155, insert § 5 opposite marginal analysis.

156, insert § 6 opposite marginal analysis.

1921, for initiating read irritating in quotation from Prof. Huxley. 219, line 2, for ch. 4 read ch. 5

2411, line 17, insert not before impossible

2602, line 22, for former read latter

Ch. xxvii, in the numbering of the §§, numbers 10 and 11 are repeated.

PROLEGOMENA

BIOGRAPHICAL, CRITICAL, AND

HISTORICAL

PRELIMINARY.

EDITIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS OF

LOCKE'S ESSAY.

Influence

FEW books in the literature of philosophy have so widely Historical represented the spirit of the age and country in which they appeared, or have so influenced opinion afterwards, as Essay. Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding. The art of education, political thought, theology, and philosophy, especially in Britain, France, and America, long bore the stamp of the Essay, or of reaction against it, to an extent that is not explained by the comprehensiveness of Locke's thought, or by the force of his genius.

and ver

In the fourteen years that elapsed between its first Editions appearance in 1690 and its author's death, the Essay sions. passed through four editions, followed by more than forty in the course of last century, and by many since, besides abridgments, and translations into Latin and French. From the first the book was the subject of criticism, and the occasion of controversy. Opposite interpretations have been put upon its doctrines by its innumerable critics, from Stillingfleet and Leibniz in Locke's lifetime; Condillac with the French Encyclopaedists, and Reid with his followers in Scotland, in last century; to

Critics of

Coleridge, Cousin, and Green, who treat the Essay as an incoherent expression of sensuous empiricism, or Webb and Tagart, with some recent German critics, who lay stress on its recognition of intuitive reason.

For a long time the Essay has been named more than the Essay. it has been studied. Even historians of philosophy have dealt with it largely at second hand; without that candid comparison of parts with the spirit and design of the whole, which is necessary in the case of a book that deals with philosophy in the inexact language of common life; and also without sufficient allowance for the fact that it was composed by a man of affairs, who discussed questions appropriated by abstract philosophy with a view to the immediate interests of human life, as his occasional employment, in an unphilosophical age.

Commen

taries of Lee and Leibniz.

It has been remarked as curious that there should be no collated and annotated edition of this English philosophical classic, notwithstanding the successive changes introduced in the four English editions published under Locke's eye, and the prolonged controversial discussion of the Essay. It is true that even before Locke's death it was made the subject of elaborate comment, by Henry Lee, rector of Tichmarsh in Northamptonshire, in his AntiScepticism: or Notes upon each chapter of Mr. Locke's Essay, with an explication of all the particulars of which he treats, and in the same order. Of this work Stewart remarks, that the strictures,' often acute and sometimes just, are marked throughout with a fairness and candour rarely to be met with in controversial writers'; and, according to the judgment of Sir James Mackintosh, Lee 'has stated the question of innate ideas more fully than Shaftesbury, or even Leibniz.' A more celebrated commentary on the Essay was that of Leibniz, in his posthumous Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain, written before Locke died, but not published till 1765. In the inconvenient form of dialogue, the doctrines of the Essay are here discussed chapter by chapter, between the interlocutors, in the eclectic spirit which thus appears in the opening sentences of the preface:-'The Essay on the Understanding,' he says, 'by an illustrious Englishman, being one of the most

beautiful and esteemed works of the time, I have resolved to make Remarks on it, because, having myself long meditated upon this subject, and upon most of the matters touched upon in the Essay, I have thought that it afforded a good opportunity for putting forth my own thoughts about them, under the title of New Essays on the Understanding; and that I might secure a favourable reception for my thoughts, by presenting them in such good company. I have hoped also that I might be able to profit by the work of this author, not only in the way of relieving my own labour (since it is easier to follow the thread of an able author than to elaborate anew,) but also by adding something to what he has done, which is less formidable than to make an independent beginning; and I think I have cleared up some difficulties which he left uninvestigated. It is true that I often differ from him; but, so far from denying the merit of famous writers, one bears testimony to it, by frankly making known in what, and why, one differs from their opinions; because we ought to prefer reason to even their authority on questions of importance. In fact, although the author of the Essay says a thousand things of which I approve, our systems are widely different. His has more relation to Aristotle, and mine to Plato; while we both diverge in many ways from those illustrious ancients. Also the author of the Essay adapts his style more to the general reader than I pretend to do, for I am obliged occasionally to be more acroamatical and abstract.' This last consideration Lee presses more strongly than Leibniz, when he mentions 'a natural elegancy of style; an unaffected beauty in his expressions; and a just proportion and tuneable cadence in all his periods' as, 'above all,' the qualities which brought Locke's Essay into popularity—a judgment which readers may regard as an exaggeration of its literary merits.

Among more recent criticisms of the Essay the most Cousin and celebrated are contained in Cousin's Ecole Sensualiste: Green. Système de Locke (1829), according to Sir William Hamilton 'the most important work on Locke since the Nouveaux Essais of Leibniz'; and in the Introduction to the philo

The present work.

sophical works of David Hume, by the late Mr. Green, who, notwithstanding the anachronism, has subjected the Essay to the canons of Neo-Hegelian dialectic.

The present work is meant partly as homage to its author's historical importance, as a chief factor in the development of modern philosophy during the last two centuries. It is also intended to recall to a study of Locke those who, interested in the philosophical and theological problems of this age, are apt to be dominated too exclusively by its spirit and maxims. They may thus study the problems in a fresher, although cruder, form than they have now assumed, through the controversies of the intervening period. The text has been prepared after collation with the four editions published when Locke was alive, and also with the French version of Coste, done under Locke's supervision. The successive changes are bracketed, many of them significant, especially those which express his oscillation of opinion about 'power' in moral agency, in Bk. II. ch. xxi. The archaic orthography of the original title—Essay concerning Humane Understanding —is retained on the title-page of the Essay, but is exchanged in the body of the work for the modern form. On the same principle (with reluctance) I have retained the 'it is and 'has' of the best posthumous editions, instead of the "tis' and (occasionally) 'hath' of the early folios. I have also reduced the superabundant italics and capitals of the early editions, retaining only what may remind readers that the book is not the work of a contemporary. The sectional analyses have been removed from the body of the text to the margin, occasionally corrected and enlarged, and new ones annexed to sections where they were wanting. The annotations might have been multiplied indefinitely; for almost every question in metaphysical philosophy and theology, as well as in philosophical physics, is suggested by the text, as well as innumerable references to the Essay in the literature of the last two centuries. The annotations offered are for the most part intended to keep the point of view and leading purpose of the Essay steadily before the reader; and the references are mostly to the works of Locke's contemporaries, and his immediate predecessors and suc