Locke

by Thomas Fowler

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Nov. 7, 1691, is the date of the dedication of the Tract entitled "Some considerations on the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money in a letter sent to a Member of Parliament, 1691." This letter was published anonymously in the following year. The member of Parliament was undoubtedly Sir John Somers, who had "put" the author "upon looking out his old papers concerning the reducing of interest to 4 per cent., which had so long," nearly twenty years, "lain by, forgotten." The time to which Locke refers must be the year 1672, when the Exchequer was closed, that is to say, all payments to the public creditors suspended for a year, and the interest on the Bankers' advances reduced to six per cent. This nefarious act of spoliation, which caused wide-spread ruin and distress, was devised while Shaftesbury was Chancellor of the Exchequer, but the main blame in the transaction probably attaches to Clifford. "The notions concerning coinage," which are embodied in the second division of the pamphlet, had been put into writing and apparently shown to Somers about twelve months before the date of the letter. On the occasion and contents of this pamphlet, as well as of Locke's other tracts on Finance, I shall have an opportunity of speaking in subsequent chapters.

Many of my readers will sympathize with Locke in his complaints of the waste of his time during this autumn. Writing to Limborch on Nov. 14, he says, "I know not how it is, but the pressure of other people's business has left me no time or leisure for my own affairs. Do not suppose that I mean public business. I have neither health, nor strength, nor knowledge enough to attend to that. And when I ask myself what has so hampered and occupied me during the last three months, it seems as if a sort of spell had been thrown on me, so that I have got entangled first in one business and then in another, without being able to avoid it, or, in fact, to foresee what was coming." Locke was pre-eminently a good-natured man, and, like many other men before and since, he had to pay the penalty of good-nature by doing a vast amount of other people's business, often probably with scant acknowledgment. One of the occupations in which he was engaged may have been doctoring the household at Oates and advising medically for his friends at a distance; but in business of this kind, though he may have grudged the time it consumed, he seems always to have taken special delight.

In the summer of 1692 he spent a considerable time in London. His main business there seems to have been to see the Third Letter on Toleration through the press. But he was now, as ever, ready to do work for his friends. Thus he obtained for Limborch the permission to dedicate the book which he had so long been preparing, the Historia Inquisitionis, to Tillotson, then Archbishop of Canterbury. Limborch evidently set great store on this privilege. Of Tillotson, Locke seems to have entertained a very high opinion; which, indeed, was thoroughly well deserved. "In proportion to his renown and worth is his modesty." Tillotson was not one of those liberal Churchmen whom promotion makes timid, or cold to their former friends. He was maligned by an unforgiving and unscrupulous faction, more, perhaps, than any other man of that age, but he always retained the courage of his opinions.

