as that the monarch should do so. In general it might be said that Locke looked to the future in appraising the foundation of political society, and then, once political society was established, looked back to the past. Genesis is more important than outcome in the framing Lof most of his political and social principles. Therefore his rationalism is very weak. Though he fortunately read into the nature of man and the terms of the political contract all the elements needed in order to draw therefrom his liberal principles, yet he must have reached his ideas of the nature of man and the terms of the political contract by considering the consequences and implications of his principles. What he ostensibly deduced as the logical outcome of certain alleged agreements of ideas, he must have first come to accept on grounds of utility -otherwise he would be guilty of unwarranted dogmatism. He reached the absolute principles which served as his major premises from an empirical estimate of the results of certain courses of conduct; but he failed to realize their empirical derivation, and remained restless until he thought that he found them in the nature of things.57 Such. procedure is most unsatisfactory, both because it combines a fictitious reconstruction of the past with a legalistic dependence thereon, anď because it rests content with insufficient empirical investigations instead of pressing on to a more complete and adequate survey of political data.

Another and hardly less serious fault in Locke's theory of political society is his failure to grapple with the problem of sovereignty. ✔ Hobbes had raised this problem in a violent fashion; but Locke returned to the pre-Hobbian, medieval attitude. He did, to be sure,. reject any government which does not rest on the consent of the governed; but he nowhere expounded a doctrine of popular sov-— ereignty. He dreaded the absolutism of the Leviathan, and seems to have supposed that in rejecting that absolutism he had to reject the doctrine of sovereignty altogether. He tried to make the law of nature, rather than any political person or body, supreme-a position which he, with his nominalistic logical views, could not maintain with as much effectiveness as did the scholastic realists of the Middle Ages. As a practical statesman he stood with the parliamentary forces in their programme of reform; but he left much power to the monarch, and he deposited still more power in the people. Of course mixed governments frequently thrive; but even in mixed governments there must be some center which in case of conflict has the ultimate power. Hobbes might be said to have abolished right in order to emphasize

57 Cf. Leslie Stephen's English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, p. 138: "Vigorously as Locke can put the utilitarian argument, we become sensible that it somehow fails to give him complete satisfaction. He wants some binding element to supplement the mere shifting considerations of expediency. We constantly meet with rights of an indefeasible nature, which have somehow obtained an authority independent of the source from which they are derived."

the fact of might; Locke might almost be said to be desirous of denying the existence of might altogether in order to restore right to its lofty position. Hobbes subjected the moral to the legal; Locke would almost make the moral operate without legal instrumentalities. 'Locke was so intent on explaining what ought to be that he did not enough consider what is. He evidently thought he could avoid the problem of sovereignty by dividing up political functions among the various parts of the body politic.58

In spite of his insistence on the right of revolution Locke can hardly be spoken of as a revolutionist. His interest was obviously to provide for a stable government. But his experience under the later Stuart. kings convinced him that such stability must be sought and obtained by limiting the rights of governments rather than by limiting the rights of the people. Whereas Hobbes sought peace by restraint upon the people, Locke sought it by restraint upon the rulers. He realized both that no denial of rights to the people would be effective in keeping them in subjection to oppressive tyranny, and also that the misrule of vain monarchs was the ultimate cause of the political unrest in the England of his day. His recognition of the rights of revolution was, therefore, not so much an exhortation to the people to rise against their government, as a warning to the monarchs and parliaments to recognize the wise limitations of their dominion. As T. H. Green not rev. expressed it: "What he was really concerned about was to dispute 'the right divine to govern wrong'. He had no more fondness for turbulence and violence than Hobbes; but whereas Hobbes showed himself a Tory and a conservative in his theory of how to maintain peace, he showed himself a Whig and a liberal.60 When he insisted on the right of revolution he at once added that his theory would not promote, but lessen, the probabilities of popular uprisings. For on the one hand, princes might be prevailed upon by a knowledge of the true political principles to be more considerate of their subjects' rights. And on the other hand, the people are not naturally inclined to resort to force against their superiors. The people “are not so easily got out of their old forms as some are apt to suggest." " 61 Most revolutions are to be blamed upon the insolence and arbitrary actions of rulers.

"" 59

58 Cf. Figgis: The Divine Right of Kings, p. 242. Figgis goes so far as to interpret Locke's Treatise of Civil Government as primarily an attack on the idea of sovereignty rather than a defense of democratic over against monarchical principles. Undoubtedly Figgis interprets correctly the implications of Locke's position. But does he not forget the practical purpose which Locke confesses he had in mind? 59 T. H. Green: Works, Vol. II, p. 385.

60 It may seem strange to speak of Hobbes as conservative and Locke as more liberal. Yet, though Hobbes was on the whole the more radical thinker, he was on certain points almost reactionary, e.g., in his making men's consciences and even their reason subservient to the authority of the state. Locke, on the other hand, if he did not carry his rationalism out to violent extremes, at least carried it into every department of thought. Hobbes consequently went further along some lines, but Locke went further along others. Cf. A. W. Benn: The History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. I, p. 114.

