LOCKE, JouN (1632-1704). An English phi losopher. born at Wrington, near Bristol. on August 29, 1632. His father was an attorney and also served as captain in the Parliamentary army during the Civil War. Locke was sent for his education to Westminster School, where lie continued till 1652, when be became a student of Christ Cluireh. Oxford. After his graduation he took pulpits. and from 1661 to 1664 he lectured in Oxford on Greek, rhetoric, and moral philos ophy. In 1665 he went to Cleves as secretary to the British envoy, but soon returned to his studies at Oxford, where he devoted himself to medicine for a while. In 1666 he made the ac• qhaintance of Lord Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury. and on his invitation went to live at his house and became his family physician. It was in Lord Ashley's house that he had Ids atten tion directed to the importance of undertaking an investigation of the limits of human under standing. This investigation resulted many years after in the publication of his famous Essay. In 1672, when Shaftesbury became Lord Chan cellor, Locke was appointed secretary of presen tations, a post winch he afterwards exchanged for that of secretary to the Council of Trade. Ile was employed to dra W up a constitution for the American Province of Carolina, but the con stitution was never adopted. In 1675 he took up his residence at Montpellier for the benefit of his health. Here lie formed the acquaintance of the Earl of Pembroke, to whioni his Essay is dedicated. In 1679 lie rejoined the Earl of Shaftesbury in England; but in 1682 the Earl fled to Holland, to avoid a prosecution for high treason. Although there is no evidence to war rant the belief that Locke was implicated in any treasonable practice, he was under surveillance, and in the following year followed the Earl to Holland, and so far shared with him the hos tility of the Government of Charles as to have his name erased, by royal mandate, from the list of students of Christ Church. Even in Holland he was demanded of the States-General by the Eng lish envoy; but he contrived to conceal himself under the assumed name of Dr. Van der Linden, till the English Court ceased to trouble itself on his account. In 1687 his Essay Concerning
Humane Understanding, begun seventeen years before, was finished; and an abridgment of it was published in French (168S) by his friend Le Clere, in his Biblioth•gue Unicerselle, in which Locke had published two yearl before his Yew Method of Making Comnzonpluce Books. In 1688, the year of the Revolution, he came back to England in the fleet that conveyed the Princess of Orange. lie soon obtained from the new Gov ernment the situation of commissioner of ap peals. worth £200 a year. He took a lively interest in the cause of toleration, and in main taining the principles of the Revolution. In 1689 appeared his first letter on 'Toleration.' In 1690 his Essay Concerning Humane Understand ing was published, and met with a rapid and extensive celebrity, although Locke himself re ceived only £30 for the copyright of the first edition; and also a second letter on 'Toleration,' and his well-known Treatises on lIorernment. in 1691 he was engaged upon the ques tion of the restoration of the coinage, and pub lished tracts on the subject. In 1093 was pub lished 8omc Thoughts of Education. In 1695 King William appointed him member of a new council of trade at a salary of £1000. The Reasonableness of Christianity had been writ ten to promote William's ravorite scheme of a comprehension of all the Christian sects in one national Church. In this work argued the necessity of identifying Christianity. not with a belief in mysteries such as the incarnation and the atonement, but with the gospel of love. He maintained a controversy in defense of this hook; he had another controversy in defense of the Essay, against Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester. His feeble health compelled him to resign his office in June, 1700, and lie spent the remainder of his life at Oates, in Essex, at the seat of Sir Francis Masham, who had taken Locke into his home in 1691. His last years were very much occupied with the study of the Scriptures, on which he wrote several disserta tions, which, with his little work entitled On the Conduct of the Understanding, were pub lished after his death. He died October 23, 1704.