It could not be supposed that we would join a society to be made worse off. Chapter X What form a government takes depends on where the supreme legislative power is located.
Chapter XI Legislative power is supreme but it ought not to be absolute or arbitrary. What power it should wield is limited to the powers that man possessed in the state of nature which should also be limited to serving the public good. Chapter XII There is no need for the legislative to stand all the time and in the following chapter Locke observes that if it meets frequently it can become dangerous or at least burdensome , but the executive power ought to be permanently in office to ensure that the laws are enforced.
Chapter XIV The executive may use powers of prerogative to ensure the smooth process of legislation, but it ought never to overstep its bounds. Chapter XV. Since nature does not give one man power over another, as all men are equal, that power can only be gained over those who wage unjust war upon the peaceful commonwealth.
Chapter XVI. Locke thus establishes strict just war code, strictly demarcating non-combatants from combatants, and also the property of conquered combatants and their dependents.
Chapter XVII. In a note on usurpation, Locke apparently accepts the usurpation of power by another personality; it only becomes problematic when the usurper adds to his power. Accordingly, tyranny is the exercise of power beyond normal rights; no one can have a right to that power and an unjust regime may thusly be opposed.
Chapter XIX. A government is thus dissolved if it falls to a foreign power or if there is a civil war, when the government acts illegally or refuses the legislative to sit, or acts contrary to the trust put in it by the people. A people should not wait until the chains are put on them before they rebel.
It is by no means exhaustive, indeed it is extremely fractional in comparison with the debates and problems the Two Treatises have provoked. Lockean scholarship has attracted and continues to generate hundreds of articles on the various aspects of his philosophy — property, rights, rebellion, women, trust, social contract theory, anarchy, toleration, etc.
Those who do aggress thereby renounce their humanity and act worse than beasts and may justly be harshly dealt with. So why leave this idyllic state? Three inconveniences arise: a lack of knowledge of known laws, which creates informational costs involved in action if agents do not know, or disagree on, the particularities of the laws of nature that legislation seeks to reflect; secondly, the absence of power to execute laws, and hence the vulnerability of small groups or individuals being violated by aggressive, more numerous groups; thirdly, in the state of nature, the agent judges his own case and for Locke, people can not be trusted to judge impartially and hence require a government to adjudicate.
There are problems with each of these. Firstly, the lack of known laws does not stop agents from working together to produce a common framework without the state.
The Law Merchant is a good example and could have been known to Locke — merchants trading across different governmental jurisdictions often find national laws highly awkward or inconsistent, so they seek their own forms of international law — independent of any political power. As private ownership develops, so too does the breadth of the services offered, and just as one family does not have to produce all of the goods they desire bread, shelter, clothing , so it does not need to produce security services.
Thirdly, while individuals may disagree on what may be the particularities of the law in a case of conflict of interests, it does not imply that all individuals will agree to accept the same arbitrator, i.
In fact, by handing over arbitration to a single institution logically invalidates the reason for seeking arbitration — if the state possesses a monopoly on adjudication services, then to whom should individuals turn for arbitrating between the state and themselves? Similarly, the free and equal society of the state of nature is arguably not rendered more efficient by consenting to be ruled by a single, albeit limited, power.
An aggressor seeks to gain absolute control over the individual — over his life and his property, that is, he seeks to enslave him.
But can a man be said to lose his rights if he aggresses against another? Hobbes was of the opinion that a man possessed an inalienable right to self-preservation, such that if he were to be executed justly for murder say he would still possess the right to flee. Lockean war is judged primarily on the objective distinction between aggressor and defender: aggressors act without justice and defenders act with justice.
But it should be noted that it is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition of Lockean just war that a party has been attacked. For although the initiation of force provides the objective criterion that distinguishes just from unjust acts, it is not a sufficient condition that may sustain a protracted defence of a country once it has fallen. Locke counsels patience and prayer for a defending side that has lost a just war.
