Among these assailants were John Norris, the disciple of Malebranche and precursor of Butler, Thomas Burnet, the author of The New Theory of the Earth,' and John Serjeant, a Roman catholic priest. "Shall I not be quite slain, think you, amongst so many notable combatants; and the Lord knows how many more to come?"! Locke wrote when the tide was setting in. But he replied to none of them, except here and there incidentally in the works that have been already described. "I know better to employ the little time my business and health afford me," he said, "than to trouble myself with the little cavillers who may either be set on, or be forward in hope of recommending themselves, to meddle in this controversy.

" 2

The third edition of the Essay concerning Human Understanding,' published in 1695, having been only a reprint of the second, Locke occupied much of his small leisure during the next few years in preparing for a fourth 1648. As vicar of Shapwick, in Dorset, he got into trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities on account of his liberal opinions and his fearless utterance of them, and he was forced to resign, or ejected from, his vicarage. But he was rector of Steeple, near by, from 1682 until his death in August, 1737. Besides the works already named, and some others, making twenty in all, he published Man's Great Duty' (1675), 'A Letter on Image Worship' (1680), ‘A Sermon against Persecution' (1682), 'A Plea for Moderation' (1682), ' An Exhortation to Charity, addressed to the Irish Protestants' (1689), The Duty of Christians with respect to Human Interpretations (1717), 'Some Thoughts concerning Church Authority' (1724), and 'A Help to Devotion' (1736).

6

1 Familiar Letters,' p. 235; Locke to William Molyneux, 11 Sept., 1697.

2 Mr. Locke's Reply to the Bishop of Worcester's Answer to his Second Letter,' p. 452.

edition, in which he desired, without altering the original form of the work, to clear it of all the inaccuracies that he or his critics could detect, and to incorporate all the new thoughts that he considered pertinent to the subject. The strictures of Stillingfleet and others did not suggest to him many new thoughts or convict him of any inaccuracies; but they showed the expediency of correcting some terms and phrases in order to render his meaning more intelligible and freer from ambiguity: it would have been well, indeed, had they in this respect induced him to make more corrections than he finally adopted. Such a careful revision seemed to him all the more necessary because, besides the Latin translation of the 'Essay' which had been already begun, a French one was also now in progress, and, as these would introduce the work to a far larger audience, both learned and unlearned, than the English original could reach, it was important that, in its tri-lingual issue, it should be made, once for all, as perfect as he could make it.

The French version was undertaken by Pierre Coste, a friend of Le Clerc's, who, while in Amsterdam, translated Some Thoughts concerning Education' and 'The Reasonableness of Christianity,' and who, having there begun also to translate the 'Essay' in the spring of 1697, came over shortly afterwards to act as tutor to Frank Masham, and thus, being in Locke's company whenever he was at Oates, was able to receive from him constant assistance in his work, and to do it all under his immediate superintendence. It was published at Amsterdam

1 Familiar Letters,' pp. 208-256; Locke to William Molyneux, 10 April, 1697, and 10 Jan., 1697-8; Le Clerc, 'Eloge de M. Locke.' "The author being present," says Le Clerc, "he corrected several places in the original, that he might make them more plain and easy to translate, and very

in 1700, with the title, Essai Philosophique concernant l'Entendement Humain; où l'on montre quelle est l'Etendue de nos Connaissances Certaines et la Manière dont nous y parvenons.'

91

The Latin translation, begun as we have seen by Richard Burridge, a friend of Molyneux's, in the autumn of 1695, was also made to some extent under Locke's supervision, portions of the manuscript being sent to him to correct. It was published in London in 1701 as 'De Intellectu Humano.' 2

The fourth English edition, dated 1700, was issued in the autumn of 1699, having been apparently put in hand as soon as the third edition was exhausted in the previous January. It bore on the title-page a new motto, which may have been suggested by the controversy with Stillingfleet: "As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child, even so thou knowest not the works of God, who maketh all." 4

To the controversy with Stillingfleet, at any rate, must be attributed a verbal alteration running through the

carefully revised the translation, so that it is not inferior to the English and often more clear."

