JOHN LOCKE
=The Enlightenment in Great Britain.= The history of the philosophy of
Great Britain includes the teachings of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and the
Scottish School. With the exception of the teachings of the reactionary
Scottish School, all the important philosophical teachings appear
in the first half of the eighteenth century. We need to understand,
first, the philosophical position of Locke, who was the father of the
Enlightenment. We shall then see how his doctrine developed in three
different directions: (1) as Deism,――a rational Christianity, (2) as
an associational psychology in ethics, (3) as a theory of knowledge in
the philosophies of Berkeley and Hume.
Our discussion of the philosophy of Bacon and Hobbes has been followed
by that of Rationalism. It would, however, be a mistake for the reader
to infer, as we are about to take up the study of Locke, that a long
period of time intervened between Hobbes and Locke. A chronological
comparison of their lives shows that they were contemporaries for
forty-seven years. Both lived through the reign of Charles I, during
the Commonwealth and the Restoration. Hobbes died eleven years before
Locke published his only philosophical essay. We must remember, too,
that the English empirical philosophers of the Enlightenment were not
insulated from the Rationalists of the Continent. On the contrary,
there was a lively interchange of ideas. Descartes influenced Hobbes
and Hobbes influenced Spinoza. The influence of Descartes upon
Locke was not inconsiderable, and Leibnitz felt the influence of
Locke. Berkeley and Leibnitz arrived at idealistic conclusions from
independent points of view. Bacon alone seems to stand apart both from
his contemporaries and from his immediate followers.
The English Enlightenment was the natural development of the English
Renaissance. Locke was the successor of Bacon and Hobbes. On the other
hand, the English Enlightenment is similar to what went on in France
and Germany. The first half of the English Enlightenment――from 1690 to
1750――was absorbed in philosophical discussions; during the second half,
the period abandoned philosophy, and was engaged entirely in politics.
The classes that won in the Revolution of 1688 had little trouble in
maintaining their place of power. The peaceful coming of William and
Mary gave well-ordered conditions for intellectual development and for
a powerful literary movement. The Jacobites were crushed, and there
ensued a period of political peace. In the latter half of the century,
however, another set of topics came to the front. After 1750 politics
superseded philosophy; and whereas the keenest English minds had been
employed upon the theoretical “study of mankind” in literature and
philosophy, they now became engaged in practical political questions.
Political parties developed. The Court was arrayed against the families
of the Revolution, the American trouble, and the Wilkite agitations
were looming large. England was sucked into the political maelstrom
that was involving all Europe. Instead of deistic controversies with
the theological orthodoxy, dangerous political questions were appearing.
Instead of Hume’s _Essay_ and Butler’s _Analogy_ we have Burke’s
speeches, Adam Smith’s _Wealth of Nations_, Junius’s _Letters_, and
political pamphlets. In the first half of the period Bolingbroke had
left politics for philosophy; in the second half Priestley left his
laboratory for politics. The great change in English intellectual
interests is shown in Hume himself. In 1752 he turned from philosophy,
because there was so little interest in the subject, to the writing
of his history of England. Theology was paralyzed; deism was no longer
ridiculed; orthodoxy slumbered in its victory. The only philosophic
tones came from France, where Voltaire, the Encyclopædists, and
Rousseau were carrying out a movement that had its origin in England;
and, on the other hand, from Scotland and its reactionary school. But
the political movement always remained political in England, because
its institutions were not inflexible and because the English people are
by nature constitutional. In England there has never been a revolution,
in the true sense, but England’s progress has always been controlled by
tradition. Even the revolution in the English colonies in America was
caused by an abridgment of constitutional rights, and not by political
theory, although the formal Declaration of Independence was framed
under the influence of French philosophers.
=John Locke, Life and Writings= (1632–1704).[37] The life of Locke
falls into four periods.
