No More Learning

The
official studies of the university were uncongenial to him; he
would have preferred to have learned philosophy from Descartes
instead of from Aristotle; but, evidently, he satisfied the au-
thorities, for he was elected to a senior studentship in 1659, and,
in the three or four years following, he took part in the tutorial
work of the college. At one time, he seems to have thought of
the clerical profession as a possible career; but he declined an
offer of preferment in 1666, and, in the same year, obtained a
dispensation which enabled him to hold his studentship without
taking orders. About the same time, we hear of his interest in
experimental science, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal
Society in 1668. Little is known of his early medical studies.
He cannot have followed the regular course, for he was unable
to obtain the degree of doctor of medicine. It was not till 1674
that he graduated as bachelor of medicine. In the following
January, his position in Christ Church was regularised by his
appointment to one of the two medical studentships of the college.
His knowledge of medicine and occasional practice of the art
led, in 1666, to an acquaintance with lord Ashley (afterwards,
from 1672, earl of Shaftesbury). The acquaintance, begun ac-
cidentally, had an immediate effect on Locke's career. Without
severing his connection with Oxford, he became a member of
Shaftesbury's household, and seems soon to have been looked
upon as indispensable in all matters domestic and political. He
saved the statesman's life by a skilful operation, arranged a
suitable marriage for his heir, attended the lady in her confine-
ment, and directed the nursing and education of her son-
afterwards famous as the author of Characteristics. He assisted
Shaftesbury, also, in public business, commercial and political,
and followed him into the government service. When Shaftesbury
was made lord chancellor in 1672, Locke became his secretary for
presentation to benefices, and, in the following year, was made
secretary to the board of trade. In 1675, his official life came
to an end, for the time, with the fall of his chief.
Locke's health, always delicate, suffered from the London
climate. When released from the cares of office, he left England
in search of health. Ten years earlier, he had had his first ex-
perience of foreign travel, and of public employment, as secretary
to Sir Walter Vane, ambassador to the elector of Brandenburg
during the first Dutch war. On his return to England, early in
1666, he declined an offer of further service in Spain, and settled


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330
John Locke
again in Oxford, but was soon induced by Shaftesbury to spend
a great part of his time in London. On his release from office, in
1675, he sought milder air in the south of France, made leisurely
journeys, and settled down for many months at Montpellier. The
journal which he kept at this period is full of minute descriptions
of places and customs and institutions. It contains, also, a record
of many of the reflections that afterwards took shape in the Essay
concerning Human Understanding. He returned to England in
1679, when his patron had again a short spell of office. He does
not seem to have been concerned in Shaftesbury's later schemes ;
but suspicion naturally fell upon him, and he found it prudent
to take refuge in Holland. This he did in August 1683, less
than a year after the flight and death of Shaftesbury. Even in
Holland, for some time, he was not safe from danger of arrest
at the instance of the English government; he moved from town
to town, lived under an assumed name and visited his friends
by stealth. His residence in Holland brought political occupations
with it, among the men who were preparing the English revolution.
It had at least equal value in the leisure which it gave him for
literary work, and in the friendships which it offered. In parti-
cular, he formed a close intimacy with Philip van Limborch, the
leader of the Remonstrant clergy, and the scholar and liberal
theologian to whom Epistola de Tolerantia was dedicated.
This letter was completed in 1685, though not published at the
time; and, before he left for England, in February 1689, the
Essay concerning Human Understanding seems to have attained
its final form, and an abstract of it was published in Leclerc's
Bibliothèque universelle in 1688.
The new government recognised his services to the cause of
freedom by the offer of the post of ambassador either at Berlin
or at Vienna. But Locke was no place hunter; he was solicitous,
also, on account of his health ; his earlier experience of Germany
led him to fear the cold air' and 'warm drinking’; and the high
office was declined. But he served less important offices at
home. He was made commissioner of appeals in May 1689, and,
from 1696 to 1700, he was a commissioner of trade and plantations
at a salary of £1000 a year. Although official duties called him
to town for protracted periods, he was able to fix his residence in
the country. In 1691, he was persuaded to make his permanent
home at Oates in Essex, in the house of Sir Francis and lady
Masham. Lady Masham was a daughter of Cudworth, the
Cambridge Platonist; Locke had manifested a growing sympathy


