DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE LIFE OF JOHN LOCKE. VOL. II. ? “I think every one, according to what way providence has placed him in, is bound to labour for the public good as far as he is able ; or else he has no right to eat.” (A letter from Locke to William Molynenx.) “ He was always, in the greatest and in the smallest affairs of human life, as well as in speculative opinions, disposed to follow reason, whosoever it were that suggested it, : he being ever a faithful servant, I had almost said, a slave, to truth; never abandoning her for anything else, and following her for her own sake purely.” (A letter from Lady Masham to Jean Le Clerc.) THE \ LIFE OF JOHN LOCKE. By H. R. FOX BOURNE. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOLUME II. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 1876 . Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/lifeofjohnlocke21bour CONTENTS OF VOLUME II, CHAPTER IX. Residence in Holland [1683 — 1689], Locke’s experience of English politics under Charles the Second — the different conditions in Holland .... 1 — 5 His first year in Holland — friends in Amsterdam — Philip van Limborch and the Remonstrants — a tour in the Seven Provinces — Leyden . 5 — 16 A winter at Utrecht — Locke’s supposed implication in Monmouth’s re- bellion, and his consequent troubles — concealment in Amsterdam — - James the Second’s “ pardon — a short visit to Cleve . . 16 —26^' Intercourse and correspondence with Limborch — Jean le Clerc — the ‘ Epistola de Tolerantia ’ . . . . . 26 — 41 Intercourse with Le Clerc — contributions to the ‘ Bibliotheque Univer- selle ’ — beginning of authorship .... 42 — 46 Second residence in Amsterdam — second stay at Utrecht — forced return to Amsterdam — removal to Rotterdam . . . 46 — 53 Share in the preparations for the Revolution of 1688 — relations with English politicians — Lord Mordaunt — William of Orange . 54 — 58 Life in Rotterdam with Benjamin Furly — a holiday in Amsterdam — letters to Furly and William Charleton — illness at Rotterdam — a last visit to Amsterdam — correspondence with Limborch and Le Clerc — last occupations in Holland .... 58 — 82 Return to England — farewell letters to Limborch . . . 82 — 86 383575 VI 11 CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. ‘Concerning Human Understanding’ [1671 — 1690]. The origin and growth of the Essay — debts to Hobbes and Gassendi — the abstract of it in the ‘ Bibliotheque Universelle ’ — the order of its composition . . .... 87 — 102 The purpose and method of the ‘Essay’— Book I. : So-called “Innate Principles” — Book II. : Ideas; their Origin ; Sensation and Reflec- tion ; Primary and Secondary Qualities ; Simple and Complex Ideas ; Pleasure and Pain, Good and Evil, Happiness and Misery ; Power and Liberty, Will and “Free Will” — Book III.: Words; their Object, Use and Abuse — Book IV : Knowledge ; its Nature, Degrees and Extent ; Reason its only Test ; the proper method of Ethics ; the Existence of God ; the Validity of Revelation . 103 — 134 The value of the ‘Essay’ — its chief merit — its chief blemish . 134 — -139 The printing of the first edition .... 139 — 141 CHAPTER XL - In Aid of the Revolution [1689 — 1692]. The accession of William and Mary — Locke’s share in the Revolution — his ^ — refusal of ambassadorship to Brandenburg — his appointment as com- missioner of appeals — relations with the Earl of Monmouth — the comprehension and toleration bills — Locke’s views thereon — his occu- pations at this time — Sir J ohn Somers and the parliamentary elections in 1690 — political changes .... 142 —164 Locke’s ‘ Two Treatises of Government ’ — his answer to Sir Robert Filmer’s ‘Patriarcha’ — his Essay on ‘Civil Government;’ man in “the state of nature;” Locke’s law of property; “the origin and extent of civil government;” legislative and executive power, and their limits; representation of the people; Locke’s justification of the Revolution — the value of his second treatise . . 165 — 180 Locke’s ‘ Epistola de Tolerantia’ and its English version as ‘A Letter CONTENTS. IX concerning Toleration ’—the opposition offered to it — ‘ A Second Letter concerning Toleration’ and ‘ A Third, Letter for Toleration ’ — the Society of Pacific Christians .... 1 80 — L87 i/Locke’s ‘ Considerations of the consequences ot the Lowering of Interest and "Raising the Yalue of Money the impotence of usury laws to benefit trade ; interest and rent ; the value of money — the evils of a depreciated currency — proposals for reforming it . . 187 — 198 Locke’s petition for restoration of his Christ Church studentship — his residence and occupations in London — his friends there — corre- spondence with Limborch . . . . 198 — 209 CHAPTER XII. In Retirement : Work as an Author [1691 — 1696]. Lady Masham and her family connections — Locke’s renewed intimacy with her — his residence at Oates .... 210 — 215 Friendship and correspondence with Newton — Newton’s office-seeking— his biblical studies — his ‘ Historical Account of two Notable Corrup- tions of Scripture ’ — Boyle’s experiments in gold-making — Locke’s last services to Boyle — Newton’s complaint against Locke, and the apology ...... 215 — 227 Occupations and correspondence between 1691 and 1693 — a letter on the death of Furly’s wife — letters to Limborch and others — Edward Clarke — employment at Oates and in London — Limborch’s ‘Historia Inquisitionis ’ — Archbishop Tillotson — William Molyneux and his brother — Betty Clarke — surroundings at Oates . . 228 — 253 ‘ Some Thoughts concerning Education ; ’ physical training, clothing, diet, and medicine ; moral training, petting, self-denial, rewards and punishments ; mental trainings the scope of education — correspond- ence with Molyneux respecting the treatise . . . 253 — 269 The second edition of ‘ An Essay concerning Human Understanding ’ — correspondence with Molyneux thereon — the third edition of the * Essay’ — its translation into Latin — Wynne’s abridgment of it — ‘An Examination of Pere Malebranche’s opinion of Seeing all Tilings in God ’ — a proposed treatise on ethics . . . 269 — 283 383575 X CONTENTS. ‘The Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures’ — Locke’s view of a reasonable Christianity — Adam’s fall ; death and “ original sin ; ” the redemption by Christ ; the nature of Christ’s mission ; Christian ethics — opposition to Locke’s treatise — his first ‘ Vindication ’ . . - . . . 281 — 293 Miscellaneous occupations and correspondence between 1693 and 1696 — visits to London — the Bank of England — Laudabridis — correspond- ence with Molyneux and others — a letter about freemasonry . 293 — 308 v/ CHAPTER XIII. In the Service of the State [1695 — 1700]. Locke’s connection with public affairs while at Oates — share in abolishing the censorship of the press — political changes — ‘ Old England’s Legal Constitution ’ — share in the reform of the currency and the new coinage — ‘Further Considerations concerning Raising the Value of Money ’ — the re-coinage bill and its issue — tracts and correspondence on the subject ...... 309 — 343 Occupations as commissioner of appeals .... 344 — 346 The commission of trade and plantations — Locke’s appointment as a member of it — his share in its duties — his proposed resignation — his efforts and proposals to encourage the linen manufacture in Ireland — other work — his scheme for reform of the poor laws — his resigna- tion ....... 346 — 394 An offer of fresh employment and its issue — political changes — ‘A Letter,’ in satirical verse, on Somers’s dismissal from the lord chan- cellorship , .... 394 — 403 CHAPTER XIV. Controversy : Later Writings [1696 — 1700]. Locke’s share in the trinitarian controversy- -Bury ’s ‘ Naked Gospel’ and the Unitarian tracts — Edwards’s attacks on Locke and his ‘ Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity’ — Poland’s ‘ Chris- CONTENTS. XI tianity not Mysterious ’ — Stillingfleet’s attack on Locke — his ‘ Letter ’ and first and second ‘ Replies ’ to Stillingfleet, and Stillingfleet’s ‘Answers’ — other attacks on Locke . . . 404 — 439 The fourth edition of the ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding ; ’ and the French and Latin versions of it — Locke’s final corrections and additions ...... 439 — 442 ‘ The Conduct of the Understanding ’ . . . , 443 — 449 CHAPTER XV. Last Years [1696—1704]. Locke’s miscellaneous occupations and correspondence between 1696 and 1700 — his cousin, Peter King— Rebecca Collier, the quaker preacher — letters to Esther Masham — failing health and serious illness in 1698 — Molyneux’s political troubles — his visit to London and death — correspondence with Limborch and Thoynard — a letter on reading and study — a plan for reforming the calendar . . 450 — 478 Retirement at Oates — illness in 1700 and the following winter — a new year’s letter to Thoynard — Locke’s interest in political affairs — advice to Peter King — Limborch’s son — occupations at Oates — controversy with Limborch — biblical studies — an essay and commentaries on Paul’s epistles . . . . . 479 — 501 William the Third’s last parliament and the war of the Spanish succession — medical advice to Limborch — Benjamin Furly and his son Arent — the Earl of Peterborough’s visit to Oates — a last letter to Edward Clark — acquaintance with Anthony Collins and correspondence with him — a fourth ‘ Letter on Toleration ’ . . . 501 — 524 "Review of Locke’s work and character — his achievements in philosophy and other studies — his services in practical affairs — his temper and bearing among his friends — the grace and versatility of his disposi- tion — his humour — his charity — his hot temper — his trustworthiness — his personal habits^- his reading and mode of study . . 524—540 XII CONTENTS. Locke’s will — his increasing illness— visits from Peter King, Anthony Collins, and others — his new carnage — last letters to Limborch, Collins and King — King’s wedding entertainment — Locke’s last days — his death — his epitaph ..... 540 — 561 Index . 5C2— 574 THE LIFE OF JOHN LOCKE. CHAPTER IX. Residence in Holland. [ 1683 — 1689 .] L OCKE was in his fifty-second year when he went into voluntary exile in Holland. In 1660, when he was twenty-seven, the presbyterian tyranny of the dying Commonwealth had not weakened his love of liberty, hut had crushed his hopes of seeing it secured by the methods with which in his youth he must have been taught to sympathise. “I find,” he had then written, “that a general freedom is but a general bondage, that the popular assertors of public liberty are the greatest engrossers of it too. I therefore cannot but entertain the approaches of a calm with the greatest joy and satisfaction ; and this, methinks, obliges me, both in duty and gratitude, to endeavour the continuance of such a blessing by disposing men’s minds to obedience to that government which has brought with it the quiet settlement which even our giddy folly had put beyond the reach, not only of our contrivance, hut hopes.” Not then, or for some time afterwards, making politics his special business, but resolving to be a student of philosophy and science — believing that he could best do VOL. II.— 1 2 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. / his share of work in the world as a physician, and already r hoping, perhaps, that he might do something towards curing other than bodily ailments by finding out what was the structure of their minds, and how they might ac- quire most wisdom and fitness for wise action— we can understand why he had welcomed “ the happy return of his majesty” King Charles the Second. His favourite studies had never been abandoned ; he had clung to them all the more zealously because other occupations had been so forced upon him as to threaten to divert him from them altogether. His broken health had joined with other causes to prevent him from becoming a regular physician, but he had continued to he a diligent student of medicine. He had been induced to take an active though not at all a noisy part in political affairs ; but the ugly complica- tions of the politics of his time, which he had to help in unravelling, had only shown him the great need of better mental training in order to smooth out the tangled threads of life and clear away some of the vicious notions that were spoiling it all. It had been tedious, painful work, and he must have felt now that his toil had been well nigh thrown away. We have seen how, during the past four years, he had over and over again longed to go away from corrupted Europe, and try, with one true friend, to find a new Garden of Eden on the other side of Africa, or to fashion a new Utopia on the other side of the Atlantic. The longings may have been uttered half in jest, but they none the less sadly expressed his temper, or certain phases of his temper, at this time. What was his position in this gloomy autumn of 1683 ? Sixteen years before he had broken through his plans of work in order to join with Shaftesbury in labouring to establish some measure of religious and political liberty, 1683. 1 iEt. 51. J THE DEGRADATION OF ENGLAND. 3 and Shaftesbury had only avoided the gibbet by going to die in Amsterdam. Bussell, Shaftesbury’s worthier associate, and Locke’s own friend to some extent, bad, in defiance of the law, been beheaded a few weeks before, heedless of the cruel warning of Locke’s more intimate friend Tillotson, that unless be submitted himself meekly to the God-sent king, he “ would leave the world in a delusion of false peace, and bis eternal happiness would be hindered.” Algernon Sidney, also an acquaintance if not a friend of Locke’s, was now in the Tower waiting to be executed, in yet greater defiance of the law, a few weeks later. Lords Essex and Salisbury, other martyrs in the good cause, with whom Locke also bad at any rate some acquaintance, bad lately died in the Tower ; the one of “ a fever on his spirits,” 1 the other either by bis own or by an assassin’s hand. “ Fever on the spirits ” was a common malady just then, for which neither Dr. Sydenham nor any other physician could prescribe a remedy ; and Locke, with so many political friends and allies dead or dying around him, himself spied upon and plotted against by his academic associates, in hope of finding some pretext for making a martyr of him too, could not hut be afflicted with it. England had been ruined, though not quite past redemption, by that monarch at whose “happy return” he had rejoiced three-and-twenty years before. The “ divine-right ” king had Louis the Fourteenth for his god on earth, and prayed 1 See a narrative by Mrs. Hill, Stringer’s widow (Christie, ‘ Life of the first Earl of Shaftesbury,’ vol. ii. , appendix pp. cxxiii. — cxxix.), who adds: “Dr. Sydenham was his [Salisbury’s] physician, and Mr. Stringer often told him to do all in his power to save him ; and the doctor told him if he could cure him of thinking too much of the danger the nation was in of popery, etc., he could cure his fever ; but he laid that danger so much to heart that he lost his life for it.” 4 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. to him, witli a zeal that put to shame the religious devo- tion of popes and prelates, for those golden favours that enabled him to occupy the English throne without help of parliaments ; while all his other faculties of worship were exhausted on harlots, old and young. Justice, virtue, honesty, and religion, were out of court, if not quite banished from the country. Judge Jeffreys represented the first, the Duke of Buckingham the second, the Duke of Sunderland the third, Bishop Parker the fourth. And the only prospect of a change from this state of things depended on the death of Charles and the succession of his brother James, when to all the social depravity would he added a religious bigotry eclipsing the intolerance then vigorous enough. It is not strange that Locke, who had so often longed for a Utopia, should have gone in search of one at last. The Utopia that he found was not very far from home, and, faulty as it was, was the best that that age could be expected to produce. The glory of those days when the brave Netherlander s rose up, under the leadership of William the Silent, to save themselves and the world from the thraldom of Philip of Spain, had a good deal faded in the century that followed; but, before the century was ended, their descendants did nearly as great service to Europe in holding at bay the new would-be Caesar, Louis the Fourteenth ; and in proportion to the loathing that Locke and every honest man then felt at the degradation of England, must have been their respect for the heroic action of the United Provinces. Especially welcome, too, to Locke, must have been the close connection, not always recurrent in the world’s history, between their zeal for political and religious liberty and their freedom from religious and political intolerance. 1P83. "I .act. 5i. J THE DUTCH UTOPIA. 5 The Earl of Shaftesbury, in spite of his former eager- ness in supporting the iniquitous wars of England against Holland, was sheltered by its people when he sought refuge among them in his time of trouble. There can be no doubt that Locke followed his friend’s example because he also was in need of a political asylum. Even in Holland, as we shall see, he was for some time not safe, and it became necessary for him to seek temporary shelter elsewhere. But, in his case, no blame could be attached to the political institutions of the country ; and it was not possible for him to find fault with its allowance, and even encouragement, of greater freedom of opinion on religious matters than was then tolerated in any other part of Europe. This freedom, of course, implied a good deal of wrangling ; but it was no slight improvement upon the arrangements existing elsewhere, that here thinkers of all sorts were allowed to give free utterance to their opinions without meeting any worse resistance than the angry expostulations, and the arguments as outspoken as their own, of those who differed from them. So, at any rate, Locke thought ; and if his long sojourn in Holland led to some changes in his opinions, it only strengthened his old convictions in favour of religious and political liberty. About Locke’s movements and occupations during several months after his departure from England in the autumn of 1683 we have very little information. He appears to have gone direct to Amsterdam ; but we do not meet with him there until the following January, when he was present, by invitation of Peter Gruenellon, the principal physician in the city, at the dissection of a 6 KESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. lioness that had been killed by the intense coldness of the winter. 1 He had made Guenellon’s acquaintance six or seven years before in Paris ; and this friendship, which seems to have been kept np by letter in the interval, helped him to make many new friends among the doctors, men of letters and theologians in the busy centre of Hutch intelligence and learning as well as of Hutch commerce. Of these new friends, the most important of all, as far as Locke was concerned, at any rate, was Philip van Limhorch. They met first at the gathering of learned men to see the lioness cut up. “When Mr. Locke heard from Hr. Guenellon,” Limhorch wrote twenty years later, “ that I was professor of theology among the remonstrants, he introduced himself to me, and we afterwards had many conversations about religion, in which he acknowledged that he had long attributed to the remonstrants doctrines very different from those which they held, and now that he understood what they really were, he was surprised to find how closely they agreed with many of his own opinions.” 2 That Locke should till now have been ignorant of the doctrines of the remonstrants is hardly credible, seeing that several of his own friends had for some time past been in occasional correspondence with Limborch and others of their number. Nearly eighty years before those doctrines had been in part propounded by Arminius, who was made professor of theology at Leyden in 1604 ; and soon after that date they began to stir up much angry discussion throughout 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants Library ; Limborch to Lady Masham, [13 — ] 24 March, 1704-5. 2 Ibid. 1683. I m. 51. J LIMBORCH AND HIS SCHOOL. 7 Europe, and a bitter theological war of words in Holland. A greater Arminian than Arminius was Episcopius. His teachings on many points — points as important as the personality of the Trinity and the questions of free-will and election — were vague and contradictory ; but he boldly maintained that the Gospels contain everything that Christians ought to believe, and that men must be left to use their own free judgment in seeing how much they can believe ; in other words, that there should be no appointed creed, and that men should be expected to agree only in imitating as far as they can in their own lives the virtues embodied in the life of Christ. But latitudi- narianism, of course, was hateful to the Dutch Calvinists. The remonstrants, so called on account of the remon- strance or petition which they had presented to the states- general in 1610, were formally and fiercely condemned at the protestant synod of Dort in 1619 ; and during the next ten or twelve years they were subjected to as bitter a persecution as a body of clergymen, with zealous cham- pions in the municipal and other organisations, could bring about. But, though the hatred that grew out of this quarrel lasted long, actual persecution was soon stayed. In 1630 the first church of the remonstrants was founded, at Amsterdam ; and the society of remon- strants was established or re-established in an orderly way in 1632. Two years later, the remonstrants’ seminary, in connection with the church, was started ; and Epis- copius was principal and professor of theology in it from 1634 until his death in 1643. Under his guidance, and that of his successors, the movement spread ; though, there being no creeds and hardly any system of church govern- ment to form bonds of union among the members, it was a movement rather adapted to encourage liberal opinions 8 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. among the members of other sects than to build up any formidable sect of its own. 1 Limborch was the grand-nephew of Episcopius. Bom at Amsterdam in June, 1633, less than a year after Locke, be succeeded to the pastorship of the church in 1668, and to the chief professorship in the seminary in 1669. By his learning and worth he made the small body of the remonstrants famous among all the ablest thinkers in Europe who concerned themselves with theological ques- tions. Already he had formed friendships, personally or by letter, with Henry More, Kalph Cudworth, and many other liberal-minded theologians, both foreign and Eng- lish; 2 and when Locke made his acquaintance he was busy upon his most important work, the ‘ Theologia Christiana,’ which proved to be an abler exposition of unsectarian and undogmatic Christianity than had ever before been published. Of the close and affectionate relations that existed between Locke and Limborch during nearly twenty years we shall have abundant evidence in the course of this volume. Their acquaintance, however, does not seem to 1 There are now about twenty remonstrant churches, and six thousand communicants, in various parts of Holland, as I am informed by the Rev. Dr. J. Tideman, emeritus professor and custodian of the library, as well as minister of the church at Amsterdam. The seminary was removed to Leyden in 1872 ; hut the church and its offices remain almost exactly as they were in Locke’s day. I take this opportunity of thanking Dr. Tideman for the kind and zealous way in which he aided me in my researches while I was in Amsterdam, and afterwards. I am also much indebted to Mr. Frederick Muller, the great publisher and collector of old literature in Amsterdam, for his assistance. 2 A great number of their letters are preserved in the Remonstrants’ Library at Amsterdam. See some account of them in Van der Hoeven, ‘ De Philippo a Limborch ’ (Amsterdam 1843), pp. 36 — 52, 129 — 144. A TOUE IN THE SEVEN PEOVINCES. 168 1 . 1 J5t. 51. J 9 have been very intimate during the first few months oi Locke’s stay in Holland. He was now only a visitor, anxious to see as many men and things of note as he could meet with; and, though he appears to have passed the winter of 1683-4 chiefly in Amsterdam, he was often moving about in its neighbour- hood, turning his exile as much as possible into a holiday, and making it his especial business to recruit his health as far as he could. Only a few~ unimportant records of his occupations prior to the beginning of August have been preserved. We are able, however, to follow him through a three months’ tour in the Seven Provinces, on which he then started from Amsterdam ; and his account of the journey, besides its personal interest, furnishes some welcome illustrations of Dutch life two centuries ago. A six hours’ ride, on the 6th of August, took him through Haarlem, then a busier trading and manufac- turing town than now, to Alkmaar, in North Holland. “ A pretty little town, very clean, but seems rather in a decaying than a thriving condition,” he described it: “ the church large, built like a cathedral. The great merchan- dise of the town is cheese, which the pastures round about it furnish. About a league and a half is Egmond, the ancient seat of the counts of Egmond.” 1 Locke was here surrounded by the most venerable relics of Dutch history, walking among ruins of castles and abbeys, from which in far-off times the neighbouring districts had been 1 Lord King, p. 161. While in Holland, as before while in France, Locke used the new style of chronology. In my extracts from his journal, and in quoting from his letters and those of his friends, I have therefore altered the dates so as to correspond with the old style then used in England. 10 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX ruled and wisely guided in civilization ; tlie abbeys and castles, andAlkmaar itself — the name signifying “ all sea” — being built on land recovered from the ocean. Next day he crossed the little peninsula to Hoorn, and went thence to Enkhuizen, then containing nearly eight times as many inhabitants as now, and a commercial rival of Amsterdam. “From Hoorn to Enkhuizen,” a distance of ten miles, he said, “the way all pitched with clinkers, and beset with boors’ houses almost as it were one street. The houses are of a pretty odd fashion ; the barn joining to the dwelling-house making a part of it. Enkhuizen has a fair East India House, the most hand- some and stately of anything in the town. Here I lay at the sign of the Golden Hen. In the same house, twenty-three years since, they say the king lay for a whole week together in a little room over the kitchen, in a cupboard-bed, about five feet long.” 1 The king, of course, was Charles the Second ; but this episode in his truant life, before he was allowed to return to England, must have happened rather more than twenty-three years back. On the 8th of August Locke crossed the mouth of the Zuider Zee by boat, and, landing in Eriesland, probably at Stavoren, proceeded along the shore to Workum. “ The land,” he wrote in his journal, “is secured against the sea for a mile by long piles driven in, a little inclining towards the bank, close one by another, each whereof cost, to be there so placed, a ducat. Thirty or forty lime- kilns ; the lime all cockle-shells picked up on the sea strand, which, laying with turf, they burn to lime. The ordinary women went most bare-legged ; but what most surprised me was to see them have woollen cloth stockings reaching down to the small of their legs, close laced, and 1 Lord King, p. 161. JEt.^52.] IN NOETH HOLLAND AND FEIESLAND. 11 yet bare-foot.” On the following day, going partly by canal and partly by road to Francker, be there saw the Frieslanders’ eccentricities in another aspect. “It is a little fortified town, that one may walk 'round in half an hour. It has a university ; the schools and library not extraordinary, which shows that knowledge depends not on the stateliness of the buildings, etc., etc., etc., since this university has produced many learned men, and has now some amongst its professors : the professors thirteen or fourteen — the scholars three hundred. They have the pictures of all their professors. A thing worthy imitation in other places is, that any one may take his degree here when he is fit — abilities, and not time, being only looked after. The fees are moderate.” 1 With the quaint industrious ways of the people of Friesland Locke was much pleased, and he spent a fort- night in visiting various parts of the province and halting in Leeuwarden, its ancient capital, which was then at its gayest. On the 9th of August, he saw feudal republi- canism in state. “ Henry Casimir, prince of Nassau, governor and captain-general of the provinces of Friesland and Groningen, having about eight months since married the princess of Anhalt, made his public and solemn entry into Leeuwarden, at the public charge of the states. The cavalcade and solemnity were suitable to the great- ness of the government. That that I observed particular in it was, that when the prince and his princess, with their two mothers and their two sisters, were alighted at his house, and had rested a little, he took the ladies with him down into the court, and there placing them in chairs just within the outward gate which stood open, he himself stood bare just without the gate, whilst all the burghers 1 Lord King, p. 162. 12 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. who were that day in arms marched by and saluted him with firing their muskets as they passed. This lasted well nigh two hours, and after that they went to supper. Some of the gentlemen of the country, and some of the chief of his officers, supped with him and the ladies, and hereupon a page said grace. The prince is about twenty- eight years old, little, and not very handsome ; but, as they say, a man of parts, loving, and well-beloved of his country.” 1 Near Leeuwarden was established a branch of the strange sect of communistic mystics founded by Jean Labadie, who died in 1674 ; and Locke examined their institutions with great interest. “ They receive,” he wrote on the 11th of August, “ all ages, sexes, and degrees, upon approbation, after trial. They live all in common ; and whoever is admitted is to give with him- self all he has to Christ the Lord — that is, the church — to be managed by officers appointed by the church. It is a fundamental miscarriage, and such as will deserve cutting off, to possess anything in property. Their discipline whereby they prevent and correct offences is — first, repre- hension ; secondly, suspension from sacrament ; and, if this makes no amendment, they cut him off from their body. Baptism they administer only to grown people, who show themselves to be Christians by their lives, as well as professions. They have been here these nine years, and, as they say, increase daily ; but yet I could not learn their numbers : Mr. Yonn said a hundred, Mr. Muller, eighty. They are very shy to give an account of themselves, particularly of their manner and rule of living and discipline ; and it was with much difficulty I got so much out of them ; for they seemed to expect that a man 1 Lord King, p 164. A DAY WITH THE LABADISTS. 13 1084. "I .fit. 52. J should come there disposed to desire and court admittance into their society without inquiring into their ways ; and if the Lord, as they say, dispose him to it, and they see the signs of grace in him, they will proceed to give him further instruction ; which signs of grace seem to me to he, at last, a perfect submission to the will and rules of their pastor, Mr. Yonn, who, if I mistake not, has estab- lished to himself a perfect empire over them. For though their censures, and all their administration, be in appear- ance in their church, yet it is easy to perceive how at last it determines in him. Hb is dominus factotum ; and though I believe they are much separated from the world, and are, generally speaking, people of very good and exemplary lives, yet the tone of voice, manner, and fashion, of those I conversed with, seemed to make one suspect a little of Tartuffe. Besides that, all their discourse carries with it a supposition of more purity in them than ordinary, and as if nobody was in the way to heaven but they ; not without a mixture of canting, in referring things imme- diately to the Lord, even on those occasions where one inquires after the rational means and measures of pro- ceeding ; as if they did all things by revelation. It was above two hours after I came before I could receive audience of Mr. Yonn, though recommended by a friend ; and how many offers soever I made towards it, I could not be admitted to see either their place of exercise, of eating, or any of their chambers, but was kept all the while I was there in atrio gentium, a little house without the gate ; for, as I said before, they seemed very shy of discovering the secreta domus, which seemed to me not altogether so suitable to the pattern of Christianity.” 1 Passing out of Friesland at the end of August, Locke Lord King, p. 162. 14 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. went south, through Drenthe and Over-Yssel, to Deventer, where he saw some Christian communistic establishments of an older sort. “ Here are two protestant nunneries. One belongs to the freemen of the town, and their daughters only are admitted. These are fourteen. They live altogether in one house. The oldest, of course, is the abbess. They have each a little garden, and their dividend of the corn and some land which belongs to them, which amounts to three or four bushels of rye. Their meat and drink they provide for themselves, and dress it in a common kitchen in the summer, in the winter in their chambers. There was formerly, before the Reformation, a convent of catholic nuns ; and when in the last war the bishop of Munster was possessed of this town two years together, he put three catholic maids into the nunnery, which remain there still, under the same rules as the others. There is, besides this, another nunnery in the town, only of the noblesse of the province ; they have each four hundred guilders per annum, one half whereof the abbess has for their board, the other half they have themselves to dispose of as they please. They have no particular habit, and are often at home with their friends in the country.” 1 From Deventer Locke went, on the 10th of September, to visit Zutphen, Arnheim, and other places rendered classical by the great struggle between the Netherlander and Philip the Second of Spain ; but his observations were less noteworthy here than in the more northern and out-of-the-way parts. He spent some days at Utrecht, and went thence to Amsterdam on the 30th of September, though only to go on the 5th of October to Leyden, which to him was a classic spot indeed. 1 Lord King, p. 165. FROM DEVENTER TO LEYDEN. 15 1084. "I it. 52. J At Leyden, Descartes, his first great master, had settled down in 1629, to spend eight years of privacy in elabora- ting his method of philosophy. Here, or at Rijnsburg hard by, Spinoza, Descartes’s greatest and most errant disciple — unless Locke may be reckoned such — had, in 1660, taken refuge from the persecutions of his Jewish kinsfolk in Amsterdam. At the university, founded only in 1575, but now nearly the most famous in Europe, Grotius, whom Locke looked up to as his foremost teacher in politics and all its philosophical and theological connections, had in 1594 begun to study under professors as learned as Joseph Scaliger. Here Arminius, who had Grotius for one of his converts to unsectarian Christianity, taught his simple doctrines from 1603 till his death in 1609 ; and here the elder Gronovius had been professor between 1651 and 1671. Of him perhaps Locke did not think so very highly ; at any rate, he spoke rather scornfully of one exploit of his learned son. “ The young Gronovius,” he wrote on the 13th of October, “ made a solemn oration in the schools. His subject was the original of Romulus. At it were present the curators of the university and the professors, solemnly ushered in by the university officers. Music, instrumental and vocal, began and concluded the scene. The harangue itself began with a magnificent and long compliment to the curators ; and then, something being said to the professors and scholars, he came to the main business, which was to show that Romulus was not an Italian horn, but came from the east and was of Palestine or thereabout. This, as I remember, was the design of his oration, which lasted almost two hours.” 1 Locke appears to have taken advantage of the resources and opportunities of the medical school at Leyden, some 1 Lord King, p. 166. 16 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. of the curiosities of which are minutely described in his journal. But, in this first year of his stay in Holland at any rate, he spent only about a month at Leyden. He was at Amsterdam, in November, 1684, when he heard of his expulsion from Christ Church ; and by that arbitrary act, and other proceedings that followed it, his plans were considerably altered. Thus far his voluntary exile in Holland had been little more than a holiday, and, besides all the profit that it brought him in other ways, this holiday had proved very beneficial to his health. “For many years past,” he wrote to Nicolas Thoynard, in the first letter, dated November, 1684, that is extant after a gap of more than three years in their correspondence, “ I have not felt better than now.” 1 “ In Holland, ” said Lady Masham, “ enjoying better health than he had of a long time done in England, or even in the fine air of Montpellier, he had full leisure to prosecute his thoughts on the subject of Human Understanding — a work which in probability he never would have finished had he continued in England.” 2 We shall see that he also made good use of the leisure that was forced upon him in prosecuting his thoughts on other subjects. Having completed his long tour through the more interesting parts of Holland in November, 1684, Locke, then in Amsterdam, was intending, as we have seen, to pass the winter at Utrecht, when he heard of Hr. Fell’s “moneo ” against him, and resolved to return at once to 1 Additional MSS., in the British Museum, no. 28753; Locke to Thoy- nard, [18—] 23 Nov., 1684. 2 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Lady Masham to Le Clerc, 12 Jan., 1704-5. 1684-5. “| jEt. 52.J A WINTER AT UTRECHT. 17 England. On discovering that he could do himself no good and might do himself much harm by adopting that course, he held to his former intention. Though he had already some excellent friends in Amsterdam, he ap- pears to have there found himself forced into the society of other English refugees, with whose political designs he had little or no sympathy, and in whose characters he saw no ground for expecting that their plots would bring anything hut mischief to the cause of real liberty in England. In Utrecht he thought that he would have more leisure and better opportunities for quiet thought and work with his pen. Its milder climate and healthier position as compared with Amsterdam, then much less protected by artificial barriers from inclement weather than now, were also evidently attractive to him. In the sober old town, which in Holland was surpassed only by Leyden as a seat of learning, and in the house of Mynheer van Gulick, a painter living by St. Pieter’s Kerk, 1 under the shadow of the great cathedral tower and very near to the university, therefore, he planted himself, and all the books and other luggage that he had brought from England, in or about the first week of December. The first extant letter from him to Limborch was written shortly before he left Amsterdam, and in this he asked for an introduction to John George Graevius, the philo- logist and archasologist, who had been professor of history at Utrecht since 1660, “ or to some other of his learned friends there.” 2 With Graevius he soon formed a friend- ship that lasted for many years, 3 and he appears to have 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants’ Library; Locke to Le Clerc, [22 Sept.— | 2 Oct., 1686. 2 Ibid.; Locke to [Limborch], [20 — ] 30 Nov., 1684. 3 It is said that Dr. Richard Mead, who was at this time studying Vol. II.— 2 18 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IS. found other congenial society at Utrecht, which relieved the serious work — chiefly, it would seem, in the prepara- tion of the ‘Essay concerning Human Understanding,’ — to which, after his year of holiday-making, he now zealously devoted himself. The severe winter affected his health, but hardly, if we may judge from some pleasant, gossiping, but not very important letters that he wrote to Thoynard, 1 his spirits. From the Abbe Gendron, a skilful physician of Orleans, with whom he had become ac- quainted in 1678, Thoynard had obtained for him a prescription which he found very serviceable. “ The plaster works miracles,” he wrote in the spring; “I find myself much relieved since I have worn it, and I hope it will quite drive away the malady which has been troubling me. M. l’Abbe is the kindest as well as the ablest of men. Tell him so, if you please, lest he should think me ungrateful.” In this letter Locke referred to a wished-for visit from Thoynard, whom he had so often and vainly expected to meet in England. “Is the good news true that I may hope soon to embrace you in these parts ? This is the one place in the world where I should most desire to see you.” 2 Locke was not himself much longer at this period in Utrecht. In May his plans of work were roughly inter- rupted. The sudden and unlooked-for death of Charles the Second on the 6th of February, 1684-5, though fol- lowed by the peaceable accession of James the Second, medicine and other subjects at Utrecht, and was a favourite pupil of Graevius’s, had in his possession several letters written to Graevius by Locke ; but I cannot trace them. 1 Additional MSS., nos. 28753 and 28728; Locke to Thoynard, [14 — 24 and [16—] 26 Feb., 1684-5. 2 Ibid., no. 28728; Locke to Thoynard, [30 March — ■] 9 April, 1685. 19 ^t 68 52 .] the duke of monmouth’s rebellion. led quickly to the foolish insurrection of the Duke of Monmouth, and to his execution after defeat at Sedgmoor on the 15th of July following ; and these events brought upon Locke far greater trouble than the loss of his Christ Church studentship seems to have caused him. He had carefully held aloof from Monmouth during their common stay in Holland. He must have known him intimately in former years, when Shaftesbury had supported his claim to the succession, and when, on one occasion at least, Monmouth had been hiding at Thanet House during Locke’s residence there. But, if ever he had heartily sympathised with Shaftesbury’s schemes, he had by this time discovered the worthlessness of Charles the Second’s selfish, pleasure-loving, and unprincipled son ; and, while in Holland, he freely stated to his friends that “ he had no such high opinion of the Duke of Mon- mouth as to expect anything from his undertaking.” 1 He was still supposed, however, to be implicated in the Monmouth conspiracies ; and, whatever other unfounded assertions may have been made to his prejudice, the report of one, in itself sufficient to bring him into dis- favour with all who believed it, has come down to us. When Lord Grey of Wark, afterwards the Earl of Tan- kerville, a contemptible and unscrupulous adventurer who had been associated with Lord Shaftesbury, as well as with Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney, sought to win hack James the Second’s favour by a sham repentance, he tendered to the king a narrative of the recent con- spiracies, in which he shrank from no falsehood that could palliate his own disloyalty and aggravate the offences of his former companions. In this narrative we read that, towards the expenses of his expedition in 1 Le Clerc, ‘ Eloge de M. Locke,’ in the ‘ Bibliotheque Choisie,’ vol. vi. 20 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. April, 1685, the Earl of Argyll had received “near .£1000 from Mr. Locke,” and also that towards the Duke of Monmouth’s subsequent enterprise Locke was one of several contributors of large sums of money, the amounts of which were not named. 1 Lord Grey’s statement being now known to abound in fabrications, and to be untrustworthy in every part, it is not necessary to say much in disproof of an assertion so preposterous. Locke was not exactly a poor man ; but his property, aided by his annuity from Lord Shaftesbury, only just sufficed to support him in quiet ways as a bachelor. It is incredible that he should have been willing to risk in Monmouth’s mad project all or nearly all he had to live upon : had he done so, he must have been reduced to poverty ; whereas it is evident that there was no material change in his income at this time, and that he certainly suffered none of the discomforts that would have resulted from such a serious loss. Even had he wished it, moreover, it would have been impossible for him, while living in Holland, to realise anything like the amount of money which he was reported to have sunk in the abortive rebellion. The story appears, however, to have been believed at the time, as also may have been others equally false and equally prejudicial to Locke ; and there can be no doubt that he was regarded as a dangerous traitor, if not by the government of James the Second, by some of its agents. There are some grounds, moreover, for supposing that he had a personal enemy in Sir George Downing, James’s representative at the Hague ; to co-operate with whom, as soon as Monmouth’s plans were known, Colonel Bevil 1 ‘ Secret History of the Rye House Piot, and of Monmouth’s Rebellion,’ from Grey’s confession (1754), pp. 112, 118. 1685. 1 ■ffit. 52.J IN DANGEE OF AEEEST. 21 Skelton was sent over as a special envoy to the states- general. On the 7th of May, 1685, just before Mon- mouth’s departure for the west of England, Skelton for- mally demanded the surrender of eighty-four dangerous Englishmen, plotters against the life of King James and the peace of the English nation. 1 In that list Locke’s name stood last. It was not, we are told, in the original list sent from London, but had been added by “ the English consul in Holland.” 2 Whether Downing made the addition on his own responsibility, or in obedience to orders forwarded to him after the first list had been de- spatched, the issue was the same to Locke. Perhaps there was not much actual danger to him in this affair. Skelton’s list of traitors was forwarded by William of Orange and the states-general to the magis- trates in Amsterdam and the other towns in which the traitors were supposed to be harboured, with orders for their arrest and detention until the wishes of James the Second as to their disposal were known. But William of Orange, though anxious to keep on good terms with his father-in-law, was not anxious to obey him ; and the local magistrates, especially in Amsterdam, were far more inde- pendent and far more friendly towards all opponents of the catholic king of England than were the central authori- ties at the Hague. There is nothing to show that any of the proscribed persons were given up to the English government, or that anything more than a very slight show of searching for them was attempted. The danger seemed real enough at the time, however, and Locke and his friends had good reason to be alarmed. He had won the affection of some very zealous friends 1 ‘ Histoire des Evenemens Tragiques d’Angleterre ’ (1686). 2 Le Clerc, ‘ Eloge de M. Locke.’ 22 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. ix. by this time, Limborch being prominent among them, as well as his older acquaintance, Dr. Peter Guenellon, and Guenellon’s father-in-law, Dr. Yeen. When the demand for his surrender was made in May, 1685, he was at Utrecht, whither he had gone from Amsterdam in the previous December. Either during his short autumn stay in Amsterdam, or during his longer residence there in the early part of 1684, he had been anxious, we are told, to lodge in Guenellon’s house ; but Guenellon had declined the proposal, “ because it was not the custom of their city to entertain strangers, though otherwise he had a great esteem for him, and was very well pleased with his visits.” “ But when Dr. Guenellon perceived the danger Mr. Locke was in,” it is added, “ and that it was time to do him a kindness, he kindly persuaded his father-in-law, Dr. Yeen, to entertain him in his house, and wrote to Utrecht to inform him of this arrangement.” Guenellon did more than that. “ He consulted one of the chief magistrates of the town to know if Mr. Locke might be safe there ; who replied that he could not protect him if the king of England sent for him, but that he would not betray him, and, if inquiry was made, would not fail to give notice of it to Dr. Yeen.” 1 Limborch was the bearer of Guenellon’s letter to Locke, reporting the plans that had been made for his safety. “ By Dr. Yeen’s direction,” he said, “I offered him his house as a place of concealment, in which he could stay without any one’s knowledge. I took him there, often visited him in his solitude, and conversed with him for many hours at a time. All his friends’ letters were, by his desire, sent to me to be forwarded to him, so that his honourable hiding-place might not be discovered. He 1 Le Clerc, ‘ Eloge de M. Locke.’ 1685. 1 2Et. 52. J IN HIDING AT AMSTERDAM. 23 entrusted to me his will and other valuables, and gave me in writing the names of his nearest relatives, in order that I might communicate with them if anything happened to him .” 1 These extreme precautions show how great was Locke’s alarm, and perhaps justify his friend Le Clerc’s assertion that “his temper was rather timorous than courageous.” Not unlike Hobbes in some other respects, he was a little like him in this. While his friends in Amsterdam were thus helping Locke to hide for his life, as he thought, his friends in London were working no less heartily in his interests. The most active of these — or at any rate, through that strange concurrence of accidents or plots which just then made a quaker the most influential courtier of the catholic monarch, the most capable — was William Penn, whom Locke had known as a promising youth at Oxford, and had probably, then and afterwards, helped in unre- corded ways. “ Musidore ” — that is, James Tyrrell— wrote his old friend David Thomas to him, at about this time, “ tells me Will. Penn hath moved the king for pardon for you, which was as readily granted. I said if you either wanted or desired it, you would move by your friend here, and you would write your own sense of it .” 2 The “friend here,” to whom Thomas alluded, was pro- bably the Earl of Pembroke, who, either independently or in conjunction with Penn, was also doing his utmost to help Locke. “ I have often writ to you with great 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Limborch to Lady Masham, [2 — ] 13 March, 1704-5. 2 Lord King, p. 159. Lord King assigns this note to November, 1687 — clearly an incorrect date. Lady Masham, in the letter to Le Clerc which has been so often quoted, confirms the report of Penn’s having procured the offer of a pardon for Locke, but assigns it to the beginning of James’s reign. 24 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IT satisfaction in hopes of an answer,” he said in a jubilant letter. “You will easily conclude, therefore, with how much more I write now, since it will he the occasion of enjoying your company here in England. I need not tell you that I have omitted no opportunity of contradicting all false reports to the king, and, as in so good a cause none can but succeed, I have so satisfied the king that he has assured me he will never believe any ill reports of you. He hid me write to you to come over. I told him I would then bring you to kiss his hand, and he was fully satisfied I should. Pray, for my sake, let me see you before the summer be over. I believe you will not mis- trust me ; I am sure none can the king’s word. You having so many friends, lest you should mistake who I am, I must subscribe myself, your friend Pembroke .” 1 But Locke did distrust King James’s word ; and did not at all care about kissing the king’s hand. Irksome as he found his close hiding in Dr. Yeen’s house, more- over, he preferred it to such life in England as would then be possible to him, especially on the disgraceful terms implied in his proffered pardon. He was doubtless grateful for the well-meant efforts of his friends on his behalf; but he proudly answered that “he had no occasion for a pardon, having been guilty of no crime .” 2 Instead of going to England he went, about the middle of September, to Cleve, where it will be remem- bered he had spent a few weeks more than twenty years before, when he had gone thither as secretary to Sir Walter Yane. “Though Mr. Locke experienced in Dr. Yeen’s house all the services that friendship and good 1 Lord King, p. 158 ; Pembroke to Locke, 20 Aug., 1G85. 2 Le Clerc. ^Et 8 53.1 JAMES THE second’s “ PARDON ” REFUSED. 25 nature could render,” wrote Limborcli, “the confinement was painful to him, the access of only two or three friends being allowed to him. Solitude wearied him, and he wished to breathe a freer air. A certain gentleman, long known to Yeen and myself, was in the habit of corre- sponding with Mrs. Hubner, a well-known lady, who concerned herself much with public affairs, and, while Chancellor Dankel flourished, was held in high estimation. He, after many letters had passed to and fro between them, persuaded Dr. Yeen that Mr. Locke would find a safe and comfortable asylum at Cleve if he went thither. I and Dr. Guenellon objected to his going, for I knew this gentleman to he a braggart, fond of making great promises which often came to nothing ; but through Yeen he persuaded Mr. Locke to leave us, his friends, and go into that unknown place in order that he might enjoy more liberty. Yeen and Guenellon and I conducted him to the boat which goes from here to Utrecht, and hardly could we bear to part from him. But before many weeks were over he found that the promises of his adviser were as vain as we had anticipated. So he came back to his old hiding-place in Amsterdam, and, that there might be the less chance of his being discovered, passed by the name of Dr. Yan der Linden .” 1 That disguise Locke seems to have soon thrown off, on finding that there was no further danger of his arrest. Though he declined to derive from it any other advan- tage than freedom in walking about the streets of Amster- dam and enjoying the society of more friends than could be admitted into Dr. Yeen’s little parlour, the “pardon ” that he refused to sue for or to accept was granted to 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Limborch to Lady Maskam, [26 March — ] 6 April, 1706. 26 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. him. 1 When, in May, 1686, just a year after Skelton’s demand for the surrender of Monmouth’s supposed accom- plices, proclamation was made hy the states-general for the arrest of certain persons who had assisted in his rebellion, hut who were out of reach of both Colonel Kirke and Judge Jeffreys, Locke’s name was not included in the list. 2 In the summer-time of 1685, after Limhorch had con- ducted Locke from his lodgings at Utrecht to find a hiding-place in Dr. Yeen’s house in Amsterdam, the friendship of these two men ripened into a maturity that decayed only with death. Yeen lived somewhere near the university, in the Hoog-straat, Limhorch in the seminary adjoining the remonstrants’ church in the Keisers-gracht ; and, while Limhorch passed from the one house to the other very often to relieve his friend’s solitude by welcome talk on philosophy and theology, Locke sometimes ventured out after dark to take counsel with him at his own home. He seems, for safety’s sake, to have generally given notice 1 “ I thought it might not he unpleasing to your lordship,” Skelton wrote to the Lord President on the 20th of April, 1686, “ to know that, upon his majesty’s inclining to pardon young Burnardiston and Joshua Locke, both now at Amsterdam, .... several others of the same party have from thence taken encouragement to hope for the like mercy, and are earnestly solicitous for it .” — Foreign State Papers, Holland, in the Public Record Office. We may reasonably assume that Skelton wrote Joshua in mistake for John. I have sought in vain for any trace of a Joshua Locke in Amster- dam at this time. 2 I am indebted to Mr. Frederic Muller, the great bookseller of Amster- dam, for an original copy of this proclamation. Though Locke’s name is not in it, it somewhat strangely mentions some of his Somersetshire neigh- bours ; among others Marv Bath and George Lipp, of Wrington. 1695. 1 iEt. 53. J FRIENDSHIP WITH LIMBORCH. 27 of his approach. “ I always have so many proofs of your kindness and friendship,” he wrote on a Monday after- noon, “ and I lean so much on your wisdom and expe- rience, that I venture to seek fresh favours from you. I am very anxious to meet you, having a great many things to say. If it is convenient to you that I should visit you this evening, I will come to your house after nine o’clock.” 1 From the time when he left Amsterdam to make his short sojourn in Cleve, Locke corresponded steadily and frequently with Limborch, whenever they had not the greater advantage of personal intercourse; and this corre- spondence throws much light on Locke’s general history, and especially on his theological opinions, during the remaining years of his life . 2 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants Library ; Locke to Limborch, Die Lunae. 2 Forty-three letters from Locke to Limborch, from copies supplied by the latter to Sir Peter King, and twenty-seven from Limborch to Locke, were printed in ‘ Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and several of his Friends’ (1708). One from Locke to Limborch and ten from Limborch to Locke were printed by Lord King in the second edition of his ‘ Life and Correspondence of Locke ’ (1830). I have found in the Remonstrants’ Library at Amsterdam thirty-four other letters from Locke, as well as Lim borch’s own copies of all his letters. From the originals, in the same library, I have also been able to supply numerous postscripts and other passages which Limborch had omitted from his transcripts of Locke’s letters, apparently because he thought them too personal and trivial to interest the general public. They are of great value now, however, as illustrating Locke’s biography. Nearly all these letters are written in Latin; a few in French. Translations of forty-four of the letters, including some of Limborch’s, were made by Mr. Rutt, the biographer of Priestly, and published by him in the ‘ Monthly Repository,’ vols. xiii. and xiv. (1818 and 1819). Of these translations I have occasionally availed myself ; but I have endeavoured in my own renderings, while retaining the sense of the originals, to avoid as far as possible the pedantic tone inevitable in a very literal translation of letters written in Latin. 28 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. From the first of the long series, it appears that he arrived in Cleve on the 7th or 8th of September, and at once addressed to Guenellon a letter which he feared had not reached its destination. “ I should especially regret its miscarriage,” he wrote two days afterwards to Limhorcli, “as in that case I might seem to disregard or undervalue the numberless kindnesses which you all have shown to me, and in the space of a few hours to have forgotten your favours, the remembrance of which, I assure you, time can never efface. I cannot find words in which to give sufficient thanks for the benefits I have received from Dr. Yeen and his excellent wife : please express them for me in your choicest phrases. I think I shall stay long here, for my health’s sake. The pleasantness of the place, and my love of quiet, if not idleness, as well as my dislike to the worry of travelling, detain me. I enjoy my daily walks immensely, though I should enjoy them very much more if some of you were companions of my rambles.” The letter was signed “ Lamy,” a pseudo- nym which Locke here adopted for his greater security. “ Please address your letter tw Lamy,” he said in a post- script, “ and send it in an outside envelope to Mr. Meyer, secretary to his highness the Elector of Brandenburg.” 1 While at Cleve, Locke worked on at his ‘ Essay con- cerning Human Understanding.’ “I wish,” he said in his next letter to Limborch, “ that the book I am pre- paring were in such a language that you might correct its faults ; you would find plenty of matter to criticise.” 2 In the same letter Locke courteously reported that he 1 MSS. in the Eemonstrants' Library; Lamy to Limborch, [18 — ] 28 Sept., 1685,— partly printed in ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 298. 2 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 302; Locke to Limborch, [26 Sept.—] 6 Oct., 1685. 1685. 1 jEt. 53. j FKIENDSHIP WITH LIMBOKCH. 29 had been vainly seeking matter to criticise in a work lately written by Limborcb. This work, published in 1687 with the title ‘Arnica Collatiode Veritate Religionis Cbristianae cum Erudito Judaeo,’ was written in or before 1684, and detailed the arguments that Limborcb bad used in dis- comfiting a Spanish Jew, named Balthasar Orobio, who, after professing Catholicism at Toulouse in order to escape the persecution be bad previously met with, settled in Amsterdam, and returned to bis former faith. Locke took great interest in it, and it seems to have done much to strengthen the friendship that arose between him and Limborcb. “ When Mr. Locke beard from Dr. Guenellon,” wrote Limborcb concerning their early ac- quaintance, “ that I bad the record of a conference held by me with a learned Jew concerning the truth of Chris- tianity, be borrowed the manuscript from me, and, having read it carefully, gave me bis wise and ingenious com- ments upon it.” 1 Locke, while be was in Utrecht, bor- rowed the manuscript again ; 2 and be took it to Cleve to revise it for publication, but be now complained that be could find hardly anything to correct in it. “ I have never,” be said, “found opinions more clearly set forth, more completely built up with rational arguments, more entirely free from party prejudices, and in every respect more in harmony with truth. Though I have applied myself to it with critical severity, I can find nothing of importance on which to fasten the critic’s tooth. Do not blame me for a busybody, therefore, if I have been forced to look out for small blemishes.” 3 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Limb orch to Lady Masbam, [13 — ] 24 March, 1704-5. 2 Ibid. ; Locke to Limborcb, [29 Jan. — ] 8 Feb., 1684-5. 3 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 801 ; Locke to Limborcb, [26 Sept. — ] 6 Oct., 1685. 30 EESIPENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX Locke’s reference in tlie same letter to another hook is of some value in itself as an evidence of his theological temper, and is also interesting as introducing to us a man with whom he afterwards had much to do. This man was Jean Le Clerc, generally known on the continent as Clericus. He was born at Geneva in 1657. Having great natural abilities, he was carefully instructed in all the classical, theological, and philosophical learning of the day, and into all his studies he put original thought. Singularly endowed with the critical faculty — almost the first of modern critics, indeed — he carefully trained himself for the wise use of his talent by mastering all the best literature of his day, and especially that sort of literature which grew out of the varied influences of Descartes and Spinoza. He soon broke loose from Descartes, but he never went as far as Spinoza. The halting-place which he occupied between the two, and from which he shrewdly criticised not only all writers and teachers, old and new, but also all the religious, social, and political movements of the time, was about similar to the halting-place between Descartes and Gassendi, in which Locke, less as a critic, but very much greater as an original thinker, himself unconscious of his greatness or of the extent of the work that he was doing, established himself as the wisest teacher of his age. There was a difference of twenty- five years between the ages of the two men ; but Le Clerc’s quicker if less profound wit made him the con- temporary of Locke, and even in some small measure his guide. Le Clerc first showed his peculiar strength of mind in the ‘ Liberii de Sancto Amore Epistolae Theologicae in quibus varii Scholasticorum Errores castigantur,’ which he produced in 1679 or 1680. In 1682, finding himself ill 1685. i Mt. 53.. JEAN LE CLERC. 31 at ease in Geneva, or among the protestants of France, he visited London. “ I sought an asylum,” he said, “ and thought that possibly I might find one in England. I preached sometimes at the Walloon church, and during six months at the Savoy ; but these gentlemen cared only for those grand geniuses who lose themselves in the clouds, and were not to be affected by the simple teaching that I offered them. They liked much better to hear from the pulpit, eloquently set forth in scholastic terms, such absurdities as serious persons never think of introducing into their conversation, than to listen to a preacher who could say nothing soothing to sinners who had not re- nounced their sins.” 1 So he went to Holland a few months before Locke ; and a few months after, in 1684, entered on more congenial work as professor of belles lettres, philosophy, and Hebrew in the remonstrants’ seminary at Amsterdam. It is somewhat strange that Locke should have known nothing of Le Clerc while he was in London, or while they were near neighbours in Amsterdam. Their personal acquaintance did not begin before 1686. Father Simon, an oratorian priest, styling himself the prior of Bolleville, had some two years before written an ‘ Histoire Critique du Yieux Testament,’ in which au- thority was found for all the dogmatic theology of the church of Rome. Le Clerc answered it in 1685, in a very able work, entitled ‘ Sentiments de Quelques Theologiens de Hollande sur l’Histoire Critique du Yieux Testament,’ the form of which allowed him to put forward not only 1 Yan der Hoeven, ‘ De Joanne Clerico ’ (Amsterdam, 1843), p. 36. This “ dissertation,” which gives the best account of Le Clerc that I know of, is bound up in the same volume, but separately paged, with the ‘ De Philippo a Limboreh ’ which is referred to in a previous note. 32 KESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX his own very liberal views, but also the opinions of the Spinozists and others more heretical than himself. Locke read the book while he was at Cleve, and seems to have been informed by Limborch that Le Clerc had inten- tionally imported into it certain rival and contradictory arguments, in order to disparage the excessive value often attached to theological arguments in general. “ I can readily believe what you tell me about the critic of the critic,” he wrote in the letter from which we have made a long digression. “ I no sooner reached that part of the eleventh letter 1 than I seemed to hear such a violent clamour as might imply that religion itself was being destroyed ; knowing as I do that this is the way of people, who, in proportion to their inability to rebut any hetero- doxy, or to say anything in defence of God, pour out their noisy reproaches and calumnies. At the same time, though I admit that the argument ” — against the verbal and plenary inspiration of the Bible — “is modestly put forward and cautiously worked out, I think it is one that cannot be too carefully discussed. If everything in the sacred books is to be indiscriminately adopted by us as divinely inspired, great opportunity will be given to philo- sophers for doubting our faith and sincerity. If, on the other hand, any part is to be regarded as of merely human composition, what becomes of the divine authority of the Scriptures, without which the Christian religion falls to the ground ? What is to be the criterion ? what the rule ? In handling this question — a fundamental one, if there be any such — the utmost caution, prudence, and modesty ought to be used, especially by one to whom, as 1 The passages referred to by Locke were included in the parts of Le Clerc’s work translated into English, and published in 1690, as ‘ Five Letters concerning the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.’ it 8 53.] doubts as to the infallibility OF THE BIBLE. 33 I suppose, the ecclesiastical authorities and the theolo- gians are not very friendly.” “ I,” he continued, “ who endeavour everywhere to seek truth alone, or as much as I can find of it, care not at all whether it comes to me from heretics or the ortho- dox ; but I confess that, while it contains much which I cannot answer, there are some things in this work that do not satisfy me. About these I should like, if you think well, to get the author’s answer. Concerning the others I shall ask your opinion.” To make clear the two points that Locke submitted to Le Clerc would require more space, than the subject seems here to demand, especially as we have not Le Clerc’s reply. It is more important to note Locke’s admission of his own sceptical mood, while gently complaining of the young author’s too great en- couragement of scepticism. “As there are so many passages in this book which call in question the infalli- bility and entire inspiration of the Scriptures, which I am quite unable to controvert,” he said to Limborch, “Ido hope you will not refuse to give me your opinion on the subject. I have met with so many things in the canonical books, long before reading this treatise, which have filled me with doubt and anxiety, that the kindest thing you could do would be to rid me of my uncertainty.” 1 Kind as Limborch was, he could not comply with that request. The ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding ’ had not then begun to ferment in the minds of men and prepare the world for the supremacy of open-eyed reason over purblind faith. The fermentation was then only partially working even in the mind of the man who was writing the essay. Limborch, albeit a theologian, was 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ pp. 302, 304 ; Locke to Limborch, [26 Sept. — ] 6 Oct., 1685. Vol. II.— 3 34 KESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. wise enough to see that this fermentation neither should nor could be stayed. His answer has not been pre- served ; but all he could say in it would be that he too was in uncertainty from which he saw no relief. Whatever doubts Locke may have had about the inspi- ration of the Bible, he had no doubts as to the duty of Christians towards one another, and towards outsiders, in allowing perfect freedom of religious opinion. Having returned, after his few weeks’ stay in Cleve, to Amsterdam, and there again found a hiding-place in Dr. Veen’s house, he occupied part of the ensuing winter in writing to Limborch a long letter, destined to become very famous, “ about the mutual toleration of Christians in their different professions of religion.” 1 We have seen how, in 1667, Locke had written a very remarkable ‘ Essay concerning Toleration,’ designed espe- cially to show that it is incumbent on the state to allow, and to secure for its subjects, entire freedom of opinion on religious matters, and also that it can have no proper control over religious worship except so far as to see that the action of anyone sect does not interfere with the rights of any other sect, and is not opposed to the temporal well-being of the whole community. It is not unlikely that, while he was hiding in Dr. Veen’s house, he told Limborch of this treatise, and was persuaded by him to re-write his thoughts in such a form as would be useful to them, even if the document was not to be 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Limborch to Lady Masham, [13 — ] 24 March, 1704-5. “ Ilia hyeme,” said Limborch, “ in aedibus D. Venii, me solo conscio, eximiam illam de tolerantia epistolam ad me scripsit.” The letter, published in Latin in 1689, was almost immediately afterwards translated into English, with Locke’s approval, and under his correction, by William Popple. In my extracts I have made use of Popple’s translation. 1 EPISTOLA DE TOLERANTIA.’ 85 1685. "I .fit. 53. J shown to any one else. That, at any rate, was what Locke did. In a conversational, but at the same time orderly way, he reproduced his old arguments, with this important difference — that, whereas he had eighteen years before considered primarily, but not exclusively, the duties of governments in general, and of the English govern- ment in particular, towards Christians of various denomi- nations, he now considered primarily, hut not exclusively, the duties of Christians of various denominations in all countries towards one another. The grand principle asserted by Locke was the same on both occasions. In 1685 he probably agreed entirely with what he had written in 1667. He here only varied the expression of his views so as to make their presentment most suitable to the new occasion. The letter which he now addressed to the chief pastor of the remonstrants was indeed a far worthier remonstrance against Christian or un-Christian intolerance than Limborch, or Episcopius, or Arminius could have penned — an epistle to the churches fit to he bound up with those of Paul — a better encyclical than has been issued by any of the successors of Peter. “The mutual toleration of Christians,” said Locke, in this letter, “I esteem to be the chief characteristical mark of the true church. For what- soever some people boast of the antiquity of places and names, or of the pomp of their outward worship — others, of the reformation of their disci- pline — all, of the orthodoxy of their faith, for every one is orthodox to himself — these things and all others of this nature are much rather marks of men striving for power and empire over one another than of the church of Christ. Let any one have ever so true a claim to all these things, yet, if he be destitute of charity, meekness, and good-will in general towards all mankind, even to those that are not Christians, he is certainly yet short of being a true Christian himself.” “ If the gospel and the apostles may be credited, no man can be a Christian without charity and without that faith which works, not by force, but by love. Now I appeal to the consciences of those that persecute, torment, destroy, and kill other men upon pretence of 36 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. religion, whether they do it out of friendship or kindness towards them or no, and I shall then indeed, but not till then, believe they do so, when I shall see those fiery zealots correcting in the same manner their friends and familiar acquaintance for the manifest sins they commit against the precepts of the gospel — when I shall see them persecute with fire and sword the members of their own communion that are tainted with enormous vices, and without amendment are in danger of eternal perdition — and when I shall see them thus express their love and desire of the salvation of their souls by the infliction of torments and exercise of all manner of cruelties. For, if it be out of a principle of charity, as they pretend, and love to men’s souls, that they deprive them of their estates, maim them with corporal punishments, starve and torment them in noisome prisons, and in the end take away their lives ; I say, if all this be done merely to make men Christians and procure their salvation, why then do they suffer whoredom, fraud, malice, and such like enormities, which according to the apostle manifestly relish of heathenish corruption, to predominate so much and abound amongst their flocks and people ? These, and such like things, are certainly more contrary to the glory of God, to the purity of the church, and to the salvation of souls, than any conscientious dissent from ecclesiastical decision, or separation from public worship, whilst accompanied with innocency of life.’' Locke had fair reason for his scorn when, writing in his hiding-place in Amsterdam, he thought of all the tyrannical hypocrisy and vicious Chris- tianity, so called, that he had left behind him in Charles the Second’s England, and of all the greater evils that James the Second and his advisers would introduce, if they dared. “ That any man should think fit to cause another man, whose salvation he heartily desires, to expire in torments, and that even in an unconverted estate, would, I confess, seem very strange to me, and, I think, to any other also. But nobody surely will ever believe that such a carriage can proceed from charity, love, or good-will. If any one maintain that men ought to be compelled by fire and sword to profess certain doctrines and conform to this or that exterior worship, without any regard had unto their morals, if any one endeavour to convert those that are erroneous unto the faith by forcing them to profess things that they do not believe, and allowing them to practise things that the gospel does not permit, it cannot be doubted, indeed, that such a one is desirous to have a numerous assembly joined in the same profession with himself ; but that he principally intends by those means to compose a truly Christian church is altogether incredible. It is not to be wondered at if those who do not really contend for the advancement of the true religion and of the church of Christ make 37 1{$5. "I .ffit. 53. J THE HYPOCRISY OF RELIGIOUS TYRANNY. use of arms that do not belong to the Christian warfare ; but if, like the captain of our salvation, they sincerely desired the good of souls, they would tread in the steps and follow the perfect example of that prince of peace who sent out his soldiers to the subduing of nations and gathering them into his church, not armed with the sword or other instruments of force, but pre- pared with the gospel of peace and with the exemplary holiness of their conversation. This was his method, though, if infidels were to be converted by force, if those that are either blind or obstinate were to be drawn off from their errors by armed soldiers, we know very well that it was much more easy for him to do it with armies of heavenly legions than for any son of the church, how potent soever, with all his dragoons.” After that indignant preface to his argument, Locke proceeded to point out the distinction between civil and religious government ; to show that the former is competent only to procure and protect the civil interests of men — that is, “ life, liberty, health and indolency of body, and the possession of outward things, such as money, lands, houses, furniture and the like ; ” and to urge that the latter is proper only to a church — that is, to “ a volun- tary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord, in order to the public worshipping of God in such a manner as they may judge acceptable to him and effectual to the salvation of their souls.” His argu- ments as to the incompetence of the state, or civil government, to interfere with religion, except when religion interferes with civil rights, were repro- duced, in briefer form, from the old essay. The rest was new, and there was certainly a good deal of novelty, however old and well-grounded may have been its authority, in his definition of a church. 1 “ I say, it is a free and voluntary society. Nobody is born a member of any church ; otherwise the religion of parents would descend unto children by the same right of inheritance as their temporal estates, and every one would hold his faith by the same tenure as he does his lands ; than which nothing can be imagined more absurd. No man by nature is bound unto any particular church or sect, but every one joins himself voluntarily to that society in which he believes he has found that profession and worship which is truly acceptable to God. The hope of salvation, as it was the only cause of his entrance into that communion, so it can be the only reason of his stay there; for, if afterwards he discover anything either erroneous in the doctrine or incon- gruous in the worship of that society to which he has joined himself, why should it not he as free for him to go out as it was to enter ? ” 1 Note, in connection with this, the extract from Locke’s * Defence of Nonconformity,’ in pp. 459,460 of the last volume. 38 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Char IX From that very liberal ideal of a church, Locke proceeded to urge that — though, of course, no church or any other society can hold together with- out laws and methods of government — the only laws admissible in a church are such as its members themselves agree upon, or approve when offered to them, and that no methods of government can be maintained without the sanction of those who conform to them. A church, at any rate, must be a de- mocracy. Christ is its only head, and as Christ has laid down no laws and appointed no deputies — as the only promise he has made is that “ where- soever two or three are gathered together in his name, he will he in the midst of them” — the church must be self-governing. All men are free to worship God as they think most conducive to their present and eternal well-being ; and as many as choose to unite in one body or church must agree upon harmonious methods of pursuing their common ends. But they have no warrant at all for keeping any one within their church against his will, or for injuring any one who does not choose to belong to it. Accord- ingly, Locke laid down these two laws : first, that “ no church is bound by the duty of toleration to retain any such person in her bosom as after ad- monition continues obstinately to offend against the laws of the society ; ” second, that “ no person has any right in any manner to prejudice another person in his civil enjoyments, because he is of another church or religion.” “Let us suppose two churches, one of Arminians, the other of Calvinists, residing in the city of Constantinople,” he said. “ Will any one say that either of these churches has right to deprive the members of the other of their estates and liberty, as we see practised elsewhere, because of their differing from it in some doctrines or ceremonies, while the Turks in the meanwhile silently stand by, and laugh to see with what inhuman cruelty Christians thus rage against Christians ? But if one of these churches hath this power of treating the other ill, I ask which of them it is to whom the power belongs, and by what right ? It will be answered, undoubtedly, that it is the orthodox church which has the right of authority over the erroneous or heretical. This is, in great and specious words, just to say nothing at all. For every church is orthodox to itself, to others erroneous or heretical. Whatsoever any church believes, it believes to be true, and the contrary thereunto it pronounces to he error. So that the contro- versy between these churches about the truth of their doctrines and the purity of their worship is on both sides equal, nor is there any judge, either at Constantinople or elsewhere upon earth, by whose sentence it can be determined. The decision of that question belongs only to the Supreme Judge of all men, to whom also alone belongs the punishment of the it S 53.] LIMITS OF ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHORITY. 39 erroneous. In the meanwhile let those men consider how heinously they sin, who, adding injustice, if not to their error, yet certainly to their pride, do rashly and arrogantly take upon them to misuse the servants of another master who are not at all accountable to them. Nay, further, if it could be manifest which of these two dissenting churches were in the right way, there would not accrue thereby unto the orthodox any right of destroying the other. For churches have neither any jurisdiction in worldly matters, nor are fire and sword any proper instruments wherewith to convince men’s minds of error and inform them of the truth. Let us suppose, neverthe- less, that the civil magistrate inclined to favour one of them, and to put his sword into their hands, that, by his consent, they might chastise the dis- senters as they pleased. Will any man say that any right can be derived unto a Christian church over its brethren from a Turkish emperor ? An infidel, who has himself no authority to punish Christians for the articles of their faith, cannot confer such an authority upon any society of Christians, nor give unto them a right which he has not himself. This would be the case at Constantinople. And the reason of the thing is the same in any Christian kingdom. The civil power is the same in every place ; nor can that power in the hands of a Christian prince confer any greater authority upon the church than in the hands of a heathen ; which is to say, just none at all.” All interference with people’s religious opinions and worship Locke regarded as altogether unreasonable as well as unjustifiable. “ If I be marching on with my utmost vigour,” he said, in one quaint illustration, “ in that way which, according to the sacred geography, leads straight to Jerusalem, why am I beaten and ill-used because perhaps I wear not buskins, because my hair is not of the right cut, because perhaps I have not been dipped in the right fashion, because I eat flesh upon the road or some other food which agrees with my stomach, because I avoid certain byeways which seem unto me to lead into briars or precipices, because amongst the several paths that are in the same road I choose that to walk in which seems to be the straightest and cleanest, because I avoid to keep company with some travellers that are less grave and others that are more sour than they ought to be, or, in fine, because I follow a guide that either is or is not clothed in white and crowned with a mitre ? Certainly, if we consider right, we shall find that for the most part they are such frivolous things as these that, without any prejudice to religion or the salvation of souls, if not accompanied with superstition or hypocrisy, might either be observed or omitted, — I say they are such like things as these which 40 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX breed implacable enmities amongst Christian brethren who are all agreed in the substantial and fundamental part of religion.” Whether Locke was right in here implying that there was wide agree- ment among Christians as to the substantial and fundamental part of religion, whether even he on sober reflection really thought so himself, must be doubted. His own canon was tolerably broad. “ He that denies not anything that the holy scriptures teach in express words, nor makes a separation upon occasion of anything that is not manifestly contained in the sacred text, however he may be nicknamed by any sect of Christians, and declared by some or all of them to be utterly void of Christianity, cannot be either a heretic or schismatic.” Only a few illustrations of Locke’s views as expressed in this long letter to Limborch are here given. To set forth the whole argument would require the repetition of nearly the whole treatise. The gist of it all, how- ever, can be very briefly stated. Every one, urged Locke, should be entirely free to worship God as he likes. If he chooses to join with others in forming a church, or to attach himself to one of the churches already formed, so much the better. A church, moreover, is as free to excommuni- cate those of its members who rebel against its rules, endorsed by the great body of the members, as it is to accept candidates for admission ; but it must not ask the state to enforce its rules, nor must the state allow it to adopt any rules or customs that are injurious to the civil interests of society. The state is responsible for the peace and well-being of the community in its civil concerns ; but it has nothing at all to do with religion, beyond seeing that no individual or body, from religious motives, injures or attempts to injure any other individual or body, or the nation at large. That last consideration suggests the limits of toleration as defined by Locke. “First,” he said, “no opinions contrary to human society, or to those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society, are to be tolerated by the magistrate. “ Another more secret evil, but more dangerous to the commonwealth, is when men arrogate to themselves, and to those of their own sect, some peculiar prerogative covered over with a specious show of deceitful words, but in effect opposite to the civil right of the community. Those who attribute unto the faithful, religious and orthodox — that is, in plain terms, unto themselves — any peculiar privilege or power above other mortals in civil concernments, or who, upon pretence of religion, do challenge any manner of authority over such as are not associated with them in their 16S5. "I iEt. 53 J OPINIONS NOT TO BE TOLERATED. 41 ecclesiastical communion, — I say these have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate ; as, neither, those that will not own and teach the duty of tole- rating all men in matters of mere religion. For what do these signify but that they may and are ready upon any occasion to seize the government and possess themselves of the estates and fortunes of their fellow-subjects, and that they only ask to be tolerated by the magistrate so long until they may find themselves strong enough to effect it ? “ Again ; that church can have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate which is constituted upon such a bottom that all those who enter into it do thereby, ipso facto, deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince ; for by this means the magistrate would give way to the settling of a foreign jurisdiction in his own country, and suffer his own people to be listed, as it were, for soldiers against his own government. “ Lastly, those are not at all to he tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have- no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all. Besides, also, those that by their atheism under- mine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration.” We may regret that Locke should have admitted into his eloquent plea for toleration such an intolerant doctrine as those last sentences contain. But, in his excuse, it must be remembered that the atheism then in vogue was of a very violent and rampant sort. He rightly held that no man has a claim to the privileges of society who does not recognise the necessity of compliance with the fundamental law of society — the law of good faith. The low morality of people in his day unfor- tunately led him to think that no one could be expected to keep faith with another unless he believed in a God who would punish him if he failed to do so. “ Promises, covenants, and oaths,” he thought, “can have no hold upon an atheist.” An atheist cannot he a good citizen. Therefore an atheist has no claim to the rights of citizen- ship. 42 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX Locke, as we have seen, read Jean le Clerc’s ‘ Senti- ments de Quelques Theologiens de Hollande snr l’Histoire Critique dn Vieux Testament ’ while he was at Cleve, and sent thence, through Limb or ch, some queries to its author. In the winter of 1685-6, soon after his return to Amster- dam, Limborch introduced him to Le Clerc. This new friendship had very memorable results. Locke had been an author for now more than a quarter of a century. During more than fifteen years he had, at intervals, been working out the arguments to be embodied in the ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding,’ and he seems to have all along intended to publish that work if, when completed, his modesty would allow him to consider it worth publishing. He had collected notes and materials, moreover, ready to be converted into at least half a dozen other works, if he could bring himself to give them to the world. But it may almost be doubted whether, but for his acquaintance with Le Clerc, he would ever have given anything to the world. His hesitation in this regard is illustrated by the history of a small, though interesting, tract, which appears to have been the first thing actually published by him, with the exception of a few complimentary verses that have already been referred to. Soon after their friendship began in Paris in 1677, Locke had explained to Nicolas Thoynard the very ingenious plan for keeping a common-place book which he had himself adopted ever since 1661. Thoynard, fol- lowing and highly commending the plan, as did every one else who tried it, urged that it should be made public, and Locke consented ; but eight years passed before this was done. “ Since you are always of the same o]rinion that my ‘ Method of a Common-Place Book ’ would be JEAN LE CLEEc’s INFLUENCE. 43 16S6. "I .Et. 53. J generally useful, and since you still press me to print it, I shall obey you,” he wrote to Thoynard from Amsterdam, in the autumn of 1684. “If I have let so many years pass without doing this, it was not because I grudged the public such a small service” — as Thoynard appears to have complained — “but because I was ashamed to have it thought that I considered such a bagatelle worth giving out. But you insist upon it, and that is enough.” 1 A later letter shows, however, that he was still in doubt on the subject, 2 and it would seem that the Method was at last only published because Limborch also commended it and Le Clerc insisted upon issuing it in his ‘ Biblio- theque Universelle.’ The ‘ Bibliotheque Universelle’ lias a special interest in connection with Locke, in addition to the general interest attaching to it as almost the earliest literary magazine and review. Eeally the earliest was the ‘Journal des S^avans,’ started by Denis de Sallo, in Paris, in 1665, and this had been to some extent imitated in the same year by the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ of our Boyal Society; hut the former hardly aimed at giving more than epitomes of new books, supplemented by as much scientific, academical and other news and gossip as its editors could collect, and the latter only now and then added short notices of books to its copious reports of the proceedings of the Eoyal Society. Pierre Bayle, who after abjuring Eomanism had settled down as professor of philosophy and history at Eotterdam, in 1681, when he was thirty-four, must be honourably remembered as having, among other good work, produced the first 1 Additional MSS. in the British Museum, no. 28753 ; Locke to Thoy- nard, [13—] 23 Nov., 1684. 2 Ibid.; Locke to Thoynard, [14 — ] 24 Feb., 1684-5. 44 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. I.Chap. IX. original and independent collection of periodical criticism. His ‘ Nonvelles de la Republique de Lettres,’ started in March, 1684, was learned, witty, and catholic. But in the first and third, if not also in the second, of those qualities, it was surpassed by the ‘ Bibliotheque Universelle,’ which Le Clerc, aided by La Croze, began just two years after- wards in Amsterdam. Le Clerc was projecting it just at the time when Locke made his acquaintance, and there can be no doubt that, if Locke did not take part from the first in the delibera- tions as to the nature and purpose of the new review, he soon became one of Le Clerc’ s chief advisers on the subject. He also became one of his coadjutors. In the number of the ‘Bibliotheque Universelle’ for July, 1686, was published a French version of his ‘ Method of a Common-Place Book,’ with the title ‘ Methode Nouvelle de dresser des Recueils.’ 1 “Mr. Locke,” said Le Clerc, twenty years afterwards, “ also contributed several reviews of books to the ‘ Bibliotheque Universelle ; ’ the review of Mr. Boyle’s De Specificorum Bemediorum cum Corpusculari Philo- 1 ‘Bibliotheque Universelle/ vol. ii. (1686), pp. 315 — 340. The fact and the mode of this tract’s publication are perhaps more important than the con- tents of the tract itself; but they maybe briefly described, chiefly in Locke’s own words. “I take,” he said, “ a paper book of what size I please. I divide the two first pages that face one another by parallel lines into five- and-twenty equal parts, every fifth line black, the others red. I then cut them perpendicularly by other lines that I draw from the top to the bottom of the page. I put about the middle of each five spaces one of the twenty letters I design to make use of” — omitting K, Y, and W, and giving but one space to Z and Q — “ and a little forward in each space the five vowels, one below another, in their natural order. This is the index to the whole volume, how big soever it may be.” In the volume itself one or two pages were to be devoted to each set of subjects having the same initial and leading vowel; the subjects being carefully indicated by an appropriate title. it 8 53 .] CONTRIBUTIONS TO LE CLERc’s ‘ BIBLIOTHEQUE.’ 45 sophia Concordia,’ for instance, which appeared in the same number of the magazine.” 1 That information is, unfortunately, very meagre ; but it is clear and positive, and it is sufficient to show us that the spring or summer of 1686 was a turning-point in Locke’s life. His contri- butions— to — the 1 Bibliotheque Universello,’ with one exception which will be noticed presently, were neces- sarily slight and may have been in themselves unim- portant. But they started him on a new road. Hitherto we have found that he was pre-eminently a student. Suppose, for example, the first portion of the index to stand thus : — a 4 e 8, 54 A i 16 0 14 u 20 Locke seeking his note on ars would turn to A a (the initial and leading vowel being in this case the same) and be directed to p. 4 for it. For entries about Aer, Agesilaus, Acheron, etc., he would refer to A e and be sent thence to p. 8, or, if p. 8 was full, to p. 54. In like manner, A i, 16 would tell him to look for remarks on Avis on p. 16; Apostles being dis- cussed on p. 14, he would be referred thither by Ao, 14 ; and if he wanted an observation about Alum, he would be directed to it by Au, 20. Locke gave numerous directions for completing this scheme. 1 ‘ Eloge de M. Locke.’ All through the early volumes of the ‘ Biblio- theque Universelle ’ are scattered reviews of English books, chiefly on theological and scientific subjects, evidently contributed by some one well acquainted with our language and literature. Unless by Le Clerc himself, who knew English, it is difficult to understand by whom they could have been written unless by Locke. It is especially likely that he was the author of articles which appeared in December, 1686, on Boyle’s ‘De Ipsa Natura,’ and in September, 1687, on Sydenham’s ‘ Schedula Monitoria.’ But as to other articles I do not feel myself at liberty to offer my guesses. 46 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. Henceforth we shall find him a humble, painstaking student still, but pre-eminently an author ; so zealous an author that the remaining eighteen years of his life did not give him time enough to pour out for the world’s in- struction all the old thoughts that he had been accumu- lating and all the new thoughts that took shape in a mind which retained the vigour of its youth long after the body had grown old. The second period of Locke’s residence in Amsterdam, after his return from Cleve at some time in November, 1685, covered nearly twelve months, and during the first five or six months of it he found it necessary to remain in concealment in Dr. Veen’s house, in or near the Hoog- straat, and to pass among the few persons who saw him at all as Mynheer Van der Linden. The Hoog-straat was barely a quarter of an hour’s walk from the Iveisers- graclit, in which, next door to the Eemonstranten Kerk, Limborch lived ; but as at this time Locke rarely ventured out of doors, he had occasion to write to the friend who continued to attend to all necessary business for him other letters besides the afterwards famous ‘ Epistola de Tole- rantia.’ “ As your affairs will prevent me from seeing you to- day,” he said in December, “ I send to ask you not to take any trouble about procuring my money, and to do nothing until it is convenient to you ; and since I am speaking of this matter I may say that an opportunity has offered itself for my relieving you from this burthen, of which I am very glad, as you have enough business of your own to attend to. But we can talk about this and all sorts of other things when I see you. You know that your visits are always most welcome to me ; but I dare iEtfss j RELATIONS WITH LIMBORCH. 47 not ask too much for them, lest I should hinder your important duties. Only, remember how eagerly I always look for you.” 1 “I wish you and all belonging to you,” he wrote on New Year’s eve, “ every sort of happiness in the coming year, and, if you desire that the year should he a happy one to me, love me all through it.” 2 “I know your feeling towards me too well,” he said in another letter, “to have any doubt about it because you have been silent for a few days. If on that account I had any anxiety I should much rather think that it was business, which I could understand, or illness, which I should very much deplore, than slackening of friendship that kept you from me. Of that indeed you have given too good proof by wearying yourself out with writing to me while your head yet ached and your hand trembled from weak- ness. I grieve that I cannot come to you, instead of the servant who bears this letter.” 3 Such expressions as these help to show us the affectionate relations existing between the two men. They were not altered when, in the spring of 1686, Locke, though still lodging in Dr. Veen’s house, found himself able to throw off his disguise and move freely about the city ; nor when, in the following September, he left Amsterdam for a time and went to Utrecht, by a very circuitous route, and on business in which we are not able to trace his movements. “ After several days’ almost constant travelling,” he wrote to Limborch from Utrecht, “I have at length reached a place where I begin to feel at rest, and am able to renew 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, [7 — ] 17 Dec., 1685. 2 Ibid.; Locke to Limborch, ultima anni, 1685. 3 Ibid. ; Locke to Limborch, [13 — ] 23 Jan., 1685-6. 48 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. acquaintance with some old friends here, and to have some welcome intercourse with those dearer ones who are away. You, therefore, best of friends, I first salute. How you and yours are, and how you are occupied, I am extremely anxious to know. No interchange of letters can compensate for absence from you ; but to be without even letters is exile nearly as had as death. I exist when 1 am away from my friends ; I only live when I am with them, and with you chief of all. How long the many things that have called me to this town will detain me I do not know. If in mind I could be present at Amsterdam with you and Guenellon and Yeen and the rest, I should return very quickly ; but the body requires clothing, bed and board, and these things, alas, are not to be easily found in your city.” 1 What were the “ many things” that called Locke to Utrecht, and why he expected to find there more easily than in Amsterdam the “ clothing, bed and board” that he required, we are not told. He appears to have been anxious to get back to the books and papers that had been left at Yan Gulick’s house ever since his hurried departure from it, in May, 1685, without which such lite- rary work as he was now much engaged on may not have been easy ; and he appears also to have been encouraged to leave Amsterdam by fear that his health would suffer if he passed another winter in the city of canals and ditches, exposed to the full force of the northern winds, and surrounded by many pestilential marshes that have since been redeemed by the industrious Hollanders. But there must have been other reasons, to which we have now no clue, for his removing to the inland city, with the 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, [22 Sept. — ] 2 Oct., 1686. SECOND STAY IN UTEECHT. 49 evident intention of making it his home for some time to come. In his letter to Limborch he enclosed one to Le Clerc, which shows that, whatever other business he may have had in hand, he was intending to make further contribu- tions to the ‘ Bibliotheque Universelle.’ “ ’Tis with regret,” he wrote, in English, which Le Clerc could read, “that I consider myself here at this distance from your conversation and the advantages I promised myself from it. ’Twill yet he some reparation for that loss if I maybe in a condition here to render you any service. If I may be so happy, pray use me with this assurance, that I shall take it for a kindness and find satisfaction in it. If you have any copies by you that you designed for me of our ‘ Methodus Adversariorum,’ ” he added, concerning the article that he had contributed to the ‘Bibliotheque Universelle ’ in the previous July, “ I beg the favour of you, you would he pleased to send them hither. I would be glad some of them were put into Mr. Wetstein’s hand ” — Wetstein being the principal bookseller then in Amster- dam — “ for my friend Mr. Thoynard, to be sent to him, when he has an opportunity, by some other way than the post : when I know, and how many you destine him, I shall write to him about it .” 1 The different tone of these letters, written on the same day to Limborch and Le Clerc, would seem to indicate very clearly the different relations in which Locke stood to the two men. His friendship with Le Clerc had not yet reached its full proportions ; but already, as to the last, Locke appears to have respected and admired him 1 MSS. in the "Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Le Clerc, [22 Sept. — ] 2 Oct., 1686. The few letters from Locke to Le Clerc which are extant were written in English. Le Clerc generally replied in French. Vol. II.— 4 50 KESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Cbap. IX. for his intellectual greatness, to have esteemed him highly for his other good qualities, and to have found no less pleasure than profit in his society. They were good friends^ hut never more than friends. Limborch, like Locke himself, was of tenderer humour than Le Clerc, and we find in Locke’s correspondence with him the same effusive expression of affection, though with some differ- ence of character, that we found before, and that still was maintained, in Locke’s correspondence with Thoynard. They wrote to one another, albeit often on the knottiest problems of theology and the most intricate mazes of philosophy, like lovers rather than like friends. ‘‘ Though by long habit,” Locke said, nine days after the letter lately quoted, “ my mind has become somewhat indifferent to other inconveniences of life, I shall never be able to separate myself from your society without great trouble of mind. For to you I have learnt to come for instruction by your learning, confirmation by your judg- ment, guidance by your advice, and solace by your friendly intercourse ; in short, you have been my daily counsellor through all my troubles. But it has too often happened to me that what I most desired, and when I most desired it, cruel fortune has refused me. That I may therefore wear away as easily as I can this tedious separation, you ought to relieve it by your frequent letters.” 1 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 305 ; Locke to Limborch, [1 — ] 11 Oct., 1686. Limborch was a good deal troubled by the opposition offered to his liberal theology by some of his kinsfolk, and in this letter Locke commiserated him thereupon, as well as congratulated him upon the friendship shown to him by some persons, especially by Gilbert Burnet, the sometime courtier of Charles the Second, now busily employed in Holland in promoting his own interests and those of William of Orange and the latitudinarian party. “ If you have found Burnet any more kind and liberal,” said Locke, “ I rejoice ; for I constantly desire to see the number of peacemakers increase, especially IC86. "I Mt. 54 . J FOBCED EETUEN TO AMSTEBDAM. 51 If there is mystery as to Locke’s reason for settling down at Utrecht in September, 1686, there is greater mystery as to the cause of his sudden removal from it in the following December. We only know from his next letter to Limborch that on some ground, which cannot have been other than political, he was now threatened with expulsion from the city. Perhaps the Utrecht au- thorities were not aware that Locke had been “ pardoned,” and therefore did not care to have him so near to them. “ The expulsion of which you have heard,” he wrote to his friend, “ I do not understand, nor do I wish it talked about, although perhaps I shall have to come to you again. I confess that a removal from this place w T ould he some- what inconvenient to me on account of my luggage. I require books, for which it is not easy to find a place in which to keep them. 1 If I can get no other quarters, I hope you will forgive me if I send them to you, and ask you to stow them away in some garret or other in your house, until I meet with a more convenient place. This is my only trouble, that I give so much trouble to my friends. The rest does not afflict me. These are the sports of fortune, or rather the ordinary chances of human life, which come as naturally as wind and rain to travellers. among protestants, who are a great deal too fond of quarrelling.” Burnet’s name is supplied from the original letter in the Remonstrants’ Library. 1 At some time during his residence in Holland, Locke devised a portable book-case, in which books could be taken from place to place without remov- ing them from the shelves. I am informed that the invention is described in a note to a Dutch translation of one of Locke’s works ; but I have not been able to meet with this. The following is from the catalogue of the effects of Locke’s friend, Benjamin Furly, of whom we shall see much here- after : “ Boekkassen voor alderley Foormaat van Boeken, geinventeert door John Locke, Esq., zynde zeer begnaam om vervoert te werden, zonder dat men de Boeken daar nemen.” — ‘ Bibliotheca Furleiana ’ ('1714'), p. 352. 52 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. But I have some consolation ; for I shall see you in a few days, and we can then settle what is to be done. In the meanwhile, please look out for lodgings for me, and on that matter take counsel with your two learned friends,” — probably Yeen and Guenellon were here alluded to “ but it is important that the expulsion should not be thought or spoken about. That is a thing which I wish kept as quiet as possible. Commend me to those friends, and especially to your dear wife. If any letters for me come into your hands, keep them till I come to you.” 1 That letter throws much interesting, though not alto- gether welcome, light on Locke’s position at this time. Sick of English politics in the degraded state that they had reached, and anxious to find some quiet resting-place in which he might be able to bring into regular shape the philosophical inquiries which had long occupied his leisure, but for which he had not lately found much opportunity or had sufficient health in England, he had come to Holland three years ago. But thither political troubles had followed him. More than one year out of the three he had been compelled to spend in hiding from his enemies ; and though some excellent work had been done then, and new influences of the utmost value had been exerted upon him, his chosen occupations had been greatly hin- dered. He had now come to Utrecht in search of rest. But before two months were over, he was again a fugitive ; troubled to know where he could keep his books and make use of them ; troubled to give so much trouble tc his friends ; but, as he said, not troubled by the persecutions that hunted him about. “ Hi sunt fortunae lusus, vel potius vitae humanae casus ordinarii, nec magis quam ventus vel pluvia iterantibus mirandi.” 1 MSS. in Remonstrants' Lib. ; Locke toLimborcb, [2 — ] 12 Dec., 1686. 1(587. I Mt. 55. J REMOVAL TO ROTTERDAM. 53 Returning to Amsterdam early in December, and be- coming the welcome guest of Dr. Guenellon, Locke stayed there hardly two months. We shall next find him at Rotterdam, which was to be his usual, though not con- stant, place of residence during the remainder of the time that he spent in the Netherlands, and where, though his old relations with Limborch and Le Clerc were strengthened, new friendships and occupations came to him. His removal to Rotterdam seems to have been as sudden as his last removal from Utrecht, and his prolonged stay there unforeseen. “ He desired,” said Le Clerc, in referring to this brief sojourn in Amsterdam, “ that Limborch and I, with some other friends, would set up conferences, and that to this end we should meet together once a week, sometimes at one house and then at another by turns, and that there should he some question proposed of which every one should give his opinion at the next meeting ; and I have still by me the rules which he would have had us observe, written in Latin with his own hand. But our conferences were interrupted, because he went to Rotterdam.” 1 “ I grieve much,” Locke wrote to Limborch, soon after arriving in Rotterdam, “ that I am parted from you and all my other dear friends in Amsterdam. To politics I there gave but little thought ; here I cannot pay much attention to literary affairs.” 2 At Rotterdam, however, he brought to something like completion the great work that he had been projecting and preparing during at least sixteen years. 1 ‘ Eloge de M. Locke,’ in the ‘ Bibliotheque Choisie,’ vol. vi. 2 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, [4 — ] 14 Feb., 1686-7. 54 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. XX. Though we know very little of its details, and though it evidently left him plenty of time for other occupations, we need be in no doubt as to the business that caused Locke suddenly, in February, 1686-7, to leave Amsterdam and such friends in it as Limborch and Le Clerc, Gue- nellon and Yeen, with all the congenial intercourse, philosophical, literary, theological, and scientific, that they offered him. . • English politics had begun to take a turn, in keeping with a more complete change of policy at the Hague, by which Locke’s movements were greatly affected. He had gone to Holland to avoid association with and personal inconvenience from the disgraceful and apparently hope- less state of affairs into which Charles the Second and his advisers had brought England. Harsh usage and unjust suspicion had followed him there, and they had been harsher and more unjust during the first year or more of James’s reign than during the last year or more of Charles’s. He had been falsely charged with participa- tion in Monmouth’s rebellion ; and as long as William of Orange, honestly or for the sake of appearances, gave some support to the efforts of the English government to get hold of all the obnoxious refugees in Holland, he had either to hide away altogether or to lead a very retired life. Perhaps good to the world came from this in the opportunities that it forced upon him for paying more steady attention to literary work and philosophical specula- tions. But, excellent student and theorist as he was, he refused to recognize, either in his own case or in that of others, any benefit to be derived from theories or studies that had not for their sole method and object the improve- ment of society and of the individuals composing it ; and, whatever else he was, he was always, in the truest sense 1687. ] ^Et. 54. J CONNECTION WITH ENGLISH POLITICS. 55 of the term, a patriot. He saw no patriotism in useless rebellion or in frivolous schemes for effecting a change that gave no promise of reformation ; but, as soon as there was a prospect of good work being done, he loyally devoted himself to it and laboured zealously to help in making it as good as it could be. Such a prospect arose when all that was left of English statesmanship — only broken and soiled fragments for the most part, it is true — combined to bring about the over- throw of James the Second’s corrupt and corrupting „ government, and the planting of William of Orange on the English throne, and when William of Orange, after long questioning whether the prize within his reach was worth grasping, consented to throw in his lot with the English. Thereupon Locke established himself, not at the Hague, where the revolution was being plotted for most eagerly, but at Eotterdam, which was within a short day’s journey of the Hague, near enough for participation Id all important business, and distant enough to be free from contact with the small selfishnesses and idle projects that only clogged the good enterprise that was in progress. Writing to Limborch a few weeks after his change of residence, he excused himself for not sooner answering his friend’s letters. “ Business of another kind,” he said, “ prevented me ; and, though that immediate business is completed by the departure for England of the person with whom I was engaged, and I have now leisure enough for writing letters, I cannot get back into my old ways .” 1 Who that person was we do not know, nor can we make clear other allusions, of later date, to the friends who came over to visit him in Holland, or, being in Holland, 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 350 ; Locke to Limborch, [27 Feb. — ] 8 March, 1686-7. 56 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. CChai\ IX. occupied his time with business too extensive and im- portant to allow him leisure even for his favourite pastime of letter- writing. His chief political friend in Holland, however, can easily be identified. When his acquaintance with Lord Mordaunt, afterwards Earl of Peterborough and Monmouth, began, is not recorded ; hut they were fast friends at this time. Mordaunt, born about 1658, had seen much active service, and had attained considerable distinction as a seaman before November, 1685, when he startled his friends by making a first and last speech in James the Second’s house of lords in eloquent condemnation of the Romanis- ing policy of the government, and its violation of the test act. Very soon after that he crossed over to Holland, ostensibly to seek employment in the Dutch navy, but really to offer his services to William of Orange as leader of an expedition against James the Second. His first rash project was not listened to, but he remained at the Hague, and became the chief, or almost the chief, adviser of William on political affairs ; Henry Sidney, afterwards Earl of Romney, finding his most congenial occupation in doing the dirty work of negociation with the various parties and adventurers that, prompted by various motives, found common ground in their desire to place a new king on the English throne ; and Gilbert Burnet, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, being most at home in settling the domestic difficulties between Prince William and his wife. Locke had had some acquaintance, hut no friendship, with Burnet in former times, and of Henry Sidney he must also have known something ; but with Mordaunt he had most sympathy ; and besides- the frequent communications that passed between them in 1687 and 1688, there cannot be much doubt that RELATIONS WITH WILLIAM OF ORANGE. 57 through Mordaunt’s infinence he was often brought into personal relations with the prince, and had much to say respecting the arrangements for the projected revo- lution. His subsequent position in regard to William and his leading counsellors cannot otherwise be under- stood. For Locke — known to him only by report as the great friend of Shaftesbury, who had been the great supporter of Monmouth, and therefore an opponent of his own claims to the English succession, claims that he did not care to see denied, though he was for a long time not eager to enforce them — it is tolerably clear that William of Orange had not felt or shown much sympathy during his stay in Holland hitherto. Locke had certainly been in no hurry to court it. Other Englishmen, honest patriots or selfish adventurers, had crowded together at the Hague, anxious to win the favour of the prince who had so good a pros- pect of becoming king of England, while Locke took no pains to clear himself from a false accusation that was bringing upon him much personal inconvenience. But he was ready to take pant in public work wdren his services were wanted and could be made useful to the world, and the time had now come for this. Whether William, understanding at last his real worth, sought him out, or whether accident or the intentional effort of mutual friends first brought them together, cannot be decided. We know, indeed, very little of their intercourse while they were in Holland, or of Locke’s detailed share in the active measures that at this time were being adopted for placing the prince on the throne of James the Second ; but it is quite clear that wdiile the revolution was being planned a hearty friendship grew up between Locke and William, and perhaps a yet heartier friendship between Locke and 58 KESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [CHAr. IX. William’s amiable wife, the Princess Mary. It is quite clear also that, during the last two years of Locke’s resi- dence in Holland, he was intimately associated with some old friends of his, and with some new ones, in the efforts that were now being made in statesmanlike ways to bring about the revolution. 1 Though there is not much to be said about it, there can be no doubt that political work devolved more and more upon him, and at last chiefly occupied his attention, while he was in Holland. But we have much fuller information concern- ing his private life among his friends. During the two years which Locke spent chiefly at Rotterdam, he resided with a quaker, named Benjamin Burly, whose house was in the Scheepmakers-haven. Furly, who was bom in 1636, had been one of George Box’s early converts, and had helped him to write at any rate one of his treatises, ‘ A Battel-door for Teachers and 1 All through the time of his residence in Holland Locke maintained an active correspondence, though only a few fragments of it are extant, with his friends in England, perhaps especially with James Tyrrell, whose gossiping letters must have been very welcome to him as sources of authentic information in those days, when newspapers told but little news, and very little indeed that was authentic. Some specimens of these letters are given by Lord King, pp. 169—172. Locke's most important political correspondence has not come down to us, and it was probably destroyed by himself, and by his friends at his request. To more than one of his letters to Limborch and others ; in which he made some cautious allusion to public affairs, he appended a request that the persons to whom they were addressed would destroy them as soon as they had read them. If the request was not always complied with, the letters bearing it, which have reached us, were doubtless preserved only by accident, or because the recipients found in them nothing that there could be any possible danger in placing on record. We are bound to assume that, whenever the request was at all reasonable, they did comply with it. ^t fi8 kl WITH BENJAMIN FUELY AT EOTTEEDAM. 59 Professors to learn Singular and Plural, You to many, and Thou to one.’ His other writings show that he was an honest and earnest supporter of the tenets of the society of friends, but it is clear that he was not at all a fanatical member of the sect. Persecution or fear of per- secution induced him to settle in Kotterdam, and there he became a wealthy merchant, a great student and collector of books on theology, philosophy, science, and nearly every other subject, 1 and a good friend to all men of parts, especially Englishmen, who happened to be in Holland. Locke appears to have made his acquaintance by in- troduction from his friend Edward Clarke, of Chipley, soon after his arrival in the country ; and it would seem that Furly acted as a sort of banker for him all through his stay there. “ Bank money is here at 4f,” Locke wrote from Amsterdam in February, 1687-8. “ If you can secure so much for it there, draw on Hr. Peter Guenellon for 15,000 guilders in bank, and make your bill or bills payable at as short view as you please. Nay, if you 1 When Furly died, in 1714, his books were sold by auction, and the catalogue of the ‘ Bibliotheca Furleiana ’ then published, filling nearly 400 pages, is a wonderful list of valuable works in print and manuscript. Furly’s correspondence was, of course, not then sold. It was retained by his family, and became the property of Dr. Thomas Forster in 1825, who in 1880 published an avowedly garbled and very incomplete selection from it as ‘ Original Letters of Locke, Algernon Sidney, and Anthony Lord Shaftesbury ’ ; a second edition, with a few fresh letters, appearing in 1847. Careful search for this collection has been made by myself and others ; "but I cannot ascertain its whereabouts. Should any reader of this work be able to help me in discovering it, I should esteem his doing so a very great favour, as, from Dr, Forster’s preface, it is evident that, besides what he has published, it contains a great deal that ought to see the light. In quoting from the published volume, I shall refer to it as ‘ Original Letters.’ 60 EESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX cannot at 4f, take 4£ rather than fail, for it will be less trouble than to get the bank money sold here and then draw it in current money thither.” 1 Having at command as much money as he needed, it is clear that, while lodging w r ith Furly at Rotterdam, as with Yeen and Guenellon at Amsterdam, and with other friends else- where, Locke made suitable arrangements for defraying all the expenses of his maintenance. It was probably from Furly’s fine old house on the “ haven ” leading out into the Maas, that Locke wrote to Limborch shortly after his arrival and before he had arranged to have his English letters sent to him direct. “I wish,” he said, “that there were many letters from England coming to me through you, in order that, if there were any unwelcome news in them, I might get in the same envelope something from your pen which, by its kindness, grace, and sweetness, would make the bad news easy to bear. Nothing is more refreshing, nothing more agreeable to me than your letters, in which even German theology is made attractive.” 2 Limborch seems to have written a great deal about German theology and its Socinian tendencies in his letters to his friend at this period. “I am entirely of your opinion about German theology,” Locke said in his next letter. “ There are and always have been a great many German writers, but among all their multitudinous productions there are few which do not disclose their nationality by their mode of thought. But you have a mode of thought too, which I have mastered, and it is not strange that my mind should 1 ‘ Original Letters ’ (ed. 1847), p. 25 ; Locke to Benjamin Furly, [10 — ] 20 Feb. [1687-8], 2 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, [4 — ] 14 Feb., 1686-7. 1C87. “| JEt. 54. J STUDIES AT ROTTERDAM. 61 be ruled and governed in harmony and sympathy with yours. To tell the truth, I am your disciple, and, though an inexpert one, I rejoice that you have led me as you have done. I acknowledge your genius, and freely resign myself to its guidance.” 1 “Remember me to Mr. Le Clerc,” Locke wrote soon afterwards to Limborch, “ and tell him that I have just received from England a new work of Sydenham’s” — vidently the ‘ Schedula Monitoria de Novae Febris In- gressu,’ which was published in 1686 — “ which I have not yet read. If he desires either the book or a review of it, I will gladly send him either.” 2 Though that passage does not help us to decide whether the notice of Sydenham’s treatise which subsequently appeared in the ‘ Bibliotheque Universelle ’ was written by Locke or by Le Clerc, it makes it tolerably clear that Locke was in some sort responsible for much, if not all, of the attention paid by the Amsterdam periodical to English literature. Of English books he was evidently a diligent reader while in Holland. One of these books was the curious ‘ Theoria Telluris Sacra,’ written by Dr. Thomas Burnet, who was senior proctor at Cambridge in 1668. The Latin treatise was published in 1681, and it so pleased William of Orange that he helped Burnet to pubhsh an English version of it in 1684, and an English continuation of it in 1689. It was a strange contribution to geological science, and, though itself full of wild fancies and ground- less theories, helped the growth of that science, then in its 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 308; Locke to Limborch, [27 Feb. — ] 8 March, [1686-7]. 2 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, [31 March — ] 10 April, 1687. 62 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX feeble infancy, by the attention which was excited espe- cially by its bold denial that the world was created in six days, according to the statements in Genesis. Boyle and the natural philosophers did not know what to make of it, and in May, 1687, we find Tyrrell sending to Boyle, in answer to his request, an extract from a letter which he had lately received from Locke on the subject. “ The ‘New Theory of the Earth’ I have read in English,” Locke had written, probably in March or April, “ and cannot but like the style and way of writing upon thoughts wholly a man’s own ; but, though it be a good while since I read it” — “now almost two years ago,” he said in another part of the letter — “and that but cursorily, yet there stick with me still some of those objections which rose in my way as I perused it, and which offered themselves against the truth or probability of his hypo- thesis, which made me not able to reconcile it either to philosophy, scripture, or itself.” 1 While reading and writing about other men’s books, and finding a good deal of occupation in the political affairs that now claimed his attention, Locke seems to have been also finishing his ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding,’ or preparing the epitome of it which was soon to appear in the ‘ Bibliotheque Universelle.’ “ Con- cerning the treatise of which you require some account,” he wrote to Limborch in May, “ to tell you the truth I should have informed you sooner, had I not hoped before now to be in Amsterdam, and there enjoying the delightful society of friends, yourself especially, without which there would be no pleasure for me even in this pleasant spring- time.” 2 1 Boyle, ‘ Works,’ vol. v., p. 620 ; Locke to Tyrrell [1687] . 2 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 811 ; Locke to Limborch, [6 — ] 16 May, 1687. 1687. "I .®t. 54. J A LETTER TO BENJAMIN FURLY. 63 Soon after writing that letter Locke paid his wished- for visit to his friends in Amsterdam, and he remained there till some time in August. Thence he wrote two letters that claim to he quoted on account of their diverse illustrations of his temperament and leisure occupations. The first was addressed to Benjamin Furly, and was evidently in answer to one in which Furly had com- plained, for himself and his wife, that they had not heard from Locke before. “ Dear Friend, — One cannot take amiss the kind mistake of one’s friends; hut I should be very sorry to have given any just occasion to your wife’s misapprehension. Had she been better acquainted with my way of living with those I am free with, she would have known that silence, when I have no business to write, is a liberty I take with none so much as with the friends I am most assured of and with whom I think myself past all cere- mony. But, to confess the truth in your present case, I think I should have writ sooner, had I not every day expected that a letter from England would also bring me with it one from you, and that then I should have an occasion to answer. For I every day went or sent to Wetstein’s, with hopes to find one there from you. This he sure, I was anything rather than sullen ; and I was so far from taking any offence that I am not dis- pleased at the opportunity of acknowledging, once for all, that I was never anywhere with more freedom and satisfaction. This to your wife, to whom pray give my kindest remembrance. As for yourself, if I mistake not very much, you and I are past these discourses ; and therefore let me tell you that, how acute, how subtle, how learned soever you are, ’tis not you alone have the privilege to pass for a Jesuit. Other people of lower rank may, I find, sometimes arrive at that honour ; and, had it not been for an envious Englishman that sat at the other end of the boat, who dis- covered the truth, I had in my passage hither gone clear away with that reputation. This story is too long for a letter, and must be reserved to make you laugh when I come. Only I desire you to article with the baron that he shall not pervert me when I return again to his conversation. For, being now got to be of the most orthodox society in the world, I would not be tainted with the least infection of heresy for all the gold our English chemist there is like to make ; and, I make account, to die in this unspotted reputation would do one as much good as dying in St. Francis’s G4 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. own frock. It is very convenient that you take care in this affair, for I find the great desire I have to return again to the enjoyment of his and your good company will not let me be long away. Pray salute him with my most hearty and best respects, and be assured that I am, with perfect sincerity, your unfeigned friend and servant, “ J. Locke. “ Remember me kindly to the little ones, especially to my little friend. Bethink yourself if I can do you any service here, or for Mr. Van Helmont. 1 I shall be glad of the occasion.” 2 The other letter was written to William Charleton, ■whom Locke had known at Montpellier some ten years before, and had since corresponded with, 3 and who was a great traveller, a great collector of curiosities of all sorts, and a friend and correspondent of nearly every contemporary who shared any of his tastes. 4 But for 1 Franz Mercurius van Helmont, who was now residing for a time at Rot- terdam, though often also at Amsterdam, and continuing the somewhat fan- tastic studies in medicine and chemistry which his father, Johann Baptista van Helmont, as a disciple of Paracelsus, had done much to promote. I cannot explain the allusions in this letter to “the baron ” and “the English chemist.” The “little friend” was Furly’s younger son, Arent. 2 ‘ Original Letters,’ p. 27 ; Locke to Furly, [20 — -J 30 July, 1687. 3 Writing to Thoynard from Montpellier on 8 April, 1681, Charleton thanks him for certain things he has sent by instruction from Mr. Locke, “ whom I shall not fail to inform of the care you have taken to serve me.” Additional MSS. in the British Museum, no. 28728. i His real name was William Courten, which he abandoned as a means of escape from political and domestic troubles. “I carried the Countess of Sunderland,” wrote Evelyn, on the 16th of December, 1686, “ to see the rarities of one Mr. Charleton, in the Middle Temple, who showed us such a collection as I had never seen in all my travels abroad, either of private gentlemen or princes. It consisted of miniatures, drawings, shells, insects, medals, natural things, animals (of which divers — I think, a hundred — were kept in glasses of spirits of wine), minerals, precious stones, vessels, curiosities in amber, crystal, agate, etc. ; all being very perfect and rare in their kind, especially his books of birds, fish, flowers, and shells, drawn and miniatured to the life. This gentleman’s whole collection, 16S7. "I iEt. 54.J A LETTEE TO WILLIAM CHARLETON. 65 this stray letter we should know hardly anything, how- ever, of their acquaintance ; and, as Locke may have maintained with a hundred other men of more or less note, whose connection with him cannot now be traced, as kindly an intercourse as is here indicated, it is im- portant that we should observe its full significance as an illustration of his sympathetic nature and readiness to aid his friends in every way in his power.' “ Dear Sir, — I cannot but take kindly from Dr. Goodall 1 any service that he has done you, and he cannot oblige me more than by putting it to my account, which is with great justice done, since there is nothing more nearly concerns me than your health. When I write to him I shall acknow- ledge it, and also recommend it to him as an interest so properly mine that he may assure himself that if he administers anything to the recovery of your health he truly takes care of mine. I have not had time since the receipt of your letter yesterday so to inform myself as to answer all the particulars of his so as I desire, for which I must beg you to excuse me to gathered by himself travelling over most parts of Europe, is estimated at £8000. He appeared to be a modest and obliging person.” (Evelyn, ‘Diary and Correspondence,’ ed. 1850, vol. ii., p. 260.) “I went again,” said the same indefatigable sight-seer, on the 11th of March, 1689-90, “to see Mr. Charleton’s curiosities both of art and nature, and his full and rare collection of medals, which, taken altogether in all kinds, is doubtless one of the most perfect assemblages of rarities that can be anywhere seen. I much admired the contortions of the tea-root, which was so perplexed, large, and intricate, and withal hard as box, that it was wonderful to con- sider.” (Vol. ii., p. 306.) This remarkable collection, including Locke’s contributions to it, became the property of Sir Hans Sloane after the death of its founder, and was ultimately lodged, along with Sloane’s other trea- sures, in the British Museum. 1 One of Sydenham’s most skilful and persevering disciples and fellow- workers. To him Sydenham dedicated the ‘ Schedula Monitoria ’ that he had lately published, and he lost no opportunity of commending his private virtues and his professional talents. (Sydenham, ‘ Opera Omnia,’ ed. Green- hill, 1846, pp. 20, 278, 358, 362, 481.) Being Sydenham’s friend, Goodall was Locke’s friend. Vol. II. — 5 66 EESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX him, with the return of my thanks till I shall be in a condition to do it by an answer to what he demands. In the meantime pray do me the favour to inform him that I remember that a friend of mine, one Mr. Charleton, had, by the use of tobacco in snuff, contracted at Montpellier a continual headache, which upon the forbearing of snuff left him again. Whether this at all concerns your present case, I beseech you consider, and, if fashion has prevailed upon you to do yourself harm, to quit it again. I with the more importunity press this because I remember it was with great instance and violence I extorted that pleasure from you, which perhaps forgetfulness has suffered you to return to again. “ I have already spoke to a friend of mine to get for you any rarities that he can light on in the East India fleet which is now here every day expected. I the last week put into the hands of Mr. Smith, a bookseller, living at the Prince’s Arms, in Paul’s Churchyard, twenty-six draughts of the inhabitants of the world, especially the East Indies. They are marked thus : 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, and the names of most of them writ on the back-side with my hand. Those whose names are not writ, if you know them not, I will get explained here. The Brazilian cannibals, of which there are one or two, are easily known, hut since there was not the name of the particular nation from which they were taken, I would not add them myself. For the excellency of the drawing I will not answer, they being done by my boy, who hath faithfully enough represented the originals they were copied from, so that one may see the habits and complexion of the people, which was the main end they were designed for, and therefore you must excuse them if they be not excellent pieces of painting. I also put into the hands of the said Mr. Smith a little box filled with the seeds and husks of Foeniculum Sinense : the husks have a very fine aromatical taste, and are used by the Muscovites to be mixed with their tea, as I have been told ; which is not I imagine the most sottish thing they are guilty of. If you think the seeds will grow and you find to spare, I would be glad you would send two or three of them, in my name, to Jacob Bobert, the gardener at the physic garden in Oxford, who may endeavour to raise plants from them. He is a very honest fellow, and will not be un- willing to furnish you with any curiosities of that kind. Moreri, I find, by your so often mentioning of it, lies heavy upon your hands, not that you are weary of the book, but are impatient till I have it. I tell you truly, if I had a better friend to whose care to commit it till I return, I should pre- sently ease you of it ; hut, if you cannot be easy in your conscience till you find it wholly in my possession, I must entreat you yet to have the patience 1687. 1 iEt. 51. J A LETTER TO WILLIAN CHARLETON. 67 till I bethink myself how to dispose of it commodiously. You are one of those scrupulous friends that cannot be at rest till you have more than quitted scores, for so your exact putting them to account gives me reason to speak, with the kindness of your friends. In this respect Dr. Guenellon and you are well met, and I who am of a more loose and careless temper am pleased to see that this nice humour has a little perplexed one or both of you, for I see that the doctor is in pains that he cannot find Gorlaeus and the other books you desired. “I most earnestly wish you health, and am, dear sir, your most humble, most obedient servant, J. Locke.” “ I was told you promised to inquire of Serjeant Maynard for the herb which cures the leprosy. Give me leave to ask whether you have done it ? ’Tis not fit so useful a thing should be lost.” 1 A sequel to that letter was written a fortnight later : — “ Dear Sir, — I lately gave you the trouble of a letter to let you know that I had sent you by Mr. Smith, a bookseller at the Feathers in Paul’s Churchyard, twenty-six draughts of several foreign, especially Asiatic, people, and also a little box of the seeds of Foeniculum Sinense. What other com- mands I have from you in yours of 26th July, I shall take all the care I can to give you satisfaction in. “ I herewith send you a letter and a little manuscript for my Lord Pem- broke, which I beg the favour of you to deliver to his own hands if he be in town, and to send me what answer his lordship shall please to honour me with. If his lordship be at Wilton, I beg the favour of you to send the whole packet away by the next post to Dr. David Thomas, at Salisbury, with the letter here enclosed to him. If I make you not a long apology for this trouble, ’tis because I know with what pleasure and readiness you oblige your friends, which lays on me the greater obligation to be, as I am, dear sir, your most affectionate and most humble servant, “ J. Locke.” 2 Having spent his holiday at Amsterdam in hard work 1 Sloane MSS. in the British Museum, no. 3962 ; Locke to Charleton, [2 — ] 12 Aug., 1687. Moreri’s ‘ Dictionnaire Historiqueet Critique’ (1671) and Gorlaeus’s ‘ Thesaurus Numismatum ’ were probably the books referred to by Locke. 2 Ibid., Locke to Charleton, [16—] 26 Aug., 1687. 68 EESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. and in pleasant intercourse with his remonstrant friends, Locke returned to Rotterdam some time before the 1st of September, when he wrote to Limborch a letter of which the most curious part was its postscript : — “ When I was in Amsterdam lately I met by chance with some paper which was better than any I can find anywhere else. I beg, therefore, that you will buy me a ream, and, when you send it, tell me what you have paid for it. This sheet on which I write will show you the size that I want. The place where it is to be bought you will learn from the sentence which I have written in the Dutch language. Every day I read some Dutch, and I hope soon to be able to express properly my thanks in all the sincerity that is natural to your own language.” Then followed the sen- tence of Locke’s Dutch : “In een kleyn wincheltie in der passer in de Warmoes-straat schuijnes over de liesweltlie Bijbel, een riem papier van de selve sort van desse brief.” 1 Soon after returning to Rotterdam Locke fell ill. “ Ever since I received the book you sent me,” he wrote to Limborch, “ I have been so unwell that I have not been able to read it ; but as I am now mending every day, I hope I shall not much longer be deprived of that pleasure.” 2 “I beg you,” he said in another letter, “ to ask Dr. Yeen to send me eleven or twelve bottles of laudanum, of the same strength as before, as I have exhausted all the stock I had, and now need more for my own use.” 3 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, [1 — ] 11 Sept., 1687. Next door to the old Bijbel Hotel, in the Warmoes-straat, there is still a bookseller and stationer’s shop, which probably has retained the same business ever since the time when Locke sent to it for his ream of paper. 2 Ibid., Locke to Limborch, [17 — ] 27 Sept., 1687. 8 Ibid.; Locke to Limborch, [26 Sept. — ] 6 Oct., 1687. ILLNESS AT ROTTERDAM. 69 1687. 1 M. 55. J But lie received better medicine than laudanum from Amsterdam. “ Among cordials, and, as we call them, restoratives,” he wrote again to Limhorch, “I find nothing so efficacious as the kindness of friends. Your last letters have really refreshed me very much. I should have answered the first of them some time ago, if I could have ventured to say anything positive about my health ; for often, when I fancied I was quite recovered, I have had another relapse. So, between the pressure of disease and the hope of recovery, I have deferred writing to you till, after a few days’ trial, I could venture to say that I was convalescent. This delay called forth your last letter — so full of friendship — and thus brought a remedy more useful and welcome than that which you sent me from Dr. Yeen. That, indeed, was wasted, for the maid carelessly overturned the bottle and spilt all its contents. Now, however, I hope to have no further need of remedies ; for though I am yet far from well, I hope I am troubled not by the approach of a new illness, but only by the remains of one passing away. I am not afraid of writing thus minutely to you, because I know that nothing else would satisfy your kind solicitude on my account.” It seems that Limborch also had been ill. “ I am so very glad,” Locke went on to say, “that your complaint was removed by such a small loss of blood. I hope you will always use as much prudence and promptitude. If you neglect this advice, you, though a healthy man, have more to fear than an invalid like me : we valetudinarians are a sort of hypocrites, who are constantly threatening to die without doing it. But I hope I shall live long enough to make some return for the kindness of my friends, and yours most of all. Tell the Yeens and the Cfuenellons and vour dear wife how much more helpful to 70 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. ["Chap, IX. me tlieir kind wishes have been than any other physio could be ; and as for you, farewell, and, if you want me to fare well, go on loving me.” 1 There was a business-like postscript to that pathetic letter. “ When you meet Mr. Le Clerc, tell him, please, that I have received the book and papers he sent me, and as soon as my health will allow me to attend to such work I will do what he asks. The enclosed sketch I have kept by me for several days, because I did not feel well enough to write to him. I beg that you will now hand it to him, in case he thinks fit to insert it in his 1 Bibliotheque.’ If he still desires Porphyry’s book about the life of Pythagoras, I will take care to send it to him by the first opportunity.” “ I am sorry,” Locke wrote a few weeks later, “ that I could not he present at the entertainment of your friends — not because I should have cared about the oysters ; for on such occasions I grudge nothing more than the time in which people are too busy in using their mouths in other ways for them to talk. I find in the conversation of pleasant companions a far more refreshing relish than I could get even from an oyster of Gaurus.” 2 Locke was among his friends in Amsterdam again in December and the two following months, the special business of his visit being superintendence of the printing of the abstract of his ‘ Essay concerning Human Under- standing,’ which appeared in the ‘ Bibliotheque Univer- selle ’ for January, 1687-8. 1 MSS. in Remonstrants' Lib.; Locke to Limborch, [10 — ] 20 Oct., 1687. 2 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 319 ; Locke to Limborch, 20 — 30 Nov., 1687. The last quoted sentence is in allusion to Juvenal’s lines (Satire viii., 1. 85) : “ Dignus morte perit, caenet licet ostrea centum Gaurana.” A LAST VISIT TO AMSTERDAM. 71 1SS7. 1 2Et. 55.J The letters that he wrote thence to Furly are in contrast to those that he wrote from Botterdam to Limborch, and help to show, not only that the honest quaker was by no means an ascetic, but also that Locke himself could on occasion enjoy the society of jovial friends as well as that of theologians, — his scorn of oysters notwithstanding. “ You wish me with you, and desire I should make haste,” he wrote at Christ- mas time ; “ and so do I too ; hut I doubt whether you would be of the same mind if you knew one of my reasons. A cask of mum, a hogshead of cyder, even now and then a bottle of wine or a zopy ” — a pigtail — u among, for a more effectual remedy against phlegmatic humours and rainy weather : this, I suspect, in my absence will make brave work, and heresy will rise up apace in the Lantern 1 when so watered; and the chief mischief is I cannot find any one to make my deputy overseer. Our old master and you will, I know, be at it with t’other glass, and our mistress, though she will not partake, yet will stand by, clap her hands, and encourage you to it. For my part, I think, I will best make Arent my vice-governor, who may often repeat to you his ‘ Wil gij wel laeten?’” Arent was Furly’s second son, now four or five years old, and to him Locke doubt- less referred when he said, “ The enclosed is for my little friend, both as a token of remembrance from me, and as an item for him to show you what you deserve when you meddle with your zopies.” 2 1 The Lantern appears to have been a club that met at Furly’s house, perhaps with Locke for president, or moderator of the mum-drinking. 2 ‘ Original Letters,’ p. 16 ; Locke to Furly, [16 — ] 26 Dec. [1687]. “The water, both in the Ij, and on the land side of the town,” Locke added in a postscript, “ is exceedingly high. If it should get into the town, 72 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. Locke’s letters to Furly are entertaining, and illustrate his habit of bantering, when he was in good health and good spirits, even though we cannot understand all the subjects that he was gossiping about. “ ’Tis not to answer your last letter, no more than your last answered mine, that I now write to you,” he said in one of them ; “but to keep up the correspondence. But, now I have begun, I fear it will scarce pass for a letter if I, who have not altogether as much pretence to business as you, should not make it a little bigger, though I can tell you I am as busy as a hen with one chick” — the chick, of course, being the epitome of the ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding,’ which was now only waiting to be printed off and published. “ I cannot, I confess, but envy you when I consider you in the posture you describe yourself, with the great folio on one side and the diminutive college” — was that the Lantern?— “on the other; and, since the mind of man is always hankering after sublime and difficult, not to say unintelligible, notions, I am apt to think you ever now and then lend an ear to that instructive discourse, and leave for a while your processes, condemnations, prisons, and executions, to take a little fresh air in those unconfined spaces where separate souls wander at liberty. But have a care you get no more into the sling of one of these inquisitions than into the dungeons of the other; for I can tell you they are both terrible places .” 1 “ I envy your employment in that musty manuscript,” I know not but you must come in a boat and fetch me from Dr. Guenellon’s as soon as you hear it. Without jesting, if this north wind continue there will be danger.” 1 ‘Original Letters,’ p. 29; Locke to Furly, [27 Dec. — ] 6 Jan., 1687-8. TROUBLE WITH PRINTERS. 73 1687-8.1 .ffit. 55. J he wrote in his next letter, “ which yon will easily allow to he a great deal better than to wait here the leisure of drunken workmen, who have so great a reverence for the holy days that they could not till to-day quit the cabarets, the places of their devotion, and betake themselves to their profane callings. It costs, as I have already told you, not a little pains and patience to be an author .” 1 “I suppose to-morrow,” he wrote a week later, “there will be one sheet printed of my work, and there being but four in all, I hope, now their hands are in, they will go on roundly and not make me wait much longer .” 2 But the printing, or any rate the binding, was not completed till more than a month afterwards. “If lying be a sin that is put to account,” Locke said with some bitterness, “ most ordinary tradesmen will, I fear, have a hard reckoning to even in the next world ; for there is scarce one of them one can find who thinks it not a privilege of his calling to break his word whenever it may serve his turn. But, however, they are all good Christians, orthodox believers, and such as one cannot but know to be marked for salvation by the distinguishing L that stands on their door-posts, or the funeral sermon that they may have for a passport, if they will go to the charge of it. This preface will not be altogether beside the matter, if you expect me, as ’tis like you do, the same day you receive this. But whatever business, desire or resolution one has to see one’s friends, those above-mentioned gentlemen, I assure you, are first to be attended and their leisure to be waited. And ’tis no small joy that I am so far out of their hands that I can now say with some confidence 1 4 Original Letters,’ p. 33 ; Locke to Furly, [9 — ] 19 Jan., 1687-8. 2 Ibid., p. 41 ; Locke to Furly, [16 — ] 26 Jan., 1687-8. 74 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. that I hope to be with you on Saturday next.” 1 The following Saturday was the 29th of February, and on that day, or soon after, he returned to Furly’s house. The letters which, during his absence, Locke had written to Furly, show very clearly in what friendly relations he stood to the quaker merchant. Furly, though to his commercial pursuits he added theological and antiquarian studies and a little authorship, was evidently much more a man of the world than Limborch, or any of the Amster- dam remonstrants. Locke found his society and that of other members of the Lantern, whatever sort of a club that was, a pleasant relief to his own ordinary studios, and along with Furly he must have been brought much more closely into contact with the political movements that could not fail to be extremely interesting to every Englishman, and especially to such a steady patriot and eager lover of liberty as Locke was. In the Furly house- hold, moreover, he was evidently quite at home. During his absence he never wrote a letter without sending affectionate messages to Mrs. Furly and her children, of whom Arent, to whom he gave the nickname of Toetie, was his favourite. For these children he invented and caused to be prepared a copy book, that was intended to teach them to write as legibly as possible. 2 One of them, the eldest, being ill while he was in Amsterdam, he sent careful directions for his treatment. In every way he seems to have made himself altogether a member of this family, and his kindly interest in it lasted to the end of his life. Immediately after his return to Rotterdam Locke 1 ‘ Original Letters,’ p. 42 ; Locke to Furly ; [23 Feb. — ] 4 March, 1687-8. 2 Ibid. The same method was recommended by Locke in ‘ Some Thoughts concerning Education,’ § 160. 1 1 ' 88 . "| JSt. 55. J OCCUPATIONS AT ROTTERDAM. 75 resumed his correspondence with Limborch, which had been agreeably disturbed by their personal intercourse ; but the letters written during the spring and summer of 1688 are not of very much interest. There is much in them, however, about a £ Liber Sententiarum Inquisi- tionis Tholosanae,’ full of important contemporary infor- mation concerning the proceedings of the holy office at Toulouse in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the manuscript of which had come into Furly’s possession, and about the publication of which he and Locke sought Limborch’s advice and assistance. “ When you see what it contains,” Locke wrote, “ I think you will agree with us that it ought to see the light. For it contains authen- tic records of things done in that rude age which have been either forgotten or purposely misrepresented. I would rather, and I feel sure all who love truth would rather, that such uncorrupted narratives should be published than that we should have those ornamental histories which, whatever renown they may bring to their authors, only deceive and mislead their readers. I spoke to Le Clerc about editing it before I left Amsterdam. Please consult with him about it, and see what can be done.” 1 Le Clerc did not edit it, but it induced Limborch to pursue some studies that he had already begun, and four years afterwards, when his studies issued in the publication of his £ Historia Inquisitionis,’ it formed a valuable supple- ment to that important work. With Le Clerc Locke does not appear to have corre- sponded very frequently, but in July he wrote to him an interesting letter that illustrates the attention paid by him to a subject somewhat alien to his usual studies. It was 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, [4 — ] 14 March, 1687-8. 76 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX called forth by an article that Le Clerc had shortly before published in the ‘ Bibliotheque Universelle,’ with the title ‘Essai de Critique, ou l’on tache de montrer en quoi consiste la Poesie des Hebreux .’ 1 The nature of the treatise is made evident by Locke’s observations upon it. “ Sir,— I know not wliy you should excuse the slow sending the ninth tome of your ‘ Bibliotheque,’ unless you have made to yourself some law I know not of, and which I cannot suppose without a mighty increase of the obligation. “ Your discourse of the Hebrew poetry I have read with mighty satisfac- tion, and am so far from having anything to say against your hypothesis that it seems to me as clear as any demonstration can be concerning such matters ; for so I call such evident probabilities as, arising from the things themselves, have no counterbalance on the other side. I know not what cavils prejudice or party may raise against you, for some men who are devoted to a sect and not to truth are never to be satisfied, and ’tis no great matter whether they are or not. “ If it were necessary to add anything to that full proof you have given of the Hebrew verses being in rhyme, I think one might say that the other, by measure, is unnatural, and had never been in the world had not the variety of dialects of the Greeks using the same language in several distinct communities, by their various placing and forming their words, given occa- sion to it. The Romans, who derived their language and learning from the Greeks, were almost under a necessity to follow their way of poetry too, but wanted so much of the conveniencies of that language to do it that it was very late before poetry got any footing amongst them, and then it was only hexameters, which have the greatest latitude, except their dramatic trimeters, which differ little from prose. For Horace was tbe first as well as almost the last amongst the Romans that durst venture their tongue at lyric poetry ; and he too, with his great wit and command of expression, was fain in many places to transgress the rules of his language and, with Grecian liberty, use foreign ways of speaking to accommodate his words to the measures of the Greek verses he imitated. Besides these two languages, I think there cannot be another produced wherein tbeir way of versifying was not in rhyme. For, 1 ‘Bibliotheque Universelle,’ vol. ix., pp. 219 — 291. 1688. 1 2Et. 55. J REMARKS ON HEBREW POETEY. 77 however yon have quoted the English for writing verses without rhyme, yet I know but one man that has done so, and he, too, one much versed in and addicted to the Greek and Roman polite learning, whose admiration of their poetry put him, as I imagine, in that way of writing. 1 Some translations I think there may be, too, in the way of blank verses, as we call them, but they are little regarded, and scarce thought different from prose. And we see, as you yourself have observed, that as soon as the Greek language began to he out of vogue and use amongst the Romans, rhyming poetry came in also in their language ; which, as I said, I think is the most natural way of verses, which the Greeks alone, who affected to be originals in everything, had the conveniency and boldness to transgress. For the Romans I count only their scholars. “ If there he anything in the whole essay wherein I differ at all from you, it is only in this, that I wish you had left out the supposition you make (p. 239) that perhaps sometimes, here and there, they neglected the rhyme ; which is not very probable if their poetry consisted in it ; and we never see it done in rhyming verses any more than the feet are neglected in metrical ; for this would be to write half verse, half prose. This, though it be a reason to me against that supposition, yet is not that for which I except against it. For I should not he much curious to inquire into the ancient poetry of the Jews, if it terminated in a bare speculation against this piece of antiquity. That which affects me in it is the prospect I have that it may be of mighty use to correct many errors, and give us a great light into the Hebrew text as we have it. But, if it be once granted that in their poetry they' neglected the rhyme, it will be apt to stop men’s farther inquiry where they can make out the sense without it. But, on the other side, I should rather conclude that, wherever the rhyme is wanting, there our copies differ from the original. Nor are we to think that there was no rhyme because we cannot now make it out with as good sense as it carries in our present reading without it. For, if to the difficulties you mention one add this, that the books written in Hebrew which are come to our hands cannot be sup- posed to contain the whole compass of the language, one shall quickly lose the hopes of reforming all the faults of the copyists. They had, no doubt, many words and expressions which are nowhere in the Scripture. And, had we no other remains of the Roman language than what is to be found in the writings of Tully and Livy (which are a great deal more than our Old Testament contains) we should thereby be very ill able to establish a very imperfect copy of Horace’s ‘ Odes,’ writ like prose, if such an one alone 1 Locke, of course, here alluded to Milton. 78 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. I. had been all could have been found of him. But I think we should not from thence conclude that the Romans used to neglect the just measure of their feet because we could not at this distance reduce them into that exactness by any change of words we could find to supply the defects of the ill-written copy. “I shall make no apology for taking this liberty, having done it in obedience to your commands, or rather to provoke you to the same with me on some other occasion. The discovery you have made I think of great use, and I wish, as your leisure will permit, you would go on reducing the Psalms into their original rhymes as far as, out of the state they now are in, it is possible to be done. “ I have some further questions to propose to you on this subject, but my letter is already grown beyond the measure I at first designed it ; and yet I must not conclude it without telling you that I wonder you so little esteem the gentleman you mention capable of penetrating far into the eastern poetry. Methinks he has the most poetical head of any man I ever met with. His visions are beyond the reach of those dull people who conduct their thoughts by paltry reason. And be must needs have a large fame in Parnassus who can expect so great an income from it. The truth is, in all but his meat, drink, clothes, and some other accoutrements of life, he is very rich, and if the world would but take those commodities he has at his rate, he would be no small man. The mischief is the ignorant world knows not how to value them, and so the exchange of knowledge for money is not made, though wanted on both sides. And I see no remedy for it but we must be condemned to ignorance and he to threadbare clothes ; though who can but think it great pity that a head which is the treasure of such a mass of precious knowledge should be covered with a peruke so much weather- beaten and out of repair ? “ About two months since, I was told at Leers’s 1 that Simon’s J Histoire Critique du Nouveau Testament ’ was in the press and that it would be done about this time ; but, being last week at his shop, I saw four-and-twenty sheets of it, all that was then printed of three score — which they say it will amount to — so that, according to this reckoning, we may expect it will be published about four months hence. “ I long to see your next volume, and shall be not a little confirmed in my opinion concerning the whole business of words as I have treated it in my third book , 2 if I find your thoughts concur with it, and that it may be applied 1 The principal bookseller then in Rotterdam. 2 Of the ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding.’ 1588. 1 iEt. 55. J REMARKS ON HEBREW POETRY. 79 with any advantage to the understanding of ancient writers, which I have been apt to think the ordinary way of critics leads not to “ I cannot, nor I ought not to, find fault with this ninth tome of your ‘ Bibliotheque ’ ; hut yet I cannot forbear to tell you that it wants the asterisks of distinction which you have done me the favour to place at the beginning of some of the other tomes. I am, sir, your most humble and most obedient servant, “ J. Locke.” 1 “ I have read with much pleasure,” Locke wrote oll the same day to Limborch, “ our friend Le Clerc’s ‘ ex- periment,’ as he calls it, on the ancient poetry of the Hebrews, and I am persuaded that by his method much light may be thrown on the Psalms and other metrical portions of the Bible. I should much like to see a com- plete edition of the Psalms thus arranged by him. Do urge him to undertake such a w T ork as quickly as his other occupations will permit. When I first discussed Le Clerc’s view with a friend of mine, well versed in Hebrew literature, he rejected it, but he now adopts it.” 2 Locke’s next letter to Limborch reminds us of his old occupations as a student of medicine. In the autumn of 1688, all, or nearly all, of Limborch’s children — he had several daughters, but apparently only one son — were ill. “I am truly sorry,” Locke now wrote, “that you have had so much trouble in yOur family ; but I hope your boy will soon recover, as the rest have done. As I am absent I will not venture to say much about the disease and its cure, especially as you have such kind and skilful medical friends at hand. Let me, however, recommend one thing. If, as you seem to expect, small-pox shows itself, be very careful to avoid all heating medicines, and do not load 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants’ Library ; Locke to [Le Clerc], [20 — ] 30 July [1688]. 2 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 322; Locke to Limborch, [20 — ] 30 July, 1688. 80 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. him with bed-coverings that are likely to bring on a fever which will greatly increase his clanger. My love for you and all belonging to you forces me to say this ; and I speak from experience .” 1 “My great anxiety has been most happily relieved,” he wrote next day, “by your letter of yesterday. If I did not fear the worst from your silence, I was certainly alarmed ; for people who love their friends can never believe that no news is good news ; but now I rejoice that all goes well, and that nothing hut care and good dieting are required to cure your son. Let me give you my advice ; not because I think you can need it when such a wise and experienced doctor as Yeen is by your side, hut because I know you have faith in me and will listen to what I say. After this disease, most doctors are in the habit of again and again administering purgatives with the object of clearing off all remaining traces of disease, but it seems to me that they are very apt to themselves encourage the evils which they deem it necessary to purge away. Patients recovering from the small-pox generally have an enormous appetite, which, if a careful and moderate diet is not pursued, causes the stomach to he over-loaded and the blood to be brought into a condition for breeding fresh disease. Old women and doctors nearly always offend in this way, thinking that the more food they give the more the invalid will he strengthened. Now, nothing but what suits the stomach nourishes the blood, strengthens the body, and brings it into a healthy condition. Over-feeding not only does no good, hut breeds vicious humours and encourages disease. I entreat you to bear this in mind.” 2 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library (partly in the ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 323) ; Locke to Limborch, [14 — ] 24 Nov., 1688. * Ibid. ; Locke to Limborch, [15 — ] 25 Nov., 1688. 1G83. “I iEt. 56. J LAST OCCUPATIONS IN HOLLAND. 81 That view of Locke recurring to his former studies in the medicine of common sense comes pleasantly to ns at this time, when it was clear that he was busily engaged in very different sorts of work. “ I had many other things to say to you,” he had written to Limborch on the day on which he had sent off his long letter to Le Clerc, suggesting that the Psalms of David should be submitted to the same rules for arriving at a correct text as were appropriate to the Odes of Horace ; “ but I am interrupted by the arrival of a friend from England.” 1 His quiet life in Holland seems to have been often broken in upon by the arrival of friends from England, who came on business that took him, as well as them, on frequent visits to the Hague, where William of Orange was at last preparing to make himself king of England. “ I hope,” we find him writing in July to his old friend, Nicolas Thoynard, with whom he had kept up a steady correspondence throughout these years, though very few of the letters have been preserved, “ I hope before this you have understood from mine of the 29th of June why I have been so tardy in answering your former letters. I have been obliged by certain friends who arrived in this country, and whom I had hardly seen before since I left England, to go about with them, so that I only received yours of the 6th the day before yesterday, and this is the first opportunity I have for reading and answering it.” 2 “I have been away from home, and therefore could not possibly write to you sooner,” he wrote again to the same friend on the 31st of October, 3 That 1 ‘ Familial - Letters,’ p. 323 ; Locke to Limborch, [10 — ] 20 July, 1688. 2 Additional MSS. in the British Museum, no. 28836 ; Locke to Thoynard, 26 July — ] 5 August, 1688. 3 Ibid., no. 28753; Locke to Thoynard, [31 Oct. — ] 10 Nov., 1688. Vol. II.— 6 82 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX. was the day before the Prince of Orange made his final departure for England. “ I hope your son’s health is not in such a state,” Locke wrote a fortnight later to Limborch, “ that I may not speak of other things, especially when it is to tell you some good news. Our friend Eurly had an interview with the prince before he went away, and urged him to put a stop to the persecution that has been attempted in this province at such an especially unseasonable time. He put the case so strongly that the prince wrote a letter to the bailiff of Kammerland, who, with the sanction of the synod, had ordered Foeke Floris, the minister of the Mennonite church, to leave the country within eight days. The history of this Foeke Floris you can learn from others better than from me ; for Furly knew nothing about him till this affair came to light. Believing, how- ever, that the common interests of Christians were in- volved, he took up the matter with his usual zeal, and I believe the prince’s letter will stop the persecution.” 1 The history of Foeke Floris has not come down to us, and we are told nothing more concerning the troubles of the disciples of Simon Menno in their home among the dykes and dunes and swamps of Zeeland ; but as they were peaceable and devout Christians, whose only crime was their belief in the simple humanity of Christ, we can understand why Furly and Locke took so much interest in this case. On the 1st of November, 1688, William of Orange started on his memorable voyage for England, having 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, [14 — ] 24 Nov., 1688. 1688 - 9 .“| 2Et. 66.J GOING BACK TO ENGLAND. 83 been detained a fortnight by bad weather. With him went Mordannt and Locke’s other friends, as well as Burnet and all the other chief advisers of the prince. Locke remained in Holland more than three months longer, and appears to have been in frequent attendance on the Princess Mary, who waited at the Hague till her husband should inform her that the time was come for her to join him. That information reached her near the end of January, 1688-9. “ This sudden and not yet looked-for departure of the princess,” Locke wrote to Limborck from Botterdam, on the 26th of the month, “disturbs all my thoughts, and hinders that which before all things I was anxious for— an opportunity of seeing you and all my other friends at Amsterdam before leaving the country. You cannot but be aware of the great advantage it would be for me to cross the channel, crowded as it is just now with ships of war, and infested with pirates, in such good company; but this would not induce me to hurry away and leave behind me the suspicion that I was unmindful of all your affection, and of the duties that I owe in return for it. A stronger reason compels me. An English nobleman ” — evidently Lord Mordaunt — “ who went hither with the prince, has asked me to take care of his wife on her passage, with the princess, from the Hague, and I could not do less than accept the office. Neither she nor I expected that we should have to leave quite so soon. We intended to spend this week in Amsterdam. But you know what has happened, and with what incredible rapidity things are moving in England. Of the pro- gress of these movements I was informed only three days ago, and I am as yet by no means prepared for the journey. It is necessity, not choice, that wall present my 84 EESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX greeting and embracing you ; that, I am sure, you will believe.” 1 A westerly wind detained the princess at the Hague for nearly a fortnight. “ I still thought I should be able to see you in Amsterdam,” Locke wrote again on Wednes- day, the 6th of February ; “ but fate seems determined to thwart my wishes. First the frost, and then my hurried packing-up, and now the rain, have prevented me. I went last Saturday to the Hague, thinking I could induce the lady of whom I have told you to accompany me to Amsterdam, as we had before intended. But a violent storm burst on us at Delft, and lasted all the way to the Hague, so that when I got there I was drenched to the skin, and my friend not only refused to go on with me the same evening, but positively forbade my making the journey myself, urging that I should be certain to fall ill if I did so. At the court I found everything ready for immediate departure, and every one so impatient of delay that it seemed doubtful whether the princess’s religious scruples would hinder her from embarking even on the Lord’s day, if the wind were favourable. I should have presumed on those scruples, however, if I could have succeeded in spending a Sunday with you. But now we wait for nothing but the east wind. Last evening I re- turned hither” — to Rotterdam, hardly more than a two hours’ ride from the Hague — “ and know not how long I shall be delayed. I only know that it is dreadfully irksome to wait here doing nothing and not to be able to do what I so much desire. “ How I long,” he continued, “to spend just an hour or two, if no longer time were possible, with you ! To 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, [26 Jan. — j 5 Feb., 1688-9. 1689. "| 2Et. 56. J FAEEWELL LETTEKS TO LIMBOBCH. 85 see, to hear, to embrace one’s friends, is a priceless joy to me. Our affection for one another needs no proof, and it could not he increased hy the ceremony of a farewell ; yet I do wish I could once more shake you by the hand, once more assure you hy word of mouth that I am alto- gether yours. Many things tempt me home again ; the urgency of my friends in England, the necessity of looking after my own neglected affairs, and other matters. But in going aw T ay I almost feel as though I were leaving my own country and my own kinsfolk ; for everything that belongs to kinship, good-will, love, kindness — everything that binds men together with ties stronger than the ties of blood — I have found among you in abundance. I leave behind me Mends whom I can never forget, and I shall never cease to wish for an opportunity of coming back to enjoy once more the genuine fellowship of men who have been such friends that, while far away from all my own connections, while suffering in every other way, I have never felt sick at heart. As for you, you best of men, most dearly and most worthily beloved, when I think of your learning, your wisdom, your kindness and candour and gentleness, I seem to have found in your friendship alone enough to make me always rejoice that I was forced to pass so many years among you. I know not how such a large portion of my life could elsewhere have been spent more pleasantly, certainly it could not have been spent more profitably. God give you heaped-up happiness, protect your country and your household, and enable you to go on in your good work for your church and all good men ! To your excellent wfife and to your children, to the Yeens and the Guenellons, and all the rest, give my kindest good wishes and my heartiest thanks for all the services they have rendered me. Embrace them for me, 86 RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [Chap. IX and tell them I can never forget them, or their many, many proofs of unselfish affection. Farewell, most cherished of friends, and again farewell.” 1 In company with the Princess of Orange and Lady Mordaunt, Locke left the Hague on the following Monday, and next day, the 12th of February, he landed at Green- wich. He had spent nearly five and a half years in Holland. 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 325 ; Locke to Limborch, [6 — ] 16 Feb., 1688-9 CHAPTER X. “ CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.” [ 1671 — 1690 .] HE most precious article that Locke brought with him Rom Holland in February, 1688-9, was the manuscript of his ‘ Essay concerning Human Understand- ing.’ Frequent mention of this work has been made in former pages, and it is now time that we should take some account of it and of the circumstances of its com- position and publication. Its history extends over a long period of Locke’s life. We have seen that in or near the year 1671, he under- took to direct the few chosen friends, like Tyrrell and Thomas, and perhaps Sydenham and Mapletoft, who formed with him a little club that met at his chamber in Exeter House, as to the way of getting out of “ the difficulties that rose on every side ” in their discussion of “ a subject very remote from this ; ” and that he dated from this accident the origin of what, though he himself never so thought of it, we must regard as the most im- portant philosophical treatise that has been written by any Englishman — the most important because to it is more or less due the writing of nearly every other im- portant treatise that has since appeared — the most important, too, because, however much its doctrines have 88 CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. [Chap. X. (C >» been or may be superseded, nothing can lessen the influ- ence of its perfect honesty and truthfulness. His own too brief account of this memorable accident and its issue has been already quoted in part, but must here be quoted in full. “ After we had puzzled ourselves without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us,” he said, “ it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course, and that, before we set our- selves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our abilities, and see what objects our under- standings were or were not fitted to deal with. This 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 thus begun by chance, was continued by entreaty, written by incoherent parcels, and after long intervals of neglect resumed 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. When I put pen to paper, I thought all I should have to say on this matter would have been contained in one sheet of paper, but the farther I went the larger prospect I had ; new discoveries led me still on, and so it grew to the bulk it now appears in .” 1 We have not Locke’s “ hasty and undigested thoughts ” on the subject with which he started, and which had to do with “ the principles of morality and revealed reli- gion ; ” 2 but we have what is vastly more important to us, 1 ‘ Concerning Human Understanding,’ Epistle to the Reader. 8 Tyrrell’s note in his copy of the ‘ Essay,’ now in the British Museum. 1671. 1 .a:t. 39. J THE ORIGIN OF THE ESSAY. 89 a rough, sketch of the doctrines in which he instructed his friends in the Exeter House chamber, and ultimately instructed the world. In his common-place book ho made a notable entry beginning thus : “ Sic cogitavit de intellectu humano Johannes Locke, anno 1671. Intel- lectus humanus cum cognitionis certitudine et assensus firmitate. I imagine that all knowledge is founded on, and ultimately derives itself from, sense or something- analogous to it, and may be called sensation, which is done by our senses conversant about particular objects, which gives us the simple ideas or images of things, and thus we come to have ideas of heat and light, hard and soft, which are nothing but the reviving again in our minds these imaginations which those objects, when they affected our senses, caused in us, whether by motion or otherwise it matters not here to consider ; and thus we do when we conceive heat or light, yellow or blue, sweet or bitter. And therefore I think that those things which we call sensible qualities are the simplest ideas we have, and the first object of our understanding.” 1 Long before 1671, from the time when, as an Oxford undergraduate, he began to study Descartes, it is clear that Locke had thought much “ de intellectu humano,” and had gradually arrived at very distinct opinions of his own, altogether opposed to the doctrine of innate ideas which Descartes had reinforced with so many new and powerful arguments. Before that date, too, it is evident that he had become a diligent and wise student of Hobbes, and had learnt quite as much from his 1 Treatise of Human Nature’ and his ‘ Leviathan,’ as from the £ Dis- cours de la Methode ’ and the ‘Meditationes’ of Descartes.’ 1 Lord King, p. 6. 2 It is impossible to doubt that, when writing the paragraph quoted above, . I i 90 CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. [Chap. X. u If not before 1671, moreover, be made in subsequent years as wise and dibgent study of the writings of other men who helped to make the seventeenth century famous Locke had very clearly in kis mind the opinions of Hobbes “ de intellects bumano,” though even then be may have so assimilated and modified them, and made them bis own, that be bad half forgotten the source from which he obtained them. As Hobbes is not much read now-a-days, and as it is important that his influence upon Locke should be understood, I here append a few representative extracts from his writings. “The thoughts of man,” he said, “are every one a representation or appearance of some quality or other accident of a body without us, which is commonly called an object; which object worketh upon the eyes, ears and other parts of a man’s body, and, by diversity of working, produceth diversity of appearances. The original of them all is that which we call sense, for there is no conception in a man’s mind which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from that original.” “ The cause of sense is the external body or object which keepeth the organ proper to each sense, either immediately, as in taste and touch, or mediately, as in seeing, hearing and smelling ; which pressure, by the mediation of the nerves and other strings and membranes of the body, continueth inwards to the brain and heart, and causeth there a resistance or counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart to deliver itself, which en- deavour, because outward, seemeth to be some matter without ; and this seeming or fancy is what men call sense, and consisteth, as to the eye in a light or colour figured, to the ear in a sound, to the nostril in an odour, to the tongue and palate in a savour, and to the rest of the body in heat, cold, hardness, softness, and such other qualities as we discern by feeling : all which qualities, called sensible, are, in the object that causeth them, but so many motions of the matter by which it presseth our organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed are they anything else but divers motions ; for motion produceth nothing but motion. But their appearance to us is fancy.” “ But the philosophy schools, through all the universities of Chris- tendom, grounded upon certain texts of Aristotle, teach another doctrine, and say, for the cause of vision, that the thing seen sendeth forth on every side a visible species — in English, a visible show, apparition or aspect, or a being seen, the receiving whereof in the eye is seeing ; and, for the cause of hearing, that the thing heard sendeth forth an audible species, that is, an audible aspect, which, entering at the ear, maketh hearing ; nay, for the 1671-87. 1 m. 39— 55.J INDEBTEDNESS TO HOBBES. 91 for philosophical research, and yet more for philosophical suggestion, Gassendi being the chief of all these others, and the one to whom unquestionably Locke owed most. cause of understanding also, they say the thing understood sendeth forth an intelligible species, which, coming into the understanding, makes us understand.” — ‘Leviathan,’ part i., ch. i. From that bold and bald theory of sense, or, as we should call it, sensation, different altogether from the Aristotelian view, Hobbes proceeded to develope his equally original theory of imagination — what James Mill has taught us to call ideation. Imagination he aptly defined as “the remains of past sense,” “ sense decaying or weakened by the absence of the object.” (‘ De Corpore,’ ch. xxv., § 7.) “ That when a thing lies still,” he said, “ unless somewhat else stir it, it will lie still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that, when a thing is in motion, it will be eternally in motion, unless somewhat else stay it, though the reason be the same, namely, that nothing can change it- self, is not so easily assented to. For men measure, not only other men, but all other things, by themselves ; and, because they find themselves subject, after motion, to pain and lassitude, think everything else grows weary of motion and seeks repose of its own accord, little considering whether it be not some other motion wherein that desire of rest they find in themselves consisteth. From hence it is that the schools say heavy bodies fall down- wards out of an appetite to rest and to conserve their nature in that place which is most proper for them ; ascribing appetite and knowledge of what is good for their conservation, which is more than man has, to things inanimate, absurdly. When a body is in motion, it moveth, unless something else hinder it, eternally ; and whatsoever hindereth it cannot in an instant, but in time and by degrees, quite extinguish it ; and, as we see in the water, though the wind cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after, so also it happeneth in that motion which is made in the internal parts of a man; for after the object is removed, or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the thing seen, though more obscure than when we see it. And this is it the Latins call imagination, from the image made in seeing, and apply the same, though improperly, to all the other senses ; but the Greeks call it fancy, which signifies appearance, and is as proper to one sense as to another. Imagination, therefore, is nothing but decaying sense.” “This decaying sense, when we would express the thing itself, I mean fancy itself, we call imagination ; but when we would express the decay, and signify that the sense is fading, old, and past, it is called memory. So that 92 CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. [Chap. X. tl >> When he found indeed that Gassendi, before Hobbes’s works were published, bad propounded and deduced from imagination and memory are but one thing, -which for divers considerations hath divers names.” (‘ Leviathan,’ part i., ch. ii. With Hobbes’s explana- tion of memory,’ compare Descartes’s — that “ the pores of the brain through which the spirits before took their entrance are more easily opened to the spirits which demand re-entrance, so that, finding those pores, they make their way sooner through them than through others.”) Hobbes proceeded to show how and why “ much memory, or memory of many things, is called experience;” and how and why imagination and memory may be either simple, “ as when one imagineth a man or horse which he hath seen before,” or compounded, “ as when, from the sight of a man at one time and of a horse at another, we conceive in our mind a centaur.” He pointed out also that dreams are imaginations, or memories, more or less distorted ; and that when we see apparitions and visions, “fairies or walking ghosts,” we see them only through some physical dis- order that stirs irregularly the organs by which, in a healthy state, true impressions come to us. Finally, “ the imagination that is raised in man or any other creature endued with the faculty of imagination, by words or other voluntary signs, is that we generally call understanding, and is common to man and beast ; for a dog, by custom, will understand the call or the rating of his master, and so will many other beasts.” “ That understanding which is peculiar to man is the understanding, not only his will, but his concep- tions and thoughts, by the sequel and contexture of the names of things into affirmations, negations and other forms of speech.” — ‘ Leviathan,’ part i., ch. ii. On his basis of sensation, imagination and memory, Hobbes built up his theory of “ the consequence or train of imagination, called, to distinguish it from discourse in words, mental discourse,” which is now known as the association of ideas. This mental discourse is at first unguided ; the thoughts are left to run in any channel that offers itself. “ And yet in this wild ranging of the mind a man may ofttimes perceive the way of it, and the dependence of one thought on another. For, in a discourse of our present civil war, what could seem more impertinent than to ask, as one did, what was the value of a Koman penny ? Yet the coherence to me was mani- fest enough : for the thought of the war introduced the thought of the delivering up the king to his enemies ; the thought of that brought in the thought of the delivering up of Christ ; and that again the thought of the m 6 aftl] INDEBTEDNESS TO GASSENDI. 93 Epicurus many of the doctrines that he had learnt from Hobbes, but in a form much more to his taste, and thirty pence, which was the price of that treason ; and thence easily followed that malicious question. And all this in a moment of time : for thought is quick.” Yet more wonderful is the train of guided thought, which consists either in seeking out the causes of effects that are apparent to us, or in tracing out effects from causes under our control. Therein we use remem- brance as to the past, conjecture as to the future. These are the limits of human understanding. “ Besides sense and thoughts, and the train of thoughts, the mind of man has no other motion, though by the help of speech and method the same faculties may be improved to such a height as to distinguish men from all other living creatures. Whatsoever we imagine is finite. Therefore there is no idea or conception of anything we call infinite. No man can have in his mind an image of infinite magnitude, nor conceive infinite time, or infinite force, or infinite power. When we say anything is infinite, we signify only that we are not able to conceive the ends and bounds of the things named ; having no conception of the thing, hut of our own inability. And therefore the name of God is used, not to make us conceive him, for he is incomprehensible, and his greatness and power are unconceivable, but that we may honour him.” — ‘Leviathan,’ part i., ch. iii. A few more sentences must he quoted. “ The remembrance of suc- cession of one thing to another, that is, of what was antecedent and what consequent and what concomitant, is called an experiment ; whether the same be made by us voluntarily, as when a man put- teth anything into the fire to see what effect the fire will produce upon it ; or not made by us, as when we remember a fair morning after a red evening. To have had many experiments is what we call experience, which is nothing else but remembrance of what antecedents have been followed by what consequents.” “ When a man hath so often observed like antecedents to be followed by like consequents, that when- soever he seeth the antecedent he looketh again for the consequent, or when he seeth the consequent maketh account there hath been the like antecedent, then he calleth both the antecedent and the consequent signs one of another, as clouds are signs of rain to come, and rain of clouds past.” “The signs are but conjectura ; and, according as they have often or seldom failed, so their assurance is more or less, but never full and evident. Experience concludeth nothing universally.” — ‘ Human Nature,’ ch. iv. 94 CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. [Chap. X. u »> separate from the atheism that was always revolting to him, he appears to have repudiated with some unconscious injustice his debt to the first English teacher of the philosophy of experience. Through at least sixteen years the ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding ’ was growing in Locke’s mind and in his note books. Those note hooks, from which a few characteristic extracts have been given in former pages, show how accurate was his statement that “ it was written by incoherent parcels; ” each new book that he read, each fresh person with whom he conversed, sug- gesting thoughts that he put on paper, to be afterwards refined or rejected according to the value that, on calm consideration, he found in them. From books he learnt much, from persons more ; his purpose being, not to build up a metaphysical theory, but to ascertain by actual observation what were the means and methods by which ordinary people acquired knowledge and developed their thinking faculties. His theory was “imagined” in out- line in 1671 ; he proved and elaborated it by personal observation. It can only have been in the writing out that there were “long intervals of neglect;” and he was evidently more anxious to think out than to write out his work. Till late in life, when the entreaties of his friends prevailed with him, Locke seems never to have had any design of formally publishing his opinions to the world. He made no secrets of them. While still a young man he wrote elaborate treatises like the ‘ Essay concerning Toleration ; ’ and probably that essay was not the only work that he showed freely to men of influence and in public position, with the distinct purpose of guiding legislation and the national mind. But he preferred to 167187. 1 ■ffit 39— 55. J THE GROWTH OF THE ESSAY. 95 discuss these matters with his friends, to profit hy their criticisms, and to make as sure as might be that his views were sound before he ventured to persuade others to accept them. So it was even — we might say especially — with the c Essay concerning Human Understanding.’ Believing that he saw more clearly than his neighbours how the human intellect might he developed, he was anxious to bias no one — least of all ignorant readers who would he apt, if their fancy prompted them, blindly to adopt his arguments without seeing, or being able to see, what real force was in them — till he had probed them to the utmost, and subjected them to the test of experience and the searching judgment of the wisest men whom he knew. Most persons, when they get hold of a new thought which pleases them, are either so charmed with it them- selves that they unconsciously shrink from carefully weighing it by standards that might prove it false and worthless, or so eager for applause that they purposely clothe it in all the specious rhetoric at their command, and glory in the triumph, not in the truth, of their dogma. Locke cannot be placed in either category. “ Those who have not thoroughly examined to the bottom all their own tenets,” he said, “must confess they are unfit to prescribe to others, and are unreasonable in imposing that as truth on other men’s belief which they themselves have not searched into, nor weighed the arguments of probability on which they should receive or reject it .” 1 “ There is nobody in the commonwealth of learning,” he also said, “who does not profess himself a lover of truth ; and there is not a rational creature that would not take it amiss to be thought otherwise of. 1 * Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. ii., ch. xvl, § 4. 96 CONCERNING HUMAN UNDEKSTANDING. [Chap. X. cc 99 And yet, for all this, one may truly say that there are very few lovers of truth, for truth’s sake, even amongst those who persuade themselves that they are so. How a man may know whether he he so in earnest is worth inquiry ; and I think there is one unerring mark of it, namely, the not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not the truth in the love of it — loves not truth for truth’s sake — hut for some other bye-end.. For the evidence that any proposition is true (except such as are self-evident) lying only in the proof a man has of it, whatsoever degrees of assent he affords it beyond the degrees of that evidence, it is plain that all the surplusage of assurance is due to some other affection, and not to the love of truth ; it being as impossible that the love of truth should carry my assent above the evidence there is to me that it is true, as that the love of truth should make me assent to any proposition, for the sake of that evidence which it has not that it is true ; ■which is in effect to love it as a truth because it is possible or probable that it may not be true. Whatsoever credit or authority we give to any proposition more than it receives from the principles and proofs it supports itself upon is owing to our inclina- tions that way, and is so far a derogation from the love of truth as such, which, as it can receive no evidence frcfm our passions or interests, so it should receive no tincture from them. The assuming an authority of dictating to others, and a forwardness to prescribe to them opinions, is a constant concomitant of this bias and corruption of our judgments ; for how at most can it be otherwise but that he should be ready to impose on another’s belief who has already imposed on his own? 1671-S7. 1 £t. 39-55. J THE GKOWTH OF THE ESSAY. 97 Who can reasonably expect arguments and conviction from him in dealing with others whose understanding is not accustomed to them in his dealing with himself, who does violence to his own faculties, tyrannises over his own mind, and usurps the prerogative that belongs to truth alone, which is to command assent by only its own authority, that is, by and in proportion to that evidence which it carries with it ?” 1 Locke rigidly subjected himself to the canon that he prescribed for others. Anxious to know what are the faculties of the human mind, and how they may best be developed, he thought out the subject with all the attention he could give it during a good many years before he ventured to do more than make occasional entries thereupon in his private note hooks ; after that he devoted the leisure of a good many other years to further consideration and note-making before he ventured to build up his thoughts into an orderly treatise ; and after that again he pondered over the matter during yet a good many other years before he ventured to give his ripened conclusions to the world. It is evident that Locke, having begun his notes in or near 1671 and continued them at intervals, took them to France in 1675. There he made so many additions that he was able, writing to Thoynard in 1679, to say, “ I think too well of my book, which is completed, to let it go out of my hands.” 2 The manuscript did not go out of his hands into those of the public for some time ; but he showed it to his friends. Shaftesbury, as we have seen, 1 ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. iv., ch. xix., § § 1, 2. This chapter, first included in the fourth edition, was not written till near the and of Locke’s life. 2 Additional MSS., no. 28836 ; Locke to Thoynard, 6 June, 1679. Vol. II.— 7 98 “concerning human understanding.” rcHAP.x. liad read it before his death in 1683, and therefore not later than 1682, when he saw the last of Locke, as on his death-bed he attributed the change in his religious opinions to the memorable tenth chapter of its fourth book. After that time, however, Locke certainly re-wrote, and probably much enlarged it. It was to the period of his residence in Holland that he referred when he said in his prefatory epistle to the reader, “In a retirement where an attendance on my health gave me leisure, it was brought into that order in which thou now seest it.” It was so far in order that he was able in the autumn of 1687 to prepare the epitome of it, which, translated into French, was published in the Bibliotheque Universelle, and to send a portion of it and apparently a proof-sheet of the epitome to the Earl of Pembroke, with a request that he might dedicate the work to him. “ I have received the second part,” Pembroke wrote from London in November, “and with it the names of all the rest in print. Such thoughts need no epistle to recommend them. I do not say so to excuse my name to it ; for I shall always be as desirous by my name to testify the satisfaction I have in anything you are pleased to write, as I am and ever will be by my person ready to vindicate anything you do. But pray do not let the hopes of seeing this in print defer the satisfaction of seeing the whole at large, which I hope you will send me as soon as possibly you can.” 1 The French version of the epitome, filling ninety-two pages, was published by Le Clerc in the number of the Bibliotheque Universelle for January, 1687-8, with this heading, £ Extrait d’un Livre Anglais qui n’est pas encore publie, intitule, Essai Philosophique concernantl’Entende- 1 Lord King, p. 158; Pembroke to Locke, 25 Nov., 1687. 1671-87. I •£t. S2-55.J THE GBOWTH OE THE ESSAY, 99 rnent, ou l’on montre quelle est l’etendue de nos con- naissances oertaines et la maniere dont nous y parvenons: communique par Monsieur Locke.’ “Here,” wrote Le Clerc by way of note to bis translation, “ is the outline of an English work which the author has been good enough to publish, to oblige one of his particular Mends ” — of course Le Clerc himself — “ and to give him an outline of his opinions. If any of those who take the trouble to study it observe in it any passage in which the author seems to them to be in error, or anything obscure or incomplete in his scheme, they are requested to communi- cate their doubts or objections to the printers. Though the author is not very anxious to publish his treatise, and though he thinks he would be wanting in respect to the public if he offered them what satisfied himself without first knowing whether they agreed with it or thought it useful, yet he is not so shy as not to hope that he will be justified in publishing his whole treatise by the reception accorded to his abridgment .” 1 The modest yet dignified purport of that note was evidently suggested by Locke, and was in keeping with the modest yet dignified temper that had guided him all through the preparation of his work. “ This abridgment,” Le Clerc, who was naturally proud of having been the first to introduce his friend’s bold arguments to the world, said long afterwards, “pleased a great many persons, and made them desirous of seeing the work at large ; but several who had never heard the name of Mr. Locke, and had only seen the abridgment in the Bibliotheque Universelle, thought that it was the project of a work of mine which was but yet designed, and that I fastened it upon an Englishman to know what the world thought of it; but they were soon 1 Bibliotheque Universelle, vol. viii. (1688), p. 141. 100 CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. [Chap. X. U »> undeceived. I had some copies of it printed singly, to which Mr. Locke prefixed a short dedication to the Earl of Pembroke.” 1 Locke’s epitome of 1687, of which we have his own manuscript copy 2 as well as Le Clerc’s French translation, shows that he added some chapters and re-arranged others before the essay itself was published in 1690. At least one paragraph of the essay, as we read in it, was written on the 11th of July, 1688, 3 and in another he speaks of “ this present year, 1689.” 4 It is clear, therefore, that additions and corrections were furnished up to the time when the sheets passed out of his hands, just as additions and cor- rections were made in each of the subsequent editions published in his lifetime. But the work was substan- tially completed in 1687. Locke made no secret of the fragmentary and disjointed way in which he originally worked out the problems that, when the whole had been severally dealt with, he arranged in the order that seemed to him most suitable for the presentment of his complete argument or series of arguments. “ I must confess,” he wrote in his third book, “that when I first began this Discourse of the Understanding, I had not the least thought that any consideration of words was at all necessary to it ; but when, having passed over the original and composition of our ideas, I began to examine the extent and certainty of our knowledge, I 1 ‘ Eloge de M. Locke.’ I have not been able to meet with a copy of this reprint and dedication. 2 ‘ Lord King,’ pp. 362 — 398. 3 ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. iv., ch. xi., § 11. 4 Ibid., b. iv., cb. xiv., § 29. In b. ii. , ch. xv., § 8, however, Locke mentions 1671 as though it were the year in which that section was written. 1671-87. 1 Mt. 39— 55 J THE GROWTH OF THE ESSAY. 101 found it had so near a connection with words that, unless their force and manner of signification were first well observed, there could he very little said clearly and per- , tinently concerning knowledge, which, being conversant about truth, had constantly to do with propositions, and# though it terminated in things, yet it was for the most part so much by the intervention of words, that they seemed scarce separable from our general knowledge : at least, they interpose themselves so much between our under- standings and the truth which it would contemplate and apprehend that, like the medium through which visible objects pass, their obscurity and disorder do not seldom cast a mist before our eyes and impose upon our under- standings .” 1 This and some less important statements, together with certain inferences that may perhaps be legitimately drawn from various other passages and allusions, seem to show that, after sketching out the scheme put forward in the introductory chapter — which, as it stands, is hardly intro- ductory to the whole work — Locke proceeded, at starting, to discuss, in the substance of what is now the second book, but much less comprehensively, “the original of those ideas, notions, or whatever else you please toe>call them, which a man observes, and is conscious to himself he has in his mind, and the ways whereby the understanding comes to be furnished with them that he then began, in what is now the fourth book, “ to show what knowledge the understanding hath by those ideas, and the certainty, evidence, and extent of it,” and “ to examine the nature and grounds of faith or opinion, and the reasons and degrees of assent ; ” but that, before he had completed that undertaking, he turned aside to prepare the wonderful 1 ‘ Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. iii., ch. ix., § 21. 102 “CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.” [Chap, X. treatise on words or language wliicli is now the third book ; and that ultimately he wrote several additional chapters of the second book, and, perhaps last of all, the three chapters on “ innate principles,” which, with the introductory chapter, constitute the first book . 1 1 Premising that my study of the phraseology of the essay, with this special object, has not been minute enough to lead me to speak authorita- tively, if indeed it would he allowable in any case to speak authoritatively about the order of composition followed in a work avowedly “ written by incoherent parcels, and, after long intervals of neglect, resumed again, as humour or occasions permitted,” I may briefly enumerate the following points in support of the suggestion made above : — 1. The beginning of book ii. is in direct continuation of book i., ch. i. The latter ends thus : “I presume it will be easily granted me that there are such ideas in men’s minds. Every one is conscious of them in himself, and men’s words and actions will satisfy him that they are in others. Our first inquiry then shall be how they come into the mind.” Book ii., ch. i., is ‘ Of Ideas in General and their Original,’ and thus commences : “ Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks, .... it is in the first place to be inquired how he comes by them,” i.e., his ideas. 2. That book iv. was begun before book iii. is clear from the passage quoted in the text. This, if it needs confirmation, may be slightly confirmed by a comparison between book iv., ch. iii., § 18 (also bookiv.,cli. xii., § 8) and book iii., ch. xi., § 16. 3. At least one part of book iv. was written before one part of book ii. Speaking of ideas of duration in book ii., ch. xvii., § 5, Locke says, “He that considers something now existing must necessarily come to something eternal. But having spoke of this in another place, I shall here say no more of it.” The “ other place ” is book iv., ch. x., § 3. 4. It seems to have been Locke’s invariable rule to clear his ground as he went along, never to assume as proved anything that he intended afterwards to prove or try to prove. To this rule, I know of no exceptions in his argumentative writings out of the essay, whereas instances are numerous there, all tending to show, as I think, that book iv. was substantially written at an early date (ch. x. at any rate, as has been noted in the text, was written before 1683, when Shaftesbury referred to it on his death-bed), and the last three chapters of book i. last, or nearly last, of all. Without taking up too nuch space with quotations, I may refer the curious reader for such allusions .ffit. S 55.] THE PURPOSE AND METHOD OF THE ESSAY. 103 But we must look at Locke’s arguments in the order in which he chose to publish them. The purpose of the * Essay concerning Human Understanding,’ as Locke announced in his introductory chapter, was “to inquire into the original, certainty and extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion and assent.” “ In order whereunto,” he said, “I shall pursue this following method. First, I shall inquire into the original of those ideas, notions, or whatever else you please to call them, which a man observes and is conscious to himself he has in his mind ; and the ways whereby the understanding comes to be furnished with them. Secondly, I shall endeavour to show what knowledge the understanding hath by those ideas, and the certainty, evidence and extent of it. Thirdly, I shall make some inquiry into the nature and grounds of faith or opinion ; whereby I mean that assent which we give to any proposition as true, of whose truth yet we have no certain knowledge ; and here we shall have occasion to examine the reasons and degrees of assent.” 1 and assumptions to book i., ch. ii. , §§ 1, 10, 11, 12, 16, 18, 23, 27, 28, and book i., ch. iv., § § 13, 21. Book i., ch. iv., § 1, assumes the whole argu- ment of book ii. 5. The extracts made from, and the references to, Thevenot and other travellers in book i., ch. iii. , show that this chapter at any rate could not have been written till after Locke had studied their works. Locke made the acquaintance of Thevenot while in Paris, and after that was reading Theve- not’s books, and communicating with him about barbaric customs. But I have given reasons for supposing that a large part of the essay was written at Montpellier, before Locke went to reside in Paris. 1 ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. i., ch. i., §§ 2, 3. The following references are to the fourth (the last edited by Locke himself) and subsequent editions. In the earlier editions, in consequence of his inter- polations, the numbering of both chapters and sections is sometimes different. Except in one or two cases which will be noted, I have, how- ever, in this chapter, quoted exclusively from the first edition, my desire being to give some account of his opinions at this time. A tew later addi- tions will he described in their chronological order. 104 “CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.” [Chap. x. “If by this inquiry into the nature of the understanding,” he added, “I can discover the powers thereof, how far they reach, to what things they are in any degree proportionate, and where they fail us, I suppose it 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 when it is at the utmost extent of its tether, and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capaci- ties. We should not then, perhaps, be so forward, out of an affectation of an universal knowledge, to raise questions, and perplex ourselves and others with disputes, about things to which our understandings are not suited, and of which we cannot frame in our minds any clear or distinct perceptions, or whereof (as it has perhaps too often happened) we have not any notions at all. If we can find out how far the understanding can extend its view, how far it has faculties to attain certainty, and in what cases it can only judge and guess, we may learn to content ourselves with what is attainable by us in this state.” 1 The excellent meaning of those sentences must not be lost sight of. Locke never varied in his assertion that truth is the noblest pursuit of man; but he held that truth is only to be attained by knowledge, and knowledge by intelligence or understanding. Let us do all we can, he said in effect, to find out what we can understand, and, as a preliminary thereto, how we can understand. Let us study the anatomy of our minds, their original nature and composition, their capacities for expansion and development, and the best ways of expanding and developing them. Unless we do that, we shall not know what material we are working with or what work it is fit for. But when that is done, as far as we are able to do it, we must take care that we make right use of our minds. Let us always remember that they can only be used in the acquisition of knowledge, that we are bound to store them with all the knowledge they are capable of ; and also, that it is not possible to store them with knowledge for which they have not capacities, and that to attempt to do this is as useless and injurious as to abstain from supplying them with such knowledge as they have power to apprehend. We can know nothing that we do not understand, and they alone are philo- sophers who educate themselves into avoidance of the unknowable as well as into acquisition of that which can be known. There is a “ quiet igno- rance ” to which the wisest men must resign themselves, just as there is a quiet ignorance “ with which none but fools will be content.” The old-world sophists, whether pre-Socratic or post-Aristotelian, who professed to know 1 ‘ Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. i., ch. i. , § 4. THE PURPOSE and method of the essay. 105 everything, strayed as far from the paths of wisdom as the mindless sensual- ists whose whole theory of life was expressed in the motto, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” The modern disciples of Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, who, each in their own rival ways, undertook to solve all the secrets of the universe, were as impotent instructors as they who taught that there were no secrets in the universe to be solved. If we would make good use of our intellects, we must find out their strength and capacity, and, while learning all we can, steer clear of what cannot be learned. “When we know our own strength,” said Locke, “we shall the better know what to undertake with hopes of success ; and when we have well surveyed the powers of our own minds, and made some estimate what we may expect from them, we shall not be inclined either to sit still and not set our thoughts on work at all, in despair of knowing anything, or, on the other side, question everything and disclaim all knowledge because some things are not to be understood. It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean. It is well he knows that it is long enough to reach the bottom at such places as are necessary to direct his voyage and caution him against running upon shoals that may ruin him. Our business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct. If we can find out those measures whereby a rational creature, put in that state in which man is in this world, may and ought to govern his opinions, and actions depending thereon, we need not to be troubled that some other things escape our knowledge.” We must not expect to understand everything ; but we are bound to understand all we can. “ It will be no excuse to an idle and unto- ward servant, who would not attend his business by candle-light, to plead that he had not broad sunshine. The candle that is set in us shines bright enough for all our purposes.” “ If we will disbelieve everything because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do much-what as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly.” 1 Having thus explained the scope and purport of the discussion on which he proposed to embark, Locke, before proceeding to the discussion itself, interpolated three chapters on innate principles. He had to disprove the erroneous opinions that were in vogue before he could build up his own system of intellectual activity. “ To clear my way,” he said, “ to those foundations which I conceive are the only true ones whereon to establish those notions we 1 ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. i. , ch. i., §§ 6, 5. 106 CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. [Chap. X. « t >1 can have of our own knowledge, it hath been necessary for me to give an account of the reasons I had to doubt of innate principles. And since the arguments which are against them do some of them rise from common received opinions, I have been forced to take several things for granted, which is hardly avoidable to any one whose task is to show the falsehood or improbability of any tenet ; it happening in controversial discourses as it does in assaulting of towns, where, if the ground be but firm whereon the batteries are erected, there is no farther inquiry of whom it is borrowed nor whom it belongs to, so it affords but a fit rise for the present purpose.” 1 Locke only borrowed from himself the groundwork that he had done his best to establish in the later, but apparently earlier written portions of his work. “ There is nothing more commonly taken for granted,” he said, referring especially to the Cartesians, and generally to the great majority of theolo- gians, “ than that there are certain principles, both speculative and practical (for they speak of both), universally agreed upon by all mankind, which therefore, they argue, must needs be constant impressions, which the souls of men receive in their first beings, and which they bring into the world with them, as necessarily and really as they do any of their inherent facul- ties.” 2 This assumption he proceeded to controvert with care and skill that were not wasted in his own day, seeing that he had all the pseudo-Aris- totelian schoolmen and their benighted successors, as well as all the Carte- sians, to contend against. But his arguments on this score are now chiefly noteworthy as antique weapons which did good service in their own day, but for which the need has almost passed away. In the course of his argument, however, he took occasion to give an excellent summary of his own theory as to the way in which knowledge is acquired. “ The senses at first let in particular ideas,” he said, “ and furnish the yet empty cabinet, and, the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory, and names got to them. Afterwards the mind, proceeding farther, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general names. In this manner the mind comes to he furnished with ideas and language, the materials about which to exercise its discursive faculty ; and the use of reason becomes more visible as these materials that give it employment increase. But, though the having of general ideas and the use of general words and reason usually grow together, yet I see not how this any way proves them innate. The knowledge of some truths, I confess, is 1 ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. i., ch. iv., § 25. 8 Ibid., b. i., ch. ii., § 2. it. S 55.] SO CALLED “ INNATE PRINCIPLES.” 107 very early in the mind, but in a way that shows them not to be innate. For, if we will observe, we shall find it still to be about ideas not innate but acquired ; it being about those first which are imprinted by external things, with which infants have earliest to do, which make the most frequent im- pressions on them senses. In the ideas thus got the mind discovers that some agree and others differ, probably as soon as it has any use of memory, as soon as it is able to retain and perceive distinct ideas. But whether it be then or no, this is certain, it does so long before it has the use of words, or comes to that which we commonly call ‘ the use of reason.’ For a child knows as certainly before it can speak the difference between the ideas of sweet and bitter (that is, that sweet is not bitter) as it knows afterwards, when it comes to speak, that wormwood and sugar plums are not the same thing. A child knows not that three and four are equal to seven till he comes to be able to count seven, and has got the name and idea of equality ; and then, upon explaining those words, he presently assents to, or rather per- ceives the truth of, that proposition. But neither does he then readily assent because it is an innate truth, nor was his assent wanting till then because he wanted the use of reason ; but the truth of it appears to him as soon as he has settled in his mind the clear and distinct ideas that these names stand for ; and then he knows the truth of that proposition upon the same grounds, and by the same means, that he knew before that a rod and a cherry are not the same thing, and upon the same grounds also that he may come to know afterwards that ‘ it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be.’ ” 1 “These characters,” Locke urged further, “if they were native and original impressions, should appear fairest and clearest in whom we find no footsteps of them ; and it is, in my opinion, a strong presumption that they are not innate, since they are least known to those in whom, if they were innate, they must needs exert themselves with most force and vigour. For children, idiots, savages, illiterate people, being of all others the least cor- rupted by custom or borrowed opinions — learning and education having not cast their native thoughts into new moulds, nor, by superinducing foreign or studied doctrines, confounded those fair characters nature had written there — one might reasonably imagine that in their minds these innate notions should lie open fairly to every one’s view, as it is certain the thoughts of children do. It might very well be expected that these principles should be perfectly known to naturals, which, being immediately stamped on the soul (as these men suppose), can have no dependence on the constitutions or 1 ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. i., ch.ii., §§ 15, 16. 108 CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. [Chap. X. 5 J organs of the body, the only confessed difference between them and others. One would think, according to these men’s principles, that all these native beams of light, were there any such, should in those who have no reserves, no arts of concealment, shine out in their full lustre, and leave us in no more doubt of their being there than we are of their love of pleasure and abhor- rence of pain. But, amongst children, idiots, savages, and the grossly illiterate, what general maxims are to be found ? What universal principles of knowledge ? Their notions are few and narrow, borrowed only from those objects they have most to do with, and which have made upon their senses the frequentest and strongest impressions. A child knows his nurse and his cradle, and, by degrees, the playthings of a little more advanced age ; and a young savage has, perhaps, his head filled with love and hunting, according to the fashion of his tribe ; but he that from a child untaught, or a wild inhabitant of the woods, will expect abstract maxims and reputed principles of science, will, I fear, find himself mistaken. Such kind of general pro- positions are seldom mentioned in the huts of Indians, much less are they to be found in the thoughts of children, or any impression of them on the minds of naturals. They are the language and business of the schools and academies of learned nations, accustomed to that sort of conversation or learning, where disputes are frequent.” “ And if the first principles of knowledge and science are found not to be innate, no other speculative maxim can, I suppose, with better right pretend to be so.” 1 Proving first that no speculative or intellectual principles or propositions are innate, Locke went on to prove by the same line of argument that there is no warrant for asserting that any moral or practical principles or proposi- tions are innate. There are no moral rules, he declared, which men obey unless they are taught to do so by others, and unless they learn their propriety from their own experience. “ Justice and keeping of contracts is that which most men seem to agree in ; ” but what man is faithful or just who has not first discovered or fancied he has discovered the expediency of faithfulness and justice? “If a Christian who has the view of happiness and misery in another life, be asked why a man must keep his word, he will give this as his reason, ‘Because God, who has the power of eternal life and death, requires it of us.’ If a Hobbist be asked why, he will answer, ‘ Because the public requires it, and the Leviathan will punish you if you do not.’ And, if one ot the old philosophers had been asked, he would have answered, ‘ Because it is dishonest, below the dignity of a man, and opposite to virtue, the 1 ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. i., ch. ii., §§ 27, 28. ifk] so CALLED “INNATE PRINCIPLES.” 109 highest perfection of human nature, to do otherwise.’ Hence naturally flows the great variety of opinions concerning moral rules which are to be found among men, according to the different sorts of happiness they have a pros- pect of, or propose to themselves ; which could not be, if practical principles were innate and imprinted in our minds immediately by the hand of God.” 1 Universal consent, Locke urged, would not in itself be a sufficient argument for the innateness of any moral rule that could be propounded ; but it is the only argument adduced, and, since there is not a single moral rule that does obtain universal consent, the plea for its innateness is altogether unsupported. “ When men have found some general propositions that could not be doubted of as soon as understood,” he said, in concluding his preliminary discourse, “ it was, I know, a short and easy way to conclude them innate. This being once received, it eased the lazy from the pains of search, and stopped the inquiry of the doubtful concerning all that was once styled innate ; and it was of no small advantage to those who affected to be masters and teachers, to make this the principle of principles, ‘ that principles must not be questioned for having once established this tenet, that there are innate principles, it put their followers upon a necessity of receiving some doctrines as such ; which was to take them off from the use of their own reason and judgment, and put them upon believing and taking them upon trust, without farther examination : in which posture of blind credulity they might be more easily governed by, and made useful to, some sort of men, who had the skill and office to principle and guide them. Nor is it a small power he gives one man over another, to have the authority to be the dictator of principles and teacher of unquestionable truths, and to make a man swallow that for an innate principle, which may serve to his purpose who teacheth I them. Whereas, had they examined the ways whereby men came by the knowledge of many universal truths, they would have found them to result in the minds of men from the being of things themselves, when duly con- sidered ; and that they were discovered by the application of those faculties that were fitted by nature to receive and judge of them when duly employed about them.” 2 In that first and introductory book, Locke, as he said, “ endeavoured to prove that the mind is at first tabula rasa,” and incidentally pointed out the mischievous effects of any other view. In the other three books he under- 1 ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. i., ch. iii. , § § 2,5, 6. * Ibid., b. i., ch. iv., § 24. 110 “ CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.” [Chap. X. took to show “ the original from whence, and the ways whereby, we receivo all the ideas our understandings are employed about in thinking.” 1 The origin of all our ideas, he maintained, is experience : “ in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself.” And the two channels by which experience is acquired and knowledge is formed are sensation and reflection. The one includes every idea received directly through our senses, like those of colour, taste, and sound ; and these vary according to the experience of the individual, a child who has never seen anything but black and white having “ no more ideas of scarlet or green than he that from his childhood never tasted an oyster or a pineapple has of those particular relishes,” and a person born blind having no idea at all of light or colour. The other includes all the ideas built up by reflection upon, or association of, the crude ideas of sensation. 2 “ If it shall be demanded, then, when a man begins to have any ideas, I think the true answer is, when he first has any sensation. For since there appear not to he any ideas in the mind before the senses have conveyed any in, I conceive that ideas in the understanding are coeval with sensation : which is such an impression or motion, made in some part of the body, as produces some perception in the understanding. In time the mind comes to reflect on its own operations about the ideas got by sensation, and thereby stores itself with a new set of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection. These are the impressions that are made on our senses by outward objects that are extrinsical to the mind, and its own operations, proceeding from powers in- trinsical and proper to itself ; which, when reflected on by itself, becoming also objects of its contemplation, are, as I have said, the original of all knowledge. Thus the first capacity of human intellect is, that the mind is fitted to receive the impressions made on it, either through the senses, by outward objects, or by its own operations, when it reflects on them. This is the first step a man makes towards the discovery of anything, and the ground-work whereon to build all those notions which ever he shall have naturally in this world. All those sublime thoughts which tower above the clouds, and reach as high as heaven itself, take their rise and footing here : in all that good extent wherein the mind wanders, in those remote speculations it may seem to be elevated with, it stirs not one jot beyond those ideas which sense or reflection have offered for its contemplation.” 3 1 The abstract written in 1687, and printed by Lord King, p. 362. 8 ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. ii., ch. i., §§ 2 — 9, 20 — 22. 3 Ibid., b. ii., ch. i., §§ 23, 24. 1687. 1 iEt. 55. J THE ORIGIN AND FORMATION OF IDEAS. Ill Locke was more careful in his definition than in his practice to distinguish between ideas and their causes. “ Whatsoever immediate object, whatsoever perception, be in the mind when it thinks, that I call idea ; and the power to produce any idea in the mind I call quality of the subject wherein that power is. Thus, whiteness, coldness, roundness, as they are sensations or perceptions in the understanding, I call ideas ; as they are in the snowball which has the power to produce these ideas in the understanding, I call qualities. The original qualities that may be observed in bodies are solidity, extension, figure, number, motion, or rest; these, in whatsoever state body is put, are always inseparable from it.” 1 The ideas produced by these primary qualities are, he said, resemblances. Secondary qualities, not pro- ducing ideas by resemblance, are of two sorts. The first, “ usually called sensible qualities,” are “ the power that is in every body, by reason of its sensible primary qualities, to operate after a peculiar manner on any of our senses, and thereby produce in us the different ideas of several colours, sounds, smells, tastes, etc.” The second, “usually called powers,” consist in “ the power that is in any body, by reason of the particular constitution of its primary qualities, to make such a change in the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of another body as to make it operate on our senses differently from what it did before ; thus the sun has a power to make wax white, and fire to make lead fluid.” 2 Locke’s explanation of the way in which simple ideas of sensation enter the mind was not satisfactory. “ Bodies operate upon one another by im- pulse,” he said ; “ I can conceive no other way. When, then, they produce in us the ideas of any of their original qualities which are really in them — let us suppose that of extension or figure by the sight — it is evident that, the thing seen being at a distance, the impulse made on the organ must be by some insensible particles coming from the object to the eyes, and, by a continuation of that motion to the brain, those ideas are produced in us. For the producing, then, of the ideas of these original qualities in our under- standings, we can find nothing but the impulse and motion of some insensible bodies. By the same way we may also conceive how the ideas of the colour and smell of a violet may as well be produced in us as of its figure, namely, by a certain impulse, on our eyes and noses, of particles of such a bulk, figure, number, and motion as those that come from violets when we see or smell them, and by the particular motion received in the organ and continued 1 The abstract printed by Lord King, p. 365. * ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. ii., ch. viii. , § 23. 112 CONCERNING IIUMAN UNDERSTANDING. [Chap. X. CC 11 to the brain ; it being no more impossible to conceive that God should annex such ideas to such motions with which they have no similitude, than that he should annex the idea of pain to the motion of a piece of steel dividing our flesh, with which that idea has also no resemblance.” 1 This notion of “impulses” involves contradictions of the teachings of modern science, both physical and physiological, which were not apparent to Locke and his disciples, still less to his opponents in his own day. In assuming, moreover, not only that “ it is possible to conceive that God should annex certain ideas to certain motions with which they have no similitude,” but that God actu- ally does so, he offered a somewhat wavering front to the intuitional theories which he attacked, and exposed himself to much adverse criticism from his contemporaries and successors. But here he ventured upon ground on which no one before or after him has found a footing. Locke divided ideas into simple and complex. Simple ideas, “in the reception whereof the mind is only passive,” he classified according to their derivation from one sense only, from various senses in combination, from sensation and reflection together, and from reflection alone. Complex ideas, in the formation of which the mind is active, he considered according as they are modes, substances, or relations. “ Though the qualities that affect our senses,” he said, “ are, in the things themselves, so united and blended that there is no separation, no distance between them, yet it is plain the ideas they produce in the mind enter by the senses, simple and unmixed. For though the sight and touch often take in from the same object, at the same time, different ideas, as the hand feels softness and warmth in the same piece of wax, yet the simple ideas thus united in the same subject are as perfectly distinct as those that come in by different senses ; the coldness and hardness which a man feels in a piece of wax being as distinct ideas in the mind as the smell and whiteness of a lily, or as the taste of sugar and smell of a rose. And there is nothing can be plainer to a man than the clear and distinct perception he has of those simple ideas, which, being each in itself uncompounded, contains in itself nothing but one uniform appearance of the mind, and is not distinguishable into different ideas. These simple ideas, the materials of all our knowledge, are suggested and furnished to the mind only by those two ways, sensation and reflection. When the understanding is once stored with these simple ideas, it has the power to repeat, compare, and unite them, even to an almost 1 The abstract printed by Lord King, p. 365. This is a more precise account of Locke’s view than he gave in the published essay. 1687. "I JKt. 55. J SIMPLE AND COMPLEX IDEAS. 113 infinite variety, and so can make at pleasure new complex ideas. But it is not in the power of the most exalted wit or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways before mentioned, nor can any force of the understanding destroy those that are there ; the dominion of man, in this little world of his own understanding, being much-what the same as it is in the great world of visible things, wherein his power, however managed by art and skill, reaches no farther than to compound and divide the mate- rials that are made to his hand, but can do nothing towards the making the least particle of new matter or destroying one atom of what is already in being.” 1 Among the simple ideas of sensation Locke specified solidity, extension, figure, sounds, tastes, colours and smells, motion and rest; among simple ideas of sensation and reflection combined, pleasure and pain, existence, unity, power, and succession ; and the simple ideas of reflection alone which he described were perception, retention, discerning, comparing, compound- ing or enlarging, abstraction, and volition. Among complex ideas he treated especially of space and expansion, time and duration, number, and the like. His examination led him, not to cover, but to make large excursions over, the whole domain of metaphysics, and occasionally to cross the border into ethics. His method will be better shown by a few illustrations than by a bald analysis of the whole. His remarks on pleasure and pain, and their issues, fairly represent Locke’s power as a psychologist, and also curiously show how, taking from any source the notions that seemed to him most reasonable, he modified or altered them as his own judgment directed. In this case, as in many others, Hobbes was his immediate teacher, Aristotle his more remote one. “ De- light or uneasiness,” he said, “one or other of them, join themselves to almost all our ideas, both of sensation and reflection ; and there is scarce any affection of our senses from without, any retired thought of our mind within, which is not able to produce in us pleasure or pain. By pleasure and pain, I would be understood to signify whatsoever delights or molests us most, whether it arise from the thoughts of our minds, or anything operating on our bodies. For whether we call it satisfaction, delight, plea- sure, happiness, etc., on the one side, or uneasiness, trouble, pain, torment, anguish, misery, etc., on the other, they are still but different degrees of the same thing, and belong to the ideas of pleasure and pain, delight or uneasi- ness.” “ Pain has the same efficacy and use to set us on work that pleasure 1 ‘ Concerning Human Understandings’ b. ii., ch. ii., §§ 1, 2. Vol. II. — 8 114 CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. [Chap. X. (( >» lias, we being as ready to employ our faculties to avoid that, as to pursue this ; only this is worth our consideration, that pain is often produced by the same objects and ideas that produce pleasure in us.” “Thus, heat, that is very agreeable to us in one degree, by a little greater increase of it proves no ordinary torment ; and the most pleasant of all sensible objects, light itself, if there be too much of it, if increased beyond a due proportion to our eyes, causes a very painful sensation ; which is wisely and favourably so ordered by nature, that when any object does, by the vehemency of its operation, disorder the instruments of sensation, whose structures cannot but be very nice and delicate, we might by the pain be warned to with- draw before the organ be quite put out of order and so be unfitted for its proper function for the future. The consideration of those objects that produce it may well persuade us that this is the end or use of pain. For though great light be insufferable to our eyes, yet the highest degree of darkness does not at all disease them ; because that, causing no disorderly motion in it, leaves that curious organ unharmed, in its natural state. But yet excess of cold, as well as heat, pains us ; because it is equally destruc- tive to that temper which is necessary to the preservation of life and the exercise of the several functions of the body, and which consists in a mode- rate degree of warmth, or, if you please, a motion of the insensible parts of our bodies, confined within certain bounds. Beyond all this, we may find another reason why God hath scattered up and down several degrees of pleasure and pain in all the things that environ and affect us, and blended them together in almost all that our thoughts and senses have to do with ; that we, finding imperfection, dissatisfaction, and want of complete happi- ness, in all the enjoyments which the creatures can afford us, might be led to seek it in the enjoyment of him, ‘ with whom there is fulness of joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore.’ ” 1 Locke’s piety was invariable ; but it did not make him less of an experi- entialist or utilitarian. “ Things are good or evil only in reference to plea- sure or pain. That we call good which is apt to cause or increase pleasure or diminish pain in us, or else to procure or preserve us the possession of any other good or absence of any evil. And, on the contrary, we name that evil which is apt to produce or increase any pain or diminish any pleasure in us, or else to procure us any evil or deprive us of any good.” 2 1 ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. ii., ch. vii. , §§ 2, 4, 5. 2 Ibid., b. ii., ch. xx., § 2. “Every man, for his own part,” said Hobbes, “ calleth that which pleaseth and is delightful to himself good, and 1687. 1 Art. 55 ,J PLEASURE AND PAIN : GOOD AND EVIL. 115 “ Pleasure and pain, and that which causes them, good and evil,” Locke said further, “ are the hinges on which our passions turn ; and if we reflect on ourselves, and observe how these, under various considerations, operate in us — what modifications or tempers of mind, what internal sensations (if I may so call them), they produce in us — we may thence form to ourselves the ideas of our passions. Thus, any one reflecting upon the thought he has of the delight which any present or absent thing is apt to produce in him has the idea we call love. For when a man declares in autumn, when he is eating them, or in spring, when there are none, that he loves grapes, it is no more but that the taste of grapes delights him ; let an alteration of health or constitution destroy the delight of their taste, and he then can be said to love grapes no longer. 1 On the contrary, the thought of the pain which anything present or absent is apt to produce in us is what we call hatred. Were it my business here to inquire any farther than into the bare ideas of our passions, as they depend on different modifications of pleasure and pain, I should remark that our love and hatred of inanimate insensible beings is that evil which displeaseth him ; insomuch that, while every man differeth from others in constitution, they differ also from one another concerning the common distinction between good and evil.” (‘ Human Nature,’ ch. vii., § 3.) Again, and more explicitly : — “ Because the constitution of man’s body is in continual mutation, it is impossible that all the same things should cause in him the same appetites and aversions ; much less can all men consent in the desire of almost any one and the same object. But whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth good, and the object of his hate and aversion, evil, and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these words of good and evil and contemptible are ever used with relation to the person that useth them, there being nothing simply and absolutely so, nor any common rule of good and evil to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves, but from the person of the man.” (‘Leviathan,’ part i., ch. vi.) 1 Locke’s own temperament shows that he was here using the term love in a very restricted sense, as he says presently, “as applied to inanimate insensible beings.” “ Delight, contentment, or pleasure,” said Hobbes, “ is nothing really but motion about the heart, as conception is nothing but motion in the head ; and the objects that cause it are called pleasant or delightful, or by some name equivalent. The Latins have jucundum, a juvando — from helping; and the same delight, with reference to the object, is called love.” — ‘ Human Nature,’ ch. vii., § 1. 116 “ CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Chap. X . commonly founded on that pleasure and pain which we receive from their use and application any way to our senses, though with their destruction ; but hatred or love to beings capable of happiness or misery is often the uneasiness or delight which we find in ourselves arising from a consideration of their very being or happiness. Thus, the being and welfare of a man’s children or friends producing constant delight in him, he is said constantly to love them. But it suffices to note that our ideas of love and hatred are but the dispositions of the mind in respect of pleasure and pain in general, however caused in us.” 1 Locke proceeded very briefly to point out the sensational origin of other passions — desire, joy, sorrow, hope, fear, despair, anger, envy. “ These two last, not being caused by pain and pleasure simply in themselves, but having in them some mixed considerations of ourselves and others, are not therefore to be found in all men ; but all the rest terminating purely in pain and pleasure, are, I think, to be found in all men. For we love, desire, rejoice and hope only in respect of pleasure ; we hate, fear and grieve only in respect of pain ultimately: in fine, all these passions are moved by things only as they appear to be the causes of pleasure and pain, or to have pleasure or pain some way or other annexed to them. Thus we extend our hatred usually to the subject, at least if a sensible or voluntary agent, which has produced pain in us, because the fear it leaves is a constant pain : but we do not so constantly love what has done us good, because pleasure ope- rates not so strongly on us as pain, and because we are not so ready to have hope it will do so again.” 2 “ I would not be mistaken here,” Locke was careful to warn his readers, “as if I meant this as a discourse of the passions : they are many more than those I have here named ; and those I have taken notice of, would each of them require a much larger and more accurate discourse. I have only mentioned these here, as so many instances of modes of pleasure and pain resulting in our minds from various considerations of good and evil. I might, perhaps, have instanced other modes of pleasure and pain more simple than these, as the pain of hunger and thirst, and the pleasure of eating and drinking to remove them ; the pain of tender eyes, and the pleasure of music ; pam from captious uninstructive wrangling, and the plea- sure of rational conversation with a friend, or of well-directed study in the search and discovery of truth. But, the passions being of much more con- 1 * Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. ii., ch. xx., § § 3 — 5. 2 Ibid., b. ii., ch. xx., § 14. HAPPINESS AND MISEEY. 1687. "I At. 55. J 117 comment to us, I rather made choice to instance them, and show how the ideas we have of them are derived from sensation and reflection.” 1 In order to understand Locke’s position we must follow him a step farther. “Happiness and misery,” he said, “are the names of two extremes, the utmost bounds whereof we know not ; it is what ‘ eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive.’ But of some degrees of both we have very lively impressions made by several instances of delight and joy on the one side and torment and sorrow on the other ; which, for shortness’ sake, I shall comprehend under the names of pleasure and pain, there being pleasure and pain of the mind as well as the body : or, to speak truly, they are all of the mind, though some have their rise in the mind from thought, others in the body, from certain modifications of motion. Happiness then, in its full extent, is the utmost pleasure we are capable of ; and misery the utmost pain : and the lowest degree of what can be called happiness is so much ease from all pain, and so much present pleasure as without which any one cannot be content. Now, because pleasure and pain are produced in us by the operation of certain objects either on our minds or our bodies and in different degrees, therefore what has an aptness to produce pleasure in us is that we call good, and what is apt to produce pain in us we call evil, for no other reason but for its aptness to produce pleasure and pain in us, wherein consists our happiness and misery. Farther, though what is apt to produce any degree of pleasure be in itself good, and what is apt to produce any degree of pain be evil, yet it often happens that we do not call it so, when it comes in competition with a greater of its sort, because, when they come in competition, the degrees also of pleasure and pain have justly a preference. So that if we will rightly estimate what we call good and evil, we shall find it lies much in comparison : for the cause of every less degree of pain, as well as of every greater degree of pleasure, has the nature of good, and vice versa.” 2 Those last quoted sentences are from Locke’s very remarkable chapter on “ Power,” the purport of which, though it was greatly elaborated in later editions, was clearly defined from the first. “ The mind,” he said, “being every day informed by the senses of the alteration of those simple ideas it observes in things without, and taking notice how one comes to an end and ceases to be and another begins to exist which was not before, reflecting also on what passes within itself and observing a constant change of its ideas, 1 ‘ Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. ii. , ch. xx., § 18. 2 Ibicl., b. ii., ch. xxi., §§ 41, 42 (§§ 29, 30 in the first edition). 118 ‘‘CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.” [Chap. X. sometimes by the impression of outward objects on the senses and sometimes by the determination of its own choice, and concluding, from what it has so constantly observed to have been, that the like changes will for the future be made in the same things by like agents and by the like ways, considers in one thing the possibility of having any of its simple ideas changed, and in another the possibility of making that change, and so comes by that idea which we call power. Thus we say, fire has a power to melt gold, that is, to destroy the consistency of its insensible parts and consequently its hardness and make it fluid, and gold has a power to be melted ; that the sun has a power to blanch wax, and wax a power to be blanched by the sun, whereby the yellowness is destroyed and whiteness made to exist in its room. In which and the like cases, the power we consider is in reference to the change of perceivable ideas ; for we cannot observe any alteration to be made in or operation upon anything but by the observable change of its sensible ideas, nor conceive any alteration to be made but by conceiving a change of some of its ideas.” 1 After speaking of what he called “ passive power,” exhibited chiefly in the operations of nature, Locke proceeded to treat of “ active power,” as pos- sessed by intelligent beings. “ All the actions that we have any idea of reduce themselves to these two — namely, thinking and motion : so far as a man has power to think or not to think, to move or not to move, according to the preference or direction of his own mind, so far is a man free. Wherever any performance or forbearance are not equally in a man’s power, wherever doing or not doing will not equally follow upon the preference of his mind directing it, there he is not free, though perhaps the action may be voluntary. So that the idea of liberty is the idea of a power in any agent to do or forbear any particular action, according to the determination or thought of the mind, whereby either of them is preferred to the other : where either of them is not in the power of the agent to be produced by him according to his volition, there he is not at liberty, that agent is under necessity. So that liberty cannot be where there is no thought, no volition, no will ; but there may be thought, there may be will, there may be volition, where there is no liberty. A little consideration of an obvious instance or two, may make this clear. A tennis-ball, whether in motion by the stroke of a racket, 6 i ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. ii., ch. xxi., § 1. Here we have an illustration of Locke’s variable and contradictory use of the word “ idea,” causing occasional confusion in his own mind, and bringing on him much excessive blame from his critics. 168 " 1 Mt. 55 . J POWER AND LIBERTY. 119 or lying still at rest, is not by any one taken to be a free agent. If we inquire into the reason, we shall find it is because we conceive not a tennis-ball to think, and consequently not to have any volition, preference of motion to rest, or vice versa, and therefore has not liberty, is not a free agent ; but its both motion and rest come under our idea of necessary, and are so called. Likewise, a man falling into the water (a bridge breaking under him), has not herein liberty, is not a free agent. For though he has volition, though he prefers his not falling to falling, yet, the forbearance of that motion not being in his power, the stop or cessation of that motion follows not upon his volition and therefore therein he is not free. So, a man striking himself or his friend by a convulsive motion of his arm, which it is not in his power by volition or the direction of his mind to stop or forbear, nobody thinks he has in this liberty, every one pities him, as acting by necessity and constraint. Again, suppose a man be carried, whilst fast asleep, into a room where is a person he longs to see and speak with, and be there locked fast in, beyond his power to get out. He awakes, and is glad to find himself in so desirable company, which he stays willingly in, that is, prefers his stay to going away. I ask, is not this stay voluntary ? I think nobody will doubt it ; and yet, being locked fast in, it is evident he is not at liberty not to stay, he has not freedom to be gone. So that liberty is not an idea belonging to volition, or preferring, but to the person having the power of doing, or forbearing to do, according as the mind shall choose or direct. Our idea of liberty reaches as far as that power, and no farther. For wherever restraint comes to check that power, or compulsion takes away that indiff'erency of ability on either side, to act or to forbear acting, there liberty and our notion of it presently ceases.” 1 “If this be so, as I imagine it is,” Locke continued, “ I leave it to be considered, whether it may not help to put an end to that long agitated and, I think, unreasonable, because unintelligible question, namely, whether man’s will be free or no ? For, if I mistake not, it follows from what I have said that the question itself is altogether improper ; and it is as insignificant to ask whether man’s will be free as to ask whether his sleep be swift or his virtue square ; liberty being as little applicable to the will as swiftness of motion is to sleep or squareness to virtue. Every one would laugh at the absurdity of such a question as either of these, because it is obvious that the modifications of motion belong not to sleep nor the difference of figure to virtue ; and, when any one well considers it, I think he will as plainly per- 1 ‘ Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. ii. , ch. xxi., §§ 8 — 10. 120 “CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.” [Chap, x ceive that liberty, which is hut a power, belongs only to agents, and cannot be an attribute or modification of the will, which is also hut a power.” 1 Of course the world is very loth to adopt Locke’s incontrovertible state- ment ; but if his arguments are not heeded it is strange that his humour should have no effect. “ The name faculty,” he said, “which men have given to this power called the will, and whereby they have been led into a way of talking of the will as acting, may, by an appropriation that disguises its true sense, serve a little to palliate the absurdity; yet the will, in truth, signifies nothing but a power or ability to prefer or choose, and when the will, under the name of a faculty, is considered, as it is, barely as an ability to do something, the absurdity in saying it is free or not free will easily discover itself.' 