LOCKE'S WORKS Locke's writings have made his intellectual and moral features familiar. Large, "round-about" common sense, intellectual strength directed by a virtuous purpose, not subtle or daring speculation, sustained by an idealizing faculty, is what we find in Locke. Defect in speculative imagination appears when he en counters the vast and complex final problem of the universe in its organic unity. He initiated criticism of human knowledge, and diffused the spirit of free enquiry and universal toleration which has since profoundly affected the civilized world. He has not bequeathed an imposing system, hardly even a striking discovery in metaphysics, but he is a signal example of the love of attainable truth for the sake of truth and goodness.
Locke's works on social polity were written at a time when the principles of democracy and toleration were struggling with that of the divine right of kings, and when "the popular assertors of public liberty were the greatest engrossers of it too." "The state" with Locke was the outcome of free contract rather than a natural growth. He maintained that natural rights, among which he includes property and personal freedom, were in no way abrogated by the change from a state of nature to society. That the people, in the exercise of their sovereignty, have the right to govern themselves in the way they judge to be for the common good ; and that civil govern ment, whatever form it assumes, has no right to interfere with religious beliefs that are not inconsistent with civil society, is at the foundation of his political philosophy. He rested this sover eignty on virtual mutual contract on the part of the people them selves to be so governed. But the terms of the contract might be modified by the sovereign people themselves in accommodation to changing circumstances. He recommended harmonious co operation with the civil magistrate in all matters of worship and government that were not expressly determined by Scripture. In the Second Treatise on Government, he maintained that civil rulers hold their power not absolutely but conditionally, govern ment being essentially a moral trust, forfeited if the conditions are not fulfilled by the trustees. His Treatises on Government
were meant to vindicate the Convention parliament and the English revolution, as well as to refute the ideas of absolute monarchy held by Hobbes and Filmer. They are classics in the library of English constitutional law and polity, and framed the principles afterwards embodied in the American War of Inde pendence and the French Revolution.
Locke's philosophical defence of religious liberty in the four Letters of Toleration show that a constant sense of the limits of human understanding was at the bottom of his arguments. He had no objection to a national establish ment of religion, provided that it was comprehensive, and was organized to promote goodness; not to protect the metaphysical subtleties of sectarian theologians. The recall of the national religion to the simplicity of the Gospels would, he hoped, make toleration of Nonconformists unnecessary, as few would then remain. To the atheist Locke refuses full toleration, on the ground that social obligation can have no hold over him, for "the taking away of God dissolves all." He argued, too, against full toleration of the Roman Catholic Church in England, on the ground of its allegiance to a foreign sovereign. Belief is legiti mately formed only by discernment of sufficient evidence ; a man cannot determine arbitrarily what his neighbours must believe. Thus Locke's pleas rest upon his philosophical view of the founda tion and limits of human knowledge.
Locke believed that he had established, philosophically, the existence of God and "natural" religion. Personally he added a sincere belief in revelation, and a profound reverence for Holy Writ. He sought for the original simplicity of Christianity and held that those who practically acknowledge the supremacy of Jesus as Messiah accept all that is essential. His own Christian belief, sincere and earnest, was more the outcome of the common sense which, largely through him, moulded the prudential theology of England in the 18th century, than of the nobler elements present in More, Cudworth and others of the preceding age.