by consulting St. Paul himself. Here the scientific spirit and method of the Essay were applied to the interpretation of the literature which the Puritans who surrounded his boyhood had taught him to reverence as infallible. 'The holy Scripture,' he declares, 'is to me, and always will be, the constant guide of my assent; and I shall always hearken to it, as containing infallible truth relating to things of the highest concernment. And I wish I could say there are no mysteries in it: I acknowledge there are to me, and I fear always will be. But where I want the evidence of things, there yet is ground enough for me to believe, because God has said it and I shall presently condemn and quit any opinion of mine, as soon as I am shown that it is contrary to any revelation in the holy scripture1.' But the same sense of the need for founding all his beliefs on a perception of their reasonableness followed him in his biblical exegesis ;-the same determination to get rid of unwarranted assumptions and to escape from the bondage of empty or ambiguous words. He discarded the exegetical methods of the Puritans, and resisted their disposition to interpret texts apart from contexts, or to read spiritual meanings dogmatically into texts, overlooking the circumstances in which the words were written, and their relation to the age and country in which they were produced. He was among the first in Europe to anticipate the spirit of modern criticism; putting himself in the place of the writer, he tried to conceive the main design of the whole, and thus to evolve its rational meaning. But it was to the dry light of the understanding, judging according to prudential common sense, that Locke was ready to appeal, when, dissatisfied with 'systems of divinity,' he betook himself to 'the sole reading of the scriptures, for the understanding the Christian religion.' This is the foundation of his vindication and interpretation of Christianity, as well as of the remarks on miracles in the Discourse on that subject, written in 1702. The teachers as well as the assailants of Christianity, in the eighteenth century, alike appealed to the Essay, as their logical standard, and tested Christian belief by 'external and internal evidences' of the sort which satisfied 1 'Postscript' to first Letter to Stillingfleet.

Locke. His own faith, sincere and intelligent, is more represented in the prudential morality and religion that prevailed in England in the century after his death, than in that deeper faith, rooted in the divine life revealed in the soul of man, which is found in More, Cudworth, and Leighton, in the age preceding Locke, and, since Locke, in Berkeley and William Law, or in Coleridge and Schleiermacher.

After 1700 Locke was gathering himself up for the end in the repose of the family life at Oates. In that year the Commission at the Board of Trade was resigned, and he ceased to send his writings to the press. Adverse criticism, and the official discouragement of the Essay at Oxford, he took 'rather as a recommendation of the book'; so he wrote to Anthony Collins, adding that 'when you and I next meet we shall be merry on the subject.' One attack only moved him. In 1704 his old antagonist Jonas Proast revived their controversy. Locke in consequence began a Fourth Letter on Toleration. The few pages preserved in the posthumous volume, ending in an unfinished sentence, exhausted his strength. Thus religious liberty, which had so much occupied his thoughts at Oxford forty years before, and had been a ruling idea in the interval, was still dominant at Oates in the last year of his life. All that summer of 1704 he continued to decline, notwithstanding the watchful care of Lady Masham and her step-daughter Esther. On the 28th of October, he passed away; according to his dying words, 'in sincere communion with the whole Church of Christ, by whatever names Christ's followers call themselves.' His tomb may be seen beside the parish church of High Laver, a mile from Oates, bearing a Latin inscription prepared by his own hand. Lely and Kneller have made us familiar with his pensive and refined expression. His writings, according to the memorial on his tomb, reveal' what sort of man he was':-Siste Viator. Hic juxta situs est JOHANNES LOCKE. Si qualis fuerit rogas, mediocritate sua contentum se vixisse respondet. Literis innutritus eousque tantum profecit, ut veritati unice litaret. Hoc ex scriptis illius disce; quae quod de eo reliquum est majori fide tibi exhibebunt quam epitaphii suspecta elogia.

Posthumous Works.

Virtutes, si quas habuit, minores sane quam quas sibi laudi tibi in exemplum proponeret. Vitia una sepeliantur. Morum exemplum si quaeras in Evangelio habes: vitiorum utinam nusquam: mortalitatis certe (quod prosit) hic et ubique. Natum Anno Dom. 1632, Aug. 29o. Mortuum Anno Dom. 1704, Oct. 28. Memorat haec tabula, brevi et ipsa interitura1. So the inscription runs. The writings of no philosopher are more distinctly stamped with the marks of the character and mind of their author than the Essay and other works of Locke.