Locke's health seems to have suffered much during the winter of 1692-93. But he still occupied himself with literary work. While in Holland, he had corresponded frequently with Clarke on the education of his children. Yielding to the solicitation of many of his friends, especially William Molyneux, he now reduced the letters to the form of a treatise, which was published in July, 1693, under the title Some Thoughts Concerning Education. The dedication to Clarke bears date in the previous March, and is signed by Locke, though his name does not appear on the title-page. The most serious work, however, in which he was now engaged, was the preparation of a second edition of the Essay. The first edition seems to have been exhausted in the autumn of 1692. On the alterations and additions introduced into the second edition, there is an interesting correspondence with Molyneux, ranging from Sept. 20, 1692, to May 26, 1694, when the new edition, notwithstanding the "slowness of the press," was "printed and bound, and ready to be sent" to Locke's Dublin correspondent. Besides suggestions in detail, such as those touching the questions of liberty and personal identity, Molyneux urged Locke to undertake a separate work on Ethics, a suggestion which for a time he entertained favourably, but which, owing partly, perhaps, to his idea that the principles and rules of morality ought to be presented in a demonstrative form, was never carried out. Though he does not seem to have doubted that "morality might be demonstrably made out," yet whether he was able so to make it out was another question. "Every one could not have demonstrated what Mr. Newton's book hath shown to be demonstrable." He was, however, ready to employ the first leisure he could find that way. But the treatise never proceeded beyond a few rough notes. Another reason assigned, at a later period, for not more seriously setting about this task was that "the Gospel contains so perfect a body of ethics, that reason may be excused for that inquiry, since she may find man's duty clearer and easier in revelation than in herself." This argument shows at once the sincerity of Locke's religious convictions, and the inadequate conception he had formed to himself of the grounds and nature of Moral Philosophy. Another suggestion made by Molyneux was that, besides a second edition of the Essay, Locke should bring out, in accordance with the main lines of his philosophy, another work forming a complete compendium of logic and metaphysics for the use of University Students. No one can regret that the author of the Essay did not adopt this advice. Apropos of this suggestion, Molyneux tells Locke that Dr. Ashe, then Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, "was so wonderfully pleased and satisfied with the work, that he has ordered it to be read by the bachelors in the college, and strictly examines them in their progress therein." From that time onwards the Essay seems to have held its ground as a class-book at Dublin. The reception which it met with at first from the authorities of Locke's own University, as we shall see presently, was widely different. In May, 1694, the second edition was on sale, and was quickly exhausted. The third edition, which is simply a reprint of the second, appeared in the following year. One more edition, the fourth, dated 1700, but issued in the autumn of 1699, appeared during Locke's lifetime. In it there are important alterations and additions, including two new chapters—that on Enthusiasm, and the very important one at the end of the second book, on the Association of Ideas. A Latin translation of the Essay by Richard Burridge, an Irish Clergyman, was published at London, in 1701; and a French translation by Pierre Coste, who was a friend of Le Clerc, and had been acting for some time as tutor to young Frank Masham at Amsterdam, in 1700. John Wynne, Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, and subsequently Bishop of St. Asaph, published an abridgment for the use of University Students, in 1696. Wynne had a large number of pupils, and the compendium of Locke's philosophy appears to have obtained rapid circulation among the younger students in Oxford, only, however, as we shall soon see, to encounter the opposition of the authorities.

It is notable that all the important alterations and additions made in the second edition of the Essay were printed on separate slips, and issued, without charge, to those who possessed the first. Sir James Tyrrell's copy of the first edition, with these slips pasted in, is in the British Museum; and that of William Molyneux in the Bodleian. In sending to Molyneux the second edition, Locke had also forwarded the slips to be pasted in the first, which would "help to make the book useful to any young man;" but whether Molyneux gave the copy now in the Bodleian to "any young man," and, if so, who the fortunate young man was, we do not learn.

The first writer who had taken up his pen against Locke was John Norris, the amiable and celebrated Vicar of Bemerton, a religious and philosophical mystic, whose works are even still in repute. Norris was a disciple of Malebranche, and his attack seems to have had the effect of leading Locke to make a careful study of the theories of the French philosopher. The result was two tractates—one entitled Remarks upon some of Mr. Norris's Books; the other, An Examination of Père Malebranche's Opinion of seeing all things in God. The latter is much the more considerable production of the two, and is mainly remarkable as showing that Locke saw clearly that the conclusions, subsequently drawn by Berkeley, must follow from Malebranche's premises. Neither of these tracts was published till after Locke's death. The reasons assigned by him for not publishing his criticisms of Malebranche are characteristic: "I love not controversies, and have a personal kindness for the author."