1 Subsequent editions appeared in 1723, 1729, 1736, 1742, 1750, 1755, 1758, and 1774.

2 It was reprinted at Leipsig in 1709, at Amsterdam in 1729, and again at Leipsig in 1731, with prefaces and notes by Gotthelf Heinrich Theile. The first German translation appeared at Königsberg in 1755.

3Familiar Letters,' p. 295; Locke to Thomas Molyneux, 25 Jan., 1698-9. Locke informed Sloane, on the 2nd of December, that some weeks before he had ordered a copy of this fourth edition to be sent to him. The fifth edition, with a few unimportant corrections and additions by Locke, appeared after his death, in 1706.

4 Ecclesiastes xi. 5.

book, "determinate ideas" or "determined ideas" being generally substituted for "clear and distinct ideas;" and most of the minor additions made by Locke were evidently designed to ward off the attacks of any future critics who, following the lead of Stillingfleet, might be tempted to engage in "disputes and wranglings" by opposing their own "undetermined ideas" to any vagueness or insufficiency in Locke's statement of his views.1

3

In this fourth edition he also included two new and very remarkable chapters, both planned, if not written, in the spring of 1695. One on "association of ideas" was a distinct and important contribution to psychological study. The other, on "enthusiasm," " " by which term Locke meant "a religious sort of madness," was in curious contrast to much of his later writing. In it he eloquently and forcibly condemned, not the cold, hard, metaphysical dogmas by which ecclesiastics like Stillingfleet prop up a structure of incredible creeds because it helps them to wealth and social dignity and power, but the yet more deplorable fanaticism by which ignorant devotees bring themselves to believe in phantom Gods and attribute to every whim of their diseased imaginations a divine authority, "substituting," as he said, "in the room of reason and revelation the ungrounded fancies of a man's own brain, and assuming them for a foundation of both opinion and conduct.'

1 Instance the important additions to b. ii., ch. xii., on Complex Ideas,' to b. iii., ch. xxviii., on 'Our Ideas of Substances,' to b. iv., ch. iii., on 'The Immateriality of the Soul,' to b. iv., ch. vii., on Maxims,' and to b. iv., ch. xvii., on ‘Reason.'

2 Familiar Letters,' pp. 101, 111, 112; Locke to William Molyneux, 8 March, 1694-5, and 26 April, 1693.

."

.

1

"I have lately," Locke wrote to Molyneux in the spring of 1697, "got leisure to think of some additions to my book, against the next edition, and within these few days have fallen upon a subject that I know not how far it will lead me. I have written several pages on it; but the matter, the farther I go, opens the more upon me, and I cannot yet get sight of any end of it. The title of the chapter will be 'Of the Conduct of the Understanding,' which, if I shall pursue as far as I imagine it will reach, and as it deserves, will, I conclude, make the largest chapter of my 'Essay.'": The fourth edition of the Essay' appeared without it, and such materials as Locke had collected for it were not published till after his death, when the anonymous editor apologised for the incomplete form of the work. "Such particulars as occurred to the author at a time of leisure," we are told, "he set down in writing, intending, if he had lived, to have reduced them into order, and to have made a complete treatise." The fragment, as we have it, confirms that statement. It is only a collection of notes for an essay or discourse, the notes often repeating one another, and sometimes not fitting very well together. But the incoherence almost enhances the value of the work to us, if not as a scientific treatise, as an index to the modest, earnest temper in which Locke prepared to give his last message to the world as an apostle of truth. Thus 'The Conduct of the Understanding' forms a very eloquent and pathetic sequel to some other of his writings as well as to the Essay concerning Human Understanding.' Only a brief account of it, however, need here be given.

2

1Familiar Letters,' p. 194; Locke to Molyneux, 10 April, 1697.

2 'Posthumous Works of Mr. Locke' (1706). Advertisement to the Reader. The editor was probably Locke's cousin, Peter King.