Changes

==English Politics==

==English Politics==

In 1696 Locke was induced to accept a commissionership on the Board of Trade. This required frequent visits to London. Meantime the Essay on Human Understanding and the Reasonableness of Christianity were becoming more involved in a wordy warfare between dogmatists and latitudinarians, trinitarians and unitarians. The controversy with Edwards was followed by a more memorable one with Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester. John Toland, in his Christianity not Mysterious, had exaggerated doctrines in the Essay, and then adopted them as his own. In the autumn of 1696, Stillingfleet, an argumentative ecclesiastic more than a religious philosopher, in his Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity, charged Locke with disallowing mystery in human knowledge, especially in his account of the metaphysical idea of " substance. " Locke replied in January 1697. Stilling-fleet's rejoinder appeared in May, followed by a Second Letter from Locke in August, to which the bishop replied in the following year. Locke's Third Letter, in which the ramifications of this controversy are pursued with a copious expenditure of acute reasoning and polished irony, was delayed till 1699, in which year Stillingfleet died. Other critics of the Essay entered the lists. One of the ablest was John Sergeant, a priest of the Roman Church, in Solid Philosophy Asserted Against the Fancies of the Ideists (1697). He was followed by Thomas Burnet and Dean Sherlock. Henry Lee, rector of Tichmarch, criticized the Essay, chapter by chapter in a folio volume entitled Anti-Scepticism (1702); John Broughton dealt another blow in his Psychologia (1703); and John Norris returned to the attack, in his Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World (1701-1704). On the other hand Locke was defended with vigour by Samuel Bolde, a Dorsetshire clergyman. The Essay itself was meanwhile spreading over Europe, impelled by the name of its author as the chief philosophical defender of civil and religious liberty. The fourth edition (the last while Locke was alive) appeared in I700, with important additional chapters on " Association of Ideas " and " Enthusiasm." What was originally meant to form another chapter was withheld. It appeared among Locke's posthumous writings as The Conduct of the Understanding, one of the most characteristic of his works. The French translation of the Essay by Pierre Coste, Locke's amanuensis at Otes, was issued almost simultaneously with the fourth edition. The Latin version by Richard Burridge of Dublin followed a year after, reprinted in due time at Amsterdam and at Leipzig. In 1700 Locke resigned his commission at the Board of Trade, and devoteed himself to Biblical studies and religious meditation.

In 1696 Locke was induced to accept a commissionership on the Board of Trade. This required frequent visits to London. Meantime the Essay on Human Understanding and the Reasonableness of Christianity were becoming more involved in a wordy warfare between dogmatists and latitudinarians, trinitarians and unitarians. The controversy with Edwards was followed by a more memorable one with Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester. John Toland, in his Christianity not Mysterious, had exaggerated doctrines in the Essay, and then adopted them as his own. In the autumn of 1696, Stillingfleet, an argumentative ecclesiastic more than a religious philosopher, in his Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity, charged Locke with disallowing mystery in human knowledge, especially in his account of the metaphysical idea of " substance. " Locke replied in January 1697. Stilling-fleet's rejoinder appeared in May, followed by a Second Letter from Locke in August, to which the bishop replied in the following year. Locke's Third Letter, in which the ramifications of this controversy are pursued with a copious expenditure of acute reasoning and polished irony, was delayed till 1699, in which year Stillingfleet died. Other critics of the Essay entered the lists. One of the ablest was John Sergeant, a priest of the Roman Church, in Solid Philosophy Asserted Against the Fancies of the Ideists (1697). He was followed by Thomas Burnet and Dean Sherlock. Henry Lee, rector of Tichmarch, criticized the Essay, chapter by chapter in a folio volume entitled Anti-Scepticism (1702); John Broughton dealt another blow in his Psychologia (1703); and John Norris returned to the attack, in his Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World (1701-1704). On the other hand, Locke was defended with vigour by Samuel Bolde, a Dorsetshire clergyman. The Essay itself was meanwhile spreading over Europe, impelled by the name of its author as the chief philosophical defender of civil and religious liberty. The fourth edition (the last while Locke was alive) appeared in I700, with important additional chapters on " Association of Ideas " and " Enthusiasm." What was originally meant to form another chapter was withheld. It appeared among Locke's posthumous writings as The Conduct of the Understanding, one of the most characteristic of his works. The French translation of the Essay by Pierre Coste, Locke's amanuensis at Otes, was issued almost simultaneously with the fourth edition. The Latin version by Richard Burridge of Dublin followed a year after, reprinted in due time at Amsterdam and at Leipzig. In 1700 Locke resigned his commission at the Board of Trade, and devoteed himself to Biblical studies and religious meditation.

