Born, at Wrington, Somerset, 29 Aug. 1632. At Westminster School, 1646[?]–52. Matric. Ch. Ch., Oxford, as Junior Student, 27 Nov. 1652; B.A., 14 Feb. 1656; M.A., 29 June 1658; Greek Lecturer, 1661; Reader in Rhetoric, 1662; Censor of Moral Philosophy, 1663. Student at Gray’s Inn, 1656. Incorporated at Cambridge, 1663. Sec. to Sir Walter Vane on embassy to Brandenburg, Dec. 1665 to Feb. 1666. Settled again at Oxford on his return to England. F.R.S., 23 Nov. 1668. Studied medicine, and practised as physician. B. Med., Oxford, 6 Feb. 1675. Resided in house of first Earl of Shaftesbury, as physician, from 1667. Visit to France, Sept. 1672. Sec. of Presentations to Earl of Shaftesbury, when latter became Lord Chancellor, Nov. 1672. Sec. to Council of Trade, Oct. 1673–75. At Montpellier, for health, Dec. 1675 to March 1677. In Paris, as tutor to a son of Sir John Banks, May 1677 to June 1678; at Montpellier, Oct. to Nov. 1678; in Paris, Nov. 1678 to April 1679. Returned to England. Resided chiefly with Earl of Shaftesbury, 1679–81; at Oxford, 1681–83. Being suspected of treason, retired to Holland, autumn of 1683. Expelled from studentship at Ch. Ch., Oxford, Nov. 1684. In Holland, 1683–89. Returned to England, Feb. 1689. Commissioner of Appeals, 1689–1704. Lived at Westminster, 1689–91; removed to Oates, High Laver, Essex, 1691. Mem. of Council of Trade, May 1696 to 1700. Lived at Oates, boarding in household of Sir Francis Masham, 1700–04. Died at Oates, 28 Oct. 1704. Buried in High Laver Churchyard. Works: “Methode nouvelle de dresser les Recueils,” 1686 (English trans., called: “A New Method of Making Commonplace Books,” 1697); “Epistola de Tolerantia,” 1689 (English trans. by W. Popple, same year); “A Second Letter concerning Toleration” (signed: “Philanthropus”), 1690; “A Third Letter” (signed: “Philanthropus”), 1690; “An Essay concerning Humane Understanding,” 1690; “Two Treatises of Government” (anon.), 1690; “Five Letters concerning the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures” (anon.; attrib. to Locke), 1690; “Some Considerations of the consequences of the Lowering of Interest” (anon.), 1692; “Some Thoughts concerning Education” (anon.), 1693; “The Reasonableness of Christianity” (anon.), 1695; “Short Observations on a printed paper intituled, ‘For encouraging the Coining of Silver Money in England’” (anon.), 1695; “Further Considerations Concerning Raising the Value of Money,” 1695; “Letter to the … Lord Bishop of Worcester,” 1697; “Reply to the Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to his Letter,” 1697; “Reply to the Bishop’s Answer to his Second Letter,” 1697; “A Commonplace Book in reference to the Holy Bible” (anon.; attrib. to Locke), 1697. Posthumous: “A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians” (6 pts.), 1705–1707; “The History of Our Saviour” (anon.; attrib. to Locke), 1705; “Select Moral Books of the Old Testament … paraphrased” (anon.; attrib. to Locke), 1706; “A Paraphrase and Notes on the First Epistle … to the Corinthians” (anon.), 1706; “Posthumous Works,” 1706; “Some Familiar Letters,” 1708; “Remains,” 1714; “A Collection of several Pieces,” 1720; “Elements of Natural Philosophy” [1750?]; “Some thoughts on the conduct of the Understanding,” 1762; “Observations upon the Growth and Culture of Vines and Olives,” 1766; “Discourses translated from Nicole’s ‘Essays,’” ed. by T. Hancock, 1828; “Original Letters of Locke, A. Sidney and Lord Shaftesbury,” ed. by T. Forster, 1830. He edited: Æsop’s “Fables,” 1703. Collected Works: in 3 vols., 1714; in 10 vols., 1823. Life: by H. R. Fox Bourne, 1876; by T. Fowler, 1880.

Personal

  If we consider his genius and penetrating and exact judgment, or the strictness of his morals, has scarce any superior, and few equals, now living.

  John Locke lives very quietly with us, and not a word ever drops from his mouth that discovers anything of his heart within. Now his master is fled, I suppose we shall have him altogether. He seems to be a man of very good converse, and that we have of him with content; as for what else he is he keeps it to himself, and therefore troubles not us with it nor we him.

  Mr. Locke being, as your Lordship is truly informed, a person who was much trusted by the late Earl of Shaftesbury, and who is suspected to be ill-affected to the Government, I have for divers years had an eye upon him; but so close has his guard been on himself, that after several strict inquiries, I may confidently affirm there is not any one in the college, however familiar with him, who has heard him speak a word either 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.

  To the Right Reverend Father in God, John, Lord Bishop of Oxon, Dean of Christ-Church, and our trusty and well-beloved the Chapter there.
  Right Reverend Father in God, and trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well. Whereas we have received information of the factions and disloyal behaviour of Locke, one of the students of that our College; we have thought fit hereby to signify our will and pleasure to you, that you forthwith remove him from his said student’s place, and deprive him of all the rights and advantages thereunto belonging, for which this shall be your warrant; and so we bid you heartily farewell. Given at our Court at Whitehall, 11th day of November, 1684.—By His Majesty’s Command

  Sir,—Being of opinion that you endeavoured to embroil me with women and by other means, I was so much affected with it, as that when one told me you were sickly and would not live, I answered ’twere better if you were dead. I desire you to forgive me this uncharitableness. For I am now satisfied that what you have done is just, and I beg your pardon for my having hard thoughts of you for it, and for representing that you struck at the root of morality, in a principle you laid down in your book of ideas, and designed to pursue in another book, and that I took you for a Hobbist. I beg your pardon also for saying or thinking that there was a design to sell me an office, or to embroil me. I am your most humble and unfortunate servant.

  Feby. By six weeks’ lodging to Mrs. R. Pawling during my stay in London, 36s. By a breast of mutton, 1s. 1d. By 3¹/₂ yds. grey cloth, 55s. By 5 yds. silk, for a waistcoat, at 6s.=32s. 6d. By one pair worsted hose, 4s. 4d. By 4¹/₂ 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 Rhenish 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, 1s. By a porter for a basket for E. Masham, 8d. By Gooseberrys and strawberrys, 8s. 2¹/₂d. By milk, 5s. 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. Cudworth, 23s. 10d. By a brasse locke for my Lady Masham, 6s. 6d. By Thomas Baley for a peruke, 60s. Oct. 7. 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.

  I began a course of chemistry under the noted chemist and rosicrucian Peter Sthael of Strasburg, a strict Lutheran, and a great hater of women. The club consisted of ten, whereof were Frank Turner, now Bishop of Ely, Benjamin Woodroof, now canon of Christ Church, and John Locke of the same house, now a noted writer. This same John Locke was a man of a turbulent spirit, clamorous, and never contented; while the rest of our club took notes from the mouth of their master, who sat at the upper end of a long table, the said Locke scorned to do this; but was for ever prating and troublesome.

