolute certainty, is not
really such — being only more or less probable pre-
sumption, in which the clear rational intuition of ab-
solute certainty is wanting.

Locke's matter-of-fact report about our rational cer-
tainties — that is, our " perceptions " or intuitions of
the necessary relations that are discerned in all self-
evident and demonstrated propositions — is contained
within the first thirteen chapters of the fourth book.
The remainder of the book reports, in the same matter-
of-fact way, what he found in examining the " assent "
which we are moved to give, on grounds of more or
less probable presumption, and in giving which most of
our erroneous beliefs arise. On those presumptions of
probability, nevertheless, human life really turns, as
Locke and Butler are fond of reminding transcendental
philosophers.

" Perception," in the second book, was usually a syn-
onym for mere idea. In the ninth chapter of that book
it is limited to " the first faculty of the mind exercised
about ideas," or "the first and simplest idea Ave have
from reflection ; " — in which " the mind is for the most
part only passive," because what it perceives it cannot,
by an act of will, perceive otherwise than it does. But
in the chapters on knowledge, in the fourth book — in
which absolute certainty is treated of, and contrasted
with merely presumed probability — " perception " is
equivalent to intellectual intuition. Examples occur
when we see intellectually that " this is not that ; "
that "two and three are five;" or that "an object,
the qualities of which are present to our senses, actually

Knowledge originates in rational intuition. 165

exists." "It is on intuition that depends all the cer-
tainty and evidence of all our knowledge ; which cer-
tainty every one finds so great that he cannot imagine,
and therefore not require, a greater."1 On the other
hand, where this distinct rational insight is wanting,
as in our expectation of some future event, there is
only a "presumption." "Mr Locke," Eeid says, "has
pointed out the extent and limits of human knowledge,
in his fourth book, with more accuracy than any philo-
sopher had done before ; but he has not confined it to
1 agreements and disagreements of ideas,' as his defini-
tion of it would require. And I cannot help thinking
that a great part of the fourth book is a refutation of
the principles laid down in the first chapter." But if
Locke means by knowledge consisting in " perception of
agreement or disagreement of ideas," that it is perceived
relation between significant (i.e., not idealess) subjects
and predicates" of propositions, this alleged inconsistency
between the definition and the subsequent treatment of
the subject disappears. In fact, the term " perception"
is expressly used in three different meanings in the
'Essay': (1) Sense phenomena and acts of mind as
simply apprehended ; (2) perception of the signification
of signs ; and (3) perception or rational intuition (im-
mediate or mediate) of relations between ideas or mean-
ings,— which last alone is Locke's "knowledge."2

The first question discussed about human knowledge,
or the indubitable judgments that arise in human con-
sciousness, relates to the sorts of relations which reason
thus perceives, a question which also concerns our pre-
1 Book IV., chap. ii. s. 1. 2 See Book II., chap. xxi. s. 5.

166 Locke.

sumptions of probability. Here Locke finds that all
the certainties and probabilities man can have must
regard one or other of four sorts of relations ; and also
that in only one of these four is there included that
"common sense" assurance of agreement of any idea
with the idea of reality which constitutes real know-
ledge,— by which he here seems to mean, knowledge of
what exists independently of the person who knows it.

According to Locke's report of the mental facts, all that
we can be certain of must be either — (1) that the ideas
compared in our judgments 1 are or are not identical, — as
when we know that "blue cannot be yellow"; or (2)
that they are in a necessary relation to one another, — as
when one sees that " two triangles upon equal bases be-
tween two parallels must be equal " ; or (3) that one idea
or phenomenon coexists (as a quality) with certain other
ideas or phenomena in the same substance ; also (as im-
plied in this) that this idea or phenomenon invariably
precedes or follows that other in succession — orderly
companionships of coexistence or of succession, in short,
among the phenomena of . the material and spiritual uni-
verse,— as when we judge that "iron is susceptible of
magnetical impressions " ; or (4) that one of our ideas
corresponds to the idea of reality — to which term "real-
ity" we must be able to attach some meaning, other-
wise it could not enter into our judgments at all. All
possible certainties, he assumes, must be found among
one or other of those four sorts of relation.

But Locke does not find the absolute certainty of
"knowledge" within man's reach alike in all the four.

1 Book IV., chap. i. Judgment is not here used in its narrow
Lockian meaning.

Knowable relations. 167

Indeed he finds it wanting in regard to what ordin-
ary men might regard as practically the most import-
ant of the four relations — those of physical coexistence
and sequence, that make up our experience of what
happens in time, which form the third class. The
absolute certainty of knowledge, on Locke's report of
the mental facts, is found only in the other three kinds ;
— with this important difference, that, as regards the
first and second sorts of relation, we may reach uni-
versal truths that are certain as well as particular facts,
while our certainties about real existence are necessarily
limited to certainties about individuals ; for only indi-
viduals really exist, he assumes with the Nominalists,
universals being unreal products of abstraction.1

But while examples of absolute certainty, about par-
ticulars if not about universals, may be found among
the first, second, and fourth relations, man seeks for it
in vain in the practically all-important judgments about
coexistence or succession among phenomena. Here the
element of change enters ; and whatever is changeable is
subject to conditions of which we can have only obscure
ideas, for we know too little of the powers that are at
work to be able to anticipate their operation with cer-
tainty. Eelations of coexistence and succession may
enter into presumptions, but they cannot, on account of
the obscurity of the conditions on which they depend,
be either self-evident or demonstrable to us. Now, as
these are the relations which men are trying to find in
all their experimental researches in quest of "laws of
nature," and as they are involved in all our scientific
expectations, it follows — so Locke argues — that man
1 Book IV., chap. vii. s. 16.

168 Locke.

can never reach the certainty of absolute knowledge in
any physical or inductive science ; which thus, properly
speaking, is not science at all, if we mean by science
the absolute certainty of intuitive or demonstrated
reason. Conclusions reached by men in any of the
physical and natural " sciences " can be only subjective
presumptions or probabilities, at the root of which there
is obscurity to our eye of reason ; man has always to
make a "leap in the dark," when he passes from the
now and here present, to the past, the distant, the
future, the general law.1

The account given in the ' Essay ' of probabilities,
which thus belong to the third of the four sorts of
relation between the subjects and predicates of our pro-
positions, may meanwhile be put aside, that we may
first consider Locke's report about human knowledge,
or our absolute certainties, as we have it chiefly in the
first thirteen chapters of the fourth book.

Locke reports, for one thing, regarding the certain-
ties contained in mental experience, that he finds
differences in the way in which the "perceptions"
of necessary relations are arrived at. In some cases the
perception of the relation is immediate ; that is, the
relation is self-evident, so that we only need to be
distinctly conscious of the meanings expressed in the
subjects or predicates of the corresponding propositions
to become certain of it. It is so when we judge that a
"circle is not a triangle," or that "three is more than
two, and equal to one and two." In instances like
these, the intellectual obligation to make the judgment
is at once felt and perceived, without room for reason-
1 See Book IV. ; chap. iii. ss. 9-17.

Self-evidence and Demonstration. 169

ing, or evidence external to what is contained within the
terms of the proposition itself. Bnt in a number of
other cases the "perception," or rational intuition, is
gained through the medium of some other certainty
already reached intuitively. It is so, for instance, in
the series of conclusions to which we are gradually led
in chains of mathematical reasoning. There each step
is taken with a rational perception of its self-evidence ;
hut then we need to take several steps. This is what
is called " demonstration," which is thus more difficult
than intuition of self-evidence, so that in it we are in
some degree liable to error, through want of memory,
or from confusion of thought.

" In every step reason makes in demonstrative knowledge,"
to use Locke's own weighty words, " there is an intuitive
knowledge of that agreement or disagreement it seeks with
the next intermediate idea which it uses as proof ; for if it
were not so, that yet would need a proof, since without the
perception of such agreement or disagreement there is no
certainty of knowledge produced. If it be perceived by it-
self, it is intuitive knowledge ; if it cannot be perceived by
itself, there is need of some intervening idea, as a common
measure, to show the agreement or disagreement. By which
it is plain that every step in reasoning that produces know-
ledge [not mere presumption of probability] has itself intui-
tive certainty ; which when the mind perceives there is no
more required but to remember it, to make the agreement
or disagreement of the ideas concerning which we inquire
visible and certain. ... So that this intuitive perception of
the agreement or disagreement of the intermediate ideas in
each step and progression of the demonstration, must be
carried exactly in the mind ; which, because in long deduc-
tions and the use of many proofs, the memory does not
always so readily and exactly retain, therefore it comes to
pass, that demonstration is more imperfect than [immedi-

170 Locke.

ately] intuitive knowledge, and that men often embrace
error for demonstration." l

To immediate perception of the self-evident, or to
mediate perception of the demonstrated, as in all ab-
stract mathematical and abstract ethical demonstrations,
Locke reports that whatever in strictness can be called
" knowledge " is confined, at least, in the processes of a
human understanding. He can find examples of propo-
sitions from which the intellectual obscurity of " prob-
able presumption " is excluded, only among those seen
to be self-evident, or those which, with considerable help
from memory, are seen to be demonstrated. The known
with certainty, as distinguished from the merely pre-
sumed, is all either immediately or mediately self-evi-
dent to reason.

Yet he also finds among the facts of human under-
standing, when examined in the " historical, plain, matter-
of-fact " method, notable examples of a sort of certainty
that is neither immediately nor mediately self-evident in
the light of its rational necessity, while nevertheless it
is certain. Sense -perceptions, in which men mentally
affirm the real existence of things that are actually pres-
ent to one or more of their senses at the time, involve
judgments which contain more than mere presumption
of probability ; nevertheless, they want some marks
of the certainty we have in self-evident knowledge,
and in mathematical or other demonstrations.2 For
there is nothing contradictory to what is self-evident, or
to the demonstrated " perceptions " of reason, in the
supposition that our sense-perceptions may all be illu-
sions. We could have our sense ideas or perceptions

1 Book IV., chap. ii. s. 7. 2 Book IV., chap. ii. s. 14.

Sense perceptions of reality. 171

exactly as we now have them, and at the same time
exclude all assurance of reason that the objects per-
ceived were " real " ; on the other hand, we cannot
suppose that self-evident propositions, or abstract con-
clusions reached by demonstration, are other than, in
their self-evidence, or by demonstration, they are seen
to be. When I see with the eye of sense a man or a
tree, I may suppose that I dream, and that the " sight "
is part of a prolonged dream. But when I see intellec-
tually that " a whole is greater than its part," I cannot
even suppose that the reality is other than I see it to be.
Nevertheless, one can distinguish in another way be-
tween a dream and an actual perception of sense-given
reality. For one cannot consistently with sanity identify
" looking on the sun by day, and only imagining a sun
at night." So Locke recognises among the certainties,
and not merely among the probabilities, all sense per-
ceptions of the real existence of things now and here
present. He finds in sense more than isolated individ-
ual sensations, from which no external conclusions can
be drawn, because no perception of reason is involved
in them. We must therefore separate him from those
who consider sense-perception as only a passive capacity
for isolated sensations. Locke sees an obscure pres-
ence of intuitive reason in the operations of the senses.
On the whole, according to Locke's report, there is
in human understanding an intellectual " perception," —
mediate or immediate, — of abstract mathematical and
abstract moral relations ; and there is - also immediate
sense " perception " of the real existence of things vis-
ible and tangible while they are actually present to sense
— inasmuch as every sane man judges that qualities

172 Locke.

sensibly perceived are qualities of things that would
exist whether he had ideas of them or not. In all
this, however, there is one important difference. The
rational " perceptions," in which pure mathematical and
moral knowledge consists, are abstract, and therefore
may be universal. Sense " perceptions," on the con-
trary, are concrete, matter of fact, and only of this,
that, or the other individual thing. What we know in
complete abstraction from concrete reality may be seen
to be universally necessary, although its knowing sub-
ject is only a human understanding. But knowledge
which involves actual existence is limited, in a human
understanding, to individuals only, and cannot become
universal. In this sphere of earthly life, when we rise
above the individual, we enter the realm of probability.
Except in abstract truth, no human judgments about
finite things and persons can rise higher than presump-
tion. Such is Locke's report.

"What is meant by " reality " or " real existence " —
that is to say, what our " idea " of it is — Locke curiously
left unexplained in his logical analysis of our meta-
physical ideas. Unless in the case of certain qualities
of matter, it hardly occurs to him that, as with Berke-
ley, ideas themselves may be the real things — or at least
one side of reality, true or false according as they fulfil
certain conditions, — that an idea and a thing may be
two phases of what is essentially the same. Locke's
"mere ideas" are logically abstracted from knowledge
and reality.

But things of sense that are now and here present
are not the only individual realities which Locke re-

Ontological certainty that "I" exist. 173

ports that he finds on reflection to be contained in
human knowledge. We can be certain of more indi-
vidual reality than this. Indeed, knowledge is presup-
posed in the more certainties of sense. Locke reports
three ontological certainties. For, — besides existing
things presently around him, — each man is, at least
potentially, if not with distinct consciousness, certain
of the reality of his own existence as a conscious being ;
and he is also certain of the real existence of God, al-
though not quite in the same way as he is of his own
self-conscious existence. Take these two last.

1. That each man has an intuitively certain know-
ledge of his individual existence as a conscious being,
Locke shows after the fashion of Descartes : —

" We perceive this fact," he says, " so plainly and so cer-
tainly by intuition, that it neither needs nor is capable of
any proof. I think, I reason, I feel pleasure and pain : can
any of these be more evident to me than my own existence
is ? If I doubt of all other things, that very doubt makes
me perceive my own existence, and will not suffer me to
doubt of that. If I know I feel pain, it is evident that I
have as certain perception of my own existence as I have of
the pain that I feel ; or if I doubt, I have as certain percep-
tion of the thing doubting as of that thought which I call
doubt. Experience [reflection] thus shows us that we have
an intuitive knowledge of our own existence, and an internal
infallible perception that we are. In every act of sensation,
reasoning, or thinking, we are conscious of our own being,
and, in this matter, come not short of the highest degree of
certainty." *

Such is Locke's report about our knowledge or cer-
tainty of our own existence. It is that we find ourselves
1 Book IV., chap. ix.

174 Locke.

obliged to predicate what is meant by the term " real
existence" of that which is signified by the personal
pronoun " I." Yet in the parts of the ' Essay ' in which
our ideas were logically analysed, he had not helped us
much to understand the meaning or idea intended by
" real existence." He reports, indeed, that he finds what
we mean by " existence " to be an idea that is sug-
gested by all the " simple ideas " of sensation and re-
flection.1 Now all knowledge is concerned about ideas,
for whatever we know must have some sort of meaning.
What then is the idea or meaning that we have when
we are conscious of our individual existence and con-
tinued identity 1 As Berkeley remarks, with a reference
to Locke, "the words 'real,' 'existence,' &c, are often
in our mouths when little that is clear or determined
answers them in our understandings." Indeed, in this
very instance, Berkeley distinguishes what we have a
notion of from what we have merely an idea of, as it
" seems improper and liable to difficulties to make a
person an idea, and ourselves ideas."2 He would say
that we have a " notion " rather than an idea of our own
existence, when " our own existence " is distinguished
from the changing operations in which it is manifested.
Hume assumed that no idea of self (or notion either)
other than that of successive consciousnesses could be
found, and so he became bound to banish personal pro-
nouns as empty sound.3

1 Book IV., chap. vii. s. 7.

2 I.e., a sensuous presentation or representation (Vorstellung), in
Berkeley's use of "idea."

3 Locke in one passage seems to say that neither idea nor notion
(for he regarded them as synonyms) is necessary in the case of the
personal pronoun. ' ' Since the things the mind contemplates are

Ontological certainty that God exists. 175

But the fact of our own continuous existence as self-
conscious persons is assumed by Locke as one of the
individual facts which do not need proof because they
are self-evident, — although not innate, in his meaning of
innateness. My own existence means more than the ex-
istence of a series of separate conscious states. It implies
their continuity in a permanent substance. We cannot
know the states apart from the Ego manifested in them,
nor can we know the Ego except as manifested in its
changing acts and other conscious states. Consciousness
necessarily involves the conviction of its own perman-
ence, and this conviction is awakened in each conscious
state, so that without it the state could not arise. This
implication, however, is not expressed by Locke.

2. The existence of God, or the One Infinite Mind, is >$—
another of Locke's absolute certainties.1 It is not innate
knowledge ; but neither does he regard " perception " of
our own existence as innate ; both depend on the indi-
vidual man rising up unto the mental experience which
contains the evidence. The certainty that God exists
is not, like our knowledge of our own existence, self-
evident : it is one of those demonstrable truths that are
reached by a succession of steps, each of which has
intuitive certainty, but which depend on memory and
distinct thought for their recognition. It is thus only
gradually that each man comes to see the intellectual
necessity for One Supreme Eeason and Will, in seeing

none of them lesides itself present to the understanding, it is neces-
sary that something else, as a representation of the thing it considers,
should he present to it when it is considering them ; — and these
are ideas." — Book IV., chap. xxi. s. 4. Elsewhere his language is
different.
1 Book IV., chap. x.

176 Locke.

the necessary connection of this with the empirical fact
that his individual conscious existence had a beginning.

" Though God," says Locke, " has given us no innate ideas
or knowledge of Himself, though He has stamped no original
characters on our minds wherein [at first, and before we
began to have any experience] we might read His Being ; yet,
having furnished us with those [innate] faculties our minds
are endowed with, He hath not left Himself without a
witness. . . . We cannot want a clear proof of Him as long
as we carry ourselves about with us. . . . Though the exist-
ence of God be the most obvious truth that reason discovers
to us ; and though its evidence be, if I mistake not, equal
to mathematical certainty; yet to see it requires thought
and attention, and the [individual] mind must apply itself
to a regular deduction of it from some part of its intuitive
knowledge."

In fact, neither this, nor indeed any part of "our
intuitive knowledge," is innate, in Locke's meaning of
innateness. " Demonstration," on which he makes the
knowledge of God depend, is, on the contrary, a bit by
bit application of what is assumed (at least in the fourth
book) to be implied in universal ideas of causality and
power. But justification of universality is hardly
found in the previous analysis in the second book of
the meaning of causality and power. The eternal exist-
ence of Supreme Active Mind is, in the fourth book,
a concrete expression of the abstract necessity for un-
caused Intelligence in a universe that is changing, of
which we become aware with a certainty equal to that
of mathematics, when we realise that our own self-con-
scious existence had a beginning. Each of us has a
"perception" of his own existence now; each is also
obliged to believe that he has not existed always. Men

Supreme Infinite Mind. 177

are also absolutely certain (Locke does not show how
or why), that "nothing can no more produce any real
being than it can be equal to two right angles." By
this reasoning, each step seen by rational intuition to
be absolutely certain, he lands in the conclusion, that
there must ever be one most powerful and most know-
ing Being ; in whom, as the origin of all, must be con-
tained all the perfections that exist, or that can exist,
and whence can issue causally only what is therein
potentially contained. In the instance of my self-con-
scious existence, "mind" has "come out of" this Power ;
so that, in order to be adequate, the Power must itself
be " what we mean by mind." Intellect, this argument
assumes, can alone explain intellect; and therefore, if
" sufficient " causality and power to explain the empir-
ical fact that I began to exist is a necessity involved
in the reason of things, Hhere must be One Supreme
Mind. As to what "mind" means when predicated
of the Supreme Power, Locke is not so clear. In a
letter written a few weeks before his death to Anthony
Collins, referring to what we are entitled to mean by
"mind" when we apply the term to the Supreme Being
— the " idea " of Infinite Mind, in short — he says :
"Though I call the thinking faculty in man 'mind,'
yet I cannot, because of this name, equal it in any-
thing to that infinite and incomprehensible Being,
which, for want of right and distinct conceptions (ideas),
is called Mind also, or the Eternal Mind."

The existence of One Supreme "Mind," or God, is
Locke's unique example of a matter-of-fact reality that
is seen, through demonstration, to be eternally necessary
— at least on the supposition that the reasoner himself

p. — xv. . m

178 Locke.

now exists and began to exist. It is the one exception
to the contingency of all the other real beings whose
existence we know or presume. For the certainties we
can rise into in mathematics are certainties only when
they are abstracted from real things. The real exist-
ence of God is the one necessity in concrete existence
that comes within the range of a human understand-
ing— the one ultimate necessity that is more than an
abstraction. My own existence, though I cannot doubt
its present reality, is not thus universally and abso-
lutely necessary ; still less the real existence of things
presently existing around me.

As I have just said, it is not easy to reconcile Locke's
account of the mathematical certainty of the real exist-
ence of One Supreme Mind with his previous analysis of
the meanings of the principal terms contained in the " de-
monstration." His meagre analysis of the meaning of
" cause," in the twenty-sixth chapter of the second book,
even when supplemented by the hesitating account of the
idea or meaning of " power," in the twenty-first chapter,
fails to show how either term can contain the meaning
needed to justify conclusions which involve the eter-
nally necessary connection required by his argument.
The idea signified by the term " cause " he had analysed
into the meaning which rises in consciousness when we
observe customary successions of phenomena ; and when
we observe that the substances to which the phenomena
are referred " begin to exist," and judge that they " re-
ceive their existence " from the " operation of some
other being." Though we may "observe" that they
begin to exist, one asks how we can observe that they
receive their existence from some other being, in merely

Equal to mathematical certainty. 179

seeing that their existence follows its presence % A
sequence may be observed ; but that one of the terms
is producer and the other the product is not observable.
At any rate the intellectual necessity, universality, and
eternity implied in this theistic argument are not " ob-
servable." Locke might call them negative " modes "
of simple ideas, which we are obliged to elaborate out
of the unanalysable data of external and internal
sense; and which, having elaborated, we are obliged
to charge with the " assurance " that they agree with
reality. This is perhaps what he intended, in recognis-
ing as mental fact a demonstrably evident certainty of
the existence of God. He had to assume that the
relations of the ideas or meanings connoted by the sub-
jects and predicates of the propositions contained in the
" demonstration " somehow carry this common - sense
assurance of the reality of what is asserted at each
step, and thus of the ultimate conclusion. But this
argument implies universality and necessity in other
propositions than those concerned with abstract truth ;
for Locke treats the conclusion that God exists as one
of individual fact and yet as eternally true. It is as
certain, he says, that God exists as any mathematical
conclusion can be. A "probable God" is inconsistent
with Locke's argument.1

The complex meaning that corresponds to the term
" God," when the Divine attributes as well as bare
" existence " are included, Locke had analysed inci-
dentally in the second book, in arguing that the term
expresses a meaning that is intelligible by man. He

1 Compare with this of Locke, Clarke's ' Demonstration of the Ex-
istence and Attributes of God, ' piiblished fifteen years after.

180 Locke.

makes it out to be a complex idea, composed of the
complex idea of a finite spirit, modified by the negative
idea of infinity.

u There is nothing," he remarks, " that can be included
in the meaning of the word God, bating the negative mean-
ing which alone we can attach to ' infinity,' that is not also
a part of our complex ideas of other [individual] spirits. . . .
For if we examine the idea we have of the incomprehensible
Supreme Being, we shall find that we come by it in the same
way as we come by the complex ideas we have of ourselves and
other finite spirits ; and that the complex ideas we have both
of God and separate spirits are made up of the simple ideas
we receive from reflection. That is, we having, from what we
experiment in ourselves, got the ideas of existence and dura-
tion ; of knowledge and power ; of pleasure and happiness,
and of several other qualities and powers which it is better
to have than to be without ; — when we would frame an idea
the most suitable we can for the Supreme Being, we enlarge
every one of these with our idea of infinity, and so putting
them (thus enlarged) together make our complex idea of
God. For that the mind has the power of enlarging (to in-
finity) some of its ideas received from sensation and reflec-
tion has been already shown. ... In His essence we do not
know God, not knowing either the real essence of a pebble
or of a fly, or of our own selves. "We can have no other idea
of Him but a complex one of existence, knowledge, power,
happiness, &c, infinite and eternal ; ... all which being,
as has been shown, originally got from sensation and reflec-
tion [i.e., not independent of them], go to make up the com-
plex idea or notion we have of God." r

The basis of Locke's theism is a modification of

what has been called the cosmological argument, for it

turns upon the contingent nature of his own existence

as a self-conscious being. Because an intelligent person

1 Book II., chap, xxiii. ss. 33-35.

What God's existence means. 181

now exists and began to exist, it is eternally necessary
that an intellectual Being should exist and be supreme.
As Locke puts it, the argument leads to the individual
existence of a Supreme Mind, — one among many yet
Supreme — rather than to recognition of the constantly
necessary immanence of Active Eeason, so implicated
in the experienced universe, that it might be truly
said that we all live and move and have our being in
a reasonably constituted and morally governed system.
Locke's argument, on the contrary, leans to the deistic^
conception of a God apart, — inferred from the contingent
appearance of sensible things, or rather of intelligent
persons, — not to the idea of pervading order, or ever-
active reason, in nature, subordinate to moral reason and
ever-active moral government of persons, as necessary
presuppositions in our experience of things and persons.
His is the theological idea that was characteristic of the
eighteenth century ; not the theological idea which har-
monises with the conceptions of dialectical and physical
evolution which govern thought in the nineteenth cen-
tury; nor with a due sense of the inadequacy of a
conception of God as an individual among individuals,
rather than as the constant, all-pervading, yet transcen-
dent presence of Supreme Order and Goodness, with
what this implies, — necessarily presupposed at the root
of all that happens — the rational implicate of a com-
plete human experience.

