HETHER England owes more to her thinkers than to her workers is a question that need scarcely be argued here: suffice it to say that her thinkers have ever been in advance of her workers, and have con

stantly suggested improvements, not only to their own country but to all countries. It would be difficult to point out in any land such a succession of truly great men, benefactors of their country, in the way of suggestive thought, as Great Britain has produced.

Of these, one of the greatest is John Locke, the son of a gentleman of Somersetshire, where the cottage in which he was born is still shown; a humble proof of how badly lodged the gentry must have been in 1632, and that the peasantry must have fared worse than at present our cows and pigs fare in the matter of lodging. Locke was educated at Westminster, and then at Christ-church, Oxford; and having chosen the profession of medicine, he made considerable progress in that science, until he found that the delicacy of his

health would prevent him from working at his necessary studies so hard as he wished. He therefore served Sir Henry Vane as secretary, travelled abroad, came again to Oxford, and was offered a preferment in the Church in Ireland, which, greatly to his credit, he declined. "A man's affairs, and the whole course of his life," said he, "are not to be altered in a moment; and one is not made fit for a calling, and that in a day.

. . . It is not enough for such places [those of clergymen] to be merely in orders; and I cannot think that preferment of that nature should be thrown on a man who has never given any proof of himself, and has not even tried the pulpit."

In 1666—for in a work like the present it is impossible to pursue the biography of any great man further than a few dates-Locke became acquainted with Lord Ashley, afterwards the Earl of Shaftesbury; and between the philosopher, then a mere medical friend, and the nobleman there sprang up a great intimacy. Locke was received into Shaftesbury's house and heart, and became thereby intimate with John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, Lord Halifax, and other wits of the time; for in those degenerate days noblemen condescended to know something, and to patronise art and letters. When Shaftesbury received his earldom (Locke had educated his son, and afterwards his grandson, the philosophic Shaftesbury) and became Chancellor, he gave Locke a post under Government, which the philosopher only enjoyed one year, losing his place when his patron fell. In 1675, Locke's health induced him to visit France; and he resided in Holland after the death of his patron, finding it safer to be out of the way of his political enemies, the

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friends of King James II. But in 1688 the fleet that brought William III. from Holland to England brought also the illustrious John Locke; and, great as was the king, it brought no richer gift. Locke had been known as a philosopher and as a prominent defender of civil and religious liberty; in Holland he had published a letter in Latin "On Toleration." This was immediately afterwards printed in French, Dutch, and English, and brought Locke much praise. In 1690 he published his most celebrated work, on which he had long been engaged in Holland, the "Essay on the Human Understanding;" in the same year two treatises on "Civil Government," being a defence of the revolution against the Tories; and his chief other works are (1693) "Thoughts concerning Education," (1695) the "Reasonableness of Christianity," (1696) "Two Vindications" of the last work, and after his death a work, perhaps his best, "On the Conduct of the Understanding."

Now the question for the self-improver is, how far he ought to read the writings of Locke, and whether they are suited to him; for a man may be very great in his day, and yet not much in ours. The effect that Locke's works had was very great; but then the resistance to his mild and easy doctrines was intense. It is difficult now to ascertain how any one could oppose some of his tenets; though it is certain that many of his doctrines were then looked upon as revolutionary, and that, studied as they were by Voltaire and the French philosophers, they produced enormous results on the Continent. "Educated," says Sir James Macintosh, "amongst English Dissenters, during the short period of their ascendancy, he imbibed the deep

piety and ardent political liberty of those men. By the Independent divines, who were his instructors, he was taught those principles of religious liberty which they were the first to disclose to the world." And Locke had the merit of doing this in simple language, for he hated scholastic jargon, and never sought by artifice to strengthen his weaker thoughts, but clothed all in sinewy, simple English, so that everybody might read them. His "Essay on the Human Understanding," and his modest defence of our Holy Faith, with the slightly sarcastic title, a "Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity," are especially worth reading, even when people are busy, and when they may even think them dry. They are full of thought, and full, too, of the spirit of toleration and love for religious freedom. Mackintosh declares that no books have done more with the learned and the leading minds "to rectify prejudice, to undermine established errors, to diffuse a just mode of thinking, to excite a fearless spirit of inquiry, and yet to contain it within the boundaries which Nature has prescribed to the human understanding." That is noble praise. There is yet nobler in its way: Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law Rhymer of our times, makes one of his working men enjoy his leisure by lying on a sofa and reading Locke and Plato. Of course the working man is a model working man; but it says much for him, and much for Locke, that his sober, excellent, thoughtful works should become the handbook of the intelligent toiler. "If," says a reviewer, "Locke made few discoveries, Socrates made none; yet both did more for the improvement of the understanding, and not less for the progress of knowledge, than the

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authors of the most brilliant discoveries."

in the year 1704, at the age of seventy-two.

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Locke died

A very different writer from Locke now claims our attention-David Hume, a capital historian so far as style and outline of facts go, and a philosophical writer of some acuteness and power, although opposed to Locke's principles of thinking, and most certainly to those which the writer would seek to advocate. But it is incumbent in literature to study fairly what an opponent says; and even in the literature of religion to welcome inquiry, and to stimulate the sharpness and alertness of those who, by opposing, really bring out into greater contrast the beauties of the truth. In 1710 Dr. George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, (1684-1753,) one of the best men who ever lived, to whom Pope ascribed "every virtue under Heaven,” published a tract on the "Principles of Human Knowledge," in which the ideal system was first promulgated, which may be most clearly explained as that which refers everything around us to sensations or effects produced on the brain by appearances, and not by realities. Hence the saying that there was no matter," only form, embodied in Byron's lines,-

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When Berkeley said there was no matter,
It was no matter what he said;

and hence the somewhat vulgar refutation, though only a false refutation after all, of Dr. Johnson, who kicked a stone, and said he had thus refuted Berkeley. But as sensations proceed from the touch as well as the sight, and as stone might be calcined, and pass off in smoke and impalpable ashes, and then would offer no resistance to a kick, although the matter would yet