LOCKE, John, one of the greatest philosophers that England has produced, was born at Wrington, Somersetshire, on the 29 th of August 1632, ten years before Sir Isaac Newton. His father was a man of moderate estate, who had suffered by the civil wars, in which he served as a captain on the parliamentary side. After receiving his school education at Westminster, he was sent to Oxford in 1651, and soon became distinguished amongst his fellow-students of Christ Church for his learning, as well as his natural abilities. The philosophy of the schools then held entire dominion at Oxford; and, in after life, Mr Locke was heard to regret having consumed the most valuable time for study at that university, where, in those days, he could learn so little of what was really useful. But it is probable that much more has been made of these expressions than they deserve; for he must have derived considerable benefit from the leisure there afforded for cultivating privately other branches of learning, when he had perceived the futility of the scholastic system; and he undoubtedly enjoyed at that place advantages which led him thus early to form the idea of his great work. That he neld self-education to be by far the most important of any, and had experienced this in his own case, there can be no doubt whatever.^[1. The following passages from two letters to Lord Peterborough set this in a strong light. In answer to a letter from his lordship, who had applied to him to recommend a tutor to his son, he says, “I must beg leave to own that I differ a little from your lordship in what you propose; your lordship would have a thorough scholar, and I think it not much matter whether he be any great scholar or no: if he but understand Latin well, and have a general scheme of the sciences, I think that enough; but I would have him well bred, well tempered; a man that, having been conversant with the world and amongst men, would have great application in observing the humour and genius of my lord your son, and omit nothing that might help to form his mind, and dispose him to virtue, knowledge, and industry. This I look upon as the great business of a tutor; this is putting life into his pupil, which, when he has got, masters of all kinds are easily to be had; for when a young gentleman has got a relish of knowledge, the love and credit of doing well spurs him on; he will, with or without teachers, make great advances in whatever he has a mind to. Mr Newton learned his mathematics only by himself; and another friend of mine Greek, wherein he is well skilled, without a master; though both these studies seem more to require the help of a tutor than almost any other.” And, in a letter to the same person on the same subject, he says, “when a man has got an entrance into any of the sciences, it will be time then to depend on himself, and rely upon his own understanding, and exercise his own faculties, which is the only way to improvement and mastery.” After recommending the study of history, he proceeds to observe, “The great end of such histories as Livy, is to give an account of the actions of men as embodied in society, and so of the true foundation of politics; but the flourishings and decays of commonwealths depending not barely on the present time for what is done within themselves, but commonly on remote and precedent constitution and events, and a train of concurrent actions amongst their neighbours as well as themselves; the order of time is absolutely necessary to a due knowledge and improvement of history, as the order of sentences in an author is necessary to be kept to make sense of what he says. With the reading of history, I think the study of morality should be joined; I mean not the ethics of the schools fitted to dispute, but such as Tully in his Offices, Puffendorf de Officio Hominis et Civis, de Jure Naturali et Gentium, and, above all, what the New Testament teaches, wherein a man may learn to live, which is the business of ethics, and not how to define and dispute about names of virtues and vices. True politics I look on as a part of moral philosophy, which is nothing but the art of conducting men right in society, and supporting a community amongst its neighbours.” ] The first productions that gave him a relish for the study of philosophy, were, it seems, the writings of Descartes, which, from their perspicuity and originality, no less than the boldness with which received opinions were impugned in them, naturally found favour with Locke, although he did not, in many cases, approve of the doctrines which they taught.

After having taken his degrees in arts, Mr Locke applied for some time to the study of physic, not so much, it is said, with a view to practice, as for the benefit of his own constitution, which was originally feeble, and required the observance on his part of a strict regimen. But he must have cultivated medical science to a far greater extent than this would seem to imply, because many of the learned in the faculty entertained a high opinion of his medical knowledge; and, in particular, Dr Sydenham, in his treatise on acute diseases, speaks of his great genius and sound judgment, in terms of very strong commendation. “You know,” says he, “how much my method has been approved of by a person who has examined it to the bottom, and who is óur common friend. I mean Mr John Locke, who, if we consider his penetrating genius and exact judgment, or the purity of his morals, has scarcely any superior and few equals now living.”^[2. “Nosti praeterea quam huic meae methodo suffragantem habeam, qui eam intimius per omnia perspexerat utrique nostrum conjunctissimum dominum Joannem Locke; quo quidem viro, sive ingenio judicioque acri et subacto, sive etiam antiquis, hoc est, optimis moribus, vix superiorem quenquam, inter eos qui nunc sunt homines repertum in confido, paucissimos certe pares.” “The merit of this method, therefore,” says Mr Stewart, in his Dissertation on the progress of Intellectual Philosophy, “which still continues to be regarded as a model by the most competent judges, may be presumed to have belonged in part to Mr Locke; a circumstance which deserves to be noticed, as an additional confirmation of what Bacon has so sagaciously taught concerning the dependence of all the sciences, relating to the phenomena either of matter or of mind, on principles and rules derived from the resources of a higher philosophy: on the other hand, no science could have been chosen more happily calculated than medicine to prepare such a mind as that of Locke for the prosecution of those speculations which have immortalized his name; the complicated and fugitive, and often equivocal, phenomena of disease, requiring in the observer a far greater portion of discriminating sagacity than those of physics strictly so called; resembling in this respect, much more nearly, the phenomena about which metaphysics, ethics, and politics, are conversant.” ] Hence he was often saluted by his acquaintance with the title, though he never took the degree, of doctor, which he would probably have done had he intended to prosecute physic as a profession, or had he not been diverted from it by other studies and avocations.