3. Eeturn now to Locke's account of our knowledge of
the real existence of the universe of " things around us."

This — according to his account of what he found in
human understanding — we can have " only by sensa-
tion." That there is "no necessary connection of rea-

182 Locke.

son that any other real being (except God) has with the
real existence of any particular man and his or its
existence," was what Locke assumed in arguing for
God's existence ; — so that our knowledge of the exist-
ence of " things around us " had still to be vindicated.
No man can know the real existence of any other par-
ticular being than himself, — except that of God, — save
only when, and as long as, by actually operating upon
his organism, the thing makes itself perceived by him.1
" For the mere having an idea of anything in our mind,
or picturing its meaning, no more proves the real exist-
ence of that thing, than the picture of a man evidences
his being in the world, or than the visions of a dream
make up a true history." Merely knowing what the
words " real existence " mean, does not prove that
something is really existing, — unless there is embedded
in this idea of the thing that inevitable assurance of
the " reality " of its existence, which Locke assumes
that we do have in the knowledge of our own exist-
ence and our knowledge of the existence of God.
What, then, makes the difference between " only hav-
ing ideas of " surrounding things, or being able to pic-
ture mentally Avhat the words that signify them mean,
and an absolute certainty that they really exist 1
How can my ideas, which, so far as they are only
mine, can have no existence excerpt when I am con-
scious of them — one perception going out of my con-
sciousness before the next begins, — how can these
transitory operations reveal to me a real — that is, a

1 This " operating " refers to the organic conditions which are
occasions rather than proper causes of sense-perception, as Locke
elsewhere explains.

Things and persons around us. 183

permanent — external world? Instead of a reasoned
theory of perception like that, for instance, of Male-
branche, or that afterwards offered by Kant, Locke
suggests a practical answer to this question in this
fashion : —

" It is the actual receiving of ideas from without [what l re-
ceiving' means he does not explain, for he offers no theory
of sense-perception] that gives us notice of the real exist-
ence of other things [including other persons] ; and makes
us know that something doth exist at that time without
us which causes [occasions] that idea in us — though per-
haps we neither know nor consider how it does it. For it
takes not from the certainty of our senses, and the ideas we
receive by them, that we know not the manner in which
they are produced. For example, whilst I write this, I
have, by the paper affecting my eyes, that idea produced
[i.e., that perception called forth] in my mind which I call
white ; by which I know that that quality . . . doth then
really exist, and hath a being without me. And this, the
greatest assurance I can possibly have, ... is the testi-
mony of my eyes, which are the proper and sole judges of
this thing ; whose testimony I have reason to rely on as so
certain, that I can no more doubt, whilst I write this, that
I see white and black, and that something [extra-organic]
really exists that causes [regularly precedes or accompanies]
that sensation in me, than [I can doubt] that [within my
organism] I write or move my hand, — which is a certainty
[regarding what is extra- organic] as great as human nature
is capable of concerning the real existence of anything —
except a man's self alone, and God."

The " perception " we thus have, conditioned by our
sense-organism, of the existence of things " without us "
(extra - organic things), though it be not altogether so
certain as our intuitive and demonstrated knowledge of
our own existence and that of God ; or as the deduc-

184 Locke.

tions of reason about clear abstract concepts of our own
minds, in pure mathematics and in abstract ethics, yet
involves, Locke maintains, " an assurance that deserves
the name of knowledge or certainty." 1 When we have
the inevitable assurance that our sense-faculty informs
us aright concerning the real existence of things that
naturally affect it (as when an appropriate extra-
organic object affects our organ of sight), this —

" Cannot," Locke thinks, " pass for an ill-grounded con-
fidence ; for nobody can, in earnest, be so sceptical as to be
uncertain of the real existence of those things which he is
actually seeing and feeling. At least, he that can doubt so
far, whatever he may have with his own thoughts, will
never have any controversy with me — since he can never be
sure I say anything contrary to his own opinion. . . . We
cannot talk of knowledge itself but by the help of those
faculties which are fitted to apprehend what the word means
[i.e., which give us the 'idea' of knowledge]. . . . But if, after
all this, any one will be so sceptical as to distrust his senses,
and to affirm that all we see and hear, feel and taste, during
our whole being, is but the series and deluding appearances
of a long dream, wherein there is no reality, and will there-
fore question the existence of things, or our knowledge of
anything, I must ask him to consider, that, if all be a dream,
then he doth but dream that he makes the question, and so
it is not much matter that a Avaking man should answer him.
. . . The testimony of our senses for this reality is not
only as great as our frame can attain to, but as our condi-
tion needs. For he that sees a candle burning, and hath
experimented the force of its flame by putting his finger
in it, will little doubt that this is something which puts him
to great pain ; which assurance is enough, when a man re-
quires no greater certainty to govern his actions by than
what is as certain as his actions themselves. The evidence

1 Book IV., chap. ii.

"Presumptions" about absent realities. 185

that this is something more than bare imagination is as
great as we can desire, — being as certain to us as our pleasure
and pain ; beyond which we have no concernment, either of
knowing or being, ... as this is sufficient to direct us in the
attaining the good and avoiding the evil."

But with Locke each man's knowledge of the real
existence of a sensible thing is confined to the moments
in which he is actually sentient; together with the
knowledge of its past existence which is afforded by
his memory of his own previous sense-perceptions of it.
This important qualification which he attaches 'to his
practical refutation of scepticism concerning the things
of sense, reduces human certainty of their real exist-
ence or permanence to very narrow limits, if it does not,
indeed, dissolve it altogether. " The certainty of this
knowledge extends," — so he explains, — " only as far as
the present testimony of our senses employed about the
particular objects that do thus affect them, and no fur-
ther. When our senses do actually convey into our
understandings any idea, we cannot but be satisfied
that there doth something really exist without us at the
time which doth actually produce (give occasion to)
that idea which we then perceive ; and we cannot so
far distrust their testimony as to doubt that such col-
lections of simple ideas (i.e., complex ideas) as we
have observed by our senses to be united together, do
really exist together." That is to say, when we have
the actual perception we cannot doubt the real exist-
ence of what we perceive — as long, but only as long,
as it is sensibly perceived.

But whenever we pass from present and remembered
data of sense to expectations, or judgments about absent

186 Locke.

things, sense-knowledge gives place, Locke finds, to pre-
sumptions of probability. Our judgments of the real
existence of sensible things that are not now, or have
not been, present to our senses, are exclusively judg-
ments of probability, not perception or knowledge.

" For, if I saw such a collection of simple ideas [i.e., such
a complex idea of an individual substance] as is wont to be
called [i.e., as is meant by the term] ' man,' existing together
[coexistence of ideas] one minute since, and if I am now
alone, I cannot be certain that the same man exists now.
For there is no necessary connection of his existence a minute
since with his existence now : by a thousand ways he may
cease to be, since I had the testimony of my senses to his
existence. And therefore, though it be highly probable
that millions of men do now exist [unperceived by me], yet,
whilst I am alone writing this, I have not that certainty of
it which we strictly call knowledge ; though the great likeli-
hood of it puts me past [practical] doubt ; and though it be
reasonable for me to do several things upon the confidence
that there are men now in the world [although my senses
are not at the time informing me of this, — i.e, actually pre-
senting the relative sense-phenomena to me]. But this is
only probability, not knowledge " [i.e., not immediate sense-
perception, because its object is absent].

Locke thus reduces the entire certain knowledge of
sensible things that man is capable of to one's present
data of sense, and one's memory of past data — to what
is, and what has been, presented to one's senses ; and
transfers from the sphere of certainties to the sphere of
probable presumptions, our assurance of the existence
of any absent reality that is not remembered by us as
having existed. There is no " necessary natural con-
nection," that Locke can see, binding together " simple
ideas of sense " in continuous coexistence in one sub-

The rationale of Inductions. 187

ject, of which they would thus be qualities. A power
by us incalculable may at any time interfere to alter
the previously perceived appearance. Accordingly, in
physical investigations man can go no further in the
way of knowledge, or discernment of connection, than
the immediate perception of the moment, or the mediate
perception of memory, informs him. " We can have no
certain knowledge of universal truths concerning natural
bodies." The certain knowledge of them does not ex-
tend beyond the time when we are, or were, actually
having the sensations in which they are, or were, per-
ceived.

Locke seems hardly to apprehend the depth of the
problem here suggested, and raised when the sceptic
asks, how in reason we can in that case get at all beyond
the narrow range of our immediate sense-perceptions'?
This is the problem which Hume afterwards made the
main subject of his ' Inquiry.' "It may therefore,"
so Hume there puts it, "be a subject worthy of curi-
osity to inquire, What is the nature of that evidence
which assures us of any real existence and matter of
fact beyond the present testimony of our senses, or the
records of our memory. This part of philosophy," he
adds, " has been little cultivated either by the ancients
or the moderns." 1

Hume's question, by implication, asks the meaning
and ultimate ground of all inductive beliefs; and in
his answer he argues that induction must be an un-
reasoning act. According to him, it involves a step
for which no adequate reason can be given by man;
it must therefore be referred to blind instinct, or

1 See his ' Inquiry concerning Human Understanding,' sect. 4.

188 Locke.

some automatic process which we share with the lower
animals. It does not occur either to Hume or Locke
that it may be a process objectively rational, but often
only unconsciously rational in the individual mind — de-
veloped under the influence of custom, but of a custom
that is by implication reason ; and that, so far as the
inductive beliefs of the individual correspond to laws
in nature, they must be at least unconsciously rational,
and the laws may be said to express the action of
supreme Reason. Even in the world of the senses
we are unconsciously, if not consciously, living and
moving and having our being in the Infinite Mind.

If the present and the remembered qualities of a
thing constitute all the absolute certainty we can have
about the thing, how can we be said to know " things of
sense " at all 1 We know the sense-phenomenon while it is
perceived ; but to know the thing means more than this.
Such knowledge implies more than is present in sense, or
represented in memory. Even when I see another man
(i.e., his body), to take Locke's own example, more than
visible qualities must be included in the present " sight."
Otherwise it is not a man that I see, but only an aggre-
gate of extended colours ; which may justify the pre-
sumption that they signify a man. But this, per se,
is not intellectual perception of the man. The sense-
object, when only seen, is not a human body ; for its
invisible qualities (hardness, temperature, odour, taste,
&c.) are as little "actual present sensations" as if the
man's body was out of the range of our senses altogether.
Now, what constitutes the objectivity and reality of that
" collection of simple ideas," belonging to various
senses, which in seeing an object we " observe by our

Meaning of an " external thing" 189

faculties of sense"? What is meant by (*.&, what
constitutes the idea of) their reality or substantiality 1
Locke did not raise, and of course did not answer, this
question, either in treating of sense -knowledge, or when
he analysed the complex idea of a substance, material or
spiritual, in the second book.

It leads to a question which, as I have already said,
Locke forgot in his logical and psychological analysis of
our metaphysical ideas. What is meant by — what is
our "idea" of — "reality" or "real existence"; and
especially what is meant by " matter " and its " real
existence " 1 It was left to Berkeley to suggest this on-
tological question. The need to include it in a philo-
sophical analysis of our ideas is thus put by him : —
" Nothing seems of more importance towards erecting
a firm system of sound and real knowledge, which may
be proof against the assaults of scepticism, than to lay
the beginning in a distinct explication of what is meant
by Thing, Eeality, Existence ; for in vain shall we
dispute concerning the ' real existence ' of ' things,' or
pretend to any knowledge thereof, as long as we have
not fixed the meaning of those words."1 Thus Locke
led to Berkeley.

Is the real existence of things necessarily dependent
on a consciousness, perception, or idea? Is idea truly
the opposite of a really existing thing I Can things be
ideas and yet be also what we mean by real things ? Are
related ideas and things ultimately identical ; at least
when the ideas are those presented in sense, and there-
fore connected by the necessary and universal relations
which constitute the divine reason that is at the root of
1 Principles of Human Knowledge, sect. 89.

190 Locke.

nature 1 May not ideas thus endowed with validity be
themselves the reality ; while ideas not thus in agree-
ment with the divine reason, or the synthetic intelli-
gence immanent in nature, must be false or fictitious1?
May not real knowledge and reality be the same, —
looked at on different sides 1 Knowledge looked at ob-
jectively, and immanent in the rational nature of things,
would then be reality ; real existence looked at subjec-
tively, or in its process of acquirement and formation,
as the conscious possession of an individual, would be
knowledge or experience only. The world would thus
be a unity in which reason and reality are inextricably
fused together.

Idealistic questions of this sort were foreign to Locke,
although in course of time they arose out of the problem
which he suggested in his account of our certainties about
sensible things. His only solution consists in showing
that human knowledge depends for its materials upon
the qualities and spiritual acts of which we can become
aware, and that it is essentially a rational intuition or
perception of the relations of those presented materials.
Perception or discernment of relations, either immedi-
ately in their self-evidence, or mediately through demon-
stration, is of the essence of Locke's " knowledge." As
to its limits, we find that we may have this " percep-
tion" as to abstract mathematical and abstract moral
truths; also as regards our own existence as self-con-
scious individuals, the existence of God or Supreme
Mind, and the existence of individual substances with
their sensible qualities, as given in perception at the
time when they are perceived. But the " perceptions "
of reason on which this limited amount of knowledge

Potential Knowledge. 191

ultimately depends are not " innate," when innate
means, as it does with Locke, having them before we
have had any sense-experiences or exercise of our innate
faculties. On the contrary, " perceptions," physical or
moral, potentially ours, may, and do in many individual
men, remain unconscious through life. "If," he says,
"by innate moral principles is meant only ar faculty
to find out in time the moral difference of actions (be-
sides that this is an improper way of speaking to call
a power a principle), I never denied such a power to be
innate ; what I denied was that any ideas [of which we
were conscious] or any perception of connection of ideas,
was innate. If they were innate they would be from
the first consciously in all men. I think nobody who
reads my book could doubt that I spoke only of innate
ideas [of which there must be consciousness], and not'
of innate 'powers. Natural [innate] powers may be im-
proved by exercise, and afterwards weakened by neglect,
and so all knowledge must be got by the exercise of
these powers. But innate ideas or propositions [con-
sciously] imprinted on the mind, I do not see how they
can be improved or effaced."1 It is thus that Locke
explains his account of knowledge, in reply to hostile
criticism.

1 Comment in Locke's handwriting on the margin of his copy of
Burnet's "Remarks" on the 'Essay.' See 'Yale Review' for July

1887.

192

CHAPTEE VI.

PROBABILITIES : PHILOSOPHY OF PHYSICAL INDUCTION
AND EVOLUTION.1

According to the 'Essay on Human Understanding,' the
only absolute certainty which a man can have about the
things of sense is, that they are, or that they have been,
present in his own experience. He can neither have
the intuitive nor the demonstrable certainty, in which
knowledge properly consists, as to any absent things;
for when things are absent there is nothing presented
in such a way as to keep him certain of their continued
existence, still less of their condition ; — which is always
subject to change from the operation of (by us) un-
known or incalculable powers. This is just another
way of saying that all expectations about anything, and
inductive interpretations, can be only presumed proba-
bilities, void of that absolute certainty of reason which
makes knowledge. The philosophical conception, that
the invariable coexistences and successions of natural
phenomena are the sensible expression of divine reason,
immanent both in them and in man's common rational
sense — in them independently of our consciousness, in us
consciously, in proportion as our intelligence develops
1 See 'Essay,' Book IV., chaps, xiii.-xxi.

Conceptions that were foreign to Locke. 193

— the conception of nature as in this way capable of
being reasoned about, and so having the thought that
is immanent in its changes translated by our intellectual
efforts into our thoughts, — was too subtle and specula-
tive for Locke. The idea, too, of human history as the
record of a gradual intellectual progress towards com-
plete agreement between the thought or reason that is
immanent in nature and the individual thoughts of men,
was not less foreign to his mind. In his view, the vast
region of the Eeal that lies beyond one's consciousness
of one's own individual existence ; the existence of the
Supreme Spirit; and the present, or the remembered,
sense-perceptions of the individual, — all realities beyond
those present and past ones — are matters of probable pre-
sumption, in its degrees from practical certainty down
to doubtful opinion ; or else they lie wholly within that
veil which for ever conceals what is behind it from
human understanding. On Locke's philosophy, it is
unphilosophical for a human understanding to assert
absolute certainty of more than abstract mathematical,
and perhaps abstract moral, truths ; and, in what is
concrete, of more than one's own existence as far back
as memory goes ; the existence of supreme active Mind ;
and the present existence of finite things that are, or
past things while they were, perceived in sense. For
all the rest, a man can at the most rise into subjective
" presumptions " of probability ; which are, he thinks,
enough for all the purposes of human life. And herein
lies the difference between probability and certainty,
faith and knowledge, — that in all the parts of knowledge
there is either rational or sense intuition. Each step has
a visibly necessary, or at least inevitable connection with

P. — XV. N

194 Locke.

the next. In beliefs, however probable, this is not so.
That which makes me believe is something extraneous
to the thing I believe, and so it does not manifest neces-
sary agreement or disagreement of the qualities involved.
It does not put me under an intellectual obligation to
affirm or to deny what is signified in the subject and
predicate of the judgment I then make. Judgments or
presumptions of probability are the commonest of all the
relations of a human understanding to reality. The only
reality which is other than a probability, — besides our
own existence and that of present things of sense, — is
the existence of the Infinite Mind ; it being, according
to Locke, " as certain that there is a God as that the
opposite angles made by the intersection of two straight
lines are equal," — demonstrable in virtue of the principle
of causality, which is used universally in the demonstra-
tion, although it is a fact and not an abstraction that is de-
monstrated. With this exception, it is only in abstract
truth that he finds any universal proposition rising higher
than probability. The entertainment which the mind
gives to probable propositions — called by Locke "judg-
ment," belief, assent, opinion — is described as "admitting
or receiving any proposition for true, upon arguments or
proofs that are found to persuade us to receive it as true,
without certain knowledge that it is so." It is upon judg-
ments of this sort that the lives of men turn; for proba-
bility, not intuitive certainty, is the guide of human life.
It is indeed the main outcome of the ' Essay ' that
probability and not absolute certainty is the sort of
insight to which beings of limited understanding like
men are confined, in their intellectual intercourse with
the changing universe that is presented to them in their

Probability the guide of life. 195

experience. The sphere of probability is that in which
objections to various conclusions have to be carefully
balanced, and in which demands are made upon wisdom
more than upon subtlety. It is the sphere of the intel-
lectually intermediate ; — for, on the one hand, mere sense
cannot even calculate probabilities ; on the other hand,
divine or perfect insight, which always sees all in each,
leaves no room for probabilities. But man, through
his participation in Sense, cannot dispense with it;
while, in virtue even of his narrow range of intellectual
certainties and participation in Eeason, he is often
able to calculate what is probable and what is not, and
by this means to make expectations and inductive gen-
eralisations that are more than "leaps in the dark."
All this is perhaps implied, although not expressed,
in the account given in the fourth book of the relative
spheres of intellectual certainty, and faith in proba-
bilities. Yet it is the vital part of the answer to the
question which he proposed to his friends at the mem-
orable reunion nearly twenty years before the ' Essay '
appeared. The subject is approached in the chapter
which treats of the " extent " of human knowledge ; 1 in
the many passages throughout the ' Essay ' which treat
of the relation of the secondary to the primary qualities
of the things of sense ; 2 and also in other passages which
maintain the impossibility of absolute certainty in any
"general propositions regarding matters of fact which
man can make."3 Here are some examples of sentences
in which it is referred to : —

1 Book IV. , chap. iii.

2 Book III., chap. viii. ; Book IV., chap. iii. ss. 10-17, &c.

3 Book IV., chaps, vi.-viii.

196 Locke.

" As to actual relations of agreement or disagreement of
our ideas in their coexistences [i.e., as to our certainties about
the qualities of individual substances], in this our knowledge
proper absolute certainty is very short ; though in this con-
sists the greatest and most important part of what is to be
known concerning substances. For, our ideas of the species
of substances being, as I have showed, nothing but certain
collections of simple ideas, united in one subject, and so co-
existing together [i.e., nothing but collections of qualities
which we refer to individual things according to their kinds]
—e.g., our idea of gold that of a body heavy, yellow, malle-
able, and fusible, — these, or such complex ideas as these, does
the general name of the substance gold stand for. Now, when
we would know anything further concerning this or any
other sort of substance, what do we then inquire but what
other qualities or powers such substances have or have not 1
which is nothing other but to know what other simple ideas
[i.e., unanalysable qualities] do or do not coexist in nature
with those that make up this complex idea [bundle of
qualities] of gold. And this, however weighty and con-
siderable a part soever of human science, is yet very narrow
and scarce any at all [i.e., except in the form of more or less
probable presumptions]. The reason whereof is, that the
simple ideas whereof our complex ideas of substances are
made [i.e., the qualities which we refer to them, in the con-
notation of the terms by which they are denoted] are for
the most part [i.e., in the case of all their qualities that are
not primary] such as carry with them in their own nature
no visible necessary connection with other simple ideas
[qualities or powers] whose coexistence with them we would
inform ourselves about."

In language that is now familiar to the philosophical
reader, this means, that our synthetic judgments about
all things in nature which are not at the moment present
in sense are destitute of the element of a priority or
necessity in reason. For Locke is saying in passages

Nature uninterpretable a priori. 197

like this, that human beings can find no necessary con-
nection articulating their sense-ideas, or the intelligible
qualities that are presented to them, through which they
might demonstrate, merely from the present sense-given
qualities of a thing, either its future appearances, or
what all or any of its other qualities must be. In all
such cases, on account of the inevitable absence of the
intellectual perception in which certainty or true science
consists, one can only presume ; and as " presumptions
of probability" are not certainties of reason, man can
never construct strict science of nature.

" How far soever human industry may advance useful and
experimental philosophy in physical things, scientifical will
still be out of our reach. There can be no science of bodies,
because we want perfect and adequate ideas of those very
bodies which are nearest to us and most under our com-
mand. Distinct ideas perhaps we may have ; but adequate
ideas I suspect we have not of any one amongst them. And
though the former of these will serve us for common use
and discourse, yet while we want the latter we are not cap-
able of scientifical knowledge ; nor shall ever be able to
discover general unquestionable truths concerning them.
Certainty and demonstration are things we must not in these
matters pretend to."

All intellectual intercourse with the changing world of
things and persons to which we are introduced through
the channel of immediate sense-perception, can thus
only be tentative, and more or less hypothetical, accord-
ing to this philosophy. For men have neither imme-
diate nor mediate intuitions of necessary connections
among the few phenomena which come within the
range of their sense - perceptions. Hence they can
neither interpret nature a priori, nor see an absolute

198 Locke.

necessity for phenomena meaning what they are believed
to mean in a posteriori interpretations of them. Instead
of being able to see with the certainty of demonstration
what the unperceived qualities or powers of sensible sub-
stances are, through a sense-perception of their present
appearances, man can only in each case balance objec-
tions and probabilities, under the general presumption
— as Locke would perhaps in his own way allow, though
he would not so express it — of the immanence, through-
out experience and its changes, of law, order, reason, or
divine direction ; — all which forbids us to suppose that
our inductive expectations as to events in external nature
and in human history turn ultimately on blind chance,
or that reason in us may in the end be put to confusion
by the essential irrationality of experience.