## p. 331 (#353) ############################################

An Essay concerning Human Understanding 331
with his type of liberal theology ; intellectual affinity increased his
friendship with the family at Oates ; and he continued to live with
them till his death on 28 October 1704.
With the exception of the abstract of the Essay and other
less important contributions to the Bibliothèque universelle,
Locke had not published anything before his return to England
in 1689; and, by this time, he was in his fifty-seventh year. But
many years of reflection and preparation made him ready now
to send forth books from the press in rapid succession. In March
1689, his Epistola de Tolerantia was published in Holland ; an
l
English translation of the same, by William Popple, appeared
later in the same year, and, in a corrected edition, in 1690. The
controversy which followed this work led, on Locke's part, to
the publication of a Second Letter, and then of a Third Letter,
in 1690 and 1692 respectively. In February 1690, the book
entitled Two Treatises of Government was published, and in
March of the same year appeared the long expected Essay con-
cerning Human Understanding, on which he had been at work
intermittently since 1671. It met with immediate success, and
led to a voluminous literature of attack and reply; young
fellows of colleges tried to introduce it at the universities, and
heads of houses sat in conclave to devise means for its suppression.
To one of his critics Locke replied at length. This was Edward
Stillingfieet, bishop of Worcester, who, in his Vindication of the
Doctrine of the Trinity (1696), had attacked the new philosophy.
It was the theological consequences which were drawn from the
doctrines of the Essay not so much by Locke himself as by
Toland, in his Christianity not mysterious, that the bishop had
chiefly in view; in philosophy for its own sake he does not seem
to have been interested. But his criticism drew attention to
one of the least satisfactory (if, also, one of the most suggestive)
doctrines of the Essay—its explanation of the idea of substance;
and discredit was thrown on the 'new way of ideas' in general.
In January 1697, Locke replied in A Letter to the Bishop of
Worcester. Stillingfleet answered this in May; and Locke was
ready with a second letter in August. Stillingfleet replied in
1698, and Locke's lengthy third letter appeared in 1699. The
bishop's death, later in the same year, put an end to the con-
troversy. The second edition of the Essay was published in 1694,
the third in 1695, and the fourth in 1700. The second and fourth
editions contained important additions. An abridgment of it
appeared in 1696, by John Wynne, fellow of Jesus college,


## p. 332 (#354) ############################################

332
John Locke
1
1
Oxford; it was translated into Latin and into French soon after
the appearance of the fourth edition. The later editions contain
many modifications due to the author's correspondence with
William Molyneux, of Trinity college, Dublin, a devoted disciple, for
whom Locke conceived a warm friendship. Other correspondents
and visitors to Oates during these years were Sir Isaac Newton
and Anthony Collins, a young squire of the neighbourhood, who
afterwards made his mark in the intellectual controversies of the
time!
Other interests also occupied Locke during the years following
the publication of his great work. The financial difficulties of the
new government led, in 1691, to his publication of Some Con-
siderations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, and
Raising the Value of Money, and of Further Considerations
on the latter question, four years later. In 1693 he published
Some Thoughts concerning Education, a work founded on letters
written to a friend, and, in 1695, appeared The Reasonableness of
Christianity, and, later, A Vindication of the same against certain
objections; and this was followed by a second vindication two
years afterwards.
Locke's religious interest had always been
strongly marked, and, in the later years of his life, much of his
time was given to theology. Among the writings of his which
were published after his death are commentaries on the Pauline
epistles, and a Discourse on Miracles, as well as a fragment of
a fourth Letter on Toleration. The posthumously published
writings include, further, An Examination of Father Male-
branche's Opinion of seeing all things in God, Remarks on Some
of Mr Norris's Books, and most important of all—the small
treatise on The Conduct of the Understanding, which had been
originally designed as a chapter of the Essay.
Locke opened a new way for English philosophy. Stillingfleet
saw dangers ahead in that way; but its discovery was Locke's
title to fame. It was no new thing, certainly, to lay stress upon
- method. Herein, he followed the example of Bacon and Hobbes
and other pioneers of modern philosophy. Bacon had done more:
he had found dangers and defects in the natural working of men's
minds, and had devised means to correct them. But Locke went
a step further, and undertook a systematic investigation of the
human understanding with a view to determining something else
-namely, the truth and certainty of knowledge, and the grounds
* The productions of Collins, Toland, and the other deistical writers will be dealt
with in the next volume of this work.


## p. 333 (#355) ############################################

The Main Problems of the Essay 333
of belief, on all matters about which men are in the habit of
making assertions. In this way he introduced a new department,
or a new method, of philosophical enquiry, which has come to be
known as theory of knowledge, or epistemology; and, in this
respect, he was the precursor of Kant and anticipated what Kant
called the critical method.
We have Locke's own account of the origin of the problem
in his mind. He struck out a new way because he found the
old paths blocked. Five or six friends were conversing in his
room, probably in London and in the winter of 1670—1, 'on a
subject very remote from this'; the subject, as we learn from
another member of the party, was the 'principles of morality
and revealed religion’; but difficulties arose on every side, and
no progress was made. Then, he goes on to say,
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 ou;
own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, or were not,
fitted to deal with.
At the request of his friends, Locke agreed to set down his
thoughts on this question against their next meeting; and he
expected that a single sheet of paper would suffice for the purpose.
So little did he realise the magnitude of the issues which he raised
"and which were to occupy his leisure for nearly twenty years.
Locke's interest centres in the traditional problems—the nature
of self, the world and God, and the grounds of our knowledge
of them. We reach these questions only in the fourth and last
book of the Essay. But to them the enquiry of the first three
books is preliminary, though it has, and Locke saw that it had,
an importance of its own. His introductory sentences make this
plain :
Since it is the understanding that gets man above the rest of sensible
beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has over
them; it is certainly a subject, even for its nobleness, worth our labour to
inquire into. The understanding, like the eye, while it makes us see and
perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and
pains to set it at a distance and make it its own object. But whatever be the
difficulties that lie in the way of this inquiry; whatever it be that keeps us so
much in the dark to ourselves; sure I am that all the light we can let in upon
our minds, all the acquaintance we can make with our own understandings,
will not only be very pleasant, but bring us great advantage, in directing our
thoughts in the search of other things.
Locke will not ‘meddle with the physical consideration of
the mind'; he has no theory about its essence or its relation
to the body; at the same time, he has no doubt that, if due pains