2 For if it be reasonable to suppose and talk of faculties as distinct beings that can act (as we do, when we say the will orders, and the will is free), it is fit that we should make a speaking faculty, and a walking faculty, and a dancing faculty, by which those actions are produced, which are but several modes of motion, as well as we make the will and under- standing to be faculties, by which the actions of choosing and perceiving are produced, which are but several modes of thinking ; and we may as properly say, that it is the singing faculty sings, and the dancing faculty dances, as that the will chooses or that the understanding conceives ; or, as is usual, that the will directs the understanding, or the understanding obeys, or obeys not, the will.” The fault has been,” he added, referring to other blunders of untrained opinion besides this great one, “ that faculties have been spoken of and represented as so many distinct agents. For, it being asked what it was that digested the meat in our stomachs, it was a ready and very satisfactory answer to say that it was the digestive faculty ; what was it that made any- thing come out of the body ? the expulsive faculty ; what moved ? the motive faculty ; and so, in the mind, the intellectual faculty or the understanding understood, and the elective faculty or the will willed or commanded. This is, in short, to say that the ability to digest digested, and the ability to move 1 ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. ii. , ch. xxi., § 14. This view was, of course, anticipated, though by no means so clearly and temperately stated, in Hobbes’s argument against Bishop Bramhall. “ In the following of one’s hopes and fears,” said Hobbes, “ consisteth the nature of election ; so that a man may both choose this and cannot but choose this, and con- sequently choosing and necessity are joined together.” 2 In quoting this sentence I have followed the fourth edition, where it is blightly altered from the first. if 55.] WILL AND u FEEE WILL.” 121 moved, and the ability to understand understood. For faculty, ability, and power, I think, are but different names of the same things ; which ways of speaking, when put into more intelligible words, will, I think, amount to this much, that digestion is performed by something that is able to digest, motion by something able to move, and understanding by something able to understand. And, in truth, it would be very strange if it should be other- wise, as strange as it would be for a man to be free without being able to be 1 free.” 1 Let us, Locke urged, get rid of the quibbling question, whether the will is free, and substitute for it the very real one, whether man is free to will. “If the ideas of liberty and volition were well fixed in our understandings and carried along with us in our minds, as they ought, through all the questions that are raised about them, I suppose a great part of the difficulties that perplex men’s thoughts and entangle their understandings would be much easier resolved, and we should perceive whether the confused signification of terms, or whether the nature of the thing, caused the obscurity. It is carefully to be remembered, that freedom consists in the dependence of the existence or not existence of any action upon our volition of it ; and not in the dependence of any action, or its contrary, on our preference. A man stand- ing on a cliff is at liberty t^> leap twenty yards downwards into the sea ; not because he has a power to do the contrary action, which is to leap twenty yards upwards, for that he cannot do : but he is therefore free because he has a power to leap or not to leap. But if a greater force than his either holds him fast or tumbles him down, he is no longer free in that case, because the doing or forbearance of that particular action is no longer in his power. He that is a close prisoner in a room of twenty feet square, being at the north side of his chamber, is at liberty to walk twenty feet southward, because he can walk, or not to walk it ; but is not at the same time at liberty to do the contrary — that is, to walk twenty feet northward. In this then consists freedom, namely, in our being able to act, or not to act, according as we shall choose or will.” 2 That brings us to the paragraph about happiness and misery which has already been quoted. Holding that the pursuit of happiness or goodness and the avoidance of evil or misery are but extreme developments of the same 1 ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. ii., ch. xxi., §§ 17, 20. 2 Ibid., b. ii., ch. xxi., §§ 26, 27. The above quotations are from the chapter as it appeared in Locke’s first edition. He greatly expanded his arguments afterwards. 122 “CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.” [Chap. X. process by which we naturally adopt attitudes of repose that give most relief to the body, or shrink from contact with anything likely to give us pain, Locke held that the action of the will, whether wise or unwise, is no more “ voluntary ” in the higher than in the lower occupations. He used his words cautiously, and seems to have been himself almost afraid of the doctrine he was propounding, and in the second edition of his work he somewhat modified it, mainly under the influence of honest theological con- siderations. The doctrine was substantially maintained, however, and, if not completely worked out by him, suggested the only sure ground for all future arguments in disproof of man’s endowment with what is called free- will. After discussing, in his second book, which comprises nearly half of the whole work, “ the original, sorts and extent of our ideas, with several other considerations about these instruments or materials of our knowledge,” Locke proceeded “ to show what use the understanding makes of them, and what knowledge we have by them.” While thus engaged, however, as has already been noted, he found that “ there is so close a connection between ideas and words, and our abstract ideas and general words have so constant a relation one to another, that it is impossible to speak clearly and distinctly of our knowledge, which all consists in propositions, without considering first the nature, use, and signification of language.” 1 That accordingly is the subject of his third book, “ that immortal third book,” as John Stuart Mill has termed it ; of which, however, not much will here be said. Locke’s teaching on the groundwork of logic has come to be so generally adopted that it would be idle to describe it without also showing what wonderful innovations it made upon the teaching previously in vogue, and for that the present is not a suitable occasion. Words are signs, and signs, not of things themselves, but of our ideas about things. Originally each word must have stood for a particular idea about a par- ticular thing; but, as with the growth of intelligence, ideas are necessarily aggre- gated, and abstract ideas formed, so general terms have come to be adopted. “All things that exist being particular, what need of general terms ? and what are those general natures they stand for, since the greatest part of words in common use are general terms ? As to the first, particular things are so many that the mind could not retain names for them, and, could the memory retain them, they would be useless, because the particular things known to one would be utterly unknown to another, and so their names would not serve for com- 1 ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. ii. , ch. xxxiii., § 19. 2Et.°55.] WORDS : THEIR OBJECT, USE AND ABUSE. 123 munication where they stood not for an idea common to both speaker and hearer ; besides, our progress to knowledge being by generals, we have need of general terms. As to the second, the general natures general terms stand for are only general ideas, and ideas become general only by being abstracted from time and place and other particularities that make them the repre- sentatives only of individuals, by which separation of some ideas which, annexed to them, make them particular they are made capable of agreeing to several particulars : thus ideas come to represent, not one particular existence, but a sort of things as their names, to stand for sorts, which sorts are usually called by the Latin terms of art, genus and species, of which each is supposed to have its particular essence ; and, though there be much dis- pute and stir about genus and species and their essences, yet in truth the essence of each genus and species, or, to speak English, of each sort of things, is nothing else hut the abstract idea in the mind which the speaker makes the general term the sign of. It is true, every particular thing has a real constitution by which it is what it is ; and this, by the genuine notion of the word, is called its essence or being ; hut, the word essence having been transferred from its original signification and applied to the artificial species and genera of the schools, men commonly look on essences to belong to the sorts of things as they are ranked under different general denominations, and in this sense essences are truly nothing hut the abstract ideas which those general terms are by any one made to stand for. The first of these may he called the real, the second the nominal essence, which sometimes are the same, sometimes quite different one from another.” 1 That epitome of one of Locke’s chapters, in his own words, may help those who know any- thing of the old doctrines of the schoolmen to see how much new light he threw upon the subject. Locke had reason to take credit to himself for his contribution to the science of language. “ I was willing,” he said, “ to stay my reader on an argument that appears to me new and a little out of the way, that, by searching to the bottom and turning it on every side, some part or other might meet with every one’s thoughts, and give occasion to the most averse or negligent to reflect on a general miscarriage ; which, though of great consequence, is little taken notice of. When it is considered what a pudder is made about essences, and how much all sorts of knowledge, discourse and conversation are pestered and disordered by the careless and confused use and application of words, it will perhaps be thought worth while thoroughly to lay it open. 1 The “ abstract ” of h. iff., cli. iff., in Lord King, p. 877. 124 “CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.” [Chap. X. And I shall be pardoned if I have dwelt long on an argument which I think needs to be inculcated, because the faults men are usually guilty of in this kind are not only the greatest hindrances of true knowledge, but are so well thought of as to pass for it. I shall imagine I have done some service to truth, peace and learning if, by an enlargement on this subject, I can make men reflect on their own use of language, and give them reason to suspect that since it is frequent for others it may also be possible for them to have sometimes very good and approved words in their mouths and writings, with very uncertain, little, or no signification. And, therefore, it is not unreason- able for them to be wary herein themselves and not to be unwilling to have them examined by others.” 1 How to be wary and how to examine Locke pointed out with unmatched force and clearness, and he urged that philosophers at any rate should endeavour to learn something of the art of speaking, and even consent “ to be very knowing or very silent.” “ Though the market and exchange must be left to their own ways of talking, and gossips not be robbed of their ancient privilege,” he said with unusual scorn, “though the schools and men of argument would perhaps take it amiss to have anything offered to abate the length or lessen the number of their disputes, yet methinks those who pi’etend seriously to search after or maintain truth should think themselves obliged to study how they might deliver themselves without obscurity, doubtfulness, or equivocation, to which men’s words are naturally liable if care be not taken. For he that shall well consider the errors and obscurity, the mistakes and confusion, that are spread in the world by an ill use of words, will find some reason to doubt whether language, as it has been employed, has contributed more to the improvement or hindrance of knowledge amongst mankind. How many are there that, when they would think on things, fix their thoughts only on words, especially when they would apply their minds to moral mat- ters ? and who then can wonder that the result of such contemplations and reasonings about little more than sounds, whilst the ideas they annexed to them are very confused, or very unsteady, or, perhaps, none at all — who can wonder, I say, that such thoughts and reasonings end in nothing but obscurity and mistake, without any clear judgment or knowledge ? This inconvenience in an ill use of words men suffer in their own private meditations ; but much 1 ‘ Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. iii. , ch. v., § 16. It may be worth noting that, while Locke in later editions made considerable additions to other parts of his work, he hardly touched this third book. He appears to have been satisfied with it, and he had good reason to be so. KNOWLEDGE : ITS NATURE AND DEGREES. 125 more manifest are the disorders which follow from it in conversation, dis- course, and arguings with others. For, language being the great conduit whereby men convey their discoveries, reasonings and knowledge from one to another, he that makes an ill use of it, though he does not corrupt the fountains of knowledge, which are in things themselves, yet he does, as much as in him lies, break or stop the pipes whereby it is distributed to the public use and advantage of mankind. He that uses words without any clear and steady meaning, what does he but lead himself and others into errors ? And he that designedly does it, ought to be looked on as an enemy to truth and knowledge. And yet who can wonder that all the sciences and parts of knowledge have been so overcharged with obscure and equivocal terms and insignificant and doubtful expressions, capable to make the most attentive or quick-sighted very little or not at all the more knowing or orthodox, since subtilty in those who make profession to teach or defend truth hath passed so much for a virtue ? a virtue indeed which, consisting for the most part in nothing but the fallacious and illusory use of obscure and deceitful terms, is only fit to make men more conceited in their igno- rance and obstinate in their errors.” 1 Having urged the extreme importance of making good use of good words for the expression, and, where possible, for the definition of our ideas, Locke was able in his fourth book to treat of knowledge, which, he said, is “ nothing but the perception of the connection and agreement or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our ideas.” “ Where this perception is, there is knowledge ; and where it is not, though we may fancy, guess, or believe, yet we always come short of knowledge. For, when we know that white is not black, what do we else but perceive that these two ideas do not agree ? when we possess ourselves with the utmost security of the demonstra- tion that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones, what do we more but perceive that equality to two right ones does necessarily agree to, and is inseparable from, the three angles of a triangle ?” 2 Locke enumerated four sorts of agreement or disagreement. “ All the inquiries that we can make concerning any of our ideas, all that we know or can affirm concerning any of them, is ‘ that it is or is not the same with some other ; ’ ‘ that it does or does not always co-exist with some other idea in the same subject ; ’ ‘ that it has this or that relation to some other idea ; ’ or ‘ that it has a real existence without the mind.’ Thus, ‘ blue is not yellow ’ 1 ‘ Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. iii. , ch. xi., §§ 3 — 5. 2 Ibid., b. iv., ch. i., § 2. 126 CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. [Cha?. X. a is of identity ; ‘ two triangles upon equal bases between two parallels are equal ’ is of relation : ‘ iron is susceptible of magnetical impressions ’ is of co-existence : ‘ God is ’ is of real existence. Though identity and co- existence are truly nothing but relations, yet they are so peculiar ways of agreement or disagreement of our ideas that they deserve well to be con- sidered as distinct beads, and not under relation in general.” 1 The knowledge thus acquired, in Locke’s view, is of three degrees ; the first intuitive (a term the signification of which in his writings must not be confounded with that now sometimes given to it), when “ the mind perceives the agreement or disagreement of two ideas immediately, by themselves, without the intervention of any other ; ” the second, demonstrative, when several ideas have to be brought into juxtaposition, and thus a train of intuitions established, this process being known as reasoning ; the thh’d “sensitive,” as to the separate recognition of which he seems very properly to have had doubts, though he finally decided to regard “knowledge of the existence of particular external objects, by that perception and conscious- ness we have of the actual entrance of ideas from them,” as something different from either intuitive or demonstrative knowledge. In spite of some traces of scholasticism in his argument, Locke showed very clearly that we can have no knowledge where we have not intelligible ideas, and that our power of using those ideas in the acquisition of knowledge depends on our power to place them in co-ordination and to apprehend their agree- ment or disagreement. 2 It would be impossible in the course of a few paragraphs to sum up Locke’s account of the way in which knowledge is to be acquired. His own limits were not sufficient for a complete handling of the subject. Important as this fourth book is as a contribution to the science of applied logic, and especially to some of its various ramifications, moreover, its chief interest lies in its illustration of Locke’s advance from the metaphysical views that were current before and in his day. He was particularly careful to strip all their artificial authority from the “ maxims ” or “ general propositions ” that were the basis of scholastic teaching, and to show that whatever value lay in these maxims could consist in nothing but their reasonableness, that is, in the possibility of proving them. 3 “ Since the knowledge of the certainty of principles, as well as of 1 ‘ Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. iv., ch. i., § 7 . 2 Ibid., b. iv., ch. i., § § 3 — 7 ; ch. ii., § § 1 — 3. 3 Ibid., b. iv., ch. vii., viii. ^T f 55.] REASON THE ONLY TEST OF KNOWLEDGE. 127 all other truths,” he said, “ depends only upon the perception we have of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, the way to improve our knowledge is not, I am sure, blindly and with an implicit faith to receive and swallow principles, hut to get and fix in our minds clear, distinct, and complete ideas, as far as they are to be had, and annex to them proper and constant names. And thus, perhaps, without any other principles, but barely considering those ideas, and, by comparing them one with another, finding their agree- ment or disagreement, and their several relations and habitudes, we shall get more true and clear knowledge by the conduct of this one rule, than by taking up principles and thereby putting our minds into the disposal of others. We must therefore, if we will proceed as reason advises, adapt our methods of inquiry to the nature of the ideas we examine and the truth we search after. General and certain truths are only founded in the habitudes and relations of abstract ideas. A sagacious and methodical application of our thoughts, for the finding out these relations, is the only way to discover all that can be put with truth and certainty concerning them into general propositions. By what steps we are to proceed in these is to be learned in the schools of the mathematicians, who, from very plain and easy beginnings, by gentle degrees and a continued chain of reasonings, proceed to the discovery and demonstration of truths that appear at first sight beyond human capacity. The art of finding proofs, and the admirable methods they have invented for the singling out and laying in order those inter- mediate ideas that demonstratively show the equality or inequality of unapplicable quantities, is that which has carried them so far and pro- duced such wonderful and unexpected discoveries. I think I may say that, if other ideas that are the real as well as nominal essences of their species were pursued in the way familiar to mathematicians, they would carry our thoughts farther and with greater evidence and clearness than possibly we are apt to imagine.” 1 By this method, Locke thought, a satisfactory system of ethics might be built up. “ The idea of a Supreme Being, infinite in power, goodness and wisdom, whose workmanship we are and on whom we depend, and the idea of ourselves as understanding rational beings, being such as are clear in us, would, I suppose, if duly considered and pursued, afford such foundations of our duty and rules of action as might place morality amongst the sciences capable of demonstration ; wherein I doubt not but from self-evident pro- positions, by necessary consequences as incontestable as those in mathe- 1 ‘ Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. iv., ch. xii., § § 6, 7. 128 “CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.” ICKAV.X. rnatics, the measure of right and wrong might be made out to any one that will apply himself with the same indifferency and attention to the one as he does to the other of these sciences. The relation of other modes may certainly be perceived, as well as those of number and extension ; and I cannot see why they should not also be capable of demonstration, if due methods were thought on to examine or pursue their agreement or dis- agreement. ‘ Where there is no property, there is no injustice,’ is a proposi- tion as certain as any demonstration in Euclid : for, the idea of property being a right to anything, and the idea to which the name injustice is given being the invasion or violation of that right, it is evident that, these ideas being thus established, and these names annexed to them, I can as certainly know this proposition to be true as that a triangle has three angles equal to two right ones. Again, in ‘ No government allows absolute, liberty,’ the idea of government being the establishment of society upon certain rules or laws which require conformity to them, and the idea of absolute liberty being for any one to do whatever he pleases, I am as capable of being certain of the truth of this proposition as of any in the mathematics.” 1 That the difficulty of constructing an ethical science would be far greater than in the case of mathematics Locke admitted, partly because of the insufficiency of words to express the varying moods and capacities of men, partly because of the great complexity inevitable to moral ideas. “But,” he added, “one part of these disadvantages in moral ideas, which has made them be thought not capable of demonstration, may in a good measure be remedied by definitions, setting down that collection of simple ideas which every term shall stand for, and then using the terms steadily and constantly for that precise collection. And what methods algebra or something of that kind may hereafter suggest to remove the other difficulties it is not easy to foretell. Confident I am that if men would, in the same method and with the same indifferency, search after moral as they do mathematical truths, they would find them have a stronger connection one with another, and a more necessary consequence from our clear and distinct ideas, and come nearer to perfect demonstration than is commonly imagined. But much of this is not to be expected whilst the desire of esteem, riches, or power makes men espouse the well-endowed opinions in fashion, and then seek arguments either to make good their beauty or varnish over and cover their deformity : nothing being so beautiful to the eye as truth is to the mind, nothing so deformed and irreconcilable to the understanding as a lie. For, though 1 ‘ Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. iv., ch. iii. , § 18. 1687. "I .fit. 55. J THE PROPER METHOD OP ETHICS. 129 many a man can with satisfaction enough own a not very handsome wife in his bosom, yet who is bold enough openly to avow that he has espoused a falsehood and received into his breast so ugly a thing as a lie ? Whilst the parties of men cram their tenets down all men’s throats whom they can get into their power, without permitting them to examine their truth or false- hood, and will not let truth have fair play in the world nor men the liberty to search after it, what improvements can be expected of this kind ? What greater light can be hoped for in the moral sciences ? The subject part of mankind in most places might, instead thereof, with Egyptian bondage expect Egyptian darkness, were not the candle of the Lord set up by himself in men’s minds, which it is impossible for the breath or power of man wholly to extinguish.” 1 Though he denied that men have an innate knowledge of it, Locke con- sidered the existence of God to be “ the most obvious truth that reason discovers,” and its evidence “ equal to mathematical certainty ; ” and his argument to this effect, though not in itself very novel or noteworthy, acquired importance from the stir that it caused among his critics. It was based on the assumption, tolerably safe, though not demonstrable, of our own existence. “ As for our own existence,” he said, “ we perceive it so plainly and so certainly, that it neither needs nor is capable of any proof. For nothing can be more evident to us than our own existence. I think, I reason, I feel pleasure and pain ; can any of these be more evident to me than my 1 * Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. iv., ch. iii., §§ 19, 20. “ Grown old and stubborn,” said Hobbes, in a passage as characteristically different in expression from the above as it agrees with it in purport, “ men appeal from custom to reason, and from reason to custom, as it serves their turn ; receding from custom when their interest requires it, and setting themselves against reason as often as reason is against them. Which is the cause that the doctrine of right and wrong is perpetually disputed both by the men and the world, whereas the doctrine of lines and figures is not so ; because men care not in that subject what be truth, as a thing that crosses no man’s ambition, profit, or lust. For I doubt not but, if it had been a thing contrary to any man’s right of dominion, or to the interest of men that have dominion, that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two angles of a square, that doctrine should have been, if not disputed, yet, by the burning of all books of geometry, suppressed as far as he whom it con- cerned was able.” — ‘ Leviathan,’ part i., ch. ii. Vol. II. — 9 130 “CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.” [Chap. x. own existence ? If I doubt of all other things, that very doubt makes me perceive my own existence, and will not suffer me to doubt of that. For if I know I feel pain, it is evident I have as certain perception of my own existence as of the existence M the pain I feel ; or if I know I doubt, I have as certain perception of the existence of the thing doubting as of that thought which I call doubt. Experience then convinces us that we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence and an internal infallible perception that we are. In every act of sensation, reasoning, or thinking, we are conscious to ourselves of our own being, and in this matter come not short of the highest degree of certainty.” 1 And, if we are, God must be. Nothing can produce nothing. Man could not have been made without a maker, and that maker could not have been made unless by some other maker ; so that, however far back we trace the process of making, we must rest at last on an eternal and unmade “ some- thing.” This “something” could not have made other things without power, could not have endowed them with knowledge unless it was itself possessed of knowledge. “ Thus, from the consideration of ourselves and what we infallibly find in our own constitutions, our reason leads us to the knowledge of this certain and evident truth, that there is an eternal, most powerful, and most knowing being ; which, whether any one will please to call God, it matters not. The thing is evident ; and from this idea, duly considered, will easily be deduced all those other attributes which we ought to ascribe to this eternal being.” 2 That is the substance of Locke’s argument, expanded by various illustra- tions, and supplemented by digressions into the cloudland of metaphysics in hope of showing that the original “ something ” must have been cogitative and must therefore have been immaterial. These digressions, along with other passages in the essay, led him afterwards, as we shall see, into tedious and unprofitable controversy. As his theism only brought on him the charge of atheism, and, however honestly held and earnestly enforced, could only be based on hypotheses beyond the reach of proof, it would have been better had he more strictly applied to his own speculations the con- cluding sentences of his chapter on ‘ our knowledge of the existence of a God,’ and purged even them of their latent dogmatism. “ It is an overvaluing of ourselves,” he there said, “ to reduce all to the narrow measure of our capacities, and to conclude all things impossible to be done whose manner of doing exceeds our comprehension. This is to make our comprehension 1 ‘ Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. iv., ch. ix., § 3. 2 Ibid., b. iv., ch. x., §§ 3 — 6. 1687. 1 2Et. 55 . J A METAPHYSICAL BASIS OF THEOLOGY. 131 infinite, or God finite, when what he can do is limited to what we can conceive of it. If you do not understand the operations of your own finite mind, that thinking thing within you, do not deem it strange that you cannot comprehend the operations of that eternal infinite mind who made and governs all things and whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain.” 1 Locke’s philosophy was necessarily tinged if not biassed by his theology. That, however, if it lessens the value of some portions of his great work, only makes others more remarkable. Thus, near the close, he boldly defined the position of faith in relation to reason. “ Reason, as contradistinguished to faith,” he said, “ I take to be the discovery of the certainty or probability of such propositions or truths as the mind arrives at by deduction made from the ideas which it has got by the use of its natural faculties, namely, by sensation or reflection. Faith, on the other side, is the assent to any pro- position not thus made out by the deductions of reason, but upon the credit of the proposer as coming immediately from God, which we call revelation.” He then specified the limits that must be set to the authority of revelation. “ No man, inspired by God,” he held, “ can, by any revelation, communicate to others any new simple ideas which they had not before from sensation or reflection.” He considered that “ the same truths may be discovered and conveyed down from revelation which are discoverable to us by reason and by those ideas we naturally have ; ” but was of opinion, in the first place, that “ in all things of this kind there is little need or use of revelation, God having furnished us with a natural and surer means to arrive at the knowledge of them,” and, in the second place, that “ whatsoever truths we come to this clear discovery of from the knowledge and contemplation of our own ideas will always be more certain to us than those which are conveyed to us by traditional revelation.” 2 In effect, though we may not deny the possibility of revelations being made in anticipation of the ordinary and orderly acquisi- tion of knowledge, we may not believe any so-called revelations that are opposed to reason, and those we may accept can never have as much authority as the opinions arrived at by the exercise of our reason. “ In propositions, then, whose certainty is built upon clear and perfect ideas and evident deductions of reason we need not the assistance of reve- lation as necessary to gain our assent and introduce them into our minds, because the natural ways of knowledge could settle them there or had done it already, which is the greatest assurance we can possibly have of anything, 1 ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. iv., ch. x., § 19. 2 Ibid., h. iv., ch. xviii., §§ 2 — 4. 132 “CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.” [Chap. x. unless where God immediately reveals it to us ; and there too our assurance can be no greater than our knowledge is that it is a revelation from God. But yet nothing, I think, can under that title shake or even overrule plain knowledge, or rationally prevail with any man to admit it for true in direct contradiction to the clear evidence of his own understanding. No evidence of our faculties, hy which we receive such revelations, can exceed, if equal, the certainty of our intuitive knowledge ; and therefore no proposition can be received for divine revelation, or obtain the assent due to all such, if it be contradictory to our clear and intuitive knowledge ; because this would be to subvert the principles and foundations of all knowledge, evidence, and assent whatsoever, and there would be left no difference between truth and false- hood, no measures of credible and incredible in the world, if doubtful pro- positions should take place before self-evident, and what we certainly know give way to what we may possibly be mistaken in. In propositions, there- fore, contrary to our distinct and clear ideas, it will be in vain to urge them as matters of faith. They cannot move our assent, under that or any other title whatsoever : for faith can never convince us of anything that contradicts our knowledge, because, though faith be founded on the testimony of God, who cannot lie, revealing any proposition to us, yet we cannot have an assurance of the truth of its being a divine revelation greater than our own knowledge, since the whole strength of the certainty depends upon our knowledge that God revealed it, which in this case, where the proposition supposed revealed contradicts our knowledge or reason, will always have this objection hanging to it, namely, that we cannot tell how to conceive that to come from God, the bountiful author of our being, which, if received for true, must overturn all the principles and foundations of knowledge he has given us, render all our faculties useless, wholly destroy the most excellent part of his workmanship, our understandings, and put a man in a condition wherein he will have less light, less conduct, than the beast that perisheth.” 1 Matters above reason, but not contrary to it, however, — such as the state- ment that “part of the angels rebelled against God and thereby lost their first happy estate,” and the doctrine that “the dead shall rise and live again,” — may easily, Locke considered, be believed on the testimony of revelation, if the truth of that revelation can be proved. “ Thus far the dominion of faith reaches ; and that without any violence or hindrance to reason, which is not injured or disturbed, but assisted and improved, by new discoveries of truth coming from the eternal fountain of all knowledge. 1 ‘ Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. iv., ch. xviii., § 5. 1687. "I i£t. 55.J FAITH AND REVELATION. 133 Whatever God hath revealed is certainly true ; no doubt can be made of it. This is the proper object of faith : but whether it be a divine revelation or no reason must judge, which can never permit the mind to reject a greater evidence to embrace what is less evident, nor allow it to entertain probability in opposition to knowledge and certainty. There can be no evidence that any traditional revelation is of divine original, in the words we receive it and in the sense we understand it, so clear and so certain as that of the prin- ciples of reason ; and, therefore, nothing that is contrary to and inconsistent with the clear and self-evident dictates of reason has a right to be urged or assented to, as a matter of faith, wherein reason hath nothing to do. What- soever is divine revelation, ought to overrule all our opinions, prejudices, and interests, and hath a right to be received with full assent. Such a sub- mission as this of our reason to faith takes not away the landmarks of knowledge : this shakes not the foundations of reason, but leaves us that use of our faculties, for which they were given us.” “ If the provinces of faith and reason are not kept distinct by these boundaries,” he said finally, “ there will, in matters of religion, be no room for reason at all ; and those extrava- gant opinions and ceremonies that are to be found in the several religions of the world will not deserve to be blamed. For, to this crying up of faith in opposition to reason, we may, I think, in good measure ascribe those absurdities that fill almost all the religions which possess and divide mankind. For men, having been principled with an opinion that they must not consult reason in the things of religion, however apparently contradictory to common sense and the very principles of all their knowledge, have let loose their fancies and natural superstition, and have been by them led into so strange opinions and extravagant practices in religion that a considerate man cannot but stand amazed at their follies, and judge them so far from being acceptable to the great and wise God that he cannot avoid thinking them ridiculous and offensive to a sober, good man. So that in effect religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts and ought most peculiarly to elevate us as rational creatures above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves. « Credo, quia impossibile est’ — ‘I believe, because it is impossible,’ might in a good man pass for a sally of zeal, but would prove a very ill rule for men to choose their opinions or religion by.” 1 Locke might well deplore the prevalence of error in matters of religion as well as in other affairs of life and real or fancied grounds of knowledge. But 1 ‘ Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. iv., ch. xviii., §§ 10, 11. 134 “concerning human understanding.” tchap.x. he could be sarcastically charitable. “ Notwithstanding the great noise made in the world about errors and opinions,” he said in almost the last paragraph of his book, “ I must do mankind the right to say there are not so many men in errors and wrong opinions as is commonly supposed. Not that I think they embrace the truth, hut indeed because concerning those doctrines they keep such a stir about they have no thought, no opinion at all. For, if any one should a little catechise the greatest part of the partizans of most of the sects in the world, he would not find concerning those matters they are so zealous for that they have any opinions of their own ; much less would he have reason to think that they took them upon the examination of arguments and appearance of probability. They are resolved to stick to a party that education or interest has engaged them in ; and there, like the common soldiers of an army, show their courage and warmth as their leaders direct, without ever examining, or so much as knowing, the cause they contend for. If a man’s life shows that he has no serious regard for religion, for what reason should we think that he beats his head about the opinions of his church and troubles himself to examine the grounds of this or that doctrine ? It is enough for him to obey his leaders, to have his hand and his tongue ready for the support of the common cause, and thereby approve himself to those who can give him credit, preferment, or protection in that society. Thus men become professors of, .and combatants for, those opinions they were never convinced of nor proselytes to — no, nor ever had so much as floating in their heads ; and though one cannot say there are fewer impro- bable or erroneous opinions in the world than there are, yet this is cer- tain, there are fewer that actually assent to them and mistake them for truths than is imagined.” * In the foregoing account of Locke’s ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding,’ in the shape in which he first published it, effort has been made only to show what was its general scope and meaning as an index to his own mind and an appeal to the good sense of the readers and thinkers around him. “It was not meant,” he said, “for those who had already mastered this subject, and made a thorough acquaintance with their own understandings; 1 1 Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. iv., ch. xx., § 18. THE VALUE OF THE ESSAY. 135 Kisr. 1 .ffit. 55. J but for my own information and the satisfaction of a few friends who acknowledged themselves not to have suffi- ciently considered it ; ” and he only offered it to a wider circle because he thought that perhaps it might be useful “in clearing the ground a little and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge .” 1 He professed to give in it no more than the results of his own long and honest inquiries into the working of his own mind and the minds of those with whom he came in con- tact or could get information about from books. He would have been the first to' acknowledge his obligations to the many writers of his own and earlier days who had propounded to him doctrines or offered to him suggestions that he found worth accepting ; but he could fairly claim that all the thoughts he had derived from others had been made his own by the careful consideration that he gave to them and by the altered form that they generally assumed in his mind, and that, by combining these thoughts of others with his own more strictly original opinions, he had built up a structure that was altogether his own workmanship . 2 1 ‘ Concerning Human Understanding,’ Epistle to the Reader. 2 It must be remembered that the work grew up gradually as a private exercise not intended for publication. Had Locke from the first meant to publish it, however, be would probably have taken no greater care than be did to specify bis debts to earlier thinkers. In not specifying bis debts, be only did as all other writers then did. When any author bad to be criticised or quoted as a distinct authority for any statement or view, be was referred to ; but when bis opinions were adopted, with or without modification, it was no more thought incumbent on the writer who did so to specify the obligation than it would now be expected of any one that be should inform the public concerning the builder of bis bouse or the maker of bis clothes. A different and a very commendable rule has since come into force ; but they who charge Locke or other writers with not, at every turn, quoting their ‘ authorities” show an entire ignorance of the custom of the times. I 136 “CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.” [Chap. X. The great value of the essay consisted in the freshness and force with which it set itself against the so-called Aristotelianism and scholasticism that had crippled men’s intelligence throughout many centuries, and also against the new sort of dogmatism encouraged by Descartes and growing rapidly into favour with many besides the Carte- sians. Much in it has been superseded ; much else has been renovated. Many faults in it, which Locke himself might have corrected, can be pointed out by any tyro in psycho- logical studies, and there are yet more numerous faults which, however apparent now, no honest critic can blame him for having fallen into. But these detract nothing from the importance of the work as the chief leader of the modern philosophical revolution, the greatest stimulant of modern thought that European literature can boast of . 1 had intended in this section to distinguish, as regards the more important passages in his work, Locke’s obligations to others and his own most original views. To do this at all adequately, however, would be such a lengthy task, involving so many quotations, and, when done, the result would be so much more appropriate to a new edition than to a brief popular description of the essay, that I shall uot here venture upon it. The same remark applies with yet more force to the much larger task of endeavouring to trace in detail Locke’s influence upon subsequent philosophical thought. 1 Were Locke living now, he would probably be hardly more pained to find many eminent teachers still enforcing dogmas that he sufficiently con- troverted than to find his essay used, as it still is in the university of Dublin, as the only text-book and authority on the subject of which it treats. “The book,” said John Stuart Mill, “which has changed the face of a science, even when not superseded in its doctrines, is seldom suitable for didactic purposes. It is adapted to the state of mind, not of those who are ignorant of every doctrine, but of those who are instructed in an erroneous doctrine. So far as it is taken up with directly combating the errors which prevailed before it was written, the more completely it has done its work, the more certain it is of becoming superfluous, not to say unintelligible, without a commentary. And even its positive truths are defended against such objections only as were current in its own times, and guarded only 1687. "I .fit. 55. J THE VALUE OF THE ESSAY. 137 The most evident blemish of the work, and the only one that need now he referred to, was the occasional vagueness and inconsistency of its phraseology. Locke against such misunderstandings as the people of those times were likely to fall into. Questions of morals and metaphysics differ from physical ques- tions in this, that their aspect changes with every change in the human mind. At no two periods is the same question embarrassed by the same difficulties, or the same truth in need of the same explanatory comment. The fallacy which is satisfactorily refuted in one age reappears in another in a shape which the arguments formerly used do not precisely meet, and seems to triumph until some one, with weapons suitable to the altered form of the error, arises and repeats its overthrow. These remarks are peculiarly applicable to Locke’s essay. His doctrines were new and had to make their way ; he therefore wrote not for learners, but for the learned ; for men who were trained in the systems antecedent to his — in those of the schoolmen or of the Cartesians. He said what he thought necessary to establish his own opinions, and answered the objections of such objectors as the age afforded ; but he could not anticipate all the objections which might be made by a subsequent age ; least of all could he anticipate those which would be made now, when his philosophy has long been the prevalent one ; when the arguments of objectors have been rendered as far as possible consistent with his principles, and are often such as could not have been thought of until he had cleared the ground by demolishing some received opinion which no one before him had thought of disputing. To attack Locke, therefore, because other arguments than it was necessary for him to use have become requisite to the support of some of his conclusions is like reproaching the Evangelists because they did not write evidences of Chris- tianity. . . . No work, a hundred and fifty years old, can be fit to be tlie sole or even the principal work for the instruction of youth in a science like that of mind. In metaphysics every new truth sets aside or modifies much of what was previously received as truth. Berkeley’s refutation of the doctrine of abstract ideas would of itself necessitate a complete revision of the phraseology of the most valuable parts of Locke's book. And the im- portant speculations originated by Hume and improved by Brown, concerning the nature of our experience, are acknowledged, even hy the philosophers who do not adopt in their full extent the conclusions of those writers, to have carried the analysis of our knowledge and of the process of acquiring it so much beyond the point where Locke left it as to require that his work 138 “CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.” [Chap. x. had a healthy contempt for the meaningless definitions and pompous nonsense of the scholastic writers whom he chiefly opposed ; but that contempt caused him to err in too much effort to set forth his thoughts in words with which every one was familiar, and thus, from an opposite motive, sometimes to commit the same sort of blunder for which he. blamed his adversaries. “I am apt to think,” he said, “that men, when they come to examine them, find their simple ideas all generally to agree, though in discourse with one another they per- haps confound one another with different names. I imagine that men who abstract their thoughts, and do well examine the ideas of their own minds, cannot much differ in thinking, however they may perplex themselves with words according to the way of speaking of the several schools or sects they have been bred up in, though amongst unthinking men, who examine not scrupulously and carefully their own ideas, and strip them not from the marks men use for them, but confound them with words, there must be endless dispute, wrangling and jargon, especially if they be learned bookish men, devoted to some sect and accustomed to the language of it.” No one was ever more careful than Locke to avoid wrangling and jargon ; but in his determination to do that he often fell into slipshod ways of writing, and, what was more serious, even of thought. “ It is not easy for the mind,” he said, “ to put off those confused notions and prejudices it has imbibed from custom, inadvertency and common conversation ; it requires pains and assiduity to examine should be entirely recast.” — An article on ‘Professor Sedgwick’s Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge,’ in the London Eeview, April, 1835 ; reprinted in ‘ Dissertations and Discussions,’ vol. i. (1867), pp. 114-117. 1687. I ■ffit. 65 J THE VALUE OF THE ESSAY. 139 its ideas, until it resolves them into those clear and dis- tinct simple ones out of which they are compounded, and to see which, amongst his simple ones, have, or have not, a necessary connection and dependence one upon another. Until a man doth this in the primary and original notion of things, he builds upon floating and uncertain principles, and will often find himself at a loss.” 1 Had Locke been careful to observe his own canon, he might have saved himself from much controversy in later years, or at least have compelled those opponents who built frivolous arguments upon his verbal inconsistencies to find some better groundwork for their attacks. Though much hindered by other work which he deemed more urgent, and also by the damage which that work caused to his health, Locke was anxious, after his return to England, to publish the essay which he had been so 1 ‘ Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. ii. , ch, xiii., § 28. It would be hypercritical to make much complaint about Locke’s uncertain use even ot the most important word in the title of his work ; but this illustrates the frequent vagueness of his phraseology. His purpose was evidently to make a searching inquiry “ concerning human understanding,” that is, concerning man’s faculty or faculties of receiving and forming ideas and thus acquiring knowledge ; but his treatise is made one “ concerning the human under- standing,” that is, the mind or intellect, the thing that understands. Some psychologists, of course, would say that there is no difference between “understanding” and “the understanding,” that the mind is simply a bundle of ideas, and only comes into existence by the aggregation of thoughts and feelings derived from bodily sensations ; but Locke did not think so: the mind to him was at starting a “tabula rasa,” or a “yet empty cabinet,” a something capable of taking in ideas, and he ought there- fore to have steadily discriminated in his hook between the understanding and its powers of understanding. 140 CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. [Chap. X. U jj long in writing. He wrote Iris “ epistle dedicatory ” to tire Earl of Pembroke, in May, 1689, 1 and lie set the printers to work as soon as be could. “ Very little is doing now among us in tbe republic of letters,” he wrote to Limborck in August ; “ we are all so busy about politics ; but in this dearth of books I am submitting my treatise ‘ de intellect!! ’ to the criticism of those Mends who are weak enough to read it. I have sent ” — evidently the proof-sheets of — “ the first book to Mr. Le Clerc.” 2 “To-day,” he wrote on the 3rd of December, “ I hope that the last sheet will be in type : so at least the printers have promised, but whether any reliance is to be placed on the word of these sort of men I cannot say. I wish the work were written in such a language that, now that it is in a complete form, you could pass judgment upon it : for I know your perfect honesty and wonderful acuteness. If it comes to be translated into Latin, I fear you will find many faults in it. But the die is cast, and I am now launched on the wide ocean.” “ I sent Mr. Le Clerc,” he added in the same letter, “ my second and third books, as well as I can recollect, in September. I shall send him the rest very soon, and I hope he will return the proofs as quickly as he can, in order that I may adopt his corrections. ‘ Finito jam termino exspecto,’ as our special pleaders say. As 1 The dedication is not dated in the first edition, but “ Dorset Court, 24th of May, 1689,” appears in the second and later editions. According to Rufihead, Pope’s biographer, “ Mr. Pope used to say the only thing he could never forgive his philosophic master was the dedication to the ‘ Essay.’ ” Seeing how much it was the rule to write fulsome dedications, Locke may certainly be forgiven ; but every one must regret that he thought fit to publish such exaggerated compliments. 2 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, 7 Aug., 1689. iEt 6 S 56 - 57 .] THE PRINTING OF THE FIEST EDITION. 141 soon as I receive the proof of the table of contents I shall write to Mr. Le Clerc.” 1 Those sentences show with what careful interest Locke was arranging for the publication of his ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding.’ The first edition was in the booksellers’ shops early in 1690. Locke’s name was not on the title-page, but appended to the dedication. It was “printed by Eliz. Holt, for Thomas Basset, at the George in Fleet Street, near St. Dunstan’s Church.” For the copyright of the work which he had been preparing during so many years Locke received T30. 2 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, 3 Dec. [1689]. 2 Lord King, p. 265. CHAPTER XI. In Aid of the Revolution, [ 1689 — 1692 .] ANDING at Torbay on the 5th of November, 1688, William of Orange came ostensibly only to persuade his father-in-law, at the point of the bayonet, to rule Eng- land according to law ; but no one was deceived as to his intentions. It was clear that he either must be driven back as a usurper, or must drive the traitor-king from the throne. James the Second did not wait for much pres- sure, and William had little more to do than leisurely to march up to London, and there make terms with the irregular parliament that he had convened. Some very useful and some rather discreditable diplo- macy had to be gone through between the day of William’s arrival and the day on which his wife joined him at Whitehall ; but with the history, well known in the outline and in many of its details, of those three months we need not here concern ourselves, especially as we know nothing of Locke’s connection with it. We can do little more than guess as to the extent of Locke’s share in the earlier stage of the Revolution, though that he had some considerable share therein is quite certain ; and it seems clear that he had no direct share at all in this second stage. Any advice he may have given to Lord Mordaunt Jfse.] THE ACCESSION of william and mary. 143 and others must have been given before the prince and bis chief advisers left Holland, and, whatever that advice, whether followed or neglected, he only came to participate personally in the work after the prince had virtually become king. The part waiting to he taken by him, however, was a large one, and more was expected of him than he felt able to do. On Wednesday, the 13th of February, 1688-9, the day after the Princess Mary’s arrival, with Locke as one of her company, she and her husband were visited at White- hall by the lords and commons, who formally tendered to them the throne that had been vacated by James the Second ; and on the same day the new sovereigns were proclaimed. Within a week of that memorable turning- point in our history, Locke received a remarkable proposal from King William . William’s first business was to fill up the ministerial and other ofiices through which public affairs were to be conducted, and not the least of his early difficulties was the selecting from the clamorous crowd of influential men who had helped him to success, and who now looked for rewards, of persons suitable for the vacant posts. He certainly was at no loss for candidates, and he seriously embarrassed his prospects by selecting from them, as he felt it necessary to do, many whose claims were based upon their influence in the country rather than upon them fitness for responsible public work. He offended many by taking upon himself the management of foreign affairs, and he must have given further offence by offering one of the most important positions under him to a man — one who, as a popular politician, was so insignificant, and indeed so utterly unknown as Locke. That he should have done this is certainly a very notable evidence of the 144 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XI. higli opinion he had formed of Locke’s capacity for good and loyal work, and thus, by inference, clear proof that, while they were in Holland together, he had had satis- factory experience of the philosopher’s abilities as a statesman. An ambassador had to he sent to Frederick the Third, the new elector of Brandenburg, who in 1701 was, as Frederick the First, to begin the new kingdom of Prussia, and who was already King William’s ablest and most honest ally in opposition to Louis the Fourteenth ; and a man of rare talents and rarer virtues was needed for the post. Through Lord Mordaunt it was offered to Locke, apparently on the afternoon of the 20th of February, just a week after William’s accession and the very day on which the new privy council was formed. At Mordaunt’s chambers in Whitehall, Locke wrote this characteristic letter on the 21st : — - “ My Lord, — I cannot but in the highest degree be sensible of the great honour his majesty has done me in those gracious intentions towards me which I have understood from your lordship ; and it is the most touching displeasure I have ever received from that weak and broken constitution of my health which has so long threatened my life, that it now affords me not a body suitable to my mind in so desirable an occasion of serving his majesty. I make account every Englishman is bound in conscience and gratitude not to content himself with a bare, slothful, and inactive loyalty where his purse, his head, or his hand may be of any use to this our great deliverer. He has ventured and done too much for us to leave room for inditferency or backwardness in any one who would avoid the reproach and contempt of all mankind. And if with the great concerns of, my country and all Christendom I may be permitted to mix so mean a consideration as my own private thoughts, I can truly say that the particular veneration I have for his person carries me beyond an ordinary zeal for his service. Besides this, my lord, I am not so ignorant as not to see the great advantages of what is proposed to me. There is honour in it enough to satisfy an ambition greater than mine, and a step to the making my fortune which I could not have expected. These are temptations that would not suffer me easily to decline so eminent 1 BS9. "I JEt. 56 J AN AMBASSADORSHIP REFUSED. 145 a favour, as the other are obligations to a forward obedience in all things, where there are hopes it may not be unuseful. “But such is the misfortune of my circumstances, that I cannot accept the honour that is designed me without rendering myself utterly unworthy of it. And, however tempting it be, I cannot answer to myself or the world my embracing a trust which I may be in danger to betray even by my entering upon it. This I shall certainly be guilty of, it 1 do not give your lordship a true account of myself, and what I foresee maybe prejudicial to his majesty’s affairs. “ My lord, the post that is mentioned to me is at this time, if I mistake not, one of the busiest and most important in all Europe, and, therefore, would require not only a man of common sense and good intentions, but one whom experience in the methods of such business has fitted with skill and dexterity to deal with, not only the reasons of able, but the more dan- gerous artifices of cunning men, that in such stations must be expected and mastered. But, my lord, supposing industry and good-will would in time work a man into some degree of capacity and fitness, what will they be able to do with a body that hath not health and strength enough to comply with them ? what shall a man do in the necessity of application and variety of attendance on business to be followed there, who sometimes, after a little motion, has not breath to speak, and cannot borrow an hour or two of watching from the night without repaying it with a great waste of time the next day ? Were this a conjuncture wherein the affairs of Europe went smooth, or a little mistake in management would not be soon felt, but that the diligence or change of the minister might timely enough recover it, I should perhaps think I might, without being unpardonably faulty, venture to try my strength and make an experiment so much to my advantage. But I have a quite other view of the state of things at present, and the urgency of affairs comes on so quick that there was never such need of successful diligence and hands capable of despatch as now. The dilatory methods and slow proceedings, to say no worse of what I cannot without indignation reflect on, in some of my countrymen, at a season when there is not a moment of time lost without endangering the protestant and English interest throughout Europe, and which have already put things too far back, make me justly dread the thought that my weak constitution should in so considerable a post any way clog his majesty’s affairs ; and I think it much better that I should be laid by to be forgotten for ever than that they should at all suffer by my ambitiously and forwardly undertaking what my want of health or experience would not let me manage to the best advantage ; for I Vol. II. 10 146 IN AID OF THE HE VOLUTION. [Chap. XI. must again tell your lordship that, however unable I might prove, there will not be time in this crisis to call me home and send another. “ If I have reason to apprehend the cold air of the country, there is yet another thing in it as inconsistent with my constitution, and that is, their warm drinking. I confess obstinate refusal may break pretty well through it, but that at best will be hut to take more care of my own health than the king’s business. It is no small matter in such stations to be acceptable to the people one has to do with, in being able to accommodate one’s self to their fashions ; and I imagine, whatever I may do there myself, the knowing what others are doing is at least one half of my business, and I know no such rack in the world to draw out men’s thoughts as a well-managed bottle. If, therefore, it were fit for me to advise in this case, I should think it more for the king’s interest to send a man of equal parts, that could drink, his share, than the soberest man in the kingdom. “I beseech you, my lord, to look on this, not as the discourse of a modest or lazy man, but of one who has truly considered himself, and, above all things, wishes well to the designs which his majesty has so gloriously begun for the redeeming England, and with it all Europe, and I wish for no other happiness in this world but to see it completed, and shall never be sparing of my mite where it may contribute any way to it ; which I am confident your lordship is sufficiently assured of, and therefore I beg leave to tell your lordship that if there be anything wherein I may flatter myself I have attained any degree of capacity to serve his majesty, it is in some little knowledge I perhaps may have in the constitutions of my country, the temper of my countrymen, and the divisions amongst them, whereby I per- suade myself I may be more useful to him at home, though I cannot but see that such an employment would be of greater advantage to myself abroad, would but my health consent to it. “ My lord, missing your lordship at your lodging this morning, I have taken the liberty to leave you my thoughts in writing, being loth that in anything that depends on me there should he a moment’s delay, a thing which at this time I look on as so criminal in others. “ I am, my lord, your lordship’s most humble and most obedient servant, “ J. Locke.” 1 Probably that letter was unique among all the answers that were received by King William or his deputies to offers of lucrative employment under the crown either at 1 Lord King, p. 173; Locke to Mordaunt, 21 Feb., 1G88-9. ^| 6 ] COMMISSIONER OF APPEALS. 147 home or abroad. But it did not satisfy the king. So honest a man, thought his majesty, must not he dis- pensed with. Other messages, accordingly, were sent to Locke. If Cleve and Berlin were too cold for him, he was invited to go to Yienna, where he need he in no fear of the weather ; nay, let him name his own place, and, if possible, it should be assigned to him. 1 But Locke was resolute. He could not trust in his health being sound enough anywhere for him to do such work as such a king as William deserved from a loyal subject and patriotic citizen, and he persisted in declining to take any diplo- matic employment. Locke had a claim for arrears, amounting to a good deal more than 1000k, of the salary that he had earned as secretary to the old council of trade and plantations under Charles the Second, and, following the example set by a multitude of other creditors of the crown, he petitioned, soon after King William’s accession, for the payment of this debt. 2 Finding, however, that the exchequer was so empty that no old debts could he paid, and also that the king’s advisers, and Lord Mordaunt especially, were de- termined to have him connected in some way with the public service, he agreed to a compromise. The claim for arrears was withdrawn and in May he accepted an appointment as commissioner of appeals, “ a place hon- ourable enough for any gentleman, though of no greater value than 200k per annum,” said Lady Masham, “ and suitable to Mr. Locke on account that it required but little attendance.” 3 This post, not quite a sinecure, - 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Lady Masham to Le Clerc, 12 Jan., 1704-5. 2 See vol. i., p. 293. 3 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Lady Masham to Le Clerc, 12 Jan. 1704-5. 148 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XI. appears to have been retained by him through the re- mainder of his life. It was procured for him by Lord Mordannt, wdiom for the next eight years we must know as the Earl of Mon- mouth, he having been raised to the new dignity on the 9th of April, and bearing the fresh title till 1697, when, on the death of his uncle, he succeeded to another as Earl of Peterborough. The friendship that now and hence- forth existed between this young nobleman and Locke is curious, and it is necessary we should remember that, though through their difference in social rank the younger man was regarded as in some sort the patron of the elder, them relations were really those of disciple and instructor or guide. It would have been better for Monmouth’s fame and happiness had he paid more heed to his friend’s instructions, or rather sought from him guidance not only as to his conduct just at this time, but also as to the way in which he should fit himself to be a wise and consistent statesman in later years ; but he possessed many qualities that reasonably endeared him to Locke. A dashing sailor, he had shown himself, while yet in his teens, a worthy inheritor of the dare-devil spirit that animated Drake and his peers, and to the temper proper to a brave seaman he added the same sort of ill-regulated zeal in political and other concerns that was displayed by Cochrane, the greatest of all Drake’s followers. His bitterest enemies, however, could not deny that he was chivalrously gen- erous, and their worst charges against him amount to little more than that he was recklessly impulsive. The uncurbed virtue and the irrepressible vice caused him much trouble in later life ; but the punishment that he brought upon himself ought surely to make modern critics somewhat lenient towards his faults. Those faults, more- RELATIONS WITH THE EAEL OF MONMOUTH. 149 over, were not very apparent in Locke’s day, and least of all in the time shortly before and shortly after King William’s accession. His greatest offences just now were that, like Locke, he was too extreme a latitudinarian to please such cautious churchmen as Burnet, and, also like Locke, too bold a reformer to please such cautious whigs as Halifax. A short letter which Locke wrote five weeks after his re- turn to England gives us some information about his health and temper at this time, and shows us that, though he had come back as a courtier in the best sense and an honoured statesman to the England that he had quitted as an exile, he was the same man still, and anxious to strengthen old ties of affection which neither time nor distance had broken. The address has been torn off, but it appears to have been written to his cousin, Mrs. Gfrigg, whose husband had been an intimate friend of Simon Patrick, the excellent bishop of Ely here referred to. Dear Sister, — Now I am come to England, where I had promised myself a full satisfaction, I find I want still two things very dear to me, — that is, you and my health. The want of your company disturbs me con- stantly, my cough by intervals ; and between them both I am constantly admonished that, whatsoever we may fancy of perfect happiness, we shall never attain it in this world. “I was informed of your health with satisfaction from my lord of Ely, who, by the kindness he expressed to you, increased my esteem of him. I am glad to hear you are well and at ease, but should be better pleased to hear it from yourself, and to have the opportunity to talk some old and new stories, with you ; for I fancy we have a great deal to say to one another, and I hope it will not be long, now the great ditch is no longer between us, before we shall meet. Wherever you are, I, with my old concern and friendship, wish your happiness, and shall be glad to receive the news of it from your own hand as often as your inclination or occasions will allow it. You must not forget that I am, dear sister, your most affectionate brother and humble servant, “ J. Locke. 150 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. xr. “ I expect to hear some pleasing news of your son to lodge at Dr. Goodall’s at the college of physicians in Warwick Lane.” 1 Four clays before the date of that letter Locke sent to his friend Limborcli a longer one, which throws more light on his position and occupations at this time. “ I fear,” he wrote, “ that you will suspect me of neglecting you because I have so long continued a silence unsuitable to your deserts, to my own inclinations, and to our mutual affection. You will surely understand that my feelings towards you cannot be changed by a change of country, and that I shall always regard you with the same friend- ship and reverence ; and I know you will find excuse for me in the time I have had to devote to friends from whom I have so long been parted, in the worry I have had in hunting up and collecting my scattered goods and chattels for my immediate use, and, I must add, in the many claims that have been made upon me by the urgent pressure of public business ; besides all which, and worst of all, my health has suffered considerably from the abominable smoke of this city. Eeally, I have hardly had a moment of leisure since I arrived.” He then proceeded to report the news most interesting to his friend, as well as to himself. “ Burnet has been nominated to the bishopric of Salisbury. In parliament the question of toleration has begun to be discussed under two designations, comprehension and indulgence. By the first is meant a wide expansion of the church, so as, by abolishing a number of obnoxious ceremonies, to induce a great many dissenters to conform. By the other is meant the allowance of civil rights to all who, in spite 1 Longleat MSS. (the Marquis of Bath’s) ; Locke to , 16 March, 1688-9. I am indebted to Canon Jackson for a transcript of this letter. 1669. “I Ait. 56. J ILL-HEALTH AND HARD WORK. 151 of the broadening of the national church, are still un- willing or unable to become members of it. How lax or strict the new arrangements will he, I cannot tell as yet ; but this at all events is certain, that the episcopal clmgy are not at all friendly to any of the proposed reforms, whether to their own or to the nation’s advantage it is for them to consider. For my own part, I hope soon to get hack to hooks and letters ; at present I am too busy with other matters.” 1 Among the matters with which Locke was so busy at this time, the chief was evidently that movement in favour of religious liberty to which he briefly referred in his letter to Limborch, but all his efforts failed to bring about anything like so much reform as he desired. It will he remembered that in the autumn of 1685 he had written his since famous ‘Epistola de Tolerantia.’ This tract was printed at Gouda in the spring of 1689, soon after Locke left Holland. It was published anonymously and probably without Locke’s knowledge, the responsi- bility of giving it to the world being, it would seem, altogether Limborch’ s, 2 and it is clear there was no design, in its publication just then, of influencing the policy of William and the English legislators. If it did 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library (part in ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 828); Locke to Limborch, 12 March, 1688-9. 2 Limborch, or some other person than Locke, was probably the com- piler of the ingenious and eccentric wording, or rather initialing, of the title-page : “ Epistola de Tolerantia ad Clarissimum Virum TARPTOLA, Scripta a PAPOILA.” The initials stood for these words, “ Theologiae Apud Remonstrantes Professorem, Tyrannidis Osorem, Limborchium, Amstelodamensem (Professor of Theology among the Remonstrants, Hater of Tyranny, Limborch, of Amsterdam),” and “Pacis Amico, Persecutionis Osore, Johanne Lockio, Anglo (a Friend of Peace, Hater of Persecution, John Locke, Englishman).” 152 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XI that at all, it can only have been to a very small extent. Translations of it in Dutch and French were almost im- mediately issued, and it created a good deal of discussion among liberal and illiberal theologians as well as politi- cians on the continent during the early months of 1689 ; but, though men like William the Third and Bishop Burnet may have read it, it was at this time almost unknown in England. If Locke had any direct or indirect share in the comprehension and toleration bills that were submitted to the convention parliament in March, his contribution to the scheme of reform had been made long before. The hills, now introduced by the Earl of Nottingham, were almost identical with measures that had been brought forward nearly ten years earlier, and that had indeed been originated more than twenty years earlier, when Locke was the modest coadjutor of the first Lord Shaftesbury. The comprehension bill proposed to relieve all ministers of the church of England, and all members of the universities, from the necessity of subscribing to the thirty-nine articles, substituting for them this declaration, “ I do approve of the doctrine and worship and govern- ment of the church of England by law established, as containing all things necessary to salvation, and I promise, in the exercise of my ministry, to preach and practise according thereto ; ” it also gave consider- able liberty as to the wearing of vestments, the mode of baptism, and other ceremonies ; and it suggested the appointment of a commission for simplifying the ritual and rubric of the church. The toleration bill, without abrogating the five mile act, the conventicle act and the other monstrous laws in the same category, pro- posed to nullify their worst provisions in the case of dissenters willing to take the oaths of allegiance and 153 J t 68 56 .] THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. supremacy and to subscribe to tbe declaration against transubstantiation and to thirty-four of the thirty-nine articles, along with portions of two others. Neither measure at all recognised the rule which Locke had laid down in terms that could not be controverted, though they might of course be contradicted, that the civil power has no right to interfere with any one’s reli- gious opinions or worship, or in any way to make those opinions or worship an obstacle to the full rights of citizenship, provided only that they are not clearly at variance with the civil interests of the community. We can easily understand that, they being better than nothing, Locke did all he could to secure their adoption, and that he was yet more zealous in urging, through Monmouth and others, that their clauses should be so modified as to make them really liberal measures ; but, wdien he saw 7 that they were narrowed instead of broadened by parlia- ment, and when finally, though the toleration bill was passed, the more useful comprehension bill was allowed to drop through, he certainly had good reason for being dis- appointed. When his ‘ Epistola de Tolerantia ’ was issued in an English translation, it appeared only as an eloquent argument in favour of reforms yet to be effected, and, by implication, as an indignant remonstrance against the very lame and insufficient efforts at reformation which were all that King William, himself an honest friend to religious liberty, and the few men like Lords Monmouth and Pembroke, who shared his views, could persuade the still priest-ridden country, and the priests who tyrannised over it, to consent to. In that translation Locke himself had no part. “ I understand that a countryman of mine is now engaged in rendering my little book about toleration into English,” 154 IN AID OF THE EE VOLUTION. [Chap. XI. lie wrote to Limborch in June. “ I hope its plea in favour of peace and justice may obtain a bearing .” 1 The translator, whom Locke afterwards sought out and made a friend of, was William Popple, an Unitarian merchant in London ; and he expressed Locke’s thoughts very skilfully, not only in the version itself, but also in the short preface with which he furnished it. “ I think there is no nation under heaven,” he there wrote, “in which so much has already been said upon toleration as ours ; but yet cer- tainly there is no people that stand in more need of having something farther both said and done amongst them, in this point, than we do. Our government has not only been partial in matters of religion, but those also who have suffered under that partiality, and have therefore endeavoured by their writings to vindicate their own rights and liberties, have for the most part done it upon narrow principles suited only to the interests of their own sects. This narrowness of spirit on all sides has un- doubtedly been the principal occasion of our miseries and confusions. But, whatever hath been the occasion, it is now high time to seek for a thorough cure. We have need of more generous remedies than what have yet been made use of in our distemper. It is neither declarations of indulgence nor acts of comprehension, such as have as yet been practised or projected amongst us, that can do the work. The first will but palliate, the second increase our evil. Absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty, is the thing that we stand in need of. Now, though this has been much talked of, I doubt it has not been much understood — I am sure not at all practised — either by our governors towards the people in 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 331 ; Locke to Limborch, 6 June, 1689. iEtf 5*6.] THE steuggle for religious liberty. 155 general, or by any dissenting parties of the people towards one another.” 1 “ I doubt not you have heard before this,” Locke wrote to Limborch, “that toleration is now established among us by law ; not with such breadth as you and true men like you, free from Christian arrogance and hatred, would desire ; but ’tis something to get anything. With these small beginnings I hope the foundations will be laid on which the church of Christ can be built up. None are to be punished for their religious opinions, unless they are catholics, if they will only consent to take the oath of allegiance and to repudiate the doctrine of transubstantia- tion and certain other dogmas of the church of Borne. ” 2 An earlier letter to Limborch shows us with what tem- perate approval Locke watched the general progress of affairs during the first few months of William’s reign, and with what honest independence of spirit he took part in them as far as he was able. “ Yesterday,” he wrote on the 12th of April, “ the inau- guration or, as they call it, the coronation of the king and queen was celebrated with great pomp and amid the acclamations of a mighty concourse of people; and at the same time, I suppose, they were in Scotland pro- claimed king and queen of that country, as some days ago the Scottish throne, according to the institutions of the northern kingdom, had been decreed to William and Mary. Burnet, now bishop of Salisbury, took part in yesterday’s solemnity. He preached before the king and queen, and everybody was delighted with his sermon. I have no doubt it will be printed, and if so, I shall take care to send you a copy. I saw him this morning, and 1 * A Letter concerning Toleration ’ (1689), To the Reader. 2 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 330 ; Locke to Limborch, 6 June, 1689. 156 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chaf. XL told him yon intended to send him a letter of congratula- tion as soon as you knew that he was actually a bishop. Whether, as you persuade yourself, he will show the same spirit at Salisbury as he did at Amsterdam, some people begin to doubt. I must tell you a hit of gossip about him. When he paid his first visit to the king after his consecra- tion, his majesty observed that his hat was a good deal larger than usual, and asked him what was the object of so very much brim. The bishop replied that this was the shape suitable to his dignity. ‘ I hope,’ answered the king, ‘ that the hat won’t turn your head.’ ” 1 Locke may surely be excused for rather spitefully repeating this story about the clever and conceited, though on the whole well- meaning, busybody who was so fond of saying spiteful things about everybody else. After referring to letters that he had received from his Mends Yeen and Guenellon, who, as well as Limborch, appear to have been surprised that they had as yet heard nothing of any favours shown to him, while Burnet had so soon forced himself into a bishopric, Locke went on to say, “ I find you are all anxious to know what public office I mean to ask for. I can tell you in a word — none. On the score of my health I have declined an appointment which I should certainly have been glad enough to accept had I been younger and stronger than I am. I want nothing now but to have some rest. It would never do for a man who is tumbling to pieces, and fit only to close his account with life, to rush into any new and great undertaking. I want nothing, I assure you, but a little better health than I have had since my return, to be able to breathe more easily, and to be less 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, 12 April, 1G89. CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 157 troubled by my cough. Whether I shall get any good from the warmer air of spring time, or from becoming accustomed to this present temperature, I do not know, but I do know that it would be very foolish of me to take any sort of public burthen on my shoulders. What would please me far better than the highest honour that could be offered to me, would be now and then, if only in pass- ing, to have an opportunity of meeting you again. And yet, I do not know how it is, though I decline to take any public work, I find myself so occupied with public affairs and the concerns of my friends, that I am hardly able to touch a book now. I hope I shall soon be able to get back to my former and much-wished-for ease in the world of letters.” 1 Locke was anxious to publish the ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding’ which he had brought home with him, and therefore probably somewhat exaggerated the difficulties thrown in his way. It is evident that, besides the rather heavy task of correcting the proof-sheets of the essay, which was now being printed, he found op- portunity for doing a good deal of other literary work during the two years following his return to England ; but it is also evident that he was much occupied with public affairs, and that, if his duties as commissioner of appeals were not very burthensome, he did plenty in other ways to earn the modest salary attached to the office. As to the details of most of these occupations, however, only very scanty information has come down to us. The chief business of the convention parliament, after the arrangements for assigning the crown to William and 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Liinborck, 12 April, 1689. 158 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chaf. XT. Mary had been completed, was the passing of the toleration bill. The chief business between its re-assembling in August and its prorogation in the following January was the passing of the hill of rights. Most of its time was spent in squabbling ; the assembly, though useful enough in settling the one great question for which it had been specially summoned, proving itself not very competent to deal with the other questions that came before it. Locke watched its proceedings very closely, and took an im- portant though indirect share in them ; hut the only subject with which we know that he intimately concerned himself was religious liberty, and in following this his attention had to he turned rather to convocation than to parliament. In its first session parliament had shelved the comprehension hill by referring it to convocation, and in order to help that body in coming to an opinion a royal commission was appointed in September “ to prepare such alterations in the liturgy and canons, and such pro- posals for the reformation of ecclesiastical courts, and to consider such other matters, as may most conduce to the good order and edification and union of the church of England.” Nothing hut increase of ill-will between the various factions in and out of the church came of all this, hut it helped to occupy people’s thoughts during a few months. “ A certain measure of indulgence has been agreed upon,” he wrote to Limborch, “ but the strife of opinions and parties is by no means ended, although the dissenters use the liberty that has been granted to them much more peaceably and modestly than I should have expected. The question of comprehension is again under discussion. What good will come of it I do not at present see, hut I do not think they are in the way of securing lasting peace 1689. "I Mt. 57.J CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC AEFAIKS. 159 to. the church. People will always differ from one another about religion and carry on constant strife and w r ar until the right of every one to perfect liberty in these matters is ccnceded and they can be united in one body by a bond of mutual charity.” “ The English translation of the ‘ Epistola de Tolerantia ’ has just appeared,” he added in a postscript. 1 But the way in which that tract was received by the English public, and the result of the discussions of the royal commissioners and of convocation, only forced upon him the conviction that the millennium of religious peace and charity was yet a very long way off. He had soon to arrive at a like conclusion on other matters. But he did all he could towards serving his country in its immediate embarrassments, and, being himself too ill to do as much active work as he desired, he was all the more eager in encouraging younger and stronger men to be zealous patriots. Of his relations with one of these men it is especially interesting to take note. Before going to Holland he had made the acquaintance of a clever young barrister, John Somers, the son of a Gloucestershire attorney and born in 1651, who was called to the bar in 1676, and, taking a lively interest in politics as well as the law, soon became known to the Earl of Shaftesbury and the other leading whigs. In 1680 he wrote, with special reference to Shaftesbury’s exclusion bill, a very learned and effective ‘ History of the Succession, collected out of the Becords and the most authentic Historians,’ which was accepted as a conclusive authority by the promoters of William of Orange’s king- ship, and a year after he published a very clever but more ephemeral tract in defence of Shaftesbury and his policv. 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborcb, 10 Sept., 1689. 1G0 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XI. He continued to be a bold politician as well as a rising lawyer during the reign of James the Second ; and Pollexfen, who was senior counsel for the Seven Bishops in 1688, having insisted that Somers should be one of his juniors, their acquittal was mainly attributed to the skill and eloquence with which he defended them. That success made him a favourite with the whigs. He was a member of the convention parliament, and in his maiden speech he laid down the principles of limited monarchy in terms that Locke might have dictated. He drew up the report, being the chief member, of the committee appointed in February “ to consider the redress of grievances,” out of which grew the declaration of rights and the bill of rights. Ably supporting those measures, he was also the chief advocate of the comprehension bill and the toleration bill in the house of commons. On the 7th of May he was appointed solicitor-general, and in the following October he was knighted. Some insight into his relations with Locke, now that their intimacy was resumed after an interval of six or seven years, as well as into Locke’s connection with political affairs, may be gained from a letter of Somers’s written from Worcester, which he represented in parliament, in September. “ 1 ought to be out of countenance for being so long in making my acknowledgment for your two favours, which I really value so much,” he here said ; “ but, as I had nothing to write from this place which was fit for you to read, so I wanted a proper address to you till I learnt it from my friend Mr. Freke,” also a friend of Locke’s, with whom we shall meet again. “ The country, generally speaking, is extremely well-disposed in relation to the government ; but some few clergymen who have not taken the oaths, and some that have, and SIE JOHN SOMEES AND THE WHIGS. 161 1689 - 90.1 m. 57 J a very little party of such as pay them a blind obedience, use incredible diligence, by misconstructions of every- thing, false stories and spreading of libels, to infect the people. I wish heartily the hi ends of the government were encouraged to use the same diligence in suppressing such doings ; for, though they behave themselves with much malice, yet it is so very foolishly that they lie as open as one could wish. I am making all possible haste to town, and hope to learn from you all that I want from my long absence. Your former favours make me bold to presume upon you, and your judgment is such that I can depend upon your instructions as the rules for my behaviour.” 1 A good many men looked to Locke for instructions, and prudently allowed themselves to be guided by his judgment. In the absence of much direct information on the sub- ject, there can be no stronger proof of Locke’s participa- tion in the troubled course of domestic politics during the first year or so of William’s reign than in the fact that, notwithstanding the serious damage that was always done to his health by residence in London during the foggy and frosty months, he spent there the whole winter of 1689-90 and most of the following one. That, however, was an especially busy time. In January, 1689-90, the king had to choose between dissolving his unruly and ungrateful house of commons and abdicating the crown that he had worn with very little satisfaction to himself, and with even less satisfaction to the noisiest and most influential of his subjects, during less than a year. He fortunately adopted the former alternative. Parliament was dismissed on the 6th of February, and 1 Lord King, p. 235 ; Somers to Locke, 25 September, 1689. is wrongly given by Lord King as 1698. The date Yol. II.— 11 1 162 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. iChap. XI. another one summoned for the 20th of March. Many of LocWs friends were candidates for seats in the new house of commons which was to decide the fate of England, and several were elected. One of them, now making his entrance into political life as representative of Taunton, was Edward Clarke, of Chipley, of whom we shall see much hereafter. Another was Sir Walter Yonge, chosen for Honiton. Another was Locke’s former pupil, Lord Ashley, the first Earl of Shaftesbury’s grand- son, who now, in his twentieth year, represented Poole. Another, about whose intimacy with Locke we know little, though there certainly was such an intimacy, was the Earl of Bellamont, an Irish peer, whom, in 1695, William the Third appointed governor of New York and Massachusetts, where freebooting was terribly rife. “I send you, my lord,” said the king, “ because an honest and intrepid man is wanted to put these abuses down, and because I believe you to be such a man.” Another was Sir John Somers, the solicitor- general. “ Since you have wished so kindly to my election,” Somers wrote to Locke from Oxford, on the 5th of March, “I cannot hut think it my duty to give you an account that yesterday morning my old partner, Mr. Bromley, and myself were chosen at Worcester without any opposition. I was very willing to get out of the town as soon as my election was over, and so got into the circuit at this place, from whence I shall go back to Worcester, where I hope you will make me so happy as to let me receive another letter from you, in which I will beg your advice (for by this time you have an account of the bulk of the elections), whether you think I may go on in the circuit or not : what you write shall be my rule in this point. If I could hope to be useful, I would not KING WILLIAM’S SECOND PARLIAMENT. 163 fail to be at the opening of the session ; but if there be no hopes of it, and that the Gazette inclines me to believe, I would take the advantage of the whole circuit, since I am now engaged in it. This letter I beg from you by Saturday’s post ; and, when I have the satisfaction of seeing you, I will beg your pardon for this freedom, which nothing but your kindness to me upon all occa- sions, as well as my dependence upon your judgment, could have drawn me to. I am earnest in expectation of your thoughts in this and greater matters.” 1 It is certainly curious to find a solicitor-general asking any one’s advice as to whether, in the midst of such political excitement as now prevailed, he should devote himself to his private interests or attend to his official duties ; and there can be no doubt that Locke strongly urged his friend to neglect the Oxford circuit and take his place in parliament on the opening day. Every honest man who had a seat in that assembly was wanted there. Perhaps it was not altogether matter for regret that a far greater number of tories were elected for this than for the previous house of commons, as the whigs had not, after offering the crown to Wi lli am and Mary, shown themselves very wise or very patriotic ; but it was a very serious matter indeed that the king, during the interval, had taken for his chief adviser, instead of the old Marquis of Halifax, the worst of all the vicious politicians who had been in the service of Charles the Second. This adviser was the Earl of Danby, now styled the Marquis of Carmarthen, and before long to be made Duke of Leeds, but the same treacherous schemer and master of the art of bribery under all his titles. This and other changes indicated that, if the house of com- 1 Lord King, p. 234 ; Somers to Locke, 5 March, 1689-90. 164 IN AID OF THE DEVOLUTION. [Chap. XI. mons was to be made loyal to the king and the govern- ment, the loyalty was not to be quite disinterested. No sooner was this apparent than Locke began to trouble himself less about parliamentary affairs. He was very anxious that as many of his friends and other honest men as possible should be elected to the new house of commons, and that their full strength should be shown in the opening proceedings ; but when that strength proved unavailing, when on the first day of the session Sir John Trevor, Carmarthen’s tool, was chosen speaker of the house, he seems to have felt that there was little to be hoped for. We have hardly any trace, at any rate, of his connection with parliamentary movements during the next four years, and therefore we need not here attempt to follow those movements. He sought to help forward the work of the revolution, as he understood it, in other ways ; and we must now follow him into one of those literary undertakings for which he complained that he had, in the first year after his return from Holland, so little leisure. This was, however, an undertaking by which he rendered to the cause of which William the Third was champion a ser- vice of certainly not less immediate importance, and as certainly of much more permanent value to the world, than anything he can have been able to do in giving advice concerning the current business of parliament or the best means of maintaining something like good govern- ment amid the embarrassments caused by selfish courtiers and greedy place-hunters, disloyal whigs and more dis- loyal tories, by Jacobite plotters in England, by disaffected Scotsmen and by Irish rebels. 1869. 1 JSt. 56. J * TWO TREATISES OF GOVERNMENT.’ 165 Early in 1690 appeared ‘Two Treatises of Government,’ with this announcement on the title-page: “In the former the false principles and foundation of Sir Robert Filmer and his followers are detected and overthrown : the latter is an Essay concerning the true Original, Extent and End of Civil Government.”- This work, afterwards acknowledged as his by Locke, was licensed for printing on the 23rd of August, 1689, and must accordingly have been written before that date. “Thou hast here,” Locke said in his prefatory address to the reader, “the beginning and end of a discourse concerning government. What fate has otherwise disposed of the papers that should have filled up the middle and were more than all the rest, it is not worth while to tell thee. These, which remain, I hope are sufficient to establish the throne of our great restorer, our present King William, to make good his title in the consent of the people, which, being the only one of all lawful governments, he has more fully and clearly than any prince in Christendom, and to justify to the world the people of England, whose love of their natural rights, with their resolution to preserve them, saved the nation when it was on the very brink of slavery and ruin. If these papers have that evidence I flatter myself is found in them, there will be no great miss of those which are lost, and my readers may be satisfied without them ; for I imagine I shall have neither the time nor inclination to repeat my pains and fill up the wanting part of my answer by tracing Sir Robert again through all the wind- ings and obscurities which are to be met with in the several branches of his wonderful system.” Locke was so busily employed in other ways during the six months that elapsed between his return to England and the licensing of this book, comprising less than hah 166 IN AID OF THE KEVOLUTION. [Chap. XI. of the whole work written by him, that it is very unlikely that he had opportunity, within those six months, for writing any large part of it, least of all its elaborate review of Sir Robert Filmer’ s “windings and obscurities.” It is yet more unlikely that its middle portion, “more than all the rest,” should have been lost so immediately after it was written, and, though what is now the second essay may possibly have been prepared in England in 1689, its tone and method seem to suggest that it was composed before, instead of after, William the Third’s accession. On these grounds, supported by some minor considerations which hardly need be here set forth, it may fairly be assumed that the whole was substantially completed during the last year or so of Locke’s residence in Holland, and that probably the earlier and larger por- tions, including that which was lost, were written before Locke went thither. Its place in the history of political and philosophical history, however, must be assigned to the first year after his return to England. It was evi- dently begun as a mere rejoinder to the £ Patriarcha ’ in which Sir Robert Filmer, a devoted subject of Charles the First, had boldly set himself to support his master’s cause by claiming for kings more absolute dominion over their subjects than any but the maddest kings in their maddest moments ever ventured to claim for themselves. Besides this work, which was written about the year 1642, and thus was nearly contemporary with Hobbes’s treatise £ De Cive,’ Filmer published £ The Anarchy of a Limited and Mixed Monarchy’ in 1646, £ The Freeholder’s Grand Inquest’ and £ The Power of Kings ’ in 1648, and ‘Observations upon Mr. Hobbes’s “Leviathan,” Mr. Milton against Salmasius, and Grotius “De Jure Belli et Pacis,” concerning the Original of Government ’ in AN ANSWER TO FILMER’S ‘ PATRIARCHA.’ 167 1652. The ‘Patriarcha’ was not published till 1680, when, Filmer being apparently dead, it was issued by his son and welcomed by all the champions of divine right who were then rallying round Charles the Second. Locke’s friend, James Tyrrell, answered it in 1681, in an essay styled, 4 Patriarcha non Monarcha ; ’ 1 and a new edition was published in 1685, with a preface “in which this piece is vindicated from the cavils and misconstructions of the author of ‘ Patriarcha non Monarcha.’ ” The first of Locke’s ‘ Two Treatises of Govern- ment ’ was probably written at some time between the appearance of Filmer’s first and second editions. 2 “ I should not speak so plainly of a gentleman long since past answering,” he said, “had not the pulpit of late years publicly owned his doctrine and made it the current divinity of the times. I should not have taken the pains to show his mistakes, inconsistencies and want of what he so much boasts of and pretends wholly to rely on — Scripture proofs — were there not men amongst us who, by crying up his books and espousing his doctrine, save me from the reproach of writing against a dead adversary.” 3 It is difficult to understand why Locke should have thought those pains worth taking. “ Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation,” he said, “that it is hardly to be conceived that an English- man, much less a gentleman, should plead for it. And truly I should have taken Sir Bobert Filmer’s ‘Patriarcha’ as any other treatise which would persuade all men that they are slaves and ought to be so for another exercise of 1 I have not been able to meet with a copy of Tyrrell’s work, 2 All his references are to the first edition. 8 ‘ Two Treatises of Government ’ (1690), Preface. 168 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XI. wit, as was his who writ the encomium of Nero, rather than for a serious discourse meant in earnest, had not the gravity of the title and epistle, the picture in front of the book, and the applause that followed it, required me to believe that the author and publisher were both in earnest. I therefore took it into my hands with all the expectation, and read it through with all the attention, due to a treatise that made such a noise at its coming abroad, and cannot but confess myself mightily surprised that in a book which was to provide chains for all mankind I should find nothing but a rope of sand, useful, perhaps, to such whose skill and business it is to raise a dust and b lin d the people the better to mislead them, but in truth not of any force to draw those into bondage who have their eyes open, and so much sense about them as to consider that chains are but an ill wearing, how much care soever hath been taken to file and polish them.” 1 Filmer had woven into his “ rope of sand ” a few texts from the book of Genesis, from which he argued that Adam was endowed with absolute mastery over the whole world, and also that “ the succeeding patriarchs had, by right of fatherhood, royal authority over their children.” “ God created only Adam, and of a piece of him made the woman, and by generation from them two, as parts of them, all mankind was propagated. God gave to Adam not only the dominion over the woman and the children that should issue from them, but also over all the earth to subdue it, and over all the creatures on it ; so that as long as Adam lived no man could claim or enjoy anything but by donation, assignation, or permission from him.” “ It was God’s ordinance that the supremacy should be unlimited in Adam and as large as 1 ‘ Two Treatises of Government ’ (1690), b. i., § 1. AN ESSAY ON CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 1G9 all the acts of his will ; and as in him, so in all others that have supreme power.” Those were the “false principles ” that Locke set himself to “ detect and over- throw.” We need not, however, follow him through his refutation of tenets now so entirely out of date. With great fulness he examined Filmer’s assertions as to Adam’s title to sovereignty by creation, by donation, by the subjection of Eve, and by fatherhood, and, having exploded these, proceeded “ to consider how inheritance, grant, usurpation or election can any way make out ' government in the world upon his principles, or derive to any one a right of empire from this regal authority of Adam, had it been never so well proved that he had been absolute monarch and lord of the whole world.” 1 But the long fragment which he published breaks off before the arguments respecting inheritance are complete, and perhaps the lost sequel can be better spared than any- thing else of Locke’s writing. The second essay is of a very different sort. “ He that will not give just occasion to think that all government in the world is the product only of force and violence, and that men live together by no other rule but that of beasts, where the strongest carries it, and so lay a founda- tion for perpetual disorder and mischief, tumult, sedition, and rebellion (things that the followers of that other hypothesis so loudly cry out against), must of necessity find out another rise of government, another original of political power, and another way of designing and knowing the persons that have it, than what Sir Bobert Filmer hath taught us.” 2 That Locke now undertook to do He was not the first able writer on “the true original, 1 ‘ Two Treatises of Government ’ (1690), b. i., § 80. 2 Ibid. , b. ii., § 1. 170 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XT. extent and end of civil government.” Old theorists like Languet the republican, and Buchanan the royalist, had been superseded by Bodin, whose ‘ Six Livres de la Republique ’ was alike remarkable for its immense learn- ing and for its profound thought on political matters, and was none the less admirable as a work of genius because it unfortunately gave all or nearly all the weight of its authority to despotic systems of government. Hobbes and Hooker, Grotius and Puffendorf, were Locke’s more immediate teachers, and he wisely took from their writings all the suggestions that seemed to him suitable for the construction of a complete scheme of the functions and duties of civil government. He here, however, only greatly expanded the ideas to which nearly thirty years before he had given very partial expression in his ‘ Reflections upon the Roman Commonwealth.’ “ To understand political power aright and derive it from its original,” he said at starting, “ we must consider what state all men are naturally in ; and that is a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man, — a state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is recipro- cal, no one having more than another ; there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection, unless the Lord and Master of them all should by any manifest declaration of his will set one above another and confer on him by an evident and clear appointment an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.” A state o liberty, however, is not a state of licence ; for reason, which is the law of nature, clearly shows that we cannot exceed our own rights without assail- ing the rights of others, “ and, being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordi- nation among us that may authorise us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours.” “Every one,” moreover, “ as he is bound to preserve himself, so, by 1689. 1 Alt. 56. J 171 MAN IN “ THE STATE OF NATUKE.” the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it he to do justice on an offender, take away or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.” 1 Hence it is, Locke urged, that “ one man comes by power over another.” The community could not exist if transgressors were not punished, “ so much as may serve for reparation and restraint ; ” and, “ if any one in the state of nature may punish another for any evil he has done, every one may do so.” Every wrong-doer places himself in “ a state of war,” and is thus at enmity with every one else ; “ it being reasonable and just I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction ; for, by the fun- damental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be pre- ferred.” 2 “ Here we have the plain difference between the state of nature and the state of war, which some men have confounded,” said Locke, 3 in evident allusion to the teaching of Hobbes as to the lawlessness of human society in its original condition. The difference, however, is only one of degree. Hobbes did not believe in the Garden of Eden. He held that men were at first utterly savage and brutal, and that only by slow and bitter experi- ence did they learn those “ laws ” of liberty and equality, self-preservation and mutual protection, with which Locke assumed them to have been endowed by their Maker. Hobbes’s first law of nature, that men should seek peace by joining together to prevent others from injuring them, was also Locke’s law. The most original and philosophical portion of Locke’s treatise was that in which he treated of property. “ The earth and all that is therein,” he said, “ is given to men for the support and comfort of their being ; and, though all the fruits it naturally produces and the beasts it feeds belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of nature, and nobody has originally a private dominion, exclusive of the rest of mankind, in any of them as they are thus in then; natural state, yet there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other before they can be of any use or at all beneficial to any particular man.” “ Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to ail men, yet every man has a 1 ‘ Two Treatises of Government’ (1690), b. ii., §§ 4, 6. 2 Ibid., b. ii., §§ 8, 16. 3 Ibid., b. ii., § 19. 172 IN AID OF THE DEVOLUTION. rfiTAP. XT property in his own person ; this nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby made it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men ; for, this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough and as good left in common for others. He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. Nobody can deny but the nourish- ment is his. I ask, then, when did they begin to be his ? when he digested ? or when he ate ? or when he boiled ? or when he brought them home ? or when he picked them up ? It is plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and common ; that added something to them more than nature had done ; and so they became his private right. And will any one say he had no right to those acorns or apples he thus appropriated because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his ? was it a robbery thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common ? If such a consent as that was necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him.” “And amongst those who are counted the civilised part of mankind, who have made and multiplied positive laws to determine property, this original law of nature for the beginning of property in what was before common still takes place ; and by virtue thereof, what fish any one catches in the ocean, that great and still remaining common of mankind, is, by the labour that removes it out of that common state nature left it in, made his property who takes that pains about it.” 1 / That might gives right was the old maxim — that the strong have a title to everything they can acquire, from the mere strength by which they acquire it, and that the weak and incapable have no reason to complain if, instead of acquiring property of their own, they become the property of others. Theologians of divers creeds taught that everything belongs to the Gods and is given by them to those whom they favour, and this, being almost identical at first with the heathen rule, issued afterwards in feudal systems and divine-right dogmas. Neither philosophers nor jurists were able to 1 ‘Two Treatises of Government ’ (1690), b. ii. , §§ 26 — 28, 30. ir$p. I Mt. 56. J locke’s law of peopekty. 173 furnish any very different view of the rights of property, until Locke pro- pounded his very simple and incontrovertible doctrine that the right of property consists in labour and that alone ; that everything in nature is common, except each individual’s own existence and the capacities attendant thereupon, and that therefore we can only make our own that which was formerly common by putting our own work into it and extracting from it, for our own and others’ benefit, the fruits of that work. It was a discovery almost as simple, and almost as evident when once stated, as Newton’s discovery of the law of gravitation. Locke developed his theory at some length, and with special application to particular varieties of property, of which, of course, land was the principal; but throughout he limited the right of possession to so much as, acquired by honest labour, can be put to good use. “ He that gathered a hundred bushels of acorns or apples had hereby a property in them. They were his goods as soon as gathered. He was only to look that he used them before they spoilt ; else he took more than his share, and robbed others. And indeed it was a foolish thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he could make use of. If he gave away a part to anybody else, so that it perished not uselessly in his possession, these also he made use of ; and, if he bartered away plums, that would have rotted in a week, for nuts that would last good for his eating a whole year, he did no injury ; he wasted not the common stock, destroyed no part of the portion of goods that belonged to others, so long as nothing perished uselessly in his hand. Again, if he would give his nuts for a piece of metal, pleased with its colour, or exchange his sheep for shells, or wool for a sparkling pebble or diamond, and keep those by him all his life, he invaded not the rights of others ; he might heap up as much of these durable things as he pleased, the exceeding of the bounds of his just property not lying in the largeness of his possession, but in the perishing of anything uselessly in it. And thus came in the use of money, some lasting thing that men might keep without spoiling, and that, by mutual consent, men would take in exchange for the truly useful but perishable supports of life.” 1 And thus, Locke went on to show, though too briefly and inadequately, grew up those social inequalities and complications for the adjustment of which civil government is necessary. But before government came to be necessary in order to protect the rights and interests of men in their dealings with one another, it arose from the necessities of family life. Locke, like Hobbes, denied that parents 1 ‘ Two Treatises of Government’ (1690), b. ii. , §§ 46, 47. 174 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [CnAP. XI. have any authority over children from the fact of giving them life : he pro- bably held that the obligation presses chiefly in the other direction, and that parents owe much more to the children whom, for their own pleasure, they bring into existence, than children owe to the parents who have recklessly bestowed on them such a dangerous gift. Where the strong help the weak, however, it is reasonable as well as inevitable that the weak should be in a certain subjection to the strong ; and for the proper education of children it is especially necessary that their parents or other guardians should have “a sort of rule and jurisdiction” over them. “ The bonds of this subjection are like the swaddling clothes they are wrapped in and supported by in the weakness of their infancy ; age and reason, as they grow up, loosen them, till at length they drop quite off, and leave a man at his own free disposal ; ” but it is proper they should exist, and their existence is no mark of slavery, while the children are too young to live alone. Nor is it strange that, when the authority allowable to parents over their offspring is exhausted, it should be replaced by the authority of rulers over their subjects. Thus, Locke said, after discussing the whole matter fully and very forcibly, “ the natural fathers of families, by an insensible change became the politic monarchs of them too ; and, as they chanced to live long and leave able and worthy heirs for several successions, or otherwise, so they laid the founda- tions of hereditary or elective kingdoms, under several constitutions and manners, according as chance, contrivance, or occasions happened to mould them.” “ But if princes have their titles in their fathers’ right, and it be a sufficient proof of the natural right of fathers to political authority because they commonly were those in whose hands we find, de facto, the exercise of government,” he added, in a well-aimed blow at the ecclesiastics who were the chief supporters of Filmer’s patriarchal theory, “I say if this argument be good, it will as strongly prove that all princes, nay, princes only, ought to be priests, since it is as certain that, in the beginning, the father of the family was priest, as that he was ruler in his own household. ’ ,:1 After treating of the relations of husband and wife and of master and servant as bearing on the question of political society, Locke proceeded to the more immediate subject of his treatise. “ Man being born,” he said, “ with a title to perfect freedom, and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature, equally with any other man or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power, not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate, against the injuries and 1 ‘Two Treatises of Government’ (1690), b. ii., §§ 55, 76. 16S9. "I ■2E*. 56 J THE GROWTH OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 175 attempts of other men, but to judge of and punish the breaches of that law in others as he is persuaded the offence deserves, even with death itself in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his opinion, requires it. But because no political society can be nor subsist without having in itself the power to preserve the property, and, in order thereunto, punish the offences, of all those of that society, there and there only is political society where every one of the members hath quitted this natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the community in all cases that exclude him not from appealing for protection to the law established by it.” “ The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living amongst one another in a secure enjoyment of their properties and a greater security against any that are not of it. When any number of men have so con- sented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated and make one body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest. For when any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby made that community one body, with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of the majority.” 1 That was Locke’s Leviath an. To the objection that “ there are no instances to be found in story of a company of men independent and equal one amongst another, that met together and in this way began and set up a government,” he answered that, though history is necessarily very vague about such pre-historic matters, “as far as we have any light from history we have reason to conclude that all peaceful beginnings of government have been laid in the consent of the people ; ” and to the objection that, “ all men being born under government, some or other, it is impossible any of them should ever be free and at liberty to unite together and begin a new one, or ever be able to erect a lawful government,” he replied by denying that any man becomes so entirely the subject of a government by being born and living under it that he forfeits the right of choosing another. “ Submitting to the laws of any country, living quietly, and enjoying privileges and protection under them, no more makes a man a member of that society, a perpetual subject of that common- wealth, than it would make a man a subject to another in whose family he found it convenient to abide for some time, though whilst he continued in it 1 ‘Two Treatises of Government’ (1690), b. ii., § § 87, 95, 96. 176 IN AID OP THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XT. be would be obliged to comply with tbe laws and submit to tbe government be found there. Nothing can make any man so but bis actually entering into it by positive engagement and express promise and compact.” 1 From that bold assertion of tbe independence of citizens Locke went on to make other and yet bolder assertions. “ Tbe great and chief end of men’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government,” be said, “ is the preservation of their property,” and “ tbe first and funda- mental positive law of all commonwealths is the establishing of the legislative power.” “Though it be tbe supreme power in every commonwealth,” however, “ tbe legislative is not, nor can possibly be, absolutely arbitrary over tbe lives and fortunes of the people ; for, it being but tbe joint power of every member of tbe society given up to that person or assembly which is legis- lator, it can be no more than those persons had in a state of nature before they entered into society and gave up to tbe community; for nobody can transfer to another more power than be has in himself, and no man has an absolute arbitrary power over himself, or over any other, to destroy his own life, or take away tbe life or property of another. The legislative power, in tbe utmost bounds of it, is limited to the public good of tbe society. It is a power that bath no other end but preservation, and there- fore can never have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the subjects.” Again, “tbe legislative or supreme authority cannot assume to itself a power to rule by extemporary arbitrary decrees, but is bound to dispense justice and decide tbe rights of tbe subject by promulgated standing laws and known authorised judges.” “ Tbe supreme power,” moreover, “ cannot take from any man any part of bis property without his consent ; for I have truly no property in that which another can by right take from me, when be pleases, against my consent. It is true, governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit every one who enjoys his share of tbe protection should pay out of his estate bis proportion for the maintenance of it ; but still it must be with bis own consent, that is, tbe consent of tbe majority, giving it either by themselves or their representa- tives chosen by them ; for, if any one shall claim a power to lay and levy taxes on tbe people by bis own authority, and without such consent of the people, he thereby invades the fundamental law of property and subverts the end of government.” Finally, “ tbe legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other bands. Tbe people alone can appoint tbe form of tbe commonwealth, which is by constituting tbe legislative and 1 ‘ Two Treatises of Government ’ (1690), b. ii. , §§ 100, 112, 113, 122. 1689. "I jEt. 56. J LEGISLATIVE POWER, AND ITS LIMITS. 177 appointing in whose hands it shall be ; and when the people have said, ‘ We will submit to rules and be governed by laws made by such men and in such forms,’ nobody else can say other men shall make laws for them ; nor can the people be bound by any laws but such as are enacted by those whom they have chosen and authorised to make laws for them. The power of the legislative, being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws and place it in other hands.” 1 Locke implied a good deal in those four points of his charter. “ In a commonwealth acting for the preservation of the community,” he said, “ there can be but one supreme power, which is the legislative, to which all the rest are and must be subordinate.” It is quite in the power of the legislature, and often expedient for it, to delegate the executive power to some other person or persons ; and it is often convenient to designate that person, or, where there are many, the chief of the number, by the familiar title of king, and even to make his power very considerable ; but in a real commonwealth the king can never be more than the agent of the legislature. “ Though oaths of allegiance and fealty are taken to him, it is not to him as supreme legislator, but as supreme executor of the law ; allegiance being nothing but an obedience according to law, which, when he violates, he has no right to obedience, nor can claim it otherwise than as the public person vested with the power of the law, and so is to be con- sidered as the image, phantom, or representative of the commonwealth and thus he has no will, no power, but that of the law. But when he quits this representation, this public will, and acts by his own private will, he degrades himself, and is but a single private person without power, and without will that has any right to obedience ; the members owing no obedience but to the public will of the society.” 2 It is not necessary to show how completely that concisely stated view was opposed to all divine-right theories and all the pretensions not only of Stuart and pre-Stuart monarchs, but of presbyterian and Cromwellian oligarchs ; and how, though it was welcomed by the whig supporters of William the Third, and has suggested the main point in the whig creed of 1 ‘Two Treatises of Government’ (1690), b. ii., §§ 124, 134 — 136, 133, 140, 141. 2 Ibid., b. ii., §§ 149, 151 . Vol. II.— 12 178 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XI. the past five generations, it implies a much more democratic rule of govern- ment than whigs have ever been inclined to adopt. Holding that legislation can only be effected for themselves by the people, acting through duly chosen representatives, Locke in one remarkable para- graph anticipated the necessity of periodical redistribution of the electoral power in order to preserve a just representation of the people. “ Things of this world,” he said, “ are in so constant a flux that nothing remains long in the same state. Thus people, riches, trade, power, change their stations ; flourishing mighty cities come to ruin, and prove in time neg- lected desolate corners, whilst other unfrequented places grow into populous countries, filled with wealth and inhabitants. But, things not always chang- ing equally, and private interest often keeping up customs and privileges when the reasons of them are ceased, it often comes to pass that in tract of time the representation becomes very unequal and disproportionate to the reasons it was at first established upon. To what gross absurdities the following of custom, when reason has left it, may lead, we may be satisfied when we see the hare name of a towm, of which there remains not so much as the ruins, where scarce so much housing as a sheep-cote or more inhabit- ants than a shepherd is to be found, sends as many representatives to the grand assembly ol law-makers as a whole county numerous in people and powerful in riches.” 1 We need not here follow Locke through the important chapters on pre- rogative, on conquest, on usurpation, on tyranny, and on “the dissolution of government,” in which he completed his exposition of “ the extent and end of civil government,” and at the same time, without openly referring to the state of England under James the Second, and to the immediate circum- stances of the Revolution, very skilfully defended the policy that was adopted by William of Orange at the instigation of the whig leaders of the day. “ The power that every individual gave the society ” — that is, the corporate community — “ when he entered it,” he said in his concluding paragraph, “ can never revert to the individuals again as long as the society lasts, but will always remain in the community ; because without this there can be no community, no commonwealth, which is contrary to the original agreement. So, also, when the society hath placed the legislative in any assembly of men, to continue in them and their successors, with direction and authority for providing such successors, the legislative can never revert to the people whilst that government lasts, because, having provided a 1 ‘ Two Treatises of Government ’ (1090), b. ii., § 157. it 8 56 .] THE sovereignty of the people. 