Accordingly, if we adopt Locke's language, we must
say that it is only probable that " all men will die,"
or that "the sun will rise to-morrow"; for we cannot
demonstrate the absolute necessity in reason of either
of these events, and so our " assent " involves an im-
perfectly intellectual '* presumption." Scientific " veri-
fications " themselves would thus present only probable
proof; even in the ideal cases in which the assurance
that a special law of nature has been ascertained is as
firm as the assurance we have that there is order or
reason in nature at all — if "verification," in any in-
stance, rises to such assurance. No physical verifica-
tion, Locke is bound to say, can exclude the abstract
possibility of another solution. This language varies
from the ordinary use of the word "probable."1 It also

1 Hume notes this. "Mr Locke," he says, "divides all argu-
ments into demonstrative and probable. In this view we must say

Qualities or powers of Things. 199

suggests some of the deepest questions in philosophy,
which Locke himself hardly brings up into view.

That the physical and natural sciences, along with all
our judgments about absent facts . in this ever-changing
universe of things or persons, consist only of proba-
bilities— although probabilities many of which exclude
reasonable doubt — is a prominent lesson in Locke's
philosophy. He is fond of illustrating it in connec-
tion with the " secondary qualities and powers " of
bodies. The subject is introduced in the eighth chap-
ter of the second book, although it is hardly relevant in
a logical analysis of our ideas. But the "simple ideas
of sense," treated of in that part of the ' Essay,' Locke
identifies with the " qualities and powers " of bodies ;
they are the intelligible phenomena in which an exist-
ence external to each man manifests itself to his senses.
These " qualities and powers," he finds, are of two sorts.
A few, inseparable from our complex idea of material
substance, are referred by us to the material substances
themselves, — the existence of which he assumes. These
are practically identical in our perceptions or ideas with
what they are in the real substance — whatever " reality "
may here mean, for this idea, as already remarked, he
does not analyse. On the other hand, most, and those
the most interesting, of the qualities and powers which
enter into our complex ideas of sensible things, may,
he finds, be changed without loss of material substance.
They are not (as ideas or intelligible phenomena) attrib-

that it is only probable all men must die. But to conform our
language more to common use, we ought to divide arguments into
demonstrations, proofs, and probabilities ; by proofs meaning sucb
arguments from experience as leave no room for doubt or opposi-
tion."— 'Inquiry,' sect, vi., Of Probability.

9 ^

200 Locke.

uted to the material substance itself, but are found on
consideration to be subjective or individual sensations of
the persons who are conscious of them. Things around
us must be solid, external, and movable, — it is essential to
our complex ideas of matter that they should be so. They
may or may not be hot, or sweet to taste, or odorous, or
melodious, in any of the innumerable varieties of these
and like qualities. This second class of "qualities"
depends upon a person's sense-consciousness of them in
a way that the first does not. When we have an idea
of heat, for instance, it is as of a feeling in us ; or if
regarded as independent of us, we image it to ourselves
as an unknown modification of motion — which is one
of the necessary qualities — although motion has no
apparent necessary connection with the feeling of heat.
Locke calls the former class primary, original, or essen-
tial qualities of matter ; the others, in their boundless
variety, its secondary derived or relative qualities. The.
primary, which involve mathematical relations, and are
therefore quantities rather than qualities, are, he reports,
inseparable from matter, as matter; and they are in
nature as they appear in our perceptions, being at once
ideas and qualities. The secondary, in our sense-experi-
ence of them, are only sensations ; they are " qualities "
in material things only through the divinely estab-
lished connection, or constant law, in respect of which
their quantified atoms occasion in us those sensations
which give positive meanings to the terms expressive of
secondary or relative qualities in matter. If there were
no sentient beings all secondary qualities would cease
to exist, except, perhaps, in the form of their primary
correlatives. For, as Locke suggests, the sensations in

Qualities and Quantities. 201'

us which give idea or meaning to all secondary qualities,
may perhaps, under the laws of nature, all depend on
correlative sorts of size, shape, and motion of the pri-
mary atoms of the bodies to which they are referred.
It is highly probable that heat, for instance, depends
on atomic motion. But if this hypothesis regarding the
secondary qualities and powers of sensible things is re-
jected, they must depend, Locke argues, on " something
still more obscure." On the other hand, " solidity, ex-
tension, figure, and motion," in contrast to the secondary
qualities and powers, are simple ideas or qualities of sense,
which would be really as they are whether there were any
sensible being to perceive them or not."

The outcome of Locke's hypothesis about the " quali-
ties and powers" of material substances, — with which
alone the physical and natural " sciences " are con-
cerned,— would be, that, in themselves, they are prob-
ably capable of being described and reasoned about
in terms of mathematical quantity instead of in terms
of subjective sensation. Its tendency is, to insinuate
such a correlation between (a) the sensations, which give
idea or meaning to all terms expressive of secondary
qualities and powers of bodies, and (b) the corresponding
modifications of their primary atoms, as that the goal
of all scientific research into nature would be — dis-
covery of what the special modifications of the primary
or mathematical qualities of individual things are, on
which their secondary qualities and powers depend.

The true scientific idea or law of any external thing
would then be found in a knowledge of the mathe-
matical relations of the atoms of which it consists ; in
which knowledge we should find, deductively by im-

202 Locke.

plication, the sensations of colour, resistance, sound,
taste, smell, heat, &c, to which such atoms, so correlated,
must give rise in us ; and also the changes which they
must occasion, by communication of motion, in the atoms
of which the bodies around them consist, — followed, of
course, by those surrounding bodies " operating " on
sentient beings differently from what they did before
their atoms were so affected. In this way, in a know-
ledge of the primary or mathematical qualities of any-
thing, we should have the key to all its qualities and
powers; and in order to explain scientifically the be-
haviour of all bodies in the material world, we should
only need to know what their respective atomic con-
stitutions are. Science of nature so developed would
become throughout applied mathematics. It would all
be capable of being evolved by us in necessary demon-
strations ; provided only that we could get possession
of the needful data, in a perfect knowledge of the
mathematical relations involved in the atomic consti-
tution of each species of things.

Locke suggests something like this in his own cautious
way. He thinks it possible, even probable, that all the
" powers " of bodies may be conditioned by, and ex-
pressible in, terms of those motions of their constituent
atoms which are always going on in the extended uni-
verse ; or, if not dependent on this, changes in nature
must, he repeats, arise under some other condition or
law " yet more remote from our comprehension," and
of which the data of our experience do not furnish us
with any idea. So that the supposed correlation is only
an hypothesis ; seeing that the secondary qualities and
powers of bodies, for all that we certainly know, may

" Science of nature impossible." 203

be independent of their primary qualities, and may de-
pend on " something even more remote from our reach "
than would be a knowledge, in principle and in details,
of his hypothetical correlation. But it is only an hypo-
thesis ; and even if in those correlations are really con-
tained the secrets of which physical science is in quest,
they must still remain secrets to man. For our feeble
senses, as he argues, could not put us in possession of
the required data ; or if they did, we could not work out
the infinitely complex conclusions. Physical or natural
science is therefore unattainable by a human under-
standing i — when " science " means, as Locke means by
it, only what is rationally intuited and what is demon-
strable, and when it refuses to admit among its propo-
sitions any presumptions of probability. This favourite
argument Locke seems to value for its moderating in-
fluence upon the pride of human understanding. Take
the following passages in illustration : —

" The reason whereof is, that the simple ideas or qualities
whereof our complex ideas of [material] substances are made
up, are, for the most part, such as carry with them no neces-
sary connection with any other simple ideas [qualities] whose
coexistence with them [in the same substance] we would
inform ourselves about. The ideas that our complex ones
of substances are made up of, and about which our know-
ledge concerning substances is most employed, are those
of the secondary qualities ; which, depending all, as has
been shown, upon the primary qualities of their minute
and insensible parts, or, if not upon them, upon something
yet more remote from our comprehension, it is impossible
we should know which of them have a necessary union or
inconsistency with the other. For, not knowing the root
they spring from ; not knowing what size, figure, and texture
of points they are, on which depend and from which result

204 Locke.

those qualities which make our complex idea of ' gold,' it is
impossible we should know what other qualities result from
or are incompatible with the same, and so consequently must
always coexist with that complex idea we [already] have of
it, or else are inconsistent with it. Besides this ignorance
of the primary qualities of the insensible parts [atoms] of
bodies, on which as on no other depend all these secondary
qualities, there is yet another and more inconceivable part
of ignorance which sets us more remote from a certain
knowledge [as distinguished from sufficiently probable pre-
sumption] of the coexistence or incoexistence, if I may so
say, of different ideas [qualities or perceived phenomena]
in the same subject, — and that is, that there is no [by us]
discoverable connection between any secondary quality and
those primary qualities it depends on. That the size,
figure, and motion of one body should cause a change in
the size, figure, and motion of another body, is not beyond
our conception. These and the like seem to have some
connection with each other. And if we knew these quali-
ties of bodies, we might have reason to hope we might
be able to know a great deal more of these operations of
them one with another. But our minds not being able to
discover any connection between the primary qualities of
bodies, and the sensations that are produced in us by them
[i.e., their secondary qualities], we can never be able to
establish certain and undoubted rules [laws of nature] of
the consequences. We are so far from knowing what partic-
ular figure, size, or motion of parts, produce a yellow colour,
a sweet taste, or a sharp sound, that we can by no means
conceive how any size, figure, or motion of any particles can
possibly produce in us the idea of any colour, taste, or sound
whatsoever ; there is no conceivable connection between the
one and the other. In vain, therefore, shall we endeavour
to discover by our ideas [i.e., by the data of actual sense]
what other ideas [qualities] are to be found constantly con-
joined with those contained in our present complex idea of
any substance ; since we neither know the real constitution
of the minute parts on which their qualities do depend, nor,

Contingency of synthetic judgments. 205

did we know them, could we discover any necessary con-
nection between them and any of the secondary qualities."

Our knowledge, in short, in all these inquiries, reaches
very little further than the fluctuating data of our
experience. A few of the primary qualities have a
necessary and visible connection with one another ; — for
figure necessarily supposes extension ; receiving or com-
municating motion by impulse necessarily supposes
solidity. But we can thus discover the necessary coex-
istence of very few of the absent qualities that are
united in substances ; we are on the whole left only to
the present and remembered experience of actual sense
for our certainties about things.

" Thus, though we see the yellow colour, and upon trial
find the weight, malleableness, fusibility, and fixedness that
are united in a piece of gold ; yet, because no one of these
ideas has any evident dependence or necessary connection
with the other, we cannot certainly know that where any
four of these are, the fifth will be also — how highly probable
soever it may be, because the highest probability amounts
not to certainty, without which there can be no true know-
ledge. For this coexistence can be known no further than it
is perceived ; and it could be perceived only in particular
subjects, by the observation of sense ; or, in general, by the
necessary connection of the ideas (qualities) themselves."

As connections of phenomena in nature can never be
seen by the eye of man's reason to be necessary, and
therefore universal, Locke concludes that all judgments
about them can only be presumptions of probability ; and
therefore absolute certainty regarding natural coexist-
ences (and by analogy of reasoning, natural successions)
must be confined to the instances now and here present
to the senses, and can never enter into, or constitute,

206 Locke.

universal propositions. It follows that a scientific in-
quirer can never have more than probable assurance that
he has discovered a law of nature ; or that any law,
ascertained by induction, may not be suspended by the
interposition of a higher law ; or even by some unex-
pected originating cause, — in a system of things like
that of nature, in which physical law is subordinate to
a yet higher order. Pure mathematical judgments of
universality, Locke would grant, have absolute cer-
tainty ; and so too would also say of our mathematical
judgments when applied to things of sense, — if the
things as perceived by sense corresponded to the mathe-
matical conceptions. But then we know too inexactly
and too little of the contents of space and time, and
of the forces at work among them, to be ever absolutely
certain that this correspondence exists; so as to be
justified in carrying our certainty beyond the present
data, into universal propositions about the qualities and
laws of the things which our senses perceive. "It is
(certainly) true of a triangle, that its three angles are
equal to two right ones, wherever the triangle really
exists. But whatever other figure really exists that is
not exactly answerable to that idea of a triangle, is not
at all concerned in that proposition " (iv. 4, 6).

Mixed mathematics can thus be only hypothetically
certain. The abstract truths of pure mathematical cer-
tainty that may be latent in nature, are not in it as it
is sensibly revealed to us, and so we cannot identify in
our reasonings the concrete and imperfect " triangles "
that we actually see and touch with the abstract or
perfect triangle of pure mathematics. By analogy, too,
Locke might so argue as to the abstract causal relation,

A universal chaos. 207

and its application to the imperfectly known concrete
causes or powers on which changes in nature ultimately
depend. In contrast with this he finds that abstract
moral truths are intuitively necessary. "We cannot con-
ceive a lie or an unjust act to be virtuous, but we can
conceive the actual laws of nature to be different from
what our inductions make them out to be. Fire may
cease to burn, but cruelty cannot cease to be criminal.
Locke does not ask whether a chaotic universe (emptied
of physical law and order) would not be as irrational
and impossible as a universe in which moral and mathe-
matical truths were reversed, on the ground in both cases
that it would be a universe emptied of God.

Locke does not go much further than this into the
philosophy of probability, and the (partly blind) pre-
sumption on which he makes it rest. His implied
philosophy of natural science and induction may be
gathered from what has been already said. It brings us
to the margin only of the metaphysics of mathematics
and physics. The nature and origin of the order latent
in the original constitution and progressive evolution
of physical phenomena, is a question which lies out-
side his inquiries ; along with the still more general
question why human understanding necessarily presup-
poses order or reason, as existing in the heart of the
things and events which it investigates. Natural science
does not entertain those purely philosophical questions.
It does not seek to determine what is meant by "an
agent " in the material world, nor whether in truth any
so-called " law " in nature — be it gravitation or evolution
by natural selection or any other — can truly be said to

208 Locke.

explain anything at all — philosophically. It leaves un-
touched the question of the cause of physical causality,
— the reason why the universe " is assumed to be a
cosmos and not a chaos." Mere natural science is ready
dogmatically to supersede all such questions, by the
assumption that " forces " in nature are independent,
self - existent, and necessary causes ; not merely con-
tingent, because dependent, modes of action of infinite,
ever-active Reason or Will, that is at once immanent in
nature and supernatural. When we remember the ques-
tion which gave rise to the ' Essay,' we perhaps expect
more than Locke has told us about the rationale of the
probable presumptions by which our limited "certain
knowledge " is supplemented, and by which human life
has to be guided. The critic of the ' Essay ' is ready to
ask, how we are justified in reason, when we pass as we
daily do beyond the narrow bounds of sense-perception
of the qualities of things present, and possess ourselves,
in merely probable "presumptions," of so much of the
universe as we seem to conquer of the unperceived past,
distant, and future. Locke contributes less perhaps than
we might have anticipated to the philosophy either of
induction or of faith.

The remaining chapters of the fourth book 1 contain
judicious advice for human beings, whose lives thus turn
upon probabilities or presumptions, as to the best means
for avoiding those risks of error to which the narrow
boundary of their certain knowledge makes them liable,
— for human errors arise mainly within the sphere of
probability, and hardly ever occur, except by defect of
1 Chaps, xiv.-xxi.

A theory of Probability. 209

memory or confusion of thought, within the limits of
absolute certainty or knowledge. Locke rejects the syl-
logism as an organ of discovery ; but without adverting to
its proper function, as a formula for guaranteeing the self-
consistency of reasonings. Another question, one which
touches the root of academical scepticism, is not raised
by him. Could there be even probability, if nothing
that is absolutely certain can enter into our mental
experience1? He registers a few absolute certainties in
classes, without showing their philosophical rationale,
or their mutual relations, and then contrasts with this
the immense extent of probabilities in their different
degrees. But he does not show any connection between
the two, nor consider whether there could be an aggre-
gate of probabilities that rested at last on a mere prob-
ability nor inquire whether so resting it could truly be
said to " rest " at all. Hume's ' Sceptical Solution of
Sceptical Doubts ' carried modern philosophy afterwards
into these questions, — by his attempt to resolve Locke's
few concrete certainties themselves into illusions, thus
making every judgment about reality only probable, and
attaching a "perhaps" to every proposition that can be
formed by man, — including the proposition itself that
all so-called knowledge is (perhaps) only probable.

This defect in the 'Essay' was not long unnoticed.
Bishop Butler, in the Introduction to his ' Analogy,' — in
explaining that it was not within his design " to inquire
into the nature, the foundation, and the measure of prob-
ability ; or whence it proceeds that likeness should beget
that presumptive opinion and full conviction which the
human mind is formed to receive from it, and which it

p. — xv. o

210 Locke.

does naturally produce in every one," — adds, that " this is
a part of logic which has not yet been thoroughly con-
sidered," and that " little in this way has been attempted
by those who have treated of our intellectual powers
and the exercise of them. Probable evidence in its
nature affords," he goes on to say, " but an imperfect
kind of information, and is to be considered as relative
only to beings of limited capacities. For nothing which
is the possible object of knowledge, whether past, pre-
sent, or future, can be probable to Infinite Intelligence,
since it cannot but be discovered absolutely as it is in
itself, certainly true or certainly false. But to us, pro-
bability is the very guide of life. And a man is as
really bound in prudence to do what, upon the whole,
appears according to the best of his judgment to be for
his happiness, as what he certainly knows to be so."
Hume, with a still humbler theory as to the extent of
human knowledge than that advocated by Locke, or by
Butler after Locke, proposed, as we saw, for a subject
worthy of curiosity, — indeed, as the theme of his ' In-
quiry into Human Understanding,' — to investigate
" what is the nature of that evidence which assures us
of any real existence or matter of fact beyond the present
testimony of our senses, and the testimony of memory to
what has been present to our senses or in our experi-
ence." The issue of Hume's investigation is, that blind
inexplicable custom, determined by the associative tend-
ency at work in each man, is a sufficient practical ex-
planation of the formation of physical experience and
science, and the only guarantee we have of their proba-
bility ; — and that beyond this there can be neither cer-
tainties nor probabilities. All that lies beyond the data

Mental Association and Evolution. 211

of present sense and memory becomes belief by custom
and habit through association, of which blind and
mechanical process, as ultimate for us, we can find no
explanation. It was thus that Hume "solved" the
" sceptical doubts " that had been expressed in his
'Treatise of Human Nature.' The "sceptical" solu-
tion,— association generated by custom, extended, since
Hume's days, through law of heredity, from the indi-
vidual to the race and its physical surroundings — is now
accepted, by many to whom a scientific understanding of
life and the universe seems adequate and final, not merely
as the scientific but even as the ultimate explanation of
moral and spiritual experience.

Locke himself has been classed with the "English
association philosophers." Yet the first edition of the
* Essay ' contained no express reference to mental asso-
ciation or its consequences, in vogue with Hobbes, and
in the following century with Hume and Hartley. The
short chapter on " Association of Ideas," now included
in the second book, was introduced (in the fourth edi-
tion) not to explain philosophically the practical cer-
tainties of probability, which play so large a part in
Locke's philosophy, far less to explain the few absolute
certainties which he recognised, — but for the opposite
purpose of warning against the blind tendency mechan-
ically to connect ideas, on the ground that it is the
potent manufacturer of prejudices and errors which he
had assailed under the name of " innate principles."
As Dr Fowler remarks, in his admirable account of
Locke, the ' Essay ' offers " no natural explanation of the
various mental tendencies and aptitudes which it de-

212 Locke.

scribes, or of the extraordinary facility of acquiring
simple and forming complex ideas, so far as the indi-
vidual is concerned." The principle of Heredity, and
the law of Evolution, which now play so large a part in
the merely physical explanations of human nature and
the universe, were of course not then anticipated. The
essence of the 'Essay' is that human knowledge and
opinion are not innate in each man, but a growth.
Yet there is no attempt at scientific explanation of
the laws under which they grow. At the most, how-
ever, such "explanations" could only express the em-
pirical conditions under which the essential principles
of Universal Eeason are consciously developed in an
individual or in mankind. Eeason is inexplicable, or
at least can only be explained by itself, — by unfold-
ing articulately its essential constitution. To ask for
a physical explanation would be to ask for a physical
cause of God's existence.

The drift of the ' Essay ' is, on the whole, against
abstract principles, but always in the interest of phil-
osophical impartiality, or what Locke calls "indiffer-
ence." He was apt to regard presuppositions of every
kind as prejudices, especially when expressed in the
form of abstract principles ; and he failed to acknow-
ledge principles that are necessarily involved in our
mental operations, but which are not consciously patent,
at least in their abstract form, in the experience of most
men. He sometimes wrote as if he failed to see that
without presuppositions of some sort, intellectual and
moral, there could neither be reasoned scepticism nor
reasonable faith.

213

THIRD PART.

ADVANCED LIFE: CONTROVERSY AND CHRISTIANITY

(1691-1704).

CHAPTER I.

A RURAL HOME IN ESSEX.

The 'Epistola de Tolerantia,' the 'Two Treatises on
Government/ and the ' Essay concerning Human Under-
standing ' formed the literary outcome of Locke's cogi-
tations up to his fifty-seventh year. They express his
philosophy as it had been formed by collision with the
contemporary adversaries of free thought and reasonable-
ness. They were given to the world in the last two
years of that interval of his life, when he no longer had
a home with Lord Shaftesbury, either at Exeter House
or in Aldersgate, and before he had found one else-
where, more peaceful if less conspicuous. It was then
that he delivered to the world the philosophy that has
been expounded in the foregoing chapters, which had
been ripening in his thoughts in many years of con-
siderate observation, in England, Erance, and Holland.

214 Locke.

He was now almost sixty. Two winters in London had
aggravated his chronic ailments. The course of public
affairs had disappointed his hopes, for the Eevolution
Settlement, especially its Toleration Act, fell short of
his political ideal.

It was then that the home of his old age, the brightest
of all his successive homes, — at Beluton, Christ Church,
Exeter House, Aldersgate, Amsterdam, and Botterdam, —
was opened to receive him. It was the secluded manor-
house of Oates in Essex, the country seat of Sir Erancis
Masham, one of the members of Parliament for that
county. The second Lady Masham was Damaris, the
accomplished daughter of Ealph Cudworth, the Anglican
theological philosopher of the seventeenth century. It
will be remembered that Locke was intimate with the
family before he went to Holland, and the intimacy was
maintained by correspondence when he was abroad.
"When he returned to London, in February 1689,
Damaris Cudworth had become the wife of Sir Francis
Masham of Oates. Now and then, in the course of the
two years spent at Mrs Smithsby's apartments in Dorset
Court, "by some considerably long visits to Oates," as
Lady Masham afterwards told Le Clerc, "Mr Locke made
trial of the air of this place, which is some twenty miles
from London, and he thought that none would be more
suitable for him. His company could not but be very
desirable for us, and he had all the assurance we could
give him of being always welcome ; but to make him
easy in living with us, it was necessary he should do so
on his own terms, which Sir Erancis at last assenting to,
he then believed himself at home with us, and resolved,
if it pleased God, here to end his days — as he did."

Oates in Essex. 215

It was in the early spring of 1691 that the idyllic
life at Oates began, and that Locke in this way found the
surroundings amidst which his later life was passed.
This place, which must ever be associated with his name,
was pleasantly situated among the leafy lanes of Essex,
north of the romantic glades of Epping Forest, midway
between Ongar and Harlow, and not far from Stanford
Eivers. There, amongst the simple peasantry of a rural
English parish, he enjoyed for almost fourteen years as
much domestic happiness and literary leisure as was con-
sistent with broken health and occasional attention to
public affairs. From minute details in his immense pub-
lished and unpublished correspondence, which abounds
in homely humorous touches, and from Masham family
letters, one can picture the philosopher in the daily
routine of this English country-house, when the shadows
of the evening of life were lengthening.