62 Of Civil Government, § 223. Cf. § 230.

rather than upon any wantonness of the people. Therefore, a frank acknowledgment by rulers of the people's right to revolution is likely to diminish rather than increase the causes which produce the necessity for the exercise of that right.

The non-revolutionary motive behind Locke's discussion of the right of revolution is further exhibited by his reliance on his rationalistic rather than his hedonistic moral principles in his discussion of the matter. If he had been willing to justify revolutions by the hedonistic standard, he would have had to grant that revolutions were morally warranted whenever they promoted the happiness of the people. And as many people might deem that sweeping political changes would be favorable to their happiness, frequent occasions for outbreaks might arise. But since he based the right of revolution on the violation of✔ the political contract, the occasions for the exercise of that right are few. If the people change their ideas of what they want from their government, they nevertheless have to abide by the contract they made. They are never entitled to begin a revolt unless their rulers have first revolted against them. Moreover, a few persons cannot ethically inaugurate a rebellion until they have won the support of a majority of their fellow-citizens. And as the views of the majority would in most cases be practically impossible to ascertain, there are strong obstacles in the way of revolution. Locke's legalistic rationalism and repugnance to popular uprisings are further seen to be closely connected in his position that though the enactments of a prince who exceeds his just power are not properly laws at all, yet all genuine laws are to be implicitly and unquestioningly obeyed.62 Thus, while he was eager to justify the bloodless Revolution of 1688, he had slight sympathy with revolutions in general. In spite of his own years of exile, he had the common British preference for working out political changes by slow constitutional reforms rather than by more sudden, but also more violent, uprisings.

Locke's theory of political society is decidedly weak. He made improvements, to be sure, in the theories of Grotius and Pufendorf. He stood with Hooker against them in denying that government can justly take its origin from a war of conquest. He recognized the justice of Filmer's criticism of Grotius to the effect that a contract freely made by the people might also be abrogated again; and so he, the first among the political philosophers of the century, gave a place in his theory, however half-heartedly, to the right_of_revolution. He. distinguished, as none of his predecessors had done, between two distinct positions: that some form of government is essential for social welfare, and that a particular government must therefore not be disturbed. And while he affirmed the former of these two positions, he

62 Cf. Figgis: Op. cit., p. 226.

denied that the latter was a logical consequence thereof. Nevertheless, in spite of these improvements in the theory of political society, Locke's position remains weak. His reconstruction of history is probably even more untrue to the facts than the patriarchal theory of Filmer. His attempt to secure social solidity by the idea of “tacit consent" is almost ridiculous. He struggled to deduce from a fictitiouscontract facts with which he should have started. And since he made political rights and duties dependent upon the exact legal terms of that contract, his conclusions are as fallible as his knowledge of those terms is inadequate. He endeavored to deduce from a consideration of life. in the state of nature what kind of an agreement men could be supposed to have made. But such a procedure is hardly satisfactory. The type of rationalism for which Locke stood thus seems unable, to serve as a basis for a political philosophy which can meet all the objections which can be brought against it.

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CHAPTER III

LOCKE'S THEORIES OF TOLERATION AND PUNISHMENT

1. There was no problem of social philosophy which absorbed so much of Locke's time and thought as that of the toleration of religious sects, and consequently of the proper relations of church and state. From his young manhood to the closing years of his life he was engaged in writing out his liberal views, though not all he wrote appeared in print during his lifetime. As early as 1667 he composed An Essay concerning Toleration which, however, was first published more than two centuries later in Bourne's Life of Locke. About the year 1682 he was aroused by Stillingfleet's book on The Unreasonableness of Separation to reply in A Defence of Nonconformity, a short work which first came out in King's Life of Locke. His four Letters on Toleration, which have been included in all of the editions of his collected works, were products of his mature years. The first and most important of these four letters appeared in Latin in 1689, and was immediately translated and published in English. The next two were replies in 1690 and 1692 to criticisms brought against the first letter by Jonas Proast, of Queen's College, Oxford, and are long and at times drearily controversial. The fourth letter is an unfinished rejoinder to a renewed attack from Proast, interrupted by Locke's death, and contained in his posthumous works which were published in 1706. Thus, from his earliest years to the end of his life he was interested in toleration.

1

Locke's influence in advancing the cause of toleration was probably considerable. The issue had been widely discussed before his day, and many prominent men, such as John Owen of Christ Church College, Oxford, John Milton, Jeremy Taylor, and Archbishop Tillotson, had given their support to the liberal side. Locke's task was not so much to get the idea of toleration into the minds of the people of his generation as to assist those who sought to put a widely accepted idea into practise and into legal enactment. As the friend and secretary of the first Earl of Shaftesbury, Locke had a share in drawing up The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, and in securing for that new land a large measure of the toleration he desired for his own countrymen.2 Also he was the confidential adviser of many of those who,

1 Unlike most of his predecessors in philosophy Locke wrote almost exclusively in his native tongue. This letter was composed in Latin because Limborch to whom it was addressed could not read English. 2 Locke's influence seems to be conspicuous in the best provisions of this constitution. In spite of the political conservatism of many articles, the articles on religion are noticeably liberal. Cf. §§ 95, 97, 100, 101, 106.