In 1660, when the restoration had given rise to great controversies respecting the settlement of the church establishments, Locke appears to have written a tract on the subject, with the intention of printing it; but, from whatever cause, he abandoned his design. It has, however, been preserved, and is the earliest of his works extant. Lord King, in his Life of Locke, has given a few extracts from it, which are extremely interesting, inasmuch as they show how great a leaning he then had towards the side of authority, and how much he was disposed to recommend concessions, upon matters not absolutely essential, for the sake of avoiding civil anarchy and religious discord. The excesses of those who had been the real friends of liberty, but who chose to represent themselves as its only friends, appear to have alarmed him so much as to lead him to [7:13:409] think somewhat too favourably of their antagonists. “Since '1 find,” says he, “that a general freedom is but a general bondage; that the popular assertors of public liberty are the greatest engrossers of it too, and not unfitly called its keepers; I know not whether experience would not give us some reason to think, that were the part of freedom contended for and indulged in England, it would prove only a liberty for contention, censure, and persecution.” He then states that liberty, in his view of it, is “not a liberty for ambitious men to pull down well-framed constitutions, that out of the ruins they may build themselves fortunes, nor a liberty to be Christians, so as not to be subjects; but that all he can wish for his country or himself is, to enjoy the protection of those laws which the prudence and providence of our ancestors established, and the happy return of his majesty has restored.” Such are often the early impressions of those whom reflection and experience afterwards conduct to sounder conclusions. Nothing, in truth, can be more natural, than to feel disgust at the extravagance, intolerance, and injustice of the men with whom we are agreed upon points of essential importance. When we find them ready to persecute us the moment they detect the least difference in our sentiments, it is almost unavoidable to stigmatise them as “the engrossers and keepers of liberty.” But the worst effect of such pretensions to infallibility, and of the excesses to which it leads, is, that it sometimes tempts honest and conscientious men to fall into the error of Locke, and to betray a disinclination towards the cause itself, because its most forward professors demean themselves in an overbearing manner. This feeling, be it observed, makes Locke here speak the language of the friends of the Restoration, and overlook those more lasting evils which have almost always attended the return of exiled sovereigns. A short time only elapsed, indeed, before he was made fully sensible of his oversight. The high-church party, finding themselves strong in the new parliament, abandoned all notion of comprehension; and, more intolerant than the Presbyterians themselves, they sought to make differences in all matters, however trivial, operate an absolute exclusion. This change prevented the publication of the tract above mentioned, by rendering its object unavailing.

In 1665, Mr Locke accompanied Sir Walter Vane, as secretary, on his mission to the elector of Brandenburg; but he returned to England within the year, and went back to Oxford, where he resumed his studies with great vigour, and, in particular, applied himself to that of natural philosophy. He refused two offers of diplomatic employment, in Germany and Spain, which were made to him at different times; and he was also pressed by a friend, who had interest with the Duke of Ormond, then lord-lieutenant of Ireland, to take orders, and accept of considerable preferment in the Irish church. Mankind have reason to be thankful that this great man did not subside into a professional diplomatist; but there is no reason to conclude, as Lord King has done, that, had he accepted of preferment in the church, he would never have attained the name “of a great philosopher, who has extended the bounds of human knowledge.” There appears, indeed, to be nothing in the peculiar duties of a divine which should incapacitate or disqualify him for engaging in scientific pursuits; and the annals, both of the English and of other churches, abound in examples of the successful cultivation of philosophy by their ministers. Berkeley was an Irish bishop; yet he unquestionably attained the name of a great philosopher, and, by his admirable Essay on Vision, extended the bounds of human knowledge.

In the year 1666, commenced Locke’s acquaintance with Lord Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury. His lordship had repaired to Oxford, with the intention of taking some mineral water for an abscess in the chest, under which he then laboured; and the physician to whom he applied, being absent, requested Locke to receive the distinguished visitor. Deeply versed in medical science, although he had not practised it professionally, Locke seems to have promptly divined the true mode of treatment for his lordship’s complaint; whilst the charms of his conversation, in which wit, and sense, and learning were happily blended, could scarcely fail to make a deep impression upon a person of Shaftesbury’s taste and discernment. Locke in his turn could not avoid being captivated by the brilliant qualities of a man whose genius and exemption from all vulgar corruption were sufficient to gloss over the most turbulent ambition, and the greatest sacrifice of principle and consistency which was ever, perhaps, made for its gratification. At the time when Locke made his acquaintance, he had, after serving the parliament in the civil wars, and being a zealous partisan of Cromwell during the protectorate, devoted himself to the cause of the restoration, and become a courtier of the sovereign from whom he derived his nobility. Mr Locke now accompanied Lord Ashley from Oxford to London; and having engaged him to submit to an operation which saved his life, such an intimacy grew up between them, that Locke was the inmate of Ashley House during a considerable part of every year, with the exception of three, which he spent abroad; and he was consulted by Shaftesbury upon all his most important private concerns. The part of his time which he did not spend with Lord Shaftesbury was passed at Oxford, where, as early as the year 1670, he appears to have sketched the plan of his Essay concerning Human Understanding. Lord King seems to think that this immortal work was completed in the following year; for he informs us that “the original copy, in Locke’s own handwriting, dated 1671, is still preserved.” But in this copy much must have been left to be added; for it was during his exile in Holland, as we learn from Leelerc, that Locke finished his Essay, and the year 1687 is mentioned as that in which it was completed. Besides, even after the work had been published, material and important additions were made to the subsequent editions, particularly the second and the fourth.

Towards the close of the year 1675, Locke went to reside in the south of France for the benefit of his health, and thus was happily absent during the disgraceful excesses connected with the pretended Popish Plot. Although his pure and tolerant principles must, with all right-thinking men, have exempted him from the least suspicion of encouraging Shaftesbury in the part which he then took, even if he had been residing with that unprincipled nobleman; yet it is fortunate for his fame, that the distance at which he then was from those dismal scenes deprives the most uncandid reasoner of every pretence for charging him with any participation in them. He kept a full and regular Journal of his travels from the day he landed at Calais; and one of the most curious and interesting portions of Lord King’s work consists in the remarks upon men and things which he has extracted from it. Nor are any of these observations more instructive than those which convey to us an idea of the state of things which prevailed under the old government of France, the overthrow of which has been so bitterly lamented by a certain class of politicians in this country. Thus we find an estimate of the revenues of the Gallican chureħ, according to which they amounted to not less than twenty-four millions sterling a year, she exemption of the lands of the nobility from taxes, as well as the ancient church lands, formed another glory of the old system, which the Revolution mercilessly swept avyay. The oppressive gabelle, or salt-duty, and the abuses of its farmers, as well as the laws for enforcing its collection, are also fully exposed. “The salt,” says the Journal, “which the owner sells for five sous, the farmer sells again for fifteen ;” and “the defrauding the duty is of such consequence, [7:13:410]that if a man should be taken with but an handful of salt not bought from the farmers, he would be sent to the galleys.” Nor was the corruption in the administration of justice less flagrant and odious than the iniquity of the financial system. “Many murders are committed here (at Montpelier). He that endeavoured to kill his sister in our house, had before killed a man, and it had cost his father five hundred crowns to get him off; by their secret distribution gaining the favour of their counsellors.” Under ι such a system, the condition of the common people was; of course, most wretched. “Their ordinary food is rye-bread and water; flesh seldom seasons their pots; they· can make no distinction between flesh and fasting days, but when their money reaches to a more costly meal, they buy the inwards of some beast in the market, and then feast themselves.”