"When Locke went to live at Oates, in February 1691,
Sir Francis and Lady Masham were both in middle life.
The daughter of Cudworth was the second wife of Sir
Francis, a devout churchwoman, full of thoughtful
piety, refined and accomplished, known afterwards in
authorship for her 'Discourse concerning the Love of
God,' and ' Thoughts in Reference to the Christian
Life,' a correspondent of John Norris, the rector of
Bemerton, and mystical disciple of Plato and Male-
branche. Their only child Francis was four years old
when Locke entered the family. A daughter of Sir
Francis by his first wife, Esther Masham, then a bright
and clever girl of sixteen, was also one of the family
circle. She became Locke's favourite companion; he
corresponded with her in his own vein of sprightly

21 G Locke.

humour during occasional separations, when she was
visiting among her friends, or when she was at Oates
during his occasional visits to London. Locke's ad-
mirers owe something to Esther Masham. I have
read two unpublished volumes of hers, containing copies
taken by her own hand of nearly two hundred fa-
miliar letters from her friends, written mostly in the
years when Locke lived at Oates.1 The fresh and
lively details even of the most commonplace incidents
of the family life, here pictured with pre - Raphaelite
realism, withdraw the curtain from the old Essex
manor-house as it was almost two hundred years ago,
and make the family, with Locke as its principal
figure, live again in fancy. Besides the child Fran-
cis and the lively Esther, Samuel, the youngest son
of the first marriage — afterwards Lord Masham, and
husband of Abigail, the noted favourite of Queen Anne
— a boy at school in 1691 — was then and afterwards
often at Oates for his holidays. Other sons of Sir
Francis, by the first marriage, most of them in the
army in Flanders or in Ireland, make their appearance
in the home circle now and then on leave; or their
letters from abroad are reported as being read with
eagerness by the winter fireside in the oak -panelled
parlour, with its woollen tapestry, Locke among the
listeners. Once and again there is sorrow in the Essex

1 These volumes are entitled, ' Letters from Eelations and Friends
to E. Masham,' in two MS. volumes (335 pp.), with date "1722,"
when they were copied by her, as she says, that she might " reflect
on past experiences, and thus divert some melancholy hours of a soli-
tary life." They are 179 in number, English and French (some of
her relations being French), the earliest dated in 1686, and the last
in 1710.

The Masham Family. 217

home, when the death of a favourite son is announced
from abroad. A picturesque member of the Oates family
circle when Locke entered it was the venerable Mrs Cud-
worth, Lady Masham's mother, who came to stay with
her daughter in 1688, after the death in that year of
her learned husband, and who continued to live at Oates
till her own death in November 1695. Country neigh-
bours, too, appear now and then on the scene. Match-
ing Hall, two miles from Oates, not far from Down
Hall, afterwards the home of the poet Prior, was in
those years occupied by the mother of Sir Francis. A
mile away in an opposite direction from Matching was
Locke's parish church of High Laver, the church in
which he was often seen ; and near it the rectory,
where he often visited the rector, his good friend
Samuel Lowe. Esther Masham's letters and Locke's
refer to many goings to and fro among these houses,
or to familiar intercourse with the farmers and the cot-
tagers. Locke's favourite walks and rides in the leafy
lanes, or the superintendence and manual labour which
he enjoyed in the garden at Oates, are common inci-
dents of the after part of the day, when the work in the
study was over. Riding was Locke's favourite exercise.
His spare, diminutive figure must have been familiar
to the cottagers, who were used to see " Doctor Locke,"
the studious gentleman who lived with Sir Francis, pass
on horseback, on the rough roads towards Harlow or
Ongar or Epping, or on his way to ask for old Mrs
Masham at Matching, or to the rectory at High Laver
to visit Mr Lowe. Sometimes the afternoon's exercise
was in the old-fashioned garden at the manor-house,
where on warm summer days of the closing years of

218 Locke.

that far-off seventeenth century he enjoyed the shade of
the yew-trees in company with Esther Masham or her
mother, or basked in the sun on the sheltered walks.
This routine was relieved by visits to town, or by occa-
sional visits at Oates of illustrious friends — Isaac New-
ton from Cambridge, or the Lord Shaftesbury of the
1 Characteristics,' who in former days was Locke's pupil,
or Lord and Lady Peterborough, or William Molyneux
the Dublin philosopher, or Peter King, Locke's cousin,
afterwards Lord Chancellor, and in the last months of
Locke's life, Anthony Collins, afterwards of free-thinking
repute, then a young Essex squire. Some years after
Locke was settled at Oates, a young Frenchman, Pierre
Coste, was added to the home circle, recommended by
Le Clerc to be Frank Masham's tutor and Locke's
amanuensis, who translated the ' Essay ' into French
when he was living there with its author.

The old manor-house itself, which in those fourteen
years was the scene of so much refined home happiness,
is not now to be seen. The Masham family disappeared
on the death of the last lord in 1776, when the lands of
Oates passed into other hands. Thirty years later the
manor-house was pulled down by the new possessor.
The spot where it once stood, marked by some noble
lime-trees, is now part of a green undulating park, one
ruined outhouse still bearing witness to the past ; near it
a spacious pond and the remains of the old-fashioned
garden in which Locke meditated, and which he helped
to keep. I have seen a picture of the house and its sur-
roundings, as it was when Locke lived in it — a square-
looking building, in Tudor style, invested with a peaceful
charm, ornamental pond and open lawn in front, barns

Boohs of Accounts. 219

and trees on one side, a sportsman in the foreground, a
turret above the entrance-hall, near it the window of the
room in which he studied, that of the room in which he
slept adjoining, and beneath both the windows of the
snug parlour in which Esther Masham, as she tells, used
to read to Locke in the winter evenings " after supper "
in ' Astraea,' then a favourite romance, or in some of the
books of voyages and travels of which throughout his
life he was so fond, where he also charmed the family
circle by easy facetious conversation.

Lady Masham says that Locke refused to live at
Oates except " on his own terms." The unpublished
papers now possessed by Lord Lovelace show what those
terms were. He paid 20s. a-week as board for himself
and his servant, and Is. a-week for grass for a horse, or
2s. when, as sometimes happened, he had two horses.
The wage of his man was 20s. a quarter, as appears from
payments, carefully recorded in the book of accounts, to
" James Dorington," and afterwards to " William Shaw "
who was his servant when the end came. Locke's books
of accounts from 1664 till his death, in two folios, are
among the Lovelace treasures. One may infer from
them strict personal economy, prudential habits, and a
methodical precision almost pedantic. Like the few
erasures in his letters and other manuscripts, they be-
speak a perfectly well-regulated habit of mind. A few
gleanings taken at random from those books help to
realise the common manner of life at Oates : —

" 1694. — Feby. By six weeks' lodging to Mrs R. Pawling
during my stay in London, 36s. By a breast of mutton, Is. Id.
By 3^ yds. grey cloth, 55s. By 5 yds. silk, for a waistcoat,
at 6s. 6d. = 32s. 6d. By one pair worsted hose, 4s. 4d. By

220 Locke.

4£ coat buttons, 3s. 4d. One dozen gold breast buttons, 9s.
By bread, cheese, oranges, and butter, 2s. 6d. By cherrys
and strawberrys, 2s. 6d. By Bhenish wine, one quart,
2s. 6d. By six tarts and three cheesecakes, 3s. 9d. By two
papers of patches, bought in London for my Lady Masham,
Is. By a porter for a basket for E. Masham, 8d. By
gooseberry s and strawberrys, 8s. 2|d. By milk, 5 s. 9d. By
ten weeks' lodging in London, from April 23 to July 3, ,£3.
By three weeks' lodging in London, from September 19 to
October 9, 18s. By two weeks' lodging in London, Dec. 7
to 22, 12s. By postages, from Feb. 16 till April 23, 33s.
By a pair of worsted stockings, 4s. 8d. By a box of sugar,
bought for Mrs Cud worth, 23s. lOd. By a brasse locke for
my Lady Masham, 6s. 6d. By Thomas Baley for a peruke,
60s. Oct. I. Paid to Awnsham Churchill, bookseller. — By
Norris's ' Letters,' 3s. ; Burnett's ' Sermons,' 6d. ; ' Assembly's
Confession,' 2s. 3d. ; Gassendi's ' Astronomia/ for my Lady
Masham, 4s. 4d.

"In 1696. — March 25. By a quarter's salary as Com-
missioner of Appeals, £50. June 24. Do., £50. Septem-
ber 29. Do., ,£50. December 29. Do., £50 [and so in the
years following]. By two places taken in Bishop Stortford
coach to London, 5s. To cash paid Sir Francis Masham,
£14, lis.

" 1699. — May 29. By sixty-six weeks' board for me and my
man, £66.

"1699. — Jan. 11. James Dorington came to serve me.
April 11. By a quarter's wages to James Dorington, 20s.
May 20. Sir Richard Gripps for half-year's interest due to
me for £2000 of my money lent to him on 19th Nov.

" 1700. — March 2. Upon a mortgage in my cousin King's
hands, £50. Received his declaration of trust. May 20.
To a year's interest, £100. July 5. To money paid Mr
Anthony Collins for mending the coach, £12, 10s."

Many pages might be filled with entries like these.
One of the last in the book was made by some one on
the day after Locke's death : —

Library at Oates. 221

" 1 704.— Saturday, October 28. By fifteen weeks' board for
Mr Locke and bis man William Shaw, from July 20 to the
time of his death, ,£15 ; also by fifteen weeks' pasture for
two horses, 30s."

There is also a " record of money transactions," from
Saturday, January 1, 1689, to Friday, June 30, 1704, —
about sixteen pages given to each year. The careful
preservation of the most trifling accounts is character-
istic,— the bills sent in weekly by the laundress, for
example, of which this is one, more or less like all the
others : —

"1697.— Dec. 24. Docktor Lock (sic), his bill. Cravat
and ruffles, 6d. 1 shirt, £ shirt, 1 pair stockings, 1 pair
drawers, 4d."

In the Lovelace repositories there is a " catalogue of
my books at Oates," in Locke's own writing, with
"labor ipse voluptas" for the motto. Among them
are works of Descartes, Nicole, Malebranche, Gassendi,
'Logique de Port-Eoyale,' 'Novum Organum,' Newton's
1 Principia,' " from the author," with many -books of
voyages and travels, all in beautiful preservation, and
Locke's autograph in most of them. The scrutoire,
with its twelve drawers and ten pigeon-holes, which
once stood in the study at Oates, is in the Locke library
at Horseley Park. It contains many hundreds of let-
ters and accounts, carefully docketed, preserved in the
order in which they were placed almost two centu-
ries ago. In the same interesting repository are rough
drafts of several of Locke's published and unpublished
works, including one of the projected ' Essay,' in a man-
uscript volume, entitled " Intellechy [or] De Intellectu

222 Locke.

Humano, 1671; [or] An Essay concerning the Under-

Opinion
standing — Knowledge, Belief (sic), Assent. — J. L."

The ' JNynehead Letters ' cast light on minute de-
tails— expected visits, Locke's careful arrangements
for Sir Francis' "coach" going to meet the incomers
and outgoers, at Bishop Stortford or at Harlow, or
directions for their transit through the dangers of Ep-
ping Eorest, where " my Lord Peterborough and his
lady" lost their way, and were benighted on their
journey from Parson's Green to the Essex manor-house.1
Esther Masham's correspondence paints other scenes.
When she is in London Locke writes to her from
Oates : " It is better to be taken up with business in
London than to freeze in the country. I can scarce be
warm enough to write this by the fireside. You should
therefore be so gracieuse as to come home and comfort
your poor solitary berger, who suffers here under the
deep winter of frost and snow. The day Mr Coste came
home it snowed very hard a good part of the morning.
... I am, of all the shepherds of the forest, gentile
bergere, your most humble and faithful servant, Caledon
the Solitary " — i.e., he was as lonely as the shepherd in
* Astraea ' was without his mistress.

1 The famous Earl of Peterborough and his wife were warm and
intimate friends during the last sixteen years of Locke's life. He
escorted her, when she was Lady Mordaunt, from Holland to London
in February 1689, and he was always a welcome guest at Parson's
Green, Fulham. She was a daughter of Sir Alexander Fraser of
Durris, in Kincardineshire. In 1713 Berkeley travelled with Peter-
borough in France and Italy as his chaplain and secretary, when he
was on an embassy to the Duke of Savoy. The brilliant and eccen-
tric Earl, like Lord Pembroke, was thus the friend of Berkeley as
well as of Locke.

Esther Masham. 223

We get glimpses into Oates in other unpublished
letters addressed to Esther. The brothers in Flanders
send their " humble service " to Mrs Cud worth and to
" Mr Locke," to whom (in one letter) " pray tell that it
would be a difficult matter to find that book here, but
when I go into Paris it may be had," and in another,
" my humble service to Mr Locke ; but as for the book
he desires, I have been to twenty booksellers and can
hear of no such thing." A letter from one of her
French relations inquires as to the success of the great
book l of their inmate at Oates she had heard so much
about : ' ' Vous estes bien heureuse de pouvoir jouer de
sa conversation — M. Locque (sic), je ne sais si je dis
bien le nom du savant homme qui demeure chez vous."
The marriage of Francis, the fourth son, to a niece of
Bishop Burnet, was an event for a time in the Oates
circle. There, in the last years, M. Coste is often re-
ferred to, and " humble services " sent to " M. Coste
and to Mr Locke." Writing to Esther from Hackney in
December 1703, "A. Burnet" refers to the memorable
storm of the 26th November which Defoe has com-
memorated : 2 " One Brown is just come in, and tells
me you have had a great deal of hurt done to the
house at Oates. Sure this tempest is the heaviest
judgment that ever befell poor England. Oh, the poor
Bishop of Bath and Wells and his wife, that were
broke in a hundred pieces ! The bishop's youngest
daughter that was at home is fallen distracted." This
unparalleled tornado swept over England on one of the

i The ' Essay.'

2 'An Historical Narrative of the Great and Tremendous Storm
which happened on November 26th, 1703.' By Daniel Defoe (187 pp.)

224 • Locke.

winter nights when Locke, reduced by illness, was a
prisoner in his room at Oates.

In the parish records of High Laver, Locke's name
appears as a subscriber to parochial and other charities,
at the instance of the good rector Samuel Lowe, who
was for fifty -seven years incumbent of the parish.
Locke's habit in connection with the parish church
has been differently represented. The writer of the
preface to the quarto edition of the ' Letters on Tolera-
tion,' which appeared in 1765, says, that "though he
communicated occasionally with the National Church,
yet, during his long residence at Oates, he generally
attended a lay preacher in that neighbourhood, to
assert, as is probable, that liberty in his own person
which he had strenuously contended for in behalf
of all men." Locke's ecclesiastical ideas might lead
him occasionally so to act. His individualism in re-
ligion as in philosophy reduced to indifference in his
mind, if indeed it did not prejudice him against, the
ideal unity of Christendom in one visible organisation ;
and made him apt to protest in action against exclusive
connection with any one of the rival religious societies
— shattered fragments of once visibly united Christen-
dom— which in modern times have all assumed the
name " Church." He was thus led to protest on behalf of
the right of each man, if he found this more for edifica-
tion, to sustain his religious life even apart from visible
ecclesiastical communion. Yet according to records,
and to the traditions of High Laver, Locke was habit-
ually seen in the parish church. "Had you been at
our church yesterday," he writes in one of his playful
letters to Esther Masham, — whom in raillery he used

The Parish Church. 225

to call his " Laudabridis," as she in turn called him
" her John," — " had you been at our church yesterday,
there was one would have put you to it to have kept
pace and time with him. He sang the poor clerk out
of his beloved ' Behold and have regard,' and made him
lose both voice and tune. Would you had been here
to have stood up for the credit of our parish which gave
up to a stranger ! We have had nothing but winter
weather since you went, and I write this by the fireside,
whither the blustering wind like December has driven
me, though it is still August. I hope for a new spring
when you come back, and desire to be then as merry as
the birds then are when they have their mates, only I
desire to be excused from singing ; that part shall be
yours." And in another characteristic letter to Esther,
then visiting in London : "I hope you are not much
troubled that you have not your full foddering as you
used to have." ["This alludes to Mr Lowe," Esther
adds in a note, "then minister of our parish, who had
taken a fancy he should die in the pulpit, therefore left
off preaching, and for a considerable time got his neigh-
bouring clergyman to give him a sermon."] "As to
singing, there be those in the parish will tell you, you
lost the perfection of that by your wandering. Had
you been at home when I wished, you had had some-
thing beyond the ordinary strain of ' Behold and have
regard.' But you must be gadding, and so make us sad
even under those heavenly strains, for they were heav-
enly too."

In Locke the rationalising, latitudinarian, or liberal
Churchman was still blended with a remainder of the
early Puritanism, but always with aversion to the sacer-

p. — xv. p

226 Locke.

dotal type of Christianity, although it too has sustained
many saints and martyrs in the history of Christendom.
Lady Masharn, in a letter to Limborch after Locke's
death, remarks, that " he was born and had finished
his studies in a time when Calvinism was in fashion in
England. But these doctrines," she adds, " had come
to be little thought of before I came into the world;
and Mr Locke used to speak of the opinions that I had
always been accustomed to at Cambridge, even among
the clergy there, as something new and strange to him.
As, during some years before he went to Holland, he
had very little in common with our ecclesiastics, I im-
agine that the sentiments that he found in vogue
amongst you there pleased him far more, and seemed
to him far more reasonable than anything that he had
been used to hear from English theologians. But
whatever the cause, I know that since his return he
has always spoken with much affection, not only of his
friends in Holland, but also of the whole society of the
Eemonstrants, on account of the opinions held by
them."

It is now time to watch the work that was going on
in Locke's study during those fourteen years of rural
happiness in the Essex home. We must let the curtain
fall on the incidents of country life in High Laver.

227

CHAPTEE II

PHILOSOPHICAL CRITICISM AND CORRESPONDENCE.

Locke's literary work, disturbed in London by politics
and weak health, was resumed in the seclusion of
Oates with characteristic industry and method. The
five years that followed entrance on rural life in the
spring of 1691, were given to the work of authorship;
— in defence of the ' Epistola de Tolerantia ; ' explana-
tion of his opinions on education ; improvement of the
'Essay,' in preparation for a second edition ; and appli-
cations of its principles to an interpretation of Chris-
tianity that was meant to show its essential reason-
ableness and simplicity, and thus promote ecclesiastical
comprehension, or at least comprehensive Christian
charity. All this was combined with copious corre-
spondence, familiar and philosophical, in which his
Dutch friends Limborch and Le Clerc, his Somerset
friend Edward Clarke, and a new Irish friend, William
Molyneux, figure largely.

Locke's appointment, in 1696, as one of the Commis-
sioners of Trade and Plantations — " a very honourable
employment, with £1000 a-year salary annexed to it,"
as he explains in one of his letters at the time — recalled

228 Locke.

him for four years to the service of the State, and occa-
sioned frequent, sometimes prolonged, visits to London,
during the four years of his commissionership, but with
Oates always as his home. Official work did not super-
sede literary work in the old manor-house, mostly philo-
sophical and theological controversy, during the time he
was at the Eoard of Trade. His published philosophy,
and its supposed theological implications, called forth
many critics, at a time when Arian and Trinitarian
were in collision, and Deism sought to supersede the
Christianity of the Church. His manuscripts contain
drafts of projected books and pamphlets, which he did
not live to publish ; and latterly there was the prepara-
tion of the 'Essay' for its fourth edition, which appeared
in 1700. In that year declining strength and a danger-
ous illness finally withdrew him from the Board of
Trade and from public life. In the four following years
he was much engaged when in his study in company
with St Paul, whose Epistles were made the subject of
reverential yet rational criticism ; for Locke was among
the first to apply to the Bible those logical processes
which, according to the ' Essay,' are the foundation of
all reasonable interpretation of facts — natural or super-
natural— in this, anticipating later Biblical criticism of
the scientific sort.

A little tract on the 'Consequence of Lowering the
Rate of Interest and Eaising the Value of Money,' which
issued anonymously from Oates in 1691, is Locke's
argument against depreciation of the currency by Gov-
ernment as a remedy for its illegal depreciation by
others. It presents him again as a political economist.

Coinage and Toleration. 229

It was followed by two other tracts, a few years after,
meant to guide opinion in matters of coinage and fin-
ance, an evidently deep interest to Locke at this time.

In the year of his movement from London to Oates,
his old adversary, Jonas Proast, produced a rejoinder to
the ' Second Letter on Toleration,' which had appeared
in the autumn of the previous year. This was met in
1692 by a ' Third Letter' from Locke, in bulk exceed-
ing the other two united. Here he pressed the old
lessons with redundant argument and irony, removing
one after another the objections to a socially unimpeded
exercise of individual judgment in questions of religion.
The ' Third Letter ' must have filled much of the time
spent in the study at Oates during the winter of 1691.

It has been already mentioned that when Locke was
an exile in Holland he had written a number of letters
to his good friend Edward Clarke of Chipley,1 about the
education of his son. In the spring of 1693, he was
busy preparing for the printers the substance of those
letters, on a subject which naturally engaged the thoughts
of his life, for it was involved in his experimental and
practical way of looking at a human understanding.
So in the summer of that year the now well-known
little book entitled ' Thoughts concerning Education '
made its appearance, dedicated to Clarke. It still has
its own place among educational classics. It may be
read either as an introduction or as a supplement to the
' Essay,' to which its author was giving his last touches,
when the letters on education were sent from Holland to
Chipley. It breathes the spirit of his philosophy. The

1 In 1690 and for years after, Edward Clarke of Chipley was M.P.
for Taunton.

230 Locke.

need for each man forming his knowledge and opinions
by the active exercise of his own understanding ; revolt
against the obstruction of empty idealess words, and
against the bondage of dogmatic assumptions ; warnings
against the abuses to which thinking for one's self is ex-
posed, when unmodified by experience, common-sense,
and wisdom, — are considerations never absent from the .
mind of the writer. In the ' Thoughts concerning /
Education,' imaginative sentiment is never allowed to
weigh against utilitarian prudence ; mere book-learning
is subordinated to observation of life and its affairs as
means to the formation of a manly character ; the part
which habit plays in unfolding the individual mind, and
in the determination of its bent, is, with Locke as with
Aristotle, always prominent ; the dependence of human
understanding, which genuine education is intended
to improve, upon the health of that material organism
which in this life is practically connected with indi-
vidual intelligence, is kept in the front along with the
relative physiological lessons, and steadily inculcated ;
while the happiness of those who undergo educational
processes is remembered as an " indispensable condition
of success;" and mere accumulation of facts in the " store-
house " of memory, without encouragement of efforts to
compare and elaborate, is condemned as the besetting
sin of teachers. Wisdom more than knowledge, is what
Locke desires in the teacher ; for only the wise man re-
cognises the " disproportion " between the infinite uni-
verse and a finite experience, and the consequent need
for selection among the many more or less appropriate
subjects which might be presented for study to youth.
The first place is felt to be due (in making the selec-

Education of Boys. 231

tion) to that sort of experience which might direct to
heaven ; the next place to the experimental acquirement
of " prudence, discreet conduct, and proper management
of ourselves in the several occurrences of our lives, with
whatever most assists one's prosperous passage through
this present life." The " disproportionateness " of human
faculty is made the ground for abandoning studies
which do not increase the power of living prudently,
however much fashion may recommend them. " Cus-
tom," he complains, "has misled our teachers, so that
they have drawn us into that maze of words and
phrases, which have been employed only to instruct
and amaze people in the act of disputing, and which
will be found perhaps, when looked into, to have little
or no meaning, . . . words being of no value but as
they are the signs of things and have ideas attached
to them : when they stand for nothing, they are mere
ciphers, and instead of augmenting the value of those
they are joined with, they lessen it and make it noth-
ing." He would confine instruction to useful know-
ledge, to the exclusion of speculative inquiries. Facts
more than languages, modern before ancient languages,
and all languages by practice in speaking them at first,
their grammar afterwards with its abstract rules and
principles. Home training under a tutor is preferred to a
great school. Information about other people's opinions,
or about the dogmas of sects, without criticism of their
truth, is what Locke everywhere deprecates. " Truth,"
he says, "needs no recommendation of this kind, and
error is not mended by it; in our inquiry after know-
ledge, it little concerns us what other men have thought.
It is an idle and useless thing to make it our business

232 Locke.

to study what have "been other men's sentiments in
matters where reason only is the judge." In words
like these, we trace that exaggerated reaction against
authority, and failure to see an unconscious evolution
of truth in the history of past opinions and controversies,
which was natural to Locke, with his inherited tempera-
ment, and in the circumstances amidst which his life
had been passed.

