CONTROVERSY WITH STILLINGFLEET.--OTHER LITERARY OCCUPATIONS.--DOMESTIC
LIFE.--PETER KING.--LATTER YEARS.--DEATH.
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 antagonist, John Serjeant, or Sergeant, a
Roman Catholic priest; but to these critics Locke did not see fit
to reply. The strictures on Norris only appear among his posthumous
works. But in the autumn of 1696 Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester,
in his _Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity_,
pointedly drew attention to the principles of the _Essay_, as favouring
anti-Trinitarian doctrine. Stillingfleet's position and reputation
appeared to demand an answer, and before the year, according to the
old style, was out, Locke's _Letter to the Bishop of Worcester_ was
published. The Bishop's Answer, Locke's Reply to the Answer, and the
Bishop's "Answer to Mr. Locke's Second Letter, wherein his notion of
ideas is proved to be inconsistent with itself, and with the articles
of the Christian faith," all followed, one on the other, within a
few months. The last letter of the series is "Mr. Locke's Reply to
the Bishop of Worcester's Answer to his Second Letter," published in
1699. Stillingfleet died soon after the publication of this pamphlet,
and thus the voluminous controversy came to an end. There can be no
doubt that the antagonists were unequally matched. Stillingfleet was
clumsy both in handling and argument, and constantly misrepresented
or exaggerated the statements of his adversary. On the other hand,
Locke, notwithstanding an unnecessary prolixity which wearies the
modern reader, shows admirable skill and temper. He deals tenderly
with his victim, as if he loved him, but, none the less, never fails
to despatch him with a mortal stab. Stillingfleet, indeed, was no
metaphysician, and not very much of a logician. He did not see at
all clearly where the orthodox doctrines were affected, and where
they remained unaffected, by Locke's philosophy, and he no doubt
considerably exaggerated the bearing of Locke's direct statements upon
them. At the same time, it is impossible to deny that his instincts
were perfectly sound in apprehending grave dangers to the current
theological opinions, and still more, perhaps, to the established
mode of expressing them, from the "new way of ideas." Religious, and
even devout, as are those portions of the _Essay_ in which Locke has
occasion expressly to mention the leading principles of the Christian
faith, yet his handling of many of the metaphysical terms and notions
which modern divines, whether Catholic or Protestant, had taken on
trust from their predecessors, the fathers and schoolmen, was well
calculated to alarm those who had the interest of theological orthodoxy
at heart. The playful freedom with which he discusses the idea of
substance seemed, not unreasonably, to strike at the terminology of
the Athanasian Creed, while, most unreasonably, his resolution of
personal identity into present and recollected states of consciousness
appeared inconsistent with the doctrine of the Resurrection of the
Dead. A far more powerful solvent, however, of the unreflecting and
complacent orthodoxy, into which established churches, and, in fact,
all prosperous religious communities, are apt to lapse, was to be
found in the general drift and tendency rather than in the individual
tenets of Locke's philosophy. And this fact, though only very dimly and
confusedly, Stillingfleet appears to have seen. To insist that words
shall always stand for determinate ideas, to attempt to trace ideas
to their original sources, and to propose to discriminate between the
certainty and varying probabilities of our beliefs, according to the
nature of the evidence on which they rest, is to encourage a state of
mind diametrically the opposite of that which humbly and thankfully
accepts the words of the religious teacher, without doubt and without
inquiry. To the religious teacher whose own beliefs rest on no previous
inquiry, who has never acquired "a reason for the faith that is in
him," such a state of mind must necessarily be not only inconvenient
but repulsive; and hence we have no right to feel surprised when an
attempt is made to expose it to popular odium, or to fasten on those
who entertain it injurious or opprobrious epithets. The old-standing
feud, of which Plato speaks, between poetry and philosophy, has in
great measure been transferred, in these latter times, to philosophy
and theology. But in both cases the antagonism is an unnecessary one.
The highest art is compatible with the most profound speculation. And
so we may venture to hope that the simple love of truth, combined, with
the charity "which never faileth," will lead men not further away from
the Divine presence, but nearer to, and into it.
Here I thankfully take leave of the mass of controversial literature,
in the writing of which so much of Locke's latter life was spent. The
controversies were not of his own seeking, and, from all that we know
of his temper and character, must have been as distasteful to him as
they are wearisome to us. But prolonged and reiterated controversy
was of the habit of the time, and no man who cared candidly and
unreservedly to express his opinions on any important question could
hope to escape from it.
