Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/776

 752 LOCKE In 1646 he entered Westminster School, then of course under Puritan control, and at the headquarters of the parliamentary movement. The six following years were mostly spent there. He does not seem to .have liked Westminster, and its memories perhaps produced the bias against public schools which afterwards almost disturbed his philosophic impartiality in his Thoughts on Education. In 1652 Locke passed from Westminster to Oxford. He there, found himself at Christ Church, in charge of John Owen, the newly appointed Puritan dean, and vice- chancellor of the university. Christ Church was more or less Locke s home for thirty years. For eight years after he entered Oxford was ruled by the Independents, who, through Owen and Goodwin, unlike the Presbyterians, were among the first in England to promulgate the prin ciples of genuine religious liberty. Locke s hereditary sympathy with the Puritans was gradually lessened by what he saw of the intolerance of the Presbyterians and the fanaticism of the Independents. He found, he says characteristically, that &quot; what was called general freedom was general bondage, and that the popular assertors of liberty were the greatest engrossers of it too, and not unfitly called its keepers.&quot; The influence of the liberal divines of the Church of England became apparent after wards in the progress of his mental history. Oxford had suffered as a seat of learning during the civil war. Under Owen the scholastic studies and dis putations were maintained with a formality unsuited to Locke s free inquisitive temper. The reaction against them which he expressed showed thus early a strong disposition to rebel against empty verbal reasonings. He was not, according to his own account of himself to Lady Masham, a very hard student at first. He sought the company of pleasant and witty men, with whom he like wise took great delight in corresponding by letter; and in conversation and in these correspondences he spent much of his time. He took his bachelor s degree in 1656, and that of master in 1658, the latter on the same day with Joseph Glanvill, the author of Scepsis Sdentifica. In December 1660 he was made tutor of Christ Church, and lectured in Greek, rhetoric, and philosophy in the following year. At Oxford Locke was within reach of distinctive intellectual influences, then of great strength, and parti cularly fitted to promote self-education in a strong character. The metaphysical works of Descartes had appeared a few years before he entered Christ Church, and the Human Nature and Leviathan of Hobbes during his undergraduate years. It does not seem that Locke read extensively, but he was soon drawn to Descartes. The first books, he told Lady Masham, which gave him a relish for philosophical things were those of Descartes. He was delighted in read ing them, though he very often differed in opinion from the writer, for he found that what he said was very intelligible. After the Restoration he lived amidst the influences which were then drawing Oxford and England into experimental research. Experiments in physics be came the fashion after 1660. The Royal Society was that year founded at Oxford. Wallis and Wilkins, and after wards Boyle and Wren, at Oxford, and Barrow and Newton at Cambridge, helped to make chemistry, meteor ology, and ^mechanics take the place of verbal disputes. We^find him, accordingly, at work in chemistry about 1663, and also in the meteorological observations which always interested him. The restraints of professional life were not well suited to Locke. There is a surmise that he once contemplated taking orders in the Church of England. His religious disposition attracted him to theological studies. His revulsion from the severe dogmatism of Presbyterians and the unreasoning fanaticism of Independents favoured that connexion with liberal Anglican churchmen which he maintained in later life. Whichcote was his favourite preacher, and latterly his closest intimacy was with the Cudworth family. But, though he has a place among the lay theologians of England, his dislike to ecclesiastical impediments to free research, as well as his taste for experimental investigations, led him in the end to turn to medicine when he had to think about a profession. This was soon after the Restoration, and before 1666 he seems to have been practising medicine in Oxford. But, though afterwards known among his friends as &quot; Doctor Locke,&quot; he never graduated as a physician. His health was uncertain, for he suffered all his life from chronic consumption and asthma, and besides that an event soon occurred which withdrew him from medical practice. To the end, how r ever, he was fond of the science, and also ready on occasion to give friendly advice. Locke had early shown an inclination to politics as well as to theology and to medicine. In 1665 he diverged from medical study at Oxford to diplomacy, and was engaged for a few months in this sort of business, as secretary to Sir Walter Vane on his embassy to Cleves. It was soon after his return from Germany in the following year that the incident occurred which determined his career in the direction of politics. Lord Ashley, after wards first earl of Shaftesbury, the most truly historical figure among the statesmen of Charles II. s reign, had come to Oxford for health. There Locke w r as accidentally introduced to him. This meeting was the beginning of a lasting friendship, sustained by a common sympathy with liberty civil, religious, and philosophical. In 1667 Locke removed from Christ Church to Exeter House, Lord Ashley s London residence, to become his private secretary, and in 1673 secretary of the Board of Trade. Although he retained his studentship at Christ Church, and occasion ally visited Oxford, and also his patrimony at Beluton, lately inherited from his father, he found a home and shared fortune with the great statesman during the fifteen years which followed his removal to Exeter House. The manuscripts of Locke which belong to this Oxford period throw welcome light on the growth of his mind in early life. Among them is an essay on the &quot;Roman Commonwealth,&quot; wiiich expresses convictions as to religious liberty and the relations of religion to the state which were only strengthened and deepened in the progress of his life. Objections to the sacerdotal conception of Chris tianity are strongly stated in another paper ; short work is made of human claims to infallibility in the interpre tation of Scripture in a third ; a scheme of utilitarian ethics, wider in its conception than that of Hobbes, is offered in a fourth. But the most significant of those early revelations is an &quot;Essay concerning Toleration,&quot; dated in 1666, which anticipates many of the positions maintained nearly thirty years later in his famous Letters on that subject. The Shaftesbury connexion helped to save Locke from those idols of the den to which professional life in every form is exposed. It brought him much in contact with public men, with the springs of political action, and with the details of office. The place he held as confidential adviser of the greatest statesman of his age is indeed the most remarkable feature in his middle life. Exeter House afforded every opportunity for society, and of this Locke, according to his disposition, availed himself. He became one of the intimates among others of the illustrious Sydenham. But though he joined the Royal Society he seldom went to its meetings, for his custom all his life was to encourage small reunions of intimate friends. One of these at Exeter House was the occasion of the enterprise