The ' Essay concerning Human Understanding ' had
encountered hostile criticism almost as soon as it ap-
peared. The new spirit which breathed through every
part of it communicated a shock to those accustomed
either to defer to authority, or to feed their minds on
abstractions more than on facts. John Norris, rector
of Bemerton, the English Malebranche, had published
in 1690 "Cursory Reflections upon a Book called 'An
Essay concerning Human Understanding'" — a tract of
some forty pages. He blamed Locke "for proceeding
to account for our ideas before he had defined what
he meant by ideas, or had explained their nature ; "
for first " setting himself to prove that there are no
innate or natural principles," and then " inconsistently "
acknowledging that " there are self - evident proposi-
tions to which we give ready assent upon their first pro-
posal," which, if self-evident, must be " universally as-
sented to " ; and then assuming that they require con-
scious instead of potential assent. In relation to the
last point, Norris hits a weak point in the ' Essay '
thus : " The most that Mr Locke can mean by want
of 'universal consent 'is, that every individual person
does not actually assent to them. This may be granted
him from the instance of idiots and children. But the

The 'Essay ' attacked by Norris. 233

question will be about the consequence of his argu-
ment— whether conscious assent from every individual
be necessary to the supposition of innate principles."
Locke, he means to say, attacks the hypothesis of innate
conscious knowledge, not that of innate power to know.
"It seems to me," the author of the 'Essay' had said,
" near a contradiction to assert that there are truths im-
printed on the soul which it perceives or understands not.
That a truth should be innate and yet not assented
to, is for a man to know a truth and be ignorant of it at
the same time." In opposition to this, JSTorris argues
that "if there may be impressions made on the mind
whereof we are not conscious, then (by Mr Locke's own
measure) the non-perception of them is no argument
against such original impressions. And that there may
be such impressions whereof we are not conscious is
what he himself elsewhere expressly does own, as when
he confesses that whilst the mind is intently occupied
in the contemplation of other objects, it takes no notice
of impressions which are at the time being made upon it.
The like is implied in his account of memory, which he
does not make to be a recovery of ideas that were lost,
but a readverting of the mind to ideas that are actually
there, though not attended to, they having been trans-
formed into some kind of unconscious states ; and he
elsewhere supposes that there are infinitely more ideas
impressed upon our minds than we can possibly attend
to or perceive." This of jSTorris is interesting as an early
recognition by an English writer of processes of un-
conscious thought or intellectual activity of which the
individual is the subject, while seemingly not the agent,
— processes afterwards noted in the "unperceived per-

234 Locke.

ceptions " of Leibniz, and which play an important part
in philosophical speculation in the nineteenth century.

Norris's tract, of which Locke took no notice at the
time, was the solitary discord in the chorus of applause
which greeted him on the first appearance of his " new
philosophy." The 'Essay' rapidly attained a popularity
without precedent in the case of an elaborate philoso-
phical treatise. It soon found its way into the uni-
versities— especially Dublin and Oxford. The public
applause reached Locke at Gates. In December 1692
a book arrived there, presented by its author, then a
stranger to him — William Molyneux, a young, but al-
ready eminent, member of Trinity College, Dublin. It
was entitled ' Dioptrica Nova.' In the dedication of
this book, Molyneux said, with reference to logic, that
" to none do we owe more for a greater advancement
in this part of philosophy than to the incomparable Mr
Locke, who, in his ' Essay of Human Understanding,'
hath rectified more received mistakes, and delivered
more profound truths, established on experience and
observation, for the direction of man's mind in the
prosecution of knowledge — all of which, I think, may
be properly termed logic — than are to be met with in
all the volumes of the ancients. He has clearly over-
thrown all those metaphysical whimsies which infected
men's brains with a spice of madness, whereby they
feigned a knowledge where they had none, by making
a noise with sounds without clear and distinct signifi-
cations." The arrival of the 'Dioptrica Nova' at Oates
was the beginning of a friendly correspondence, which
lasted till it was ended by death. "I will confess to
you," Molyneux wrote in answer to Locke's grateful

William Molyneux. 235

acknowledgments, " that I have not in my life read any
book with more satisfaction than your ' Essay ' ; and
I have endeavoured, with great success, to recommend
it to the ingenious in this place [Dublin]."1 "You
must expect me," Locke replied, " to live with you here-
after, with all the confidence and assurance of a settled
friendship. In meeting with but few men in the world
whose acquaintance I find much reason to covet, I make
more than ordinary haste into the familiarity of a ra-
tional inquirer after and lover of truth, whenever I can
light on any such." " Mr Norris's unfortunate attempts
on your book," Molyneux rejoins, " sufficiently testify
to its validity; and truly I think he trifles so egregiously
that he should forewarn all men how they venture to
criticise your work." Molyneux was at the time the
spokesman of many, and his enthusiasm helps us to
enter into the admiration of intelligent readers, at a time
when the ' Essay ' seemed charged with a new revelation,
and before its " novelties " had become commonplace by
assimilation, in the course of the eighteenth century.

This friendship with Molyneux was formed when
Locke was beginning to prepare the 'Essay' for a
second edition, the first "being now dispersed"; and dur-
ing the year and more of preparation that followed, his new
Dublin correspondent was the Mentor at his right hand.
" I expect," he writes, " a great deal more from any ob-
jections you shall make, who comprehend the design
and compass of my 'Essay,' than from any one who
has read but a part of it, or who measures it from a
slight reading by his own prejudices." In the summer

1 The 'Essay' has since then kept its place in Trinity College,
Dublin.

236 Locke.

of 1694 the second edition made its appearance. It
contained important alterations and additions, on which
the correspondence with Molyneux in the interval is
an instructive commentary. "If there be anything,"
Locke writes to Dublin, " in which you think me mis-
taken, I beg you to deal freely with me. For I natter
myself that I am so sincere a lover of truth that it is
very indifferent to me, so I am possessed of it, whether
it be by my own or any other's discovery. For I count
any parcel of this gold, not the less to be valued, be-
cause I wrought it not out of the mine myself." Locke
regrets " prolixity and many repetitions " in the ' Essay,'
in all which Molyneux sees an added charm, — "that
strength of thought and expression that everywhere
reigns in it," making him " sometimes wish that it was
twice as long." One thing he urges in almost every
letter, and that is that Locke would oblige the world
with " a treatise on morals, drawn up in demonstrations,
according to the mathematical method," agreeably to
hints often given in the ' Essay,' which places abstract
ethics along with mathematics, among the absolute cer-
tainties;— an enterprise which Locke then postponed,
and which was never accomplished. A proposal to turn
the ' Essay ' more into the scholastic form of logic and
metaphysics, " in order to get it more readily intro-
duced into the universities," " which love to learn ac-
cording to the old forms," is set aside because, " if in
this book of mine they have the matter of these two
sciences, or what you will call them, I like the method
it is in, better than that of the schools." A new
chapter, on " Personal Identity," " writ at your in-
stance," was sent for criticism to Dublin before it was

"Power " — Divine and Human. 237

introduced into the 'Essay,' where it now stands in
the second book ; 1 but their joint efforts fail to relieve
it of eccentricity and paradox, due probably to the
difficulty of presenting this mysterious idea with the
distinctness at which Locke always aimed. The original
chapter on the idea of " Power " 2 was transformed on
its way into the new edition. The correspondence with
Molyneux, and a comparison of the first and second
versions of this celebrated chapter, show how much
Locke was perplexed to reconcile the spiritual fact of
moral freedom from natural causality with the merely
scientific conception of a caused or phenomenal cause.
The coexistence of divine and human agency added to
the perplexity, confessed in his dissatisfaction with this
chapter after all the changes it underwent. "I own
freely to you the weakness of my reasoning, that though
it be unquestionable that there is omnipotence and om-
niscience in God, and though I cannot have a clearer
perception of anything than that I am free, yet I can-
not make freedom in man consistent with omnipotence
and omniscience in God, and yet I am as fully per-
suaded of both as of any truths I most firmly assent to."
Eesting in this wise conclusion, he says he " has long
since given off consideration of that question." That
God in forming man can make organised matter think,
while "unthinking matter cannot be this Almighty
God ; " that " the ideas which are ingredient in the com-
plex idea of God" are got from external or internal
sense ; while the fact of the real existence of this God,
or that " really there are united in one Being all these
ideas, is had not from sense, but from demonstration ; "
1 Chap, xxvii. 2 Book II. chap. xxi.

238 Locke.

the " ceterncs veritates," and the "principiurn individua-
tionis" — are matters on which the correspondents gener-
ally agree, but as to which Locke promises to make his
meaning clearer. A "jocose problem" of Molyneux, as
to whether one born blind, who had been taught " by
touch alone to distinguish between an ivory cube and
sphere," would be able, when first made to see, to distin-
guish from one another, " by sight alone, which was the
globe and which the cube," interested Locke so much,
that he introduced it into his chapter on " Perception." 1
It afterwards suggested to Berkeley his famous theory,
that our power to see surrounding things is really power
to interpret significant signs in the universal sense-sym-
bolism of nature.

Malebranche's hypothesis, that we " see all things in
God," proposed as an explanation of our perception in
sense of the qualities of matter, made Locke project a
chapter in refutation of it for the new edition. The
chapter was partly written, and " would make a little
treatise of itself " ; but it was held back, " because I
like not controversies, and have a personal kindness for
the author," and was left unfinished, " lest I should be
tempted by anybody to print it." In this little essay,
which made its way at last into the world among its
author's posthumous works, he has to his own satisfac-
tion, "laid open the vanity, inconsistency, and unintel-
ligibleness of that way of explaining human understand-
ing." Locke and his Dublin friend were agreed in this
view of "Malebranche's notions, or rather Plato's in
this particular." "What you in your 'Essay' lay
down," says Molyneux, "concerning our ideas and
1 Essay, Book II. chap. ix. sec. 8.

''Examination of Malcbranche." 239

knowledge, is founded on, and confirmed by, the experi-
ence and observation that any man may make on him-
self, or the children he converses with, wherein he may
note the gradual steps that we all make in knowledge."
The ' Examination of Malebranche ' is now interesting,
chiefly as evidence of Locke's indifference to any hypo-
thesis in explanation of the fact that "ideas of the
things of sense have been introduced into the store-
house of memory." He accepted the fact without pro-
posing a philosophical theory of sense-perception to ac-
count for it. In such theories words are apt to be taken
for things, and men who make them fancy they know
what after all they know not. The organic motions in
our bodies which accompany perception of bodies at a
distance, may perhaps be accounted for by " the motion
of particles of matter coming from them and striking on
our organs." But this is only motion explained mechani-
cally by other motion. It throws no light at all on the
spiritual act of perception which accompanies or follows
the intra-organic and extra-organic affections ; it merely
reveals conditions made necessary to the realisation of
that spiritual act, under the established laws of nature in
our embodied conscious life. The rise of the percipient
act in an individual is " incomprehensible, and can only
be resolved into the good pleasure of God. The ideas (or
sense-perceptions) it is certain I have, and God is the
original cause of my having them ; — but how it is that
I perceive, I confess that I understand not." "How,"
Locke asks, " can any one know, on Malebranche's ex-
planation, that there is any such real being as the sun 1
Did he ever see the sun % No ; but on occasion of the
presence of the sun to his eyes, he has seen the idea of

240 Locke.

the sun 'in God'; but the sun, because it cannot be
united to his soul, he cannot see. How, then, does he
know that there is a sun which he never saw 1 What
need is there that God should make a sun only that we
might see its idea in Him, when this might as well be done
without any real sun at all? . . . The ideas or percep-
tions we have, all arise in our minds by the will and power
of God, — though in a way that we are not able to compre-
hend. " To call our sense-perceptions " modifications of the
mind," or to say that ideas are "modifications of mind,"
does not mend the matter. It is only substituting one
term for another term, without adding to our philosophic
insight. "It is plain, sensation and modification stand
for the same idea, and so are but two names of one and
the same thing. All we can say is, that there is some
alteration in our mind, when we perceive or think of
something that we were not thinking of a moment
before. What Malebranche says of universal reason,
whereof all men partake, seems to me nothing new, but
only the power we find all men have to find out the
relations that are between ideas; and therefore if an
intelligent being at one end of the world, and another at
the other end, will consider twice two and four together,
they cannot but find them to be equal. God knows all
these relations, and so His knowledge is infinite ; but
individual men are able only to discover more or less
of them gradually as they apply their minds. If he
•means that this universal reason, whereof men partake,
is the reason of God, I can by no means assent ; for I
think we cannot say that God reasons at all, for He
has at once a view of all things ; but (human) reason
is a laborious and gradual progress in the knowledge of

Sense-perception inexplicable. 241

things. ... I should think it presumptuous to sup-
pose that I shared in God's knowledge; there being
some proportion between mine and another man's un-
derstanding, but none between mine and God's." Man's
sense-perceptions "and God's knowledge, in short, are
both incomprehensible ; human philosophy can offer no
theory of either, 7— far less explain the former by means
of the latter.1

Although Locke took no notice of Norris's 'Reflec-
tions' upon the 'Essay,' when they appeared in 1690,
he wrote some critical comments upon them three years
after, which, like those on Malebranche, were published
posthumously. They are to the same effect. To say
that our ideas are the divine ideas, is not to explain the
nature of our ideas ; and indeed, no words which any
one can use can "make known to another what his
ideas, that is, what his perceptions, are, better than what
he himself knows them to be; which is enough, for
affirmations or negations about them" — i.e., for our
perceptions and judgments of their agreements or dis-
agreements. But if by "nature of ideas" is meant
" their causes and manner of production in the mind "
— i.e., in what alteration of the mind this perception
consists, — Locke answers that "no man can tell what
alteration is made in the substance of our mind when
we see what Ave did not see a minute before. . . .
Wherein this change called perception consists is, for
aught I see, unknown to one side as well as the other ;
only the one have the ingenuity to confess their igno-
rance, and the other pretend to be knowing." Norris

1 I am glad to be confirmed in this interpretation by Mr Abbott,
in ' Hermathena, ' No. vii.

P. — XV. Q

242 Locke.

" explains " perception — like Malebranche — by the
power of God enabling us to perceive the divine ideas ;
so that our power is lost in God's, and with it our
responsibility. " This," Locke sarcastically says, " is the
hypothesis that clears doubts, and brings us at last to the
religion of Hobbes and Spinoza ; by resolving all, even
the thoughts and will of men, into an irresistible fatal
necessity.1 This, therefore, may be a sufficient excuse
of the ignorance I have owned, of what our ideas are,
any further than as they are the perceptions we experi-
ment, or are conscious of, in ourselves ; and of the dull
unphilosophical way I have taken of examining their
production, only as far as experience leads me." They
are, he means to say, what reflection shows them now to
be, no matter in what way they were caused.

The second edition of the ' Essay ' appeared in the
summer of 1694. The third, which was only a reprint
of the second, was issued in the following year, almost
contemporaneously with the " Abridgment " of the
* Essay ' by Dr Ashe of Oxford, " for the use of young
scholars, in place of the ordinary system of Logic,"
which was long used for this purpose.

In the winter of 1694-95, Locke was busy in theolog-
ical authorship. His deep-seated sentiment of religion,
his early Puritan training, and the circumstances of his
life, especially intercourse and constant correspondence
with Limborch, made questions of theology and Biblical

1 This is one of Locke's few references to Spinoza," whose "Unica
Substantia," absorbing into itself all substance and power, was pro-
posed to explain the dualism left unresolved by Descartes. The
theory of "occasional" causality in Malebranche and Geulinx was
a half-way stage to a one-sided development of Cartesianism in the
monism of Spinoza.

Board of Trade. 243

interpretation increasingly interesting to him, The re-
sult was a book, published anonymously, in 1695, on the
1 Eeasonableness of Christianity.' It was an attempt, in
the spirit of the ' Essay,' to recall religion from verbal
reasonings of dogmatic theologians, which had destroyed
the peace and unity of the Church, to the original simplic-
ity of Christianity, as delivered in the Scriptures, when
interpreted in the spirit of modern inductive inquiry.

But Locke's new departure in Christian theology, in-
cluding excursions in Scripture criticism, which formed,
perhaps, the distinctive feature of his literary life at
Oates, deserves more particular consideration in a sep-
arate chapter.

The ' Reasonableness of Christianity ' had hardly
awakened controversy when Locke returned to the per-
plexing question of the coinage, on which he had pub-
lished an argument in his first year at Oates. In
1695 he issued two tracts in further development of his
views. One of them was occasioned by an ' Essay for
the Amendment of Silver Coins,' by William Lowndes,
Secretary for the Treasury. In his reply Locke further
anticipated recent doctrines on economics. These tracts
brought him once more back into public life.

In 1696 Locke accepted office as a Commissioner of
Trade, and for more than four, years he was an active
officer in this important department of the administra-
tion. The Secretary of the Board was William Popple,
the translator of the ' Epistola de Tolerantia.' Locke's
attendance at the Board is thus summarised by Mr Fox
Bourne: "1696. 25th June-1 3th November (absent three
days). 1696-97. 13th-17th February. 1697. 21st

244 Locke.

June-22d November. 1698. 11th July-20th October
(absent two days). 1699. 6th June-20th November
(absent two days). 1700. 17th May-20th June, when
he resigned." The Council met almost daily. Notwith-
standing indifferent health he was the most efficient, and
among the most regular, of the commissioners. But those
new duties encroached upon his rural retirement, and
its opportunities for literary labour, in the five summers
in which he held office ; in the winters he was relieved
from attendance, his advice being always ready. More
than once, " with health impaired by the air of London,"
he asked leave to resign, but was prevailed on by the
king to continue his services. " Eiches may be pur-
chased too dear," had been his reply to the congratula-
tions of Molyneux on his appointment. " My age and
health demand a retreat from bustle and business ; and
the pursuit of some inquiries I have in my thoughts
makes it more desirable than any of those rewards which
public employments treat people with. I think the
little I have enough, and do not desire to live higher or
die richer than I am. And therefore you have reason
rather to pity the folly than congratulate the fortune
that engages me in this whirlpool." Indeed his life was
more than once in danger through his loyalty to the
service. " He had been kept a close prisoner within
the doors at Oates for more than a month, when, on the
23d of January 1698, he received an urgent summons
from King William to present himself at once at Ken-
sington, It was a dismal winter morning, cold and raw.
Lady Masham begged him to send back the messenger
with word that he was too ill to make the journey.
But he insisted upon going. So he rode through the

Toland and Stilling fleet. 245

snow and wind of Epping Forest in the coach that had
been despatched for him. On Monday afternoon he
returned more dead than alive." More than one such
dangerous adventure on the rough bridle-roads of the
Forest, and an increasing aversion to promiscuous
society, made him long for relief. " My temper/' he
wrote to Lord Somers, " always shy of a crowd of
strangers, has made my acquaintances few, and my con-
versation too narrow and particular, to get the skill of
dealing with men in their various humours, and drawing
out their secrets." At last, in the summer of 1700, the
king accepted his resignation. "I have read in the
newspapers," Limborch wrote, " that on account of your
increasing age and weakness you have retired from the
honourable office you have rilled for some years. I com-
mend your resolution to spend the remainder of your
life freed from the burden of politics, in rest, study, and
holy meditation."

The years of the Commissionership were not years
of literary repose. They were the most controversial
years in his life. The ' Reasonableness of Christianity '
involved him in the theological and ecclesiastical con-
troversies of the time, and the ' Essay,' especially in its
theological consequences, was the object of attacks which
he no longer disregarded. Through means of both he
drew upon himself a share of the odium theologicum
in the Trinitarian discussions then going on in England.
The chief and centre of these collisions was with Still-
ingfleet, who was now Bishop of Worcester. It deserves
a place among the really memorable philosophical con-
troversies of the modern world. It was brought about
in this way. John Toland, an Irishman, in a deistical

246 Locke.

book entitled 'Christianity not Mysterious,' had exag-
gerated some opinions in the ' Essay,' and then adopted
certain inferences from them of his own, under cover of
Locke's authority. In the autumn of 1696, Stillingfleet,
who was more an ecclesiastical than a philosophical
theologian, in a 'Vindication of the Doctrine of the
Trinity,' devoted some pages to Locke as interpreted
by Toland, charging him with eliminating mystery and
therefore faith in his account of our idea, or no idea,
of substance, and in his rejection of all that cannot
be reduced to "ideas" as out of all relation to man.
Locke replied in January 1697. Stillingfleet's rejoinder
came out in May, followed by a " Second Letter " from
Locke in August, to which the Bishop replied in the
following year. Locke's long and elaborate "Third
Letter," in which the ramifications of the questions in
dispute are pursued with a needless expenditure of acute
reasoning and Socratic irony, was delayed till 1699.
The death of the Bishop in that year brought this
famous trial of intellectual strength to an end. In the
course of the discussion, Locke was drawn further into
speculative questions about the rational constitution of
human knowledge than he had gone in the 'Essay,'
and with a more express concession of presuppositions
of reason latent in experience, which awaken into con-
sciousness in individuals with the growth of reflection ;
and also of the fact that we may have the full certainty
of knowledge about ideas that are obscure or mysterious,
as well as about those that are distinct.

In 1697 Locke wrote to Molyneux that he had
"much rather be at leisure to make some additions to
the ' Essay ' than be employed in defending himself

Sergeant and Leibniz. 247

against the groundless, and, as others think, trifling
quarrel of the Bishop." But a storm was rising against
the book, which now engaged many adversaries. One
of these was John Sergeant, a Catholic priest, whose
'Solid Philosophy asserted against the Fancies of the
Ideists ' (1697) is a curious criticism of Locke. " Those,"
he says, " who have in their minds only similitudes or
ideas, and only discourse of them, which ideas are not
the thing, do build their discoveries upon nothing.
They have no solid knowledge." "I do not wonder
at the confusedness of his notions," Locke remarks in
a letter, " or that they should be unintelligible to me.
I should have much more admired had they been other-
wise. I expect nothing from Mr Sergeant but what is
abstruse in the highest degree." Sergeant was followed
by the noted Thomas Burnet, Master of the Charter
House, author of the ' Sacred Theory of the Earth,'
and by Dean Sherlock.

A more redoubtable critic than any of these was
Leibniz, Locke's greatest philosophical contemporary,
whose point of view and method were at the opposite
intellectual pole to his own. What Leibniz thought of
the ' Essay ' was first communicated to him by Molyneux,
in a transcript of "reflections" on it, by Leibniz, ad-
dressed to Mr Burnet of Kemnay in Aberdeenshire, in
the spring of 1697. It anticipates dimly some of the
objections which Leibniz afterwards expressed with
much elaboration in the * Nouveaux Essais sur l'En-
tendement Humain,' which he was preparing at the
time of Locke's death. The death of Locke was a bar
to the publication, and the 'ISTouveaux Essais' was held
back till 1765, half a century after its author's death.

248 Locke.

Locke made light of the epistolary criticisms of the
German eclectic, which were to him " unintelligible."
" I see you and I," he writes to Molyneux, " agree
pretty well concerning the man, and this sort of fiddling
makes me hardly avoid thinking that he is not that very
great man as has been talked of him."

Meantime M. Coste was translating the ' Essay ' into
French, for Continental circulation. Locke himself, as
soon as he was freed from the argument with Stilling-
fleet, found his chief literary occupation in 1699 in pre-
paring it for a fourth edition. This, as well as Coste's
French version, appeared in 1700,1 followed the year
after by a Latin version, by Burridge of Dublin — both
in due time republished at Amsterdam and Leipsic.
The ' Essay ' was now spreading over Europe, impelled
by the name of its author, who had become the recog-
nised philosophical defender of religious and civil liberty.
Limborch and Le Clerc were his theological and philo-
sophical representatives on the Continent.