This may be read as a very Hobbesian view of international affairs, which is a popular conception cf. Political Realism that sees the lack of, or ineffectiveness of international bodies, as evidence of a presiding anarchy between nations — even in the absence of actual war, such a situation is still, on Lockean and Hobbesian reasoning characteristic of the state of nature. The defenders — the prosecutors of a just war — thus gain arbitrary and despotic power over soldiers captured in a just war.
How long should such a right last for? Whether a government or a villain commits aggression does not make any difference, Locke echoes the words of the philosophers reaching back through Aquinas, Augustine, and to Cicero. Yet what ought the unjustly defeated do? Remain patient, Locke counsels. Without proper redress against either a petty villain or an aggressive government, the citizen ought to persevere, for justice remains with God and aggressors will ultimately be judged there.
Nonetheless, in the meantime, the conquerors in an unjust war have no title to the subjection and obedience of the conquered. Apparently, Locke again retreats to a Hobbesian position here — that the security of peace is to be preferred to the violence, uncertainty, and fears of war. Yet the defeated are entitled to survive — outward obedience to the regime may certainly be coupled with an inward conscientious disobedience. Self-defence against individuals or against states that infringe upon the fundament right to life, liberty, and property justifies defence.
So to what extent can the Lockean state expand its jurisdiction? The Lockean state is commissioned by a people to serve their interests in securing their rights to live peacefully. It opposes the organic Aristotelian conception of the state that perceives the state as the natural result of social growth — a development Locke agrees with but rejects the non-consensual characteristic of the Aristotelian state.
The organic conception of the state collectivises the citizenry into a single body a family ruled by the fatherly head as Filmer would perceive it , and thereby permits wielding the masses into directions the rulers see fit — ensuring that the collective as a whole survives and flourishes. The organic conception is antithetical to the Lockean order. For Locke, government is no more than a tool that continuously depends on the consent of the people and must not violate the maximum conditions of securing peace and property — to do so is to violate the trust that is afforded the institution.
It possesses no mystical nature of either a divine or a supernatural order, it is a mere prudential institution that can efficiently and effectively provide a better security service though that is highly debatable — see above than individuals working along in the natural state of freedom. Political power is the power that every man in the state of nature possesses but which is given over to the society that they form: i.
The state must not possess arbitrary, absolute powers over the lives and property of the civilians, yet its mandate must seek the public good and be democratic that is, majority rule. This opens up issues. However, it does raise wonderfully intricate problems for any incumbent regime that oversteps its boundaries and initiates force against the people it is supposedly seeking to protect.
Or should implied consensus be an acceptable criterion of continual legitimisation of government — namely, the fact that a people do not seek to secede to migrate should be held as evidence of continued trust in their state?
The argument develops accordingly: may I possess the right to espouse treason in my own home, but not as a member of a public body? Or is it more the case that I can express what theories I care to, as long as the consequences of those speeches do not undermine the peaceful and Commonwealth? Locke remained intolerant of those who would overthrow a peaceful settlement, but that demands we look closer at the nature of peaceful settlements. The Glorious Revolution was bloodless in England, but not in Scotland or Ireland, and the inhabitants there saw the accession of William III through different eyes to their English contemporaries.
Nevertheless, Lockean theory implies that we seek out objective distinctions rather than subjectively held differences — does the new regime uphold peace, property, and liberty, or does it strain to abuse power for its own ends. That remains the deciding argument for the Lockean, even though the details may be difficult to ascertain in practice. It is a powerful theory and one that goes a long way in justifying private property both on utilitarian grounds that it creates wealth and on moral grounds.
The Lockean conception of the state, as we have seen above, depends greatly on the role of property — the relationship between the two topics being difficult to disentangle.
In the state of nature, everything is commonly owned; but as God gave man senses and reason to use for his preservation and reproduction, that which he removes out of the state of nature with his own hands becomes his property — and this is natural and just.
The fact that a man labours to pick fruit or till the soil presents the distinguishing characteristic of private versus commonly held property. There is no need for any consent to be given by his comrades living in the state of nature, indeed awaiting that consent may mean he starves! But take a river from which a man draws water.