At Versailles, Mr Locke saw the other extreme of French society under the same happy dispensation. The queen sat on one hand of Louis XIV., and Madame de Montespan, his majesty’s mistress, sat on the other, in the royal box at the opera. The latter also attended him in like manner at a hunting party. This monarch was, however, exceedingly punctual in his devotional exercises. “ At the king’s levee,” says Mr Locke, “which I saw this morning, there is nothing so remarkable as his great devotion, which is very exemplary; for as soon as ever he is dressed, he goes to his bedside, where he kneels down to his prayers, several priests kneeling by him, in which posture he continues for a pretty while, not being disturbed by the noise and buzz of the rest of the chamber, which is full of people standing and talking to one another.” Here we have a pretty conspicuous example of that blessed condition, “where prayers are morality, and kneeling is religion.”

The same Journal contains some dissertations of very great value. The most complete and instructive of these is that upon Study. The sagacity and plain strong sense of Locke, and his freedom alike from the trammels of prejudice, or any affectation of originality, form the distinguishing features of this piece, as of all the illustrious author’s works, and impress us with the persuasion, that if he differed from received opinion, it was simply for the love of truth, and not for the sake of appearing wiser than other men. In this discourse he lays it down that there are so many things to be known, whilst our time on earth is so short, that we must at once reject all useless learning. The first parcel of lumber which he condemns to be thrown over board, is all that maze of words and phrases invented to instruct people in the art of disputing, and abounding in the logic, physics, and divinity, of the schools. “Such words,” he says, “no more improve the understanding than the motion of a jack will fill our bellies.” Next he condemns a too great desire to know what opinions other men have entertained. He does not undervalue the light which we receive from others, nor think that there are not books which assist us mightily in our endeavours after knowledge; but he conceives that it is idle and useless to make it one’s business to study what have been other men’s sentiments in things where reason is, after all, the only judge. The third class of rejected studies consists of “purity of language, a polished style, or exact criticism in foreign tongues ;” under which head, he says, are to be comprehended Greek and Latin, as well as French and Italian. To spend much time upon such niceties he considers as only labouring tbr' s an outside, a handsome dress of truth and falsehood, which may become fashionable gentlemen, but is unsuited to wise and useful men. But from this prohibition, which we cannot help thinking a great deal too broad, he specially excepts whatever amount of philological learning may be required for the right interpretation and understanding of the Scriptures; a case for which, according to his system, no sufficient provision is made, and which seems indeed to be excluded by the general prohibition. Another branch of proscribed study comprehends all “nice questions and remote useless speculations; as, where the earthly paradise was, what kind of bodies we shall have at the resurrection,” and such like insoluble difficulties. The remarks upon useless historical study are judicious and discriminating; and the rest of the discourse is well worthy of attentive consideration, however much we may be disposed to dissent from some of the author’s principles and views.

Amongst the lesser pieces which are inserted in the Journal under different dates, the most curious is one upon Religion, in which Tillotson’s argument against the doctrine of the real presence, which is naturally turned by Hume into an argument against the possibility of miracles, is very clearly anticipated. He begins by affirming that the being and attributes .of God can only be discovered and judged of by natural reason. Any other source of knowledge can only be inspiration; but even this, according to Mr Locke, cannot be admitted by any one who receives it, much less by any other to whom he tells it, as the ground of believing an alleged supernatural communication, excepting in as far as it is conformable to reason, which alone can enable either the one or the other to distinguish between inspiration and fancy, revelation and delusion. He holds it to be impossible that God should have made a creature to whom the knowledge of himself was necessary, and yet only imparted that knowledge by a channel through which all manner of errors are conveyed into the mind; “a channel much more likely to let in falsehoods than truths, since nobody can doubt, from the contradictions and strangeness of opinions concerning God and religion in this world, that men are likely to have more frenzies than inspirations.” He next proceeds to inquire how far inspiration can enforce any opinion concerning God or his religion, when accompanied with a power to work miracles; and here again he maintains that “the last determination must be that of reason.” His remarks upon religious enthusiasm are a continuation of the same argument; and although the definition of “enthusiasm” is not guarded by proper limitations, and consequently may admit of a dangerous extension, it ought at the same time to be kept in view that the sentiments of Locke upon this subject are those of a man who approved himself a sincere and devout advocate of the cause of Christianity. His observations concerning miracles bear date September 1681, and, consequently, must have been written a considerable time before Tillotson’s discourse against transubstantiation, which appears to have been composed about the end of the reign of Charles II.^[3. It is not a little remarkable that, a few years before this, Locke accidentally came near to one of the greatest discoveries of physical science, that of fixed air, which, a century afterwards, changed the whole face of chemistry, u M. Teinard produced a large bottle of muscat; it was clear when he set it on the table, but when he had drawn out the stopper, a multitude of little bubbles arose, and swelled the wine above the mouth of the bottle. It comes from this, that the air which was included and disseminated in the liquor, had liberty to expand itself, and to become visible, and, being much lighter than the liquor, to mount with great quickness. Q∙ Whether this be air new generated, or whether the springy particles of air in the fruits out of which these fermenting liquors are drawn, have by the artifice of nature been pressed close together, and thereby other particles fastened and held so; and whether fermentation does not loose these bonds and give them liberty to expand themselves again? Take a bottle of fermenting liquor, and tie .a bladder on the mouth. Q. How much new air will it produce? Whether this has the quality of common air ?” ]