1. _Student Life_ (1632–1666). Locke passed his first fourteen years
at home, which were the troublesome years of the Civil War. The next
six years were spent at the Westminster School in London. The last
fourteen years of this period were spent, first as student and then
as lecturer in Oxford. He took his Oxford degrees in 1660, the year
of the Restoration and the year in which the British Royal Society was
founded at Oxford. His dislike for the classics, which was begun at the
Westminster School, was confirmed by his Oxford studies. Consequently,
during the years of his perfunctory lecturing at Oxford (1660–1666),
his main interest was in physics. He was engaged in chemical,
meteorological, and especially medical observations. He was also
engaged in an amateur medical practice, in partnership with an old
physician.
The first turning point in his life came in 1666, when he was called
to attend the first Lord Shaftesbury, who had fallen ill at Oxford.
This accidental meeting was the beginning of a lasting friendship with
the Shaftesbury family, sustained by their common love for political,
religious, and intellectual liberty. The first Lord Shaftesbury was
the most notable statesman in the reign of Charles II; the third Lord
Shaftesbury was the greatest of English ethical scholars. Locke was the
trusted friend and beneficiary of the first Lord Shaftesbury, the tutor
of the second, and influenced, more than any one else, the ethical
productions of the third. Locke wrote some notes in this period on
the Roman Commonwealth, an essay on toleration, and made records of
physical observations.
2. _As Politician_ (1666–1683). During these seventeen years Locke’s
outward fortunes were intimately connected with the political career
of Shaftesbury. He held public office. He was made a member of the
Royal Society in 1668. The winter of 1670–1671 was important for
his intellectual fortunes and marks another turning point in his
life. It was then that he started the inquiry that led to his famous
_Essay_.[38] The _Essay_ was in the process of development during the
next nineteen years. He passed four years in retirement and in study in
France (1675–1679). He also at this time first conceived his _Essays on
Government_. Shaftesbury fled to Holland in November, 1682, and Locke a
few months later followed him.
3. _As Philosophical Author_ (1683–1691). The year 1689 divides this
period into two important parts. The first part (1683–1689) is not
only the period of his exile in Holland, but it is the time in which
he is composing and completing his three most important literary
works,――_Essay on the Human Understanding_, the two _Treatises on
Government_, the three _Epistles on Tolerance_. During the second
part (1689–1691) he published these, which was the time immediately
following his return to England. Newton’s _Principia_ was published
in 1687, and Locke’s _Essay_ in 1690――the one the foundation of modern
physical science, the other the beginning of modern psychology. The
appearance of these two works together with the Revolution in 1688
makes this point of time an important one in the history of the world.
4. _As Controversialist_ (1691–1704). Locke then began to write upon
almost every conceivable subject,――the coining of silver money, the
raising of the value of money, the culture of olives, etc. He was also
very busy in defending his philosophy against attacks. For him, until
1700 the period was one of controversy. At that time he retired from
all activity, and after four years of failing health died in 1704. His
period of production was confined to the eleven years between 1689 and
1700.
=The Sources of Locke’s Thought.= 1. _His Puritan Ancestry._ The
ancestry of Locke is little known, and not much that appears in his
personality can be explained by it. Both his father and mother were
Puritans, and he seems to have inherited the severe piety, prudent,
self-reliant industry, and love of liberty, that were common in English
Puritan families of the middle class in the seventeenth century. During
the first fourteen years he was schooled by his parents.
2. _His Training in Tolerance._ If Locke inherited in the least
degree any temper of intolerance from his Puritan ancestry it entirely
disappeared with his experiences before and during his life at the
University of Oxford. In 1646, at the Westminster School, his mind
revolted at the cruel intolerance on both sides in the events just
succeeding the Civil War. He also rebelled at the stern scholastic
training which he received. These negative influences were supplemented
by positive incentives to freedom and toleration during his university
life. John Owen was the liberal Vice-Chancellor of Oxford at that time,
and the university granted freedom of thought to all Protestants. Locke
felt Owen’s influence throughout his whole life. The fact that Locke’s
intimate friend at Oxford was Professor Pococke, the most outspoken
Royalist in the university, shows that whatever Puritanism there
was in Locke’s nature had been ameliorated. Tolerance and liberty of
opinion became now the key-note in the life of John Locke. “A gentle
disposition, great love for his friends, an honest seeking after truth,
and a firm faith in the importance of personal and political freedom
are the traits most remarkable in Locke as we know him from his books
and letters.” His toleration was not of the same sort as that of
his contemporary Leibnitz. Leibnitz sought to reconcile discordant
elements by combining them into a new dogmatic theory; Locke neglected
disagreements, sought no perfect harmony, but pointed out a _via media_
that any individual might take. Leibnitz set forth a metaphysical
system; Locke gave a practical method. He had great directness, and was
a man of honesty of thought. Not being a partisan he had no side to
defend; and he was not a partisan because philosophy was not his trade.
