Having got rid of innate ideas — tenues sine corpore ritce — the English philosopher proceeded to investigate the origin of human knowledge — the avowed object of his main inquiry. There was an inversion of logical order, as Morell has observed, in seeking the ratio es- sendi of the phenomena before ascertaining the phenom- ena themselves ; but the accidental connection between the first and second pairs of the Essay is very intimate. If knowledge be not deduced ub intra, it might natural- ly appear to be derived ab extra. Hence Locke con- cluded that all knowledge is obtained from sensation and reflection. This is his principle, and his principle is his philosophy — the curtain is the picture. The dis- tinction between the sensation and its intellectual ap- preciation was unsuspected by him ; nor did he observe that if sensation and reflection upon sensation are the exclusive sources of knowledge, the knowledge of reflec- tion is derivative from and dependent upon sensation, and all knowledge springs from sensation alone. This oversight occasioned his very inadequate explanations of space, time, power, cause, good and evil, and God ; it furnished Hume with his cardinal positions in regard to impressions and ideas; it rendered Locke a suitable patron for the French encyclopaedists and the material- ists, and created the belief that he espoused the tenet ^' Xi/iil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu." This te- net was held by neither Aristotle nor Locke, but Locke's development of his own principle often seems to assert and to rest upon that tenet, and both provoked and justitted the celebrated response and refutation off^ered by Leibnitz in the proposed addition to the maxim of the words •' ?iisi intdlectus ipse.'' Locke might have ac- cepted that addition, but it was not declared by his lan- guage, nor clearly indicated by his teachings ; and its frank acceptance would have been fatal to his philo- sophical expositions ; for, if reflection be considered as a source of knowledge distinct from sensation, it must be different from sensation, and must be a contribution of the mind itself to the intellectual product. Locke's original attitude was that of a polemic engaged in the refutation of Des Cartes; this attitude he never alto- gether abandoned ; it determined his habits of specula- tion, and continually misled him. Locke was still fur- ther misled by the looseness, awkwardness, obscurity, and prolixity of his style, bj' its colloquial negligence of phrase, by that wavering of expression and impalpabil- ity of figurative illustration which have been noted by Sir William Hamilton, iMaurice, and nearly every other student of his works. The equivocation of the terms employed by liim escaped his recognition, while it per- plexes his readers, and producetl much the same effect upon his reasoning as was produced upon Hume's by a similar agency. With Locke there might be delusion ; there was no sophistry ; there was an open, manly spir- it, a candor and honesty of investigation which often slighted or ignored consistency in the determined ap- ]irehensioii of what was felt instinctively to be right. His book accordingly exercises a most wholesome influ- ence even when tlie developments of his doctrine are most aberrant, and its perversions most perilous. The practical character of his own disposition, the predilec- tion for the studies of observation, and the innocence and simplicity of his own nature, guarded him from the effects as well as from thcperception of his errors, but at the same time rendered those errors less apparent and more setiuctive to others. They preserved his own pie- ty, while his system became a templum impietatis.
This practical appetency of Locke's mind was so en-
grossing as to leave him utterly without imagination or poetic sensibility. Poetry he discountenanced from want of taste, but professetUy for the more ignoble rea- son that " no gold was found at the roots of Parnassus." The absence of imagination was a very serious defect. It was not true in his case that omite irpiotum p)ro mira- bili. On the contrary, the wondrous domain of the un- known and the unapprehended was " undreamt of in his philosophy." These intellectual peculiarities became very manifest in his religious and political treatises — sometimes inducing point, perspicuity, and popularity; sometimes generating prosaic assumptions for want of penetrating vision. Thus were probably occasioned the denial of the immortality of the soul in the Reasoiuible- ness of Christianiti/ — the ascription of all value to labor originally expended in his economical speculations — - the allegation of a social contract and of a state of nature — pure and untenable hypotheses — in his treatises On Government, and other less prominent vagaries. These points merit careful consideration, but they can be onlj' notetl here. We should not, however, omit to mention that Locke's amiable and tolerant disposition, the asso- ciations of his life, the tenor of his philosophy, his love of justice and freedom, rendered efficient service towards the extension of civil, political, and religious liberty at home and abroad, and entitle him to reverential regard as one of the chief benefactors of humanity.
Literature. — The literature illustrative of Locke's phi- losophy is endless. It includes the greater part of the metaphysical treatises written since tlie close of the 17th century. It must suffice, therefore, to mention here only the works of most direct importance, and most readily accessible. Of such is the following list composed. Locke, Worlds (London, 182-i, 9 vols. 8vo) ; Locke, Philo- sophical Works, by J. A. St. John (London, 1854, 2 vols. 12mo); Leibnitz, Nouveaux Essais sur rEntendement Humain ; .Joannes Clericus, Lockii Vita ; " Life of John Locke," in the Biographica Britannica ; Lord King, The Life of John Locke, etc. (Lond. 18.30, 2 vols. 8vo) ; Fors- ter. Original I^etters of John Locke, etc. (London, 1847) ; Browne, " Life of John Locke," in the Encyclop. Britan- nica ; Dugald Stewart, Supplement to the Encyclop. Bri- tannica; Sir James Mackintosh, On the philosophical Genius of Bacon and Locke ; Henry Rogers, Miscellanies (Lond. 1855, 3 vols. 8vo) ; Ritter, Gesch. d. Christl. Philos. vii, 449 sq. ; V. Cousin, Hist, de la Philosophic ; Lewes, Biograph. Hist, of Philosophy (Lond. 1857, 2 vols. 8vo), ii, 237 sq. ; Farrar, Critical Hist. ofEree Thought, p. 124 sq. ; Blakey, Hist. Philosophy of Mind (London, 1850,4 vols. 8vo) ; Morell, Crit. Histoi-y of Modern Philosophy (Lond. 1847, 2 vols. 8vo); Brit. Quar.Rev. 1847 (May); North Brit. Rev. 1864 (July), p. 37 sq. ; Edinb. Rev. 1864 (April), 1854; Lond. Quar. Review, 1864 (July), p. 41 sq. (G. F. H.)