a Puritan attorney and small landowner of Somersetshire, attended, between the ages of fourteen and twenty, the Westminster Grammar School, at the head of which was a Dr. Busby, famous as a flogger of schoolboys. The impressions received by him there were of lasting consequence he always afterwards had a hatred of mere scholasticality in thinking, which constituted a prime motiveforce in his philosophizing. He entered Oxford University in 1652, and remained connected with that institution, as student, tutor, fellow, or honorary student, for many years. He was not, as an undergraduate, specially studious: he was repelled at Oxford, as at Westminster, by outworn Scholasticism. He was, however, a busy reader. The reading of Descartes, who greatly delighted if he did not completely satisfy him, gave him his first stimulus to philosophical reflection. Some thought of making divinity his profession was dispelled by the certainty that if he did so he would be obliged to surrender all real conviction; and he chose the study and practice of medicine. He fell into the society of men interested in physical research, and was elected member of the Royal Society of London. 1665 he accompanied Sir Walter Vane as secretary on an embassy to Germany. In 1667 he became private secretary to the statesman, or politician, Lord Ashley. During Ashley's term as minister he received appointments as Secretary of Presentations, and of the Board of Trade. In 1675 (after Ashley's dismissal from office), Locke went to France on account of ill-health. He there had the society of men of intellectual eminence. He returned to England in 1679 to become again secretary and counsellor of Ashley, with whom he remained till the latter's flight to Holland four years later. Locke fled to Holland, and was for six years a (political) exile. In Holland his time was largely occupied with the preparation of his great "Essay," begun In Locke," by Thomas Fowler (" English Men of Letters "); Green's "Introduction to Hume; ""Conduct of the Understanding," ed. by Fowler; "Locke," by Fraser (Blackwood Series). fifteen years previously. He had the pleasure and advantage of social and intellectual intercourse with the Dutch theological liberals. Locke returned to England when the new political order began, and took an active part during the remainder of his life in the work of establishing firmly the quasi-republican form of government under the reign of William of Orange. Ill-health necessitated his declining the offer of certain positions of great honor and responsibility; but he did accept the office of Secretary of Trades and Plantations, and acted as a personal adviser of the chief republican statesmen about him. His published works, dealing with burning questions of his day, brought upon him many controversial tasks, which he always performed vigorously and effectively. In the scientific, religious, and political life of his age he was one of the most active and useful of men. Few philosophers, if any, in any age, have, indeed, been practically so efficient as Locke. His private life and character seem to have been most estimable. Works. Locke's chief philosophical works are: "Essay Concerning Human Understanding," first published in 1690, and enlarged twice or thrice within the following decade, the sixth edition being the fullest; "Thoughts Concerning Education" (1693); "The Conduct of the Understanding" (posthumuously published); "Second Treatise of Civil Government" (1689); Three "Letters" (1697-1699) to the Bishop of Worcester (Edward Stillingfleet). Philosophy. I. Human Understanding. Introduction: Scope, Value, and Method of the Proposed Investigation.Locke proposes in his chief philosophical undertaking, concerning human understanding, to inquire into the "original [origin] of those ideas, notions, or whatever else one may please to call them, which a man observes and is conscious to himself he has in his mind; the ways whereby the understanding comes to be furnished with them; what knowledge the understanding hath by those ideas, and the certainty, evidence, and extent of it; the nature and grounds of faith or opinion [or the assent which we give to any proposition as true of whose truth we have no certain knowledge], and there as on and degrees of assent." He proposes to exclude from his investigation all "physical consideration of mind" and all examination into its essence and the "motions of our spirits or alteration of our bodies by which we come to have any sensation by our organs or any ideas in our understandings, and with the question whether those ideas do in their formation, any, or all of them, depend on matter or no." He hopes that undertaking, successfully carried through, "may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension, to stop where it is, at the utmost extent of its tether, and to sit down in quiet ignorance of those things which upon examination are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities; our business in this world being not to know all things, but only those which concern our conduct," etc. And he is confident that it "will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant, who