==Resignation from Politics, devotion to God's Word==

==Resignation from Politics, devotion to God's Word==

IV. PHILOSOPHY.-(1) An Essay concerning Human Understanding, in four books (1690). (2) A Letter to the Bishop of Worcester 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 (1697). (3) Mr Locke's Reply to the Bishop of Worcester's Answer to his Letter (1697). (4) Mr Locke's Reply to the Bishop of Worcester's Answer to his Second Letter (1699). (5) An Examination of Father Malebranche's Opinion of Seeing all Things in God (1706, posthumous). (6) Remarks upon Some of Mr Norris's Books, wherein he asserts Father .11,1alebranche s Opinion of Seeing all Things in God (1720, posthumous).

IV. PHILOSOPHY.-(1) An Essay concerning Human Understanding, in four books (1690). (2) A Letter to the Bishop of Worcester 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 (1697). (3) Mr Locke's Reply to the Bishop of Worcester's Answer to his Letter (1697). (4) Mr Locke's Reply to the Bishop of Worcester's Answer to his Second Letter (1699). (5) An Examination of Father Malebranche's Opinion of Seeing all Things in God (1706, posthumous). (6) Remarks upon Some of Mr Norris's Books, wherein he asserts Father .11,1alebranche s Opinion of Seeing all Things in God (1720, posthumous).

MISCELLANEOUS.-(I) A New Method of a Common Place Book (1686). This was Locke's first article in the Bibliotheque of Le Clerc; his other contributions to it are uncertain, except the Epitome of the Essay, in 1688). (2) The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina (prepared in 1673 when Locke was Lord Shaftesbury's secretary at Exeter House, remarkable for recognition of the principle of toleration, published in 1706, in the posthumous collection). (3) Memoirs relating to the Life of Anthony, First Earl of Shaftesbury (1706). (4) Elements of Natural Philosophy (1706). (5) Observations upon the Growth and Culture of Vines and Olives (1706). (6) Rules of a Society which met once a Week, for their improvement in Useful Knowledge, and for the Promotion of Truth and Christian Charity (1706). (7) A Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country, published in 1875 (included by Des Maizeaux in his Collection of Several Pieces of Mr John Locke's, 1720), and soon afterwards burned by the common hangman by orders from the House of Lords, was disavowed by Locke himself. It may have been dictated by Shaftesbury. There are also miscellaneous writings of Locke first published in the biographies of Lord King (1830) and of Mr Fox Bourne (1876). Letters from Locke to Thoynard, Limborch, Le Clerc, Guenellon, Molyneux, Collins, Sir Isaac Newton, the first and the third Lord Shaftesbury, Lords Peterborough and Pembroke, Clarke of Chipley and others are preserved, many of them unpublished, most of them in the keeping of Lord Lovelace at Horseley Towers, and of Mr Sanford at Nynehead in Somerset, or in the British Museum. They express the gracious courtesy and playful humour which were natural to him, and his varied interests in human life.

MISCELLANEOUS.-(I) A New Method of a Common Place Book (1686). This was Locke's first article in the Bibliothèque of Le Clerc; his other contributions to it are uncertain, except the Epitome of the Essay, in 1688. (2) The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina (prepared in 1673 when Locke was Lord Shaftesbury's secretary at Exeter House, remarkable for recognition of the principle of toleration, published in 1706, in the posthumous collection). (3) Memoirs relating to the Life of Anthony, First Earl of Shaftesbury (1706). (4) Elements of Natural Philosophy (1706). (5) Observations upon the Growth and Culture of Vines and Olives (1706). (6) Rules of a Society which met once a Week, for their improvement in Useful Knowledge, and for the Promotion of Truth and Christian Charity (1706). (7) A Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country, published in 1875 (included by Des Maizeaux in his Collection of Several Pieces of Mr John Locke's, 1720), and soon afterwards burned by the common hangman by orders from the House of Lords, was disavowed by Locke himself. It may have been dictated by Shaftesbury. There are also miscellaneous writings of Locke first published in the biographies of Lord King (1830) and of Mr Fox Bourne (1876). Letters from Locke to Thoynard, Limborch, Le Clerc, Guenellon, Molyneux, Collins, Sir Isaac Newton, the first and the third Lord Shaftesbury, Lords Peterborough and Pembroke, Clarke of Chipley and others are preserved, many of them unpublished, most of them in the keeping of Lord Lovelace at Horseley Towers, and of Mr Sanford at Nynehead in Somerset, or in the British Museum. They express the gracious courtesy and playful humour which were natural to him, and his varied interests in human life.