Philosophy was to Locke the accomplishment of a gentleman who was
interested in the puzzles of life. His diction is for ordinary people;
it is simple and expressed in short Anglo-Saxon words. He shows no
logic of thought; and while any sentence is admirable, the paragraph
and the page are dull. His _Essay_ is a chaos of plain truths, only
here and there illuminated by imagination. He shows no poetic power,
and the world in which he lived never fired his imagination. He studied
the human mind as he would read the thermometer. To our fathers his
_Essay_ was a philosophical Bible. To us the _Essay_ stands, not like
a completely planned building, but like an enlarged cottage, very
habitable, but making no single impression.
3. _The Scientific Influence._ As a fellow-countryman of Ockam and
the two Bacons, Locke shows the same anti-mystical and positivist
tendencies. He was a thorough Englishman in taste and temperament. When
the “new philosophy” was finding its way into the Oxford circle, he
was one of the first to welcome it. It came to the University through
books; the lecturers were still true to Aristotle. Descartes, Hobbes,
and Bacon were widely read, as was also Gassendi’s exposition of
Epicurus. Locke himself writes concerning the influence of Descartes
upon him. He gave up all thought of becoming a clergyman; and his
personal friendship for Bayle, a famous chemist, and for Sydenham, a no
less famous physician, interested him in the empirical method as they
applied it to chemistry and therapeutics. He owed his philosophical
awakening to Descartes and the Port Royal logic. The lucidity of
Descartes came to him as an inspiration of intellectual liberty;
although he afterwards used the principles that Descartes had taught
him to controvert his teacher’s doctrine.
During the first period of Locke’s life (1632–1666) he was nothing more
than a student of medicine and a meteorological observer. He was the
retired scholar who led so placid a life that it portended nothing
noteworthy. He was a creditable scholar and teacher, but his life was
negative in character. He had passed through stirring times, and they
did not stir him.
4. _The Political Influence._ Locke’s interest in politics began when
he was thirty-four years old――when he met Lord Ashley at Oxford. For
fifteen years he shared the home and fortune of this most remarkable
man of affairs in the reign of Charles II. This Lord Ashley (Earl of
Shaftesbury) fled to Holland in 1682, and died there the next year.
After the death of his patron Locke left England for exile in Holland
until 1689, when he returned to England with William and Mary. In
Holland he found a brilliant company, exiled from all countries; and
he formed an intimate friendship with Limborch, the leader of liberal
theology in Holland. Some of the time he lived with a Quaker. Locke’s
friendship with Shaftesbury and his residence in Holland confirmed him
in his belief in political liberty. So when William entered England and
needed literary justification for the Revolution, he got it in Locke’s
two _Treatises on Government_. Locke thus became the philosophical
defender and intellectual representative of the Revolution that now
after fifty years had reached its culmination.
=Summary.= On the whole, the inherited Puritanism of Locke was
easily modified not only by his own moderate disposition, but also
by his scientific interests and by his large political experiences.
He naturally grew to be the apostle of the _via media_ between
traditionalism and empiricism. He published practically nothing before
he was sixty years old. After his return from exile his principal
works appeared in swift succession. Two accidents formed turning-points
in his life. His accidental meeting with Shaftesbury in 1666 turned
him to politics; and secondly, at an informal meeting of friends in
the winter of 1670–1671 the question about the nature of sensations was
accidentally raised, out of which grew his great _Essay_. His life was
primarily one of affairs and of large acquaintance with men and things.