The fourth edition of the * Essay ' was the latest pro-
duction of Locke's mind published during his life. His
remaining writings appeared posthumously.2 He was
now in his sixty-ninth year. He had added to the
' Essay ' two important chapters, one on " Association of
Ideas," 3 and the other on " Enthusiasm," 4 besides more

1 Locke's copy of Coste's French version contains here and there
sentences in Locke's hand, afterwards introduced into the second
edition of the translation (1729), and now incorporated with the
ordinary English editions of the ' Essay. '

2 Some of them in 1706, under direction of his nephew King and
Anthony Collins ; several others in 1720, edited by Des Maizeaux,
under the direction of Collins.

3 Book II. chap, xxxiii. 4 Book IV. chap. xix.

"Enthusiasm." 249

tinkering of the perplexing chapter on " Power." It
must be repeated that, although Locke is sometimes
ranked in the succession of English "association psy-
chologists," association — word and meaning — makes no
appearance in the first three editions of his book, and
that the chapter on the subject which it now contains,
far from representing the associative tendency as the
solution of the ultimate problems of knowledge, treats
of it exclusively as the chief source of human errors.
Empirical analysis of the certainties of which we are
conscious into automatic association, individual or in-
herited, and a priori idealistic analysis of the rational
constitution of experience, were both alike foreign to
his matter-of-fact report about human understanding as
he found it. " Enthusiasm," too, is characteristically
brought in, as "a false principle of reasoning often
made use of," with ill consequences which his early
life among the Puritans probably suggested. Like
innate principles, as he understood them, it seemed, in
another way, to remove our beliefs from the jurisdiction
of reason. What he said on this subject was offered
as the substitute for a larger discussion, involving the
natural history of enthusiasm, which he excused him-
self from entering on when the day was so far spent.
"To give an historical account of the various ravings
men have embraced for religion under the name of
enthusiasm, would, I fear, be beside my purpose, and
be enough to make an huge volume." l

1 This sentence may have suggested the ' Natural History of En-
thusiasm ' of Isaac Taylor, the recluse of Stanford Rivers, a book
written a few miles from Oates, a century and a quarter after Locke's
death.

250 Locke.

A subject, originally designed for a chapter in the
'Essay,' was prepared, but withheld in order to form
the subject of the separate treatise. It appeared
among Locke's posthumous works, under the title of
1 The Conduct of the Understanding,' — in some re-
spects the most characteristic of all his books. " Your
chapter concerning the conduct of the understanding
must needs be very sublime and spacious," the admiring
Molyneux writes from Dublin. Those lovers of truth
who conduct their understandings in what Locke here
describes as the " reasonable way," must occupy the
point at which " a full view " may be had of whatever
question they want to determine. The uneducated
majority, on the contrary, seldom reason or think
definitely at all ; or if they made the attempt, put
passion and prepossession in the place of logically reg-
ulated thinking. " For want of a large roundabout
common-sense, they direct their understandings only to
one part of the evidence, converse only with one sort of
men, read but one sort of books, and will not come into
the hearing of but one sort of notions ; and so carve out
to themselves a little Goshen in the intellectual world,
where alone light shines, and, as they conclude, day
blesses them ; but the rest of the vast expansion they
give up to night and darkness, and avoid coming near
it." The intended " chapter " thus became a discourse
on the large wisdom needed for the management of a
human understanding, so that it may overcome the
idols, or tendencies to error, against which Bacon had
warned mankind, and which Locke here again explains
partly by mental association. Hasty one-sided judg-
ments, bias, want of philosophical " indifference " as to

Molyneux at Oates. 251

what the evidence may in the end require us to believe,
undue regard for custom and authority, indolence, and
sceptical despair, are among the states of mind marked
as most likely to interfere with the attainment of the
harmony of truth as between our individual minds and
the universal reality.

The summer of 1698 brought a much -longed-for
visitor to Oates. William Molyneux, the loved corre-
spondent of six preceding years, he had not yet seen in
the flesh ; but after many postponements, the constant
correspondents then spent two months together there
and in London. Molyneux promised to repeat the visit
in the following year ; but the letter which reported his
return to Dublin, with a promise to repeat the visit to
Oates in another year, was followed a few days after
by one which announced his sudden death — an un-
expected shock to Locke's affectionate nature.

The shades of evening were now fast gathering around
him, and he was warned by many signs that " the dis-
solution of this cottage is not far off."

252

CHAPTEE III.

1 REASONABLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY ' AND ECCLESIASTICAL
COMPREHENSION.

"Who, I beseech you, is it that makes sects'? Is it
not those who contract the Church of Christ within
limits of their own contrivance1? — who by articles and
ceremonies of their own forming separate from their
communion all that have not persuasions which jump
with their model." So Locke wrote in his 'Third
Letter on Toleration.' The words express one motive
of the theological discussions and controversies which
occupied him so much in his retirement at Oates.
Ecclesiastical comprehension was in the air throughout
King William's reign. The Church of England, in
its rejection at the Eeformation of the supremacy of
Eome, had never departed from the Catholic traditions,
nor from the continuous organisation of Christendom.
In the sixteenth century opposition to Eoman supremacy
substituted faith in the infallibility of Scripture for faith
in ecclesiastical infallibility, with a widespread tendency
at first towards the Puritan extreme. The advance of
the seventeenth century was marked by that return
under Laud to the Catholic spirit and traditions of his-
toric Christendom which was an important factor in the

Unity of the Historic Church. 253

Civil War. On the other hand, before and after the
Restoration, some influential ecclesiastics and religious
thinkers were disposed to rest religion and theology ul-
timately on reason and conscience in man, instead of
either on the external authority of the living visible
Church, or on the external authority of verbally inspired
Scriptures.

Ecclesiastical tradition, and the venerable organisa-
tion of the ancient historic Church, had no attraction
for Locke. The Visible Society of Christendom was not
to him the ideal which it was to the historic imagination
of his great contemporary Leibniz, whose comprehensive
genius found satisfaction in the unbroken unity of the
Catholic Church, with its constitution so adapted to all
the dispositions and circumstances of those whom it
offers to embrace within its ample fold, resembling that
still vaster organisation in which he loved to contem-
plate the universe under the pre-established harmony of
the government of the All-holy and All-wise. Locke's
revulsion from his early Puritanism was towards rational-
ism,— in sympathy with the latitudinarian divines of the
Anglican Church in the latter half of the seventeenth
century, or their successors, such as Burnet, Tillotson,
and Fowler, who held bishoprics after the Revolution.
With them comprehension of Dissenters by increased
elasticity on the part of the Church was the favoured
policy. Locke's theological writings tended to encourage
that policy, although, after all, it ended in failure. Its
time was not then come.

Locke's intellectual philosophy determined his way
of looking at Christianity and the Church; for, like
everything in his life, it expressed the delight he took

254 Locke.

in making use of reason in everything. "The most
trifling thing he did must always be seen to have some
good reason for doing it," as Coste remarked, in de-
scribing his character ; he could not therefore part with
reason in the supreme beliefs of life. His religion must
be reasonable, and could not be accepted on unreasoned
authority. He had discovered that in action proba-
bility is the guide of life. Religion was with him es-
sentially life and action, and what he looked for in it
was reasonable probability, not the absolute certainty
of self-evidence or of demonstration. When attainment
of certainty was found to be inconsistent with the
limits of human knowledge, his philosophy accustomed
him to accept the most probable judgment, and then
to act as if he were certain. To assume certainty when
we are working within the sphere of probability, would
appear to him a sign not of strength but of weakness.
All that can be done by man in such cases is to see that
in reason one belief is more probable than any other
that can be supposed ; and that accordingly, till it is
disproved, or shown to be in reason less probable, he
must, as a reasonable being, accept and act upon it.

Locke was predisposed to accept Holy Scripture as
infallible with the reverence of a Puritan. It is the
reasonableness of Christianity "as delivered in the Scrip-
tures " that he set himself to unfold articulately. " The
little satisfaction and consistency that is to be found in
most of the systems of divinity I have met with," ac-
cording to the opening words, " made me betake myself
to the sole reading of the Scriptures (to which they all
appeal) for the understanding the Christian religion.
What from thence, by an attentive and unbiassed search,

Historical criticism of Holy Scripture. 255

I have received, reader, I here deliver to thee." The
ground in reason on which he rested his belief was the
miraculous physical signs by which he was satisfied that
the authority of the Bible was sustained. But he did not,
like the Puritans, mean Scripture either as interpreted
by his own feelings, or as interpreted by his own sect.
He claimed the personal right of interpreting it in the
light of historical criticism. Confidence in the infal-
libility of the sacred literature, to the interpretation
of which he was among the first to try to apply the
scientific spirit and method, was united in Locke with
a deep distrust for what he called "enthusiasm," to
which he traced a host of errors. This, with the prom-
inence assigned in his philosophy to the data of external
sense, and to the understanding judging according to
sense, predisposed him to crave physical miracles as
an objective, and therefore solid, test for distinguish-
ing a real revelation from one accepted in blind defer-
ence to authority, or under the influence of subjective
feeling. " Fancy and strong assurance," — enthusiastic
illumination, without support from positive data of
external sense, — sustained by sentiment, but "without
proof and examination," were in his eyes sure signs of
the absence of the divine spirit of love for truth. Fan-
atical confidence that one is right, he would say, is no
proof that one is right ; it is rather a sign that one is
wrong. When God, who is true reason, leads our assent
to the truth of an alleged fact or of a general proposi-
tion in religion, or in anything else, He either exhibits
it to us in its intrinsic rationality as self-evident, or else
presents miraculous signs in conjunction with the ex-
hibition— signs of whose reality we may be sufficiently

256 Locke.

assured, if not by the evidence of our own senses, at
least by sufficiently probable presumption of the veracity
of witnesses. Eeasonableness must be our ultimate
guide in this as in everything.

Yet Locke's faith in Christianity seems to have rested
at last on its moral excellence when interpreted in its
primitive simplicity, — combined, however, with the ex-
traordinary physical phenomena which he believed to
have accompanied its first promulgation. His Chris-
tianity, I think, is something that he accepts because
it finds a response in the genuine constitution of man
— including human understanding, explained according
to his own philosophical report about it — not in man
stunted and distorted by traditions, confessions of faith,
and ecclesiastical organisations. The response of the
spiritual constitution of man to the Biblical revelation,
not isolated miraculous signs looked at apart from the
moral purpose which they express, seems on the whole
to be his ultimate reason for a life of faith in religion
as personified in Jesus. " Even in those books which
have the greatest proof of revelation from God, and
the attestation of miracles to confirm their being so,
the miracles," he says, " are to be judged by the doc-
trine, and not the doctrine by the miracles." Physical
miracle, he would probably say, cannot per se accredit
a verbal revelation; but it may call attention to the
books in their divine meanings, and thus get them
responded to by what is supernatural in the constitu-
tion of man, in this way awakened into consciousness
in the individual. When this is so, the physical
miracles have a moral meaning ; instead of interrupt-
ing the order or reason that is latent in the universe,

Miracles and Moral Government. 257

they illustrate the presence of order or reason higher
than natural, and to which the customary physical laws
are therefore subordinate. They would then be in har-
mony with the thus correlated physical and ethical order
of the universe, as startling occasions, fitted to awaken
the spiritual or supernatural faculty that is depressed by
sense, but is latent in all men, — being that " inspiration
of the Almighty " which, when brought out of latency,
gives to the inspired man spiritual understanding of the
Infinite Mind, in which he had been unconsciously living
and having his being.

Locke, indeed, does not put the subject or the proof
in this way. Yet now and then his arguments tend,
perhaps unconsciously, to transfer the foundation of
Christianity from unreasoned or dogmatic assumption
which he always struggled against, to the response
which it finds in the conscience and spiritual constitu-
tion of man. Still, in his own conception of a human
understanding, the lower faculties of sense tended, as
we have seen, to obscure the higher faculties which
connect man with God or the Infinite. Ecclesiastical
dogma and tradition was no doubt a substitute with
many for the catholic experience of all round humanity ;
but a philosophy which inclines to see in man chiefly
a recipient of phenomena presented in sense-experience,
is in another way one-sided, and to this narrower faith
Locke's argument on the whole inclined. Christian
teachers and apologists for Christianity in the eighteenth
century, as well as its assailants, alike appealed to
the i Essay concerning Human Understanding ' as their
philosophical standard, and tested it by the "external
and internal evidences " on which it was rested by Locke.

p. — xv. K

258 Locke.

His own Christian belief, sincere and earnest, appears
more in the prudential theology of England, in the two
or three generations after his death, than in the larger
faith, rooted in our whole spiritual being, which showed
itself in More, Cudworth, and Leighton in the age pre-
ceding ; or, since Locke, in the religious philosophy
of Law and Berkeley, and still more of Coleridge and
Schleiermacher.

The ' Eeasonableness of Christianity ' was in intention
an attempt to recall Christianity from verbal reasonings
and dogmas of ecclesiastical schools, destructive of peace
and charity among Christians, to its original simplicity.
All who are in sympathy of spirit with Jesus as the
Messiah or Eedeemer of mankind, have accepted what
is essential to the simple Christianity of Locke, what-
ever inferences of their own they may add to this essence
of their religion. Personal surrender of life to this sim-
ple faith in the Messiahship of Jesus, and a correspond-
ing sympathy with all of whatever name or sect who
share in it, was his ideal at once of personal religion
and of the Church. "What was sufficient to make a
man a Christian in our Saviour's time," he argues, " is
sufficient still — the taking Him for our King and Lord,
ordained so by God. What was necessary to be be-
lieved by all Christians in our Saviour's time, as an
indispensable duty which they owed to their Lord and
Master, was the believing all divine revelation as far as
each could understand it ; and just so it is still, neither
more nor less. No man has " a right to prescribe to me
my faith, or magisterially to impose his opinions or
interpretations on me; nor is it material to any one

A ficture life conditional. 259

what mine are. It is this which I think makes me of
no sect, and entitles me, it seems, in the opinion of my
adversaries, to the name of a Papist or a Socinian."
This " essential Christianity " contains only articles that
the labouring and illiterate man may comprehend; and
nothing can be necessary to be believed by all but what
is suited to ordinary capacities and the comprehension
of ignorant men. " All that is necessary for all to be-
lieve about God must be easily understood. There be
many truths in the Bible which a good Christian may
be wholly ignorant of, and so not believe ; which per-
haps some lay great stress on, and call fundamental
articles, because they are the distinguishing points of
their sect or communion." But Christianity is with
Locke more than religion as it would be if Christ had
never lived : the revelation of God in Christ, while con-
sistent with the conditions of a human understanding of
the universe, could not have been discovered but for His
miraculous appearance in the world of nature, and His
resurrection after death.

An interesting part of Locke's interpretation of Scrip-
ture is the account which he gives of its revelation of
the destiny of men after death. Human immortality
is, he argues, not of the essence of the human spirit, or
necessarily involved in our personality and identity \ nor
is it on the other hand predicable only abstractly of Rea-
son, but also of men in their distinct continuous personal
existence. A life after death was given by God to men
at first, when it might have been withheld, and it has
been lost by the fall of mankind in Adam ; but it may
be recovered through faith in the Messiahship of Jesus,
and sympathy with Him in His divine mission. Anni-

260 Locke.

hilation is with Locke the ultimate destiny of all who
do not retain life after physical death as the reward of
the conduct in this life that issues from faith in Christ.
This reward — contrasted with the punishment of annihi-
lation— this conditional offer of immortality is, according
to Locke, the chief motive to goodness of conduct which
Christianity supplies, and which gives it its superiority
to heathen philosophy.

This conditional immortality is accepted by Locke
as the revelation contained in Holy Scripture. The
" death " which is the issue of sin, he would say, must
mean annihilation, and in such matters we should not
seek to be wise above what is written. The idea of
annihilation might also have recommended itself as a
mitigation of the mystery of immoral agency in the
universe being otherwise endless, — when the free agents
who create evil become so confirmed in their habits as
to make their final restoration to goodness impossible.
If moral evil has entered the universe through the cre-
ation of agents, who, in virtue of their freedom, may
create either good or evil actions ; and if their present
existence is, as facts prove, consistent with the Perfect
Universal System ; then their annihilation, after their
" fall " from the divine life, rather than their continued
existence, when they have made themselves permanent
moral failures, might seem to be the outcome of the
universal ethical government. The existence of persons
who can create their own acts is implied in God's moral
government; not necessarily their unending existence,
when they are finally bent on the" creation of wicked
acts. But Locke hardly suggests this sort of reason-
ing, and confines himself to determining the interpreta-

A Visible Church. 261

tion of the Biblical terms " life " and " death " in this
relation.

Locke's languid historical1 imagination made no
account of the continuity of one great ecclesiastical or-
ganism, as a miraculous standing evidence of the truth
of Christianity, and a principal means for securing its
victory in the world. Visible ecclesiastical organism,
whether in the form of the ancient historic Church, —
Eoman, Greek, and reformed Anglican, — or any other,
he regarded as an accident, and not of the essence of
Christianity — of which those who would might avail
themselves, but visible union with which was not neces-
sary to the communion of those who are united in a
common sympathy with Jesus, and in surrender to his
Messiahship, — "who love all men, of what profession
or religion soever, and who love and seek truth for
truth's sake," — the one comprehensive communion re-
cognised in Locke's Christianity.

The last years of Locke's life were given to the
exegetical study of the New Testament. The story of
Christ in the Gospels he had studied when he worked
in theology years before. He now turned to the Epistles
of St Paul, and applied the spirit and methods of the
'Essay' in the critical interpretation of the literature
which he still revered with the reverence of the pious
Puritans who surrounded his boyhood. The same sense
of the need for a reasonable foundation for his beliefs
followed him here as in other investigations ; the same

1 Locke's " historical plain" method, of course, does not refer to
the history of philosophy, or to history at all in that sense, and only
expresses his reverence for the facts and events of nature and of con-
sciousness.

262 Locke.

determination to explode unreasoned assumptions, and
to deliver himself from bondage to empty words. This
sort of exegesis implied a revolution in the favourite
methods of the Puritans, who were ready to interpret
texts apart from their context, directed by emotions to
which the words gave rise, or by the tendency to spirit-
ual edification of a meaning which might be read into
the words, — neglecting the context, the circumstances in
which they were written, and the influences at work in
the writers and in the age in which they were produced.
Locke sought, in the spirit of modern historical criti-
cism, to identify himself with the writers, their feel-
ings and thoughts and circumstances, and by regarding
each Epistle as a whole, and in all its relations, to
evolve its rational meaning. He was among the first
in Europe who led towards the large historical exegesis
since practised by the great German critics, which has
now so transformed Christian thought. His dominant
design as a critic was to work his way through the sand
and rubbish of prejudiced interpretations — the presup-
positions due to feeling and imagination — the " ideas
and principles," presumed to be " innate," — which had
previously biassed interpreters.

"The Epistles," he says, "are written upon several oc-
casions ; and he that will read them as he ought, must observe
what is in them which is principally aimed at. He must
find what is the argument in hand, and how managed, if he
will understand them right. The observing of this will best
help us to the true meaning and mind of the writer : for
that is the truth which is actually given to be recorded and
believed, and not scattered sentences in Scripture language
accommodated to our notions and prejudices. We must look
into the drift of the discourse, observe the coherence and

Catholic Christianity must he simple. 263

connection of all the parts, and so how it is consistent with
itself and with other parts of Scripture, if we will conceive
it right. We must not cull out, as best suits our system,
here and there a period or verse, as if they were all distinct
and independent aphorisms, and make these necessary to
salvation, unless God has made them so. The Epistles,
most of them, carry on a thread of argument, which, in the
style they are writ, cannot everywhere be observed without
great attention ; and to consider the texts as they stand and
bear a part in the whole, that is to view them in their true
light, and the way to get the true sense of them."

The application and vindication of these principles
in an interpretation of the literature of Apostolic Chris-
tianity was the last labour of Locke's life. He nowhere
defines his own relation to the theological doctrines that
were disputed in the Trinitarian controversy then going
on in England, if indeed he had a positive opinion upon
questions which seemed to him not necessarily involved
in practical Christianity. Doctrines intellectually diffi-
cult, and distinctions which demand subtle thought,
whatever in them might be true or false, could not, in
his view, be essential to a faith that was to be catholic ;
so long at least as human understanding was limited in
all men to a narrow experience and imperfect faculty,
and still more limited in the great majority of mankind
by their surroundings, and by the defective education
which makes them unable to think for themselves, or
even to apprehend the results of subtle thinking in
others.

264

CHAPTER IV.

THE CLOSE.

After 1700, Locke was gathering himself up for the
end in the rural repose and family life of Oates. The
commission at the Board of Trade was resigned, and
the visits to London ceased. The devout spirit and
simple piety of one consciously living in the presence of
God, appears in the latest acts and expressions of his
life, unchecked by that independent exercise of thought
which he still vindicated for himself and for others.
Religious meditation and Biblical studies engaged much
of his remaining strength in the four following years,
along with a tract on ' Miracles,' suggested by the essay
of his friend Bishop Fleetwood.

The critics of the ' Essay ' were not silenced, they
were rather multiplied. ' Anti- scepticism ; or, Notes
upon each Chapter of Mr Locke's " Essay," with an Ex-
plication of all the Particulars of which he treats, and
in the same order,' an elaborate folio, in four books, by
Henry Lee, a Northamptonshire rector, made its appear-
ance in 1702 — pleading for "some regard to authority in
an age too much given to novelty. 'Tis now become the
common mode,"" the author says, "to go so deep in our

More Criticism of the 'Essay.' 265

inquiries after truth, and to be so warm in our amours,
as first to doubt whether there be any such thing as a
real truth; for the received maxims of all mankind,
which used to be the touchstone by which to try it,
must now, it seems, be tried themselves, and in the
meantime are to be declared 'purely artificial, and
wholly owing to the powerful influence of custom and
education.' Our philosophy, our policy, our religion,
must be new or none at all." It is in this spirit that
Lee addresses himself to his critical work, in which,
with some irrelevancy, he touches several ambiguous
expressions of Locke, states what is meant by innate
ideas and principles not less clearly than Leibniz, and
anticipates reasonings of Burner and Eeid in vindication
of the common reason that is latent in humanity, im-
plying of any one who opposes this, that —

" Habit with him is all the test of truth :
It must be right ; I've done it from my youth."

About the same time the ' Essay' was formally con-
demned by the authorities at Oxford. "I take what
has been done there rather as a recommendation of the
book." So Locke wrote to his young friend Anthony
Collins, who had now become a frequent visitor at Oates,
"and when you and I next meet we shall be merry
on the subject." But criticism of the 'Essay' failed
to draw its author into controversy, and indeed con-
tributed to its reputation. In the original, or in the
French or Latin versions, it was making its way on the
Continent, as well as in public opinion at home, and
was becoming accepted as the acknowledged standard
of English philosophy.

266 Locke.

One attack only moved Locke. In 1704 his former
adversary, Jonas Proast, unexpectedly revived the old
controversy, regarding the principle of religious tolera
tion, as logically meaning that, although some modifica-
tion of theism is necessary to secure the ends of civil
government, yet there is " absolutely no such thing under
the Gospel as a Christian commonwealth," so that all re-
ligious differences short of atheism are foreign to the
concerns of the State. Locke in consequence began a
' Fourth Letter on Toleration.' The few pages, ending
in an unfinished sentence, which appeared among his
posthumous works, seem to have exhausted his remain-
ing strength in the weeks before he died. Thus the
idea of religious liberty, which engaged him at Oxford
more than forty years before, and had been his ruling
idea during the long interval, was still dominant when
earthly objects were fading from his view.1

Locke's letters to Anthony Collins cast light upon
the evening of his life. He was above seventy, and
Collins was twenty -six, when their friendship began.
The letters express an ardour of affectionate friend-
ship which was natural to Locke. Here are a few
extracts : —

" You make the decays and dregs of my life the pleasantest
part of it," he writes in May 1703 ; " for I know nothing calls
me so back to a pleasant sense of enjoyment, and makes my
days so gay and lively, as your good company." Again :
" It is but six days since that I writ to you, and see here

1 I found in the Lovelace collection many letters and other doc-
uments regarding the case of Thomas Aikenhead, the youth who
was hanged for heresy at Edinburgh in 1697, at the demand of the
city ministers. Locke showed much concern in the affair.