The water in his pitcher is necessarily his — by virtue of his labouring to retrieve it; however, the water remains in common ownership. Locke deals with the first objection that if a man, with his labour, manages to secure vast resources, but there are brakes on such an engrossment. Nothing was made by God for Man to spoil or destroy. As men settle down, Locke continues, they needed to delineate their titles to the land, a pressure that gathers as a population increases.
If he lets his grass rot, or his fruit perish, then his enclosure reverts back to wasteland — i. But once land is taken under private ownership, its productivity increases and a man can sell its surplus; in turn, economic growth causes a population to grow, and thereby the value of cultivated land increases.
The introduction of money also permits a man to hold his profit in the form of coin, which does not waste, and thereby enables him justly to increase his wealth. The advance of private property, tempered with Christian charitable considerations, is inherently virtuous. But should the advancement resulting from enclosure be encouraged or even forced? The Rye House Plot was uncovered to be behind it and this led Charles into running away from England again.
Being a protestant closely associated with the Rye House John was suspected of being involved and as a result he took refuge in the Netherlands. It is unknown if John actually participated in the assassination attempt but historians believe he was not involved in the plot. The three major writings of John Locke were published in quick succession of each other and ended up being very influential works of philosophy that influenced political, religious and education sectors.
It remains one of the most important philosophical work on education in England. John Locke is considered the Father of Liberalism on his ideas of liberty and equality. He is the man behind the notion that government acquires consent from the governed and therefore authority is derived from the people and not the government. He was not only known as liberalism, but he was also regarded as the founder of empiricism and influential philosopher who not only imparted his home country but also greatly influence 18th century America.
Damaris Cudworth Masham, the wife of Sir Francis Masham, met John Locke in her early twenties and maintained a close personal relationship with him for the remainder of his life. In , Lady Masham invited Locke to live in her household in Essex which he accepted. John lived there until his death on 28 th October when he was 72 years. He died of health problems which he has suffered from most of his adult life. He was buried in the churchyard of the village of High Laver, Essex.
Locke only shared a close Platonic relation with Lady Masham, who was 26 years his junior, and not a romantic relationship. He never married nor had any children in his 72 years. However, there are strong objections to this view. Had he intended to justify Afro-American slavery, Locke would have done much better with a vastly more inclusive definition of legitimate slavery than the one he gives.
This, however, is also not the case. These limits on who can become a legitimate slave and what the powers of a just conqueror are ensure that this theory of conquest and slavery would condemn the institutions and practices of Afro-American slavery in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Nonetheless, the debate continues. Indeed, some of the most controversial issues about the Second Treatise come from varying interpretations of it.
In this chapter Locke, in effect, describes the evolution of the state of nature to the point where it becomes expedient for those in it to found a civil government.
In discussing the origin of private property Locke begins by noting that God gave the earth to all men in common. Thus there is a question about how private property comes to be. Locke finds it a serious difficulty. What then is the means to appropriate property from the common store? Locke argues that private property does not come about by universal consent. Locke holds that we have a property in our own person. And the labor of our body and the work of our hands properly belong to us.
So, when one picks up acorns or berries, they thereby belong to the person who picked them up. Daniel Russell claims that for Locke, labor is a goal-directed activity that converts materials that might meet our needs into resources that actually do Russell One might think that one could then acquire as much as one wished, but this is not the case.
Locke introduces at least two important qualifications on how much property can be acquired. The first qualification has to do with waste. As much as anyone can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much by his labor he may fix a property in; whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Since originally, populations were small and resources great, living within the bounds set by reason, there would be little quarrel or contention over property, for a single man could make use of only a very small part of what was available.
Note that Locke has, thus far, been talking about hunting and gathering, and the kinds of limitations which reason imposes on the kind of property that hunters and gatherers hold. In the next section he turns to agriculture and the ownership of land and the kinds of limitations there are on that kind of property.
Once again it is labor which imposes limitations upon how much land can be enclosed. It is only as much as one can work. But there is an additional qualification. Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land , by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the as yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less for others because of his inclosure for himself: for he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all.