  You will not, perhaps, dislike to know, that the last scene of Mr. Locke’s life was no less admirable than any thing else in him. All the faculties of his mind were perfect to the last; but his weakness, of which only he died, made such gradual and visible advances, that few people, I think, do so sensibly see death approach them as he did. During all which time, no one could observe the least alteration in his humour,—always chearful, civil, conversible, to the last day, thoughtful of all the concerns of his friends, and omitting no fit occasion of giving Christian advice to all about him. In short, his death was like his life,—truly pious, yet natural, easy, and unaffected; nor can time, I think, ever produce a more eminent example of reason and religion than he was, living and dying.

  He knew something of almost everything which can be useful to mankind, and was thoroughly master of all that he had studied, but he showed his superiority by not appearing to value himself in any way on account of his great attainments. Nobody assumed less the airs of a master, or was less dogmatical, and he was never offended when any one did not agree with his opinions…. He considered civility not only as something agreeable and proper to gain people’s hearts, but as a duty of Christianity, which ought to be more insisted on than it commonly is…. His conversation was very agreeable to all sorts of people, and even to ladies; and nobody was better received than he was among people of the highest rank…. Those who courted the acquaintance of Mr. Locke to collect what might be learned from a man of his understanding, and who approached him with respect, were surprised to find in him not only the manners of a well-bred man, but also all the attention which they could expect…. He was very charitable to the poor, provided they were not the idle or the profligate, who did not frequent any church, or who spent their Sundays in an alehouse. He felt, above all, compassion for those who, after having worked hard in their youth, sunk into poverty in their old age. He said, that it was not sufficient to keep them from starving, but that they ought to be enabled to live with some comfort. He sought opportunities of doing good to deserving objects; and often in his walks he visited the poor of the neighbourhood, and gave them the wherewithal to relieve their wants, or to buy the medicines which he prescribed for them if they were sick, and had no medical aid. He did not like any thing to be wasted; which was, in his opinion, losing the treasure of which God has made us the economists. He himself was very regular, and kept exact accounts of every thing…. He was kind to his servants, and showed them with gentleness how he wished to be served. He not only kept strictly a secret which had been confided to him, but he never mentioned anything which could prove injurious, although he had not been enjoined to secrecy; nor did he ever wrong a friend by any sort of indiscretion or inadvertency.

  Mr. Locke had a great knowledge of the world, and of the business of it. Prudent without being cunning; he won people’s esteem by his probity, and was always safe from the attacks of a false friend, or a sordid flatterer. Averse to all mean complaisance; his wisdom, his experience, his gentle and obliging manners, gained him the respect of his inferiours, the esteem of his equals, the friendship and confidence of the greatest quality. Without setting up for a teacher, he instructed others by his own conduct. He was at first pretty much disposed to give advice to such of his friends as he thought wanted it; but at length, finding that, “good counsels are very little effectual in making people more prudent,” he grew much more reserved in that particular. I have often heard him say, that the first time he heard that maxim, he thought it very strange; but that experience had fully convinced him of the truth of it…. But then Mr. Locke was very liberal of his counsels, when they were desired; and no body ever consulted him in vain. An extreme vivacity of mind, one of his reigning qualities, in which perhaps he never had an equal; his great experience, and the sincere desire he had of being serviceable to all mankind; soon furnished him with the expedients, which were most just and least dangerous. I say, the least dangerous; for what he proposed to himself before all things was to lead those, who consulted him, into no trouble…. Mr. Locke, above all things, loved order…. Never man employed his time better than Mr. Locke.

  In October 1704, his disorder greatly increased: on the 27th of that month, Lady Masham not finding him in his study as usual, went to his bedside, when he told her that the fatigue of getting up the day before had been too much for his strength, and that he never expected to rise again from his bed. He said that he had now finished his career in this world, and that in all probability he should not outlive the night, certainly not to be able to survive beyond the next day or two. After taking some refreshments he said to those present that he wished them all happiness after he was gone. To Lady Masham, who remained with him, he said that he thanked God he had passed a happy life, but that now he found that all was vanity, and exhorted her to consider this world only as a preparation for a better state hereafter. He would not suffer her to sit up with him, saying, that perhaps he might be able to sleep, but if any change should happen, he would send for her. Having no sleep in the night, he was taken out of bed and carried into his study, where he slept for some time in his chair; after waking, he desired to be dressed, and then heard Lady Masham read the Psalms apparently with great attention, until perceiving his end to draw near, he stopped her, and expired a very few minutes afterwards about three o’clock in the afternoon of the 28th October, in his 73d year.

  We consider Locke as one of the best examples of the Christian character…. We admire Locke as an example of the manly Christian character; and the union of vast intellectual strength with calm and fervent devotion, so beautifully displayed in his life and writings, shows what our religion is when it resides in a powerful mind and an open heart. In the intercourse of the world, his gentleness was like that of childhood; his object was to make others happy, and while he exerted himself for this purpose, he kept a guard over his manners that he might not give pain by the slightest inattention; for he well knew, that there are many who will do kindnesses to others, but will not regard the little things on which the comfort of life depends. But though nothing could exceed his mildness in familiar conversation, which made friends of all who ever knew him, he was firm as a rock on every point of duty, and no fear of slander or injury, nor even of exile or bondage, could induce him to refrain from expressing his convictions, or retract one word which he had deliberately spoken to the world. In these respects, he was tried, and not found wanting; and the cause of civil and religious freedom numbers him among those noble spirits, who, in every age, have put forth their gigantic strength to break the arm of the oppressor and to set the prisoner free.

  John Locke hated tyranny and persecution as a philosopher; but his intellect and his temper preserved him from the violence of a partisan. He had lived on confidential terms with Shaftesbury, and had thus incurred the displeasure of the court. Locke’s prudence had, however, been such that it would have been to little purpose to bring him even before the corrupt and partial tribunals of that age. In one point, however, he was vulnerable. He was a student of Christ Church in the University of Oxford. It was determined to drive him from that celebrated college the greatest man of whom it could ever boast; but this was not easy. Locke had, at Oxford, abstained from expressing any opinion on the politics of the day. Spies had been set about him. Doctors of divinity and masters of arts had not been ashamed to perform the vilest of all offices, that of watching the lips of a companion in order to report his words to his ruin. The conversation in the hall had been purposely turned to irritating topics, to the Exclusion Bill, and to the character of the Earl of Shaftesbury, but in vain. Locke never broke out, never dissembled, but maintained such steady silence and composure as forced the tools of power to own with vexation that never man was so complete a master of his tongue and of his passions. When it was found that treachery could do nothing, arbitrary power was used. After vainly trying to inveigle Locke into a fault, the government resolved to punish him without one. Orders came from Whitehall that he should be ejected, and those orders the dean and canons made haste to obey.

