all the use of language, cannot be understood, when he declares his will to man, without the help of an interpreter, who thus must know the thoughts of God better than God himself. As if, the words of God being obscure, man could throw light on them! as if the minds of creatures could be more erudite than the mind that formed them!" 1

Though we know that during these years Locke was devoting much of his time to medicine, chemistry, and other sciences, it is perhaps less strange that none of his observations thereupon, save such as have been already referred to in our notices of his correspondence, have come down to us, than that we have so few records of his passing thoughts on philosophical subjects. That he made many such can hardly be doubted; but if so, they have nearly all been lost. Only two passages in his common-place book, coming under this category, seem important enough to be here quoted. But these two are very important, as throwing remarkably clear light on the state of his mind at this period.

The first, which appears to have been written in 1661 or soon after, helps to show, not only that Locke had largely imbibed and greatly improved upon the utilitarian views of Hobbes, but also that he had made enough practicable observation of some perplexing social problems to form a juster estimate of them than the world, after learning so much from him, is yet quite ready to adopt.

"Virtue, as in its obligation it is the will of God, discovered by natural reason, and thus has the force of a law, so in the matter of it. it is nothing

1 Shaftesbury Papers, series viii., no. 30.

else but doing of good, either to oneself or others; and the contrary hereunto, vice, is nothing else but doing of harm. Thus the bounds of temperance are prescribed by the health, estates, and the use of our time: justice, truth, and mercy, by the good or evil they are likely to produce; since everybody allows one may with justice deny another the possession of his own sword, when there is reason to believe he would make use of it to his own harm. But since men in society are in a far different estate than when considered single and alone, the instances and measures of virtue and vice are very different under these two considerations; for though, as I said before, the measures of temperance, to a solitary man, be none but those above-mentioned, yet if he be a member of a society, it may, according to the station he has in it, receive measures from reputation and example; so that what would be no vicious excess in a retired obscurity, may be a very great one amongst people who think ill of such excess, because, by lessening his esteem amongst them, it makes a man incapable of having the authority and doing the good which otherwise he might. For, esteem and reputation being a sort of moral strength, whereby a man is enabled to do, as it were by an augmented force, that which others of equal natural parts and natural power cannot do without it, he that by any intemperance weakens this his moral strength does himself as much harm as if by intemperance he weakened. the natural strength either of his mind or body, and so is equally vicious by doing harm to himself. This, if well considered, will give us better boundaries of virtue and vice than curious questions stated with the nicest distinctions; that being always the greatest vice whose consequences draw after it the greatest harm; and therefore the injury and mischiefs done to society are much more culpable than those done to private men, though with greater personal aggravations. And so many things naturally become vices amongst men in society, which without that would be innocent actions. Thus, for a man to cohabit and have children by one or more women, who are at their own disposal, and when they think fit to part again, I see not how it can be condemned as a vice, since nobody is harmed, supposing it done amongst persons considered as separate from the rest of mankind. But yet this hinders not but it is a vice of deep dye when the same thing is done in a society wherein modesty, the great virtue of the weaker sex, has often other rules and bounds set by custom and reputation than what it has by direct instances of the law of nature in a solitude or an estate separate from the opinion of this or that society. For if a woman, by transgressing those bounds which the received opinion of her country or religion, and not nature or reason, have set to modesty, has drawn any

blemish on her reputation, she may run the risk of being exposed to infamy and other mischiefs, amongst the least of which is not the danger of losing the comforts of a conjugal settlement, and therewith the chief end of her being, the propagation of mankind.”

"1

Whether the other paper that has here to be quoted was written by Locke before 1667 is not clear, but this is most probable, and it may at any rate be taken as a fair epitome of the exalted utilitarianism in accordance with which, both at this period and all through the remainder of his life, he sought to regulate his conduct. "Thus, I think," we find him saying, with something like the emphasis of a philosophical Credo:

"Thus, I think;-It is a man's proper business to seek happiness and avoid misery. Happiness consists in what delights and contents the mind; misery in what disturbs, discomposes, or torments it. I will therefore make it my business to seek satisfaction and delight, and avoid uneasiness and disquiet; to have as much of the one, and as little of the other, as may be. But here I must have a care I mistake not, for if I prefer a short pleasure to a lasting one, it is plain I cross my own happiness.