Anthony Collins. 267

is another letter. You are like to be troubled with me.
If it be so, why do you make yourself so beloved 1 Why
do you make yourself so necessary to me ? I thought
myself pretty loose from the world, but I feel you begin
to fasten me to it again. Believe it, my good friend, to love
truth for truth's sake is the principal part of perfection in
this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues ; and if I
mistake not, you have as much of it as ever I met with in
anybody. Now methinks I begin to see openings to truth,
where a little industry and application would settle one's
mind with satisfaction. But this is at the end of my day,
when my sun is setting. It is for one of your age, I think
I ought to say for yourself, to set about it ; there is so much
beauty and consistency in the prospect. I am a poor igno-
rant man, and if I have anything to boast of, it is that I
sincerely love and seek truth, with an indifferency where
it pleases or displeases. I take you to be of the same school,
and so embrace you. To be rational is so glorious a thing
that two-legged creatures generally content themselves with
the title, and inform themselves by a tiresome rummaging
in the mistakes and jargon of pretenders to knowledge, not
by looking into things themselves." Then again : " As for
rummaging over Mr Norris's late book,1 I will be sworn it
is not I have done that ; for however I may be mistaken in
what passes without me, I am infallible in what passes in
my own mind ; and I am sure the ideas that are put to-
gether in your letter out of him were never so in my thoughts
till I saw them there. What did I say? — 'put ideas to-
gether.' I ask your pardon, it is ' put words together with-
out ideas.' Men of Mr Norris's way seem to jdecree rather
than to argue. . . . What you say about my ' Essay ' —
that nothing can be advanced against it but upon the prin-
ciple of innate ideas — in the sense I speak of innate ideas,
though they make a noise against me, yet they so draw and
twist their improper ways of speaking, which have the sound

"Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World" (1704).

268 Locke.

of contradiction to me, that at last they state the question
so as to leave no contradiction in it to my ' Essay ' ; as you
have observed in Mr Lee, and Mr Norris in his late treatise.
You have a comprehensive knowledge of it, and do not stick
in the incidents which I find many do ; which, whether true
or false, make nothing to the main design of the 'Essay.'
That lies in a little compass, and yet I hope may be of use
to those that follow the plain and easy method of nature to
carry them to knowledge. It was with a design of inquiry
into the nature and powers of the understanding that I
writ it."

In the spring and summer of 1704, Locke continued
to decline, tenderly nursed by Lady Masham and her
stepdaughter Esther. The sense of gradual decay finds
expression in the letters to Collins. There is correspond-
ence about a chaise which Locke got Collins to have
made for him, that he might still enjoy the leafy lanes of
High Laver and Epping Forest, and joy expressed for
Collins' companionship in his frequent visits to Oates in
that last summer, "when your company and kindness
have added to the length of my life, which in my way
of measuring, doth not lie in counting of minutes, but in
tasting of enjoyments. I wish every day the chaise
done ; not out of impatience I am for the machine, but
for the man — the man, I say, that is to come in it. A
man that has not his fellow, and for all that, loves me.
If I regret my old age, it is you that makes me." Then
there are arrangements for Sir Godfrey Kneller coming
down to Oates to take Locke's picture for Collins, which,
" if it was possible to make a speaking picture, it should
tell you every day how much I love and esteem you."
The picture was taken, and another of Lady Masham
in August 1704, — two months before the end, — the

Mortal life and its hope. 269

second of Locke by Kneller, who seven years before had
made pictures of Locke and Molyneux.1

The vanity of mortal life, and the hope of a more spir-
itual communion with God in the life to come, now ab-
sorbed Locke's interest in the controversies and concerns
of earth. " All the use to be made of it," he wrote to
Collins, a few weeks before the end, in a letter to be
delivered to him afterwards, " is, that this life is a scene
of vanity that soon passes away, and affords no solid satis-
faction but in the consciousness of doing well and in the
hope of another life. This is what I say on experience,
and what you will find to be true when you come to
make up the account." A few days before death came he
is pictured by Coste in the garden at Oates taking the air
in bright October sunshine, the warmth affording him
great pleasure, which he improved by causing his chair
to be drawn more and more towards the sun as it went
down. They happened to speak of Horace, Coste hav-
ing repeated to him the verses where the poet says of
himself that he was "solibus aptum, irasci celerem,
tamen ut placabilis essem." Locke remarked that if
he durst compare himself with Horace in anything, he
thought it was in these two respects. He loved the

1 There are several portraits of Locke. The engraving prefixed to
this volume is from Kneller' s 1697 portrait, when Locke was in his
sixty-fifth year. Apparently the portrait here referred to is the one
I saw at Holme Park, — thin white hair, weakness and suffering in
every feature of the thoughtful countenance, pale, even ghastly.
Two of the earliest are at Nynehead, one of them a companion pic-
ture to another which represents his young friend "Betty," Edward
Clarke's daughter, "beside portraits of Clarke himself and his wife.
Locke called Betty his "little wife," and the two used to send the
most amusing messages to each other. The Sanfords of Nynehead
now represent the Clarkes of Chipley.

270 Locke.

warmth of the sun, and he was naturally choleric, but
his anger never lasted long ; if he retained any resent-
ment, it was against himself for having given way to so
ridiculous a passion, which, he often said, "may do a
great deal of harm, but never yet did the least good."
On the 28th of October he ceased to appear in this
world of sense, and passed away, as he declared, "in
perfect charity with all men, and in sincere communion
with the whole Church of Christ, by whatever names
Christ's followers please to call themselves." The last
scene is referred to in the homely expressions of the fol-
lowing hitherto unpublished letter,1 from Esther Masham
to a Mrs Smith, who had been housekeeper at Oates : —

" Oates, November 17, 1704.

" I am grieved, dear Mrs Smith, you should think I have
forgot you ; you are very much in my thoughts. You have
heard, no doubt, of the death of good Mr Locke. Ever since
his death we have been in a continual hurry; for my mother,
not being able to settle her thoughts to anything, bustles
about as much as she can, and I generally come in for some-
thing. Though we could not expect his life a great
while, it did, nevertheless, surprise us. His legs were very
much swollen, and the day before he died, finding it very
troublesome to rise, because of his great weakness that he
was hardly able to do anything for himself, he resolved to lie
abed, which made the swelling in his legs get up into his
body, and immediately took away his stomach and his sleep,
for he slept not a wink all that night. The next morning he
resolved to rise, and was carried into his study, and in his
chair got a little sleep, was very sensible, but soon called to be
moved, and was no sooner set elsewhere than he died, closing

1 Preserved among the Birch MSS. in the British Museum. I owe
this reference and other particulars to the Rev. R. Rodwell, rector of
High Laver.

Death and Burial. 271

his eyes with his own hands. He is extremely regretted by
everybody. He left Mr King x his executor, and has left
Frank J3000 and half his books.2 He left me £10, and like
to my father and mother, and several other legacies. He
has given to every servant in the house 20s., and Mrs Lane
40s., for which she thought she must have gone into mourn-
ing. He has left a great deal for charitable uses. He ordered
in his will to be buried in the churchyard, in a plain wooden
coffin without cloth or velvet, which cost, he said, would be
better laid out in clothing the poor, and therefore ordered
four poor men to have coats, breeches, shoes, stockings, and
hats. I heard him say, the night before he died, that he
heartily thanked God for all His goodness and mercies to
him, but above all for His redemption of him by Jesus
Christ. — I am, yours, E. Masham."

So ended the prudent, moderate, and tranquil life,
pious and inquisitive, which began at Wrington and

1 His cousin, afterwards Lord King, Baron of Ockham in Surrey,
and Lord Chancellor (1725), ancestor of the present Earl of Lovelace.

2 The share of the books, &c., which went to Francis Masham be-
came the property of the Palmers, who bought Oates in 1776. The
other part of the library and the MSS. went to Ockham, to Sir Peter
King. The Will, as I find on examination of the original record, is
dated 15th September 1704, and he describes himself as "John Lock
of High Laver." It disposes of £4555 of personal property, besides
books, plate, clock, pictures, and manuscripts. The £3000 to Francis
Masham, to be held in trust by Peter King and Anthony Collins,
with reversion in case of his death to "Dame Damaris Masham."
His "ruby and diamond rings," with some books, are left to Lady
Masham ; £10 to Anthony Collins, £200 and his picture to his
"daughter Betty," £100 to the poor of High Laver, and another
£100 to the poor of Publow and Pensford in his native Somerset,
with souvenirs to the Guenellons, Dr Veen, Furly, and Awnsham
Churchill, the publisher. The land and houses in Somerset were
divided between Peter King and Peter Stratton. The Will is proved
by Peter King, "sole executor" and residuary legatee — "Damaris
Masham, Anthony Collins, and Pierre Coste, witnesses," in the
winding-up of his affairs. Locke's income when he was at Oates
must have kept him in easy circumstances.

272 Locke.

Beluton in the stormy years of Charles I. On Tuesday,
the 31st of October, they buried him on the sunny side
of the parish church of High Laver, where, almost two
centuries ago, that serene and pensive face, pale and
tinged with sadness, which Kneller has made familiar to
us all, was often seen. A few chosen friends, including
the Masham family, King, Collins, and Coste, and neigh-
bours at Oates, seem to have formed the little company
who gathered round his grave, when the aged rector read
the beautiful service of the Church of England, on that
autumn day in Essex. The lines of the Latin inscrip-
tion composed by himself, lately traced with difficulty
upon the stone, suggest the pensive language of the
' Essay ' about human memory, in which it is suggested
that " the ideas as well as the children of our youth
often die before us, and our minds thus represent to
us those tombs to which we are approaching, where,
though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions
are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away." 1
Especially in that remote rural scene, the tomb of
Locke may touch the imagination of the wayfarer. Ac-
cording to tradition, Sir Isaac Newton was one of the
first who visited it. At a little distance are some tombs
of the Mashams, and within the church, those of Sir
Francis Masham, of Damaris, the widow of Cudworth,
and of Mr Lowe the rector. The heads of the Masham
family, with whom he had lived so happily, soon fol-
lowed him. Lady Masham died at Bath in April 1708,
and rests there in the Abbey Church. Sir Erancis died
in 1722, the year in which his daughter Esther collected
and transcribed the letters to which we are indebted, —
1 Book II. chap. x. sec. 5.

Intellectual and Moral features. 273

as it seems, on the eve of her departure from the home
of her youth, when, with her treasured memories of her
"Joannes," she disappears finally from view.1 Locke's
young favourite, Francis Masham, died in 1731, when
Lord Masham, the heir of Sir Francis, and his wife
Abigail were the possessors of Oates. He is buried in
the neighbouring church of Matching. Queen Anne's
favourite died in 1734, and her lord four years after.
The barony expired in 1776, on the death of their only
son, the second lord, who died childless. The estate of
Oates was then sold to Richard Palmer, whose last repre-
sentative, Miss Palmer of Holme Park, near Reading,
was, at her death, in 1879, in possession of the share of
Locke's books and other possessions that had been left
to Francis Masham. This collection of relics, since dis-
persed, contained, when I saw it, the chair which Locke
occupied in his last illness, comfortable enough for the
slight and feeble patient, who must have been of low
stature, for the height of the seat is hardly fourteen
inches, occupied in those last years by that slender figure,
wiry but emaciated, calm, yet with signs of suffering.

Locke's writings, Avhich everywhere express his char-
acter, have made his intellectual and moral features
not less familiar to Englishmen than his countenance
has been made by Kneller. The reasonableness of tak-
ing probability or likelihood for our guide in the most

1 M. Coste, soon after Locke's death, seems to have gone to live
at Chipley with the Clarkes. " Mr Coste is now well settled in Mr
Clarke's family," one of Esther's correspondents writes. Letters
thence from him to Esther Masham refer to Anthony Collins, and
the development of his opinions in the direction of philosophical
necessity and Deism. A few years later Collins was in controversy
with Dr Samuel Clarke about free agency. He died in 1729.
P. — XV. s

274 Locke.

important concerns of human life was his governing
principle. The desire to see for himself what is really
in harmony with the thought and will of God, in the
light of its reasonable evidence, and that all men should
do the same, was his ruling passion, if the word may he
applied to one so calm and judicial. " I can no more
know anything by another man's understanding," he
would say, "than I can see by another man's eyes.
The knowledge which one man possesses cannot be lent
to another." Eeluctance to believe in the dark, on
blindly accepted authority, instead of faith sustained
in the judgment by self-evident or demonstrative reason,
or by good probable evidence, runs through his life. He
is the typically English philosopher in his love for con-
crete exemplifications of the abstractions in which more
speculative minds delight ; in his reverence for facts —
facts in nature, or facts of conscious life; in indiffer-
ence to speculation on its own account ; in aversion to
verbal reasonings ; in suspicion of mystical enthusiasm ;
in calm reasonableness, and ready submission to truth,
.even when the truth could not be reduced to system
by a human understanding; and in the honest origi-
nality which stamped the features of his intellect and
character upon all that he wrote. In philosophical dis-
cussions he never lost sight of immediate utility ; he
esteemed men in proportion to the good they were obvi-
ously doing, and thus perhaps unduly disparaged learned
scholars and idealistic philosophers. While he practised
the severe reasoning that he admired in Chillingworth, he
had little patience with those who argue for victory and
not for truth, guarding their arguments behind the am-
biguity of a word. Large, "roundabout," even pruden-

Defects. 275

tial and prosaic, common-sense, with occasional help of
humour and refined scarcasm, strength of understanding
sagaciously directed by a prudent purpose, much more
than subtle, daring, comprehensive, or even coherent
speculation, are conspicuous in his writings and conduct.
His caution approached timidity, and sometimes made
him irresolute. His aim was not to explain the uni-
verse, but to adapt his life to its actual conditions. The
visions of the poet were foreign to his experience ;
neither Bunyan nor Milton found much response in
Locke. Deficiency in speculative imagination, and
want of eclectic sympathy with the historical develop-
ment of human thought are shown when he encounters
the vast and complex problem of human knowledge,
and the constitution of the reality which it contains.
This appears in his indisposition to find elements of
truth in systems foreign to his own, — unlike Leibniz,
whose ideal of philosophical truth was grander, or at
least more pretentious, than that matter-of-fact account
of the office and limits of a human understanding which
Locke offered in the * Essay,' in order to bring about
an amendment of its operations in the future history
of mankind.

276

CHAPTEE V.

PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES IN THE LAST TWO CENTURIES.

Locke's intellectual philosophy may be interpreted in
two ways, as one or other of the two fundamental parts
of its constitution regulates the interpreter. Its origin,
in reaction against authority and schol a.sti r, a hstrn r.t.i on b,
as well as the tendency of opinion in the century which
followed its appearance, have favoured one of those inter-
pretations. Accordingly, Locke is commonly associated
with the disposition to resolve metaphysics into physics ;
and our spiritual or supernatural experience, with its
elements of reason, conscience, and creative will, into
sensuous phenomena.1

That we find in our " experience " of the qualities of
things and the operations of our own spirits, in their
ever -changing variety, the materials which enter into
all our knowledge and presumptions of probability; —
that man can know, or even have an idea of, nothing
that is not clothed in the phenomena thus presented to

1 Yet in Mr Webb's < Intellectualism of Locke ' (Dublin, 1857), we
have an ingenious attempt to interpret Locke throughout as even
"an Intellectualist in the sense of Reid and Kant." With Reid he
has much in common, but from Kant he is surely separated by-
method and point of view.

Two essential Factors of Experience. 277

him — is one of the two principal lessons of Locke's phil-
osophy of human understanding.

The other is left in the background in those two books
of the ' Essay ' in which " ideas," not " certainties " and
"probabilities," are the subject of analysis.1 It conies
out more when the certainties of common-sense are re-
ported on, in the fourth book ; for these involve, not
mere ideas, complex and simple, but relations among
ideas, intuitively discerned or perceived as true. "It
is on intuition or perception," as Locke expresses it,
"that the certainty (i.e., the self -evidence and the de-
mon strableness) of our knowledge depends." Know-
ledge thus originates, according to Locke, in i?ituition
of relations among the data of experience ; and it is on
presumptions, involving more or less likeness to what we
have experienced, as he afterwards shows, that the prob-
ability of our opinions naturally depends. Wherever
we have an intuitive perception of relations between
the subjects and predicates of propositions, we have the
absolute certainty of knowledge ; and if the perception
of relations is accompanied by a common-sense convic-
tion that it corresponds, as one might say, with the
order or reason that is latent in experience, then we
have some real knowledge of the universe. Eut he
also reports that when we pass out of the world of
abstract thought into the world of concrete examples,
this certainty never involves universality. Certainty
about more than an individual case is " never to be

1 It might be said that the second and third books of the
1 Essay ' are concerned with Terms and their meanings ; the fourth
chiefly with Propositions — self-evident, demonstrated, probable, and
erroneous.

278 Locke.

found except within abstract thoughts or ideas." When-
ever we seek it elsewhere — in observation of nature —
we find that " our knowledge goes not beyond particu-
lars." It is the contemplation of abstract ideas alone
that is able to afford us general knowledge. This con-
fines Locke's ontological certainties to individuals —
including God — and withdraws certainty from universal
judgments about nature and the attributes of existing
realities.

Locke's Epistemology, so far as it goes, might be in-
terpreted in harmony with the formula of Patricius —
" cognitio omnis a mente primam originem, a sensibus
exordium habet primum," — with this qualification that
Locke puts stress on the "exordium," or the appearance
of knowledge in time, and in the consciousness of the
individual ; he leaves in the background what is im-
plied in its " origo," — in " perception " or intuitional in-
telligence of relations, with all involved in this which
is latent and so comes out of the mind.1 "Why the
'Essay' and the other philosophical works of Locke
make exemplification of the ultimate rational necessi-
ties more prominent than the abstract necessities them-
selves that are latent in the " intuitions or perceptions
on which all absolute certainty depends," is partly ex-
plained by the motive to which the ' Essay ' was due.2

1 Yet in a letter to Mr Samuel Bold (16th May 1699), Locke says :
"I agree with you that the ideas of the modes and actions of substances
are usually in our minds before the idea of substance itself ; but in
this I differ from you, that I do not think the ideas of the operations
of things are antecedent to the ideas of their existence,— for they must
exist before they can in any way affect us or make us sensible of their
operations, and Ave must suppose them to be before they operate."

2 Locke expressly says that his purpose is, not to analyse pure

The "exordium" and the " origo." 279

Locke, we have found, was led to his via media philo-
sophy through reaction against a priori dogmatism, and
the empty abstractions with which it is apt to be con-
nected ; not by reaction against the sceptical nescience
which would discredit even presuppositions that express
the conditions by which real knowledge must a priori be
determined, and by which it is in one sense explained.
The assault in the ' Essay ' upon " innate " ideas and
principles ; its analysis of the metaphysical ideas that
gradually arise in consciousness in the course of the
exercise of our faculties ; its limited and uncritical re-
cognition of self-evident and demonstrated certainties ;
together with the prominence given in it to probability
as the guide of life, were all meant to administer checks
to empty verbal reasonings, and to a priori speculation
that is not exemplified in particular facts. Locke, no
doubt, invited that new philosophical departure, from
the epistemological point of view, which has since drawn
modern philosophy into theories of human, and also of
absolute or divine knowledge, but away from the dog-
matic ontologies which those critical theories have
superseded. His own epistemology was founded upon
the humanity of knowledge, showing that man's know-
ledge, like every aspect of him, is intermediate between
the animal and the divine, — " far short of a universal
or perfect comprehension of what exists." Philosophy
has, at some periods of its history, been recalled to this
human position by sceptical despair, — in hope of find-
ing relief from doubt in a deeper and truer insight of

reason, or the understanding as such, but "to consider the dis-
cerning faculties of a man as they are employed above the objects
(phenomena) they have to do with " (Book I. , chap. i. s. 62).

280 Locke.

man's spiritual being, — as in the Socratic reaction
against the scepticism of the Sophists. Locke was
brought to a study of the actual facts of a human
understanding of the universe with the opposite motive
of testing dogmatic omniscience by demanding exempli-
fication of its abstractions in data of experience. He
sought thus to convict the dogmatists of their inability
fully to realise divine or absolute knowledge of the
actual universe, or to substitute a complete rational
perception of truth for the presumptions of probability
that are appropriate to man.

That Locke was moved by this second motive ex-
plains much not only in his own philosophical expres-
sions, but also in that development of philosophic
thought, from 1690 till now, which his recall of phil-
osophy to the human or intermediate may be said to
have inaugurated. His proposal to try to find what
in point of fact a human understanding is or is not
able to deal with, was made, not because he found the
current of opinion running towards sceptical despair of
the power of man's mind to make any way at all in
the interpretation of the successively presented data of
human experience ; or because he wanted men to become
more intrepid and comprehensive in their speculations.
It was for an opposite reason, — because he suspected
that men had been claiming for their knowledge more
than could be justified by a true human philosophy.
They seemed to have been " letting loose their thoughts
into the vast ocean of Being, as if all that boundless
extent were their natural and undoubted possession."
The \ Essay ' is accordingly an inquiry as to whether
past failures to reach truth may not have been due

Nescience and Omniscience. 281

to men having ventured, either as uncritical tradition-
alists or as dogmatic rationalists, to place themselves as
it were at the Divine or central point for viewing the
universal reality j instead of seeing that human indi-
viduality necessarily withdraws us from the centre, and
keeps us always at the side ; where much that is
actual must remain out of our intellectual sight, and
where things, experienced under the relations of time,
must appear at a different angle from the timeless intel-
lectual vision at the centre. His inquiry was as to what
in point of fact could be seen from the side. So in
the 'Essay' and elsewhere he is fond of returning to
the contrasts between the few points of full light found
within our intellectual horizon ; the many points at
which we can have only the dim twilight of probability ;
and the boundless realm of darkness which, for us, sur-
rounds both — all suggesting to his reader the moral ad-
vantage of habitually pondering the enigma of a human
understanding in the discharge of its necessarily inter-
mediate function, between Nescience and Omniscience.

It was perhaps inevitable that Locke, — disposed by
temperament, as well as by education and his surround-
ings, to see the danger of dogmatic claims to omnis-
cience rather than the danger of sceptical despair, —
should be more apt to dwell on the weakness of human
understanding, and the narrow limits of human experi-
ence, than either on the abstract constitution of Divine
Universal Reason, in which man in a manner shares,
or on the facts that distinguish man as a moral and
spiritual, or supernatural, being. Thus his own philo-
sophy was apt to draw more towards the philosophical
extreme of Empiricism and Nescience than towards

282 Locke.

the opposite extreme of transcendental Idealism and
potential Omniscience. This was in the spirit of the
age in which he lived, of which he was so signally
the intellectual representative. In the latter part of
the seventeenth century, the assumptions of dogmatic
theology that had been supreme in the middle ages,
and in the theological controversies and religious wars
of the sixteenth century and after, were beginning
to be subjects of criticism. Simultaneously with this,
the astonishing growth of the sciences of observation
in England strengthened the disposition to bring every
disputed belief before the tribunal of the generalising
understanding, which judges only according to the physi-
cal categories of sense. Hence the philosophy natural to
a representative thinker, at a time when the traditional
philosophy was weak, and when leading opinions were
reacting even in excess against the pressure of the Past,
was apt to be analytic and disintegrative, more than
constructive or conservative. This explains how Locke's
chief aim was to expose empty verbalism, and to dis-
solve obstinate prejudices inherited from the Past, which
he assailed as " innate ideas " and " innate principles."
He wanted to explode verbal forms and dogmas that had
usurped the place which was due to experience faithfully
interpreted. He did not spare even Bacon and Descartes,
pioneers as they were of free inquiry, but not completely
freed from the bondage of scholastic abstractions and
assumptions. Bacon's too sanguine anticipation of com-
ing sciences of nature which should reveal its " fixed,
eternal, universal principles," was probably in Locke's
view, when he once and again administered a check to
those who vainly hoped for a " demonstrable " science

The Supernatural in Man. 283

of the laws and qualities of matter ; and when he in-
sisted as he did upon man's inevitable ignorance of
necessary relations between the innumerable secondary-
qualities and powers of the things of sense and their
few primary or mathematical qualities ; or when he
argued for the impossibility of finding universal or
necessary propositions in matters concrete. As to Des-
cartes too, when Locke engaged in his 'Essay' Car-
tesianism was passing into Spinozism; and all along
its course it had seemed to Locke, with its teaching
about "innate ideas," as he interpreted it, to be too
much a " letting loose of thought in the vast ocean of
Being."

