Page:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu/125

 and principles, were a labour which might well be ranked among the most extravagant legends of fabulous Greece."

What might be expected from the business of education being lodged by the state in the hands of any one set of men, may be imagined from the alarm which the Newtonian system gave to all philosophers at the time of its first publication; and from what passed at Oxford with respect to Locke's Essay on the human understanding, which hath done so much honour to the English nation in the eyes of all the learned world. We are told by the authors of Biographia Britannica, in the life of Mr. Locke, that "there was a meeting of the heads of houses at Oxford, where it was proposed to censure, and discourage the reading of this Essay; and that, after various debates, it was concluded, that, without any public censure, each head of a house shall endeavour to prevent its being read in his own college."

This passed but a little before Mr. Locke's