To him life was the first thing, his interest in politics came second,
and his philosophy third. That his ideas should have been the basis of
extreme philosophical and political beliefs on the Continent is natural
enough when one remembers the perils of misinterpretation to the man
who preaches the doctrine of the _via media_.
=The Purpose of Locke.= In the historical perspective of two
centuries we to-day see Locke in his _Essay on the Human Understanding_
delivering the inaugural address of the eighteenth century. He is
making the first formal declaration of the intellectual rights of the
individual in a lengthy, dry, and erudite psychological dissertation.
Of course he never knew the historical importance of his own work.
It grew out of the need of the hour. He would have been astonished to
find himself the spokesman of the century of French Encyclopædists,
materialists, and revolutionists, of English deists, of German
Illuminati, of Hume, and of Voltaire. He had in mind to answer the
restrictions of the high churchman on the one hand, and the arrogant
claims of the atheists on the other, as to the power of the human
intellect. He states that his design is to “inquire into the original
certainty and extent of human knowledge.” In this declaration Locke
foreshadows Kant, but he falls short of the insight of Kant. For Locke
speaks for the spirit of the eighteenth and not the nineteenth century,
and (1) he must keep within the range of concrete facts; (2) he must
state only what can be stated clearly; and (3) he must be practical.
It was, however, in its larger meaning a declaration of human freedom.
Locke shows what limitations the human intellect has, what it can and
what it cannot know. When the Enlightenment got momentum, it forgot the
limitations to knowledge that the sober Locke had set down, and read in
his words only a declaration of license. The _Essay_ differs from any
previous modern philosophical writing. Man and not the universe is the
subject. For the first time we find an examination of the laws of mind,
and not of the laws of the universe.
But it is the _via media_ for which Locke stands, and not the
lawless excesses of the eighteenth century. The human reason is not
all-knowing――cannot solve all problems, is not endowed with divine
ideas; on the other hand, the human reason is not merely a string of
sensations. The human reason is just this: it is _human_. It stands
midway between divine intuition and animal sensation. Man is free, but
free under his own limitations. “If by this inquiry it may be of use to
prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with
things beyond its comprehension――we should then not be so forward, out
of affection for universal knowledge, to perplex ourselves and others
with disputes about things, to which our understandings are not suited
and of which we have not any notions at all.” Human freedom stands
between the absolute freedom of God and the absolute necessity of
the animal. Human freedom lies within the limits and bounds of human
ideas――the _via media_; and analysis of those ideas will show what
those limits and bounds are. There can be no knowledge without ideas.
Some ideas may be erroneous and out of all relation to reality.
On the other hand, there may be ideas to which no experiences fit.
Intellectual freedom consists in having not isolated ideas, but ideas
in their relations, that is, in the form of judgments. Locke was
moved in making his analysis of ideas by a general moral purpose to
correct the faults and fallacies in mankind and in himself. “Man’s
faculties were given him to procure the happiness which this world
is capable of,” says Locke, and it might have been Bacon who had said
it. The search for the _via media_ is justified by its practical and
utilitarian ends. The _via media_ is the way of freedom.
=Two Sides of Locke’s Philosophy.= The search for the _via media_ is
an attempt to find “the limits and extent of human knowledge.” This
involved Locke in a discrimination as to what should be accepted and
what rejected of the past. It gives his philosophy a positive and a
negative aspect. In brief, on its negative side he makes a show of
rejecting the entire past by rejecting all innate ideas, but really he
inconsistently accepted from the past its conception of substance and
of individuality. On its positive side he builds up from experience a
theory of knowledge which he divides into intuitive, demonstrative, and
probable. That is to say, while Locke affirms that all our knowledge
must be derived from experience, it never occurs to him to doubt the
traditional Cartesian theory of the existence of God, man, and matter.
(a) =The Negative Side――Locke and Scholasticism.= Locke issued an
avowed defiance to scholasticism in the introduction of his _Essay_.
Of the four books into which the _Essay_ is divided, the first was
composed last and added as an introductory declaration of independence.
If it had been the only part ever written, the anarchism of the
eighteenth century would have been right in finding its justification
in the _Essay_. To a modern mind this first book looks harmless enough,
but in Locke’s time it had a deep sociological and political meaning.
