The Past and Present Society

Review: The Locke Myth

Author(s): Philip Abrams
Review by: Philip Abrams
Source: Past & Present, No. 15 (Apr., 1959), pp. 87-90
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/649835
Accessed: 04-07-2015 02:40 UTC

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ReviewArticle

THE LOCKE MYTH*

UNTIL QUITE RECENTLY WE WERE ENCOURAGEDTO THINK OF JOHNLOCKE

as existingin thatpure philosophicatmospherethroughwhichwe

still tend to approach Aquinas and his contemporaries."Sweet
ofthe
and thepale, asceticcountenance
moderation
reasonableness",
the familiarimage of the philosopher
officialportraits,constituted
of Englishpoliticaldemocracy. At leastit was an imagethatcould
be lived with withouttoo much awkwardhistoricalquestioning.
And since in England's major intellectualrevolutionLocke had
replacedtheprophetsas thebasisformoraland politicalspeculation,
Lockehas
it was necessary
to be able tolivewithhim. Intellectually,
perhapsnowceasedto matterso much;itis possibleto discoursewithout reference,
foror against,to the Lockeiancategories. And with
this intellectualemancipationa historicalfreedomhas been won.
The Locke mythbeing no longerrequired,Locke himselfmay be
brought down to earth. The historicalproblem,the motives,
receptionand uses of his thought,has becomean acceptablesubject
ofinvestigation.
Locke's latest biographercertainlybringshis subject to earth.
The philosophicimageis replacedby thatof a manwho was furtive,
cruel; a man whose
small-minded,
calculatingand not infrequently
lifewas devotedto detailsand whosetasteswereludicrously
bourgeois.
Asceticismgives way to hypochondria,plagiarismand lack of
a greatcapacityforfriendship
conviction
areaddedto reasonableness,
takes
withbothsexesthwartedby a strangeemotionalcolourlessness
the place of his formermoderation. Some minor additionsto
Mr. Cranston'spicturemaybe suggested- at least one of Locke's
seemsalso to havebeenhismistress;on occasion
manywomenfriends
he was capable of a bawdy lavatorialhumour which, however
unfashionable
to-day,is betterthannothingperhaps- butin general
the Locke archiveabundantlyconfirms
the new impressionof the
philosopher. Or rather,it would do so had he been a man of the
twentieth
and not of the seventeenth
century.
the impressionis constructedmainly on
For, unfortunately,
values. Mr. Cranstonis not concernedwith Locke
contemporary
as a historicalproblemand measuredby the standardsof a modern
he can onlybe deflated. He livedin a generaand liberalempiricism
tionforwhompovertywas thenegationofvalueand goodswerethe
necessarytoken of a precariousstatus. He was of a class and
* M. Cranston,
JohnLocke, Longmans I958, 480 pp.

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88

PAST AND PRESENT

whoseresourcescould seldommaintaintheirpretensions.
profession
Consequentlyhe appearsparsimonious. He lived in a societyfor
was an everydaymatterand
whichconspicuousphysicalsuffering
ofsocialthoughtwhichheldsuchsuffering
to be
movedin a tradition
bothnormaland inevitable. Consequentlyhe seemscruel. Other
on his personality
can be tracedto similarfailuresto allow
comments
forhis situation. Possiblyit is not the task of the biographerto
answerthequestionsofthehistorian. To havewrestedanynarrative
at all froma collectionas complicatedand dispersedas the Locke
papers have become is a considerableachievement. But this
to the contextof Locke's lifedoes morethan suggest
insensitivity
a moreusefulandinterestiteliminates
irrelevant
personaljudgments,
approach. Removedfromthepressures
ing methodof biographical
of his time,Locke emergesas a collectionof episodes,a bundle of
events and responses from which the necessaryconnection,a
is lacking. We havea massoftraitsbut,since
developingcharacter,
no personality.He is now romantic,now
theyremainunarranged,
rigidlymethodical,now genial, now cantankerous,now reticent
and now aggressive- but thedetailsremainwithoutco-ordination.
This failureto relatethe aspectsof Locke's lifeto one anotheris
mostapparentin the handlingof his medicalthoughtand activity.
Medical interestsmusthave occupied almosthalf,at timesnearly
the whole,of his attention;and medicineforLocke as forhis age
moralperhaps- of the
was but one facet- the mostimmediately
generalscienceof physicalnature,the search,in the pages not of
Scripturebut ofthelibernaturae,forthetrueorderofthe universe.
Locke's startingpointwas "chemistry"as definedby Boyle,and as
as muchas thatof
WalterPagel has shown,the concernof chemistry
theologywas withthe causafinalis. In i66o Locke wrotehis first
politicalworks,two essaysagainstreligioustolerationarguedin the
termsoftraditional
academictheologyand scholasticlogic. In i66o
also his medicalnotebookssuggesta mindimmersedin the system
buildingcategoriesof the alchemistswitha bias towardsthe archei
of van Helmont and the Paracelsan tria prima. In I667 after
six yearsspent mainlyin turninghimselfinto a virtuoso,he had
in his medicine;at thesametimehe
becomean aggressive
empiricist
defences
producedthe firstof his familiarpragmaticand utilitarian
Toleration
of religioustoleration. Boththe Essay Concerning
(I667)
De artemedica(I669) arguefromtheintractability
and theunfinished
ofthefacts- individualsand naturalphenomena- and thefutility
of a priorisystemsin favourof an "experimental"and permissive
approachto both typesof reality. It is hardlyprobablethatsuch
wereno morethancoincidental.
close paralleldevelopments