* * * * *
In the autumn of 1697, while the controversy with Stillingfleet was
at its hottest, Locke wrote to Molyneux:--"I had much rather be at
leisure to make some additions to my book of Education and my Essay
on Human Understanding, than be employed to defend myself against the
groundless, and, as others think, trifling quarrel of the bishop." He
was at this time engaged on preparing the fourth edition of the _Essay_
for the press. In addition to this task, or rather as part of it, he
was also employing himself on writing the admirable little tract on
the Conduct of the Understanding, the contents of which I shall notice
in a subsequent chapter. This treatise, which was not published till
after his death, was originally intended as an additional chapter to
the _Essay_. Speaking of it in one of his letters to Molyneux, he
says:--"I have written several pages on this subject; but the matter,
the farther I go, opens the more upon me, and I cannot yet get sight of
any end of it. The title of the chapter will be 'Of the Conduct of the
Understanding,' which, if I shall pursue as far as I imagine it will
reach, and as it deserves, will, I conclude, make the largest chapter
of my Essay." It did not, however, appear in the new edition, nor did
Locke ever reduce its parts into order, or put the finishing stroke
to it. He may, perhaps, have intended to revise it for a subsequent
edition of the _Essay_, but the fourth was the last which appeared
during his lifetime.
* * * * *
Before speaking of the literary labours which occupied the last
years of Locke's life, I may here conveniently recur to his domestic
history. Of his quiet life with the Mashams little more need be said.
Had Lady Masham been his daughter, she could not have tended him more
carefully or lovingly; and had he been her father, he could not have
entertained a more sincere solicitude for the welfare of her and her
family. All Locke's friends were welcome at Oates, and seem to have
been regarded quite as much as friends of the Mashams as of his own.
And Oates appears in every respect to have been as much Locke's home
as that of its owners. In the whole of his correspondence, there does
not appear the slightest trace of those petty piques and annoyances,
those small _désagréments_, which are so apt to grow up among people
who live much together, even when, at bottom, they entertain a deep
love and admiration for each other. On the side of the Mashams we know
that the tide of affection ran equally smooth. Lady Masham and Esther
acted as his nurses, and with one or other of them he seems to have
shared all his pursuits. The intimacy and sweetness of these relations
surely imply as rare an amount of amiability of temper and power of
winning regard on the one side, as of patience and devotion on the
other. But then Locke possessed the inestimable gift of cheerfulness,
which renders even the invalid's chamber a joy to those who enter it.
All the glimpses we obtain of the life, at Oates represent it as
a gay and pleasant one, none the less gay and pleasant because its
enjoyments were modest and rational. After complaining to Molyneux of
the persistent asthma which confined him a close prisoner to the house
during the winter of 1697-98, he adds, "I wish, nevertheless, that
you were here with me to see how well I am; for you would find that,
sitting by the fireside, I could bear my part in discoursing, laughing,
and being merry with you, as well as ever I could in my life. If you
were here (and if wishes of more than one could bring you, you would
be here to-day) you would find three or four in the parlour after
dinner, who, you would say, passed their afternoons as agreeably and
as jocundly as any people you have this good while met with." Locke's
conversation is reported to have been peculiarly fascinating. He had a
large stock of stories, and is said to have had a singularly easy and
humorous way of telling them.
Among the more frequent guests at Oates at this time were Edward Clarke
and his daughter Betty, Locke's "little wife," now fast growing up to
womanhood, a son of Limborch, and a son of Benjamin Furly, both engaged
in mercantile pursuits in London, and a young kinsman of Locke's own,
Peter King, of whom I shall have more to say presently. One of the most
anxiously expected guests, whose visits had been often promised and
often deferred, was the correspondent of whom we have heard so much,
William Molyneux. At length, after the rising of the British Parliament
in the summer of 1698, the two friends met. Even on this occasion,
Molyneux had been obliged to defer his promised visit for some weeks,
on account of a recent trouble which he had brought on himself by
the publication of a "home-rule" pamphlet, protesting against the
interference of the English Parliament in Irish affairs. Both Houses
had joined in an address to the king, praying for punishment on the
offender; but the king, possibly through Locke's intervention, had
wisely taken no notice of the petition. Any way, after the prorogation,
Molyneux seems to have felt sufficiently secure to venture on a journey
across the Channel. He and Locke were together for some time both in
London and at Oates. The friends, though they had been in such constant
and intimate correspondence for six years, had never met before. We
may easily imagine how warm was their greeting, how much they had to
talk about, and how loath they were to separate. "I will venture to
assert to you," wrote Molyneux on his return to Dublin, "that I cannot
recollect, through the whole course of my life, such signal instances
of real friendship as when I had the happiness of your company for five
weeks together in London. That part thereof especially which I passed
at Oates has made such an agreeable impression on my mind that nothing
can be more pleasing." Shortly after writing this letter, Molyneux died
at the early age of forty-two. "His worth and his friendship to me,"
writes Locke, in a letter to Burridge, the Latin translator of the
_Essay_, "made him an inestimable treasure, which I must regret the
loss of the little remainder of my life, without any hopes of repairing
it any way." He then characteristically goes on to ask if there is any
service he can render to Molyneux's son. "They who have the care of him
cannot do me a greater pleasure than to give me the opportunity to show
that my friendship died not with his father." One of the most amiable
and attractive traits in Locke's character is the eagerness which he
always displayed in advising, encouraging, or helping forward the sons
of his friends. Any opportunity of doing so always gave him the most
evident satisfaction, as, from his correspondence, we see in the case
of Frank Masham, the two young Furlys, young Limborch, and numerous
others.