  He was pre-eminently a philosopher—that is, a lover of wisdom. Whether, till late in life at any rate, it ever occurred to him that he could teach much to the world may well be doubted. For a long while he was content to do all he could in teaching himself. With that object he studied all that Oxford could provide for him; all that, in his student’s quarters at Christ Church, in the society of friends outside of the university, and in the more bustling scenes that he occasionally visited, he could learn of the ways and thoughts of men, and the best means of helping them to lead worthy and happy lives. With that object he read all the books that came in his way, romances and travel-books as well as abstruse treatises of every sort, and applied himself with special eagerness, not only to the medical and kindred researches that were directly connected with the practical work to which he was anxious to devote his life, but also to every other scientific pursuit that he deemed useful in disclosing the secrets of nature and promoting the welfare of mankind. With that object, also he accustomed himself to write down his thoughts on all kinds of subjects, not, it would seem, with the design of giving them to the world, but in order thus to be the better able to test their value, and see how much truth was in them.

  His epitaph, in Latin, was written by himself, and the reader may be curious to see it in English: “Stay, traveler: near this place lies JOHN LOCKE. If you ask what sort of man he was, the answer is that he was contented with his modest lot. Bred a scholar, he used his studies to contend for truth alone. This you may learn from his writings, which will show you any thing else that may be said about him more faithfully than the doubtful eulogies of an epitaph. His virtues, if he had any, were too slight for him to offer them to his own credit or as an example to you. Let his vices be buried with him. Of good life you have an example, should you desire it, in the Gospel; of vice, would there were none any where; of mortality, surely (and you may profit by it) you have one here and every where. That he was born on the 29th of August, 1632, and that he died on the 28th of October, in the year of our Lord 1704, this tablet, which itself will quickly perish, is a record.

  An ancestral connection with Locke was not a source of pride to Southey; he respected neither the philosopher’s politics nor his metaphysics; still, it is pleasant, he says, to hear of somebody between one’s self and Adam who has left a name.

  We are too apt, I think, to dismiss this author from our thoughts as a man full only of dreary metaphysic subtleties; and support the belief with the story that our Jonathan Edwards read his treatise on the “Human Understanding” with great delight at the age of fourteen. Yet Locke, although a man of the keenest and rarest intellect—which almost etherialized his looks—was possessed of a wonderful deal of what he would have called “hard, round-about sense;” indeed it would be quite possible to fill a whole calendar with bits of his printed talk that would be as pitpat and common-sensical as anything in “Poor Richard’s Almanac.” Moreover, he could, on occasions, tell a neat and droll story, which would set the “table in a roar.”

  So ended the prudent, moderate, and tranquil life, pious and inquisitive, which began at Wrington and 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 neighbours 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 inscription 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.” Especially in that remote rural scene, the tomb of Locke may touch the imagination of the wayfarer. According to tradition, Sir Isaac Newton was one of the first who visited it.

Letters on Toleration, 1689–90

  How far are we, at this moment, from adopting these admirable principles! and with what absurd confidence do the enemies of religious liberty appeal to the authority of Mr. Locke for continuing those restrictions on conscience which he so deeply lamented!

  It is hard to say, whether mankind are more indebted to this illustrious person as a philosopher, or as a politician. The publication of his great work undoubtedly fixed an era in the history of science: But his writings, and his personal exertions in favour of liberty, and more especially of religious Toleration, may be truly said to have had a greater effect than can be ascribed to the efforts of any other individual who bore a part in the transactions of that important period. The true doctrines of Toleration were first promulgated by him, and in their fullest extent; for he maintained the whole stretch of the principle, that opinion is not a matter cognizable by the civil magistrate, and that belief, being the result of reason, is wholly independent of the will, and neither the subject of praise nor of blame, far less the object of punishment or of reward.

  A complete and satisfactory work.

  Locke’s position is given in the “Letters on Toleration,” the first of which sufficiently indicates his position. The others, devoted to meeting the cavils of an antagonist, consist chiefly of incessant and wearisome repetitions of the same arguments. As in his other controversies, Locke has no mercy upon the patience of his reader.

  The authorship of the “Letters on Toleration,” though it could hardly fail to be pretty generally known, was first distinctly acknowledged by Locke in the codicil to his will. Limborch, on being hard pressed, had divulged it, in the spring of 1690, to Guenellon and Veen, but they appear, contrary to what generally happens in such cases, to have kept the secret to themselves. Locke, however, was much irritated at the indiscretion of Limborch, and for once wrote him an angry letter. “If you had entrusted me with a secret of this kind, I would not have divulged it to relation, or friend, or any mortal being, under any circumstances whatsoever. You do not know the trouble into which you have brought me.”

On the Human Understanding, 1690

  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 and undigested thoughts, on a subject I had never before considered, which I set down against our next meeting, gave the first entrance into this discourse; which, having been begun by chance, was continued by entreaty; written by incoherent parcels, and after long intervals of neglect, returned 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.

  To none do we owe for a greater advancement in this part of philosophy, [logic] 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, which I think may be properly termed logic, than are to be met with in all the volumes of the ancients. He has clearly overthrown 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 significations.

  Which may as well qualify for business and the world as for the sciences and a university. No one has done more towards the recalling of philosophy from barbarity into use and practice of the world, and into the company of the better and politer sort, who might well be ashamed of it in its other dress. No one has opened a better or clearer way to reasoning.

  After clearing the way by setting aside the whole doctrine of innate notions and principles, both speculative and practical, the author traces all ideas to two sources, sensation and reflection; treats at large of the nature of ideas simple and complex; of the operation of the human understanding in forming, distinguishing, compounding, and associating them; of the manner in which words are applied as representations of ideas; of the difficulties and obstructions, in the search after truth, which arise from the imperfections of these signs; and of the nature, reality, kinds, degrees, casual hindrances, and necessary limits of human knowledge.

  It may be said that Locke created the science of Metaphysics, in somewhat the same way as Newton created Physics…. To understand the soul, its ideas and its affections, he did not study books; they would have misdirected him; he was content to descend within himself, and after having, so to speak, contemplated himself a long while, he presented in his “Essay” the mirror in which he had seen himself. In one word, he reduced Metaphysics to that which it ought to be, viz. the experimental physics of the mind.

  Perhaps it was for mankind a lucky mistake (for it was a mistake) which Mr. Locke made when he called his book, An Essay on Human Understanding. For some part of the inestimable benefit of that book has, merely on account of its title, reached to many thousands more than, I fear, it would have done, had he called it (what it is merely) A Grammatical Essay, or a Treatise on Words, or on Language.

  The endless disputations of the learned led him to suspect that they had their origin in an improper use of words and a defective use of conceptions; which he proposed to rectify by ascertaining the grounds and extent of human knowledge, through investigation of the properties of the human understanding. This was the origin of his renowned work on the Human Understanding, by which he justly acquired the greatest distinction for the modesty and tolerance of his way of thinking, the clearness and rectitude of his understanding, evinced in the course of a correspondence with the most accomplished men of his day, and his penetrating acuteness and manly honesty. He so far adopted Bacon’s principles that he pursued the method of experiment and observation, in preference to that of speculation; applying it principally to our inner nature. His method of philosophizing has many advantages, but at the same time some great defects; especially that of avoiding the great obstacles and difficulties in the course of philosophical knowledge instead of directly sounding them by a more radical and a deeper research…. Locke’s great object and merit, was the investigation of the origin, reality, limits, and uses of knowledge…. Locke has also suggested some admirable ideas on Language, and the abuses to which it is liable…. It was the object of Locke to liberate philosophy from vain disputations and unprofitable niceties; but his work had the effect of discouraging, by the facility and accommodating character of its method, more profound investigation; at the same time that he gave a popular air to such inquiries, diminishing the interest they excited, and affording advantages to Eclecticism and Materialism.