It expresses his practical moral defiance of traditional mediævalism.
“There exist no innate ideas,” says Locke. Innate ideas mean to him
the tyranny of tradition――unexamined and unsubstantiated beliefs,
conceptions unverified by fact. They stand for church dogma imposed
upon the unthinking masses, the absolutism of monarchy and the divine
right of kings, the inherited superstitions about nature. Spinoza
had deduced his entire philosophy from the innate idea of substance;
Descartes had found at least three innate ideas; Leibnitz believed
all ideas innate. Locke pleads for the personal right to examine all
ideas. Locke’s critics have claimed that no philosopher ever maintained
the existence of innate ideas in the sense in which Locke attacked
them. Locke was aiming at something more vulnerable than innate ideas
themselves――he was attacking the mediæval habit of the individual who
takes a thing as true because the thing has the weight of traditional
authority.
(b) =The Positive Side――The New Psychology and Epistemology.= If
inherited ideas have no weight for Locke, he was bound to show the
kind of ideas upon which we can rely. The mind enters upon life with
no stock of ideas in trade; how do they arise? The logical outcome of
Locke’s disclaimer of scholastic psychology obliged him to construct
a new psychology and theory of knowledge. He must offer a psychology
as a constructive programme for the individualism of the Enlightenment.
In his second book Locke states the positive side of his doctrine
by saying that the mind is like a white paper without any original
markings; that it gets its markings from the impressions made upon it.
Thus to deny innate ideas and to affirm that all ideas are empirically
aroused, are the negative and positive sides of the same doctrine
of individualism. They are two ways of saying that the mind of the
individual is free to judge for itself of the truth or falseness of
its experiences.
In his denial of the existence of innate ideas, in his use of the
formula that “nothing is in the intellect that has not been first in
the sense,” or in his employment of the figure of the “white piece
of paper,” Locke does not intend to state anything further than that
the mind is free. He merely means that the individual starts without
trammels and prejudices. He does not mean that the mind is completely
passive and at the mercy of its environment, as his French followers
interpreted him. Locke is a sensationalist, but he does not belong to
that class who believe that our mental states are merely translated
sensations, and that the mind itself is merely passive. He believes
that the mind does not create its ideas, but that they are presented
to it. The mind has original powers upon which it can reflect. The mind
can operate with its ideas and make them into compounds. Thus one must
read Locke’s _Essay_ to the end to get his double point of view. In the
second and third books he frequently discusses the contents of the mind
as if the mind were passive, in the manner of modern psychologists. In
the fourth book he develops an epistemology on the assumption that the
mind is active and free.
=Locke’s Psychology.= The second and third books of the _Essay_ are
a discussion of the empirical sources of our ideas. One notes the
Cartesian dualism of mind and matter in the background. All ideas
have their source either externally in the impressions upon the bodily
senses, or internally in the operations of the mind itself. The sources
of ideas are either sensations or reflections, or, as Locke calls
them, “outer and inner perceptions.” Locke also calls them “simple
ideas,” being the units out of which the complex ideas are constructed.
We understand easily enough what Locke means by sensations, but
“reflections” is a word peculiar to him, which has not been taken up by
philosophy. He means by “reflections” a consciousness of the machinery
of the mind. We are, that is to say, conscious of our willing, loving,
remembering, etc. As to the order of their appearance in the mind,
the sensations are prior to the reflections and are the occasion
for the appearance of the reflections. The reflections are not the
process of transmitting the sensations, but they are the later and
mechanical transmutation of the sensations. It is important to note
that throughout Locke’s psychological analysis, he regards the mind as
passive, even with respect to the ideas of reflection. The reflections,
as faculties of the mind, are dependent on the sensations, and both
sensations and reflections make impressions upon a passive mind.
These “simple” ideas come into the crucible of the mind and form
“complex” ideas of various sorts. There are three general classes of
these complex ideas: substances, modes, and relations. The construction
of “complex ideas” out of “simple ideas” and the objects to which the
complex ideas refer receive a great variety of illustration at Locke’s
hands, but the details of his lengthy discussion need not detain us.