I must now no longer delay the introduction to the reader of Locke's
young cousin, Peter King. Locke had an uncle, Peter Locke, whose
daughter Anne had married Jeremy King, a grocer and salter in a
substantial way of business at Exeter. Such a marriage was not
necessarily any disparagement to Anne Locke's family, as the present
line of demarcation between professional men and the smaller gentry,
on the one side, and substantial retail tradesmen, on the other,
hardly existed at that time. They had a son, Peter, born in 1669, who
was consequently Locke's first cousin once removed. The boy seems
for some time to have been employed in his father's business, but he
had a voracious appetite for books, and showed a decided talent for
the acquisition of learning. Locke, on one of his visits to Exeter,
discovered these qualities, and persuaded Peter King's parents to
allow him to change his mode of life, and study for one of the learned
professions. Whether he went to any English school does not appear;
but, during Locke's stay in Holland, he resided for some time in the
University of Leyden. His studies there embraced at least classics,
theology, and law; and when he returned to England, apparently in
1690, he brought back with him a pamphlet entitled _An Enquiry into
the Constitution and Discipline of the Primitive Church_. As in this
treatise he maintained that Presbyterianism was the original form
of Church government, he probably never had any serious intention,
notwithstanding his theological proclivities of entering holy orders
in the Established Church. Any way, in October, 1694, he was entered
a student of the Middle Temple; and in Trinity Term, 1698, he was
called to the bar. During his residence in London as a law student,
he must have been frequently at Oates, and Locke must have frequently
visited him in his chambers in the Temple. The first extant letter
from Locke to King, dated June 27, 1698, at any rate, assumes intimacy
and frequency of intercourse. "Your company here had been ten times
welcomer than any the best excuse you could send; but you may now
pretend to be a man of business, and there can be nothing said to you."
Very sound was the advice with which the elder relative concluded his
letter to the young barrister: "When you first open your mouth at the
bar, it should be in some easy plain matter that you are perfectly
master of." King's success in his profession was very rapid, and he
soon became one of the most popular counsel on the Western Circuit. In
the general election of 1700 he attained one of the first objects of
ambition at which a rising young barrister generally aims--a seat in
the House of Commons. Owing, probably, to his cousin's influence with
the Whig leaders, he was returned for the small borough of Beer Alston,
in Devonshire, which he continued to represent in several successive
Parliaments. Locke, writing to him shortly before the meeting of
Parliament, entreats him not to go circuit, as he had intended to
do, but to devote himself at once to his Parliamentary duties. "I am
sure there was never so critical a time, when every honest member of
Parliament ought to watch his trust, and that you will see before the
end of the next vacation." The loss to his pocket, his good relative
intimates, delicately enough, shall be amply made up to him. King took
his cousin's advice on this point, but, fortunately and wisely, did
not take it on another. "My advice to you is not to speak at all in
the House for some time, whatever fair opportunity you may seem to
have." King was advised to communicate his "light or apprehensions"
to some "honest speaker," who might make use of them for him. Locke,
we must remember, was now becoming old, and though not, like many old
men, jealous of his juniors, he could not escape the infirmity of all
old men, that of exaggerating the youthfulness of youth, and so of
insisting too stringently on the modesty becoming those in whom he was
interested. King broke the ice soon after the meeting of Parliament,
and Locke had the prudence and good-nature to show no resentment at
his advice having been neglected. His cousin, however, never became
a great Parliamentary speaker; but he soon gained a reputation for
being a thoroughly sound lawyer and a thoroughly honest man. He rose
successively to be Recorder of London, Lord Chief Justice of the Common
Pleas, and Lord High Chancellor of England. He was also ennobled as
Lord King of Ockham, and, by a very curious coincidence, his four
sons in succession bore the same title. To one of his descendants,
his great-grandson, also named Peter, we owe the publication of many
documents and letters connected with Locke, and the biography so well
known as _Lord King's Life of Locke_. The present representative of
the family, and the direct descendant in the male line of Peter King,
is the Earl of Lovelace. As Peter King was, to all intents, Locke's
adopted son, we may thus regard Locke as the founder of an illustrious
line in the English peerage, and there are certainly few, if any, of
our ennobled families who can point to a founder whose name is so
likely to be the heritage of all future ages.