179 legislative with power to continue for ever, they have given up their political power to the legislative and cannot resume it. But if they have set some limits to the duration of their legislative, and made this supreme power in any person or assembly only temporary, or else when by the miscarriage of those in authority it is forfeited, upon the forfeiture or at the determination of the time set it reverts to the society, and the people have a right to act as supreme, and continue the legislative in themselves, or erect a new form, or under the old form place it in new hands, as they think good.” 1 As a treatise on “ the original, extent and end of civil government,” Locke’s essay was faulty in some respects and defective in others ; but, if suggested in part by Hobbes’s ‘ De Cive,’ and if in some measure weakened by a desire to serve in it the cause of William of Orange, just as Hobbes’s treatise was weakened by a desire to serve the cause of Charles the First, it was a work of very great originality, abounding in passages no less valuable for their practical purpose than for their philosophical accu- racy. The extracts that have been made from it will show, without comment, what was Locke’s ideal of political organisation and what an excellent Leviathan he set up for political theorists to study. Grod made men free and equal, and capable of immense improvement upon the rude state of nature in which they were first planted. For that improvement it is necessary that they should, without sacrificing any of their natural liberty, subject it to such restraints as will enable them to unite in political action, and out of an aggregate of individuals construct a commonwealth. They may and, if in large numbers, must delegate to properly chosen representatives the power of legislating for the whole community, and that legislative may and, in many cases, should delegate the duty of executing its laws to some 1 ‘Two Treatises of Government’ (1690), b. ii., § 243. 180 IN AID OF THE EEYOLUTION. [Chap, XI. magisterial functionary or king; but the people is sovereign, and “ salus populi suprema lex.” That, in brief, was Locke’s doctrine. He did not inquire with sufficient exactness what should he the details of governmental action ; it suited better his im- mediate purpose to show how falsely conceived or per- verted theories of governmental action, such as Charles the Second and James the Second and their advisers had indulged in, were altogether unlawful, and not only might but should be resisted. Had he intended to produce a strictly philosophical treatise, he would probably have written very differently, though not at all at variance, from the views that he did express. Had he intended to produce a mere political pamphlet, his work would have been yet more different from the essay which he did write. But he combined both objects, and there cannot be much doubt that, whether the first of the two ‘ Treatises on Government ’ was written then or earlier, the second was planned, if not completed, during the last period of his residence in Holland, partly to justify to himself his own share in the rebellion against James the Second, yet more to justify the action of his friends in placing William of Orange on the English throne. In that respect it was of great immediate service ; and it afterwards came to be of greater and more lasting value as a contribution to the science of politics and an unan- swerable assertion of the rights of the people to govern themselves for their common benefit. The ‘Epistola de Tolerantia’ having been published in the spring of 1689, the ‘Essay concerning Human ^ 56-57.1 THE toleration controversy. 181 Understanding’ being out of bis bands by the close of the year, and the ‘ Two Treatises of Government ’ at about the same time, Locke soon found other work to do with his pen, which was hardly less intimately connected with the political well-being of the commonwealth than the essay on ‘ Civil Government ’ itself. Some of this work grew out of the first-named treatise. We have seen that he had no hand in Popple’s English translation of that treatise, though he was well pleased that it should have been undertaken and well satisfied with the work when it was done. He appears not to have even seen a copy of the original publication for some time after it had been issued, and it was all but unknown in England until the toleration act had been passed, and almost until the comprehension bill had been finally suppressed. “ I thank you,” he wrote to Limborch in June, “ for the copies of the tract on tolera- tion which you have sent me.” 1 “I wish,” he said three months later, “that you would send me the Dutch and French translations of the tract. I am surprised at the carelessness of your booksellers or ours. I cannot buy a copy of the ‘ Epistola de Tolerantia’ anywhere.” 2 The English version of the letter, however, which was published in the autumn, must have been widely read, as a second edition had to be issued before the close of the .year. At least two answers to it were printed, moreover, early in 1690. Of one, ‘ The Letter for Toleration deci- phered, and the Absurdity and Impiety of an Absolute Toleration demonstrated by the Judgment of Presbyterians, Independents, and by Mr. Calvin, Mr. Baxter, and the 1 * Familiar Letters,’ p. 3B1 ; Locke to Limborch, 6 June, 1689. 2 MSS. in the Remonstrants Library ; Locke to Limborch, 10 Sept., 1689. 182 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XI. Parliament of 1662,’ written bjr Thomas Long, 1 Locke seems to have taken no notice ; but he quickly replied at some length to the other, 4 The Argument of the 44 Letter concerning Toleration” briefly Considered and Answered,’ which was written by Jonas Proast, and published at Oxford in April, 1690. Locke’s 4 Second Letter concern- ing Toleration,’ which he issued under the pseudonym of Philanthropus, was dated the 27th of May, and printed in June of the same year. To this Proast rejoined, in February 1690-1, in 4 A Third Letter concerning Tolera- tion, in Defence of 44 The Argument of the Letter con- cerning Toleration briefly Considered and Answered,’” and Locke closed the controversy, for twelve years at any rate, in 4 A Third Letter for Toleration,’ also signed Philanthropus, and dated the 20th of June, 1692. Such full illustration has been given of Locke’s earlier writings on the subject of these second and third letters that little need here he said about them. He carefully examined Proast’s flimsy arguments and assertions based on prejudice instead of argument, and answered him para- graph by paragraph. That was undoubtedly the right mode of procedure, and he was thus able to make a com- plete defence and eloquent reiteration of his doctrine that the civil government has no right to interfere with the religion of any one who does not use that religion as a cloak for seeking to damage the civil interests of the community. But thereby the letters suffered as literary compositions ; and in these later days, when Locke’s opinions have come to be almost regarded as truisms, his abundant defence and reinforcement of them are compara- tively uninteresting, except for their evidence of his skill 1 Wood speaks of this pamphlet in his * Athense Oxonienses.’ I have not found a copy. 1690-2. I ■ffit. 67— 59.J THE TOLERATION CONTROVERSY. 183 in the appropriate use of banter and scorn, along with sober argument, as weapons of controversy, and for the new utterances made in them of his remarkably sound and statesmanly opinions. One quotation from the ‘ Third Letter for Toleration ’ will suffice to show how boldly Locke argued, not only in favour of religious liberty as an abstract question, but also in favour of that full measure of toleration and compre- hension which he had vainly hoped to see adopted by William the Third and the convention parliament, and the ultimate adoption of which he still longed for. “ Through the goodness of God,” Proast had said, “ the truth that is necessary to salvation lies so obvious and exposed to all that sincerely and diligently seek it that no such person shall ever fail of attaining the knowledge of it .” 1 “This,” exclaimed Locke, “will be a good answer to what I objected from the danger most are in to be led into error by the magistrate’s adding force to the arguments for their national established religions, when you have shown that nothing is wont to be imposed in national religions but what is necessary to salvation, or, which will a little better accommodate your hypothesis, when you can show that nothing is imposed or required for communion with the church of England but what is necessary to salva- tion, and consequently is very easy and obvious to be known and distin- guished from falsehood. And, indeed, besides what you say here, upon your hypothesis that force is lawful only because it is necessary to bring men to salvation, it cannot be lawful to use it to bring men to anything but what is absolutely necessary to salvation. For, if the lawfulness of force be only from the need men have of it to bring them to salvation, it cannot lawfully be used to bring men to that which they do not need, or is not necessary to their salvation ; for in such an application of it it is not need- ful to their salvation. Can you therefore say that there is nothing required to be believed and professed in the church of England, but what lies ‘ so obvious and exposed to all that sincerely and diligently seek it that no such 1 ‘ A Third Letter concerning Toleration’ (1691), p. 29. 184 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XI. person shall ever fail of attaining the knowledge of it’? What think you of St. Athanasius’s creed ? Is the sense of that so obvious and exposed to every one who seeks it which so many learned men have explained so different ways, and which yet a great many profess they cannot under- stand ? Or is it necessary to your or my salvation that you or I should believe and pronounce all those damned who do not believe that creed, that is, every proposition in it ? which I fear would extend to not a few of the church of England, unless we can think that people believe, that is, assent to the truth of propositions they do not at all understand. If ever you were acquainted with a country parish, you must needs have a strange opinion of them, if you think all the ploughmen and milkmaids at church understood all the propositions in Athanasius’s creed ; it is more, truly, than I should be apt to think of any one of them, and yet I cannot hence believe myself authorised to judge or pronounce them all damned. It is too bold an intrenching on the prerogative of the Almighty. To their own master they stand or fall. The doctrine of original sin is that which is professed and must be owned by the members of the church of England, as is evident from the thirty-nine articles and several passages in the liturgy; and yet 1 ask you whether this be ‘ so obvious and exposed to all that diligently and sincerely seek the truth,’ that one who is in the communion of the church of England, sincerely seeking the truth, may not raise to himself such diffi- culties concerning the doctrine of original sin as may puzzle him, though he be a man of study, and whether he may not push his inquiries so far as to be staggered in his opinion ? If you grant me this, as I am apt to think you will, then I inquire whether it be not true, notwithstanding what you say concerning the plainness and obviousness of truths necessary to salvation, that a great part of mankind may not be able to discern between truth and falsehood in several points which are thought so far to concern their salva- tion as to be made necessary parts of the national religion ? ” 1 Tlie ‘ Third Letter for Toleration ’ was not published till after the period we are now considering ; but there can be no doubt that the opinions there expressed by Locke, both on religious questions and on the relation of the state towards them, were held no less clearly and strongly during the previous year or two. 1 ‘Four Letters on Toleration’ (1870), pp. 282, 288. Not having the original editions of Locke’s letters at hand, I have referred to this, the latest, cheapest and most complete reprint of them. j® 8 *.] THE SOCIETY OF PACIFIC CHBISTIANS. 185 Of the way in which he combined with these theoreti- cal opinions a very practical expression of his religion, remarkable evidence appears in the following creed, or code of rules, or. constitution, that he drew up for a small “ society of Pacific Christians” which he and some of his principal friends are said to have formed in 1 689 : — “ 1. We think nothing necessary to be known or believed for salvation, but what God hath revealed. “ 2. We therefore embrace all those who, in sincerity, receive the word of truth revealed in the Scripture, and obey the light which enlightens every man that comes into the world. “ 3. We judge no man in meats, or drinks, or habits, or days, or any other outward observances, but leave every one to his freedom in the use of those outward things which he thinks can most contribute to build up the inward man in righteousness, holiness, and the true love of God and his neighbour, in Christ Jesus. “ 4. If any one find any doctrinal parts of Scripture difficult to be under- stood, we recommend him, — 1st, The study of the Scriptures in humility and singleness of heart ; 2nd, Prayer to the Father of lights to enlighten him ; 3rd, Obedience to what is already revealed to him, remembering that the practice of what we do know is the surest way to more knowledge ; our infallible guide having told us, ‘ If any man will do the will of him that sent me, he shall know of the doctrine.’ 4th, We leave him to the advice and assistance of those whom he thinks best able to instruct him, no men or society of men having any authority to impose their opinions or interpreta- tions on any other, the meanest Christian, since, in matters of religion, every man must know and believe and give an account for himself. “ 5. We hold it to be an indispensable duty for all Christians to maintain love and charity in the diversity of contrary opinions : by which charity we do not mean an empty sound, but an effectual forbearance and good-will, carrying men to a communion, friendship, and mutual assistance one of another, in outward as well as spiritual things ; and by debarring all magistrates from making use of their authority, much less their sword (which was put into their hands only against evil-doers), in matters of faith or worship. “ 6. Since the Christian religion we profess is not a notional science, to furnish speculation to the brain or discourse to the tongue, but a rule of righteousness to influence our lives, Christ having given himself ‘ to redeem 186 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XI. us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a people zealous of good works,’ we profess the only business of our public assemblies to be to exhort, thereunto laying aside all controversy and speculative questions, instruct and encourage one another in the duties of a good life, which is acknowledged to he the great business of true religion, and to pray God for the assistance of his spirit for the enlightening our understanding and subduing our corruptions, that so we may return unto him a reasonable and acceptable service, and show our faith by our works, proposing to ourselves and others the example of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as the great pattern for our imitation. “ 7. One alone being our Master, even Christ, we acknowledge no masters of our assembly ; but, if any man in the spirit of love, peace, and meekness, has a word of exhortation, we hear him. “ 8. Nothing being so oppressive, or having proved so fatal to unity, love, and charity, the first great characteristical duties of Christianity, as men’s fondness of their own opinions, and their endeavours to set them up, and have them followed, instead of the gospel of peace ; to prevent those seeds of dissension and division, and maintain unity in the difference of opinions which we know cannot be avoided — if any one appear contentious, abounding in his own sense rather than in love, and desirous to draw followers after himself, with destruction or opposition to others, we judge him not to have learnt Christ as he ought, and therefore not fit to be a teacher of others. “ 9. Decency and order in our assemblies being directed, as they ought, to edification, can need but very few and plain rules. Time and place of meeting being settled, if anything else need regulation, the assembly itself, or four of the ancientest, soberest, and discreetest of the brethren, chosen for that occasion, shall regulate it. “ 10. From every brother that, after admonition, walketh disorderly, we withdraw ourselves. “ 11. We each of us think it our duty to propagate the doctrine and prac- tice of universal good-will and obedience in all places, and on all occasions, as God shall give us opportunity.” 1 It is not at all likely that Locke’s altogether unsec- tarian sect of Pacific Christians ever got to the holding of “public assemblies,” and the constitution that he drew up for them may never even have been formally 1 Lord King, pp. 273—275. ™ s %] THE SOCIETY OP PACIFIC CHRISTIANS. 187 adopted by the few who agreed with him in his very liberal religions opinions. That document is of great interest, however, as showing, not only his ideal of a Christian community, but also the principles that actuated him and the few younger men, like Lord Pembroke and Lord Ashley, James Tyrrell, Edward Clarke, and, among some others, after he had introduced himself to Locke by his translation of the ‘ Letter concerning Toleration,’ William Popple. Not the least, though almost the least recognised, of Locke’s services in aid of good government and national prosperity under William the Third consisted in the publication of ‘ Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money,’ and in the persistent advocacy among men of influence of the opinions there expressed. This little book, published anonymously in 1692, took the shape of a letter, dated the 7th of November, 1691, addressed to an unnamed member of parliament, who, however, was doubtless Sir John Somers, Locke’s friend and King William’s solicitor general, one of the very few public men sufficiently patriotic and intelligent to understand and adopt its principles. Somers did that, at any rate, and as he was afterwards iu clobe communication with Locke on the subject, we may infer that it was he who, as Locke said in his preface, “ put him upon looking out his old papers concerning the reducing of interest to four per cent.,” which had been written “ near twenty years since,” and had “long lain by forgotten.” “ Near twenty years since,” that is, in 1672, it will be remembered, the first Earl of Shaftesbury was lord 188 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XL chancellor, and Locke was his chief adviser on state affairs. Charles the Second’s government was so em- barrassed that the famous “ stop on the exchequer” was resorted to, contrary to Shaftesbury’s advice, and this royal theft, though the cause of much fresh commercial disaster, was only a notable indication of the false views and vicious customs that at that time, as well as in the times before and after, generally prevailed in the country, and did much to lessen the immense advantages that necessarily followed from the establishment of our colonies in America and the West Indies, and the opening up of new channels of commerce with the East Indies. Locke, himself a sharer in more than one important colonial and commercial adventure, the chief agent in the formation of the new colony of Virginia, and for some time the secretary of Charles the Second’s council of trade and plantations, took a great interest in all the questions thus directly and indirectly brought before him, in a more philosophical, and not less practical, temper than appeared in the ‘ Brief Observations concerning Trade and the Interest of Money,’ and the ‘ New Discourse of Trade,’ both written by Sir Josiah Child, the foremost merchant of that day, and in the ‘ Discourses upon Trade ’ of Sir Dudley North, another great merchant. The first named of those treatises, published in 1665, must have the credit of doing more than any other single publication, by its own wise teaching on some points, joined with erroneous opinions on others, and yet more by the controversy that it provoked, to encourage those principles of free trade by which the material prosperity of England has been so mightily advanced. What Locke thought on at least one important branch of the subject as early as 1672 may be understood from J t 69 Jg] TREATISES ON MONEY AND THE COINAGE. 189 the reproduction of his arguments thereupon in 1691, though these arguments, if occupying the chief space in the work, were of less immediate importance than the “notions concerning coinage ” which he also included in it ; these latter, he said, “ having for the main been put into writing above twelve months since,” and being now, along with the rest, published at the request of the member of parliament to whom they were dedicated. “ You must be answerable to the world,” he added, “for the style, which is such as a man writes carelessly to his friend, when he seeks truth, not ornament, and studies only to be in the right and to be understood.” Plain, ungarnished words were certainly the best for putting in an intelligible shape the economical problem which more perhaps than all others had been misappre- hended and misstated by men of business and their advisers, biassed by theologians and prejudiced by poli- ticians, through all the centuries before Locke’s time. It might be supposed that every one having anything to do with money would have at any rate some knowledge of the meaning of the term and the value of the thing, but few terms or things have been more persistently mystified, and from Locke’s exposition, coming almost like a revelation in his own day, and as such rendering immense service to society, the world still has much to learn. Interest, or usury, was universally denounced in Eng- land all through the middle ages ; and, though kings and priests, as well as all classes of the people over whom they tyrannised, were eager enough to borrow money, and the country was never without a large body of money- lenders, the Jews and others who made up that body were looked upon as outcasts, debarred from all the 190 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XL privileges of this world or the next, left to the mercy of all who chose to rob or defraud them, and therefore driven to seek some compensation for the hardships to which they were exposed by charging ten or a hundred times as much interest for the use of their money as under a healthy arrangement would have satisfied them. A fiist step towards that arrangement, naturally very faulty, was made in Henry the Eighth’s reign, and in 1546 usury was legalised at the rate of ten per cent. Henry’s law was abrogated in 1552, however, and not re-introduced till 1571. In 1624 the legal rate was lowered to eight per cent., and in 1651 to six per cent. The result of these reforms was that, usury being recognised, the usurers were able, instead of charging from fifty to one or two hundred per cent., to reduce their rates to some- thing like fifteen or even ten per cent. The legal rates were binding in all public transactions ; but of course no laws could bind private arrangements between borrowers and lenders, though it was found that private contracts did, to some extent, follow the changes initiated by the government. Therefore, about the time when Locke began to think over these subjects, an agita- tion was started among merchants and others, headed by Sir Josiah Child, in favour of a further reduction of the legal rate. “ The lowness of the rate of interest,” said Child, referring to the arrangements adopted in Holland, “ is causa causans of all the other causes of the riches of that people,” and he accordingly urged that the English rate should be lowered to four per cent. Locke, admitting, as perhaps he was justified in then doing, that a legal rate is necessary as affording a legal status to money- lenders, and useful as suggesting a standard for their transactions, set himself to prove, as a first though not 1191. I j9St. 59. J USURY LAWS. 191 very important point, that six per cent, was a very suit- able rate for the law to prescribe, and that, as commercial affairs then stood, legal insistance on so low a rate as four per cent, would have very disastrous consequences ; but the main purpose of his treatise was to controvert Child’s absurd proposition and to show that no arbitrary fixing of any rate can be in any way a cause of national wealth and prosperity. “ The first thing to be considered,” he said, “ is, whether the price of the hire of money can be regulated by law ; and to that I think, generally speaking, one may say ’tis manifest it cannot. For, since it is impossible to make a law that shall hinder a man from giving away his money or estate to whom he pleases, it will be impossible, by any contrivance of law, to hinder men, skilled in the power they have over their own goods and the ways of conveying them to others, to purchase money to be lent them at what rate soever their occasions shall make it necessary for them to have it. It is to be remembered that no man borrows money, or pays use, out of mere pleasure. ’Tis the want of money drives men to that trouble and charge of borrowing ; and, proportionably to this want, so will every one have it, whatever price it cost him ; wherein the skilful will always so manage it as to avoid the prohibition of your law and keep out of its penalty, do what you can.” 1 Some of the consequences to be looked for from a reduction of the legal rate were enumerated by Locke. By rendering the borrowing and lending of money more difficult, it would harass trade, and would press most hardly of all upon “those who need most help and assistance, widows and orphans, and others uninstructed in the arts and managements of more skilful men.” It would give undue advantage to “ bankers and scriveners and other such expert brokers who, skilled in the arts of putting out money according to the true and natural value, will infallibly get what the true value of interest shall be, above the legal.” More than all, it would encourage perjury. “ I remember I was once told, in a trading-town beyond sea, of a master of a vessel, there esteemed a sober and fair man, who yet could not hold saying, ‘ God forbid that a custom-house oath should be a sin.’” If the legal rate 1 ‘ Some Considerations of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money’ (1692), pp. 1, 2. 192 IN AID OF THE DEVOLUTION. [Chap. Xt. of interest were put below the rate that could he obtained in trade, usury would not take that level, but usurers and their clients would systematically make false oaths in order to save themselves from penalty. 1 Locke said a great deal that was very much to the purpose on these points, and a great deal more to show how idle are any attempts to compel people to pay either a higher or a lower rate of usury than the state of the market and conditions varying in each individual case direct, “ the want of money being that alone which regulates its price.” He pointed out very clearly, moreover, how useless this result would be, even if it were attain- able. “ The fall or rise of interest — making neither more nor less land, money, or any sort of commodity in England than there was before — immediately by its change alters not at all the value of money in reference to commodi- ties, because the measure of that is only the quantity and vent, which are not immediately changed by the change of interest, but only as the change of interest in trade conduces to the bringing in or carrying out money or commodity, and so in time varying their proportion here in England from what it was before.” 2 Locke drew a careful parallel between tbe rent of land and the interest of money, to show that it is, to say the least, quite as inequitable and, without ruinous consequences, quite as impossible to establish a fixed rate of interest as to establish a uniform rent. “ They,” he said, “ who consider things beyond their names, will find that money, as well as all other com- modities, is liable to the same changes and inequalities : nay, in this respect of the variety of its value, brought in by time in the succession of affairs, the rate of money is less capable of being regulated by a law, in any country, than the rent of land. Because, to the quick changes that happen in trade this too must be added, that money may be brought in, or carried out of the kingdom, which land cannot, and so that be truly worth six or eight per cent, this year, which would yield but four the last. Money has a value as it is capable, by exchange, to procure us the necessaries or con- veniences of life, and in this it has the nature of a commodity ; only with this difference, that it serves us commonly by its exchange, never almost by its consumption. It has not at all a more standing, settled value in exchange with any other thing than any other commodity has, but a more known one, and better fixed by name, number, and weight, to enable us to 1 ‘ Some Considerations of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money’ (1692), pp. 2—6. 8 Ibid., p. 47. 1691. 1 m. 53 J THE VALUE OF MONEY. 193 reckon what the proportion of scarcity and vent of one commodity is to another. For, supposing that half an ounce of silver would last year exchange for one bushel of wheat, or for fifteen pounds’ weight of lead, if this year wheat be ten times scarcer and lead in the same quantity to its vent as it was, is it not evident, that half an ounce of silver will still exchange for fifteen pounds of lead, though it will exchange but for one-tenth of a bushel of wheat, and he that has use of lead will as soon take fifteen pounds’ weight of lead, as half an ounce of silver, for one-tenth of a bushel of wheat, and no more ? So that if you say that money now is nine-tenths less worth than it was the former year, you must say so of lead too, and all other things that keep the same proportion to money they were in before ; only this variation is first observed in money, because that is the measure by which people reckon.” 1 Locke did a distinct and important service to kis country by publishing in 1692 bis notes of 1672, as they furnished very powerful arguments against the specious efforts of many leading merchants of the day, prompted mainly by a mistaken view of their own interests, to induce the embarrassed government of William the Third to make a change in the law that, it was represented, would enable it to borrow money for the public service on easier terms. Much more valuable, however, as a con- tribution to political literature was the second and shorter portion of the treatise, occupying less than a third of the whole, on “raising our coin,” or, to use a more modern and less misleading term, the depreciation of the currency. For more than a century before this time the state of the coinage had caused serious trouble to English mer- chants, traders, and all others who had much money to handle, as well as to all English statesmen who cared for the prosperity of their country. The old-fashioned silver money— silver being then the only standard — was coined in a way that made it very easy for it to be tampered 1 * Some Considerations of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money,’ pp. 50—52. Vol. II. — 13 194 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [CffAP. IX with ; the coins being cut by hand-shears, and stamped with hand-hammers, and being thus so ill-shapen to begin with, and of such irregular size, that they could be “ clipped ” over and over again without much fear of detection. Money-clipping became a regular and very profitable trade, which not even the law of Elizabeth’s reign, making it as culpable as high treason, could seriously diminish. In 1663 a better system of coinage was intro- duced, and large quantities of milled money were issued every year from the mint, only, however, to be exported or to be melted down at borne, and the old hammered money continued to be the only coin in general use. Golden guineas — themselves depreciated in value — were eagerly bought up for ten or eleven half-crowns apiece, instead of at their nominal worth of twenty-one shillings, and the actual value of half-a-crown was hardly more than eighteenpence. Serious loss and inconvenience were thus experienced by retail purchasers at home ; but as the clipped money was current in England, the mischief to them was not quite so apparent as to the traders with foreign oountries. In the foreign markets, of course, the coin was only taken at its true value, and all imported goods were proportionately enhanced in price, or enhanced in even greater proportion, as the merchants were careful to indemnify themselves not only for their losses by exchange, but also for the trouble and risk to which they were exposed. That was the state to which affairs had come when William the Third ascended the throne, and, though the gradual growth of the evil had rendered the public strangely apathetic about it, or reckless under despair of obtaining any remedy, a few clear-headed men insisted upon a remedy being found without delay. ifsa.] EVILS OF A DEPRECIATED CURRENCY. 195 Foremost among these was Locke. “ From the first year of his return into England,” said Lady Masham, “ when nobody else appeared sensible of this matter ” — that is, nobody else among Lady Masham’s acquaintance, — “ he was very much troubled concerning it, and on talking on the subject of our public affairs, he has often said to me, ‘ that we had one evil which nobody com- plained of, that was more surely ruinous than many others with which we were daily frightened, and that, if that unminded leak in our vessel were not timely looked after, we should infallibly sink, though all the rest were ever so safe.’ And when, at my lodgings in London, the com- pany there, finding him often afflicted about a matter which nobody else took any notice of, have rallied him upon this uneasiness as being a visionary trouble, he has more than once replied, ‘ We might laugh at it, but it would not be long before we should want money to send our servants to market with for bread and meat ’ — which was so true, five or six years after, that there was not a family in England who did not find this a difficulty.” 1 Locke not only insisted among his friends upon the serious embarrassments that must ensue from a perpetua- tion of this state of things ; he also showed the need of reform in the letter or letters that furnished the substance of the second part of his ‘ Considerations of the Conse- quences of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money.’ Here, however, he was most anxious to pro- test against the very mischievous schemes of those who favoured a change which, instead of reforming, would only increase the evil. Lady Masham erred in saying that he was the only man who was conscious of the 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Lady Masham to Le Clerc, 12 Jan., 1704-5. 196 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XI. existence of this evil. There were many who clamoured, in language that almost drowned his sober arguments, for its redress ; and he felt it to be primarily incumbent upon him to expose their fallacies. His originality was chiefly shewn in his successful doing of this. Their proposal was, not that the old depreciated coin should he all called in, and be no longer recognised as legal tender, being replaced by so much new money, of proper value, as was absolutely necessary, and that thus the currency of the country should be brought to its proper level, but that the new money should be “ raised ” in nominal value, so as to force a depreciated currency upon the country by weight of law. “ I hear a talk up and down,” Locke said, “of 1 raising our money ’ as a means to retain our wealth, and keep our money from being carried away. I wish those that use the phrase of ‘ raising our money ’ had some clear notion annexed to it, and that then they would examine whether, that being true, it would at all serve those ends for which it is proposed. The ‘ raising of money ’ signifies one of these two things : either raising the value of our money or raising the denomination of our coin. The raising of the value of money or anything else is nothing but the making a less quantity of it exchange for any other thing than would have been taken for it before. For example, if five shillings will exchange for, or, as we call it, buy a bushel of wheat, if you can make four shillings buy another bushel of the same wheat, it is plain the value of your money is raised, in respect of wheat, one-fifth. But nothing can raise or fall the value of your money but the proportion of its plenty or scarcity, in proportion to the plenty, scarcity, or vent of any other commodity with which you compare it, or for which you would exchange it. And thus silver, ^fk] PROPOSED EEFOEM OF THE CUERENCT. 197 which makes the intrinsic value of money compared with itself, under any stamp or denomination of the same or different countries, cannot be raised. For an ounce of silver, whether in pence, groats, or crown-pieces, stivers, or ducatoons, or in bullion, is, and always eternally will he, of equal value to any other ounce of silver, under what stamp or denomination soever, unless it can be shown that any stamp can add any new or better qualities to one parcel of silver which another parcel of silver wants. All then that can be done is only to alter the denomination, and call that a crown now which before by the law was but a part of a crown.” 1 Locke showed that it was this which, under specious phrases, the advo- cates of “raising our money ” wanted to do, and that, in plain terms, it was merely a scheme for defrauding of a shilling the recipient of every crown-piece at its nominal value. The fraud, however, he pointed out, would soon be detected, and then things would be just as bad as before, if not worse. “ For ’tis silver, not names, that pays debts and purchases commodities.” 2 This view, which no one now would venture to contra- dict, was insisted upon by Locke at some length and with remarkable vigour and clearness of argument. He had to wait more than four years before his warnings and expositions were heeded ; but it is important for us to bear in mind that almost immediately after his return to England he not only insisted upon the uselessness of any attempts to fix the rate of interest by law, but also was among the first to urge the necessity of effecting a thorough reform of the currency, and apparently the first, and certainly the boldest, to expose the worthlessness and dishonesty of any effort to reform it by legalising a 1 ‘Some Considerations,’ etc., pp. 133 — 135. 2 Ibid., p. 145. 198 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. 53. currency of greater nominal value than the actual value of the metal employed in it. His arguments worked slowly, but, as we shall see, they had an excellent effect on public opinion, and ultimately on the action of the legislature. “ I know of none,” wrote Lady Masham, after the good work had been done, and after his death, “ but think that that was a service to his country for which he merits even a public monument to immortalise the memory thereof. And I am farther sure that what loss our nation suffered by the slowness with which men were made sensible what must be the remedy to our diseases in the debasing and clipping of our coin might, had he been hearkened to, have had a much easier cure.” 1 Soon after his return to England, Locke addressed to the king a petition, part of which has already been quoted, asking for redress of the great injury and greater insult to which he had been subjected in his expulsion from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1684. “ Your petitioner,” he said in the last sentence of this document, “humbly prays that your majesty, being visitor of the said college, and having power by your immediate command to rectify what you find amiss there, would, out of your great justice and goodness, be graciously pleased to direct the dean and chapter of the said college to restore your peti- tioner to his student’s place, together with all things belonging unto it which he formerly enjoyed in the said college.” 2 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Lady Masbam to Le Clerc, 12 Jan., 1704-5. 2 Lord King, p. 176. I do not find the original of this petition among the State Papers ; but Locke’s draft of it is extant. 1 «OQ “I At 56 . j THE CHRIST CHURCH STUDENTSHIP. 199 The petition was altogether reasonable, and we can un- derstand how, far more than for the sake of any material advantage that would accrue to him, Locke “desired to he restored to his right in Christ Church, as an acknow- ledgment that he had been wronged.” That, according to Lady Masham’s report, was his chief reason for making this petition ; and she added, “ This would have been granted him, but that, he finding it would give great disturbance to the society, and dispossess the per- son that was in his place, Mr. Locke desisted from that pretension.” 1 Locke’s magnanimity in so desisting must not be lost sight of. It must have been some sacrifice to him, moreover, though perhaps not a very great one, to resign all claim to the pleasant student’s quarters in which, during so many earlier years, he had lived and worked as a youth under Cromwell and John Owen, as a man under Charles the Second and Dr. Fell, together with all prospect, now that he could have lived in them more freely than ever before, of settling down there at intervals, if not perma- nently, and of propounding thence on all the great pro- blems of human life views which the foremost men in England were now far more ready to receive than at any earlier time. But he was able to do that anywhere under William the Third ; and perhaps he was not unwilling to look upon London as henceforth, instead of Oxford, his head-quarters, especially during the time in which he felt that, by living in London, he could take a larger share in the political and half-political movements that he had at heart, and could be at any rate not less active in com- 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Lady Masham to Le Clerc, 12 Jan., 1704-5. 200 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chat. XI. pleting those literary undertakings by -which he hoped, not idly, to do even better service to the world. “He continued for more than two years after the revolution much in London,” said Lady Masham in her sketch of his life, “ enjoying, no doubt, all the pleasure there that any one can find who, after being long in a manner banished from his country, unex- pectedly returning to it, was himself more generally esteemed and respected than ever he was before. If Mr. Locke had any dissatisfaction in this time, it could only be, I suppose, from the ill success now and then of our public affairs ; for his private circumstances were as happy, I believe, as he wished them, and all people of worth had that value for him that I think I may say he might have what friends he pleased. But of all the contentments that he then received there was none greater than that of spending one day every week with my Lord Pembroke in a conversation undisturbed by such as could not bear a part in the best entertainment of rational minds, free discourse concerning useful truths. His old enemy, the town air, did indeed sometimes make war upon his lungs ; but the kindness of the now Earl of Peterborough and his lady, who both of them always expressed much esteem and friendship for Mr. Locke, afforded him so pleasing an accommodation on those occasions at a house of theirs near the town, advantaged with a delightful garden, which was what Mr. Locke always took much pleasure in, that he had scarce cause to regret the necessity he was under of a short absence from London.” 1 We unfortunately have only the slender account that 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Lady Masham to Le Clerc, 12 Jan., 1704-5. ^ 56 - 53 .] RESIDENCE AND OCCUPATIONS IN LONDON. 201 Lady Masliam gives us of Locke’s holidays at Parson’s Green, the suburban residence of the Earl of Peter- borough, at this time the Earl of Monmouth, and of his gardening exercises there ; and we know no more than she tells us about the weekly meetings at Lord Pem- broke’s, unless we shall he justified in assuming that it -was for those meetings that Locke drew up the rules of the society of Pacific Christians which have been quoted. A good deal of information about his more private as well as his more public occupations during the first two years of his renewed residence in England may, however, be obtained from his extant correspondence, and from other sources. Within a month or two after his return to England, he settled down in lodgings in the house of a Mrs. Smithsby, in Dorset court, Channel row, Westminster. 1 Dorset court has long since disappeared, but a part of Channel row still exists as Cannon row, and Locke appears to have chosen this residence between the Thames and Whitehall in order to be near the centre of political business. Thence he dated the dedication of the £ Essay concerning Human Understanding,’ and there he appears to have devoted all the time he could spare — complaining to Limborch that it was too little — to the completion of the great book and to other literary work. There he was within easy reach of Lord Monmouth, Lord Pembroke and many other friends, among whom must not be forgotten young Lord Ashley. Ashley, losing Locke’s guidance and indirect tutorship in 1683, had passed three or four years at Winchester school, and after that had been sent abroad for a year or 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, 12 April 1689. 202 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XI. two with a Mr. Denoune for his companion. While on the continent he spent some time at Rotterdam, and it is probable, though nowhere recorded, that he there renewed acquaintance with Locke. A firm friendship grew up, at any rate, between him and Benjamin Furly, in whose house Locke had continued to reside for the most part until February, 1688-9. 1 He soon followed Locke to England, and, residing generally at his father’s house in Chelsea, was very much in the company of his “foster-father,” as he liked to call him in gratitude for the care with which Locke had watched over his body as well as his mind in the years of his infancy and child- hood. It would be interesting, were this a fit occasion, to trace the influence of Locke’s teaching upon the author of ‘ Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions and Times.’ The third Lord Shaftesbury’s obligations to Locke were thankfully acknowledged, and his acknowledgments were not at all excessive. Perhaps, moreover, though there must have been other and more powerful inducements to it, Locke, in encouraging the early development of his precocious talents, may have done something towards making the clever boy a conceited youth and a man wdiose own powers of good work, and yet more whose opportunities of influencing others, were crippled by a great deal of supercilious dogmatism. Ashley was often at Mrs. Smithsby’s house in Dorset 1 Perhaps Ashley did not visit Rotterdam till after that date ; but from a letter which he wrote from London on the 27th of June, 1691, to Furly, it is clear that their acquaintance was then of long standing. In the postscript to this letter, which is the first extant of a long series full of interesting political and biographical matter, Ashley said, “I entreat you, when you have received this, to acquaint me with it either by yourself or by Mr. Popple or Mr. Locke, if you chance to write to either of them in any little time .” — Shaftesbury Payers, series v., no. 3. ^t 6 56 - 53 .] LORD ASHLEY AND LORD PEMBROKE. 208 court, chopping logic and discussing questions in meta- physics and theology with Locke ; nor was he the only visitor who did this. 1 But of all his friends, the one on whose sympathy in questions of philosophy and theology Locke could most rely was in Holland. The letters that passed between him and Limborch during this period, however, touch chiefly, though not exclusively, on other matters. In the beginning of June, 1689, the Earl of Pembroke went to Holland as special envoy to the states-general. Pembroke did not mix much in politics during the first year or so of William’s reign. He was not whig enough to enter heartily into the antecedents of the Revolution, but, it having been effected, he honestly and quietly did his best to serve the new king. He took office as first lord of the admiralty in the spring of 1690, and before as well as after that date he acted worthily in such occa- sional services as this mission to the Hague. Yet Locke’s old friendship and present connection with him were phi- losophical rather than political, and it was as a philoso- pher and friend of philosophers that Locke introduced him to Limborch and urged Limborch to use the oppor- tunity now offered to him for making his acquaintance. “ The Earl of Pembroke, our king’s extraordinary ambas- sador to your country,” Locke wrote, “ desires to see and know you, and I hope you will be able to meet with him. He is a great scholar, devoted to useful studies, and a friend to all learned and upright men. If you see him, you will find him full of kindness.” “ It nearly fell out,” 1 See a long and very characteristic letter, printed by Lord King, p. 183, from Ashley to Locke, dated August, 1689 ; and another, yet longer and more characteristic, in the same volume, p. 197, written by Locke to Tyrrell on 4th August, 1690. 204 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XI. he added in a postscript, which tells ns all we know on this point, “ that I accompanied him in his mission; but business that I could not escape from detains me here against my will.” 1 Lord Pembroke’s four months’ stay in Holland led to his lasting friendship, not only with Limborch, but also with Le Clerc. Returning in September, he or his secre- tary brought home a parcel that Locke bespoke from Limborch, and the details of this commission are curious. “ If this letter reaches you in time,” Locke wrote, “ please buy for me a pound or half-a-pound of the best tea, and send it to Mr. Furly’s clerk before the Earl of Pem- broke’s departure. He will pay you for it, and hand it to the earl’s secretary, Mr. Barker. I want the best tea, even if it costs forty florins ” — about a hundred and eighty shillings at the present value of money — “ a pound ; only you must be quick, or we shall lose this opportunity, and I doubt whether we shall have another. As you praise it so much, I know you are a most excellent buyer of this herb. You see how freely I make use of you. It would delight me to do as much for you, and I am sure you do not doubt my will : only try me. I should also like you to send me, along with this pound of tea, the ‘Acta Eruditorum’ for 1689, and two copies of the same publi- cation for 1688.” 2 “I have received the tea and the books which you so kindly procured and sent for me,” Locke wrote in his next letter, “ and I thank you with all my heart.” 3 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants’ Library ; Locke to Limborch, 1 June, 1689. 2 Ibid. ; Locke to Limborch, 10 Sept., 1689. 3 Ibid. ; Locke to Limborch, 3 Dec. [1689]. Tea, though imported in small quantities by the Dutch as early as 1610, had only lately come to be known in England, and was at that time a costly luxury, and still regarded as an agreeable medicine rather than an article of diet. ^ 56 - 58 .] COEEESPONDENCE WITH LIMBOECH. 205 In Amsterdam and, to a less extent, in the other prin- cipal towns in Holland, a great number of learned books were at that time published. Copies of many and infor- mation about the progress of others were often sent to Locke by Limboroh, and also, it would seem, by Le Clerc, and Locke in return sent to his friends in Amsterdam news of every important work on theology, philosophy, and science that appeared in England. In nearly every one of his letters to Limborch he included some friendly message to Le Clerc, and it is evident that with him also he kept up a frequent correspondence, though, as Le Clerc was not such a careful storer up of his friend’s letters as Limborch, hardly any of this correspondence has been preserved. Locke wrote one, and apparently only one, angry letter to Limborch. It will be remembered that his ‘ Letter concerning Toleration,’ both in its original Latin form and in its translations into English and other languages, had been published anonymously ; and Locke had been evidently very anxious that his authorship of it should not be known. Limborch’s letting out of this secret was the occasion of the brief quarrel. “ Our friend Guenellon came to me the other day,” Limborch wrote on the 15th of April, 1690, “ and told me he had heard from Mr. Daranda that his brother in London 1 had told him a certain friend of mine was the author of the treatise, and was very anxious to know who this was. On my express- ing surprise, he pressed me in the first instance to say whether it was I who had written it. This I denied. 1 Paul Daranda was an eminent merchant in London, apparently a friend of Locke’s, and connected with William Paterson in the establishment of the bank of England.- — ‘ The Writings of William Paterson,’ edited by Saxe Bannister (1859), vol. ii., p. lxxvi. 206 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap XI. Then he insisted on my telling him whether it had really been written by a friend of mine. I tried all I could to prevaricate ; but I could not tell a direct lie to such a very dear friend. In this way he discovered that no one in our country except myself knew who was the author or had the least suspicion on the subject. As I said, I could not tell a lie to a man who, if he afterwards found out the truth, might very properly he angry with me for deceiving him about a person who was also such a very dear friend of his. So the secret came out in the presence of his father-in-law as well as Guenellon himself, though I bound them by the most solemn promises to divulge it to nobody else. What hitherto was known only to one person, however, is now known to three, and there is much greater risk than there was before of its being made known to others. I shall do all I can to prevent the secret from going any further, hut I cannot answer for the others. Yet, is there any good in trying to keep the authorship secret? Your name would attract many fresh readers and would give authority to the tract. These two friends of ours, as soon as they heard you were the author, showed themselves extremely anxious to read it at once, and I gave each of them a copy. But enough about this .” 1 Locke did not think it enough. “ I have received your letter,” he wrote back, “and am amazed at your account of what has passed between you and Dr. Guenellon. I must confess it surprises me that these inquisitive men should have found it so easy to fish out of you 2 a secret that I hoped was perfectly safe in your 1 Lord King (2nd edition, 1830), vol. ii. , p. 306 ; Limborch to Locke, [15 — ] 25 April, 1690. In translating Limborch’s long and rather shuffling story, I have somewhat condensed it. 2 “ Ex te expiscari.” ! ]W). iEt. 57. J A QUARREL WITH LIMBORCH. 207 keeping. For rumours are afloat about this pamphlet which, though they did not trouble me at all when its authorship was unknown, now threaten almost to ruin me. What answer I should have made to Guenellon when he was making those inquiries, you can see from my last letter to him. But now you have made known the authorship ; and all I have to say is that, if you had confided such a secret to me, I should never have divulged it to any friend or acquaintance, or any human being, on any condition. You do not know what trouble you have brought on me. All that now remains for you to do is to try all you can to induce these two others to join you in keeping the secret which you could not keep by yourself. I have little hope of that, however ; for doubtless before now Dr. Guenellon, who was not so exceedingly curious merely for his own amusement, but to oblige Daranda, has told it to Daranda. If you find that to be the case, you need take no further trouble about it. The mischief has been done and there is no remedy.” 1 Limborch cannot be excused for his rash breach of faith ; but it is difficult to understand why Locke should have expected such disastrous consequences from the divulging of his name as author of the ‘Letter concerning Toleration.’ The fact, however, was not made public at the time, nor indeed until after Locke had himself in his will explicitly acknowledged that he had written both this letter and those that followed it on the same subject. There seems to have been a temporary coolness between him and Limborch in consequence of this affair, and a cessation of correspondence between them during the next few months ; but it had quite passed off before November, when, alluding to at least one other letter 1 Lord King (2nd ed.), vol. ii., p. 310 ; Locke to Limborch, 22 April, 1690. 208 IN AID OF THE REVOLUTION. [Chap. XI. written in the interval, but not preserved, Locke addressed his friend in the old tone of tender affection. “ I have to-day received yours of the 23rd of last month,” he then wrote, “ in which you blame me for my silence — not without reason, though I am innocent. I answered your very kind letter as soon as I received it, and at great length, for our ecclesiastics gave me plenty of matter to write about, the fury of your synod concern- ing ecclesiastical affairs being by no means equal to the orthodox zeal of our convocation. But that letter, I now find, is at the bottom of the sea, the packet-boat having been almost captured by the French, and all the letters having been thrown overboard to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy, mine among the rest. I expressed my fears on this point the other day in writing to Guenellon ; now I am sure of it. I am very sorry it should have thus fallen out, for, though your affection for me is now again made certain, I do not like to seem tardy in acknowledging my obligations to you. I have sent you a copy of the ‘ Second Letter concerning Toleration,’ which Mr. Le Clerc commends. It will be fortunate for our country if we can make in the English tongue as good a defence of religious liberty as you offer to your countrymen in Latin. But the proved excellence of your cause renders defence less difficult in your case.” 1 Among other matters referred to in this letter was the death of Yeen’s wife, of whom Locke must have seen much during the many months in which he found a hiding-place in the house of the Amsterdam doctor. “ I know well enough that our friend’s loss of a wife who was so excellent a companion of his youth, so great a solace in his old age, must have caused you very great sorrow, 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, 7 Nov., 1690. 1690. | .Et. 57. J FRIENDS IN HOLLAND. 209 and I doubt whether anything can lighten the force of this affliction ; nor is my pain less. I loved them both. I mourn for her who is gone ; I revere him who remains ; and I can never forget the many kindnesses I have received from them both. I have been writing to Yeen this evening .” 1 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, 7 Nov., 1690. In Amsterdam Locke had made the acquaintance of Dr. Matthew Slade, giandson of a Matthew Slade who soon after 1600 had left Oxford and become rector of the academy in that town. The younger Slade, whose mother was a Dutchwoman, visited England in the autumn of 1689, and died suddenly of apoplexy in December, at Shotover, near to Tyrrell’s resi- dence. In several of his letters to Limborch Locke referred to his inter- course with Slade, and described Tyrrell’s share in burying him and his own participation in the business. I have not thought it necessary, however, to set forth these particulars, or the many other references in this correspond- ence to matters not having much connection with Locke’s biography. Vol. II. — 14 CHAPTER XII. In Retirement : Work as Author. [ 1691 — 1696 .] AMAEIS CUD WORTH, with whom Locke had made acquaintance about two years before he went to Holland, became the second wife of Sir Francis Masham in 1685. Her husband was a grandson of the Sir William Masham who took a conspicuous part in the rebellion against Charles the First and served as a member in Oliver Cromwell’s council. Sir Francis, born in 1645, had married young, and was the father of eight sons and a daughter before his first wife died in 1681 ; but of these children only the daughter Esther, born in 1675, appears to have had much to do with Locke, and only the youngest son, Samuel, born in 1680, and destined to become the first Lord Masham, and husband of Abigail Hill, Queen Anne’s favourite, acquired any sort of notoriety. As Sir Francis Masham’s second wife was born on the 18th of January, 1658-9, she was thirty years old when Locke returned to England. We have seen how highly Locke esteemed her seven years before. Some letters had passed between them in the interval, though none of these, unfortunately, have been preserved ; nor have we any but very meagre details of their relations during 1691. 1 -JEt. 68 .J FEOM LONDON TO OATES. 211 the first two years of his residence in London. But that those relations were cordial is evident. Locke, as we know, had found by old experience that he could not pass the winter-time in London without great damage to his weak lungs. The urgency of political affairs, in the guidance of which he then hoped and sought to take a very prominent part, as well as other pressing occupations in connection with the printing of the ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding’ and his other books, had induced him to run all risks and remain in the metropolis throughout the first season of cold weather, with the exception, probably, of short visits to Lord Monmouth’s house at Parson’s Green and other places within an easy ride from Westminster, and he continued to regard the house in Dorset court as his home until January or February, 1690-1. “ Soon after,” however, said Lady Masham, “ he was forced to think of a farther remove from London, and of quitting it for the entire winter at least.” 1 His health was the immediate cause of this change of plan ; but there can be no doubt that he was induced to give way to personal considerations by dissatisfaction at the course of politics under the direction of the Marquis of Carmarthen, and a feeling that, if he was to render any further service to the cause of religious and political liberty, as to the results of which from the Eevolution he had been over sanguine, the service could be done quite as well at some distance from London, with only such occasional visits to it as were required by his easy duties as a commissioner of appeals and by other occupations. So he looked for a new home, and he found one without difficulty. 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Lady Masham to Le Clerc, 12 Jan., 1704-5. 212 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. Xlt. “ He had during the years ’89, ’90 and ’91,” said Lady Mashatn, writing from Oates, in Essex, “ by some con- siderably long visits with which he had obliged Sir Francis and me, made trial of the air of this place, which is something above twenty miles from London, and he thought that none would be so suitable to him. His com- pany could not but be very desirable to us, and he had all the assurances we could give him of being always welcome here ; but, to make him easy in living with us, it was necessary he should do so on his own terms, which Sir Francis at last consenting to, Mr. Locke then believed himself at home with us, and resolved, if it pleased God, here to end his days — as he did.” 1 Locke was very ill in September, 1690, as we hear in- cidentally, 2 and though we do not meet him at Oates until the following January, 3 he appears to have stayed there for several months after that, and during this stay to have resolved that he would pay no more visits to his host and hostess, hut take up his abode with them, con- tributing his share towards the household expenses, and feeling that in his own apartments he could do as he liked, without any other obligation than that strongest one of all which subsists in the bond of mutual affection and esteem between friends who have tried and proved one another’s worth. “ I have already told you,” he wrote from Oates to Limborch in March, “ that I was acquainted with the daughter of Dr. Cudworth, and have spoken to you of her wonderful qualities. She is married to a baronet who 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Lady Masham to Le Clerc, 12 Jan., 1704-5. 2 Lord King, p. 216; Newton to Locke, 28 Sept., 1690. s Ibid., p. 216; Newton to Locke, 7 Feb., 1690-1. ICfll. 1 Mt. 58. J LADY MASHAM. 213 represents this county in the present parliament. They have received me as a guest in their house, and provided for me an asylum that is very favourable to my health. The lady herself is so well versed in theological and philosophical studies, and of such an original mind, that you will not find many men to whom she is not superior in wealth of knowdedge and ability to profit by it. Her judgment is excellent, and I know few who can bring such clearness of thought to bear upon the most abstruse subjects, or such capacity for searching through and solving the difficulties of questions beyond the range, I do not say of most women, but even of most learned men. From reading, to which she once devoted herself with much assiduity, she is now to a great extent debarred by the weakness of her eyes, but this defect is abundantly sup- plied by the keenness of her intellect. About your name and your merits she was well informed from the corre- spondence you formerly had with her father ; and, when she found that I had been intimately acquainted with you in Amsterdam, she made all sorts of inquiries about you and all your affairs, and derived as much pleasure from our friendship as if she knew you herself. When your letter reached me to-day while we were at dinner, she asked so many fresh questions and was so anxious to know all I could tell her about you, that I read her as much of it as I felt myself at liberty to do. I hope you will not object to this.” 1 From the spring of 1691, then, we must date the com- mencement of Locke’s residence at Oates. He kept on his chambers in Westminster until he removed to fresh quarters in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and continued to be 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborcli, 13 March,, 1690-1. 214 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [CnAp. XIL often in London, especially during the summer time ; and, after about five years of comparative retirement, public business caused him, during some four years, to be in the metropolis as often as be could and for much longer periods. But henceforward we shall find that the Essex country bouse was bis home, and that its mistress was bis devoted companion until the time came for her to tend him through bis last painful iliness with more than a daughter’s care, and to find herself more than ever an orphan as she turned away from bis grave. Her own father bad died, at the age of seventy-one, on the 26th of June, 1688, and from that time, it would seem, her widowed mother resided with her at Oates until she also died in 1695. When Locke, at the age of fifty-nine, became a member of the family, its other members were — besides Sir Francis Masham, apparently an easy-going good-hearted country gentleman of whom we know little, now forty- six years old, and bis young wife of thirty-two — Mrs. Cudworth, whose age was sixty- seven, Lady Masham’s little son Francis, born in June, 1686, and now in his fifth year, and her step-daughter Esther, now about sixteen. Sir Francis Masham’s other surviving children appear to have been at school, or to have generally lived away from home ; at any rate we hear very little about them, but Esther Masham nas nearly as important a place in Locke’s biography as Lady Masham herself. Old Mrs. Masham, Sir Francis’s mother, a very religious woman and a staunch noncon- formist, lived at Matching Hall, on an estate adjoining that of Oates. The old manor house of Oates, pulled down near the end of the last century, was in the parish of High Laver, THE FAMILY AT OATES. 215 1691 . 1 Mi. 58 . J though more than a mile distant from the very small hamlet, consisting of little more than a church and one large house, which bears that name, and was pleasantly situated in a pleasant region of wooded country and green lanes, about midway between the post-towns of Harlow and Chipping Ongar, and four or five miles distant from each. Here, within doors and without, Locke was able to find all the happiness and enjoyment that were allowed by his broken health and the many occupations forced upon him by the requirements of his country and his own desire to instruct the world on the topics that had claimed his attention during more than thirty years before he became an author. Although during the five years following the spring of 1691 Locke resided almost constantly at Oates, and withdrew himself for the most part from the minor details of politics, his time of retirement was not a time of idleness. Although, moreover, an important influence was exerted upon him by his almost constant intercourse with Lady Masham, the main current of his life as a thinker and author was not greatly altered by his change of residence. His health being better, indeed, we shall find that he was almost busier than ever, and his corre- spondence with his friends shows that he took as much interest as formerly in all their concerns, and was as anxious to help them and be helped by them in all good work. With one famous friend he must have been acquainted for many years past, though we only now begin to know much about their relations with one another. Isaac Newton, not Sir Isaac Newton until 1705, was his junior 216 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chai>. xii. by ten years, and being in early life a disciple of Cud- worth, More and the other Cambridge latitudinarians, though, like Locke, he soon went far beyond his teachers — being also a friend of Robert Boyle’s, and often coming to London to attend the meetings of the Royal Society, of which he became a member in 1672 — we may be quite certain that he met Locke often during the reign of Charles the Second. He published his ‘ Principia ’ in 1687, 1 and two years after that, while he was in London as representative of his university in the convention parliament, and must have seen Locke yet oftener in political as well as in other circles, he gave to his friend a “ demonstration that the planets, by their gravity towards the sun, may move in ellipses.” 2 This fact is chiefly interesting to us as furnishing the first positive evidence that we have of their intimacy, the document 1 “ The celebrated Locke, who was incapable of understanding the * Principia ’ from his want of geometrical knowledge, inquired of Huyghens if all the mathematical propositions in that work were trite. When he was assured that he might depend upon their certainty, he took them for granted, and carefully examined the reasonings and corollaries deduced from them. In this manner he acquired a knowledge of the physical truths in the ‘ Principia,’ and became a firm believer in the discoveries which it contained. In the same manner he studied the treatise on ‘ Optics,’ and made himself master of every part of it which was not mathe- matical.” (Brewster, ‘ Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton,’ 1855, vol. i., p. 339, quoting from Desagulier’s ‘ Course of Experimental Philosophy,’ 1734, vol. i., p. 8.) Locke had found out the genius of Newton before he pub- lished his ‘Essay concerning Human Understanding.’ “In an age that produces such master-builders as the great Huyghens and the incomparable Mr. Newton,” he said in his Epistle to the Reader, written not later than the autumn of 1689, “it is enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge.” 2 Lord King, pp. 209 — 214, where this document is printed from Locke’s papers. 1C00-1. 1 Mt. 68. J FEIENDSHIP WITH NEWTON. 217 being endorsed by Locke, “Mr. Newton, March, 1689.” Soon after that date the evidence is frequent. Newton was anxious to obtain some more lucrative appointment than his Cambridge professorship, and it is clear that Locke used all the influence he had to help him, though for some time without success. “I am extremely obliged to my Lord and Lady Monmouth,” Newton wrote in the autumn of 1690, “for their kind remembrance of me, and, whether their design succeed or not, must ever think myself obliged to be their humble servant.” 1 “If the scheme you have laid of managing the controller’s place of the mint will not give you the trouble of too large a letter,” he wrote some months later, “ you will oblige me by it. I thank you heartily for your being so mindful of me and ready to assist me with your interest.” 2 The great mathematician had to wait four years before he became warden of the mint, and eight years before he became its master, the office on which he had set his heart ; and he was much annoyed that Locke could not succeed in helping him sooner, and blamed, if not Locke himself, at any rate Locke’s friends, because they were out of office, and thus could not serve him. Among these friends were the Earl of Monmouth, who had been de- prived of his lordship of the treasury in the spring of 1690, and Charles Montagu, afterwards Earl of Halifax, the ablest of the younger politicians, though he only entered office, as a commissioner of the treasury, in March, 1692. “Being convinced that Mr. Montagu, upon an old grudge which I thought had been worn out, is false to me, I have done with him,” Newton wrote in 1 Lord King, p. 217 ; Newton to Locke, 28 Sept., 1690. * Ibid . , p. 216 ; Newton to Locke, 30 June, 1691. 218 IN RETIREMENT: WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap, xil the January before that, in a sentence which is not quite intelligible, “ and intend to sit still, unless my Lord Monmouth be still my friend 5,1 “I am very glad my Lord Monmouth is still my friend,” he said in another letter, three weeks later, “but intend not to give his lordship and you any further trouble. My inclinations are to sit still.” 2 Locke did take further trouble, and ultimately obtained for his friend the post he desired. In the meanwhile he sought to assist him in other ways. In the previous December he had offered to use any influence he pos- sessed towards procuring for Newton the mastership of Charterhouse school. “ I thank you for putting me in mind of Charterhouse,” Newton wrote back; “but I see nothing in it worth making a bustle for. Besides a coach, which I consider not, it is but 200k per annum, with a confinement to the London air, and to such a way of living as I am not in love with. Neither do I think it advisable to enter into such a competition as that would be for a better place.” 3 Those illustrations of the philosopher’s care for the mathematician’s material advancement are interesting ; but it is more interesting to trace their connection in other ways. 1 Lord King, p. 219 ; Newton to Locke, 26 Jan., 1691-2. ; 2 Ibid., p. 219 ; Newton to Locke, 16 Feb., 1691-2. “ We do not envy the reader who peruses these simple details without a blush of shame for his country,” said Sir David Brewster, in his ‘ Memoirs of Newton ’ (vol. ii. , p. 118), after quoting this correspondence. “ That Locke and Lord Monmouth and Charles Montagu could not obtain an appointment for the author of the ‘ Principia ’ will hardly be believed in any country but our own.” It is a pity Sir David did not inquire into the political standing of Locke and his friends at this time before sneering at them. 3 Lord King, p. 222 ; Newton to Locke, 13 Dec., 1691. 1690-2. "I m 58 — 59. J FRIENDSHIP WITH NEWTON. 219 When Locke went down to Oates in January, 1690-1, Newton either accompanied or joined him there. “ I must thank both you and Lady Masham for your civilities at Oates, and for not thinking that I made a long stay there,” he wrote soon after his return to Cambridge. “ I hope we shall meet again in due time, and then I should he glad to have your judgment upon some of my mystical fancies. The Son of Man (Daniel, ch. vii.) I take to be the same with the Word of God upon the White Horse in Heaven (Apocalypse, ch. xix.), and him to be the same with the Man-Child (Apocalypse, ch. xii.), for both are to rule the nations with a rod of iron ; but whence are you certain that the Ancient of Days is Christ ? does Christ anyw 7 here sit upon the throne ? ” “ Know you,” he asked in a postscript, “the meaning of Daniel, ch. x., v. 23, ‘ There is none that holdeth with me in these things but Michael your prince’?” 1 “Concerning the Ancient of Days,” he wrote some five months later, “ there seems to he a mistake either in my last letter or in yours, because you wrote in your former letter that the Ancient of Days is Christ, and in my last I either did or should have asked how you knew that. But these discourses may be done with more freedom at our next meeting.” 2 When they met, there w 7 as doubtless often a good deal of discourse between them, in which Lady Masham joined when she was present, about the interpretation of difficult passages in the Bible. Newton, like Locke, had come to hold very independent opinions about some questions in theology ; and he seems to have been even more anxious than Locke to avoid the personal inconvenience to which, in that bigoted age, 1 Lord King, p. 216 ; Newton to Locke, 7 Feb., 1690-1. 2 Ibid., p. 217 ; Newton to Locke, 30 June, 1691. I 220 IN RETIREMENT ! WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Cdap. XII. every one was liable who ventured to differ from the orthodox beliefs or professions of belief. This appears especially from a long correspondence having to do with two famous texts: “ There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one;” 1 and, “God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” 2 Newton was bold enough to dispute the authen- ticity of these texts, and in 1690 he wrote ‘ An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture, in a Letter to a Friend ’ — the friend being Locke though the treatise was probably only put in this form as a convenient one for its conversational and somewhat desultory, albeit very masterly, handling of the subject. In this year Locke, then in London, had some thought of visiting his friends in Holland— though, as we only know of his intention from two passages in Newton’s letters, it is probable the intention was never carried very far— and it was agreed between them that he should take the letter to Amsterdam, have it published there anony- mously and in French, and thus render it almost impos- sible for the authorship to be detected. “ I had answered your letter sooner,” Newton wrote to him from Cambridge in September, “ but that I stayed to revise and send you the papers which you desire ; but, the consulting of authors proving more tedious than I expected, so as to make me defer sending them till next week, I could not forbear sending this letter alone to let you know how extremely glad I was to hear from you. For, though your letter brought me the first news of your having been 1 1 John, ch. v., v. 7. 2 1 Timothy, ch. iii. , v. 16. • 61*0-2. “1 iEt. 58 — 59. J FRIENDSHIP WITH NEWTON. 221 so dangerously ill, yet, by your undertaking a journey into Holland, I hope you are well recovered. ” 1 “ 1 send you now,” be wrote, not one, but six weeks later, “ the papers I promised. I fear I have not only made you stay too long for them, but also made them too long by an addition. For, upon the receipt of your letter, reviewing what I had by me concerning the text of 1 John, ch. v., v. 7, and examining authors a little farther about it, I met with something new concerning that other of 1 Timothy, ch. iii., v. 16, which I thought would be as acceptable to inquisitive men, and might be set down in a little room, but, by searching farther into the bottom of it, is swelled to the bigness you see. I fear the length of what I say on both texts may occasion you too much trouble, and therefore, if at present you get only what concerns the first done into French, that of the other may stay till we see what success the first will have. I have no entire copy besides that I send you, and there- fore would not have it lost, because I may perhaps, after it has gone abroad long enough in French, put it forth in English. What charge you are at about it — for I am sure it will put you to some — you must let me know ; for the trouble alone is enough for you. If your voyage hold, I wish you a prosperous one and happy return.” 2 As Locke’s voyage to Holland did not hold, he sent Newton’s manuscript to his friend Le Clerc. “ As soon as I have leisure,” Le Clerc wrote in the following April, “ I will translate into either Latin or French the little ‘ Historical Account,’ which ought to see the light.” 3 “ I have as yet done nothing wfith the manuscript,” Le Clerc 1 Lord King, p. 216 ; Newton to Locke, 28 Sept., 1690. 2 Ibid., p. 215 ; Newton to Locke, 14 Nov., 1690. * Ibid., p. 230; Le Clerc to Locke, [1 — ] 11 April, 1691. 222 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. said in his next letter, three months later, “ as other things have occupied me ; hut I hope to have an oppor- tunity of publishing it along with some other tracts. It is too small to appear by itself. A very little book gets lost. We must try to make it bigger if it is to live.” 1 Le Clerc was waiting for this opportunity when, in January, 1691-2, Newton, apparently not aware that his manuscript had been sent to Holland, asked Locke to return it. 2 “ I was of opinion my papers had lain still,” he wrote in another letter, on hearing the state of the case, “ and am sorry to hear this news about them. Let me entreat you to stop their translation and impression as soon as you can, for I desire to suppress them. If your friend hath been at any pains and charge, I will repay it, and gratify him.” 3 Locke wrote accordingly to Le Clerc, who thus replied in April : “ It is a pity that this disser- tation is to be suppressed. I do not think that any one could possibly recognise it in a translation. In a work of this sort, where I could not fail to catch the sense of the author, I should use such freedom in rendering it that no one would suppose it to be a translation.” 4 “I will take great care of the papers,” he said in a subsequent letter, “ until you tell me what the author would like me to do with them. I can assure you that the authorship neither of this nor of any other anonymous publication issued from this place would be divulged on the spot, so that it could not possibly be known on your side of the channel. Besides, one ought to risk a little in order to be of service to those honest folk who err only through ignorance, and 1 Lord King, p. 230 ; Le Clerc to Locke, [21 — ] 31 July, 1691. 2 Ibid. , p. 219 ; Newton to Locke, 26 Jan., 1691-2. 3 Ibid., p. 219 ; Newton to Locke, 16 Feb., 1691-2. 4 Ibid., p. 231 ; Le Clerc to Locke, [1 — ] 11 April, 1692. If 5 ?’ -2. "I At. ‘9 J FRIENDSHIP WITH NEWTON. 223 who, if they get a chance, would gladly he disabused of Their false notions.” 1 Le Clerc was not able to under- stand, or at any rate to excuse, Newton’s excessive timid- ity, but of course he yielded to it. The treatise remained in his hands till he died, and it was not taken from its hiding-place in the Eemonstrants’ Library at Amsterdam, except that some sheets of the manuscript were lost in the interval, until 1734, when all that remained was pub- lished in England. 2 At this time Newton and Locke were in correspondence about another curious subject. 3 Boyle died on the 30th of December, 1691, at the age of sixty-five, leaving Locke, along with two other friends, a sort of literary and scientific executor. The great chemist, seeing what marvels he knew to be achievable by help of his favourite science, may he excused for having had, not exactly a belief in alchemy, but a vague hope that there might be some truth in it ; and among the treasures that he left behind him was a store of red earth, with directions for endeavouring to turn it into gold. “I understand Mr. Boyle communicated his process about the red earth to you as well as to me,” Newton wrote on the 26th of January following, “ and before his death procured some of that earth for his friends.” 4 Acting on this hint, Locke forwarded a parcel of the 1 Lord King, p. 232 ; Le Clerc to Locke, [5 — 1 15 July, 1692. 2 With this misleading title, ‘ Two Letters to Mr. Clarke, late Divinity Professor of the Remonstrants in Holland.’ “ Clarke ” is of course an error for “Le Clerc,” with whom, however, Newton does not appear to have had any personal acquaintance. 3 A long letter from Newton to Locke, dated 30th June, 1691, in which he describes the injury done to his eyesight by too much looking at the sun, was printed by Lord King, p. 217, and reprinted by Sir David Brewster 4 Lord King, p. 219 ; Newton to Locke, 26 Jan., 1691 2. 224 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XI i. material to Newton, who wrote back, “You have sent me much more earth than I expected. I desired only a specimen, having no inclination to prosecute the process. For, in good earnest, I have no opinion of it. But since you have a mind to prosecute it, I should he glad to assist you all I can ; hut I have lost the first and third parts out of my pocket. I thank you for what you communicated to me out of your own notes about it .” 1 “ Mr. Boyle,” Locke replied, “ has left to Dr. Dickson, Dr. Cox, and me the inspection of his papers. I have, here enclosed, sent you the transcript of two of them that came to my hand, because I knew you desired it. Of one of them I have sent you all there was ; of the other only the first period, because it was all you seemed to have a mind to. If you desire the other periods, I will send them too. If I meet with anything more of the process he communicated to you, you shall have it, and if there be anything more in relation to any of Mr. Boyle’s papers, or anything else wherein I can serve you, he pleased to command me .” 2 “ I am glad you have all the three parts of the recipe entire,” said Newton in his reply ; “ but before you go to work about it, I desire you would consider these things, for it may perhaps save you time and expense.” “In dissuading you from too hasty trial of this recipe,” he added, after much else on the subject, “I have forborne to say anything against multiplication in general, because you seemed persuaded of it ; though there is one argu- ment against it which I could never find an answer to, 1 Edleston, ‘ Correspondence of Sir Isaac Newton and Professor Cotes, etc.’ (1850), p. 275 ; Newton to Locke, 7 July, 1G92. 2 Brewster, ' Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton,’ vol. ii., p. 4G1 ; Locke to Newton, 26 July, 1692. j£ 9 Jg] FRIENDSHIP WITH NEWTON. 225 and which, if you will let me have your opinion about it, I will send you in my next .” 1 If that promised letter was sent, it has not come down to us, and we hear no more about Boyle’s experiments in gold-making or their continuation by either Locke or Newton. Notwithstanding Newton’s suggestions, it seems probable that, though anxious that the matter should be sifted, Locke did not turn aside from his literary and other occupations to make any researches of his own, and that he chiefly concerned himself in this business from a desire to do justice to the friend who had left him his papers to arrange. He had done something towards that before Boyle’s death. Boyle had at intervals collected a great number of notes on meteorology and barometrical and thermo- metrical observations. These notes he asked Locke to edit, and Locke, having arranged them in chapters and made as many alterations as he felt that he had liberty to offer, returned the manuscript with a long letter sug- gesting further changes before its publication . 2 Through some confusion, however, the work w r as published in its incomplete form, as ‘A General History of the Air.’ What share Locke had in the editing of Boyle’s other works, after his death, is not recorded. Having broken through the strict order of chronology in order to group together our more important illustra- tions of Locke’s intercourse with Newton during this period of his life, we may here go farther ahead and take note of one very pathetic episode. Newton, as even some of our few extracts from his correspondence help to show, was subject to a nervous 1 Lord King, p. 220 ; Newton to Locke, 2 August, 1G92. 2 Boyle, ‘ Works,’ vol. v., p. 571 ; Locke to Bovle, 21 Oct., 1691. Vol. IT.- 15 226 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. X1T. irritability that occasionally led him to think and say unkind and unjust things about his friends ; and on at least one occasion this irritability was so aggravated by over-work and other causes, as to amount to a temporary aberration of intellect. While recovering from this state in the autumn of 1693, he addressed the following strange letter of confession to Locke, dated from “ The Bull, in Shoreditch.” “ 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, 1 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, “ Is. Newton.” 2 Locke’s generous answer, which we have only in his own unfinished draft, needs no comment. “ Sir, — I have been, ever since I first knew you, so entirely and sincerely your friend, and thought you so much mine, that I could not have believed what you tell me of yourself, had I had it from anybody else. And though I cannot but be mightily troubled that you should have had so many wrong and unjust thoughts of me, yet, next to the return of good offices, such as from a sincere good-will I have ever done you, I receive your acknowledg- ment of the contrary as the kindest thing you could have done me, since it gives me hopes that I have not lost a friend I so much valued. After what your letter expresses, I shall not need to say anything to justify myself to you. I shall always think your own reflection on my carriage, both to you and all mankind, will sufficiently do that. Instead of that, 1 That is, the ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding.’ 8 Lord King, p. 224 ; Newton to Locke, 16 Sept., 1693. 1653. I Mt. 61. J FRIENDSHIP WITH NEWTON. 227 give me leave to assure you that I am more ready to forgive you than you can be to desire it ; and I do it so freely and fully that I wish for nothing more than the opportunity to convince you that I truly love and esteem you, and that I have still the same good-will for you as if nothing of this had happened. To confirm this to you more fully, I should be glad to meet you anywhere, and the rather because the conclusion of your letter makes me apprehend it would not be wholly useless to you. But whether you think it fit or not, I leave wholly to you. I shall always be ready to serve you to my utmost, in any way you shall like, and shall only need your commands or permission to do it. “ My book is going to the press for a second edition ; and though I can answer for the design with which I writ it, yet since you have so oppor- tunely given me notice of what you have said of it, I should take it as a favour if you would point out to me the places that gave occasion to that censure, that, by explaining myself better, I may avoid being mistaken by others, or unawares doing the least prejudice to truth or virtue. I am sure you are so much a friend to them both that, were you none to me, I could expect this from you. But I cannot doubt but you would do a great deal more than this for my sake, who after all have all the concern of a friend for you, wish you extremely well, and am without compliment, etc.” 1 2 Newton’s reply, with which this correspondence, as far as it has come down to ns, ends, contained a tolerably sufficient explanation, but might have been more cordial. “ Sir, — The last winter, by sleeping too often by my fire, I got an ill habit of sleeping ; and a distemper, which this summer has been epidemical, put me further out of order, so that when I wrote to you, I had not slept an hour a night for a fortnight together, and for five nights together not a wink. I remember I wrote to you, but what I said of your book I remem- ber not. If you please to send me a transcript of that passage, I will give you an account of it if I can. “ I am your most humble servant, “ Is. Newton.’ 1 Lord King, p. 224; Locke to Newton, 5 Oct., 1698. As this lettei from Oates, and the next one, from Cambridge, bear the same date, there is evidently an error of a d!ty or two in one of them. 2 Ibid., p. 225 ; Newton to Locke, 5 Oct., 1693. 228 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. “ It gave me very great pleasure,” Limborch bad written in May, 1691, in answer to Locke’s letter informing him of bis intended residence at Oates, but not informing bim that Damaris Cudworth’s title was now Lady Masbam, “ to learn from yours that Lady Cudwortb bas sucb a kindly recollection of me. Among all my English friends, tlie one I always most esteemed was Dr. Cud- wortb. His letters were inspired by more than ordinary learning and wisdom ; and it was always a trouble to me that bis more important occupations caused bim to send me so few of them. I now rejoice that tbis worthy lady inherits not so much her father’s wealth ” — it is not likely that Cudworth bad much — “ as her father’s talents and learning, and that she represents bim in those ways which we consider suitable to men. I am glad that she approves of the work on which I am now engaged ” — the 4 Historia Inquisitionis ’ — “ and my plan of it ; and I hope that, when it appears, she will be satisfied with the work itself, in which she will see set forth the whole mystery of iniquity, as far as a thing so utterly atrocious and detestable can be set forth in words. I beg you humbly to tender to her my services and tell her that I heartily pray God to com- pensate by other favours that weakness of her eyesight which has been caused by her too much reading.” 1 In this same letter Limborch made two announcements — that Le Clerc was married, and that Furly had lost his wife. The latter intelligence had reached Locke some weeks before he heard it from Limborch, and he had already sent a very characteristic letter of condolence to his friend in Rotterdam. 1 Lord King (ed. 1830), vol. ii., p. 311; Limborch to Locke, [19 — ] 29 May, 1691. 1631. "I yEt. 58. J A LETTER OF CONDOLENCE TO FURLY. 229 “ Dear Friend, — Though I am very much concerned and troubled for your great loss, yet, your sorrow being of that kind which time and not arguments is wont to cure, I know not whether I should say anything to you to abate your grief, but that, it serving to no purpose at all, but making you thereby the more unfit to supply the loss of their mother to your remaining children, who now more need your care, help, and comfort, the sooner you get rid of it the better it will be both for them and you. If you are convinced this is fit to be done, I need not make use to you of the common though yet reasonable topics of consolation. I know you expect not to have the common and unalterable law of mortality, which reaches the greatest, be dispensed with for your sake. Our friends and relations are but borrowed advantages, lent us during pleasure, and must be given back whenever called for. We receive them upon these terms, and why should we repine ? or, if we do, what profits it us ? But I see my affection is running into reasoning, which you need not, and can think of without any suggestions of mine. I wonder not at the greatness of your grief, hut I shall wonder if you let it prevail on you. “ Your thinking of retiring some whither from business was very natural upon the first stroke of it ; but here I must interpose to advise you the contrary. It is to give yourself up to all the ills that grief and melancholy can produce, which are some of the worst we suffer in this life. Want of health, want of spirit, want of useful thought, is the state of those who abandon themselves to griefs, whereof business is the best, the safest, and the quickest cure. I say not this in favour of your doubt whether you should be acceptable to any of your friends. I know none of them you named that I do not think you would be acceptable to ; and I can assure you of it from some whom you did not then think of. My Lady Masham, always inquiring very kindly after you, when I told her by the outside that the letter I had then received was from you, was impatient to know how you did, and when I told her of your loss and sadness, was mightily concerned, and desired me to tell you that, if you would come and spend some time here with her, you should be very welcome. You do not doubt but I should be exceeding glad of your company. I know no man’s I would sooner have or should be more pleased with. Were I settled in a house of my own, I should tell you how welcome you should be to me a little more at large ; but I suppose you doubt it not. “ But for all this kind and sincere invitation from my Lady Masham, the like whereof I doubt not but you would receive from your other friends, if they knew your state and present thoughts, I advise you to think of none 230 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. of them. You would be presently sick of, and constantly uneasy in, such a course of life. Keep in your employment. Increase it, and be as busy in it as you can — now more than ever. This is best for you and for your children ; and when your thoughts are a little come to themselves and the discomposure over, then calmly consider what will be the best way for you to dispose of them and yourself ; but, at present, lay by none of your busi- ness, nor neglect it in the least. I know there is little room for reasoning in the first disorder of grief. What that proposes is alone hearkened to. I must therefore desire you to trust me on this occasion. I am truly your friend and love you, and therefore you may do it. I am unbiassed and not under the prevalency of any passion in the cure, and therefore am in a state to judge better, and I will be answerable to you for it you will here- after thank me for this advice ; and for your children we will hereafter, when you are in a better state to do it, consider what will be best for you to resolve. “ Pray have a care of your health, and believe that “ I am sincerely yours, “ J. L.”i “ I congratulate our friend Le Clerc on his long-delayed marriage,” Locke wrote to Limborch two months later, in answer to that part of his letter in which the event was announced. “I wish them both every kind of good fortune and happiness. Match-making and love-making and matrimonial delights are evidently the cause of my having received so few letters from him lately — and a very good cause too, as love does and should engross all the attention of a lover .” 2 Le Clerc was thirty-four when he married, and the union, we are told, was a union of lovers and one of undisturbed happiness during three-and-forty years . 3 1 ‘ Original Letters,’ p. 47 ; Locke to Furly, 28 April [1691]. I have omitted an unimportant paragraph and a postscript referring to other matters. 2 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, 18 June, 1691. 3 Van der Hoeven, ‘ De Joanne Clerico Dissertatio Historico-Literaria,’ p. 108. CORRESPONDENCE WITH LIMBORCH. 231 Of Locke’s correspondence with Le Clerc during the eighteen or nineteen years of their acquaintance, only a few specimens have come down to us. His correspond- ence with Limborch has had a better fate, and out of the numerous letters that passed between them while Locke resided at Oates it would be possible, with suitable anno- tations, to construct, if not a complete history, at least a very comprehensive sketch, of the progress of religious, theological and philosophical thought among the best thinkers during this period. It would be improper, how- ever, here to do more than extract from them the portions of most strictly biographical interest, and in these there is so much sameness that it would be tedious to repeat them at length. In every letter Locke indulges in profuse and evidently honest expressions of affection for his chief friend in Amsterdam and for his wife and children, and conveys kindly messages to Le Clerc, Yeen, Guenellon, and his other friends in the neighbourhood ; and Limborch is as profuse and as tender in the letters he sends back to his friend at Oates, and rarely forgets to say some pleasant words about Lady Masham and others whom he knows personally or by repute. Limborch’ s ‘ Historia Inquisi- tionis,’ the most important of his writings after the ‘ Theologia Christiana,’ and his other works, are frequently referred to, and Locke’s studies and pursuits are hardly less clearly indicated. “ Because I intended to send you a particularly long letter,” Locke wrote in November, 1691, “you have not yet had anything at all from me. I have been trying to find time enough in which to talk freely and fully with you, and make a proper return for your last and very friendly epistle, which ought to have been answered long ago. But, I know not how it is, so many occupations, 232 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. not of my seeking, have so engrossed my time that I have not even had leisure in which to pay proper attention to certain pressing affairs of my own. Do not think I have been devoting myself to public affairs. Neither my health nor my strength, nor my fitness for the work to be done, permitted that. And yet, when I try to consider what it is that has so hindered me during these last three months, I can only find that I have been in a sort of maze, in which each day brought some fresh business that led to other business that I could neither foresee nor avoid.” 1 Locke did not here say so, but much of his time appears to have been at this period employed in the editing of Boyle’s ‘ General History of the Air.’ He went to London to visit Boyle on his deathbed in December, 1691. “ Since then,” he w 7 rote on the last day of the following February, “ my health has kept me in the country, for I found my lungs could not bear the smoke of the city.” 2 In May he spent a day or two at Cambridge, that being his first visit to the town of which we have any record ; though, doubtless, he had been there often before. “ Now the churlish weather is almost over,” Newton had written to him on the 3rd, “ I was thinking, within a post or two, to put you in mind of my desire to see you here, where you shall he as welcome as I can make you. I am glad you have prevented me, because I hope now to see you the sooner. You may lodge con- veniently either at the Bose tavern or Queen’s Arms inn.” 3 On his way back he halted for an hour or two at Bishop Stortford, and thence wrote a letter which 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 334 ; Locke to Limborch, 14 Nov., 1G91. 2 Ibid., p. 337 ; Locke to Limborch, 29 Feb., 1G91-2. 3 Lord King, p. 222 ; Newton to Locke, 3 May, 1G92. 1602. "I 2Et. 59. J EDWARD CLARKE. 233 claims, not only to be quoted in full, but also to be furnished with a preface. Edward Clarke, to whom it was addressed, and with whose name w r e have already met once or twice, was a man of good position as owner of Cliipley, a few miles west of Taunton, who had become a member of parlia- ment in February, 1690-1 ; who held officce as one of the commissioners of excise ; and who, wherever he may have generallyresided before, was from that time much in London. Locke’s acquaintance with him was evidently of very long standing, and, during at any rate some time previous to his going to Holland, they had met and corresponded on terms of great intimacy. Locke had been Clarke’s trusted adviser as to the management and education of his children ; with one of whom, Elizabeth, a little girl now about ten or eleven years old, he main- tained a frequent correspondence, calling her generally his “ wife,” sometimes “ Mrs. Locke.” He also acted as a family doctor and family friend in every other sort of way ; while Clarke, in return, appears to have been his chief counsellor and agent in all sorts of business con- cerns. The letter which Locke wrote to this friend shows us that he continued his old habit of giving medical advice to other friends as well ; and, being now acting as doctor to Mrs. Cudworth, Lady Masham’s mother, and, doubt- less, to the wdiole household at Oates and the neigh- bouring cottagers, we can partly understand his recent statement to Limborch, that his days were repeatedly filled up with occupations that he could neither foresee nor prevent. The letter was addressed to “ Edward Clarke, Esq., Member of Parliament, at Mrs. Henman’s, over against Little Turnstile, in Holborn.” 234 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. “ Dear Sir, — I am got thus far homeward from Cambridge, where I have been for two days, drawn thither by business that Avas very necessary to despatch. I staid there less time than I could well have spent there, and was very much importuned to. But I left not Mrs. Cudworth so well restored to her health as to be sure she would need no more assistance, which made my lady very earnestly press my speedy return from Cambridge, and ’twas with much difficulty I got leave to go thither. I here meet with yours of the 10th instant, which is the first and only one of yours is come to my hands since I saw you. “ The consultation you would have with me about the health of our infirm friend, I know not w r hat to say to. You know I wish him very well, but my notions in physic are so different from the method which now obtains, that I am like to do little good, and, not being of the college, 1 can make no other figure there but of an unskilful empiric ; and no doubt anything I should offer would seem as strange to his physicians as the way you tell me they take with him seems strange to me. But, as every one’s hypothesis is, so is his reason disposed to judge both of disease and medicines. But I hope the young gentleman will do well without me, and that the danger will be over by the time this comes to you. I hope my lady will not, as you say, blame my absence, considering the necessity that called me away, and her son was in so good hands that I concluded there was no need of me in that case, and I shall never omit any occasion wherein I may be serviceable. 2 “ In your next pray do but name the person of whom I may inquire upon occasion for what belongs to me. You need hut name him, without troubling yourself to mention what you inform me, in yours that I have now before me, is done. “ I have also received, this post, a letter from Mrs. Lqckhart. Pray present my service to her and the rest of my friends as they come in your way ; especially to madam, my wife, and the rest of your family. “ I am, sir, your most humble servant, “ J. Locke .” 3 1 The College of Physicians. 2 I cannot identify the young gentleman about whom Locke’s professional advice was here sought, nor the “lady,” his mother, nor the “person” referred to in the next paragraph. 3 Additional MSS. in the British Museum, no. 4290, fol. 105 ; Locke to Clarke, 13 May, 1692. There are forty-one letters addressed by Locke to Clarke in this collection. A few, and portions of some others, have 1G9?. 1 die. 59.J OCCUPATIONS IN LONDON. 235 Between the middle of June and the middle of October, except that in August he returned to Oates for three weeks, Locke was in London, thus making a longer stay there than at any time during the previous year and a half, 1 and in these months he saw much of Clarke, and transacted a good deal of important business. Among other occupa- tions, he rendered to Limborch what the latter regarded as a valuable service, and in so doing renewed an old friendship of some interest. The printing of the ‘ Historia Inquisitionis,’ which was ready for the press a year before, was proceeding very slowly. “I hope the Wetsteinian press” — Wetstein, it will be remembered, being the great publisher of Amster- dam — “ will hurry on with its work,” Locke wrote to Limborch on the 2nd of June, “ for your account of the Holy Office is much needed. For my part, I am waiting impatiently for it, and I know that it will be of great benefit to the whole Christian world.” 2 “ The Wetsteinian press is now hard at work,” answered Limborch on the 17th. “ The printing of the history of the Holy Office is proceeding rapidly. Already the third part is in hand. I been printed by Dr. Forster in the ‘ Original Letters,’ but so inaccurately and incompletely, that in future I shall refer to the originals. For Dr. Forster’s text of Locke’s letters to Furly I am obliged to trust to him, correcting only a few manifest blunders. 1 While at Oates, Locke resumed the register of the weather which he had kept at Oxford and in London long before. All this has been lost, except the portion for 1692, which, shortly before his death, he sent to Sir Hans Sloane, offering to publish the whole in the Philosophical Transactions, but dying too soon to adhere to his proposal. This portion was printed ( Philosophical Transactions, vol. xxiv., 1706, pp. 1917 — 1937), and the original is in the British Museum ( Additional MSS., no. 4052). It enables me to trace his movements more exactly during the period to which it refers. 2 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Locke to Limborch, 2 June, 1692. 236 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XU hope the whole will be ready within three months, and till then I shall be as busy as I can be, and I want you to help me. I did not care about dedicating my other hooks to anybody ; but I am very anxious to dedicate this book, in favour of liberty of conscience, and against that persecu- tion which has brought such great disasters on religion, to the Archbishop of Canterbury — a man so much superior to every theologian whom I know, both in character and in abilities — if he will allow me to do so. Both his writings and his acts show that he favours the opinions which I have undertaken to set forth ; for, though I have written a history, it is a history intended to throw light on the arguments that I propound in it. I wish that you, who know him, would find an opportunity of asking him to bestow on me this great favour. I know not whether my position among the remonstrants will stir up any hatred and wrath against the book, and I do not wish it to excite any prejudice against a man whom I respect and venerate from the bottom of my heart. You know the scope and argument of the work, and can explain them to him. To no one could a work in favour of liberty of conscience be dedicated more properly than to him, who is not only a great friend of liberty, but also a great friend of the great friends of liberty. If he does not reject the dedication, I should like to send him, through you, a draft of it, in order that he may tell me, if he is so kind, of anything that he wishes cut out, altered, or amplified. I rely on your dis- cretion in the matter, and shall be for ever obliged by your letting me know the result as quickly as you can, as the printing is now proceeding rapidly, and there is not much time for delay.” 1 1 Lord King (ed. 1830), vol. ii., p. 324 ; Limborch to Locke, [17 — ] 27 June, 1692. 1692. I jEt. 69. J LIMBORCH AND TILLOTSON. 237 “ On receipt of your letter,” Locke replied, “ I called to-day on the archbishop. When he first heard your name, he said yon had sent him a copy of your disputa- tion with the Jew, and excused himself for not having acknowledged it on the ground that his bad health, the weakness of his eyes and other causes had prevented him from reading it. But he greatly praised both that work and its author, and said that the present is a most opportune time for a history of the Holy Office. He read through the list of chapters with great pleasure and appro- bation, and, when I informed him of your wish to dedicate the work to him, he assented to it with a grace and cour- tesy that would certainly have shown you, had you been there, that your proposal gave him pleasure. Send your draft dedication, therefore, as soon as you can; I know his modesty, and approve of your wish that he should read it before it is printed. I will show it to him, which ; I know he will take as a compliment, and I will tell you if he wishes any change made in it.” 1 “ 1 return yon as quickly as I can your dedicatory i epistle, approved by the archbishop,” Locke wrote five I weeks later. “ He objected to nothing in it, except that he complained of your having said so much about him ; but that he passed by. In proportion to his renown and worth is his modesty.” 2 Dr. Tillotson had been promoted from the deanery to the archbishopric of Canterbury in May, 1691. Locke must have been acquainted with him for twenty years or more, ever since, if not before, the days when they had joined with others of like mind, hut few as bold or honest, 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 339 ; Locke to Limborch, 30 June, 1692. ' l MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, 2 August, 238 IN RETIREMENT ! WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Ciiap. XII. in efforts to make the church of England in the early years of Charles the Second so free and comprehensive that all but the most violent protestant dissenters and the Eoman catholics might find a place in it. His virtues are too well known for it to be necessary that they should be here set forth, and, if that is not done, it would be unfair to call attention to the blemishes in his character, w r hich were notably few and slight, especially when we remember that he was a clergyman of the church of England under the last two Stuarts, as well as the primate of that church under William the Third. In these years, when Locke had parted widely from many ecclesiastics who were his friends in former times, it is pleasant to observe his continued friendship with the most liberal of all the great churchmen who sought to make the organisation of which they were ministers a national church instead of an established sect. The main business that brought Locke to London in this summer time of 1692 appears to have been the publication of his ‘ Third Letter for Toleration.’ This work, nearly eight times as long as the first ‘ Letter con- cerning Toleration,’ and filling a bulky volume, was dated by him the 20th of June. It had evidently occupied the chief part of his time during several previous months, and he was now anxious to have it issued, but also anxious that it should receive the corrections of those few friends whose criticism he valued, and to whom he dared entrust the secret of its authorship. “ Finding no better conveyance,” he wrote to Newton on the 26th of July, “ I have sent you the eighth chapter ” - — there were ten chapters in all, but the last two formed three-sevenths of the whole work — “ by Martin, the carrier. It was delivered to his own hands yesterday. ‘ A THIRD LETTER FOR TOLERATION.’ 239 I would beg you, if you have so much leisure, to read, correct, censure, and send it back by the same hand this week ; else I fear the press will stay. I deferred it so long in hopes to send all together by a safe hand. Missing that, I have ventured but one chapter at once. As soon as this comes back I will send the next.” 1 There is nothing to show whether Newton or some other friendly critic or the printer was at fault ; but the press was stayed till long after Locke had gone back to Oates. “ I beg,” he said, in a letter to Clarke, on the 2nd of November, “ that you would send for Mr. Awnsham Churchill” — the publisher — (to whom I have writ four or five times to desire him to send me the sheets which have been printed since I came to town, but cannot receive a word from him), and tell him I would by no means have him publish it till I have perused all the remaining sheets, which I would have him send to me. I desire you would give yourself this trouble ; for I am concerned to see it before it go abroad.” 2 The book was published, however, before the end of the month. “ I must beg you,” Locke then wrote to the same friend, “ to send again for Mr. Churchill, and let him write down from you these names — Ashley, Newton, Somers, Popple, Le Clerc, Furly, Wright, Freke, and Firmin.” (These words were also written, hut erased — “ and Treby and Ker ; these two last, if you think fit, for I am in some doubt whether it be prudent or no.”) “ But to none of them as from me : to yourself more than one, if you please : hither two to be sent. Bid him forthwith bring in all the remainder of the copy to you.” 3 1 Brewster, vol. Ii. , p. 461 ; Locke to Newton, 26 July, 1692. 2 Additional MSS., no. 4290 ; Locke to Clarke, 2 Nov., 1692. 3 Ibid. ; Locke to Clarke, 28 Nov., 1692. 240 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XU, The list of the persons to whom presentation-copies of the ‘ Third Letter for Toleration ’ were to be anonymously sent is interesting. Most of the names are familiar to ns. John Freke, a great friend of Clarke’s as well as Locke’s, was a barrister who had been called at the Middle Temple on the same day in 1676 as Sir John Somers, and had maintained acquaintance with him ever since. Thomas Finnin was the excellent Unitarian merchant at whose house Locke had met Tillotson and so many other lati- tudinarian clergymen some twenty years before. Firmin w r as now an old man, hut not weary of good work. Besides renewing old friendships while he was in London — where he still occupied his chambers in Dorset court, though he now had a Mr. Pawling for landlord instead of Mrs. Smithsby for landlady 1 — Locke began a new one, from which he derived much satisfaction during the next six years. On his arrival in town he had found waiting for him at his bookseller’s a volume entitled ‘ Diopterica Nova,’ and further described on the title-page as“ a treatise of diop- terics, wherein the various effects and appearances of spherical glasses, both convex and concave, single and compound, in telescopes and microscopes, together with their usefulness in many concerns of human life, are explained.” The author was 'William Molyneux, a talented Irish- man, wdio, born near Dublin on the 17th of April, 1656, had been educated at Trinity College, and had come over to study law at the Middle Temple between 1675 and 1678, though he appears never to have intended to follow 1 This appears from the addresses of many of the letters sent to him. From this time Pawling is frequently referred to as a sort of agent, attend- ing to small matters of business for him while he was at Oates. if*,] FBIENDSHIP WITH WILLIAM MOLYNEUX. 241 this as a profession. He inherited an ample fortune, and devoted himself during the last twenty years of his short life to scientific pursuits, and especially to the practical study of optics and astronomy and the construction of telescopes. Having settled down in Dublin, he founded the Philosophical Society in that city, under the guidance of Sir William Petty, in 1683. In 1684 he was appointed by the Duke of Ormond surveyor-general of works and buildings and chief engineer under the Irish government ; but in 1689 the troubles to which he as a protestant was exposed during the catholic opposition to William the Third caused him to take shelter in England, and through- out three years to reside partly in Chester and partly in London. The time that intervened before he went back to Ireland, to represent Dublin in the Irish parlia- ment, was spent chiefly in producing his ‘ Diopterica Nova.’ “ To none do we owe for a greater advancement in this part of philosophy,” he said, speaking of logic, in the dedication of this book, ££ 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 observa- tion, 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 meta- physical 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.” Locke welcomed the unlooked-for compliment, and wrote a graceful acknowledgment of it. ££ You have Vol. II. — 16 242 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. made great advances of friendship towards me,” he said, “ and yon see they are not lost upon me.” 1 “ 1 cannot easily tell yon,” Molyneux wrote in answer to this letter, “how grateful it was to me, having the highest esteem for him that sent it from the first moment that I was so happy as to see any of his writings. That yon may judge of my sincerity by my open heart, I will plainly confess to you that I have not in my life read any book with more satisfaction than your ‘ Essay ; ’ and I have endeavoured with great success to recommend it to the consideration of the ingenious in this place.” 2 “You must expect,” Locke promptly replied, “to have me live with you hereafter, with all the liberty and assurance of a settled friendship. Eor, meeting with but few men in the world whose acquaintance I find much reason to covet, I make more than ordinary haste into the familiarity of a rational inquirer after and lover of truth, whenever I can light on any such. There are beauties of the mind, as well as of the body, that take and prevail at first sight ; and, wher- ever I have met with this, I have readily surrendered myself, and have never yet been deceived in my expecta- tion. Wonder not, therefore, if, having been thus wrought on, I begin to converse with you with much freedom.” 3 Thus arose a friendship of which we shall see many proofs in future pages. Locke’s introduction to William Molyneux also gave some fresh life to an older friendship. Eight years before this time he had met at Leyden William Moly- neux’s brother Thomas, then studying medicine in the great Dutch university. In his first letter to his new 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 1 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 16 July, 1692. 2 Ibid., p. 3 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 27 Aug., 1692. * ibid., p. 7 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 20 Sept., 1692. ifl’o] THOMAS MOLYNEUX AND SYDENHAM. 243 friend, Locke asked whether the person of the same name whom he had known in Holland was related to him, and the inquiry provoked a letter from Thomas Molyneux himself, now a physician practising in Dublin. “ I reckon it,” wrote this Dr. Molyneux, “ amongst the most fortu- nate accidents of my life my so luckily getting into your conversation, which was so candid, diverting and in- structive, that I still reap the benefit of it. Some years after I left you in Holland I contracted no small intimacy with Dr. Sydenham, on the account of having been known to you, his much esteemed friend, and I found him so accurate an observer of diseases, so thoroughly skilled in all useful knowledge of his profession, and withal so communicative, that his acquaintance was a very great advantage to me ; and all this I chiefly owe to you.” 1 “ That which I always thought of Dr. Sydenham living,” Locke said in his reply to this letter, “ I find the world allows him now he is dead, and that he de- served all that you say of him. I hope the age has many who will follow his example, and, by the way of accurate practical observation, which he has so happily begun, enlarge the history of diseases, and improve the art or physic, and not, by speculative hypotheses, fill the world with useless though pleasing visions.” 2 “ I wonder,” he wrote to this correspondent, in a subse- quent letter which is interesting in more ways than one. “ that, after the pattern Dr. Sydenham has set them of a better way, men should return again to the romance way of physic. But I see it is easier and more natural for men to build castles in the air of their own than to survey well those that are to be found standing. Nicely to 1 ! Familiar Letters,’ p. 277 ; Thomas Molyneux to Locke, 27 Aug., 1692. 2 Ibid., p. 278; Locke to Thomas Molyneux, 1 Nov., 1692. < 244 IN EETIEEMENT : WOEK AS AN AUTHOE. [CHAP. XII. observe the history of diseases in all their changes and circumstances is a work of time, accurateness, attention, and judgment, and wherein, if men through prepossession or obstinacy mistake, they may be convinced of their error by unerring nature and matter of fact, which leaves less room for the subtlety and dispute of words which serves very much instead of knowledge in the learned world, where metliinks wit and invention has much the preference to truth. Upon such grounds as on the established history of diseases hypotheses might with less danger be erected, which I think so far useful as they serve as an art of memory to direct the physician in particular cases, but not to be relied on as foundations of reasoning or verities to be contended for ; they being, I think I may say, all of them suppositions taken up gratis, and will so remain till we can discover how the natural functions of the body are performed, and by what altera- tions of the humours or defects in the parts they are hindered or disordered. To which purpose I fear the Galenists’ sour humours, or the chymists’ sal, sulphur, and mercury, or the late prevailing invention of acid and alkali, or whatever hereafter shall be substituted to these with new applause, will upon examination be found to be but so many learned empty sounds, with no precise deter- minate signification. What we know of the works of nature, especially in the constitution of health and the operations of our own bodies, is only by the sensible effects, but not by any certainty we can have of the tools she uses or the ways she works by; so that there is nothing left for a physician to do but to observe well, and so, by analogy, argue to like cases, and thence make to himself rules of practice. And he that is this way most sagacious will, I imagine, make the best physician, though, Jfeb.] PRAISE OF SYDENHAM’S METHOD. 245 subservient to this end, be should entertain distinct hypotheses * concerning distinct species of diseases that were inconsistent one with another, they being made use of in those several sorts of diseases but as distinct arts of memory in those cases. And I the rather say this that they might be relied on only as artificial helps to a physician, and not as philosophical truths to a naturalist. I hoped the way of treating of diseases which with so much approbation Dr. Sydenham had introduced into the world would have beaten the other out, and turned men from visions and wrangling to observation and endeavouring after settled practices in more diseases, such as I think he has given to us in some. If my zeal for the saving men’s lives and preserving their health, which is infinitely to be preferred to any speculations never so fine in physic, has carried me too far, you will excuse it in one who wishes well to the practice of physic, though he meddles not with it.” 1 That diversion from the metaphysical, theological and political studies that now so largely occupied Locke’s attention, to do honour to the worthiest of his early friends and to tell a young doctor very modestly, but very plainly, wdiat was the right way for him to follow in his profession, is surely not only quite excusable hut alto- gether delightful. Of the more prosaic business that claimed Locke’s attention while he was in London, we have curious illus- tration in a letter that he wrote to Clarke soon after his return to Oates in the autumn of 1692. He had lent some money to a Mrs. Lockhart — with whose name we have already met, and who was his and Lady Masham’s 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 284 ; Locke to Thomas Molyneux, 20 Jan., 1692-8. 246 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. and Benjamin Furly’s friend, as well as Clarke’s — on the security of her diamonds ; and, Mrs. Lockhart having lodged with him jewels of more value than the loan, it appears that he had, in opposition to Clarke’s advice, insisted on her taking some of them hack, and also that he was willing to let her make occasional use, when she was anxious to have all her finery about her, of those which he did hold. “ Had my desire to you in my note,” he wrote from Oates in October, “ been with other design than it was, I should with satisfaction have submitted to your judgment in the affair. But the reason why I resolved to give hack some of the stones being only because I would not be clogged with more than was necessary for sufficient security, wdiat was enough for that was all I in effect desired. I think it necessary she should, write a letter to me to thank me that I have consented to her request to let them be deposited in Mr. Pawling’s hands for her to have them to use at Christmas, if she has occasion, and that if they miscarry before they be restored to me again, it must be at her adventure and loss, they being deposited there at her request and for her convenience. Let her seal and deliver that letter to you, which I desire you to keep ; but you must make her write it whilst you are with her or else it will not be done.” 1 From the same letter we learn that, as Mrs. Clarke was expecting another baby, it had been arranged that little 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290 ; Locke to Clarke, 28 Oct., 1692. Another paragraph in this letter gives us the first intimation we have that a kinsman of Locke's was now settled in London as an attorney. “ When the mort- gage is executed by Mrs. Lockhart, my cousin Bonville need not be there. You may by a penny post letter send for him to your lodging when you please, and then he may there execute both the mortgage and the declaration of trust at the same time without troubling them.” 1692. "I ■®t. 60. J BETTY CLARKE. 