Accordingly, one need not wonder that Locke, with
his early training in natural science and in practical
politics, repelled too by the dogmatic theology of the
Puritans who surrounded his youth, should unconsciously
lean to that narrow and incomplete conception of man
which represents him as ending in sense and empirical
understanding. Speculative imagination, constitutive
reason, moral experience, and thinking will — on all
which a deep and spiritual philosophy depends — are
either left out of sight or attenuated. An "experi-
ence " that ends in sense and empirical generalisation
must end incoherently, and therefore contain the seeds
of scepticism, if there is (potentially) in man a larger
and richer life, due to the factors of his moral and
religious experience, — often latent, it is true, in indi-
vidual men, but found to respond when rightly ad-
dressed by words or by miracles. In those supernatural
factors in the human mind we have the key to the
metaphysical or supernatural interpretation of the uni-

284 Locke.

verse, at the human or intermediate point of view.
From them come to us —

" Those shadowy recollections,

Which, he they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing ;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the heing
Of the Eternal Silence ; truths that wake

To perish never."

If this is so, then Locke's philosophy was a common-
sense protest on behalf of the right and duty of the
understanding to judge according to a somewhat thin
and narrow, or at least ambiguous, conception of what
enters into human experience. It therefore tended
to send the main current of thought in the eighteenth
century in the direction of analysis and disintegra-
tion, with a preference, healthy in its own way, for
concrete and variable examples in sense over abstract
and absolute necessities of reason. And so it came to
pass that, before the middle of the century, Locke's
ambiguously constructed philosophy was transformed
into Hume's " sceptical solution of sceptical doubts." 1
The extreme nescience into which Hume resolved Locke
called forth Eeid and Kant. Reid, in the spirit and
according to the "historical" or matter-of-fact method
of Locke, sought to penetrate more deeply than Locke
had done into the " perceptions " of common reason
by which Locke saw that tho certainties of knowledge
were constituted. Eeid traced scepticism to " the Car-

1 See Hume's e Inquiry concerning Human Understanding,' passim,
but especially Lects. IV. -VI.

British and French disintegration. 285

tesian system of the human understanding," otherwise
called " the ideal system," which he attributed also to
the ' Essay,' according to which only an image of real-
ity is perceived in sense, — though Locke disclaims any
theory on the subject. Kant applied his new critical
method to the purely rational side of experience, and
to the epistemological problem, which Locke, in an
iconoclastic spirit, had tried to solve in the practical
interest of man's individual right and liberty to under-
stand things according to positive proof.1

The course of British and French philosophy, from
the publication of the ' Essay concerning Human Un-
derstanding' in 1690, till Reid in 1764 produced his
' Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of
Common Sense,' represents on the whole the progress
of the disintegrative tendency, which in Britain was
only in part and temporarily arrested by Reid. Reid
and the psychologists of Scotland were moved to at-
tempt an analysis of the common rational sense deeper
than Locke's, by the desire to refute the Hume they
saw when looking only at the negative side of Berkeley.
But the philosophy which appeals at last to custom and
association only was not thus arrested. English and
French empirical psychology from Hartley and Condil-
lac to John Stuart Mill and Comte, accepted isolated
sensations, emptied of the originating and active Reason
which in Berkeley was their necessary constitution and
final cause. English psychology from Hartley to Mill
continued on the lines of the " sceptical solution of

1 For an able comparison of the Scottish, and German answers to
Hume, the reader is referred to Professor Seth's 'Scottish Phil-
osophy' (2d ed., 1890).

286 Locke.

sceptical doubts ;" and "association" is more prominent
than the Common Eeason in the teaching even of Dr
Thomas Brown, who represented Eeid's philosophy in
its decline, in the second decade of the nineteenth, cen-
tury. Thus for 130 years after its publication the
' Essay ' of Locke gave to philosophy in this country
its groundwork and its method. The Anglo - Saxon
mind cautiously leans to that side of human life which
is instinctive and determined by custom, overlooked as
outside philosophy altogether by those who would con-
fine its speculations to the ultimate presuppositions, and
who despise "axiomata media" as external to the
sphere in which it moves.

The German mind, awakened into a priori specula-
tion by Leibniz, continued in it on the new lines of
Kant, and from Kant to Hegel tended steadily towards
the speculative construction and systematic unity of
absolute all-explaining Idealism. This philosophy in-
troduced into Britain, at first by Coleridge and by the
criticisms of Hamilton, has, within the last forty years,1
gradually transformed our insular manner of thinking,
and inverted for the time Locke's "plain, historical,"
matter-of-fact procedure.2 A similar but more transi-
tory dissatisfaction in France with the materialism
and theological nescience into which Locke had been
there resolved, was represented by Jouffroy and Cousin

1 It is hardly necessary to mention in this connection Principal
Caird, Professors Edward Caird and Green, and Dr Hntchison
Stirling,— names prominent in the history of British philosophy in
the last quarter of a century.

2 The most powerful argumentative criticism of this transfor-
mation will be found in Professor Veitch's ' Knowing and Being '
(1889).

The Eighteenth Century. 287

contemporaneously with Coleridge and Hamilton in
Britain.

Locke's political philosophy was modified and adopted
in France in the eighteenth century by Montesquieu, and
many of his opinions on education were modified and
adopted by Eousseau.1 The 'Esprit des Lois' (1748)
of Montesquieu, — which in popularity and influence was
hardly inferior in the department of political speculation
to the ' Essay concerning Human Understanding ' in the
history of logical and metaphysical thought, — propagated
many of Locke's opinions of social polity, in a more
attractive form ; while Condillac and the encyclopaedists
of France unwarrantably associated his name with the
sensuous materialism into which their interpretation of
the * Essay ' reduced his philosophy.

Notwithstanding the supremacy of Leibniz in Ger-
many, and the natural disposition of the Teutonic mind
to a priori philosophy and absolute idealism, the influ-
ence of Locke even in the universities of the Empire was
undoubtedly strong.2 Locke, directly or through Hume,
awakened Kant from his dogmatic slumber, and the
1 Kritik of Pure Eeason,' in the form which its problem
assumes, as well as in some of its main features, bears
marks of the parentage of Locke. The ' Essay ' and
the ' Kritik ' differed in the handle by which each took
hold of the problem. The concrete data of experience,
and their priority in the order of time and natural

1 The ' Sandford and Merton ' of Thomas Day is a popular illustra-
tion of the educational teaching of Locke and Rousseau.

2 It may still be traced, for instance in Hartenstein, ' Locke's
Lehre von der Menschlichen Erkenntniss ' (1861), and Koenig, ' Uber
den Substanzbegriff bei Locke und Hume' (1881).

288 Locke.

evolution, regulate the ' Essay ' ; the dialectical evolu-
tion of presuppositions and principles, the denial of
which would make experience and reasoning impos-
sible, and priority in the order of thought and exist-
ence, determine the ' Kritik.'

The connection of Locke's logical enforcement of rea-
sonableness, and independence of authority in theology,
with the history of English Deism, Erench illuminism,
and German rationalism, is for the student of religious
thought the most interesting issue of his life and
philosophy. But Locke's lasting effect upon religious
thought in these two centuries is seen in the ever-
widening conviction among Christians that religion
and Christianity must, like other beliefs, be exposed to
the test of free criticism, and to the response of the
rational, as well as the moral and spiritual, or super-
natural, constitution of man.

In the eighteenth century it was difficult to obtain a
hearing for an interpretation of man and the universe,
other than that attributed to Locke, or of those who in
his name professed absolute empiricism and nescience.
Berkeley, at first trained in the ' Essay,' became at
last in ' Siris ' the neglected spokesman of a loftier or
more ambitious creed. Such characteristic utterances of
his as those which follow, for example, were out of place
in his generation, and were overlooked until they came
to be recognised long after : —

" If explaining of a phenomenon be to assign its proper
efficient and final cause, it should seem that mechanical phil-
osophers never can explain anything, their province being
only to discover the laws of nature — that is, the general

Could not assimilate ' Siris.' 289

rules and methods of motion. We cannot make a single step
in accounting for phenomena without admitting the im-
mediate presence and immediate action of an incorporeal
Agent, who connects1, moves, and disposes all things, accord-
ing to such rules and for such purposes as seem good to
Him. . . . Nothing mechanical either is or really can be a
cause. . . . Strictly, Sense knows nothing. . . . Nature or
sense is reason immersed and plunged into matter, and as it
were fuddled in it and confounded with it.1 . . . General
rules are necessary to make the world of sense intelligible.2
... It may not be inferred [from our unconscious reflex
actions] that an unknowing nature can act regularly. The
true inference is only that the human person is not the real
author of these natural motions ; for no man blames himself
if they are wrong, or values himself if they are right.3 What
is done by rule must proceed from something that under-
stands the rule; therefore, if not from the human person
himself, from some other active Intelligence. . . . Sense
and experience acquaint us only with the course and analogy
of appearances or natural effects. Thought, Reason, and
Intellect introduce us into the knowledge of their causes.4
Sensible appearances, though of a flowing, unstable, uncer-
tain nature, yet having first occupied the mind, they do by
an early prevention render the after task of thought more
difficult — ' sensible ' and * real ' being to common appre-
hensions the same thing. The principles of science are
neither objects of sense nor of imagination, and Intellect
and Reason are alone the sure guides to truth. . . . All
the faculties, instincts, and motions of inferior beings, in
their several respective subordinations, are derived from

1 This adopted from Cudworth.

2 Compare this with Locke on the unreality of general principles
and universal conceptions.

3 This implies that the moral or immoral agency of persons is our
one concrete example of independent and creative causality or power.

* Mere evolution of phenomena from preceding phenomena, in
short, explains nothing, but itself needs to be explained.

P. XV. T

290 Locke.

and depend upon Mind and Intellect. '. . . Number is
no object of sense, it is an act of the mind. . . . Com-
prehending God and the creatures in one general notion,
we may say that all together make one universe or rb irav.
But if we should say that all things thus make one God,
this would indeed be an erroneous notion of God, but would
not amount to Atheism, so long as Mind or Intellect was
admitted to be the governing part. . . . Sense denotes
dependence in the soul which hath it. Sense is a passion,
and passions imply imperfection. ... So far forth as there
is real power in the universe there is Spirit. . . . Sense at
first besets and overbears the mind. We look no further than
to it for realities or causes ; till Intellect begins to dawn, and
cast a ray on this shadowy scene. We then perceive the true
principles of unity, identity, and existence. Those things
that before seemed to be the whole of being, upon taking an
intellectual view are seen to be but phantoms. . . . The
Mind, her acts, and her faculties, furnish a new and distinct
class of objects ; from the contemplation whereof arise certain
other notions, principles, and verities, so remote from, and
even repugnant to, the first prejudices which surprise the
sense of mankind, that they may well be excluded from vul-
gar speech and books, as abstract from sensible matters, and
more fit for the speculation of truth, the labour and aim of a
few, than for the practice of the world, or for the subjects of
experimental and mechanical inquiry. . . . Sense supplies
images to memory. These become subjects for fancy to
work upfin. Reason considers and judges of the imagina-
tions. And these acts of reason become new objects to the
understanding. In this scale each lower faculty leads to
one above it ; and the uppermost naturally leads to the
Deity, who is rather the object of intellectual knowledge
than even of the discursive faculty, not to mention the
sensitive. . . . Plato held original ideas in the mind ; that is,
notions such as never were nor can be in the sense. Some,
perhaps, may think the truth to be this : — that there are
properly no ideas [mental images, Vorstellungen] but what
were derived from sense, but that there are also besides these

Hume and the Eighteenth Century. 291

her own acts and operations, such as notions. ... It does
not follow that because a thing is, it must actually exist [i.e.,
in a consciousness]. . . . That perpetual struggle to recover
the lost region of light, that endeavour after truth and in-
tellectual ideas, the soul would neither seek to attain, nor
rejoice in, nor know when attained, except she had some
prenotion or anticipation of them, and they had lain innate
and dormant, like habits and sciences in the mind, which are
called out and roused by reminiscence. ... A Divine force
or influence permeates the entire universe. . . . Plotinus
represents God as order ; Aristotle, as law. ... As the mind
gathers strength by repeated acts, we should not despond,
but continue to exert the flower of our faculties, still re-
covering and reaching on, and struggling into the upper
region, whereby our natural weakness may be in some
degree remedied, and a taste attained of truth and intellec-
tual life."

Contrast with the philosophy that is implied in these
thoughts of Berkeley characteristic sentences of Hume
like those which follow, — the issue of Hume's attenua-
tion of Locke, and of his interpretation of Berkeley's
subordination of sense and the material world to Mind
as virtual scepticism : —

" This theory of the universal energy and operation of
the Supreme Being [Mind] is too bold ever to carry convic-
tion with it to a man sufficiently apprised of the weakness
of human reason, and the narrow limits to which it is con-
fined in all its operations. "We are got into fairyland, long
ere we have reached the last steps of our theory. Our line
is too short to fathom such immense abysses. . . . Were our
ignorance a good reason for rejecting anything, we should be
led into denying all energy in the Supreme Being as much
as in the grossest matter. All we know is our profound
ignorance in both cases. . . . All belief of real existence is
derived from a customary conjunction between one object

>

292 Locke.

and another. Custom is the supreme guide of human
life. . . . Anything may a priori he the cause of any-
thing. . . . The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexpli-
cable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspense of judgment,
appear at last the only result of our most accurate inquir}\ "

These sentences are more in the spirit of the age
in which they were written than those selected from
Berkeley, who habitually realised the constitution and
unity of the universe in supreme immanent Mind, al-
though without critical analysis of this rational constitu-
tion. Hume, taking Locke's simple ideas as isolated
sensations and the essence of knowledge ; and looking
only at Berkeley's negative conclusion that the (inde-
pendent) existence of sensible things is an absurdity,
dissolved all in the incoherence and contradiction which
would be latent both in Locke and Berkeley so inter-
preted. Locke's ' Essay,' under this light, became an
incoherent theory of a " knowledge " resolved into succes-
sive sensations blindly connected by custom. Berkeley
was transformed into a sceptic, on the ground that he
had resolved matter into isolated sensations ; not, as he
really intended, into sense -phenomena charged with
immanent and ever-active Eeason, to which they owe
their reality or significance, interpretability, and capacity
for being reasoned about.

The ' Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain '
of Leibniz made its appearance in 1765, fully sixty
years after the death of Locke, and about half a cen-
tury after the death of its author. The long neglect
of this great work is another illustration of the favourite
modes of thought in last century. Like Berkeley's
{ Siris ' it was forgotten till the revolution in philosophy

Tlie ' Nouveaux Essais ' overlooked. 293

which followed introduced meaning into its pages.
With his eclectic disposition, Leibniz suggested possi-
bilities of a reconciliation of his own philosophy with
that of Locke, through Locke's " ideas of reflection."
" Perhaps the opinions of this able writer," he says,
"are not so far from mine as they seem to be. For
he grants that there are ideas which do not come from
the senses, and cannot deny that there is much innate
in the mind. The mind is itself innate." But the
4 Nouveaux Essais ' is in spirit, method, and results at
the opposite pole from the 'Essay' of Locke. The
potential rationality of the universe, and the potential
demonstrableness of true philosophy, are at the bottom
of the ' Nouveaux Essais,' and the ideal which Leibniz
sought to realise was the conversion of this potentiality
into an articulate system. Locke's indifference to the
history of thought in its successive evolutions con-
trasts with the habitual endeavour of Leibniz to see
the seeds of truth in systems and speculations the most
alien from his own, and by eclectic criticism to absorb
them into his philosophy. Locke's tendency to solve
philosophical difficulties by physical categories is op-
posite to the spiritual dynamics of his German critic ;
whose " unconscjoui ideas " contradict the assumption
on which the English philosopher always proceeds, —
that " ideas " and conscious intelligence are identical, or
at least two ways of looking at the same thing. With
Leibniz "innate knowledge" is not of necessity con-
scious knowledge, nor knowledge got independently of
continuous personal exertion, as with Locke ; it may be
unconscious as well as conscious, as far as the individual
is concerned, under laws of the spiritual world to which

294 Locke.

there is nothing analogous in nature, which is the realm
of caused causes. The ' Nouveaux Essais ' advanced
upon Locke in the form of anticipations partly of Kant
and partly of Lotze.

The ultimate or metaphysical interpretation of the
universe which is widely accepted in any age or coun-
try, as well as by individuals, depends upon the degree
in which faculties, originally latent in each man, are
drawn forth into conscious exercise. When, as for
the most part in the eighteenth century, external ob-
servation, automatic association, and merely general-
ising understanding are the characteristics, and the
spiritual or supernatural faculties are much left in their
original latency as at birth, — then the prevalent phil-
osophy naturally tends to self -contradictory scientific
agnosticism, which accepts the presuppositions of phys-
ical science, and yet argues for theological nescience
on the ground that metaphysical presupposition is illu-
sion. On the other hand, in periods when reflective
thought is so exaggerated as to leave the sense fac-
ulties comparatively dormant — as with medieval and
modern schoolmen — abstractions come to supersede con-
crete things and persons, and the resulting philosophy
becomes a web of subtle speculation spun out of the
philosopher's thought, — in disregard of facts in ex-
perience which, if recognised, would destroy the unity
of the subtle system, and make its thought "abrupt."
The philosophy that corresponds to the experience of
the complete man acknowledges the need and value of
the empirical elements and methods of knowledge, and
also their subordination to the universalising reason,

Three conflicting Voices. 295

which connects man with the infinite and • eternal. As
Leibniz himself says, " those who give themselves np to
the details of sense and to the natural sciences are" Jed
to despise abstract speculation and idealism, while those
who habitually live among universal principles, rarely
care for or appreciate individual facts. But," in his
own eclectic spirit, he adds, "I equally esteem both."
Bacon, in a like spirit, profoundly remarks that " those
who have handled knowledge have been too much
either men of mere observation or abstract reasoners.
The former are like the ant ; they only collect material
and put it to immediate use. The abstract reasoners
are like spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own
substance. But the bee takes a middle course ; it
gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and
the field, while it transforms and digests what it gathers
by a power not its own. Not unlike this is the work
of the philosopher. For true philosophy relies not
solely on the power of abstract thinking ; :?or does it
take over the matter which it gathers from natural
history and mechanical experiments, only to lay it up
in the memory as it found it ; — for it lays it up altered
and digested by the rational understanding. Therefore
from a closer and better considered alliance between
these two faculties — the empirical and the rational —
such as has never yet been fully realised, much may be
hoped for philosophy in the future."

It is thus that from Locke to Lotze the modern
philosophical world has for two hundred years been
engaged in attempts to solve the speculative problem
that is involved in Locke's practical ' Essay.' The two

296 \S Locke.

intervening Centuries have witnessed a struggle between
two antithetical conceptions of man's intellectual rela-
tion'to life and its realities, which may issue in the end

jCIn a deepened philosophical knowledge both of the
changing phenomena and of the mysterious permanent
implicates of his physical and spiritual experience. One
seems to hear three conflicting voices in the course of
those centuries. The response to the philosophic ques-
tions made by one of them is — that "nothing can be
known because nothing may be presupposed, except in-
deed the mechanical presuppositions of physical science."
An opposite philosophic utterance comes from another
quarter : " The universe may be seen through and through,
and its secret is revealed in the light of the Divine Rea-
son that is immanent in it." These two voices are apt
to overyear the third, which pleads that man may see
enough to justify the faith that he is living and moving
and having his being in a universe in which Nature is
in harmo^ with, yet subordinate to, the ethical and
spiritual Order with which his higher faculties connect

, him ; and that the more his latent faith or inspiration is
made to respond, by reflection and by the facts of his-
tory, the more clearly each man can see the little that is
intellectually visible at the human point of insight, and
the more wisely and religiously he can direct his life.

297

APPENDIX.

LOCKE'S WORKS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
OF PUBLICATION.

When in Holland.

1. Contributions to the ' Bibliotheque Universelle ' — (a)

Methode Nouvelle de dresser des Recueils ; (6) Re-
view of Boyle's ' De Specificorum Remediorum cum
Corpusculari Philosophia Concordia' ; (c) Epitome of
the ' Essay/ &c, 1686-88

When in London.

2. Epistola de Tolerantia,1 March 1689

3. Two Treatises on Government, . . . February 1690

4. Essay concerning Human Understanding, . March 1690

5. Second Letter for Toleration, . . . October 1690

When at Oates before the Commissionership.

6. Some Considerations on the Consequence of Lowering

the Rate of Interest and Raising the Value of
Money, 1691

7. A Third Letter for Toleration, 1692

8. Some Thoughts concerning Education (dedicated to

Clarke of Chipley), July 1693

9. Second Edition of Essay concerning Human Under-

standing, 1694

10. Third Edition of Essay concerning Human Under-
standing, 1695

1 Popple's translation in the following summer.

298 Locke9 s Works.

11. For Encouraging the Coining of Silver Money, and

after for keeping it here, . ■ . . . .1695

12. Further Considerations concerning Raising the Value

of Money, 1695

13. The Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the

Scriptures, ....... June 1695

14. A Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity

from Mr Edwards' Reflections, .... 1695

"When at Oates during the Commissionership.

15. Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Chris-

tianity, 1697

16. A Letter to the Bishop of "Worcester (Stillingfleet)

concerning some Passages relating to Mr Locke's
Essay of Human Understanding in a late Discourse
of his Lordship's in Vindication of the Trinity, . 16j)7

17. Mr Locke's Reply to the Bishop of "Worcester's Answer

to his Letter, ........ 1697

18. Mr Locke's Reply to the Bishop of "Worcester's Answer

to his Second Letter, ...... 1699

19. Fourth Edition of Essay concerning Human Under-

standing, . 1700

Posthumous.

20. A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St Paul to

the Galatians, First and Second Corinthians, Romans,
and Ephesians. To which is prefixed an Essay for
the Understanding of St Paul's Epistles by consult-
ing St Paul himself, 1705-7

21. A Discourse of Miracles, . . . . • • 1706

22. A Fourth Letter for Toleration (fragment), . . 1706

23. An Examination of Father Malebranche's Opinion of

Seeing all Things in God, ...... 1706

24. The Conduct of the Understanding, .... 1706

25. Memoirs relating to the Life of Anthony, First Earl of

Shaftesbury, 1706

Locke's Works. 299

26. Some Familiar Letters between Mr Locke and several

of his friends, 1706

27. The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, . . 1720

28. A Letter giving an account of the Debates in the

House of Lords in April and May 1675,. . . 1720

29. Remarks upon some of Mr Norris's Books, wherein he

asserts Father Malebranche's Opinion of our Seeing

all Things in God, 1720

30. Elements of Natural Philosophy, .... 1720

31. Some Thoughts concerning Reading and Study for a

Gentleman, 1720

32. Rules of a Society which met once a-week for their

Improvement in Useful Knowledge, and for the
Promotion of Truth and Christian Charity, . . 1720

33. Letters to Anthony Collins and others, . . . 1720

34. Observations upon the Growth and Culture of Vines

and Olives, written in 1679, . . . . .1766

Some writings which have been published as Locke's are not
sufficiently authenticated — among others an ' Introductory Dis-
course to Churchill's Collection of Voyages,' containing a history
of Navigation, with a Catalogue of Books of Travels (1704), ' The
History of our Saviour Jesus Christ, related in the Words of
Scripture ' (1705), and ' Select Moral Books of the Old Testament
and Apocrypha Paraphrased ' (1706). No. 28 of the preceding
has also been doubted, although it was included by Des Maizeaux
in his " collection " (1720), under the direction of Anthony Collins.

END OF LOCKE.

OS

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