King kept Locke well posted in all that went on in Parliament, and
seems also to have been a constant visitor at Oates. Soon after his
election, Sir Francis Masham had considerately proposed to Locke that
his cousin should "steal down sometimes with him on Saturday, and
return on Monday." On one of these occasions, in the Easter holidays of
1701, King was accompanied by young Lord Ashley, now become the third
Earl of Shaftesbury. Locke had then surmounted his winter troubles, and
his old pupil pronounces him as well as he had ever known him.
Amongst Locke's correspondents in these years was the celebrated
physician, Dr. Sloane, now Secretary of the Royal Society, afterwards
created Sir Hans Sloane. In writing to him at the end of the century,
evidently in answer to a request, Locke proposes a scheme for
rectifying the calendar. Notwithstanding the reformation which had
already taken place in many foreign countries, it will be recollected
that the English year then began on the 25th of March, instead of the
1st of January, and that, by reckoning the year at exactly 365¼ days,
or at 11 m. 14 sec. longer than its actual length, our time lagged
ten days behind that of most other European countries, as well as
the real solar time. The inconvenience, especially in transactions
with foreign merchants, had become very great. The advent of the
new century, inasmuch as the centenary year would be counted as a
leap-year in England, but not in other countries where the new style or
Gregorian calendar prevailed, would add an eleventh day to the amount
of discrepancy, and hence the subject was now attracting more than
ordinary attention. Locke's remedy was to omit the intercalar day in
the year 1700, according to the rule of the Gregorian calendar, as also
for the ten next leap-years following, "by which easy way," he says,
"we should in forty-four years insensibly return to the new style."
"This," he adds, "I call an easy way, because it would be without
prejudice or disturbance to any one's civil rights, which, by lopping
off ten or eleven days at once in any one year, might perhaps receive
inconvenience, the only objection that ever I heard made against
rectifying our account." He also suggested that the year should begin,
as in most other European countries, on the 1st of January. No change,
however, was made till, by an Act of Parliament passed in 1750-51, it
was ordered that the year 1752 should begin on the 1st of January, and
that the day succeeding the 2nd of September in that year should be
reckoned as the 14th. Locke's other correspondence with Sloane shows
the interest which he still took in medical matters, and how ready he
always was to expend time and thought on attending to the ailments of
his poor neighbours at Oates.
During the latter years of Locke's life his principal literary
employment consisted in paraphrasing and writing commentaries on some
of St. Paul's epistles. He thought that this portion of Scripture
offered peculiar difficulties, and finding, as he says, that he did
not understand it himself, he set to work, rather for his own sake,
and perhaps also that of the household at Oates, than with any view of
publication, to attempt to clear up its obscurities. The labour was a
work of love; and to a man of Locke's devout disposition, with almost a
child-like confidence in the guidance of Scripture, the occupation must
have afforded a peculiar solace in the intervals of his disease, and
as he felt that he was rapidly approaching the confines of that other
world which had so long been familiar to his thoughts. Though he was
induced to consent to the publication of these commentaries, and though
he himself prepared an introduction to them, they did not appear till
after his death. They were then issued by instalments, coming out at
intervals between 1705 and 1707 inclusively.
