CHAPTER III.

ON THE SPIRIT OF LOCKE'S WRITINGS.

Ir has for many years been the fashion to decry Locke. Indirect sneers at his "superficiality abound in the writings of those who, because they are muddy and cannot see their bottom, fancy they are profound. Locke's "materialism" is also a favourite subject of condolence with these writers; and they fearlessly assert that his principles "lead to Atheism." Lead whom?

Another mode of undervaluing Locke is to assert that he only borrowed and popularised the ideas originated by Hobbes. The late Mr. Hazlitt-an acute thinker and a metaphysician, but a wilful reckless writer-used to fly into a passion at the idea of Locke being regarded as a great thinker; and deliberately asserted that Locke owed everything to Hobbes. Dr. Whewell repeats the charge, though in a more qualified manner. He says "Hobbes had already promulgated the main doctrines, which Locke afterwards urged, on the subject of the origin and nature of our knowledge.'

Locke is no favourite at Cambridge, we know, although he is one of the students' text-books; and of all Cambridge men, perhaps, with no one could he be less congenial than with Dr. Whewell. Locke is one of the clearest of thinkers, and one of the homeliest. The antagonism between him and

Dr. Whewell is radical. We are therefore little surprised to find the great Englishman thus appreciated by the Professor ::-"Locke owed his authority mainly to the intellectual circumstances of the time. Although a writer of great merit, he by no means possesses such metaphysical acuteness, or such philosophical largeness of view, or such a charm of writing, as to give him the high place he has held in the literature of Europe."

That Locke did not borrow his ideas from Hobbes will be very apparent in our exposition of Locke; but meanwhile we may quote the testimony of Sir James Mackintosh, one of the best read of our philosophers, and one intimately acquainted with both these thinkers :

"Locke and Hobbes agree chiefly on those points in which, except the Cartesians, all the speculators of their age were agreed. They differ on the most momentous questions-the sources of knowledge, the power of abstraction, the nature of the will; on the two last of which subjects, Locke, by his very failures themselves, evinces a strong repugnance to the doctrines of Hobbes. They differ not only in their premises and many of their conclusions, but in their manner of philosophizing itself. Locke had no prejudice which could lead him to imbibe doctrines from the enemy of liberty and religion. His style, with all its faults, is that of a man who thinks for himself; and an original style is not usually the vehicle of borrowed opinions."*

To this passage we will add another from a writer the weight of whose authority must carry

*Edin. Review' for October, 1821, P. 242.

conviction to all who know his works, distinguished, as they are, no less by the thorough knowledge of the subject than by the clear depth and mastery of the speculations brought forward:

"Few among the great names in philosophy have met with a harder measure of justice from the present generation than Locke, the unquestioned founder of the analytic philosophy of mind, but whose doctrines were first caricatured, then, when the reaction arrived, cast off by the prevailing school even with contumely, and who is now regarded by one of the conflicting parties in philosophy as an apostle of heresy and sophistry; while among those who still adhere to the standard which he raised, there has been a disposition in later times to sacrifice his reputation in favour of Hobbes- -a great writer and a great thinker for his time, but inferior to Locke not only in sober judgment, but even in profundity and original genius. Locke, the most candid of philosophers, and one whose speculations bear on every subject the strongest mark of having been wrought out from the materials of his own mind, has been mistaken for an unworthy plagiarist, while Hobbes has been extolled as having anticipated many of his leading doctrines. He did not anticipate many of them, and the present is an instance in what manner it was generally done. [The writer is speaking of Locke's refutation of Essences.] They both rejected the scholastic doctrine of Essences, but Locke understood and explained what these supposed essences were. Hobbes, instead of explaining the distinction between essential and accidental properties, and between essential and accidental

propositions, jumped over it, and gave a definition which suits, at most, only essential propositions, and scarcely those, as the definition of Proposition in general."*

Dugald Stewart, indeed, says that "it must appear evident Locke had diligently studied the writings of Hobbes;" but Sir J. Mackintosh, as quoted above, has explained why Locke appears to have studied Hobbes, and Stewart is far from implying that Locke therefore gained his principal ideas from Hobbes. Indeed he has an admirable note in which he points out how completely Locke's own was the important principle of Reflection. "This was not merely a step beyond Hobbes, but the correction of an error which lies at the very root of Hobbes's system."+

We have heard great authorities speak. Let us now cast a glance at the facts.

That Locke never read Hobbes may seem incredible, but we are convinced of its truth. It is one among many examples of how few were the books he had read. He never alludes to Hobbes in any way that can be interpreted into having read him. Twice only, we believe, does he allude to him, and then so distantly, and with such impropriety, as to be quite convincing with respect to his ignorance. The first time is in his Reply to the Bishop of Worcester,' in which he absurdly classes Hobbes and Spinoza together. He says"I am not so well read in Hobbes and Spinoza as to be able to say what were their opinions on this matter, but possibly there be those who will think * Mill's System of Logic,' vol. i. p. 150.

6

Dissertation on the Progress of Met. Phil.,' p. 114. The note is very long and curious,

your Lordship's authority of more use than those justly-decried writers." The term of expression, "I am not so well read," &c., is obviously equivalent to I have never read those justly-decried writers. His second allusion is simply this :-“ A Hobbist would probably say." We cannot at present lay our hands on the passage, but it refers to some moral question.

The above is only negative evidence. Something like positive evidence, however, is the fact that Hobbes's great discovery of Association of Ideas-a principle as simple of apprehension as it is important was completely unknown to Locke, who first, in the fourth or fifth edition, added the chapter on Association as it now stands. Moreover, Locke's statement of the law is by no means so satisfactory as that by Hobbes: he had not so thoroughly mastered it; yet, had he read it in Hobbes, he would assuredly have improved on it. That he did not at first introduce it into his work is a strong presumption that he had never read Hobbes, because the law is so simple and so evident, when stated, that it must produce instantaneous conviction.

It is strange that any man should have read Locke and questioned his originality. There is scarcely a writer we could name whose works bear such an indisputable impress of his having "raised himself above the almsbasket, and not content to live lazily on scraps of begged opinions, set his own thoughts to work to find and follow truth."

It is still more strange that any man should have read Locke and questioned his power. That patient sagacity which, above all things, distinguishes a philosopher, is more remarkable in Locke than