Locke’s return to England was accelerated by Shaftesbury, who had been taken into the ministry, and was now [7:13:411]president of the council which the king had appointed, 'with the view of promoting conciliation. This measure, and the appointment of the popular leaders to office, was adopted by the advice of Sir William Temple; but the whole arrangement had not his concurrence, for he protested so vehemently against Lord Shaftesbury’s admission, that it made him rather desire the whole plan should miscarry than be executed with such an addition.^[4. Temple, Memoirs from 1629 to his retirement. ] It is also incorrect to represent Lord Shaftesbury’s resignation as voluntary, and, like Lord Russell’s, the consequence of the king proroguing the new parliament, chosen after he had dissolved the short one which succeeded the pensioned parliament, and passed the first exclusion bill and the habeas corpus act. Shaftesbury was deprived of his place as president of the council by the king, about the same time that he made the Duke of Monmouth retire to Holland, in consequence of the intrigues of Essex and Halifax, and the Duke of York’s coming over, at their suggestion, on the occasion of the king’s illness. This is the account given of the transaction by Temple; and Hume, though he makes Shaftesbury’s removal take place at the date of the prorogation, yet is so far accurate that he does not describe him as resigning, but as dismissed. The account of this transaction given by Burnet is nearly the same with that of Temple.^[5. Burnet, History of his own Times, vol. ii. p. 477. ] Mr Locke arrived in England in May 1679, about a fortnight after the new council had been formed; and it may be presumed that he was living in his usual habits of familiar intercourse with Shaftesbury during that remarkable session when the exclusion and habeas corpus bills were powerfully supported by his lordship’s talents and zeal. But the asthma, with which Mr Locke was afflicted, obliged him to pass the greater part of his time either at Oxford or in the west of England; notwithstanding which, several passages in his Journal plainly show his sense of the delirium which still prevailed upon the subject of the Popish Plot. The trials of the five Jesuits, and of Langhorne, the lawyer, were then going on, or in preparation ∙, thatof Sir George Wakeman, the queen’s physician, took place in the month of July, when he was acquitted. This maybe said to have terminated the frenzy, so disgraceful to the nation; for, excepting that of Stratford, Wakeman’s was the last of the trials. Lord Shaftesbury was now in avowed opposition to the court; and for some time his party had every success that could be expected, short of passing the exclusion bill, in which they were always foiled by the House of Lords. The new parliament had been returned with a decisive majority in favour of the country party. The king dissolved it, and another of the very same description was chosen. This the king also dissolved suddenly in March 1681; and, within a month or two, the most humiliating spectacle which the history of popular fickleness presents, either in ancient or modern times, was exhibited by the people of England.

The whole tide of popularity now turned in favour of the court and the king, and even the Duke of York. The sanguinary delusions of the Popish Plot seem to have stricken the infatuated nation with a kind of compunctious self-hatred, which was to be gratified only by rushing blindly to the opposite extremity. From grand juries, the bench of justices in the counties, cities, and boroughs, the franchises and corporations, many manors, the companies in towns, and, lastly, from the very apprentices, addresses were sent up, the purport of which was to declare unlimited confidence in the king, readiness to devote lives and fortunes to his service, condemnation of the exclusion bill, and charges of a seditious and even treasonable nature against the late parliament for having faithfully represented the sense, or rather the violence, of those very parties on the subject of popery and the Duke of York. As for the clergy, they struck up even a higher note of servility, evincing as much zeal for the duke’s succession “as if a Popish king had been a special blessing of heaven to be much longed by a Protestant church.”^[6. Burnet, History of his own Times, vol. ii. p. 501. ] The court perceived its advantage, and improved it by turning out of the commissions of the peace and the militia all whose attachment was considered as doubtful. And then began that campaign of judicial murders, which continued without pity or remorse until the end of this reign, and which plainly showed, as indeed the whole history of despotism in this island proves, that, with scarcely any exception, the judges of the land have ever been found the ready instruments of the most cruel and profligate of our tyrants. Indeed almost the only person who escaped their servile violence was the least deserving of those whom the court had resolved to destroy. Lord Shaftesbury being charged with high treason, the grand jury threw out the bill; but this was the last instance of resistance to the pleasure of the court. All the other victims of its malignity were regularly handed over to the “justice” then administered by the despot’s ermined sycophants, who, we are authorized by legislative authority to say, murdered them in detail. As it was manifestly dangerous for Shaftesbury to rely upon the frail chance of a second escape, he retired to Holland, where he soon afterwards died; and his illustrious friend, deeming it unsafe to remain any longer in a country thus ruled and judged, went also into voluntary exile, about the close of the year 1683.^[7. That the mitre was not behind the ermine in the foul contamination of those times, abundant proof may be found, both in the general conduct of the church as described by Burnet, and in the strain composed by the heads of the hierarchy, to testify the gratitude of the nation for its enslavement. Lord King has given a form of prayer appointed for the thanksgiving holden upon the 9th of September 1683, which, he justly observes, “might have been supposed to proceed rather from the mufti and ulema, than from the bishops and rulers of the Christian church of England.” They exult in the reflection that God “had given their gracious king, Charles, the necks of his enemies that is, of the virtuous Lord Bussell, who had suffered, and of Sidney, who was yet to be delivered over to the inhuman Jefferies. They acknowledge that in all ages the Almighty has “shed forth his power in the miraculous protection of righteous and religious kings and “yield, from the very bottom of their hearts, unfeigned thanks” for the delivery of those two “righteous and religious” princes, Charles and James, from the “unnatural and hellish conspiracy of wicked and ungodly men.” Upon these princes and their posterity they pray that the crown may forever flourish; and, under the form of a prayer tor enemies, they pour out all imaginable abuse of their political antagonists, expressed in terms so gross that we shall not pollute the purity of this work by quoting them. ]