Locke's political interests, always keen, were specially active in
the winter of 1701-02. England was just then on the point of engaging
in the war of the Spanish Succession. In the previous September an
alliance against France and Spain had been concluded between the
emperor and the two great maritime powers, England and Holland. Almost
immediately after the conclusion of this treaty, James the Second
had died at St. Germain, and not only had the French king allowed
his son to be proclaimed King of England but had himself received
him with royal honors at the court of Versailles. The patriotic and
Protestant feeling of the country was thoroughly roused, and the new
Parliament, which met on the 30th of December, was prepared to take
the most energetic measures for the purpose of supporting the national
honor and the Protestant succession. The king's speech, on opening the
Parliament, excited an outburst of enthusiasm throughout the nation. He
conjured the members to disappoint the hopes of their enemies by their
unanimity. As he was ready to show himself the common father of his
people, he exhorted them to cast out the spirit of party and division,
so that there might no longer be any distinction but between those who
were friends to the Protestant religion and the present establishment,
and those who wished for a popish prince and a French government. The
speech was printed in English, Dutch, and French, framed, and hung up,
as an article of furniture, in the houses of good Protestants, both
at home and abroad. Locke, writing to Peter King four days after the
meeting of Parliament, asks him to send a copy of the king's speech,
"printed by itself, and without paring off the edges." He suggests
that, in addition to what the two Houses had done, the city of London
and counties of England should, "with joined hearts and hands return
his Majesty addresses of thanks for his taking such care of them."
"Think of this with yourself," he says, "and think of it with others
who can and ought to think how to save us out of the hands of France,
into which we must fall, unless the whole nation exert its utmost
vigour, and that speedily." He is specially urgent on his cousin not to
leave town, or to think of circuit business, till the kingdom has been
put in an effectual state of defence. "I think it no good husbandry
for a man to get a few fees on circuit and lose Westminster Hall." By
losing Westminster Hall he does not, apparently, mean losing the chance
of a judgeship, but forfeiting those rights and liberties, and that
personal and national independence which the Revolution had only so
lately restored. "For, I assure you, Westminster Hall is at stake, and
I wonder how any one of the house can sleep till he sees England in
a better state of defence, and how he can talk of anything else till
that is done." But a majority, at least, of the House of Commons was
fully alive to its responsibilities; enormous supplies were voted, and
almost every conceivable measure was taken for securing the Protestant
succession to the crown. A few days after Locke wrote the letter last
quoted, King William died. His reflections on that event or on the
political prospects under William's successor, we do not possess.
As the war proceeded, Locke's old friend, the Earl of Monmouth, now
become Earl of Peterborough, was entrusted with a naval expedition
against the Spanish possessions in the West Indies. He had a great
desire to see Locke before his departure, and, Locke being unable to
come up to London, he and the Countess drove down to Oates about the
middle of November, 1702. It is characteristic of the times that Locke
was "much in pain" about their getting back safely to town, the days
being then so short. His young friend, Arent Furly, who was also a
protégé and frequent correspondent of Lord Shaftesbury, went out as
Lord Peterborough's secretary, and seems to have acquitted himself
in the position with marked diligence and success. The early promise
which he gave, however, was soon blighted. This young play-fellow and
foster-child, as he might almost have been called, of Locke, died
only a few years after him, in 1711 or 1712. Before accompanying Lord
Peterborough on his expedition, he had been living for some time, first
at Oates, and afterwards in lodgings in the neighbourhood, for the
purpose of learning English.
It is gratifying to find that, during the autumn of this year, Locke
had received a visit from Newton. During the discussion of the
re-coinage question, and the active operations which followed for the
purpose of carrying out the decisions of Parliament, they must have
been thrown a good deal together. Montague declared that, had it not
been for the energetic measures taken by Newton, as Warden of the Mint,
the re-coinage would never have been effected. When, however, Newton
came down to visit Locke at Oates, in 1702, their conversation seems to
have turned mainly on theological topics. Locke showed Newton his notes
upon the Corinthians, and Newton requested the loan of them. But, like
most borrowers, he neglected to return them, nor did he take any notice
of a letter from Locke, who was naturally very anxious to recover
his manuscript. Peter King was asked to try to manage the matter.
He was to call at Newton's residence in Jermyn Street, to deliver a
second note, and to find out, if he could, the reasons of Newton's
silence, and of his having kept the papers so long. But he was to do
this "with all the tenderness in the world," for "he is a nice man to
deal with, and a little too apt to raise in himself suspicions where
there is no ground." The emissary was also, if he could do it with
sufficient adroitness, to discover Newton's opinion of the Commentary.
But he was by no means to give the slightest cause of offence. "Mr.