## p. 334 (#356) ############################################

334
John Locke
be taken, the understanding can be studied like anything else:
we can observe its objects and the ways in which it operates upon
them. All the objects of the understanding are described as
ideas, and ideas are spoken of as being in the mind'. Locke's
first problem, therefore, is to trace the origin and history of
ideas, and the ways in which the understanding operates upon
them, in order that he may be able to see what knowledge is
and how far it reaches. This wide use of the term 'idea' is
inherited from Descartes. The term in modern psychology which
corresponds with it most nearly is ‘presentation. ' But presentation
is, strictly, only one variety of Locke's idea, which includes, also,
representation and image, percept, and concept or notion. His
usage of the term thus differs so widely from the old Platonic
meaning that the danger of confusion between them is not great.
It suited the author's purpose, also, from being a familiar word
in ordinary discourse as well as in the language of philosophers.
Herein, however, lay a danger from which he did not escape.
In common usage 'idea' carries with it a suggestion of contrast
with reality; and the opposition which the 'new way of ideas'
excited was due to the doubt which it seemed to cast on the claim
of knowledge to be a knowledge of real things.
The Essay is divided into four books; the first is a polemic
against the doctrine of innate principles; the others deal with ideas,
with words, and with knowledge respectively. The first book is
remarkable for the way in which the author brings to bear upon
the question all the facts that could then be ascertained regarding
the ideas and beliefs of primitive and savage races. He points to
the variety of human experience, and to the difficulty of forming
general and abstract ideas, and he ridicules the view that any
such ideas can be antecedent to experience. It is in its most
extreme form that the doctrine of innate ideas is attacked; but he
cannot see any alternative between that form and his own view
that all ideas have their origin in experience.
Locke wishes to avoid any presupposition about matter, or
mind, or their relation. It is not difficult to see that the notions
which he has expelled often re-enter unbidden. But the peculiar
value of his psychology consists in his attempt to keep clear of
them. He begins neither with mind nor with matter, but with
ideas. Their existence needs no proof: 'everyone is conscious of
them in himself, and men's words and actions will satisfy him that
they are in others. ' His first enquiry is 'how they come into the
* Cf. Essay, introduction, sec. 2; bk. II, chap. I, sec. 5; bk. 11, chap. VIII, sec. 8.


## p. 335 (#357) ############################################

Sensation and Reflection 335
9
mind'; his next business is to show that they constitute the
whole material of our knowledge. In his answer to the former
question we discover the influence of traditional philosophy, or,
rather, of ordinary commonsense views of existence, upon his
thought. All our ideas, he says, come from experience. The
mind has no innate ideas, but it has innate faculties: it perceives,
remembers, and combines the ideas that come to it from without;
it also desires, wills, and deliberates; and these mental activities
are themselves the source of a new class of ideas. Experience is,
therefore, twofold. Our observation may be employed either
about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations
of our minds. The former is the source of most of the ideas which
we have, and, as it depends 'wholly upon our senses,' is called
“sensation. The latter is a source of ideas which 'every man has
wholly in himself,' and it might be called “internal sense’; to it
he gives the name 'reflection. '
Hence, the peculiarity of Locke's position. There are no
innate ideas 'stamped upon the mind' from birth ; and yet
impressions of sense are not the only source of knowledge : 'the
mind,' he says, 'furnishes the understanding with ideas. ' No
distinction is implied here between 'mind' and 'understanding,'
so that the sentence might run, 'the mind furnishes itself with
ideas. ' As to what these ideas are, we are not left in doubt : they
are 'ideas of its own operations. ' When the mind acts, it has
an idea of its action, that is, it is self-conscious. Reflection, there-
fore, means self-consciousness, and, as such, is assumed to be an
original source of our knowledge. Afterwards both Hume and
Condillac refused to admit reflection as an original source of
ideas, and both, accordingly, found that they had to face the
problem of tracing the growth of self-consciousness out of a
succession of sensations. According to Locke, reflection is an
original, rather than an independent, source of ideas. Without
sensation, mind would have nothing to operate upon, and, there-
fore, could have no ideas of its operations. It is 'when he first
has any sensation' that 'a man begins to have any ideas' The
operations of the mind are not themselves produced by sensation,
but sensation is required to give the mind material for working on.
The ideas which sensation gives 'enter by the senses simple
and unmixed; they stand in need of the activity of mind to
bind them into the complex unities required for knowledge. The
complex ideas of substances, modes and relations are all the
1 Bk. 11, chap. I, sec. 23.
2 Bk. 11, chap. II, seo. 1.
6
>