At this period Locke was removed from his studentship at Christ Church, by virtue of an illegal order of the king, cheerfully, nay, almost thankfully, submitted to by the timeserving priest who then held the see at Oxford and the deanery of Christ Church. The common version of this memorable passage in his life, which treats it as an expulsion, and as the act of the university, is incorrect; it was merely a deprivation of his collegiate situation by the dean and chapter of the lesser body. The correspondence between the court of St James’s and their wretched slaves of the university is very remarkable. In November 1684 Sunderland writes to Bishop Fell that the king understands that “one Mr Locke, who belonged to the late Lord Shaftesbury, and has on several occasions behaved himself very factionsly and undutifully to the government, is a student of Christ Church,” and adds, “that his majesty would have him removed from being a student, and that in order thereto the bishop would let them know the method of doing it.” The answer of the right reverend prelate is instinct with [7:13:412] unparalleled meanness and treachery. After stating that he had “for divers years had an eye upon” Locke, in order, no doubt, to find matter of charge against him, but that (“so close had his guard been of himself") all this episcopal espionage proved unavailing; and “although very frequently, both in public and in private, discourses have been purposely introduced, to the disparagement of his master the Earl of Shaftesbury, his party and designs, he could never be provoked to take any notice, or discover in word or look the least concern,” Bishop Fell proceeds thus: “He has here a physician’s place, which frees him from the exercise of the college, and the obligation which others have to residence in it, and he is now abroad upon want of health; but notwithstanding that, I have summoned him to return home; which is done with this prospect, that, if he comes not back, he will be liable to expulsion for contumacy ; if he does, he will be answerable to your lordship for what he shall be found to have done amiss ; it being probable, that though he may have been thus cautious here, where he knew himself to be suspected, he has laid himself more open in London, where a general liberty of speaking was used, and where the execrable designs against his majesty and his government were managed and pursued. If he does not return by the first day of January next, which is the time limited to him, I shall be enabled of course to proceed against him to expulsion. [But if this method seem not effectual or speedy enough, and his majesty shall please to command his immediate remove, upon the receipt thereof, by the dean and chapter, it shall accordingly be executed.” This letter is dated the 8th of November 1684. The immediate answer of Sunderland brings the grossly illegal order of the crown to deprive; and the bishop forthwith replies that it has been “fully executed,” which elicits an expression of satisfaction on the part of the king “with the college’s ready obedience an expression with which that learned body was probably satisfied, until its members should have occasion for some more substantial mark of approbation. But this is not all. There is still extant a letter by Bishop Fell, dated the 1st of June 1680, about four years before this, and addressed to Mr Locke himself, which proves that this right reverend pander of despotism, and forward tool of persecution, was the friend of the man whom he now showed himself so eager to betray.

There can be but one opinion as to this prelate’s base and treacherous conduct in the matter of Mr Locke’s removal from his college; yet we must not shut our eyes to the lesson which is afforded by the proceeding of the court. It is a mistake to suppose that absolute princes are not so much to be abhorred as mean and petty tyrants, because they never come into conflict with individuals. Upon this subject, which he had long and profoundly considered, Mr Fox has, in his history, expressed a different opinion. “Thus,” says he, “while, without the shadow of a crime, Mr Locke lost a situation attended with some emolument, and great convenience, was the university deprived of, or rather thus, from the base principles of servility, did she cast away, the man, the having produced whom is now her chiefest glory; and thus to those who are not determined to be blind, did the true nature of absolute power discover itself, against which the middling station is not more secure than the most exalted. Tyranny, when glutted with the blood of the great and the plunder of the rich, will condescend to hunt humbler game; and make the peaceable and innocent fellow of a college the object of its. persecution. In this instance, one would almost imagine there was some instinctive sagacity in the government of that time, which pointed out to them, even before he had made himself known to the world, the man who was destined to be the most successful adversary of superstition and tyranny.” It affords a striking confirmation of these remarks, that Charles, not satisfied with driving Locke from the situation which he held in England, and which in a great measure formed the means of his subsistence, followed him to the retreat abroad, where he had sought shelter from tyranny, and demanded, through his ambassador at the Hague, that the illustrious exile should be given up to his vengeance. Locke was therefore obliged to live in concealment during part of his residence in Holland; and it was about this time that he, appropriately enough, composed that admirable Letter on Toleration, which has ever since its publication been the chosen manual of the friends of religious liberty.

Mr Locke remained in exile until the Revolution, having refused many offers from powerful friends to obtain the king’s permission to return. William Penn, amongst others r Jiaving some favour with James II., and probably fancying he had more, offered to procure him a pardon; but Locke nobly refused to accept one, being conscious of no offence.^[8. Much about the same time, Penn busied himself with Bishop Burnet, and tried to bring him also over to England. The bishop, however, seems to have had but very little confidence in him. “He was,” says he, “a talking vain man; he had such an opinion of his own faculty of persuading, that he thought none could stand before it; but he was singular in that opinion, for he had a tedious, luscious way, that was not apt to overcome a man’s reason, though it might tire his patience.” (Burnet, History of his own Times, vol. i. p. 693.) He tried to pe'rsuade the Prince of Orange, and indeed undertook to bring him into the king’s measures, but of course without the least success. He also told Bishop Burnet many prophecies which he said he had from “a man that pretended to a commerce with angels.” Amongst other things, he foretold, in 1686, that a change in the face of affairs would happen in 1688, and amaze all the world. But when, after the Revolution, Bumet asked him if that was the event, he had the rare candour to admit that he meant “the full settlement of the nation, upon a toleration, to quiet and unite all men’s minds.” ] Upon his return to England, he was pressed to accept a high diplomatic situation in Germany; but declined, partly from a modest apprehension of his insufficiency, and partly from an idea that his health would not stand the climate, and the service, of which he seems to have formed a somewhat unfavourable opinion. He states his reasons in a letter to Lord Mordaunt, afterwards Earl of Peterborough, in which he says, “I beg leave to tell your lordship, that if there be any thing wherein I may flatter myself I have any degree of capacity to serve his majesty, it is in some little knowledge 1 perhaps may have in the constitutions of my country, the temper of my countrymen, and the divisions amongst them; whereby I persuade 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.”

