nature there is wanting established, settled, and known law, a known and indifferent judge, "power to back and support the sentence of the judge when right, and to give it due execution." The possible forms of government, dependent upon the placing of the powers, are pure democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, hereditary or elective, and commonwealth, in which last the legislative power is the supreme power. The legislative power in the commonwealth, though supreme, has not absolute authority over the lives and fortunes of the people; it has, for example, no right to make arbitrary decrees, it cannot take from any man any part of his property without his own consent, it cannot transfer its function of making laws into any other hands. The supremacy held by the legislative power passes in a certain manner, however, over to the executive, in as much as the executive must have authority (especially as the legislative body does not always sit) to act according to discretion for the public good, without the prescription of law, and sometimes even against it. In the last resort, the really supreme power of the state is with the people, who alone can alter the legislative and so determine the form of government. In relation to other states, the commonwealth is in a state of nature, and has among its powers what may be called a federative power. In case of conquest, he who conquers acquires no power over those "who conquered with him, acquires power only over those who have actually assisted, concurred, or consented to that unjust force that is used against him, and has over those conquered in a just war, a power perfectly despotical." Tyranny is power exercised beyond right. Governments are overturned from without, by conquest, and from within, by the alteration of the legislative power, and by unfaithfulness of legislature and prince to their respective trusts. Religion. Regarding Locke's doctrine of religion, it may be added to what has already been stated (page 152) concerning reason and revelation, that Locke advocated what he supposed to be a "rational" Christianity. Such a doctrine was based on a literal interpretation of the New Testament according to the principles of his doctrine of knowledge and probability; it was natural religion, supplemented by the sanctions of the pure life of Christ, and the revelation through him of the altogether reasonable hypotheses of immortality and future rewards and punishments. Locke advocated religious toleration for all classes of persons except pronounced atheists. Result. Locke, it is scarcely necessary to say, is an empiricist; consistently speaking, he ought also to be described as a subjective idealist, for if knowledge is merely the perception of the agreement or disagreement among ideas, and ideas all originate, directly or indirectly, in sensation, the mind contributing nothing to objectify ideas, it seems impossible to get, by knowledge, beyond the individual subject with its ideas. Locke did not himself draw the full consequences of his doctrine, but maintained the existence of a (quasi-) objective apprehension of mind, the external world, and God. On the principles of his empiricism it was possible for any one coming after him to deny, regarding any one or even all of these, that we have knowledge of it or them. Such denial occurred. The influence of Locke in modern philosophy has, as we shall see, been very great. - We take up next the critics and defenders of Locke's doctrines in his own country and age. § 60. - The doctrines of Locke Critics and Defenders of Locke.1 provoked exceptions from a number of thinkers (upwards of a dozen, at least), the most important of whom are, perhaps, Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester (16351699), Richard Burthogge, M.D. (d. 1694), John Sergeant (1621-1707), Henry Lee, B.D., Peter Browne, Bishop of Cork (d. 1735), Zachary Mayne (d. 1750). 1 See Dr. Porter's "Philosophy in Great Britain and America" (printed with Morris's translation of Ueberweg's "History of Philosophy"); Noack; etc. -Stillingfleet's exceptions relate to most of the cardinal features of the doctrine of Locke: the polemic against innate ideas, the merely twofold source of knowledge, the unknowability of substance and identity of subject or object, the meaning of the term "idea," etc.; Stillingfleet's attitude being that of a defender of traditional orthodoxy in religion, i. e., of a revelationist. — Burthogge, in an essay on Reason and the Nature of Spirits, substitutes for the Lockean representationism, or doctrine of ideas representing unknown. objects, a doctrine of pure phenomenism, asserting that "things are nothing to us but as they are known to us," - a doctrine which (as Dr. Porter points out) "anticipates one of the most important positions of Kant's philosophical system, known also as Hamilton's doctrine of the relativity of knowledge." - Sergeant criticises Locke's use of the term "idea" to signify "whatever is before the understanding when one thinks," and limits the term to objects of sense or of sensuous imagination. He then affirms that by the understanding we cognize directly things as they are in themselves. The title of Sergeant's work is "Method to Science Solid Philosophy asserted against the Fancies of the Ideists" (1697). — Lee, who wrote "the most elaborate and extended critical reply to Locke's 'Essay,'" defends the doctrine of innate ideas (though not in the sense in which Locke denied it), denies, of course, that sensation and reflection are the only sources of knowledge, and denies that there are simple ideas which must be "gained before the mind receives the knowledge of things by perceiving the agreement or disagreement of such ideas," etc. The title of Lee's work is, "Anti-Scepticism; or, Notes upon each Chapter of Mr. Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding,' with an Explication of all the Particulars of which he treats, and in the same order with Locke" (1702). - According to Browne, all knowledge depends upon "simple perceptions of sense," and there is no knowledge of the supersensible. Knowledge is immediate or mediate. Immediate knowledge comprises the single perceptions of sense, which are ideas of external objects, and simple apprehension of the intellect (or in the present terminology, "self-consciousness"). The simple apprehension of the intellect is knowledge without ideas; it is perfectly direct (and hence the term "idea" has meaning only in relation to sense-perception). But the apprehension does not occur apart from the consciousness of external objects. Mediate knowledge is either demonstrative certainty, moral certainty, certainty based upon sight, or certainty based on evidence. Our notions of the supersensible are derived from an analogical extension of the application of sensible ideas. Browne's works of importance in this connection are, "The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Human Understanding" (1729), and "Things Divine and Supernatural conceived by Analogy with Things Human" (1733). - Mayne, who published anonymously a work entitled "Two Dissertations Concerning Sense and Imagination, with an Essay on Consciousness" (1727), unless, indeed, this work be a work of Browne's,1-distinguishes from sense and imagination, which he declares to be non-intellectual in character, the understanding as the sole faculty of conceptions. He "distinctly recognizes the functions of consciousness and selfconsciousness as they have been subsequently developed by the schools of Reid and Hamilton." 2- Locke's views were defended by Vincent Perronet, Samuel Bold, and Mrs. Catherine Cockburn. § 61. English Deism. Owing largely to the influence of Locke's teaching, but partly also to that of the teachings of Lord Cherbury and Hobbes, there appeared conspicuously in England about the beginning of the eighteenth century a certain phase of philosophical thought, hardly characterized by any definiteness or identity of particular doctrines among different thinkers, which is known as Eng 1 See Noack, and Franck, under Browne. 2 Porter. 3 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, by Leslie Stephen. VOL. I. II lish Deism. It was in general a denial of supernaturalism in religion and morals, together with the (complementary) assertion of the inherent truth and sufficiency of reason, or common-sense, in religion and morals. We may take as perhaps the most important of the Deists, John Toland (1689-1722), Anthony Collins (1676-1729), Matthew Tindal (1657-1733), Thomas Chubb (1677-1747), Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke (1698–1751). — Toland, in a work entitled "Christianity not Mysterious" (1st ed., 1696, 3d ed., 1702), maintains that all things have their real foundation in reason alone, and that, consequently, the only legitimate ground of assent is reason or demonstration, and that whenever this is wanting, suspension of judgment is the only proper attitude of mind. True Christianity cannot be mysterious in the sense of being "above all reason;" and no alleged revelation which does not show the "indisputable character of divine wisdom and sound reason" deserves acceptance. By "reason," Toland, who is a professed Lockean, means what Locke means by "knowledge" when he defines it as "the perception of the agreement or disagreement among ideas."-Collins, a personal friend and acknowledged disciple of Locke, wrote a work entitled a "Discourse of Freethinking" (1713), in which he maintained the necessity of free thought as an instrument of truth and human welfare, and a work entitled “Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty" (1715), defending the (Hobbean) doctrine of necessitarianism. Among Collins's arguments upon freethinking occur the two, (1) that thought cannot in reality be limited, since it would be only by a reason or thought which should show that it is not permitted to think on a subject on which one may wish to think; and (2) the limiting of thought takes away the only means of arriving at the truth, especially in religion. Collins admits liberty (with Locke and Hobbes) in the sense of a power to do as one wills or pleases, but denies it of man in any other sense, and for the following reasons (among others) When two contrary objects of choice are presented : |