## p. 336 (#358) ############################################

336
John Locke
6
product of the combining and abstracting activity of mind
operating upon simple ideas, which have been given, without any
connection, by sensation or reflection. Locke's doctrine of know-
ledge has thus two sides. On the one side, all the material of
knowledge is traced to the simple idea. On the other side, the
processes which transform this crude material into knowledge
are activities of mind which themselves cannot be reduced to
ideas. Locke's metaphors of the tabula rasa, white paper,'
and dark room' misled his critics and suggested to some of his
followers a theory very different from his own. The metaphors
only illustrate what he had in hand at the moment. Without
experience, no characters are written on the tablets' of the
mind; except through the 'windows' of sensation and reflection,
no light enters the understanding. No ideas are innate; and
there is no source of new simple ideas other than those two. But
knowledge involves relations, and relations are the work of the
mind; it requires complex ideas, and complex ideas are mental
formations. Simple ideas do not, of themselves, enter into relation
and form complex ideas. Locke does not, like Hobbes before
him and Hume and Condillac after him, look to some un-
explained natural attraction of idea for idea as bringing about
these formations. Indeed, his treatment of the association of
ideas' is an afterthought, and did not appear in the earlier
editions of the Essay.
Starting from the simple ideas which we get from sensation,
or from observing mental operations as they take place, Locke
has two things to explain: the universal element, that is, the
general conceptions with which knowledge is concerned or which
it implies, and the reference to reality which it claims. With
the former problem Locke deals at great length; and the general
method of his exposition is clear enough. Complex ideas arise
from simple ideas by the processes of combination and abstraction
carried out by the mind. It would be unfair to expect complete-
ness from his enterprise ; but it cannot be denied that his intricate
and subtle discussions left many problems unsolved. Indeed, this
is one of his great merits. He raised questions in such a way
as to provoke further enquiry. Principles such as the causal
relation, apart from which knowledge would be impossible, are
quietly taken for granted, often without any enquiry into the
i The same metaphor is used by Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, bk. 1, chap. vr: "The
soul of man being therefore at the first as a book, wherein nothing is, and yet all
things may be imprinted. '


## p. 337 (#359) ############################################

Simple and Complex Ideas 337
grounds for assuming them. Further, the difficulty of accounting
for universals is unduly simplified by describing certain products
as simple ideas, although thought has obviously been at work upon
them. At the outset of his enquiry, simple ideas are exemplified
by yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, and so forth; but, towards
the close of the second book, a very different list is given, which
includes space, time, solidity, motion, power. Having arrived at this
latter point, he seems to forget his view that all knowledge begins
with the particular, with something simple and unmixed. ' Indeed,
his whole doctrine of modes may be said to be based on oblivion
of the fact that a simple idea must be really simple. Instead of
showing how the idea of space is built up out of many particular
sensations (or simple ideas) of particular spaces, he regards
particular spaces as modes of the simple idea space; instead of
showing how the idea of time is evolved from our experience of
particular durations, he calls the latter modes of the simple idea
time; and so on. Unwittingly, he generalises the particular.
He professes to begin with the mere particulars of external or
internal sense, and to show how knowledge-which is necessarily
general-is evolved from them. But, instead of doing so, he
assumes a general or universal element as already given in the
simple idea, and then treats the particular experience as one of
its modes.
Having gone so far, he might almost have been expected to take
a further step and treat the perceptions of particular things as modes
of the simple idea substance. But this he does not do. Substance
is an idea regarding which he was in earnest with his own funda-
mental theory; and the difficulties in which his theory involved
him on this head were both provocative of criticism and fruitful
for the progress of thought. He admits that substance is a
complex idea; that is to say, it is formed by the mind's action
out of simple ideas. Now, this idea of substance marks the
difference between having sensations and perceiving things. Its
importance, therefore, is clear; but there is no clearness in
explaining it. We are told that there is a 'supposed or confused
idea of substance' to which are joined (say) ‘the simple idea
of a dull whitish colour, with certain degrees of weight, hardness,
ductility and fusibility,' and, as a result, we have the idea of
lead. A difficulty might have been avoided if substance could
have been interpreted as simply the combination by the under-
standing of white, hard, etc. , or some similar cluster of ideas of
sensation. But it was not Locke's way thus to ignore facts. He
22
6
E. L. VIII.
CH. XIV.