  Locke met with general acceptance, just because his system was not so inconsistent with the recognized moral principles and feelings of his time; and the exposition of his views, though prolix, was yet easy of comprehension—or, at least, seemed so.

  As the antagonists chiefly contemplated by Mr. Locke were the followers of Descartes, perhaps the only proposition for which he must necessarily be held to contend was, that the mind has no ideas which do not arise from impressions on the senses, or from reflections on our own thoughts and feelings. But it is certain that he sometimes appears to contend for much more than this proposition; that he has generally been understood in a larger sense; and that, thus interpreted, his doctrine is not irreconcilable to those philosophical systems with which he has been supposed to be most at variance.

  No serious work is less read than that of Locke. I very much doubt whether there be a single person in Paris who has perused from beginning to end the “Essay on the Human Understanding.” It is much talked of and quoted, but always upon trust…. In most other books, even of little value, there are some instructive or amusing passages, but in the Essay there is nothing to console you; it is as dreary as a vast Arabian desert. Not the smallest oasis, not a single inch of verdure, to afford the weary traveller a temporary refreshment…. The proper title of the work is not “An Essay on the Human Understanding,” but “An Essay on the Understanding of John Locke.” It is, in fact, a full length portrait of the author, executed to the life. We recognise at the first glance a man of natural good sense and honesty, but completely bewildered and led astray by party spirit, besides being absolutely deficient in power of thinking and in the most ordinary philosophical learning…. The icy dulness of his style would have destroyed, in a great measure, the effect of his detestable doctrines; but it was warmed into life in the hot-houses of Paris, and there brought forth the revolutionary monster that has devoured Europe. Contempt of Locke is the beginning of wisdom.

  Locke is also a child of Descartes: he is imbued with his spirit and his method; he rejects every other authority than that of reason, and he sets out from the analysis of consciousness; but, instead of seeing all the elements which it comprehends, without rejecting, entirely, the interior element, liberty and intelligence, he considers more particularly the exterior element, he is above all struck with sensation. The philosophy of Locke is a branch of Cartesianism, but it is a straggling one, like Spinozism.

  It is the glory of Newton and Locke, to have directed their labors at once, and with all the necessary zeal and perseverance, to the most important subjects in physical and intellectual science; and the splendor of the results corresponded with, or even surpassed, all that might have been expected from the excellence of the new method, and the extraordinary talent of those who made the application of it. It does not belong to our subject to insist on the value of the astonishing discoveries of Newton. The efforts of Locke in an equally or still more interesting field, were hardly less successful, although the truths he has made known, from their entirely abstract character, are somewhat less fitted to attract the attention and excite the imagination of the world at large…. In the “Essay on the Human Understanding,” intellectual science appeared for the first time in a clear and intelligible shape, unmingled with the vain and visionary fancies which had previously disfigured it, and accessible to the plain good sense of every cultivated mind. This great work is, and will probably always remain, the text-book of the noblest branch of human learning. What higher honor could mortal ambition attain or aspire to, than that of achieving it? It is not, perhaps, free from errors; for what work of the same extent was ever faultless? But of the exceptions that have been taken to it, the most considerable have been or will be overruled by the great tribunal of public opinion; and those that are better founded, are of too little consequence to affect its general value.

  It is perhaps the first, and still the most complete, chart of the human mind which has been laid down, the most ample repertory of truths relating to our intellectual being, and the one book which we are still compelled to name as the most important in metaphysical science. Locke had not, it may be said, the luminous perspicuity of language we find in Descartes, and, when he does not soar too high, in Malebranche; but he had more judgment, more caution, more patience, more freedom from paradox, and from the sources of paradox, vanity, and love of system, than either.

  Few among the great names in philosophy have met with a harder measure of justice from the present generation than Locke, the unquestioned founder of the analytic philosophy of mind, but whose doctrines were first caricatured, then, when the reaction arrived, cast off by the prevailing school even with contumely, and who is now regarded by one of the conflicting parties in philosophy as an apostle of heresy and sophistry; while among those who still adhere to the standard which he raised, there has been a disposition in later times to sacrifice his reputation in favor of Hobbes; a great writer and a great thinker for his time, but inferior to Locke not only in sober judgment but even in profundity and original genius. Locke, the most candid of philosophers, and one whose speculations bear on every subject the strongest mark of having been wrought out from the materials of his own mind, has been mistaken for an unworthy plagiarist, while Hobbes has been extolled as having anticipated many of his leading doctrines.

  Reiterated depreciation had somewhat defaced his image in my mind. The time came however when, for the purposes of this history, I had to read the “Essay on Human Understanding” once more, carefully, pen in hand. The image of John Locke was again revived within me; this time in more than its former splendor. His modesty, honesty, truthfulness, and directness I had never doubted; but now the vigor and originality of his mind, the raciness of his colloquial style, the patient analysis by which he has laid open to us such vast tracts of thought, and above all, the manliness of his truly practical understanding, are so strongly impressed upon me, that I feel satisfied the best answer to his critics is to say, “Read him.” From communion with such a mind as his, nothing but good can result. He suggests as much as he teaches.

  Its empiricism is clear as day. The mind, according to it, is in itself bare, and only a mirror of the outer world,—a dark space which passively receives the images of external objects; its whole content is made by the impressions furnished it by material things. Nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu—is the watchword of this standpoint…. It is true that Locke was not always logically consistent, and in many points did not thoroughly carry out his empiricism: but we can clearly see that the road which will be taken in the farther development of this direction, will result in a thorough denial of the ideal factor.

  It is impossible to deny that the immortal “Essay” is disfigured by serious blemishes—by some errors, and many inconsistencies and ambiguities. The latter flowed chiefly from that figurative and popular style which is yet one of its most attractive, as well as serviceable features; but partly also from the desultory manner in which the “Essay” was composed, and the length of time (nearly twenty years) occupied in its completion. This allowed, it is true, time for elaboration; but it also allowed time for the “sleepy nods” which proverbially overtake a man in a “long work;” and for those variations which are sure to characterise every large edifice when it is an aggregate of accretions. Hence the apparent, and sometimes real consistencies and ambiguities of expression which are found in Locke’s frequent repetitions of the same or similar thoughts, and which have made it possible for critics to fight so long even over the fundamental principles of his philosophy.

