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CHAPTER XIV.

THE SECOND REVOLUTION.

§1. JOHN LOCKE: his life. § 2. His works. Letters on Toleration, Treatise on Civil Government. §3. Essay on the Human Understanding. § 4. Essay on Education. On the Reasonableness of Christianity. On the Conduct of the Understanding. §5. ISAAC BARROW : his life and attainments. His Sermons. § 6. Characteristics of the Anglican divines. JOHN PEARSON. §7. ARCHBISHOP TILLOTSON. § 8. ROBERT SOUTH. EDWARD STILLINGFLEET. THOMAS SPRAT. WILLIAM SHERLOCK. §9. Progress of the physical sciences towards the end of the seventeenth century. Origin of the Royal Society. DR. JOHN WILKINS. § 10. Scientific writers. § 11. SIR ISAAC NEWTON. § 12. JOHN RAY. ROBERT BOYLE. THOMAS BURNET. § 13. BISHOP BURNET. His History of the Reformation, and other works.

§ 1. THE period of the great and beneficent revolution of 1688 was characterized by the establishment of constitutional freedom in the state, and no less by a powerful outburst of practical progress in science and philosophy. It was this period that produced Newton in physical and Locke in intellectual science. The latter, in his character and career, offers the most perfect type of the good man, the patriotic citizen, and the philosophical investigator. JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704) was born in 1632, educated at Westminster School and Christ-Church, Oxford, where he particularly devoted himself to the study of the physical sciences, and especially of medicine. He undoubtedly intended to practise the latter profession, but was prevented from doing so by the weakness of his constitution, and a tendency to asthma, which in after life obliged him to retire from those public employments for which his integrity and talents so well fitted him. The direction of his studies at Oxford must have tended to inspire him with distaste and contempt for that adherence to the scholastic method which still prevailed in the University, and to excite in him a strong hostility to that stationary or rather retrograde spirit which sheltered itself under the venerable and much-abused name of Aristotle. There is no question that Locke's investigations during the thirteen years of his residence at Oxford had been much turned to metaphysical subjects, and that he had seen the necessity of applying to this branch of knowledge that experimental or inductive method of which his great master Bacon was the apostle. In 1664 he accompanied Sir Walter Vane, as his secretary, on a diplomatic mission to Brandenburg, and returning to Oxford in the following year, refused a flattering offer made him by the Duke of Ormond of considerable preferment in the Irish Church. His reasons for declining to take orders were equally honorable to Locke's good sense and to his high conscientious feeling. He declined the favor on the ground of his not experiencing that internal vocation without which no man should

enter the priestly profession. In 1666 Locke became acquainted with Lord Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, and subsequently so celebrated for his political talents and for his unprincipled and factious conduct when Chancellor and the head of the parliamentary opposition. He is said to have rendered himself useful to this statesman by his medical skill, and unquestionably secured his intimacy and respect by the charms of his conversation and the virtues of his character. He attached himself intimately both to the domestic circle and to the political fortunes of this statesman, in whose house he resided several years, having undertaken the education first of the Chancellor's son and afterwards of his grandson, the latter of whom has left no unworthy name as an elegant, philosophical, and moral essayist. Locke's acquaintance with Shaftesbury brought him into daily and intimate contact with many of the most distinguished politicians and men of letters of the day, among whom I may mention the all-accomplished Halifax, Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, and many others. Locke fully shared in the frequent and violent vicissitudes of Shaftesbury's agitated career. He was nominated, on his patron becoming Chancellor in 1672, Secretary of the Presentations, with which he combined another appointment; but these he lost in the following year on the first fall of his patron. In 1675 he visited France for his health, and his journals and letters are not only valuable for the accurate but very unfavorable account they give of the then state of French society, but are exceedingly amusing, animated, and gay. In 1679 Locke returned to England and rejoined Shaftesbury on his second accession to power during that stormy period when he was at the head of the furious agitation in favor of the Exclusion-Bill depriving the Duke of York, afterwards James II., and then Heir-Apparent, of the right of succeeding to the throne, on the ground of his notorious sympathies with the Roman Catholic religion. The Chancellor again fell from power, was arraigned for High Treason, and though the bill of indictment was ignored by a patriotic jury, fled to Holland, where he died in 1683.