The Commentaries on St. Paul were given to the world soon after Locke's death. In 1706 the volume of posthumous works appeared, which contains:—(1) A Discourse of Miracles, (2) A Fourth Letter on Toleration, (3) An Examination of Malebranche's Opinion of seeing all things in God, (4) The Conduct of the Understanding, (5) Memoirs relating to the Life of Anthony, First Earl of Shaftesbury, (6) Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and several of his Friends-including chiefly the correspondence with Limborch and Molyneux. This was followed in 1720 by another volume, edited by Des Maizeaux, including :(1) The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, (2) A Letter from a Person of Quality giving an account of the Debates in the House of Lords in April and May 1675, (3) Remarks on some of Mr. Norris's books, wherein he asserts Father Malebranche's Opinion of our seeing all things in God, (4) Elements of Natural Philosophy, (5) Some Thoughts concerning Reading and Study for a Gentleman, (6) Rules of a Society which met once a week for their improvement in useful Knowledge, and for the promotion of Christian Truth and Charity, (7) Letters to Anthony Collins, Samuel Bold and others. Other writings, much in harmony with Locke's taste and studies, but not sufficiently authenticated, have been published under his name, in particular :-(1) An Introductory Discourse to Churchill's Collection of Voyages (1704)—

1 So Essay, Bk. II. ch. x. § 5:'The ideas, as well as children, of our youth often die before us: and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching;

are

where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away.'

many passages in the Essay and elsewhere show his fondness for books of travels. (2) Observations upon the Growth and Culture of Vines and Olives, written in 1679 and published in 1766, is said to be a result of observations during his retreat in France. (3) The History of our Saviour Jesus Christ related in the words of Scripture (1706), and (4) Select Moral Books of the Old Testament and Apocrypha paraphrased (1716), resemble Locke in subject and tone.

Locke.

The Éloge historique de feu M. Locke, by Le Clerc, which Biogra appeared in the Bibliothèque Choisie, in 1705, has been the phies of foundation of later biographies. Le Clerc found his materials during personal intercourse with Locke in Holland; in his own and Limborch's correspondence with him afterwards; in a letter from the third Lord Shaftesbury (author of the Characteristics); and in the interesting letter, already referred to, received by him from Lady Masham. A letter by M. Coste, Locke's amanuensis and translator of the French version of the Essay, gives a few additional particulars. Long after, in 1830, Lord King, the lineal descendant of Locke's cousin and executor, Lord Chancellor King, produced a Life of John Locke, with Extracts from his Correspondence, Fournals, and Commonplace Books; and in 1876 Mr. Fox Bourne's Life of John Locke added important documents and incidents, collected with much care and industry. Dr. Fowler's Locke (1880), in 'English Men of Letters,' and my own Locke (1890), in Blackwood's ' Philosophical Classics,' are intended to present the author of the Essay in his place in literature and in philosophy.

The main design of the Essay.

(B.) EXPOSITORY AND CRITICAL.

I. KNOWLEDGE: STRUCTURE OF THE ESSAY.

'You have done me and my book a great honour'— so Locke writes, a few months before his death, to Anthony Collins-'for having bestowed so much of your thoughts upon it. You have a comprehensive knowledge of it, and do not stick in the incidents, which I find many people do; which whether true or false make nothing to the main design of the Essay; that lies in a little compass.' The fault Locke finds with those early interpreters has beset most of their successors. They 'stick in the incidents,' and fail to comprehend the main design, for which the structure of the Essay, 'written by incoherent parcels,' may be an excuse. One turns to the Introduction' to discover the design. Locke there proposes a modest inquiry into the relation between 'human understanding' and the realities of existence; with a view to determine the limits of a human knowledge of what exists; and also the foundation of that assent to probability through which men are able to supplement their necessarily narrow knowledge. The office of the Essay is put with more exactness in Locke's Second Letter to Stillingfleet :- If I have done anything new [in the Essay], it has been to describe to others, more particularly than has been done before, what it is their minds do when they perform the action that they call knowing.' To find, in the 'historical, plain method' of investigating actual facts, pursued introspectively, under what conditions knowledge becomes a fact in the individual consciousness of man; to what extent a human understanding can penetrate and compass reality; how man falls short of omniscience, without being reduced to nescience; and on what ground our 'broken' knowledge may be assisted by a reasonable faith in probabilities-all this is within the compass of the Essay, according to its proposed design. It is concerned with an understanding of things