## p. 338 (#360) ############################################

338
John Locke
1)
sees that something more is needed than these ideas of sensation.
They are only joined to the supposed or confused idea of
substance, which is there and always the first and chief. He
holds to it that the idea is a complex idea and so made by the
mind; but he is entirely at a loss to account for the materials out
of which it is made. We cannot imagine how simple ideas can
subsist by themselves, and so 'we accustom ourselves to suppose
some substratum wherein they do subsist, and this we call
substance. In one place, he even vacillates between the assertions
that we have no clear idea of substance and that we have no idea
of it at all. It is 'a supposition of he knows not what. ' This
uncertainty, as will appear presently, throws its shadow over our
whole knowledge of nature.
The new way of ideas' is thus hard put to it in accounting for
the universal element in knowledge; it has even greater difficulties
to face in defending the reality of knowledge. And, in the latter
case, the author does not see the difficulties so clearly. His view
is that the simple idea is the test and standard of reality.
What-
ever the mind contributes to our ideas removes them further
from the reality of things; in becoming general, knowledge loses
touch with things. But not all simple ideas carry with them the
same significance for reality. Colours, smells, tastes, sounds, and
the like are simple ideas, yet nothing resembles them in the bodies
themselves; but, owing to a certain bulk, figure and motion of their
insensible parts, bodies have a power to produce those sensa-
tions in us. ' These, therefore, are called 'secondary qualities of
bodies. On the other hand, “solidity, extension, figure, motion or
rest, and number' are also held by Locke to be simple ideas; and
these are resemblances of qualities in body; 'their patterns do really
exist in the bodies themselves,' and, accordingly, are 'primary
qualities of bodies? ' In this way, by implication if not expressly,
Locke severs, instead of establishing, the connection between simple
ideas and reality. The only ideas which can make good their claim
to be regarded as simple ideas have nothing resembling them in
things. Other ideas, no doubt, are said to resemble bodily qualities
(an assertion for which no proof is given and none is possible); but
these ideas have only a doubtful claim to rank as simple ideas.
Locke's prevailing tendency is to identify reality with the simple
>
1 A similar distinction between qualities of body was formulated by Galileo, Hobbes
and Descartes; its origin may be traced to Democritus; and the words 'primary' and
'secondary' were occasionally used in this connection by Robert Boyle, Origine of
Formes and Qualities (1666), pp. 10, 43, 100—1; cp. Tracts (1671), introduction, p. 18.


## p. 339 (#361) ############################################

Knowledge. Morality 339
idea, but he sometimes comes within an ace of the opposite view
that the reference to reality is the work of thought.
In the fourth book of his Essay, Locke proceeds to apply these
results so as to determine the nature and extent of knowledge. As
ideas are the sole immediate object of the mind, knowledge can be
nothing else than the perception of the connexion of and agree-
ment, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our ideas. ' This
agreement or disagreement is said to be of four sorts: identity
or diversity; relation; co-existence or necessary connection; real
existence. Each of these kinds of knowledge raises its own
questions; but, broadly speaking, one distinction may be taken
as fundamental. In the same paragraph in which he restricts
knowledge to the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, he
admits one kind of knowledge which goes beyond the ideas
themselves to the significance which they have for real existence.
When the reference does not go beyond the ideas in the mind,'
the problems that arise are of one order; when there is a further re-
ference to real things, another problem arises. The preceding books
have prepared the way for the solution of both sets of problems.
When ideas are together in the mind, we can discover their
relations to one another; so long as they are not taken to
represent archetypes outside the mind, there is no obstacle to
certainty of knowledge: for 'all relation terminates in, and is
ultimately founded on, those simple ideas we have got from sen-
sation or reflection. ' In this way, Locke vindicates the certainty
of mathematics: the science is merely ideal, and its propositions
do not hold of things outside the mind. He thinks, also, that
'morality is capable of demonstration as well as mathematics. '
But, in spite of the entreaties of his friend Molyneux, he never
set out his ethical doctrine in detail. In the second book he had
reduced moral good and evil to the pleasure and pain which—as
reward and punishment-come to us from some lawgiver; thus
they point to a source outside the mind. But his ground for
maintaining the demonstrative character of morality is that moral
ideas are 'mixed modes' and, therefore, mental products, so that
their 'precise real essence . . . may be perfectly known. ' He
ventures upon two examples only of this demonstrative morality;
and neither of them is more than verbal or gives any information
about good or evil. Yet the doctrine is significant as showing the
influence upon Locke of another type of thought, of which there
are many traces, both in the Essay and in his other works.
The real existences to which knowledge extends are self, God,
22-2