During the evil days of tyranny and persecution which followed this event, Locke found a safe and tranquil retreat in Holland, a country which had so long been the asylum of all who were brought, by the profession of free opinions on politics or religion, under the frown of power; and he enjoyed the friendship and society of Le Clerc and many other illustrious exiles for conscience' sake. During this time Locke, whose bold expression of constitutional opinions and whose ardent attachment to free investigation must have made him peculiarly obnoxious to the bigotry of Oxford, was deprived of his Studentship at Christ-Church, and denounced as a factious and rebellious agitator, and as a dangerous heresiarch in philosophy. The Revolution of 1688 was the triumph of those free principles of which Locke had been the preacher and the martyr; and he returned to England in the same fleet which conveyed Queen Mary from Holland to the country whose crown she had been called to share. From this period his career was eminently useful, active, and even brilliant. He was appointed a member

of the Council of Trade, and in that capacity took a prominent part in carrying out Montague's difficult and most critical operation of calling in and reissuing the silver coinage — an operation of the most vital importance at the moment, and of which Macaulay has given in his history a narrative of the most dramatic interest. After a short service Locke retired from public employment, and resided during the remainder of his life with his friend Sir F. Masham at Oates in Essex. Lady Masham, an accomplished and intellectual woman, was the daughter of the philosopher Cudworth, tenderly loved and respected by her illustrious guest, who enjoyed under her roof the ease and tranquillity he had so nobly earned. Locke died in 1704; and his personal character seems to have been one of those which approach perfection as nearly as can be expected from our fallible and imperfect nature. On his return to England in 1688 Locke became acquainted with the illustrious Newton, who, like himself, was employed in the public service; but somewhere about 1692 certain untoward events, among which one of the principal was the unfortunate accidental burning of his papers, seem to have shaken, if not overthrown for a season the balance of the great philosopher's mind; and his querulous and suspicious irritation appears to have vented itself in a most unfounded misunderstanding with Locke, whom he accuses of "embroiling him with women and other things." It is pleasing to think that Locke's conduct in the affair was delicate and forbearing, and that his manly expostulations and wise advice re-established a good 'understanding that was never again interrupted.

§ 2. The writings of this excellent thinker are numerous, varied in subject, all eminently useful, and breathing a constant love of humanity. In 1689 were published the Letters on Toleration, originally composed in Latin, but immediately translated into French and English. The author goes over somewhat the same ground as had been occupied by Jeremy Taylor in his Liberty of Prophesying, and by Milton in the immortal Areopagitica; but Locke deduces his arguments less from scriptural and patristic authority than was done by the former, and depends more upon close reasoning and considerations of practical utility than Milton. Of course in Locke's work there is no trace of that gorgeous and imposing eloquence which glows and blazes through the Speech on Unlicensed Printing; but perhaps Locke's calm and logical proofs have not less powerfully contributed to fix the universal conviction as to the justice of his cause. The Treatise on Civil Government was undertaken to overthrow those slavish theories of Divine Right which were then so predominant among the extreme monarchical parties, and nowhere carried to such extravagance as in the University of Oxford. Locke's more special object was the refutation of Sir John Filmer's once famous book entitled Patriarcha, in which these principles were maintained in all their crudeness, and supported with some learning and much ill-employed ingenuity. Filmer maintains that the monarchical form of government claims from the subject an unlimited obedience, as being the representative of the patriarchal

authority in the primitive ages of mankind, while the patriarchal authority is in its turn the image of the power naturally possessed over his offspring by the parent, that again being the same in nature as the power of the Creator over his creature. The last-named of these being essentially infinite, it follows, according to Filmer, that all the others are so likewise. Locke combats and overthrows this monstrous theory, and seeks for the origin of government, and consequently the ground of authority on the one hand and obedience on the other, in the common interest of society; showing that any form of polity which secures that interest may lawfully be acquiesced in, while none that does not secure it can claim any privilege of exemption from resistance. He investigates the origin of society, and finds it based as it can only be solidly based upon the great and fertile principle of property and individual interest.