  Locke himself, by his training and associations, would naturally occupy the ground of mediation. His education as a physician, his sympathy with the new physics which were coming into notice, and his cool and tolerant temper, all contributed to this tendency. The temper of his times was practical rather than speculative, cautious rather than adventurous, critical and analytic rather than bold and dogmatic. The Essay on the human understanding did not attain the form in which we find it, till the sixth edition. The first edition contains not even the rudiment of the celebrated chapter on the Association of Ideas, which subsequently obtained such extensive currency among English psychologists, and so decided an influence over English speculation. This is the more surprising if we consider that Hobbes distinctly recognizes the law of association and attaches to it great importance. In the first edition the distinction between desire and will—of which so much was subsequently made, is not recognized—the necessitarianism of Hobbes is broadly asserted, and liberty is limited to the power of acting…. It should be observed also that the essay is more logical or metaphysical than psychological in its aims. Sir Isaac Newton terms it “your book of ideas,” in a letter of apology to its author. The criticisms upon it and the replies which they called forth, indicate that its doctrine of ideas was the chief feature which attracted the public attention. If we compare the essay with the Port Royal Logic, then well known in England, and especially if we view attentively Locke’s own account of the design of his essay, we shall be satisfied that he did not so much propose to give a complete outline of the powers of man as to analyze the different forms of human knowledge into their ultimate elements. The critics and antagonists of Locke all confirm this view. They criticize and assail his positions on the ground of their supposed inconsistency with important theological, practical, or scientific truths rather than in respect to their psychological validity.

  It was the most renowned treatise of its time. It was the book of its generation. Its fame, as we have already noted, was not confined to Great Britain and Ireland, but extended to France, Germany, and even Italy. Its author was believed to have taken a new departure in the study of mind. His doctrines were accepted as the truth by all parties, believers and skeptics alike. He was the master metaphysician; and we have found that the imperfection of his work lay not in his method, which was the only true one, but in his neglect to observe it steadfastly in his own practice.

  Probably intended by his father to be a theologian, certainly intending himself to be a physician, and deeply imbued all through his life by a religious spirit while he was persistent in his devotion to medical pursuits, these diverse, though not in his case contrary, influences greatly affected his philosophical studies. It was at no time possible for him to believe that he could find out everything, or even to desire, in this life, to do so; least of all did he desire, or was it possible for him, so to reject all that he could not understand as to lose his belief in God or to take no account of him in his studies; he only thought that he should serve God best by striving to find out what powers of intellect he had endowed men with and how they ought to use them. This may have been to a certain degree a bias, and may to some extent have led him towards dogmatism; but never was an avowed theologian more free from either fault…. No man ever strove more, or did more, to bring metaphysics out of the desert of idle speculation or the dreamland of foolish fancy into the domain of common-sense and every-day life; and no metaphysician ever concerned himself more, or more worthily, with the practical business of his own time and country.

  The conditions and surrounding that matured Locke are distinctly opposed to those which produce the great German thinkers. It is, indeed, especially when compared with the German school that Locke’s genius appears most striking. Both have travelled on the long and difficult journey after truth. Both have reaped the gratitude of mankind. But their paths diverged. Locke found food for thought in the brilliant yet boisterous age which surrounded him at the courts of kings and the mansions of great noblemen, while the master minds of Germany seem to have been inspired only by the solitude of great universities and the silence of great libraries. Locke developed the “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” in the excitement and turmoil of London life, amidst a marvellous variety of active pursuits. Kant evolved the “Kritik der Reinen Vernunft” in the solitudes of Konigsberg. Kant devoted a life to his work, Locke a few leisure hours. Locke was the amateur, Kant the professional. Yet the amateur can scarce be mentioned with less gratitude or respect.

  Many of its individual doctrines, doubtless, could not now be defended against the attacks of hostile criticism, and some even of those which are true in the main, are inadequate or one-sided. But its excellence lies in its tone, its language, its method, its general drift, its multiplicity of topics, the direction which it gave to the thoughts and studies of reflecting men for many generations subsequent to its appearance…. He may almost be said to have recreated that philosophy. There is hardly a single French or English writer (and we may add Kant) down to the time of Dugald Stewart, or even of Cousin, Hamilton, and J. S. Mill, who does not profess either to develope Locke’s system, or to supplement, or to criticise it. Followers, antagonists, and critics alike seem to assume on the part of the reader a knowledge of the “Essay on the Human Understanding,” and to make that the starting-point of their own speculations. The office which Bacon assigns to himself with reference to knowledge generally might well have been claimed by Locke with reference to the science of mind. Both of them did far more than merely play the part of a herald, but of both alike it was emphatically true that they “rang the bell to call the other wits together.”

  It is an earnest appeal in favour of devotion to the attainment of truth, and an exposure of all the various sources of error, moral and intellectual; more especially prejudices and bias. There are not, however, many references to book study; and such as we find are chiefly directed to the one aim of painful and laborious examination, first, of an author’s meaning, and next of the goodness of his arguments.

  He received £30 for the copyright, about the same sum as Kant received, ninety-one years after, for his “Kritik of Pure Reason,”—the philosophical complement to the “Essay.” These two great works are the fountains of the philosophy of our epoch, the one dominating philosophical thought in the eighteenth, and the other, partly by reaction, in the nineteenth century.

  You will not find this world of Locke an exciting one.

  Became at once the leading philosopher of his time…. Locke’s authority as a philosopher was unrivalled in England during the first half of the eighteenth century, and retained great weight until the spread of Kantian doctrines. His masculine common sense, his modesty and love of truth have been universally acknowledged; and even his want of thoroughness and of logical consistency enabled him to reflect more fully the spirit of a period of compromise. His spiritual descendant, J. S. Mill, indicates his main achievement by calling him the “unquestioned founder of the analytic philosophy of mind.” By fixing attention upon the problem of the necessary limits of thought and investigating the origin of ideas, his writings led to the characteristic method of his English successors, who substituted a scientific psychology for a transcendental metaphysic. His own position, however, was not consistent, and very different systems have been affiliated upon his teaching. His famous attack upon “innate ideas” expressed his most characteristic tendency, and was generally regarded as victorious; but critics have not agreed as to what is precisely meant by “innate ideas,” and Hamilton, for example, maintains that if Locke and Descartes, at whom he chiefly aimed, had both expressed themselves clearly, they would have been consistent with each other and with the truth. Hume’s scepticism was the most famous application of Locke’s method; but Reid and his follower Dugald Stewart, while holding that the theory of “ideas” accepted by Locke would logically lead to Hume, still hold that a sound philosophy can be constructed upon Locke’s method, and regard him as one of the great teachers. In France, Locke’s name is said to have been first made popular by Fontenelle. He was enthusiastically admired by Voltaire and by d’Alembert, Diderot, Helvetius, and their contemporaries. Condillac, his most conspicuous disciple in philosophy, gave to his teaching the exclusively sensational turn which Locke would have apparently disavowed.

  Notwithstanding its enormous influence, the “Essay” contains very little in the way of definite solution of philosophical problems. The results attained by Hobbes and by Berkeley are as much more definite than Locke’s as their literary style is superior to his. The place of Locke in English philosophy is like that of Kant in German philosophy. He takes up the problem of “criticism of knowledge,” and determines the questions that his successors shall put to themselves. Berkeley is directly dependent on Locke for his starting-point, as Hume is in turn on Berkeley and Locke.

On Education

  Education in England has been in danger of being hurt by two of its greatest men, Milton and Locke. Milton’s plan is impracticable, and I suppose has never been tried. Locke’s, I fancy, has been tried often enough, but is very imperfect: it gives too much to one side, and too little to the other; it gives too little to literature.