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340
John Locke
a
1
and the world of nature. Of the first we have, says Locke, an
/ intuitive knowledge, of the second a demonstrative knowledge, of
the third a sensitive knowledge. This view he proceeds to explain
and defend. - Locke holds that the existence of the self is known
by immediate intuition. Like Descartes, he thinks that doubt on
this head is excluded. But he fails to point out how self can be an
idea and thus belong to the material of knowledge. An idea of
self cannot come from sensation; and the simple ideas of reflection
are all of mental operations, and not of the subject or agent of
these operations. On the other hand, when he had occasion to
discuss personal identity, he followed his new way of ideas, and
made it depend on memory. His proof of the existence of God
belongs to the order called by philosophers cosmological. It starts
with the existence of a thinking self or mind, and argues from this
position to the necessity for an intelligent first cause. Locke
assumes, without question, the validity of the causal principle even
beyond the range of possible experience. It was left for David
Hume to take the momentous step of questioning this principle.
Regarding self and God, therefore, Locke does not show any special
originality of view. It is when he faces the question of the real
existence of external bodies that his doctrine of ideas as the sole
immediate object of the understanding comes into play, and casts
uncertainty upon the propositions of natural science. He does
not, indeed, question the transition from the presence of an idea of
sensation to the existence at that time' of a thing which causes
the idea in us? . Here, he thinks, we have 'an assurance that
deserves the name of knowledge, although he admits that it is
‘not altogether so certain as our intuitive knowledge, or the de-
ductions of our reason employed about the clear abstract ideas of
our own minds. ' Knowledge of this sort is merely sensitive; it does
not extend beyond the present testimony of our senses employed
about particular objects that do then affect them. ' Necessary
connection here is beyond our reach. Any assertion about things,
except in respect of their immediate presence to the sensesmall
the generalisations of natural science, therefore-fall short of
knowledge strictly so called. "God has set some things in broad
daylight*'; but the science of nature is not one of them; there,
as in many other matters, we have only the twilight of proba-
bility’; but probability is sufficient for our purposes. This sober
practical note marks the outcome of the whole enquiry:
1 Bk. iv, chap. XI, sec. 2.
2 Bk. iv, chap. XI, sec. 3.
3 Bk. iv, chap. XI, seo. 9.
4 Bk. iv, chap. XII, sec. 1.
6


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Government
341
our faculties being suited not to the full extent of being, nor to a perfect,
clear, comprehensive knowledge of things free from all doubt and scruple;
but to the preservation of us, in whom they are; and accommodated to the
use of lifel
In his other works Locke's practical interests find ample scope;
he deals with most of the questions that attracted the mind of the
day, and he left upon them the mark of his thought. In Two
Treatises of Government he has two purposes in view: to refute
the doctrine of absolute power, as it had been put forward by
Sir Robert Filmer, and to establish a theory which would reconcile
the liberty of the citizen with political order. The criticism of
Filmer is complete. His theory of the absolute sovereignty of
Adam, and so of kings as Adam's heirs, has lost all interest; and
Locke's argument has been only too effective: the exhaustive reply
to so absurd a thesis becomes itself wearisome. There is little
direct reference to the more enduring work of Hobbes; but this
work seems to have been in Locke's mind when he argued that the
doctrine of absolute monarchy leaves sovereign and subjects in the
state of nature towards one another. The constructive doctrines
which are elaborated in the second treatise became the basis of
social and political philosophy for many generations. Labour is
I
the origin and justification of property; contract or consent is the
ground of government, and fixes its limits. Behind both doctrines
lies the idea of the independence of the individual man. The state of
nature knows no government; but in it, as in political society, men
are subject to the moral law, which is the law of God. Men are
born free and equal in rights. Whatever a man ‘mixes his labour
with is his to use. Or, at least, this was so in the primitive
condition of human life in which there was enough for all and
'the whole earth was America. ' Locke sees that, when men have
multiplied and land has become scarce, rules are needed beyond
those which the moral law or law of nature supplies. But the
origin of government is traced not to this economic necessity, but
to another cause. The moral law is always valid, but it is not
always kept. In the state of nature, all men equally have the
right to punish transgressors: civil society originates when, for
the better administration of the law, men agree to delegate this
function to certain officers. Thus, government is instituted by a
social contract'; its powers are limited, and they involve recip-
rocal obligations; moreover, they can be modified or rescinded by
the authority which conferred them. Locke's theory is thus no
1 Bk. tv, chap. XI, sec. 8.
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John Locke
more historical than the absolutism of Hobbes. It is a rendering
of the facts of constitutional government in terms of thought, and
it served its purpose as a justification of the revolution settlement
in accordance with the ideas of the time.
Locke's writings on economic subjects do not rank in importance
with his treatises on government. They deal with particular ques-
tions raised by the necessities of the political situation. No attempt
had yet been made to isolate the fact of wealth and make it the
subject of a special science? . The direction of industry and
commerce was held to be part of the statesman's duty; but, in
the seventeenth century, it began to be carried out with less
thoroughness than before; and at the same time new problems
were opened up by the growth of the national life. The American
colonies, the enterprise of the East India company, the planting
of Ireland, the commercial rivalry with Holland and with France,
as well as questions regarding the rate of interest and the currency,
occupied the attention of a crowd of writers in the second half of
the century. Sir William Temple's career had made him familiar
with the economic condition both of Holland and of Ireland, and
he wrote on both (1672 and 1673), praising highly the industrial
methods of the Dutch? Sir Josiah Child, also, a great merchant
? .
who became chairman of the East India company, admired the
commercial conditions of Holland, specially the low rate of interest
so favourable to traders. This, he thought, was the true cause of
the greatness of the Dutch; in like manner, cheap money would
stimulate the enterprise of English merchants, and he urged that
a low rate should be fixed by law. After the revolution, the
economic policy of the whig House of Commons was criticised by
several writers of whom the most important were Charles Davenant
and Sir Dudley North. Davenant was the author of An Essay on
the East India Trade (1697), besides other works, and North
wrote Discourses upon Trade (1691). They were not free traders
in the modern sense, but they argued against the restrictions and
regulations adopted by the government for the encouragement
of English trade.
Of all the economists contemporary with Locke, Sir William
Petty was, in many ways, the most remarkable. Circumstances
made him acquainted with France, Holland and Ireland. He
studied medicine in Holland; in France he became intimate with
1 Cf. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, sec. 206.
? See post, chap. XVI, as to Temple's writings.