==I. Social Economy==

==I. Social Economy==

It has been truly said that all Locke's writings, even the Essay on Human Understanding itself, were occasional, and " intended directly to counteract the enemies of reason and freedom in his own age." This appears in his works on social polity, written at a time when the principles of democracy and toleration were , struggling with divine right of kings, and when the popular assertors i of public liberty were the greatest engrossers of it too." " The state " with Locke was the deliberate outcome of free contract rather than a natural growth or organism. That the people, in the exercise of their sovereignty, have the right to govern themselves in the way they judge to be for the common good.; and that civil government, whatever form it assumes, has no right to interfere with religious beliefs that are not inconsistent with civil society, is at the foundation of his political philosophy. He rested this sovereignty on virtual mutual contract on the part of the people themselves to be so governed. But the terms of the contract might be modified by the sovereign people themselves, from time to time, in accommodation to changing circumstances. He saw that things in this world were in a constant flux, so that no society could remain long in the same state, and that " the grossest absurdities " must be the issue of " following custom when reason has left the custom." He was always disposed to liberal ecclesiastical concessions for the sake of peace, and he recommended harmonious co-operation with the civil magistrate in all matters of worship and government that were not expressly determined by Scripture.

It has been truly said that all Locke's writings, even the Essay on Human Understanding itself, were occasional, and " intended directly to counteract the enemies of reason and freedom in his own age." This appears in his works on social polity, written at a time when the principles of democracy and toleration were, struggling with divine right of kings, and when the popular assertors i of public liberty were the greatest engrossers of it too." " The state " with Locke was the deliberate outcome of free contract rather than a natural growth or organism. That the people, in the exercise of their sovereignty, have the right to govern themselves in the way they judge to be for the common good.; and that civil government, whatever form it assumes, has no right to interfere with religious beliefs that are not inconsistent with civil society, is at the foundation of his political philosophy. He rested this sovereignty on virtual mutual contract on the part of the people themselves to be so governed. But the terms of the contract might be modified by the sovereign people themselves, from time to time, in accommodation to changing circumstances. He saw that things in this world were in a constant flux, so that no society could remain long in the same state, and that " the grossest absurdities " must be the issue of " following custom when reason has left the custom." He was always disposed to liberal ecclesiastical concessions for the sake of peace, and he recommended harmonious co-operation with the civil magistrate in all matters of worship and government that were not expressly determined by Scripture.

===The Social Contract===

===The Social Contract===

The attack on Sir Robert Filmer in Locke's First Treatise on Government was an anachronism. The democratic principle argued for in the Second Treatise, while in advance of the practice The social of his age, was in parts anticipated by Aquinas and Bodin, contract. as well as by Grotius and Hooker. Its guiding principle is, that civil rulers hold their power not absolutely but conditionally, government being essentially a moral trust, forfeited if the conditions are not fulfilled by the trustees. This presupposes an original and necessary law of nature or reason, as insisted on by Hooker. But it points to the constitution of civil society in the abstract rather than to the actual origin of government as a matter of fact and past history. There is no historical proof that power was formally en-trusted to rulers by the conscious and deliberate action of the ruled. Indeed Locke seems to allow that the consent was at first tacit, and by anterior law of nature conditional on the beneficial purpose of the trust being realized. His Treatises on Government were meant to vindicate the Convention parliament and the English revolution, as well as to refute the ideas of absolute monarchy held by Hobbes and Filmer. They are classics in the library of English constitutional law and polity.