He is very painstaking; he shows hard common sense; but he is deficient
in logical classification and he often betrays much indecision. His
_Essay_ is of encyclopædic character in its derivation of all common
notions from “simple ideas.” The laws of association form the chemistry
by which he welds the “simple ideas” together.
Thus far Locke is empirical and consistent. However, the dualistic
background of the thought of his age makes him deviate from his
avowed empiricism. Besides the clear and simple ideas of sensation and
reflection Locke introduces the idea of the Self. What is the idea of
Self? It is not a sensation nor a reflection. It is not a complex idea,
derived from sensations and reflections. “It is an internal, infallible
perception that we are.” It is an accompaniment of the processes of
thought. It stands beside the ideas, which are empirically derived,
as an unexplained remainder. The result of Locke’s psychological
analysis is therefore that the inner world of the mind consists of the
combination of the simple ideas of sensation and reflection plus the
unexplained idea of the Self.
=Locke’s Theory of Knowledge.= Although Locke says that the purpose
of his _Essay_ is to show the limits and extent of human knowledge, he
does not reach this until the last book. The first three books form a
long introduction to the fourth book and his real theme. Here for the
first time he treats the mind as active; and here for the first time in
the history of thought the attempt is made to show what questions man
can answer with certainty, what with probability, and what are beyond
man’s knowledge.
All the difficulties in the assumptions of the Enlightenment come out
in Locke’s treatment of his main theme. Locke defines knowledge as the
“perception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas,” and yet he
says that knowledge is real only as ideas agree with things. That is
to say, Locke had assumed (in Book II of the _Essay_) the existence of
the material substance of things of the outer world, just as he assumed
the existence of the spiritual Self-substance of the inner world. What
is the nature of the outer material substance? Locke hesitates, and
the best he can answer is, “It is the unknown support and cause of
the union of several distinct, simple ideas.” Substance, to Locke,
is a word for something unknown. But does the mind know nothing about
substance? What information do our ideas convey to us of substance? We
have this knowledge: we know the _primary_ or constant, unchangeable
qualities of substances, and the _secondary_ or variable qualities
of substances. The _primary_ qualities of bodies are the same as
their effects in us, such as the extension of bodies, their solidity,
movement and rest, duration and position in time. The _secondary_
“are nothing in the objects themselves but powers to produce various
sensations in us by their primary qualities.” Secondary qualities
are sounds, colors, etc. In this confused statement it would seem
that substance stands as merely the nominal support of the _primary_
qualities, and the _primary_ qualities are the cause of the _secondary_
qualities.
Thus the individual stands forth free in the development of his
ideas, but he is an individual circumscribed by his dualistic
world. He belongs to the world of an unexplained spiritual substance
on the one hand, and he is surrounded by a world of an unknown
material substance on the other. There are three kinds of knowledge:
intuitive, demonstrative, and probable. Locke says that the individual
is intuitively certain of his own ideas. The individual has also
demonstrative knowledge――he can reason logically and mathematically.
But Locke’s real problem does not lie with intuitive and demonstrative
knowledge. The question that concerned him was rather, What is the
character of our knowledge of the external world? The individual in
the Enlightenment lived in a spiritual independence of matter, yet
he had a feeling of uncertainty about his hold upon a world of matter
so different from himself. It was a world foreign to his spiritual
essence. With the deepening of the mind within itself and with its
growing independence, the equally independent material world grew more
difficult and distant. Locke feels this difficulty. How can man know
this external world? How can the individual, with all his freedom,
bring the external world under his control?
Besides the certainty of intuitive and demonstrative knowledge, there
is a third kind according to Locke. This is the probable knowledge
of the nature world. We are certain of our sensations, but we are
not certain of what our sensations report. The highest degree which
our knowledge of the external world can attain is probability, or an
inference from many sources. Such knowledge is mere opinion, which
supplements certain knowledge and operates in the large field of our
daily existence. The spiritual individual stands in a kind of twilight
region with the dull wall of the material world of probable existence
looming up before him, the outlines of which he can barely discern.