His great work, the Essay concerning Human Understanding, was first published in the year 1690. The second edition appeared in 1694, the third in 1697, and the fourth in 1700.^[9. Leclerc, Bibliothèque Choisie, tom. vi. p∙ 379. ] The second edition received an additional chapter, namely, that on Identity; and the fourth, two more chapters, one on Association of Ideas, and another on Enthusiasm. Besides these entire chapters, various other partial additions and alterations were made by the author in the editions referred to. By this work Mr Locke soon became involved in several controversies. That with Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester, is well known; and he also appears to have been teazed with another, which the third Lord Shaftesbury, the, distinguished author of the Characteristics, insisted upon carrying on in private, by means of letters, which, though clever enough, are at the same time models of flippancy and affectation.

Soon afterwards, Locke took an active and most useful [7:13:413]part in the great political discussions of the time. The toleration act, it is well known, was chiefly promoted by him, although he always lamented that it stopped so far short of the true point. His treatise on Civil Government, written in defence of the Revolution, against the Tories, and a second letter in defence of toleration, were both published in 1690. The act passed in 1662, establishing a censorship of the press, under pretence of preventing irreligious publications, remained in force, as is well known, until the year 1694, when it was allowed to expire, the House of Commons having refused to renew it. Upon that occasion Mr Locke probably prepared the curious and valuable piece which was first published by Lord King, and contains the author’s observations upon the objectionable clauses of the bill. In considering these, it is interesting to observe that one of the substitutes for a licenser, which he points out, is the law passed above a century afterwards; whilst at the Revolution, when men’s tempers were much heated, and their party differences ran as high as they ever did since, our ancestors were content to abolish the censorship, which had existed about thirty-two years, and to take no surety against the licentiousness of the press beyond that which had been provided by the common law. “I know not,” says Mr Locke in the admirable piece referred to, “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 transgresses the law in either.”

About the same period commenced the intimacy between Newton and Locke, which forms so interesting a part of their biography. Of that memorable friendship some curious and instructive monuments have been preserved. One of these will more particularly interest mathematicians. It is a demonstration of the fundamental proposition in the Principia, and its principal corollary; and we presume that it must have been drawn out for the purpose of explaining the matter fully to Locke. Lord King informs us that the paper containing it is indorsed “Mr Newton, March 1689;” and thinks that it was communicated before the publication of the Principia. But however the indorsement may be accounted for, this is a mistake; the Principia having, as is well known, been published in 1687. The demonstration begins with three hypotheses, of which two are the first axioms or laws of motion, and the third is the first corollary to the third axiom in b. i. prop. 1 of the Principia. Then follows the important proposition of the radius-vector describing equal areas in equal times, being the well-known proposition first of the second section, and demonstrated in nearly the same manner in which it is there given. Next comes the first proposition of the third section, in substance, but given in the form of a theorem upon the law of attraction applied to bodies moving in elliptical orbits. The construction and demonstration differ materially from those contained in the Principia ; and three lemmas are prefixed, the substance of one of which may be recognised in the early part of the demonstration given in the Principia, whilst it forms the subject of a note in the Jesuits’ commentary on that proposition. These lemmas being expressed in a more explanatory form than those of the Principia usually are, we may hence conclude, that Newton’s illustrious pupil had required him to state as plainly as possible the grounds of his fundamental doctrine.

But these things, however interesting to mathematicians, will not arrest the attention of the general reader so much as the very curious correspondence between Newton and Locke, which Lord King has given to the world. Part of this correspondence relates to the letter which Newton had addressed to Locke upon the famous verse in John (1 John, V. 7), and the controverted passage in Timothy (1 Tim. iii. 16). He had been desirous at one time to have his researches upon these texts published; but being anxious to avoid controversy, and aware of the virulence with which he would be attacked as soon as his theory became known, he begged Locke to get it translated into French and published on the Continent. Locke, therefore, sent the manuscript to his friend and correspondent Leclerc, without disclosing the name of the author, for the purpose of having it translated and published in Holland. But some time afterwards Newton appears to have become alarmed at the risk of being discovered; and on the 16th of February 1692, he addressed a letter to Mr Locke, in which he says, “Let me entreat you to stop the translation and impression so soon as you can; for I design to suppress them.” Accordingly, Leclerc did not proceed with 14 the publication, but retained the papers until Locke’s death in 1704, and, never having been informed to whom they belonged, deposited them in the library of the Remonstrants, where they were found, and published in 1754. Other parts of Newton’s correspondence relate to his opinions upon passages in the Prophecies, which appear to have engrossed a large share of his attention, especially after he had ceased to devote himself so unremittingly to science as he did in the early part of his life.

