Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 12.djvu/427

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LOCKE.
377
LOCKHART.

the Essay, against Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester. His feeble health compelled him to resign his office in June, 1700, and he spent the remainder of his life at Oates, in Essex, at the seat of Sir Francis Mashani, who had taken Locke into his home in 1G91. His last years were very much occupied with the study of the Scriptures, on which he wrote several dissertations, which, with his little work entitled On the Conduct of the Understanding, were published after his death. He died October 28, 1704.

Great as were Locke's services to his country, and to the cause of civil and religious liberty, his fame rests on the Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, which marks an epoch in the history of philosophy. His purpose was to inquire into the powers of the human understanding, with a view to find out what things it was fitted to grapple with, and where it must fail, so as to make the mind of man "more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension, and disposed to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether." He institutes a preliminary inquiry in the first book as to the existence of innate ideas, theoretical and practical, on which the philosophical world has been much divided. (See Common Sense, Philosophy of.) Locke urges against the existence of these supposed innate conceptions or intuitions of the mind the fact that there is no truth universally accepted by mankind. Having thus repudiated the intuitive sources of our knowledge or ideas, he is bound to show how we come by them in the course of our experience. Our experience being twofold, external and internal, we have two classes of ideas—those of sensation and those of reflection. He has, therefore, to trace the recognized conceptions of the mind to one or other of these sources. Many of our notions are obviously derived from experience, as colors, sounds, etc.; but some have been disputed, more especially ideas of space, time, infinity, power, substance, cause, moral good and evil; and Locke discusses the.se at length, by way of tracing them to the same origin. This is the subject of book ii., entitled "Of Ideas." Book iii. is on language considered as an instrument of truth, and contains much valuable material. Book iv. is on the nature, limits, and reality of our knowledge, in hiding the nature of demonstrative truth, the existence of God, the provinces of faith and reason, and the nature of error.

In his views on government, Locke was a disciple of Hobbes, but he was not slavish in his discipleship. He believed with Hobbes that government is the result of an original contract, but the state of nature preceding the establishment of government he did not believe to be a state of war. Right existed before the foundation of society. Society is a means to the better enjoyment of natural rights; Locke distinguishes in government the three functions of legislation, execution, and adjudication. Of these the legislative function is supreme, but even over this stands the sovereign will of the people. When the people enforce their will against the government, there is no rebellion. They are acting within their rights. In ethics he was a hedonist. Good and bad are equivalent to pleasure and pain or their causes. Moral good is accordance with the law imposed by an authority which rewards us with pleasure for obedience and punishes us with pain for disobedience. The law-imposing authority may be divine or human.

Locke's collected works have often been published from 1714 on. A convenient edition of his philosophical works is Saint John's, London, 1854, followed by many subsequent issues. The best edition of the Essay is Fraser's (Oxford, 1894). For biography, see King, The Life of John Locke (London, 1829); Fox Bourne, The Life of John Locke (London and New York, 1876); T. Fowler, John Locke (London, 1880); A. C. Fraser, Locke (Edinburgh, 1890). The last two works give also popular accounts of his philosophy. For a fuller bibliography, see Ueberweg-Heinze, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie (8th ed., Berlin, 1896). A convenient compendium of Locke's philosophical views is found in Russell, The Philosophy of Locke (New York, 1891).


LOCKE, John (1792-1856). An American physicist and inventor, born at Freiburg, Maine. He was educated at Bethel Academy and at Yale, and then entered the navy as a surgeon. Later he settled in the Middle West, and became well known as a geologist, botanist, and inventor of scientific instruments.


LOCK'ER-LAMP'SON, Frederick (1821-95). An English writer, born May 29, 1821, in Greenwich Hospital. For many years he was a precis-writer in the Admiralty. Whitehall, but after middle life he devoted himself to travel, society, and literature, and became well known in 1857 by a collection of graceful society verse, entitled London Lyrics. He subsequently published an anthology', Lyra Elegantiarum (1807; new ed. 1891), and a volume of miscellanies, Patchnxirk (1879). Locker married in 1850 Lady Charlotte Bruce, a daughter to Lord Elgin, and after her death the only daughter of Sir Curtis Lampson (1874), from whom he took the name Lampson. He died at Rowfant, May 30, 1895. Consult his autobiography, My Confidences (London, 189G).

LOCKHART, lok'hiirt. A town and the county-seat of Caldwell County, Tex., 30 miles south of Austin, on the San Antonio and Aransas Pass, and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroads (Map; Texas, F 5). It controls the trade of a cotton, grain, and live-stock region, and has cotton-gins and a compress, a cottonseed-oil mill, lumber-yards, wagon-works, a soap-factory, etc. Population, in 1890, 1233; in 1900, 230G.


LOCKHART, John Gibson (1794-1854). The son-in-law and biographer of Walter Scott. He was the son of Rev. John Lockhart, aiul was born in the manse of Cambusnethan, Scotland, July 14, 1794. Two years later his father became minister of the College Kirk in Glasgow. From the high school and the University of Glasgow, young Lockhart proceeded to Balliol College. Oxford, where he graduated in 1813. He afterwards studied law at Edinburgh and became an advocate at the Scottish bar (1810). Already interested in literature, he made a German tour in 1817, visiting Goethe at Weimar. In April of the same year Blackwood's Magazine was founded, and Lockhart soon became one of its chief contributors. In the October number lie assailed Coleridge and Leigh Hunt, the leader of 'the Cockney school' of poets; then had a hand in the buffoonery of "The Chaldee Manuscript." and made some good translations of Spanish ballads (collected, 1823). In 1819 he published Peter's Letters to His Kinsfolk, a