No body could consider himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left to quench his thirst: and the case of land and water, where there is enough, is perfectly the same. The next stage in the evolution of the state of nature involves the introduction of money.
Locke remarks that:. So, before the introduction of money, there was a degree of economic equality imposed on mankind both by reason and the barter system.
And men were largely confined to the satisfaction of their needs and conveniences. Most of the necessities of life are relatively short lived—berries, plums, venison and so forth. And says Locke:. The introduction of money is necessary for the differential increase in property, with resulting economic inequality. Without money there would be no point in going beyond the economic equality of the earlier stage. In a money economy, different degrees of industry could give men vastly different proportions.
This partage of things in an inequality of private possessions, men have made practicable out of the bounds of society, and without compact, only by putting a value on gold and silver, and tacitly agreeing to the use of money: for in governments, the laws regulate the rights of property, and the possession of land is determined by positive constitutions.
The implication is that it is the introduction of money, which causes inequality, which in turn multiplies the causes of quarrels and contentions and increased numbers of violations of the law of nature. This leads to the decision to create a civil government. Before turning to the institution of civil government, however, we should ask what happens to the qualifications on the acquisition of property after the advent of money?
One answer proposed by C. Macpherson in The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism is that the qualifications are completely set aside, and we now have a system for the unlimited acquisition of private property. This does not seem to be correct. It seems plain, rather, that at least the non-spoilage qualification is satisfied, because money does not spoil.
The other qualifications may be rendered somewhat irrelevant by the advent of the conventions about property adopted in civil society. This leaves open the question of whether Locke approved of these changes. Macpherson, who takes Locke to be a spokesman for a proto-capitalist system, sees Locke as advocating the unlimited acquisition of wealth.
James Tully, on the other side, in A Discourse of Property holds that Locke sees the new conditions, the change in values and the economic inequality which arise as a result of the advent of money, as the fall of man. Tully sees Locke as a persistent and powerful critic of self-interest. This remarkable difference in interpretation has been a significant topic for debates among scholars over the last forty years.
Covetousness and the desire to having in our possession and our dominion more than we have need of, being the root of all evil, should be early and carefully weeded out and the contrary quality of being ready to impart to others inculcated.
Just as natural rights and natural law theory had a florescence in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, so did the social contract theory. Why is Locke a social contract theorist? Is it merely that this was one prevailing way of thinking about government at the time which Locke blindly adopted? One might hold that governments were originally instituted by force, and that no agreement was involved.
Were Locke to adopt this view, he would be forced to go back on many of the things which are at the heart of his project in the Second Treatise , though cases like the Norman conquest force him to admit that citizens may come to accept a government that was originally forced on them. Treatises II, 1, 4. So, while Locke might admit that some governments come about through force or violence, he would be destroying the most central and vital distinction, that between legitimate and illegitimate civil government, if he admitted that legitimate government can come about in this way.
So, for Locke, legitimate government is instituted by the explicit consent of those governed. Those who make this agreement transfer to the government their right of executing the law of nature and judging their own case.
These are the powers which they give to the central government, and this is what makes the justice system of governments a legitimate function of such governments. Ruth Grant has persuasively argued that the establishment of government is in effect a two step process. Universal consent is necessary to form a political community. Consent to join a community once given is binding and cannot be withdrawn.
This makes political communities stable. The answer to this question is determined by majority rule. The point is that universal consent is necessary to establish a political community, majority consent to answer the question who is to rule such a community. Universal consent and majority consent are thus different in kind, not just in degree. Grant writes:. When the designated government dissolves, men remain obligated to society acting through majority rule.
It is entirely possible for the majority to confer the rule of the community on a king and his heirs, or a group of oligarchs or on a democratic assembly. Thus, the social contract is not inextricably linked to democracy.
Still, a government of any kind must perform the legitimate function of a civil government. Locke is now in a position to explain the function of a legitimate government and distinguish it from illegitimate government. The aim of such a legitimate government is to preserve, so far as possible, the rights to life, liberty, health and property of its citizens, and to prosecute and punish those of its citizens who violate the rights of others and to pursue the public good even where this may conflict with the rights of individuals.