Newton is really a very valuable man, not only for his wonderful skill
in mathematics, but in divinity too, and his great knowledge in the
Scriptures, wherein I know few his equals. And therefore pray manage
the whole matter so as not only to preserve me in his good opinion,
but to increase me in it; and be sure to press him to nothing but what
he is forward in himself to do." In this letter Locke, notwithstanding
the caution with which he felt it necessary to approach one of so
susceptible a temperament, says, "I have several reasons to think him
truly my friend." And in this generous judgment there can be little
doubt he was right. The friends probably never met again, but Newton is
said to have paid a visit, on one of his journeys perhaps from London
to Cambridge, to Locke's tomb at High Laver. Peter King succeeded in
recovering the manuscript, and at the same time or soon afterwards
there came a letter, criticising one of Locke's interpretations, but
expressing a general opinion that the "paraphrase and commentary on
these two epistles is done with very great care and judgment."
Something should here be said of two friends whom Locke had made
in later life, one of whom seems to have been constantly about him
during his last years. The less intimate of these was Samuel Bolde, a
Dorsetshire clergyman, who had come forward, in 1697, to defend the
_Reasonableness of Christianity_ against Edwards' attacks, and who
afterwards did Locke a similar service in replying to the assailants of
the _Essay_. He was one of Locke's correspondents, and once at least
paid him a visit at Oates. Bolde's outspokenness and independence of
judgment naturally excited Locke's admiration. There are some memorable
sentences in a letter written to him in 1699. "To be learned in the
lump by other men's thoughts, and to be in the right by saying after
others, is the much easier and quieter way; but how a rational man,
that should inquire and know for himself, can content himself with a
faith or a religion taken upon trust, or with such a servile submission
of his understanding as to admit all and nothing else but what fashion
makes passable among men, is to me astonishing. I do not wonder you
should have, in many points, different apprehensions from what you meet
with in authors. With a free mind, which unbiassedly pursues truth, it
cannot be otherwise." After expanding these thoughts, and applying them
to the study of Scripture, he goes on to advise Bolde how to supply a
mental defect that he had complained of, namely, that "he lost many
things because they slipped from him." The simple method was to write
them down as they occurred. "The great help to the memory is writing,"
Bacon had said. Locke emphasizes the dictum, and adds, "If you have not
tried it, you cannot imagine the difference there is in studying with
and without a pen in your hand." "The thoughts that come unsought, and
as it were dropped into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any
we have, and therefore should be secured, because they seldom return
again."
The other friend, whose acquaintance had only been made during these
later years, was Anthony Collins, who was not more than twenty-eight
years of age when Locke died. Collins afterwards attained great
celebrity as a Deistical writer, but none of his theological works
appeared till some time after Locke's death. Locke, with his sincere
and simple belief in the divine origin of the Christian Revelation,
would doubtless, had he lived to see them, have been shocked with
their matter, and still more with their style. But at the present time
Collins presented himself to him simply in the light of an ingenuous
young man, with rare conversational powers and wide interests, and with
what Locke valued far more, an eager desire to find out the truth. No
one can have read the tracts, _An Enquiry concerning Human Liberty_,
and _Liberty and Necessity_, without recognizing the acuteness and
directness of Collins' intellect, and these, we know, were qualities
always peculiarly acceptable to Locke. Moreover, to encourage and bring
forward younger men had invariably been one of his main delights. Hence
we may, perhaps, abate our surprise at the apparently exaggerated
language in which he addresses this friend, who was so much his junior
in age, and who must have become known to him only so recently. "Why
do you make yourself so necessary to me? I thought myself pretty loose
from the world; but I feel you begin to fasten me to it again. For you
make my life, since I have had your friendship, much more valuable to
me than it was before." "If I were now setting out in the world, I
should think it my great happiness to have such a companion as you,
who had a relish for truth, would in earnest seek it with me, from
whom I might receive it undisguised, and to whom I might communicate
freely what I thought true. Believe it, my good friend, to love truth
for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this
world and the seed-plot of all other virtues, and, if I mistake not,
you have as much of it as I ever met with in anybody." Then he adds
pathetically, but with a tone of hopefulness in the labours of others
which is not commonly found amongst old men, "When I consider how much
of my life has been trifled away in beaten tracks, where I vamped on
with others only to follow those that went before us, I cannot but
think I have just as much reason to be proud as if I had travelled
all England, and, if you will, France too, only to acquaint myself
with the roads and be able to tell how the highways lie, wherein
those of equipage, and even the herd too, travel. Now, methinks--and
these are often old men's dreams--I see openings to truth and direct
paths leading to it, wherein a little industry and application would
settle one's mind with satisfaction, and leave no darkness or doubt.