247 Betty Clarke, Locke’s special friend, should go down on a visit to Oates. “ Present my humble service to madam,” Locke wrote on Friday, “ to whom I heartily wish a short and safe hour. I shall take care to have the coach sent for my wife to-morrow.” “ My wife came hither safe and well on Saturday,” he wrote again on the following Monday, “ and you had completed the kindness if you yourself had come with her. But you could not part, it seems, with my lord mayor’s show for your poor country friends and a sermon to hoot. This I tell madam is the reason why you staid in town, though I doubt not but you have business enough ; but yet I know you will not blame me that I desire to see you. My wife I shall take care of as her mother desires ; and I think she need be in no pain about her whilst she is here, where everybody is so disposed to take care and make much of her, as she very well deserves. But, my lady intending to write to Mrs. Clarke herself, I shall say no more on that subject.” 1 “ My wife and I and all here- — except Mrs. Cudworth, who is also much mended — are well, and, according to our respective duties, salute you,” he wrote again on Wednesday. “ I cannot let Sir Francis come to town without telling you this, though I have very little else to say, unless it be to thank you for your care and trouble in my affairs ; and that would furnish me with matter enough for more than one letter.” 2 Locke’s next letter to Clarke referred to a subject of some importance to one of his friends, at any rate. “I expect every day several books concerning the Inquisition, writ by Mr. Limborch,” he said in it. “Amongst the rest 1 Additional 'MSS., no. 4290 ; Locke to Clarke, 31 Oct., 1692. 2 Ibid. ; Locke to Clarke, 2 Nov., 1692. 248 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. there is one for the bishop of Bath and Wells” — Dr. Bichard Kidder — “ with a letter to him. I have ordered Mr. Pawling to put what is for that worthy bishop into your hands to be delivered him by you in my stead and with my service. Pray excuse my not having waited upon him as I have a long time desired and hope ere long I shall have the opportunity to do ; though it be one of the inconveniences I suffer from my ill lungs, that they usually drive me out of town when most of my friends, and those whom I would wish to be near, are in it. The books were shipped in Holland above a fortnight gone ; so that I hope they may be in London before this.” 1 “ At last,” Limborch had written to Locke, “ Wetstein has shipped the volumes that were to go to England. They were sent to Botterdam the day before yesterday, so that, if the vessel has fair weather, I hope they will reach you in a few days from now. The parcel is ad- dressed to you and contains five copies — four of them unbound, as Wetstein was afraid that your strict English law would not permit him to send so many bound books. Please apologise to the Earl of Pembroke for my seeming lack of courtesy in sending him an unbound copy The bound one, enclosed in a box, is intended for the arch- bishop. The letters accompanying the others will show you for whom they are intended. The one without a letter is for yourself: you will understand why I send it unbound. Now I wait for your candid opinion about the book : whatever faults you find in it tell me honestly, for the sake of our friendship.” 2 From his letter to Clarke it would seem that, his cough 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290; Locke to Clarke, 11 Nov., 1692. 2 Lord King (ed. 1830), vol. ii. , p. 327 ; Limborch to Locke, [28 Oct.J 7 Nov., 1692. ifgb.] LIMBOECH’s * HISTOEIA INQUISITIONIS.* 249 being then very troublesome and bis breathing very bad, Locke had not intended to go to town and execute Lim- borch’s commissions in person ; but he went on the 19th of November and returned on the 26th. “As soon as I heard of the arrival of your books,” he wrote to Limborch on the 28th, “ I hurried to London with such haste as I could manage. I called first on the archbishop, who was very much obliged and pleased, and said that, though he is just now very much occupied with pressing business, he was not able to keep himself from looking into your work, and had hurriedly read a large part of it with great pleasure ; but you will better understand his opinion and praise of it from the letter wdiich he promised to write to you. The bishop of Salisbury said much the same, and that, while heartily thanking you at once, he should write to you as soon as he had read it through, adding that you appeared to have set forth the history of the Inquisition far more clearly and correctly than he could have ex- pected. The Earl of Pembroke, among much praise of you, bade me assure you of his thanks, in anticipation of his doing so with his own hand. The bishop of Bath and Wells was not at home when I called, and during my short stay I could not find an opportunity of seeing him ; but your book will reach him safely, for I have asked our friend Mr. Clarke to deliver it to him and to apologise for its being unbound, as I have done to the others.” 1 Then follow some sentences on a subject that Locke, though not fond of writing about himself, had to speak of now very frequently. “Perhaps you will wonder that that I, who owe you prompt thanks on my own account, besides being charged with all these messages, have de- layed writing to you until my return to the country. A ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 341 ; Locke to Limborch, 28 Nov., 1692. 250 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XU. The fact is that, though I was tolerably well when I went to town, after a single day’s stay there I fell so ill that I could hardly breathe, and as I was getting worse and worse I was forced to come away, leaving undone a great deal that I ought to have attended to. I came hack last Saturday, bringing my copy of your book with me, and, thanks to you, Lady Masham and I promise ourselves some Attic nights this winter.” “ I got safe hither, I thank God,” Locke wrote on the same day to Clarke ; “ well I cannot say I yet am, under so troublesome a cough as I have, but my lungs move easier than they did. My wife’s shoes are too little. We thought at first to send them back, but, upon con- sideration that it will be longer much before another pair can come from London, and that the sending one and t’other pair will cost almost the price of a pair of shoes, we think to send one of these new ones to-day to Bishop Stortford, and hope on Friday to have a pair that will fit her. Amongst the many things I left undone and forgot at my coming away, you will not think it strange that I should let slip the Cheddar cheese at Mr. Pawling’ s. There it is, and there pray dispose of it as you think fit. I expected to hear from you to-day how madam is and whether the medicine did any good, but by your silence I conclude all goes well, and hope I shall not find myself deceived in your next. My lady, my wife, and all here are well, give them service to madam and you, and wish you joy of the lusty boy.” 1 Clarke disposed of the Cheddar cheese, which had pro- bably been sent up to Locke by some of his kinsfolk in Somersetshire, or may have been a present from Clarke himself, by forwarding it to Oates. “ The cheese is come 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290 ; Locke to Clarke, 28 Nov., 1692. SUEBOUNDINGS AT OATES. 251 Mt. 60 . J safe hither, and my lady desires me to return you her thanks,” Locke wrote in his nest letter. “ She intends to do it suddenly herself; but the news to-day of the death of a niece, and the short stay of the messenger that carries back our letters, makes her desire me to excuse it by this post.” 1 Locke’s letters to Clarke abound in homely details that help us to a very clear understanding of his every-day life at Oates. “ I had designed to draw you hither if you have any holidays,” he wrote just before Christmas day in this year. “ I long to talk with you, and mightily desire you should have a little refreshment in the air. But I fear I shall make you an ill compliment to invite you to a bedfellow, and such an one as I am. If you can dispense with that, pray come. You will be to everybody very wel- come, I know, and would be desired if it could be a civil invitation. The house will he so full when Mr. Cudworth comes ” — this was apparently Lady Masham’s brother, to whom Locke had written two years before, and now re- turned from India — “ who was expected with Mr. Andrews, and is looked for every day, that Mrs. Masham is fain to lie in a servant’s chamber and bed in the passage to the nursery.” 2 That invitation seems not to have been accepted, and it was renewed in the following spring. “ I am extremely troubled,” Locke wrote then, “that your cold sticks so upon you. Pray drink water, and carefully, no wine, and be as little abroad in the evenings as you can. I know not what else to say to you unless you will come hither a little while for some country air. If your cold increases upon you, quit all business that you may serve your 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290; Locke to Clarke, 9 Dec., 1692. 2 Ibid. ; Locke to Clarke, 23 Dec., 1692. 252 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. country ; for, wdien you are sick or worn, you will not be able to serve it. Therefore, pray come hither. We will make very much of you. My lady would take it very kindly, and says this is a sure place to get rid of colds. My service to my wife .” 1 Little Betty had gone home after spending three or four months with the big “husband,” whom, somewhat before the world had learnt to recognise his worth as one of its greatest teachers, she had found to be the kindest of playmates. There were other hospitable homes open to Locke, and the Earl of Monmouth was not the only friend who, save for the benefit that it caused to his health, grudged his so long and frequent absences from London. Monmouth had written to him on the day when, in spite of the raw November weather, he was riding up to London to dis- tribute Limborch’s presentation copies of the ‘ Historia Inquisitionis.’ “I am told,” he then said, “that so many of your friends have sent you word how desirous they are you should come to town, that I am resolved I will not be of the number, concluding that your health obliges you to stay in the country. I am afraid of men- tioning Parson’s Green to you, for I find you would be importuned, if so near, to come to town, and our innocent air would be accused of the ill effects of London smoke. If your acquaintances would make you visits, and expect no returns, I would do all in my power to tempt you to a lady, who would take all possible care of you. She has prepared you a very warm room, and if you take the resolution, which she thinks you are obliged to by your promise, you must send me word of it ; for, as your physician, you must refuse none of her prescriptions ; and 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290 ; Locke to Clarke, 6 March, 1692-3. 1(1P2. I ■J5t. 60.J THE EARL OF MONMOUTH. 253 she will not allow yon to come up but in a glass coach. This is no compliment ; and you can gain no admittance except my coach brings you, which I can send without the least inconvenience. But after all, I desire you not to venture coming towards us if it may he prejudicial to your health. If you stay in the country, I will send you now and then a news letter. Our revolving government always affords us something new every three or four months ; but what would be most new and strange would be to see it do anything that were really for its interest. There seems a propensity towards something like it. I fear their sullen and duller heads will not allow it. Mons. Blanquet tells us the king is grown in love with English- men and whigs : it is true, he smiles and talks with us, hut Messrs. Seymour and Trevor come up the back stairs.” Sir John Trevor, it will he remembered, was the Earl of Carmarthen’s profligate friend and chief agent in corrupting the house of commons, of which he was now speaker. Sir Edward Seymour, a man about as worth- less, had lately been made a commissioner of the treasury. “I will engage no further in politics,” the earl added, after some more complaint about the disorganised con- dition of public affairs, “ but, being sick, am going, by way of physic, to eat a good supper and drink your health in a glass or two of my reviving wine .” 1 Feeling that he could do nothing thus to serve his country, Locke appears to have concerned himself very little about the political movements of this time. Though the first letter written by Locke to Edward Clarke, which has come down to us in its original shape, 1 Lord King, p. 236; Monmouth to Locke, 19 Nov., 1692. 254 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XU. is dated 1692, we have the substance of many others, some of which were written at least eight years earlier. During the first portion of his stay in Holland Locke had corresponded much with Clarke, with the special object of assisting him in the bringing-up of his children. His notes for these letters he appears to have kept by him with the thought of some day working them up into a treatise on education, and he was at last induced, not to do this, but to string them together into a volume, by the solici- tation of several friends, among others his new friend William Molyneux. “My brother has sometimes told me,” wrote Molyneux, “ that whilst he had the happiness of your acquaintance at Leyden you were upon a work on the method of learn- ing, and that, too, at the request of a tender father for the use of his only son. Wherefore, good sir, let me most earnestly entreat you by no means to lay aside this infinitely useful work till you have finished it, for ’twill be of vast advantage to all mankind, as well as particu- larly to me, your entire friend. There could be nothing more acceptable to me than the hopes thereof. I have but one child, who is now nigh four years old and promises well. His mother left him to me very young” — she had died at Chester in 1689 — “and my affections, I must confess, are strongly placed on him. It has pleased God, by the liberal provisions of our ancestors, to free me from the toiling cares of providing a fortune for him, so that my whole study shall be to layup a treasure of knowledge in his mind, for his happiness both in this life and the next.” That pathetic request was answered more promptly than Molyneux could have hoped. Three weeks after 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 34; William Molyneux to Locke, 2 March, 1692-3. it”oi).] * some thoughts concerning education.’ 255 receiving it, Locke wrote to say that the manuscript had “gone to the printer at his instance.” “ These letters, or at least some of them, have been seen by some of my acquaintance here, who would needs persuade me ’twould he of use to publish them. Your impatience to see them has not, I assure you, slackened my hand or kept me in suspense. I know not yet whether I shall set my name to this discourse, and, therefore, shall desire you to conceal it.” 1 The work was not published till July, 1693, but Locke’s name, though not on the title-page, was appended to the “ epistle dedicatory,” addressed to Edward Clarke, and dated the 7th of March, 1692-3. “These ‘Thoughts concerning Education,’ which now come abroad into the world,” he then wrote, “ do of right belong to you, being written several years since for your sake, and are no other than you have already by you in my letters. I have so little varied anything, but only the order of what was sent to you at different times and on several occasions, that the reader will easily find, in the familiarity and fashion of the style, that they were rather the private conversation of two friends than a discourse designed for public view. Those whose judgment I defer much to, telling me that this rough draft of mine might he of some use if made more public, touched upon what will always he very prevalent with me. For I think it every man’s indispensable duty to do all the service he can to his country, and I see not what difference he puts between himself and his cattle who lives without that thought. This subject is of so great concernment, and a right way cf education is of so general advantage, that did I find my abilities answer my wishes, I should not have needed 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 41 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 28 March, 1693. 256 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. exhortations or importunities from others. However, the meanness of these papers, and my just distrust of them, shall not keep me, by the shame of doing so little, from contributing my mite, when there is no more required of me than my throwing it into the public receptacle. The early corruption of youth is now become so general a complaint that he cannot he thought wholly impertinent who brings the consideration of this matter on the stage, and offers something if it be but to excite others or afford matter of correction. You will, however, bear me witness that the method here proposed has had no ordinary effects upon a gentleman’s son it was not designed for. I will not say the good temper of the child did not very much contribute to it ; but this I think you and the parents are satisfied of, that a contrary usage, according to the ordinary disciplining of children, would not have mended that temper, nor have brought him to be in love with his book, to take a pleasure in learning, and to desire as he does to be taught more than those about him think fit always to teach him.” The child here referred to may have been young Frank Masham, whose education Locke was now superintending, as he had formerly super- intended that of young Anthony Ashley, that of young Arent Furly, and probably that of others who had come in his way. Having given practical study to the subject of edu- cation all through his life, Locke had good right now to propound his views to the world. And notwith- standing some blemishes and eccentricities, his plan was a wonderfully sensible one. Not the least of its recom- mendations is that in it the crafts of the doctor and the teacher were combined. We have seen in his own case, and in previous pages some illustrations have A^ebJ ‘ SOME THOUGHTS CONCERNING EDUCATION.’ 257 been taken from this treatise of bis to show, bow eager tbe old pedagogues were for certain sorts of intellectual training ; but physical education was before tbis time almost a thing unknown. Locke bad clear notions of bis own, which be advanced very boldly, as to tbe sort of pedagogic work that was most proper for duly developing children’s minds ; but be was yet bolder in bis insistance on tbe necessity of looking after their bodies if their minds were to be trained in any useful way. “A sound mind in a sound body,” was the trite, neglected maxim that Locke preached, in his own eloquently conversational language. “ He whose mind directs not wisely will never take the right way ; and he whose body is crazy and feeble will never be able to advance in it.” “ I imagine the minds of children are as easily turned this or that way as water itself, and, though this be the principal part, and our main care should be about the inside, yet the clay cottage is not to be neglected.” 1 Therefore he began by propounding some very homely wisdom about the training of the body. “ Most children’s constitutions,” he said, “ are either spoilt or at least harmed by cockering and tenderness. The face, when we are born, is no less tender than any other part of the body. ’Tis use alone hardens it and makes it more able to endure the cold. And therefore the Scythian philosopher gave a very significant answer to the Athenian who wondered how he could go naked in frost and snow. ‘ How,’ said the Scythian, ‘ can you endure your face exposed to the sharp winter air ? ’ ‘ My face is used to it,’ said the Athenian. ‘ Think me all face,’ replied the Scythian. Our bodies will endure anything that from the beginning they are accustomed to.” 2 Locke did not propose that English children should be made to run about naked ; but he wanted them to have their bodies so hardened that they could ward off the assaults of variable winds and weather, which are the main causes of disease. He objected to too much clothing. He recom- mended plenty of washing and bathing in cold weather, and went so far as to suggest that the child’s shoes should be so thin “ that they might leak and let in water whenever he comes near it.” “ Here,” he said, “I fear 1 ‘ Some Thoughts concerning Education,’ §§ 1, 2. 2 Ibid., §§ 4, 5, You. II.— 17 258 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII I shall have the mistress and maids too against me : one will think it too filthy, and the other, perhaps, too much pains to make clean his stockings. But yet truth will have it that his health is much more worth than all such considerations, and ten times as much more. I doubt not but, if a man from his cradle had been always used to go barefoot, whilst his hands were constantly wrapped up in mittens and covered with hand-shoes, as the Dutch call gloves — I doubt not, I say, hut such a custom would make taking wet in his hands as dangerous to him as now taking wet in their feet is to a great many others.” “Another thing that is of great advantage to every one’s health, but especially to children’s,” he said, “ is to be much in the open air, and very little as may be by the fire, even in winter. By this he will accustom himself also to heat and cold, shine and rain ; all which if a man’s body will not endure, it will serve him to very little purpose in this world.” 1 Insisting upon loose clothing — which will let nature “have scope to fashion the body as she thinks best,” seeing that “ she works, of herself, a great deal better and exacter than we can direct her” — Locke insisted yet more on simple diet, “ without other sauce than hunger.” “ I impute a great part of our diseases in England,” he said, “ to our eating too much flesh and too little bread.” Plenty of sleep and early rising were strongly recommended; but “ let the bed be hard, and rather quilts than feathers : hard lodging strengthens the parts, whereas being buried every night in feathers melts and dissolves the body, is often the cause of weakness, and the forerunner of an early grave.” Finally, as regards training of the body, Locke laid down the rule, “ very sacredly to be observed,” that children ©uglit to be physicked as little as possible. Plenty of fresh air and cold water, of exercise and sleep, good food and well-ordered habits would be better for them than “ the ladies’ diet-drinks or apothecaries’ medicines,’'' than “ the busy-man that will presently fill their windows with gaily pots and their stomachs with drugs.” “ In this part I hope I shall find an easy belief,” he said ; “ and nobody can have a pretence to doubt the advice of one who has spent some time in the study of physic when he counsels you not to be too forward in making use of physic and physicians.” 2 Having thus pointed out the ways in which he considered that the body could he best fitted “ to obey and execute the orders of the mind,” Locke proceeded to set forth his views as to the ways in which “ to set the mind 1 ‘Some Thoughts concerning Education,’ §§ 7, 9. * Ibid., §§ 11, 13, 14, 21, 22, 29. 1«93. I JEt. 60 . J PHYSICAL AND MORAL TRAINING. 259 right, that on all occasions it may he disposed to consent to nothing hut what may be suitable to the dignity and excellency of a rational creature.” 1 “ The difference to be found in the manners and abilities of men is owing more to their education than to anything else,” Locke urged, and he com- plained bitterly that this truth was so much neglected in his day, and that no effort at all was made by most parents to train their children’s minds when most tender and pliant ; that, in fact, nearly all the training went the other way. “ Parents, being wisely ordained by nature to love their children, are very apt, if reason watch not that natural affection very warily, to let it run into fondness. They love their little ones, and ’tis their duty ; but they often, with them, cherish their faults too. They must not be crossed, for- sooth ; they must be permitted to have their wills in all things ; and, they being in their infancies not capable of great vices, their parents think they may safely enough indulge their little irregularities and make themselves sport with their pretty perverseness which, they think, well enough becomes that innocent age. But to a fond parent, that would not have his child corrected for a perverse trick, but excused it, saying it was a small matter, Solon very well replied, ‘Ay, but custom is a great one.’ ” “ By humouring and cockering them when little, parents corrupt the principles of nature in their children, and wonder afterwards to taste the bitter waters when they themselves have poisoned the fountain. When their children are grown up and these ill habits with them, when they are too big to be dandled and their parents can no longer make use of them as playthings, then they com- plain that ‘ the brats are untoward and perverse,’ then they are offended to see them wilful, and are troubled with those ill humours which they them- selves infused and fomented in them : and then, perhaps too late, would be glad to get out those which their own bands have planted, and which now have taken too deep root to be easily extirpated.” “ Having made them ill children, we foolishly expect they should be good men For, if the child must have grapes or sugar-plums when he has a mind to them, rather than make poor baby cry or be out of humour, why, when he is grown up, must he not be satisfied too if his desires carry him to wine or women ? They are objects as suitable to the longing of one of more years as what he cried for when little was to the inclinations of a child. The having desires ac- commodated to the apprehensions and relish of those several ages is not a fault, but tbe not having them subject to the rules and restraints of reason. The difference lies, not in the having or not having appetites, but in the power to govern and deny ourselves in them.” 2 1 ‘ Some Thoughts concerning Education,’ § 31. 2 Ibid., §§ 32,34,35,36. 260 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. That from earliest infancy the mind should be trained to govern the body by exercise of reason and self-denial, and that as it progressed it should be enabled to make the best use of its faculties in dignified and serviceable ways, was Locke’s reiterated recommendation. Perhaps, approving the stern treatment to which he himself, as a child, had been subjected by his father, there was too much sternness in his rules. But his rules were never unkind. The unkindness, as he urged, is in encouraging children to be naughty, and then flogging them for their naughtiness. The parent who keeps his child in awe of him need never flog him, and, whereas awe in a child naturally passes into respect in a man, “ slavish discipline ” begets nothing but “ a slavish temper.” If you have not the wit to keep your children in order without whipping them, Locke said in effect, you had better let them run wild ; “for extravagant young fellows, that have liveli- ness and spirit, come sometimes to be set right, and so make able and great men ; but dejected minds, timorous and tame, are hardly ever to be raised, and very seldom attain to anything.” “ If severity, carried to the highest pitch, does prevail and works a cure upon the present unruly distemper, it is often by bringing in the room of it a worse and more dangerous disease, by breaking the mind, and then, in the place of a disorderly young fellow, you have a low-spirited, moped creature, who, however with his unnatural sobriety he may please silly people who commend tame inactive children because they make no noise nor give them any trouble, yet at last will probably prove as uncomfortable a thing to his friends as he will be all his life an useless thing to himself and others.” 1 Excellent wisdom, surely, for a bachelor of sixty or thereabouts to impress upon married folk and parents ! Deprecating the rod and all coarse punishments, Locke objected as strongly to the rewards usually given to children. “ He that will give his son apples, or sugar-plums, or what else of this kind he is most delighted with, to make him learn his book, does but authorise his love of pleasure, and foster up that dangerous propensity which he ought by all means to subdue and stifle in him.” What, then, did he propose instead of ordinary rewards and punishments? Esteem and disgrace. These, he urged, are “the most powerful incentives to the mind, when once it is brought to relish them ; if you can once get into children a love of credit and an apprehension of shame and disgrace, you have put into them the true principle which will con- stantly work and incline them to the right.” That, he admitted, is not 1 ‘ Some Thoughts concerning Education,’ §§ 46, 51. 1*93. "I Mt. 60. J REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS. 2G1 easy. But education is not easy. It can only be managed properly by inducing the children to respect their teachers, and they who cannot win this respect cannot possibly be good teachers. And, Locke added, after saying much more about the moral training of children, “ He that will have his son have a respect for him and his orders, must himself have a great reverence for his son. ‘ Maxima debetur pueris reverentia.’ You must do nothing before him which you would not have him imitate. If anything escape you, which you would have pass for a fault in him, he will be sure to shelter himself under your example, and shelter himself so as that it will not be easy to come at him to correct it in him the right way. If you punish him for what be sees you practise yourself, he will not think that severity to proceed from kindness in you, careful to amend a fault in him, but will be apt to interpret it the peevishness and arbitrary imperiousness of a father who, without any ground for it, would deny his son the liberty and pleasure he takes himself. Or, if you assume to yourself the liberty you have taken as a privilege belonging to riper years, to which a child must not aspire, you do but add new force to your example, and recommend the action the more powerfully to him. For you must always remember that children affect to be men earlier than is thought, and they love breeches, not for their cut or ease, but because the having them is a mark of a step towards manhood.” 1 In order to turn children into reasonable men and women, Locke thought, their reasoning powers must be made use of and strengthened. “ They understand reasoning as early as they do language, and, if I misobserve not, they love to be treated as rational creatures sooner than is imagined. ’Tis a pride should be cherished in them, and, as much as can be, made the great instrument to turn them by. But when I talk of reasoning, I do not intend any other but such as is suited to the child’s capacity and appre- hension. Nobody can think a boy of three or seven years old should be argued with as a grown man. Long discourses and philosophical reasonings, at best, amaze and confound, but do not instruct children. They cannot conceive the force of long deductions. The reasons that move them must be obvious and level to their thoughts, and such as may, if I may say so, be felt and touched ; but yet, if their age, temper, and inclination be considered, there will never want such motives as may be sufficient to convince them.” 2 Locke’s notion as to the sort of moral training proper to young people 1 ‘ Some Thoughts concerning Education,’ §§ 52, 56, 71. a Ibid., § 81. 2G2 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. when passed out of infancy and early childhood is set forth at great length in his ‘Thoughts concerning Education,’ and may be compactly illustrated by a few sentences from his account of an ideal tutor and his duties. “ The great work of a governor,” he said, “ is to fashion the carriage and form the mind, to settle in his pupil good habits and the principles of virtue and wisdom, to give him by little and little a view of mankind, and work him into a love and imitation of what is excellent and praiseworthy, and, in the prosecution of it, to give him vigour, activity, and industry. The studies which he sets him upon are but as it were the exercises of his faculties and employment of his time, to keep him from sauntering and idleness, to teach him application, and accustom him to take pains, and to give him some little taste of what his own industry must perfect. For who expects that, under a tutor, a young gentleman should be an accomplished critic, orator, or logician, go to the bottom of metaphysics, natural philo- sophy, or mathematics, or be a master in history or chronology ? Though something of each of these is to be taught him, it is only to open the door that he may look in, and, as it were, begin an acquaintance, but not to dwell there ; and a governor would be much blamed that should keep his pupil too long and lead him too far in most of them. But of good breeding, knowledge of the world, virtue, industry, and a love of reputa- tion, he cannot have too much ; and, if he have these, he will not long want what he needs or desires of the other.” 1 Virtue, wisdom, good breeding, and learning Locke considered — and in that gradation — to be the matters with which education should concern itself. The foundation of virtue he placed in “ a true notion of God, as of the independent Supreme Being, the author and maker of all things, from whom we receive all our good, who loves us and gives us all things,” in careful avoidance of all teaching about supernatural agencies of evil, and in the diligent inculcation of truthful habits. “ Let the child know that twenty faults are sooner to be forgiven than the straining of truth to cover any one by an excuse. And to teach him betimes to love and to be good- natured to others is to lay early the foundation of an honest man ; all injustice generally springing from too great love of ourselves and too little of others.” 2 “ To accustom a child to have true notions of things, and not to be satisfied till he has them ; to raise his mind to great and worthy thoughts; 1 * Some Thoughts concerning Education,’ § 94. 2 Ibid., § § 136, 139. 1693. "I ■ffit. 60. J THE SCOPE OF EDUCATION. 263 and to keep him at a distance from falsehood and cunning, which has always a broad mixture of falsehood in it,” Locke said under his second head, “is the fittest preparation of a child for wisdom.” 1 Of good breeding he thought highly and wrote at some length, though his views were fairly summed up in one sentence : “ There are two sorts of ill-breeding, the one a sheepish bashfulne.ss, and the other a misbecoming negligence and disrespect in our carriage ; both which are avoided by duly observing this rule, Not to think meanly of ourselves, and not to think meanly of others.” 2 Learning came last in Locke’s category, and he was careful to point out that he regarded it as the least part of education. “ When I consider what a-do is made about a little Latin and Greek, how many years are spent in it, and what a noise and business it makes to no purpose, I can hardly forbear thinking that the parents of children still live in fear of the schoolmaster’s rod, which they look on as the only instrument of education, and a language or two to be its whole business.” “ Secure your son’s innocence as much as possible,” he said, “cherish and nurse up the good, and gently correct and weed out any bad inclinations, and settle in him good habits. This is the main point, and, this being provided for, learning may be had into the bargain, and that, as I think, at a very easy rate.” 3 Of the objections taken by Locke to the subjects and methods of school- teaching which were favoured in his day, and, by inference, of the im- provements that he desired, sufficient illustrations have perhaps been given in our examination of his own school life. It is not, at any rate, necessary here to repeat his curriculum of study as adapted to various scholars. His grand canon was that all teaching should follow the dictates of common- sense in being made as simple and intelligible as possible, free from all scholastic jargon and fettered by no mischievous traditions ; and, next to that, he insisted that, while to every pupil ought to be imparted as much useful instruction as he had time and intelligence to receive, the instruction should in every case be suited to the special requirements and future prospects of the pupil. Any one intended for one of the learned professions should, of course, be well grounded in the classical languages and all the lore necessary to the thorough performance of the duties that would devolve upon him ; but for any one intended to be a country gentleman or a merchant, or to follow any other path in life, the prescribed studies should 1 ‘ Some Thoughts concerning Education,’ § 140. 2 Ibid., § 141. 3 Ibid., § 147. 264 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XI L be in harmony with the circumstances of his career, and he should be troubled with no useless learning. In the case of each youth, “ his tutor should remember that his business is not so much to teach him all that is knowable as to raise in him a love and esteem of knowledge, and to put him in the right way of knowing and improving himself when he has a mind to it.” “The great business of all is virtue and wisdom. Teach him to get a mastery over his inclinations, and submit his appetite to reason. This being obtained, and by constant practice settled into habit, the hardest part of the task is over.” 1 Before parting from ‘ Some Thoughts concerning Edu- cation,’ we may take note of the correspondence between Locke and Molyneux which the hook provoked. Highly commending the work as a 'whole, Molyneux took exception to that part in which, as he said, Locke seemed “to bear hard on the tender spirits of children and the natural affections of parents,” and especially to the doctrine that “ a child should never be suffered to have what he craves or so much as speaks for, much less if he cries for it .” 2 “You say, indeed, ‘ This will teach them to stifle their desires, and to practise modesty and tem- perance ; ’ but for teaching these virtues, I conceive,” Molyneux urged, “ we shall have occasions enough in relation to their hurtful desires, without abridging them so wholly in matters indifferent and innocent, that tend only to divert and please their busy spirits. You allow, indeed, ‘that ’twould be inhumanity to deny them those things one perceives would delight them.’ If so, I see no reason why, in a modest way, and with submission to the wills of their superiors, they may not be allowed to declare what will delight them. ‘No,’ say you, ‘ but in all wants of fancy and affectation, they should never, if once declared, be hearkened to or complied with.’ This I can 1 ‘ Some Thoughts concerning Education,’ §§ 195, 200. 2 Ibid., § 108. KP3. T jEt. 60. J THE MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN. 265 never agree to ; it being to deny that liberty between a child and its parents which we desire, and have granted us, between man and his Creator.” 1 Molyneux said more to the same effect, the purport of which appears in Locke’s reply. “ Your objection,” he then wrote, “ confirms to me that you are the good- natured man I took you for ; and I do not at all wonder that the affection of a kind father should startle at it at first reading, and think it very severe that children should not be suffered to express their desires ; for so you seem to understand me. What you say — that children would be moped for want of diversion and recreation, or else we must have those about them that study nothing all day but how to find employment for them ; and how this would rack the invention of any man living you would leave me to judge — seems to intimate as if you understood that children should do nothing but by prescription Of their parents or tutors, chalking out each action of the whole day in train to them. I hope my words express no such thing, for it is quite contrary to my sense, and I think would be useless tyranny in their governors and certain ruin to the children. I am so much for recreation that I would, as much as possible, have all they do be made so. I think recreation as necessary to them as their food, and that nothing can be recreation that does not delight. I would have them have the greatest part of their time left to them, without restraint, to divert themselves any way they think best, so it be free from vicious actions or such as may introduce vicious habits. And therefore, if they should ask to play, it could be no more interpreted 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 50 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 12 August, 1608. 266 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. xii. a want of fancy than if they asked for victuals when hungry ; though, when the matter is well ordered, they will never need to do that. I am for the full liberty of diversion, as much as you can be, and, upon a second perusal of my book, I do not doubt but you will find me so. But, being allowed that, as one of their natural wants, they should not yet be permitted to let loose their desires in importunities for what they fancy. Children are very apt to covet what they see those above them in age have or do, to have or do the like, especially if it be their elder brothers or sisters. This, being indulged when they are little, grows up with age, and with that enlarges itself to things of greater consequence, and has ruined more families than one in the world. This should he suppressed in its very first rise, and the desires you would not have encouraged you should not permit to be spoken, which is the best way for them to silence them to themselves .” 1 Molyneux also took exception to Locke’s theory of “ hardy breeding,” saying that he dared not adopt it in his own case, at any rate, as his child was weakly. l ' You say your son is not very strong,” replied Locke. “ To make him strong, you must make him hardy, as I have directed ; hut you must be sure to do it by very insensible degrees, and begin any hardship you would bring him to only in the spring. This is all the caution needs be used. I have an example of it in the house I live in, where the only son of a very tender mother was almost destroyed by a too tender keeping. He is now, by a contrary usage, come to bear wind and weather, and wet in his feet ; and the cough which threatened him under that warm and 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 57 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 23 August, 1G93. 1693. 1 Mt. 60. J THE MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN. 267 cautious management lias left him, and is now no longer his parents’ constant apprehension as it was .” 1 As Oates was the house Locke then lived in, Lady Masham was, of course, the tender mother and Frank Masham the child alluded to. “ Were it not too nigh approaching to vanity, I could tell you of extraordinary effects your method of education has had on my little boy,” Molyneux wrote twenty months later . 2 “ I should he glad to know the particulars,” said Locke in his reply. “ For, though I have seen the success of it in a child of the lady in whose house I am (whose mother has taught him Latin without knowing it herself when she began), yet I would be glad to have other instances, because some men, who cannot endure any- thing should be mended in the world by a new method, object, I hear, that my way of education is impracticable. But this I can assure you, that the child above mentioned, but nine years old in June last, has learnt to read and write very well, is now reading Quintus Curtius with his mother, understands geography and chronology very well and the Copernican system of our vortex, is able to multiply well and divide a little, and all this without ever having had one blow for his book .” 3 Thus encouraged, Molyneux wrote his own little boy’s educational biography. “ He was six years old about the middle of last July. When he was but just turned five, he could read perfectly well, and on the globes could have traced out and pointed at all the noted parts, countries, and cities of the world, both land and sea; 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 57 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 23 August. 1693. 2 Ibid., p. 114 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 7 May, 1695. 3 Ibid., p. 117 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 2 July, 1695. 268 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap, xii and, by five and a half, could perform many of the plainest problems on the globe, as the longitude and latitude, the antipodes, the time with them and other countries, etc., and this by way of play and diversion, seldom called to it, never chid or beaten for it. About the same age he could read any number of figures not exceeding six places, break it as you please by cyphers or zeros. By the time he was six he could manage a compass, ruler and pencil very prettily, and perform many little geometrical tricks, and advanced to writing and arithmetic, and has been about three months at Latin, wherein his tutor observes, as nigh as he can, the method prescribed by you. He can read a gazette, and, in the large maps of Sanson, shows most of the remarkable places as he goes along, and turns to the proper maps. He has been shown some dogs dissected, and can give some little account of the grand traces of anatomy. And as to the formation of his mind, which you rightly observe to be the most valuable part of education, I do not believe that any child had ever his passions more perfectly at command. He is obedient and observant to the nicest particular, and at the same time sprightly, playful, and active.” 1 “ You have a good subject to work on,” Locke said in his answer, £< and therefore pray let this be your chief care, to fill your son’s head with clear and distinct ideas, and teach him on all occasions, both by practice and rule, how to get them, and the necessity of them. This, to- gether with a mind active and set upon the attaining of truth and reputation, is the true principling of a young man. But to give him a reverence for our opinions, 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 124; William Molyneux to Locke, 24 August, ‘AN ESSAY CONCEENING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.’ 269 because we taught them, is not to make knowing men, hut prattling parrots.” 1 Though the publication of ‘ Some Thoughts concerning Education ’ was an important event in Locke’s literary life, and must be referred to the early months of 1693, it did not take up much of his time. His quiet life at Oates during the winter of 1692-3, and some time after that, was chiefly occupied in preparing a second edition of the ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding,’ and in studies connected therewith. “ I am happy to tell- you,” he wrote to Limborch in A-Ugust, 1692, “ that a new edition of my book is called for, which, in the present turmoil of the protestant world, I consider very satisfactory.” 2 It was certainly very satisfactory that, within a space of hardly more than two years, a work of so solid a nature, and appealing to such a limited circle of readers — and it must be remembered that in those days the circle of intelligent readers to whom such a book, written in English, could appeal, was far smaller than it would have been had it been produced in Latin — should have passed through a first edition. In setting himself to prepare another, Locke took all the pains that were due to his own reputation as a now acknowledged teacher of philosophy, though his care for that was very slight in comparison with his honest desire, in the interests of truth, to make the work as complete and accurate as it was in his power to make it. His temper appears from a letter that he wrote to 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 146; Locke to William Molyneux, 80 March, 1696. 2 MSS. in the Bemonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, 2 August, 1692. 270 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. Molyneux oh the 20th of September. “ I desire your advice and assistance about a second edition of my ‘ Essay,’ the former being now dispersed,” he said. “You have, I perceive, read it over so carefully, more than once, that I know nobody I can more reasonably consult about the mistakes and defects of it ; and I expect a great deal more from any objections you should make, who comprehend the whole design and compass of it, than from any one who has read but a part of it, or measures it upon a slight reading by his own prejudices. You will find, by my ‘ Epistle to the Beader,’ that I was not insen- sible of the fault I committed by being too long on some points, and the repetitions that, by my way of writing it, I let pass, but not without advice so to do. But — • now that my notions are got into the world, and have in some measure bustled through the opposition and diffi- culty they were like to meet with from the deceived opinion and that prepossession which might hinder them from being understood upon a short proposal — I ask you whether it would not be better to pare off a great part of that which cannot but appear superfluous to an intelligent and attentive reader. If you are of that mind, I shall beg the favour of you to mark to me those passages which you think fittest to be left out. If there be any- thing wherein you think me mistaken, I beg you to deal freely with me, that either I may clear it up to you, or reform it in the next edition. For I flatter myself that I am so sincere a lover of truth that it is very indifferent to me, so I am possessed of it, whether it be my own or any other’s discovery. For I count any parcel of this gold not the less to be valued, nor not the less enriching, because I wrought it not out of the mine myself. I think every one ought to contribute to the common stock, but ^ 60 - 62 .] THE SECOND EDITION OF THE ESSAY. 271 to have ho other scruple or shyness about the receiving of truth but that he he not imposed on and take counterfeit, and what will not bear the touch, for genuine and real truth. I doubt not but that, in the reading of my hook, you miss several things that perhaps belong to my sub- ject, and, you would think, belong to the system. If in this part, too, you will communicate your thoughts, you will do me a favour ; for, though I will not so far flatter myself as to undertake to fill up the gaps which you may observe in it, yet it may be of use, where mine is at a stand, to suggest to others matter of farther contempla- tion.” That bundle of requests was followed by an interesting correspondence between Molyneux and Locke, extending over the year and a half that elapsed before the second edition of the ‘ Essay ’ was ready for the printers. Molyneux was anxious that his friend, while reprinting the work, should reshape and expand some portions in a more systematic treatise, for school and college use, on logic and metaphysics— which Locke declined to do — and yet more anxious that he should supplement it by a treatise on ethics- — a proposal to which Locke half assented. As regarded the ''Essay’ itself his first judg- ment was that “ the same judicious hand that first formed it is best able to reform it, where he sees convenient.” He suggested, however, several verbal corrections, most of which were thankfully adopted, and a few others of more importance. It was by his advice that the long chapter “ of identity and diversity ” 2 was added to the work, and, though not by his advice alone, that considerable altera- tions were made in the more famous chapter “ of 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 6 ; Locke to Molyneux, 20 Sept., 1692. * * Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. ii., ch. xxvii. 272 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. power.” 1 These and some minor alterations added much to the value of the work. In correcting and improving his ‘ Essay ’ with the utmost possible care and unbiassed thought, Locke chiefly occupied all the time he could give to literary work from the autumn of 1692 till the spring of 1694. “ My book is now printed and bound and ready to he sent to you,” he wrote to Molyneux in May, 1694, in a letter in which he complained of “ the slowness of the press.” 2 One small matter, if it be a small one, connected with the publication, deserves to be noted as an evidence of Locke’s desire to make his work as useful as possible to liis readers, without much thought of his own pecuniary advantage. Along with the second edition he issued, on separate slips, all the important alterations and additions that ho had made, copies of which all owners of the first edition could have for the asking. A set of these slips he sent to Molyneux, with a suggestion that he should insert them in his original copy and give it away to “ any young man.” 3 “ Our friend Dr. Locke, I am told, has made an addition to his excellent ‘Essay,’ which may be had without purchasing the whole book,” wuote Evelyn to Pepys on the 7th of July. “ Dr. Locke,” Pepys replied on the 10th of August, “ has set a useful example to future reprinters. I hope it will be followed in books of value.” The second edition had not been published many months before a third was called for, and it was published 1 ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. ii., ch. xxi. See a letter from Le Clerc to Locke, dated 12 Aug., 1694, in Lord King, p. 818. a ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 76 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 26 May, 1694. 3 Ibid. One of these sets was pasted by Tyrrell into bis copy of the first edition, now in the British Museum. J 3 t? 62 .] rHE LATIN TRANSLATION OF THE ESSAY. 273 before the year was out, near the end of June, 1695. This, however, was hardly more than a verbal reprint of the one that preceded it, and ga.ve Locke very little fresh work to do. He was more occupied with various proposals for translating it into Latin. Molyneux urged this very strongly, and offered to pay all the expenses of the translation, if Locke would revise the work, or even him- self, if necessary, to undertake the latter task. “ This I do,” he said, “not that I think you may not with a great deal of ease employ some one yourself in this matter, but merely that herein I may have an oppor- tunity of doing so much good in the world.” 2 The offer was in part accepted by Locke. He would not put his friend to pecuniary expense, nor did the publisher require that, but he was glad for him to superintend the translation. He told Molyneux of an unfortunate attempt made by a young gentleman in Amsterdam, named Veriyn, to produce a Latin version. 3 “ Since that, my bookseller was, and had been for some time, seeking for a translator, whom he would have treated with to have undertaken it, and have satisfied for his pains. But, a little before the coming of your letter, he writ me word he had been disappointed where he expected to have found one who would have done it, and was now at a loss, so that what you call a bold is not only the kindest, but the most seasonable, proposal you could have made.” 4 There was some difficulty, however, in finding a com- 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 117 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 2 July, 1695. 2 Ibid., p. 94; William Molyneux to Locke, 15 Jan., 1694-5. 3 MSS. in the Remonstrants’ Library ; Locke to Limborch, 7 Nov., 1690, and 13 March, 1690-1. Also Lord King (ed. 1830), vol. ii., p. 311 ; Limborch to Locke, [19 — ] 29 May, 1691. 4 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 100 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 8 March, 1694-5. Vol. II. — 18 274 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. petent translator, and after that in getting the work completed. Molyneux at first entrusted it to a Dublin student named William Mullart ; but, after some experi- ment, his Latin style w r as found to be faulty and his other engagements threatened to detain him very long over the business. 1 Another person had accordingly to be looked for, and at last the right man was found in Richard Burridge, an Irish clergyman of great scholar- ship and very liberal opinions. 2 Beginning the welcome task early in 1696, he was at intervals engaged upon it during at least three years, and it was not published till 1701. At the instance of Molyneux the ‘ Essay ’ had been made a text-book in Trinity College, Dublin, in 1692, or even earlier. “ The reverend provost of our university, Dr. Ashe, a most learned and ingenious man,” wrote Molyneux, “ was so wonderfully pleased and satisfied with it that he has ordered it to be read by the bachelors in the college, and strictly examines them in their progress therein. Now a large discourse in the way of a logic would be much more taking in the universities, wherein youths do not satisfy themselves to have the breeding or business of the place unless they are imaged in some- thing that bears the name and form of logic.” 3 It was on that account that Molyneux urged Locke to reshape the work in such a way as to adapt it to college use. A better proposal was made, two years later, very soon after the publication of the second edition, by Dr. John Wynne, 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 122 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 24 August, 1695. 2 Ibid., p. 129; Locke to William Molyneux, 20 Nov., 1695 ; and several subsequent letters between Locke and Molyneux. 3 Ibid., p. 17 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 22 Dec., 1692. m'62.] the abridgment of the essay. 275 a fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, and bishop of St. Asapli in 1714, wlio volunteered to prepare an abridgment of the ‘ Essay.’ To this offer Locke gladly acceded, 1 and Wynne’s compilation was published in 1696, with a dedication to Locke, dated the 17th of April, 1695. Its success shows that it found great favour with university students, though it doubtless helped to provoke the opposition that soon after began to be offered to the larger work by some of the champions of orthodoxy both at Oxford and at Cambridge. The first note of opposition had already come in a feeble and courteous way. The ‘ Essay ’ had only been pub- lished a month or two when John Norris, a clergyman who had been intimate with Lady Masham before Locke’s return from Holland, appended to a work entitled ‘ Chris- tian Blessedness, or Discourses upon the Beatitudes of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,’ some ‘ Cursory Deflections upon a Book called “ An Essay concerning Human Understanding.” ’ 2 Locke did not think Norris’s strictures worth much attention. He penned some ob- servations upon them, however, in October, 1695, 3 and appears to have been induced by them to renew his ac- quaintance with the chief work of the far abler man from whom Norris had received his inspiration. Nicolas Malebranche — Locke’s junior by six years, the 1 Lord King, pp. 189, 191; Wynne to Locke, 31 Jan., 1G94-5 ; Locke to Wynne, 3 Feb., 1694-5. 2 Norris’s most important work, ‘An Essay on the Ideal World,’ in which he set forth those views of Malebranche which were afterwards much more skilfully adapted and expanded by Bishop Berkeley, was not published until 1701, with a second part in 1702. 3 ‘ Bemarks upon some of Mr. Norris’s Books,’ in ‘ A Collection of Several Pieces of Mr. John Locke ’ (1720). These brief strictures substan- tially agreed with Locke’s fuller observations on Malebranche. 276 IN KETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. LChap. XII. greatest of all the disciples of Descartes who were loyal throughout their lives to the Cartesian doctrines, though he coloured them with a great deal of religious mysticism and added to them a great deal of original metaphysi- cal speculation, the intellectual kinsman if by no means the intellectual comrade of Pascal — had, in 1674, published his ‘Recherche de la Verite.’ What Locke thought of its other five books we do not know, though it would not be difficult to guess ; but the third book, on the understanding or, “ 1’ esprit pur,” was both the most attractive and the most repulsive to him, and especially that part of it in which, by a modification of Plato’s teaching, the origin of ideas was explained in the very pantheistic way which afforded refuge to this greatest of all the oratorians, as well as to some other rebellious catholics. “ Malebranche’s hypothesis of seeing all things in God being that from whence I find some men would derive our ideas,” Locke wrote to Molyneux while he was pre- paring the second edition of his ‘ Essay,’ “ I have some thoughts of adding a new chapter, wherein I will examine it, having, as I think, something to say against it that will show the weakness of it very clearly. But I have so little love of controversy that I am not fully resolved.” 1 “ I should very much approve,” Molyneux replied, “ of your adding a chapter in your essay concerning Male- branche’s hypothesis. As there are enthusiasms in di- vinity, so there are in philosophy, and, as one proceeds from not consulting or misapprehending the book of God, so the other from not reading or considering the book of nature. I look upon Malebranche’s notions, or rather 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 42 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 28 March, 1693. iEt.^ 62 .] MALEBRANCHE ON “ SEEING ALL THINGS IN GOD.” 277 Plato’s, in this particular as perfectly unintelligible ; and if you will engage in a philosophic controversy yon cannot do it with more advantage than in this matter. What you lay down concerning our ideas and knowledge is founded and confirmed by experience and observation that any man may make in himself or the children he converses with, wherein he may note the gradual steps that we make in knowledge; but Plato’s fancy has no foundation in nature, but is merely the product of his own brain.” 1 Locke did not add a chapter to the ‘ Essay,’ but soon after the second edition was published he wrote a short treatise on the portion of Malebranche’s work which most touched on his own ground. “ I have examined Pere Malebranche’s opinion concerning seeing all things in God, and, to my own satisfaction, laid open the vanity and inconsistency and unintelligibleness of that way of explaining human understanding,” he said in March, 1694-5. 2 “What I have writ,” he added in another letter, “ would make a little treatise of itself. But I have not quite gone through it, for fear I should by somebody or other be tempted to print it ; for I love not controversies, and have a personal kindness for the author.” 3 It was published among his posthumous works in 1706, with the title ‘ An Examination of Pere Malebranche’s Opinion of Seeing all Things in God.’ A fuller consideration of Malebranche’s position than the subject calls for here would he needed to make clear the opposition offered to it by Locke. That opposition, moreover, for the most part resolved itself into verbal criticism which, since all that was strongest in Malebranche’s arguments 1 * Familiar Letters,’ p. 45 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 18 April, 1693. 2 Ibid . , p. 101 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 8 March, 1694-5. 3 Ibid., p. Ill ; Locke to William Molyneux, 26 April, 1695. 278 IN KETIBEMENT : WOBK AS AN AUTHOK. [Chap. XII. was subsequently set forth anew and with much more vigour and clearness by Berkeley, is now of little interest save as illustrating Locke’s skill in word-fencing. The ground taken up by Locke was quite legitimate and there was nothing but fair fighting in his attacks, but, as he attacked Male- branche and not Berkeley, they are now out of date. Malebranche argued at great length, and with great ability, though with a good deal of jargon, which Locke showed to be as objectionable as the old jargon of the schoolmen which it was intended to supersede, that we have the power of “ seeing all things,” because we can have “ a desire to see all things,” and therefore that all things are present, though they may not be apparent to our minds ; and, if they are present, he added, “ they can no ways be present but by the presence of God, who contains them in all the simplicity of His being.” That last huge assumption Locke passed by as being outside his range of criticism ; but, even admitting it, he declined to see any substance in the pile of arguments based upon it. “ This reasoning,” he said, “ seems to be founded on this, that the reason of seeing all things is their being present to our minds, because God, in whom they are, is present. This, though the foundation he seems to build on, is liable to a very natural objection, which is, that then we should actually see all things because in God, who is present, they are all actually present to the mind. This he has endeavoured to obviate by saying we see all the ideas in God which he is pleased ‘ to discover to us ’ : which, indeed, is an answer to this objection, but such an one as overturns his whole hypothesis, and renders it useless and as unintelligible as any of those he has for that reason laid aside. He pretends to explain to us how we come to perceive anything, and that is, by having the ideas of them present in our minds — for the soul cannot perceive things at a distance or remote from it, and those ideas are present to the mind only because God, in whom they are, is present to the mind. This, so far, hangs together and is of a piece ; but when, after this, I am told that their presence in my mind is not enough to make them be seen, but God must do something further to dis- cover them to me, I am as much in the dark as I was at first, and all this talk of their presence in the mind explains nothing of the way wherein I perceive them, nor ever will, till he also makes me understand what God does more than make them present to my mind when he discovers them to me. For I thin nobody denies — I am sure I affirm — that the ideas we have are in our minds by the will and power of God, though in a way that we conceive not nor are able to comprehend. God, says our author, is strictly united to the soul, and to the ideas of things too but yet that 1695. "I vEt. 62. J ARGUMENTS AGAINST MALEBEANCHE. 279 presence or union of theirs is not enough to make them seen, but God must show or exhibit them. And what does God do more than make them present to the mind when he shows them ? Of that there is nothing said, to help me over this difficulty, but that, when God shows them, we see them ; which, in short, seems to me to say only thus much, that, when we have these ideas, we have them, and we owe the having them to our Maker — which is to say no more than I do with my ignorance. We have the ideas of figures and colours by the operation of exterior objects on our senses, when the sun shows them us ; but how the sun shows them us, or how the light of the sun produces them in us, what and how the alteration is made in our souls, I know not. Nor does it appear, by anything our author says, that he knows any more what God does when he shows them us, or what it is that is done in our minds, since the presence of them to our minds, he confesses, does it not.'’ 1 That paragraph will sufficiently illustrate Locke’s mode of dealing with Malebranche, if we add to it a sample of his banter. In support of his argument that “ we see all things in God,” Malebranche said, “ The strongest of all reasons is the manner in which the mind perceives all things. It is evident, and all the world knows it by experience, that when we would think of anything in particular, we at first cast our view upon all beings, and afterwards we apply ourselves to the consideration of the object which we desire to think on.” “ This argument,” said Locke, “has no other effect on me but to make me doubt the more of the truth of this doctrine. This, which he calls ‘ the strongest reason of all,’ is built upon matter-of-fact, which I cannot find to be so in myself. I do not observe that, when I would think of a triangle, I first think of ‘ all beings,’ whether those words ‘ all beings ’ be taken here in their proper sense or, very improperly, for being in general. Nor do I think my country neighbours do so, when they first wake in the morning, who, I imagine, do not find it impossible to think of a lame horse they have, or then- blighted corn, till they have run over in their minds all beings that are, and then pitch on Dapple, or else begin to think of being in general, which is being abstracted from all its inferior species, before they come to think of the fly in their sheep or the tares in their corn.” 2 It lias already been mentioned that Molyneux urged Locke to write a treatise on ethics. “ One thing I must 1 ‘ An Examination of Malebranche’s Opinion,’ § 30. 2 Ibid. § 28. 280 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [CHA.1-. XIX. needs insist on to yon,” lie wrote in 1692, “ that yon would think of obliging the world with a treatise of morals, drawn up according to the hints yon frequently give in your ‘ Essay,’ of their being demonstrable according to the mathematical method.” 1 “ Though, by the view I had of moral ideas whilst I was considering that subject,” Locke wrote in answer, “ I thought I saw that morality might be demonstrably made out, yet whether I am able so to make it out is another question. Every one could not have demon- strated what Mr. Newton’s book hath shown to be demonstrable. But to show my readiness to obey your commands, I shall not decline the first leisure I can get to employ some thoughts that way.” 2 Molyneux’s request was repeated several times and echoed by others. “As to a treatise of morals,” Locke said in 1696, “I must own to you that you are not the only person who has been for putting me upon it ; neither have I wholly laid by the thoughts of it. Nay, I so far incline to comply with your desires, that I every now and then lay by some materials for it, as they occasionally occur in the rovings of my mind. But when I consider that a book of offices, as you call it, ought not to be slightly done, especially by me, after what I have said of that science in my ‘ Essay,’ and that 1 nonumque prematur in annum ’ is a rule more necessary to be observed in a subject of that consequence than in any- thing Horace speaks of, I am in doubt whether it would be prudent, in one of my age and health, not to mention other disabilities in me, to set about it. Did the world want a rule, I confess there could be no work so necessary 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 5 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 27 August, 1692. 2 Ibid., p. 10 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 20 Sept., 1692. ^2.] A PROPOSED TREATISE ON ETHICS. 281 nor so commendable. But the gospel contains so perfect a body of ethics, that reason may be excused from that inquiry, since she may find man’s duty clearer and easier in revelation than in herself. ' Think not this the excuse of a lazy man, though it be perhaps of one who, having a sufficient rule for his actions, is content therewith and thinks he may perhaps, with more profit to himself, employ the little time and strength he has in other researches wherein he finds himself in the dark .” 1 To that decision Locke adhered, and his talked-of treatise never got beyond the noting down of a few rough “ materials as they occasionally occurred in the rovings of his mind .” 2 “ You write to me,” Locke said in one of his letters to Molyneux, “as if ink had the same spell upon me that mortar, as the Italians say, has upon others, that, when I had once got my fingers into it, I could never afterwards keep them out. I grant that methinks I see subjects enough, wdiich way ever I cast my eyes, that deserve to be otherwise handled than I imagine they have been ; but they require abler heads and stronger bodies than I have to manage them. Besides, when I reflect on what I have done, I wonder at my own bold folly that has so far exposed me in this nice and critical, as well as quick- sighted and learned, age. I say not this to excuse a lazy idleness to which I intend to give up the rest of my few days. I think every one, according to what way Provi- dence has placed him in, is bound to labour for the public good as far as he is able, or else he has no right to eat .” 3 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 143; Locke to William Molyneux, 30 March, 1696. 3 Of these the most important was published by Lord King, pp. 306 — 312. 2 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 71 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 19 Jan., 1693-4. 282 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. Locke liad certainly already earned his right to eat ; hut, if lie shrank from following his friend’s advice that, as soon as the work involved in the perfecting of his ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding ’ was over, he should apply himself to the preparation of a systematic treatise on ethics, it was only because he thought there was something better for him to do. That thought took shape in the essay on ‘ The Reasonableness of Christ- ianity as delivered in the Scriptures,’ which appears to have chiefly occupied him during the early months of 1695. Writing to Limborch, a year after Locke’s death, Lady Masharn said of him, “ He was horn and had finished his studies at a time when Calvinism was in fashion in England. But these doctrines had come to he little thought of before I came into the world, and Mr. Locke used to speak of the opinions that I had always been accustomed to at Cambridge, even among the clergy there, as something new and strange to him. As, during some years before he w T ent to Holland, he had very little in common with our ecclesiastics, I imagine that the sentiments that he found in vogue among you pleased him far more and seemed to him far more reasonable than anything that he had been used to hear from English theologians. But, whatever the cause, I know that since his return he has always spoken with much affection not only of his friends in Holland but also of the whole society of the remonstrants, on account of the opinions held by them .” 1 Locke had wandered far from Calvinistic ortho- doxy long before he made personal acquaintance with any of the remonstrants ; but there can be no doubt that his 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Lady Masham to Limborcli, 17 Sept., 1705. 2 Et' 9 62 .] * THE REASONABLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY.’ 283 religious opinions were to some extent modified under their influence, nor can it be doubted that they were further influenced by bis intimate association with Lady Masbam, though this latter may only have encouraged him to talk and think much on theological matters without greatly affecting his views upon them. In his own deep religious spirit, however, we may find sufficient explanation for his now writing on “ the reason- ableness of Christianity,” and this came in almost natural sequence to the work he had already done. In his ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding’ he had discussed more or less fully and exhaustively all those important questions that had puzzled the old schoolmen and still perplexed their successors, including some questions that metaphysicians must be content to leave unsolved unless they choose to seek instruction from the theolo gians. In his ‘ Letter concerning Toleration ’ he had very eloquently and boldly, albeit anonymously, asserted the right of every one not only to choose and follow his own modes of religious worship, hut also to think out and adhere to his own system of theological belief. It was only proper that he should now set forth his opinions on what, as an earnest and devout Christian, he regarded as the most momentous of all religious questions. The book grew, almost by accident, out of Locke’s interest in the controversy then rife among churchmen, Unitarians, and other dissenters about “justification.” He was induced, he tells us, to make a careful examin- ation of the New Testament in order, in the first place, to assure himself that “ ’twas faith that justified,” and then to discover “what faith that was that justified, what it was which, if a man believed, it should be imputed to 284 IN RETIREMENT I WORK AS AN AUTHOR. {Chap. XU. him for righteousness.” He was soon led to the very- rational view set forth in the treatise, though one so novel that he was justified in regarding it as a discovery. “ The first view I had of it,” he said, “ seemed mightily to satisfy my mind in the reasonableness and plainness of this doctrine ; yet the general silence I had in my little reading met with concerning any such thing awed me with the apprehension of singularity, till, going on in the gospel history, the whole tenor of it made it so clear and visible that I more wondered that everybody did not see and embrace it than that I should assent to what was so plainly laid down and so frequently inculcated in holy writ, though systems of divinity said nothing of it. The wonderful harmony that, the farther I went, disclosed itself, tending to the same points in all the parts of the sacred history of the gospel, was of no small weight with me and another person” — evidently, Lady Masham — “who every day, from the beginning to the end of my search, saw the progress of it, and knew at my first setting out that I was ignorant whither it would lead me ; and, therefore, every day asked me what more the Scripture had taught me. So far was I from the thoughts of Socinianism, or an intention to write for that or any other party, or to publish anything at all. But, -when I had gone through the whole, and saw what a plain, simple, reasonable thing Christianity was, suited to all conditions and capacities, and in the morality of it, now with divine authority established into a legible law, so far surpassing all that philosophy and human reason had attained to, or could possibly make effectual to all degrees of man- kind, I was flattered to think it might be of some use in the world, especially to those who thought either that there was no need of revelation at all, or that the ^Et 9 52 .] * THE REASONABLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY.’ 285 revelation of our Saviour required the belief of such articles for salvation, which the settled notions and their way of reasoning in some, and want of under- standing in others, made impossible to them.” 1 Locke did not. address himself to those who denied the possibility of a revelation, still less to those who denied the existence of a being able to reveal himself by inspiration or any other form of miracle. He expected his readers not only to believe in the existence of God, but also to accept the Bible as the word of God. But, under those conditions, he bade them look at the Bible as critically as they would at any other book, and derive from it only such teaching as was honestly to be found in it ; it being, he maintained, ‘ a collection of writings designed by God for the instruction of the illiterate bulk of mankind in the way of salvation, and, therefore, generally and in necessary points, to be understood in the plain direct meaning of the words and phrases, such as they may be supposed to have had in the mouths of the speakers, who used them according to the language of that time and country wherein they lived, without such learned, artificial and forced senses as are sought out and put upon them in most of the systems jf divinity, according to the notions that each one has been bred up in.” 2 In that temper he applied himself to his own study of the Bible, and, though his special concernment was with the New Testament, he had to begin with the Old. “ ’Tis obvious to any one who reads the New Testament,” he said, “ that the doctrine of redemption, and consequently of the gospel, is founded upon the supposition of Adam’s fall. To under- stand, therefore, what we are restored to by Jesus Christ, we must under- stand what the Scripture shows us we lost by Adam.” 3 Locke’s exposition of this subject forms the most original part of his treatise. “ What Adam fell from,” he explained, “was the state of perfect obedience, which is called justice in the New Testament, though the word which in the original signifies ‘justice’ be translated ‘righteousness;’ and by this fall he lost Paradise, wherein was tranquillity and the tree of life, that is, he lost bliss and immortality. The sentence passed upon him was, ‘ In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’ Death did not, it is I 1 ‘A Second Vindication of “The Reasonableness of Christianity” ’ H697), Preface. 2 ‘The Reasonableness of Christianity ’ (1695), p. 2. 3 Ibid., p. 1. 286 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. true, at once destroy our first parents, but they were excluded from the Garden of Eden, and doomed to mortality. When man was turned out, he was exposed to the toil, anxiety, and frailties of this mortal life, which should end in the dust out of which he was made, and to which he should return, and then have no more sense than the dust had out of which he was made.” That any other interpretation should be put upon the plain words of the Bible, Locke held to be altogether monstrous. “ Some will have it to be a state of guilt wherein not only Adam, but all his posterity was so involved that every one descended of him deserved endless torment in hell-fire. It seems a strange way of understanding a law, which requires the plainest and directest words, that by death should be meant eternal life in misery. Could any one suppose by a law that says, ‘ For felony thou shalt die,’ not that he should lose his life, but be kept alive in perpetual, exquisite torments ? and would any one think himself fairly dealt with that was so used ? ” But Locke complained that a yet worse interpretation is generally put upon the words. God said, “ In the day that thou eatest thou shalt die,” and men dare to assert that he meant to say, “ Thou and thy posterity shall be ever after incapable of doing anything but what is sinful and provoking to me, and shall justly deserve my wrath and indignation.” “ Could a worthy man be supposed to put such terms upon the obedience of his subjects ? much less can the righteous God be supposed, as a punishment of one sin wherewith he is displeased, to put a man under a necessity of sinning continually, and so multiplying the provocation ? I must confess, by death here, I can understand nothing but a ceasing to be, the losing of all actions of life and sense. Such a death came on Adam and all his posterity by bis first disobedience in Paradise, under which death they should have lain for ever, had it not been for the redemption by Jesus Christ.” 1 Adam having forfeited immortality, his offspring shared his mortality. That, Locke argued, was a misfortune, but not a punishment. What was privation to Adam, is no privation to men who come into the world with no other gift than “a temporary, mortal life.” “ Had God taken from mankind anything that was their right, or did he put men in a state of misery worse than not being, without any fault or demerit of their own, this indeed would be hard to reconcile with the notion we have of justice, and much more with the goodness and other attributes of the Supreme Being, which he has declared of himself, and reason as well as revelation must acknowledge to be in him, unless we will confound good and evil, God and Satan. That such 1 ‘The Reasonableness of Christianity, ’ pp .3 — 7. it 9 62 .] “ ORIGINAL SIN ” AND THE REDEMPTION. 287 a state of extreme irremediable torment is worse than no being at all, it every one’s sense did not determine against the vain philosophy and foolish metaphysics of some men, yet our Saviour’s peremptory decision has put it past doubt, that one may be in such an estate that it had been ‘ better for him not to have been born.’ But that such a temporary life as we now have, with all its frailties and ordinary miseries, is better than no being, is evident by the high value we put upon it ourselves.” 1 If there was no “ original sin ” to be exorcised, what was the purpose of Christ’s coming ? To restore all mankind to life. “ As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.” The gift of immortality is again offered to mankind, and all who choose may take it. “ The wages of sin is death,” and if we choose to go on sinning, we must die ; but we can live for ever if we will. “ Here then we have the standing and fixed measures of life and death. Immortality and bliss belong to the righteous ; those who have lived in an exact conformity to the law of God are out of the reach of death ; but an exclusion from paradise and loss of immortality is the portion of sinners, of all those who have anj r way broke that law, and failed of a complete obedience to it by the guilt of any one transgression.” 2 But Christ came to do more than that. He supplemented the old law of works, “ that law which requires perfect obedience, without any remission or abatement,” by the law of faith, in which “ faith is allowed to supply the defects of full obedience, and so the believers are admitted to life and immor- tality, as if they were righteous.” The law of works is “ the law of nature, knowable by reason,” interpreted, with special applications adapted to their special circumstances, by Moses to the Jews, but intelligible to every man who uses those powers of reason with which he is endowed. The law of faith consists in trustful, prayerful belief in the goodness and mercy of God, and, among all to whom the Messiah reveals himself, in belief in him. 3 Concerning the nature of Christ’s messiahship, Locke wrote at great length, supporting his views by a vast number of quotations from the Bible. Christ came primarily to the Jews, but also to the whole world, in fulfilment of the prophecies contained in the Hebrew Scriptures, and in satisfaction of the more or less articulate longings of all mankind, as the great messenger from heaven commissioned to show how men might recover the lost privi- lege of eternal life. Christ “the anointed,” and Messiah “ the appointed,” are identical titles. The son of Joseph was, by his miraculous parentage, at once the Son of God, representing the maker of the world, and the Son 1 ‘The Reasonableness of Christianity,’ pp. 8, 9. 2 Ibid., p. 13. 3 Ibid., pp. 14, 15. 288 IN EETIEEMENT : WOEK AS AN ATJTHOE. [Chap. Xir. of man, representing the world that had been made. To the Jews he was the Son of David and the King of Israel, though in a way that they refused to understand ; to the Jews and all others he was the Saviour and the Judge, the bringer of God’s message of mercy to mankind, with power to decide whether each individual in the universe had deserved the gift of eternal life and bliss, or, refusing that gift, must be left under the old doom of death. That, and that only, Locke urged, is the doctrine of the Bible, the substance of the “new testament.” Christ’s life and death, all his miracles and sayings, all the prophecies about him, and all the sermons of his apostles, attest it. Locke was at pains to show how unwarrantable were the assumptions of such documents as the Athanasian creed, and to clear away from pure Christianity all the polytheistic, or at any rate tri-theistic and di-theistic, tendencies by which it had been corrupted. But — in accumulating evidence to show that the Bible, in its authentic text as far as we can arrive at it, furnishes no shadow of a pretext for the assertion that Jesus, the Messiah, endowed with superhuman faculties and powers as God’s agent for the redemption of mankind, ever assumed to himself any title or office deroga- tory to the unity of God — Locke never lost sight of the nature and object of the mission that, as the Bible showed him, this Messiah came to perform. That mission he found, as has already been noted, to consist in the bringing back of eternal life to the world, and in offering it, on easier terms than were proposed to Adam, to all of Adam’s offspring who chose to accept it. The prime condition of acceptance, he insisted, lies in the recognition of Jesus as the Messiah, of a Christ, and of this only true Christ, as the mes- senger and minister of God’s grace to the world. “ All that was to be believed for justification was no more but this single proposition, that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, or the Messiah.” But a good deal else was required “ to be done for justification.” Mere belief, however thorough, is of no avail without repentance. “ Besides believing him to be the Messiah, their King, it was required that those who would have the privilege, advan- tage, and deliverance of his kingdom, should enter themselves into it, and, by baptism being made denizens, and solemnly incorporated into that king- dom, live as became subjects obedient to the laws of it.” “ Life, eternal life, being the reward of justice or righteousness only, appointed by the righteous God to those only who had no taint or infection of sin upon them, it is impossible that he should justify those who had no regard to justice at all, whatever they believed. This would have been to encourage iniquity, 1695. I 62. J THE MISSION OF CHRIST. 289 contrary to the purity of his nature, and to have condemned that eternal law of right which is hoty, just, and good, of which no one precept or rule is abrogated or repealed, nor, indeed, can he whilst God is a holy, just and righteous God, and man a rational creature. The duties of that law, arising from the constitution of his very nature, are of eternal obligation ; nor can it be taken away, or dispensed with, without changing the nature of things, or overturning the measures of right and wrong, and thereby introducing irregularity, confusion, and disorder in the world. Christ’s coming into the world was not for such an end as that, but, on the contrary, to reform the corrupt state of degenerate man, and, out of those who would mend their lives and bring forth fruits meet for repentance, erect a new kingdom.” The law of faith does not displace the law of works. It only provides that they who humbly and in a contrite spirit believe in Christ, and who prove the reality of their belief by doing all they can to live righteous lives, shall be forgiven for their frailties and weaknesses, and have righteousness imputed to them. 1 What that righteousness is, Locke maintained, may be abundantly and sufficiently learnt from the Bible. Christ came to complete the law, “ by giving its full and clear sense, free from the corrupting and loosening glosses of the scribes and Pharisees,” and out of his teaching may be built up the most complete and comprehensive code of ethics possible to us, containing in their most perfect form all the moral precepts of the Mosaic law, which were identical with the law of nature or the law of reason. It is unfortunate that Locke did not substantiate this bold thesis. In the course of his work, however, he quoted enough from the teaching and example of Christ to show what an excellent standard of Christian duty was thereby afforded. “ Our Saviour not only confirmed the moral law, and showed the strictness as well as obligation of its injunctions, but, moreover, upon occasion requires the obedience of his disciples to several of the commands he afresh lays upon them. There is not, I think, any of the duties of morality which he has not, somewhere or other, by himself and his apostles, inculcated over and over again to his followers in express terms.” 2 We may fairly regret that Locke did not, in discussing “ the reasonableness of Christianity,” treat more fully of its ethical aspects. But this appears to have been no part of his purpose in writing the book. He wrote it, not to 1 1 The Keasonableness of Christianity,’ pp. 210 — 213. * Ibid,., p. 231. Vol. II.— 19 290 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. convert unbelievers, or to elaborate any dogmatic system of theology or religion, but to controvert what seemed to him the most offensive dogmas of those who claimed to be the only true believers, and especially of the self-styled orthodox members of the church of England. It was accepted in that light. Immediately after its publication in the summer of 1695, it was met with a storm of abuse. “ The buzz and flutter and noise which was made, and the reports which were raised,” Locke said himself, “would have persuaded the world that it subverted all morality, and was designed against the Christian re- ligion. I must confess, discourses of this kind, which I met spread up and down, at first amazed me, knowing the sincerity of those thoughts which persuaded me to publish it, not without some hope of doing some service to decay- ing piety and mistaken and slandered Christianity.” 1 One of these discourses, probably the only one that appeared at that time in print, was included in ‘ Some Thoughts concerning the Several Causes and Occasions of Atheism, especially in the Present Age,’ by John Edwards, a very intemperate and pugnacious clergyman, who afterwards became a nonconformist. Twenty pages of the book, which appeared only two or three months after Locke’s work, were devoted to coarse condemnation of it ; and this attack was all the more unwelcome to Locke because, although the work had been published anonymously, Edwards openly referred to him as “ the ingenious gentleman who is supposed to be the author of this treatise.” 2 He was here charged, not only with Socinianism, but even with atheism. He had reason to be angry with his critic, but he showed his anger so 1 ‘ A Vindication of “ The Reasonableness of Christianity ” ’ (1695). 2 Edwards, ‘ Some Thoughts concerning Atheism’ (1695), p. 114. OPPOSITION TO LOCKE’S THEOLOGY. 291 1695-6. 1 Ml. 62— 63 J plainly as to do some damage to his nw dignity, in the short ‘ Vindication ’ — twice as long, however, as Edwards’s chapter — which he published without delay. Neither Edwards’s attack nor Locke’s ‘ Vindication claims much notice here, as they hardly at all affected the position of ‘ The Reasonableness of Christianity ’ in £ theological literature. Locke re-asserted those of his opinions and assertions ' that had been assailed, and insisted upon their strict accordance with the plain meaning of the Bible. He indignantly repudiated other opinions and assertions that Edwards had invented for him. He vehemently denied that there was any Socinianism or atheism, or any “ cause of atheism,” to be found in his book. And he scornfully protested against the vulgar personalities, and unseemly jokes, and “ declamatory rhe- toric,” in which his antagonist had indulged. Edwards appears, however, to have been well pleased at finding that Locke had consented to make any reply at all to his attack, as an excuse was thus given to him for renewing it. This he did ; and other assailants followed. ‘ The Reasonableness of Christianity,’ indeed, when it was known to have been written by the author of ‘ An Essay concerning Human Understanding,’ was the prime cause of all the controversy in which Locke came to be involved. Of that we shall have to take account in a later chapter. Anxious that it should be anonymous, Locke appears to have told none of his friends that he was writing this book. Edwards had charged him with the authorship, however, and, though he parried the charge very cleverly, the secret could not he kept. “I find by some little pieces I have lately met with,” Molyneux wrote to him in June, 1696, “ that you are the reputed author of ‘ The 292 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. Reasonableness of Christianity.’ Whether it he really so or not I will not presume to inquire, because there is no name to the book. This only I will venture to say on that head, that whoever is the author, or vindicator thereof, he has gotten as weak an adversary in Mr. Edwards to deal with as a man could wish. So much unmannerly passion and Billingsgate language I have not seen any man use .” 1 “What you say of ‘ The Reasonableness of Christianity’” Locke replied, “ gives me occasion to ask your thoughts of that treatise, and also how it passes amongst you there” — in Dublin ; “for here, at its first coming out, it was received with no indifferency, some speaking of it with great commendation, but most censuring it as a very bad book. What you say of Mr. Edwards is so visible that I find all the world of your mind .” 2 “As to ‘ The Reasonableness of Christianity,”’ Molyneux wrote back, “ I do not find but ’tis very well approved of here amongst candid unprejudiced men that dare speak their thoughts. I’ll tell you what a very learned and ingenious prelate said to me on that occasion. I asked him whether he had read that book, and how he liked it. He told me very well, and that, if my friend Mr. Locke writ it, ’twas the best book he ever laboured at ; ‘ But,’ says he, ‘ if I should be known to think so, I should have my lawns torn from my shoulders .’” 3 Locke had better excuse for desiring not to be known as the author either of this book or of the ‘ Letters con- cerning Toleration,’ than can be found for the bishop who agreed with ‘ The Reasonableness of Christianity,’ 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 149 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 6 June, 1696. 2 Ibid. , p. 157 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 4 August, 1696. 3 Ibid., p. 168 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 26 Sept., 1696. ^ t 69 63 .] ‘ THE REASONABLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY.’ 293 but dared not say so publicly, for fear of being unfrocked. He held no brief for the creeds and dogmas of the estab- lished church, and therefore could not be accused of secretly entertaining one set of opinions while professing another. But he knew that the ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding ’ was his most important work, and the one most likely to be of permanent value to the world ; and in it he had started so many heresies and pro- voked so many prejudices, that he was hound to protect it as"far as possible from any additional prejudices that might be stirred up against it because of the additional heresies of its author. Our review of Locke’s miscellaneous occupations, as far as they can be traced, has been brought down only to the spring of 1692-3, when he began to be especially busy in literary ways. During the next two years or more he made good use of his retirement at Oates, as we have seen, in preparing old manuscripts for the press, and in doing much new work ; and, though he paid many short visits to London, these appear to have been chiefly occupied in supervising printers’ work and in other employment incidental to authorship. We have at any rate only stray notices of his engagement in other ways. “ I have for a long time been intending to send you a very full letter,” he wrote from London to Limborch, in June, 1693, “ but have not been able to find leisure for it, and now that I have been called to town by pressing business, I can hardly get time for even this short note. I wrote to you last winter, enclosing a letter from the archbishop, and since then have heard nothing from you. 294 IN EETIEEMENT : W0EK AS AN AUTHOE. [Chap. XII. I know not whether our letters crossed one another ; but this I do know, that I could not have endured so long a silence, had I not felt quite sure of your friendship. Write as soon as you can to tell me that you are well and have not forgotten us, and let me know whether you received the volume of English sermons which the arch- bishop sent through me. Remember me to your excellent wife and your children.” 1 Locke was in London again in November, when he wrote another letter to Limborch, confessing that he had lately been a bad correspondent, but assuring him that his neglect was due not to any lack of friendly feel- ing, but to the constant strain of work upon his weakly body . 2 The work lasted through the winter, but, carefully looked after by Lady Masham and the other members of the Oates household, his body seems to have been none the worse for it. He was tempted in the spring to make London his home again, and, though he did not do that, the political changes that then occurred, by which the whigs were restored to the chief place in King William’s councils, began, as we shall presently see, to provide fresh work for him in the service of the state. “ Have you heard of our late whiggish promotion wuthout admiration?” the Earl of Monmouth wrote to him at Easter from Parson’s Green. “Whether to congratulate with your friends, or to see the silly looks of the enemy, I suppose you will give us one week in town. There is a little philosophical apartment quite finished in the garden that expects you, and if you will let me know when you will come, it will not be the least inconvenience to me to send my coach 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborch, 8 June, 1693. 2 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 347 ; Locke to Limborch, 10 Nov., 1693. VISITS TO LONDON. 1993 - 4 . 1 Mt. 60 — 61 . J 295 twenty miles out of town to meet you, and make your journey more easy.” 1 Whether Locke accepted that invitation is not recorded; hut he spent some two months in London in the early summer of 1694, and in the last week of June he took part in a very memorable business that was brought to completion in consequence of the “ whiggish pro- motion.” William Paterson had for three years past been ad- vocating his project for organising a corporation which should raise a sum of 1,200,000Z. to be lent to the crown at eight per cent, interest, and which, in return for that sorely needed assistance, should have power to deal in hills of exchange, bullion, and forfeited notes, provided it carried on no other trade in its corporate capacity. This was the beginning of the Bank of England, esta- blished, amid much opposition, by an act of parliament which was endorsed by the king on the 25th of April, and endowed with a charter which was completed on the 27th of July, 1694. We are not told that Locke took much interest in the early history of this famous project ; hut this may alm ost be assumed from the very substantial interest that we know him to have taken in it when it was completed. The subscription list for the capital of the new bank was opened on the 20th of June. “ Tuesday last,” that is, on the 26th, he said in a letter written on the Saturday to Clarke, “I went to see our friend J. E.” — apparently John Freke. “ Upon discourse with him, he told me he had subscribed 300Z., which made me subscribe 500Z. ; and so that matter stands. Last night the subscriptions amounted to 1,100,000Z., and to-night I suppose they are all full. Mr. Freke talks of going out of town Monday, 1 Lord King, p. 237 ; Monmouth to Locke, 25 March, 1694. 296 IN RETIREMENT t WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. Xtl. and I shall go Tuesday.” 1 It would almost seem that a main reason for Locke’s paying this visit to London was his desire to take part in the establishment of the bank, of which he now became one of the original pro- prietors. A letter that he wrote a few weeks after he had gone hack to Oates reminds us that, amid all his other occupations, he still took a lively interest in medical affairs, and continued to cultivate the acquaintance of medical men. Dr. Hans Sloane, his junior by twenty- eight years, and not made a baronet till 1716, was now a rising physician in London, and secretary of the Loyal Society. He had probably been known to Locke for some time, hut we are first informed of their acquaintance by this letter, in which he made precise inquiries concerning a disease from which a woman whom Sloane attended had died, and in which he also asked some questions about im- perfect plants and equivocal generation in the vegetable kingdom. “It is very kindly done of you,” Locke said, “ to send me some news from the commonwealth of letters into a place where I seldom meet with anything beyond the observation of a scabby sheep or a lame horse.” 2 That was hardly polite to Lady Masham, or her step-daughter Esther. About Locke’s intimate relations with Lady Masham we have too few details. But we just now obtain some welcome insight into his relations with the younger lady. Esther Masham, a bright and amiable girl, who lived to be a bright and amiable old maid, was nineteen years old in 1694. Full of life and fun, as well as of good sense and sober thought, as fond of serious study as of 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290 ; Locke to Clarke, 30 June, 1694. 2 Ibid., no. 4052; Locke to Sloane, 14 Sept., 1694. LAUDABRIDIS. 297 1694. I At. 01. J French romances, she had won a place in Locke’s heart and learnt to nestle there during the years they passed together at Oates. She had come to be one of those adopted sisters, wives or daughters, by whose honest affection Locke’s bachelorhood seems to have been cheered at almost every stage of his life. “In raillery he used to call me his Laudabridis, and I called him my John,” she proudly wrote many years afterwards. Often Laudabridis was shortened into Dab or Dib, and in one letter at any rate Locke signed himself, instead of the usual Joannes, as Celadon the Solitary — “ alluding,” Esther explained, “ to the romance of ‘ Astraea ’ I used to read to him after supper.” 1 As they were so much together during the thirteen years of their intimacy, there was probably not much occasion for letters to pass between them, but we have four written by Locke during the second half of 1694, and these will now be quoted. The first was written from Oates in July under circumstances that Laudabridis herself thus explained : “ Being at this time in Hunting- donshire with my Lady Bernard, formerly Mrs. Wilding, now married to Sir John Bernard, I writ to Mr. Locke. 1 In 1722 Esther Masham sorted all her old letters, and before destroying them — “ to prevent them becoming pie-papers, serving to setup candles, or, at best being made thread-papers,” as she said — began to copy all the more important ones, including ten written by Locke, into a large note-book, to which a “volume two” had afterwards to be added. These manuscript volumes, entitled hy her “Letters from Relations and Friends to E. Masham,” and containing copies of a hundred and thirty-eight letters, are now in the possession of Miss Palmer, of Holme Park, near Reading, to whom I am greatly indebted for permission to copy from them the letters that will be given in the next few pages and afterwards. In 1773 the second Lord Masham, Esther’s nephew, sold Oates to Mr. Palmer, from whom Miss Palmer is descended, and thus some of its treasures have been preserved, too many having been, it would seem, irretrievably lost. 298 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. Having heard a rich widow had been visiting at Oates, I pretended to be jealous of her; upon which he sent me the following letter ” : — “ The greatest good the widow is ever like to do me is the having pro- cured me a letter from my Laudabridis, and giving me the opportunity to let you know you possess the conquest you have made by a power that will hold it against any widow coming with her hundred thousands. A heart that you think worth looking after cannot but be yours, and where gratitude joins with inclination to make good your title, you need not fear a little absence ; only I wish you would shorten it as much as you could. For, though I shall not fail you, yet I shall sutler for want of you, and the more faithful I am, the less can I bear the want of your company. Your letter satisfies me as much as you can desire that you are not indifferent whether you lose me or no. Let your return satisfy me that ’tis tenderness to me more than glorying over your rival that makes you look after me. For, if she steal me not away, yet, if your absence kill me, ’twill be but an odd way of expressing your kindness to your Joannes, who having satisfied you that he is proof against money, the temptation of old men, you ought to remove his doubts that the pride and triumph which so usually acccompany youth and beauty in a young lady do not make a great part of that care wherewith you hedge me in from the widow. If you think me to blame for this sus- picion, you should not have showed me the example. If jealousy be allow- able in either, it will be more excusable in my age and experience than in your gaiety. But a little touch of it sometimes does well, and is sauce to affection, and I take yours kindly as you have managed it. I suspect my daughter 1 more than you, but not your way. But she has so little ill in her that I cannot take amiss anything she does or designs. Remember me very kindly to her, if she be with you still, and give my most humble service to Sir Robert and my lady and all the rest of your good company. Everybody here is well, and want you — Bully 2 and all. “ I am, madam, your most humble and most faithful servant, “ Joannes.” 3 1 “ My cousin Frances Compton, then married to Mr. William St. John. She used to call Mr. Locke father.” — Esther Masham’s note. 2 “ Bully was a dog of mine.” — E. M.’s note. 3 Letters from Relations and Friends, vol. i., pp. 8 — 10; Locke to Esther Masham, 23 July, 1694. 1694. ~] 2Et. 61. J LETTERS TO ESTHER MASHAM. 299 Laudabridis stayed so long in Huntingdonshire that her “ faithful servant ” had, four weeks afterwards, to write her another playful letter : — “ Though I wish mightily for your company, and I see you could be content with mine, yet I could be pleased you should relish the cream of the country you are in, and to heighten the gusto I wish you strawberries to it. For those who have the goodness not to dislike me when they are with me, and to think on me when absent, I would not have uneasy when they are out of my sight. Let my Laudabridis therefore be as merry as she can every day, and know that I partake in it ; but now and then mix a kind thought of her Joannes. So he does here on his side of her to preserve himself the better for her sake, since she thinks him worth the taking care for. Pray, when you return, bring a little summer with you, if you intend to do anything in the garden with your John. For we have had nothing but winter weather since you went, and I write this by the fireside, whither the blustering wind and rain like December has driven me. I hope for a new spring when you come back, and to be as merry as the birds then are when they have their mates ; only I desire to be excused from singing — that part shall be yours. “ Had you been at our church 1 yesterday, there was one would have put you to it to have kept pace and time with him. He sang the poor clerk out of his beloved ‘ Behold and have regard,’ and made him lose both voice and tune. Would you had been here to have stood up for the credit of our parish which gave up to a stranger. “Everybody here is in health, but wants you. In the meantime you are kindly remembered by all. “I am perfectly your most affectionate and most humble servant, “ Joannes. “ Pray my service to Sir Robert, my lady, and the rest of your good company.” 2 Locke was in London when Esther returned to Oates, and he wrote to her again at the beginning of October. 1 High Laver church, a mile south of Oates, and then connected with it by a carriage drive. 2 Letters from Relations and Friends, pp. 10 — 12 ; Locke to Esther Masham, 20 August, 1694. 300 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII. “ I take it amiss of my stars that they should order me to be out of the way when my Laudabridis, whom I had so long languished for, returned. I will not say whether it was because you made too little haste, or your Joannes too much. But this I know, it had been much more to my satis- faction and advantage if you had stole home and caught me napping, than, by leaving me forlorn so long, exposed me to a journey that looked t’other way. This yet ought not to make you suspect that anybody has stolen me, or, if they have, you need not much be troubled at it whilst you have my heart with you at Oates ; for, without that, what a purchase they will have, in such a carcase as mine, you may judge. If you value your John so much as you say, and I cannot but believe you sincere, he is not such a fool as to change you for the Indies. For that has nothing that can purchase love, especially such as yours is, which can have no temptation but the great esteem and affection I have for you. You may believe then that I shall make all the haste I can to even our long account of absence, and compare thoughts and wishes and sighs, and having quitted that score, begin a new one of mirth and laughing and kind words one to another, with now and then a song amongst. “ I hope you are not much troubled that you have not your full foddering as you used to have. 1 As to singing, there be those in the parish will tell you you lost the perfection of that by your wandering. Had you been at home when I wished, you had had something beyond the ordinary strain of ‘Behold and have regard.’ But you must be gadding and make us sad under those heavenly strains, for they were heavenly too. “ To be serious, I am extremely glad that you are safe and well returned, exceedingly obliged to you for the favour of your letter, and shall make haste to Oates to tell you how much I am your obedient “ Joannes. “ If you had been charitable, you would have sent me some commission or other.” 2 A few days after writing thus Locke found himself obliged to hasten hack to Oates, before whatever business 1 “ This alludes to Mr. Low, then minister of our parish, who had taken a fancy he should die in the pulpit, therefore left off preaching, and for a con- siderable time got his neighbouring clergymen to give him a sermon only in the afternoon.” — E. M.’s note. 2 Letters from Relations and Friends, pp. 12 — 14 ; Locke to Esther Masham, 2 Oct., 1C94. •J® 9 !.] LETTERS TO ESTHER MASHAM. 301 he had to do was completed, not merely to tell his sweet- heart how he was, but to he nursed by her. “ I thank God,” he wrote to Edward Clarke soon after his return, “ the country air begins a little to relieve me from those impressions that were made on my lungs by the London smoke, which I perceive I must not make too bold with at this time of the year.” 1 Business forced him back to town again for a week in December, however ; and though ill and harassed there, he found opportunity for writing this short letter to Laudabridis. “ A little house and a little furniture must serve young beginners as you and I are, dear Laudabridis. Besides, my stock will not reach to much, being not furnished with compliment or history to fill out a large spread of paper. And you know there needs not many words to express a great deal of affection, respect and esteem, where it is as real as mine is, and affects not to make a show. I saw the Major 2 to-day. He told me Mr. Masham 3 was well, and that he should not go to the West Indies. 4 This, I thought, would be welcome news to you, and so could not forbear to put it into my letter ; but leave it to his to explain to you the particulars more fully, for I reproached him for not writing to you, and made him promise me he would do it this night. Pray give my humble service to all at Oates and Matching Hall, and let Totty 5 know I expect he should say something to me by you in your next. I am, madam, your most humble and obedient servant, “ J. Locke.” 6 Locke was not able to run away from his friends at Oates for some time after getting back to them in Decem- 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290 ; Locke to Clarke, 15 Oct., 1694. 2 “ My brother Henry.” — E. M.’s note. 3 “ My brother William.” — E. M.’s note. 4 “ ’Twas said the regiment my brother Henry belonged to was com- manded to the West Indies.” — E. M.’s note. 5 “ Totty was a nickname was given to my brother Francis Cudworth Masham, when he was a boy.” — E. M.’s note. 6 Letters from Relations and Friends, pp. 15, 16 ; Locke to Esther Masham, 2 Dec., 1694. 302 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. rcn*p. XII. ber. “ This cold winter,” he wrote in the following March to Molyneux, “ has kept me so close a prisoner within doors that, till yesterday, I have been abroad but once these three months, and that only a mile in a coach .” 1 It was chiefly, if not altogether, during those months of confinement that he wrote * The Eeasonableness of Christianity.’ For some portion of the time he had for a guest the brother of his little “ wife,” Betty Clarke, the same lad in whose interests he had written long before the letters that were expanded into £ Some Thoughts concerning Education.’ “ I hope,” he wrote to Clarke a fortnight after Christmas, “ this airing of your son, these holidays in the country, will be convenient for his health, and no prejudice to his learning. He was welcome to everybody here, and particularly to me ; and I am glad to find him such a proficient in the Latin, from which I conclude that in a little time now he will be master of that tongue. But schools I see still are schools, and make schoolboys. I say this to make you observe whether it be not to be apprehended that the main benefit of a dancing-master will be lost, though he dance constantly two or three times a week, if those who ought to have the constant care of him in every part do not look after and mind his postures, carriage and motions when he is out of the dancing-master’s hands ; for, without that, the steps and figures of dances I think of no value.” 2 Locke had been expecting another visitor this Christ- mas time. Molyneux had already, it would seem, come to be almost a dearer friend to him than Limborch, but 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 98 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 8 March, 1694-5. 2 Additional MSS., no. 4290; Locke to Clarke, 11 Jan. [1694-5j. LETTERS TO WILLIAM MOLYNEUX. 303 111 *-; AW li2. J they had never yet seen one another, and both men looked eagerly to the meeting, for which Molyneux had arranged to come to England in December . 1 He, how- ever, like Locke, had delicate health, and being unwell now, Locke urged him not to make the journey, although, as he said, he “ coveted” it none the less. “A rational, free-minded man, tied to nothing but truth, is so rare a thing that I almost worship such a friend. I cannot but exceedingly wish for that happy day when I may see a man I have so often longed to have in my embraces .” 2 “ You cannot think,” Locke added in the same letter, “ how often I regret the distance that is between us. I euvy Dublin for what I every day want in London. Were you in my neighbourhood, you would every day be troubled with the proposal of some of my thoughts to you. I find mine generally so much out of the way of the books I meet with, or men led by books, that, were I not con- scious to myself that I impartially seek truth, I should be discouraged from letting my thoughts loose, which commonly lead me out of the beaten track. However, I want somebody near me, to w T hom I could freely commu- nicate them, and, without reserve, lay them open. I should find security and ease in such a friend as you, were you within distance ; for your judgment would confirm and set me at rest, where it approved, and your candour would excuse what your judgment accused and set me right in .” 3 “ I cannot complain,” he said in another letter, “ that I have not my share of friends of all ranks, and such whose interest;, assistance, affection, and opinions too, 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 91 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 18 Dec., 1694. a Ibid., p. 98; Locke to William Molyneux, 8 March, 1694-5. 3 Ibid. 304 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XII in lit cases, I can rely on. But metliinks, for all this, there is one place vacant, that I know nobody that would so well fill as yourself. I want one near me to talk freely with £ de quolibet ente,’ to propose to the extravagances that rise in my mind ; one with whom I would debate several doubts and questionings, to see what was in them. Meditating by one’s self is like digging in the mine. It often, perhaps, brings up maiden earth which never came near the light before ; but whether it contain any metal in it is never so well tried as in conver- sation with a knowing, judicious friend who carries about him the true touchstone, which is love of truth, in a clear-thinking head. Men of parts and judgment the world usually gets hold of, and, by a great mistake that their abilities of mind are lost if not employed in the pursuit of wealth or power, engages them in the ways of fortune or interest, which usually have but little freedom or leisure of thought for pure disinterested truth ; and such who give themselves up frankly and in earnest to the full latitude of real knowledge are not easily to be met with. Wonder not, therefore, that I wish so much for you in my neighbourhood. I should be too happy in a friend of your make, were you within my reach.” 1 “ This long winter and cold spring,” Locke said in the same letter, written at the end of April, “has hung very heavy upon my lungs, and they are not yet in a case to be ventured in London air.” He appears at this time to have been in some alarm as to the issue of his life-long illness, and his friends were, perhaps, even more alarmed than he was. His friend Edward Clarke, at any rate, had evidently urged him to make his will. “That which you say of my will,” he wrote back, “ satisfies me how little 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 108; Locke to William Molyneux, 26 April, 1695. 1695 . 1 S.t. 62 . J AT OATES AND IN LONDON, 305 I must rely on my memory .” 1 If he did make a will now, it was cancelled by another one dated nine years later. In Locke’s next letter to Clarke we have one of many allusions to their mutual friend John Freke, whom they generally in their correspondence termed “ the bachelor,” and who was evidently a member of some private club or society in London, known among them as “ the college,” in which various matters, political and social, perhaps also philosophical and religious, were from time to time discussed. “ I am not at all pleased,” he said, “ with the news of the bachelor’s designed journey. Half the satis- faction I have in being in London will be lost if he be out of the way when I am there. Let me know when he intends to go, and wdien return from Bath. My breath is yet short. I know not how long stay it will permit me in town, and I must husband my time there as well as I can. I have something w'hich I would gladly propose and have debated in the college.” 2 Clarke appears to have replied that the bachelor had already gone to Bath. “ It will fall out extremely ill,” Locke wrote a week later, “if I should miss you too in town when I come thither. The weather and my busi- ness are neither of them yet ripe for it ; for I write this by the fireside, and know not how I shall bear the London air.” 3 In June Locke spent two or three weeks in London, but he was soon driven back to Oates. “ The impressions of the last severe winter on my weak lungs, and the slo w return of warm weather this spring detained me long in 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290; Locke to Clarke, 3 May, 1G95. 2 llrid., Locke to Clarke, 17 May, 1695. 3 Ibid., Locke to Clarke, 25 May, 1695. Vol. II.— 20 306 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XTI. the country,” lie wrote tlience to Molyneux at the begin- ning of July. “I shall not be at quiet till some business brings you into England, and brings me a satisfaction to the most earnest of all my desires. My decaying health does not promise me any long stay in this world. You are the only person in it that I desire to see once, and to converse some time with, before I leave it. I wish your other occasions might draw you into England and then let me alone to husband our time together. I have laid all that in my head already. But I talk my desires and fancies as if they were in view.” 1 Locke paid at least two other short visits to London during 1695, one in August, 2 and one in October and November; 3 hut he appears to have passed nearly the whole of this year very quietly at Oates, though not without taking, as we shall see, a lively interest and a leading part in at any rate two questions of extreme importance to the public welfare. His last visit was broken in upon by private trouble. Lady Masham’s mother, Hr. Cudworth’s widow, died on the 15th of November, at the age of seventy-two. Locke only hurried down to Oates in time to attend her burial, and, it is reported, to write this epitaph to be placed over her grave, in High Laver churchyard : — “ Hamaris Cudwortli, exemplary for her piety and virtue, for her study of the Scriptures, charity to the poor, and goodwill to all, an excellent wife, mother, mistress, and friend, lies buried in the middle between this and the opposite wall. After a life made easy to herself and others by the unalterable 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 119; Locke to William Molyneux, 2 July, 1695 2 Additional MSS., no. 4290 ; Locke to Clarke, 24 August, 1695. 3 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 125 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 16 November, 1695. AT OATES AND IN LONDON. 307 1695-6.1 J3t. 63. J evenness of her temper, she died as one that goes to sleep, without disease or pain, in full hope and expectation of a happy resurrection.” Locke was himself very ill this winter of 1695-6 — “not without some apprehensions of my life,” he said in a letter to Molyneux ; 1 but he intended to live as long as he could, and life to him meant work. Public affairs were now claiming much of his thought, and he was planning a more systematic attention to them, and a more constant residence in London, than he found to be possible. “ I intend to be in town as soon as the weather is hut so warm that I leave off fires,” he wrote to Clarke in the third week in May. “It is now with us perfect winter weather, and I write this by the fireside. Warm weather cannot now be far off. But, however that may happen, pray give me at least a week’s warning, and as much longer as is possible, before the day set for your journey into the country ; for I must needs see you, and have many things to say to you, and therefore will venture my lungs a little sooner than otherwise I would in town, not to miss the opportunity of kissing your hands. Else, not knowing how long I may be detained there, I would, if I could, have so much warm weather as to get off the remainder of my cough before I venture into that inimic air.” 2 Before we follow him to London, however, we may here take note of one amusing illustration of the interest that he felt in all sorts of out-of-the-way as well as in- the-way subjects. It 'would seem that the Earl of Pem- 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 141; Locke to William Molyneux, 30 March 1696. 2 Additional MSS., no. 4290 ; Locke to Clarke, 18 May [1696]. Locke, ■who occasionally made similar mistakes, dated this letter 1689. 308 IN RETIREMENT : WORK AS AN AUTHOR. [Chap. XU. broke was auxions for information on freemasonry, and especially anxious to know the contents of an old docu- ment entitled “ Certeyn Questyons, with answers to the same, concerning the Mystery of Maconrye ; written by the hands of Kynge Henrye, the sixthe of the name, and faithfully copyed by me, Johan Leylande, Antiquarius, by the commands of his Highnesse ” — his Highness being Henry the Eighth. “ I have at length,” Locke wrote on the 6tli of May, 1696, “ by the help of Mr. Collins, pro- cured a copy of that manuscript in the Bodleian Library, which you were so curious to see, and, in obedience to your commands, I herewith send it to you. Most of the notes annexed to it are what I made yesterday for the reading of my Lady Masham, who is become so fond of masonry as to say that she now more than ever wishes herself a man that she might be capable of admission into the fraternity. I know not what effect the sight of this old paper may have on your lordship, but for my own part I cannot deny that it has so much raised my curiosity as to induce me to enter myself into the fraternity, which I am determined to do, if I may be admitted, the next time I go to London.” Of course that letter is satirical, and Locke’s resolution was as unsubstantial as Lady Masham’s wish. The frivolous contents of the old manu- script could convert no one, or at any rate no sensible person ; but Locke’s learned historical and philosophical notes sufficiently attest his “ curiosity.” 1 1 Hutchinson, ‘ The Spirit of Masonry ’ (1775), Appendix, pp. 1 — 17. CHAPTER XIII. In the Service of the State, [ 1695 — 1700 .] HOUGH Locke resolved to have as little as possible to do with politics from the time when the Earl of Carmarthen became William the Third’s chief adviser, with Sir John Trevor, the new speaker of the house of commons, for his willing agent in wholesale bribery and national demoralisation, neither his own patriotic temper nor that of his friends allowed him to keep clear of busi- ness. While at Oates he continued to watch closely the course of public affairs, and during these years of retire- ment and special devotion to literary pursuits he spoke out by proxy, on at least some of the great questions that had to he decided, quite as emphatically and expres- sively as he could have done had he been living constantly within the purlieus of Whitehall, or personally taking part in the debates and divisions at Westminster. For occasional, if not very regular, exponents of his opinions in the house of lords, he had the Earl of Monmouth and the Earl of Pembroke. And in the commons house he undoubtedly had many zealous disciples and spokesmen besides the two, Edward Clarke and Lord Ashley, about whom we are best informed, and whom we know most positively to have sought his guidance as to their action in political affairs . 