In doing this it provides something unavailable in the state of nature, an impartial judge to determine the severity of the crime, and to set a punishment proportionate to the crime. This is one of the main reasons why civil society is an improvement on the state of nature. An illegitimate government will fail to protect the rights to life, liberty, health and property of its subjects, and in the worst cases, such an illegitimate government will claim to be able to violate the rights of its subjects, that is it will claim to have despotic power over its subjects.
Since Locke is arguing against the position of Sir Robert Filmer who held that patriarchal power and political power are the same, and that in effect these amount to despotic power, Locke is at pains to distinguish these three forms of power, and to show that they are not equivalent.
THOUGH I have had occasion to speak of these before, yet the great mistakes of late about government, having as I suppose arisen from confounding these distinct powers one with another, it may not be amiss, to consider them together.
Paternal power is limited. It lasts only through the minority of children, and has other limitations. Political power, derived as it is from the transfer of the power of individuals to enforce the law of nature, has with it the right to kill in the interest of preserving the rights of the citizens or otherwise supporting the public good. Legitimate despotic power, by contrast, implies the right to take the life, liberty, health and at least some of the property of any person subject to such a power.
At the end of the Second Treatise we learn about the nature of illegitimate civil governments and the conditions under which rebellion and regicide are legitimate and appropriate. As noted above, scholars now hold that the book was written during the Exclusion crisis, and may have been written to justify a general insurrection and the assassination of the king of England and his brother. The argument for legitimate revolution follows from making the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate civil government.
A legitimate civil government seeks to preserve the life, health, liberty and property of its subjects, insofar as this is compatible with the public good. Because it does this it deserves obedience. An illegitimate civil government seeks to systematically violate the natural rights of its subjects. It seeks to make them illegitimate slaves. Because an illegitimate civil government does this, it puts itself in a state of nature and a state of war with its subjects.
The magistrate or king of such a state violates the law of nature and so makes himself into a dangerous beast of prey who operates on the principle that might makes right, or that the strongest carries it.
In such circumstances, rebellion is legitimate as is the killing of such a dangerous beast of prey. Thus Locke justifies rebellion and regicide under certain circumstances. Presumably this justification was going to be offered for the killing of the King of England and his brother had the Rye House Plot succeeded. The issue of religious toleration was of widespread interest in Europe in the seventeenth century.
The Reformation had split Europe into competing religious camps, and this provoked civil wars and massive religious persecutions. The Dutch Republic, where Locke spent time, had been founded as a secular state which would allow religious differences. This was a reaction to Catholic persecution of Protestants. Once the Calvinist Church gained power, however, they began persecuting other sects, such as the Remonstrants who disagreed with them.
In France, religious conflict had been temporarily quieted by the edict of Nantes. But in , the year in which Locke wrote the First Letter concerning religious toleration, Louis XIV had revoked the Edict of Nantes, and the Huguenots were being persecuted and though prohibited from doing so, emigrated on mass.
People in England were keenly aware of the events taking place in France. In England itself, religious conflict dominated the seventeenth century, contributing in important respects to the coming of the English Civil War, and the abolishing of the Anglican Church during the Protectorate.
After the Restoration of Charles II, Anglicans in parliament passed laws which repressed both Catholics and Protestant sects such as Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers and Unitarians who did not agree with the doctrines or practices of the state Church.
Of these various dissenting sects, some were closer to the Anglicans, others more remote. One reason among others why King Charles may have found Shaftesbury useful was that they were both concerned about religious toleration. They parted when it became clear that the King was mainly interested in toleration for Catholics, and Shaftesbury for Protestant dissenters. One widely discussed strategy for reducing religious conflict in England was called comprehension. The idea was to reduce the doctrines and practices of the Anglican church to a minimum so that most, if not all, of the dissenting sects would be included in the state church.
