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In writing the chapters on Locke's Life, I have derived much information from the biographies of Lord King and Mr. Fox Bourne, especially from the latter, which contains a large amount of most interesting documents never before printed. In a work like the present, where numerous foot-notes would be out of place, I am obliged to content myself with this general acknowledgment. I may add that I have also referred to several other authorities, both printed and in manuscript; and, in some cases, I b

John Locke, perhaps the greatest, but certainly the most characteristic, of English philosophers, was born at Wrington, a pleasant village in the north of Somersetshire, August 29, 1632. His family, however, resided in the village of Pensford, and the parish of Publow, within a few miles of Bristol. It was there, probably, that Locke spent the greater part of his early life. His mother appears to have died while he was young. From his father, John Locke (b. 1606), who seems to have inherited a f

Locke, at the time of his father's death and his entrance on college office, was in his twenty-ninth year. At the election of college officers on Christmas Eve, 1662, he was transferred from the Greek Lectureship to the Lectureship in Rhetoric, and, on the 23rd of December in the following year, he was again transferred to another office. This office was the Censorship of Moral Philosophy (the Senior Censorship); the Censorship of Natural Philosophy (the Junior Censorship) he appears never to ha

The state of Locke's health had long rendered it desirable that he should reside in a warmer climate, and his release from official duties now removed any obstacle that there might formerly have been to his absence from England. The place which he selected for his retirement was Montpellier, at that time the most usual place of resort for invalids who were able to leave their own country. He left London about the middle of November, 1675, with one if not more companions, and, after experiencing

Locke must have landed in Holland in one of the autumn months of 1683, being then about fifty-one years of age. We are not able, however, to trace any of his movements till the January of 1683-84, when he was present, by invitation of Peter Guenellon, the principal physician of Amsterdam, at the dissection of a lioness which had been killed by the intense cold of the winter. Through Guenellon, whom he had met during his stay in Paris, he must have made the acquaintance of the principal literary

Shortly after Locke returned to England, he settled down in lodgings in the neighbourhood of what is now called Cannon Row, Westminster. But the fogs and smoke of London then, as now, were not favourable to persons of delicate health, and he seems to have been glad of any opportunity of breathing the country air. Amongst his places of resort were Parson's Green, the suburban residence of Lord Mordaunt, now Earl of Monmouth, and Oates, a manor-house, in the parish of High Laver, in Essex, the sea

Notwithstanding his retirement to Oates, and his incessant literary activity, Locke never lost his interest in politics, and, as the friend and admirer of men like Monmouth, Somers, and Clarke, he must always have exercised a considerable influence on the policy of the Whig party. In the spring of 1695 he seems to have taken a primary share in determining a measure which for a time divided the Houses of Lords and Commons, and which must have enlisted his warmest sympathies. This was the repeal o

In order to resume the thread of Locke's literary and domestic life, it is now necessary to go back two or three years. I have already spoken of no less than three literary controversies in which he found himself engaged, one on financial, and two on religious questions. Of the latter, one was occasioned by the publication of the Letter on Toleration , the other by that of the Reasonableness of Christianity . The Essay also had been attacked by Norris and other writers, including one very acute

"Were it fit to trouble thee," says Locke in his Epistle to the Reader, "with the history of this Essay , I should tell thee that five or six friends meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand by the difficulties that rose on every side. After we had a while puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course; and that, before we set o

In the Essay on the Human Understanding , Bk. IV., ch. x., Locke attempts to prove the existence of a God, which, though God has given us no innate idea of Himself, he regards as "the most obvious truth that reason discerns," and as resting on evidence equal to mathematical certainty. Morality is, he maintains, entirely based upon the Will of God. If there were no God, there would, for him, be no morality, and this is the reason of his denying to Atheists the protection of the State. In the chap

Locke's tractate on Education, though some of the maxims are reiterated with needless prolixity, abounds in shrewdness and common-sense. Taking as the object of education the production of "a sound mind in a sound body," he begins with the "case," the "clay-cottage," and considers first the health of the body. Of the diet prescribed, dry bread and small beer form a large proportion. Locke is a great believer in the virtues of cold water. Coddling, in all its forms, was to be repressed with a str

Locke's two Treatises of Government (published in 1690) carry us back into the region of worn-out controversies. The troublous times which intervened between the outbreak of the Civil War and the Revolution of 1688, including some years on either side, naturally called forth a large amount of controversy and controversial literature on the rights of kings and subjects, on the origin of government, on the point at which, if any, rebellion is justifiable, and other kindred topics. Not only did the

To trace Locke's influence on subsequent speculation would be to write the History of Philosophy from his time to our own. In England, France, and Germany there have been few writers on strictly philosophical questions in this century or the last who have not either quoted Locke's Essay with approbation, or at least paid him the homage of stating their grounds for dissenting from it. In the last century, his other works, especially those on Government and Toleration, may be said to have almost f

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