THE PROGRESS OF SCIEXCE. 



189 



THE UKOGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



THE TWO TILXDREDTH ANNI- 

 VERSARY OF THE DEATH 

 OF LOCKE. 

 Johx Locke, who was born on 

 August 29, 1632, died on October 28, 

 1704, a century before the death of 

 Kant, and two centuries before that 

 of Spencer. The two hundredth anni- 

 versary of Locke's death was com- 

 memorated by the British Academy, 

 where papers by Professors Fraser and 

 Sir William Pollock were read, and at 

 Johns Hopkins University, where Prin- 

 cipal C. Lloyd Morgan, Professor F. J. 

 E. Woodbridge, Professor J. McBride 

 Sterrett, Dr. Wm. T. Harris and Dr. 

 William Osier made addresses. Locke 

 ranks in eminence with his contem- 

 porary Leibnitz, who controverted his 

 teaching, and with the sage of Konigs- 

 berg, upon whom he was destined to 

 exert a powerful influence, although 

 Lockism and Kantism have come to 

 mean almost diametrically opposite 

 ways of regarding the world. The 

 friend of Boyle and Xewton, he was 

 always interested in experimental sci- 

 ence. As a student and practitioner 

 of medicine, he was intimately associ- 

 ated with Sydenham, by whom he was 

 frequently consulted. 



Locke's education was in some re- 

 spects unconventional and his life one 

 of varied incident. Taught at home 

 until his fourteenth year, he was sent 

 for a time to public school, thence to 

 Oxford, with which he was connected 

 as a student or a lecturer successively 

 in Greek, rhetoric and philosophy for 

 many years. At one time he was dis- 

 missed by order of the king for alleged 

 complicity in schemes against the 

 crown, but he was already securely 

 ensconced in Holland, where he be- 

 came the recipient of the favor of 

 \\ illiam of Orange, under whom he 



resumed his residence in England after 

 the great revolution. During the 

 troublous times which preceded, he 

 had been actively interested in business 

 and particularly in political affairs, 

 chiefly through his connection with the 

 Earl of Shaftesbury, and had held im- 

 portant public offices. While living in 

 the family of Shaftesbury, as physi- 

 cian, adviser and general literary and 

 social factotum, he undertook the edu- 

 cation of an only son of the household. 

 He took an active part in the forma- 

 tion of the Colony of Carolina and at 

 one time contemplated emigrating to 

 America. Never strong, he especially 

 suffered from poor health after middle 

 life, yet he was always of a cheerful 

 j and sociable disposition. He was well 

 on towards sixty when he began to 

 publish the series of works which have 

 made him famous. The products of 

 mature reflection, each of his books 

 was nevertheless called forth by some 

 concrete situation and directed to a 

 definite, practical end. This circum- 

 stance, together with their candor and 

 common-sense and the freshness of 

 their style, which is remarkably free 

 from technicalities, early won for even 

 the most obscure of his productions a 

 favorable reception among all sorts of 

 readers, and gave his writings a per- 

 manent place in literature. 



The ' Essav concerning the Human 

 Understanding,' his most important 

 book, contains his philosophy of knowl- 

 edge and his classic contributions to 

 psychology. Philosophy before Locke 

 had been highly metaphysical as to its 

 problems, and dogmatic in its method. 

 It took a fresh start under the criti- 

 cism of Locke, who deliberately set 

 himself the preliminary task of in- 

 quiring 'into the original, certainty 

 and extent of human knowledge, to- 