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THE LOCKE MYTH

89

Thus, thoughthe biographyends withthe just claim,"Locke did

not merelyenlarge men's knowledge,he changed their ways of
thinking",we are shownso littleof the structureof thosewaysof
thattheclaimis herehardlymorethanrhetorical. Locke's
thinking
own contentionin the Essay Concerning
Human Understanding
that
he was workingonly"as an under-labourer
in clearingthe grounda
littleand removingsomeoftherubbishon the way to knowledge",
is quotedby Mr. Cranstonbut theintellectual
situationit impliesis
ignored. Typically, Boyle's alchemical researches, themselves
essentialground-clearing
work,are dismissedas "foolish"; thereis
no awarenessof the way in which,when theirworkbegan in the
of theexperimental
i66os, the enthusiasts
philosophywereinvolved
withtheirown intellectualpast, or of the characteristic
movement
of hypothesisand experimentwhich then emergedas scientific
method.
This is themoresurprising
in thatMr. Cranstonhimselfunderlines
whatis possiblythe mostimportant
historicalinformation
abouthis
subject- thatLocke was a man notof the GreatRevolutionbut of
the Restoration,
of a periodof insecurity
not of confidence,
thathis
mostcreativethinkingand majorworkbelongbeforeand not after
i688 when he began to publish. His biographermakeslittleuse
ofthisdiscovery;butto see Locke as an intellectual
oftheRestoration
is to suggesta model which may well prove more useful as an
devicethantheeclecticand incidentalapproachfavoured
explanatory
by Mr. Cranston.
Locke himselfhailed the Restorationwitha poem whichmight
havebeen written
as an exerciseto illustrate
the"ElizabethanWorld
Picture",an elaborateanalogicaldevelopmentof a fairlyobvious
conceitwherebyCharles II becomesthe Creator. And obviously
he was boundas muchto thequestionsas to thewaysofexpression
of
hisage. On eachlevelofthoughtand experience
theproblemforthe
Restorationintellectualwas itselfto restore- to restorethe moral
and cosmicorderwhicha centuryof individualism
had pulverised.
For Leibniz,KenelmDigby,HenryMore and othersthisfeelingfor
orderwas explicit;almosteverything
in Locke's lifeis implicitly
a
responseto it, and to theneed,as R. W. Meyerputsit, fora "moral
and ethicalreconstitution
of the individual"in relationto himself
and to others. Thus whateverformhis thoughttakeswe findLocke
motive
thinker;a plausibleand continuing
aspiringto be a systematic
emergesforhis endlesschartsand tablesand classifications
(hardly
mentionedby his biographer),
forhis obsessiveconcernformethod,
themeticulousness
his personalaffairs,
in organising
and evenforhis

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PAST AND PRESENT

90

and his secrecy. Publicdiscourse

revulsionfrompubliccontroversy
meantcommitting
himselfto an individualview whichhe knewby
to regulateand define
definition
to be onlya partialtruth. His efforts
foremotionbecomenotso much
hisfriendships,
to substitute
civility
a wantofpassionbuta passionagainstpassion,thesocialcounterpart
of his permanentintellectualinabilityto come to termswith the
of the
of a geometricalethicsand the integrity
attractions
contrary
individual'sacts of will.
So muchoftheactionofLocke'slifein short,canbe drawntogether
to sucha model
andgivensomesortofhistorical
meaningbyreference
thatit seemsabsurdnotto use it - at least as Locke himselfwould
have done,experimentally.
Cambridge

PhilipAbrams

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