"Let me then see wherein consist the most lasting pleasures of this life; and that, as far as I can observe, is in these things:-1st. Health,—without which no sensual pleasure can have any relish. 2nd. Reputation,-for that I find everybody is pleased with, and the want of it is a constant torment. 3rd. Knowledge,-for the little knowledge I have, I find I would not sell at any rate, nor part with for any other pleasure. 4th. Doing good,—for I find the well-cooked meat I eat to-day does now no more delight me, nay, I am diseased after a full meal: the perfumes I smelt yesterday now no more affect me with any pleasure; but the good turn I did yesterday, a year, seven years since, continues still to please and delight me as often as I reflect on it. 5th. The expectation of eternal and incomprehensible happiness in another world is that also which carries a constant pleasure with it.

"If then I will faithfully pursue that happiness I propose to myself, whatever pleasure offers itself to me, I must carefully look that it cross not any of those five great and constant pleasures above mentioned. For

1 Lord King, pp. 292, 293.

28-31

example, the fruit I see tempts me with the taste of it that I love, but if it endanger my health, I part with a constant and lasting for a very short and transient pleasure, and so foolishly make myself unhappy, and am not true to my own interest. Hunting, plays, and other innocent diversions delight me: if I make use of them to refresh myself after study and business, they preserve my health, restore the vigour of my mind, and increase my pleasure; but if I spend all, or the greatest part of my time in them, they hinder my improvement in knowledge and useful arts, they blast my credit, and give me up to the uneasy state of shame, ignorance, and contempt, in which I cannot but be very unhappy. Drinking, gaming, and vicious delights will do me this mischief, not only by wasting my time, but by a positive efficacy endanger my health, impair my parts, imprint ill habits, lessen my esteem, and leave a constant lasting torment on my conscience.

"Therefore all vicious and unlawful pleasures I will always avoid, because such a mastery of my passions will afford me a constant pleasure greater than any such enjoyments; and also deliver me from the certain evil of several kinds, that by indulging myself in a present temptation I shall certainly afterwards suffer. All innocent diversions and delights, as far as they will contribute to my health, and consist with my improvement, condition, and my other more solid pleasures of knowledge and reputation, I will enjoy, but no further, and this I will carefully watch and examine, that I may not be deceived by the flattery of a present pleasure to lose a greater." 1

6

By far the most important of Locke's early writings was an unfinished 'Essay concerning Toleration,' which, having previously strung together copious notes on the subject in his common-place book, he put into orderly shape in 1766. A second part which he projected seems never to have been written, at least as he then projected it; but the portion which we have is complete in itself, and furnishes very valuable illustration both of Locke's

1 Lord King, p. 304.

2 The notes are briefly described by Lord King, p. 156; but the existence of the essay has not hitherto been known. It is here printed from Locke's manuscript in the Shaftesbury Papers, series viii., no. 1.

opinions at this time and of the state of things which he wished to remedy.

It is quite possible that his acquaintance with Lord Ashley, beginning in the summer of 1666, may have encouraged him to watch very carefully the political movements in which his new friend was taking an influential part; but, as we have seen, he had for some time. past been paying considerable attention to the questions. which he here especially discussed.

He held, as in fact did everybody else in those days, that it is the business of the state to take account of the religious welfare of its members, but his opinions on this subject were shared by few, if any, of his contemporaries. Episcopalians and presbyterians, independents and catholics alike considered that the state would in no way fulfil its duty either to God or to man if it did not do the utmost in its power to inculcate the religious tenets which they severally regarded as necessary to salvation. The catholic pretensions were most monstrous, not only because of their greater bigotry in themselves, but also because they expected the state to be merely the humble tool of a foreign ecclesiastic; but Milton had found that "new presbyter is but old priest writ large," and, if the disciples of John Knox shared the tyrannical and persecuting spirit of the papal church, the disciples of Archbishop Laud were, to say the least, as willing to use tyranny and persecution in their efforts to make all ways to heaven but their own as strait and narrow as possible. The independents alone, with John Owen for their chief spokesman in this respect, showed any real disposition to allow the holding of religious opinions with which they did not agree, and, in spite of their fair promises, their brief authority in England-especially if we gauge it by