[Born in Somersetshire, 1632. Died at Oates, in Essex, 1704. Aged 72.]
A stern intellect with a pious and gentle heart. Of a good family. He
studied for medicine; but his delicate health prevented his engaging in
the profession. The study was apparently turned to higher account in
settling his contemplation on the real and the useful. He ranks amongst
English philosophers as the one who first, by his writings, impressed
the fact that the Mind of Man lies before us, if we can attend, as much
a subject for observation and for the investigation of laws, as the
outwardly sensible world. The impulse given by his teaching to the
educated mind of the country was strong and lasting. His successors have
introduced, as might be expected, more method and precision into this
region of speculation. They have confirmed, enriched, and extended the
science, although yet far from having attained that luminous certainty,
and that wealth of profitable results, which wonderfully reward the
inquirers into the physical order of Nature. Besides his “Essay on the
Human Understanding”--for which Locke is called the founder, in England,
of modern metaphysical inquiry--he stood up in other works also, as the
champion of intellectual liberty, vindicating the rights of Reason in
politics and in religion. In the study of the Mind, “he broke the
fetters of the schools,” as Bacon had done for physical science. Locke
was the friend of Newton.
[By Riesback.]