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Economical Writings
343
6
>
Hobbes; an appointment as army physician in Ireland, under the
lieutenant-governorship of Henry Cromwell, led to his undertaking
the 'Down survey' of forfeited lands, and thus determined both
his own fortunes and the character of his literary work. His
type of mind inclined him to experimental work and to the exact
sciences; and, as experiment is seldom possible in economic affairs,
he found a substitute for it in what is now called statistics. This
he himself styled 'political arithmetic': 'instead of using only
comparative and superlative words, and intellectual arguments,'
he states his intention to consider only such causes as have
visible foundations in nature,' and to express himself in terms of
number, weight, or measure. ' Thus he adopted the quantitative
method, and applied it to a variety of topics. At the time, there
were many complaints of national decay; Britannia languens
was vocal; rents (it was said) were falling; money was scarce;
trades were disappearing; the country was underpeopled; and
the people underemployed and overtaxed. Petty did not sym-
pathise with these complaints; he distrusted vague generalities,
and asked for exact statements of the resources of England as
compared with those of her rivals. The net results of his own
enquiry into the matter are given in his Political Arithmetic.
It was characteristic of Petty to look facts in the face, without
being too much overawed by the prevalent assumptions of states-
men and men of business. He did not share the fears of the
mercantilists regarding the danger of exporting the precious
metals: the country, he thinks, is not always the poorer for
having less money. On the subject of money, he gives two
definitions which are worth quoting. Interest is 'a reward for
forbearing the use of your own money for a term of time agreed
upon'; similarly, Exchange is 'local interest, or a reward for
having your money at such a place where you most need the use
of it. ' The sentence ‘labour is the father and active principle of
wealth, as lands are the mother' occurs in his Treatise of Taxes,
but is not introduced as original on the author's part.
Locke's own contributions to economics were occasioned by the
financial problems which faced the new government after the revo-
lution. His reflections on the rate of interest show the growing
disfavour with which appeals for state interference were beginning
to be met. He points out the obstacles to trade that are caused
when the rate of interest is fixed by law, and he argues in favour
of freedom for what he calls, in words which suggest Adam Smith,
'the natural interest of money. ' Money'turns the wheels of trade';


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John Locke
therefore its course should not be stopped. At the same time, he
holds no general brief against the interference of the state in
matters of commerce; nor is the language of the mercantilists
foreign to him. Riches consist in plenty of gold and silver, for
these command all the conveniences of life. Now, 'in a country
not furnished with mines, there are but two ways of growing rich,
either conquest or commerce. ' For us commerce is the only way;
and Locke condemns 'the amazing politics of some late reigns
which had 'let in other competitors with us for the sea. ' In the
concluding portion of Some Considerations, dealing with the cur-
rency, Locke laid stress on the importance of a uniform and stable
measure of values; four years later, in his Further Considerations,
he defended his view against the proposals, involving a depreciation
of the standard, which William Lowndes, secretary of the treasury,
had set forth in An Essay for the amendment of the silver coins
(1695).
Locke's plea for toleration in matters of belief has become
classical. His Common-Place Book shows that his mind was clear
on the subject more than twenty years before the publication of
his first Letter. The topic, indeed, was in the air all through his life,
and affected him nearly. When he was a scholar at Westminster,
the powers of the civil magistrate in religious matters were the
subject of heated discussion between presbyterians and inde-
pendents in the assembly of divines that held its sessions within
a stone's throw of his dormitory; and, when he entered Christ
Church, John Owen, a leader of the independents, had been
recently appointed to the deanery. There had been many
arguments for toleration before this time, but they had come
from the weaker party in the state. Thus Jeremy Taylor's
Liberty of Prophesying appeared in 1646, when the fortunes of
his side had suffered a decline. For Owen the credit is claimed
that he was the first who argued for toleration 'when his party
was uppermost? ' He was called upon to preach before the House
of Commons on 31 January 1649, and performed the task without
making any reference to the tragic event of the previous day; but
to the published sermon he appended a remarkable discussion on
toleration. Owen did not take such high ground as Milton did,
ten years later, in his Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical
Causes-affirming that it is not lawful for any power on earth to
compel in matters of religion. ' He abounds in distinctions, and,
indeed, his position calls for some subtlety. He holds that the
· Orme, W. , 'Memoirs of John Owen,' prefixed to the latter's Works, 1826, vol. I, p. 76.