would not attend his business by candle-light, to plead that he had not broad sunshine, since the candle that is set in us shines bright enough for all our purposes." Locke's proposed method is what he terms the "plain historical one," the looking into his own mind to find what he can there, without even assuming that all "minds" are similar to his. And, in fact, anything like the methods of recent experimental psychology, comparative psychology, and of the theory of knowledge in the sense of an inquiry into the condition of experience, is quite foreign to Locke's conscious (or unconscious) plan. He proposes simply to take the "ideas he finds in his mind," and by exhausting the consideration of the agreements and disagreements among them, to gather what he can concerning their origin and meaning. The investigation of human understanding has four parts: I. "Of Innate Notions; " II. "Of Ideas; III. "Of Words;" IV. "Of Knowledge and Opinion." Innate Ideas: (1) Speculative Principles. Defining 1 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II. ch. ii. an idea as "whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks," "whatever the mind can be employed about in thinking," "something which a man observes and is conscious to himself he has in his mind," Locke combats the doctrine of innate ideas. Universal consent or agreement as to the (supposed) fact of innate ideas, or "constant impressions which the souls of men receive in their first being, and which they bring into the world with them as necessarily and really as they do any of their inherent faculties, proves nothing," says Locke, "if there be any other way shown how men come to that universal agreement in the things they do consent in." But there are no ideas to which mankind give universal assent even such axiomatic truths as "What is, is," and "It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be," are, to a large portion of mankind, unknown even. Again, "no proposition can be said to be in the mind which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of," for otherwise all propositions that the mind is capable of assenting to might be regarded as "innate;" the capacity for ideas if that is all that is meant― is, of course, "innate." If it be said that certain principles are innate in the sense that all men know and assent to them when they come to the use of reason, and that this is enough to prove them innate, the answer is that savages, children, idiots, and the illiterate employ reason long before they are aware of such truths as "What is, is," and "It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be;" that if such truths were innate on this ground, so likewise are many others not regarded as innate; that it would be no more true to say that these truths are innate, on the ground that the time of assenting to them and the time of coming to reason coincide, than to say that speech could be innate if the time of coming to the use of it, and the time of first assenting to these truths, were the same; that, overlooking time, - if all truths discovered by reason be innate, then equally are the axioms of mathematics (which are innate . if any principles are) and the theorems grounded on them innate, and it would follow that, since all reasoning is "search and casting about, and requires pains and application," what was imprinted by nature as the foundation and guide of our reason (as innate principles are supposed to have been) would require the use of reason to discover it! Further, on the alleged ground that ideas are innate which are assented to when the terms in which they are proposed are understood, innumerable propositions in mathematics, natural philosophy, and all other sciences would have to be (falsely) declared innate. And, indeed, why should innate ideas or principles need to be proposed in order to gain assent? It is not true to say here that men do not learn anything absolutely de novo: the truth is, rather, that ideas are no more innate than names are. To conclude, then, as regards "speculative" principles, such as, "Whatever is, is," and "It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be," - they have not universal assent, they are not first known unless we make the absurd supposition that they can be imprinted in the mind and yet not be perceived, and finally, they appear least where what is innate shows itself most clearly, in the original impressions, if there be such, upon the minds of children, idiots, savages, and the illiterate being least of all corrupted by custom, borrowed opinion, learning, and education, though the minds of such persons are without innate principles. There are, therefore, no innate speculative principles. (2) Practical Principles.1 — And it is even more true that there are no innate practical principles, or principles of action. The proverbial "honor among thieves," for example, points not to any such innateness of practical principles, but merely to men's natural instinct of selfpreservation. Again, "practical principles" that are denied in action, but approved in theory, are not really practical principles or "inclinations of appetite" 1 Essay, Book I. ch. iii. |