But this is at the end of my day, when my sun is setting; and though
the prospect it has given me be what I would not for anything be
without--there is so much irresistible truth, beauty, and consistency
in it--yet it is for one of your age, I think I ought to say for
yourself, to set about it." What were those "openings to truth and
direct paths leading to it?" Were they merely the delusive visions of
an old man's fancies, or had he really formed wider conceptions of
science, and pictured to himself more precise and fertile methods of
reaching it? The sciences, it is needless to observe, have grown vastly
since Locke's day; the methods of scientific research are far more
numerous, more accurate, richer in their results. Had Locke, in his
thoughts at this time, at all anticipated the courses which inquiry and
knowledge have since taken?
The letter to Collins, from which I have just quoted, was written on
Oct. 29, 1703. Within a year of that date the end came. The wonder,
indeed, is that, with his persistent malady, aggravated apparently in
these latter years with other disorders, Locke's life had continued
so long. The reasons are probably to be sought in his unfailing
cheerfulness, in the variety of interests which diverted his mind from
the thought of his own ailments, and in the judicious manner in which
he regulated his exercise and diet. Of these personal traits something
may conveniently here be said. The remarkable cheerfulness of his
disposition, his lively sense of humour, and his power of extracting
amusement from all that was going on around him, have frequently come
before us in the course of this biography. His temper was not moody,
like that of so many men of letters, but pre-eminently sociable. When
not actually engaged in his studies, he always liked to be in company,
and enjoyed especially the society of young people and children. He had
a happy knack of talking to his companions for the time being on the
subjects which interested them most, and in this way he gained a very
extensive knowledge of the various kinds of business, and of a variety
of arts and crafts. To working people he was often able to give very
useful hints as to their own employments. This union of conversational
qualities, grave and gay, invariably made him a welcome addition to
any company, young or old, gentle or simple. An even temper, and a
combination of happy gifts of this kind, will carry a man through
much suffering, bodily and mental. From any mental troubles, on his
own account, Locke seems, during these latter years of his life,
to have been remarkably free. From bodily suffering he was rarely
exempt, but he always endured it with resignation, and endeavoured to
obviate its causes by every precaution, which his prudence or medical
skill suggested. Thus, we have seen that, whenever it was possible,
he preferred the quiet life and pure air of the country to the many
attractions which the capital must have offered to a man with his wide
acquaintance, and with so many political and literary interests. In
diet he practised an abstemiousness very rare among men of that age.
His ordinary drink was water, and to this habit he attributed not only
his length of years, but also the extraordinary excellence of his
eyesight. Till recently, a curious relic of Locke's water-drinking
habits was preserved in the shape of a large mortar of spongy stone,
which acted as a natural filter, and which he used to call his
brew-house. He was assiduous in taking exercise, and was specially fond
of walking and gardening. In the latter years of his life he used to
ride out slowly every day after dinner. When advising his friend Clarke
about his health, he says, "I know nothing so likely to produce quiet
sleep as riding about gently in the air for many hours every day," and
then, like a truly wise doctor, he adds, "If your mind can be brought
to contribute a little its part to the laying aside troublesome ideas,
I could hope this may do much." At last, when he was no longer able
to sit on horseback, he commissioned Collins to have an open carriage
specially made for him, the principle on which it was to be constructed
being that "convenient carries it before ornamental."
In November, 1703, the Heads of Houses at Oxford--who at that time
constituted the governing body, and through whose repressive and
reactionary administration the evil genius of Laud then and long
afterwards continued to cast a blight on the University--resolved to
discourage the reading of Locke's _Essay_. The attempt was futile, as
they relied, not on coercion, but on the influence of their authority,
which appears to have been held very cheap. Locke was now far too
eminent a man to be troubled by so anile a demonstration of folly. "I
take what has been done as a recommendation of my book to the world,"
he says, in a letter to Collins; and then he promises himself and his
friend much merriment on the subject when they next meet.
Locke's last literary labour appears to have been his _Fourth Letter
for Toleration_. Jonas Proast, after a long interval, had returned to
the charge in a pamphlet published in 1704; and Locke, unfortunately,
thought it incumbent on him to reply, though he had long ceased to
pay any regard to the assailants of the _Essay_. The _Letter_ is
unfinished. Its last words cannot have been written long before Locke's
death.
