Volume 2

Life of John Locke / by H. R. Fox Bourne.

  • Bourne, H. R. Fox (Henry Richard Fox), 1837-1909.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Life of John Locke / by H. R. Fox Bourne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    THE LIFE OF JOHN LOCKE. -■eHAPTER IX. EeSILENCE IN Holland. [1683—1689.] Locke was in his fifty-second year when he went into voluntary exile in Holland. In 1660, when he was twenty-seven, ,the presbyterian tyranny of the dying Commonwealth had not weakened his love of liberty, hut had crushed his hopes of seeing it secured by the methods with which in his youth he must have been taught to sympathise. “I find,” he had then written, ‘‘‘that a general freedom is but a general bondage, that the popular assertors of public liberty are the greatest engrossers of it too. I therefore cannot but entertain the approaches of a calm with the greatest joy and satisfaction ; and this, methinks, obhges me, both in duty and gratitude, to endeavour the continuance of such a blessing by disposing men’s minds to obedience to that government which has brought with it the quiet settlement which even our giddy folly had put beyond the reach, not only of our contrivance, but hopes.” Not then, or for some time afterwards, making politics his special business, but resolving to be a student of philosophy and science—believing that he could best do