1 1 It is not clear whether the following letter had special reference to 310 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. Tlie two ablest, most honest, and, ultimately, most influential statesmen in the house of commons may be looked upon as, in at least some respects, his disciples. We have no extant correspondence, for this period, between him and Sir John Somers — who in May, 1692, exchanged the solicitor-generalship for the attorney- generalship, and in the following March became lord keeper of the great seal— but in his correspondence with public business, but it may be taken as an illustration of the way in which Locke acted as counsellor, and on occasion and in courteous style as the dic- tator, of men taking an active part in politics. It is addressed to Sir Edward Harley, the father of the great statesman of Queen Anne’s reign who became Earl of Oxford. For a transcript of the original, among the Marquis of Bath’s papers at Longleat, I am indebted to Canon Jackson. “ London, 25 Sept., ’94. “ Sir, — Though I cannot doubt but you are assured there is nobody more your servant than I, yet I cannot but think a letter from me, especially of the kind this will be, will somewhat surprise you. For it is no less than to desire you lay by all that country business which you had reserved to the little time is now between this and the parliament, and to come up to town immediately. So bold a presumption as this, without farther explain- ing myself, will possibly appear very odd to you, and I myself think it so extravagant that I should not venture to send it you were I not satisfied I should be able to justify myself to you for having done it when you come to town, and should condemn myself for having failed in that respect and service which I owe you if I had done otherwise. It is but a little antici- pating your journey up to the parliament, and I conclude you will, when you are here, think it time not lost. I therefore earnestly press you again, and, if you do not think me a vain man, I beseech you to believe that I would not have writ to you after this fashion had I not had some reason. I should be very glad to see you here without any answer. But, if you think fit to honour me with a line or two, pray let it be to assure me of your being speedily here. “ I am, sir, your most humble and most faithful servant, “ J. Locke. “ I lodge at Mr. Pawling's, over against the Plough Inn, in Little Lincoln’s Inn Fields.” it°k] POLITICAL FRIENDS AND DISCIPLES. 311 others we find frequent allusions to their interviews, and from what we know of their antecedent and subsequent relations we may safely assume that those interviews were supplemented by letters, and that the younger man now, as at other times, took frequent counsel with the elder one on the difficult business that came before him. When Locke made acquaintance with Charles Montagu — who was made Baron Halifax in 1701 and Earl of Halifax in 1714, and who was ten years younger than Somers, thirty years younger than Locke — we do not know, nor have we any record of their connection before 1695 ; but there can hardly be any doubt that the acquaintance began in 1689, when Montagu was a member of the convention parliament, and was continued from that time. Certain it is, at any rate, that in nearly all their political action both Somers and Montagu were actuated by the principles that Locke advanced, and gave utterance to opinions with which he agreed. In two very important reforms, effected while Locke resided chiefly at Oates, we are able to trace his hand ; though the details of the first, as regards the whole subject as well as Locke’s part in it, are unfortunately very scanty. That the church had a right to control the printing and publishing of books, was an assumption as old as the invention of the printing-press, and when, under Henry the Eighth, the church became a limb of the state, it was not strange that the state should have arrogated this function to itself. Scholarship and general education, as well as freedom of opinion, suffered grievously, with benefit to no one but the monopolists of the stationers’ company, but with hardly a note of protest, for a century and a half before the famous “ decree of star chamber concerning printing” was issued in 1637, to be followed 312 IN THE SEKVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. in 1643 by the “ order of tbe lords and commons for the regulating of printing,” which provoked Milton’s splendid condemnation. Charles the Second’s licensing act was more stringent than any of its predecessors, and, enforced as it had been hy James the Second’s agents, it might have been supposed that it would have been one of the first monuments of Stuart tyranny to be overturned by William the Third. James Fraser quietly replaced Sir Roger Lestrange, however, as censor, and, as Fraser used his office temperately, suppressing nothing but tory sedi- tion, the act, which lapsed in 1693, was actually then renewed for two years, no regard being paid to the mild petitions sent in by the printers, booksellers and book- binders, and the feeble opposition of the tones. What Locke, who was at Oates at the time, thought of that proceeding is not recorded, but we have a very important paper which he drew up some time after, probably in the spring of 1694-5, when parliament was considering whether the act should be again renewed or should be allowed to disappear from the statute book. He here scornfully criticised, one after another, all the chief clauses of the act. “Heretical, seditious, schismatical, or offensive books,” said the second section of the act, “ wherein anything contrary to Christian faith or the doctrine or discipline of the church of England is asserted, or which may tend to the scandal of religion, or the church, or the government, or gover- nors of the church, state, or of any corporation, or particular person, are prohibited to be printed, imported, published, or sold.” “ Some of these terms,” Locke urged, “ are so general and comprehensive, or at least so submitted to the sense and interpretation of the governors of church and state for the time being, that it is impossible any book should pass but just what suits their humours. And who knows but that the motion of the earth may be found to be heretical, as asserting antipodes once was ? I know not why a man should not have liberty to print whatever he would speak ; and to be answerable for the one, just as he is for the other, if he ^ t 69 62 .] ARGUMENTS FOR LIBERTY OF THE PRESS, 313 transgresses the law in either. But gagging a man, for fear he should talk heresy or sedition, has no other ground than such as will make gyves necessary, for fear a man should use violence if his hands were free, and must at last end in the imprisonment of all who, you will suspect, may be guilty of treason or misdemeanour. To prevent men being undiscovered for what they print, you may prohibit any hook to be printed, published, or sold without the printer’s or bookseller’s name, under great penalties, whatever be in it. And then let the printer or bookseller whose name is to it be answerable for whatever is against law in it, as if he were the author, unless he can produce the person he had it from, which is all the restraint ought to be upon printing.” That suggestion, it should be noted, was adopted in the law now in force. Locke commented at some length upon the mischievous effect of the act in conferring upon the stationers’ company a monopoly in the publication of most of the classics, supplemented by such a heavy tax upon foreign editions that it was almost impossible for poor scholars to procure them, and they had to be content, if they could afford to pay the high price charged even for these, with the English “authorised” editions “scanda- lously ill-printed, both for letter, paper, and correctness.” “ Upon occasion of this instance of the classic authors,” he added, “I demand whether, if another act for printing should be made, it be not reasonable that nobody should have any peculiar right in any book which has been in print fifty years, but any one as well as another might have the liberty to print it ; for by such titles as these, which lie dormant and hinder others, many good books come quite to be lost. But, be that determined as it will in regard of those authors who now write and sell their copies to booksellers, this certainly is very absurd at first sight, that any person or company should now have a title to the printing of the works of Tully, Caesar, or Livy, who lived so many ages since, in exclusion of any other ; nor can there be any reason in nature why I might not print them as well as the company of stationers, if I thought fit. This liberty, to any one, of printing them, is certainly the way to have them the cheaper and the better ; and it is this which, in Holland, has produced so many fair and excellent editions of them, whilst the printers all strive to outdo one another, which has also brought in great sums to the trade of Holland, whilst our com- pany of stationers, having the monopoly here by this act and their patents, slobber them over as they can cheapest, so that there is not a book of them vended beyond seas, both for their badness and dearness ; nor will the scholars beyond seas look upon a book of them now printed at London, so 314 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XTII. ill and false are they. Besides, it would be hard to find how a restraint of printing the classic authors does any way prevent printing seditious and treasonable pamphlets, which is the title and pretence of this act.” The arbitrary and unjust restrictions upon freedom in printing, he further urged, were injurious, not only to printers and purchasers, but also, as a necessary consequence of that, to the book trade of the country. “ The restraint of presses and taking of apprentices, and the prohibition of taking or using any journeymen except Englishmen and freemen of the trade, is the reason why our printing is so very bad, and yet so very dear in Eng- land ; they who are hereby privileged, to the exclusion of others, working and setting the price as they please, whereby any advantage that might be to the realm, by this manufacture is wholly lost to England, and thrown into the hands of our neighbours ; the sole manufacture of printing bringing into the Low Countries great sums every year. But our ecclesiastical laws seldom favour trade, and he that reads this act with attention will find it upse ” — that is, very — “ecclesiastical. The nation loses by this act; for our books are so dear and ill printed, that they have very little vent among foreigners, unless now and then by truck for theirs, which yet shows how much those who buy the books printed here are imposed on, since a book printed in London may be bought cheaper at Amsterdam than in Paul’s Churchyard, notwithstanding all the charge and hazard of transportation : for, their printing being free and unrestrained, they sell their books at so much a cheaper rate than our booksellers do ours, that in truck, valuing ours proportionably to their own, or their own equally to ours, which is the same thing, they can afford books received from London upon such ex- changes cheaper in Holland than our stationers sell them in England. By this act England loses in general, scholars in particular are ground, and nobody gets, but a lazy, ignorant company of stationers, to say no wrong of them ; but anything rather than let mother church be disturbed in her opinions or impositions by any bold inquirer from the press.” Quoting the fifteenth section of the licensing act, Locke said, “ One or more of the messengers of his majesty’s chamber, by warrant under his majesty’s sign-manual, or under the hand of one of his majesty’s principal secretaries of state, or the master and wardens of the company of stationers, taking with them a constable and such assistance as they shall think needful, have an unlimited power to search all housqs, and to seize upon all books which they shall but think fit to suspect. How the gentry, much more how the peers of England, came thus to prostitute their houses to the suspicion of anybody, much less a messenger upon pretence of searching for books, I AEGUMENTS FOE LIBEETY OF THE PEESS. 315 cannot imagine. Indeed, the houses of peers, and others not of the trades mentioned in this act, are pretended to be exempted from the search, -where it is provided they shall not be searched but by special -warrant under the king’s sign-manual, or under the hands of one of the secretaries of state. But this is but the shadow of an exemption, for they are still subject to be searched, every corner and coffer in them, under pretence of unlicensed books, a mark of slavery which, I think, their ancestors would never have submitted to. They so lay their houses, which are their castles, open, not to the pursuit of the lawagainst a malefactor convicted of misdemeanour, or accused upon oath, but to the suspicion of having unlicensed books, which is, whenever it is thought lit to search his house to see what is in it.” 1 From those extracts, the difference between Locke’s and Milton’s arguments against a censorship of the press will be sufficiently apparent. Locke, had he tried to do it, could not have written so eloquent a declaration as the ‘ Areopagitica.’ But he did not at all try to emu- late or imitate Milton’s work. He felt that, in order to overturn the licensing act, he must draw up a straightforward business-like appeal to the common sense of such men as formed the majority in the house of commons, and even in William the Third’s cabinet. He therefore pointed out the practical inconveniences resulting from it and only incidentally made sarcastic reference to the very pernicious principle on which it was based and to its gross contravention of political, religious and social liberty. And therein he did wisely. Milton’s advocacy of “ un- licensed printing ” had no effect upon the presbyterian rulers of England. Locke’s strictures on the licensing act helped to demolish it. On the 11th of February, 1694-5, the house of com- mons, on the recommendation of a committee that had been appointed to report upon the expediency of renewing temporary statutes about to expire, was invited to continue 1 Lord King, pp. 202 — 208. 316 IN THE SEKVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XITI. the act entitled “ an act for preventing abuses in printing seditious, treasonable and unlicensed pamphlets, and for regulating of printing and printing presses.” The pro- posal was negatived without a division. The house of lords, however, when, on the 8th of April, the bill for renewing the other temporary acts was sent up from the commons, returned it with an amendment, adding the licensing act to the list. This amendment the commons resisted on the 12th, and a conference of the two houses was held on the 18th. At the conference, Locke’s friend, Edward Clarke, the member for Taunton, who had been chosen chief of the committee of managers, read Locke’s strictures on the act, and the lords at once gave way. 1 As Locke was at that time ill at Oates, it is not possible that he could have drawn up his document especially for use on that decisive day. Clarke must have had it in his possession before, and it had probably been circulated among the whig members in anticipation of the decision of the house of commons two months earlier, and thus may have done much to bring about that decision. The final victory, at any rate, must he attributed to him. To him, therefore, must be attributed a large share in the most fruitful of all the great benefits that issued from the revolution of 1688. The memorable exploit was little heeded, and Locke’s part in it was quite ignored, amid the more startling incidents of the time. Queen Mary had died in the previous December, and in April the Marquis of Halifax, a person of more consequence in state affairs, had followed her to Westminster Abbey. Sir John Trevor had been deposed from the speakership of the house of commons 1 ‘Journal of the House of Commons,’ 11 February, 1694 — 5, and 12 and 17 April, 1695 ; ‘ Journal of the House of Lords,’ 8 and 18 April, 1695. 1^03. "I Mt. 62 .J POLITICAL CHANGES. 317 in March, and, though the process was slower in the case of so great a man, the train had been laid for the disgrace of Trevor’s master, Lord Carmarthen, now Duke of Leeds. The tories, with some unworthy whigs, had been allowed, during nearly five years, to take the chief management of public affairs, and now they were found to have so mis- managed everything that neither king nor country could longer hear with them. A younger and more patriotic generation of whigs had been slowly working their way into power, and the time was now come for them to have their five years’ lease of office, and Locke, though very unwilling to share in what was regarded as their good fortune, was eager, worn out in body as he was, to join them in their good work. One notable instance of his desire to take part in that work and of the spirit that prompted him can be given. It is not the less valuable as an indication of his motives and methods because we can only trace the outcome of his own mind, not its issue in other minds. William’s second parliament was prorogued on the 13th of May, 1695, and soon afterwards dissolved; and the third parliament was summoned for the 23rd of November. Soon after its assembling Locke wrote a short discourse which he entitled, ‘ Old England’s Legal Constitution,’ and which, addressed in the manuscript “ To Mr. , a member of parliament,” was evidently meant to be printed and circulated among the newly elected repre- sentatives of the people in the house of commons, though it appears never to have gone far beyond the circle of his intimate friends. 1 The letter was prefaced by an extract from Camden’s ‘ Elizabeth,’ telling how, in 1601, the 1 As I found this document among the Shaftesbury Papers (series viii., no. 6), I infer that it got into Lord Ashley’s hands and was retained by him. 318 IN THE SEBVICE OF THE STATE. [CnAr. XIII. house of commons complained to “ the queen of glorious memory” concerning “ the mischiefs arising to the sub- ject from monopolies and private trading companies of merchants,” how she attended to their complaint&, 3 iid how, on parliament’s thanking her for so doing, she made answer in the following words, which Locke reasonably applied to political affairs even more important than the suppression of unjust trading monopolies “ We owe unto you special thanks and commendations for your singular good-will towards us, not in silent thought but in plain declaration expressed, whereby you have called us home from an error proceeding from ignorance not willingness. These things had undeservedly turned to our disgrace (to whom nothing is more dear than the safety and love of our people) had not such harpies and horseleeches as these been made known unto us by you. I had rather be maimed in mind or hand than with mind or hand give allowance of such privileges of monopolies as may be prejudicial to my people. The brightness of regal majesty hath not so blinded my eyes that licentious power should prevail more with me than justice. The glory of the name of a king may deceive unskilful princes, as gilded pills may deceive a sick patient ; but I am none of those princes : for I know that the common- wealth is to be governed for the benefit of those that are committed, not of those to whom it is committed, and that an account is one day to be given t ! before another judgment-seat. I think myself most happy that, by God’s assistance, I have hitherto so governed the whole commonwealth and have such subjects as for their good I would willingly leave both kingdom and life also. I beseech you that what faults others have committed by false sugges- tions may not be imputed to me. Let the testimony of a clear conscience be my absolute excuse. You are not ignorant that princes’ servants are now and then too attentive to their own benefit ; that the truth is often concealed from princes; and they cannot themselves look preciselyinto all things upon whose shoulders lieth continually the weight of the greatest business.” To that extract Locke appended the following “ obser- vations ” : — “It is the duty of a parliament house humbly to remonstrate the grievances of the nation to the prince, and the performance of his duty deserves ‘ his special thanks and commendations ’ for averting the ‘ disgrace’ and reproach of ill government from him. 1693. I .St. 62. J ‘ old England’s legal constitution.’ 319 “This manner of remonstrating is a token of the parliament’s ‘singular good-will ’ towards the prince, not of disaffection or sedition. “ The parliament ought to deal * plainly ’ with the prince. The faults of his government are ‘ not in silent thought to be blamed, but in plain declara- tion- 'expressed,’ to the end this mark of their ‘singular good-will ’ may produce suitable effects. “It is so far from being a shame that ’tis a great glory for a prince to own publicly and reform ‘an error proceeding from ignorance,’ since no English king can be supposed to commit a crime ‘ willingly.’ “ Procurers and enjoyers of monopolies are no better than ‘ harpies and horseleeches,’ i.e., devourers of the people’s properties andravishers of their liberties. * “ It is the duty of a prince to consent to such laws, and reform such abuses, as are ‘made known to him by parliament,’ rejoice to be ‘called home from an error,’ and demonstrate by his works and actions that ‘no- thing is more dear to him than the safety and love of his people.’ “ ‘ The brightness of regal majesty often blinds princes’ eyes, so that licentious power,’ preached up by flatterers for their own ends, ‘ prevails more with them than justice.’ “ ‘ An unskilful prince ’ swallows ‘ the gilded pill ’ of arbitrary power under the title of ‘ prerogative,’ and ‘ is deceived ’ by it, since ’tis no better than ‘ poison to such a sick patient.’ ‘ But I am none of those princes,’ says the queen, ‘ for I know that the commonwealth is to be governed for the benefit of those that are committed, not of those to whom it is committed.’ “ Heaven as well as earth will have its part in the punishment of ill princes. ‘ An account is one day to be given before another judgment-seat.’ She was then ‘ a-giving an account ’ before ‘ one,’ and both repenting and reforming. “ A good government will make good subjects, and such as are worthy of the prince’s love, so far as that he ought to ‘ be willing to leave both king- dom and life for their sakes if necessary.’ “ Whatever ‘ faults an English king commits ’ must be imputed to ‘his ministers ; ’ since no king has power to do or command a public wrong. If he once acquires that power, he is no longer a king. “ ‘ False suggestions ’ and flattery are the bane of princes. “ ‘ Princes’ servants are most commonly too attentive to their own benefit,’ without regard to their masters’ honour or their nation’s detriment. “ The concealment of the truth from princes is a very great crime ; and the declaring of it freely is the special business of a parliament ; which 320 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. therefore ought frequently to be ‘ holden,’ because ‘ the prince himself can- not precisely look into all things upon whose shoulders lieth continually the weight of the greatest business,’ viz., the executive part, which is his proper province, and wherein consists the very life of the laws. “ That prince gives occasion to be esteemed ‘ as one maimed in his mind ’ who knowingly ‘ allows such practices as may be prejudicial to his people.’ ” Locke certainly drew a great deal more out of Queen Elizabeth’s speech than she intended it to convey ; but he as certainly made it the handle for some excellent comments on the relations between sovereigns and their subjects. And these comments he continued in the'letter which follows : — “ This wise speech of a queen whose memory will always be precious to this nation would not need to have the dust it has been so long covered with now shaken off, or any observations made upon it, if a supine negli- gence in affairs of the greatest importance did not overspread the whole land. I wish we could except those whose particular business it is to watch over the interests of the people, and [who] are chosen to serve in parliament for that purpose. “ For, although barefaced bribery, corruption, and perjury never were so generally practised among us as lately, and this not in the subordinate courts, but the very fountain-heads of justice, nor in matters of small conse- quence, but tending to the utter subversion of the constitution, yet I cannot agree with several ill-natured persons who involve the generality of our representatives, either as actors or abettors, in the guilt of these most heinous crimes. God forbid such a thought should have any ground of truth. Neither ought it to be cherished, since very remarkable steps were made towards the end of last session in order to clear them from this uncharitable imputation. “ Many are of opinion that, if the shortness of the time and urgency of affairs would have permitted, such enormous offences had not only been hunted and scared a little, as they were, but received their mortal stroke. Others, who pretend to have better studied the temper of both houses, stick not to say that the universal reigning carelessness which is now complained of would more probably have obstructed the thorough performance of so good a work as soon as the first fire had been spent and some particular turns been served. 1695. "I Jit. 63. J HOW TO SAVE THE COMMONWEALTH. 321 “ ’Tis owned that partiality and sinister ends may indeed influence too many, and hinder in a great measure the prosecution of criminals ; but ’tis rather to be imputed to this general inactivity that knavery gets so much and so often the better of justice and honesty. “Did every uncorrupt member of parliament seriously consider that the work of the whole house is the work of each particular in it, and not fling his share of the public burden off from bis shoulders in expectation that another will take it up, we should soon see such an honest majority that no set of knaves, though of the first magnitude, could hope for impunity, much less for honours and riches. “ Certainly, as long as more pains are taken, and more hearty united en- deavours are used, to protect notorious delinquents against the public than there are to discover and bring them to punishment, the effect will answer the degree of diligence and the nation will go on to be abused. The children of darkness are in their generation so much wiser than the children of light that they seldom fail of being more successful too in their designs. “ This has been the principal root of all our past calamities, and will be of our future till every good man shakes off idleness, considers himself as a piece of the public, and quits those vain selfish imaginations that he may chance to thrive or ’scape, let what will become of the commonwealth, and that the public will take care of itself. For the false axiom ‘ Res nolunt male administrari ’ has deceived many a well-meaning pretender to politics. Whoever considers how few were the men of parts and industry that in all times have stood at the helm of affairs, steering them as they pleased and making the subordinate multitude ignorantly contributors to their designs, will soon be convinced that the hearty endeavours of a few good men, guided by prudence, may as well do wonders towards the saving a nation as those of bad men to the ruin of it. “ History will inform us that, in most of the surprising revolutions which have happened in the world, a very few great men, according as they were ii dined, have occasioned the good or ill fortune of their countries. Believe it, the labours of not many persons of understanding, diligence, and disin- terestedness, backed by the laws, may stem the current of the most potent wickedness. “ The people’s liberties are seldom lost but through negligence and the want of being taken due care of in time, when a small matter will do it. How much easier, greater and more sudden, then, would the effect be, did all such as have yet pure hearts and clean hands among us set them seriously to understand and cultivate the public interest 1 Vol. II.— 21 322 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. “ Such an unanimity would in a short time quite overthrow country- selling knavery. Were principal ministers and their inferior agents once thoroughly persuaded that not titles of honour, blue garters, boons, pensions, sums of money, places, confiscate estates, etc., but impeachments, fines, imprisonments, ropes and axes were the undoubted attendants upon ill practices, we should soon see another manner of world. “ Fear of punishment often does what virtue should do. If this last be not strong enough, or have but few rewards to recommend it, then it belongs to the two houses of parliament to make the former so, since the recom- penses of virtue are no longer lodged in their hands for disposal. For ’tis the greatest absurdity imaginable to say that an English king, without the consent of parliament, will or can pardon a crime committed against the whole nation, who cannot by our laws pardon one against a private person ; neither did any king yet attempt to do so who was not himself deeply concerned in the guilt. “The wrong understanding of the word ‘prerogative’ has been the undoing of many kings and subjects. Flatterers and interested ministers seldom fail of screwing up this string till it cracks of itself ; and ’tis happy for us it does so, notwithstanding the inconveniences which constantly attend such a rupture ; for, whenever it holds, adieu to the liberties of old England for ever. “ This most extraordinary woman, Queen Elizabeth (who may be called the last of English princes as to birth and extraction, and till within these seven years might also in the same sense that Brutus called Cassius the last of the Romans x ), was so wise as thoroughly to understand this truth, and to determine the point after forty-two years’ experience, during which she happily governed this realm in most difficult times. “ Neither was she satisfied in her own private judgment only, hut made it part of her glory to acknowledge this openly to her house of commons, in the foregoing speech, which we may see proceeded from her heart, and could not be prepared for her in any cabal of her ministers. “What Englishman would not be prodigal of life and estate for such a prince ? This made her own subjects so fond of her, and continues her memory so sweet to this day. I believe if a speech of this kind should be heard now (and we are not without hopes of doing so as soon as the English genius is thoroughly understood), it would force tears of joy from the whole house, 1 This allusion to William the Third, who had become king seven years before the spring of 1695-6, fixes pretty accurately the date of this letter, which is undated in the manuscript. 1005 . "I Mt. 63 . J HOW TO SAVE THE COMMONWEALTH. 323 and open the purse of the most narrow-hearted miser. For we have already convincing instances how much more prevalent towards the procuring of vast sums to answer the public occasions liberty and security is than arbitrary power which can only create fear, hatred and distrust. “ She often during her reign did things which at first glance seemed arbitrary, and I have heard this objected to her by some who thought to excuse their own practices by accusing hers. ’Tis most certain our late kings could not bear, with any patience, the respect which the people paid her memory, because their contrary maxims made them look upon the anniversary of her birth as the anniversary of their own disgrace ; and in effect it was so. “ I say she often did things which looked irregular, but, when those things were well considered, they had either a popular root and bottom, or at least no tyrannical one. Whereas we have known things done in the late reigns which had a face of popularity, but, when narrowly inspected, were found to have had either an arbitrary root or none at all ; and heaven knows what fruits they produced. “Her interest and that of her subjects was so much one and the same that they could scarce in any instance be separated, which to our great comfort is the case of his present majesty and these kingdoms at present. The people of England had in her time but one work upon their hands, and that was to be upon their guard against their common enemies, not against their own prince’s encroachments ; and how easily did this nation overcome that single difficulty, though, among many other aggressors, it had to deal with Philip the Second of Spain, one of the most potent and wisest monarchs that ever ruled in Europe ! “ She was a true mother of her people, not a step-mother, and we know by experience that the hatred of the last, though it may be more covered, is as intense as the love of the first, and much more designing. The one may often correct her children, and sometimes in a passion unjustly ; but a deep repentance, and hearty endeavour to make a large amends in kindness, seldom fails of succeeding such a correction. The other does acts of civility and favour with an intention to lead them into inconveniences — like the liberty of conscience granted in the late reigns — and would be well pleased to see them take wrong courses, that she may seem to have just occasion for using them ill. “ We need not pursue the parallel any farther. Whoever reads this speech, w’herein there is not a line, nay, scarce a word, that is not full of worth and deserves not to be engraven on pillars of marble, will find the mother as well as the queen shine through all parts of it. 321 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. Chap. XHI. “ Were all princes’ words and actions conformable to this model, there would never be a commonweath’s man in England, and I am persuaded there are few at this time, notwithstanding the outcry that is made, and the dust that is raised, to blind the people’s eyes and create the prince’s distrust, I mean in that hated sense wherein ’tis usually taken as exclusive of king- ship ; for, as to the other sense wherein ’twas anciently used, the good queen has twice sanctified it in this very speech, how frightful soever the very sound of it be to some persons. “ My pains has been no more than only to transcribe this speech out of the learned Camden’s ‘History of Queen Elizabeth,’ where it was lain as it were under rubbish, and was as little thought of as if it had been spoken above two thousand years ago, not in this very same age. Pray read it often ; consider it well, recommend it to your friends, and let them with you judge whether such a constitution as ours is owned and declared to be in this speech be not worth every Englishman’s care and diligence, the prince’s as well as the people’s, to preserve upon its true bottom.” Before writing that letter Locke had done much to- wards the second of the two great reforms of which at this time he was a chief promoter. We have seen how, five years or more previously, he had begun to warn his friends as to the deplorable conse- quences of the prevalence and steady increase of money- clipping and, in a long chapter added to his anonymous tract on ‘ The Lowering of Interest,’ had seriously protested against the specious arguments of those who thought that the only way to prevent the illegal depreciation of the currency effected by the clippers was for the government itself to issue a depreciated currency. There can be no doubt that all through the interval he had continued often to think and talk on the subject, and he had good reason to do this on private as well as on public grounds. “ I shall, I think, in the beginning of July have some money paid me in, and perhaps some sooner,” he wrote to Clarke at the end of May, 1695. “ Pray tell me whether I cannot refuse clipped money ; for I take it not to be the lawful 1695. "1 63. J THE DEPRECIATED CURRENCY. 325 coin of England, and I know not why I should receive half the value I lent, instead of the whole.” 1 It would seem that Locke now circulated among his friends copies of the tract that had been published in 1692, with the avowed object both of stirring up interest in the subject', and of obtaining criticisms that might help him in writing more upon it. “ With my treatise of Education,” he said in a letter to Molyneux, “ you will receive another little one concerning Interest and Coinage. It is one of the fatherless children which the world lays at my door; hut, whoever he the author, I shall be glad to know your opinion of it.” 2 The letter containing Moly- neux’s opinion is missing ; but we have Locke’s reply, showing that Molyneux praised it greatly, and asked for another copy, as he had given away the one already received by him. Locke complied with this request. “But ’tis to you I send it,” he said, “ and not to any- body else. You may give it to whom you please, for ’tis yours as soon as you receive it ; but pray do not give it to anybody in my name, or as a present horn me ; and how- ever you are pleased to make me a compliment in making me the author of a book you think well of, yet you may be sure I do not own it to be mine. You, I see, are troubled there ” — in Ireland — “ about your money as well as we are here, though I hope you are not so deep in that disease as we are.” 3 “ The affair of our money, which is in a lamentable state,” he had said in an earlier letter, “is now under debate here. What the issue will be I know not : I pray for a good one. I find everybody 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290 ; Locke to Clarke, 25 May, 1695. 2 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 118 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 2 July, 1695. 3 Ibid., p. 127 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 20 Nov., 1695. 326 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. Cimp. XXII. almost looks on it as a mystery. To me there appears to he none at all in it. ’Tis but stripping it of the cant which all men that talk of it involve it in, and there is nothing easier. Lay by the arbitrary names of pence and shillings, and consider and speak of it as grains and ounces of silver, and ’tis as easy as telling of twenty.” 1 The question was easy enough to understand and ex- plain, but not so easy to bring to a practical solution. The cant in which it was involved, as Locke said, though honestly adopted by many, was prompted by shrewd men who, either for their own profit, or under a false concep- tion of the interests of the nation, industriously propounded opinions that Locke found it hard work, not to controvert, but to discredit. Fortunately he had friends in the government who shared his views, and not only eagerly sought his advice, hut were really anxious to follow it. Charles Montagu, who had been made chancellor of the exchequer in April, 1694, the greatest financier who had ever occupied the post, and who had won it by his suc- cessful insistance on Paterson’s project of the Bank of England, had an able coadjutor, if not leader, in Lord Keeper Somers ; and both of them knew the value of Locke’s counsel. Being the most influential of the lords justices — the body of seven to whom, after Queen Mary’s death, the administration of affairs was entrusted during the king’s absence on the continent, and who, after his return, continued in an irregular way to perform some of the functions of a cabinet — Somers induced his colleagues in October, not apparently for the first time during this year, to invite Locke to come up from Oates to confer with them. King William was now on his way from a successful camjiaign in the Netherlands, and use was to 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 126 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 16 Nov., 1695. ^ t 69 63 .] PROPOSED REFORM OF THE COINAGE. 327 be made of liis good fortune in dissolving tire old parlia- ment- — a step rendered necessary, it is true, by the re- cently passed triennial act — and electing a new one, as patriotic as it could be, in wbicb currency reform was to be the first business discussed. “A little before bis majesty’s return,” Locke wrote to Molyneux, “ tbe lords justices bad this matter under tbeir consideration, and, amongst others, were pleased to send to me for my thoughts about it. This is too publicly known here to make tbe mentioning of it to you appear vanity in me.” 1 Then’ lordships appear to have been just now especially troubled by a pamphlet “ for encouraging the coining silver money in England, and after for keeping it here,” which we only know through Locke’s reply to it, but which seems to have been considered more important than any of the others that were plentiful at the time. The pamphlet was an answer to Locke’s chapter on “ raising the value of money ” in the treatise that he had published three years before. Locke criticised it paragraph by paragraph in a paper which he drew up for the lords justices, and which, as it convinced them that no sort of justification could be found for coining money with a denomination in excess of its actual value, was at once printed and widely circulated throughout the country . 2 Before long a more formidable adversary had to be defeated. William Lowndes, an indefatigable public ser- 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 128 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 20 Nov., 1695. 2 ‘ Short Observations on a Printed Paper, entitled, For Encouraging the Coining Silver Money in England, and after for keeping it here ’ (1695), 24 pp. This tract need not be described, as its arguments were repeated more fully and effectively in Locke’s next publication on the subject. 328 IN THE SEEYICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. Xlll. vant, who, after some sixteen years of subordinate employ- ment, was made secretary to the treasury by Montagu in April, 1695, and who held that post with great credit to himself, and great advantage to the country, during nearly eight-and-twenty years, rendering unobtrusive but extremely valuable service by his reformation and honest and energetic oversight of the national account-keeping, had been directed, early in the year, to collect statistics “ of divers matters which concern the gold and silver moneys, and of the most practicable methods for new coining the latter, and supplying, in the meantime, suffi- cient coins to pay the king’s taxes and revenues, and to carry on the public commerce.” 1 Such statistics were absolutely needed as preliminary to a reform of the currency ; and that Lowndes executed the task assigned to him very well indeed is attested by the report, which he dated the 12tli of September, though it does not appear to have been seen by the government till two months later. He learnedly summed up the history of the coinage from ancient times, explained the successive variations in sterling and changes in the method of coining, and described with painful exactness the deplorable state to which the use of clipped money had brought the country. Of the silver coins brought into the exchequer within three months, in 1695, amounting in nominal value to 57,200/., and which ought to have weighed 221,418 ounces, he reported that the actual weight was only 113,771 ounces, showing that the real was hardly more than half the nominal value, and arguing from that average that the silver coin then in 1 Lowndes ; ‘ A Report containing an Essay for the Amendment of the Silver Coins ’ (1695), p. 3. iEt.^ 03 .] THE FINANCIAL EMBARRASSMENTS OF ENGLAND. 329 the country, reckoned to te worth about 4, 000,000k, was actually worth but little over 2, 000,000k All the new milled money that issued from the mint, he alleged, was hoarded up or melted down for exportation ; clipped silver coins alone were in circulation, and the best of these were being constantly bought up at the rate of as many as thirty shillings to the golden guinea, so that the remaining coins were becoming worse and worse, and, besides all the immense damage done to foreign trade, local trade was growing every day more and more difficult. “ In consequence of the vitiating, diminishing and counterfeiting of the current moneys, it is come to pass that great contentions do daily arise amongst the king’s subjects in fairs, markets, shops and other places throughout the kingdom, about the passing and refusing of the same, to the great disturbance of the public peace. Many bargains, doings and dealings are totally prevented and laid aside, which lessens trade in general. Persons, before they conclude in any bargains, are necessitated first to settle the price or value of the very money they are to receive for their goods, and, if it be in guineas at a high rate, or in clipped or bad moneys, they set the price of their goods accordingly, which I think has been one great cause of raising the price not only of merchandises, but even of edibles and other necessaries for the sustenance of the common people, to their great grievance. The receipt and collection of the public taxes, revenues, and debts, as well as of private men’s incomes, are extremely retarded, so that there rvere never so many bonds given and lying unsatisfied at the custom houses, or so vast an arrear of excises. And as for the land-tax, your lordships know how far ’tis affected with the bad moneys by the many complaints 330 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE [Chap. XIII. transmitted daily from tlie commissioners, receivers and collectors thereof .” 1 Lowndes, however, was not satisfied with merely reporting upon the state of the currency. He entitled his document £ An Essay for the Amendment of the Silver Coins ; ’ imported into it all the arguments he could bring together in favour of such an adulteration of the coinage as would put into a crown-piece only four shillings’ worth of silver, and, a few days before the meeting of the new parliament, issued this more monstrous proposal than any that Locke had hitherto had to condemn in the form of a state paper ; apparently printing and publishing it before presenting it to the lords justices, and, in a note on the last page, suggesting that “ any persons who have considered an affair of this nature” should “communicate their thoughts for rendering the design here aimed at more perfect or agree- able to the public service .” 2 During the first fortnight or so of November Locke was in constant communication with Montagu and Somers, and perhaps with some other members of the govern- ment, discussing the terms of the proposal to he submitted to parliament. They were all agreed as to the madness of any attempt to adulterate the coinage : of the folly and dishonesty of such a proceeding, Locke had quite convinced his associates. They were also agreed as to the necessity of calling in the clipped money, and render- ing its use, after a short time, illegal, as otherwise the new money would certainly be at once, as heretofore, either hoarded up or melted down or exported. But who was to J Lowndes ; ‘ A Report containing an Essay for the Amendment of the Silver Coins’ (1695), pp. 106 — 116. 2 Thid. p. 160. it 9 63.] CONFERENCES WITH THE GOVERNMENT. 331 bear the loss consequent on the change, which Lowndes estimated at 2,000,000/., and Locke at the more moderate sum of 1,200,000/. ? If it fell upon the individuals who held the bad money, there would be universal discontent, and the government would come into utter disfavour, which the king would largely share. If it fell on the exchequer, there would be serious difficulty in obtaining the money, the resources of the crown having as yet by no means recovered from the bankruptcy inherited from the later Stuarts. How and when, moreover, should the new money be substituted for the old ? The mint could not be put to work without the sanction of an act of parliament, and when that was obtained, with its limited resources, it would necessarily require a considerable time for completion of the work. If an early day were fixed for suppression of the old money, the new money would not be ready to replace it. If a distant day were fixed, the clippers w T ould make a rich harvest in the interval. Every hour would add to the public loss, and the whole trade of the country would be hopelessly deranged. Those were some of the difficulties through which Locke was helping to guide his friends when Lowndes’s essay was published. Lowndes had shown him this essay in manuscript. “Before it was laid before those great per- sons to whom it was afterwards submitted,” Locke wrote, “he did me the favour to show T it to me, and made me the compliment to ask me my opinion of it. Though we had some short discourse on the subject, yet the multi- plicity of his business whilst I staid in town, and my health, which soon after forced me out of it, allowed us not an occasion to debate any one point thoroughly and bring it to an issue. Before I returned to town, his book 332 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. was in tlie press, and finished before I had an opportunity to see Mr. Lowndes again. And here he laid a new ob- ligation on me, not only in giving me one of them, hut telling me, when I received it from his hands, that it was the first he had parted with to anybody .” 1 Locke told his friends the nature of the essay ; but, for all that, when it was published, it would seem that they were amazed by its audacity. “ You will easily see,” Somers wrote in haste to Locke, “by the book which was put in my hand last night, and by the title of a report which it bears, as well as by the advertisement at the end of it, that you were in the right when you said that the altera- tion of the standard was the thing aimed at. The challenge at the end, if you will allow me to say so, is in some sort directed to you. The proposition which you and I dis- coursed upon yesterday is endeavoured to be represented impracticable. The passing of money by weight is said to be ridiculous, at least in little payments. There is no encouragement proposed to invite people to bring the clipped money into the mint, so that it will be melted down to be transported ; and whilst this is doing, nothing will be left to carry on commerce, for no one will bring out his guineas to part with them for twenty shillings, when he paid thirty shillings for them so lately. These ” - — and some others — “ as I remember, are the objections made use of ; and I doubt not but you will, without great difficulty, help us with some expedients for them. I believe it an easier task than to remove what I see is so fixed, the project of alteration of the standard .” 2 Locke readily took up the challenge thrown to him, 1 ‘ Further Considerations concerning Kaising the Value of Money’ (1695), Preface. 2 Lord King, p. 241 ; Somers to Locke, Nov., 1695. Jfe] “ RAISING THE VALUE OE MONEY.” 333 not only by Lowndes, but also by Somers, who probably spoke for Montagu as well as for himself. He concerned himself, however, not so much with the details of the reform wdiich, difficult as they were, Somers thought comparatively easy, as with the “ fixed project of altera- tion of the standard,” that is, of the mischievous depreciation of the currency, which Lowndes, as repre- sentative of a number of crafty schemers and ignorant theorists, himself belonging only to the latter class, had now set before the country with far more authority and vigour of argument than any of the other score of pamph- leteers, writing to the same effect, could pretend to. He did not do this later work in London. On the 16th of November, a few days after the appearance of Lowndes’s essay, he hurried down to Oates on hearing of Mrs. Cudworth’s sudden death, and his own ill-health detained him there. He had only time to promise that he would write an answer to the essay, and this he did with such rapidity as should have spared him the “repeated intimations and instances, not without some reproaches for his backwardness,” which, as he said, came to him from London. 1 His own essay, filling more than a hundred pages, was written, submitted to the lords justices, and printed and published at their request, 2 before the end of December, that is, in barely more than a month from the time when it was begun. It was not circulated among members of parliament soon enough to prepare them for Montagu’s re-coinage bill ; but it was able to help that bill, in a modified form, to become law. Locke began his essay with a very complete and lucid exposition of the 1 ‘ Further Considerations,’ etc., Preface. 2 Ibid., dedication to Sir John Somers. 334 IN THE SEEYICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XHT. purposes and advantages of using silver as a standard of value, to which he added some other “considerations” preliminary to his discussion of Lowndes’s proposals. The substance of these may be given in his own concise epitome. “ Silver,” he said, “ is that which mankind have agreed on to take and give in exchange for all other commodities, as an equivalent. It is by the quantity of silver they give, or take, or contract for, that they estimate the value of other things, and satisfy for them ; and thus, by its quantity, silver becomes the measure of commerce. Hence it necessarily follows that a greater quantity of silver has a greater value ; a less quantity of silver has a less value ; and an equal quantity an equal value. Money differs from uncoined silver only in this, that the quantity of silver in each piece of money is ascer- tained by the stamp it bears ; which is set there to be a public voucher of its weight and fineness. Gold is treasure, as well as silver, because it decays not in keeping, and never sinks much in its value. Gold is fit to be coined, as well as silver, to ascertain its quantity to those who have a mind to traffic in it, but not fit to be joined with silver as a measure of commerce. Jewels too are treasure, because they keep without decay, and have constantly a great value in proportion to their bulk, hut cannot be used for money, because their value is not measured by their quantity, nor can they, as gold and silver, be divided and keep their value. The other metals are not treasure, because they decay in keeping, and because of their plenty, which makes their value little in a great bulk, and so unfit for money, commerce and carriage. The only way to bring treasure into England is the well- ordering of trade. The only way to bring silver and gold to the mint, for the increase of our stock of money and treasure which shall stay here, is an overbalance of our whole trade. All other ways to increase our money and riches are but projects that will fail us.” 1 Thereupon Locke proceeded to show that Lowndes’s project of increasing the national wealth, or, which was the same thing, of lessening the national loss from so many generations of clipping, was an altogether fallacious one. Lowndes proposed that, in order to restoi’e the clipped money to something like its nominal value, an ounce of silver, worth five shillings in the market, should be coined iuto a crownpiece and given out as worth six shillings and threepence ; and that in the same proportion the whole currency should be depreciated to the extent of one fifth. His plea for this was that an ounce of standard silver was worth six and fivepence in the market. He failed to see that the clipped money to which the denomination of six and fivepence 1 ‘Further Considerations,’ etc., pp. 22, 23. 335 63 .] FALLACIES ABOUT THE VALUE OF MONEY. was given was really worth no more than five shillings, or a good deal less than that, and that this shallow fallacy and all others like it that were current had no other basis than the misleading phrase of commerce, that “ bullion is risen.” “ I desire those who say bullion is risen,” Locke wrote, “ would tell me what they mean by ‘risen.’ Any commodity, I think, is properly said to be risen when the same quantity will exchange for a greater quantity of another thing : but more particularly of that thiug which is the measure of commerce in the country. And thus corn is said to be risen among the English in Virginia when a bushel of it will sell or exchange for more pounds of tobacco ; amongst the Indians, when it will sell for more yards of wampompeak, which is their money ; and amongst the English here, when it will exchange for a greater quantity of silver than it would before. Rising and falling of commodities is always between several commodities of distinct worths. But nobody can say that tobacco of the same goodness is risen in respect of itself. One pound of the same goodness will never exchange for a pound and a quarter of the same goodness. And so it is in silver. An ounce of silver will always be of equal value to an ounce of silver. Nor can it ever rise or fall in respect of itself. An ounce of standard silver can never be worth an ounce and a quarter of standard silver ; nor one ounce of uncoined silver exchange for an ounce and a quarter of coined silver. The stamp cannot so much debase its value.” 1 “Mr. Lowndes,” he added later on in his essay, “compares the value of silver in our coin to the value of the same silver reduced to bullion, which he, supposing to be as four to five, makes that the measure of raising our money. If this be the difference of value between silver in bullion and silver in coin, and if it be true that four ounces of standard bullion be worth five ounces of the same silver coined, or, which is the same thing, that bullion will sell by the ounce for six shillings and fivepence unclipped money, I will take the boldness to advise his majesty to buy, or to borrow anywhere, so much bullion, or, rather than be without it, melt down so much plate, as is equal in weight to 1200?. sterling of our present milled money. This let him sell for milled money. And, according to our author’s rule, it will yield 1500?. Let that 1500?. be reduced into bullion, and sold again, and it will produce 1875?.; which 1875?. of weighty money being reduced into bullion, will still produce one fifth more in weight of silver, being sold for weighty money. And thus his majesty may get at least 320,000?. by selling of bullion for weighty money, and melting that down into bullion as fast as he receives it ; till he has Further Considerations,’ etc., p. 27. 336 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. brought into bis hands the 1,600,000/, which Mr. Lowndes computes there is of weighty money left in England. I doubt not but every one who reads it will think this a very ridiculous proposition. But he must think it ridiculous for no other reason but because he sees it is impossible that bullion should sell for one fifth above its weight of the same silver coined ; that is, that an ounce of standard silver should sell for six shillings and fivepence of our present weighty money. For, if it will, it is no ridiculous thing that the king should melt down and make that profit of his money.” 1 It was Locke’s object to show the ridiculous meaning of Lowndes’s falla- cies, and this he certainly did so well that unfair critics may be tempted to urge that he was talking nonsense. If he did that, it was only because the specious phrases of his opponent sadly needed to be cleared of the ponderous pretence of wisdom in which they were framed. Lowndes thus stated one of the many advantages that he anticipated from giving an artificial value to the coin : — “ The raising the value of the silver in the coin will increase the whole species in tale, and thereby make it more commensurate to the general need thereof for carrying on the common traffic of the nation, and to answei the payments on the numerous contracts, securities, and other daily occa- sions requiring a larger supply of money for that purpose. This reason may be further illustrated by considering that the want of a sufficient stock of money hath been the chief cause of introducing so much paper credit, which is at best hazardous, and may be carried too far.” To which Locke answered : — “ Just as the boy cut his leather into five quarters (as he called them) to cover his ball, when cut into four quarters it fell short — but after all his pains, as much of his ball lay bare as before — if the quantity of coined silver employed in England fall short, the arbitrary denomination of a greater number of pence given to it, or, which is all one, to the several coined pieces of it, will not make it commensurate to the size of our trade, or the greatness of our occasions. This is as certain as that if the quantity of a board, which is to stop a leak of a ship fifteen inches square, be but twelve inches square, it will not be made to do it by being measured by a foot that is divided into fifteen inches instead of twelve, and so having a larger tale or number of inches in denomination given to it.” 2 There were more serious passages in Locke’s pamphlet ; but the whole was designed to expose, by laughing at them, the absurd fallacies that Lowndes had strung together. No better plan could have been adopted for convincing the men of such moderate intelligence as the ordinary mem- 1 ‘Further Considerations,’ etc., pp. 55 — 57. 2 Ibid., p. 64. 1695-6 1 it. 63. J THE EE -COINAGE BILL. 337 bars of parliament in William the Third's day, and, the fallacies not being still quite obsolete, Locke’s mockery is not yet quite out of date. But no more of it need here be quoted. Locke’s share in the details of the re-coinage hill cannot he traced. Being out of London all through the time of its discussion in parliament, he cannot then have given much advice to Montagu ; but it is certain that before he left town in November he took an important part in the arrangement of the general scheme, and he was probably concerned in drawing up the resolutions with which Montagu introduced the subject to the house of commons in the first week of December. Those reso- lutions, which were adopted after some hard fighting, stipulated that all new money should be coined in accord- ance with the old standard, that the use of clipped money should, after intervals to be specified, become illegal, and that the public exchequer should bear the loss upon the difference in actual value between bad money and good. Their acceptance was soon followed by the re-coinage bill, in which it was stipulated that, to provide for the loss to the public, 1,200. 000Z. should be borrowed from the bank of England on the security of a window-tax. The bill passed rapidly through the lower house, but met with considerable opposition from the peers. Before their amendments came down for consideration, serious prejudices were aroused in the minds of many members who had previously voted for it, in consequence of a panic that had seized the country, under a foolish fear that clipped money would become illegal before the new coinage was introduced. Montagu therefore deemed it prudent to adopt, without opposition, the lords’ altera- tions, which hardly touched the principle of the measure. Thus the bill, though not as perfect as its framers Vol. II. — 22 338 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. desired, became law in April, 1696. 1 Locke and bis friends bad gained their victory. “ The business of our money lias so near brought us to ruin,” Locke wrote to Molyneux at the end of March, “that, till the plot broke out, it was everybody’s talk, everybody’s uneasiness; and, because I had played the fool to print about it, there was scarce a post wherein some- body or other did not give me fresh trouble about it. But now the parliament has reduced guineas to two and twenty shillings apiece after the 10th, and prohibited the receipt of clipped money after the 4th of May next. The bill has passed both houses, and, I believe, will speedily receive the royal assent. Though I can never bethink any pains or time of mine in the service of my country, as far as I may be of any use, yet I must own to you this and the like subjects are not those which I now relish or that do, with most pleasure, employ my thoughts.” 2 Locke was just then in worse health than usual, and he was evidently tired of the frivolous interruptions that his great services towards a settlement of the currency question had caused him. Of those interruptions one illustration may be given. Some weeks before the end of February, Archbishop Tenison — made primate on the death of Tillotson, in November, 1694 — had forwarded to him, with a wrong address, a manuscript pamphlet, written by some friend of his, which he desired Locke to criticise. Immediately on receiving the parcel, Locke wrote to acknowledge it, 3 and 1 Journals of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, Dec. 1695, and Jan. 1695-6. 2 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 141 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 30 March, 1696. 3 MSS. in Lambeth Palace, vol. cmxxx. ( Gibson Papers, vol. ii.), no. 23; Locke to Tenison, 27 Feb., 1695-6. OPPOSITION TO THE NEW COINAGE. 1698. "I iEt. 63. J 339 on the following day he sent off the following extremely courteous letter : — “ May it please your Grace, — I took the liberty to trouble your grace with two letters yesterday, the one to trouble your grace with an account of the delay of your grace’s packet in coming hither, and the other to inform you that I had just then received it. " “ My letters were no sooner gone but I betook myself to the reading the manuscript you did me the honour to send me, and, upon perusal of it, in obedience to your grace’s commands, I must own to your grace my dissent from the author in the design of his papers, which is, I take it, to prove that the lessening of our coin would be an advantage to the kingdom. The stress of his argument is, if I mistake not, laid upon this supposition, viz., that, though foreigners will presently raise the price of their commodities in proportion to our raising the denomination of our money, yet our own people will not. To make good this supposition, the author says (page 3rd), ‘ Instances of this may be given innumerable. For the clipping of our money had an effect equal to any public alteration of the denomination, and yet it was for a great while so far from affecting our commodities that ’tis known the light money would have bought the heavy, and that in a goldsmith’s shop five ounces of clipped money would have bought sis ounces of plate, and that purely by virtue of its denomination.’ I guess these innu- merable instances, when examined, will not amount to one. That here given, I am sure, is none. For, if I mistake not, ‘the clipping of our money’ had not ‘ an effect equal to any public alteration.’ The difference was mani- festly this, that, though a clipped shilling had not the silver and so not the value of a weighty one, yet there went with it a belief that, when the money should come to be rectified, the public would make good to every one the deficiency of silver in the clipped money, and so, on that presumption, it was taken for as good as weighty money, since it would at last produce to every one as much silver as ought to he in weighty money, as in effect we now see care is taken it should. And, according as clipped money met with more or less of this belief, so it had the easier or more difficult passage. But when once a law has established our coin one-fifth lighter, and the hopes that ever the fifth part will be made good to the receivers of that money are quite gone, then nobody will ever be able in a goldsmith’s shop to buy six ounces of plate with five ounces of this money by virtue of its denomination. If the author will say it will, I grant him all the rest of his treatise to be right. If he confesses it will not, then all that he builds on it falls with it and is at an end. 340 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. “ I need not apply this particularly to all this gentleman’s deductions drawn from this mistaken supposition : his own quickness (for he is not a man of slow thoughts) will excuse me from giving your grace that trouble. At least, the papers having lain so long by the way, I thought it my duty, on once reading, to give my opinion in short by the very first opportunity, rather than add any longer time to that delay which I fear has already much exceeded expectation. I have not with this returned the manuscript, be- cause I thought that either the author had another copy, or, if not, that this I have was not to be ventured by so uncertain a way as I send this. And I have the rather kept it by me that, if anything farther be required of me, I may be able to obey your grace’s demands, when I am sure I may with good manners take longer time to go over the particulars, if that or any farther thoughts of mine on this discourse be more of leisure expected from me. The author has done me too great honour in demanding my opinion, and will, I doubt not, forgive my complying with him so far as to profess it, though it differs from his. If your grace please to honour me with any farther commands, a letter directed to me at Oates, to be left at Mr. Samuel Jocelin’s, in Bishop Stortford, by the post, will find the way hither. “ I am, your grace’s most humble and most obedient servant, “John Locke .” 1 During the weeks just before and shortly after the passing of the re-coinage bill, Locke seems to have been sometimes in fear that it would be of no avail in repressing the worst evils of the old system and silencing the proposals of those who followed the lead of Lowndes. In one letter to Clarke he expressed alarm lest that party should after all be able “ to compass their so long laboured design of raising the denomination of our coin.” “Did I not see so ready a motion towards them,” he added, “ 1 could scarce imagine that any Englishman could harbour a thought so destructive to his country as I apprehend this to be. But what may one not believe of Englishmen, when there are those found amongst them that would favour a French invasion ? Is there no hopes to put a 1 MSS. in Lambeth Palace, vol. cmxxx. ( Gibson Papers, vol. ii.), no. 18; Locke to Tenison, 28 Feb., 1695-6. 1606 . "I Mt. 63 . J OPPOSITION TO THE NEW COINAGE. 341 total end to clipping and coining — that is, counterfeiting? Methinks the present ferment should take some vigour, and put a stop to that great and surely destructive evil.” 1 “ I see by the temper the country is in (and I doubt not but there are those who will blow the coal),” he wrote a month later, “ that, if London do not set them good example, the act will be broken through, and clipping will he continued upon us. The trade, I am sure, goes on as brisk as ever. A company was lately taken at or about Ware. Somebody ready, as soon as the day comes, to arrest a goldsmith that refused to pay money according to the law, would spoil the trick, especially if several of them were made examples. If clipped money once but get currency in London amongst those blades, but for the first week after the 4th of May, I look upon it as irre- trievable. But, if it be stopped there, the rest of the kingdom will fall into it, especially if receiving clipped money by weight can be introduced. These are at present my thoughts, which I trouble those with w 7 ho are able to make use of them, if they may be of any.” 2 It will be remembered that Clarke was now an influential member of parliament. “I agree with you,” Locke said, a fortnight after the 4th of May, in answer to some suggestion made by Clarke in a letter that is missing, “ that a proclamation of the lords justices to the purpose you mention would be of infinite use, and I hope those who have done so much in this affair will be able to obtain that too ; and take care the proclamation be so drawn, or by such a hand, as may not increase the difficulties and doubts. Some examples 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290; Locke to Clarke, 25 March, 1696. 2 Ibid.; Locke to Clarke, 24 April, 1696. 342 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XI IL of the kind you mention, especially among the Lombard- street blades, would make the matter go glib, and raise the croak against them, and turn the poor suffering people’s eyes upon them ; for there lies the great obstruc- tion. Hold hut tight as you have begun in London, and we shall do well enough .” 1 Among many men of influence with whom Locke was for the first time brought into connection by his public efforts towards reform of the currency, John Cary, a mer- chant of Bristol, deserves to he particularly mentioned. As soon as Locke’s answer to Lowndes was published, Cary wrote to thank him for the service he had thus done to the nation. “ I think you have hit the mark,” he said. “ ’Tis the balance of our trade with foreign countries, not altering the standard of our coin, which increases or lessens our bullion at home.” In this letter Cary pointed out some errors in figures occurring in the ‘ Further Con- siderations,’ for which Locke was grateful . 2 He also forwarded with it 1 An Essay on Trade,’ which he had written ; and with this work Locke was much pleased. “It is the best discourse I ever read on that subject,” he said, “not only for the clearness of all that you deliver, and the undoubted evidence of most of it, but for a reason that weighs with me more than both those, and that is that sincere aim of the public good and that disinterested reasoning that appears to me in all your proposals ; a thing that I have not been able to find in those authors on the same argument which I have looked into. The country gentleman, who is most concerned in a right ordering of trade, both in duty and interest, is of all others the most remote from any true notions of it or sense in his stake in 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290; Locke to Clarke, 18 May [1696]. * Ibid., no. 5540; Cary to Locke, 11 Jan., 1695-6. FRIENDSHIP WITH JOHN CARY. 343 1696. 1 ■ffit. 63 J it, ’Tis high time somebody should awaken and inform him, that he may in his place look a little after it. I know nobody so able to do it as you, and in no party or interest.” 1 “ A worthy rational man and a disinterested lover of his country,” Locke wrote as soon as he found that Cary answered to that description, “is so valuable a thing that I think I may be allowed to be very ambitious of such acquaintance whensoever I can meet with it .” 2 During the next few years Locke had frequent intercourse with Cary wdien they were together in London, and took especial interest in the exploit for which Cary is chiefly to be remembered in English history. The philan- thropic Bristol merchant, finding that there were about a thousand paupers in his city, though not more than thirty of them were too old or infirm to work, persuaded several of his influential neighbours to form a com- mittee of sixty “ guardians of the poor,” and to join him in building a great workhouse, where all who did not choose to earn their living in other ways should be com- pelled to maintain themselves . 3 This plan, established after many difficulties, was legalized by a special act of parliament , 4 and formed an important contribution towards the modern reformation of our poor laws. By it John Cary earned a better right to the gratitude of posterity than his more famous but not more philanthropic friend and fellow- citizen, Edward Colston. 1 Additional MSS., no. 5540 ; Locke to Cary, 2 May, 1696. 2 Ibid., no. 5540; Locke to Cary, 12 April, 1696. 3 Board of Trade Papers, in the Public Record Office, vol. iv., pp. 263 — 269. 4 7th and 8th of William III., cap. 32 (private acts). 344 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. Xm. Though Locke was a commissioner of appeals during at least eleven or twelve years, there is not much to be said about his occupations in that capacity. There must have been a good deal of work to be done in the office, in adjustment of claims and quarrels growing out of the disorganised state of public affairs under Charles the Second and James the Second and the turmoil of the Revolution ; hut most of this was probably disposed of by a secretary and his clerks, under the supervision of the other commissioners who resided in London. Locke’s appointment to the post appears to have been made on the understanding that it should not take up much of his time, and, after his settlement at Oates, at any rate, it cannot possibly have done so. That it was not quite a sinecure, however, is evident from the very slight in- formation that we have respecting his connection with it. His friend, Edward Clarke, held a somewhat similar, though less dignified and more onerous position, as com- missioner of excise, and he seems, in April, 1696, to have complained to Locke about the delay in dealiug with some claim in which he was especially interested. “ As to the commission of appeals,” Locke replied from Oates, “ I could do no more than I did, unless I could have heard and judged by myself. I took three journeys to London on purpose, but neither found any more than Mr. Dodington ” — one of his colleagues — “in town, nor could, with my utmost endeavours, get three together. The last time my health forced me out of town in haste, and, there being four then present, I could not think my absence could hinder their proceeding to judgment, and yet I should have come up had not my illness at that time kept me in bed and not permitted me that attend- ance without danger of my life. But pray tell me, have it 9 63 .] WOKE AS COMMISSIONER OF APPEALS. 345 not my brethren determined that cause, and at what sticks it ? Mr. Tilson, a clerk in the treasury, our secre- tary, knows how much I laboured to get a quorum and to bring the appeals to a hearing, and you are not wholly stranger to it.” 1 Two months later, on the 18th of June, Locke was in London and helped to make a quorum at the consideration of an appeal from a distiller, named Woodcock, against a decision of the commissioners of excise, and on that day he, along with two other commissioners, signed a letter to the excise commissioners on the subject. 2 A couple of days afterwards he learnt that the letter had been tam- pered with. “I return you my thanks,” he then wrote, “for the favour you have done me in letting me have a sight of that letter. I was startled when I at first was told that there was the mention of witnesses in it, being very sure that I had not so far mistaken the common rules of all judicial proceedings as to set my hand to a summons of witnesses in a cause that I was to judge, when it was not demanded of me by either of the parties con- cerned. All the rest of the letter I own to have set my hand to ; but these words, ‘ and the witnesses,’ which are interlined in that letter, I know nothing of ; nor were they there when I signed the letter, and therefore I must desire you to look on them as not coming from me.” 3 It is not necessary to endeavour to clear up the points involved either in Locke’s private letter to Clarke from Oates, or in his letter to the commissioners of excise, of whom Clarke was one. The only value of these letters to 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290 ; Locke to Clarke, 16 April, 1696. 2 Treasury Papers (in the Public Record Office), vol. xxxviii., no. 63 ; Commissioners of Appeal to Commissioners of Excise, 18 June, 1696. 3 Ibid. ; Locke to Commissioners of Excise, 20 June, 1696. 346 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. us is in the slender help they give us towards understand- ing the nature of his occasional duties as a commissioner of appeals. At the time of writing them he waspreparing to enter upon work of far greater importance concerning which we are much more fully informed. The reformation of the currency was only one of the great services that Somers and Montagu, as the ablest and most active members of the government that was re-shaped in the spring of 1695, rendered to their country; and in at least one other of extreme value they were aided by the wisdom and experience of Locke. In the currency reform Locke took the initiative, and, having- insisted not only on a change, but also on the main con- ditions on which that change was to be effected, he left the working out of its details to associates better qualified for the task. In projecting the commission of trade and plantations, out of which our present board of trade and colonial office have grown, he does not seem to have had much or anything to do ; but the business of laying the foundations of all the administrative duties for which these and other departments of the public service are now responsible chiefly devolved upon him. William the Third had inherited the administrative machinery of the later Stuarts, and only slowly proceeded to reconstruct it. His first cabinets, or cabals, or juntos, were made up indiscriminately of wliigs and tories, men of different parties and men of no party, selected primarily in hope of thereby strengthening the loyalty of the various cliques and factions that they represented, and secondarily because they were thought suitable men to execute the THE COMMISSION OF TEADE AND PLANTATIONS. 347 work assigned to them. But the work was for the most part ill-defined, and for some time there was very little effort to parcel out the public business into separate departments and still less to bring all public business under departmental supervision. This was especially the case as regarded such important concerns as the protec- tion or custody of the poor throughout the country, or the direction of the relations in which English traders and manufacturers should stand to one another, to foreign traders and manufacturers, or to foreign governments, or the guidance and control of the numerous colonies that were established during the seventeenth century. The first Lord Shaftesbury had induced Charles the Second to appoint a council of trade and plantations, and during most of its short life Locke had been its secretary. But that council, never supported by either king or parlia- ment, was speedily abandoned under the pressure of the political and religious struggles that absorbed all men’s thoughts at that time, and no attempt seems to have been made to revive it until more than six years after William’s accession. No sooner, however, had the tolerably compact govern- ment which followed Carmarthen’s disgrace taken shape under the guidance, though not the nominal leadership, of Sir John Somers, than the old council was thought of. It was felt by many outsiders as well as by the more active members of the government that trade, in the widest application and ramifications of the term, could no longer be neglected. Currency reform was more urgently needed than anything else, and that was first undertaken ; but currency reform was only one out of many items in the work to be done if England in its domestic and com- mercial concerns was to obtain substantial benefit from 348 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIIT. the Devolution, and, while that was in progress, the entire question was not ignored. It is not recorded that Locke had any part in the discussion and management of it ; but as he was now in close communication with the govern- ment respecting the coinage, as he had nearly a quarter of a century before had thorough experience of the difficulties and requirements to he met in the handling of this matter, and as his recent work on ‘ The Lowering of Interest ’ had given fresh proof of his intimate ac- quaintance with trade in its theoretical and practical conditions, there can hardly be any doubt that he was freely consulted by Somers and some of his associates. As he paid only a few short visits to London during 1695, however, and as his time was then very fully occupied with other matters, it is not likely that he had much if any part in the arrangement of the details or in elabo- rating the plan of action, and it is probable that the constitution of the proposed commission of trade and plantations which was ready for the king’s signature early in December was arranged, and that even his name was inserted in it as one of the commissioners, without his knowledge. 1 “ I was some days ago extremely pleased,” the Earl of Monmouth wrote to him on the 12th of December, “ when the king was brought to so reasonable a resolution as to determine upon a council of trade, where some great men were to assist, but where others, with salaries of 1000Z. a year, were to be fixed as the constant labourers. Mr. Locke being to be of the number made me have the better opinion of the thing. But, according to our accustomed wisdom and prudence, when all things had 1 Docquet Book (in the Public Record Office), vol. xx. ^t 5 G3.] THE commission of trade and plantations. 349 been a good while adjusted, the patent ready for the seal, and some very able and honest men provided for your companions, it was impossible to get the king to sign it ; but, delaying it from day to day, the parliament this day fell upon it, and are going to form such a commission, to be nominated by themselves. Mr. Locke may be the choice of the house as well as the king’s. If it take that course, if the ill weather prevent you not, it were not improper you were in town ; but, above all things, take care of yourself, without which your friends will lose the pleasure of serving you. I hope we may make the house desist, and that your affair is fixed.” 1 Locke was not at all anxious to be a member of the commission, but he was anxious that the business pro- posed for it should be entered upon, and perhaps he was not sorry to find that the house of commons showed such eagerness in the matter as to attempt to take it out of the hands of the government. For some unexplained reason, however, perhaps because the re-coinage bill, and the important operations consequent upon it, ab- sorbed all the attention of those most concerned in the establishment of the commission of trade and planta- tions, though its patent was signed and ready to be issued on the 16th of December, 1695, no further action was taken upon it for nearly half a year. “ I shall not be sorry,” Locke wrote to Molyneux at the end of March, 1696, “ if I ’scape a very honourable employment, with a 1000k a year salary annexed to it, to which the king was pleased to nominate me some time since. May I have but quiet and leisure and a competency of health to perfect some thoughts my mind is sometimes upon, I should desire no 1 Lord King, p. 233; Monmouth to Locke, 12 Dec., 1695. 350 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. more for myself in this world.” 1 He appears to have asked permission to decline the appointment, of which Sir John Somers had written to inform him, apologising while he did so for having inserted his name in the commission without his “ express consent.” 2 He was re-appointed, however, in an amended patent that was issued on the 15th of May, and immediately afterwards he was called upon to begin his duties. “ The public requires your help, and consequently your attendance in town,” wrote Sir William Trumbull, the very honest and very good-hearted, hut not very brilliant, assistant secretary of state. “ The council of trade, whereof you are most worthily appointed a member, must go on with effect, or the greatest inconveniences and mischief will follow. I hope your health will permit you to come and make some stay here ; and what reluctancy soever you may have to appear among us, I know your love to your country and your great zeal for our common interests will over- come it.” 3 By the patent of the 15th of May the eight principal officers of state and six other persons besides Locke were appointed “ commissioners for promoting the trade of the kingdom, and for inspecting and improving the plantations in America and elsewhere.” They were authorised and empowered “ to inquire into and take account of the state and condition of the general trade of England and also of the several particular trades into all foreign parts, and how the same, respectively, are ad- vanced and decayed ; and to inquire into and examine 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 142 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 30 March, 1696. 2 Lord King, p. 243. 3 Ibid., p. 243; Trumbull to Locke, 19 May, 1696. APPOINTMENT AS COMMISSIONER OF TRADE. 351 what trades are or may prove hurtful, or are or- may ho made beneficial to the kingdom of England, and by what ways and means the profitable and advantageous trades may he more improved and extended, and the hurtful and prejudicial rectified or discouraged, and to inquire into the several obstructions of trade and the means of re- moving the same, and also in what manner and by what proper methods the trade of the kingdom may be most effectually protected and secured in all the parts thereof, and to consider by what means the several useful and profitable manufactures already settled in the kingdom may be further improved and in what manner most profit- able manufactures maybe introduced.” They were “to consider of some proper methods for setting on work and employing the poor of the kingdom and making them useful to the public, and thereby easing the nation of that burthen, and by what ways and means such designs may be most effectual.” They were, at their discretion, “ to inform themselves of all things relating to trade and the encouraging thereof, as also to consider of the best and most effectual means to regain, encourage, and establish the fishery of the kingdom.” Even more ex- tensive were their functions as overseers of all the English colonies. They were to look after the plantations, “ as well with regard to the administration of the govern- ment and justice in those places as in relation to the commerce thereof,” including the improvement of the soil, the introduction of new commodities, and a score of other matters . 1 The principal officers of state were ex-officio members, unpaid, and only expected to take a general supervision 1 Board of Trade Papers (in the Public Record Office), Journal A, pp. 1-6. 352 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XTri. of the work of the new council. Locke’s working col- leagues, with a salary of 1000k apiece, were the Earl of Bridgewater, the Earl of Tankerville, known to us of old as the disreputable Eord, Lord Grey of Wark, Sir Philip Meadows, William Brathwayte, John Pollexfen, Abraham Hill, John Methuen, and, after some time, George Step- ney. 1 The secretary to the commission, appointed on the first day of meeting, 2 was William Popple, the trans- lator of Locke’s ‘ Epistola de Tolerautia,’ and his friend during the past six or seven years. 3 One of the clerks employed in the office, at a salary of 80k a year, was 1 Board of Trade Papers (in the Public Record Office), Journal A, pp. 1—6. 2 Ibid,, p. 7. 3 Popple, born in 1638, and a nephew of Andrew Marvel, was the author of a ‘ Rational Catechism,’ which was published in 1687, and of various plays and poems, which are still in manuscript. ( Additional MSS., in the British Museum, no. 8888.) After many years’ residence in London he estab- lished himself as a merchant at Bordeaux in 1676. He returned to England about the time of the Revolution, and was an intimate friend of Thomas Firmin and other Unitarians, his daughter marrying Maurice Ashley, the third Lord Shaftesbury’s brother. That he did not prosper greatly in busi- ness may be inferred from his taking the secretaryship of the council of trade. In that post, however, he acquitted himself admirably, and if, as is probable, he obtained it through Locke’s influence, the influence was well used. He appears to have been Locke’s chief assistant and agent in bringing the work of the council into good order and in rendering it possible for the immense amount of good work done during its first few years to be effected. Most of the information contained in the following pages is derived from Popple’s minutes and the papers doequeted and classified by him. All his work was done with wonderful neatness and. apparently, with wonderful accuracy. I shall generally refer only to Popple’s journal of the proceedings of the com- mission, leaving any who care to inquire into the subject to follow his own explicit references therein to the profuse collection of letters, books, and bundles of papers left by him, and now in the Public Record Office, so far as they have been preserved. it 9 63 .] WORK AS COMMISSIONER OF TRADE. 353 Sylvanus Brownover, wlio had been “ Mr. Locke’s boy ” five-and-twenty years before, who had resided and travelled with him ever since, both in England and Holland, as a sort of confidential servant or secretary, a fair artist in his way, and an excellent amanuensis. His employment now in the council office was doubtless in order that when Locke was at Oates or absent else- where there might be readier communication with him. During the four years and a little more that comprised Locke’s work as a commissioner of trade and plantations, his health only suffered him to be at his post during the summer months, but whenever he could be in London he was in constant attendance . 1 The other commissioners attended occasionally, two or three of them very fre- quently, so that the quorum of three was always made up. But Locke was the only one who appears to have devoted himself very heartily to the business ; and he was in every way its chief director and controller. His experience fitted him for this ; his wisdom and integrity yet more. All the more important undertakings of the council were begun when he was present, and continued under his guidance. All its more important decisions were written, dictated, or inspired by him. When he was in London, it was always hard at work. When he was at Oates, though he was informed of every measure of importance, and frequently sent up long minutes for 1 His attendances may be here summarised ; 1696, 25 June — 13 Novem- ber (absent three days); 1696-7, 13 — 17 February; 1697, 21 June — 22 November ; 1698, 11 July — 20 October (absent two days) ; 1699, 6 June — 20 November (absent two days) ; 1700, 17 May — 28 June, when he resigned. The council began by meeting three times a week ; but soon afterwards be met every day but Saturday and Sunday, with occasional intermissions of a few days, especially during the winter. When there was great pressure of business, it met in the evening as well as in the day time. Vol. II. — 23 354 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. its use, its work slackened in quantity, and yet more in quality. He was altogether its presiding genius, and by his energy and talent it was enabled and induced to do more — and more useful — work, during the first four years of its existence, than any one who has not studied its pro- ceedings and traced their connection with all the com- mercial and social affairs of England at this time and afterwards can at all adequately appreciate. To set forth the details of that work would require more than one stout volume. The extracts that have been made from King William’s patent, comprehensive as are the duties there prescribed, but feebly indicate its extent, variety, and ramifications. Only a few illustra- tions can here be given, and only a few topics of special importance with which Locke was specially concerned can be more than touched upon. The first meeting of the council was held in the cham- bers assigned to it in Whitehall, on the 25th of June. That day and the three following were spent in deciding upon the plan of procedure and the times of meeting, in appointing a secretary and clerks, in giving instructions to Christopher Wren about the fitting up of the offices, and to Awnsham Churchill and Jacob Tonson about the supply of stationery, and in arranging other prelim- inaries. 1 After that they at once set to work. As it would take a longer time to receive information from the colonies than from places nearer home, they began by taking a general view of the state of the English possessions in America and the West Indies, and in setting matters in train for obtaining full and new details from them and about them. They next sent out circulars to clergymen and 1 Board of Trade Papers, Journal A, pp. 7, 8. it 9 63 .] WORK AS COMMISSIONER OF TRADE. 355 others in nearly every parish in the kingdom, asking for particulars concerning the number of paupers therein, the modes in which they were relieved and employed, the amounts of local poor-rates, and so forth. They spent one day in discussing the state of the linen and paper manufactures, and instructed the secretary to collect further information. On another day they considered a draft bill, intended for the house of commons, for in- creasing the woollen trade in England, and preventing the exportation of wool. Thus, and in a variety of other work, the month of July was occupied . 1 In August they examined and cross-examined Gilbert Heathcote, one of the leading merchants of London and a friend of Locke’s, and several other merchants trading with Sweden and the Baltic, about the condition of English commerce with those parts ; and made similar inquiries from Paul Daranda and other merchants about trade with Holland, and the value of a consulate at Botterdam, as a result of which “ Mr. Locke was desired to draw up a scheme of some method of determining differences between merchants by referees that might be decisive without appeal.” On one day they took evidence from Locke’s very old friend, Thomas Eirmin, about linen manufacture, and a great workhouse that he had established in Little Britain more than twenty years before, in which some sixteen or seventeen hundred persons whom he had reclaimed from beggary were con- stantly employed ; discussed his recommendation of the compulsory employment of paupers in such ways as this, or, at any rate, that no one should be allowed to take alms unless he wore a pauper’s badge and confined his begging to his own parish ; and inspected a model that 1 Board of Trade Papers, Journal A, pp. 8 — 30. 356 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. lie produced of a spinning-wheel invented by him, and which would make it easy for a girl ten years old to spin eight hundred yards of flax for a penny, and to earn ten- pence a day. They considered, at another time, some papers about the procuring of naval stores from New England, which Lowndes, the secretary to the treasury, had sent to Locke ; and several days were occupied in taking evidence and examining statistics about Jamaica and the other West Indian settlements, New York, Maryland, and Virginia . 1 Colonial affairs continued to engross most of their, attention during September, one day being devoted to the consideration of a proposal that in the plantations it should be compulsory to clothe all servants and slaves and to bury persons of every class in linsey-woolsey instead of wool, and to adopt other steps for discouraging the exportation of that fabric. The state of Jamaica and the troubles caused by the buccaneers received par- ticular attention both in September and in October, though questions nearer home occupied a good deal of time in the latter month. The chief part of one day was passed in inquring into the feud between the white paper makers and the brown paper makers ; and the chief part of an- other in listening to the grievances of the lustring com- pany. At one meeting “ Mr. Locke communicated copies of two letters writ from Falmouth by Mr. Robert Corber to Mr. Hillary Renn, importing that the undertaking for setting up a woollen manufacture in Spain, though en- couraged by the king, is not like to succeed, but, however, ought not to be slighted;” and that led, of course, to full investigation of the prospects of the Spanish woollen trade . 2 ] Board of Trade Papers, Journal A, pp. 31 — 80. 2 Ibid., Journal A, pp. 80 — 192. ifei.] WORK AS COMMISSIONER OF TRADE. 357 In November, “ Mr. Mitford and Mr. Bloom, Eastland merchants, delivered to the board a proposal for the better establishing a credit by paper, being, in substance, to desire that merchants and tradesmen may be obliged to give bills for the payment of goods bought, and those bills, upon protest, and after certain days of grace, to be of the same force in law as bonds, and to bear interest till fully satisfied. Being asked if they had any objection against making both those bills and bonds transferable, they answered no, but that they thought it very desirable it should be so. The hoard, thereupon, approving their proposal, advised them, as the best way to make it take effect, to get a petition drawn clear and full, and to apply themselves to the parliament.” A week before that, “ Mr. Locke delivered to the board a letter from Sir Bobert Clayton to himself, giving an account of a-la-modes made by the lustring company and others made in France, wherein those of the company were judged better than the other, some twelvepence, some sixpence per ell.” On another day, with reference to the special task assigned to him three months before, “ Mr. Locke acquainted the board that, in order to draw up a scheme of some method for determining differences between merchants by referees, he had inquired into the methods practised in Holland for that purpose, but found them too intricate and too different from our methods to be put in practice here ; whereupon he had consulted with others experienced in our laws, who had drawn up a draft of an act of parliament for that purpose, which he delivered unto the board.” 1 A few days after doing that, Locke had to go down to Oates for the winter. His draft bill was considered in his absence, and a statement of certain alterations suggested 1 Board of Trade Papers, Journal A, pp. 200 — 229. 358 IN THE SEKVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. in it by Bratbwayte was sent down to him. These he returned in due time with his own corrections, and those corrections being adopted by the other commissioners, a fair copy of the document was forwarded to King William for his approval , 1 and in due time became law . 2 The proceedings of the commissioners during Locke’s absence, or in the succeeding summers, when he was present, need not be followed, even with such a meagre selection of specimens of the work done and attempted as has just been given for the first five months of their employment. Those specimens will serve to show how busy at this time, chiefly though not exclusively in the collection of evidence on all sorts of subjects, Locke and his colleagues were, and especially what kinds of business he himself gave most attention to. If he was unwilling to tax his strength by devoting himself to the duties of the commission, he was certainly energetic enough in performing them. He began his new work bravely, though not very cheer- fully, and with a knowledge that only prudence could help him through it. “I have, I thank God, now as much health as my constitution will allow me to expect,” he wrote to Molyneux, after he had been five weeks in harness. “ But yet, if I will think like a reasonable man, the flattery of my summer vigour ought not to make me count beyond the next winter at any time for the future. The last sat so heavy upon me, that it was with difficulty I got through it.” Molyneux had congratulated him on his appointment. “Your congratulation,” he replied, “ I take as you meant, kindly and seriously, and, it may be, it is what another would rejoice in ; but ’tis a preferment ] Board of Trade Papers, Journal A, pp. 233, 288, 354, 358. 2 9th of William III., cap. xv. it 9 64 .] WORK AS COMMISSIONER OF TRADE. 359 I shall get nothing by, and I know not whether my country will, though that I shall aim at with all my endeavours. Biclies may be instrumental to so many good purposes, that it is, I think, vanity rather than reli- gion or philosophy to pretend to contemn them. But yet they may be purchased too dear. My ago and health demand a retreat from hustle and business, and the pursuit of some inquiries I have in my thoughts makes it more desirable than any of those rewards which public employ- ments tempt people with. I think the little I have enough, and do not desire to live higher or die richer than I am. And therefore you have reason rather to pity the folly, than congratulate the fortune, that engages me in the whirlpool.” 1 He found it indeed a whirlpool, and when, on going down to Oates, he saw that he could not escape from it even there, that, while his friends were in serious alarm as to his health, and he was sorely in need of rest, the business followed him, and the time when he ought to he in bed was occupied in writing letters and doing other work connected with his office, yet more when he learnt that his colleagues were complaining of his absence, he resolved to resign the commissionership. Thereupon he wrote a very characteristic letter to Lord Keeper Somers. “ Some of my brethren,” he here said, “ think my stay in the country long, and desire me to return to bear my part, and to help to despatch the multitude of business that the present circumstances of trade and the plantations fill their hands with. I cannot hut say they are in the right ; and I cannot hut think, at the same time, that I also am in the right to stay in the country, where all my 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 153 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 4 August, 1696. 360 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. T Chap. XIH. care is little enough to preserve those small remains of health which a settled and incurable indisposition would quickly make an end of anywhere else. There remains, therefore, nothing else to be done but that I should cease to fill up any longer a place that requires a more constant attendance than my strength will allow ; and to that purpose I prevail with your lordship to move his majesty that he would he pleased to ease me of the employment he has been pleased to honour me with, since the crazi- ness of my body so ill seconds the inclination I have to serve him in it, and I find myself every way incapable of answering the ends of that commission. I am not insen- sible of the honour of the employment, nor how much I am obliged to your favourable opinion in putting me into a post which I look upon as one of the most considerable in England. I can say that nobody has more warm wishes for the prosperity of his country than I have ; but the opportunity of showing those good wishes in being any way serviceable to it I find comes too late to a man whose health is inconsistent with the business, and in whom it would be folly to hope for a return to that vigour and strength which such an employment I see requires. It is not without due consideration that I represent this to your lordship, and that I find myself obliged humbly and earnestly to request you to obtain for me a dismission out of it .” 1 Somers refused to hear of Locke’s resignation, at any rate just then. “ I am very sorry,” he replied, “ for your ill health, which confines you to the country for the pre- sent ; but now you will have so much regard to yourself, your friends, and your country as not to think of returning to business till you are recovered to such a competent 1 Lord King, p. 244 ; Locke to Somers, 7 Jan., 1696-7. PROPOSED RESIGNATION OF THE COMMISSIONERSHIP. 361 degree as not to run the hazard of a relapse. As to the other part of your letter, which relates to the quitting the commission, I must say you are much in the wrong, in my opinion, to entertain a thought of it ; and I flatter myself so far as to believe I could bring you over to my sentiments, if I had the happiness of half an hour’s con- versation with you. These being my thoughts, you cannot wonder if I am not willing to enter upon the commission you gave me, of saying something to the king of your purpose. But when the new commission is made, and the establishment fixed, and the parliament up, and you have had the opinion of your friends here, I will submit to act as you shall command me .” 1 Locke answered that letter by another, again urging the pro- priety of his retirement, and assuring Somers that the “half an hour’s conversation” would lead him to see that he would do well “to substitute a man in the place of a shadow .” 2 But he went up to London for a week in February , 3 and the result of that journey, and the interview for which it was taken, was that he continued his post of commissioner of trade during three and a half years longer. He withdrew his resignation unwillingly, how- ever, and seems still to have been anxious to retire as soon as Somers and the king would let him. “ The corruption of the age,” he wrote to Molyneux, two or three days after returning to Oates in February, “gives me so ill a prospect of any success in designs of this kind that I am not sorry my ill health gives me so just a 1 Lord King, p. 245 ; Somers to Locke, 26 Jan., 1696-7. s Ibid., p. 245; Locke to Somers, 1 Feb., 1696-7. 3 Board of Trade Papers, Journal A, p. 404. 362 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. reason to desire to be eased of the employment I am in.” 1 He did not fairly resume work till the end of June. He then returned to London, prepared to devote himself as zealously as before to the multifarious business of the council, and at once to take a very prominent part in one important branch of it. Shortly before the appointment of the commission of trade, an act of parliament had been passed which was designed to encourage the cultiva- tion of hemp and flax in Ireland by permitting the impor- tation thence into England, without duty, both of the raw material and of goods made from it, 2 an arrangement which, it was reasonably thought, would induce many foreign protestants, skilled in linen manufacture, to settle in Ulster. This movement and its issues had been often discussed by the commissioners in the first year of their employment, and Locke, taking special interest in it, had sought information on the subject from Molyneux, who, besides being a student of science and philosophy, was a zealous politician, representing Dublin university in the Irish parliament, and an active promoter of the industrial welfare of his country. 3 He had also collected information of the same sort from other sources ; and almost imme- diately after his return to London he brought the matter before the board. Much time was spent, chiefly in July and August, 1696, in discussing it, and it was at last agreed that each commissioner should draw up a scheme for improving Irish trade. 4 On the 24th of August three 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 177 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 22 Feb., 169G-7. 2 7 and 8 William III., cap. 39 (1695-6). 3 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ pp. 161, 164 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 12 Sept., 1696 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 26 Sept., 1696. 4 Board of Trade Papers, Journal B, pp. 164, 168, 176, 201 — 214, 224 — 1 226. JEt.^ 65 .] ENCOURAGEMENT OF IRISH LINEN MANUFACTURE. 363 such, schemes were produced and read. “ That brought in by Mr. Locke was pitched upon,” it is recorded in the minutes of the board. Two whole days were spent in considering this document, paragraph by paragraph, there being an evening sitting on the second day to complete the work. Only a few unimportant alterations were made, however, and the following report to the lords justices, finally agreed upon on the 30th of August, signed on the next day, and sent on on the 2nd of Sep- tember, was substantially altogether Locke’s work. 1 It is hardly necessary to point out the economical fallacies of the protective policy as regards the English woollen manufacture, which Locke adopted as a matter of course, or as regards the Irish linen manufacture, in which he proposed to introduce new and very curious institutions ; but whatever errors in principle he may have fallen into, the remarkable shrewdness with which he worked out his details and the generous patriotism, according to his lights, pervading the whole document must not be lost sight of. “ May it please your Excellencies, — In obedience to bis majesty’s commands, signified to us by Mr. Secretary Trumbull, that we should take into consideration the trade of England and Ireland, how they stand in relation to one another, and how they may be improved to the advantage of both Dations, we humbly represent to your excellencies that the woollen manufacture of Ireland cannot be carried on and continued to be improved there at the rate it hath been of late years without very ill consequence to this kingdom. The care of our parliament in all times in preserving this manufacture entirely to England, and the sensible damage we have suffered 1 Board of Trade Papers, Journal B, pp. 224 — 226, 232. I have not been able to find Locke’s original draft among the Board of Trade Papers. It was, probably, after the corrections had been made upon it, handed to the clerk who made the fair copy, from which the following is printed, and then thrown aside as waste paper. 364 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Ciiap. Xnl. ■when any part of it hath been lost from us to any other country, makes this so evident that we think we need use no other reasons to show of what necessity it is not to let in any new sharers. “ To hinder, therefore, the growth of the woollen manufacture in Ireland, so wholly incompatible with the fundamental trade of England, on which the prosperity of this nation so much depends, we are humbly of opinion that the exportation of all sorts of woollen manufactures out of Ireland to any parts whatsoever (except only that of their frieze, as is wont, to England) be restrained and discouraged with impositions, penalties and all other ways which together may be sufficient to hinder it. “ But since the private exportation of wool in England, acknowledged by everybody to be directly against the interest of this kingdom, is too public an instance how little bare prohibitions of exportation, though under the severest penalties, are to be depended upon where the temptation of great profit may encourage private men to bribe officers and run other risks, it is much less to be expected that the bare stopping of the exportation of woollen manufactures, when made by a guard only at the ports, will be sufficient to keep them from being sent out of Ireland, where not only the gain of private exporters, but the general sense of the people that it is the interest of the country to export them, concur to break through all obstacles of this kind. “ We, therefore, crave leave humbly to offer to your excellencies’ con- sideration, whether it will not be convenient to add the following remedies as a more natural and effectual way to take off the people there from their application to that sort of trade, so that the cheapness of victuals and, consequently, of labour may not enable them to transport the woollen manu- factures to foreign markets to the prejudice of our English trade — “ That a sufficient duty be laid upon the importation of oil, upon teasles whether imported or growing there, and upon all the utensils employed in the making of woollen manufactures, such as cards for wool of all sorts, fulling mills, racks, presses, etc., as also upon the utensils of woollen combers, and particularly a duty by the yard upon all cloth and woollen stuffs (except friezes) before they are taken off the loom. “ But because we can by no means think it advisable that men should be all on a sudden stopped in their way of livelihood till other ways of employ- ment be opened to them, since such changes cannot possibly be effected ail at once, but must be introduced by degrees, we are humbly of opinion that, though it be requisite that the remedies above propounded be enacted all at once, yet that they should not all or any of them be in force and put iu execution but only by such degrees and in such proportions as by procla- ^t.° 65 .] ENCOURAGEMENT OF IRISH LINEN MANUFACTURE. 365 mation from the lord lieutenant or lords justices, by advice of the privy council there, shall from time to time be directed and required, so that the gradual increase of these duties may warn and give people time to turn themselves to some other employments, provided that, whatever part of the said act shall by such proclamation be once put in force, the same shall remain so and stand good, and whatever proportion of the said duties shall in this manner be required it shall no more be diminished, but may at any time, if it be found requisite, in the same manner be augmented, so far as the said act allows. “ Nevertheless, that the owners of wool may he hindered in the vent thereof by the diverting of labouring hands to other manufactures, we humbly offer that unwrought wool have free exportation from Ireland into England, without any duty from and to the ports now appointed by act of parliament, but that the exportation of it any whither else be effectually Lindered by all ways and means possible to he used. “And since it generally proves ineffectual, and we conceive it hard to endeavour, to drive men from the trade they are employed in by bare pro- hibition, without offering them at the same time some other trade which, if they please, may turn to account, we humbly propose that the linen manu- facture be set on foot and so encouraged in Ireland as may make it the general trade of that country as effectually as the woollen manufacture is and must be of England. To which purpose we humbly conceive it of great importance that it be intimated and insinuated from hence to all such persons there, and in such ways and manner as shall be thought most convenient, that they seriously bethink themselves of setting up and carrying on the linen manufactures in that country, it being not to be supposed that England either can or ever will suffer that the wcollen manufacture should grow up in Ireland so as to come any way in competition with, or so much as threaten, that trade so necessary to the subsistence of England. “ For the encouragement, therefore, and setting up of the linen manufac- ture in Ireland, we humbly propose — “ That the proportion 1 of hemp seed and linseed into Ireland be free from all duties for three years or longer, if the directors, whose office and employment is hereafter to be explained, shall think it requisite. “ That flax and hemp growing in Ireland shall be tithe and tax free for twenty-one years, and after twenty-one years shall pay for tithes only two shillings and sixpence per annum. 1 Importation ? 366 IN THE SEEYICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. ‘ That the present customs and other duties on hemp, flax and all manu- factures made thereof, imported into Ireland, be increased one-fourth part every year, till they come to be quadrupled to what they are at present, and that the like graduate increase of duties be laid on calicoes and all other sorts of cloth made of cotton that may supply the place and use of linen. “That the exportation of linen cloth and all other manufactures made of flax or hemp, without any mixture of wool, shall be free to all places and without any custom. “ That all dressers of hemp or flax, linen weavers, rope-makers, and all other workers in hemp or flax, and using no other trades, shall be free, during the time that they follow those vocations, from serving of juries or bearing any offices which they themselves shall not be willing to undergo. “ And, because the poorest earning in the several parts of the linen manu- facture is at present in the work of the spinners, who therefore need the greatest encouragement, and ought to be increased as much as possible, that therefore spinning schools be set up in such places and at such distances as the directors shall appoint, where whoever will come to learn to spin shall be taught gratis, and to which all persons that have not forty shillings a year estate shall be obliged to send all their children, both male and female, that they have at home with them, from six to fourteen years of age, and may have liberty to send those also between four and six if they please, to he employed there in spinning ten hours in the day when the days are so long, or as long as it is light when they are shorter ; provided always that no child shall be obliged to go above two miles to any such school. “ That all children who are thus obliged to come to these schools shall be paid for what they earn there in spinning, according to the ordinary rate paid to others, first deducting from each of them what they have spoilt in tow or flax in their beginning to learn. “ That all in general who come there to learn shall have wheels provided for them, and that they who are able to spin in Mr. Firmin’s double wheel shall, at their going away, have one of those wheels given them. “ That no wheel shall be used in any of those spinning schools but what shall he turned with the foot and have the distaff placed in the middle, so that, both the hands being at liberty, sometimes the one, sometimes the other, may he used to draw the flax, the only way to fit them for the double wheel, which they can never use unless each hand can draw the flax with an equal facility. it 97 66.] ENCOURAGEMENT OF IRISH LINEN MANUFACTURE. 367 “ The use of this double wheel is of that great consequence to the linen manufacture that nothing can contribute more to the advancement of it than the bringing this wheel in fashion, they that can use it being enabled thereby to earn very near double with the same labour, and it deserving therefore by all ways possible to be encouraged. In order thereto we humbly propose — “ That the husbands of such wives as can spin upon the double wheel, and do follow that employment, either in teaching or working, shall have all the same immunities and privileges that are hereafter proposed to he granted to linen weavers and other workers in hemp or flax, though their said husbands are of other trades and employments. “ That at every summer assizes it may be lawful for any female inhabitant of each county respectively to come there and show her skill in spinning on the double wheel, and that she that shall there in one hour spin the most and best thread, to be judged of by the grand jury, shall have 10Z. paid her upon the place by an officer to he appointed thereto by the directors, and moreover he recorded in court a mistress spinner and thereof have a certificate delivered to her in parchment, without fees, under the hands of the judge, the sheriff, the foreman of the jury, and such of the justices of the peace as will sign it, which shall entitle her and her husband, whenever she shall be married, to a freedom in any city, town, borough, or corporation in Ireland, to set up there what trade he or she shall think fit, with an exemption to the said husband during his life from serving on all juries and bearing any manner of office which he himself shall not be willing to undergo. “And, to the end that no person by reason of poverty or distance from the place where the assizes are held may be hindered from showing her skill upon the double wheel and may be somewhat considered for the charge in coming and bringing her wheel and flax, every one that comes and can spin so well on the double wheel as to be capable of a trial to be a mistress spinner shall be allowed twopence per mile from the place of her habitation to the place of the assizes, to be paid by the same officer to be appointed thereunto by the directors as aforesaid. “ That if any double-wheel spinner, during her following that way of living, shall by sickness or other calamity he disabled from getting a livelihood by spinning as she used to do, and be thereby reduced to the public relief, she shall have double the allowance that any other person in her circumstances hath or is wont to have. “ That it shall also be lawful for any weaver to bring any piece of linen cloth of his own weaving to the summer assizes of the county whereof he is an inhabitant, as a sample of his workmanship, and that the foreman of 368 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. the grand jury, together with some person skilled in linen cloth to he ap- pointed by the court and an officer appointed thereto by the directors shall, upon oath, give their judgments which piece of cloth amongst all that are so produced is best and most workman-like woven ; whereupon the piece of cloth that shall be thus judged best woven shall be cut into two equal pieces to prevent its being again produced, and the weaver who wove it shall have 10/. paid him upon the place by the aforesaid officer, shall be recorded in the same a master weaver, and shall there receive a certificate as before expressed in the case of a mistress spinner, which shall entitle him to a freedom in any city, town, borough or corporation in Ireland, there to set up and practise the said trade of linen weaving, with an exemption from serving on juries and hearing any manner of office that he is not willing to undergo, so long as he continues the said trade. “ That the like reward and privileges in each county he also granted to him who shall at the summer assizes produce the best piece of sail-cloth made the same year within the same county, and that the said piece of sail-cloth he thereupon cut in two equal pieces to prevent its being again produced. “ That all the money that shall be so paid at each assizes by the officers appointed thereunto by the directors shall be set down in a bill, which shall be signed by a judge of the assizes and the sheriff, to vouch that article of the said officer’s account. “ Provided always that none of the foregoing rewards of 10/. upon any of the aforesaid trials be allowed to any person more than once. “But, because no such public manufacture can, at its first settingup, subsist on itself in a new place, and hold up against, much less gain upon, the same trade already settled and established elsewhere, therefore for the defraying the charge of bringing into Ireland persons skilled in the sowing, dressing or any ways improving of hemp, flax or any manufactures made thereof, or in spinning in the double wheel, together with the several other charges in schools, bleacheries, magazines, and rewards before or hereafter mentioned, with others also that may be necessary, and likewise for sus- taining the losses that may be made in the infancy of this undertaking by taking of any parcels of linen cloth from the makers at such reasonable rates as may enable them to live by their trade, we humbly further propose — “ That every female above fourteen years old (excepting those of such families as by reason of poverty are exempt from taxes) shall every year deliver unto such persons as shall be appointed in each parish twelve lays of good, sound, merchandable and unbleached linen yarn or thread, each Jt 69 65 .] ENCOURAGEMENT OF IRISH LINEN MANUFACTURE. 3G9 lay containing in length two hundred yards, and the whole twelve lays not weighing above eight ounces avoirdupois, or, if they do, then for each ounce they weigh more the party so bringing them shall deliver two ounces of the i, like merchandable yam or thread, over and above the twelve lays before mentioned. “ That every male above fourteen years of age (not in holy orders) shall 1 every year deliver as aforesaid one pound of merchandable raw flax, and one pound of like merchandable hemp. “ But all parents also who neglect to send their children to the spinning I schools, as before proposed, shall deliver as aforesaid the like quantity of twelve lays or more of linen yarn or thread for every child, male and female, not sent accordingly to the said schools. “ That, in order to this collection of linen yarn, hemp and flax, to be yearly made in each county, as early as may be in the spring, the ministers and churchwardens in each parish shall every year, before the 25th day of March, make and sign a true and perfect list of all persons in their respec- tive parishes liable to the said contributions ; in conformity unto which list the said churchwardens shall forthwith make the whole collection of the said contributions of thread, hemp and flax, within their said respective parishes, : and deliver it, together with the said list, to the linen collector who is to be appointed by the directors for that purpose when he demands it. “ That whosoever shall fail to deliver to the churchwardens upon demand his or her respective contribution of linen yarn, flax, or hemp, as before proposed shall forfeit one shilling, to be levied by distress, which distress the churchwardens shall be empowered and required to make and account for to the said linen collector. “ That all the linen yarn thus collected shall be bleached the same summer and afterwards sold or made into cloth, as shall be thought best by the directors. “That all the flax also and hemp thus collected shall be either sold or further manufactured as the said directors shall think fit. “But, lest the profit arising from the several aforesaid contributions should not be sufficient to give the encouragement and bear the losses and expenses necessary to the support of the said manufacture, especially in the first beginning of it, we are humbly of opinion that it may be requisite a fund should be raised by an imposition of twopence per pound upon tobacco imported into Ireland, which imposition so laid will but raise the duties upon that commodity in Ireland to an equality with what is now paid upon tobacco spent in England. Vol. II. — 24 370 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. “ That what money is raised upon the said duty of twopence per pound shall be monthly paid in to the treasurer of the said linen manufacture, who is to be appointed by the directors, and to whom the linen collectors of each county and other officers concerned in any receipts or payments, by order of the said directors, shall be accountable from time to time. “ That the said treasurer shall once every year give in a clear account and perfect state of the public revenue and contributions given for the carrying on of the said linen manufacture unto the lord lieutenant or lords justices of Ireland, or to such person or persons as shall be authorised and appointed by them, to examine and audit the said account to the end that, upon the stating thereof, so much as shall be found remaining an overplus, not expended or lost in the management of the said manufactures, may be deducted out of the next year’s tax upon tobacco, and paid into his majesty’s treasury for public uses. “ That the said treasurer shall give such security for his faithful discharge of the trust reposed in him as the lord lieutenant or lords justices and council in Ireland shall think fit, and that for a reward of his pains he shall have per pound upon all receipts and disbursements of money that shall pass through his hands, or what other reward or salary the said directors shall think fit. “ That all other officers employed in the management of this manufacture under the directors shall have such salaries and give such securities as the said directors shall think fit. “That the said directors shall have the full and sole power and authority to nominate and appoint not only the officers already mentioned, but so many and such others also as they shall think necessary and proper for the good and orderly management of this whole undertaking, and to turn out any of the said officers and put others in their places at their pleasure ; provided always that no person so near of kin to any of the said directors as a cousin-german shall be capable of any place or employment under them ; and that whoever gives or takes any reward for any employment in this manufacture more than the salary allowed and appointed by the said directors, shall absolutely and without remission forfeit his respective place and employment. “ That the said directors shall likewise have full power and authority in all things whatsoever relating to the conduct and management of this whole affair, as particularly (where it shall be necessary for the improvement and carrying on of the linen manufacture) to provide bleacheries, to erect maga- zines, workhouses, and other public buildings ; to order the buying and ^Et 9 65 .] ENCOURAGEMENT OF IRISH LINEN MANUFACTURE. 