The winter of 1703-04 seems to have been peculiarly trying to his
health. He hardly expected to live through it; but he still maintained
his cheerfulness, and followed his usual employments. On the 11th of
April, 1704, he made his will--perhaps not his first. To most of his
friends, relatives, and dependents he left some remembrance; but the
bulk of his personal property be left to Frank Masham and Peter King,
the latter of whom was sole executor and residuary legatee. All his
manuscripts were left to King. Many of these were published for the
first time by the seventh Lord King, in his _Life of Locke_. His land
he designedly did not will, and so it devolved by law, in equal shares,
on his two cousins, Peter King and Peter Stratton. His funeral was to
be conducted without any ostentation, and what it would otherwise have
cost was to be divided amongst four poor labourers at Oates.
The approach of summer had not its usual restorative effect upon him.
On the other hand, all the bad symptoms of his disease increased. To
use his own expression, "the dissolution of the cottage was not far
off." In a letter, written on the 1st of June, he earnestly pressed
King to come to him, that he might pass some of the last hours of his
life "in the conversation of one who is not only the nearest but the
dearest to me of any man in the world." Both King and Collins seem to
have visited him frequently during the last months of his life; and
their society being cheerful, and the topics of their conversation
interesting, he appears to have taken great pleasure in their company.
He did not, however, find equal enjoyment in the visit of Dr. Edward
Fowler, Bishop of Gloucester, who, like himself, was in a bad state of
health. "I find two groaning people make but an uncomfortable concert."
The moral he draws is, that men should enjoy their health and youth
while they have it, "to all the advantages and improvements of an
innocent and pleasant life," remembering that merciless old age is in
pursuit of them. The lamp of life was now dimly flickering, but once
more it burnt up in the socket before going out forever. Peter King
had been married on the 10th of September, and he and his bride must
be received with all due honours at Oates. King was asked to cater for
his own wedding feast, and goodly and dainty is the list of delicacies
which he was to buy. But something, perhaps, might be omitted in which
Mrs. King took special delight. "If there be anything that you can
find your wife loves, be sure that provision be made of that, and
plentifully, whether I have mentioned it or no." The feast was to be
cooked by "John Gray, who was bred up in my Lord Shaftesbury's kitchen,
and was my Lady Dowager's cook." The wedded pair arrived at Oates
towards the end of the month, and well can we picture to ourselves the
pride and pleasure with which the genial old man entertained the wife
of his cousin and adopted son--the adopted son whom he had rescued
from the grocer's shop at Exeter, and whose future eminence he must
now have pretty clearly foreseen. A few days after King left Oates, he
solemnly committed to him by letter the care of Frank Masham. "It is my
earnest request to you to take care of the youngest son of Sir Francis
and Lady Masham in all his concerns, as if he were your brother. Take
care to make him a good, an honest, and an upright man. I have left my
directions with him to follow your advice, and I know he will do it;
for he never refused to do what I told him was fit." Then, turning to
King himself, he says, "I wish you all manner of prosperity in this
world, and the everlasting happiness of the world to come. That I loved
you, I think you are convinced."
Peter King certainly executed the dying request of his cousin, so
far as Frank Masham's material interests were concerned. Soon after
he became Lord Chancellor, Frank Masham was appointed to the newly
constituted office of Accountant-General in the Court of Chancery, a
lucrative post, conferring the same status as a Mastership.
Locke retained his faculties and his cheerfulness to the last; but he
grew gradually weaker day by day. "Few people," says Lady Masham, "do
so sensibly see death approach them as he did." A few days before his
death he received the sacrament from the parish minister, professing
his perfect charity with all men, and his "sincere communion with
the whole Church of Christ, by whatever name Christ's followers call
themselves." In the last hours he talked much with the Mashams about
their eternal concerns. As for himself he had lived long enough, and
enjoyed a happy life; but he looked forward to a better. At length,
on the afternoon of the 28th of October, the spirit left him, and the
earthly tabernacle was dissolved. His body is buried in the churchyard
of High Laver, in a pleasant spot on the south side of the church. The
Latin epitaph on the wall above the tomb was written by himself. It
tells us that he had lived content with his own insignificance: that,
brought up among letters, he had advanced just so far as to make an
acceptable offering to truth alone: if the traveller wanted an example
of good life, he would find one in the Gospel; if of vice, would that
he could find one nowhere; if of mortality, there and everywhere.
"His death," says Lady Masham, "was, like his life, truly pious, yet
natural, easy, and unaffected; nor can time, I think, ever produce a
more eminent example of reason and religion than he was, living and
dying."