LOCKE 567 him. At Amsterdam he kept aloof from the British exiles who were, plotting the rebellion of Monmouth, auguring their ill success, and joined with Limborch, Le Clerc, and others, in the formation of a philosophical society for the weekly discussion of important questions. Spies were set about him to suggest irritating topics, and to report his words "to his ruin, but they were foiled by his steady silence con- cerning the politics of the day. The court therefore resolved to punish him in the only point where he was vulnerable, and ejected him from his studentship in Christchurch col- lege. Still he refused to take part in the schemes of invasion, and concealed himself at Utrecht, where he was employed in writing his letter "On Toleration." In the Biblio- theque universelle et historique of Le Olerc he published in French in 1686 a "New Method of a Commonplace Book," in 1687 an abridg- ment of his "Essay on the Human Under- standing," and in 1688 his letter "On Tolera- tion," which was published in England in the same year, and in Latin at Gouda in 1689. Its liberal views were attacked by an Oxford theologian, and were defended by Locke in two additional letters. Adopting the theory of a compact, he maintained that the state relates only to civil interests, has nothing to do with matters in the world to come, and should there- fore tolerate all modes of worship not immoral in their nature or involving doctrines inimical to good government. Conscious of no crime, he refused to accept a pardon which William Penn promised to obtain for him from James II., but returned to England after the revolu- tion of 1688 in the same fleet which brought the princess of Orange, and obtained through Lord Mordaunt the office of commissioner of ap- peals. In 1690 appeared his " Essay concerning Human Understanding," the first work which attracted attention in England to metaphysical speculations, except on the part of merely stu- dious men, and one of the greatest contribu- tions in modern times to the philosophy of the human mind. The celebrity of the author as a friend of civil and religious liberty, the attacks upon it, and the attempts made at Ox- ford to prevent the students from reading it, were among the secondary causes of its success. Six editions appeared within 14 years, and through translations into Latin and French the fame of the author was made European. He published in 1690 two " Treatises on Civil Gov- ernment," written to support the principles of the revolution by establishing the title of King William upon the consent of the people as the only title of lawful government ; in 1693 his "Thoughts concerning Education," in which his object is to fashion a gentleman rather than a scholar, and therefore he lays less stress on learning than on virtue, breeding, and practical wisdom; and in 1695 "The Reasonableness of Christianity," the object of which was to de- termine what points of belief were common to all the Christian sects, in order to facilitate a plan of the king for the reconciliation and union of them all. He published a vindication of this work against the charge of Socinianism, and conducted a controversy with Stillingfleet, who in his work on the Trinity denounced some of the principles of the "Essay" as opposed to fundamental Christian doctrines. In 1700 he resigned his commissionership in consequence of his failing health, and, declining a pension offered him by the king in a personal inter- view, retired to the mansion of his friend Sir Francis Masham at Oates, in Essex, where he devoted the remainder of his life to the study of the Scriptures. Among the fruits of his later labors were a "Discourse on the Miracles," " Paraphrases, with Notes, of the Epistles of St. Paul," and an "Examination of Father Malebranche's Opinion of Seeing all Things in God," which were published posthumously. His excellent treatise on the " Conduct of the Understanding," which maybe regarded as the ethical application of his "Essay," being a scheme of the education which an adult person should give himself, also appeared after his death. He received during his last years, while suffer- ing under an incurable asthma, the affectionate attentions of Lady Masham, a daughter of Ralph Cudworth, and died ultimately in his chair, from the natural decay of a constitution ori- ginally weak, while she was reading the Psalms to him. The course and circumstances of Locke's life were in every respect favorable to the production of such a work as the " Essay concerning Human Understanding." Early im- bued with a zeal for liberty and with the prin- ciples of a severe morality, his whole life was a warfare against the enemies of freedom in speculation, freedom in worship, and freedom from every unnecessary political restraint. Acquainted by his studies both with scholastic subtleties and the physical sciences, he was in mature age admitted to the society of wits and politicians, and became a man of business and of the world. The " Essay " was the product of meditation continued through many years, was composed at intervals, and is in a studied colloquial and rather racy style, which, how- ever attractive to the reader, is too figurative, ambiguous, various, and even contradictory, for the purposes of philosophy. The essen- tial character and tendency of his system has therefore always been a matter of dispute be- tween metaphysicians of different schools, and different passages suggest very opposite con- clusions. His object was to inquire into the origin, certainty, and extent of human knowl- edge, and his method was purely psychologi- cal, by the patient and tentative observation of the phenomena of consciousness. In the first book he confutes the Cartesian doctrine of innate principles or axioms, which would conflict with his whole theory of the empirical origin of our ideas. This theory is fully devel- oped in the second book, in which he shows that our natural faculties are capable of form- ing every notion that we possess, that the ao-