§ 3. The greatest, most important, and most universally known of Locke's works is the Essay on the Human Understanding. In this book, which contains the reflections and researches of his whole life, and which was in the course of composition during eighteen years, Locke shows all his powers of close deduction and accurate observation. His object was to give a rational and clear account of the nature of the human mind, of the real character of our ideas, and of the mode in which they are presented to the consciousness. He attributes them all, whatever be their nature, to two, and only two, sources; the first of these he calls Sensation, the second Reflection. He thus opposes the notion that there are any innate ideas, that is, ideas which have existed in the mind independently of impressions made upon the senses, or of the comparison, recollection, or combination of those impressions made by the judgment, the memory, or the imagination. Locke is eminently an inductive reasoner, and was the first to apply the method of experiment and observation to the obscure phenomena of the mental operations; and he is thus to be regarded as the most illustrious disciple of Bacon, whose mode of reasoning he adopted in a field of research till then considered as totally unamenable to the à posteriori logic. The most striking feature in this, as in all Locke's philosophical works, is the extreme clearness, plainness, and simplicity of his language, which is always such as to be intelligible to a plain understanding. He is the sworn foe of all technical and scientific terms, and his reasonings and illustrations are of the most familiar kind; indeed he never scruples to sacrifice elegance to the great object of making himself understood. The following brief analysis of the work may be found not unacceptable to the reader:

In Book I., consisting of four chapters, Locke inquires into the nature of the understanding, and demonstrates that there exist neither innate speculative nor innate practical principles. Book II., containing thirty-three chapters, is devoted to an examination into the nature of ideas, respectively treated as simple, as of solidity, of space, of duration, of number, of infinity, and the like. He then considers the ideas of pleasure and of pain, of substance, of relations, as of cause and effect,

and finally treats the important question of the association of ideas. Book III., divided into eleven chapters, is a most original and masterly investigation of the nature and properties of Language, of its relation to the ideas of which it is the vehicle, and of its abuses and imperfections. This is, in the present day, when some parts of Locke's general theory are regarded as no longer tenable, the most valuable portion of the work. Book IV., including twenty-one chapters, discusses knowledge in general, its degrees, its extent, and its reality. The philosopher then proceeds to consider the nature of truth, of our knowledge of existence, of our knowledge of the existence of a God, and of other beings. Then are investigated various important questions relating to judgment, probability, reason, faith, and the degrees of intellectual assent, and after some reflections on enthusiasm and on wrong assent, or error, Locke terminates with some valuable considerations on the Division of the Sciences.

It was unavoidable that the portion of the work devoted to the investigation of sensation should be more interesting and satisfactory than the portion treating of the obscure phenomena of reflection; but however we may dissent from particular details of Locke's theory, we cannot fail to render full justice to the inimitable clearness of his exposition, and to the multitude of well-observed and well-arranged facts which form the groundwork of his arguments.

§4. The Essay on Education has, like the book just examined, a practical tendency, and may be said to have mainly contributed to bring about that beneficial revolution which has taken place in the training of the young. Locke powerfully discountenances that exclusive attention to mere philology which prevailed in the education of the seventeenth century, and in no country more than in England. He advocates a more generous, liberal, and practical system, both in the choice of the subject-matter to be taught and in the mode of conveying instruction. He is therefore in favor of making the pupil's own conscientiousness a substitute for that tyranny of force and authority which formerly disgraced our schools. Much of what is humane and philosophical in Rousseau's celebrated Emile is plainly borrowed from Locke, who is not responsible for the absurdities and extravagances ingrafted upon his plans by the Genevese theorist. Indeed both the educational and metaphysical works of Locke were unceremoniously ransacked by many French writers of the end of the seventeenth century, who were frequently not solicitous to point out the sources whence they drew their ideas.

Besides the above works may be mentioned a treatise On the Reasonableness of Christianity, in which the calm piety and benevolence of the sentiments form a triumphant refutation of those bigots who, like De Maistre, have accused Locke of irreligious and materialistic tendencies, and a small but admirable little book On the Conduct of the Understanding, which was not published until after the author's death. It contains a kind of manual of reflections upon all those natural defects or acquired evil habits of the mind, which unfit it for the task of acquir

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