For those which even this measure would not serve, there was to be toleration. Toleration we may define as a lack of state persecution. Neither of these strategies made much progress during the course of the Restoration. This is a quite difficult question to answer. But what kind of Christian was Locke? At Oxford, Locke avoided becoming an Anglican priest. Others have identified him with the Latitudinarians—a movement among Anglicans to argue for a reasonable Christianity that dissenters ought to accept.
Still, there are some reasons to think that Locke was neither an orthodox Anglican or a Latitudinarian. Locke arranged to have the work published anonymously in Holland though in the end Newton decided not to publish McLachlan This strongly suggests that Locke too was by this time an Arian or unitarian. Arius, c. Newton held that the Church had gone in the wrong direction in condemning Arius.
Yet Richard Ashcraft has argued that comprehension for the Anglicans meant conforming to the existing practices of the Anglican Church; that is, the abandonment of religious dissent. Locke had been thinking, talking and writing about religious toleration since His views evolved. In the early s he very likely was an orthodox Anglican. He and Shaftesbury had instituted religious toleration in the Fundamental Constitutions of the Carolinas He wrote the Epistola de Tolerantia in Latin in while in exile in Holland.
Holland itself was a Calvinist theocracy with significant problems with religious toleration. Locke gives a principled account of religious toleration, though this is mixed in with arguments which apply only to Christians, and perhaps in some cases only to Protestants. He excluded both Catholics and atheists from religious toleration.
In the case of Catholics it was because he regarded them as agents of a foreign power. He gives his general defense of religious toleration while continuing the anti-Papist rhetoric of the Country party which sought to exclude James II from the throne.
Locke defines life, liberty, health and property as our civil interests. These are the proper concern of a magistrate or civil government. The magistrate can use force and violence where this is necessary to preserve civil interests against attack. This is the central function of the state. Locke holds that the use of force by the state to get people to hold certain beliefs or engage in certain ceremonies or practices is illegitimate. The chief means which the magistrate has at her disposal is force, but force is not an effective means for changing or maintaining belief.
Suppose then, that the magistrate uses force so as to make people profess that they believe. A sweet religion, indeed, that obliges men to dissemble, and tell lies to both God and man, for the salvation of their souls!
So, religious persecution by the state is inappropriate. This means that the use of bread and wine, or even the sacrificing of a calf could not be prohibited by the magistrate.
If there are competing churches, one might ask which one should have the power? The answer is clearly that power should go to the true church and not to the heretical church.
But Locke claims this amounts to saying nothing. For every church believes itself to be the true church, and there is no judge but God who can determine which of these claims is correct. This will supersede The Works of John Locke of which the edition is probably the most standard.
The Oxford Clarendon editions contain much of the material of the Lovelace collection, purchased and donated to Oxford by Paul Mellon. There were corrected in February The Limits of Human Understanding 2. The Two Treatises Of Government 4. In the Epistle to the Reader at the beginning of the Essay Locke remarks: The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity: but every one must not hope to be a Boyle or a Sydenham; and in an age that produces such masters as the great Huygenius and the incomparable Mr.
He tells us that: Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of this Essay, I should tell thee, that five or six friends meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that rose on every side. The Limits of Human Understanding Locke is often classified as the first of the great English empiricists ignoring the claims of Bacon and Hobbes. Locke writes: For I thought that the first Step towards satisfying the several Enquiries, the Mind of Man was apt to run into, was, to take a Survey of our own Understandings, examine our own Powers, and see to what Things they were adapted.
Locke says: It seems to me a near Contradiction to say that there are truths imprinted on the Soul, which it perceives or understands not; imprinting if it signify anything, being nothing else but the making certain Truths to be perceived.
Locke gives the following argument against innate propositions being dispositional: For if any one [proposition] may [be in the mind but not be known]; then, by the same Reason, all Propositions that are true, and the Mind is ever capable of assenting to, may be said to be in the Mind, and to be imprinted: since if any one can be said to be in the Mind, which it never yet knew, it must be only because it is capable of knowing it; and so the Mind is of all Truths it ever shall know.