  He has uttered, to say the least, more good sense on the subject than will be found in any preceding writer. Locke was not like the pedants of his own or other ages, who think that to pour their wordy book-learning into the memory is the true discipline of childhood…. Much has been written, and often well, since the days of Locke: but he is the chief source from which it has been ultimately derived; and, though the “Emile” is more attractive in manner, it may be doubtful whether it is as rational and practicable as the “Treatise on Education.” If they have both the same defect, that their authors wanted sufficient observation of children, it is certain that the caution and sound judgment of Locke have rescued him better from error. There are, indeed, from this or from other causes, several passages in the “Treatise on Education” to which we cannot give an unhesitating assent. Locke appears to have somewhat exaggerated the efficacy of education. This is an error on the right side in a work that aims at persuasion in a practical matter; but we are now looking at theoretical truth alone.

  When an English University established an examination for future teachers, the “special subjects” first set were “Locke and Dr. Arnold.” The selection seems to me a very happy one. Arnold greatly affected the spirit and even the organization of our public schools at a time when the old schools were about to have new life infused into them, and when new schools were to be started on the model of the old. He is perhaps the greatest educator of the English type, i.e., the greatest educator who had accepted the system handed down to him and tried to make the best of it. Locke on the other hand, whose reputation is more European than English, belongs rather to the continental type. Like his disciple Rousseau and like Rousseau’s disciples the French Revolutionists, Locke refused the traditional system and appealed from tradition and authority to reason. We English revere Arnold, but so long as the history of education continues to be written, as it has been written hitherto, on the Continent, the only Englishman celebrated in it will be as now not the great schoolmaster but the great philosopher.

  The great defect of this tractate (but its brevity makes the defect of less importance) is its singular want of method. In fact, it appears never to have undergone revision. The author seems to throw together his remarks and precepts without any attempt at order, and he never misses any opportunity of repeating his attacks on what he evidently regarded as being, in his own time, the main hindrances to the acquisition of a sound understanding—prejudice and pedantry. But in justness of observation, incisiveness of language, and profound acquaintance with the workings of the human mind, there are many passages which will bear comparison with anything he has written…. Except for the inveterate and growing custom of confining works employed in education to such as can be easily lectured on and easily examined in, it is difficult to understand why this “student’s guide,” so brief, and abounding in such valuable cautions and suggestions, should have so nearly fallen into desuetude.

  One of the most attractive traits in Locke’s character was his sympathy with children. One feels that, childless though he was, yet in writing these counsels concerning their proper education, he is performing a labor of love. The work is remarkable for the due and catholic regard evinced for every means of education necessary for a perfect manhood, in body as well as in knowledge and character. But there is in it no false sentimentalism. The truest love is the firmest.

  Virtue, practical worldly wisdom, good-breeding, and last, “though this may seem strange in the mouth of a bookish man,” learning, as something which may be easily and incidentally had “into the bargain,” are the objects of education in the order of their importance. To this extent character is the product of education, as knowledge is of experience, so that here again Locke is most modern and most German.

  The ideas on education first mooted in an irregular and jesting manner by Rabelais, then developed and made current in good society by Montaigne, were popularised in England by Locke, and through him exercised a mighty influence over Europe in the Émile of Rousseau. Although Locke’s “Thoughts on Education” are probably little read in the present day, they have had a powerful effect on the attitude of English society toward education, and, consciously or unconsciously, they determine the character of our most characteristic educational institution, the English public school. These schools, on their intellectual sides the creation of John Sturm and the Jesuits, have been deeply penetrated by the spirit of naturalism, but we imagine that few of those who defend the fresh air and healthy exercise, the self-government and the savoir faire which our public schools provide with such success, have any idea that the principles which they support from prejudice have their origin in the theories of two such philosophers as Locke and Rousseau.

  Of all Locke’s works, “Some Thoughts Concerning Education” is perhaps the most universally approved, and it is in truth a golden treatise, the very incarnation of good sense and right feeling; and more useful in its own time than it can be now that the errors which Locke especially assailed have become contrary, instead of congenial, to the general spirit of the age. The prevailing tone, the confidence in human nature rightly treated, the abhorrence of the merely arbitrary and despotic, render the work an epoch in the history of culture, and, compared with the coarse maxims of a Defoe, or even the “Whole Duty of Man’s” exclusive reliance upon authority, show how greatly Locke was beyond his contemporaries in enlightenment and the genuine spirit of humanity. The insight and penetration into children’s characters are surprising in a man who had no children of his own, or much direct concern with the education of the children of others. They prove that Locke must have been a most careful and accurate observer. If there is a fault in the treatise, it is that the range of view is not always sufficiently wide, and that the author’s precepts are too exclusively propounded with reference to the individual, and too little with a view to the general advantage of society.

On Government

  For my own part, I must confess, that, in these latter chapters of Locke on Government, I see, what sometimes appears in his other writings, that the influence of temporary circumstances on a mind a little too susceptible of passion and resentment, had prevented that calm and patient examination of all the bearings of this extensive subject which true philosophy requires.

  In 1669 a Constitution for the Carolinas was framed by the celebrated John Locke; and so widely different is practical statesmanship from profound philosophy, that it was found altogether unmanageable, grounded on principles extremely illiberal and wholly inconsistent with its author’s theoretical love of freedom. It was universally disliked and vehemently opposed; nor did the colony, according to the common tradition, ever enjoy a day of peace or happiness under it, till in 1693 it was abandoned and the old government restored.

  Hobbes seems to have been one of the first who had any thing like a distinct perception of the real source of wealth…. Locke, however, had a much clearer apprehension of this doctrine. His “Essay on Civil Government,” published in 1689, is, in fact, the earliest work in which the true sources of wealth are distinctly pointed out…. Locke has here all but completely established the fundamental principle which lies at the bottom of the science of wealth…. But though Locke gave, in the passage referred to above, a far more distinct and comprehensive statement of the fundamental 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 either by his contemporaries or by subsequent inquirers. Locke was not himself aware of the vast importance of the principle he had developed; and three-quarters of a century elapsed before it began to be generally 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.

  John Locke hated tyranny and persecution as a philosopher; but his intellect and his temper preserved him from the violence of a partisan.

  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 unprovided 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 subsistence. 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…. Locke’s appeals to ethical principles in the “Treatise on Government” usually presuppose that they are founded in the reason or nature of things, independently of utilitarian 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 Puffendorf.

Commentaries

  It contains [“On St. Paul”] much important truth and some very considerable errors. Locke read St. Paul with great attention, and yet missed his meaning on some leading subjects. His ideas of the person of Christ, of the doctrine of justification by faith, and the character and privileges of the Christian Church, are grossly erroneous. But, apart from his theological errors, his work possesses very considerable merit. He set the example, in English, of a style of criticizing the New Testament which was afterwards followed by Pierce and Benson, who, in a series of similar works, completed the epistolary part of the New Covenant.

  Locke himself is far from being a scriptural writer…. He concurred with the Arminians, and was intimate with their leaders in Holland…. Whatever desire of peace and union among Christians may have actuated him, we cannot but consider that his influence has been decidedly prejudicial to the pure gospel of Christ…. We cannot acquit him of a tendency to Socinian principles. His works must therefore be read with caution.

