tianity not Mysterious '-Stillingfleet's attack on Locke-his 'Letter ' and first and second Replies' to Stillingfleet, and Stillingfleet's The fourth edition of the 'Essay concerning Human Understanding;' and the French and Latin versions of it-Locke's final corrections and Locke's miscellaneous occupations and correspondence between 1696 and 1700-his cousin, Peter King-Rebecca Collier, the quaker preacher -letters to Esther Masham-failing health and serious illness in 1698-Molyneux's political troubles--his visit to London and death -correspondence with Limborch and Thoynard-a letter on reading Retirement at Oates-illness in 1700 and the following winter-a new year's letter to Thoynard-Locke's interest in political affairs-advice to Peter King-Limborch's son-occupations at Oates-controversy William the Third's last parliament and the war of the Spanish succession --medical advice to Limborch-Benjamin Furly and his son Arent- the Earl of Peterborough's visit to Oates--a last letter to Edward Clark-acquaintance with Anthony Collins and correspondence with THE LIFE OF JOHN LOCKE. CHAPTER IX. RESIDENCE IN HOLLAND. [1683-1689.] OCKE was in his fifty-second year when he went into voluntary exile in Holland. In 1660, when he was twenty-seven, the presbyterian tyranny of the dying Commonwealth had not weakened his love of liberty, but had crushed his hopes of seeing it secured by the methods with which in his youth he must have been taught to sympathise. "I find," he had then written, "that a general freedom is but a general bondage, that the popular assertors of public liberty are the greatest engrossers of it too. I therefore cannot but entertain the approaches of a calm with the greatest joy and satisfaction; and this, methinks, obliges me, both in duty and gratitude, to endeavour the continuance of such a blessing by disposing men's minds to obedience to that government which has brought with it the quiet settlement which even our giddy folly had put beyond the reach, not only of our contrivance, but hopes." Not then, or for some time afterwards, making politics his special business, but resolving to be a student of philosophy and science-believing that he could best do VOL. II. 1 his share of work in the world as a physician, and already hoping, perhaps, that he might do something towards curing other than bodily ailments by finding out what was the structure of their minds, and how they might acquire most wisdom and fitness for wise action—we can understand why he had welcomed "the happy return of his majesty" King Charles the Second. His favourite studies had never been abandoned; he had clung to them all the more zealously because other occupations had been so forced upon him as to threaten to divert him from them altogether. His broken health had joined with other causes to prevent him from becoming a regular physician, but he had continued to be a diligent student of medicine. He had been induced to take an active though not at all a noisy part in political affairs; but the ugly complications of the politics of his time, which he had to help in unravelling, had only shown him the great need of better mental training in order to smooth out the tangled threads of life and clear away some of the vicious notions that were spoiling it all. It had been tedious, painful work, and he must have felt now that his toil had been well nigh thrown away. We have seen how, during the past four years, he had over and over again longed to go away from corrupted Europe, and try, with one true friend, to find a new Garden of Eden on the other side of Africa, or to fashion a new Utopia on the other side of the Atlantic. The longings may have been uttered half in jest, but they none the less sadly expressed his temper, or certain phases of his temper, at this time.. What was his position in this gloomy autumn of 1683 ? Sixteen years before he had broken through his plans of work in order to join with Shaftesbury in labouring to establish some measure of religious and political liberty, . 51 and Shaftesbury had only avoided the gibbet by going to die in Amsterdam. Russell, Shaftesbury's worthier associate, and Locke's own friend to some extent, had, in defiance of the law, been beheaded a few weeks before, heedless of the cruel warning of Locke's more intimate friend Tillotson, that unless he submitted himself meekly to the God-sent king, he "would leave the world in a delusion of false peace, and his eternal happiness would be hindered." Algernon Sidney, also an acquaintance if not a friend of Locke's, was now in the Tower waiting to be executed, in yet greater defiance of the law, a few weeks later. Lords Essex and Salisbury, other martyrs in the good cause, with whom Locke also had at any rate some acquaintance, had lately died in the Tower; the one of "a fever on his spirits," the other either by his own or by an assassin's hand. "Fever on the spirits was a common malady just then, for which neither Dr. Sydenham nor any other physician could prescribe a remedy; and Locke, with so many political friends and allies dead or dying, around him, himself spied upon and plotted against by his academic associates, in hope of finding some pretext for making a martyr of him too, could not but be afflicted with it. England had been ruined, though not quite past redemption, by that monarch at whose "happy return" he had rejoiced three-and-twenty years before. The "divine-right" king had Louis the Fourteenth for his god on earth, and prayed 1 See a narrative by Mrs. Hill, Stringer's widow (Christie, 'Life of the first Earl of Shaftesbury,' vol. ii., appendix pp. cxxiii.-cxxix.), who adds: "Dr. Sydenham was his [Salisbury's] physician, and Mr. Stringer often told him to do all in his power to save him; and the doctor told him if he could cure him of thinking too much of the danger the nation was in of popery, etc., he could cure his fever; but he laid that danger so much to heart that he lost his life for it." |