Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/42

 and love of truth have been universally acknowledged; and even his want of thoroughness and of logical consistency enabled him to reflect more fully the spirit of a period of compromise. His spiritual descendant, J. S. Mill, indicates his main achievement by calling him the 'unquestioned founder of the analytic philosophy of mind' (, Logic, book i. chap, vi.) By fixing attention upon the problem of the necessary limits of thought and investigating the origin of ideas, his writings led to the characteristic method of his English successors, who substituted a scientific psychology for a transcendental metaphysic. His own position, however, was not consistent, and very different systems have been affiliated upon his teaching. His famous attack upon 'innate ideas' expressed his most characteristic tendency, and was generally regarded as victorious; but critics have not agreed as to what is precisely meant by 'innate ideas,' and Hamilton, for example, maintains that if Locke and Descartes, at whom he chiefly aimed, had both expressed themselves clearly, they would have been consistent with each other and with the truth (, Works, p. 782). Hume's scepticism was the most famous application of Locke's method; but Reid and his follower Dugald Stewart, while holding that the theory of 'ideas' accepted by Locke would logically lead to Hume, still hold that a sound philosophy can be constructed upon Locke's method, and regard him as one of the great teachers (see e.g., Intellectual Powers, ch. ix., and , Philosophical Essays, Essay iii.) In France, Locke's name is said to have been first made popular by Fontenelle. He was enthusiastically admired by Voltaire and by d'Alembert, Diderot, Helvetius, and their contemporaries. Condillac, his most conspicuous disciple in philosophy, gave to his teaching the exclusively sensational turn which Locke would have apparently disavowed. Condorcet and the 'idéologues,' Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy, and others, owed much to Locke during the revolutionary period (for many references to his influence with them see Les Idéologues, by Fr. Picavet, 1891). He was attacked as a source of the revolutionary views by De Maistre in the 'Soirées de St. Pétersbourg,' and by other reactionary writers: and criticised with great severity and probably much unfairness by Cousin as leader of the 'eclectics.' The English empirical school have continued to regard Locke as their founder, though they seem to have been more immediately influenced by his followers, Berkeley and Hume, and especially by David Hartley, as also in some respects by his predecessor Hobbes. Leibniz's 'Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain,' the most remarkable contemporary criticism, written in 1704, was first published in 1765. Some short 'Reflexions' upon the 'Essay' written by Leibnitz were submitted to Locke in 1708, but are mentioned rather slightingly by him in his letters to Molyneux (22 Feb. and 10 April 1697). 'Locke's Writings and Philosophy Historically Considered and Vindicated from the Charge of Contributing to Hume's Scepticism,' by Edward Tagart (1855), is loose and discursive, but may suggest some comparisons. See also 'The Intellectualism of Locke,' by Thomas E. Webb (1857). For recent expositions see Dr. Thomas Fowler's 'Locke' in Mr. John Morley's 'Men of Letters' series; Professor Fraser's 'Locke' in Blackwood's 'Philosophical Classics,' and T. H. Green's 'Introduction' to Hume's 'Philosophical Works.'