  It is needless to remark that these commentaries are distinguished by sound, clear sense, and by a manifest spirit of candour and fairness. They are often quoted with approbation by commentators of the last century. But in the present more advanced state of grammatical and historical criticism, they are likely to remain, as they now are, the least consulted of all his works.

General

  I will forbear to speak of the valuableness of his works. The general esteem they have attained, and will preserve, as long as good sense and virtue are left in the world; the service they have been of to England in particular, and universally to all that set themselves seriously to the search of truth, and the study of christianity, are their best eulogium. The love of truth is visible in every part of them. This is allowed by all that have read them. For even they, who have not relished some of Mr. Locke’s opinions, have done him the justice to confess, that the manner, in which he defends them, shows he advanced nothing that he was not sincerely convinced of himself.

  After all, we must admit that anybody who has read Locke, or rather who is his own Locke, must find the Platos mere fine talkers, and nothing more. In point of philosophy a chapter of Locke or Clarke is, compared with the babble of antiquity, what Newton’s optics are compared with those of Descartes.

  The clearness of Mr. Locke’s head renders his language perspicuous, the learning of Stillingfleet’s clouds his. This is an instance of the superiority of good sense over learning, towards the improvement of every language.

  Every rational admirer of Mr. Locke will acknowledge, that if his learning had been equal to his good sense and manly spirit, his works would have been still more creditable to himself, and more useful to mankind.

  Perspicuous and pure, but almost without any ornament whatever.

  Locke was a man of an uncommonly clear and masculine understanding, and greatly superior to many of his most distinguished contemporaries, who, instead of being contented to trace facts and phenomena as he has done, idly bewildered themselves in the invention of fanciful theories. His work forms too memorable an epoch in the annals of literature, not to render it improper that it should be omitted even in this slight essay towards a history of the English language.

  Perhaps no writer can be named, of ancient or of modern times, to whom mankind are under more extensive obligations than Mr. Locke. By his “Essay on Human Understanding” he effected what may well be called, a complete revolution of opinion in metaphysics. Metaphysics, which had so long and so justly lain under the reproach of bewildering the understanding in a maze of words, destitute of real meaning—metaphysics, which had so long discoursed in an unintelligible jargon, became in the hands of Mr. Locke a most interesting and important branch of true philosophy. By his Treatises on Government and Toleration, he fixed the civil and religious rights of mankind upon a firm and immovable basis: and in his theological works he exhibited the Reasonableness of Christianity, and the solidity of the evidence on which our holy religion is founded, in a clear, perspicuous, and convincing point of view.

  The affectation of passing for an original thinker glares strongly and ridiculously in Mr. Locke. Who sees not that a great part of his Essay on Man is taken from Hobbes? and almost everything in his Letters on Toleration from Bayle? Yet he nowhere makes the least acknowledgment of his obligations to either of those writers. They were both of them indeed writers of ill fame. But was that a reason for his taking no notice of them? He might have distinguished between their good and ill deserts.

  The studies to which Mr. Stewart has devoted himself have lately fallen out of favour with the English public; and the nation which once placed the name of Locke immediately under those of Shakspeare and of Newton, and has since repaid the metaphysical labours of Berkeley and of Hume with such just celebrity, seems now to be almost without zeal or curiosity as to the progress of the Philosophy of Mind.

  Locke himself, indeed, was a good Christian; but this is only one instance more that he who first opens a new line of thought very seldom pursues it so far as to perceive even its most inevitable consequences. If we adopt his principles, we must inevitably renounce all other thoughts, and limit ourselves to the feeling, the experience, and the enjoyment of the senses: and those who in later times have openly professed these notions, although they called themselves independent philosophers, were in truth only the disciples of Locke.

  Few books have contributed more than Mr. Locke’s Essay to rectify prejudice; to undermine established errors; to diffuse a just mode of thinking; to excite a fearless spirit of inquiry, and yet to contain it within the boundaries which Nature has prescribed to the human understanding…. His writings have diffused throughout the civilized world, the love of civil liberty and the spirit of toleration and charity in religious differences, with the disposition to reject whatever is obscure, fantastic, or hypothetical in speculation,—to reduce verbal disputes to their proper value,—to abandon problems which admit of no solution,—to distrust whatever cannot clearly be expressed,—to render theory the simple expression of facts,—and to prefer those studies which most directly contribute to human happiness. If Bacon first discovered the rules by which knowledge is improved, Locke has most contributed to make mankind at large observe them…. If Locke made few discoveries, Socrates made none: yet both did more for the improvement of the understanding, and not less for the progress of knowledge, than the authors of the most brilliant discoveries. Mr. Locke will ever be regarded as one of the great ornaments of the English nation; and the most distant posterity will speak of him in the language addressed to him by the poet, “O Decus Angliacæ certé, O Lux altera gentis!”

  In regard to style, it is generally agreed that the prose of Locke is the best of his times; and it requires no great knowledge of the English to perceive in it the manners of a man who has lived in the best society, and who expresses his thoughts without pedantry, in the most clear, most simple, and most familiar terms…. I need not tell you that the eminent characteristic of this style is clearness.

  Locke, himself a clear, humble-minded, patient, reverent, nay, religious man, had paved the way for banishing religion from the world. Mind, by being modelled in men’s imaginations into a shape, a visibility; and reasoned of as if it had been some composite, divisible and reunitable substance, some finer chemical salt, or curious piece of logical joinery—began to lose its immaterial, mysterious, divine, though invisible character; it was tacitly figured as something that might, were our organs fine enough, be seen. Yet, who had ever seen it? Who could ever see it? Thus by degrees it passed into doubt, a relation, some faint possibility; and at last into a highly probable nonentity.

  In his language Locke is, of all philosophers, the most figurative, ambiguous, vacillating, various, and even contradictory;—as has been noticed by Reid and Stewart, and Brown himself,—indeed, we believe, by every author, who has had occasion to comment on this philosopher. The opinions of such a writer are not, therefore, to be assumed from isolated and casual expressions, which themselves require to be interpreted on the general analogy of his system.

  From 1792 to 1800 I seldom heard Locke mentioned in England: his system, it was said, had become obsolete, and he was regarded as weak in ideology.

  In our own country, in like manner, the immortal Locke, under James II., was a student persecuted and silent: the world received no benefit from the labours of his thoughts. But the lapse of a few years and the renewal of a free form of government saw him cherished and admired; saw him give to mankind his “Treatise on Government,” his “Reasonableness of Christianity,” his “Essay on Toleration,” his “Essay on the Human Mind,” and contribute more, perhaps, than any individual who can be mentioned, to the best interests of his fellow-creatures, by contributing to remove obscurity from the mind, servility from the heart, and dogmatism from the understanding.