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Religion and Toleration
345
6
civil magistrate has duties to the church, and that he ought to
give facilities and protection to its ministers, not merely as
citizens, but as preachers of the truth'; on the other hand he
argues that civil or corporal penalties are inappropriate as
punishments for offences which are purely spiritual. The position
ultimately adopted by Locke is not altogether the same as this.
He was never an ardent puritan; he had as little taste for
elaborate theologies as he had for scholastic systems of philo-
sophy; and his earliest attempt at a theory of toleration was
connected with the view that, in religion, 'articles in speculative
opinions [should] be few and large, and ceremonies in worship
few and easy. ' The doctrines which he held to be necessary for
salvation would have seemed to John Owen a meagre and pitiful
creed. And he had a narrower view, also, of the functions of the
state.
The business of laws is not to provide for the truth of opinions, but for the
safety and security of the commonwealth, and of every particular man's
goods and person. And so it ought to be. For truth certainly would do well
enough, if she were once left to shift for herself. She seldom has received,
and I fear never will receive, much assistance from the power of great men,
to whom she is but rarely known, and more rarely welcome. She is not
taught by laws, nor has she any need of force, to procure her entrance into
the minds of men. Errors, indeed, prevail by the assistance of foreign and
borrowed succours. But if truth makes not her way into the understanding
by her own light, she will be but the weaker for any borrowed force violence
can add to her.
A church, according to Locke, is 'a free and voluntary society';
its purpose is the public worship of God; the value of this worship
depends on the faith that inspires it: 'all the life and power of
true religion consist in the inward and full persuasion of the
mind'; and these matters are entirely outside the jurisdiction of
the civil magistrate Locke, therefore, (to use later language) was
a voluntary in religion, as he was an individualist on questions of
state interference. There is an exception, however, to his doctrine
of the freedom of the individual in religious matters. The tolera-
tion extended to all others is denied to papists and to atheists;
and bis inconsistency, in this respect, has been often and severely
blamed. But it is clear that Locke made the exception not for
religious reasons but on grounds of state policy. He looked upon
the Roman Catholic as dangerous to the public peace because he
professed allegiance to a foreign prince; and the atheist was
excluded because, on Locke's view, the existence of the state
depends upon a contract, and the obligation of the contract, as
of all moral law, depends upon the Divine will.


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John Locke
Locke's theological writings exhibit the characteristic qualities
which his other works have rendered familiar. The traditions of
theologians are set aside in them much as philosophical tradition
was discarded in the Essay. He will search the Scriptures for
religious doctrine just as he turned to experience for his philosophy,
and he follows a method equally straightforward. Locke does
not raise questions of Biblical criticism, such as Hobbes had
already suggested and some of his own followers put forward soon
afterwards, and the conclusions at which he arrives are in harmony
with the Christian faith, if without the fulness of current doctrine.
At the same time, his work belongs to the history of liberal
theology, and was intimately connected with the deism which
followed; it treats religion like any other subject, and interprets
the Bible like any other book; and, in his view of the nature of
religion, he tends to describe it as if it consisted almost entirely in
an attitude of intellectual belief-a tendency which became more
prominent in the course of the eighteenth century.
Locke's Thoughts concerning Education and his conduct of
the Understanding occupy an important place in the history of
educational theory, though only a scanty reference can be made
to them here. The subject had a right to prominence in his
thought. The stress he laid on experience in the growth of mind
led him to magnify, perhaps overmuch, the power of education.
He held that 'the minds of children (are) as easily turned, this
way or that, as water itself. ' He underrated innate differences:
'we are born with faculties and powers, capable almost of any-
thing'; but, 'as it is in the body, so it is in the mind, practice
makes it what it is. ' Along with this view went a profound
conviction of the importance of education, and of the breadth of
its aim. It has to fit men for life-for the world, rather than for
the university. Instruction in knowledge does not exhaust it; it
is essentially a training of character.
6
6
Locke had the gift of making philosophy speak the language of
ordinary life. As a consequence, his writings were followed by a
whole literature of attack and defence. Of his critics Stillingfleet
was the most prominent; he breathed an atmosphere of controversy,
and his powers were displayed on many fields; he was not Locke's
equal in intellectual fence; but he was a formidable opponent, and
the difficulties in Locke's doctrine were pressed home by him with
no little power. Among Locke's other critics were John Sergeant
(who asserted Solid Philosophy against the fancies of the Ideists'),


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Richard Burthogge
347
Henry Lee, William Sherlock, archbishop King, John Broughton,
and Thomas Burnet (author of Sacra telluris theoria). Another
Thomas Burnet, of Kemnay, in Aberdeenshire, was the intermediary
through whom Locke received the Reflexions of Leibniz upon the
Essay. The Nouveaux Essais of Leibniz, in which the doctrines
of the Essay were criticised, section by section, were ready for
publication when Locke's death occurred, but, owing to this event,
their appearance was postponed indefinitely. Amongst the writers
who sided with Locke were Samuel Bold, Vincent Perronet, and
Mrs Catherine Cockburn. Two other writers of the period deserve
further mention on their own account. These are Richard
Burthogge and John Norris.
Burthogge had no great reputation in his own day, and was
almost entirely forgotten afterwards, till recent historians drew
attention to his merits. His chief work, An Essay upon Reason
and the Nature of Spirits, was published in 1694 and dedicated to
Locke'as to a person . . .