On either side of this twilight existence lies the broad daylight of
intuitive and demonstrative knowledge, and around it all the absolute
darkness of ignorance. Our knowledge is much less than our ignorance
because our knowledge is limited to our ideas and their combinations.
=Locke’s Practical Philosophy.= Locke pursued the _via media_ in his
discussion of the practical problems that were at that time of burning
importance in English society. He always kept in mind the spiritual
man who is circumscribed by his own limitations. Morally, religiously,
and politically the individual has to conform to the conditions in
which he lives. But morality, religion, and government cannot get their
authority from ideas inborn in the mind. All are the outgrowths of
experience. The moral law, for example, is a law of nature, although at
the same time it is a law of God. It arises from experience, and at the
same time it has its root in God. To obey it is to be happy, to disobey
it is to be unhappy. The revelation of religion, too, may transcend
experience, but it must not contradict experience. In both religion and
morality the individual must be the final judge, for he is the arbiter
of his own happiness. Individual happiness is of more value than all
else. Religious toleration is therefore one of the first principles
of government, and between the church and the state there should be
no conflict.
Locke’s political philosophy is along the same _via media_. In his
_Treatises on Government_ he seeks to make good the title of King
William to the British throne. He justifies the right of the individual
to revolt under certain conditions. Political government is not a
sacred innate idea, but has arisen out of experience as conducive
to the happiness of man. The individuals and the government make a
contract to serve each other. When either violates the contract, the
State is at an end. To the advocates of the divine rights of kings,
like Filmer, political law antedated “nature”; to Hobbes, law came
after “nature”; to Locke, law is “nature.” To Filmer “nature” was a
golden age; to Hobbes it was a shocking state to be got rid of; to
Locke “nature” is harmony. Thus according to Locke the individual has
through his experiences constructed his morality, his religion, and his
government because they are conducive to his happiness, and at the same
time they have their ground in the “nature” of things. The individual
stands free among them, the central figure in the world.
=The Influence of Locke.= The philosophy of Locke became the
fountain-head of the many divergent schools of thought of the
Enlightenment. His _Essay_ did not contain anything fundamentally new,
and its presentation has little originality; but it voiced the thought
of the eighteenth century so easily, and with such skillful avoidance
of pitfalls, that it made Locke the most widely read and the most
influential philosopher of his time. Four separate movements had
their source in him: (1) From his theory of knowledge, in which the
emphasis is laid upon the mind as active, came the empirical idealism
of Berkeley and Hume; (2) from his psychological analysis in the
second and third books of the _Essay_, in which the mind is regarded
as passive, came the sensationalism of the French; (3) from his theory
of religion came Deism; (4) from his associationalistic ethics came
the utilitarian ethical theories of the English moralists. The most
constructive followers of Locke were Berkeley and Hume. The others
may be called the lesser Lockian schools; for although they may
have exercised a much greater influence upon their own time, they
were nevertheless only partial interpreters of Locke. We shall deal
briefly with Deism and Ethics in England, next consider at length the
philosophies of Berkeley and Hume, and then present in a summary but
articulate way the development of the Enlightenment in France and
Germany.
=The English Deists.= We have seen how Rationalism, especially
in the case of Descartes, tried at the beginning to reconstruct
theology without breaking with established dogma. Gradually, however,
rationalism and revealed religion showed signs of divorce. Some of
the rationalists came to take the stand that if reason can understand
the nature of God, revelation is either incredible or superfluous.
The revealed religions differ. The god of the mediæval people is not
the same as the god of the heathen nor as the Jehovah of the Jews.
There are many religions and many sects in each religion. There must
be to them all a common basis, which is the true religion. This was
the creed of Deism or Natural Religion. Positive religions are only
the corruptions of natural religion, or the religion of reason. Deism
sought to separate religion from special revelations, which were looked
upon as the irrational elements of religion. Bacon and Descartes had
freed natural science from church dogma; Hobbes had freed psychology
from the same dogma; Grotius had freed the conception of law from dogma.
The Deists would free religion from dogma.