371 selling of anything in such manner as they judge expedient, to direct th levying of the several contributions before mentioned, to order all receipts and payments of money, to regulate and appoint the breadth, length, and other qualities of the several sorts of linen cloth to be made by their direc- tion, to give what names to each sort they think fit, to appoint an uniform length of reels whereupon to wind the linen yarn (which length it is sup- posed may most conveniently be such as to contain two yards in circum- ference), and to do whatever other thing and make whatever other regulations they conceive necessary and proper for the improvement of hemp and flax in Ireland, and manufactures made out of them, and more particularly for the carrying on the linen manufacture there to due perfection ; all which regulations by them made, they are to take care to see duly observed, and that the transgressor thereof in any point be prosecuted and brought to such condign punishment as is or shall by law be provided. That all justices of the peace and other officers be aiding and assisting the said directors and those employed by them in the execution of the trust committed to them. ▲ “ And — forasmuch as the whole success of this undertaking seems unavoid- ably to depend upon the fidelity, skill and diligence of the said directors in the management of it, we having observed, on the one side, how great salaries are apt to tempt men to undertake things they are neither skilled in nor careful of, by which means those undertakings fall and come to nothing, to the great detriment of the public, and, on the other side, when, to avoid this inconvenience, any manufacture is put into the management of a company, how the greediness of present gain occasions stock-jobbing or contests among themselves about sharing the profit, whilst the improve- ment thereof is neglected, whereof we have in this kingdom but too many instances — to prevent therefore the foresaid mischief on both sides, we humbly propose that the said directors be rewarded for employing their time and care in the management of this business in such a method and manner as may lay upon them the highest obligation imaginable to fidelity and diligence therein, by the increase of their own private advantage in proportion to the improvements they shall make in the business committed to their charge. “ To which purpose we are humbly of opinion that there be five directors, honest and able men, lovers of their country, and such as, being willing to take the employment upon them, shall be nominated and authorised there- unto by parliament. “ That they shall each of them have 100Z. per annum salary, to being 372 IN THE SERVICE OP THE STATE. Chap. XIII. from the time that by their management there shall be double the number of looms employed in the weaving of linen in Ireland as were employed in it at the passing of the act that shall be thought expedient to be made for the establishment of that manufacture, of which looms so employed at the passing of that act an exact account is therefore to be taken. “ That from the time the looms there shall be three times as many as they were at the passing of the said act, the said directors shall have each of them 300?. per annum. “ That from the time the looms shall be four times as many as they were at the passing of the said act, the said directors shall have each of them 500?. per annum. “That from the time the said linen manufacture shall he there able to subsist of itself, by its own gains, without any allowance or contribution from the public for its support and encouragement, each of the said directors shall have 1000?. per annum. “ That, if the said manufacture shall so subsist and go on of itself as to be able to supply the whole kingdom of England with linen, the said directors shall have each of them l000?. per annum for their lives. “And, if this proposed undertaking shall by them be brought to that perfection as that Ireland shall send forth yearly to foreign markets to the value of 100,000?. in their native hemp, flax, or manufactures of any kind made out of them, the said directors shall then have each of them 1000?. per annum settled upon them and their heirs for ever. “ That upon the death of any one of the said directors, the survivors shall, from time to time, choose another to keep the number full. “ That this act shall he in force for twenty-one years, but that all the personal privileges which shall be granted to any one by virtue thereof, remain good to him during his or her life, though they should outlive the said one-and-twenty years. “ All which, nevertheless, is most humbly submitted to your excellencies’ great wisdom. “ J. Bridgewater, “ Phil. Meadows, “ John Pollexfen, “ John Locke, “ Abr. Hill. “ Whitehall, August the 31st, 1697.” 1 5 Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, no. 1324. JEt 9 65 .] ENCOURAGEMENT OF IRISH LINEN MANUFACTURE. 373 That elaborate and comprehensive proposal was promptly sent by the lords justices to Ireland, in order that it might he reported on by the authorities there. "When it arrived, however, a draft hill, handling the same subject in a very different way, which had been prepared in Dublin, was on the point of being sent to London, and the Irish authorities decided to delay farther inquiry into the matter until their own proposal, which they forwarded along with Locke’s, had been considered in London. 1 Thereupon the lords justices called upon the com- missioners of trade for a fresh report on the whole subject, and especially for their opinion on the Dublin scheme. Controversies and complications, of which a detailed account would here be out of place, grew out of this scheme, and extended over more than two years ; and the final recommendations of the council, in which Locke’s original plan was substantially repeated, were not forwarded to the lords justices until October, 1698 ; to be then superseded by the adoption of Louis Crommelin’s more practical device for encouraging the linen manu- facture in Ireland. 2 The temper in which Locke pursued these inquiries, and the spirit that prompted him, are well expressed in one of his letters to Molyneux on the subject. “ I am so concerned for it, and zealous in it, that I will neglect no pains or interest of mine to promote it as far as I am able ; and I think it a shame — whilst Ireland is so capable to produce flax and hemp, and able to nourish the poor at so cheap a rate, and, consequently, to have their labour upon so easy terms — that so much money should go 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 241 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 4 Oct., 1697. 2 Board of Trade Papers, Journals B and C, passim : Treasury Papers, vol. lxvii., no. 24. 374 IN THE SEBVICE OF THE STATE. Chap. XIII. yearly out of the king’s dominions, to enrich foreigners, for those materials and the manufactures made out of them, when his people of Ireland, by the advantage of their soil, situation, and plenty, might have every penny of it, if that business were but put into a right way. I perceive, by one of your letters, that you have seen the proposals”— Locke’s own proposals — “ for an act sent from hence. I would he glad that you would consider them, and tell me whether you think that project will do, or wherein it is impracticable and will fail, and what may he added or altered in it to make it effectual to that end. I know, to a man a stranger to your country as I am, many things maybe overseen which, by reason of the cir- cumstances of the place or state of the people, may, in practice, have real difficulties. If there be any such in regard of that project, you will do me a favour to inform me of them. The fact is, I mightily have it upon my heart to get the linen manufacture established in a flourishing way in your country. I am sufficiently sensible of the advantages it will be to you, and shall be doubly rejoiced in the success of it, if I should be so happy that you and I could be instrumental in it, and have the chief hand in forming anything that might conduce to it. Employ your thoughts, therefore, I beseech you, about it, and be assured what help I can give to it here shall be as readily and carefully employed as if you and I alone were to reap all the profit of it .” 1 In Locke’s day the science of political economy was in its infancy. He had himself contributed more than any other man to its progress by his definition of the relations of labour to property, and by many other truths disclosed 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 258; Locke to William Molyneux, 10 Jan., 1697-8. iEt.^ 65 .] PROTECTIVE AND PATERNAL LEGISLATION. 375 in his ‘ Two Treatises of Government,’ and in his £ Con- siderations on Interest and Money.’ But he shared many of the opinions that were current in his time and long afterwards, and hence much of his action as a commissioner of trade and plantations must appear faulty to a modern critic. He wrote boldly in favour of free trade in money ; but he never discerned the import- ance of free trade in other things. There is nothing to show that he differed from his colleagues as to the general work done by the council, or most of the recommendations put forward by it. It is much more likely that he led them than that he was led by them therein, and that he was mainly responsible for the commercial legislation which was especially abundant in 1697 and the following years, and nearly all of which had for its object the protection of particular trades and trading corporations, the forcing of English industry and enterprise into particular channels, and the disparagement of all foreign enterprise, industry, and trade that was thought to be at variance with English interests. Thus he must be held largely responsible for an act of parliament passed in 1697 to protect the English lustring company by imposing very heavy penalties upon the smuggling or importation of foreign lustrings, 1 and for two acts passed in the following year, the one forbidding the exportation of corn, the other prohibiting the exportation of beer and ale and the manufacture of any other alcoholic liquors by the fermentation of corn. 2 He adopted the current notion that the prosperity of England depended upon its woollen manufactures, and we find that he and his colleagues spent a great deal of time in considering how 1 8th and 9th of William III., cap. 36. s 10th of William III., caps. 8, 4. 376 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. these manufactures could be protected and developed, how foreign goods could be kept out of England, and English goods forced upon foreigners, and yet more upon English colonists. All such action is now justly con- demned by every prudent statesman and wise economist ; hut much excuse may be found, in the different conditions of trade and industry six generations ago, for the different policy pursued in Locke’s time, and we certainly need not he surprised that he, who propounded so many new truths to the world, and enforced them so bravely in his own life, did not also propound and enforce the doctrine of free trade. A like apology must be made for what was faulty in the most interesting of all Locke’s undertakings as a com- missioner of trade and plantations ; that in which he attempted to reform the poor law of England. Pauperism had been painfully abundant all through the disordered period of the later Stuart rule, following on the turmoil of the Commonwealth period ; but it was greatly increased during the famous “ seven barren years,” from 1692 to 1699. It was partly in the hope that the new organisation might find some means of lessening the evil that the council had been established, and, as we have seen, it entered on the task almost immediately after its appointment. The first year was occupied chiefly in collecting statistics and receiving evidence from a few philanthropists like Thomas Firmin and John Cary, or so far like them as they could he. The evidence showed that various good-hearted men in different parts of the country were endeavouring to assist some of the paupers in their own districts by starting factories in which work was provided for them, especially in flax spinning and linen manufacture, and paid for at a fair rate. But the JEt. 9 ®).] PROPOSED POOR LAW REFORM. 377 statistics proved that immense sums of money collected in the several parishes for the relief of the poor were often very ill spent, and frequently either in ignorance or in defiance of the law, itself very confusing and inadequate. The question began to be discussed in July, 1697, and in September, after a good deal of debate, it was decided that each commissioner should draw up a scheme of reform. Locke immediately set to work, and, in so short a time that it is evident he must have been preparing for it long before, produced a document which threw into the shade the crude efforts of those of his colleagues who took the trouble to write anything at all on the subject. It was brought up on the 19th of October, and again in a slightly amended form on the 26th. Other matters, especially the Irish linen hills which have been referred to, caused it to be laid aside for seven weeks. On the 17th of November it began to be discussed clause by clause. Locke was now very ill, however, and after six days had been spent in debate, in which he was not able to take much part, he had to go down to Oates, leaving his colleagues to com- plete the business. 1 The important document that he left with them was the following representation to the lords justices : — “ May it please youe Excellencies, — His majesty having been pleased by bis commission to require us particularly to consider of some proper methods for setting on work and employing the poor of this kingdom, and making them useful to the public, and thereby easing others of that burden, and by what ways and means such design may be made most effectual ; we humbly beg leave to lay before your excellencies a scheme of such methods as seem unto us most proper for the attainment of those ends. “ The multiplying of the poor, and the increase of the tax for their 1 Board of Trade Papers, Journal B, pp., 170, 242 — 245, 250, 255, 2(13—269, 275, 278, 285, 316, 326, 348—355. 378 IN THE SEEYICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. maintenance, is so general an observation and complaint that it cannot be doubted of. Nor has it been only since the last war that this evil has come upon us. It has been a growing burden on the kingdom these many years, and the two last reigns felt the increase of it as well as the present. “ If the causes of this evil be well looked into, we humbly conceive it will be found to have proceeded neither from scarcity of provisions nor from want of employment for the poor, since the goodness of God has blessed these times with plenty no less than the former, and a long peace during those reigns gave us as plentiful a trade as ever. The growth of the poor must therefore have some other cause, and it can be nothing else but the relaxation of discipline and corruption of manners ; virtue and industry being as constant companions on the one side as vice and idleness are on the other. W “ The first step, therefore, towards the setting of the poor on work, we humbly conceive, ought to be a restraint of their debauchery by a strict execution of the laws provided against it, more particularly by the suppres- sion of superfluous brandy shops and unnecessary alehouses, especially in country parishes not lying upon great roads. “ Could all the able hands in England be brought to work, the greatest part of the burden that lies upon the industrious for maintaining the poor would immediately cease. For, upon a very moderate computation, it may be concluded that above one half of those who receive relief from the parishes are able to get their livelihood. And all of them who receive such relief from the parishes, we conceive, may be divided into these three sorts. “ First, those who can do nothing at all towards their own support. “ Secondly, those who, though they cannot maintain themselves wholly, yet are able to do something towards it. “ Thirdly, those who are able to maintain themselves by their own labour. And these last may be again subdivided into two sorts ; namely, either those who have numerous families of children whom they cannot or pretend they cannot support by their labour, or those who pretend they cannot get work and so live only by begging or worse. “ For the suppression of this last sort of begging drones, who live un- necessarily upon other people’s labour, there are already good and whole- some laws, sufficient for the purpose, if duly executed. We therefore humbly propose that the execution thereof may be at present revived by proclamation till other remedies can be provided ; as also that order be taken every year, at the choosing of churchwardens and overseers of the 1697. 1 •®t. 65. J RESTRAINT OF IDLE VAGABONDS. 379 poor, that the statutes of the 39th Eliz., cap. 4, and the 43rd Eliz., cap. 2 1 be read and considered, paragraph by paragraph, and the observation of them in all their parts pressed on those who are to be overseers ; for we have reason to think that the greatest part of the overseers of the poor everywhere are wholly ignorant, and never so much as think that it is the greatest part, or so much as any part, of their duty to set people to work. “ But for the more effectual restraining of idle vagabonds, we further humbly propose that a new law may be obtained, by which it be enacted, “ That all men sound of limb and mind, above fourteen and under fifty years of age, begging in maritime counties out of their own parish without a pass, shall be seized on either by any officer of the parish where they so beg (which officers by virtue of their offices shall be authorised, and under a penalty required to do it), or by the inhabitants of the house themselves where they beg, and be by them or any of them brought before the next justice of the peace or guardian of the poor (to be chosen as hereafter mentioned) who in this case shall.have the power of a justice of the peace, and, by such justice of the peace or guardian of the poor (after the due and usual correction in the case), be by a pass sent, not to the house of correc- tion (since those houses are now in most counties complained of to be rather places of ease and preferment to the masters thereof than of correction and reformation to those who are sent thither), nor to their places of habita- tion (since such idle vagabonds usually name some remote part, whereby the county is put to great charge, and they usually make their escape from the negligent officers before they come thither and are at liberty for a new ramble), but, if it be in a maritime county as aforesaid, that they be sent to the next seaport town, there to be kept at hard labour, till some of his majesty’s ships, coming in or near there, give an opportunity of putting them on board, where they shall serve three years, under strict discipline, at soldier’s pay (subsistence money being deducted for their victuals on board), and be punished .as deserters if they go on shore without leave, or, 1 The former of these acts provided for the erection of houses of correc- tion and the due punishment of vagabonds therein. The latter is the famous statute on which our poor laws are based, directing that there shall be overseers of the poor in every parish, empowered, conjointly with the justices of the peace, to levy poor’s rates, set the able-bodied poor to work, provide for impotent paupers, apprentice out pauper children, and so forth. 380 IN THE SEEVICE OF THE STATE. [ClIAP. XIII. when sent on shore, if they either go further or stay longer than they have leave. “ That all men begging in maritime counties without passes, that are maimed or above fifty years of age, and all of any age so begging without passes in inland counties nowhere bordering on the sea, shall be sent to the next house of correction, there to be kept at hard labour for three years. “ And, to the end that the true use of the houses of correction may not he perverted as of late it has for the most part been, that the master of each such house shall be obliged to allow unto every one committed to his charge fourpence per diem for their maintenance in and about London; but, in remoter counties, where wages afid provisions are much cheaper, there the rate to be settled by the grand jury and judge at the assizes ; for which the said master shall have no other consideration nor allowance but what their labour shall produce ; whom, therefore, he shall have power to employ according to his discretion, consideration being had of their age and strength. “ That the justices of the peace shall, each quarter-sessions, make a narrow inquiry into the state and management of the houses of correction within their district, and take a strict account of the carriage of all who are there, and, if they find that any one is stubborn and not at all mended by the discipline of the place, that they order him a longer stay there and severer discipline, that so nobody may be dismissed till he has given manifest proof of amendment, the end for which he was sent thither. “ That whoever shall counterfeit a pass shall lose his ears for the forgery the first time that he is found guilty thereof, and the second time that he shall be transported to the plantations, as in case of felony. “That whatever female above fourteen years old shall be found begging out of her own parish without a pass (if she be an inhabitant of a parish within five miles’ distance of that she is found begging in) shall he conducted home to her parish by the constable, tithing-man, overseer of the poor, churchwarden, or other sworn officer of the parish wherein she was found begging, who, by his place and office, shall be required to do it and to deliver her to the overseer of the poor of the parish to which she belongs, from whom he shall receive twelvepence for his pains, which twelvepence, if she be one that receives public relief, shall be deducted out of her parish allowance, or, if she be not relieved by the parish, shall be levied on her or her parents’ or her master’s goods. “ That, whenever any such female above fourteen years old, within the 1697. "I A3t. 65. J RESTRAINT OF IDLE VAGABONDS. 381 same distance, commits the same fault a second time, and whenever the same or any such other female is found begging without a lawful pass, the first time, at a greater distance than five miles from the place of her abode, it shall be lawful for any justice of the peace or guardian of the poor, upon complaint made, to send her to the house of correction, there to be employed in hard work three months, and so much longer as shall be to the next quarter- sessions after the determination of the said three months, and that then, after due correction, she have a pass made her by the sessions to carry her home to the place of her abode. “ That, if any boy or girl, under fourteen years of age, shall be found begging out of the parish where they dwell (if within five miles’ distance of the said parish), they shall be sent to the next working school, there to be soundly whipped and kept at work till evening, so that they may be dis- missed time enough to get to their place of abode that night. Or, if* they live further than five miles ofi' from the place where they are taken begging, that they be sent to the next house of correction, there to remain at work six weeks and so much longer as till the next sessions after the end of the said six weeks. “These idle vagabonds being thus suppressed, there will not, we suppose, in most country parishes, be many men who will have the pretence that they want work. However, in order to the taking away of that pretence, whenever it happens, we humbly propose that it may be further enacted, “ That the guardian of the poor of the parish where any such pretence is made, shall, the next Sunday after complaint made to him, acquaint the parish that such a person complains he wants work, and shall then ask whether any one is willing to employ him at a lower rate than is usually given, which rate it shall then be in the power of the said guardian to set ; for it is not to be supposed that any one should be refused to be employed by his neighbours whilst others are set to work, but for some defect in his ability or honesty, for which it is reasonable be should suffer, and he that cannot be set on work for twelvepence per diem, must be content with ninepence or tenpence rather than live idly. But, if nobody in the parish voluntarily accept such a person at the rate proposed by the guardians of the poor, that then it shall be in the power of the said guardian, with the rest of the parish, to make a list of days, according to the proportion of every one’s tax in the parish to the poor, and that, according to such list, every inhabitant in the same parish shall be obliged, in their turn, to set such unemployed poor men of the same parish on work, at such under- 382 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. rates as the guardians of the poor shall appoint ; and, if any person refuse to set the poor at work in his turn as thus directed, that such person shall be bound to pay them their appointed wages, whether he employ them or no. “ That, if any poor man, otherwise unemployed, refuse to work according to such order (if it be in a maritime county), he shall be sent to the next port, and there put on board some of his majesty’s ships, to serve there three years as before proposed ; and that what pay shall accrue to him for his service there, above his diet and clothes, be paid to the overseers of the poor of the parish to which he belongs, for the maintenance of his wife and children, if he have any, or else towards the relief of other poor of the same parish ; but, if it be not in a maritime county, that every poor man thus refusing to work shall be sent to the house of correction. “ These methods we humbly propose as proper to be enacted, in order to the employment of the poor who are able but will not work ; which sort, by the punctual execution of such a law, we humbly conceive, may be quickly reduced to a very small number, or quite extirpated. “ But the greatest part of the poor maintained by parish rates are not absolutely unable nor wholly unwilling to do anything towards the getting of their livelihoods ; yet even these, either through want of fit work pro- vided for them, or their unskilfulness in working in what might be a public advantage, do little that turns to any account, but live idly upon the parish allowance or begging, if not worse. Their labour, therefore, as far as they are able to work, should be saved to the public, and what their earnings come short of a full maintenance should be supplied out of the labour of others, that is, out of the parish allowance. “ These are of two sorts : — “ 1. Grown people, who, being decayed from their full strength, could yet do something for their living, though, under pretence that they cannot get work, they generally do nothing. In the same case with these are most of the wives of day labourers, when they come to have two or three or more children. The looking after their children gives them not liberty to go abroad to seek for work, and so, having no work at home, in the broken intervals of their time they earn nothing ; but the aid of the parish is fain to come in to their support, and their labour is wholly lost ; which is so much loss to the public. “ Every one must have meat, drink, clothing, and firing. So much goes out of the stock of the kingdom, whether they work or no. Supposing then 1697. I jEt. 65. J RELIEF OF THE DESERVING POOR. 3S3 there be a hundred thousand poor in England, that live upon the parish, that is, who are maintained by other people’s labour (for so is every one who lives upon alms without working), if care were taken that every one of these, by some labour in the woollen or other manufacture, should earn but a penny per diem (which, one with another, they might well do and more), this would gain to England 130,000£. per annum, which, in eight years, would make England above a million of pounds richer. “ This, rightly considered, shows us what is the true and proper relief of the poor. It consists in finding work for them, and taking care they do not live like drones upon the labour of others. And in order to this end we fin d the laws made for the relief of the poor were intended ; however, by an ignorance of their intention or a neglect of their due execution, they are turned only to the maintenance of people in idleness, without at all examining into the lives, abilities, or industry of those who seek for relief. “In order to the suppression of these idle beggars, the corporations in England have beadles authorised and paid to prevent the breach of the law in that particular ; yet, nevertheless, the streets everywhere swarm with beggars, to the increase of idleness, poverty, and villany, and to the shame of Christianity. And, if it should be asked in any town in England, how many of these visible trespassers have been taken up and brought to punish- ment by those officers this last year, we have reason to think the number would be found to have been very small, because that of beggars swarm- ing in the street is manifestly very great. “ But the remedy of this disorder is so well provided by the laws now in force that we can impute the continuance and increase of it to nothing but a general neglect of their execution. “ 2. Besides the grown people above mentioned, the children of labouring people are an ordinary burden to the parish, and are usually maintained in idleness, so that their labour also is generally lost to the public till they are twelve or fourteen years old. “ The most effectual remedy for this that we are able to conceive, and which we therefore humbly propose, is, that, in the fore-mentioned new law to be enacted, it be further provided that working schools be set up in every parish, to which the children of all such as demand relief of the parish, above three and under fourteen years of age, whilst they live at home with their parents, and are not otherwise employed for their livelihood by the allowance of the overseers of the poor, shall be obliged to come. “ By this means the mother will be eased of a great part of her trouble in looking after and providing for them at home, and so be at the more liberty 384 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. to work ; the children will be kept in much better order, be better provided for, and from infancy be inured to work, which is of no small consequence to the making of them sober and industrious all their lives after ; and the parish will he either eased of this burden or at least of the misuse in the present management of it. For, a great number of children giving a poor man a title to an allowance from the parish, this allowance is given once a week or once a month to the father in money, which he not seldom spends on himself at the alehouse, whilst his children, for whose sake he had it, are left to suffer, or perish under the want of necessaries, unless the charity of neighbours relieve them. “ We humbly conceive that a man and his wife in health may be able by their ordinary labour to maintain themselves and two children. More than two children at one time under the age of three years will seldom happen in one family. If therefore all the children above three years old be taken off from their hands those who have never so many, whilst they remain them- selves in health, will not need any allowance for them. “ We do not suppose that children of three years old will be able at that age to get their livelihoods at the working school, but we are sure that what is necessary for their relief will more effectually have that use if it be distri- buted to them in bread at that school than if it be given to their fathers in money. What they have at home from their parents is seldom more than bread and water, and that, many of them, very scantiy too. If therefore care be taken that they have each of them their belly-full of bread daily at school, they will be in no danger of famishing, but, on the contrary, they will be healthier and stronger than those who are bred otherwise. Nor will this practice cost the overseers any trouble ; for a baker may be agreed with to furnish and bring into the school-house every day the allowance of bread necessary for all the scholars that are there. And to this may be also added, without any trouble, in cold weather, if it be thought needful, a little warm water-gruel ; for the same fire that warms the room may be made use of to boil a pot of it. “From this method the children will not only reap the fore-mentioned advantages with far less charge to the parish than what is now done for them, but they will be also thereby the more obliged to come to school and apply themselves to work, because otherwise they will have no victuals, and also the benefit thereby both to themselves and the parish will daily increase ; for, the earnings of their labour at school every day increasing, it may reasonably be concluded that, computing all the earnings of a child from three to fourteen years of age, the nourishment and teaching of such a 1697. "I m 65. J WORKING SCHOOLS FOR CHILDREN. 385 child during that whole time will cost the parish nothing; whereas there is no child now which from its birth is maintained by the parish but, before the age of fourteen, costs the parish 50 1. or 60L “ Another advantage also of bringing children thus to a working school is that by this means they may be obliged to come constantly to church every Sunday, along with their schoolmasters or dames, whereby they may be brought into some sense of religion ; whereas ordinarily now, in their idle and loose way of breeding up, they are as utter strangers both to religion and morality as they are to industry. “ In order therefore to the more effectual carrying on of this work to the advantage of this kingdom, we further humbly propose that these schools be generally for spinning or knitting, or some other part of the woollen manufac- ture, unless in countries 1 where the place shall furnish some other materials fitter for the employment of such poor children ; in which places the choice of those materials for their employment may be left to the pi udence and direction of the guardians of the poor of that hundred, knd that the teachers in these schools be paid out of the poor’s rate, as can be agreed. “ This, though at first setting up it may cost the parish a little, yet we humbly conceive (the earnings of the children abating the charge of their maintenance, and as much work being required of each of them as they are reasonably able to perform) it will quickly pay its own charges with an overplus. “ That, where the number of the poor children of any parish is greater than for them all to be employed in one school they be there divided into two, and the boys and girls, if thought convenient, taught and kept to work separately. “ That the handicraftsmen in each hundred be bound to take every other of their respective apprentices from amongst the boys in some one of the schools in the said hundred without any money ; which boys they may so take at what age they please, to be bound to them till the age of twenty- three years, that so the length of time may more than make amends for the usual sums that are. given to handicraftsmen with such apprentices. “ That those also in the hundred who keep in their hands land of their own to the value of 25 1. per annum, or upwards, or who rent 50 l. per annujp or upwards, may choose out of the schools of the said hundred what boy each of them pleases, to be his apprentice in husbandry on the sam condition. Vol. II. — 25 1 That is, districts. 386 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. “ That whatever boys are not by this means hound out apprentices before they are full fourteen shall, at the Easter meeting of the guardians of each hundred every year, be bound to such gentlemen, yeomen, or farmers within the said hundred as have the greatest number of acres of land in their hands, who shall be obliged to take them for their apprentices till the age of twenty-three, or bind them out at their own cost to some handi- craftsmen ; provided always that no such gentleman, yeoman, or farmer shall be bound to have two such apprentices at a time. “That grown people also (to take away their pretence of want of work) may come to the said working schools to learn, where work shall accord- ingly be provided for them. “ That the materials to be employed in these schools and among other the poor people of the parish be provided by a common stock in each hun- dred, to be raised out of a certain portion of the poor’s rate of each parish as requisite ; which stock, we humbly conceive, need be raised but once ; for, if rightly managed, it will increase. “ That some person, experienced and well skilled in the particular manu- facture which shall be judged fittest to set the poor of each hundred on work, be appointed storekeeper for that hundred, who shall, accordingly, buy in the wool or other materials necessary ; that this storekeeper be chosen by the guardians of the poor of each hundred, and be under their direction, and have such salary as they shall appoint to be paid pro rata upon the pound out of the poor’s tax of every parish, and, over and above which salary, that he also have two shillings in the pound yearly for every twenty shillings that shall be lessened in the poor’s tax of any parish from the first year of his management. “That to this storekeeper one of the overseers of the poor of every parish shall repair as often as there shall be occasion to fetch from him the mate- rials for the employment of the poor of each parish ; which materials the said overseer shall distribute to the teachers of the children of each school and also to other poor who demand relief of the said parish to be wrought by them at home in such quantity as he or the guardian of the parish shall judge reasonable for each of them respectively to despatch in one week, allowing unto each such poor person for his or her work what he and the storekeeper shall agree it to be worth ; hut, if the said overseer and store- keeper do not agree about the price of any such work, that then any three or more of the guardians of that hundred (whereof the guardian of the same parish in which the contest arises to be always one) determine it. “ That the sale of the materials thus manufactured be made by the store- 1697. I iEt. 65. J POOR-LAW OFFICERS. 387 keeper in the presence of one or more of the guardians of each hundred and not otherwise, and that an exact account be kept by the said storekeeper of all that he buys in and sells out, as also of the several quantities of un- wrought materials that he delivers to the respective overseers and of the manufactured returns that he receives back again from them. “ That, if any person to whom wool or any other materials are delivered to be wrought shall spoil or embezzle the same, if it be one who receives alms from the parish, the overseers of the poor of that parish shall pay unto the storekeeper what it cost, and deduct that sum out of the parish allow- ance to the person who has so spoiled or embezzled any such materials, or, if it be one that receives no allowance from the parish, then the said over- seers shall demand it in money of the person that spoiled or embezzled it, and if the person so offending refuse to pay it, the guardian of the poor of that parish, upon oath made to him by any of the said overseers that he delivered such materials to such person, and that he paid for them such a s um to the storekeeper (which oath every such guardian may be empowered to administer), shall grant unto the said overseer a warrant to distrain upon the goods of the person so offending, and sell the goods so distrained, ren- dering the overplus. “ That the guardian of the poor of every parish, to be chosen by those who pay to the relief of the poor of the said parish, shall be chosen, the first time, within three months of the passing of the act now proposed ; that the guardians thus chosen by the respective parishes of each hundred shall have the inspection of all things relating to the employment and relief of the poor of the said hundred ; that one third part of the whole number of the guardians of every hundred thus chosen shall go out every year, the first year by lot out of the whole number, the second year by lot out of the remaining two-thirds, and for ever afterwards in their turns, so that after the first two years every one shall continue in three years successively and no longer ; and that for the supply of any vacancy as it shall happen a new guardian be chosen as aforesaid in any respective parish at the same time that the overseers of the poor are usually chosen .there, or at any other time within one month after any such vacancy. “ That the guardians of the poor of each respective hundred shall mejt every year in Easter week, in the place where the stores of that hundred are kept, to take an account of the stock, and as often else at other times as shall be necessary to inspect the management of it and to give directions therein, and in all other things relating to the poor of the hundred. “ That no person in any parish shall be admitted to an allowance from 388 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chai>. xm. the parish but hy the joint consent of the guardian of the said parish and the vestry. “ That the said guardians also, each of them within the hundred whereof he is guardian, have the power of a justice of the peace over vagabonds and beggars, to make them passes, to send them to the seaport towns or houses of correction, as before proposed. “ These foregoing rules and methods being what we humbly conceive most proper to he put in practice for the employment and relief of the poor generally throughout the country, we now further humbly propose for the better and more easy attainment of the same end in cities and towns corporate, that it may be enacted, “ That in all cities and towns corporate the poor’s tax be not levied hy distinct parishes, but by one equal tax throughout the whole corporation. “ That in each corporation there be twelve guardians cf the poor, chosen by the said corporation, whereof four to go out by lot at the end of the first year, other four of the remaining number to go out also by lot the next year, and the remaining four the third year, and a new four chosen every year in the rooms of those that go out, to keep up the number of twelve full, and that no one continue in above three years successively. That these guardians have the power of setting up and ordering working schools as they see convenient, within each corporation respectively, to which schools the children of all that are relieved by the said corporation, from three to fourteen years of age, shall be bound to come as long as they continue unemployed in some other settled service, to be approved of by the overseers of the poor of that parish to which they belong. “ That these guardians have also the sole power of ordering and dis- posing of the money raised in each corporation for the use of the poor, whether for the providing of materials to set them on work, or for the relieving of those whom they judge not able to earn their own livelihood ; and that they be the sole judges who are or are not fit to receive public relief, and in what proportion. “ That the said guardians have also the power to send any persons begging without a lawful pass to the next seaport town or house of correc- tion, as before propounded. “ That they have likewise power to appoint a treasurer to receive all money raised for the relief of the poor ; which treasurer shall issue all such money only by their order, and shall once a year pass his accounts before them ; and that they also appoint one or more storekeepers, as they shall 1697. "I m. 65.J POOR-LAW OFFICERS. 389 see occasion, with such rewards or salaries as they think fit ; which store- keepers shall in like manner be accountable unto them, provided always tha tthe mayor or bailiffs or other chief officers of each corporation have notice given him that he may be present (which we humbly propose may be enjoined on all such officers respectively) at the passing of the accounts both of the treasurer and storekeepers of the poor within each respective corporation. That the teachers in each school, or some other person thereunto ap- pointed, shall fetch from the respective storekeepers the materials they are appointed to work upon in that school, and in such quantities as they are ordered, which materials shall be manufactured accordingly, and then returned to the storekeeper, and by him be either given out to be further manufactured or else disposed of to the best advantage, as the guardians shall direct. “ That the overseers of the poor shall in like manner take from the storekeeper, and distribute unto those who are under the public relief, such materials, and in such proportions, as shall be ordered each of them for a week’s work, and not pay unto any of the poor so employed the allowance appointed them till they bring back their respective tasks well performed. “ That the overseers of the poor of each parish shall be chosen as they are now, and have the same power to collect the poor's rates of their respec- tive parishes as now ; but that they issue out the money so collected for the relief and maintenance of the poor according to such orders and directions as they shall receive from the guardians. And that the accounts of the over- seers of the poor of each parish, at the end of their year, shall be laid before such persons as the parish shall appoint to inspect them, that they may make such observations on the said accounts, or exceptions against them, as they may be liable to, and that then the said accounts, with those obser- vations and exceptions, be examined by the treasurer and two of the guar- dians (whereof one to be nominated by the guardians themselves and the other by the parish), and that the said accounts be passed by the allowance of those three. “ That the said guardians shall have power to appoint one or more beadles of beggars, which beadles shall be authorised and required to seize upon any stranger begging in the streets, or any one of the said corporation begging either without the badge appointed to be worn or at hours not allowed by the said guardians to beg in, and bring all such persons before any one of the said guardians. And that, if any of the said beadles neglect 390 IN THE SEBVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII their said duty, so that strangers, or other beggars not having the badge appointed or at hours not allowed, be found frequenting the streets, the said guardians, upon complaint thereof made to them, shall have power and be required to punish the beadle so offending, for the first fault, at their own discretion ; but, upon a second complaint proved before them, that they send the said beadle to the house of correction, or (if it be in a maritime county, and the beadle offending be a lusty man and under fifty years of age), to the next seaport town, in order to the putting him aboard some of his majesty’s ships, to serve there three years as before proposed. “ That those who are not able to work at all, in corporations where there are no hospitals to receive them, be lodged three or four or more in one room, and yet more in one house, where one fire may serve, and one atten- dant may provide for many of them, with less charge than when they live at their own choice scatteringly. “ And, since the behaviour and wants of the poor are best known amongst their neighbours, and that they may have liberty to declare their wants and receive broken bread and meat or other charity from well-disposed people, that it be therefore permitted to those whose names are entered in the poor’s book, and who wear the badges required, 1 to ask and receive alms in their respective parishes at certain hours of the day to be appointed by the guar- dians, but, if any of these are taken begging at any other hour than those allowed, or out of their respective parishes, though within the same corpo- ration, they shall be sent immediately, if they are under fourteen years ol age, to the working school to be whipped, and, if they are above fourteen, to the house of correction, to remain there six weeks and so much longer as till the next quarter-sessions after the said six weeks are expired. “ That, if any person die for want of due relief in any parish in which he ought to be relieved, the said parish be fined according to the circum- stances of the fact and the heinousness of the crime. “ That every master of the king’s ships shall be bound to receive without money, once every year (if offered him by the magistrate or other officer of any place withiu the bounds of the port where his ship shall be), one boy, 1 A law passed shortly before Locke’s preparation of this document (8 and 9 William III., cap. 30), chiefly to make new arrangements for the settlement and removal of paupers, and for the apprenticeship of pauper- children, had stipulated that no one should be allowed to beg who did not wear the distinctive badge of the parish to which he belonged. 1697. "1 .act. 05 . J locke’s poor-law scheme. 391 sound of limb, above thirteen years of age, who shall be his apprentice for nine years.” 1 To understand that very comprehensive scheme, we must remember that the poor-laws of Queen Elizabeth’s reign and the minor laws by which they were supplemented during the ensuing century, had all been based on the assumption that it is the duty of every parish to look after its own paupers, to maintain those who cannot work, to find employment for those who can work and to compel them to perform it, to put pauper children in the ways of earning their own livelihoods, and to draft off all vagrant paupers to the places of their birth and settlement. Locke had to build on these bases, and, though there is no reason for supposing that he saw anything to object to or anything but the highest political wisdom in having an immense state-machinery of work-houses in which or in connection with which all the poor could labour if they liked, and should be compelled to labour if they did not find other and more profitable employment for themselves, his elabo- rate proposals in this respect were designed only to give an efficient development to clearly defined and often- asserted principles of legislation. The theory of state work-houses w T as provided for him : all the detailed proposals for making them useful institutions, and espe- cially for supplementing them by working schools for poor children, were his own, or adapted from the experi- ments and speculations of such practical philanthropists as his friends Thomas Eirmin and John Cary. Whatever we may think of the theory, it must certainly be admitted that he showed amazing shrewdness and excellent philan- thropy in his working out of the details, and it may be fairly assumed that, had his projects been adopted and 1 Board of Trade Papers, Domestic, bundle B, no. 6. 392 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. improved upon by more expert law-framers, and honestly enforced by competent administrators of the law, English pauperism might have been checked if not well-nigh extirpated, or at any rate that the country would have been spared that steady and rapid growth of social degradation which the poor-law reformers of 1834 were only able very partially to correct. Though Locke was not able to support his scheme while it was being discussed by his colleagues in the commission of trade, they appear to have substantially adopted it in the report which they made to the lords justices on the 23rd of December, 1697. 1 The lords justices, however, do not seem to have taken any notice of this document. Perhaps it was lost in the great fire that made terrible havoc at Whitehall on the 4th of J anuary, and the subject was thus lost sight of. 2 It was not revived at any rate until June, 1699, when the lords justices called for a new report. In consequence of that instruction, after some days’ discussion, a copy of Locke’s original scheme, with a few verbal alterations, was sent on on the 20th of July, 3 only, however, to be again laid aside. King William’s advisers apparently thought the scheme too large to be seriously consi- dered, or, if they themselves approved of it, involving questions so wide and changes so considerable that they did not venture to submit it to the quarrelsome and 1 Board of Trade Papers, Journal B, pp. 378, 379. 2 On this occasion the meeting-place of the commissioners of trade was destroyed, and only some of its records were saved by the prompt energy of Popple, who conveyed them to his own house, where the commissioners generally met until the 2nd of March, 1697-8, when more suitable offices were fitted up at the Cockpit, in which they established themselves for some time. 3 Board of Trade Papers, Journal D, pp. 79, 80, 119, 121, 124, 127. fflt. 7 65 - 6 ?:] retirement from the council of trade. 393 discontented parliament that had met in 1698. A less ambitious work in which Locke, being ill at Oates, took no part, having for its object the consolidation of all existing poor-laws, was undertaken in the following Feb- ruary, and on the 13th of March a draft bill to this effect, put forward by the commissioners, was laid before the house of commons. 1 Neither this bill, however, nor a hill embodying some of Locke’s suggestions which was introduced in 1705, was adopted; and until 1834 suc- cessive cabinets and parliaments were satisfied with patchwork legislation, very insufficient where not very mischievous, as regards paupers and pauperism. During the delays incident to his own scheme of poor- law reform, Locke continued, as far as he was able, to devote himself to the general work of the commission of trade and plantations ; but of this a complete account would be tedious. Having been in constant attendance throughout five months in 1696, four months in 1697, three months in 1698, and five months in 1699, he at- tended for only five weeks in 1700. His first appearance, after the winter, was on the 17th of May. On Monday, the 28tlr of June, as we read in the minutes of the council, “ Mr. Locke acquainted the board that, finding his health more and more impaired by the air of this city, so that he is not able henceforward to make any continued residence in it and attend the service of this commission as is requisite, he had been yesterday to wait upon the king, and desired his majesty’s leave to lay down his place in this commission, and that he therefore came now to take leave of the board; and so withdrew.” 2 1 Board of Trade Papers, Journal D, p. 404; Journals of the House of Commons, vol. v., p. 13. 2 Ibid., Journal D, p. 94. Matthew Prior was appointed in his stead. 394 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XIII. “ He acquitted himself in this place with great appro- bation of all men,” said Lady Masham, “till the year 1700 ; but then, on account of not being able to stay in London so long as he was wont to do, he laid it down without saying anything to any one till he had surrendered his commission to the king, who very unwillingly received it, telling him that, were his attendance ever so small, he was sensible his continuance in the commission would be useful to him, and that he did not desire he should be one day in town on that account to the prejudice of his health ; but he told the king he could not be satisfied to hold a place of that profit without giving more attendance on it than he was able, and humbly therefore begged to be discharged from that service ; which was the last public service he undertook.” 1 While Locke was taking part in the reform of the currency, and during the four years of his zealous work as a commissioner of trade and plantations, his relations with King William and his chief advisers were very intimate. Whether he was often at court, paying his respects to both king and queen, before Mary’s death, and afterwards to William alone, we are not told ; but there can be no doubt that his friendship was sought after and prized by the sovereigns, who, if they did not cultivate such coarse society as Charles the Second and James the Second had found pleasure in, had learnt at the Hague that kingly dignity is only enhanced by free and genial intercourse with men of worth. “ This I may say, as having had it from those to whom his i 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Lady Masham to Le Clerc, 12 Jan., 1704-5. ife!;] AN OFFER OF FRESH WORK. 395 majesty expressed so much,” wrote Lady Masliam, “ that, whatever opportunities Mr. Locke had had of making himself so well known to him, the king had a very great opinion of him as a wise and an honest man.” 1 One instance of William’s great opinion of Locke had very disastrous consequences. He does not appear, until 1700, to have renewed the request for permission to retire horn the hoard of trade which he had made in January, 1696-7 ; hut the worse health in which he found himself at the following Christmas time would have afforded ample excuse for such a proposal, especially after an increase of his illness, of which the king was unintentionally the cause. He had been kept close prisoner within doors at Oates for more than a month w T hen, on the 23rd of January, 1697-8, to his surprise he received an urgent summons from King William to present himself at once at Kensington. It was a dismal winter morning, cold and raw. Lady Masliam begged him to send back the messenger with word that he was too ill to make the journey. But he insisted upon going : the king would not send for him if he did not want him ; and if there was any work for him to do, he must try to do it. So he rode through snow r and wind in the coach that had been despatched for him. On Monday afternoon he returned, more dead than alive. As soon as he was well enough to answer Lady Masham’s question as to the business for which he had been summoned, all the answer she could get from him was that “ the king had a desire to talk with him about his own health, as believing that there was much similitude in their cases” 2 and all the 1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Lady Masham to Le Clerc, 12 Jan., 1704-5. 4 Ibid. 396 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. XITI. particulars his friends could afterwards obtain were that he had advised his majesty, whenever his asthma was troublesome, to abstain from wine and heavy feeding. 1 These answers were doubtless true as far as they went, and they told all that Locke felt himself justified in tell- ing ; hut they were only a part of the truth, and they occasioned in the minds of Lady Masham and some of his other friends a prejudice against King William which was not altogether warranted. What was the real motive of the untimely summons to Locke is nowhere recorded ; but a tolerably safe guess can he made. The peace of Kyswick had been ratified in November, 1697, and thereby had been triumphantly termi- nated the long struggle of William of Orange and pro- testantism and liberty against Louis the Fourteenth, Catho- licism and tyranny. A special ambassador had to be sent to France, and, after careful consideration, it was decided early in January that this office should he filled by the king’s most trusted and trustworthy friend, William Bentinck, Earl of Portland, and that he should be at- tended by a suite fit to represent the dignity of England in Paris. Of courtiers there were plenty eager to join the embassy, and a goodly show of them was wanted ; but there was more need and less supply of honest men to aid the ambassador — a Dutchman, and, however shrewd and worthy, not well versed in English politics or institutions - — in doing wisely the serious work that had to be done. Was Locke fastened upon as the best person to go as Portland’s right-hand man? That seems to be a fair surmise when we remember how anxious the king had been, nine years before, that he should go as ambassador to the court of the elector of Brandenburg, and how many 1 Le Clerc, ‘ Eloge de M. Locke,’ in the ‘ Bibliotheque Choisie.’ ISSUE OF THE KING’S PROPOSAL. 397 1697-8."] Ml. 65.J fresh proofs had since been furnished of his wonderful honesty and wonderful ability ; and on no other supposi- tion can we so well understand the only document we have to throw any light on the mystery. This document is a letter addressed by Locke, on the Thursday after his return to Oates, to his friend Somers, now lord chancellor, referring in very guarded terms to the public business on hand, hut stating with painful precision some of its personal concomitants, as a sequel to an interview between them on the previous Saturday. “ Sunday, in the evening,” Locke here wrote, “ after I had waited on the king, I went to wait on your lordship, it being, I understood, his majesty’s pleasure I should do so before I returned hither. My misfortune in missing your lordship I hoped to repair by an early diligence the next morning, but the night that came between destroyed that purpose, and me almost with it. For, when I was laid in my bed, my breath failed me. I was fain to sit up in my bed, where I continued a good part of the night, with hopes that my shortness of breath would abate, and my lungs grow so good-natured as to let me lie down to get a little sleep, whereof I had great need. But my breath constantly failing me as often as I laid my head upon my pillow, at three I got up, and sat by the fire till morning. My case being brought to this extremity, there was no room for any other thought but to get out of town imme- diately ; for, after the two precedent nights without any rest, I concluded the agonies I laboured under so long in the second of those would hardly fail to be my death the third, if I stayed in town. As bad weather, therefore, as it was, I was forced early on Monday morning to set out and return hither. His majesty was so favourable as to propose the employment your lordship mentioned; but 398 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. ST1L the true knowledge of my own weak state of health made me beg his majesty to think of some fitter person, and more able, to serve him in that important post ; to which I added my want of experience for such business. That you may not think this an expression barely of modesty, I crave leave to explain it to you, though there I discover my weakness, that my temper, always shy of a crowd of strangers, has made my acquaintances few, and my con- versation too narrow and particular to get the skill of dealing with men in their various humours and drawing out their secrets. Whether this was a fault or no to a man that designed no bustle in the world, I know not. I am sure it will let you see that I am too much a novice in the world for the employment proposed.” “ The king,” Locke added, “was graciously pleased to order me to go into the country to take care of my health. These four or five days here have given me a proof to what a low state my lungs are now brought, and how little they can bear the least shock. I can lie down again, indeed, in my bed, and take my rest ; but, bating that, I find the impression of these two days in London so heavy upon me still, which extends further than the painfulness of breathing and makes me listless to everything, so that methinks the writing this letter has been a great performance. My lord, I should not trouble you with an account of the prevail- ing decays of an old pair of lungs, were it not my duty to take care his majesty should not he disappointed, and, therefore, that he lay not any expectation on that which, to my great misfortune every way, I find would certainly fail him ; and I must beg your lordship, for the interest of the public, to prevail with his majesty to think on somebody else, since I do not only fear, but am sure, my broken health will never permit me to accept the great jMt.^ 65 .] ISSUE OF THE KING’S PROPOSAL. 399 honour Ms majesty meant me. As it would be unpardon- able to betray the king’s business, by undertaking what I should be unable to go through, so it would be the greatest madness to put myself out of the reach of my friends during the small time I am to linger in this world, only to die a little more rich or a little more advanced. He must have a heart strongly touched with wealth or honours who, at my age, and labouring for breath, can find any great relish for either of them.” 1 It is clear, at any rate, that Locke was summoned to town, not to advise the king about his asthma, but to receive an offer of some important employment, from which he with difficulty excused himself, modestly on the score of his unfitness for the work, seriously on the score of his broken health. Two passages in Locke’s corre- spondence with Limborch, moreover, furnish some con- firmation of the surmise that the public work on which Kin g William was so anxious to engage him had to do with the embassy to France, and, if that was the case, they also tend to show that the king’s proposals were renewed in the autumn. “ Our friend Gfuenellon,” Lim- borch wrote on the 2nd of September, after referring to some letters that had passed between Locke and Guenellon, “ raises a hope in us that you will be going to France this winter and will return to England by way of Holland. If you can make this journey without injury to your health, I wish for it with all my heart, as it will give me an oppor- tunity of seeing and embracing you after our long separa- tion.” 2 “ My journey to France, so long in contemplation, is likely to come to nothing,” Locke replied. 3 1 Lord King, p. 247 ; Locke to Somers, 28 Jan., 1697-8. 2 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 428 ; Limborch to Locke, [2 — ] 12 Sept., 1698. 3 Ibid., p. 431 ; Locke to Limborch, 18 Oct., 1698. 400 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. [Chap. X1TJ We hear no more of Locke’s public employment in that or any other new way, and, as we have seen, he resigned his commissionership of trade in the summer of 1700 on the ground of ill-health. His ill-health was a very sufficient reason for the resignation ; but it was doubtless insisted upon at this time in consequence of his evident dissatisfaction at the progress of public affairs. The parliament of 1695 had set itself honestly to support the efforts of Somers and his party to improve the condition of the country and promote the happiness and well-being of all classes. The parlia- ment of 1698 was of a different temper. Quarrels soon began in it, and King William, whatever his wishes and sympathies may have been, deemed it expedient to tem- porise with the tones and disloyal whigs. One after another, he consented to the dismissal of all his best counsellors and agents, and to the substitution for them of worthless place-hunters. Somers, almost the first to go, was deprived of his lord chancellorship on the 17th of April, 1700, and ten days afterwards the great seal was entrusted to the two chief justices and the chief baron as commissioners until the 21st of May, when Nathan Wright was appointed lord keeper. What Locke thought of Somers’s dismissal and its surroundings may be gathered from the following ‘ Letter,’ a fragment of very curious if not very poetical verse, which he must have written in or near the first week in May. In it the Earl of Sunder- land is referred to as “ the count.” “ Having thank’d me so much for the news in my last, This serves to acquaint you with what has since passed. The count, who lives in (but not on) the square, Was summon’d last week to the court to repair, Where he found the sad king to his closet retreated, More pensive than when at Landen defeated. iroo. i JEt. 67. J A LETTER IN VERSE. 401 * Good sir,’ said the count, ‘ what is your command ? Your affairs, I am told, are all at a stand.’ ‘ Sacrament ! ’ swore the monarch, ‘ you have me undone, — And hast been a traitor to father and son. ’ ‘ Dread sir,’ said the count, ‘ though the proverb be true, Yet ’tis very hard to be quoted by you : Betraying the father my conscience does sting, But you, by that treason, were made Britain’s king ! ’ The monarch, surprised with such a sharp touch, And sensible of so just a reproach, Said, ‘ Fear not, my lord ; I no secrets reveal. Let me know how you like my dispose of the seal ? ’ ‘ Not at all,’ said the count. ‘ It is given to those Who to absolute monarchs are all sworn foes, Men learn’d in the law, but honest and brave, Who the guiltless won’t hang, nor the guilty will save. And such as will never the people enslave ; That work’s to he done by Methuen my knave.’ * The seal,’ said the king, ‘ was to judges committed. Till I with a man for my turn could be fitted ; And now you may guess if or no I have hit it. I’ve pleas’d a few lawyers ; but the rest of the nation I hear do talk high of a new abdication. Turning out of lord chanc’llor, I confess, I repent : But since it is done, whate’er be th’ event, I never will do like hen-hearted James, Run away, and throw my great seal in the Thames. I intended t’ have given it the man you were for, Your Lillyburlero Irish chancellor ; But, he having bred his son at Saint Omers, I must not let Methuen succeed my Lord Somers.’ The count, growing pale, said, ‘ Then must I swear, The mob have no mercy on those in their power. I have sent my son Spencer to tell all the town The remove of the seal I lament and disown ; ’Twas not from my lord taken, himself laid it down ; A better lord chancellor never was known. But all the town says my son ’s a court spy, And therefore lay wager what he says is a lie. Vol. II. — 26 402 IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE. LChap. XIII The removing the seal I advis’d and design’d. Yet, since you do know it was your own mind, To deny ’twas my counsel. Pray, sir, be so kind, To lie for your service : you ’ll me ready find.’ ' My lord,’ said the king, ‘ too late I have found By following your counsels I daily lose ground In the people’s affections. Their murmurs require That you and your son from the court should retire.’ ‘ Leave the court ! ’ said the count : ‘ that sure ’s very hard ; And for all my service no grateful reward ! A minister ought not to he valued the less, If his cunning schemes meet not with success. An able lord chancellor may, without doubt, For reasons of state sometimes be turn’d out. When princes would absolute be on the throne, They must trust their conscience with those that have none, And when their subjects deserve to be slaves, Turn out honest ministers and prefer knaves.’ ‘ My lord,’ said the king, ‘ if these maxims be true, The great seal should have been bestow’d upon you ; But still all these measures are false or unsafe, And Montagu’s offers are greater by half. That mushroom-projector has far outdone you, And did undertake things you never durst do. Would I govern by force, he’d an army provide That I might the three kingdoms like packliorses ride ; He heading his tools (like some Turkish bashaw) The old company broke against justice and law ; But, that he might ne’er prove more faithful than you, Ho basely betray’d his dear friends of the new ; By factions and clubs he’d our ferments abate, And pay the national debts with Duncombe’s estate. In fact, there’s no fence he would not break thorough, Puts me on one thing to-day, on another to-morrow, Till the insolent, vain, and impolitic elf Would make me as abject and mean as himself. But, my lord, that for once my whole mind you may know, Pray mark well the truths I’m now going to show ; — Pembroke and Lansdowne, Godolphin and Lory, 1700 . ~\ Mt. 67 . J A LETTER IN VERSE. 403 Shrewsbury, Rumney and Leeds, whig and tory, My Keppel and Portland, with such foreign slaves, Are unthinking proud fools or poor tricking knaves ; Ranelagh, Brathwayte, and Boyle I’ll skip o’er, Lest they smuggle the little that ’s yet left in store, Or, like my Lord Oxford, make up their accounts, Though his cowardly baseness their cheating surmounts. Grim Coningsby should be secure from all pasquill, Since none can express all the crimes of that rascal, Who by murder makes Gafney in annals take place An act well becoming his poisoning grace. All my train are reproach’d with true jests and tart jibes ; E’en Somers is branded with pensions and bribes, But chiefly for keeping of other men’s wives, And favouring persons of dissolute lives. Vernon ’s by all men believed a mere tool, And Jersey ’s acknowledg’d t’ have ne’er been to school ’ n 1 Shaftesbury Papers, series viii., no. 29. I have not thought it necessary to explain the various allusions in the text. They will be understood by any one tolerably acquainted with political history during the last few years of William the Third’s reign. CHAPTER XIV. CoNTEOVEBSY : LaTEE WeITINGS. [ 1696 — 1700 .] URING most of the years in which Locke held his office in the council of trade and plantations he had to defend himself from repeated attacks, first on £ The Reasonableness of Christianity,’ and afterwards on the ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding,’ and in so doing to take a prominent part in the great war of words between trinitarians and anti-trinitarians, latitudinarians and dogmatists, which was waged in England during the last decade of the seventeenth century. The controversy was greatly encouraged, if not started, by ‘ The Naked Gospel,’ a work written by Arthur Bury, but published anonymously in 1690. Love to God and love to man were here set forth as the great rules of fife which Christ came to enforce, and, when made real and lasting by faith in Christ and a hearty repentance, the only conditions of salvation. Eaith in Christ was shown to consist solely in loyal devotion to him as the great teacher and exemplar of virtue, and was entirely divested of doctrinal questions and speculative dogmas. All inquiry concerning the incarnation of Christ or his relations to God, Bury regarded as “ impertinent to the design of Christianity, fruitless and dangerous,” that 1696. *1 jEt. 63. J THE TRINITARIAN CONTROVERSY. 405 design being nothing but the restoration of human nature to its original purity, that is, the reconciliation between God and man. It is not strange that this audacious book should have been publicly burnt at Oxford a few months after its publication : but that proceeding only increased its popularity, and strengthened the Unitarian movement that was just now acquiring force under the leadership of Locke’s friend, Thomas Fir min. Firmin was not, it would appear, himself the author of any of the numerous tracts published at his charge between 1689 and 1695 ; but he obtained, the help of able writers for his anonymous publications, and by them succeeded in stirring up all sorts of rival attacks from the various sects of trinitarians and tritheists then included m the church of England, and in thus setting his antagonists to overthrow one another. Dr. Wallis, Locke’s old teacher, urged that it is as natural and neces- sary that there should be three “ somewhats ” — he objected to the term “ persons ” — in one God as that there should be three dimensions, length, breath and height. He was too kind-hearted to venture upon much justification of the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian creed; but Dr. Sherlock proved to his own satisfaction that “none but believing Christians are in a state of salvation, however morally virtuous their lives may be,” while he offered some assistance to “ believing Christians ” by defining the Trinity to be “ three persons intimately united to each other in one undivided substance,” three infinite minds distinct from one another, but joined in one by their common nature ; there being three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in one Godhead, just as there may be three persons, Peter, James, and John, in one manhood. Dr. South, Locke’s ribald schoolfellow of 406 CONTROVERSY : LATER WRITINGS. (Chap. xrv. nearly fifty years ago, went even nearer to unitarianism than Wallis, though he was not the less bitter against it on that account ; but his bitterest attack was against Sher- lock’s treatise, which, at his instigation, was publicly condemned by the university of Oxford, in November, 1695, he having brought appropriate logic to bear upon the authorities when he urged them to withstand the progress of “ deism, socinianism, tritheism,” and every other form of heresy, “ lest they should fall from ecclesi- astical grace and the door of preferment should be shut against them.” That was the state of the controversy — as far as very brief allusion to a few tracts and treatises can indicate the purport of a hundred or more — when Locke published his ‘ Reasonableness of Christianity.’ He there carefully kept out of the trinitarian debate, and mentioned none of those who had taken part in it. His main business, like that of Bury in ‘ The Naked Gospel,’ was to steer clear of all dogmas and show how the gospel of Christ was simply and solely a gospel of love and redemption, how the Messiah came, not to perplex any one with unin- telligible creeds and impracticable rules of life, but to supplement the law of nature and the law of reason by a gracious evidence of the way in which men might save themselves from death and annihilation, and win for themselves the eternal life of happiness that had been forfeited by Adam. He differed alike from those who “ would have all Adam’s posterity doomed to eternal infinite punishment for the transgression of Adam, whom millions had never heard of and no one had authorised to transact for him or be his representative,” and from those to whom “ this seemed so little consistent with the justice or goodness of the great and infinite God that they 1696. "I ■St. 63. J EDWAKDS'S ATTACKS ON LOCKE. 407 thought there was no redemption necessary, and conse- quently that there was none, and so made Jesus Christ nothing but the restorer and preacher of pure natural religion, thereby doing violence to the whole tenour of the New Testament.” 1 He was thus more orthodox than Bury, the churchman, and many church of England divines. His work, however, was the most powerful apology for rational theology that had been made since the publication of ‘ The Naked Gospel,’ all the more powerful because it was entirely free alike from vulgar personality and from every sort of scholastic quibble. As we have seen, it was at once assailed by John Edwards, a very contemptible antagonist, whose language unfortunately induced him to indulge in personalities, though they were not vulgar ; and Edwards’s disclosure of the fact that the anonymous ‘ Reasonableness of Chris- tianity’ was written by the author of the ‘ Essay concern- ing Human Understanding,’ if it gave a new importance to the work, compelled him to take a larger share than he otherwise might have taken in the subsequent controversy, and was at least one cause of the opposition that soon came to be offered to the ‘ Essay ’ itself. Edwards’s strictures, in ‘ Some Thoughts concerning Atheism,’ having been published in the autumn of 1695, and quickly met by Locke’s short ‘ Vindication ’ as well as by an anonymous pamphlet entitled 1 The Excep- tion of Mr. Edwards against “The Reasonableness of Christianity ” Examined,’ he lost no time in replying to both tracts in another entitled ‘ Socinianism Unmasked,’ the introduction to which was dated January, 1695-6. Here, with a profusion of scurrilous abuse and clever falsification, he charged Locke over and over again with 1 ‘ The Reasonableness of Christianity,’ p. 6. 408 CONTROVERSY : LATER WRITINGS. [Chap. XIV. declaring that a belief in the Messiahship of Jesus was the only thing required from Christians — in perversion of Locke’s assertion that it was the only article of faith required as a condition of endeavouring to participate in the joys and duties of a Christian life — and, thus confining himself to a personal attack on the author of ‘ The Reasonableness of Christianity,’ sought to divert attention from the work itself. Locke’s real views he did not attempt to controvert ; all he aimed at was to bring him into discredit, or rather perhaps to win some credit for himself by seeming to have detected a foolish and narrow- minded Socinian in so eminent a man as Locke. Locke, for some time, took no notice of this treatise. “ A cause,” he said, “ that stands in need of falsehoods to support it, and an adversary that wall make use of them, deserve nothing but contempt, which, I doubt not but every con- siderate reader thought answer enough to Mr. Edwards’s 4 Socinianism Unmasked.’ ” 1 It is a pity he did not hold to that opinion, especially as Samuel Bolde, a Dorsetshire clergyman, unknown to him, promptly came to his assist- ance, and, in some concise but pertinent ‘Animadversions,’ showed the worthlessness of Edwards’s attack . 2 His anger was aroused, however, by the taunts and aggravated misrepresentations contained in Edwards’s next work, ‘ The Socinian Creed,’ and he wrote a long and convincing, though hardly requisite and somewhat tedious, ‘ Second Vindication of “ The Reasonableness of Christianity.” ’ 1 ‘The Second Vindication of “The Reasonableness of Christianity”’ (1736), p. 1. I refer to this, the fifth, edition, not having the first at hand. 2 Some ‘Passages in “ The Reasonableness of Christianity” and its “Vin- dication,” with some Animadversions ' on Mr. Edwards’s “Reflections on ‘ The Reasonableness of Christianity,”’ and on his “Socinianism Unmasked’” (1697), pp. 17—52. locke’s reply to edwards. 409 1*97. 1 JEt. 61.J This volume must have been published before May, 1697, as in that month Molyneux wrote to say, “If you know the author thereof, as I am apt to surmise you may, be pleased to let him know that I think he has done Mr. Edwards too much honour in thinking him worth his notice ; for so vile a poor wretch certainly never appeared in print. But, at the same time, tell him that, as this ‘ Vindication ’ contains a further illustration of the divine truths in ‘ The Reasonableness of Christianity,’ he has the thanks of me and all fair candid men that I converse with about it.” 1 In saying that, Molyneux said nearly all that could be said in commendation of the hook. Whatever useful service it may have done when it was published, it is to modern readers one of the least valuable of all Locke’s writings. Some portions of it are of interest, however, as helping us to understand his system of religion and theology, and his place among the controversialists of his day. Locke reiterated very fully and forcibly, and in one place very concisely and clearly, bis scheme of Christianity : “ There is a faith that makes men Christians. This faith is the believing of Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah. The believing Jesus to be the Messiah includes in it a receiving him for our Lord and King, promised and sent from God, and so lays upon all his subjects an absolute and indispensable necessity of assenting to all that they can attain of the knowledge of that he taught, and of a sincere obedience to all that he commands.” 2 Christ’s teaching and commands, he emphatically declared, must be sought for in the Bible, and there only ; and each honest seeker must be 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 218 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 15 May, 1697. 2 ‘ Second Vindication,’ etc., p. 385. This summary was offered, not to Edwards, but to another opponent with whom Locke dealt at the end of his book. 410 CONTROVERSY : LATER WRITINGS. [Chap. XIV. left to draw thence such special rules of life and such special articles of faith as he finds in them. “ If the reading and study of the Scripture were more pressed than it is, and men were fairly sent to the Bible to find their religion, and not the Bible put into their hands only to find the opinions of their particular sect and party, Christendom would have more Christians, and those that are would be more knowing and more in the right than now they are. That which hinders this is that select bundle of doctrines which it has pleased every sect to draw out of the Scriptures, or their own inven- tions, with an omission of all the rest. These ‘ choice truths,’ as the ‘ unmasker ’ calls his, are to be the standing orthodoxy of that party, from which none of that church must recede without the forfeiture of their Chris- tianity and the loss of eternal life ; but, whilst people keep firm to these, they are in the church and the way to salvation ; which, in effect, what is it but to encourage ignorance, laziness, and neglect of the Scriptures ? For what need they be at the pains of constantly reading the Bible, or perplex their heads with considering and weighing what is there delivered, when, believing as the church believes, or saying after or not contradicting their teacher, serves the turn ? I desire it may be considered what name that mock-show of recommending to men the study of the Scriptures deserves, if, when they read it, they must understand it just as he that would be their master tells them ? If they find anything in the word of God that leads them into opinions he does not allow, if anything they meet with in holy writ seems to them to thwart or shake the received doctrines, the very proposing of their doubts renders them suspected ; reasoning about them and not acquiescing in what is said to them is interpreted want of due respect and deference to the authority of their spiritual guides ; disrepute and censures follow ; and if, in pursuance of their own light, they persist in what they think the Scripture teaches them, they are turned out of the church, delivered to Satan, and no longer allowed to be Christians. This is the consequence of men’s assuming to themselves a power of declaring fundamentals, that is, of setting up a Christianity of their own making. Thus systems, the inventions of men, are turned into so many opposite gospels, and nothing is truth in each sect but just what suits with them ; so that the Scripture serves but, like a nose of wax, to be turned and bent just as may fit the contrary orthodoxies of different societies.” 1 Locke made no scruple of his rejection of the doctrine, or rather all the diverse doctrines, of the Trinity ; he indignantly repudiated the generally 1 ‘ Second Vindication,’ etc., pp. 173 — 175. 1697. 1 2Et. 64.J CHRISTIANITY WITH DOGMAS. 411 received notions of the atonement and predestination, of original sin and everlasting punishment ; but he very properly objected to being called names, partly because he refused to acknowledge any other teacher of religion than Christ, partly because, though he agreed on many points with the members of many heretical sects, he differed from them on others, and did not choose to be pinned down to agreement with them on any. Most especially he objected to being called a Socinian, as comprehensive and insulting, a term of opprobrium in his day as the term fanatic had been before, or as the term atheist was both before and after ; and for this he had good reason, seeing that the epithet was applied to him with the distinct purpose of discrediting his opinions in philosophy as well as in theology, and, had he in any way acknowledged it, would have gone far to spoil the influence of all his writings. He, therefore, angrily resented the charge brought against him so persistently by Edwards. “ He hopes,” he said, “to fright people from reading my book by crying out ‘ Socinianism, Socinian- ism ! ’ I challenge him to show one word of Socinianism in it. But, however, is it worth while to write a book to prove me a Socinian ? Truly, I did not think myself so considerable that the world need be troubled about me, whether I were a follower of Socinus, Arminius, Calvin, or any other leader of a sect among Christians. A Christian I am sure I am ; because I believe Jesus to be the Messiah, the King and Saviour sent by God, and, as a subject of his kingdom, I take the rule of my faith and life from his will, declared and left upon record in the inspired writings of the apostles and evangelists in the New Testament, which I endeavour, to the utmost of my power, as is my duty, to understand in their true sense and meaning. To lead me into their true meaning I know no infallible guide but the same Holy Spirit from whom these writings at lirst came. If the ‘ unmasker ’ knows any other infallible interpreter of Scripture, I desire him to direct me to him. Till then I shall think it according to my Master’s rule not to be called, nor to call any man on earth, master. No man, I think, has a right to prescribe to me my faith, or magisterially to impose his interpreta- tions or opinions on me ; nor is it material to any one what mine are any farther than they carry their own evidence with them.” 1 Of all the railing accusations brought against him by Edwards, Locke admitted only one — that he “ everywhere struck at systems.” “ And I always shall,” he exclaimed, “so far as they are set up by particular men or parties, as the just measure of every man’s faith, wherein everything that is con- 1 ‘Second Vindication,’ etc., pp. 281, 282, 412 CONTROVERSY : LATER WRITINGS. [Chap. XI V. tained is required and imposed to be believed to make a man a Christian. But that every man should receive from others, or make to himself, such a system of Christianity as he found most conformable to the word of God, according to the best of his understanding, is what I never spoke against, hut think it every one’s duty to labour for and to take all opportunities as long as he lives to perfect.” 1 Edwards continued to denounce Locke as a Socinian or worse, and lie imported new grounds of abuse into a work that he must have written shortly before, though it was not issued till some months after, the publication of the ‘ Second Vindication.’ This work was entitled ‘A Brief Vindication of the Fundamental Articles of the Christian Faith, as also of the Clergy, Universities, and Public Schools, from Mr. Locke’s Beflections upon them in his Book of Education, etc.,’ and in it, as the title implies, Edwards specially, though by no means exclusively, set himself to condemn Locke’s new views about teaching and his objections to the methods hitherto in vogue. In the dedication, addressed to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, he referred to Hobbes and “ one Mr. Locke, who, though he infinitely comes short of the fore- named person in parts or good letters, yet hath taken the courage to tread in his old friend’s steps and pnbiicly to proclaim his dislike of university men and to remonstrate against the methods they take in bringing up of youth.” He invented other connections between Hobbes and Locke. “ When that writer,” he went on to say, “ was framing a new Christianity, he took Hobbes’s ‘ Leviathan ’ for the New Testament, and the Philosopher of Malmes-, bury for our Saviour and the apostles.” That insolent dedication and the harmonious abuse that followed it are chiefly noteworthy as further showing 1 ‘ Second Vindication,’ etc., p. 327. 1697. 1 64. J FURTHER ATTACKS FROM EDWARDS. 413 the way in which Locke was now coming to be attacked. Locke’s chagrin is curiously exhibited in an indignant letter that he wrote to a very old friend, Dr. John Co veil, now master of Trinity College, Cambridge . 1 Edwards, being also a Cambridge man, and an acquaintance of Covell’s, had induced him to join with the vice-chancellor of the university and two other dons in signing an “ imprimatur ” for the scurrilous work. On discovering this, Locke wrote to Covell as follows : — “ Reverend Sir, — I am told the booksellers in Cambridge have made bolder than they should with the book you will herewith receive, by pasting a paper over the author’s epistle to the bookseller. ’Tis pity so excellent a treatise as this is should lose the authority and recommendation your name gives to it. I therefore send you one with all its ornaments displayed as our shops here afford them, and you will do well to keep it safe that posterity may know, as well as this present age, who lent his helping hand to usher into the world so cleanly a piece of divinity, and such a just model of managing of controversy in religion, to he a pattern for the youth in his own college and in the rest of the university to imitate. This is all at pre- sent, till I have a fitter opportunity to talk with you about what the dull stationer here made bold to strike out, notwithstanding it had the warrant of your ‘ imprimatur.’ ’Tis not that I pretend to be interested in the controversy wherein Mr. Edwards is a party ; but, hearing he had named me in the title of his book, I thought myself concerned to read it, and, having perused it, I think it will not misbecome our old acquaintance to do you this right. I lay all those titles you have thought me worthy of at your feet, and am, reverend sir, your humble servant, “ J. Locke .” 2 That deservedly sharp rebuke produced an answer as 1 They were in Paris together in 1678, and a frequent correspondence appears to have passed between them ; but the few remains of it that are extant for the period before the date of the above letter are not of much interest. Coveil was a great orientalist, and in other ways an important man in his day. 2 Additional MSS., no. 22910, fol. 463 ; Locke to Coveil, 29 Sept., 1697. 414 controversy: later writings. [Chap. XIV. satisfactory as frankness and humility could make it. Covell explained that he had sanctioned Edwards’s book without knowing what was in it. Edwards had asked for his name and he had given it, without inquiry, as to an old college friend whom he thought he could trust. “ Till the book was printed, I assure you I never so much as saw it or knew the least syllable of its contents, much less of your name. Now I do confess myself indeed very guilty of too much credulity and easiness herein, hut not in the least of any known or designed disrespect to you. You have taught me hereafter not to be over apt too hastily to believe the reports and to trust the judgments of other men. The vice-chancellor himself — after some high words, as I hear, with the author — commanded that page to be covered, so that he seems to disown some part of the charge, as I must do the whole.” Coveil added that he thought Locke had known him “ so well as at least to have a little expostulated such a matter as this ” before he charged him “ so warmly and so home.” 1 Locke readily forgave his friend, and their intimacy I appears to have been strengthened by this mischance ; : hut he could not forget the insult that had been put upon him, however unintentionally, by the university authori- ties. His letter of forgiveness is missing ; hut nearly a year later he referred to a conversation on the subject that had taken place while Coveil was visiting him at Oates in the spring of 1698. “ The discourse you then made me about the ‘ imprimatur ’ so fully satisfied me that I was not mistaken in your friendship,” he wrote, “ that I shall not he unwilling you should put into my hands the means of vindicating you to the world in this matter. I therefore desire that you would send me the 1 Additional MSS., no. 22910, fol. 463 ; Coveil to Locke, 4 Oct., 1697. ■16S7. '1 -Et. 64. J FURTHER ATTACKS FROM EDWARDS. 415 letter you offered to write to me that I might publish concerning that affair. For, though your name stands printed equally amongst the others, yet I shall he glad to have it in my power to clear you in that point and to show the world that they ought not to involve you in the same opinion with the others which that memorable transaction, when examined and looked into, will be found to deserve.” 1 Covell sent a more formal and dignified letter of apology and explanation ; 2 but it does not appear that Locke made any use of it, or took any further notice of Edwards’s venomous attacks. Some time before this he had embarked in his more important controversy with Bishop Stillingfleet, a more influential, though hardly a more honest or able opponent. Almost immediately after the publication of ‘ The Rea- sonableness of Christianity ’ appeared another anonymous work, ‘ Christianity not Mysterious,’ which caused even greater commotion among the theologians than Locke’s treatise. Its author was John Toland — as he called him- self, his sponsors having named him Janus Junius — a young Irishman of erratic genius, who, horn at Derry in 1669 or 1670, renounced the Catholicism in which he had been 1 Additional MSS., no. 22910, fol. 477; Locke to Coveil, 26 July, 1698. 2 Ibid., fol. 468 ; Covell to Locke, 2 August, 1698. The following sen- tences are from a letter (in the same collection, fol. 474) that Locke wrote to Covell on the 1st of July, 1698 : — “ I received the book you sent to me safe, entitled ‘ The Acts of English Votaries,’ written by John Bale. I mention the title so particularly that, if I should die before I restore it again, you may demand it of my executor ; for, though it be but a little book, yet pos- sibly it is not every day to be met with, and ’tis fit you should have your own again and not lose by the favour you have done me in lending it. . . . I beg the favour of you to let your man transcribe the description of the monster and the woman’s confession out of Benedetto Varchi, because it is a book I know not where to meet with, and I shall have occasion to make use of the story.” 416 CONTROVERSY: LATER WRITINGS. [Caip. yrv. educated, became a presbyterian student at Glasgow in 1687, went thence to Edinburgh, and in 1690 to Leyden, where he acquired more liberal opinions in theology, before finishing his university life at Oxford. He was as un- scrupulous as he was clever, and his vanity, arrogance and lawless ways of life' went far to spoil the good work that he did, and farther to ruin his own prospects. On his return from Holland he boasted of having enjoyed the friendship of Limborch and Le Clerc, though Limborch could not remember that he had ever seen him, and Le Clerc only spoke with him twice, and on the second occasion, said Limborch, “ so dealt with him that he had small reason to boast of their meeting.” 1 Having scraped up some acquaintance with Locke in London, and been kindly treated by him, he made similar unfair use of their slight connection. When, in 1697, he attempted to settle down in Dublin, Molyneux welcomed him as Locke’s friend, 2 until warned by him to the contrary. 3 Molyneux , soon found the warning well-grounded. “ He has raised against him the clamour of all parties,” he wrote before 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 438 ; Limborch to Locke, [24 July — ] 3 Aug., 1 1699. “I am very glad,” Bishop Burnet wrote, probably in 1700, in an undated letter to Le Clerc, “ that you have put it in my power to clear you of all correspondence with Mr. Toland. I shall add only one thing concerning ! him to show you what sort of a man he is. Mr. Firmin, whose character you know, if not himself, who supported Socinianism while he lived and with whom it seems to be sunk among us, but who was a man of strict morality and eminently zealous for the truth of the Christian religion, broke with him and would have no communication with him a year before his death. This Mr. Daranda told me he had from Mr. Firmin himself. Mr. Firmin was a true Socinian ; but it appears now that infidelity is the business to which the other was only a disguise ; for that goes on, though the other is at a stand.” — MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library . | 2 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 190 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 6 April, 1697. 3 Ibid., p. 206 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 3 May, 1697. toland’s ‘ Christianity not mysterious.’ 417 Toland had been two months in Ireland, “ and this not so much by his difference in opinion, as by his unreason- able way of discoursing, propagating and maintaining it. Coffee-houses and public tables are not proper places for serious discourses relating to the most important truths ; but when also a tincture of vanity appears in the whole course of a man’s conversation, it disgusts many that may otherwise have a due value of his parts and learning. Mr. Toland also takes here a great liberty on all occasions to vouch your patronage and friendship, which makes many that rail at him rail also at you.” 1 The raillery that Toland brought upon Locke, not only in Dublin, but also in London and elsewhere, did not affect his opinion of him, as that opinion had already been formed ; hut it occasioned him serious inconvenience. In ‘ Christianity not Mysterious ’ — a work the great ability of which must not he ignored on account of its many blemishes or the infirmities of its author — Locke’s views were partly perverted and partly carried out to their logical conclusions. Toland insisted, with almost more boldness than any previous writers had shown, upon the free exercise of reason in matters of faith, and attempted to do for theology what Locke had done for metaphysics. He promised to show, in a book which he never wrote, that Christianity is a divinely revealed religion ; but he here contented himself with arguing that no religion can he accepted unless it is altogether reasonable and intelli- gible, and that Christianity, as he understood it, answers those conditions. He endeavoured to apply purely scien- tific tests to all the historical and doctrinal teachings of the Christian fathers. He admitted that, when all is done that can be done to clear away the quibbles and ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 215; William Molyneux to Locke, 27 May, 1697. Vol. II.— 27 418 controversy: later writings. [Chap. TTV. delusions in which schoolmen, theologians, visionaries and fanatics indulge, there will be a great outside circle of mysteries ; but with these we have nothing to do unless, by wise use of reason, we can farther extend the ground on which alone Christianity, either as a rule of life or a system of beliefs, can be planted. We can only believe what we understand. We can obey no rule the principles of which are unintelligible to us. Had Locke, with his great force of intellect, entered soberly upon the task that Toland rashly assigned to himself, he might, amid the chaos of vague opinions and conflicting dogmas with which the religious world was perplexed, have brought about in theology a revolution as important as that which he did bring about in philosophy. But his own religious bias was too strong ; and Toland’s book only provoked a new storm of controversy which soon died out, and the book with it . 1 It is now chiefly remembered, 1 Toland’s book was burnt at the door of the parliament house in Dublin in August, 1697, this foolish proceeding being adopted, however, it would seem quite as much in consequence of the prejudice excited by Toland’s reckless bluster and disreputable life as in consequence of any violent and general opposition to the book itself. At any rate Toland’s misconduct provided the bigots with a strong lever for overturning the book, as far as the parlia- ment could doit. “ Mr - . Toland is at last driven out of our kingdom,” Moly- neux wrote to Locke on the 11th of September (‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 236). “ The poor gentleman, by his imprudent management, had raised such an universal outcry that ’twas even dangerous for a man to have been known once to converse with him. This made all wary men of reputation decline seeing him, insomuch that at last he wanted a meal’s-meat, as I am told, and none would admit him to their tables. The little stock of money which he brought into this country being exhausted, he fell to borrowing from any one that would lend him half-a-crown, and ran into debt for his wigs, clothes and lodging, as I am informed ; and last of all, to complete his hardships, the parliament fell on his book, voted it to be burned by the common hang- man, and ordered the author to be taken into custody of the serjeant-at-arms TOLAND’s c CHRISTIANITY NOT MYSTERIOUS. * 419 if remembered at all, on account of the efforts made to implicate Locke in its tenets and Locke’s own efforts to clear himself therefrom. Toland recognised four and only four sources of know- ledge and agencies for discovering the truths of religion : the experience of the senses, the experience of the mind, human authority or moral certitude, and divine authority or such professed revelation as is consistent with reason. With the third and fourth we need not concern ourselves, nor is it requisite to say more of the first and second than that they were adaptations of the account of ideas of sensation and ideas of reflection given by Locke in his ‘Essay.’ Toland avowedly laid the foundations of his work in Locke’s philosophy and put upon some parts of it interpretations with which Locke by Ho means agreed. Without any intentional dishonesty, he gave to all opponents who knew Locke to be the author of ‘ The Reasonableness of Christianity,’ and suspected him or wished others to suspect him of sympathy with the deists and Unitarians, an opportunity of condemning the ‘Essay’ as the fountain of all sorts of heresy ; and foremost among these opponents was Edward Stillingfleet, the first Lord Shaftesbury’s protege half a century before, when Locke was acquainted with him ; a turncoat in the later years of the Stuarts, when Locke wrote, but did not publish, a powerful answer to his ‘ Unreasonableness of Separa- and to be prosecuted by the attorney-general-at-law. Hereupon be is fled out of this kingdom, and none knows where he has directed his course.” Toland turned up in London and lived there and elsewhere till 1722. He wrote a ‘ Life of Milton ’ in 1698, ‘ Amyntor, or a Defence of Milton’s Life,’ in 1699, ‘ Letters to Serena ’ in 1704, ‘ Nazarenus ’ in 1718, and other works, obtaining a bare subsistence as a bookseller’s hack. An interesting account of him will be found in D’lsraeli’s ‘Calamities of Authors.’ 420 CONTROVERSY : LATER WRITINGS. [Chap. XIV tion ; 1 and now bishop of Worcester, sorely disappointed that Tenison had been preferred before him as archbishop of Canterbury. Stillingfleet was a sound scholar, but no logician, and even his admirers were surprised when into ‘ A Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity,’ which he published in the autumn of 1696, he imported twenty- seven pages of attack upon Locke for certain opinions that he supposed him to hold in common with Toland and the Unitarians, “the gentlemen of the new way of reasoning.” “My book,” that is, the ‘Essay,’ Locke said, “ was brought into the trinitarian controversy by these steps : 1. The Unitarians have not explained the nature and bounds of reason. 2. The author of ‘ Chris- tianity not Mysterious,’ to make amends for this, has offered an account of reason. 3. His doctrine concerning reason supposes that we must have clear and distinct ideas of whatever we pretend to any certainty of in our mind. 4. Your lordship calls this a ‘ new way of reason- ing.’ 5. This ‘ gentleman of the new way of reasoning ’ in his first chapter, says something which has a conformity with some of the notions in my book. But, it is to be observed, he speaks them as his own thoughts and not upon my authority, nor taking any notice of me. 6. By virtue of this, he is presently entitled to I know not how much of my book, and divers passages of my ‘ Essay ’ are quoted and attributed to him under the title of ‘ the gentlemen of the new way of reasoning ’ (for he is by this time turned into a troop), and certain unknown (if they are not all contained in this one author’s doublet) ‘ they ’ and ‘ these ’ are made by your lordship to lay about them shrewdly, for several pages together, in your lordship’s 1 See vol. i., pp. 456 — 461 of this work. Iby6. 1 Mt. 64 . J STILLINGFLEET’s ATTACK ON LOCKE. 421 * Vindication of tlie Doctrine of the Trinity,’ with passages taken out of my book, which your lordship was at the pains to quote as ‘ theirs,’ that is, certain unknown anti- trinitarians .” 1 It was a clear injustice to Locke to attribute his original arguments to other writers ; but it was a cruel injury to him to represent him as holding their opinions. ‘‘Nothing but my book and my words being quoted, the world will be apt to think that I am the person who argue against the Trinity and deny mysteries, against whom your lordship directs those pages.” 2 “ I have lately met with a book of the Bishop of Worcester’s concerning the Trinity,” Molyneux wrote. ' “ He takes occasion therein to reflect on some things in your ‘ Essay,’ but truly, I think, with no great strength of reason. However, he being a man of great name, I hum- bly propose to you whether you may not judge it worth your while to take notice of what he says, which will be no difficult task .” 3 Locke, in his reply, said that he had anticipated Molyneux’s advice. “What he says is, as you observe, not of that moment much to need an answer: but the sly design of it I think necessary to oppose ; for I cannot allow any one’s great name a right to use me ill. All fair contenders for the opinions they have I like mightily ; but there are so few that have opinions, or at least seem, by their way of defending them, to be really persuaded of the opinions they profess, that I am apt to think there is in the world a great deal more scepticism, or at least want of concern for truth, than is imagined.” 4 1 ‘Mr. Locke’s Reply to the Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to his Second Letter ’ (1699), p. 18. 2 ‘A Letter to the Bishop of Worcester (1697), p. 59. 8 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 171 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 3 Feb., 1696-7. 4 Ibid., p. 180 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 22 Feb., 1696-7. 422 CONTROVERSY : LATER WRITINGS. [Chap. XIV. To controvert and expose his new opponent’s “ sly design,” Locke wrote ‘ A Letter to the Bishop of Wor- cester concerning some Passages, relating to Mr. Locke’s Essay of Human Understanding, in a late Discourse of his Lordship’s in Vindication of the Trinity,’ which was dated the 7th of January, 1696-7, and published in February or March, some weeks before the ‘ Second Vindication of “ The Reasonableness of Christianity.” ’ The bishop at once prepared an ‘ Answer to Mr. Locke’s Letter ’ which was dated the 26th of April, and published in May. “ So that I perceive this controversy is a matter of serious moment beyond what I could have thought,” Locke wrote on hearing that this answer was in the press. “ This benefit I shall be sure to get by it, either to be confirmed in my opinion, or be convinced of some errors, which I shall presently reform, and so make it the better for it.” 1 ‘ Mr. Locke’s Reply to the Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to his Letter,’ dated the 29tli of June, appeared in August. “ I had much rather,” he said, “be at leisure to make some additions to my ‘ Essay ’ than be employed to defend myself against the groundless and, as others think, trifling quarrel of the bishop. But his lordship is pleased to have it otherwise, and I must answer for myself as well as I can till I have the good luck to be convinced.” 2 The bishop endeavoured to convince him in an ‘ Answer to Mr. Locke’s Second Letter, wherein his Notion of Ideas is proved to be inconsistent with itself and with the Articles of the Christian Faith,’ dated the 22nd of Sep- tember, hut not printed till the beginning of the following year. “ ’Tis of a piece with the rest,” Molyneux wrote of it, “ and you know my thoughts of them already. I 1 4 Familiar Letters,’ p. 209 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 3 May, 1697. Ibid., p. 234 j Locke to William Molyneux, 11 Sept., 1697. jEtelis.] THE CONTEOYEEST WITH STILLINGFLEET. 423 begin to be almost of old Hobbes’s opinion that, were it men’s interest, they would question the truth of Euclid’s ‘Elements,’ as now they contest almost as full evi- dences.” 1 “I have an answer ready for the press,’ ’ Locke replied. “ It is too long. The plenty of matter of all sorts which the gentleman affords me is the cause of its too great length, though I have passed by many things worthy of remark.” 2 ‘ Mr. Locke’s Eeply to the Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to his Second Letter,’ though dated the 4th of May, 1698, was not published until 1699. If Stillingfleet ever thought of making a rejoinder to it, he died too soon ; and thus the controversy was brought to a close. It had attained dimensions about equal to those of the ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding,’ Locke’s share of the whole amounting to nearly three- fourths. Locke’s own stricture on his last letter is true of all three. They are “too long,” if not for the immediate occasions that prompted them, at any rate for the only uses that they now can serve. Stillingfleet could not or would not separate Locke’s opinions from the opinions of the deists and Unitarians whom he wished to overturn, and he persisted in his “ sly design ” of discrediting Locke’s philosophy by associating him with more ob- noxious writers. His letters were even more full of misrepresentations of Locke’s views and of misquotations from his ‘ Essay ’ than of illogical efforts to refute them. Locke therefore deemed it necessary to repeat his argu- ments over and over again, with a diffuseness that was partly due to hasty writing but yet more to an honest 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 263; William Molyneux to L-mke, 15 Marcl^ 1697-8. 2 Ibid., p. 267 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 6 April, 1698. 424 CONTEOVEESY : LATEE WETTINGS. [Chap. XIV desire to restate them in such ways as might succeed in convincing, if not Stillingfleet himself, the crowd of persons whom his unfair tactics were likely to mislead. Hence a large portion of his replies must be tedious and must appear redundant to modern readers ; and, for our present purposes at any rate, a very brief account of then general tenour will be sufficient. The tone in which this controversy w T as carried on must not be ignored. In writing against Edwards Locke made no secret of his contempt for his vulgar antagonist and the miserable perversions of Christianity that he sought to defend. Towards Stillingfleet he was always singularly courteous, though the courtesy was charged with a judicious satire and a wholesome mockery which, without adopting the current report that the bishop at last died of chagrin at his discomfiture, we may be sure must have been very distressing to him. An Irish prelate told Molyneux that Locke’s words, “ though they were as smooth as oil, yet cut like a two-edged sword.” Another Irish prelate said to the same friend, “ He has fairly laid the great bishop on his back ; but ’tis with so much gentleness as if he were afraid, not only of hurting him, but even of spoiling or tumbling his clothes. Indeed, I cannot tell which I most admire, the great civility and good manners in his book, or the force and clearness of his reasonings .” 1 The polite sarcasm was triumphant in the sentence with which Locke closed the controversy. ‘‘Before I conclude,” he said, “ ’tis fit I take notice of the obligations I have to you for the pains you have been at about my ‘ Essay,’ which, I conclude, could not have been any way so effectually recommended to the world as 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 213 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 15 May, 1697. *“•&*] THE CONTEOYEESY WITH STILLINGFLEET. 425 by your manner of writing against it ; and since your lordship’s sharp sight, so carefully employed for its cor- rection, has, I humbly conceive, found no faults in it, I hope I may presume it will pass the better in the world and the judgment of all considering men, and make it for the future stand better even in your lordship’s opinion.” 1 A few illustrations will suffice to show the nature and method of Locke’s controversy with Stiilingfleet on those matters about which they were actually at variance. Having undertaken to “ vindicate ” the doctrine of the Trinity, and espe- cially the peculiar notions of substance involved in it, Stiilingfleet naturally took exception to Locke’s fundamental argument that we can know nothingthat is not derived from our ideas of sensation or reflection. “ Then it follows,” he said, “ that we can have no foundation of reasoning where there can be no such ideas from sensation or reflection. Now this is the case of substance. It is not intromitted by the senses, nor depends upon the operation of the mind, and so it cannot be within the compass of our reason. And therefore I do not wonder that the gentlemen of this new way of reasoning have almost discarded substance out of the reasonable part of the world.” 2 Locke referred to several passages of his * Essay,’ 3 in which he had shown that our ideas of substance do come from sensation and reflection. But, he added, “ I do not understand what is ‘ almost to discard substance out of the reasonable part of the world.’ If your lordship means that I have destroyed, and almost discarded, the true idea we have of it, by calling it ‘ a substratum,’ a ‘ supposition of we know not what support of such qualities as are capable of producing simple ideas in us,’ ‘ an obscure and relative idea,’ ‘ that, without knowing what it is, which supports accidents, so that of substance we have no idea of what it is, but only a confused obscure one of what it does ’ — I must confess this and the like I have said of our idea of substance, and should he very glad to be convinced that I have 1 ‘Mr. Locke’s Reply to the Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to his Second Letter ’ (1699), p. 452. 2 Stiilingfleet, ‘Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity,’ (1696), p. 234. 3 ‘Concerning Human Understanding,’ b. ii., ch. xii., § 6 ; b. ii., ch. xiii., § 19 ; b. ii., ch. xxiii., § § 22, 23, etc. 426 controversy: later writings. Chap. XIV. spoken too meanly of it. He that would show me a more clear and distinct idea of substance would do me a kindness I should thank him for ; but this is the best I could find either in my own thoughts or in the books of logicians. But supposing I or these logicians should own that we have a very imperfect, obscure, inadequate idea of substance, would it not be a little too hard to charge us with discarding substance out of the world ? Let * almost ’ and 4 reasonable part ’ signify here what they will, for I dare say your lordship meant something by them, would not your lordship think you were a little hardly dealt with if, for acknowledging yourself to have a very imperfect and inadequate idea of God, or of several other things which in this very treatise you confess our understandings come short in and cannot com- prehend, you should be accused to be one of these gentlemen that have almost discarded God or those other mysterious things whereof you contend we have very imperfect and inadequate ideas, out of the reasonable world ?” 1 “My saying,” Locke continued, “that ‘when we talk of substance, we talk like children who being asked a question about something which they know not, readily give this satisfactory answer, ‘ that it is something,’ your lordship seems mightily to lay it to heart in these words that follow ; 4 If this be the truth of the case, we must still talk like children, and I know not how it can be remedied. For, if we cannot come at a rational idea of sub- stance, we can have no principle of certainty to go upon in this debate.’ If your lordship has any better and distincter idea of substance than mine is, which I have given an account of, your lordship is not at all concerned in what I have there said. But those whose idea of substance, whether a rational or not rational idea, is like mine, something they know not what, must in that with me talk like children when they speak of something they know not what. For a philosopher that says that which supports accidents is something he knows not what, and a countryman that says the foundation of the great church at Haarlem is supported by something he knows not what, and a child that stands in the dark upon his mother’s muff and says he stands upon something he knows not what, in this respect talk all three alike. As long as we think like children, in cases where our ideas are no clearer nor distincter than theirs, I agree with your lordship that 4 1 know not how it can be remedied, but that we must talk like them.’ ” 2 A large part of Locke's first 4 Letter ’ to Stillingfleet was devoted to the vindication of his original propositions concerning the only sources of 1 4 A Letter to the Bishop of Worcester ’ (1G97), pp. 6, 10 — 13. 2 Ibid., pp. 15, 16. ^t 9 k] THE FIRST c letter to stillingfleet. 427 knowledge and the only grounds of reasoning, Stillingfleet’s main effort being to show that other sources and grounds must be sought if we are to have any real knowledge of anything within us or around us, and especially of such “ spiritual substances ” as our own souls or their Creator. “ We can have no certainty of an immaterial substance from these simple ideas,” the bishop maintained. “ There can be no sufficient evidence brought from them concerning the existence of the most spiritual and infinite substance, even God himself.” And after examining at some length Locke's famous chapter on “ our knowledge of the existence of a God,” he claimed to have proved “ that the certainty of it is not placed upon any clear and distinct ideas, but upon the force of reason distinct from it.” 1 “I do not remember,” Locke replied, “ that I have anywhere said that we could not be convinced by reason of any truth but where all the ideas concerned in that conviction were clear and distinct ; for knowledge or certainty, in my opinion, lies in the perception of the agreement or disagree- ment of ideas such as they are, and not always in having perfectly clear and distinct ideas. Those, I must own, the clearer and more distinct they are, contribute very much to our more clear and distinct reasoning and dis- coursing about them ; but yet in some cases we may have certainty about obscure ideas — for example, by the clear idea of thinking in me, I find the idea of the clear idea of existence and the obscure idea of a substance in me, because I perceive the necessary agreement of thinking and the relative idea of a support, which support, without having any clear and distinct idea of what it is beyond this relative one, I call substance.” 2 Out of such material, Locke insisted, he had satisfactorily built up his proof of the existence of God ; but he declined to be drawn into any metaphysical controversy about the nature and personality of the Godhead, whether uniform or multiform. “ All our notions of the doctrine of the Trinity,” said Stillingfleet, “ depend upon the right understanding of the distinction between nature and person. For we must talk unintelligibly about this point, unless we have clear and distinct apprehensions concerning nature and person and the grounds of identity and distinction. But these come not into our minds by the simple ideas of sensation and reflection.” 3 “If this be so,” Locke slily observed, “ the inference I should draw from 1 Stillingfleet, ‘ Discourse,’ etc., pp. 246, 252. 8 ‘ A Letter,’ etc., pp. 87, 88. 8 Stillingfleet, ‘ Discourse,’ etc., p. 252. 428 CONTEOYEBSY I LATEE WEITINGS. [Chap. XIV. thence, if it were fit for me to draw any, would be this, that it concerns those who write on that subject to have themselves and to lay down to others * clear and distinct apprehensions ’ or notions or ideas, call them what you please, of what they mean by nature and person and of the grounds of identity and distinction.” 1 He insisted that he had only professed to instruct men about the materials with which sound knowledge could be built upon solid foundations : he had nothing to do with the efforts of others to erect metaphysical and theological castles in the air ; and would not be responsible for any “ unintelligible talk ” that might be employed in the hopeless task. “ There is in the world,” he said, “ a great and fierce contest about nature and grace ’Twould be very hard for me if I must be brought in as a party on either side, because a disputant in that controversy should think the ‘ clear and distinct apprehensions ’ of nature and grace ‘ come not into our minds by the simple ideas of sensation and reflection.’ If this be so, I may be reckoned among the objectors against all sorts and points of orthodoxy, whenever any one pleases. I may be called to account as one heterodox in the points of free-grace, free-will, predestination, original sin, justification by faith, transubstantiation, the pope’s supremacy, and what not ? as well as in the doctrine of the Trinity ; and all because they cannot be furnished with clear and distinct notions of grace, free-will, transubstantiation, etc., by sensation or reflection. For, in all these or any other points, I do not see but there may be complaint made that they have not always a ‘ right under- standing ’ and ‘ clear notions ’ of those things on which the doctrine they dispute of depends ; and ’tis not altogether unusual for men to * talk unin- telligibly ’ to themselves and others in these and other points in controversy for want of ‘ clear and distinct apprehensions,’ or (as I would like to call them, did not your lordship dislike it) ideas. For all which unintelligible talking I do not think myself accountable, though it should so fall out that my ‘ way by ideas ’ would not help them to what it seems is wanting, ‘ clear and distinct notions.’ If my way be ineffectual to that purpose, they may make use of any other more successful, and leave me out of the controversy as one useless to either party for deciding of the question.” 2 Locke having, in his first ‘ Letter,’ taken Stillingfleet very courteously but very severely to task for misquoting his words and misrepresenting his views in order to force him into the trinitarian controversy and fasten upon him opinions of Toland and others with which he had nothing to do, the 1 ‘ A Letter,’ etc., p. 148. 2 Ibid., pp. 151, 152. 169/'. •) jEt. 64. J THE FIRST ‘ REPLY ’ TO STILLINGFLEET. 429 bishop devoted forty- seven pages of his ‘Answer’ to a shuffling attempt to justify his dishonesty, and to some additional falsifications, thereby robbing himself of all ground for his subsequent complaint that Locke devoted fifty pages of his ‘ Reply ’ to what the bishop called “ personal matters.” Stillingfleet’s main excuse, though a very poor one, for bringing Locke into the controversy, was thus stated : “ When new terms are made use of by ill men, to promote scepticism and infidelity, and to overthrow the mysteries of our faith, we have then reason to inquire into them and to examine the foundation and tendency of them ; and this was the true and only reason of my looking into this new way of certainty by ideas, because I found it applied to such purposes.” 1 And the most obnoxious of all the new terms, according to Stillingfleet, was that one, “ idea,” which Locke had brought into fashion. “ The world,” he angrily exclaimed, “ hath been strangely amused with ‘ ideas ’ of late ; and we have been told, that strange things might be done by the help of ‘ ideas ; ’ and yet these ‘ ideas,’ at last, come to be only common notions of things, which we must make use of in our reasoning. You say in that chapter about the existence of God, you thought it most proper to express yourself in the most usual and familiar way, by common words and expressions. I would you had done so quite through your book ; for then you had never given that occasion to the enemies of our faith to take up your new way of ‘ ideas ’ as an effectual battery, as they imagined, against the mysteries of the Christian faith. But you might have enjoyed the satisfaction of your ‘ ideas ’ long enough before I had taken notice of them, unless I had found them employed about doing mischief.” 2 “ Which,” Locke replied in admirable banter, “ as I humbly conceive, amounts to thus much and no more, namely, that your lordship fears ‘ideas,’ that is, the term ‘ideas,’ may, some time or other, prove of very dangerous consequences to what your lordship has endeavoured to defend, because they have been made use of in arguing against it. For I am sure your lordship does not mean that you apprehend the things signified by ‘ ideas ’ may be of dangerous consequence to the article of faith your lord- ship endeavours to defend, because they have been made use of against it; for, besides that your lordship mentions ‘ terms,’ that would be to expect that those who oppose that article should oppose it without any thoughts ; 1 ‘ The Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to Mr. Locke’s Letter’ (1697), p. 2U. 2 Ibid., p. 98. 430 CONTROVERSY ! LATER WRITINGS. [Chap. yrv. for the things signified by ‘ ideas ’ are nothing but the immediate objects of our minds in thinking : so that unless any one can oppose the article your lordship defends without thinking on something, he must use the things signified by ‘ ideas ; 1 for he that thinks must have some immediate object of his mind in thinking, that is, must have ‘ ideas.’ My lord, if any, in answer to your lordship’s sermons, and in other pamphlets, wherein your lordship complains they have talked so much of ‘ ideas,’ have been troublesome to your lordship with that term, it is not strange that your lordship should be tired with that sound ; but how natural soever it bo to our weak constitu- tions to be offended with any sound wherewith an importunate din hath been made about our ears, yet, my lord, I know your lordship has a better opinion of the articles of our faith, than to think any of them can be over- turned, or so much as shaken, with a breath formed into any sound or term whatsoever. Names are but the arbitrary marks of conception ; and, so they be sufficiently appropriated to them in their use, I know no other difference any of them have in particular, but as they are of easy or difficult pronunciation, and of a more or less pleasant sound ; and what particular antipathies there may be in men to some of them upon that account, it is not easy to be foreseen. This I am sure, no term whatsoever in itself bears, one more than another, any opposition to the truth of any kind ; they are only propositions that do, or can, oppose the truth of any article or doctrine ; and thus no term is privileged from being set in opposition to truth. There is no word to be found which may not be brought into a proposition wherein the most sacred and most evident truths may be opposed ; but that is not a fault in the term, but him that uses it. My lord, if I should leave the word ‘ idea ’ wholly out of my book, and substitute the word ‘ notion ’ everywhere in the room of it, and everybody else do so too, I do not see how this would one jot abate the mischief your lordship complains of. For the Unitarians might as much employ ‘ notions ’ as they do ‘ ideas ’ to do mischief, unless they are such fools as to think they can conjure with this notable word ‘ idea,’ and that the force of the term lies in the sound and not in the signifi- cation of their terms.” 1 “ Though I cannot conceive,” he went on to say somewhat more soberly, “how any term, new or old, idea or not idea, can have any opposition or danger in it to any article of faith or any truth whatsoever, yet I easily grant ; that propositions are capable of being opposite to propositions, and may fee 1 ‘ Mr. Locke’s Reply to the Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to his Letter' (1697), pp. 63—67, 70. THE FIRST c REPLY ’ TO STILLINGFLEET. 431 ifior. i At. CLJ such as, if granted, may overthrow articles of faith or any other truth they are opposite to. But your lordship not having, as I remember, shown or gone about to show how this proposition, namely, that certainty consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas is opposite or inconsistent with that article of faith which your lordship has endeavoured to defend, it is plain it is but your lordship’s fear that it may be of dangerous consequence to it, which, as I humbly conceive, is no proof that it is any way inconsistent with that article. The reason your lordship gives of your fears is only this, namely, that it is made use of by ill men to do mischief, that is, to oppose that article of faith which your lordship hath endeavoured to defend. But, my lord, if it be a reason to lay by anything as bad, because it is, or may be, used to an ill purpose, I know not what will be innocent enough to he kept. Arms, which were made for our defence, are sometimes made use of to do mischief ; and yet they are not thought of dangerous consequence for all that. Nobody lays by his sword and pistols, or thinks them of such dangerous consequence as to be neglected or thrown away, because robbers and the worst of men sometimes make nse of them to take away honest men’s lives or goods. And the reason is, because they were designed, and will serve, to preserve them. And who knows but this may he the present case ? If your lordship thinks that placing of certainty in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas be to be re- jected as false, because you apprehend it may be of dangerous consequence to that article of faith on the other side, perhaps others, with me, may think it a defence against error, and so, as being of good use, to be received and adhered to.” 1 Locke’s ‘ Reply ’ was chiefly occupied, after he had defended himself from Stillingfleet’s “personal” charges, with reiteration and expansion of his account of knowledge or certainty, and separation of it from faith or belief. “There are several actions of men’s minds,” he said, “that they are conscious to themselves of performing, as willing, believing, knowing, etc., which they have so particular a sense of that they can distinguish them one from another, or else they could not say when they willed, when they believed, and when they knew anything. But, though these actions were different enough from one another and not to be confounded by those who spoke of them, yet nobody that I had met with had, in their writings, particularly set down wherein the act of knowing precisely consisted. To this reflection, upon 1 ‘Mr. Locke’s Reply to the Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to his Letter’ (1697), pp. 83—86. 432 CONTROVERSY : LATER WRITINGS. [Chap. "i;V. the actions of my own mind, the subject of my ‘Essay concerning Human Understanding’ naturally led me; wherein, if I have done anything new, it has been to describe to others, more particularly than had been done before, what it is their minds do when they perform that action which they call knowing ; and if, upon examination, they observe I have given a true account of that action of their minds in all the parts of it, I suppose it will be in vain to dispute against what they find and feel in themselves. And if I have not told them right and exactly what they find and feel in them- selves, when their minds perform the act of knowing, what I have said will be all in vain. Men will not be persuaded against their senses. Knowledge is an internal perception of their minds ; and if, when they reflect on it, they find that it is not what I have said it is, my groundless conceit will not be hearkened to, hut be exploded by everybody, and die of itself ; and nobody need to be at any pains to drive it out of the world. My definition of knowledge stands thus : knowledge seems to me to he nothing but the perception of the connection and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy, of any of our ‘ ideas.’ This definition your lordship dislikes, and apprehends it may be of dangerous consequence as to that article of Christian faith a J which your lordship hath endeavoured to defend. Whether true or false, right or wrong, it can he of no consequence to it at all. That which your lordship is afraid it may be dangerous to is an article of faith : that which your lordship labours and is concerned for is ‘ the certainty of faith.’ Now, my lord, I humbly conceive ‘ the certainty of faith,’ if your lordship thinks fit to call it so, has nothing to do with the certainty of knowledge. To talk of ‘ the certainty of faith ’ seems all one to me, as to talk of ‘ the knowledge of believing,’ a way of speaking not easy to me to understand. Place know- ledge in w'hat you will ; ‘ start what new methods of certainty you please, that are apt to leave men’s minds more doubtful than before ; ’ place cer- tainty on such grounds as will leave little or no knowledge in the world (for these are the arguments your lordship uses against my definition of knowledge) ; this shakes not at all, nor in the least concerns, the assurance of faith ; that is quite distinct from it, neither stands nor falls with know- ledge. Faith stands by itself, and upon grounds of its own, nor can be removed from them, and placed on those of knowledge. Their grounds are so far from being the same, or having anything common, that when it is brought to certainty, faith is destroyed ; it is knowledge then, and faith no longer. With what assurance soever of believing I assent to any article of faith, so that I steadfastly venture my all upon it, it is still but believing. Bring it to certainty, and it ceases to be faith. ‘I believe that Jesus Obrist ifLJ THE FIRST ‘ EEPLY ’ TO STILLINGFLEET. 433 was crucified, dead, and buried, rose again the third day from the dead, and ascended into heaven.’ Let now such methods of knowledge or cer- tainty be started as leave men’s minds more doubtful than before ; let the grounds of knowledge be resolved into what any one pleases, it touches not my faith ; the foundation of that stands as sure as before, and cannot be at all shaken by it ; and one may as well say that anything that weakens the sight, or casts a mist before the eyes, endangers the hearing, as that anything which alters the nature of knowledge (if that could be done) should be of dangerous consequence to an article of faith. Whether then am or am not mistaken in the placing certainty in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas ; whether this account of knowledge be true or false, enlarges or straitens the bounds of it more than it should, faith stands still upon its own basis, which is not at all altered by it ; and every article of that has just the same unmoved foundation and the very same credibility that it had before. So that, my lord, whatever I have said about certainty, and how much soever I may be out in it, if I am mistaken, your lordship has no reason to apprehend any danger to any article of faith from thence ; every one of them stands upon the same bottom it did before, out of the reach of what belongs to knowledge and certainty. And thus much of my way of certainty by ideas ; which, I hope, will satisfy your lordship how far it is from being dangerous to any article of the Christian faith whatsoever.” 1 His lordship was not so satisfied, and in his second ‘Answer’ boldly asserted that the fundamental doctrines of Christianity would be weakened instead of strengthened if they were proved on purely rational grounds, and persisted in declaring that “ the certainty of faith ” is stronger than “ the certainty of knowledge.” Of course he meant here that the “articles of faith ” would have a surer hold upon men if they were taken upon trust than if they were subjected to the test of reason. But the conditions upon which he had entered into his controversy with Locke, and his own reputation as a logical and philosophical churchman, forbade his openly taking that position. Therefore he sought refuge in quibbles, which Locke exposed with pitiless force. Though Locke’s second ‘Reply’ — “wherein, besides other incident matters, is examined what his lordship has said concerning certainty by reason, certainty by ideas and certainty by faith, the resurrection of the 1 ‘Mr. Locke’s Reply to the Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to his Letter’ (1697), pp. 90, 91, 94—98. Vol. II. — 28 434 CONTROVERSY : - LATER WRITINGS. [-Chap. XTr. same body, the immateriality of the soul, the inconsistency of Mr. Locke’s notions with the articles of the Christian faith, and their tendency to scepticism” — is nearly twice as long as the ‘Letter’ and the first ‘ Reply’ put together, it need not here be noticed at length. Locke found it necessary to follow his assailant into the mazes of theological metaphysics in which he endeavoured to find shelter when driven from the more open ground, and, when his assailant attempted to save himself by verbal subter- fuges, he found it as necessary patiently to clear all these away. But the work was evidently irksome to him. “ I must beg my reader’s pardon, as well as your lordship’s,” he said in one place, “for using so many words about passages that seem not in themselves of that importance. ’Tis my misfortune that, in this controversy, your way of writing forces me to it. Clearness and force and consistence are to be presumed always, whatever your lordship’s words be ; and there is no other remedy for an answerer, who finds it difficult anywhere to come at your meaning or argument, but to make his excuse for it in laying the particulars before the reader, that he may be judge where the fault lies : an inconvenience possibly fitter to be endured than that your lordship, in the run of your learned notions, should be shackled with the ordinary and strict rules of language, and, in the delivery of your sublimer speculations, be tied down to the mean and contemptible rudiments of grammar.” 1 Though Locke had not forgotten his courtesy in writing this second * Reply,’ he could not conceal his indignation at the dishonest treatment to which now for the third time he was subjected by the same episcopal hand. In his second ‘ Answer ’ Stillingfleet was more reckless than ever in his perversion of Locke’s language and attempt to convict him of heresies that he repirdiated. “ I have been pretty large in making this matter plain,” Locke said at the close of a long debate concerning the immateriality of the soul, “that they who are so forward to bestow hard censures or names on the opinions of those who differ from them may consider whether some- times they are not due to their own, and that they may be persuaded a little to temper that heat which, supposing the truth in their current opinions, gives them, as they think, a right to lay what imputations they please on those who would fairly examine the grounds they stand upon. For, talking with a supposition and insinuations that truth and knowledge, nay, and religion too, stand and fall with their systems, is at best but an 5 ‘ Mr. Locke’s Reply to the Bishop of W orcester’s Answer to his Second Letter’ (1699), p. 96. ^f 9 65 .] THE SECOND ‘ REPLY ’ TO STILLINGFLEET. 435 imperious way of begging the question and assuming to themselves, under the pretence of zeal for the cause of God, a title to infallibility. It is very becoming that men’s zeal for truth should go as far as their proofs, but not go for proofs themselves. He that attacks received opinions with anything but fair arguments may, I own, be justly suspected not to mean well, nor to be led by the love of truth. But the same may be said of him too who so defends them. An error is not the better for being common, nor truth the worse for having lain neglected ; and, if it were put to the vote any- where in the world, I doubt, as things are managed, whether truth would have the majority, at least whilst the authority of men, and not the examina- tion of things, must be its measure. The imputation of scepticism and those broad insinuations to render what I have writ suspected, so frequent as if that were the great business of all this pains you have been at about me, has made me say this much, my lord.” 1 But Locke was not frightened. When Stillingfleet taunted him with being one of the Unitarian party, but afraid so to acknowledge himself, he answered — and let it be remembered that these words were written in the spring of 1698, when he thought he was about to die — “I am going, my lord, to a tribunal that has a right to judge of thoughts, and, being secure that I there shall be found of no party but that of truth, for which there is required nothing but the receiving truth in the love of it, I matter not much of what party any one shall, as may best serve his turn, denominate me here. Your lordship’s is not the first pen from which I have received such strokes as these, without any great harm. I never found freedom of style did me any hurt with those who knew me ; and, if those who know me not will take up borrowed prejudices, it will be more to their own harm than mine. So that in this I shall give your lordship little other trouble, but my thanks sometimes, where I find you skilfully and industriously recommending me to the world under the character you have chosen for me. Only give me leave to say that if the ‘ Essay ’ I shall leave behind me hath no other fault to sink it but heresy and ‘ inconsistency with the articles of the Christian faith,’ I am apt to think it will last in the world, and do service to truth, even the truths of religion, notwithstanding the imputation laid on it by so mighty a hand as your lordship’s.” 2 This long controversy attracted wide attention while 1 ‘ Mr. Locke’s Keply to the Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to his Second Letter ’ (1699), pp. 406, 407. 2 Ibid., pp. 98. 99. 436 CONTEOVEESY : LATEE WEITINGS. [Chap. XIV. it was proceeding, and won for Locke high praise from all but extreme partisans of the cause that Stillingfleet endeavoured to support. “ If those gentlemen,” Locke wrote, after finishing his last letter, “think that the bishop hath the advantage, not by making good one of those many propositions in debate between us, but by asking a question, a personal question, nothing to the purpose, I shall not envy him such a victory. In the meantime, if this be all they say, the world, that sees not with their eyes, will see what disputants for truth those are who make to themselves occasions of calumny, and think that a triumph. The bishop is to prove that my book has something in it that is in- consistent with the doctrine of the Trinity, and all that, upon examination, he does is to ask me whether I believe the doctrine of the Trinity as it has been received in the Christian church. A worthy proof !” 1 2 * * “I have read attentively the controversy between the Bishop of Worcester and Mr. Locke,” wrote Leibnitz — not a friendly critic — before the later letters had been published. “I have no doubt that the latter will come well out of the affair. He has too much judgment to give a handle to ‘messieurs les ecclesiastiques,’ who are the natural directors of the people, and whose methods must be followed as far as possible ; and from what I have seen it is evident that Mr. Locke justifies himself in a very able manner .” 5 “For my part,” said Le Clerc, who had no arrogance or jealousy to bias his judgment, “ I confess I never read a dispute managed in such cool blood, and with such skill 1 Lord King, p. 196 ; Locke to King, 5 Nov., 1698. 2 Ibid., p. 196; Leibnitz to Thomas Burnet, 1697. Leibnitz began in Locke’s life-time to criticise his philosophical doctrines, and some of these strictures were submitted to him by their mutual friend Thomas Burnet. iEt.^ 65 .] THE CONTROVERSY WITH STILLINGFLEET. 437 and exactness on the one side, nor on the other so unjustly, so confusedly, or so little to the credit of the writer.'’ 1 In answer to a letter that doubtless expressed those senti- ments, Bishop Burnet, who had no liking for Locke, wrote, “ What you say of the Bishop of Worcester’s con- test with Mr. Locke is too true. The dispute was certainly unworthy of him. There was a gross misrepresentation of Mr. Locke’s notions, which, I hope, is now at an end, though it had been more to the bishop’s honour that it had never been begun. But every man does not know where his strength lies. While there is visibly a design to throw off the Christian religion, a just zeal against that is apt to raise jealousies both of persons and things that have no relation to it, but are very innocent.” 2 Stilhngfleet’s attack was only the most formidable of several that began in 1696 to be made upon the ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding.’ “ My book,” Locke wrote to Molyneux, early in 1697, “ crept into the world about six or seven years ago without any opposition, and has since passed amongst some for useful and amongst the least favourable for innocent. But, as it seems to me, it is agreed by some men that it should no longer do so. Something, I know not what, is at last spied out in it that is like to be troublesome, and therefore it must be an ill book and be treated accordingly. ’Tis not that I know anything in particular, but some things that have hap- pened at the same time together suggest this. What it will produce, time will show. But ‘ magna est veritas et praevalebit.’ That keeps me at perfect ease in this and 1 Le Clerc, * Eloge de M. Locke.’ 2 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Gilbert Burnet to Le Clerc (un- dated). This is part of the same letter (endorsed “ Mr. Sarum,” Burnet having signed it “ Gil. Sarum ”) which was quoted from on p. 416. ! I 438 CONTROVERSY : LATER WRITINGS. [Chap. XIV. whatever I write ; for, as soon as I shall discover it not to be truth, my hand shall be the forwardest to throw it in the hre.” 1 “ This excellent treatise,” wrote Samuel Bolde, the Dorsetshire clergyman who had written in defence of ‘ The Reasonableness of Christianity,’ “ having been received through all the learned world with great approbation, a mighty outcry was at last, on the sudden, raised against it here at home. There was, no doubt, some reason or other why so many hands should be employed, just at the same time, to attack and batter this ‘ Essay,’ though what was the weighty consideration which put them all in motion may, perhaps, continue long a secret. Several persons have discovered their inclination to find fault with the treatise by nibbling at several passages in it, which it appears they did not understand, and concern- ing which they have been at a loss how to express them- selves intelligibly. Some have spoken handsomely of the author. Others have treated that incomparable gentleman with a rudeness peculiar to some who make a profession of the Christian religion and seem to pride themselves in being the clergy of the church of England. But, what- ever reputation may accrue to them on either of those accounts, their conduct doth not contribute anything to the honour either of the one or of the other.” 2 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 175; Locke to William Molyneux, 22 Feb., 1696-7. 2 Bolde, ‘ Some Considerations on the Principal Objections and Arguments which have been published against Mr. Locke’s Essay of Human Under- standing ’ (1669), p. 60. This very able pamphlet puts in a clear light the points at issue in the controversy, and contains a masterly defence of Locke’s position. Bolde afterwards handled one branch of the subject at greater length in ‘ A Discourse concerning the Resurrection of the same Body ; with Two Letters concerning the necessary Immateriality of Created Thinking Substance ’ (1705, pp. ix., 206). Bolde was born about the year 1698. “I Mt. 65. J OTHER ATTACKS ON THE c ESSAY.* 439 Among these assailants were John Norris, the disciple of Malebranche and precursor of Butler, Thomas Burnet, the author of ‘ The New Theory of the Earth,’ and John Serjeant, a Roman catholic priest. “ Shall I not be quite slain, think you, amongst so many notable combatants ; and the Lord knows how many more to come ? ” 1 Locke wrote when the tide was setting in. But he replied to none of them, except here and there incidentally in the works that have been already described. “ I know better to employ the little time my business and health afford me,” he said, “ than to trouble myself with the little cavillers who may either he set on, or be forward in hope of recommending themselves, to meddle in this contro- versy.” 2 The third edition of the 1 Essay concerning Human Understanding,’ published in 1695, having been only a reprint of the second, Locke occupied much of his small leisure during the next few years in preparing for a fourth 1648. As vicar of Shapwick, in Dorset, he got into trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities on account of his liberal opinions and his fearless utterance of them, and he was forced to resign, or ejected from, his vicarage. But he was rector of Steeple, near by, from 1682 until his death in August, 1787. Besides the works already named, and some others, making twenty in all, he published ‘ Man’s Great Duty ’ (1675), ‘ A Letter on Image Wor- ship ’ (1680), ‘ A Sermon against Persecution ’ (1682), ‘ A Plea for Modera- tion ’ (1682), ‘ An Exhortation to Charity, addressed to the Irish Protestants ’ (1689), ‘ The Duty of Christians with respect to Human Interpretations ’ (1717), ‘ Some Thoughts concerning Church Authority ’ (1724), and ‘ A Help to Devotion ’ (1786). 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 235 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 11 Sept., 1697. 2 ‘ Mr. Locke’s Reply to the Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to his Second Letter,’ p. 452. 440 CONTROVERSY : LATER WRITINGS. [Chap. XIV. edition, in which he desired, without altering the original form of the work, to clear it of all the inaccuracies that he or his critics could detect, and to incorporate all the new thoughts that he considered pertinent to the subject. The strictures of Stillingfleet and others did not suggest to him many new thoughts or convict him of any inac- curacies ; but they showed the expediency of correcting some terms and phrases in order to render his meaning more intelligible and freer from ambiguity : it would have been well, indeed, had they in this respect induced him to make more corrections than he finally adopted. Such a careful revision seemed to him all the more necessary because, besides the Latin translation of the ‘ Essay ’ which had been already begun, a French one was also now in progress, and, as these would introduce the work to a far larger audience, both learned and unlearned, than the English original could reach, it was important that, in its tri-lingual issue, it should be made, once for all, as perfect as he could make it. The French version was undertaken by Pierre Coste, a friend of Le Clerc’s, who, while in Amsterdam, trans- lated ‘ Some Thoughts concerning Education ’ and ‘ The Keasonableness of Christianity,’ and who, having there begun also to translate the ‘ Essay ’ in the spring of 1697, came over shortly afterwards to act as tutor to Frank Masham, and thus, being in Locke’s company whenever he was at Oates, was able to receive from him constant assistance in his work, and to do it all under his imme- diate superintendence. 1 It was published at Amsterdam 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ pp. 208 — 256; Locke to William Molyneux, 10 April, 1697, and 10 Jan., 1697-8; Le Clerc, ‘ Eloge de M. Locke.’ “The author being present,” says Le Clerc, “ he corrected several places in the original, that he might make them more plain and easy to translate, and very 441 m 7 6^6?:] THE FOURTH edition of the ‘essay.’ in 1700, with the title, ‘ Essai Philosophiqne concern- ant l’Entendement Hnmain ; ou l’on montre qnelle est 1’Etendne de nos Connaissances Certaines et la Maniere dont nous y parvenons.’ 1 The Latin translation, begun as we have seen by Bichard Burridge, a friend of Molyneux’s, in the autumn of 1695, was also made to some extent under Locke’s supervision, portions of the manuscript being sent to him to correct. It was published in London in 1701 as £ De Intellectu Humano.’ 2 The fourth English edition, dated 1700, was issued in the autumn of 1699, having been apparently put in hand as soon as the third edition was exhausted in the previous January. 3 It bore on the title-page a new motto, which may have been suggested by the controversy with Stilling- fleet: “ As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child, even so thou knowest not the works of God, who maketh all.” 4 To the controversy with Stillingfleet, at any rate, must he attributed a verbal alteration running through the carefully revised the translation, so that it is not inferior to the English and often more clear.” 1 Subsequent editions appeared in 1728, 1729, 1736, 1742, 1750, 1755, 1758, and 1774. 2 It was reprinted at Leipsig in 1709, at Amsterdam in 1729, and again at Leipsig in 1731, with prefaces and notes hy Gottlielf Heinrich Theile. The first German translation appeared at Konigsberg in 1755. 3 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p, 295 ; Locke to Thomas Molyneux, 25 Jan., 1698-9. Locke informed Sloane, on the 2nd of December, that some weeks before he had ordered a copy of this fourth edition to be sent to him. The fifth edition, with a few unimportant corrections and additions by Locke, appeared after his death, in 1706. 4 Ecclesiastes xi. 5. 442 CONTEOVEESY 1 LATEE WEITINGS. [Chap. XIV. book, “ determinate ideas ” or “ determined ideas ” being generally substituted for “ clear and distinct ideas ; ” and most of the minor additions made by Locke were evidently designed to ward off the attacks of any future critics who, following the lead of Stillingfleet, might be tempted to engage in “ disputes and wranglings ” by opposing their own “ undetermined ideas ” to any vagueness or insuffi- ciency in Locke’s statement of his views. 1 In this fourth edition he also included two new and very remarkable chapters, both planned, if not written, in the spring of 1695. 2 One on “ association of ideas ” 3 was a distinct and important contribution to psychological study. The other, on “ enthusiasm,” 4 by which term Locke meant “ a religious sort of madness,” was in curious contrast to much of his later writing. In it he eloquently and forcibly condemned, not the cold, hard, metaphysical dogmas by which ecclesiastics like Stillingfleet prop up a structure of incredible creeds because it helps them to wealth and social dignity and power, but the yet more I deplorable fanaticism by which ignorant devotees bring themselves to believe in phantom Gods and attribute to every whim of their diseased imaginations a divine authority, “substituting,” as he said, “in the room of reason and revelation the ungrounded fancies of a man’s own brain, and assuming them for a foundation of both opinion and conduct.” 1 Instance the important additions to b. ii., ch. xii., on ‘ Complex Ideas,’ to b. iii., cb. xxviii., on ‘ Our Ideas of Substances,’ to b. iv., cb. iii., on ‘The Immateriality of the Soul,’ to b. iv., cb. vii., on ‘Maxims,’ and to b. iv., cb. xvii., on ‘ Reason.’ 2 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ pp. 101, 111, 112; Locke to William Molyneux, 8 March, 1694-5, and 26 April, 1698. 3 B. ii., cb. xxiii. 4 B. iv., cb. xix. m 7 64 ^ 67 j <0F THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING.’ 443 “I have lately,” Locke wrote to Molyneux in the spring of 1697, “ got leisure to think of some additions to my hook, against the next edition, and within these few days have fallen upon a subject that I know not how far it will lead me. I have written several pages on it ; but the matter, the farther I go, opens the more upon me, and I cannot yet get sight of any end of it. The title of the chapter will be ‘ Of the Conduct of the Understanding,’ which, if I shall pursue as far as I imagine it will reach, and as it deserves, will, I conclude, make the largest chapter of my ‘Essay.’” 1 The fourth edition of the ‘ Essay ’ appeared without it, and such materials as Locke had collected for it were not published till after his death, when the anonymous editor apologised for the incomplete form of the work. “ Such particulars as occurred to the author at a time of leisure,” we are told, “ he set down in writing, intending, if he had lived, to have reduced them into order, and to have made a com- plete treatise.” 2 The fragment, as we have it, confirms that statement. It is only a collection of notes for an essay or discourse, the notes often repeating one another, and sometimes not fitting very well together. But the incoherence almost enhances the value of the work to us, if not as a scientific treatise, as an index to the modest, earnest temper in which Locke prepared to give his last message to the world as an apostle of truth. Thus ‘ The Conduct of the Understanding ’ forms a very eloquent and pathetic sequel to some other of his writings as well as to the ‘Essay concerning Human Understanding.’ Only a brief account of it, however, need here he given. 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 194 ; Locke to Molyneux, 10 April, 1697. 2 ‘Posthumous Works of Mr. Locke’ (1706). Advertisement to the Reader. The editor was probably Locke’s cousin, Peter King. 444 controversy: later writings. [Chap. XIV. Locke began by complaining that “ the last resort a man has recourse to, in the conduct of himself, is his understanding,” and by exposing the folly of this neglect of the most important of all means towards right action. “ No man ever sets himself about anything but upon some view or other which serves him for a reason for what he does. Whatsoever faculties he employs, the understanding, with such light as it has, well or ill informed, constantly leads ; and by that light, true or false, all his operative powers are directed. The will itself, how absolute and uncontrollable soever it may be thought, never fails in its obedience to the dictates of the understanding. Temples have their sacred images, and we see what influence they have always had over a great part of mankind ; but, in truth, the ideas and images in men’s minds are the invisible powers that constantly govern them, and to these they all universally pay a ready submission. It is, therefore, of the highest concernment that great care should be taken of the under- standing, to conduct it right in the search of knowledge, and in the judgments it makes.” 1 How, in his opinion, that ought to be done, he proceeded to show. “ There are three miscarriages that men are guilty of in reference to their reason, whereby this faculty is hindered in them from that service it might do and was designed for.” “ The first is of those who seldom reason at all, but do and think according to the example of others, whether parents, neighbours, ministers, or whom else they are pleased to make choice of to have an implicit faith in, for the saving of themselves the pains and trouble of thinking and examining for themselves.” “ The second is of those who put passion in the place of reason and, being resolved that shall govern their actions and arguments, neither use their own nor hearken to other people’s reason any further than it suits their humour, interest, or party ; and these, one may observe, commonly content themselves with words which have no distinct ideas to them, though in other matters that they come to with an unbiassed indiflerency they want not abilities to talk and hear reason.” “ The third sort is of those who readily and sincerely follow reason but, for want of having that which one may call large, sound, roundabout sense, have not a full view of all that relates to the question, and may be of moment to decide it. We are all short-sighted, and very often see but one side of a matter ; our views are not extended to all that has a connection with it. From this defect I think no man is free. We see but in part, and we know but in part ; and therefore ’tis no wonder we j 1 ‘ Of the Conduct of the Understanding,’ § 1. iEt.V™:] MISCARRIAGES OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 445 conclude not right from our partial views. This might instruct the proudest esteemer of Lis own parts how useful it is to talk and consult with others, even such as come short of him in capacity, quickness, and penetration ; for, since no one sees all, and we generally have different prospects of the same thing, ’tis not incongruous to think, nor beneath any man to try, whether another may not have notions which have ’scaped him and which his reason would make use of if they came into his mind.” “In this we may see why some men of study and thought, that reason right and are lovers of truth, do make no great advance in their discoveries of truth. Error and truth are uncertainly blended in their minds. Their decisions are lame and defective, and they are very often mistaken in their judgments; the reason whereof is, they converse but with one sort of men, they read but one sort of books, they will not come in the hearing but of one sort of notions. The truth is, they canton out to themselves a little Goshen in the intellectual world, where light shines, and, as they conclude, day blesses them ; but the rest of that vast expanse they give up to night and darkness, and so avoid coming near it. They have a pretty traffic with known corre- spondents in some little creek : within that they confine themselves and are dexterous managers enough of the wares and products of that corner, but will not venture out into the great ocean of knowledge, to survey the riches that nature hath stored other parts with, no less genuine, no less solid, no less useful, than what has fallen to their lot in the admired plenty and sufficiency of their own little spot, which to them contains whatsoever is good in the universe.” 1 But can men hope to do more than live within the small circle of glim- mering light which they call day ? or shall they be wise in venturing upon commerce outside the puny creek that they know how to navigate ? Yes, answered Locke. “We are born with faculties and powers capable almost of anything — such, at least, as would carry us farther than can be easily imagined ; but ’tis only the exercise of those powers which gives us ability and skill, and leads us towards perfection.” See what grace and agility, what strength and endurance, the body can be endowed with, if it is pro- perly trained from infancy ; and it is the same with the mind. “Practice makes it what it is; and most even of those excellences which are looked on as natural endowments will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to be the product of exercise, and to be raised to that pitch only by repeated actions ” Natural faculties are great gifts ; hut acquired habits are of 1 ‘ Of the Conduct of the Understanding,’ § 3. 446 CONTROVERSY : LATER WRITINGS. [Chap. XIV more value ; and there are not many ploughmen or country hedgers who could not have been made good painters or musicians, great statesmen, or wise philosophers, under proper training. “ Defects and weaknesses in men’s understandings come from a want of right use of their minds. There is often a complaint of a want of parts, when the fault lies in want of a due improvement of them.” 1 About the fundamental business of all, “ the getting clear and determined ideas and the employment of our thoughts about them rather than about sounds put for them,” Locke here said little, having said so much about it in his ‘ Essay ; ’ but he protested very earnestly against the adoption of sham ideas, under the name of “ principles.” “ ’Tis not unusual to see men rest their opinions upon foundations that have no more solidity than the propositions built on them and embraced for their sake. Such foundations are these and the like : ‘ The founders or leaders of my party are good men, and therefore their tenets are true ; ’ ‘ It is the opinion of a sect that it is erroneous, and therefore it is false ; ’ ‘ It hath been long received in the world, and therefore it is true ; ’ or, ‘ It is new, and therefore it is false.’ These and many the like, which are by no means the measures of truth and falsehood, the generality of men make the standards by which they accustom their understandings to judge ; and thus, they falling into a habit of determining truth and falsehood by such wrong measures, ’tis no wonder they should embrace error for certainty and be very positive in things they have no ground for.” He who resolves to take nothing upon trust, and holds to that resolve, is in the right way of knowing much and living well. 2 The first thing to do is to get rid of prejudice — “ this great and dangerous impostor, prejudice, who dresses up falsehood in the likeness of truth, and so dexterously hoodwinks men’s minds as to keep them in the dark, with a belief that they are in the light.” “He that would acquit himself as a lover of truth must do two things that are not very common nor very easy. He must not be in love with any opinion, or wish it to be true, till he knows it to be so, and then he will not need to wish it. He must do that which he will find himself very averse to, as judging the thing unne- cessary, or himself incapable of doing it ; he must try whether his principles be certainly true or not, and how far he may rely upon them.” “ In these two things — namely, an unequal indifference for all truth (I mean, the re- 1 ‘ Of the Conduct of the Understanding,’ § 4. 2 Ibid., §§ 5, 6. MISCARRIAGES OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 447 ceiving it in the love of it as truth, hut not loving it for any other reason before we know it to he true), and in the examination of our principles, and not receiving any for such, nor building on them till we are fully convinced, as rational creatures, of their solidity and certainty — consists that freedom of the understanding which is necessary to a rational creature, and without which it is not truly an understanding. ’Tis conceit, fancy, extravagance, anything rather than understanding, if it must be under the constraint of receiving and holding opinions by the authority of their own, not fancied but perceived, evidence. This was rightly called imposition, and is of all other the worst and most dangerous sort of it.” 1 “These,” said Locke, “are the common and most general miscarriages which I think men should avoid or rectify in a right conduct of their under- standings, and should he particularly taken care of in education ; the busi- ness whereof is not to perfect a learner in all or any one of the sciences, but to give his mind that freedom, that disposition, and those habits that may enable him to attain any part of knowledge he shall apply himself to, or stand in need of in the future course of his life.” He next proposed to point out some of the mental infirmities that are like diseases of the body, “ each whereof clogs and disables the understanding to some degree, and therefore deserves to be looked after and cured ; ” 2 and to this part of his subject all the remaining sections of the essay are devoted. The list is incomplete, however, and as regards those mental ailments that are touched upon, we have only the rough sketches that Locke evidently intended, had health and leisure permitted it, to rearrange and elaborate. Overloading of the mind was the first perversion of the intellectual facul- ties of which he complained, and he pointed out two rival maladies likely to ensue from it. “ There are those who are very assiduous in reading, and yet do not much advance their knowledge by it.” They either allow themselves no time in which to draw conclusions from the mass of infor- mation which they cram into themselves, but do not digest ; or else they jump at hasty conclusions that are only useless or even mischievous to them. “ He that makes no reflections on what he reads only loads his mind with a rhapsody of tales fit in winter nights for the entertainment ot others ; and he that will improve every matter of fact into a maxim will abound in contrary observations that will be of no other use but to perplex and pudder him if he compares them, or else to misguide him if he gives 1 ‘ Of the Conduct of the Understanding,’ §§ 10 — 12. 2 Ibid., § 12. 448 controversy: later writings. [Chap. Xrv. himself up to the authority of that which for its novelty or for some other fancy best pleases him.” “ Between these, those seem to do best who, taking material and useful hints, sometimes from single matters of fact, carry them in their minds to be judged of by what they shall find to confirm or reverse these imperfect observations, which may be established into rules fit to be relied on when they are justified by a sufficient and wary induction of particulars.” 1 But there must be no bias in these observations. “ Truth is all simple, all pure, will bear no mixture of anything else with it. ’Tis rigid and in- flexible to any bye interests ; and so should the understanding be, whose use and excellency lies in conforming itself to it. Men are apt to excuse themselves, and think they have reason to do so, if they have but a pretence that it is for God or a good cause- — that is, in effect, for themselves, their own persuasion or party ; for those, in their turn, the several sects of men, especially in matters of religion, entitle ‘ God ’ and ‘ a good cause.’ But God requires not men to wrong or misuse their faculties for him, nor to lie to others or themselves for his sake ; which they purposely do who will not suffer their understandings to have right conceptions of the things proposed to them, and designedly restrain themselves from having just thoughts of everything, as far as they are concerned to inquire. And as for a good cause, that needs not such ill helps ; if it be good, truth will support it, and it has no need of fallacy or falsehood.” 2 Indifference, Locke urged, giving to the word a significance which it has now almost lost, is the great requisite to healthy training of the understand- ing. “ We should keep a perfect indifferency for all opinions, not wish any of them true or try to make them appear so, but, being indifferent, receive and embrace them according as evidence, and that alone, gives the attesta- tion of truth. They that do this will always find the understanding has perception enough to distinguish between evidence or no evidence, betwixt plain and doubtful ; and, if they neither give nor refuse their assent but by that measure, they will be safe in the opinions they have ; which being, perhaps, but few, this caution will have also this good in it, that it will put them upon considering, and teach them the necessity of examining, more than they do ; without which the mind is but a receptacle of inconsistencies, not the storehouse of truths. They that do not keep up this indifferency in themselves for all but truth, not supposed, but evidenced in themselves, 1 ‘ Of the Conduct of the Understanding,’ § 13. 2 Ibid ., § 14. 1697— 1700.T /Et. 64— 67. J THE VALUE OF INDIFFERENCE. 449 put coloured spectacles before tlieir eyes and look on things through false glasses, and then think themselves excused for following the false appear- ances which themselves put upon them. I never saw any reason yet why truth might not be trusted to its own evidence. I am sure, if it be not able to support it, there is no fence against error, and then truth and falsehood are but names that stand for the same things. Evidence, therefore, is that by which alone every man is and should be taught to regulate his assent ; who is then, and then only, in the right way, when he follows it.” “ Throw- ing wholly by the opinions of others, he ought, as much as he can, to examine the question in its source. This, I own, is no easy thing to do i but I am not inquiring the easy way to opinion, but the right way to truth, which they must follow who will deal fairly with their own understandings and their own souls.” 1 Those solemn words were not the last in this excellent fragment on ‘ The Conduct of the Understanding,’ nor the last in which Locke summed up all his teaching to the world as to the way in which men should learn to become reasonable creatures. But they contained the kernel of that teaching, and the key to all his life and all his work in philosophy . 2 1 ‘ Of the Conduct of the Understanding,’ § § 84, 35. 3 At some time after he had taken up his residence at Oates, Locke wrote, probably for the use of Frank Masham, a very clever little handbook, entitled ‘ Elements of Natural Philosophy,’ which was first published in ‘ A Collection of Several Pieces of Mr. John Locke ’ (1720). In the spring of 1702-3 he wrote a short ‘ Essay on Miracles,’ which appeared in ‘ The Posthumous Works of Mr. John Locke ’ (1706). Brief mention will be made in the next chapter of his commentaries on Paul’s Epistles. Vol. II.— 29 CHAPTER XY. Last Years. [ 1696 — 1704 .] B EFORE we follow Locke through the closing years of his life, when ill-health forbade his having any further share in public business, and even hindered him from doing much more literary work, we must take some account of his miscellaneous occupations and concerns during the years in which, as we have just seen, he was busily employed both as a commissioner of trade and plantations and as an author. We must also go farther back to make acquaintance with a young man who, though his name has not yet occurred in our narrative, was not at this time a new companion to Locke. Yery little is recorded about Locke’s Somersetshire kinsfolk, but there can be no doubt that all through the time subsequent to his departure from Pensford, nearly fifty years ago, to become a Westminster boy, he had maintained very intimate relations with them, and now one of the number begins to take a prominent place in his biography. His uncle, Peter Locke, had two daugh- ters, Anne and Elizabeth. Elizabeth married twice and had two sons, John Bonville and Peter Stratton, with, whose names we meet occasionally, and to whom he did many kindnesses. Bonville was in due time established 1696. 1 .St. 64. J PETEB KING. 451 in London, and Stratton resided at his father’s place, Whitsun Court, near Bristol. Locke’s other cousin, Anne, became the wife of Jeremy King, a grocer of Exeter, and her son Peter was horn in 1669. This child, after such schooling as would usually be given to a tradesman’s son, was set to work in his father’s shop. Locke, during one of his visits to Somersetshire — pro- bably the visit that he paid just before going to Holland — met with the boy, was pleased with him, and resolved to place him in a different way of life. 1 From this time Peter King was almost his adopted child. Whether Locke first put him to school in England is not stated ; but at some period during his stay in Holland he sent for him to complete his education in Leyden University. Thence young King returned to England, apparently in 1690, with ‘ An Inquiry into the Constitu- tion and Discipline of the Primitive Church ’ among his luggage — a work of which the theme and style fairly indicated the bent of his mind, and which was published in 1691. He desired to become a clergyman, but had conscientious scruples about entering the established church, and therefore, at Locke’s instigation, enrolled himself as a student of the Middle Temple, and devoted himself to legal pursuits ; not, however, to the neglect of theology, as appears from a very learned ‘ History of the Apostles’ Creed, with Critical Observations on its Several Articles,’ which he published in 1702. Thus, though as yet we have very few traces of their intercourse, it is clear that, during nearly all the years 1 Campbell, ‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors’ (1849), vol. iv., p. 551. Lord Campbell, in his memoir of Lord King, disclosed some interesting facts and committed some curious blunders. For the former I am grateful to him. 452 LAST TEARS. [Chap. XV. when, living chiefly at Oates, Locke came to London from time to time, he had this young cousin in the Temple to look after, and to make a companion of when he had leisure for any society that was not forced upon him by business. It is clear also that Peter King was often at Oates. “ Your company here,” Locke wrote to him thence, three weeks after the 8th of June, 1698, when he was called to the bar, 1 “ had been ten times better than any the best excuses you could send. But you may now pretend to be a man of business, and there can be nothing said to you. I wish you good success in it, and doubt not but you have the advice of those who are better skilled than I in the matter. But yet I cannot forbear saying this much to you, that when you first open your mouth at the bar, it should be in some easy plain matter that you are perfectly master of.” 2 “ I am glad you are so well entered at the bar,” he added a few days later, on hearing that King had started on the western circuit, and that he had taken his first brief. “It is my advice to you to go on so, gently by degrees, and to speak only in things you are perfectly master of, till you have got a confidence and habit of talking at the bar. I have many reasons for it, which I shall discover to you when I see you.” 3 We have not much information about Locke’s occupa- tions during these years, apart from the official and literary work forced upon him. The record of one sig- nificant little incident, however, has come down to us. In November, 1696, shortly before he had to go down to Oates for the winter, after his first five months’ attendance 1 Lord Campbell, vol. iv., p. 551. * Ibid., vol. iv., p. 552 ; Locke to King, 27 June, 1698. 8 Lord King, p. 251 ; Locke to King, 3 July, 1698. REBECCA COLLIER, THE QUAKER PREACHER. 453 at the council of trade, he accompanied King William the Third to a meeting of the society of friends, the latter being anxious to have some personal knowledge of the much maligned sect, and going incognito. Both were pleased with the service, and especially with the ministra- tions of Bebecca Collier, a preacher of some fame in her day, with whom Locke, if not the king, appears to have had a subsequent interview . 1 To her Locke soon after- wards sent the following letter, accompanied by two parcels of sweetmeats, one for herself, and one for Kachel Bracken, another female preacher : — “ My sweet Friends,— A paper of sweetmeats by the bearer, to attend your journey, comes to testify the sweetness I found in your society. I admire no converse like that of Christian freedom, and fear no bondage like that of pride and prejudice. I now see acquaintance by sight cannot reach the height of enjoyment which acquaintance by knowledge arrives unto. Outward hearing may misguide, but internal knowledge cannot err. We have something here of what we shall have hereafter, to ‘ know as we are known.’ This we, with other friends, were at the first view partakers of ; and the more there is of this in this life, the less we need inquire of what nation, country, party or persuasion our friends are, for our own knowledge is more sure to us than another’s. Thus we know when we have believed. Now the God of all grace grant that you may hold fast that rare grace of charity and choose that unbiassed and unbounded love which, if it decay not, will spring up mightily, as the waters of the sanctuary, higher and higher, until you with the universal church swim together in the ocean of divine love. Women, indeed, had the honour first to publish the resurrec- tion of the Lord of Love ; why not again the resurrection of the Spirit of Love? And let all the disciples of Christ rejoice therein, as doth your partner, “ John Locke.” 2 A few months before writing thus Locke had sent a letter 1 Mrs. Thistlethwayte, ‘ Memoirs and Correspondence of Dr. Henry Ba- thurst, Lord Bishop of Norwich ’ (1853), p. 537. 2 Ibid.; Locke to Rebecca Collier, 21 Nov., 1696. Mrs. Thistlethwayte adds : “ Transcribed from a copy lent me by Joseph John Gurney, Norwich, 4 Sept., 1831.” 454 LAST YEARS. [Chap. XV to Esther Masham, his Laudabridis, from whom during these years he was often parted for much longer periods than in the years before and after ; and this letter must here he quoted, along with three that followed it at in- tervals. They throw too many stray gleams of light upon his life and temperament for us to be able to dispense with them. “ Upon Mr. Locke’s being made a commissioner of trade, I writ him a letter to wish him joy ; upon which he sent me the following letter,” said Esther Masham by way of preface to the first. “ The joy which you so forwardly and so kindly wrapped up in your letter proved a fright to me when I opened it. What could a solemn joy be less to one that had before his eyes the fresh example of Mr. H — - — , and when I received your joy I knew not but your grandmother’s prophecy was fulfilled and that I had been tumbled into the meal tub in my sleep without knowing it. But that which set the flight more on was that it came from my Lauda- bridis, whose business, you know, is to make joy, not to wish it. After a little time, recovering myself enough to observe some other expressions which went along with it, I began to find out the matter, and then your wishes had their effects. For, whatever I may expect from what you had in view, either satisfaction or trouble or neither, this I am sure, your taking part in what concerns me, and rejoicing in what perhaps you view but on one side, extremely pleases me. I take it as I am sure you meant it. I take it as a sincere and great mark of your kindness to me, which the more sensibly affects me by how much I more esteem and wish well to you than to all the young ladies I know. Would the time were now come that I could return you your wish and upon a better occasion ! You would then see how much your Joannes was in earnest concerned for you. I am your most faitliful servant, “ Joannes. “ Pray give my humble service to your grandmother and the rest at Matching Hall.” 1 1 Letters from Relations and Friends, in Miss Palmer’s possession, vol. i., pp. 18, 19. JEt . 04. J LETTERS TO ESTHER MASHAM. 455 Locke wrote at least once again to Laudabridis before he returned to Oates. “ Dear Dab, — Your letter the last week, after so long silence, looks as if you had been bottling up kindness for your Joannes, which at last you have let run to the rejoicing of his heart more than if you had overflowed to him sack and sugar or cherry brandy. I was not a little dejected in being so long out of your thoughts, as appeared to me by your no words, which is a very ill sign in a prattle-box of your age. But in good sooth you have now made me amends, and, if what you say be but true, Joannes will perk up again and will not give place to the finest powdered spark in the town. I think you know my heart pretty well, but you are a little mistaken about my head. Though it belongs now to a man of trade, and is thwacked with sea-coal and fuller’s earth, lampblack and hobnails and a thousand such considerable things, yet there is a room empty and clear kept on purpose for the lady, and, if you did hut see how you sit mistress there and com- mand all the ambergris and pearls, all the fine silks and muslins which are in my storehouse, you would not complain of the filling of a place where you would sit mistress. “ I thank you for the Bible you have been at the trouble about for me, and desire it may be sent me. When I come down next, I will bring it into the country with me, and you and I will be the better for it. “Pray present my humble service to Sir Francis and my lady, and let my lady know that, almost nobody in town paying now at sight, I hope she will not have very hard thoughts of me if I remain in her debt for a letter I received from her till the end of the week. “ Remember me very kindly to dear Totty, and, when you go to Matching Hall, pray present my most humble service there. “ I am, D. D., your most faithful humble servant, “ Joannes.” 1 Another letter, dated nearly a year afterwards, was written on the day on which Locke brought before his brother commissioners his scheme for developing the linen manufacture in Ireland. Neither that nor the great hustle in London on account of the approaching 1 Letters from Relations and Friends, vol, i., pp. 20, 21 ; Locke to Esther Masham, 1 Sept., 1G96. 456 LAST YEARS. [Chap. XV. visit of the czar of Muscovy kept him from thinking of Laudabridis, and longing to be with her. “Dear Dab,— There was nothing wanting to complete the satisfaction your obliging letter of the 20th brought me but the motive from yourself of writing. Had inclination procured me the favour, and not the commands of another, you had made me perfectly happy. However, the good and kind things you say in it make a great amends for that defect, and I should be very unreasonable if so many good words you have put into your letter should not hinder -me from complaining. They are more and better than I deserve, and you may believe they have no ordinary charms in them, since they go a great way towards reconciling me to my old and great enemy, winter. At least you wish for him with so peculiar a way of kindness to me that I cannot be angry with you for doing it ; for, since you think I cannot have your company without his, I should be better pleased with his coming than the czar’s, and like him better, crowned as he is with turnips and carrots, than the great duke with all his rubies and diamonds. This may convince you that, whatever keeps me in town, it is not my inclination. And the reproach of not coming to you whilst I can live here is a little beside the matter. Did I stay here no longer than I lived here, I should quickly be at your town without houses ; 1 for in this, where there are so many, too many, I do not live. To live is to be where and with whom one likes. Do not, therefore, dear Dab, any more reproach your Joannes on this point, as you will answer it another day. You huddled up the end of your letter to get to the man in black 2 and the melon. Which you relished best, either the discourses of the one or the taste of the other, I shall know when I see you. For, if you have no sweet sayings laid up by you of that day’s collection, I know what I know. I long to be examining of you because I am, dear Dab, your most humble and most obedient servant, “Joannes .” 3 The next letter was written seven weeks later, after a hard day’s work at the council, occupied in discussing the 1 “ Mr. Locke used to laugh at Mr. Low, the minister of our parish, for calling his parish, his town, when there were not two houses together in it.” — E.M.’s note. 2 “ The man in black was Mr. Low.” — E. M.’s note. 3 Letters from Friends and Relations, vol. i., pp. 23, 24; John Locke to Esther Masham, 28 August, 1697. ] 007. “I JSX. 65. J LETTERS TO ESTHER MASHAM. 457 trade relations between England and Norway, and while Locke was completing his scheme for the reform of the poor laws. It was provoked by some playful reproaches from Landabridis on account of his reported civilities to a famous dowager-duchess, still handsome, though no longer in her prime. “ I pretended to be jealous upon his visiting the Duchess of Grafton,” said Laudabridis in explanation of it. “ Beauty and honour are two tempting things, but a heart, dear Dab, that you are possessed of is proof against all of that kind. If therefore you have any more jealousy but just so much as shows your concern for me, you are unjust to yourself and your Joannes too. The wishes I made to be with you remain the same I brought to town with me, and, if you can but defend me against your own fears, I promise you to defend you against all the duchesses and beauties in Christendom. I believe you as innocent and sincere as the country can produce, and I think I may pre- sume I shall hold out longer against the false fashions than the ill air of the town ; for my heart, I am sure, is better than my lungs ; so that your part is safe. I do not much rejoice in the plump you make such show of in your letter. If you were so much concerned as you talk of, you would pine away a little in my absence. But, with all the love you brag of, there is not that sympathy should be. If there were, separation would always abate something of your good mien, as it always, you know, does of mine, and, as thin as I am when I part from you, I always return thinner. But what I am abated in bulk, I always return increased in affection. If this does not satisfy you, I will make up the rest of the account when I see you at Oates, where I long to tell you how much and how sincerely I am, dear Dab, your most humble and most affectionate servant, “ Joannes.” 1 Locke bad been very ill in the winter before those last two letters were written, and, as we have seen, had in consequence vainly sought to be discharged from his comissionership of trade. He was ill also when he w r rote them, and all through the five months and more in which 1 Letters from Friends and Relations, vol. i., pp. 26, 27 ; Locke to Esther Masham, 13 Oct., 1697. 458 LAST YEARS. [Chap. XV. lie toiled on at liis official duties ; and lie greatly over- worked liimself in this summer and autumn of 1697. “ I have had less health and more business since I writ to you last,” he said in a letter to Molyneux, dated from Oates in January, 1697-8, the previous letter having been written in September, “than ever I had for so long to- gether in my life. Business kept me in town longer than was convenient for my health. All the day from my rising was commonly spent in that, and, when I came home at night, my shortness of breath and panting for w T ant of it made me ordinarily so uneasy that I had no heart to do anything ; so that the usual diversion of my vacant hours forsook me, and reading itself was a burden to me. In this estate I lingered along in town to December, till I betook myself to my wonted refuge in the more favourable air and retirement of this place. That gave me presently relief against the constant op- pression of my lungs, whilst I sit still ; but I find such a weakness of them still remain, that, if I stir ever so little, I am immediately out of breath. The very dress- ing or undressing me is a labour that I am fain to rest after to recover my breath ; and I have not been once out of the house since I came last hither. I wish never- theless that you were here with me to see how well I am'; for you would find, that, sitting by the fireside, I could bear my part in discoursing, laughing, and being merry with you as well as ever I could in my life. If you were here — and if wishes of more than one could bring you, you would be here to day — you would find three or four in the parlour after dinner who, you would say, passed their afternoons as agreeably and as jocundly as any people you have this good while met with. Do not, therefore, figure to yourself that I am languishing -jjfel:] FAILING HEALTH AND SEEIOUS ILLNESS. 459 away my last hours under an unsociable despondency and the weight of my infirmity. ’Tis true, I do not count upon years of life to come ; hut, I thank God, I have not many uneasy hours here in the four and twenty ; and, if I can have the wit to keep myself out of the stifling air of London, I see no reason but, by the grace of God, I may get over this winter, and that terrible enemy of mine may use me no worse than the last did, which, as severe and as long as it was, let me yet see another summer .” 1 Neither lack of wit nor wusli of his broke in upon the happy retirement in which Locke had resolved to live as long and as cheerfully as he could, but to meet death as a friend when it came ; but in less than a fortnight after writing that pathetic letter he was in London. It was in the last week of January that, at the bidding of King William, he paid the unfortunate visit to Kensington which has been referred to ; and from its effects he never recovered. He was so ill during the following spring that he thought his end was near. ‘ ‘ I am in doubt whether it be fit for me to trouble the press with any new matter,” he wrote to Molyneux, alluding to the unfinished work that he had on hand, and especially to the ‘ Keply to the Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to his Second Letter,’ which he felt constrained in self-defence to write, “ or, if I did, I look upon my life as so near worn out, that it would be folly to hope to finish anything of moment in the small re- mainder of it.” He was anxious that Molyneux should take his notes and scraps, and, “ if there were anything useful to mankind” in them, use them “ for the advantage of truth some time or other.” At any rate, he wanted to 1 * Familiar Letters,’ p. 253 ; Locke to Molyneux, 10 Jam, 1697-8. 460 LAST YEARS. [Chap. XT. see his friend. “ Some things I would be glad to talk with you about before I die.” 1 In the same mood he wrote, just three months after his return to Oates, to Benjamin Furly, at Rotterdam. “ I was forced to go to town in December ” — he meant to say January — “last, but in two days’ stay there I was almost dead, and the third I was forced to fly for it in one of the bitterest days I have known, for I verily believe one night’s longer stay had made an end of me. I have been here ever since, and in the chimney-corner, and write this by the fireside ; for we have yet no warmth from the sun, though the days are almost at their full length, and it was but yesterday morning that it snowed very hard for near two hours together. This great indisposition of my health, which is not yet recovered to any degree, keeps me here out of the air of London and the hustle of affairs. I am little furnished with news, and want it less. I have lived long enough to see that a man’s endeavours are ill laid out upon anything but himself, and his expectations very uncertain when placed upon what others pretend or promise to do. I say not this with any regard to my private concerns, which, I own, give me no cause of com- plaint, hut in answer to what you say with public views. Now there is peace, I wish it may last my days. If not, I wish I and my friends may escape the disorders of war. But, after all, every one must take his lot according tc the fate of the age he lives in. You must pardon this 1 humdrum from a man who is much removed from the commerce of the world, and yet, when he has the pen ir his hand, cannot forbear writing something to an old anc valued friend, such as you are. I am almost quite alone 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ pp. 266, 267 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 6 x\pril 1698. it 9 65 .] “ REMOVED from the commerce of the world.” 461 here now. Sir Francis, my lady and Mr. Masham are all now at London, and have been for some weeks. If a wish could bring yon hither, you and I in a day or two would have a good deal of talk together. I know not what we may do when we are spirits, but this earthly cottage, I perceive, is not so easily removed.” 1 Esther Masham was in London just then, as well as Sir Francis and my lady and little Totty, now dignified with the title of Mr. Masham. She had been forced to go thither because her uncle, M. de la Messangere, had died shortly before, leaving his property, of which a consider- able share was to come to her, locked up by a complicated will. Locke had been, and continued to be, her adviser in the matter, and was anxious that she should look after her interests, but he grudged her absence, and sorely missed her tender nursing and her reading to him of ‘ Astraea ’ and other romances in the long cold evenings, and he said or clearly implied all this and more in the little letter that he wrote to her on the day after writing to Furly. Here he reminded her that, without her, he was as lonely as the shepherd of ‘ Astraea ’ without his shepherdess. “ It is better to be taken up with business at London than to freeze in the country. I can scarce be warm enough to write this by the fireside. You should therefore be so gracieuse to come and comfort your poor solitary berger, who suffers here under the deep winter of frost and snow. I do not hyperbole in the case. The day Mr. Coste came home it snowed very hard a good part of the morning. My affection for your service having thawed me a little, I proceeded to your business. Matters being as you state them, I see nothing at present you have more to do but to press for the sending your legacies, since you judge it best to have them in your own hands, as soon as you can. To the paying your grandfather’s presently, there is no manner of exception. If they make any difficulty in remitting 1 ‘ Original Letters,’ p. 68 ; Locke to Furly, 28 April, 1698. 462 LAST YEAES. [Chap. XV. your grandmother’s, we shall know what is to he said when we see their objections, or what they demand. When I see you here, I shall have a better opportunity to discourse you at large by word of mouth how you may offer them such satisfaction about the r emplacement as in reason they cannot refuse. “ My thanks to my daughter 1 for the favour of her remembrance. My service to her and all the rest of my friends in town, especially Sir Francis and my lady. I am, of all the shepherds of the forest, gentile berg ere, your most humble and most faithful servant, “ Celadon the Solitary .” 2 The Mashams came back a few days after that letter was written, and Betty Clarke came with them to cheer her good old friend, playfellow and “ husband” with her welcome company. But somehow Locke found a change in her, as well as in himself. Feeling that he was growing very old now, he did not understand that little girls grow older too. Betty seems to have been less boisterous in her romps, more shy in her behaviour, than she had been. “ My Lady Masham has said something to me concerning my wife,” he wrote to her father. 11 Since she has been here she has been very reserved. If it be her usual temper, ’tis well. If it be present thoughtful- ness, ’tis worth your consideration how I shall carry myself to her. You must instruct me, for I love her .” 3 Whether Betty Clarke had anything to do with it, or whether all the credit was due to Esther Masham and her stepmother and the warm weather, Locke’s health and 1 This “ daughter ” — of whom unfortunately we know very little, though Esther Masham copied for us into her letter hook one very lively gossiping letter from her — was probably Esther’s cousin, Fanny Compton, now wife or widow of William St. John, and next year to be married to a second husband, named Gower. 2 Letters from Friends and Relations, in Miss Palmer’s possession; Locke to Esther Masham, 29 April, 1698. 3 Additional MSS., no. 4290; Locke to Clarke, 7 May, 1698. FROM OATES TO LONDON. 463 1(198. "I 35t. 65. J spirits mended as summer came, though he was never so well again after the unfortunate journey up to town and hack again through the cold wind and snow of January. “ This warm day, which is the third that I have been able this year yet to pass without a fire,” he wrote on the 3rd of July to his cousin, Peter King, “ gives me hopes that the comfortable weather which I have long wished for is setting in, that I may venture to town in a few days ; for I would not take a journey thither to be driven out again presently, as I am sure our late cold weather would have done, for my lungs are yet very weak.” 1 He went to London on the 8th of July, 2 having hurried up partly, it would seem, because he heard that Molyneus, after so many promises and so many delays, was at last on his way to visit him. 3 Molyneux had firmly resolved to come to England this year, not only to see his friend, hut also because his own health was so bad that he had been urged to try the waters of Bath. 4 The latter pur- pose his duties as member of the Irish parliament and other business had forced him to abandon, and perhaps he would not have come at all but for the pathetic letter from Locke, of which some sentences have been quoted. “ The thing I above all things long for,” Locke had further said in that letter, “is to see and embrace and have some discourse with you before I leave this world. I meet with so few capable of truth, or worthy of a free conversa- tion, such as becomes lovers of truth, that you cannot think it strange if I wish for some time with you for the exposing, sifting and rectifying of my thoughts. If they 1 Lord King, p. 251 ; Locke to King, 8 July, 1698, 5 Additional MSS., no. 28336 ; Locke to Thoynard, 14 July, 1698. 3 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 271 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 9 July, 1697. * Ibid., p. 262 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 15 March, 1697-8. 464 LAST TEAKS. [Chap. XV. have gone anything farther in the discovery of truth than what I have already published, it must be by your en- couragement that I must go on to finish some things that I have already begun. I hoped to have seen you and unravelled to you that which, lying in the lump unexplicated in my mind, I scarce yet know what it is myself ; for I have often had experience that a man can- not well judge of his own notions till, either by setting them down on paper, or in discoursing them to a friend, he has drawn them out and, as it were, spread them fairly before himself. As for writing, my ill-health gives me little heart or opportunity for it, and of seeing you I begin to despair ; and that which very much adds to my affliction in this case is that you neglect your own health, on considerations I am sure that are not worth your health ; for nothing, if expectations were certainties, can be worth it.” That was in reference to some business that Molyneux had mentioned to him. “ You must lay by that business for a while which detains you, or get some other body into it, if you will take that care of your health this summer which you designed and it seems to require ; and, if you defer it till the next, who knows but your care of it may then come too late ? There is nothing that we are such spendthrifts of as of health. We spare everything sooner than that, though whatever we sacri- fice to it is worth nothing without it.” 1 One subject referred to in that letter, and which some- what delayed Molyneux’s visit, had unlooked-for conse- quences. With the discussions about the promotion of linen manufacture in Ireland, which we have already noticed, were mixed up yet more angry discussions about the Irish woollen trade. Locke, with Molyneux's ap- 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 265 ; Locke to William Molyneux, 6 April, 1698. MOLYNEUX’s POLITICAL TROUBLE. 465 proval, had agreed to, and even recomm ended, the suppression of Irish wool, on condition that Irish linen should be encouraged. But the English merchants and their friends in parliament, while they were determined that all possible obstacles should be thrown in the way of the manufacture of woollen goods by the Irish, were by no means anxious that the Irish linen trade should he encouraged. In the spring of 1698, accordingly, an act of parliament was passed at Westminster imposing fresh prohibitive duties upon Irish wool brought into England, and providing no substitute for it. Many Irishmen resented this proceeding, and Molyneux most of all ; and his resentment led him to form opinions that were very shocking to English politicians. “ Indeed, they bear very hard upon us in Ireland,” he wrote to Locke. “ How justly they can bind us without our consent and representatives, I leave the author of the ‘ Two Treatises of Government ’ to consider. But of this I shall trouble you further another time, for you will hear more hereafter.” 1 Locke seems to have barely understood this allusion, but was anxious to discuss the subject with his friend. Molyneux did not wait for the discussion. In April he sent to Locke a copy of a pamphlet that he had written, entitled ‘ The Case of Ireland’s being bound by Acts of Parliament in England stated,’ a memorable little treatise in which he started the momentous question of Ireland’s subjection, as a mere colony, to England, which afterwards found much fuller expression and much wider extension in the writings of men like Swift, Grattan, and O’Connell. “ This,” he said in a letter to Locke, “ you’ll say is a nice subject, but I think I have treated it with 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 263 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 15 March, 1697-8. 466 last years. [Chap. XV. that caution and submission that it cannot justly give offence ; insomuch that I scruple not to put my name to it, and, by advice of some of my good friends here, have presumed to dedicate it to his majesty. I cannot pretend this to be an accomplished performance. It was done in haste, and intended to overtake the proceedings at West- minster, but it comes too late for that. What effect it may possibly have in time to come, God and the wise council of England only know. But till I either see how the parliament at Westminster is pleased to take it, or till I see them risen, I do not think it advisable for me to go on t’other side of the water. Though I am not apprehensive of any mischief from them, yet God only knows what resentments captious men may take on such occasions.” 1 Molyneux cannot, therefore, have been much surprised when he heard of the little storm which his hold pam- phlet stirred up. On the 21st of May a member of the house of commons produced the obnoxious work, read portions of it to his indignant fellow-members, and ob- tained the appointment of a committee to report on its insolent defiance of the sovereign power of the English parliament over Ireland. Molyneux’s ‘ Case ’ was here grossly exaggerated, but the parliamentary committee took the exaggerated view. Both houses joined in an address to the king, begging that he would discover and punish the offender. 2 The king paid no heed to the request, ho w- ever, perhaps in consequence of Locke’s showing of the folly of the threatened impeachment of his friend ; and within three weeks of parliament’s prorogation, on the 5th of July, Molyneux was quietly walking about the streets of London or sitting in charmed converse with 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 270 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 19 April, 1698. 4 Journals of the House of Commons. 467 MOLYNEUX’ S VISIT TO LONDON AND DEATH. the man who had been as an elder brother to him during nearly six years, but whom now he had the happiness for the first time to see. Of all that passed between these two friends during the long-waited-for and much-longed-for meeting, which lasted from the end of July till the early part of September, we know nothing more than is contained in the brief letter that Molyneux wrote to Locke after his return to Dublin. “ 1 cannot recollect through the whole course of my life,” he said, “ such signal instances of real friendship as when I had the happiness of your company for five weeks together in London. ’Tis with the greatest satisfaction imaginable that I recollect what then passed between us, and I reckon it the happiest scene of my whole life. That part thereof especially which I passed at Oates has made such an agreeable impression on my mind that nothing can be more pleasing. To all in that excellent family I beseech you give my most humble respects.” 1 That was the last letter that Molyneux sent to Locke. Just three weeks after writing it, on the 11th of October, he died, at the age of forty-two. “ I parted from my excellent friend when he went from England,” Locke wrote to Eichard Burridge, the trans- lator of the ‘ Essay concerning Human Understanding,’ who had sent him word of the event, “with all the hopes and promises to myself of seeing him again and enjoying him longer the next spring. This was a satisfac- tion that helped me to bear our separation ; and the short taste I had of him here in this our first interview I hoped would he made up in a longer conversation which he pro- mised me the next time. But it has served only to give me a greater sense of my loss in an eternal farewell in this Familiar Letters,’ p. 272 ; William Molyneux to Locke, 20 Sept., 1698. 468 LAST YEARS. [Chap. XV. world. Your earlier acquaintance may have given you a longer knowledge of his virtue and excellent endowments. A fuller sight or greater esteem of them you could not have than I. His worth and his friendship to me made him an inestimable treasure which I must regret the loss of, the little remainder of my life, without any hopes of repairing it any way.” 1 “ Death,” he wrote on the same day to Thomas Moly- neux, the doctor, “ has with a violent hand hastily snatched from you a dear brother. I bear too great a share in the loss, and am too sensibly touched with it myself, to be in a condition to discourse to you on this subject, or do any- thing but mingle my tears with yours. I have lost in your brother, not only an ingenious and learned acquaintance that all the world esteemed, but an intimate and sincere friend whom I truly loved and by wdiom I was truly loved. And what a loss that is those only can be sensible who know how valuable and how scarce a true friend is and how far to be preferred to all other sorts of treasure.” 2 When Locke heard of Molyneux’s death, he was at Oates, having been already driven back at the first indications of autumn chill. “ The increasing severity of the weather, hostile as it is to my lungs, will soon force me from town,” he had written to Limborch on the 18th of October. “A troublesome cough and great difficulty of breathing urge my departure.” 3 If his correspondence with Limborch during these years was not very plentiful, the few letters that passed between them were generally of great length, and, from a theological point of view, of great interest. Theology was now, as 1 ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 275 ; Locke to Burridge, 27 Oct., 1698. 2 Ibid., p. 290 ; Locke to Thomas Molyneux, 27 Oct., 1698. 8 Ibid., p. 431 ; Locke to Limborch, 18 Oct., 1698. JfliJ CORRESPONDENCE WITH LIMBORCH. 469 heretofore, the main ground of sympathy between them and the chief subject of their correspondence, though joined, as of old, with profuse and transparently honest utterances of mutual affection and esteem. “ Though nothing is more welcome to me than a letter from such a dear friend as you,” Limborch wrote on one occasion, “ I am far from wishing that one so absorbed as you are in many and very important duties should feel constrained to reply to me, letter for letter. Friendship like ours does not require arithmetical proportion in writing and answering, but can be satisfied by the knowledge that the loved one’s mind is full of kindly thought, and I feel myself well treated if now and then, when you have a little relaxation from your weighty cares, you can spare a few minutes to send me ever so short a letter.” 1 Locke did not often send short letters. Whenever he could write at all, he wrote short treatises rather than letters ; and Limborch’s replies were yet longer. But we have had so much other illustration of Locke’s theological opinions, that this correspondence need not detain us. Nor need much here be said about another correspond- ence in which Locke was now and hereafter engaged. The establishment of peace between England and France in 1697 enabled him to resume communications with a very old friend, from intercourse with whom the long war had almost, if not quite, debarred him. We have a few letters written by him from Holland to Nicolas Thoynard, but since his return to England in 1689 he seems to have been unable to write anything for nearly nine years. He probably sent to Thoynard at least one letter of the new series before March, 1698, but the first that is extant bears that date. In it he congratulated his friend on the 1 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 443 ; Limborch to Locke, [22 Sept. — ] 2 Oct., 1699. 170 LAST YEAES. [Chap. XT. progress of his literary undertakings and thanked him for a parcel of hooks that he had received from him. “ I also, I know not by what fate,” he added, “ have become the author of certain books. I should send you copies of them if they were in a language that you could understand; but I am a barbarian to you. While I was in Holland, I employed some leisure hours in writing letters to a friend to help him in the training of his little boy. The treatise that has grown out of these ” — ‘ Some Thoughts concern- ing Education ’ — “ has been translated into French and Dutch. I have given orders for a copy of the French version to he sent to you, and I hope it has reached you by this time. I shall he glad to have your opinion upon it. Eight years ago I submitted to the judgment of the public my ‘Essay concerning Human Understanding,’” — about the early sketch of which Locke had consulted Thoynard in Paris more than twenty years before. t£ This work, I believe, will soon be reproduced in a language not unknown to you, and, when that is done, I beg, if I am alive at the time, that you will let me know the result of your calm and clear judgment concerning it, without favour and without prejudice.” 1 More of the same sort Locke wrote to his old friend in this and other letters . 2 These letters, however, though containing much interesting matter about literary, scientific, and theological affairs, do not throw any light on Locke’s biography ; and, though written in kind and familiar terms, they show that the old intensity of affection that was freely expressed in the letters of former years had to a great extent worn off with time and the long and unavoidable cessation of correspondence. Locke, since he last saw Thoynard, 1 Additional MSS., no. 28753; Locke to Thoynard, 25 March, 1698. 2 In Additional MSS., nos. 28728, 28753, 28836. ™*»;] COBEE SPONDENCE WITH THOYNAED. 471 had fallen in with other friends who had grown dearer to him than Thoynard ; and one of them, alas, was beyond the reach of letters. Molynenx could not be forgotten. More than three months after his death, Locke wrote to his brother and excused himself for not having sooner answered a letter he had received. “ The truth is, my thoughts never look towards Dublin now without casting such a cloud upon my mind, and laying such a load of fresh sorrow on me for the loss of my dear friend, that I cannot without dis- pleasure turn them that way, and, when I do it, I find myself very unfit for conversation and the entertainment of a friend. ’Tis therefore not without pain that I bring myself to write you a scurvy letter. What there wants in it of expression, you must make up out of the esteem I have for the memory of our common friend, and I desire you not to thiuk my respects to you the less, because the loss of your brother makes me not able to speak them as I would. I have given orders to Mr. Churchill to send you the last edition of my treatise of £ Education,’ which came forth since Mr. Molyneux’s death. I send this with the more confidence to you, because your brother told me more than once that he followed the method I therein offer to the world in the breeding of his son. I wish you may find it fit to be continued to him and useful to you in his education ; for I cannot but be mightily concerned for the son of such a father, and wish that he may grow up into that esteem and character which his father left behind him amongst all good men who knew him .” 1 There is not much to be said about Locke’s life and occupations during the two years following Molyneux’s ; ‘ Familiar Letters,’ p. 294 ; Locke to Thomas Molyneux, 25 Jan., 1698-9. 472 LAST YE AES. LChap. XV. death. Going down to Oates in October, 1698, he ap- pears to have carefully nursed himself during the long winter — “ the wettest, though not the coldest, that I remember for fifty years last past,” said Evelyn 1 — and to have had better health than he had looked for. “ The warm weather that begins now with us makes me hope I shall speedily get to town,” he said in a letter to Samuel Bolde, 2 the unseen champion who had relieved him from some work that he might have otherwise been led against his will to undertake, by ably continuing the controversy with Edwards about ‘ The Beasonableness of Christi- anity,’ and who had lately published his very skilful de- fence of the ‘Essay concerning Human Understanding." Some portions of that letter deserve to be quoted here. “To be learned in the lump, by other men’s thoughts,” said Locke, “ and to be in the right by saying after others, is the much easier and quieter way ; but how a rational man, that should inquire and know for 1 himself, can content himself with a faith or a religion taken upon trust, or with such servile submission of his understanding as to admit all and nothing else but what fashion makes passable among men, is to me astonishing. I do not wonder you should have, in many points, differ- ent apprehensions from what you meet with in authors. With a free mind, that unbiassedly pursues truth, it cannot be otherwise. First, all authors did not write unbiassedly for truth’s sake. Secondly, there are scarce any two men that have perfectly the same views of the same thing, till they come with attention and perhaps mutual assistance to examine it, a consideration that makes conversation with the living much more desirable 1 Evelyn, ‘ Diary,’ 25 June, 1699. 2 ‘ The Museum ’ (1746), vol. ii., p. 205 ; Locke to Bolde, 6 May, 1699. ^Et.^66.] A LETTER TO SAMUEL BOLDE. 473 and useful than consulting the dead, would the living but he inquisitive after truth, apply their thoughts with atten- tion to the gaining of it, and be indifferent where it is found, so they could but find it. The first requisite to the profiting by books is not to judge of opinions by the authority of the writers. None have the right of dic- tating but God himself, and that because he is Truth itself. All others have the right to be followed as the evidence of what they say convinces ; and of that my own understanding alone must be judge for me, and nothing else. If we made our own eyes our guides, and admitted or rejected opinions only by the evidence of reason, we should neither embrace nor refuse any tenet because we find it published by another, of what name or character soever he was.” “ What you say about critics and critical interpretations, particularly of the Scriptures, is not only in my opinion true, but of great use to be observed in reading learned commentators, who not seldom make it their business to show in what sense a word has been used by other authors ; whereas the proper business of a commentator is to show in what sense it was used by the author in that place, which in the Scripture we have reason to conclude was most commonly in the ordinary vulgar sense of the word or phrase known in that time, because the books were written and adapted to the people. If critics had ob- served this, we should have in their writings less ostenta- tion and more truth, and a great deal of darkness now spread on the Scriptures had been avoided. I have a late proof of this myself, who have lately found in some passages of Scripture a sense quite different from what I understood them in before, or from what I found in com- mentators. But I read the word of God without prepos- 474 LAST YEAES. [Chap. XV. session or bias, and come to it with a resolution to take my sense from it, and not with a design to bring it to the sense of my system. How much that has made men wind and twist and pull the text in all the several sects of Christians, I need not tell you. I design to take my religion from the Scripture, and then whether it suits or suits not any other denomination I am not much con- cerned ; for I think at the last day it will not be inquired whether I was of the church of England or Geneva, but whether I sought or embraced truth in the love of it.” Those sentences surely furnish a delightful clue to the temper in which Locke had set himself long ago, but in these last years of his life set himself more zealously than ever, to build up a religion for himself. The same charming letter also tells us something of his mode of work. “ You say you lose many things because they slip from you. I have had experience of that myself. But for that my Lord Bacon has provided a sure remedy ; for, as I remember, he advises somewhere never to go without pen and ink or something to write with, and to be sure not to neglect to write down all thoughts of moment that come into the mind. I must own I have omitted it often, and have often repented it. The thoughts that come unsought, and as it were dropped into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have, and therefore should be secured, because they seldom return again. You say also that you lose many things, because your thoughts are not steady and strong enough to pursue them to a just issue. Give me leave to think that herein you mistake yourself and your own abilities. Write down your thoughts upon any subject as far as you have at any time pursued them, and then go on again some other time when you find your mind disposed to it, LETTERS TO ESTHER MASHAM. 475 1699. "I iEt. 66. J . and so till yon have carried them as far as you can, and you will be convinced that, if you have lost any, it is not for want of strength of mind to bring them to an issue, hut for want of memory to retain a long train of reason- ings, which the mind, having once beat out, is loth to be ; at the pains to go over again ; and so, your connection and train having slipped the memory, the pursuit stops and the reasoning is neglected before it comes to the last conclusion. If you have not tried it, you cannot imagine the difference there is in studying with and without a pen in your hand. Your ideas, if the connections of them J that you have traced be set down, so that without the pains of re-collecting them in your memory you can take an easy view of them again, will lead you farther than you can expect. Try ; and tell me if it is not so.” Locke could write playful letters as well as serious ones ; but even in his letters to Esther Masham there was a touch of seriousness now. Here are two, both written from London in one week in July, 1699 : — “ Dear Dib, — Did not your ears tingle much on Saturday last ? My daughter 1 and I talked much of you that day at Battersea ; and, if you are not an obdurate creature, you could not hut be sensible of it at twice this distance. Particularly she told me she had writ and that you answered not, that she writ of business and you took no notice of it, of your business and yet you were silent. To all this your Joannes, standing up for you, answered the best he could, and ’twas no hard matter for him to carry the point, for my good daughter was not inclined to be angry, but was only concerned you should know that she had found out a merchant, an honest man, their neighbour at Battersea, who was of Rouen, traded thither and had acquaintance there, and would be ready to do you any service. I wish you had business there ; be might be a fit man for some purposes. How- ever, my daughter is mindful of her friends. “ I thank you for the care you take of my brewhouse 2 and drink. ’Tis 1 “Cos. St. John, now Cos. Gower. She used to call Mr. Locke father.” — E. M.’s note. 2 “ Mr. Locke drank nothing but water. What he calls his brewhouse 1 476 LAST YEABS. [Chap. XV. like a good Dib, and when I go into our nown 1 country of Wales I promise you a bottle of the best metkeglin for it. “ I thought your paper books would have come best home with my printed ones. But since you long to begin the world, and ’tis a good girl for it, you shall have them speedily by the butcher or Lantam. Give me credit but till next week, and that account shall be balanced between us, though there be many others wherein I shall be all over your debtor. But what matters that ? You know I am all over your “ Joannes.” 2 “ Bear Dib, — I have received the honour of yours of the 24th, and have to say to the kindness of it a great deal, to the business of it very little, to the compliment nothing. The first of these being too much for a letter, I shall adjourn it till I see you. And therefore I come to the second. That you should put out your money rather than let it lie dead, is easily resolved. Mr. Jefferies and Mrs. Burdet together I imagine to be good security, espe- cially if he borrows this 50 1. only to make up 500/. which he is letting out upon a mortgage, and Mrs. Burdet has money and houses. “ I wish your lady mother had taken a soop of the brandy which you write me was just come. She would then certainly have been better natured than to have complained of my using her, and made that an excuse for her not writing when, if she consider it, she will find I have writ four letters to her since I received ever a one. “ Pray tell Frank that I am glad to hear you and everyone speak well of him. Assure him that I love him very much, and that I expect to hear from him some news of what he saw or observed at the assizes. My humble service to Sir Francis, Mr. Winwood, and Mr. Coste. “ I am, your most humble and faithful servant, “ Joannes .” 3 was a stone in form of a great mortar, of so spongy a stone that water, being putin, used to run through in a very short time, and strained the water from any dirt that might be in it ” (E. M’s note). Miss Palmer tells me that this home-made filter of Locke’s was till lately in the possession of her family, and was found so well to answer its purpose that it was lent to a farmer in the neighbourhood, whose health required that he should drink especially pure water. Unfortunately the filter was never returned, and this interest- ing heirloom has been lost. 1 Sic. 2 Letters from Relations and Friends, vol. i., pp. 80, 81 ; Locke to Esther Masham, 21 July, 1699. 3 Ibid. , vol. i., pp. 81, 82 ; Locke to Esther Masham, 27 July, 1699. IcM. I St. 67 J A PLAN FOR REFORMING THE CALENDAR. 477 In noteworthy contrast to the last few letters that have been quoted, though quite as valuable for its indication of Locke’s very various but always consistent temperament, is one that he addressed a few months later, after he had spent another half-year in working with unabated zeal at the business of the council of trade, and was now at Oates again, to Dr. Sloane, the secretary of the Royal Society. The chief subject of this letter was the reformation of the calendar. It must be remembered that in Locke’s time Englishmen persisted in making the new year begin at Lady-day instead of on the 1st of January, and in adopt- ing the old-fashioned and erroneous reckoning of a year as consisting of exactly three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter, thus causing a discrepancy of ten days in the seventeenth century and of eleven days in the eight- eenth. “ Since you command me,” Locke wrote shortly before the beginning of a new century, “ I here send you what I proposed above a twelvemonth since for the reforming of our year, before the addition of another day increase the error, and make us, if we go on in our old way, differ the next year eleven days from those who have a more rectified calendar. The remedy which I offer is that the intercalar day should be omitted the next year, and so the ten next leap-years following, by which easy way we should in forty-four years insensibly return to the new style. This I call an easy way, because it would not be without prejudice or disturbance to any one’s civil rights, which, by lopping off ten or eleven days at once in any one year, might perhaps receive incon- venience, the only objection that ever I heard made against rectifying our account. I need not say anything bo you how inexcusable it is, in so learned an age as this, 478 LAST YEARS. [Chap. XV and in a country wherein astronomy is carried to a higher pitch than ever it was in the world, an error of this kind should be suffered to go on, an error which everybody sees and owns to have growing inconveniences in it. I shall rather choose to wish that, when this reformation is made, the beginning of the year with us might be re- duced from the 25th of March to the 1st of January, that we might herein agree with our neighbours and the rest of the Christian world.” 1 Many years passed before the change was effected, and then not by Locke’s “easy way!” After a quiet winter at Oates, Locke returned to London in the middle of May, 1700, but, as we have seen, resigned his commissionership of trade in June. From that time he resided almost constantly in the Essex country house. “I have read in the newspapers,” Limborch wrote to him a fortnight after his retirement, “ a report which your letter to Mr. Le Clerc confirms, that on account of your increasing age and weakness, you have obtained release from the very honourable office that was assigned to you some years ago. I certainly cannot blame you for so doing. Indeed, I greatly commend your resolution to spend the remainder of your life, freed from the burden of politics, in rest, in study and in holy meditations. From my heart I wish you joy in your repose, and I pray God that he will increasingly adorn your advancing age with those best gifts which bring true happiness, and that he will make amends for every decay of bodily strength by the bestowal of a livelier sharpness of mind and strength of spirit.” 2 1 ‘ Original Letters,’ p. 66 ; Locke to Sloane, 2 Dec., 1699. 2 ‘Familiar Letters,’ p. 461 ; Limborch to Locke, [9—] 20 July, 1700. RETIREMENT AT OATES. 479 iron. -[ iEt. 08 . J Locke’s leisure at Oates enabled him to write more freely to bis friends, and bis letters reflect tbe continued and even increasing interest that be took in all those friends’ concerns, as well as tbe brave temper in wbicb, for bimself, be resolved to live as happily as be could while bis feeble body held out, and to die cheerfully when it was time for him to die. “ I cannot but be mightily concerned for tbe ill state of your health,” be wrote to Clarke, in August, 1700. “ My lady desired me, bearing that you were in town by this time, to invite you and my wife down hither to try . what tbe air will do. She says we will all take a great deal of care of. you, and try, every one, to rectify your 1 spleen. She very earnestly importunes you to make tbe trial, if it be but for tbe change sake, wbicb is good in such cases, and to get out of tbe town air and smoke, I wbicb she thinks good in no distemper. I join heartily with her in it, and think you cannot do a better thing.” That letter was accompanied by another, written on tbe afternoon of tbe same day from Matching Tye. “ Carry- ing tbe enclosed myself to Mr. Jocelyn, by whom it goes to tbe post,” be now added, “ I found there yours of yesterday, with tbe enclosed from my wife. I am glad to find by it that you came safe to town, and wish heartily you bad left your distemper behind. I know nothing so likely to produce quiet sleep as riding about gently in tbe air for many hours every day. If your mind can be brought to contribute a little its part to tbe laying aside troublesome ideas, I could hope this may do much. This may be a further inducement for your coming hither, for I am on horseback every day. Pray return my thanks to my wife for her letter.” 1 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290; Locke to Clarke, 23 August, 1700 (two letters). 480 LAST YEARS. [Cuap. XV. Neither Clarke nor his daughter Betty accepted the invitation to Oates, and ten days afterwards Locke had to report that he was himself too ill to go to London, as his friend had desired him to do, a painful swelling, which issued in a boil, having appeared on his back. “ I can at present bear neither horse nor coach, and if you saw me, and how I labour for breath in the morning when I rise, you would not think the town air very fit for me .” 1 In that letter Locke advised Clarke as to the medicine he should take, and in the next, written a fortnight later, he kindly scolded him for not following his advice. “ Half methods never produce whole or any cures ; and health is worth all that we can do.” “ My swelling is not gone,” he added. “It goes hut slowly. It has kept me quiet, and I have not been on horseback ever since I first mentioned it to you. I count it a great loss to me now winter is at hand, and thereby my time of riding near an end. For, though I rode hut gently a mile or two when it was fair after dinners, yet that airing and exercise, which is all that I have, I thought did me good .” 2 After another fortnight he had to tell his friend that, though the tumour had quitted his hack, another and worse one had broken out in his leg. “I write in pain. I spend most of my time in bed, and have ate nothing for some days but water-gruel. I hope in my next I shall be able to give a better account of my spindle-shanks .” 3 After yet another fortnight a slightly better account was given. “ My sore leg permits me to sit up very little. I hoped to have had it well before this time ; hut it is not so forward this way as I thought.” In that letter 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290 ; Locke to Clarke, 2 Sept., 1700. 2 Ibid. ; Locke to Clarke, 16 Sept., 1700. 3 Ibid . ; Locke to Clarke, 3 Oct., 1700. 1700. "I JEt. 6S. J ILLNESS AT OATES. 481 Locke again complained that Clarke did not follow his advice, and especially that he did not ride ; riding, he said, being a better- cure than steel or any other medicine, [ and one that he sorely regretted his own inability to adopt. “ My leg mends, though but slowly,” he wrote next week, “ and it will not let me return to my ordinary course of life ; but whenever I sit up an hour or two too long, it grows troublesome and painful, and is sensibly the worse for it .” 1 2 Thus September and October passed. Peter King came down to visit his cousin during his illness ; 3 and Locke amused himself by looking up material for a large ‘ Collection of Voyages and Travels,’ which, apparently at his instigation, Churchill the publisher was preparing to issue . 4 In October, and again in November, he wrote to Dr. Covell at Cambridge, urging him to contribute to this series an account of his own experiences among the Brahmins, as he thought it very important that the old religions of the east should he better understood by Europeans. In the second of these letters he begged Coveil to visit him at Oates. “ I have for some time been confined within doors by a lame leg,” he said, ; “ and now am under the blockade of my old enemy, winter .” 5 Locke had good reason to fear that the winter would 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290 ; Locke to Clarke, 18 Oct., 1700. 2 Ibid. ; Locke to Clarke, 25 Oct., 1700. 3 Ibid. ; Locke to Clarke, 21 Oct., 1700. 4 It was not issued till 1704, in six folio volumes ; and the long introduc- tion was reported to have been written by Locke. This is not at all likely, as the introduction comprised a sketch of the whole history of voyaging and navigation, long enough to fill a volume of ordinary size. 5 Additional MSS., no. 22910 ; Locke to Coveil, 25 Oct. and 3 Nov., 1700. Vol. II.— 31 482 LAST YEARS. [Chap. XV be too much for him. “ My leg,” he wrote to Clarke early in November, “is now, I thank God, so well that it confines me no longer to the lazy lying in bed, which I was quite weary of ; so that that malady I look on now as quite over. Whether I am much to rejoice in it I do not well know, for, though the settling of a humour in my legs is not a very desirable thing in one of my age, and has usually trouble and danger enough in it, yet, if I do not mistake, my lungs were much easier whilst the sores were running than they were before. This I said, and thought I felt, then ; but this I am sure, that I breathe much worse now than when my leg was ill. Whether it be the coming on of winter alone that causes it, and the cold and foggy weather, I cannot be positive. Every winter is of course to bring a greater load upon me till at last it put an end to my breathing at all .” 1 But he was not to have merely an alternation of maladies. “ The very day I writ to you in confidence that my leg was as good as well,” he wrote to Clarke six days afterwards, “ my other before night began to be out of order ; and between the one and the other of them I am not yet free from pain and trouble ; but I hope I shall in a little time get over it. In the meantime, I have one inconvenience now the cold weather comes in, which, if my legs should remain in the state they are, would make me very uneasy. You know I have but one way to keep my feet warm, that are, without a fire, icy cold. But now, if I approach the fire, the only remedy for my cold feet, the sores that yet remain on my legs, as soon as they feel any warmth from the fire, so burn and shoot that the pain is intolerable . 2 This obliges me to 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290 ; Locke to Clarke, 5 Nov., 1700. 2 “ Mr. Locke’s legs do not pain him now that he has got a screen for 1700. "I .®t. 68. J ILLNESS AT OATES. 483 spend a great part of my time in bed, a way of living I do not much like. Though, when I consider it well, I think I ought to be content that I am at all amongst the living. ’Tis not the spleen that suggests this thought, but the news I hear this post that my poor old friend Mr. Hodges is dead. He, Hr. Thomas and I were inti- mate in our younger days in the university. These two are gone ; and who could have thought that I, much the weakest and most unlikely of the three, should have outlived them ? 5,1 “I came into the country,” he said at the close of the year, in a letter to Sloane, thanking him for copies of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, “ with a design of employing some part of my leisure in looking over some papers I have, with an intention to offer you anything I should find in them that I might presume you would think worthy to appear amongst those observations which you continue to oblige the world with. But sore legs, that seized on me soon after my coming hither, and that have ever since made me spend the greatest part of my time in bed, have kept me from that and several other things I proposed to myself. I thank God my legs are now pretty well again, but my old evil of my breast, as is to be expected from every year’s increase of age, sits heavier upon me than it was wont to do formerly in them, for which I am extremely glad,” Frank Masham wrote to his sister Esther, then in London, just a year after, on the 7th of November, 1701. — Letters from Friends and Pieiations, in Miss Palmer’s possession. 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290; Locke to Clarke, 11 Nov., 1700. “Mr. Hodges, being here, hath received an invitation from Mr. Locke to desire a visit from him, in terms that bespeak him a dying man,” Humphrey Prideaux had written, four years before, to Under-Secretary Ellis (‘ Letters of Prideaux to Ellis,’ p. 182). The letter is dated 20 July, 1696. Locke was well then, but had been very ill in the previous winter. 484 LAST YEARS. [Chap. XT. country air. I have read physic enough to think it not at all strange that it should do so, and therefore am not startled at it. The tenement must at some time or other fall to dust, and mine has held out heyond expectation. I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year.” 1 Nicolas Thoynard had, on the French new year’s day, written a letter that reached Locke on the 1st of January, 1700-1, and to this he made a graceful reply, which, as it is the last letter to his old friend that need be here referred to, though not the last written by him, deserves to he translated from its mingled French and Latin. “I could not,” he said, “have had a more agreeable or a happier commencement of the century than that which you caused me by your kind letter, and by its renewed assurances of your friendship, and by the hope you give me in it that I may see you once again. Truly, sir, nothing could he more welcome to me, and if I had to live through another century, my first wish would be to spend it happily with you, free from every other care but that of honest and zealous seeking after truth. The injustice of men is always painful to me ; but I am grieved especially at the obstacles that embarrass and thwart you in your great plans and excellent designs for serving the republic of letters.” That was doubtless an allusion to the hindrances offered, during nearly half a century, to the publication of Thoynard’s 1 Harmony of the Gospels.’ 1 Additional MSS., no. 4052; Locke to Sloane, 27 Dec., 1700. A passage in this letter suggests the inference, though there is nothing to confirm it, that Locke suspected in himself the threatenings of yet another malady. “ A diabetes is a disease so little frequent that you will not think it strange that I should ask whether you in your great practice ever met with it. You will do me the favour to tell me the pathognomonic signs of it, and, if you have cured it or known it, you will oblige me in instructing me in the method.” 1701. I ■Et. 68. J A LETTEIl TO THOYNAED. 485 “ God grant that yon may see the end of all this, and enjoy the frnits of your labours at last. I pray, too, that I may have that much-longed-for sight of you which you promise. The infirmities of old age, pressing very heavily upon me in late years, warn me of my speedy departure. For some time past I have been kept almost entirely in my bed. By God’s favour, I have been somewhat better lately, and I am beginning to hope that I may get back to some of my old ways ; but an old man like me can never expect to recover the lungs he has lost. Yet the hope of seeing you again and soon gladdens me. If I cannot think of ever visiting you in Paris, it is from want of strength, not want of will ; and you must not be surprised when I tell you that we have sent up our prayers to heaven to bring you here, for there are more than one in this house who would rejoice at your coming into it, and among them Lady Masham is not the last.” 1 All Locke’s friends were Damaris Masham’s friends. There was no link wanting in the chain of pure affection that bound these two, adopted daughter and adopted father, together. If accident, in fortunately preserving for us several of Locke’s letters to Esther Masham, whereas none of his correspondence with her step-mother is extant, gives us more details about his relations with the younger lady, Esther was certainly not more loved t by him and devoted to him than Lady Masham. With the one he read novels and the Bible, with the other he read travel books and the Bible. By both he was cheered and cherished during these last years in which his feet stumbled but his heart went bravely down into the valley that had no dismal shade for him. That all was done which could be done in the way of ten- 1 Additional MSS., no. 28753 ; Locke to Thoynard, 1 Jan., 1700-1. 486 LAST YEARS. [Chap. XV. der nursing to ease his bodily pain and weakness through these times, we may be quite sure. “ 1 cannot yet get my legs well,” he wrote to Clarke, in February, 1700-1. “ They so much inconvenience me when I am up, that they make me spend most of my time in bed, wherein I have no great satisfaction. As to my lungs, they keep their ordinary course, and feel the effects of winter.” 1 Four days later he said to the same friend, “You must excuse me to my wife for not writing to her. ’Tis with much ado I get time for this. My untoward legs made me keep my bed all day yesterday, and I think I shall do the same to-day ; for I am not yet up, and it is now past two in the afternoon.” 2 But he mended in the spring. “ I saw Mr. Locke lately in Essex,” wrote his old pupil, Anthony Ashley, now Earl of Shaftesbury in his turn, early in May. “ He is as well as I have known him.” 3 In spite of his illness and his withdrawal from all share in political work, save in advising his friends, Locke continued to take great interest in public affairs. We have seen something of the temper of the parliament elected in 1698. Growing more and more stubborn and perverse, it was dissolved before its time, in the autumn of 1700 ; and great things were hoped for by both whigs and tories from the new parliament summoned to meet on the 11th of February, 1700-1. A war with Spain — the great war of the Spanish succession — was imminent ; the Duke of Gloucester being dead, a new successor to the throne after William and Anne had to be fixed upon ; and all sorts of domestic questions joined with these, or even superseded 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290 ; Locke to Clarke, 10 Feb., 1700-1. 2 Ibid.; Locke to Clarke, 14 Feb., 1700-1. 3 Shaftesbury Papers, series v., no. 23 ; Third Lord Shaftesbury to Furly. 6 May, 1701. 1701 . 1 JEt. 63 . J INTEREST IN POLITICAL AFFAIRS. 487 them, in giving new vigour to the party struggle that had been growing fiercer and fiercer during the past two or three years. “ This is not a time to be ill in,” Locke wrote to Clarke in one of his February letters, on the eve of the meeting of the new parliament, after giving him some advice about his health. 1 “ I return you my thanks for yours of the 11th instant,” he wrote soon after, “with the heads of the speech” — the king’s speech — “in it. I have since seen the speech itself, and, though all the rest are fit for the consideration of the great council of the nation, yet there is none hut the second that seems at present fit to take up your time and thoughts, for, unless it he so well considered as to provide a security for us and the rest of Europe, what making a stir and provisions about the rest will signify I confess I do not see. But ’tis like I may mistake, and you will forgive these melancholy visions of a man out of the world, who lies abed and dreams.” 2 Locke’s interest in public business was especially shown, however, in connection with his cousin, Peter King. Having made a prosperous beginning at the bar, : chiefly, it would seem, through Locke’s acquaintance with so many leading men, with Lord Somers at their head, who would be eager to prove their regard for him by helping his kinsman, King had in the autumn been elected member of parliament for Berealston, his purpose in entering the house of commons being rather to advance his professional interests than to take much part in poli- tics. Having gained his seat, he proposed to make no use of it in the spring until he had, as usual, gone on the western circuit, where perhaps he knew that some good 1 Additional MSS., no. 4290; Locke to Clarke, 10 Feb., 1700-1. 2 Ibid. ; Locke to Clarke, Feb., 14 1700-1. 483 LAST YEAES. [Chap. XV. briefs were waiting for him. But Locke would not hear of this. “ I am as positive as I can he in anything,” he wrote a fortnight before the opening of parliament, “ that you should not think of going the next circuit. I do not in the meantime forget your calling ; but what this one omission may be of loss to you may be made up other- wise.” It is clear that Locke intended to pay out of his own purse the value of the forfeited briefs ; certainly an allowable bribe. “I am sure,” he continued, “ there never was so critical a time when every honest member of parliament ought to watch his trust ; and that you will see, before the end of the next vacation. I therefore expect your positive promise to stay in town. I tell you you will not, you shall not, repent it. I cannot answer the other parts of your letter, lest I say nothing at all this post, and I must not omit by it to put an end to your wavering about your going the circuit.” 1 The next parcel of letters from Oates to London con- tained this one, interesting for other things besides the excellent advice to an unfledged member of parliament given in it : — “ Dear Cousin, — Having no time but for a few words the last post, it is fit I now answer the other particulars of your letter, which I then was forced to omit. Your staying in town the next vacation I look upon as resolved, and the reasons I find for it in your own letters — now that I have time to read them a little more deliberately — I think sufficient to determine you should, though I say nothing at all. Every time I think of it I am more and more confirmed in the opinion that it is absolutely necessary in all respects, whether I consider the public or your own private concerns, neither of which are indifferent to me. It is my private thought that the parliament will scarce sit even so much as to choose a speaker before the end of the term ; but whenever he is chosen, it is of no small consequence which side carries it, if there be two nominated, or at least in view, as it 1 Lord King, p. 253 ; Locke to King, 27 Jan., 1700-1. 1701 . 1 2Et. 68. J LETTERS TO PETER KING. 489 is ten to one there will be, especially in a parliament chosen with so much struggle. “ Having given all the help possibly you can in this, which is usually a leading point, showing the strength of the parties, my next advice to you is not to speak at all in the house for some time, whatever fair opportunity you may seem to have ; but though you keep your mouth shut, I doubt not but you will have your eyes open to see the temper and observe the motions of the house, and diligently to remark the skill of management, and carefully watch the first and secret beginnings of things and their tendencies, and endeavour, if there be danger in them, to crush them in the egg. You will say, what can you do who are not to speak ? It is true I would not have you speak to the house, but you may communicate your light or apprehensions to some honest speaker who may make use of it ; for there have always been very able members who never speak, who yet by their penetration and foresight have this way done as much service as any within those walls. And hereby you will more recommend yourself, when people shall observe so much modesty joined with your parts and i judgment, than if you should seem forward though you spoke well. But let the man you communicate with be not only well-intentioned, but a man of judgment. “ Methinks I take too much upon me in these directions. I have only then to say in my excuse that you desired it more than once, and I advise you nothing I would not do myself were I in your place. I should have much more to say to you were you here, but, it being fitter for discourse than for letter, I hope I may see you here ere long, Sir Francis having already proposed to me your stealing down sometimes with him on Satur- day and returning on Monday. The ‘votes’ you offer me will be very acceptable, and for some time at least during the busy season I would be glad you would send me, every post, the three newspapers, viz., Postman, Postboy, and Flying Post ; but when you begin to send them you will do me a kindness to stop Mr. Churchill from sending me any more, for he sends them now ; but it is by the butcher they come, and very uncertainly. But when you send me these papers, do not think you are bound always to write to me. Though I am always glad to hear from you, yet I must not put that penance upon you. Things of moment I doubt not but you will let me know. “ I am your affectionate cousin, “ J. L.” 1 1 Lord "King, p. 258 ; Locke to King, 81 Jan., 1700-1. 490 LAST YEAES. [Chap. XV. Before receiving that second letter, King wrote to say that the first had prevailed with him. “ I am glad to find that yon are resolved to stay,” Locke replied in the following week. “ Your own resolution, in case of un- foreseen accidents, will always he in your power ; or, if you will make me your compliment that you will not go without my leave, you may be sure that, in any unforeseen and pressing occasion that may happen that may make it necessary for you, you will not only have my leave but my persuasion to go. But, as things are, I think it for your interest to stay.” 1 Though he followed his wise cousin’s counsel in devoting himself to parliamentary work, King was not able to act upon another part of Locke’s advice. A fortnight after taking his seat in the house of commons, he made his maiden speech ; and Locke, instead of blam- ing him, cautiously congratulated him upon it. “I am very glad the ice is broke,” he said, “and that it has succeeded so well ; but, now you have showed the house you can speak, I advise you to let them see you can hold I your peace, — and let nothing but some point of law, which you are perfectly clear in, or the utmost necessity, call you up again.” 2 This latter advice seems to have been followed. Peter King made very little figure in parliament. He rose to be lord chancellor, but by virtue of his honesty and proficiency in the technicalities of the law, rather than by force of oratory or genius. In the Easter holidays the young Earl of Shaftesbury went down with King to pay the short visit to Locke which has already been mentioned, and Benjohan Eurly, the eldest son of his friend in Amsterdam, was also at 1 Lord King, p. 254 ; Locke to King, 7 Feb., 1700-1. 2 Ibid., p. 255 ; Locke to King, 28 Feb., 1700-1. 1701 . "I .St. 68. J limboech’s son. 491 Oates, the youth having lately come to England to enter the office of a London merchant . 1 Another visitor at that time, or immediately afterwards, was Limborch’s son, sent over, like young Furly, to obtain commercial training in London, and committed to Locke’s guardianship. “ Very welcome to us all,” Locke wrote to the father, 11 was the arrival of your son, and to me all the more because in your entrusting him to me I find another proof of your confidence in me. If I can lay claim to any good faith, energy, gratitude, power of giving good advice, your trust will not be misplaced. I doubt not that his industry, uprightness, tact and truth- fulness will easily find him friends and occupation, if he can quietly and hopefully put up with a small beginning and some delays, for young traders who shift their ground are like transplanted trees ; they do well enough if in the first year they get their roots fairly in the soil. I have not lately had much to do with merchants, since my health has kept me away from town and all sorts of business. But I have taken counsel with some honest men among them, and Lady Masham and I will do the best we can for him. When I go to London, which I hope to do shortly, I will see what arrangements I can make, and I have no doubt he wall readily understand that he must take the greatest care not to put faith in any whose integrity has not been proved and whose stability is not beyond question. Nor do I doubt that, in the end, he will prosper, for virtue and honesty always thrive, though perhaps but slowly. You may be quite sure that he will always find in me a friend and adviser .” 2 1 Additional MSS., no. 4052 ; Locke to Sloane, 14 July, 1701. 2 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library ; Locke to Limborck, 21 May, 1701. 492 LAST YEARS. [Ch*p. XV It was probably in order that be might make suitable arrangements for this youth that Locke went up to London in June, where he was in “ a perpetual hurry,” as he said during his short stay, and whence he retreated as soon as his business would permit. 1 “ Whatever little help I have been able to render to your son,” he wrote to Limborch a few weeks after his return, in answer to a letter of thanks, “ must rather be regarded as a token of my gratitude than, as you think, as a burden put upon me by our friendship. Surely you know how anxious I am to serve you to the utmost of my power in any useful way. If by advice, assistance, kind words or anything else I can help him, I shall not be wanting. I hardly think that many words are needed to assure you of that.” 2 Having better health than he had hoped for during the summer of 1701, Locke spent some portions of it iu applying his old medical knowledge in ministering to the ailments of his friends the cottagers in the neighbourhood of Oates. About one case, which proved stubborn, he wrote to consult Dr. Sloane in August. “ I have a patient here sick of the fever of this season,” he said. “ It seems to be not violent ; but I am told ’tis a sort that is not easily got off. I desire to know of you whether the fevers in town are, and what method you find most successful in them. I shall be obliged by your favour, if you will give me a word or two by to-morrow’s post.” 3 Being so much stronger than he expected to be during this summer, Locke could more easily spare one of his 1 Additional MSS., no. 4052 ; Locke to Sloane, 14 July, 1701. 2 MSS. in the Remonstrants Library ; Locke to Limborch, 12 August, 1701. 3 Additional MSS., no. 4052; Locke to Sloane, 22 August, 1701. it°