But the most singular part of this correspondence relates to that affecting passage in Newton’s life, in which it appears that his great mind, whether from bodily ailment, some original morbid predisposition, or from too vast a burden being imposed upon it, had, for a season, been liable to aberrations. And, in the first place, we shall refer to the authority upon which this passage in the history of Newton’s life rests; a fact of which so melancholy a confirmation is afforded by his correspondence with Mr Locke. In a manuscript diary of Huygens, preserved in the library of Leyden, there is a note, in which it is stated that, on the 29th of May 1694, a Scotchman of the name of Colin (or Collins) informed him, that, eighteen months before, Newton had become deranged, in consequence either of too severe application, or of distress occasioned by the loss of his papers, which were accidentally burned; that his alienation had first appeared in a conference with the archbishop; and that, having been confined by his friends, he gradually recovered, so as of late (that is, prior to the date of Colin’s communication to Huygens) to have become capable of resuming his pursuits. This would carry back the period of his being taken ill to December 1692; and there is at Cambridge a manuscript letter of Mr de la Pryne, dated in February 1693, in which the well-known circumstance of the burning of the papers containing his calculations, by a lap-dog, is mentioned, and a statement added, that Newton “was so troubled thereat, that every one thought he would have run mad, and he was not himself for a month after.”^[10. This shows how wide of the truth is the common version of the anecdote, which gives it as a striking instance of Newton’s extreme composure and patience, that he contented himself with exclaiming to the little dog, “Diamond, thou little knowest what mischief thou hast done !” The absurdity of this, and some other anecdotes of a similar kind, consists in the supposition upon which they all proceed,’ that Newton was raised above the ordinary impulses, feelings, and weaknesses of humanity. But there is no evidence of any kind to show that he was exempted from the common frailties of our nature, and some which goes to establish the contrary. In “patient thinking,” no one, dead or living, ever approached him; but his temper could occasionally be ruffled, like that of any other man; and in such cases, it is highly improbable that excited feelings would find expression in a miserable scrap of sentiment. "VV hen provoked with Flamsteed, he called the astronomer royal “a puppy,” just as any body else would have done in similar circumstances. ] These facts would seem to fix the winter of 1692-1693 as the period at which this malady commenced.
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A degree of irritability and suspicion may, however, be discerned in his correspondence during the earlier part of the year 1692. The letter written to Mr Locke, concerning the papers which had been sent to Leclerc, betrays morbid feeling; and there is one respecting Mr Montague, afterwards Lord Halifax, which is tinged with very unmerited suspicions of that person. “Being fully convinced,” says he, “that Mr Montague, upon an old grudge which I thought had been worn out, is false to me, I have done with him.” Mr Montague had been his colleague in the representation of Cambridge; and having always had the highest esteem for Newton, obtained for him, a few years afterwards, the office of Master of the Mint. There is likewise another letter, dated in August of the same year, containing a good deal of suspicion insinuated against Mr Boyle. But these indications would have excited no rash observation, had they not been followed by the letters of the next year. In one dated in September 1693, addressed to Mr Locke, he says, “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 you were dead. I desire you to forgive me this uncharitableness. For 1 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, and designed to pursue in another book, and that I took you for a Hobbist.” Locke’s answer is admirable; full of excellent and amiable feeling towards his illustrious friend, and, at the same time, breathing the dignity of a mind wholly unconscious of offence. It is dated at Oates, 5th of October 1693. “I have been, ever since I first knew you, so entirely and sincerely your friend,” says Mr Locke, “and thought you so much mine, that I could not have believed what you tell me of yourself, had I had it from any body 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 acknowledgment of the contrary as the kindest thing you could have done me, since it gives me hopes 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, 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 that 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.” The letter which this called forth from Newton shows plainly the unhappy state to which he must have been reduced. “The last winter,” says he, “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 farther out of order, so that when I wrote 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 remember not.” Here we have direct evidence that the mind of this illustrious man had been in a state of obscuration, and that the temporary darkness was beginning to be dispelled. These disclosures may also serve to explain the otherwise remarkable fact, that Newton had completed all his discoveries in science before attaining the age of forty-five, and that he did little or nothing after that, although he lived in the enjoyment of health forty years longer.

In 1695, Mr Locke was appointed a commissioner of trade and plantations. For this office, worth about L.1000 a year, he was indebted to the friendship of Lord Somers, who reposed great confidence in him, and paid much deference to his judgment in the practical details of politics. About the same time the bad state of the coin was such as to call for the attention of the government. The practical men, as they delight to call themselves, though they are often the most fanciful of speculators (only that their theory being founded on a partial view of a few facts, and therefore necessarily false, assumes the shape of detaiD, recommended as the obvious remedy an alteration of the standard; but, happily for the credit and the interest of the country, it had at that time ministers both honest and sagacious enough to pursue a different course. Lord Somers and Sir William Turnbull preferred the counsels of Mr Locke to those of Mr Lowndes and his practical friends, and the great measure of the recoinage was carried through. The difference between the embarrassments which affected the currency in the reign of William III. and those which have occurred in our own time, are well stated by Lord King in his Life of Locke. “The coin, at the period first mentioned, had been deteriorated by the frauds of individuals and the neglect of the public; but when the evil was felt, and the remedy pointed out, the parliament, notwithstanding the pressure of the war, and the false theories of the practical men of those days, applied the proper remedy at the proper time, before any great permanent debt had been incurred. In our own time, the depreciation of the currency was entirely to be attributed to the bank and the government. The paper-money of a banking company, without the one indispensable security against it, payment in specie on demand, was in an evil hour substituted in place of the king’s lawful coin; and in order that the minister might avoid the imputation of being an unskilful financier, who borrowed money on unfavourable terms, a debt of unexampled magnitude was accumulated in a debased currency, to be ultimately discharged in specie at the full and lawful standard. It must be confessed, that by the tardy act of retributive justice, which was passed in 1819, the punishment inflicted upon the nation was in the exact proportion to the former deviations from good faith and sound principle; and we may at least hope that the severity of the penalty will in future prevent a repetition of the same folly.”

The increasing infirmities of Mr Locke, arising from his asthmatic complaint, induced him, in 1700, to resign his seat at the board of trade, notwithstanding the pressing instances of Lord Chancellor Somers. He felt an invincible repugnance to retain the office when he found that, from the state of his health, he must leave a great portion of its duties unperformed. For the same reason, he declined a proposal of another and apparently a higher situation, made to him by the king himself, who sent for him to Kensington that he might persuade him to accept it. The air of London appears to have been unfavourable to his ailment; and he spent the last four years of his life at the seat of Sir Francis and Lady Masham, at Oates, in Essex, where he had occasionally resided during many preceding years. In this hospitable and friendly retreat, his chief occupation consisted in the study of the Scriptures, an employment in which he found so much gratification that he regretted not having devoted more of his time to it in the earlier part of his life. But, though thus occupied, his affection for his friends and his love of his coun [7:13:415]try suffered no diminution. His correspondence, at this period, with his cousin Sir Peter, afterwards Lord Chancellor King, is full of the gentlest affection, mixed with his wonted sagacity, and breathing the warmest attachment to the liberties of his country.