  One of the wisest of Englishmen…. That Locke never read Hobbes may seem incredible, but is, we are convinced, the truth. It is one among many examples of how few were the books he had read. He never alludes to Hobbes in any way that can be interpreted into having read him. Twice only, we believe, does he allude to him, and then so distantly, and with such impropriety, as to be almost convincing with respect to his ignorance…. It is strange that any man should have read Locke, and questioned his originality. There is scarcely a writer we could name whose works bear such an indisputable impress of his having “raised himself above the almsbasket, and not content to live lazily on scraps of begged opinions, set his own thoughts to work to find and follow truth.” It is still more strange that any man should have read Locke and questioned his power. That patient sagacity which, above all things, distinguishes a philosopher, is more remarkable in Locke than almost any writer. He was also largely endowed with good sense; a quality, Gibbon remarks, which is rarer than genius. In these two qualities, and in his homely racy masculine style, we see the type of the English mind, when at its best.

  His reputation has been great, but his wrongs have been as memorable as his celebrity…. He was an honest man, and great alike in integrity and power. His moral courage was calm, self-sustained, and of the highest order. It sometimes disposed him almost to rashness. Nevertheless, his wisdom in most things was greater than commonly falls to the lot even of the wise. He was a sincere lover of truth and of humanity. If we except Lord Bacon, no single mind in modern times has exercised so powerful an influence on the progress of philosophy.

  His style and language are everywhere clear, simple, and idiomatic to the highest degree; not always quite elegant, it is true, but invariably addressing itself directly to the understanding of a plain, cautious, and intelligent reader. It should be distinctly remembered that Locke is the steady and professed enemy of all scholastic and learned phraseology; and perhaps the very skill with which he has popularised his difficult and important subject may have tended to diminish our sense of the obligations which science owes to his name: he has himself often furnished us with arms which we have become so dextrous in using, that we forget they were not of our own invention—a fate which awaits almost all who have simplified human knowledge.

  Though, like the other greater luminaries of philosophy and science, Locke has shone on with tolerably uniform lustre, he has had, like most of them, his periods, if not of waxing and waning, yet of brighter effulgence or transient obscuration. He seems to us labouring under some such partial eclipse at present. In the reaction against the sensational schools of the last century—in itself a happy revolution—he has been in some danger of having his merits underrated from his presumed connexion with the extravagancies of those schools…. The principal characteristics of the genius of Locke are visible at once to the reader in almost every page. No author has impressed the image of his own mind more indelibly on his works, or given them a character of more perfect originality. Hence, in part, and in great part, the continued popularity they possess, and the delight and profit with which they are perused; delight and profit, as usual, often greater than can be reaped from writings less marked indeed by defects, and even by errors, but tamer in character, and less stimulating to the mind of the student…. As to the learning of Locke, it has, like that of Shakspeare, been most variously estimated. While some would make him almost ignorant of what his predecessors had written, and such a very Troglodyte in metaphysics that he was not properly acquainted even with such writers as Descartes or Hobbes,—others are of opinion (with Stillingfleet) that he is under vast but unconscious obligations to them. The truth lies, as usual, between the extreme estimates. To suppose that a mind so inquisitive and powerful as Locke’s should not have been tolerably conversant with the principal productions of philosophers, is extravagant; to suppose that a mind so original and independent should be a servile imitator, is equally so. If any man ever thought for himself, it was Locke. He avows it everywhere, that he had faithfully endeavoured to trace the origin and analyse the composition of thought in his own mind, totally careless what might or might not be the opinions of others. His whole work bears the marks of this; and if he has erred, it is in not having sufficiently and carefully examined the opinions of others.

  Locke was in religion the avowed disciple of Chillingworth, and in politics the highest representative of the principles of Harrington; and it was on the double ground of the sanctity of an honest conviction, and of the danger of enlarging the province of the civil magistrate, that he defended toleration against the theologians of Oxford.

  Newton attained at most an incomplete idea of space, and was only a mathematician. Locke, almost as poor, gropes about, hesitates, does little more than guess, doubt, start an opinion to advance and withdraw it by turns, not seeing its far-off consequences, nor, above all, exhausting anything. In short, he forbids himself lofty questions, and is very much inclined to forbid them to us. He has written a book to inquire what objects are within our reach, or above our comprehension. He seeks for our limitations; he soon finds them, and troubles himself no further.

  The doubt which Voltaire praised in Locke had nothing to do with that shivering mood which receives overmuch poetic praise in our day, as the honest doubt that has more faith than half your creeds. There was no question of the sentimental juvenilities of children crying for light. It was by no means religious doubt, but philosophic; and it affected only the possibilities of ontological knowledge, leaving the grounds of faith on the one hand, and practical conduct on the other, exactly where they were. His intense feeling for actualities would draw Voltaire irresistibly to the writer who, in his judgment, closed the gates of the dreamland of metaphysics, and banished the vaulting ambition of à priori certainties, which led nowhere and assured nothing.

  The intellectual ruler of the eighteenth century…. Locke’s candour breathes in every line of his work. He has an unmistakable right to his place in that roll-call of eminent believers which is to this day thundered from pulpits against the pride of the infidel. No child or clergyman of the present time could accept the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures with a simpler faith than this intellectual progenitor of the whole generation of eighteenth-century iconoclasts—the teacher of Toland and Collins, the legitimate precursor of Hume and of Condillac, the philosopher before whom Voltaire is never tired of prostrating himself with unwonted reverence. There is no sign of a consciousness that biblical criticism may turn out to be a destructive agent, and scarcely of a consciousness that it exists. Like Chillingworth, whose congenial intellect excites his admiration, he accepts the authority at once of reason and of the Bible; and never suspects that there will be any difficulty in serving the two masters.

  His style is slovenly but clear: that is to say, there is no possibility of mistaking his meaning. The meaning in his case being the result of important and forcible thought, his directness of expression has gained him credit as a writer which is not strictly deserved.

  Setting apart the extraordinary merits of Locke’s contributions to thought, as a mere writer he may be said to exhibit the prose of the Restoration in its most humdrum form. We have now progressed too far into the new period to expect to find the faults of the old lumbering and stately prose, nor are these in the slightest degree the faults of Locke. But his style is prolix, dull, and without elevation; he expresses himself with perfect clearness indeed, but without variety or charm of any kind. He seems to have a contempt for all the arts of literature, and passes on from sentence to sentence, like a man talking aloud in his study, and intent only on making the matter in hand perfectly clear to himself.

  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 eighteenth century—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 Leibniz, and then of Kant and of Hegel has extended; in Britain the reaction is marked in Coleridge…. What strikes one about Locke and his fortunes, besides the large place which he fills in the history of modern opinion—religious and political as well as metaphysical—is the difficulty of interpreting his philosophy 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.

  Can hardly be classed otherwise than as a mercantilist, and must even be written down as a systematic upholder of the errors of that system. Nevertheless, in respect of certain theories in detail,—such as property, which he bases upon work done, and money, the debasing of which he loudly condemned in spite of Lowndes and Barbon,—he has claims to originality and soundness.

  It would be absurd to say that Locke’s style is nervous, or original, or instinct with any impulse of feeling, or stimulated by any current of imagination. But it is almost always correct; it flows evenly and smoothly, and has dignity and even grace, if it lacks variety and force…. If Locke is never original in his style, and never shows the force and vigour of one who speaks straight to the deeper instincts of human nature, we must still accord to him the praise of regularity, of dignity, of scrupulous accuracy in diction, up to the measure of logical accuracy to which his thought attained.