Deism was founded on three principles; (1) the origin and truth of
religion may be scientifically investigated; (2) the origin of religion
is the conscience; (3) positive religions are degenerate forms of
natural religion. The tendency of the Enlightenment was deistical,
and the movement was powerful in England, France, and Germany. Deism
was quite consistent with the central principle of this period――the
self-sufficiency of the individual.
In England the first deist was Herbert of Cherbury (1581–1648), with
his “five fundamental propositions of religion.” The body of English
deists, however, got their cue from Locke’s identification of the moral
law with the law of nature; but Locke himself was not a deist. The
literature of deism coincides for the most part with the English moral
philosophy of the period, but usually the group of English deists is
supposed to include only Toland, Chubb, Tindal, Collins, Morgan, and
Bolingbroke. These men lived in the first half of the Enlightenment.
They were much despised by the scholars of the time as being mere
dabblers in letters. “They were but a ragged regiment whose whole
ammunition of learning was a trifle when compared with the abundant
stores of a single light of orthodoxy; whilst in speculative ability
they were children by the side of their antagonists.”[39]
The English deists passed from view at the end of the first half
of the eighteenth century, crushed by the weight of the attack upon
them. The more powerful orthodoxy, with its greater talent, was itself
rationalistic, and could beat them on their own ground. The churchmen
showed that the objections against the God of revelation would be
equally effective against the deistic God of nature. The classic
argument along this line against the deists is Bishop Butler’s _Analogy
of Religion_. The battle was unequal, and the character of the books
published during the controversy reveals the inequality of the contest.
The deistic publications were small and shabby octavos, and were
published anonymously. The orthodox publications were solid octavos
and quartos in handsome bindings, with the credentials of powerful
signatures. Even if the orthodoxy had not employed the arm of the
law against the deists, the deists would have been broken by the
intellectual force against them.
=The English Moralists.= Just as the motive of the deists was to
free religion from the authority of theology, so the motive of the
celebrated group of English moralists of the Enlightenment was to
find a basis for morality outside of church dogma. Many of the English
moralists were also deists in belief. Their number is legion, as the
list given below will show. The greatest among them was Shaftesbury.
The school began with Hobbes and received momentum from the
associational psychology of Locke. All the members of this group sought
to find an ultimate basis for morality――some seeking it with Locke in
experience, others in innate ideas. Yet the starting-point with each of
these moralists seems to be Hobbes and his selfish ethics, for nearly
all ethical scholars have his ethics in mind, either to attack or to
defend. For many years Hobbes was regarded by ethical scholars either
as an evil spirit or as an inspired genius. In any case, his influence
was felt in ethical discussion for a long time.
Chronological Table of the English Moralists.
1500 1600 1700 1800
Hobbes 88 .. 79 .. .. .. .. .. ..
Cudworth .. 17 88 .. .. .. .. .. ..
Locke .. 32 .. 04 .. .. .. .. ..
Cumberland .. .. 32 .. 18 .. .. .. ..
Wollaston .. .. 59 24 .. .. .. .. ..
Mandeville .. .. 70 .. 33 .. .. .. ..
Shaftesbury .. .. 71 13 .. .. .. .. ..
Clarke .. .. 75 .. 29 .. .. .. ..
Berkeley .. .. 85 .. .. 53 .. .. ..
Pope .. .. 88 .. 44 .. .. .. ..
Butler .. .. 92 .. .. 52 .. .. ..
Hutcheson .. .. 94 .. 47 .. .. .. ..
Edwards .. .. .. 03 .. 58 .. .. ..
Hartley .. .. .. 05 .. 57 .. .. ..
Tucker .. .. .. 05 .. .. 74 .. ..
Reid .. .. .. 10 .. .. 96 .. ..
Hume .. .. .. 11 .. .. 76 .. ..
Smith .. .. .. 23 .. .. 90 .. ..
Price .. .. .. 23 .. .. 91 .. ..
Paley .. .. .. .. 43 .. .. 05 ..
Bentham .. .. .. .. 47 .. .. 32 ..
Stewart .. .. .. .. .. 53 .. 28 ..
Whewell .. .. .. .. .. .. 95 .. 66
Mill .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 06 73