The attack on Sir Robert Filmer in Locke's First Treatise on Government was an anachronism. The democratic principle argued for in the Second Treatise, while in advance of the practice The social of his age, was in parts anticipated by Aquinas and Bodin, contract. as well as by Grotius and Hooker. Its guiding principle is, that civil rulers hold their power not absolutely but conditionally, government being essentially a moral trust, forfeited if the conditions are not fulfilled by the trustees. This presupposes an original and necessary law of nature or reason, as insisted on by Hooker. But it points to the constitution of civil society in the abstract rather than to the actual origin of government as a matter of fact and past history. There is no historical proof that power was formally en-trusted to rulers by the conscious and deliberate action of the ruled. Indeed, Locke seems to allow that the consent was at first tacit, and by anterior law of nature conditional on the beneficial purpose of the trust being realized. His Treatises on Government were meant to vindicate the Convention parliament and the English revolution, as well as to refute the ideas of absolute monarchy held by Hobbes and Filmer. They are classics in the library of English constitutional law and polity.

===Religious Toleration===

===Religious Toleration===

==II. The Reasonableness of Christianity==

==II. The Reasonableness of Christianity==

The principles that governed Locke's social polity largely determined his attitude to Christianity. His " latitudinarianism " was the result of extra-ordinary reverence for truth, and a perception that knowledge may be sufficient for the purposes of human life while it falls infinitely short of speculative completeness. He never loses sight of essential reasonableness as the only ground on which Christian faith can ultimately rest. But Locke accepted Holy Scripture as infallible with the reverence of a Puritan. It has God for its author, salva-tion for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter." Yet he did not, like many Puritans, mean Scripture as interpreted by himself or by his sect. And faith in its infallibility was combined in Locke with deep distrust in " enthusiasm." This predisposed him to regard physical miracles as the solid criterion for distinguishing reasonable religious conviction from " inclinations, fancies and strong assurances. ' Assent in religion as in everything else he could justify only on the ground of its harmony with reason; professed " illumination without search, and certainty without proof " was to him a sign of absence of the divine spirit in the professor. Confidence that we are right, he would say, is in itself no proof that we are right : when God asks assent to the truth of a proposition in religion, he either shows us its intrinsic rationality by ordinary means, or he offers miraculous proof of the reality of which we need reasonable evidence. But we must know what we mean by miracle. Reasonableness, in short, must always at last be our guide. His own faith in Christianity rested on its moral excellence when it is received in its primitive simplicity, combined with the miracles which accompanied its original promulgation. But " even for those books which have the attestation of miracles to confirm their being from God, the miracles," he says, " are to be judged by the doctrine, and not the doctrine by the miracles." Miracles alone cannot vindicate the divinity of immoral doctrine. Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity was an attempt to recall religion from the crude speculations of theological sects, destructive of peace among Christians, to its original simplicity ; but this is apt to conceal its transcendent mystery. Those who practically acknowledge the supremacy of Jesus as Messiah accept all that is essential to the Christianity of Locke. His own Christian belief, sincere and earnest, was more the outcome of the common sense which, largely through him, moulded the prudential theology of England in the 18th century, than of the nobler elements present in More, Cudworth and other religious thinkers of the preceding age, or afterwards in Law and Berkeley, Coleridge and Schleiermacher.

The principles that governed Locke's social polity largely determined his attitude to Christianity. His " latitudinarianism " was the result of extraordinary reverence for truth, and a perception that knowledge may be sufficient for the purposes of human life while it falls infinitely short of speculative completeness. He never loses sight of essential reasonableness as the only ground on which Christian faith can ultimately rest. But Locke accepted Holy Scripture as infallible with the reverence of a Puritan. It has God for its author, salva-tion for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter." Yet he did not, like many Puritans, mean Scripture as interpreted by himself or by his sect. And faith in its infallibility was combined in Locke with deep distrust in " enthusiasm." This predisposed him to regard physical miracles as the solid criterion for distinguishing reasonable religious conviction from " inclinations, fancies and strong assurances. ' Assent in religion as in everything else he could justify only on the ground of its harmony with reason; professed " illumination without search, and certainty without proof " was to him a sign of absence of the divine spirit in the professor. Confidence that we are right, he would say, is in itself no proof that we are right : when God asks assent to the truth of a proposition in religion, he either shows us its intrinsic rationality by ordinary means, or he offers miraculous proof of the reality of which we need reasonable evidence. But we must know what we mean by miracle. Reasonableness, in short, must always at last be our guide. His own faith in Christianity rested on its moral excellence when it is received in its primitive simplicity, combined with the miracles which accompanied its original promulgation. But " even for those books which have the attestation of miracles to confirm their being from God, the miracles," he says, " are to be judged by the doctrine, and not the doctrine by the miracles." Miracles alone cannot vindicate the divinity of immoral doctrine. Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity was an attempt to recall religion from the crude speculations of theological sects, destructive of peace among Christians, to its original simplicity ; but this is apt to conceal its transcendent mystery. Those who practically acknowledge the supremacy of Jesus as Messiah accept all that is essential to the Christianity of Locke. His own Christian belief, sincere and earnest, was more the outcome of the common sense which, largely through him, moulded the prudential theology of England in the 18th century, than of the nobler elements present in More, Cudworth and other religious thinkers of the preceding age, or afterwards in Law and Berkeley, Coleridge and Schleiermacher.

