Locke

“ Locke argues the intellectual and sensible world to be in this perfectly alike: that the part which we see of them holds no proportion with what we see not; and that whatsoever we can reach with our eyes, or our thoughts, of either of them, is but a point, almost nothing, in comparison with the rest. Shall he whose birth, maturity, and age, as Beattie has it, scarce fill the circle of one summer day—shall the poor gnat conclude nature in collapse because of a passing cloud, not transparent to the insect’s vision? ”

“ In our works—and why should we not say it?—we have often presented the thought of Locke, whom we regard as one of the best and most sensible men that ever lived. He is among those secret and illustrious advisers with whom we support our weakness. More than one happy thought we owe to him; and we often ask ourself whether investigations directed with the circumspect method which we try to carry into ours, would not have been accepted by his sincerity and wisdom. ”

“ In his utter antipathy to everything in the slightest degree illumined, or, as he would have thought, distorted, by the glamour of imagination or fancy, Locke was the true representative of his age, and no subsequent change of mental attitude, as the world sweeps on into new and more genial climates of thought, can deprive his work of its representative historical importance. ”

“ Shaftesbury was as yet neither the Shaftesbury of the Cabal nor the Shaftesbury of the Popish Plot, and there was no reason why Locke should hesitate in attaching himself to a statesman, who, whatever his astuteness and versatility, possessed by far the most enlightened and comprehensive mind of any public man of his day. ”

“ The works of Locke are on the shelves of most considerable libraries; but many men, now that the study of metaphysics is out of fashion, are appalled at the suggestion that they should read an essay in three volumes on the human understanding, evidently considering their own minds less worthy of study than their bodies or their estates. It may be worth while, therefore, to give a short summary of those theories, or discoveries of Locke which most modified French thought in the eighteenth century. ”

“ There was a rap at the door and a peremptory demand for entrance—a pause—and a whispered consultation outside.
"Open the door!" cried Locke, again.
As there was no answer, heavy blows were rained upon the door, and finally it gave way.
Three men stumbled into the room. They stared about, then started to search the place. One by one they started to cough. Locke, who was the farthest away from the brazier, seemed to be the least affected.
Finally he spied the note on the table and snatched it up. By the dim light he read:
You will never live to capture me. ”

“ Locke, whose work is public, I must be considered as directing myself to the generality of the world: for, Sir, I have the pleasure to say, that your conduct in your family is unexceptionable; and the pride to think that mine is no disgrace to it. No one hears a word from your mouth unbecoming the character of a polite gentleman ”

“ Though it was the broad day of a summer afternoon, his memory sped swiftly back over twenty years to the night when he saw it alive with light and flashing movement and the great city’s joy of life, for the last time before he sailed for China; when, in spite of decorous and scholarly living, his heart had sunk within him at the realization that he was giving up all that, and all that it symbolized—the familiar and pulsating life of England. And now he stood in the same glamour-haunted precincts, and again his heart sank like a stone. ”

“ On the appointed day he waited, with a four-wheeled cab, by the prison gate. The early morning sunshine of midsummer flooded the world with pale glory, its magic even softening the grim, forbidding walls. A light southwest wind brought the pure scents of the down from many a sleeping garden and woodland far away. The quiet earth sang its innocence, for wickedness was not yet abroad to scream down the song. Even John Risca, anti-sentimentalist, was stirred. What sweeter welcome, what gladder message of hope, could greet one issuing into the upper air from the gloomy depths of Hades? ”

“ There was a murderous glare in Paul's eyes as Locke unconcernedly withdrew, whispering to the detective, who nodded deferentially to the young scientist who had been assigned by the Department of Justice, strangely, to the very case which now he realized in some unknown way must concern himself and the very mystery of his own identity. ”

“ John Locke was fond of referring questions to something he called 'the bulk of mankind'—an undefinable, undignified, unsalaried body, of small account at the beginning of controversies, but all-powerful at their close. ”

“ Locke in education, as in metaphysics and in politics, was the pioneer of French thought. In education there is less room for scientific originality. The sage of a parish, provided only she began her trade with an open and energetic mind, may here pass philosophers. Locke was nearly as sage, as homely, as real, as one of these strenuous women. ”

“ As the emissary heard him, he concluded that it was the guard come to release him, and sprang from his bunk just as Locke entered. He suspected nothing until a stray ray of light fell on Locke's face. But then it was too late either for him to put up much of a fight or to make an outcry. For with a swift blow Locke disposed of him and carried the fellow, unconscious, into his own cell, where he locked the door again, hurrying back to the emissary's cell, where he donned the fellow's clothes, of which he had stripped him, and appropriated the cap and goggles. ”

“ But though Locke and multitudes of his admirers were profoundly Christian in their belief, the whole drift of his thought tended to bring prominently forward the purely practical side of religion and the purely intellectual side of theology, and to throw into the background, and reduce to its narrowest compass, the more entirely spiritual region which marks the contact of the human with the Divine. ”

“ She has the warm russet complexion that suits her heavy bronze hair, and there is a glow beneath the satin of her neck and arms. And she is fragrant—I recognise it now—of hyacinths. The world can hold nothing more alluring to the senses of man. My fingers that held the turquoise trembled as they chanced to touch her—but she was all unconcerned. Nay, further—she gazed into the mirror—
“It makes me look so white—oh, there was a girl at Bude who had a gold locket—and it lay upon her bones—you could count them. I am glad I have no bones. I am quite soft—feel.” ”