In 1703, Locke suffered severely from the asthmatic complaint with which he had been so long afflicted; but though labouring under an incurable disorder, his natural cheerfulness never forsook him, and, whilst perfectly resigned to his own fate, he continued to the last deeply interested in the welfare of his friends. His literary occupation at this time was the study of, and preparation of a commentary on, St Paul’s Epistles, afterwards published amongst his posthumous works. In October 1704, his malady had greatly increased. On the 27th of that month, Lady Masham, not finding him in his study as usual, went to his bedside, when he told her that the fatigue of getting up the day before had been too much for his strength, and that he never expected to rise again from his bed. He had now, he said, finished his career in this world, and in all probability would not outlive the night, certainly not survive beyond the next day or two. After taking some refreshment, he observed to those present that he wished them all happiness when he was gone. To Lady Masham, who remained with him, and whose kind attentions had soothed so many hours of hopeless suffering, he said that he thanked God he had passed a happy life, but that now he found that all was vanity; and he earnestly exhorted her to consider this life as only a preparation for a better and happier state hereafter. He would not suffer her to watch by him during the night, observing, that perhaps he might be able to sleep; but that if any change should happen, he would send for her. Having had no sleep in the night, he was taken out of bed, and carried into his study, where he slept for some time in his chair. When he awoke he desired to be dressed, and then heard Lady Masham read the Psalms, apparently with great attention, until, perceiving that his end drew near, he stopped her, and a few minutes afterwards expired, about three o’clock in the evening of the 28th of October, in the seventy-third year of his age.

It is difficult to say whether mankind have been more indebted to this illustrious man as a philosopher or as a politician. The publication of his great work, the Essay concerning Human Understanding, undoubtedly fixed an era in the history of intellectual science. On this subject, however, it is only necessary here to refer the reader to the First Preliminary Dissertation (Part ii. sect. i. p. 100, et seq.), where the highest attainments in philosophy, an eloquence worthy of Plato himself, and a cautious, discriminating sagacity, all happily combined, have been employed in the exposition of Locke’s speculative labours. But his writings and his personal exertions in favour of liberty, and more especially of religious toleration, may truly be said to have produced a greater effect than can be ascribed to the efforts of perhaps any other individual who bore a part in the transactions of the important period immediately succeeding the Revolution. The true doctrines of toleration were first promulgated by him in their full extent; he asserted the principle in its greatest amplitude, that opinion is not a matter cognizable by the civil magistrate, and that belief, being the result of reason, is wholly independent of the will, and the subject neither of praise nor of censure, far less the object of punishment or reward. It is well known, indeed, that intolerance had not ceased at the Reformation; that the Protestant church had not put an end to persecution. The influence of the Reformation had, do doubt, been salutary in this, as in other respects; but persecution had been mitigated by very slow degrees; and, in its early stages, the reformed church was to the full as intolerant, and nearly as persecuting, as the hierarchy which it had supplanted. In proof of this, it is only necessary to refer to the numerousaexecutions of Catholics, and even of Protestant dissenters, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; executions which were not unfrequently accompanied by the most cruel tortures.^[11. Of the persecuting spirit of that age it is scarcely possible for us to form any adequate conception. Fox, the martyrologist, addressed to Queen Elizabeth an earnest entreaty that she would be pleased to put a stop, not to persecution, but only to^ the burning of the Anabaptists in Smithfield. He seems to have thought it a great deal too much to seek that no punishments, even no capital punishments, should be inflicted for the crime of dissent; he merely begs that such “horrors” as burning should be disallowed. “There are chains,” says Fox, “there is exile, there are branding and stripes, and even the gibbet; this alone (burning) I earnestly deprece.” It is only one form of cruelty that shocks the soul of the martyrologist; he seems to have felt great “horror” at the infliction of death by fire; but he makes no objection to the application of such other specifics, in case of non-conformity or dissent, as chains, exile, branding, stripes, and even the gallows itself. Disallow fire, and he is satisfied. What a picture does this exhibit of the glorious reign of “the good Queen Bess !” ] At a later period, the Episcopalian church of Scotland not only equalled, but even surpassed the cruelties of the older times; and the intolerance of the Presbyterians during the whole of the seventeenth century is too well known to require any particular exposition. It is from the era of the Revolution that we must date the establishment of that toleration which the Reformation had in no respect secured; and it has been reserved for our own times to carry the principles of Locke to their full extent, and to supply those deficiencies in the scheme of religious freedom which he and his coadjutors were unfortunately obliged to leave in their great work. In the matter of civil government, the obligations of mankind generally, and of his countrymen in particular, to the genius, the wisdom, and the sagacity of Locke, are not less conspicuous and important. He it was who not only exposed the folly, as well as injustice, of the slavish doctrines which had hitherto prevailed, but who placed upon a solid foundation the true principles of legislation and government.

All the works of this great man have been collected, and frequently reprinted in different forms. They consist of, 1. Three Letters upon Toleration, the first (in Latin) printed at London in 1689; 2. A Register of the Changes of the Air observed at Oxford, inserted in Mr Boyle’s General History of the Air, 1692; 3. New Method for a Commonplace Book, 1686; 4. Essay concerning Human Understanding, 1690; 5. Treatises of Civil Government, 1690, 1694, and1698; 6. Some Considerations of the Consequences of lowering the Interest and raising the Value of Money, 1691 and 1695; 7. Observations on a printed paper entitled For coining Silver Money in England ; 8. Farther Observations concerning the raising the Value of Money; 9. Some Thoughts concerning Education, 1695; 10. The Reasonableness of Christianity, 1695; 11. Vindication of the Reasonableness, 1695; 12. A Second Vindication, 1696; 13. A Letter to the Bishop of Rochester, 1697; 14. Reply to the Bishop of Rochester, 1697; 15. Reply, in answer to the Bishop’s second Letter, 1698; 16. Posthumous works of Mr John Locke, containing, Of the Conduct of the Understanding, intended as a supplement to the Essay, An examination of Malebranche’s Opinion that we see all things in God, A Discourse of Miracles, part of a Fourth Letter on Toleration, Memoirs relating to the Life of Anthony first Earl of Shaftesbury, &c. At his death he left several manuscripts, from which his executors, Sir Peter King and Mr Anthony Collins, published, in 1705, his paraphrase and notes upon St Paul’s Epistle to [7:13:416] the Galatians, which were soon followed by those upon the Corinthians, Romans, and Ephesians, with an Essay prefixed for the understanding of St Paul’s Epistles, by consulting St Paul himself. In 1708 were likewise published some familiar letters which passed between Mr Locke and several of his friends. (See Lord King’s Life of John Locke, London, 1829, in 4to; and particularly the Edinburgh Review, vol. 1. p. 1, et seq∙) (a.)