==III. Education==

==III. Education==

Reasonableness of Christianity have also gone through many editions, and been translated into different languages. The first collected edition of Locke's Works was in 1714, in three folio volumes. The best is that by Bishop Law, in four quartos (I777). The one most commonly known is in ten volumes (5812). The Eloge of Jean le Clerc (Bibliotheque choisie, 1705) has been the basis of the memoirs of Locke prefixed to the successive editions of his Works, or contained in biographical dictionaries. In 1829 a Life of Locke (2nd ed. in two volumes, with considerable additions, 183o), was produced by Peter, 7th Baron King, a descendant of Locke's cousin, Anne Locke. This adds a good deal to what was previously known, as Lord King was able to draw from the mass of correspondence, journals and commonplace books of Locke in his possession. In the same year Dr Thomas Foster published some interesting letters from Locke to Benjamin Furly. The most copious account of the life is contained in the two volumes by H. R. Fox-Bourne (1876), the results of laborious research among the Shaftesbury Papers, Locke MSS. in the British- Museum, the Public Record Office, the Lambeth, Christ Church and Bodleian libraries, and in the Remonstrants' library at Amsterdam. Monographs on Locke, by T. H. Fowler in 1880, in " English Men of Letters, ' and by Fraser, in 1890, in Blackwood's " Philosophical Classics " may be mentioned ; also addresses by Sir F. Pollock and Fraser at the bicentenary com-memoration by the British Academy of Locke's death, published in the Proceedings of the Academy (1904). See also C. Bastide, John Locke; ses theories politiques et leur influence en Angleterre (Paris, 1907) ; H. 011ion, La Philosophie generale de J. L. (1909).

Reasonableness of Christianity have also gone through many editions, and been translated into different languages. The first collected edition of Locke's Works was in 1714, in three folio volumes. The best is that by Bishop Law, in four quartos (I777). The one most commonly known is in ten volumes (5812). The Eloge of Jean le Clerc (Bibliothèque choisie, 1705) has been the basis of the memoirs of Locke prefixed to the successive editions of his Works, or contained in biographical dictionaries. In 1829 a Life of Locke (2nd ed. in two volumes, with considerable additions, 183o), was produced by Peter, 7th Baron King, a descendant of Locke's cousin, Anne Locke. This adds a good deal to what was previously known, as Lord King was able to draw from the mass of correspondence, journals and commonplace books of Locke in his possession. In the same year Dr Thomas Foster published some interesting letters from Locke to Benjamin Furly. The most copious account of the life is contained in the two volumes by H. R. Fox-Bourne (1876), the results of laborious research among the Shaftesbury Papers, Locke MSS. in the British- Museum, the Public Record Office, the Lambeth, Christ Church and Bodleian libraries, and in the Remonstrants' library at Amsterdam. Monographs on Locke, by T. H. Fowler in 1880, in " English Men of Letters, ' and by Fraser, in 1890, in Blackwood's " Philosophical Classics " may be mentioned ; also addresses by Sir F. Pollock and Fraser at the bicentenary com-memoration by the British Academy of Locke's death, published in the Proceedings of the Academy (1904). See also C. Bastide, John Locke; ses theories politiques et leur influence en Angleterre (Paris, 1907) ; H. 011ion, La Philosophie generale de J. L. (1909).

==See also==

==See also==