Woozley puts the difficulty of doing this succinctly: …it is scarcely credible both that Locke should be able to see and state so clearly the fundamental objection to the picture-original theory of sense perception, and that he should have held the same theory himself.
Locke writes: First, Modes I call such complex Ideas , which however compounded, contain not in themselves the supposition of subsisting by themselves; such are the ideas signified by the Words Triangle, Gratitude, Murther, etc. He writes: Of these Modes , there are two sorts, which deserve distinct consideration. Locke writes: As Demonstration is the shewing of the agreement or disagreement of two Ideas, by the intervention of one or more Proofs, which have a constant, immutable, and visible connexion one with another: so Probability is nothing but the appearance of such an Agreement or Disagreement, by the intervention of Proofs, whose connection is not constant and immutable, or at least is not perceived to be so, but is or appears, for the most part to be so, and is enough to induce the Mind to judge the Proposition to be true, or false, rather than the contrary.
He writes: Thus the observing that the bare rubbing of two bodies violently one upon the other, produce heat, and very often fire it self, we have reason to think, that what we call Heat and Fire consist of the violent agitation of the imperceptible minute parts of the burning matter…. But he adds: And I do not see how they can argue with anyone or even convince a gainsayer who uses the same plea, without setting down strict boundaries between faith and reason.
Locke writes: Because the Mind, not being certain of the Truth of that it evidently does not know, but only yielding to the Probability that appears to it, is bound to give up its assent to such Testimony, which, it is satisfied, comes from one who cannot err, and will not deceive.
Of enthusiasts, those who would abandon reason and claim to know on the basis of faith alone, Locke writes: …he that takes away Reason to make way for Revelation, puts out the Light of both, and does much what the same, as if he would perswade a Man to put out his eyes, the better to receive the remote Light of an invisible Star by a Telescope.
In the Middle Ages the child was regarded as only a simple plaything, as a simple animal, or a miniature adult who dressed, played and was supposed to act like his elders…Their ages were unimportant and therefore seldom known. Axtell 63—4 Locke treated children as human beings in whom the gradual development of rationality needed to be fostered by parents.
The Two Treatises Of Government Lord Shaftsbury had been dismissed from his post as Lord Chancellor in and had become one of the leaders of the opposition party, the Country Party. Treatises, II, 1,3 In the second chapter of The Second Treatise Locke describes the state in which there is no government with real political power. Thus Locke writes: The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone: and reason which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions….
Locke writes: As much as anyone can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much by his labor he may fix a property in; whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Locke says: Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land , by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the as yet unprovided could use.
Locke remarks that: … before the desire of having more than one needed had altered the intrinsic value of things, which depends only on their usefulness to the life of man; or had agreed, that a little piece of yellow metal, which would keep without wasting or decay, should be worth a great piece of flesh, or a whole heap of corn; though men had a right to appropriate by their labor, each one of himself, as much of the things of nature, as he could use; yet this could not be much, nor to the prejudice of others, where the same plenty was left to those who would use the same industry.
And says Locke: …if he would give his nuts for a piece of metal, pleased with its color, or exchange his sheep for shells, or wool for a sparkling pebble or diamond, and keep those by him all his life, he invaded not the right of others, he might heap up as much of these durable things as he pleased; the exceeding of the bounds of his property not lying in the largeness of his possessions, but the perishing of anything uselessly in it.
Treatises II, 1, 4 So, while Locke might admit that some governments come about through force or violence, he would be destroying the most central and vital distinction, that between legitimate and illegitimate civil government, if he admitted that legitimate government can come about in this way.
Locke and Religious Toleration The issue of religious toleration was of widespread interest in Europe in the seventeenth century. Locke writes: A sweet religion, indeed, that obliges men to dissemble, and tell lies to both God and man, for the salvation of their souls! Nidditch ed. Yolton and Jean S. Yolton eds. Nidditch and G. Rogers eds. Higgins-Biddle ed. Milton and Philip Milton eds. Wainwright ed. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you.
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