“ Those Swabian hills, in their peaceful clothing of vine and wood, have looked down on the young sceptical inquirer whilst he armed himself for the demolition of one faith, which was old, that he might build up another, fantastic and full of inconsistency, but which was new. Locke has here for a century laboured under the imputation of disbelief for asserting that all ideas are only pictorial images in the mind of objective existences ”

“ Locke is unwilling to engage in controversy with the gentlemen you mention; for, I am informed, his infirmities have obliged him, for some time past, to desist from his serious studies, and only employ himself in lighter things, which serve to amuse and unbend the mind."
Locke, indeed, had but six months more to live, and though he retained his charming serenity of spirit he was well aware that the end approached. Never contentious or desirous of making a sensation, he was least of all, in his present precarious state, likely to enter into discussion with foreign philosophers. ”

“ Locke did the work which he had to do so thoroughly that every Englishman who will philosophize must either build upon Locke’s foundations, or, with conscious purpose, clear the ground before building for himself. ”

“ Locke would have us begin with the study of spirits and go on to that of bodies. This is the method of superstition, prejudice, and error; it is not the method of nature, nor even that of well-ordered reason; it is to learn to see by shutting our eyes. We must have studied bodies long enough before we can form any true idea of spirits, or even suspect that there are such beings. The contrary practice merely puts materialism on a firmer footing. ”

“ La métaphysique de Locke n’a eu d’autre effet sur les esprits, en Angleterre, que de ternir un peu leur originalité naturelle; quand même elle dessécherait la source des grandes pensées philosophiques, elle ne saurait détruire le sentiment religieux, qui sait si bien y suppléer ”

“ Locke was perhaps too little read in the literature of philosophy to do full justice to those more subtle thinkers who, from Plato downwards, have recognized the need for categories of the understanding and presuppositions of reason in the constitution of knowledge. “Innate,” Lord Shaftesbury says, “is a word Mr Locke poorly plays on.” For the real question is not about the time when ideas entered the mind, but “whether the constitution of man be such that, being adult and grown up, the ideas of order and administration of a God will not infallibly and necessarily spring up in him.” ”

“ She was twenty. John, still Great High Belovedest, still finding his perfect rest from care, his enchanted haven, in the great, wide-windowed room looking out to sea, wondered at the commonplace fact. Not long ago, it seemed to him, she had been but the fragile wraith of a child, with arms that you might pass through a signet-ring, and hands no bigger than an acacia-leaf. ”

“ His destiny was drawing him nearer and nearer to it, he thought, with slow and irresistible force. In a few years there would be Parliament, office, power, the awaking from stupor of an England hypnotized by malign influences. He saw himself at the table in the now familiar House of green benches, thundering out an Empire's salvation. If he thought more of the awakener than the awakening, it was because he was the same little Paul Kegworthy to whom the cornelian heart had brought the Vision Splendid in the scullery of the Bludston slum. ”

“ Locke lost a situation attended with some emolument and great convenience, was the university deprived of, or rather thus, from the base principles of servility, did she cast away the man, the having produced whom is now her chiefest glory; and thus, to those who are not determined to be blind, did the true nature of absolute power discover itself, against which the middling station is not more secure than the most exalted. ”

“ Locke's Works upon Government and the Understanding are among the best in the world, but their results will all be found in the later works of Spencer, Mill, and Bryce; and the only part of the writings of Locke that claims our reading to-day is the little book upon the Conduct of the Understanding, which tells us how to watch the processes of our thought, to keep clear of prejudice, careless observation, etc., and should be in the hands of every one who ever presumes to do any thinking. ”

“ For Locke saw that the ultimate questions about our knowledge and its extent presuppose questions about ideas. Without ideas knowledge is impossible. “Idea” is thus a leading term in the Essay. It is used in a way peculiar to himself—“the term which, I think, stands best for whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks” or “whatever it is which the mind can be employed about.” But ideas themselves are, he reminds us, “neither true nor false, being nothing but bare appearances,” phenomena as we might call them. ”

“ Locke's explanation of the origin of our knowledge differs from the opinions of his predecessors only by being more ambiguous and perfunctory. Material things exist, and give rise to our sensible ideas or perceptions, because they are fitted to do so by the Divine law and appointment. ”

“ Locke, the brilliant author of the Essay on the Human Understanding, was once introduced by Lord Shaftesbury to the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Halifax. But the three noblemen, instead of entering into conversation on literary subjects with the philosopher, very soon sat down to cards. Locke looked on for a short time, and then drew out his pocket-book and began to write in it with much attention. ”

“ In his second letter to Molyneux, dated Sept. 20, 1692, Locke says:—"You must expect to have me live with you hereafter, with all the liberty and assurance of a settled friendship. For meeting with but few men in the world whose acquaintance I find much reason to covet, I make more than ordinary haste into the familiarity of a rational inquirer after and lover of truth, whenever I can light on any such. There are beauties of the mind as well as of the body, that take and prevail at first sight ”

“ Of [pg xxxvii] books powerful in intellectual results, Locke's Essay is, perhaps, thought of as metaphysical and remote, yet it was of immeasurable influence at home and abroad, so subtly penetrating as to resemble in scale and intimacy the silent forces of nature. It was great as a representative of the spirit of rationalism, which it supported and spread with incalculable results on the temper of educated Europe; and great also as a product and embodiment of that cold, intellectual habit, distinctive of a certain kind of English mind, and usually regarded as radical in the race. ”

“ Locke proceeds in the second book to treat of Ideas, and their origin. He then says:
‘Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks, and that which his mind is applied about whilst thinking being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt that men have in their minds several ideas, such are those expressed by the words, whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness, and others: it is in the first place then to be inquired how he comes by them. ”