Locke's literary activity during the years 1689-95 appears excessive; but we must recollect that he had already accumulated a vast amount of material, and that, during the latter part of that time at least, he must have enjoyed considerable leisure in his country retirement. In the early months of 1695 he was mainly occupied with a new subject—the Essay on the Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures. Though this work was designed to establish the supernatural character of the Christian revelation, and its importance to mankind, it by no means satisfied the canons of a strict orthodoxy. Some of the more mysterious and less intelligible doctrines of the Christian Church, if not denied, were at least represented as unessential to saving faith. Hence it at once provoked a bitter controversy. "The buz, the flutter, and noise which was made, and the reports which were raised," says its author, "would have persuaded the world that it subverted all morality, and was designed against the Christian religion. I must confess, discussions of this kind, which I met with, spread up and down, at first amazed me; knowing the sincerity of those thoughts which persuaded me to publish it, not without some hope of doing some service to decaying piety and mistaken and slandered Christianity." The first assailant was John Edwards, a former Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, who in a violent pamphlet, entitled Thoughts concerning the Causes and Occasions of Atheism, included the Reasonableness of Christianity in his attack, and insinuated that Locke was its author by affecting to disbelieve it. The book was described as "all over Socinianized," and a Socinian, if not an atheist, is, according to Edwards, "one that favours the cause of atheism." That there was much similarity between the apparent opinions of Locke and the doctrines of Faustus Socinus himself, though not of Socinus's more extreme followers, who were also popularly called Socinians, admits of no doubt. But the charge of favouring atheism can only have been brought against a man who regarded the existence of God as "the most obvious truth that reason discovers," and who appears never to have questioned the reality of supernatural intervention, from time to time, in the world's history, because it happened to be the roughest stone that could be found in the controversial wallet. Locke replied to Edwards with pardonable asperity, in a tract entitled A Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity. Edwards, of course, soon replied to the reply, and attacked Locke more violently than ever in his Socinianism Unmasked. No rejoinder followed, but the adversary was not to be let off on such easy terms. Another shot was fired, and The Socinian Creed, as venomous and more successful than the Socinianism Unmasked, provoked A Second Vindication. This lengthy pamphlet, far more elaborate than the first, must have occupied much of Locke's time. It did not appear till the spring of 1697. Edwards returned to the charge; but, fortunately, Locke had the wisdom and courage to refrain from carrying on the fight. Bitter as the feeling against Locke must have been in many clerical circles at this time, there were not wanting, even amongst the clergy, those who sympathized with his views. Mr. Bolde, a Dorsetshire clergyman, came forward to defend him against Edwards. And Molyneux, writing on the 26th of September, 1696, says, "As to the Reasonableness of Christianity, I do not find but it is very well approved of here amongst candid, unprejudiced men, that dare speak their thoughts. I'll tell you what a very learned and ingenious prelate said to me on that occasion. I asked him whether he had read that book, and how he liked it. He told me very well; and that, if my friend Mr. Locke writ it, it was the best book he ever laboured at; 'but,' says he, 'if I should be known to think so, I should have my lawns torn from my shoulders.' But he knew my opinion aforehand, and was, therefore, the freer to commit his secret thoughts in that matter to me." We may not be disposed to think highly of the "very learned and ingenious prelate;" but the story shows, as indeed we know from other sources, to what a volume of opinion, both lay and clerical, on the expediency of presenting Christianity in a more "reasonable" and less mysterious and dogmatic form, Locke's treatise had given expression. Men were anxious to retain their beliefs in the supernatural order of events, but they were equally anxious to harmonize them with what they regarded as the necessities of reason. The current of "Rationalism" had set in.

It is satisfactory to know that, amidst all these controversial worries, which must have been most distasteful to a man of his habits and temper, Locke enjoyed the solace of pleasant companionship and domestic serenity. He was thoroughly at home at Oates, and Lord Monmouth and his other friends in and near town seem always to have been ready to accord him a hearty welcome, whenever he cared to pay them a visit. His little "wife," Betty Clarke, and her brother used occasionally to come on visits to him at the Mashams, and he seems to have taken great delight in the society of Esther Masham, who was now rapidly growing up to womanhood. "In raillery," wrote this lady many years afterwards, "he used to call me his Laudabridis, and I called him my John." The winters of 1694-95 and 1695-96 were unusually long and severe, and in both of them Locke appears to have been under apprehensions that his chronic illness might terminate in death.

It may here be noticed that in the summer of 1694 Locke became one of the original proprietors of the Bank of England, which, having been projected by a merchant named William Paterson, had been established by Act of Parliament in April of that year, and invested with certain trading privileges, on condition that it should lend its capital to the Government at eight per cent. interest. The plan had encountered great opposition, especially among the landed gentry, and had only been carried through the strenuous exertions of Montague and the Whig party. Locke subscribed 500l., a considerable sum in those days.